[Deck] Manaless Ichorid

[Michael Keller]

If you seen Feline while your there tell her David said hello! If she isn't sure who your talking about just tell he what deck you are playing and she will know who your talking about. :P I almost talked her into picking up the deck after SCG Milwaukee.

Good luck!

Sorry, guys.

The weather is absolutely atrocious here - I'm snowed the fuck in. I waited until the last minute to see if it would clear up, and it hasn't.

Oh well, guess I get to stay in and work on the new primer...

[TableTopMagic]

Sorry, guys.

The weather is absolutely atrocious here - I'm snowed the fuck in. I waited until the last minute to see if it would clear up, and it hasn't.

Oh well, guess I get to stay in and work on the new primer...

Oh man, that is sucks. I was hoping to see you on camera tomorrow. I just I will just have to look forward to maybe seeing Feline pilot High Tide.

[Mr. Froggy]

Crap.. that sucks.. but at least the primer is coming along. :)

[JonhLightning]

I played in a 24 man tourney yesterday at my local store with Manaless Ichorid yesterday. I had not played Magic in a year and wanted to have some fun. I ran something close to Hollywood deck list with the Serum Powder (minus the fetch, dryad arbor and bloodghast). I went 3-1-1 into top8 then went to top4. Sadly I had to drop was running short on time. I had a blast playing this deck.
My match up were: Game 1 against Punishing Maverick. Game 2 against some kind on Aggro Loam with Dark Depth. Game 3 was against Pox (totally crushed him). Game 4 was an instant draw. Top 8 was against some Pod deck. I won every game using dread return on flayer or beating people down with Ichorid and Nether Shadow. Props Hollywood for your awesome list I had a blast playing it.

[Michael Keller]

I played in a 24 man tourney yesterday at my local store with Manaless Ichorid yesterday. I had not played Magic in a year and wanted to have some fun. I ran something close to Hollywood deck list with the Serum Powder (minus the fetch, dryad arbor and bloodghast). I went 3-1-1 into top8 then went to top4. Sadly I had to drop was running short on time. I had a blast playing this deck.
My match up were: Game 1 against Punishing Maverick. Game 2 against some kind on Aggro Loam with Dark Depth. Game 3 was against Pox (totally crushed him). Game 4 was an instant draw. Top 8 was against some Pod deck. I won every game using dread return on flayer or beating people down with Ichorid and Nether Shadow. Props Hollywood for your awesome list I had a blast playing it.

So, what list exactly did you play?

[JonhLightning]

So, what list exactly did you play?

The list I played was:

4 Golgari Grave-Troll
4 Golgari Thug
4 Stinkweed Imp
4 Shambling Shell
4 Bridge from Below
4 Cabal Therapy
4 Narcomoeba
4 Nether Shadow
4 Ichorid
4 Street Wraith
4 Gitaxian Probe
4 Dread Return
4 Phantasmagorian
4 Serum Powder
3 Flayer of the hatebound
1 Flame-Kin Zealot

[Mr. Froggy]

The list I played was:

4 Golgari Grave-Troll
4 Golgari Thug
4 Stinkweed Imp
4 Shambling Shell
4 Bridge from Below
4 Cabal Therapy
4 Narcomoeba
4 Nether Shadow
4 Ichorid
4 Street Wraith
4 Gitaxian Probe
4 Dread Return
4 Phantasmagorian
4 Serum Powder
3 Flayer of the hatebound
1 Flame-Kin Zealot

3 Flayer? How did you find that?

EDIT: I've been running Hollywood's old list from way back, and its still kicking-ass. I like it.

Proof of concept:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-2MityfDDnw

The second game is more of a blow-out. My opponent was cool about it though. :)

[Michael Keller]

With Manaless, honestly, the core group of cards are so strong that the other flex slots are really just there to have fun with. The old list works just fine and still does what it does.

[kaosjr]

To anyone interested, I piloted my manaless deck to a top 32 finish at SCG Baltimore finishing 7-2. Heres the list I ran.


4 Golgari Grave-Troll
4 Stinkweed Imp
4 Golgari Thug
3 Shambling Shell
4 Dread Return
1 Flayer of the Hatebound
4 Phantasmagorian
4 Street Wraith
4 Cabal Therapy
4 Ichorid
4 Nether Shadow
4 Bridge from Below
4 Narcomoeba
4 Chancellor of the Annex
4 Gitaxian Probe
4 Balustrade Spy

SB:
4 Force of Will
4 Disrupting Shoal
4 Mindbreak Trap
2 Faerie Macabre
1 Blightsteel Colossus


I originally had played this in the 4 round legacy challenge on Saturday going 4-0 fairly easily so I wanted to try it in the open and it performed beautifully. One match I lost could've easily gone either way for multiple turns, but I couldn't flip another ichorid/phantasmagorian/nether shadow over 3 turns and he got me. Overall I was very impressed with the deck and will probably play it in another open. Also to note, I beat storm, various UWR and BUG decks throughout the day only losing to deathrite shaman once since I couldn't find a second dredger via phantasmagorian.

[Mr. Froggy]

To anyone interested, I piloted my manaless deck to a top 32 finish at SCG Baltimore finishing 7-2. Heres the list I ran.


4 Golgari Grave-Troll
4 Stinkweed Imp
4 Golgari Thug
3 Shambling Shell
4 Dread Return
1 Flayer of the Hatebound
4 Phantasmagorian
4 Street Wraith
4 Cabal Therapy
4 Ichorid
4 Nether Shadow
4 Bridge from Below
4 Narcomoeba
4 Chancellor of the Annex
4 Gitaxian Probe
4 Balustrade Spy

SB:
4 Force of Will
4 Disrupting Shoal
4 Mindbreak Trap
2 Faerie Macabre
1 Blightsteel Colossus


I originally had played this in the 4 round legacy challenge on Saturday going 4-0 fairly easily so I wanted to try it in the open and it performed beautifully. One match I lost could've easily gone either way for multiple turns, but I couldn't flip another ichorid/phantasmagorian/nether shadow over 3 turns and he got me. Overall I was very impressed with the deck and will probably play it in another open. Also to note, I beat storm, various UWR and BUG decks throughout the day only losing to deathrite shaman once since I couldn't find a second dredger via phantasmagorian.

Nice one! Congrats my man!

[Michael Keller]

What kind of hate did you contend with?

Nice work!

[Thrasher]

I'm glad to see someone else picking up those Fow's and shoals! Keep on forcing rips!

[kaosjr]

What kind of hate did you contend with?

Nice work!

Most people have very little hate. I worked around several surgical extractions and had a RIP played against me about 3 times. I had a counterspell all 3 times but 2/3 had the force backup as well.

[Mr. Froggy]

I honestly think Manaless is positioned really well in the meta right now, as far as combo decks go that is. I feel it has pretty good match-ups vs most of the field, some are more work than others but that doesn't really matter.

I'm probably going to get hated for saying this though, out of the two Dredge decks in the format, I think this is the best one in the meta.

[carefulmug]

What is the sideboarding plan for the Free Counter lists?

[Thrasher]

All right. Back when i started with the deck i used to play the "green" sideboard. That strategy sometimes actually removes the hate, but i almost never won the game after that: ending up with an empty grave and 6 cards in hand definitely sucks. What i needed was something that could remove rip and leave me with a dredger. Basically, after a big tournament in september, i found myself thinking: "Would i have won if i had had Force of Will?". The answer was "yes".

Countering rip means that you'll be able to discard in your first cleanup step, counter the hate and dredge the turn after. That seems better than "play a land,cast the antihate, wait 2 turns, dredge". Furthermore, you don't have to play garbage such as Forest in the sideboard, meaning that you'll be able to play a proper sideboard, without wasting 11 slots for rip/cage. The blue antihate requires just 8 pieces, and they're much more flexible than the green ones. Force of Will works very well against storm, too, and we all know that it isn't a great matchup, the other one, Disrupting Shoal, is strictly worse than FoW, basically it's a FoW with 7 pitches(4 narcomoeba, 3 other Shoals).

So, here it is.
4 Mindbreak Trap
4 Force of Will
4 Disrupting Shoal
3 Flex Slots, i'm currently trying Faerie Macabre, the number of reanimator decks is increasing, where i play.

How it works:
Basically, you must play 4 Gitaxian Probe MD, so that you end up with 8 blue cards.

VS Grave Hate:

Force and Shoal are sided in together only for rip or cage (against cage shoal becomes significantly worse, though). Diluting the deck versus relic or crypt is just dumb, as there's no need to counter them. Siding in the counters means:
1. Removing the combo kill. Never cut the dredgers. Countering rip and dying due to no dredgers sucks.
2. Remove some DR's. That's needed, you can win with bridges, specially against an opponent who "wasted" a turn playing his hate.
3. Cut something else to reach 60 cards. Adding Mindbreak Trap works if you want more pitches. Most of the times you'll need to counter just one piece of hate, that's why 16 blue cards should be enough.

VS Storm:

4 Force + 4 Mindbreak are nuts. Basically you get to play the control deck until you strip your opponent's hand with therapies. Never side out Chancellors or Therapies. Griselbrand + Flayer are easy side-outs. Chancellor of the Annex is just better versus storm.

VS Omnitell:

Player: I'll cast show and tell.
Me: That's fine.
Player puts Omniscience.
I put Griselbrand.
Player: I'll cast EtE.
Me: I'll pay 14 life, draw 14, force your EtE.

This has happened more than once in my tests, it was hilarious. This works because often omnitell players will have to play S&T, because Dream Halls is just not fast enough.

VS Elves.

Now, this is tricky. I don't wanna lose 100% against reanimator, so i had to cut contagion&Sickening Shoal. Force sure helps against the problematic stuff (they usually can't win without a huge GSZ, Order/Behemoth,glimpse), covering even something removal can't, but pitching a black card is a lot easier.



Does this SB completely solve the grave-hate problem? Definitely not, it still has flaws(mainly it can get daze'd or fow'ed), but i think it's the best if you don't wanna die to random hate and if you wanna have a good shot at beating storm.

Feedback is appreciated, as long as it's not stupid stuff coming from a lack of testing. Thank you.

You might find this useful. I don't have a fixed sideboard against every deck, it really depends on the hate they're packing and how much you can afford to dilute the combo. Maybe kaosjir has it, though.

[kaosjr]

I honestly think Manaless is positioned really well in the meta right now, as far as combo decks go that is. I feel it has pretty good match-ups vs most of the field, some are more work than others but that doesn't really matter.

I'm probably going to get hated for saying this though, out of the two Dredge decks in the format, I think this is the best one in the meta.

There are so many games on Sunday that if I were playing mana dredge I would've just got stomped. Delver into 2-4 counterspells is just miserable for the other dredge deck. I beat that lineup several times.

[Mr. Froggy]

I know what you mean my man. I feel like trying FoW/Disrupting Shoal now!

[Michael Keller]

I still don't think I'm sold on Force. While it was average in testing, you're going to be needing to run more than eight blue cards to support it. You might as well ditch Griselbrand and roll with River Kelpie or Sphinx of Lost Truths to support the blue count.

[Thrasher]

One of my first lists with fow had 1 River Kelpie in the sideboard, but i had no shoals yet. With shoal i have 4 Forces with 15 pitches (3 fow,4 gitaxian, 4 shoal,4 narcomoeba) and 4 shoals with 4/7 pitches (4 gitaxian for cage, 4 narco + 3 shoals for rip), which seems enough to me. What made me cut that 1-of kelpie is the presence of Sneak&Show/Omnitell: dropping a griselbrand against them is better, specially because versus omnitell i just side in 4 force of will, to avoid diluting the deck, and rely on the possibility to draw them with Griselbrand. I've won 90% of my games against that deck, so i guess it works for me.

I like the flexibility of this board, too. Playing with chancellor, mindbreak, force and therapy versus storm is not bad at all,it's actually been a quite good matchup, lately.

I'd never play with forests+claim/silence after trying the blue stuff, unless i'm playing a bloodghast list without gitaxian, maybe. The green spells sometimes get to hit something, but it's often too late(7 lands + 4 claim/silence isn't that easy to get, it's the same as shoal, but claim/silence should be the main antihate in that list), they double timewalk your opponent, and, in case of rip, you still have an empty graveyard. Force+shoal is the only configuration that i tried that gets to beat hate and does it consistently, without wasting too many slots.

[Final Fortune]

One of my first lists with fow had 1 River Kelpie in the sideboard, but i had no shoals yet. With shoal i have 4 Forces with 15 pitches (3 fow,4 gitaxian, 4 shoal,4 narcomoeba) and 4 shoals with 4/7 pitches (4 gitaxian for cage, 4 narco + 3 shoals for rip), which seems enough to me. What made me cut that 1-of kelpie is the presence of Sneak&Show/Omnitell: dropping a griselbrand against them is better, specially because versus omnitell i just side in 4 force of will, to avoid diluting the deck, and rely on the possibility to draw them with Griselbrand. I've won 90% of my games against that deck, so i guess it works for me.

I like the flexibility of this board, too. Playing with chancellor, mindbreak, force and therapy versus storm is not bad at all,it's actually been a quite good matchup, lately.

I'd never play with forests+claim/silence after trying the blue stuff, unless i'm playing a bloodghast list without gitaxian, maybe. The green spells sometimes get to hit something, but it's often too late(7 lands + 4 claim/silence isn't that easy to get, it's the same as shoal, but claim/silence should be the main antihate in that list), they double timewalk your opponent, and, in case of rip, you still have an empty graveyard. Force+shoal is the only configuration that i tried that gets to beat hate and does it consistently, without wasting too many slots.

Congratulations, I doubt Balustrade Spy and Flayer of the Hatebound is better than Sphinx of Lost Truths and Flame Kin Zealot to the point where having combo package A outweighs having combo package B when the latter comes with 2 or 3 more blue cards to support Force of Will. You're probably SBing out the combo package for Disrupting Shoal vs Rest in Peace regardless, but just SBing in Force of Will vs decks that are playing Grafdigger's Cage and being able to keep your combo package as long as it adds 3 blue cards to your blue count might come up.

I'm not sure how much it's going to matter in the end because I've found worrying about the 2 Rest in Peace in UWR's SB isn't really worth over SBing for, but if it works for you then go for it because at least you get to patch up your combo match up if nothing else.

[Darklingske]

I'm not sure how much it's going to matter in the end because I've found worrying about the 2 Rest in Peace in UWR's SB isn't really worth over SBing for, but if it works for you then go for it because at least you get to patch up your combo match up if nothing else.
Mind listing your SB and what your strategy is vs Cage and RiP? Because those two are the nails in our coffin. And I find the strategy "Just race them" not enough. Please give some examples of how you would do that. And I'm not trying to be a *ss, I'm just curious.

[Michael Keller]

I have a question: If you opt to run Force of Will out of the sideboard and you're on the play game two, wouldn't Unmask be better in that scenario? I mean, you're passing the turn with no action anyhow, so if an opponent keeps on seven you've got to believe they have at least some form of hate. In this case, a proactive Unmask would dodge Daze and potentially allow you to dump a dredger faster into your yard to avoid Time Walking an opponent.

It's also easier to cast given the entire deck is virtually black. Granted, it's not as effective against a top-decked hate spell like Force would be, so I'm not certain if we're talking about choosing to play proactive or reactive.

[Thrasher]

Congratulations, I doubt Balustrade Spy and Flayer of the Hatebound is better than Sphinx of Lost Truths and Flame Kin Zealot to the point where having combo package A outweighs having combo package B when the latter comes with 2 or 3 more blue cards to support Force of Will. You're probably SBing out the combo package for Disrupting Shoal vs Rest in Peace regardless, but just SBing in Force of Will vs decks that are playing Grafdigger's Cage and being able to keep your combo package as long as it adds 3 blue cards to your blue count might come up.

I'm not sure how much it's going to matter in the end because I've found worrying about the 2 Rest in Peace in UWR's SB isn't really worth over SBing for, but if it works for you then go for it because at least you get to patch up your combo match up if nothing else.
If i had 3 blue reanimation targets i'd definitely leave them in for g2, i wouldn't side the whole counter package against decks with just 1 cage. At the moment i prefer having Griselbrand + Flayer, but that's a metagame call due to show and tell being around and people adapting to it (some ensnaring bridges in sideboards).


I have a question: If you opt to run Force of Will out of the sideboard and you're on the play game two, wouldn't Unmask be better in that scenario? I mean, you're passing the turn with no action anyhow, so if an opponent keeps on seven you've got to believe they have at least some form of hate. In this case, a proactive Unmask would dodge Daze and potentially allow you to dump a dredger faster into your yard to avoid Time Walking an opponent.

It's also easier to cast given the entire deck is virtually black. Granted, it's not as effective against a top-decked hate spell like Force would be, so I'm not certain if we're talking about choosing to play proactive or reactive.

I used to run Unmask, before fow, and i'd say it's the second best at removing hate. Having Gitaxian Probe with unmask is cool, because firing off unmask on t1 means going to 5 cards, and having the opportunity to see if the opponent actually has some hate is nice, because,if he doesn't, triple timewalking him might be enough to let him find his hate.

The good thing about force is that it doesn't timewalk at all, versus rip . We get the opportunity to discard after the opponent's land-whatever-go, counter his hate the turn after and start dredging.

I tried a sideboard with unmask in a Bloodghast list a while ago, but dismissed it because i didn't like it. It might have been due to lack of enough testing,though, when i tried another bloodghast list some time ago i really liked it. Basically the plan was about discarding the hate in g2, when we're on the play: 4 unmask, 3 Dakmor Salvage, 4 Cabal Therapy. Being on the play allows us to hit Rip with therapy in our second turn, which is a slight chance that should help unmask. It didn't work as planned, but i'm trying a revised version of that with verdant catacombs and 1 bayou in the sideboard. It still needs work, though, but it looks at least decent.

[Michael Keller]

So, with the base core of the deck aside, the future of Manaless sideboards is deciding whether or not to be either proactive or reactive.

The only real solution for a reactive sideboard config is going with Force of Will, really. I get that we're predicating our defense on the strength of the opening draw, which is fine because in order to fight hate otherwise you're looking at needing a land and removal spell - much like Force needing a blue card to work with it.

I think either works fine, it's just that naturally drawing an anti-hate spell once it has resolved seems better than top-decking a Force after hate has resolved.

Remember: the likelihood of drawing answers mathematically improves after each draw. With Force, it's generally turn one or bust @ a static 39.95% on turn one. Yes, turn two is fine drawing it as well, but if an opponent drops Cage or the like then there's no stopping it without Force in the opener.

[Slag]

I tried a sideboard with unmask in a Bloodghast list a while ago, but dismissed it because i didn't like it. It might have been due to lack of enough testing,though, when i tried another bloodghast list some time ago i really liked it. Basically the plan was about discarding the hate in g2, when we're on the play: 4 unmask, 3 Dakmor Salvage, 4 Cabal Therapy. Being on the play allows us to hit Rip with therapy in our second turn, which is a slight chance that should help unmask. It didn't work as planned, but i'm trying a revised version of that with verdant catacombs and 1 bayou in the sideboard. It still needs work, though, but it looks at least decent.

I also ran unmask in my Bloodghast build, and I found it hit-or-miss. On the plus side, in addition to hitting hate, you can unmask yourself and then probe to dredge, which is especially fun if your opponent put you on the play. On the minus side, you have a pretty narrow window to hit any hate cards, and if you have to unmask before you can discard a dredger, you are pretty much out of luck. I'm trying forces in the board, because I like the prospect of being able to DDD and still have some manner of protection. Your post on sideboarding in countermagic was very helpful.

[Darklingske]

So, with the base core of the deck aside, the future of Manaless sideboards is deciding whether or not to be either proactive or reactive.

Remember: the likelihood of drawing answers mathematically improves after each draw. With Force, it's genenerally turn one or bust @ a static 39.95% on turn one. Yes, turn two is fine drawing it as well, but if an opponent drops Cage or the like then there's no stopping it without Force in the opener.
And that is exactly why I prefer Claim + lands over FoW & U cards. For me it is the proactive way that I'm the most comfortable with.

[Final Fortune]

Mind listing your SB and what your strategy is vs Cage and RiP? Because those two are the nails in our coffin. And I find the strategy "Just race them" not enough. Please give some examples of how you would do that. And I'm not trying to be a *ss, I'm just curious.

Watch how they mulligan and then Unmask them if they're greedy and chose to draw, otherwise the best answer to Grafdigger's Cage is probably Force of Will and the best answer to Rest in Peace is probably Dryad Arbor, Fetchlands and Reverent Silence - Nature's Claim is pretty awful fwiw.

There are some other cute SBing plans, like SBing in Lion's Eye Diamond, Deep Analysis, Faithless Looting and Serum Powder and then aggressively mulling for Lion's Eye Diamond if they chose to draw. No one really expects you to switch into that plan post-board so you've got a shot at just outright killing them before they have a chance to play any of their hate.

There's really no good choice, the blue SB is probably your best try at answering the problem. I usually just hope they don't draw the hate twice and play whatever I think is objectively good and trust the math is on my side.

[Mr. Froggy]

And that is exactly why I prefer Claim + lands over FoW & U cards. For me it is the proactive way that I'm the most comfortable with.

That's my line of thought as well. I tell myself that since I run Claim, I can be proactive about it.

[Final Fortune]

So, with the base core of the deck aside, the future of Manaless sideboards is deciding whether or not to be either proactive or reactive.

The only real solution for a reactive sideboard config is going with Force of Will, really. I get that we're predicating our defense on the strength of the opening draw, which is fine because in order to fight hate otherwise you're looking at needing a land and removal spell - much like Force needing a blue card to work with it.

I think either works fine, it's just that naturally drawing an anti-hate spell once it has resolved seems better than top-decking a Force after hate has resolved.

Remember: the likelihood of drawing answers mathematically improves after each draw. With Force, it's generally turn one or bust @ a static 39.95% on turn one. Yes, turn two is fine drawing it as well, but if an opponent drops Cage or the like then there's no stopping it without Force in the opener.

That nomenclature seems a bit dubious, Force of Will is going to be a more pro-active than re-active solution to Rest in Peace because you're stopping it from resolving when compared to Reverent Silence you're removing it after it's resolved and inflicted damage. Any answer to Rest in Peace that doesn't remove it from the board is going to be the pro-active, not reactive answer because you can't draw into it. If you think about it, Unmask and Force of Will aren't much different from each other in what they do vs hate, except Force of Will lets you DDD and makes the opponent commit resources to casting it.

Do we necessarily have to play with Gitaxian Probe in the MD if we're playing Force of Will? I think Dryad Arbor is probably the strongest MD slot because it facilitates either Cabal Therapy or Dread Return uncounterably and we have a lot of SB space to just board it instead. I was trying something like out Street Wraith, out Chancellor of the Annex, out Dryad Arbor and in Gitaxian Probe, Force of Will and Disrupting Shoal with a combo package of 2 Sphinx of Lost Truths and 2 Flame Kin Zealot to keep the FoW count at about 18.

Also I think I'm done with Serum Powder for a little while, making Goyfs 6/7 is a bit of a problem when you could've DRed Phantasmagorian and not being able to chain Dredgers or draw multiple Dredgers vs pin point graveyard removal makes the deck a bit less resilient. Maybe the answer is to play 4 Serum Powder and not cut any Dredgers for like super, duper consistency, but I'm pretty happy Chancellor of the Annex and Dryad Arbor and I'm really not sure what I'd start to cut other than a Shambling Shell here, Nether Shadow there and a Griselbrand over there etc. for 3 of them.

[Thrasher]

So, with the base core of the deck aside, the future of Manaless sideboards is deciding whether or not to be either proactive or reactive.

The only real solution for a reactive sideboard config is going with Force of Will, really. I get that we're predicating our defense on the strength of the opening draw, which is fine because in order to fight hate otherwise you're looking at needing a land and removal spell - much like Force needing a blue card to work with it.

I think either works fine, it's just that naturally drawing an anti-hate spell once it has resolved seems better than top-decking a Force after hate has resolved.

Remember: the likelihood of drawing answers mathematically improves after each draw. With Force, it's generally turn one or bust @ a static 39.95% on turn one. Yes, turn two is fine drawing it as well, but if an opponent drops Cage or the like then there's no stopping it without Force in the opener.

Shoal increases that chance by a fair amount.

Sure, using Claim/Silence allows you to draw, but your opponent will be drawing, too. I think we see the "time walking your opponent" thing in a different way. In my opinion, nature's claim/reverent silence hardly get through after a couple of timewalks.

Let's say you are facing a rip, and you cast a silence after drawing for 2 turns. The most common decks playing Rip are UWR delver,Stoneblade and Death&Taxes.Uwr/stoneblade should have found a counter by then. If he hasn't you'll end up with 6-7 cards in hand and an empty grave. That's 1-2 more timewalks. Now, 3/4 turns are more than enough to establish a good board position, even against us. Stoneforge for Jitte is hard to beat when your first dredge happens with jitte already equipped and charged. Death and Taxes can't counter, but it has Thalia, which makes you need forest to hardcast the answer to rip. Dryad arbor is also pretty bad at casting hate, in these matchups, they have Wasteland and Swords to Plowshares to remove it before it can tap for mana. Uwr has bolt, too.

Now, about cage: i mostly see it in Show and Tell based decks, jund and team america. Time walking show and tell leads to 15/15s knocking at your door, team america will just draw into counters and try to resolve double deathrite shaman or apply some pressure with delver + goyfs. Jund has just burn for Dryad Arbors and discard to try to furtherly timewalk themselves. It shouldn't be hard anyway vs jund, though, unless they do something stupid like Cage+Ooze.

Another thing i don't like about the green sideboard is the amount of slots it takes. Using force + shoal you basically have 4 cards that are dead versus everything but hate (shoals), for claim to work you need to run forests + fetches in the sideboard, and Silence can't touch cage. Sideboarding without diluting the deck too much becomes quite hard,too, unless you're playing fetches in the maindeck, which is something i'd do only in a bloodghast list.


I also ran unmask in my Bloodghast build, and I found it hit-or-miss. On the plus side, in addition to hitting hate, you can unmask yourself and then probe to dredge, which is especially fun if your opponent put you on the play. On the minus side, you have a pretty narrow window to hit any hate cards, and if you have to unmask before you can discard a dredger, you are pretty much out of luck. I'm trying forces in the board, because I like the prospect of being able to DDD and still have some manner of protection. Your post on sideboarding in countermagic was very helpful.

I'm glad to hear (well, read) that!


Do we necessarily have to play with Gitaxian Probe in the MD if we're playing Force of Will? I think Dryad Arbor is probably the strongest MD slot because it facilitates either Cabal Therapy or Dread Return uncounterably and we have a lot of SB space to just board it instead. I was trying something like out Street Wraith, out Chancellor of the Annex, out Dryad Arbor and in Gitaxian Probe, Force of Will and Disrupting Shoal with a combo package of 2 Sphinx of Lost Truths and 2 Flame Kin Zealot to keep the FoW count at about 18.

Also I think I'm done with Serum Powder for a little while, making Goyfs 6/7 is a bit of a problem when you could've DRed Phantasmagorian and not being able to chain Dredgers or draw multiple Dredgers vs pin point graveyard removal makes the deck a bit less resilient. Maybe the answer is to play 4 Serum Powder and not cut any Dredgers for like super, duper consistency, but I'm pretty happy Chancellor of the Annex and Dryad Arbor and I'm really not sure what I'd start to cut other than a Shambling Shell here, Nether Shadow there and a Griselbrand over there etc. for 3 of them.
I agree on Dryad Arbor being stronger in the maindeck,i'm playing gitaxian in my latest lists because i want the deck to perform at least decently against the whole field, so i needed those sideboard slots for Faerie Macabre. Gitaxian might replace it in the sideboard, Dryad arbor would take Gitaxian's previous place in the MD. This would be a smart choice if you predict a metagame without led dredge and reanimator. Same goes for Sphinx/Kelpie over Griselbrand, i find too many show and tell decks to cut Griselbrand, but i have my kelpies ready, in case s&t drops in popularity. Back when i tested Kelpie and sphinx i liked kelpie more. Persist is pretty good, and it's the only one that can draw as much as Griselbrand does.
I'd never side out street wraith, Zealot seems a better side out to me, it isn't necessary versus the decks playing rip.

[Final Fortune]

My thought process regarding keeping Zealot in is to win as fast as possible before they either find and play Rest in Peace or we counter Rest in Peace and they find another. Despite Street Wraith also being a card that accelerates the deck, it only accelerates the deck if you draw it as opposed to the combo package inevitably accelerating the deck as soon as you cast.

I've had very bad experiences with River Kelpie, the problem is that if you're playing Dryad Arbor, then you're increasing the speed at which you Dread Return and therefore reducing the total number of cards you have in your graveyard. Now assume the opponent is playing counter spells, you don't know which counter spells he's playing and you have to blind therapy your way thru' his hand before you can return a kelpie. What are you going to use to trigger kelpie's draw on the same turn then? I used to get in a lot of awkward situations because of not having the card I needed to start the Kelpie chain and had to wait until the next turn to recur creatures and start drawing, at which point his ass is dead to Lightning Bolt etc. Sphinx just draws his cards with no other conditions attached, so the faster you try to go off the less resources you need compared to Kelpie.

I'm sure it's not going to be a huge difference, but the variance kelpie has for not working at all compared to it possibly being "win more" than Sphinx seems like an unnecessary risk where you either have to pray they don't have removal and pass the turn or return something else some of the time.

[Mr. Froggy]

I don't understand how FoW lets us DDD? It still sets us back -2 cards in hand.

Do you guys mean that you're able to counter the RiP/Cage while having a Dredger?

I think I just answered my own question, lol.

[meffeo]

And what about a main split between Balustrade Spy and Griselbrand? Something like 3/1. Do you guys think it's a good idea?

Or is it better to run Spies without the demon? Btw I'm running the blue sideboard

[Mr. Froggy]

I feel its more a question of "either/or" since I think they offer two different gameplans. Test and let us know!

[Slag]

I don't understand how FoW lets us DDD? It still sets us back -2 cards in hand.

Do you guys mean that you're able to counter the RiP/Cage while having a Dredger?

I think I just answered my own question, lol.

Yep. When you're on the draw with unmask, you have to forgo your discard step if you want to hit a RIP before your opponent gets a second land. At that point, you've set yourself back pretty far. With force, you can pick your nose through your discard step, counter the hate card, and then dredge. It hurts either way with a cage or crypt on turn one, though.

[Michael Keller]

Playing tonight @ the local with a new list.

Keep you guys posted.

[Mr. Froggy]

Playing tonight @ the local with a new list.

Keep you guys posted.

How did it go?

[Michael Keller]

Won the whole thing @ X-1. Beat:

Reanimator
Elves
U/g/w Bant-Blade
Reanimator

List and details tomorrow.

[GoldenCid]

So....sumarizing. our main concern for sideboarding is combo mu.
then creature based hate andar finally artifact/enchantment hate. Reading list, nobody sides anti art/enchant hate.

I'll the deck a try in a very large tournament here where i expect blue and combo based decks. Do you recomend me serum powder?

[Final Fortune]

So....sumarizing. our main concern for sideboarding is combo mu.
then creature based hate andar finally artifact/enchantment hate. Reading list, nobody sides anti art/enchant hate.

I'll the deck a try in a very large tournament here where i expect blue and combo based decks. Do you recomend me serum powder?

I wouldn't bother with Serum Powder, the problem with Serum Powder is that even tho' it increases consistency it decreases resiliency, once you've been targetted with Surgical Extraction, Nihil Spellbomb etc. you'll realize your ability to naturally draw 2 dredgers or chain dredgers off of each other in order to use your end step to discard other cards, Cabal Therapy, Dread Return, Ichorid, Bridge from Below etc. you'll realize Serum Powder helps you win more when you're ahead and lose more when you're behind.

I think Shambling Shell, Chancellor of the Annex, Dryad Arbor and Griselbrand are just overall the most consistent choices, with the SB being dedicated to fight other combo decks. I have to admit tho' I'm liking the Gitaxian Probe MD and Force of Will/Disrupting Shoal SB quite a bit, because Gitaxian Probe is a more than reasonable MD card and Force of Will/Disruptiong Shoal pro-actively answer Rest in Peace while giving you game vs combo.

[GoldenCid]

I wouldn't bother with Serum Powder, the problem with Serum Powder is that even tho' it increases consistency it decreases resiliency, once you've been targetted with Surgical Extraction, Nihil Spellbomb etc. you'll realize your ability to naturally draw 2 dredgers or chain dredgers off of each other in order to use your end step to discard other cards, Cabal Therapy, Dread Return, Ichorid, Bridge from Below etc. you'll realize Serum Powder helps you win more when you're ahead and lose more when you're behind.

I think Shambling Shell, Chancellor of the Annex, Dryad Arbor and Griselbrand are just overall the most consistent choices, with the SB being dedicated to fight other combo decks. I have to admit tho' I'm liking the Gitaxian Probe MD and Force of Will/Disrupting Shoal SB quite a bit, because Gitaxian Probe is a more than reasonable MD card and Force of Will/Disruptiong Shoal pro-actively answer Rest in Peace while giving you game vs combo.

I got it. Thx a lot. Which do hoy think is the apropiated number of slots against combo?

Trap
Unmask
Chacellor

Are great options. With 4 chancellor main, would you dedícate 4 or 8 side slotS?

[Final Fortune]

I got it. Thx a lot. Which do hoy think is the apropiated number of slots against combo?

Trap
Unmask
Chacellor

Are great options. With 4 chancellor main, would you dedícate 4 or 8 side slotS?

What kind of combo? I usually have 4 Mindbreak Trap, 4 Leyline of Sanctity and 4 Faerie Macabre

[GoldenCid]

Storm maily

[Final Fortune]

You need about 8 cards then, maybe less if you're playing in a meta with ANT where Leyline of the Void is an option vs them.

[meffeo]

Went 3-1 to my lgs tourney (it could been 4-0 but I made a stupid error vs sneak&show), using the blue sideboard.

I faced canadian (2-1), sneak&show (1-2), uwr delver (2-1) and again canadian (2-1).

I'll write a short report if someone's interested.

[Mr. Froggy]

Went 3-1 to my lgs tourney (it could been 4-0 but I made a stupid error vs sneak&show), using the blue sideboard.

I faced canadian (2-1), sneak&show (1-2), uwr delver (2-1) and again canadian (2-1).

I'll write a short report if someone's interested.

I'd be interested in a report.

[Graf_Caligula]

Went 3-1 to my lgs tourney (it could been 4-0 but I made a stupid error vs sneak&show), using the blue sideboard.

I faced canadian (2-1), sneak&show (1-2), uwr delver (2-1) and again canadian (2-1).

I'll write a short report if someone's interested.

Yup! Give it a write!

[Michael Keller]

That nomenclature seems a bit dubious, Force of Will is going to be a more pro-active than re-active solution to Rest in Peace because you're stopping it from resolving when compared to Reverent Silence you're removing it after it's resolved and inflicted damage. Any answer to Rest in Peace that doesn't remove it from the board is going to be the pro-active, not reactive answer because you can't draw into it. If you think about it, Unmask and Force of Will aren't much different from each other in what they do vs hate, except Force of Will lets you DDD and makes the opponent commit resources to casting it.

Force of Will and Disrupting Shoal as counterspells are inherently both reactive cards; they cannot be played unless someone represents a spell on the stack. You cannot proactively attack a Rest in Peace or Grafdigger's Cage once they've resolved and when you draw either of those a turn too late. I am on board in agreement with the Unmask/Force correlation, and I like the fact that Force allows for the DDD plan to take effect so you can blow out an opponent. It also solves the problem before it becomes a problem, so I guess at this point we should all agree that Force of Will and Disrupting Shoal are the future of this archetype.

I mean, with waiting a turn with spot removal for those hate cards and putting Dryad Arbor at risk for removal, you're better off playing Force or Shoal to stop that from happening...before it actually happens. I am 100% on board with the Force/Shoal plan.


Do we necessarily have to play with Gitaxian Probe in the MD if we're playing Force of Will? I think Dryad Arbor is probably the strongest MD slot because it facilitates either Cabal Therapy or Dread Return uncounterably and we have a lot of SB space to just board it instead. I was trying something like out Street Wraith, out Chancellor of the Annex, out Dryad Arbor and in Gitaxian Probe, Force of Will and Disrupting Shoal with a combo package of 2 Sphinx of Lost Truths and 2 Flame Kin Zealot to keep the FoW count at about 18.

If this deck is going the way of Shoal and Force, then Gitaxian Probe is the clear frontrunner to replace Arbor. I understand that we initially had it in there to fuel out Dread Returns and Therapy faster, but we're in a situation where we may have to forgo that level of turbo-acceleration in order to battle hate cards post-board. One of the predominant strengths of the Arbors were to ease the strain of post-board anti-hate measures so that you could free up board space with more goodies. Probe can help eradicate some of the pressure that would come with boarding in eight cards to fight Rest in Peace and Grafdigger's Cage directly from your hand, which I do like.


Also I think I'm done with Serum Powder for a little while, making Goyfs 6/7 is a bit of a problem when you could've DRed Phantasmagorian and not being able to chain Dredgers or draw multiple Dredgers vs pin point graveyard removal makes the deck a bit less resilient. Maybe the answer is to play 4 Serum Powder and not cut any Dredgers for like super, duper consistency, but I'm pretty happy Chancellor of the Annex and Dryad Arbor and I'm really not sure what I'd start to cut other than a Shambling Shell here, Nether Shadow there and a Griselbrand over there etc. for 3 of them.

Cutting dredgers is never an option unless you're running the full suite of sixteen in this archetype. There are enough chump blockers in this deck (that in turn make zombies) where Tarmogoyf is the least of our worries. There is no fundamental difference between a 5/6 and 6/7 Goyf as they're both four turn clocks. If you can't stop a Goyf from dealing that much damage in four turns, you're either losing anyhow or doing something critically wrong. Serum Powder's effectiveness cannot be measured by such a random corner-case situation. And even if we did, there's a high probability you'll have plenty of tokens to chump the Goyf in the event you want to trade punches back and forth with your 6/6 versus their 6/7. That's not a race they will likely win - not in the face of a gummed-up board state.

That being said, I am putting the Powders on ice for a while and going with the Force-Shoal package.

[Final Fortune]

There is a fundamental difference between a 5/6 Tarmogoyf and a 6/7 Tarmogoyf and it's called Lightning Bolt, when you're playing games instead of theory crafting the problem of "bigger Goyfs" comes up when they're clearing the board with Rough/Tumble etc. and racing your life total. Bigger Tarmogoyfs are by no means a reason to cut Serum Powder, but I haven't been happy with them as a replacement for the weakest Dredgers at the point where we stop gold fishing and start facing hate. The answer may very well be to play 16 Dredgers and 4 Serum Powder, but then we face the problem of having to cut another spell for Serum Powder, at which point I'm not certain whether or not Serum Powder is really any better than the alternatives. It's always a posssible SB inclusiong tho' if we want to virtually increase the number of high impact SB cards like Leyline of the Void etc. in our starting.

I have no problem with MD Gitaxian Probe, but if another card is better than MD Gitaxian Probe for whatever reason we have to question whether or not we're putting our SB space to good use otherwise it can live there with Force of Will and Disrupting Shoal. Regardless all that slot does is accelerate the deck one way or the other, be it Dryad Arbor or Gitaxian Probe.

I still think Force of Will is a pro-active strategy, I don't care if we have to wait until the opponent casts a spell in order to counter it, we're essentially preventing the spell before it becomes a problems and the only difference between Unmask and Force of Will is that we're making them commit resources to casting that spell. Whatever you call it, it just doesn't make sense to categorize Force of Will and Unmask in different categories or put Force of Will into the same category as Reverent Silence. Call it pink poka dots and retro plad for all I care, but things should be grouped by function IMO.

[Mr. Froggy]

There is a fundamental difference between a 5/6 Tarmogoyf and a 6/7 Tarmogoyf and it's called Lightning Bolt, when you're playing games instead of theory crafting the problem of "bigger Goyfs" comes up when they're clearing the board with Rough/Tumble etc. and racing your life total.

I'm not sure I understand what you mean by this?

Do you mean they swing with Goyf then shoot our face with Bolt?

If they were able to swing at least 3 times at you without chump blockers, there is something really wrong. Every time I play vs Goyf, I've never run into this problem. I'd even go so far to say that its one of the least of my worries since all it is is a huge Grizzly Bear.

[Michael Keller]

I'm not sure I understand what you mean by this?

Do you mean they swing with Goyf then shoot our face with Bolt?

If they were able to swing at least 3 times at you without chump blockers, there is something really wrong. Every time I play vs Goyf, I've never run into this problem. I'd even go so far to say that its one of the least of my worries since all it is is a huge Grizzly Bear.

It really is. Tarmogoyf is the least of our problems, which I feel have been addressed.

[aznxlarry]

I just thought of something cute to put into the deck. What about trying Ruric Thar, the Unbowed? The turn he comes down any response from the opponent would have to be some sort of spell ie plowshare. Or what I'm trying to say is, it stuns them for a turn as they try and get rid of it. Any thoughts?

[Holly]

Well .. lets assume I play a creature in this deck.
Also lets assume I only want this creature to be a DR target.
So..why would I want this DR target to be a creature which super-shocks the opponent instead of killing him (via Spy (of which I'm not a fan) or Griselbrand)?
Spy kills in 100% of the DR cases.
Griselbrand kills in 100% of the cases in which you have enough life (let's say 10+ to be bolt proof) and some more since most of the time he itself is enough to win.

Oh and they're both black for Ichorid..you know..just in case.

In which scenario would I want another creature like Ruric Thar?
I must'be at a low life total, be able to DR and no target which could help be beside him?
Uhm..
To put it simple..no.
There's NO way he could improve ANY matchup.. like.. NO nothing.


Well sure.. if you're
<7 life
and playign a sub par choice
and be able to DR something
and a huge Troll or Chancellor of the Annex are not enough
yeah.. in this case the Ogre could help you.. but come on..

Oh and there should be no such thing as another more useful target even in these really small extraordanary examples like Iona..


to make it short.. no.
Really..no..there's no way. Not a single one. Zero. None. At. All. Not any way at all that I'd play Ruric over Iona, Spy, Grisel, FKZ, Flayer, Sphinx, Leviathan, Elvish Warrior, Mon's Goblin Raider, Vizzerdrix or Chub Toad.

[Mindlash]

Well .. lets assume I play a creature in this deck.
Also lets assume I only want this creature to be a DR target.
So..why would I want this DR target to be a creature which super-shocks the opponent instead of killing him (via Spy (of which I'm not a fan) or Griselbrand)?
Spy kills in 100% of the DR cases.
Griselbrand kills in 100% of the cases in which you have enough life (let's say 10+ to be bolt proof) and some more since most of the time he itself is enough to win.

Oh and they're both black for Ichorid..you know..just in case.

In which scenario would I want another creature like Ruric Thar?
I must'be at a low life total, be able to DR and no target which could help be beside him?
Uhm..
To put it simple..no.
There's NO way he could improve ANY matchup.. like.. NO nothing.


Well sure.. if you're
<7 life
and playign a sub par choice
and be able to DR something
and a huge Troll or Chancellor of the Annex are not enough
yeah.. in this case the Ogre could help you.. but come on..

Oh and there should be no such thing as another more useful target even in these really small extraordanary examples like Iona..


to make it short.. no.
Really..no..there's no way. Not a single one. Zero. None. At. All. I would play Ruric over Iona, Spy, Grisel, FKZ, Flayer, Sphinx, Leviathan, Elvish Warrior, Mon's Goblin Raider, Vizzerdrix or Chub Toad.

What about Mindslicer ;) If there is one creature to DR its him because of the flavor ;)

[Michael Keller]

Still working on the primer.

[Mr. Froggy]

Can't wait to read it. :)

[meffeo]

Short report of last lgs tourney

Vs Canadian

I win the first game after destroying my opponent's hand with multiple therapies, dread return for grisi -> flayer -> ggt.
Game 2 my opponent plays a cage in the early and I was without counter.
Game 3, my oppo has few lands and just one flipped delver. Therapies and ichorids for the win.

1-0

Vs Sneak & Show

I lose the first game because of an early s&t to emrakul.
Second match: I'm full of bridges in gy, play a gitaxian and see a hand full of counters but I'm too fast and decide to follow the tokens path.
Game 3: oppo plays gitaxian and see a griselbrand (I've kept a not great hand just because of griselbrand). He decides to play s&t and we both reveal a griselbrand. In his eot I pay 7, dredge x7: gy full of ichorids and board already full of tokens and narcos.
I attack with everything, oppo to 8, I 20. In his turn he pays 7, goes to 1, plays a sneak attack for emrakul and swings for 22.

Biggest mistake: I've could kept at least one narco on defense OR pay 7 to draw 7 and dig for some fows to counter his sneak attack (I was left with 20 cards in library, it means that the fows were there).

1-1

Vs Uwr Delver

First game I'm without bridges, oppo with flipped delver, two sfm and a jitte.
Game 2 ichorids and token for the win.
Game 3 I keep a hand with shoal, fow, probe and some dredgers. Oppo land delver go, I draw another fow, discard dredger, go. He plays rip, I play fow, he plays fow, I play fow (hilarious). I win after some minutes with many tokens.

2-1

Vs Canadian

I win the first thanks to the flayer.
Game 2: my notes say 17-13-dead. I think he played a cage with daze backup.
Game 3 was a long match. I remember that I've played a dread return targetting a chancellor, just to try to stop his delver and take some time. He plays dismember in his main phase to kill my chancellor but... She's a 5/6! Gg

3-1

Some considerations

I've seen quite always a phantasmagorian in first hand, one of the greatest card that this deck could (ab)use. I remember vs canadian, he plays t1 drs, I discard phantasmagorian after drewing another one and discard the 2nd: drs annulled.

I like so much the fows, they're unaspected and really much mure stronger than the green sideboard (also because people think that dredge plays at sorcery speed).

Against uwr my oppo named dread return with his meddling mage but they were sided out with the whole combo package (grisi, flayer and dr's) to insert fows and shoals.

Keep dredgin' guys.

[Michael Keller]

I remember vs canadian, he plays t1 drs, I discard phantasmagorian after drewing another one and discard the 2nd: drs annulled.

What concoction is that mess? Deathrite Shaman in Canadian Threshold?

[Thrasher]

I guess it was burg, it's basically canadian that splashes for DRS.

[Final Fortune]

I'm not sure I understand what you mean by this?

Do you mean they swing with Goyf then shoot our face with Bolt?

If they were able to swing at least 3 times at you without chump blockers, there is something really wrong. Every time I play vs Goyf, I've never run into this problem. I'd even go so far to say that its one of the least of my worries since all it is is a huge Grizzly Bear.

Like I said, the problem with theory crafting is that you rarely take into account what happens when opponents play hate. Wait until your Bridge from Belows are exiled by Surgical Extraction or your board is swept by Rough/Tumble and then you'll be asking yourself why you played a card that gave Tarmogoyf +1/1 over a card that didn't. Unless we're cutting Dredgers for Serum Powder, I don't think Serum Powder is any better than any other card we could play in the ~8 slots up for discussion and those ~8 cards don't give Tarmogoyf +1/1. It's not a damning reason not to play Serum Powder by any means, but personally I just don't think the added consistency is worth the decreased resiliency by cutting Shambling Shell and the card isn't significantly better than the alternatives.

When you're grinding it out vs hate, it can matter tho'. I've dropped two games in tournament play to 6/7 Tarmogoyfs that I didn't need to lose.

Right now I'm just on the Chancellor of the Annex and Gitaxian Probe MD in order to play the Force of Will SB because I think it's our best chance vs Deathrite Shaman and Rest in Peace. Being inadverdently good vs Storm is a plus, but it finally feels like the MD and the SB are actually addressing problems now instead of just playing whatever pointless ~8 card flavor of the month just for shits and giggles.

[Mr. Froggy]

The thing is though, I don't theorycraft.

I play vs Goyf pretty often on MTGO, and spoke from my experiences.

[Michael Keller]

So at this point, is it safe to assume most of us are on board with the counter plan?

Basically ceding to a resolved Cage/Rest in Peace?

[Slag]

So at this point, is it safe to assume most of us are on board with the counter plan?

Basically ceding to a resolved Cage/Rest in Peace?

I've always lost to a resolved RIP, myself, so it's a bold step forward one way or another. Against cage, there have been a couple of instances where I was able to hardcast creatures with dakmor salvage, so there's a small measure of hope if you run ghasts.

[Mr. Froggy]

So at this point, is it safe to assume most of us are on board with the counter plan?

Basically ceding to a resolved Cage/Rest in Peace?

I guess that works both ways, I like having an answer to it either way.

[jimmythegreek]

Excited for the shoals and fows in the board. Does it make sense to to run blue dread return targets to up the blue count? If i understand correctly we remove the combo pieces to add the counter package, in which case grisebrand would be better than say kelpie or the sphinx?

[meffeo]

Excited for the shoals and fows in the board. Does it make sense to to run blue dread return targets to up the blue count? If i understand correctly we remove the combo pieces to add the counter package, in which case grisebrand would be better than say kelpie or the sphinx?

I wouldn't run blue dread return's targets. You play narcos, probes + fows and shoals, there's enough blue pitches imho.

Usually I follow the "guidelines" that Thrasher wrote some posts ago, check them.

[Final Fortune]

So at this point, is it safe to assume most of us are on board with the counter plan?

Basically ceding to a resolved Cage/Rest in Peace?

I don't think removing Rest in Peace was ever a reliable strategy, provided I'm not disregarding Rest in Peace entirely I don't really see any other consistent alternative to the FoW plan.

I'm a little iffy on Disrupting Shoal tho', I haven't gottten that to work yet - how much does it increase the chances of countering RIP for the 4 slots it takes up? I've been thinking there may be other, higher impact cards we could play in really bad match ups like Reanimator and just rely on Force of Will and Mind Break Trap to counter Rest in Peace/Grafdigger's Cage and support the blue count regardless of whether or not it's a dead card.

Another idea that might work is Foil. I know it sounds ridiculous, but Foil discards instead of exiles so it can counter Grafdigger's Cage and put a dredger into the graveyard immediately. Considering the odds we were taking on Reverent Silence at 7 Forests and 4 Reverent Silence, 7 islands and Foil isn't anymore unrealistic. I don't think it's better than Disrupting Shoal vs Rest in Peace, but I'd laugh my ass off if I got to actually troll a tournament with a SB of 4 Force of Will, 4 Foil and 7 Island. I counter your Grafdigger's Cage and Time Walk, suck it!

[Thrasher]

Trolling with Foil would be hilarious! What i didn't like about it when i was looking for a backup for Force is the need of islands. One of the things i didn't like about Claim/Silence was the need of Forests in the sb, and it was mitigated by Dryad arbor not being a dead card. Foil, on the other hand, needs 7 islands, which are completely dead cards. Shoal can use narcomoeba and gitaxian as pitches, that's what i like about it.

I have not done calculates about the chances of playing 4 fow/4 fow + 4 shoal, but with shoal it seems to work roughly 50-55% of the times.

EDIT:
Land Grant + Tropical Island + Dryad Arbor + Foil anybody???

[Michael Keller]

Good lord.

Shoal seems to have intrinsic value over Foil out of the board. DS is perfectly viable with eight 2 CMC blue cards and Force of Will capacity - by pitching Force to counter Force.

I've had great luck with Shoal so far; the card's been amazing. The irony of utilizing the most dead of draws in Narcomoeba as being part of the protective equation is actually hilarious.

[Final Fortune]

Good lord.

Shoal seems to have intrinsic value over Foil out of the board. DS is perfectly viable with eight 2 CMC blue cards and Force of Will capacity - by pitching Force to counter Force.

I've had great luck with Shoal so far; the card's been amazing. The irony of utilizing the most dead of draws in Narcomoeba as being part of the protective equation is actually hilarious.

I was only joking about Foil.

I haven't had the same luck with Disrupting Shoal, Force of Will has been doing most of the countering so I really debate whether or not the added % vs ~2 Rest in Peace is worth 3 Surgical Extraction vs Reanimator etc. if they don't draw hate then I think we win anyway so the instrinsic value may not be significantly better than an otherwise dead card vs aggro-control compared to a clutch card vs Reanimator.

So in short does anyone think Disrupting Shoal is over SBing?

[Thrasher]

Joke or not, i really have to troll someone using Land Grant into Tropical Island for Foil!

@Final Fortune: It depends on what you want your sideboard to do: if you want to answer hate with consistency i think you have to play shoal, if you want to address more slots for the other combo matchups, then you can cut the shoals. You won't be able to fight through hate as well as with the 8-counters package,though.

[Michael Keller]

Disrupting Shoal, in the match-ups you'd bring it in, is effectively the next best thing to Force of Will. Rest in Peace is seeing a fair amount of play, and considering it's really the only card we care about stopping bringing in a set to compliment the Forces seems right. We can't mulligan and we need at least two blue cards in our opening hand, so we want to ensure that this happens.

Like Force of Will, the card is a blowout when it connects. It appears to be (preliminarily, at least) better in just about every circumstance than any sort of anti-hate out of the board. It stops hard-cast Oozes, Zenith on one for Deathrite Shaman, Rest in Peace, tutors in Enchantress, tutors in Storm, Stoneforge Mystic, etc.

I think the tag team of Force and Disrupting Shoal is excellent. Force alone is not enough, although with four Force, four Shoal and four Chancellor of the Annex, we should be fine.

[Final Fortune]

Joke or not, i really have to troll someone using Land Grant into Tropical Island for Foil!

@Final Fortune: It depends on what you want your sideboard to do: if you want to answer hate with consistency i think you have to play shoal, if you want to address more slots for the other combo matchups, then you can cut the shoals. You won't be able to fight through hate as well as with the 8-counters package,though.

Oh man that's even more hilarious, I hadn't even thought of using Land Grant -> Tropical Island, that'd let us use Dryad Arbor and functionally have more business when playing Foil and we even get to Reverent Silence. The ultra combo just keeps getting better and better, they are never going to see this shit comming.

[slave]

Disrupting Shoal, in the match-ups you'd bring it in, is effectively the next best thing to Force of Will.
....
I think the tag team of Force and Disrupting Shoal is excellent. Force alone is not enough, although with four Force, four Shoal and four Chancellor of the Annex, we should be fine.

That's a lot of space to commit to counter!

With a typical list of Nether Shadow, Golgari Thug & Narcomoeba, we have a possible 12 cards to pitch to Shoal, for RiP.
I think that's a VERY good number, considering the huge number of powerful 2-drops out there, especially in control matchups.
Are you guys trying out Shoal, still running the full 12 of these cards above?

My only concern here though, is that Grafdiggers Cage, Relic of Progenitus & Surgical Extraction is at 1cmc > we have very few cards we can pitch with Shoal.
From this alone, Shoal has me wondering how many matchups I'd actually be bringing it in for.
Given that Storm (and most combo) has a high density of one-drops, have you guys found Shoal to be useful against Combo?

[Thrasher]

Shoal needs a blue pitch. You have 7 cc2 pitches, 4 cc1 pitches, 4 cc4 pitches (for Balustrade spy).
Versus storm i bring in just Forces and Mindbreak traps, i don't suggest to furtherly dilute the deck, since you need Cabal Therapy active as soon as possible.

[slave]

Shoal needs a blue pitch. You have 7 cc2 pitches, 4 cc1 pitches, 4 cc4 pitches (for Balustrade spy).
Versus storm i bring in just Forces and Mindbreak traps, i don't suggest to furtherly dilute the deck, since you need Cabal Therapy active as soon as possible.

Ugh... RTFC.
Sorry peeps.

[Michael Keller]

That's a lot of space to commit to counter!

With a typical list of Nether Shadow, Golgari Thug & Narcomoeba, we have a possible 12 cards to pitch to Shoal, for RiP.
I think that's a VERY good number, considering the huge number of powerful 2-drops out there, especially in control matchups.
Are you guys trying out Shoal, still running the full 12 of these cards above?

My only concern here though, is that Grafdiggers Cage, Relic of Progenitus & Surgical Extraction is at 1cmc > we have very few cards we can pitch with Shoal.
From this alone, Shoal has me wondering how many matchups I'd actually be bringing it in for.
Given that Storm (and most combo) has a high density of one-drops, have you guys found Shoal to be useful against Combo?

Surgical Extraction is really the least of this deck's worries. I've committed to running Leyline of Sanctity out of my board, which also helps to stop Crypt, Bojuka Bog and Relic's lock ability. It also gives the deck game against Storm-based combo and Burn.

Mindbreak Trap is turning out to be less and less spectacular against competent Storm pilots. Cards like Cabal Therapy, Thoughtseize, Duress and Silence just shut us down - effectively nullifying the card's capacity to function. Sure, these decks can go the route of Empty the Warrens, but that's far less likely to happen than a straight-up Tendrils kill - especially in ANT. Leyline not only shuts down their discard, it also shuts down their ability to target you with Tendrils. I think something like that with Force, Chancellor and Shoal keeps me in good shape.

As far as Grafdigger's Cage goes, the deck has Force of Will with any blue card and Shoal with Probe. Chancellor also plays a key role here as pushing off that turn-one Cage on their side allows you a turn to draw into counter-magic in order to fight it.

[Darklingske]

Leyline not only shuts down their discard, it also shuts down their ability to target you with Tendrils. I think something like that with Force, Chancellor and Shoal keeps me in good shape.

As far as Grafdigger's Cage goes, the deck has Force of Will with any blue card and Shoal with Probe. Chancellor also plays a key role here as pushing off that turn-one Cage on their side allows you a turn to draw into counter-magic in order to fight it.
So that is a hefty full 15 to board in against storm. What do you take out in that case? I guess you could run Chancellor MD, but that still means that you need to cut 11 or 12 cards.
Do you mind sharing your Sb Hollywood? I guess it will be something like:
4 LoS
4 FoW
4 Shoal
3 Faerie Macabre
Am I correct?

[AmokPL]

Wow. A while ago everybody was laughing when Hollywood sacrificed half of his sb to run green antihate package and now all of the sudden blue packet got so much love.

Seriously Shoal? A card not only requiring a blue card to cast it, it requires a blue card with a RELEVANT CMC to even start working???! And to fight afterboard hate you need to have it on your first hand. How often will you get to have a Shoal with a specific blue card once you dropped Serum Powder? Sorry I don't buy all that "but it can counter this and this and this". We agreed we want to deal with RiP and Cage (I will not even mention 0 turn Leyline because blue packet users seem to ignore existence of this card) but now we are sidinig it a card which will counter "tutors for shaman or stoneforge mystic"?

[Final Fortune]

Regarding Storm, I agree on Mindbreak Trap and Unmask are dissapointing, one of the reasons I replaced Unmask with Dryad Arbor was Storm opponent's knew what to name with Cabal Therapy. A card like Leyline of the Void or Dryad Arbor can't be discarded, so we can either play free, counter proof, permanent hate or we can sacrifice Dryar Arbor consistently. Mindbreakd Trap and Unmask are better when they're paired because the opponent only has a 50/50 chance of guessing what to name, so therefore I think you can't play Mindbreak Trap in the SB without playing Unmask in the MD.

I agree on Disrupting Shoal being a "meh" SB card, opponent's have as little as 2 Rest in Peace sometimes.

[Thrasher]

I don't like Leyline of Sanctity versus storm, even if it has its merits versus some builds. I tested a lot the storm matchup, and leyline just didn't work for me. I'll try to explain.

1) Time walking:

Opening with Leyline immediately drops you down to six cards, effectively giving the opponent three free turns to go off, not something i'd like to do. In 3 turns storm is more than capable of storming with Empty the warrens (gg against an empty board), or using ad nauseam to look for Chain of Vapor. I think Leyline is significantly stronger against Ant without wish. It can actually steal some g2's, if the opponent doesn't board chain of vapor in. I'd be more willing to play Leyline if i had Unmask, unmasking ourselves negates the tempo loss.

Mindbreak trap, on the other hand, lets you have 7 card at the beginning of the game. True, it can be discarded, but the opponent won't always have a discard spell, and, if he has, he has to use mana to cast it. Wasting his mana in his first turn is very valuable.

2) Interaction with Chancellor of the Annex.

In my opinion Leyline interacts poorly with Chancellor of the Annex. Chancellor's huge usefulness is "stealing" the opponent's first turn to avoid discard and discard-dredge immediately. Leyline doesn't allow this. Having Chancellor + Mindbreak trap is actually quite good, in the storm matchup, they can't go off before hitting mindbreak with discard, and discard can't come before their second turn.



@AmokPL: The blue sideboard has been supported by tests, maths and results. The green sideboards had max 7 green sources. How many pitches for rip does the oh-so-shitty Shoal have? 7. What about Force of will? 15. The build has been tuned to support it. The old post i'm quoting sums up some of the reason to play the blue sideboard.



Let's say you are facing a rip, and you cast a silence after drawing for 2 turns. The most common decks playing Rip are UWR delver,Stoneblade and Death&Taxes.Uwr/stoneblade should have found a counter by then. If he hasn't you'll end up with 6-7 cards in hand and an empty grave. That's 1-2 more timewalks. Now, 3/4 turns are more than enough to establish a good board position, even against us. Stoneforge for Jitte is hard to beat when your first dredge happens with jitte already equipped and charged. Death and Taxes can't counter, but it has Thalia, which makes you need forest to hardcast the answer to rip. Dryad arbor is also pretty bad at casting hate, in these matchups, they have Wasteland and Swords to Plowshares to remove it before it can tap for mana. Uwr has bolt, too.

Now, about cage: i mostly see it in Show and Tell based decks, jund and team america. Time walking show and tell leads to 15/15s knocking at your door, team america will just draw into counters and try to resolve double deathrite shaman or apply some pressure with delver + goyfs. Jund has just burn for Dryad Arbors and discard to try to furtherly timewalk themselves. It shouldn't be hard anyway vs jund, though, unless they do something stupid like Cage+Ooze.

Another thing i don't like about the green sideboard is the amount of slots it takes. Using force + shoal you basically have 4 cards that are dead versus everything but hate (shoals), for claim to work you need to run forests + fetches in the sideboard, and Silence can't touch cage. Sideboarding without diluting the deck too much becomes quite hard,too, unless you're playing fetches in the maindeck, which is something i'd do only in a bloodghast list.


"We agreed we want to deal with RiP and Cage (I will not even mention 0 turn Leyline because blue packet users seem to ignore existence of this card"
http://tcdecks.net/busqueda.php?token=Decks&tname=&nlow=0&nhigh=0&dlow=0&mlow=0&ylow=0&dhigh=0&mhigh=0&yhigh=0&player=&dname=&format=Legacy&aname=&main=&nomain=&side=Leyline+of+the+Void&noside=&strict=on Leyline
http://tcdecks.net/busqueda.php?token=Decks&tname=&nlow=0&nhigh=0&dlow=0&mlow=0&ylow=0&dhigh=0&mhigh=0&yhigh=0&player=&dname=&format=Legacy&aname=&main=&nomain=&side=Rest+in+peace&noside=&strict=on Rip
http://tcdecks.net/busqueda.php?token=Decks&tname=&nlow=0&nhigh=0&dlow=0&mlow=0&ylow=0&dhigh=0&mhigh=0&yhigh=0&player=&dname=&format=Legacy&aname=&main=&nomain=&side=grafdigger&noside=&strict=on Cage
9 decks playing Leyline in December, 5 in January. Playing antihate to fight leyline instead of Rip/Cage seems like playing Firemane Angel because of the burn matchup.

[Michael Keller]

A smart Storm player isn't going to walk into Mindbreak Trap cold. Force and Shoal are nice bonuses to have against Storm, but they aren't the sole reason they're in there. Storm players have enough wit to fire out at least a single discard spell or Silence before going off, and I've repeatedly found myself saying, "Fuck, if only I could hold this guy off with a Leyline for a turn or two, I'd be set."

As far as Time Walking goes, it doesn't matter. I've said it before and I'll say it again: I don't care about forfeiting a turn to protect myself from losing.

The card is a beast. And no one is boarding in Chain of Vapor against Manaless Dredge. Why would they? It doesn't do anything outright and I just feel as though the merits of Leyline outweigh the risks.

Also, in what parallel universe is Leyline bad with Chancellor? You're not only hosing their primary win condition and discard and Probes for info outright, you're still setting them back a turn. If anything, the synergy is omnipresent and works better when an opponent pays two life for a Probe, lets it get countered and fires off a Duress.

You're saying you lose a turn with Leyline. I'm saying I gain a turn by shutting a majority of their cards down and stopping their turn one to dig out of it. Seems really good.

[Michael Keller]

And even if Shoal is there to stop two to three RiPs total, it still counters other spells in the event your opponent doesn't see it. Shoal and Force work well together and should be plenty to help you succeed.

Just the thought of kicking an EOT Crop Rotation in the junk makes me smile. I fucking hate that card, and I'm not losing to it ever again. Leyline works against an asston of decks, fellas; it's worth testing.

Also, Force of Will has more weight in more match ups than Trap outright, which is why I removed it, albeit temporarily, from my board.

[Shawon]

Just the thought of kicking an EOT Crop Rotation in the junk makes me smile. I fucking hate that card, and I'm not losing to it ever again. Leyline works against an asston of decks, fellas; it's worth testing.

Losing to Jeremiah's deck pushes the rigors of my testing far beyond losing to any other deck. And he's a good friend of mine!

[Thrasher]

I agree, a good storm player will never walk into Mindbreak Trap without protection, but this means that he'll have to wait to assemble a protected combo. The time it'll take to do that should be enough to start our engine and fire off a therapy.

The turn you lose can be crucial, depending on the deck you're facing. I've done most of my testing versus TES and Ant with Burning Wish, losing a turn led to hard times facing goblins. The times when i had leyline + counter backup were great indeed, but i felt i couldn't do that often enough.

Chancellor in the opening without leyline means that you'll be dredging on turn 2. Chancellor with leyline means giving the opponent two turns to setup an etw combo against an empty board. By the way, i'd expect the ant player to board in chain of vapor, if they lose g2 to it.

Anyway, i'll test it again, using a wishless ant build, too. Honestly i'm not a huge fan of trap, too, but it has worked so far. Being able to "counter" Crop rotation for bojuka is a nice thing in favour of leyline, though.

[Barsoom]

You can counter Crop Rotation with Force of Will / Disrupting Shoal + Gitaxian Probe too, and the % combined should be better than the 40% of Leyline.

[Thrasher]

Honestly, i wouldn't side in the counter package versus something like jund depths. Leyline would be far more valuable. 4 slots compared to 8, plus it negates the opponent's discard spells. The timewalk should never be relevant in this matchup.

[Barsoom]

Well, Lands/Jund Depths can win on turn 4, the lists with Exploration can win on turn 2/3; this can be relevant i think.

[Michael Keller]

Losing to Jeremiah's deck pushes the rigors of my testing far beyond losing to any other deck. And he's a good friend of mine!

It's not just that deck; Crop Rotation is seeing play in several decks now: Elves, Dark Depths and 12Post. It's annoying and quite frankly, Bog is seeing play. Leyline is just a nice bonus that shuts that strategy down. Since I've swapped to that strategy, I haven't dropped a game to 12Post in four straight matches. They're too slow and rely too heavily on disrupting you with repeated Bog attempts. Show and Tell is not as good against us as it would be against other strategies, which is fine by me. I also run Ashen Rider in my build to deal with game-swinging cards like Omniscience and Glacial Chasm.

Lands is also an incredibly easy match-up. They're a slow, controlling deck that relies on tapping lands down and shutting opponents out of the game with Ports and such. We don't care about any of that. Blocking a 20/20 flying creature with a Narcomoeba is a rather nice bonus, and with the sideboard strategy of Faerie Macabre blowing out Life from the Loam can be key. The crackback can be just huge and enough to kill an opponent who can't keep up with it.

You could even Dread Return a Narcomoeba, make tokens and setup a blocker in a pinch against that deck; it's rather simple. In fact, I'd go so far as saying that a competent, strong Manaless pilot could blow it out rather easily.

[slave]

Mindbreak Trap is turning out to be less and less spectacular...
Yeah, I've found the same thing. They see our little trick coming don't they?
RE: Leyline, I haven't tried it before, will give it a try.

Been looking hard at Disrupting Shoal, I'm struggling to see what you blokes are seeing. Any chance you can educate me?
Using it to pitch for Force is not an argument, we all know that, so with that out the way, why run it?

Probe, Narcomoeba & Force make sense, they all do something and work together.
Shoal's effectiveness seems very narrow in comparison.
I would think it unlikely we would still have a Probe in hand, as I'm likely to use the acceleration sooner than later > especially as seeing an opponents' hand is so bloody useful for us to know when we should just go for it, or not....
I'm not comfortable with holding a probe back (and slow DDD) just to pitch to Force/Shoal, especially against fast combo > is this what you fella's are doing?

Force would pitch Shoal, not the other way round. Besides Ad Nauseam, there's very few 5cmc spells in legacy.

So why is Shoal worth slots?
It seems to me just as narrow as Mindbreak Trap, only it's more situational > At least Trap is halfway useful without a blue card in hand.

[Michael Keller]

Yeah, I've found the same thing. They see our little trick coming don't they?
RE: Leyline, I haven't tried it before, will give it a try.

Been looking hard at Disrupting Shoal, I'm struggling to see what you blokes are seeing. Any chance you can educate me?
Using it to pitch for Force is not an argument, we all know that, so with that out the way, why run it?

Probe, Narcomoeba & Force make sense, they all do something and work together.
Shoal's effectiveness seems very narrow in comparison.
I would think it unlikely we would still have a Probe in hand, as I'm likely to use the acceleration sooner than later > especially as seeing an opponents' hand is so bloody useful for us to know when we should just go for it, or not....
I'm not comfortable with holding a probe back (and slow DDD) just to pitch to Force/Shoal, especially against fast combo > is this what you fella's are doing?

Force would pitch Shoal, not the other way round. Besides Ad Nauseam, there's very few 5cmc spells in legacy.

So why is Shoal worth slots?
It seems to me just as narrow as Mindbreak Trap, only it's more situational > At least Trap is halfway useful without a blue card in hand.

We have no mana, so we have to work with what we have that's free. If we are not running cards to kill hate once it resolves, we need to stop it beforehand. In order to do this, we need to evaluate what the best options are. Force of Will is a no-brainer, obviously. But Disrupting Shoal has some really good synergy with Narcomoeba and other Shoals to stop Rest in Peace from hitting the table. There's really nothing else that matters aside from that and or Grafdigger's Cage, which we can beat as well.

Shoal doesn't need to stop Ad Nauseam from resolving; it can stop Infernal Tutor first or even Burning Wish. I run Leyline of Sanctity out of my board, so I don't need Mindbreak Trap anymore. I get that the two of those work good together against Storm specifically, but Force and Shoal are more multilateral and stop other decks from achieving their goals. I've basically shifted my entire way of thinking on this archetype, going with cards I normally don't prefer, like Chancellor of the Annex and Leyline (of Whatever).

So far, the results have been outstanding with the eight-counter slots out of the board. I'm still on the fence about Chancellor; I think I may be switching back to Contagion. (Meta call.)

[Final Fortune]

Why would you play Contagion over Chancellor of the Annex when Chancellor of the Annex is clearly better vs Deathrite Shaman, are you having difficulty beating Elves or Affinity? Edit: This isn't meant as a condescending question, I've had difficulty beating Elves and Affinity in the past; aggro-combo despite being a rare match up is one of our worst match ups.

Regarding SB hate, have people had positive or negative experiences with Bojuka Bog either in the MD or in the SB? A friend of mine suggested it, and altho' it's more conditional vs Reanimator it's capable of a 1/2 punch by exiling the creature and then letting you cast a Cabal Therapy from your hand on the next turn. His logic was that'd be another SB card vs ANT because it'd prevent the opponent from reaching Threshold and then discard his Infernal Tutor.

I've also been thinking about cutting 1 Shambling Shell, 2 Phantasmagorian and 1 Nether Shadow from the MD for another card, any card that we normally wouldn't have the MD space to play because those 4 cards are relatively low impact, highly redundant cards and as long as we're playing 4 Chancellor of the Annex in the deck we still have 10 outs vs a Deathrite Shaman and if we were to play Serum Powder in thost slots then we'd have even more virtual outs to Deathrite Shaman and a way to mulligan for SB cards without time walking ourselves. I think we need to sit down and really evaluate the numbers in this deck, it's been too easy to 4x everything and then just fill in the rest of the deck with 8 flavor of the day cards. I've noticed almost no difference between 2 Griselbrand/1 Flayer of the Hatebound and 3 Griselbrand/2 Flayer of the Hatebound for instance and that's 2 more cards that could potentially be better used elsewhere. Really, that's a lot of slots for what is often a "win more" mechanic.

I'm sure you're going to laugh, but I actually got Foil to work. If you SB out 4 Street Wraith, 2 Phantasmagorian, 1 Shambling Shell, 1 Nether Shadow, 2/1 Griselbrand/Flayer of the Hatebound for 4 Force of Will, 4 Foil, 3 Tropical Island you still have SB space for another 4x card and you basically have a "super Disrupting Shoal" that simultaneously counters hate while discarding a Dredger vs anything they could play. Take the standard MD, cut Chancellor of the Annex for 4 Land Grant, cut a Griselbrand for a Dryad Arbor and you only have 3 "dead cards" in your deck that really aren't dead, because you can use them to play around Daze or those last 4x SB slots for something like Nature's Claim. I mean, for 3 more SB slots we can seriously upgrade Disrupting Shoal into a better counter, and I'm pretty indifferent on playing Land Grant/Dryad Arbor over Chancellor of the Annex and a Griselbrand. You're obvioulsy SBing lands and playing without Street Wraith at the end of the day, but functionally Foil does work the speed you lose by not playing Street Wraith you can gain by discarding a Dredger immediately. I think if we ever see a rise of Grafdigger's Cage, this might be worth taking seriously. It's pretty fucking hilarious to watch people's reaction to Land Grant for Dryad Arbor tho', I was surprised by how many people Dazed it.

Another option I've been considering is whether or not we should SB a dead, 2cc blue card to increase the number of blue cards for Force of Will and Disrupting Shoal. I don't this is as bad as it sounds either, because it makes Force of Will and Disrupting Shoal more likely/consistent vs Storm and if you pick the right, dead, 2cc blue cards you could potentially play some mind games with your opponent. I was thinking Force of Will, Disruption Shoald and dun, dun duh Daze?! to really mind fuck people. If people are gullible enough to play around Daze then that buys us the one turn we need for Cabal Therapy. Also, another serious possibility is that it'd let us cut Gitaxian Probe from the MD, run the same number of cards for Force of Will and then stream line Disrupting Shoal vs Rest in Peace etc.

Those last two paragraphs may just mean I'm officially off my rocker, but really we've already tried everything else and this seems like the best, worst try we're going to get right now to innovate signifcantly.

[Thrasher]

@Final Fortune:
It's nice to read about Foil working for you, i might give it a try after i'm done testing for the combo matchup. I'm seriously considering it because it would solve the greatest problem of the storm MU.

I don't know if Bojuka Bog would work, i wouldn't board it in versus storm, and faerie macabre should be better versus Dredge/Reanimator.

Regarding those cuts: -1 Shambling Shell might work, but i wouldn't reduce the number of Phantasmagorian&Nether Shadow. If you need slots you can try cutting a DR or/and the 1x flex slot, if you have it.

On the dead card topic: I used to run 1 Wandering Ones in my sideboard to rise the number of pitches for Shoal->cage. I love that card. I eventually cut it when i decided to dedicate some slots of my sideboard to grave-hate.



Now, i've done an intense testing session, both playing with a friend and versus myself playing both ant and burning ant. Playing against a storm player who knows our deck well is damn hard. Burning ant is the worst matchup, it can play discard on t1 if you don't have leyline, cantrip and etw on turn 3 if you have it. The only thing that works is leyline + active counter or avoid discard spells on turn 1. I've lost 50%+ of the games i lost due to discard/leyline timewalking my opponent + fast empty the warrens. Wishless ant is easier, though, Leyline wins alone in g2, unless they board in Etw. This is mostly the main reason to consider Foil as a serious option. Dumping a dredger in the yard is very important in that matchup. Shoal was considered trash, too, and it proved itself useful, in the end, Foil might do the same.

The sideboards i used for testing:

1)
4 Leyline
4 FoW
4 Shoal
3 Faerie macabre

2)
4 Leyline
4 FoW
4 Shoal
2 Mindbreak Trap
1 Contagion

Anyway, these are just the initial impressions,even if i actually played a fair amount of games.

[slave]

On the dead card topic: I used to run 1 Wandering Ones in my sideboard to rise the number of pitches for Shoal->cage. I love that card. I eventually cut it when i decided to dedicate some slots of my sideboard to grave-hate.
LOL.:laugh:
In some of my decks (not this one specifically) where I've done that for force, it's been Giant Shark. He's my underwater friend.:smile:
I saw a great white in the flesh once, first appearing only a couple of metres behind me! It had snuck up on me while I was snorkelling about 1/2 km off shore, close to Lancelin, W.A.
Damn lucky it was just curious > frightened the hell out of me! It followed me all the way to shore while I slowly made my way back, although it kept a bit of a distance.... Took 30mins for my hands to stop shaking I was that full of adrenalin!

Back to subject; To be perfectly fair, we're probably better off with something that's halfway useful, whether it's for Show and Tell.deck, or something we can actually use like River Kelpie, Sphinx of Lost Truths etc.
We all know Griselbrand is the tits > but quite often Lost Truths works out well to get us the win anyway.
How about swapping out Grisel for Sphinx?

I'm surprised some of you are considering Land Grant. Not a card I would ever have thought about running.
Showing our opponent our hand (when we don't draw cards at all) seems suicidal to me, as you'd be telling them to race you, or to expect a single counter (then they simply bait you when they have counter of their own).
Either way, it's not good..:eyebrow:

[Michael Keller]

I just think Force and blue card working hand in hand with Shoal and blue card should be enough. Most decks run what, one or two Cage? Those should be sufficient.

I know you guys are talking about Foil, which is fine. But seriously - where are we going to find the space to dedicate slots to X Islands out of the board? I mean, come on - it's not good. Those lands do nothing in the deck to begin with, and even if they did, in what capacity would they be useful *without* Foil?

Honestly, Force and Shoal are more than sufficient. Contagion just makes me feel more comfortable against fast aggro-aggro/combo and fast hands. Chancellor is decent, but it's a terrible top-deck unlike Contagion. I just think eight slots main in Phantasmagorian and Street Wraith should be enough.

I don't know; it's close for me.

[Final Fortune]

I ran a search for 2cc blue creatures and found a surprising number of them that'd be useful for both Disrupting Shoal and Dread Return, Magus of the Bazaar, Owl Familiar, Balefuld Strix, Gilded Drake, Phantasmal Illusion, Meddling Mage and Aquamoeba are all pretty reasonable choices, I'm trying out Magus of the Bazaar and he closes out the game pretty damn fast if left unchecked.

[Final Fortune]

I just think Force and blue card working hand in hand with Shoal and blue card should be enough. Most decks run what, one or two Cage? Those should be sufficient.

I know you guys are talking about Foil, which is fine. But seriously - where are we going to find the space to dedicate slots to X Islands out of the board? I mean, come on - it's not good. Those lands do nothing in the deck to begin with, and even if they did, in what capacity would they be useful *without* Foil?

Honestly, Force and Shoal are more than sufficient. Contagion just makes me feel more comfortable against fast aggro-aggro/combo and fast hands. Chancellor is decent, but it's a terrible top-deck unlike Contagion. I just think eight slots main in Phantasmagorian and Street Wraith should be enough.

I don't know; it's close for me.

I don't think being a terrible top deck is nearly as bad as Contagion being a tripple reverse Time Walk vs Deathrite Shaman, I also can't even state how important it is to not only be able to Daze combo but to Daze combo and have the ability to Dread Return a lock piece when you've SBed out your combo piece for counters.

Chancellor has just never dissapointed me.

[slave]

I ran a search for 2cc blue creatures and found a surprising number of them that'd be useful for both Disrupting Shoal and Dread Return, Magus of the Bazaar, Owl Familiar, Balefuld Strix, Gilded Drake, Phantasmal Illusion, Meddling Mage and Aquamoeba are all pretty reasonable choices, I'm trying out Magus of the Bazaar and he closes out the game pretty damn fast if left unchecked.
I like Magus of the Bazaar
To add to that;
Alchemist's Apprentice can sac itself and draw the turn it comes out, helping us make zombies?

I like Strix, as we could potentially pitch it for Black and Blue "exile a card" choices.
The only 2-drop I know of in Black/Blue, that also gives us draw would be Sygg, River Cutthroat.
Both seem worse than Magus at a glance.

I'm gonna try Whirlpool Rider. If you have a full hand, you just did a Griselbrand. :wink:
Since it gives you the option of dredging OR drawing a new grip (for counter, therapy or whatever), it seems a very test-worthy card to me.

[Thrasher]

@Slave: Wow, it must have been scary! But cool, too :laugh:

Back on businnes: i don't think Foil is better than shoal as an anti hate card,actually shoal has more good pitches and doesn't require dead cards. The only upside Foil has is being a discard outlet. I don't know if it will work, but i'm pretty sure i want to try it, sooner or later. I'm actually having trouble with storm getting timewalks with discard. Sure, most players who don't know the deck would side discard out or play it poorly, but otherwise it's a pretty tough matchup. Honestly, i don't like playing islands,but i want to check if playing Foil, even if it means playing 3 dead cards, can improve some matchups.If it doesn't work...well, i lost nothing. Basically what i'm looking for is a cc0 discard outlet that works at 7 cards, without having to go to 8.

@Final Fortune: I wouldn't add cc2 pitches, 7 is enough to me. If you feel like doing it, though, i think Gilded Drake might be a nice sideboard card for the show and tell matchup. Magus of the Bazaar is good if it connects, but i guess summon sickness matters.

On the "Contagion vs Chancellor" topic: i prefer Chancellor,it's good against discard, too, but Contagion has its merits versus elves.

EDIT: just noticed slave's last post. Whirpool rider definitely deserves a test.Nice find, man.

[Final Fortune]

Whirlpool Rider is an amazing find; I think you could actually MD that over Griselbrand and then you'd have the combo piece, blue count and 2cc count all in one card.

Bargain bin commons baby, wow.

[Michael Keller]

@Whirlpool Rider: LMFAO!

It's amazing to think this thread has finally hit the point where we're stopping Rest in Peace with Whirlpool Rider(s). That's so much win! It can even replace Griselbrand!

[Barsoom]

The bad thing is that i was siding out the combo package (Balustrade Spy/Griselbrand + Dread Return + Flayer of the Hatebound) versus Rest in Peace for the Disrupting Shoal/Force of Will package, with Whirlpool Rider what we will side out?

Sometimes i even used Balustrade Spy for Ichorid too, leaving the deck with less black creatures is something to think about; and when Balustrade Spy enters the battlefield i win 100% (with Griselbrand i guess is the same), i'm not so sure about Whirlpool Rider cause sometimes i have just 2-3 cards in hand cause i used a Phantasmagorian before; seems too much a "danger of the cool things" card for me, i don't know.

[Karbunkelsopp]

Whirlpool Drake seems strictly better; allows you to do it again when he dies... 😄


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Thrasher]

Whirlpool Rider can be pitched to shoal to counter rip, Whirlpool Drake can't.

[carefulmug]

@ Barsoom:

I think the first set of cards that could be switched out against RiP and Grafdigger decks would be the Chancellor of the Annex//Contagion slot, (dependent on your build) since those usually aren't the kinds of decks that typically pack problematic creatures or discard spells.

After that, I'm not sure. Shaving a one-of from several of the playsets seems the most likely.

+++++++++

@ Slave

The Whirlpool Rider tech is brilliant. I hope it turns out to be as good as it is cool.

[jimmythegreek]

With whirlpool rider it turns the disrupting shoal into a legitimate threat at being a real counter. Shoal as an actual counter rather than a card we pitch to force seems like the way to go. Shoal +force+whirlpool+narcomoeba+gitaxian probe= like 8 force of wills. Some testing on how many cards we generally dredge off of the merfolk is definetly in order. The question now I suppose is whether whirlpool rider negatively effects our reliability of a flayer kill.

[Final Fortune]

Flayer kill is generally irrelevant, as long as Whirlpool Rider pulls us far enough ahead to win it doesn't matter whether or not we win on the same turn or the following turn etc. Whirlpool Rider is no fucking joke tho', I'm managing to pack Force of Will, Mind Break Trap and Disrupting Shoal vs Storm right now and get a warm and fuzzy about it.

[Thrasher]

Siding 12 counters with rider seems quite complicated, though. Diluting the deck too much versus something as fast as storm doesn't seem a good idea. Maybe cutting 3 gitaxian probe might work, we'd still have the same pitches for fow and 3 more relevant pitches for shoal, since rider hits the tutors.

By the way, leyline just doesn't work for me, in the storm matchup. I think i'll just stick to the traps, and play the "therapy asap" game.

On another note, Hapless Researcher doesn't seem completely useless, it triggers bridge and cycles itself, something that might be useful in a grindy game. It's a lot more narrow than ridrr,though,its primary role would be being a pitch for shoal->cage. I think that shoal would need more cc1 pitches rather than cc2 ones, but raider is easily maindeckable, the researcher isn't. I think i might throw some copies in my sideboard and see if it works.

Wandering Ones looks cooler, though. :/

[slave]

Siding 12 counters with rider seems quite complicated, though. Diluting the deck too much versus something as fast as storm doesn't seem a good idea. Maybe cutting 3 gitaxian probe might work, we'd still have the same pitches for fow and 3 more relevant pitches for shoal, since rider hits the tutors.

By the way, leyline just doesn't work for me, in the storm matchup. I think i'll just stick to the traps, and play the "therapy asap" game.

On another note, Hapless Researcher doesn't seem completely useless, it triggers bridge and cycles itself, something that might be useful in a grindy game. It's a lot more narrow than ridrr,though,its primary role would be being a pitch for shoal->cage. I think that shoal would need more cc1 pitches rather than cc2 ones, but raider is easily maindeckable, the researcher isn't. I think i might throw some copies in my sideboard and see if it works.

Wandering Ones looks cooler, though. :/

I agree > Wandering Ones is pleasing on the eye. :cool:
Hapless Researcher & Alchemists Apprentice seems similar, only the Apprentice gets us a dredge, and might be a pitch c/o Shoal for RiP (potentially)

I'm gonna give Rider a decent test > obviously Spy & Grisel are a very high target to match, but I'll see how it goes.
I too see that Rider will have occasions when we only dredge 2, 3 or 4 times, but after playing with Sphinx of Lost Truths in the past, I know that on many an occasion that dredging 3 can be enough to get ahead in the game, and win from there.

BTW;
For those of you pushing a blue sideboard, have you still got Dryad Arbor in your lists? Or have you dropped the Arbor for Gitaxian Probe instead, in order to support Force?

[Michael Keller]

Whirlpool Rider also has the added bonus of shuffling Narcomoebas back into your library from your hand in the event it gets Dread Returned undisturbed; pretty cool. That sets up the endgame nicely.

I mean, you're probably looking at dredging between three to five times with Rider entering play. That's perfectly fine, and doesn't cost you seven life to do it. Griselbrand is Griselbrand, but the shift in the fabric of this deck makes Rider - shockingly - the better choice, IMO.

[Final Fortune]

Guys, I've done the impossible ...

MD

4 Golgari Grave Troll
4 Stinkweed Imp
4 Golgari Thug
4 Shambling Shell
4 Phantasmagorian
4 Street Wraith
4 Gitaxian Probe
4 Force of Will
4 Cabal Therapy
4 Narcomoeba
4 Nether Shadow
4 Ichorid
4 Bridge From Below
4 Dread Return
4 Whirlpool Rider

SB

4 Disrupting Shoal
4 Mindbreak Trap
4 Misdirection

Welcome to modern Dredge, aggro-control eat your heart out.

[Thrasher]

I had tried Fow maindeck, but with only 11 pitches it wasn't worth it, now it might be different. I don't know if having a counter for thalia/natural order/Trinisphere/random oozes is worth cutting chancellor, though. I see Force more as a antihate card,we can already win most g1's without it. The reason i tried it in the maindeck is freeing sideboard slots. Force + Shoal + Trap is already 12 slots, and i'd like to have something for elves, reanimator and some pitch for shoal->cage. I ran 1x FoW maindeck in my last online 3-round tournament because i needed 4 Faerie Macabre's in my sideboard, but i don't think i'll do it again: revealing our g2 strategy for a single sideboard slot kinda sucks.

Misdirection? Is that for counterwars and discard?
Edit: it should be fun versus reanimator: "Reanimate my Thug, dude!"


BTW;
For those of you pushing a blue sideboard, have you still got Dryad Arbor in your lists? Or have you dropped the Arbor for Gitaxian Probe instead, in order to support Force?one
Yeah, Gitaxian is needed.

[Final Fortune]

Misdirection is good vs a lot of decks, vs RUG for example we can Misdirect their counters and their Surgical Extractions; altho' it's arguably unnecessary to play it, I wanted to push the idea of playing "aggro-control" Dredge as far as possible. Force of Will isn't just an anti-hate card, it's an anti-combo card. Now Storm can't just face roll all over us, they have to stop and Silence/Cabal Therapy us first and they have no idea whether or not we're playing Force of Will MD or which counter to name post-board when we have Force of Will, Mindbreak Trap and Disrupting Shoal as all possible counters. I really think this is the way to go, Force of Will MD means we're no longer just combo's bitch or a glass cannon vs Rest in Peace. Every card in our MD and SB serves a definite purpose to the point where no card is interchangeable for whatever cutesy bullshit people feel like playing anymore, that is a lock stock list.

Edit: Oh and just think about what saving that SB space means, Reanimator ain't shit when you can SB 4 Leyline of the Void and 3 Faerie Macabre on their ass

[Thrasher]

Actually vs rug i don't even side in Force of Will. I see you cut chancellor for Force of Will. I wouldn't to this, FoW is quite a bad answer to Deathrite shaman, which is widely played: it's counterable and triple timewalks your opponent. At least Contagion just double timewalks. If you want to play control just don't cut the chancellor. When i tried 4x FoW i had cut 1 Nether Shadow, 1 Dread Return, 1 Contagion (1x flex slot), 1 Phantasmagorian, if i'm not wrong. I might still have it written somewhere. I'll check later, when i get home.

[Final Fortune]

Actually vs rug i don't even side in Force of Will. I see you cut chancellor for Force of Will. I wouldn't to this, FoW is quite a bad answer to Deathrite shaman, which is widely played: it's counterable and triple timewalks your opponent. At least Contagion just double timewalks. If you want to play control just don't cut the chancellor. When i tried 4x FoW i had cut 1 Nether Shadow, 1 Dread Return, 1 Contagion (1x flex slot), 1 Phantasmagorian, if i'm not wrong. I might still have it written somewhere. I'll check later, when i get home.

Believe me, as one of the stalwart advocates of Chancellor of the Annex, I didn't cut Chancellor of the Annex without considerable thought. As far as I'm aware there's no difference between Force of Will and Contagion vs Deathrite Shaman, they're equally bad answers vs Deathrite Shaman, but they're answers vs Deathrite Shaman nonetheless and more importantly they're an answer vs Goblin Charbelchers, Empty the Warrens, Balustrade Spies, Undercity Informers and Infernal Tutors pushing your shit in on turn one. The deck is already pretty resilient vs Deathrite Shaman without Chancellor of the Annex, and it's no less so with Force of Will even tho' it comes at a price, so why wouldn't we shore up one of our weakest archetypical matchups by playing Force of Will?

[igri_is_a_bk]

Yeah, I agree with Thrasher. Force of Will is only good here if it isn't invasive and kicking out Chancellor is a problem. DRS is still the mb card we are most worried about and Chancellor is better there. Yeah it's not as good as Force against combo, but our g2 and g3 percentages improve more than theirs considering we bring in 8 or more cards.

[Final Fortune]

Yeah, I agree with Thrasher. Force of Will is only good here if it isn't invasive and kicking out Chancellor is a problem. DRS is still the mb card we are most worried about and Chancellor is better there. Yeah it's not as good as Force against combo, but our g2 and g3 percentages improve more than theirs considering we bring in 8 or more cards.

The marginal utility Chancellor of the Annex provides vs a single card that we have 8 other answers to is no where near as much as the marginal utility provides vs entire archetypes we have no answers to, just because you have 8 other, or even 12 other cards you can SB in vs Storm does not mean we have a good or winning match up % vs Storm. Think about Storm is designed to compete against aggro-control, a deck with just as many, if not more counters than us, the cantrips to find them and the ability to mulligan to find them.

This is more than a 4 card swap for whatever card that tickles your fancy, it literally completely changes the dynamic of this deck in the entire metagame. It's a small hit vs Deathrite Shaman, it's a major gain vs combo. You guys are concentrating on the wrong match ups, IMO. Deathrite Shaman is ubiquitous no doubt, but plenty of people have done well without running Chancellor vs it anyway.

[igri_is_a_bk]

I just do not agree with that thought process at all. I want Force to be in the 75 and maybe even the 60 but just not in Chancellor's place. I think you've dug too deep to suggest eight answers are enough for DRS - excluding Force - or that DRS isn't a higher priority than combo. A triple Time Walk is just unacceptable as an answer; legacy decks are too good for that. DRS completely shuts you down. Storm or SneaknShow or whatever might race you. I know this is a really bare bones argument, but it's really that simple to me.

If there are more decks that get wrecked by Force than decks that wreck you with DRS, then I'll concede the fact. But I have a feeling there are more DRS decks.

Just looking at the DtB section for example
Team America? yep
Elves? yep
DnT? no
Shardless? yep
Deathblade? yep
RUG? no
Sneak? no
Miracle? no
Jund? yep
Blade? no
Nic Fit? sometimes
Patriot? no

Force looks better than Chancellor against Sneak and... maybe Elves? Are you building for the MTGO meta where everyone is playing cheap combo decks? That couuld also explain this difference in opinion.

[Thrasher]

As far as I'm aware there's no difference between Force of Will and Contagion vs Deathrite Shaman, they're equally bad answers vs Deathrite Shaman
You're right, sorry, i messed up.

Anyway,i agree with igri_is_a_bk , i've always found a lot more DRS than storm decks. In the last big tournament i faced 3 team america and 1 jund. I think that to be able to do well at a tournament with this deck we have to minimize the chance of auto losing. Having 8 outs to DRS equals a 65% chance of escaping the lock, having 12 is a lot higher, around 80%. I think we can't afford to lose g1 due to random bad luck, that's why i like being well prepared for DRS.

On the combo matchups: chancellor is actually great versus storm, too, i think it's our best opening. Force is useless after a duress/Gitaxian+Therapy. Sneak and Show is a pretty good matchup, isn't it? They can't really use show and tell effectively and sneak attack is quite slow. Plus we can easily race emrakul.


Found my list, btw. It didn't work with so few pitches, it might be better with Whirlpool Rider.

4 Golgari Grave-Troll
4 Stinkweed Imp
4 Golgari Thug
3 Shambling Shell
3 Dread Return
1 Flayer of the Hatebound
3 Phantasmagorian
4 Force of Will
4 Street Wraith
4 Cabal Therapy
4 Ichorid
3 Nether Shadow
4 Bridge from Below
4 Narcomoeba
4 Chancellor of the Annex
4 Gitaxian Probe
3 Griselbrand

Sideboard:
4 Disrupting Shoal
4 Mindbreak Trap
1 Wandering Ones
4 Faerie Macabre
2 Contagion

[Final Fortune]

It could be a MTGO vs a brick and mortar meta thing, I don't play IRL at all. I have tested the Manaless Dredge vs combo match up tho' a lot and even with a MD that plays Chancellor of the Annex and Unmask it is an uphill battle.

That said it's not just the odds of us drawing an answer to Deathrite Shaman, its the odds of them drawing a Deathrite Shaman as well so 1/3 chance we don't draw an answer to Deathrite Shaman multiplied by a 2/5 chance they do draw a Deathrite Shaman and it's only 2/15 or 13% of the time. I don't have the time to do the math, but let's say Chancellor of the Annex reduces the odds to a 1/5 chance we don't draw an answer to a Deathrite Shaman and we've only improved to 8%. Now compare that to the 40% stopping power that Force of Will gives us vs combo goldfishing us, and remember even if it's a bad answer to Deathrite Shaman it's still an answer to Deathrite Shaman, and can you really tell me that trade off isn't worth it?

[Thrasher]

If you're facing a lot of combo decks then go with force maindeck. It's a matter of metagame. I almost never find All spells or Belcher, the most common combo deck here is Sneak and Show, followed by ANT. I don't have trouble with S&T, and ANT isn't really stopped by force of will. Keep in mind that if you win the die roll and choose to draw, any decent ANT player who knows manaless will start with discard to get a timewalk.

The chance of drawing a 4-of is 39,9%. You have a 14% chance of getting locked/timewalked by deathrite shaman with 8 answers, 8% with 12. That's a 6% difference, if i didn't mess up, and they're both pretty low. However, if you consider the chance of not drawing dredgers, phantasmagorian with just a single dredger/2 weak dredgers, phantasmagorian vs double deathrite shaman, the chance of getting locked with 8 answers gets annoying, if you expect to face a lot of DRS decks in a tournament.

I don't think doing -4 Chancellor +4 FoW is wrong, it just doesn't fit my playstyle and metagame.

[Final Fortune]

I'm cool with that, I just think even being able to MD Force of Will is probably the most exciting thing that has happened to this archetype in awhile and I really want to run with the idea and maximize SB space. I've been thinking of even crazier shit like MDing both Force of Will and Disrupting Shoal because they're both frankly just pretty good vs aggro-control as you can Force their counterspells or Disrupting Shoal their Daze etc. and get those Dread Returns to go off or just stop them from getting a Stoneforge Mystic on the board etc.

I mean our MD and SB can really expand to give us a shot vs Storm and Reanimator right now, it's just such a unique approach to this deck considering what we've been doing for the last few years.

[meffeo]

I don't think that the blue package should go MB. Many opponents do not think about it because they're used to a certain kind of hate vs dredge and the surprise in g2 is what matters.
They could go rip / cage without a fow / daze backup, and that's the point.

Ruining this surprise could lead to others counterspells to face.

[igri_is_a_bk]

The surprise is ruined after one time anyways. And we're not trying to fit in Force of Will for one tournament. We're trying to increase the resiliency of the deck overall while opening up sb space. They're going to play that Cage or RiP probably even if they don't have the counter back up. Think about how paranoid most people are when playing against dredge.

4 Gitaxian Probe
4 Force of Will
4 Cabal Therapy
3 Dread Return
4 Bridge from Below
4 Chancellor of the Annex
3 Phantasmagorian
4 Street Wraith
4 Golgari Grave-Troll
4 Stinkweed Imp
4 Golgari Thug
3 Shambling Shell
4 Ichorid
4 Narcomoeba
4 Nether Shadow
3 Whirlpool Rider

4 Mindbreak Trap
4 Disrupting Shoal
4 Faerie Macabre
3 Surgical Extraction

Here's what I'm gonna give a try for now. I'm pretty pumped for Whirlpool tbh.

[Graf_Caligula]

The surprise is ruined after one time anyways. And we're not trying to fit in Force of Will for one tournament. We're trying to increase the resiliency of the deck overall while opening up sb space. They're going to play that Cage or RiP probably even if they don't have the counter back up. Think about how paranoid most people are when playing against dredge.

4 Gitaxian Probe
4 Force of Will
4 Cabal Therapy
3 Dread Return
4 Bridge from Below
4 Chancellor of the Annex
3 Phantasmagorian
4 Street Wraith
4 Golgari Grave-Troll
4 Stinkweed Imp
4 Golgari Thug
3 Shambling Shell
4 Ichorid
4 Narcomoeba
4 Nether Shadow
3 Whirlpool Rider

4 Mindbreak Trap
4 Disrupting Shoal
4 Faerie Macabre
3 Surgical Extraction

Here's what I'm gonna give a try for now. I'm pretty pumped for Whirlpool tbh.

Seems worth a try. Damn there seems to be no space for +1 Phantasma and +1 Flayer =(

[Final Fortune]

Cut a Nether Shadow, it's pretty redundant.

[Graf_Caligula]

mmh Although I like this card very much and It is a good defense against DRS and targeted gy hate, Phant fucks a little bit around with the whirlpool guy. Maybe 3 is the right number... I'll have to test.

what do you think about the last list?

edit: Spelling + q

[slave]

Whirlpool Rider also has the added bonus of shuffling Narcomoebas back into your library from your hand....
Exactly, and whilst this may be a moot point most of the time, but I like it.


Dredging .... doesn't cost you seven life to do it. Griselbrand is Griselbrand, but the shift in the fabric of this deck makes Rider - shockingly - the better choice, IMO.
I have to agree at this (early) stage.
The only minus I can see is how it interacts with Phantasmagorian, and against heavy discard decks like Pox. But we smash Pox anyways, so whoop-dee-fuckin-doo.

I've done about 60 or 70 goldfishes so far and a handful of games on MGTO.
Rider has the benefit of just working with the blue plan so well. Because of that, there will be times we can roll with the Dread Return plan postboard, where we might not have with Spy/G-man.
This to me seems so much win.:tongue:


Welcome to modern Dredge, aggro-control eat your heart out.
I LOL'd when I read that.:laugh:

I used to fret about the strengths/weaknesses of LED-Dredge VS Manaless, about which was more resilient pre- and postboard.
Now that the blue side looks like it actually works, I don't have any doubts.
Manaless looks like a more flexible choice now, and (surprisingly) more robust. Anyone disagree?


But I have a feeling there are more DRS decks.
I agree. I face a load more decks running DRS than Storm.
Whilst a blue side for protection against combo (or control for that matter) is great, Contagion is still a great option.
DRS isn't the only thing I fear, Goblin Lackey can be a real bastard on top of their white taxing sideboard.
I still want a way to deal with that little fucker before they land a taxer on T2 to stop me playing anything, especially as they can nerf our bridges.


(Whirlpool Rider) Phant fucks a little bit around with the whirlpool guy. Maybe 3 is the right number... I'll have to test.
True dat.
Phantsamagorian numbers I haven't tested yet. I'll give it a go.
I'm edging towards four Riders. I'm yet to decide on the best number. I like 3, but 4 means we can exile one without a second thought of damaging our Dread Return chances. I also think backing down the number of Phants for game1 could be a mistake, given it's a great card to discard first.
Saying that, I'm still not convinced either way.

I'm gonna be running this on the wknd. May swap the number of Phants & Riders, maybe drop a single Flayer.
I don't wanna run Force in the main, wanna keep that a secret.:wink:

4 Golgari Grave-Troll
4 Stinkweed Imp
4 Golgari Thug
3 Shambling Shell
4 Dread Return
2 Flayer of the Hatebound
3 Phantasmagorian
4 Street Wraith
4 Cabal Therapy
4 Ichorid
4 Nether Shadow
4 Bridge from Below
4 Narcomoeba
4 Chancellor of the Annex
4 Gitaxian Probe
4 Whirlpool Rider

Sideboard:
4 Disrupting Shoal
4 Force of Will
4 Contagion
3 of something I haven't decided yet!

I'm still frightened of turn 1 Leyline of the Void. If someone has these, all they have to do is mulligan to oblivion and they beat us in both game2 and 3. I still see this card fairly often. Anything we can do with Blue about it?

[Final Fortune]

Why do you need Force of Will and Contagion when Force of Will deals with the same, and more problems? Are you running both?

[Thrasher]

May swap the number of Phants & Riders, maybe drop a single Flayer.

I'm still frightened of turn 1 Leyline of the Void. If someone has these, all they have to do is mulligan to oblivion and they beat us in both game2 and 3. I still see this card fairly often. Anything we can do with Blue about it?
I'd do those changes, i prefer not to overload on DR targets, phants allow pretty sick plays.

The best answer to Leyline in blue is chain of vapor, but it needs lands. I think you should just scoop to a resolved leyline, it's not worth to dedicate sb slots to it.

[Final Fortune]

If anybody is playing Leyline of the Void instead of Rest in Peace, Relic of Progenitus, Nihil Spellbomb, Surgical Extraction or Faerie Macabre they deserve their bi vs Manaless Dredge. Assumming we automatically beat any deck that plays Leyline of the Void game 1, technically speaking our match up win% should be equal to the odds that they don't mulligan into it for games 2 and 3. Clearly long odds, but I've won match ups vs Leyline of the Void by watching my opponent's mulligan themselves to death.

Storm and Reanimator terrify me mutch, mutch more to be honest.

[slave]

Why do you need Force of Will and Contagion when Force of Will deals with the same, and more problems?
I guess you're right.

But to play devil's advocate;
Contagion can deal with more than one threat. But yeah, with all this blue in the side (and main) it's probably not as important as it used to be.
That said, are you willing to timewalk yourself with a Force on T1 before you can discard a dredger on a turn1 DRS/Lackey etc., when they could have another one in hand?
Contagion is pretty good if they manage to get a Vial down, which we can expect against fish too.

And you're right > Reanimator terrifies good and proper.
We used to have a chance with the *old* legend rule running Griselbrand (think SnT sideboard), but with the new rule we just get owned.
I'd probably be better off getting in some Faerie Macabre's > far out they're cheap right now.:smile:

[Michael Keller]

Whirlpool Rider is the tits and has been solid in testing.

[slave]

Whirlpool Rider is the tits and has been solid in testing.

Indeed.
The more I play with it, the more I'm liking it.

Against reanimator, I was always wary of them playing Reanimate on our grave, stealing a DR target.
With a stolen Griselbrand they just win from there, with Spy they deck you.
But with this little guy whats the worst that can happen? :smile: ...ha ha.

[Michael Keller]

Some thoughts:

Contagion and Chancellor both have their merits. I think Chancellor's effect is more multilateral, but at the same time Contagion can be just crippling against decks spewing creatures out quickly. I get that Chancellor slows those decks down, but sometimes it's not enough - especially against a mana-machine like Elves.

Force in the main seems okay and could give the deck a boost against fast combo. I still think four Rider is a mistake, though. Three max seems like the right call in this instance, because we don't want to dilute the main building around Force. It's strong enough game one against most decks in the format where it may not even be necessary. That verdict is still out.

But Force does not solve the same issues Contagion does: one is reactive and one is proactive; you (highly unlikely) can't Force a second creature after the first one baits your counter-magic out. Contagion has more application to the board state and levels the playing field, while also facilitating faster Dread Returns on your own creatures.

The merits are there for all of these options, but most wind up being meta-dependent.

Faerie Macabre is too good right now to not be running four in this deck. It's multifaceted and shores up the nightmare matchup in Reanimator, in addition to opposing Dredge. It even has application against Storm in some situations. I think we all like it.

Shoal seems much more streamlined now with its interoperability post-board with Riders. That looks legit.

Leyline of the Void is a complete rarity these days. At this point, auto-scooping to it is fine in the one-odd chance I run into someone playing it. Let them mulligan into oblivion; it's not worth it.

[gato con botas]

Hello I am new in the forum excuse my Englishman I write it des of a translator. For someone who does not have access to the fow serious which I count the best sideboard in my power with unmask, faeire macabre, shoal black and contagion for sideboard serious which the best configuration?

[Thrasher]

Have you got any green fetchlands? I've got a pretty decent sideboard, but it needs fetches.

[gato con botas]

If I have fech

[gato con botas]

Also I have reveren silence natures claim and noxus revival

[slave]

Which is the best configuration? (side)

If you don't have the $$$$ for Force, the blue sideboards' effectiveness will be narrow.
But the green sideboard works, provided you run 4x Dryad Arbor in the mainboard.

//Sideboard
4x Reverent Silence
4x Nature's Claim
2x Verdant Catacombs
1x Forest
.... is a good start, and leaves you 4 slots for something like Contagion or Mindbreak Trap etc.

Or you could drop the green, and focus on other options like Faerie Macabre & Unmask.
It's all up to what matchups, and what hate, you expect to face.

[P-E]

long time no see

Slave good find on Whirlpool ^^

if you have to take this deck for GP paris , what would be your 75 ?

[Thrasher]

Without Force of Will you can try this.
Not as good, but you can hit the hate with discard on turn 1, gitaxian probe helps to decide whether to fire off therapy/unmask or not, bayou/Overgrown tomb lets you cast Cabal Therapy and is fetchable by Verdant Catacombs.
4 Bloodghast
4 Narcomoeba
4 Ichorid
4 Cabal Therapy
4 Dread Return
2 Nether Shadow
4 Golgari Grave-Troll
4 Stinkweed Imp
4 Golgari Thug
3 Shambling Shell
4 Street Wraith
2 Dryad Arbor
2 Verdant Catacombs
2 Dakmor Salvage
2 Griselbrand
3 Edge of Autumn
4 Phantasmagorian
4 Bridge from Below


2 Verdant Catacombs
1 Bayou/Overgrown Tomb
4 Gitaxian Probe
4 Unmask
1 Flayer of the Hatebound
3 Faerie Macabre

It's not mandatory to have that maindeck, but i suggest it because it makes good use of lands.

[Final Fortune]

Edge of Autumn is just trying too hard to be good, there's better options.

[Thrasher]

I may be wrong, but i think it's impressive in that list. It allows sick turn2 plays.

[slave]

I may be wrong, but i think it's impressive in that list. It allows sick turn2 plays.

If it works for you, good stuff.
But in your list above you don't have a single basic land? I assume this is just a simple typo.:tongue:

I did test it at one stage. For one, it can't find a Dryad Arbor, and the land comes in tapped, so I lost interest after that.
I'd rather just play a few fetches and basic land.

I noticed you're running 4 Ghast & 2 Shadows. How do these numbers work for you?

[Thrasher]

You're not supposed to cast it, the good part is the cycling ability. Drop a dryad arbor,return bloodghast, sacrifice it for a zombie token, dredge. It happens quite often with phantasmagorian.

That's right, no basics. I didn't need green mana at all, so no basic forest. the only mana i need is black, that's why there is bayou in that place (overgrown is just more budget friendly, since the guy who was asking said he didn't want to spend money for force of will).

I built this quite a while ago, it was right after i was done testing force&shoal, i had nothing more to test,so i was getting bored. I think the maindeck is very good, even if finding space for chancellor wouldn't be bad. Bloodghast is very powerful, it can come into play the turn it is put into the grave, unlike Nether, which speeds up our clock, that's why i chose to go 4 Blood/2 Nether. I'd play Bloodghast even in my current list,it really performed well, but it just eats up too many slots, in my opinion, i want to be able to play chancellor without cutting the Gitaxian/Edge. I think FoW + Shoal is just better, now.

By the way, the idea of the deck was Hollywood's, I just slightly tweaked the maindeck and created the sideboard plan.

[Mr. Froggy]

I find it nuts how much activity this thread gets!

Keep on testing my friends.

[Michael Keller]

I like Edge of Autumn; it compliments a Bloodghast package well and has some insane synergy with Bridge from Below, Arbor and Bloodghasts. There's absolutely nothing wrong with going that route if you so choose.

[gato con botas]

Is truth that I do not deal for that of the verdand catacombs and Edge of Autumn of main the edge makes you look for better basic not serious land a land grand?

[Final Fortune]

I like Edge of Autumn; it compliments a Bloodghast package well and has some insane synergy with Bridge from Below, Arbor and Bloodghasts. There's absolutely nothing wrong with going that route if you so choose.

Eh, I don't know, I've never been able to get behind the card because it's conditional and it always costs you something that you need, when I played the Bloodghast list I just ended up cutting Edge of Autumn for fetchlands.

Before the blue SB and Whirlpool Rider became all the rage, I was saving this as my "super secret weapon"

4 Golgari Grave Troll
4 Stinkweep Imp
4 Golgari Thug
X Shambling Shell
4 Phantasmagorian
4 Street Wraith
4 Ichorid
4 Bridge From Below
4 Narcomoeba
X Nether Shadow
4 Cabal Therapy
4 Dread Return
4 Bloodghasts
X Fetchlands
1 Bayou
1 Dryad Arbor
? Dakmor Salvage

Basic idea is that 4xDryad Arbor is really stupid compared to X Fetchlands, 1 Dryad Arbor and 1 Bayou because you can have more mana sources to either cast Cabal Therapy or Nature's Claim if you can get Landfall + Bloodghast + Cabal Therapy. I think Edge of Autumn is just kind of crap, it moves the deck forward but we win inevitably anyway so who cares, while fetchlands actually trigger landfall and give you additional Cabal Therapy without having to SB lands over removal. If you play 2 Shambling Shell, 1 Dakmor Salvage, 3 Nether Shadow and 8 fetchlands you have 11 lands, which maximizes the odds of drawing one in the opening hand, for landfall and statistically you get to go completely ape shit with Cabal Therapy on turn two.

It was the only way I could figure out how to improve my combo match up while adressing Rest in Peace and Grafdiggers Cage before Force of Will, Disrupting Shoal and Whirlpool Rider came along.

[gato con botas]

That looks like to you this deck?


4 Bloodghast
4 Chancellor of the Annex
1 Flayer of the Hatebound
4 Golgari Grave-Troll
4 Golgari Thug
1 Griselbrand
4 Ichorid
4 Narcomoeba
4 Nether Shadow
4 Phantasmagorian
4 Shambling Shell
4 Stinkweed Imp
4 Street Wraith
4 Cabal Therapy
4 Dread Return
4 Bridge from Below
2 Dakmor Salvage

[Final Fortune]

I don't like the decks that cut Shambling Shell for Dakmor Salvage and play 4 Dryad Arbor, Shambling Shell is a bad Dredger and Dakmor Salvage is a worse Dredger and as a land it doesn't untap to cast Cabal Therapy until turn 3, which is too late vs Storm. The entire point of playing so many fetchlands is that you can Landfall, return Bloodghast, cast Cabal Therapy and then flashback Cabal Therapy all on the same turn, if you had played Dakmor Salvage or Dryad Arbor that wouldn't be possible.

You also need to think about how your MD extends into your SB, with 8 fetchlands, bayou and arbor that's 10 lands that cast Reverent Silence, none of which I have to waste SB space on.

There's no room for Griselbrand combo at all.

[Thrasher]

Yeah, basically in the bloodghast list you have to choose between Chancellor and Griselbrand

[Final Fortune]

Yeah, basically in the bloodghast list you have to choose between Chancellor and Griselbrand

Chancellor is always going to be better IMO.

[slave]

Chancellor is always going to be better IMO.
Chancellor is fairly situational, although actually having D.R.'d onto the field is pretty cool against Storm, especially decks like PSI that run so few perm mana-sources.

I was never a huge fan of the Ghast package.
It demands you devote a fairly large portion of the main to support it > feels more like a casual deck than a legacy deck approach, although to be fair, I can see it's effectiveness.
Back when I tested it I was under the impression you need about 6 - 8 sources of land (or ways to find them) for any real consistency
I dunno...
I like it and all, but I've just found the deck to be more consistent without it.

But If Ghast is your thing;
Have a look at Ghost Town with Dakmor Salvage.
Ghost Town in your initial grip of 7 can not only be useful to get ghast into play every turn, (and bounce out in their upkeep), but is also useful to pay taxing perms like Thalia etc.

Say Hollywood, didn't you test a Ghast version using Riftstone Portal a while back?
How was it?

[Final Fortune]

Chancellor has more utility than Griselbrand because it's a disruption spell and a DR target vs Storm, the logic behind the Bloodghast version of Dredger is that Bloodghast replaces Griselbrand/Flayer of the Hatebound and when combined with Dryad Arbor and Dakmor Salvage enables faster Cabal Therapies and Dread Returns. The original version of this, which I think ran 4 Dryad Arbor/Dakmor Salvage with Dakmor Salvage as a replacement for Shambling Shell had a really high rate of turn 2 Cabal Therapy.

When I figured out recurring and playing Dakmor Salvage over another Dredger for a single Bloodghast was just bad compared to an average Dredge 5, I realized replacing the Dryad Arbors and Dakmor Salvages with fetchlands and a Bayou made the deck significantly more flexible because you can actually fetch for Bayou and play Reverent Silence thru' Daze or thru' Force of Will if you have a Cabal Therapy. You can actually play a lot of lands in manaless dredge if you subscribe to the Dakmor Salvage being a Shambling Shell replacement philosophy or cut Nether Shadow entirely from the deck. I definitely want to try it without Dakmor Salvage or Nether Shadows for a full compliment of Shambling Shells and a second Bayou in order to hard cast Golgari Thug and Bloodghast.

You have to really stop tho' and think for a second about what all of this means tho', because you can do some really crazy shit vs opponent's who make you play by actually having lands that you can cast Cabal Therapy with and discard your Dredger or Phantasmagorian or just strip that Rest in Peace right out of their hand. You're also virtually immune to Daze and Thalia.

It's a slightly "mad scientist" approach to Manaless and breaking the moniker, but the crazy thing is Bloodghast makes lands not suck in this deck and fetch/Bayou is actually highly relevant. Even a small tweak like playing 2 Fetch, 1 Bayou, 1 Dryad Arbor is better than what we were doing, and you really start to wonder how we could have been stupid enough to ever have been playing Forest or 4 Dryad Arbor when we had all of that utility sitting there the whole time.

You're obviously missing out on that big finisher or Chancellor of the Annex vs Deathrite Shaman by going the fetchland route, but you get to turn Cabal Therapy into Hymn to Tourach. I'm not sure what the right numbers are, maybe you go 3 Shambling Shell, 2 Nether Shadow and the 2nd Bayou and cut Dakmor Salvage because it's just a weak card. Something tells me it should depend on how many Shambling Shells you need to maximize the chances of drawing 2 in hand with Phantasmagorian vs Deathrite Shaman.

I think the approach is funny as shit tho', I've actually got to cast Shambling Shell on people.

[Thrasher]

I've never got that far, the thing with the highest cc that i managed to cast was Nether Shadow. It was fun, though.

At first i thought the Bloodghast list was just a "win more" strategy, i changed my mind when i tried Edge of Autumn and fetchlands, later. It's definitely not bad, it doesn't have good answers to rip/cage,unlike the blue build, but i can see it being competitive in a certain known metagame.

One day i'll try a build with 1x Underground Sea and Daze just for shits and giggles. Hell, it even sets you back to 7 cards! :tongue:

[slave]

One day i'll try a build with 1x Underground Sea and Daze just for shits and giggles. Hell, it even sets you back to 7 cards! :tongue:
I think my brain just imploded.

[deedeehey]

I think my brain just imploded.

Hey guys,

I have read all the posts about your side boarding and adding whirlpool riders main deck and thank you this is ver helpful!

I came to this conclusion,
we basically loose vs grave hate which is mostly 2 cards (RIP & cage)
I don't consider Deathrite Shamam a threat (I never loose vs them) cranial extraction is not play that much and Leyline of the Void either.
At least this is the last experience I got from casual plays / cockatrice and tournaments the last 2 months.

this is the version of the deck I was playing post patriot nemesis coming up.

44 CREATURES
4 Chancellor of the Annex
4 Golgari Thug
4 Stinkweed Imp
4 Golgari Grave-Troll
4 Ichorid
4 Nether Shadow
4 Street Wraith
4 Phantasmagorian
4 Narcomoeba
4 Balustrade Spy
2 Shambling Shell
1 Flayer of the Hatebound
1 Progenitus

12 INSTANTS and SORCERIES
4 Gitaxian Probe
4 Cabal Therapy
4 Dread Return

4 OTHER SPELLS
4 Bridge from Below

and my side was


1 Ashen Rider
2 Sickening Shoal
3 Contagion
3 Mindbreak Trap
3 Unmask
4 Faerie Macabre / or 4 Leyline of sanctity depending where I was playing

Today I'd like to do this

4 Balustrade Spy > 4 Whirlpool Riders (it's basically a balustrade spy or a griselbrand and a serum powder all together. It will mess up with the players who knew the deck under is previous mechanics... great addition, thks and congrats for this treasure!)

and the side would be completely different (but I haven't test it yet, this is where you guys can comment, advice or not ;) )

4 land grant
4 foil
1 tropical island
3 reverent silence / nature's claim
3 daze


I mixed both plans without FOW.
Why? In theory we can beat our opponents T2 / T3. The will side hardly vs us and mulligan hardly as well to get they grave hate.
FOW is really not good on tempo for our dredging mechanic. I am too scared to not have card in my hand to be able to dredge (which is really our worst enemy).

Land grant is the weakest card of the side. I know some of you don't want to show their hand, but really after game1, they know clearly what our decks are.

tropical island is here or discarded for foil (I am pretty positive of the wincon after one foil cast) and works well with daze. We can even cast whirlpool riders by recycling daze on a own countered Probe or Cabal... Seems stretched but anyone with me on this?

[Thrasher]

I think my brain just imploded.
Hey, i was just kidding!

@deedeehey:
On the maindeck:
I suggest you to cut progenitus and 1 whirlpool rider, you don't really need the full set.
Sideboard:
I have done some testing with foil. It's obviously not as consistent as fow, it's only good if you want to win versus storm, but that's the only thing he can do better than fow/shoal. I don't think there's a reason to run lands without bloodghast, you have everything you need to support force + shoal. If you don't want to play FoW, I don't suggest to play Reverent Silence. It's really bad, at least Nature's Claims is good versus cage, Silence actually sucks versus rip. Land Grant Without Dryad Arbor is bad, too, playing 4 tropical island+1 fetch would be strictly better. If you want to choose the counter route definitely go with force of will, with that maindeck.

By the way, force doesn't hurt your tempo, unless it's played on a t1 cage.

[Final Fortune]

I wouldn't play Foil unless Grafdigger's Cage was more popular than Rest in Peace, and I don't see that happening as long as Tarmogoyf is a part of this format - likewise I wouldn't play Whirldwind Rider without Disrupting Shoal as Whirlwind Drake, Griselbrand or Balustrade Spy are just better. I still think the Foil plan has a lot of potential merrit to it especially if anti graveyard cards like Relic of Progenitus ever take off again because you can SB 4 Foil, 4 Land Grant, 3 Tropical Island and 4 Nature's Claim but honestly it's just not right for the meta when you consider how consistent Force of Will and Disrupting Shoal is.

I'm back to running MD Chancellor of the Tangle and SBing the 12 counters, Force of Will, Mindbreak Trap and Disrupting Shoal because I think Force Spike is often enough vs Belchers and Hermit Druids. I have like 12 counters and 4 Chancellors post-board vs Storm, that match up can go get bent. I'm a bit resigned to losing to Reanimator, I've tried extreme SBs like 4 Faerie Macabre and 3 Surgical Extraction but they always seem to just tutor up another target and win. It's pretty fucking irritating, but as long as we can not roll over to Rest in Peace anymore we have our place in the metagame.

[deedeehey]

Hey, i was just kidding!

@deedeehey:
On the maindeck:
I suggest you to cut progenitus and 1 whirlpool rider, you don't really need the full set.
Sideboard:
I have done some testing with foil. It's obviously not as consistent as fow, it's only good if you want to win versus storm, but that's the only thing he can do better than fow/shoal. I don't think there's a reason to run lands without bloodghast, you have everything you need to support force + shoal. If you don't want to play FoW, I don't suggest to play Reverent Silence. It's really bad, at least Nature's Claims is good versus cage, Silence actually sucks versus rip. Land Grant Without Dryad Arbor is bad, too, playing 4 tropical island+1 fetch would be strictly better. If you want to choose the counter route definitely go with force of will, with that maindeck.

By the way, force doesn't hurt your tempo, unless it's played on a t1 cage.


Ok,

I made in practice my little changes

main deck : 2 Ballustrade Spy > 1Whirlpool Rider / 1Whirlpool Drake


Sideboard:

x4 land grant
x4 nature's claim
x4 foil
1 tropical island
1 forest
1 Ashen Rider

I won few games at the local stores today.
I played a very interesting game vs death and taxes.
Won 2-1

first one... turn two kill with Ballustrade Spy combo.
2nd one... I conceded after seeing misplays with the new experimental sideboard I made
3rd one .... Sided correctly. It was a blast...Revealed Chancellor of Annex. Revealed and played land grant on the draw, get tropical island (foil in my hand). Keep my hand full, discard Phantasmagorian. Discard dredger6, cabal and Ichorid through Phantasmagorian. Recycle street wraith dredge 6. play Ichorid. I didn't dredge for few turns to get nature's claim while attacking with Ichorid (I got his Thalia through cabal). Destroy his Jitte. Then when I could see it was really not in shape. Started to dredge. Put my Whirlpool Rider on the grave yard. Shuffle my hand draw 6 (dredge 4 time + draw 2) got ashen rider on the board + cabal... Won the game...

Didn't play foil. It works really nice just has a threat to his spoiler or his real grave hate which you'll get out of his hand with cabal.
It's quite challenging, but I think I'm going with this.

[Michael Keller]

Land Grant just seems like a lost cause with the Foil sideboard. Force and Shoal in conjunction with Chancellor should be sufficient. (We included Rider to coincide with Shoal, so I'm curious why you included him into your main deck without Shoal post-board.)

I mean, it's a fine target, but fires on all cylinders with Shoal.

[deedeehey]

Land Grant just seems like a lost cause with the Foil sideboard. Force and Shoal in conjunction with Chancellor should be sufficient. (We included Rider to coincide with Shoal, so I'm curious why you included him into your main deck without Shoal post-board.)

I mean, it's a fine target, but fires on all cylinders with Shoal.




Land grant did not disappoint me right now.
Getting your land on turn1 (round2, which you will start certainly) is worth a mulligan. Right now I didn't have to go more than a mulligan 5 to get it. When I got the Tropical Island, I don't drop it on the board yet for Foil. And start to dredge slowly after few draws to get Nature's Claim. Again Fow makes us loose so many turns, I'd rather be on the clock.

Foil, doesn't have to be cast to work... That is the beauty of it. Reveal chancellor / land grand / foil. Your opponent know is threat can be played before turn3/4 which enough to go off / or cast ashen riders and blow them 2 lands...

About Rider, altough that it's a bit slower that balustrade spy, I does griselbrand's work + serum powder with no CDA and lost of life points. It kills their cranial extractions if they dare to play it (they will have to use 3 of them to get spy / rider / drake, which is easier for ichorid / bridge from below and narcomeba to be safe.

[Michael Keller]

Mulliganing for Land Grant in Manaless is completely not worth it. You're predicating your start on opening with a Foil, too. That just seems like too much work and forces the deck to be overly reliant on a single card.

[Thrasher]

I don't get it. Fow makes us lose too many turns but mulling doesn't?And why would you start to dredge slowly after a few draws to get claim? You're basically wasting a turn every time you draw instead of dredging.

[deedeehey]

I don't get it. Fow makes us lose too many turns but mulling doesn't?And why would you start to dredge slowly after a few draws to get claim? You're basically wasting a turn every time you draw instead of dredging.


Well if I mulligan for land grant or claim, I'm reactive. Which I prefer.
I like to draw if I took my flayer out. Once I got an Ichorid and a bridge in the grave I can draw few cards see if I can get claim for the 2nd hate. That is been testing only in goldfish situation I admit. But the few test I did earlier in my local store (which had decent players) made me feel positive about this side board.


Here is an option another player has shared too.

4 Tropical Island

4 Golgari Grave-Troll
4 Stinkweed Imp
4 Golgari Thug
3 Shambling Shell

4 Phantasmagorian

4 Ichorid
4 Nether Shadow
4 Narcomeba

4 Dread Return
4 Bridge from Below
4 Force of Will
4 Circular Logic
4 Cabal Therapy

4 Whirlpool Rider

1 Flayer of the Hatebound

Any thoughts?

[gato con botas]

Excuse for cutting the topic but we are speaking about versions of dredge without uses force of will for whom there are people who is not possible to allow to acquire them. Serious of great contribution you list without force of will decks

[deedeehey]

Excuse for cutting the topic but we are speaking about versions of dredge without uses force of will for whom there are people who is not possible to allow to acquire them. Serious of great contribution you list without force of will decks

Alright.

What do you think about foil then?
Do you have any ideas of sideboarding with the new legacy field right now?

[Michael Keller]

Excuse for cutting the topic but we are speaking about versions of dredge without uses force of will for whom there are people who is not possible to allow to acquire them. Serious of great contribution you list without force of will decks

Here's the deal:

Manaless Dredge is at a crossroads. Like, a very serious crossroads. The truth of the matter is people are playing some incredibly bad hate cards for us in the format now - be it Rest in Peace or Grafdigger's Cage. The biggest problem Manaless has in dealing with those cards is allowing them to hit play and do damage. We can't have that anymore. I know people can't afford Forces because of how expensive they are, but just know this: it's becoming harder and harder to navigate into deeper rounds in tournaments because of the varied amount of hate people are packing. Force of Will is not only allowing us to finally break through the major problems the deck has been having by fighting hate before it hits play - it's giving us serious game against combo.

Whirlpool Rider, for all intents and purposes, should be considered a fixture main-deck in Shoal-based sideboards, or with Force of Wills.

Foil and Disrupting Shoal as counter-magic may be ways for the deck to fight varied hate, but just know they will always be inferior and more conditional than Force of Will. You can tailor your deck to suit a Foil-based sideboard, but I'm not a fan of it.

[gato con botas]

Ok understand Hollywood will will try to do to me with a set of force of ahun that costs average to me he pays if your you say that it is the future plough it. This way like is it necessary to to be the main deck and the correct sideboar with the fows???

[Mr. Froggy]

Here's the deal:

Manaless Dredge is at a crossroads. Like, a very serious crossroads. The truth of the matter is people are playing some incredibly bad hate cards for us in the format now - be it Rest in Peace or Grafdigger's Cage. The biggest problem Manaless has in dealing with those cards is allowing them to hit play and do damage. We can't have that anymore. I know people can't afford Forces because of how expensive they are, but just know this: it's becoming harder and harder to navigate into deeper rounds in tournaments because of the varied amount of hate people are packing. Force of Will is not only allowing us to finally break through the major problems the deck has been having by fighting hate before it hits play - it's giving us serious game against combo.

Whirlpool Rider, for all intents and purposes, should be considered a fixture main-deck in Shoal-based sideboards, or with Force of Wills.

Foil and Disrupting Shoal as counter-magic may be ways for the deck to fight varied hate, but just know they will always be inferior and more conditional than Force of Will. You can tailor your deck to suit a Foil-based sideboard, but I'm not a fan of it.

For me, I have the budget for FoWs; I just don't like adding them to Manaless Dredge since it was a deck I could always have constructed because it was so cheap.

I guess I'll see later on.

[jimmythegreek]

Force and rider is honestly a god-send for this deck, an answer to the decks achilles heel. Budget should never intercede when talking of deck theory, it only stifles conversation. Its time for testing and recording our results. Ill be playing the force-rider version at my local store on sunday, the meta there is extremely hostile with many rip decks and a few bojuka main decks. Ive played all versions of dredge and prefer the manaless due to its consistency and evasion. I predict good things to come for manaless. Report to follow.

[slave]

Manaless Dredge is at a crossroads.
Yep.
The blue Shoal/Force side gives us game, in some matchups that were very one-way against us, provided we're quick.

Not sure how I'm gonna be siding for matchups yet... :confused:

[Thrasher]

I'm still working on it,Rider changes some sb plans where i had the DR targets as easy sideouts, but if you think it can help, i can share the sideboard configurations that i've tried so far.

[nokto]

Hi!

Well it actually awakes my interest. Just to make sure we are on the same page, we are talking about a list that is something like this:

MD:
4 Chancellor of the Annex
4 Golgari Thug
4 Stinkweed Imp
4 Golgari Grave-Troll
4 Ichorid
3 Nether Shadow
4 Street Wraith
4 Phantasmagorian
4 Narcomoeba
3 Whirlpool Rider
2 Shambling Shell
1 Flayer of the Hatebound
4 Gitaxian Probe
3 Cabal Therapy
4 Dread Return
4 Bridge from Below
4 Force of Will

SB:
4 Disrupting Shoal
4 Mindbreak Trap
4 Faerie Macabre
3 Ashen Raider

I plan to play this tomorrow at a local store. What are the sideboard plans? I guess the easy part is what to put in, but the hard part is what to take out.

[Vandalize]

Hi!

Well it actually awakes my interest. Just to make sure we are on the same page, we are talking about a list that is something like this:

MD:
4 Chancellor of the Annex
4 Golgari Thug
4 Stinkweed Imp
4 Golgari Grave-Troll
4 Ichorid
3 Nether Shadow
4 Street Wraith
4 Phantasmagorian
4 Narcomoeba
3 Whirlpool Rider
2 Shambling Shell
1 Flayer of the Hatebound
4 Gitaxian Probe
3 Cabal Therapy
4 Dread Return
4 Bridge from Below
4 Force of Will

SB:
4 Disrupting Shoal
4 Mindbreak Trap
4 Faerie Macabre
3 Ashen Raider


I plan to play this tomorrow at a local store. What are the sideboard plans? I guess the easy part is what to put in, but the hard part is what to take out.

Whirlpool Rider is better than River Kelpie? Kelpie can draw less cards on the trigger, but if you Dread Return it and follow with Cabal Therapy, you'll trigger Bridge from Below, trigger Persist and draw twice. Seems good. Better than Sphinx of Lost Truths, that's probably the 3rd best option.

[deedeehey]

Yep.
The blue Shoal/Force side gives us game, in some matchups that were very one-way against us, provided we're quick.

Not sure how I'm gonna be siding for matchups yet... :confused:

Yep seems like a mess right now.


Anyone else was positive about Foil?

Why everyone else dropped the reactive SB (nature's claim / silence)

[rhinoflipper]

Why everyone else dropped the reactive SB (nature's claim / silence)

Because the blue plan gives us game against combo in addition to being just as good at stopping gravehate. In addition, you can still DDD if they play RIP and you use Force.

[rhinoflipper]

Whirlpool Rider is better than River Kelpie? Kelpie can draw less cards on the trigger, but if you Dread Return it and follow with Cabal Therapy, you'll trigger Bridge from Below, trigger Persist and draw twice. Seems good. Better than Sphinx of Lost Truths, that's probably the 3rd best option.

You can't pitch Sphinx or Kelpie to Shoal to counter RIP.

[Final Fortune]

Do not cut a Cabal Therapy ever from your deck, Shambling Shell, Nether Shadow, Whirlpool Rider, Dread Return or a Phantasmagorian are all cards where you'll never really notice the difference between 4x and 3x but you'll lose entire games and entire match ups to decreasing the odds of resolving a Cabal Therapy and stopping combo before they kill you.

Everything you can do to maximize the odds of resolving a Cabal Therapy is the difference between life and death vs combo.

[Modus Pwnens]

Post SB games are really a mess right now, before the blue version, i used to side-out our 8-flex slots + 3 DR targets, but now i can't Sideout Probe and Rider. So my only option now is to dilute the main strategy, shaving dredgers, DRs, and stuff. Diluting our deck really hurts in the most grindy match-ups (I even lost to a resolved Batterskull because i didn't have enough firepower to win at turn 4-5.)

I will probably start to sideout Probe vs Patriot Decks, at least i won't have to dilute my deck that way. (And grafdigger's cage is not a thing in Patriot)

Sent from my phone, don't be a dick =p

[Mr. Froggy]

Post SB games are really a mess right now, before the blue version, i used to side-out our 8-flex slots + 3 DR targets, but now i can't Sideout Probe and Rider. So my only option now is to dilute the main strategy, shaving dredgers, DRs, and stuff. Diluting our deck really hurts in the most grindy match-ups (I even lost to a resolved Batterskull because i didn't have enough firepower to win at turn 4-5.)

I will probably start to sideout Probe vs Patriot Decks, at least i won't have to dilute my deck that way. (And grafdigger's cage is not a thing in Patriot)

Sent from my phone, don't be a dick =p

That's the thing I was most scared of...

[deedeehey]

That's the thing I was most scared of...

any thoughts on daze?

[rhinoflipper]

any thoughts on daze?

I could be wrong, but Daze seems really, really weak. You run no Islands maindeck nor have the capacity to, and the card isn't close to Foil in power (assuming you do manage to cast it). Foil, of course, isn't even close to Force and Shoal.

[Thrasher]

When i wrote about daze i was kidding. It might actually work in a bloodghast list, but there's no need to waste 16 slot for daze+foil/daze + whatever + 8 lands (the minimum number if you don't want your plan to be too inconsistent), without using the lands for something else. Force + Shoal works better and requires half the amount of slots.

@nokto: I don't know if i'll be able to do it before tomorrow, i don't have much time, now. It depends on your timezone, if your "tomorrow" is far enough i might be able to do it. :tongue:
I have sb plans for storm, reanimator, Rip-decks, Sneak and Show, Elves and team america, anyway. I haven't really tested the other matchups enough with this build.

[Mr. Froggy]

Isn't adding all those diluting the deck?

[Thrasher]

Exactly. That's why 8 slots for Force + Shoal is better than 16 for Daze+othercounter+lands.

[slave]

Whirlpool Rider is better than River Kelpie? Kelpie can draw less cards on the trigger, but if you Dread Return it and follow with Cabal Therapy, you'll trigger Bridge from Below, trigger Persist and draw twice. Seems good. Better than Sphinx of Lost Truths, that's probably the 3rd best option.
Like Rhinoflipper said, Whirlpool is all about the blue denial. Stopping them play a Rest in Peace in tandem with Shoal.
Compare Kelpie to Whirlpool Drake.

I should point out too, in my testing there has been loads of occasions Rider has been a blowout like griselbrand > netting a dredge for 8, with no loss of life. Yes, there will be occasions where you're only dredging 3 or 4 times, but sometimes that's enough anyway. Rider looks good to me, but in truth I don't know how it'll go until I get some real matches behind me.


Post SB games are really a mess right now.... Diluting our deck really hurts in the most grindy match-ups.

If they're not playing RiP from the side, or another card that causes a blowout at 2cmc, we're free to focus on a grindy plan, just like many of us will be comfortable with from the green side plan.
I mean, RiP & Leyline of the Void = game.
Besides those two, which not that many decks will run really, we can deny, or protect our Dread Return/Therapy with just Force.
Shoal looks to me to be a very useful side option I would bring in only for matchups where 2cmc really matters.

For me;
We need to know what kind of hate they're likely to play, how many 2-drops they're likely to be running, and whether SHoal is gonna be relevant.
Going in as a newbie with Manaless just got harder...

[deedeehey]

Like Rhinoflipper said, Whirlpool is all about the blue denial. Stopping them play a Rest in Peace in tandem with Shoal.
Compare Kelpie to Whirlpool Drake.

I should point out too, in my testing there has been loads of occasions Rider has been a blowout like griselbrand > netting a dredge for 8, with no loss of life. Yes, there will be occasions where you're only dredging 3 or 4 times, but sometimes that's enough anyway. Rider looks good to me, but in truth I don't know how it'll go until I get some real matches behind me.



If they're not playing RiP from the side, or another card that causes a blowout at 2cmc, we're free to focus on a grindy plan, just like many of us will be comfortable with from the green side plan.
I mean, RiP & Leyline of the Void = game.
Besides those two, which not that many decks will run really, we can deny, or protect our Dread Return/Therapy with just Force.
Shoal looks to me to be a very useful side option I would bring in only for matchups where 2cmc really matters.

For me;
We need to know what kind of hate they're likely to play, how many 2-drops they're likely to be running, and whether SHoal is gonna be relevant.
Going in as a newbie with Manaless just got harder...


I'll be playing this tomorrow.

I will start with 3 balustrade 1 whirlpool rider.

And use 4 land grant / 4 nature's claim / 3 Foil / 1 daze / 1 Tropical Island / 1 Forest / and 1 Ashen Rider

[rhinoflipper]

I'll be playing this tomorrow.

I will start with 3 balustrade 1 whirlpool rider.

And use 4 land grant / 4 nature's claim / 3 Foil / 1 daze / 1 Tropical Island / 1 Forest / and 1 Ashen Rider

Daze is literally trash, don't run it. If you don't have the budget for Forces, trade those Trops for some.

EDIT: Misread SB, so getting a set of FoW is harder than I thought (read it as 3 Trop. Island). Still, cut Daze for Foil.

EDIT 2: Remember that Rider is awful if you don't run Shoal. Whirlpool Drake is strictly better, but a 4th Spy is even better than that. If you don't have the budget for Force, you should probably be running one of the Autumn's Edge lists, or something with Bloodghast at least. None of this cute Foil stuff, ESPECIALLY when you only have 1 Island(!) (Land Grant is a sorcery, if you were reading it wrong.)

This could end up being a meta call, as Foil is good (read: not trash) in cage-infested metas. But it would have to be VERY cage-infested for me to even CONSIDER running it.

[Michael Keller]

Daze is literally trash, don't run it. If you don't have the budget for Forces, trade those Trops for some.

I actually was going to suggest this, but to each his own.

[slave]

Good Call rhinoflipper.

We want a HARD counter, if we're running blue at all.
Thrasher was joking about Daze, please drop the idea.

From now on, If anyone ever suggests playing Daze, please consult this picture below;
Yep, he thinks Daze smells like your mum.
Feel free to ask him about Land Grant

http://i28.photobucket.com/albums/c201/smobass/Cube_zps27fcf830.png (http://s28.photobucket.com/user/smobass/media/Cube_zps27fcf830.png.html)

[Thrasher]

@Slave: I lol'd.

Back on the serious stuff. I picked up my notes from my latest tests, and copied the sideboard plans, just for the matchups i tested with a decent amount of games.

Here are the SB plans i have tested until now, using this list:
4 Golgari Grave-Troll
4 Stinkweed Imp
4 Golgari Thug
3 Shambling Shell
4 Dread Return
1 Flayer of the Hatebound
4 Phantasmagorian
4 Street Wraith
4 Cabal Therapy
4 Ichorid
4 Nether Shadow
4 Bridge from Below
4 Narcomoeba
4 Chancellor of the Annex
4 Gitaxian Probe
3 Whirlpool Rider
1 Sickening Shoal

4 Disrupting Shoal
4 Mindbreak Trap
3 Faerie Macabre
4 Force of Will


Storm

-3 Whirlpool Rider
-1 Sickening Shoal
-1 Nether Shadow
-1 Flayer of the Hatebound
-1 Dread Return
-1 Phantasmagorian/Nether Shadow/Dread Return/Shambling Shell
+4 Force of Will
+4 Mindbreak Trap

The combo is not needed, reanimating Chancellor of the Annex will be enough the vast majority of times,which is the reason for the -1 DR, too: Seeing one DR is more than enough in this matchup. Sickening Shoal would have no useful targets, so it's a pretty obvious side out. I cut a Shadow because it's the slowest of the recurring creatures. The last slot is up to preference, they're all valid choices, but i don't like boarding out 'Gorian, having a fast opening is very good versus storm. Shambling is there just because you aren't gonna win this matchup starting with a dredge 3, most of the times.

Death&Taxes,Patriot,Stoneblade

-1 Sickening Shoal
-1 Flayer of the Hatebound
-4 Chancellor of the Annex
-1 Dread Return
-1 Gitaxian Probe
+4 Force of Will
+4 Disrupting Shoal

These decks should be packing rip, this sideboarding plan is aimed at fighting it. Sickening Shoal would take care of creatures we can already deal with, and it's unplayable versus Thalia. Flayer is not needed because they can't win in a turn versus a board full of zombies. 3 Dread Return is enough, being resilience to hate is much more important than comboing fast, that's the reason why Gitaxian gets a -1, too.
Pitches: 17 for Fow, 10 for Shoal.

Some of these deck pack Relic (often 1 relic 2 rip), too, so there's a different plan for that.

-1 Sickening Shoal
-1 Flayer of the Hatebound
-2 Chancellor of the Annex
-1 Dread Return
-2 Gitaxian Probe
-1 Dread Return/Nether Shadow
+4 Force of Will
+4 Disrupting Shoal

Pitches: 16 for FoW, 10 for Shoal->Rip.

Basically 2 Chancellors are left in to be able to answer effectively Relic. I didn't shave Phantasmagorian because this plan is made to fight relic, it wouldn't really make sense.

Reanimator

2 plans here:
a)

-1 Sickening Shoal
-1 Shambling Shell
-2 Dread Return
-3 Nether Shadow
+4 Force of Will
+3 Faerie Macabre

Pitches: 14 for FoW

Pitches:

b)Same as before, just add:
-1 Nether Shadow
-1 Whirlpool Rider
-2 Phantasmagorian
+4 Disrupting Shoal

Pitches: 18 for FoW, 10 for Shoal->Animate Dead, 4 for Shoal->Reanimate.

I always focus on disruption, in this matchup. We aren't gonna win unless we somehow manage to stop them. Taking a mull actually makes sense in this matchup. Sickening Shoal gets cut because counterspells are generally more effective.It's nice in g1, though. Shambling Shell is slow, Dread Return isn't useful until late in the game, it doesn't disrupt at all, so i'm fine with 2. Nether Shadow is the slowest creature, and we need slots. I don't cut Flayer because winning in the turn you DR is very important, it's not funny to get slaughtered by Elesh Norn. The second plan, the better one, imho, focuses more on disruption, adding a counter, Shoal, following the idea "i won't win if he goes off". The deck gets quite diluted, but it kinda works. I guess there's no need to say that Faerie Macabre is an all star, when i see it in my opening i think "yeah, i can win this game".

Sneak and Show

I often win g1, with this list, so going (almost)fearless in g2 and adding antihate in g3, in case i lose g2, works.

If i win g1 i just do

-1 Sickening Shoal
-1 Nether Shadow
-1 Phantasmagorian
-1 Dread return
+4 Force of Will

Pitches: 14 for FoW

otherwise (rarely, though, 4 fow is usually enough, most lists play 1/2 cages.)

same as above, add:
-1 Shambling Shell
-1 Dread Return
-2 Nether Shadow
+4 Disrupting Shoal
Pitches: 18 for FoW, 4 for Shoal->Cage.

Firing off cabal therapies hitting the right card is enough, hence i cut more shadows, i'm trading speed for an answer to cage.

Team America

I usually don't sideboard at all. If i expect cage i consider this plan:
-1 Sickening Shoal
-1 Nether Shadow
-2 Dread return
+4 Force of Will

Pitches: 14 for FoW.

Dread Return isn't really that necessary in this matchup. Deathrite shaman annoys that plan, too. There's not really much more to say, i'm just keeping 12 answers to DRS and adding Force, which solves cage, the only real problem in this matchup.

Elves

This is complicated.I don't think like cutting DR, here, we need to go off as soon as possible. No sideboard is an option.
otherwise i used this plan, too:
-1 Dread Return
-1 Nether Shadow
-1 Shambling Shell
-1 Phantasmagorian
+4 Force of Will

Pitches: 14 for FoW.

The advantage of this SB plan is being able to stop Crop Rotation for Bojuka Bog, Natural Order,Ooze and Green Sun's Zenith. I favoured speed, here, rather than consistency. We get to use Gitaxian Probe at full power, so we shouldn't have too much trouble finding 1 of the 3 'Gorians/Dread Returns/Nether Shadow. Cutting DR and Shadow is necessary, although i don't really like it, but i couldn't cut another Shambling Shell or Phantasmagorian, it would've hurt much more our speed and consistency.

Basically Whirlpool Rider Enables -4 stuff + 4 FoW sideboards, since it keeps the blue count at a decent number. I think this is good because sometimes it's just not worth to side in the 8-counter package, going with 4 gives some protection, but it leaves intact our main plan.

By the way, i don't always side like this. I don't like copying strategies from a sheet, i prefer doing it at the moment, it helps me understand what i'm doing and why, therefore making my sideboarding more "flexible". Still, if in testing i do many times the same (or almost same) strategy, i assume it's for a reason. Anybody agrees/disagrees with my choices?

Sh*t, this turned out to be longer than i had expected, i hope it's useful and not too boring.

[Graf_Caligula]

Very well done, Thrasher!

I like they way you give a definite strategy as well as a general one against these matchups. In there could be some copypaste stuff for the new primer.

Regarding the primer: How is it going with it, Hollywood? Were you able to write something down,yet?

@Land lists: I tinkered around a bit with various of those lists. Including Undiscovered Paradise, Dakmor Salvage, Fetches,Foil and 1cmc cards to abuse lands like Monstrous Carabid, Tortured Existence, Call to the Netherworld and the likes, but as stated above several times before, including ~8 lands seems to dillute the deck more than it benefits from it compared to the blue plan that is discussed atm.

I just never had a land drop when I needed it the most and dredging from dakmor sucks if you cannot abuse it for maximum value.

though I would love to see a list that really works.

once again good job, Thrasher!

[Michael Keller]

I'm plugging away at it; it's getting there.

This coming Saturday is a major Legacy tournament (Bazaar of Moxen qualifier) in the Northeast U.S. I'll be attending with the new list and new sideboard.

[JPoJohnson]

I'm plugging away at it; it's getting there.

This coming Saturday is a major Legacy tournament (Bazaar of Moxen qualifier) in the Northeast U.S. I'll be attending with the new list and new sideboard.

Would love an update afterwards! Been a while since I've heard action from your end with all you've had going on (:

[gato con botas]

Hello boys and managed to do top in a tilt of 41 persons with this deck:



4 cabal terapy
4 dread return
3 shambling shell
4 contagion
4 street wraith
4 ichorid
4 golgari grave - troll
4 bridge from below
3 balustrade spy
4 Narcomoeba
4 stinkweed imp
4 nether shadow
4 golgari thug
4 phantasmagorian
4 dryad arbor
1 flayer of the hatebound
1 Sickening Shoal


sideboard

1 forest
2 land grant
2 Sickening Shoal
4 reverent silence
3 noxious revival
3 natures claim
I hope that you like the list and certainly I wait for your comments :smile:

[rhinoflipper]

Hello boys and managed to do top in a tilt of 41 persons with this deck:



4 cabal terapy
4 dread return
3 shambling shell
4 contagion
4 street wraith
4 ichorid
4 golgari grave - troll
4 bridge from below
3 balustrade spy
4 Narcomoeba
4 stinkweed imp
4 nether shadow
4 golgari thug
4 phantasmagorian
4 dryad arbor
1 flayer of the hatebound
1 Sickening Shoal


sideboard

1 forest
2 land grant
2 Sickening Shoal
4 reverent silence
3 noxious revival
3 natures claim
I hope that you like the list and certainly I wait for your comments :smile:

It's a solid list. Two suggestions: run 4 Nature's Claim and 3 Reverent Silence, there's no real reason not to. Also, Spy is pretty weak in a deck with Dryad Arbor. Replace it with Griselbrand. If you can't afford that, Sphinx of Lost Truths or River Kelpie will work fairly well also.

Congratulations on the win!

[slave]

Also, Spy is pretty weak in a deck with Dryad Arbor. Replace it with Griselbrand. If you can't afford that, Sphinx of Lost Truths or River Kelpie will work fairly well also. I would suggest that between Kelpie, Sphinx & Whirlpool Drake, that Kelpie is the weakest of the three, if a budget alternative is what you're after.
Reason being removal. I like my DR targets to do what they do when they ETB.



This is what I ran over the wknd.
4 Golgari Grave-Troll
4 Stinkweed Imp
4 Golgari Thug
3 Shambling Shell
4 Dread Return
2 Flayer of the Hatebound
3 Whirlpool Rider
4 Phantasmagorian
4 Gitaxian Probe
4 Street Wraith
4 Cabal Therapy
4 Ichorid
4 Nether Shadow
4 Bridge from Below
4 Narcomoeba
4 Chancellor of the Annex
Side;
4 Disrupting Shoal
4 Force of Will
3 Contagion
4 Faerie Macabre

I'm very happy with this list after playing some matches with it. :cool: The blue side works. Kinda....
More to the point, Rider worked, and I feel lik we finally have enough blue cards in here.
When my DR didn't get countered, I dredged for 5 or more each time from Rider. Obviously I won't know just how good or bad it is, until I face some harder opponents running more discard/counter, than I got this wknd.

I caught out people in a few other games with Force or Shoal, stopping a Jitte, Grindstone & Rest In Peace (Yay!!)
Far out the StoneBlade player was perplexed! "Shoal? WTF? You actually run that card?! WTF kind of deck are your running man?" :laugh:

I was just playing at the local, so no big tourney or anything. Played Combo-Elves, UW-Stoneblade, GWr-Enchantress (not running Helm) & Blue-Painter-Stone.
Ended up 3-1 (lost to Elves) thanks largely to having both Probe & Wraith in the main and going off quickly. I won 3 out of 4 first games.
Bummed we had such a poor turn-out, I was hoping some of the storm boys would rock up! (I feel strange saying that...:eyebrow:)

Maybe some of you guys can chirp up on how you went?

[Thrasher]

@Graf_Caligula: Thank you!

@gato con botas & slave: nice results there!


The blue side works. Kinda....
Why "kinda"?

By the way, Kelpie doesn't really care about removal. No decent player will save his/her stp's for Kelpie instead of using them on ichorid/narcomoeba in upkeep/end of draw, unless you have a lot of creatures, and by then you should be able to either get it with therapy or dread return something else. Drake should be the best one, though.

[Final Fortune]

Whirlpool Drake is the best non Griselbrand/Balustrade Spy target, bar none, if you're not playing Disrupting Shoal. I'd still playing Disrupting Shoal even if I couldn't afford Force of Will tho' I think.

[slave]

Why "kinda"?
Ha ha,
Cos half the time I used it protect a DR, probe etc., the opponent had a pair of counters ready.
I don't mind that too much though.

Nice sideboard theory BTW.

[carefulmug]

@ Slave

I'm wondering why not go -1 Flayer, +1 Whirlpool Rider?

It maxes out our baseline blue count for FoW, gives us 4 1cc and 8 2cc blue spells for Shoal, increases a pitched Rider's dispensability, and slightly increases the speed of the deck's combo.

Also, while we do not typically flip our entire library to a Whirlpool Rider, it is very easy to DR a second Rider after the first's CitP ability, thus finishing dredging our library, functioning as a slightly drawn out Balustrade Spy, and, ultimately, only requiring one Flayer.

[rhinoflipper]

@ Slave

I'm wondering why not go -1 Flayer, +1 Whirlpool Rider?

It maxes out our baseline blue count for FoW, gives us 4 1cc and 8 2cc blue spells for Shoal, increases a pitched Rider's dispensability, and slightly increases the speed of the deck's combo.

Also, while we do not typically flip our entire library to a Whirlpool Rider, it is very easy to DR a second Rider after the first's CitP ability, thus finishing dredging our library, functioning as a slightly drawn out Balustrade Spy, and, ultimately, only requiring one Flayer.

I agree completely. The two cards serve essentially the same function (resolving DR on either one is a win), but, as carefulmug said, 4 Rider means an easier time with Shoal.

Personally I do 3 Riders and 1 Flayer to make room for a 4th Shell, but that's entirely preference. The point is that 1 Flayer is optimal.

[ahg113]

The SB'ing primer is clutch. Thank you for the good work.

Question about Goblins- I went with 4 Shoals and 4 FoW, got to goink the t1 Relic, but then Thalia made me sad. Any thoughts comments on the boarding matchup?

[slave]

The point is that 1 Flayer is optimal.
Perhaps. I favour 2 personally.


Question about Goblins- I went with 4 Shoals and 4 FoW, got to goink the t1 Relic, but then Thalia made me sad. Any thoughts comments on the boarding matchup?
I've played against Rw-Goblins quite a few times with manaless, and so far I've seen quite a few different hate cards. Some of them run RiP....
Obviously Thalia negates Contagion, but I still think Contagion is a good in here for getting rid of Lackey.
Lackey just enables their deck to go silly so quickly.

[rhinoflipper]

Perhaps. I favour 2 personally.

Fair enough. I just think that being able to maximize your capacity to kill RIP while retaining the combo kill is good, but the core group of cards is so strong that it really doesn't matter. A 3/2 split is certainly fine.

[Thrasher]

The SB'ing primer is clutch. Thank you for the good work.

Question about Goblins- I went with 4 Shoals and 4 FoW, got to goink the t1 Relic, but then Thalia made me sad. Any thoughts comments on the boarding matchup?

That's an interesting question. I think it's a matchup that requires some testing. I've never had too many problems versus the mono red version, but the RW one seems definitely more complicated, there are a lot of variables. Chancellor is an all star, here, but cavern of souls-> lackey is annoying. I think i'd definitely board in FoW's, but i'd avoid Shoal. They're fast, we can't afford to dilute our deck too much.

Choosing what to side out seems quite hard,though Chancellor is good versus lackey/relic, i don't feel like cutting it, Sickening Shoal is a nice "oh, shit" button for t1 Lackeys. The combo kill is pretty important, they are better at swarming and they can remove our bridges pretty easily. Flayer is actually very good versus goblins,it, DRing it + some recursion in upkeep is pretty much gg. I'd say siding out 1 DR + 1 Phantasmagorian is ok, but i don't know what else, maybe 1 Shell 1 Nether Shadow, but cutting a dredger is bad vs relic. I'll see if i find someone playing rw gobs for some testing.

[Michael Keller]

Forced Rest in Peaces all night yesterday.

Played Force main.

Shit's legit.

[Darklingske]

That's great! And what was the final result Hollywood? And I'm really curious for your funky list :smile:

[Final Fortune]

Forced Rest in Peaces all night yesterday.

Played Force main.

Shit's legit.

Knew I wasn't crazy.

[Michael Keller]

Big tournament this weekend; can't divulge yet!

Force main is perfectly viable. It frees up sideboard space, too.

[Final Fortune]

Big tournament this weekend; can't divulge yet!

Force main is perfectly viable. It frees up sideboard space, too.

I found the same to be true, the extra 4 spaces let's you play 4 Faerie Macabre and 3 Surgical Extraction most importantly, Reanimator is being played everywhere.

[P-E]

waiting for lists :cool:
good luck for the weekend Hollywood

[Michael Keller]

So let me ask you guys a question:

How do you feel about Faerie Macabre in the main deck?

[ahg113]

Are you talking about having 4 FoW and 4 Faerie Macabre MD?

If so, I'm guessing four are in the 'typical flex spot' usually occupied by Chancellor/removal. The other four I'm guessing are shaving a Gorian, Shadow, 1 of 4 Whirlpool Rider and x card. I'm a fan of Chancellor, so I'm not totally for it, however I can see it's use. I tend to think stopping a first turn spell is better than the chance of facing Reanimator or AnT. However, if those are the matchups to be on the look out for, then I'm a fan of Faerie's maindeck.

Moving Faerie to the maindeck, do you move Chancellor to the sb, or what extra utility is gained in that location?

[Michael Keller]

Are you talking about having 4 FoW and 4 Faerie Macabre MD?

If so, I'm guessing four are in the 'typical flex spot' usually occupied by Chancellor/removal. The other four I'm guessing are shaving a Gorian, Shadow, 1 of 4 Whirlpool Rider and x card. I'm a fan of Chancellor, so I'm not totally for it, however I can see it's use. I tend to think stopping a first turn spell is better than the chance of facing Reanimator or AnT. However, if those are the matchups to be on the look out for, then I'm a fan of Faerie's maindeck.

Moving Faerie to the maindeck, do you move Chancellor to the sb, or what extra utility is gained in that location?

Either or.

Chancellor is good, but I think Force is better in most situations where hard-countering a key spell is better than holding an opponent off for a turn. Chancellor is terrible off the top of your deck, whereas a Force (or a blue card) as the first draw is pretty darn good. Granted, there's the whole "Time Walk" argument again, but seriously - I'm not overly concerned with it. We can beat a turn one Shaman with Phantasmagorian and or Street Wraith. Hell, I beat two in the last big tournament I played in with three cards left in my deck. Shaman doesn't bother me.

What bothers me are decks that think they can goldfish us like Storm, Belcher, Reanimator or opposing Dredge turn one. Force gives us game against those decks, but like I was saying - is it possible to consider running some number of Faeries main to augment the Forces for our bad match-ups? Faerie is just fucking good in so many circumstances and can be a blowout more often than not.

[ahg113]

Either or.

Chancellor is good, but I think Force is better in most situations where hard-countering a key spell is better than holding an opponent off for a turn. Chancellor is terrible off the top of your deck, whereas a Force (or a blue card) as the first draw is pretty darn good. Granted, there's the whole "Time Walk" argument again, but seriously - I'm not overly concerned with it. We can beat a turn one Shaman with Phantasmagorian and or Street Wraith. Hell, I beat two in the last big tournament I played in with three cards left in my deck. Shaman doesn't bother me.

What bothers me are decks that think they can goldfish us like Storm, Belcher, Reanimator or opposing Dredge turn one. Force gives us game against those decks, but like I was saying - is it possible to consider running some number of Faeries main to augment the Forces for our bad match-ups? Faerie is just fucking good in so many circumstances and can be a blowout more often than not.

To answer your question - yup.

There's a lot of window dressing in this deck, the meat comes down to

4 Therapies
4 Bridges
4 Dread Return
4 Street Wraith
4 Golgari GT
4 G Thug
4 S. Imp
2-3 S. Shell
4 Narco
3 massive dredge
1 kill (Flayer/Flame-Kin/X)
4 Icky
3-4 N. Shadow
3-4 Gorians

That's 51 cards on the high-side, 48 on the low side. Competing for those extra spots (9 or 12) are G. Probe, Chancellor, FoW, Faerie Macabre. That makes sense to me. Especially if you feel as though other gy decks will be present in force. I'm prolly inclined to go with that third Shell, for 15 dredgers instead of 14, cause not hitting a dredger, like mulling in g1, are just the shits.

[Thrasher]

Yeah, i agree, too. We just can't touch the core, but the rest has to adapt to the metagame. Since Gitaxian is pretty much needed in the blue strategy, we have 5 flex slots. If you get paired often vs grave-based combo then Faerie Macabre is an option. It's a dead* card in many matchups, though.
*i mean that you won't use it for grave-hate purposes, but dumping a creature over shadow in eot is still a thing.

I'd try again FoW maindeck if my meta forces me to, otherwise it's unneeded in the majority of matchups i play (my metagame is heavily filled with u-based aggro control and show and tell). It's much better against d&t/Nic Fit/Crop-Bojuka/Storm.

[slave]

Given DRS is still freakin everywhere, I don't wanna reduce the number of Phants in the main.

Chancellor seems the logical choice to swap for Force. Probe, 3-4 Rider & Narc's all stay for Force.
To be fair, I've questioned how useful Chancellor actually is when we have 4 of Probe, Wraith & Phants to accelerate, I've been playing this deck with and without it for a while. Chancellor seems the weakest choice maindeck doesn't it?
I have to admit, packing Force in the main with Surgical Extraction in the side does look very attractive to stomp combo.

Faerie in the main?
Besides Reanimator & some Storm variants, what would have you worried enough to pack it in the main?

[Final Fortune]

MD Faeries just seem awful, it's good vs Dredge, Reanimator and Oops, All Spells, and none of those decks are as ubiquitous as Deathrite Shaman; so either play Force of Will or play Chancellor of the Annex in the main.

[gato con botas]

Hollywood which is the list that you play now?? Do you go force of will of base??

[Michael Keller]

Hollywood which is the list that you play now?? Do you go force of will of base??

I can neither confirm nor deny until after Saturday.

[Red Zone]

I recently played the Force of Will sideboard with Whirlpool Riders in the Balastrude Spy/Griselbrand spot at a local 30 man tourney and took Manaless Dredge all the way to the finals. We split, but played it out and his Blue/Green infect deck took me down 2-0. Counting that match I finished with a 5-2 record.

My first match loss was to Death and Taxes. Won game one like we should, but lost the second game and third game to Rest in Peace both times. It was really my fault for boarding out some dredgers and keeping permission heavy hands. I was able to Disrupting Shoal a Rest in Peace once (totally caught my opponent by surprise) and Force of Will another, but both games I was unable to find a dredger which gave him time to find another Rest in Peace.

This deck seems to be really well positioned against the field now considering how little graveyard hate is being packed in sideboards. Most decks seem to only run 1-3 pieces of hate and with the Force of Will/Disrupting Shoal plan we seem to be able to answer the first piece and not give our opponents enough time to draw a second.

The matches I won were against Burn, Re-Animator, Blue/Red Delver, Golgari Control and ANT.

If I were to play the deck again I would take out the Chancellor of the Annex and run Force of Will main. I can't even begin to tell how good Force and Mindbreak Trap together are against ANT/combo decks. Cabal Therapy played a huge role in my ANT matchup as well.

With Force main deck this means Gitaxian Probe stays in as well. Also found the Flayer of the Hatebound to be well worth his one spot in the deck.

With Force moving to the main deck that frees space to run Contagion in the side. There are more creature decks being played than Re-Animator in my meta so a 4/3 split of Contagion/Faerie Macabre seems right. Rounding out the board would be 4 Mindbreak Trap and 4 Disrupting Shoal.

Hope this info helps some of the brewers out there trying to take Manaless Dredge to the next level.

[Michael Keller]

I'll tell you one thing: Force main has been awesome. There is seriously no better feeling in the world than seeing the look on your opponent's face when you Shoal or Force away that trash. The application goes even farther than that. Chancellor is nice main, but Force is neck and neck with it. I just like drawing it off the top of the deck for the turn with a Narcomoeba in your hand. It's just funny how the deck turned one of its greatest weaknesses into one of its greatest strengths: the open-handed Narcomoeba.

I know I'm going to run into Elves at some point on Saturday, so I'm staying prepared out of the board. Same goes with Reanimator and Storm.

[chlb]

I'd try again FoW maindeck if my meta forces me to

I see what you did there. :P

I have been reading this thread much more than participating in the conversation. That said, I'll be joining the "FoW MD" crew with my list as well.

[Final Fortune]

Yeah, adding FoW MD seemed absurd at first, but it completely changes the dynamicism and competitiveness of this deck from being a glass cannon to being a primary weapon.

Never cut that many of one card type for your counters, 1 Shambling Shell (or Flayer of the Hatebound if you play it) 1 Nether Shadow, 1 Phantasmagorian and 1 Dread Return are my normal cuts - you board out Gitaxian Probe vs combo -

I still think our Storm match up is rough and I'm considering cutting Mindbreak Trap for Leyline of Sanctity to have as many angles of attack as possible, if they can't peek and see whether or not you have Force/Shoal it really mind fucks them. I've thought about going all in on an anti-Storm board and bring in 12 more cards to stop it by cutting Gitaxian Probe and Whirlpool Rider and the singletons for 8 counters and Leyline of Sanctity or maybe using Unmask again.

I just want to pick one bad match up with my SB and absolutely burry it in hate at this point, Storm seems like the most logical choice.

[Thrasher]

@Red Zone: Congrats!


I see what you did there. :P
Ahaha, i didn't realize that while i was writing!


Yeah, adding FoW MD seemed absurd at first, but it completely changes the dynamicism and competitiveness of this deck from being a glass cannon to being a primary weapon.
Come on, this is an exaggeration. It doesn't make any difference in at least half of the matchups of the field. Countering thalia can be nice, but d&t is already an easy matchup. Same goes for stoneblade, we shouldn't care about sfm->batterskull at all, deathblade and team america, which has no useful targets. Even protecting dread return isn't useful, most of the times you get a huge swarm of tokens even if it's countered. It's nice vs elves, but that's all. It's not even that good vs ant, it's often not enough without Mindbreak Trap as a support.

On the storm topic, i'm testing a lot of different builds to improve that matchup. Force MD was just an easy target for Duress, it hardly slowed my opponent down. The games i won weren't thanks to FoW, but Chancellor + fast dredging through Street Wraith and/or Gitaxian Probe.


I still think our Storm match up is rough and I'm considering cutting Mindbreak Trap for Leyline of Sanctity to have as many angles of attack as possible, if they can't peek and see whether or not you have Force/Shoal it really mind fucks them. I've thought about going all in on an anti-Storm board and bring in 12 more cards to stop it by cutting Gitaxian Probe and Whirlpool Rider and the singletons for 8 counters and Leyline of Sanctity or maybe using Unmask again.
I think we may have been doing it wrong. I remember my storm matchup being better,before changing my list, and i'm trying to understand why. The only configuration that kinda worked for me, now, is Chancellor+FoW+Mindbreak. Leyline + shitload of counters was crap without leyline in play,the deck just became bad at dredging and suffered discard a lot. Leyline + counter is gg most of the times , but it's a low chance.
(Side note:the Bloodghast list with Edge of Autumn has a better storm matchup preboard. I'm serious.Too bad it can't really deal with hate.)

I think i might go back to Unmask maindeck. I think it might be better vs storm. FoW can be stripped by our hand in the opponent's turn 3, Unmask has already done its damage in our second turn.It's significantly worse than force vs Crop-Bojuka, but i hardly ever face decks playing it. Leyline of sanctity might be worth it, too. In the end it's free wins vs non-wish ant variants.

[Final Fortune]

Force of Will does a lot more than you give it credit for, it's really important vs the aggro-combo match ups like Elves and Affinity where countering their combo pieces is game winning as well as in the linear combo match ups like Belcher/Warrens, Hermit Druids, SI and to a lesser extent TES where they'll never guess you're playing Force of Will MD with Cabal Therapy.

You say it doesn't make a difference in half of the match ups in the field, but making a difference in the other half of the match ups in the field is actually a really big fucking deal because those matchs ups have strategy superiority against us.

I have no problem with Chancellor of the Annex in the MD and Force of Will in the SB, if your metagame is inbred with Deathrite Shamans it's the right choice.

Metagame matters, there's a ton of cheap combo decks on MTGO so that's probably a huge influence on my personal thinking.

I'd never play the Bloodghast list without Chancellor of the Annex, Edge of Autumn is a terrible, terrible card. I don't know if you saw the fetchland list I posted a couple pages back, but that could actually deal with hate altho' it'd invoke the double time walk.

[Thrasher]

I agree with what you say about metagames, mine has an absurd amount of DRS and decks which don't care about FoW, except elves maybe. Force is definitely the best choice to rape SI, Belcher and All Spells.


I'd never play the Bloodghast list without Chancellor of the Annex, Edge of Autumn is a terrible, terrible card. I don't know if you saw the fetchland list I posted a couple pages back, but that could actually deal with hate altho' it'd invoke the double time walk.
I know edge is weird and everything, that's just raw data collected from testing. It might be just luck, but it seems to have a decent storm matchup. Yeah, i've seen it, i meant without timewalking.

[slave]

Forced Rest in Peaces all night yesterday.
Played Force main.
Shit's legit.

Force of Will does a lot more than you give it credit for....

I think this is the main thought I can take from the last two pages of this thread.

I'm enjoying Force > not just for killing combo pieces etc., (as we don't often get one in our intial grip of 7), but it's because once an opponent see's you dredge a force into the yard, they'll be forced to consider whether you have one in hand.
Do they play tight? Do they go all-in? Do they make a play without a counter back-up?
An opponent playing tight can possibly give us more time......


(metagames)... mine has an absurd amount of DRS....
Me too.
Sucks doesn't it?


Yeah I can't see a reason not to run Force in the main.
Last wknd I ran it out of the side, hoping to use it as a surprise (it worked amazingly), but It's just too good not to run in the main, especially VS everything.
Consider me converted.

[Barsoom]

What's the point of playing Force of Will main when you already win 90% of your game 1? the surprise factory of Force of Will in the sideboard (even if this surprise will disappear in the future if as we all hope this version will start to top8 more) is better imho than spare wins against "random decks" like Belcher or All Spells.

I started recently to play manaless dredge, just in time for the Thrasher epic innovation of Force of Will/Disrupting Shoal to fight hate (that it seems is the better innovation this deck had from 2011 when it was born, i indeed choose a good time to pick up this deck...) and i'm really liking Force of Will for what i does, countering graveyard hate g2 and g3; we all know it's a good card vs "everything", but do we really need it main? i'm not so sure about it; cmon, do ANT/Belcher/All Spells are really so prevalent in your meta/the general meta? watching results from GP Paris, the answer seems NO.

[Thrasher]

Does it improve any matchup? I know forcing stuff is cool, but if the vast majority of the decks i face doesn't have anything that can threaten me in g1 why should i use Force? Why should i care about countering a Stoneforge Mystic when i can easily race it?(just a random example) I prefer having additional consistency in grindy matchups, such as miracles and thopters.

I don't think Force MD is a bad idea, but i think it's highly meta-dependent. If lands/elves/glass-cannon combo are popular in a certain metagame, playing FoW maindeck is probably the best choice, otherwise i prefer leaving them in my sideboard.

[AmokPL]

For anybody considering Forceless build (for budget reasons), I am getting somewhat decent results with this. I love Unmask, preSB it gives you some sort of weapon against Storm along with Therapies and Chancellors, comboes well with not needed Phantasm, lets you discard a dredger when you need it, secure your DR minute before it goes off or spies opponent's hand for solid Therapy or two.

Powder on the other hand helps after SB when you need to get a specific card soon (Leyline against Burn, Macabre or part of antihate etc). No Dryads as I decided against Reverent Silence (need to fight both Cage and RiP with already nine cards). I know it is not perfect but does the job for me (until I get hold of FoW's).

MD
4x Golgari Grave Troll
4x Stinkweed Imp
4x Golgari Thug
4x Phantasmagorian
4x Nether Shadow
4x Ichorid
4x Chancellor of the Annex
4x Narcomoeba
4x Street Wraith
2x Griselbrand
Flayer of the Hatebound
Ashen Rider

4x Bridge from Below
4x Cabal Therapy
4x Dread Return
4x Unmask
4x Serum Powder

SB:
3x Leyline of Sanctity
3x Faerie Macabre
4x Nature's Claim
4x Wooded Foothills
1x Forest

[Michael Keller]

What's the point of playing Force of Will main when you already win 90% of your game 1? the surprise factory of Force of Will in the sideboard (even if this surprise will disappear in the future if as we all hope this version will start to top8 more) is better imho than spare wins against "random decks" like Belcher or All Spells.

I started recently to play manaless dredge, just in time for the Thrasher epic innovation of Force of Will/Disrupting Shoal to fight hate (that it seems is the better innovation this deck had from 2011 when it was born, i indeed choose a good time to pick up this deck...) and i'm really liking Force of Will for what i does, countering graveyard hate g2 and g3; we all know it's a good card vs "everything", but do we really need it main? i'm not so sure about it; cmon, do ANT/Belcher/All Spells are really so prevalent in your meta/the general meta? watching results from GP Paris, the answer seems NO.

Force of Will kind of fits the bill that Dryad Arbor does: it alleviates sideboard space so you don't have to jam eight to twelve cards into your deck post-board - keeping the deck's primary focus intact. Force is just good on its own and has much more utility than stopping combo in its tracks; it's a hard-counter. That's what it does. It stops key spells from resolving, so you can't look at it from a narrow perspective in the sense that it's only strictly good against Belcher or O!ASs.

Also, the GP meta across the sea is different than the one where I play, where Force is actually good. Look at Miracles: some builds still do rock RiP main. But it doesn't matter - it's in a subjective utility spot open for interpretation.

[Michael Keller]

I've got some tech lined up for the Qualifier...should be awesome.

[gato con botas]

Here we all are expecting for your list hollywood aa to see when you show it to the rest of mortal XD

[slave]

What's the point of playing Force of Will main when you already win 90% of your game 1?
If you win 90% of game1, I can see why you'd say Force isn't needed in the main. But I'm not that lucky.

I happen to have a favourable game1 %, but I still lose against Storm/Combo regularly, and there are decks out there with RiP maindeck.
Force main allows us to better our game1 win % > it's important, given that fighting hate postboard can be hit and miss.

[Michael Keller]

1-0.

Disrupting Shoal pwned Surgical Extraction.

[Michael Keller]

2-0.

Beat DnT. Shoal dominated.

[P-E]

Go holly go
Waiting for my shoal in my mailbox !!

[gato con botas]

Go holly go
!

[Graf_Caligula]

Shoal FTW!

Go, Hollywood!

[JPoJohnson]

Haha, I love the streaming updates. Keep us updated as you go :p

[Michael Keller]

5-2.

Shoal countered:

1x SFM
2x Cage
4x RiP

Force countered:

2x Cage
2x RiP
1x Reanimate
1x Infernal Tutor
1x SFM

One more round.

[gato con botas]

Who was ultimately your deck list hollywood?

[Michael Keller]

6-2 - just beat Sneak and Show.

[Michael Keller]

Came in 13th out of 173!

Expect a report!