Valakut / Lands

[Jeff]

I've been playing around with making Valakut work in Legacy for a little while and wanted to throw the idea at the wall here and see if people had any further suggestions. I started with this (http://sales.starcitygames.com//deckdatabase/displaydeck.php?DeckID=39922) as a template, and have made changes since. Notable changes to the deck so far.

- Cut Tabernacle. This is not for financial reasons. Essentially the deck doesn't do enough mana denial like 43 Lands for Tabernacle to actually be useful. Decks like RUG don't seem to have much trouble paying 1 or 2 mana in upkeep for their creatures, getting one or two through the mazes each turn, and still controlling the game.
- Cutting Jace - The deck isn't really able to protect Jace very well, he's basically just an expensive brainstorm. He isn't a reliable win condition
- Cutting Grove/Fires - As an alternate win condition, this falls victim to all the same cards that stop our primary win condition (Extirpate, Leyline of Sanctity, Blood Moon). Not a very good alternate

- Adding Brainstorm. We have blue lands, fetches, and need to find specific cards at times. There's absolutely no reason not to use Brainstorm.
- Adding Slagstorm. This is taking the role Punishing Fire had, but it's actually able to kill the creatures in Zoo.


4 Exploration
3 Explore
4 Prismatic Omen
2 Scapeshift

4 Brainstorm
4 Intuition
4 Force of Will
1 Ponder

2 Slagstorm
1 Life from the Loam

4 Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle
4 Maze of Ith
4 Taiga
4 Volcanic Island
2 Stomping Ground
1 Steam Vents
7 Fetchlands
1 Tropical Island
1 Forgotten Cave
3 Wasteland

Sideboard
3 Koth of the Hammer
3 Pyroblast
2 Spell Pierce
2 Slagstorm
2 Nature's Claim
1 Bojuka Bog
1 Scapeshift
1 Wasteland


This is really rough at the moment as I consider a lot of changes. Here's what I'm currently thinking about

- I'd like a maindeck alternate win condition. I'm currently considering a singleton Worm Harvest, but GGG is actually a little tough to pick up. It might not really be good enough, but it's pretty decent against zoo when it comes to providing blockers.
- I'm considering cutting Scapeshift altogether. It's only really good against decks without countermagic. I haven't done it yet, but its usually pretty underwhelming.
- The sideboard is totally rough right now, but I'm looking for alternate win conditions that can win through Blood Moon, Extirpate, and Leyline of Sanctity. Koth seems pretty decent for winning through Blood Moon and Extirpate, although his ultimate is pretty crappy against Leyline. Still, if he can ultimate and I have the Worm Harvest, the mountains should be able to keep creatures down while the worm harvest generates enough tokens to kill.
- Obviously there aren't many blue cards for Force right now. That's actually been fine, it's really only there for counter backup when it comes to resolving Scapeshift, so I might look into cutting Force then. However, I'd point out that hardcasting force happens in this deck more often than you'd think. Honestly I've considered cutting blue entirely, but Intuition is pretty essential.
- The one of Ponder could be a lot of different things. I'm also considering cutting a land to go down to 30, at which point I'd have two flex slots that could be Worm Harvest, Ponder/Preordain/filtering of some sort.

So yea. Thoughts?

[SpeedOfDark]

I'm not really sure what I think of the deck (or the idea). The list as it is looks is underwhelming unless I'm missing something, it just seems way too slow. But there might be a way to build it, who knows.

The lack of crucible of worlds seems like a problem. The first reason is that wasteland is everywhere in legacy and you need to protect against it somehow if your only way to win is valakut. Also, it makes you intuitions a lot better, such as: intuition for valakut and get the 2 in the yard back, or play crucible then intuition for wasteland and start chomping some nonbasics.

[Jeff]

Well, the advantage to it is that it is essentially a combo deck with inevitability, as you continue to make your land drops you just win, and counterspells can't really stop that. It's definitely slower than other combo decks, but if you get a turn 1 exploration some really silly things happen.

Why would you play Crucible when you've got Life from the Loam to go with the intuitions? There's no good way to tutor up a Crucible, but Intuition for Loam+Forgotten Cave+any missing land is a pretty ridiculous draw engine.

J

[ateu89]

I was thinking in a deck like that. Manabond can be pretty insane.

[Nameless Two]

How about a couple of Boseijus in the board?

[Choux]

Can you beat control or combo ?

[Raider Bob]

Seems like you lose to Surgical Extraction.

[Jeff]

Can you beat control or combo ?

Actually the control matchup isn't half bad. Obviously if you manage to resolve a scapeshift it's over, but even if you don't you can just make your land drops forever and get there. Resolving a single Intuition will do half your job for you, and since you do have some countermagic available, you can often force through one or two spells. Postboard you get the REBs which is really nice.

Combo is absolutely the worst matchup. You kind of have to play a bunch of countermagic and hope for the best. However, in my local meta right now combo is really unpopular because counterbalance is picking up, so this seems decent at the moment.


Seems like you lose to Surgical Extraction.

Did you even read the post? The part where I talked about how I was looking for a maindeck alternate win condition like Worm Harvest, and postboard Koth is supposed to be an out to both Extirpate and Blood Moon? Or did you just want to make a snarky comment and be done with it? Half the reason I made this thread is because I recognize that Surgical ruins my day, and I want to find a good alternate win condition that doesn't also just lose to it.

[Anen]

Read the 43 Lands Thread, I just got some results with a Scapeshift build.
You don"t need Omen to win, you just need to resolve Scapeshift.

[sumbahdy]

How do you search for Valakut other than by Intuition? Am guessing the line of play would be intuition for Loam + Valakut and Fetch but other than that, what else? If you could fit Show and Tell + Primeval Titan I think this could work. I too want to play something like this or you could try Ali Aintranzi's Turbo land deck. Will try to look for the link and also you might want to look for Turbo Eldrazi for reference?

[Jeff]

Aintrazi's turboland deck is really different. I dig it, but I don't think it's quite what I want to be doing.

You search for Valakut with Intuition, Scapeshift, or just digging. Loam digs through a deck really quick. Also, unlike Standard Valakut, you really only need 1 or 2, especially if you have omen out. It gets silly real fast. it doesn't play out like old standard at all. I will say I've considered Primeval Titan a bit, just haven't bitten the bullet yet.

I wonder what a deck with Show and Tell, Primeval Titan, and Emrakul would look like. That's a really intriguing concept.

I'll jump over to 43 lands and see what you're doing. I'm surprised to see you think Scapeshift is so important, I've found it to be far more underwhelming than I expected when I originally built the deck.

J

[sumbahdy]

Aintrazi's turboland deck is really different. I dig it, but I don't think it's quite what I want to be doing.

You search for Valakut with Intuition, Scapeshift, or just digging. Loam digs through a deck really quick. Also, unlike Standard Valakut, you really only need 1 or 2, especially if you have omen out. It gets silly real fast. it doesn't play out like old standard at all. I will say I've considered Primeval Titan a bit, just haven't bitten the bullet yet.

I wonder what a deck with Show and Tell, Primeval Titan, and Emrakul would look like. That's a really intriguing concept.

I'll jump over to 43 lands and see what you're doing. I'm surprised to see you think Scapeshift is so important, I've found it to be far more underwhelming than I expected when I originally built the deck.

J

Would love to hear what would it look like if you do test the deck. I might try to sleeve it up also just in case. Next question would be how fast can the deck go? Ideally you should be playing turn 1 exploration into extra land, then turn 2 land and explore valakut. Turn 3 scapeshift and win? I think this should need 2 mana lands (City of Traitors or Ancient Tomb) to be able to power intuition on turn 2 even without the extra land. I will draft a list so we could compare.