[Deck] T.E.S. - The EPIC Storm

[paeng4983]

Iona didn't name Red or Black? Do you play against awful people a lot?

Pyroclasm just isn't worth it, I never want it. We have Grapeshot.

Spree's uses are just too narrow.

I forgot to mention, another candidate for the open slot: Ill Gotten Gain.

Personally, I won't cut the ADs for I am expecting a ton of countertop decks this coming weekend's event.

[Bryant Cook]

As useless as Decay has been, I've decided it's utility (Counterbalance, Chalice, Gaddock Teeg & Thalia) is too important to cut. But I am moving it's number back down to two, meaning I currently have one open slot and possibly a second to work with if I move down to one sideboard protection slot. I'm just unsure of what to put there.

[redhamjack]

What about goblin war strike? I've used it a couple of times post ETW with extra burning wishes.

[Lemnear]

What's going on here? Goblin War Strike? This is counterintuitive on so many Levels (early EtW =/= follow up Wish, EtW + Cabal Therapy interaction much better, etc.) that I won't count all. Deathmark? GS or Pyroclasm are plain better for that purpose.

Depending on what matchups you want to improve, there are a lot more and better options available

[Lemnear]

Peeps asked and here it is: the list for the Bazaar of Moxen 2013 Trials


4 Gemstone Mine
2 City of Brass
2 Underground Sea
1 Volcanic Island
1 Polluted Delta
1 Scalding Tarn
1 Misty Rainforest
1 Flooded Strand

2 Chrome Mox
4 Lotus Petal
4 Lion’s Eye Diamond
4 Dark Ritual
4 Rite of Flame
4 Burning Wish
4 Infernal Tutor
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
4 Gitaxian Probe
4 Silence
3 Cabal Therapy
1 Empty the Warrens
1 Ad Nauseam

3 Xantid Swarm
3 Abrupt Decay
2 Chain of Vapor
1 Cabal Therapy
1 Telemin Performance
1 Grapeshot
1 Empty the Warrens
1 Tendrils of Agony
1 Past in Flames
1 Diminishing Returns


Happy storming! Try spotting guys in shiny shoes, vests, blazers, suits at the BoM ;D

[Asthereal]

As useless as Decay has been, I've decided it's utility (Counterbalance, Chalice, Gaddock Teeg & Thalia) is too important to cut. But I am moving it's number back down to two, meaning I currently have one open slot and possibly a second to work with if I move down to one sideboard protection slot. I'm just unsure of what to put there.
You could always add the Tropical Island again.

Btw, just one sideboard protection slot seems bad. You always want one as a Wish target, but you also want to board one in vs. Tempo or other counter heavy strategies. Or do you feel you would be fine siding one Swarm in against those?


Or (it) can even be Shattering Spree.
In that case I'd vote for Revoke Existence or Hull Breach, depending on whether you run the sideboard Tropical or not.
It's nice to have a catch-all like that, but on the other hand I haven't actually used that slot in years. It just sits there giving me a false sense of security.

[Lemnear]

Btw, just one sideboard protection slot seems bad. You always want one as a Wish target, but you also want to board one in vs. Tempo or other counter heavy strategies. Or do you feel you would be fine siding one Swarm in against those?


I've done this in the recent past. Don't miss that Xantid reads "G - Flashback Cabal Therapy in your graveyard" in my build



Edit: a pal suggested the return of Karakas...

[Asthereal]

True, but it also has a Lightning Bolt target on its head.
Not many RUG/Patriot players board those out. (To the surprise of the SCG commentators, I might add. :tongue:)

Karakas seems too narrow. I do like the fact that it also taps for mana though.

[Summerrain]

Attended to GP Antwerpen Legacy Events with following list after only playing smaller LGS-Events since GP Strassbourg:

Sorcery (24)

4x Burning Wish
2x Duress
1x Empty the Warrens
4x Gitaxian Probe
4x Infernal Tutor
4x Ponder
4x Rite of Flame
1x Thoughtseize

Artifact (11)

3x Chrome Mox
4x Lion's Eye Diamond
4x Lotus Petal

Land (12)

1x Bloodstained Mire
2x City of Brass
4x Gemstone Mine
1x Polluted Delta
1x Scalding Tarn
2x Underground Sea
1x Volcanic Island

Instant (13)

1x Ad Nauseam
4x Brainstorm
4x Dark Ritual
4x Silence

Sideboard (15)

3x Abrupt Decay
2x Cabal Therapy
1x Chain Lightning
2x Chain of Vapor
1x Diminishing Returns
1x Empty the Warrens
1x Past in Flames
1x Tendrils of Agony
3x Xantid Swarm

Dropped after going 4:3 and fading out due to not playing in such an environment for quite a time. Deck felt very well, losses were due to one misplay, some "I prepared for 90 % of the cases and the other 10 % occured" and only against non-countermagic decks. There was a lot of Painter, Elves and D&T. Blue match-ups were fine. Xantid Swarm was not boarded once, but I still saw many High Tide and some S&T players. Played against Tom T., I think we had a really great match.

I'll now say how I interpreted my results from testing a lot before and a bit after the event. Testing after the event was mostly because of not expecting so many painter decks.

Ill-Gotten Gains improved the Elves and the D&T Match-Up. The Elves-MU was improved significantly (5-10%). In the pre-event tests the D&T-MU could not be proven to be improved significantly, however in post-event testing it could be (~5 %). There's more testing needed there. I expect the influence of IGG on Maverick and other hatebear decks to be similar to the influence on the D&T-MU. No testing here though.
1 Thoughtseize main did not hurt my Ad Nauseams in all the testings and in the events played at GP. Was not comfortable with having 2 Thoughtseizes main though, that configuration led to some losses. Would need more time and testing to see exactly how often you get hands with multiple lifeloss cards and how certain match-ups are affected by that.
Telemin Performance was tested against Omni-Tell, Sneak Show, Spiral Tide and TES. Improvements in all MUs but only one significant improvement in the Spiral Tide MU (~5%).
Tested Karakas again as I really saw tons of D&T decks. Heavily improved that MU postboard (~10%). Bad against Ethersworn Canonist though. Did no testing against maverick but I expect similar results.
In pre-event testing I was not happy with any Cabal Therapies maindeck. The quality of those cards might vary with pilot-skill though.
Silence-Walk plan against Painter proved miserable. These decks really have no problem putting a Thorn of Amethyst on the board on their first turn. Revoker on LED can also hurt a lot.


This led to the following conclusions for me:

IGG is a card that definitely pulls its weight in certain Match-Ups. I did the cut one day before the event and really missed it a lot. I will re-include it.
TP was not good enough for me to deserve a spot in the Sideboard.
2 spots in the sideboard should be Chain of Vapor but in really hatebear-heavy metas one could try to cut either the Chains or Abrupt Decays for Karakas. Not being able to answer Mother of Runes + Thalia led to some suboptimal Turn 2 Goblin-Line-of-plays that are easy prey for Stoneforge Mystic.
Cutting Duress mainboard for Thoughtseize or Cabal Therapy is a viable option (and maybe the only way) to open up slots in the sideboard. The perfect configuration requires a lot of testing though and right now I'm not sure how my "new" 75 cards look like.
For Europe players: Do SOME testing and practicing on the Painter MU. Was really surprised how many Painter-players attended GP Antwerpen.


Ultimately I want to thank Tom T again for the great match we shared. I'm still not 100 % sure how good TP is, but it certainly is funny.

[Lemnear]

SFM gives you a free target for Therapy. EtW isn' dead against the SFM package therefore

[Bryant Cook]

I'm going to try Telemin Performance, one thing that concerns me is that it's a sideboard slot that's somewhat narrow thats also vulnerable to Leyline of Sanctity. It could easily go back to being Tropical Island, I've also considered Surgical Extraction for Reanimator, Dredge and the Storm Mirror (There would be two copies).

[emidln]

I'm going to try Telemin Performance, one thing that concerns me is that it's a sideboard slot that's somewhat narrow thats also vulnerable to Leyline of Sanctity. It could easily go back to being Tropical Island, I've also considered Surgical Extraction for Reanimator, Dredge and the Storm Mirror (There would be two copies).

I remember playing Meddling Mage in my TES sideboard a few years back to beat ANT more reliably. I'd name Tendrils and then win with Grapeshot. Also has uses vs SnT, Dredge (realistically you don't lose games that they don't Dread Return), and when you need to next level control players. Not saying it's the most obvious include, but in a deck with probe and discard, the first copy is super powerful.

IMO play 2 Meddling Mage then deck reg as 5c Aggro Combo Control.

[Jaycounet]

I guess for the bom we can consider more patriot and merfolk on the field with the out come of the new nemesis
I like the idea of extraction makes our discard more efficient

[Lemnear]

If your opponent has more than one copy of a single card in hand, Therapy does the same as Duress/Thoughtseize + Surgical but saves cards & life.

Removing cards against other combo decks puts you into the control-Seat which is a losing Position in most cases. I'd rather be the faster deck in the combo-mirror and therefore running TP.

@Patriot: EtW + Cabal Therapy neuters any attempt to get Jitte/Batterskull going

[Jaycounet]

Means you have cabal in your hand and he has fow daze pierce before you even think of etw + cabal

[Lemnear]

Means you have cabal in your hand and he has fow daze pierce before you even think of etw + cabal

Mean he tapps out for SFM, you Therapy for FoW, have one extra mana to pay for Daze, drop EtW and flashback for skull.

If he untaps with SFM and has a million counters already, every deck might lose against such a draw or at least negated EtW as an option

[oSeabass]

TP seems really nice in the mirror and in the Show and Tell matches. I like having the Tropical Island in board to have extra mana help for Swarm and Decay.

I don't know if I miss IGG yet. I used to run a 2/1 split on Abrupt Decay/Hull Breach. Having a game 1 Wishable removal spell in the board for decks like Painter, Tezzeretor, etc. main deck Chalice decks, seems useful. If more decks start showing up with main deck hate like this, or Painter starts really ramping back up, a main deck tutor answer seems like it could be useful to pull us out of some hate bear lock in game 1.

[Tom T]

Attended to GP Antwerpen Legacy Events with following list after only playing smaller LGS-Events since GP Strassbourg:

Sorcery (24)

4x Burning Wish
2x Duress
1x Empty the Warrens
4x Gitaxian Probe
4x Infernal Tutor
4x Ponder
4x Rite of Flame
1x Thoughtseize

Artifact (11)

3x Chrome Mox
4x Lion's Eye Diamond
4x Lotus Petal

Land (12)

1x Bloodstained Mire
2x City of Brass
4x Gemstone Mine
1x Polluted Delta
1x Scalding Tarn
2x Underground Sea
1x Volcanic Island

Instant (13)

1x Ad Nauseam
4x Brainstorm
4x Dark Ritual
4x Silence

Sideboard (15)

3x Abrupt Decay
2x Cabal Therapy
1x Chain Lightning
2x Chain of Vapor
1x Diminishing Returns
1x Empty the Warrens
1x Past in Flames
1x Tendrils of Agony
3x Xantid Swarm

Dropped after going 4:3 and fading out due to not playing in such an environment for quite a time. Deck felt very well, losses were due to one misplay, some "I prepared for 90 % of the cases and the other 10 % occured" and only against non-countermagic decks. There was a lot of Painter, Elves and D&T. Blue match-ups were fine. Xantid Swarm was not boarded once, but I still saw many High Tide and some S&T players. Played against Tom T., I think we had a really great match.

I'll now say how I interpreted my results from testing a lot before and a bit after the event. Testing after the event was mostly because of not expecting so many painter decks.

Ill-Gotten Gains improved the Elves and the D&T Match-Up. The Elves-MU was improved significantly (5-10%). In the pre-event tests the D&T-MU could not be proven to be improved significantly, however in post-event testing it could be (~5 %). There's more testing needed there. I expect the influence of IGG on Maverick and other hatebear decks to be similar to the influence on the D&T-MU. No testing here though.
1 Thoughtseize main did not hurt my Ad Nauseams in all the testings and in the events played at GP. Was not comfortable with having 2 Thoughtseizes main though, that configuration led to some losses. Would need more time and testing to see exactly how often you get hands with multiple lifeloss cards and how certain match-ups are affected by that.
Telemin Performance was tested against Omni-Tell, Sneak Show, Spiral Tide and TES. Improvements in all MUs but only one significant improvement in the Spiral Tide MU (~5%).
Tested Karakas again as I really saw tons of D&T decks. Heavily improved that MU postboard (~10%). Bad against Ethersworn Canonist though. Did no testing against maverick but I expect similar results.
In pre-event testing I was not happy with any Cabal Therapies maindeck. The quality of those cards might vary with pilot-skill though.
Silence-Walk plan against Painter proved miserable. These decks really have no problem putting a Thorn of Amethyst on the board on their first turn. Revoker on LED can also hurt a lot.


This led to the following conclusions for me:

IGG is a card that definitely pulls its weight in certain Match-Ups. I did the cut one day before the event and really missed it a lot. I will re-include it.
TP was not good enough for me to deserve a spot in the Sideboard.
2 spots in the sideboard should be Chain of Vapor but in really hatebear-heavy metas one could try to cut either the Chains or Abrupt Decays for Karakas. Not being able to answer Mother of Runes + Thalia led to some suboptimal Turn 2 Goblin-Line-of-plays that are easy prey for Stoneforge Mystic.
Cutting Duress mainboard for Thoughtseize or Cabal Therapy is a viable option (and maybe the only way) to open up slots in the sideboard. The perfect configuration requires a lot of testing though and right now I'm not sure how my "new" 75 cards look like.
For Europe players: Do SOME testing and practicing on the Painter MU. Was really surprised how many Painter-players attended GP Antwerpen.


Ultimately I want to thank Tom T again for the great match we shared. I'm still not 100 % sure how good TP is, but it certainly is funny.

You're welcome! That match was one of the most awesome matches I played the entire weekend.


I did miss IGG in one hand: Fetch + 2 RoF + 2 Burning Wish + LED + X.
Telemin Performance wasn't awesome enough to run it again, Reanimator is playing Young Pyromancer sometimes anyways. However I will test it against the Show and Tell decks.
I'm testing Karakas now in addition to the Pyroclasm against Thalia/Teeg decks. Karakas is also pretty awesome in the Reanimator and Sneak&Show matchup.
Thoughtseize was awesome against all kinds of decks, but I think I'll try Therapies instead (like Lemnear) to have a better matchup against tempo.
There was indeed a respectable amount of Imperial Painter. The Painter decks would get beat up by Serenity I guess, which I am testing at the moment :)

[Lemnear]

Left my suit at home ... just shiny shoes, vest and blazer. Will give updates over the weekend. Feel like I catched a cold :/

[P-E]

http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20131009170413/villains/images/9/91/GeeseHoward.jpg

so your team doesn't look like that ? :laugh:

good luck for BoM

[JPoJohnson]

Lemnear would definitely be the one in the do-rag.

[Kayradis]

Hahahahahahahhaaha

[Lemnear]

Got our hotel hear La Defense (Adagio Hotels). Out for Sightseeing and food ^^

[Kael]

You're welcome! That match was one of the most awesome matches I played the entire weekend.


I did miss IGG in one hand: Fetch + 2 RoF + 2 Burning Wish + LED + X.
Telemin Performance wasn't awesome enough to run it again, Reanimator is playing Young Pyromancer sometimes anyways. However I will test it against the Show and Tell decks.
I'm testing Karakas now in addition to the Pyroclasm against Thalia/Teeg decks. Karakas is also pretty awesome in the Reanimator and Sneak&Show matchup.
Thoughtseize was awesome against all kinds of decks, but I think I'll try Therapies instead (like Lemnear) to have a better matchup against tempo.
There was indeed a respectable amount of Imperial Painter. The Painter decks would get beat up by Serenity I guess, which I am testing at the moment :)


I know there'll be both Big Red and Painter at a local even this week...might try Serenity out in the Abrupt Decay slot, just to see what it does. Has your testing gotten you any results yet?

Good luck at BoM Lemnear! Same goes for anyone else playing there.

[Lemnear]

If anyone is attending tomorrows 9am Trials, spot a guy with shiny shoes, vest and black/white scarf (shemagh-Style), come over and say "hi" :D

[Jaycounet]

One hour im looking for u ^^

[Lemnear]

Sitting on table 87 with the guys

[Lemnear]

Completely blew out Jund and Miracles in the first rounds of the Legacy trial. 4-0 in games with 2 hilarious Show-offs. More of that tonight ^^

Meet some fellow Sourcers but got once detected because of my dices -.-'

[Tom T]

Completely blew out Jund and Miracles in the first rounds of the Legacy trial. 4-0 in games with 2 hilarious Show-offs. More of that tonight ^^

Meet some fellow Sourcers but got once detected because of my dices -.-'

Awesome!

Just ask your opponent if they have a die when you want to roll for the play. Get your dice as soon as you combo out, but not any earlier. That way people won't put you on storm that easily :)

Good luck!

[Kayradis]

I think I'll bring tons of dice in DC just to have people thinking im on storm!

[Lemnear]

Awesome!

Just ask your opponent if they have a die when you want to roll for the play. Get your dice as soon as you combo out, but not any earlier. That way people won't put you on storm that easily :)

Good luck!

He just remembered the pic of my dices i posted here. Wasn't a problem. Awesome guy

Lost 1-2 against imperial Painter due to losing the dice and him having ridiculous draws/hands. can't beat turn 1 painters + double REB's +SSG followed by killing my lands and Magus beatdown game 1 and neither the Painter + double REB mimic play in game 3, this time followed by double Thorn and magus :/

Died with 2 LED + RoF + BW in hand game 1 ... No red mana

[vercadium]

Had a great weekend in Belgium at MTG Grand Prix Antwerp and got to play a load with TES which was great (there's not a lot of Legacy in Northern Ireland).

I went undefeated at the Legacy Warm-up event on Friday, taking 1st place out of 25.

I came 17th out of 136 at the Legacy Championship on Sunday, unfortunately loosing my last round which would have got me into the top 8 play offs; finishing at 5-2-1.

I had the enjoyment of playing against some extremely competent players (My opponent match win percentage was 73.19%) who afforded me no easy wins, including a few nailbiting games against German Canadian Threshold master and MTG Madness team member, Carsten Linden, who I defeated in round 4.

I'm avoiding writing a full tournament report as my last one was gargantuan (http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?25561-Through-the-Eye-of-a-Storm-A-Legacy-Tournament-Report-by-Adam-Stewart), but I'm going to go over some of my thoughts:

(My list didn't include any of the recent developments as I didn't want to make any changes to the list without having time to get used to them - thus I was running the following list:)

=========================
The Epic Storm
=========================

//Target (2)
1 Ad Nauseam
1 Empty the Warrens

//Tutor (8)
4 Infernal Tutor
4 Burning Wish

//Disruption (7)
4 Silence
2 Duress
1 Cabal Therapy

//Draw (12)
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
4 Gitaxian Probe

//Artifact Mana (11)
4 Lion’s Eye Diamond
4 Lotus Petal
3 Chrome Mox

//Ritual Mana (8)
4 Dark Ritual
4 Rite of Flame

//Land (12)
2 Underground Sea
1 Volcanic Island
2 Flooded Strand
1 Polluted Delta
4 Gemstone Mine
2 City of Brass

//Sideboard (15)
2 Cabal Therapy
2 Chain of Vapor
2 Abrupt Decay
3 Xantid Swarm
1 Tropical Island
1 Grapeshot
1 Empty the Warrens
1 Tendrils of Agony
1 Past in Flames
1 Diminishing Returns

I lost my win-and-in to top 8 against Imperial Painter. I opted to bring in Abrupt Decay and friends post-board; in heinseight I think mulliganing to faster hands and time-walking them with Silence is the preferred plan here though I agree with Bryant that both plans are fine. I guess it depends on the exact list and I do have a skewed perspective given that I lost game 2 to turn 1 Grindstone - turn 2 Painter's Servant + activate. I need to practice this match-up more to see how often starts like this occur.

The other loss & draw weren't notable - one hinged on a timely Echoing Truth being drawn, but perhaps I could have taken different lines which might have been a positive outcome. Overall my play was very tight and defensible given the information I had.

Here's my opinion on the changes to the sideboard that are being discussed as well as my thoughts on the performance of some other cards:

Cabal Therapy was excellent all weekend, but I still think roughly 2 "revealing" discard spells is probably still required in the 75. Thoughtseize seems an upgrade over duress in this case and I agree that paying the situationaly important cost of 2 life is probably worth the added versatility and potentially freeing up sideboard slots (now that we can hit creatures easier maindeck, one could argue that only 1 discard spell in the sideboard is required, but with this you loose the ability to Burning Wish for one post-board). The split of this is debatable as there are merits to going 2 Cabal Therapy and 1 Thoughtseize in the maindeck and vice-versa. The division of Thoughtseize and Cabal Therapy across the maindeck and sideboard is also something that only extensive testing will be able to settle.

I also agree that while 3 Abrupt Decay is fine, we don't get a lot of value out of the 3rd copy, so 2 feels like the right number.

I boarded in the Xantid Swarms once all weekend (in one round against High Tide). While this isn't a huge sample size (I would have loved to have them all day if playing against Show and Tell) I still think 3 is probably too much. I'm not certain on this one though and 3 is still pretty defensible given the lack of other options we have.

The Tropical Island was low impact - I never wanted the 13th land when I brought it in - just the colour fixing. Sadly, I don't think we can have it both ways while still maintaining our shuffle effects. I could see myself wanting the extra land against tempo based Wasteland decks with a fast clock, but I wouldn't board in a Tropical Island in most of these cases anyway. If running 3 Xantid Swarm (or lots of other green cards), the Tropical Island could still be argued.

I have not tested Carpet of Flowers yet. This is about the only other "answer" that is worth considering inclusion (assuming empty spots).

I have not tested Telemin Performance yet, but while it seems powerful (having a 1 card "kill" would be great) it is pretty narrow and, as Bryant pointed out, not being able to get them through Leyline of Sanctity is a strike against it. I will still try it.

3 Chrome Mox was amazing, I never did consider dropping to 2, but that's even more evident to me now.

Here's the changes I'll be testing for a the next week or two:

=========================
The Epic Storm
=========================

//Target (2)
1 Ad Nauseam
1 Empty the Warrens

//Tutor (8)
4 Infernal Tutor
4 Burning Wish

//Disruption (7)
4 Silence
2 Cabal Therapy
1 Thoughtseize

//Draw (12)
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
4 Gitaxian Probe

//Artifact Mana (11)
4 Lion’s Eye Diamond
4 Lotus Petal
3 Chrome Mox

//Ritual Mana (8)
4 Dark Ritual
4 Rite of Flame

//Land (12)
2 Underground Sea
1 Volcanic Island
2 Flooded Strand
1 Polluted Delta
4 Gemstone Mine
2 City of Brass

//Sideboard (15)
2 Chain of Vapor
2 Abrupt Decay
2 Xantid Swarm
1 Thoughtseize
1 Cabal Therapy
1 Grapeshot
1 Empty the Warrens
1 Telemin Performance
1 Tendrils of Agony
1 Past in Flames
1 Diminishing Returns
1 ________________ - Not sure what to test here, probably a Carpet of Flowers to see what impact it has.

Anyway, I'm eager to hear everyone's thoughts, it was a gruelling weekend but a thoroughly enjoyable one!

As ever, thanks for taking the time to read this.

[JPoJohnson]

it also increases the power of Burning Wish
But you don't wish for instants? What am I missing?

Congrats on the event otherwise! Looks like you had some fun (:

Edit: Just went and read your last tournament report. That was a very fun read! Thanks for pointing it out (:

[mario91234]

Playing eternal weekend tomorrow, is there any merits to running 2 seize 1 therapy main, 2 therapy board? I dont consider myself to be an expert on playing the deck and i feel i may miss on therapies vs tempo and show decks. Also curious for the ad naus in the board.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk (http://tapatalk.com/m?id=1)

[vercadium]

But you don't wish for instants? What am I missing?

Congrats on the event otherwise! Looks like you had some fun (:

Thanks! And you're not missing anything... I'm just being an idiot... Guess I'm more tired than I thought! Will edit the post now, cheers.

[vercadium]

Playing eternal weekend tomorrow, is there any merits to running 2 seize 1 therapy main, 2 therapy board? I dont consider myself to be an expert on playing the deck and i feel i may miss on therapies vs tempo and show decks. Also curious for the ad naus in the board.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk (http://tapatalk.com/m?id=1)

That split is fine, more so if you're not comfortable with Cabal Therapy. Forget about the Ad Nauseam in the sideboard that I spoke about, I had a moment of idiocy. My post has been edited to correct this.

[JPoJohnson]

Thanks! And you're not missing anything... I'm just being an idiot... Guess I'm more tired than I thought! Will edit the post now, cheers.

I had the same discussion with my brother at one point in time when he asked why I only had one and I thought, "Wait, why don't I have a second in the board?" Haha. Been there done that.

[oSeabass]

At this point I'm kinda locked in to running TES at the GP DC next week. I don't feel as comfortable with any other deck to just audible out at this point. I've been playing and practicing TES since about August, and it is still teaching me new tricks. At this point it is probably too late to learn a ton more about the deck and stuff (other then the rereading of BC's sideboarding tips in the main post).

Other then the deck being tough to play for new pilots, do any of you have any advice for someone who is going to play the deck over a large two day tournament? If I end up playing well and Day 2ing, I will be playing many matches with a very complex deck with many working parts. Does anyone have any tips for keeping your brain fresh during a long tournament when you are running a complex deck like this one. The thing that will help is if I play against people who are not prepared and I can just coast into a win, then I have the rest of the round to relax and chill out.

[Luklinda]

Bring something to nibble on.

Make notes of when you have a difficult choice (what to blind therapy - what to wish for, etc.).

Always write down what you reveal via discard/probe (and cross off as they play).

DON'T PANIC! (in big, bold, friendly letters).

[oSeabass]

Bring something to nibble on.

Make notes of when you have a difficult choice (what to blind therapy - what to wish for, etc.).

Always write down what you reveal via discard/probe (and cross off as they play).

DON'T PANIC! (in big, bold, friendly letters).

I always write down everything that gets revealed off everything and cross it off. I use a fresh piece of paper for each game in a super big life pad, which helps keep information clean as well as my opponents not seeing a Storm and Mana count from previous matches.

http://www.nespahtens.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/dont-panic-thumb.jpg

[Lemnear]

Dropped out round 6 of 7 ... Losing all but 1 dice sux. Playing against Miracles and hilarious topdecks all day does too. Totally punted round 6 Game 1 as I missed to flashback Therapy over a Goblin token to strip a batterskull ... didn't matter at the end anymore.

Quad Therapy was nuts. Didn't face a combo deck aside Imperial Painter all day, so no TP. 3 Decay were necessary.

[Jaycounet]

Rage quit after 1-3
Meet
Painter loose
Merfolk loose discover that they play chalice ...
Conterbalance deck win
Hard control loose
Quit

[Lemnear]

Rage quit after 1-3
Meet
Painter loose
Merfolk loose discover that they play chalice ...
Conterbalance deck win
Hard control loose
Quit

That explains why I was unable to find you :(

Carsten made 6-1 and gained a Bye with ANT and my teammate made 5-2 with my TES' twin

[paeng4983]

Where were you guys? Arrived like 3pm in the venue and registered for the last trial for 2bye. I saw some tes players playing. I'll be wearing again my letran jacket and will take pictures again. Just tap me in the shoulder tomorrow. Good luck to all tes players

[Lemnear]

Where were you guys? Arrived like 3pm in the venue and registered for the last trial for 2bye. I saw some tes players playing. I'll be wearing again my letran jacket and will take pictures again. Just tap me in the shoulder tomorrow. Good luck to all tes players

Will do. Enjoy your stay. :)

We were leaving right after round 6 (because I had no more chance to gain Bye's) to get food for our party at our appartment

[Lemnear]

Funny that all peeps ran in their SB is combo-&grave-hate in a 2/1 relation. There were too many Patriots, D&T, Maverick, Thalia and Cannonists in the trial that Massacre Looks pretty appealing as I was not able to get paired against any of the other combo decks in the room. Maybe a last Minute switch :/

[Deviruchi]

Last minute changes are the things I regret the most after tournaments ^^ But if you have to you have to. Good luck to you and to all other Storm Troopers!

[Lemnear]

Where were you guys? Arrived like 3pm in the venue and registered for the last trial for 2bye. I saw some tes players playing. I'll be wearing again my letran jacket and will take pictures again. Just tap me in the shoulder tomorrow. Good luck to all tes players

Where are thou? Or PM me name

690 players for the Mainevent ... Starting on table 266

[Megadeus]

Good luck storm troopers. Massacre seems eh. Still doesn't get teeg, but at least it kills off the other bears of hate that are white

[P-E]

so far so good Lemnear ?

[paeng4983]

6-3
my MUs were
Ur 2-1 win
Tinfins 0-2 loss
DT 2-0 win
Bug control 2-1 win
Rug 1-2 loss
Bant 2-0 win
maverick 2-0 win
pox 2-1
Rug 1-2

*all info just derived from memory. Let me know if i miss somethings. Thank you.
*typing from my phone too..
* tourney report to follow.

@ lemear private message your whole name so that i know where to look for u. Thanks.

To other tes players, how did u do?

[Lemnear]

so far so good Lemnear ?

Nope. X-2-1 isn't enough to make day 2 anyway so I dropped and left the venue before round 9, picked up some doods who were also eliminated and go out for Sightseeing (horrible weather) and food.

The deck worked well as expected, but losing all but 2-3 dice rolls over the whole weekend sux donkey balls as the insane hate I faced. I tip my hat for the peeps who ran Cannonists in their Esper Desthblades (FoW + Thoughtseize + Clique + Snapcaster + Cannonist) or slapped me with Turn 1 Thorns the whole weekend (Painter). Worst Moment of the weekend was my opponent having 2 Sphere of Resistance + 2 Counterbalance + SDT in play before killing me with Painter + Grindstone after I killed 3 Painter before.

Didn't face a single combo deck (aside 2 Painter) the whole weekend

I'll write down more later or tomorrow.

Greetings to all people who reconized me, my deck, my dices or my Lost Eye Diamonds :D


@paeng: didn't you notice a guys with blazer, leather stachel and beanie? I'll wait for you tomorrow right before the hall at 9:30am. I PM'd you my name already yesterday ^^

[davelin]

6-3
my MUs were
Ur 2-1 win
Tinfins 0-2 loss
DT 2-0 win
Bug control 2-1 win
Rug 1-2 loss
Bant 2-0 win
maverick 2-0 win
pox 2-1
Rug 1-2

*all info just derived from memory. Let me know if i miss somethings. Thank you.
*typing from my phone too..
* tourney report to follow.

@ lemear private message your whole name so that i know where to look for u. Thanks.

To other tes players, how did u do?

Not too bad!

[Tammit67]

Finished 7-2 aka 16th at Legacy Champs in Philly today. Played the 75 in the OP, thoughtseize was fine for me all day. Report might come or I'll just post the matchups and small details since i didn't take awesome notes. I punted in round 8 to kill my hopes at top 8.

If GP DC is anything like Eternal weekend was today, there will be a decent amount of merfolk, elves, omni, storm, miracles, and rug. Few to no nonblue fair decks near the top (Ari Lax on Death and Taxes a notable exception)

[davelin]

Finished 7-2 aka 16th at Legacy Champs in Philly today. Played the 75 in the OP, thoughtseize was fine for me all day. Report might come or I'll just post the matchups and small details since i didn't take awesome notes. I punted in round 8 to kill my hopes at top 8.

If GP DC is anything like Eternal weekend was today, there will be a decent amount of merfolk, elves, omni, storm, miracles, and rug. Few to no nonblue fair decks near the top (Ari Lax on Death and Taxes a notable exception)

Well done! Would love to see a report!

[paeng4983]

This is my last day or chance of meeting fellow tes players from europe. Me and lemear will be in front of the vendo machine near the entrance hall at 930. I hope to see u guys. Good luck to those who made it to day two.

[Pelikanudo]

I'm sorry, I wanted to go to the BOM but I couldn't so, good luck to every Storm Trooper!
I'm from the bottom - Spain.

Please let us know your feelings after the torunament!

Lets rock with Storm!

[davelin]

ANT represented over the weekend at both BoM and Legacy Champs, no TES to be found. Just a numbers game (i.e. more folks playing ANT) or is TES not as well-position in the current meta?

[Ivan Ferreiro]

There are 3 ANT decks on the Top8 of BOM (http://www.lotusnoir.info/decklists-top-8-main-event-legacy/). What it comes to my mind is that there is a need of mana stability on combo decks (as Show n tell and Elves have but not TES).

I leave you the deck I played the other day (http://evolutiongoya.com/mazo.php?torneo=55&mazo=450). You will laugh for sure

[Lemnear]

ANT represented over the weekend at both BoM and Legacy Champs, no TES to be found. Just a numbers game (i.e. more folks playing ANT) or is TES not as well-position in the current meta?

There were 5 TES among 690 players afaik and all (including me) eliminated day 1. I can only talk for myself here, but the meta was pretty rough for a fragile construct like TES with various hate within single decks, masses of Miracles/Esperblade (with Cannonist)/MUD/Painter and ontop of that I lost all but 3 dicerolls (16 rounds total with trial and Mainevent but I dropped the last one in both events due to being practically eliminated).

Regarding your question: It was both. A lot more players (and good ones too) picked ANT for the event, which is more successful in outplaying manadenial/-block which was omnipresent.

Losing dicerolls against decks like Painter/MUD/Miracles/etc. is a near 1-2 loss and the sources/results of my defeats. It doesn't matter if you beat the rest then. :/

Didn't face a single deck which Telemin would have been an option. Guess being unlucky again.

[Bryant Cook]

There were 5 TES among 690 players afaik and all (including me) eliminated day 1. I can only talk for myself here, but the meta was pretty rough for a fragile construct like TES with various hate within single decks, masses of Miracles/Esperblade (with Cannonist)/MUD/Painter and ontop of that I lost all but 3 dicerolls (16 rounds total with trial and Mainevent but I dropped the last one in both events due to being practically eliminated).

Regarding your question: It was both. A lot more players (and good ones too) picked ANT for the event, which is more successful in outplaying manadenial/-block which was omnipresent.

Losing dicerolls against decks like Painter/MUD/Miracles/etc. is a near 1-2 loss and the sources/results of my defeats. It doesn't matter if you beat the rest then. :/

Didn't face a single deck which Telemin would have been an option. Guess being unlucky again.

I played in a 12 man GPT today with Telemin, four of the twelve decks Telemin would've been good against and I still didn't cast it once (I had an opportunity in the mirror game two but would've lost if he sided in Xantid). It's likely that Tropical is going back in my sideboard for stability against decks like Death and Taxes. My only loss was to RUG.


On a side note, a friend of mine is testing Mox Diamond over the third Chrome. I don't like it all all, but he claims it's been better than Chrome for him.

[paeng4983]

I've done that before. Playing a mox instead of running 4 chrome then. It only shines after u have cards off an ad naus.
Having mana stability in a meta like this where every deck runs a set of waste not to mention stifles is a good advantage. But i'll still go with tes because i love doing turn one or two kill or puking out 14 plus tokens.
i lost my last round because he had a wall of counterspells negating evevery spell i make.
Good job to ant players. They sure are DTB.

[Jaycounet]

On my side i've drop after 6 round

Meet Goblin, Dredge, sneak show, TT, reanimator, random deck

it happened quite a lot during the WE that i've in starting hand probe lotus dark ritual golden land tutor led rite of flame (would you keep this kind of hand against rea / sneak ? it's quite a perfect hand but each time they got FOW in hand (see with probe) and finally with lineley for sneak and discard on rea side i could do anything. and with this kind f deck the clock is tight.

[Lemnear]

The "Problem" is that Silence is horrible to stop other combo decks (maybe aside storm) and to disrupt decks with various hate (counter+discard/counter+hatebear/all 3). It's only good against pure sorcery speed hate or passive decks with counters.

Noticed that across the weekend. Have to reflect the weekend. Am a bit frustrated because there was no Chance to avoid the 4x 1-2 losses and the draw (all after loosing the dice) after reviewing my notes. Take this post only with a grain of salt

-.-'

[Jaycounet]

The "Problem" is that Silence is horrible to stop other combo decks (maybe aside storm) and to disrupt decks with various hate (counter+discard/counter+hatebear/all 3). It's only good against pure sorcery speed hate or passive decks with counters.

Noticed that across the weekend. Have to reflect the weekend. Am a bit frustrated because there was no Chance to avoid the 4x 1-2 losses and the draw (all after loosing the dice) after reviewing my notes. Take this post only with a grain of salt

-.-'

So finaly don't have to regret anything i did what i have to do with almost no chance of success

[Asthereal]

The "Problem" is that Silence is horrible to stop other combo decks (maybe aside storm) and to disrupt decks with various hate (counter+discard/counter+hatebear/all 3). It's only good against pure sorcery speed hate or passive decks with counters.
Perhaps it's time for an ANT-like discard only protection suite main deck?
4x Duress, 3x Cabal Therapy or the other way around.
We then only have green mana for Swarms and Decays to worry about. This could affect the mana base as well.

[Megadeus]

Yeah I think the issue would be that you can't really run a discard suite like ANT on this mana base that relies on 0 basics, 4 lands that deplete themselves, and a couple of lands that deal us damage.

At the point that you are changing up the whole protection suite and mana base, why not just play ANT?

[Asthereal]

Yeah I think the issue would be that you can't really run a discard suite like ANT on this mana base that relies on 0 basics, 4 lands that deplete themselves, and a couple of lands that deal us damage.
Why not? Silence is harder to cast in TES than Cabal Therapy or Duress. In my opinion it's only getting easier to cast them.

At the point that you are changing up the whole protection suite and mana base, why not just play ANT?
TES is faster. But you know the difference between TES and ANT. Your choice depends on your evaluation of the meta and your playing style.
And I'm not saying we should completely change the mana base if we decide to run discard only. I would suggest we try -1 City of Brass, +1 fetch and a guaranteed sideboard slot for the Tropical.

[Lemnear]

Stop right here! Silence traded for value for my teammate and was golden in most matches. It however loses value being on the draw, when Delver is already attacking or you face various hate.

The list was good. Maybe it was bad luck, bad matchups or a difficult metagame.

[Damoxx]

Just a quick summary of my last month's tournaments.

Oct 6. SCG:IQ (16 players)
2-1-1 in swiss, beating ANT and something Delver (I think, but I know EtW got me the wins) and losing to my own misplays against Mono-Blue Tezzeret.
In T8, beat Jund.
In T4, lose to Shardless BUG due to my own misplays.

Nov. 2 GPT:DC (16 players)
2-1-1 in swiss, Beating UWR Delver and High Tide (on the back of double silence), losing to Death & Taxes (I did get to flashback Diminishing Returns, yes, I was desperate).
T8- Beat Mono-Black Hexmage-Depths (G1- Brainstorm in response to Thoughtseize, hiding Ad Nauseum and G.Probe leaving my hand landx2, LEDx2 and I.Tutor, G2- He has T1 CotV with discard and Hex/Depths combo, G3- Pretty Much the nuts and Tendrils on T2)
T4- Lost to RUG. G1, he had T1 Delver followed by Daze, Spell Pierce and 3x FoW.

TL;DR The deck is solid and was well positioned for the tournaments that I have entered. I only missed IGG from the board once and Thoughtseize has been exceptional

[Megadeus]

Why not? Silence is harder to cast in TES than Cabal Therapy or Duress. In my opinion it's only getting easier to cast them.

TES is faster. But you know the difference between TES and ANT. Your choice depends on your evaluation of the meta and your playing style.
And I'm not saying we should completely change the mana base if we decide to run discard only. I would suggest we try -1 City of Brass, +1 fetch and a guaranteed sideboard slot for the Tropical.

I guess what I am saying is that the mana base is more fragile so being able to cast discard for a turn or two may be a bit more difficult just because your mana is dealing you damage or your land getting wasted. Also losing rainbow lands weakens our side board choices of decay and swarm right?

[Asthereal]

I guess what I am saying is that the mana base is more fragile so being able to cast discard for a turn or two may be a bit more difficult just because your mana is dealing you damage or your land getting wasted. Also losing rainbow lands weakens our side board choices of decay and swarm right?
Lands getting wasted was always a problem for TES. That's not new, and doesn't change whether you play 7x discard or Silences and discard.

Stock list Bryant has developed has this to cast Silences, Swarms and Decays: 4x Gemstone Mine, 2x City of Brass, 4x Lotus Petal
Bryant later proposed we play a Tropical on side, giving us 3x fetch and a Trop extra, but they don't help to cast Silence.

If we lose the Silences, we could play: 4x Gemstone Mine, 1x City of Brass, 4x fetch, 1x Tropical, 4x Lotus Petal. That's more green mana than the stock list, and the same as Bryants list with Tropical on side. So we have a fetch more (which improves our cantrips) and we have more green mana available to us than the stock list. I fail to see how this weakens Swarm and Decay on side. :wink:

On a different note, Lemnear might be right to want to hold on to Silence for a while longer. I am a big fan of fooling around with the list, and I must add that Cabal Therapy improves with every spell that allows us to see the opposing hand, so I would be very interested if anyone would be bold enough to try this change in a tourney. :smile:

[Lemnear]

I recommend maxing the Therapies across the 75 before toying with Silences or such. Flashbacking Therapies off EtW and trading 1-for-2 was nuts all the weekend.

We may need to tinker about the Painter- & Esperblade-matchups. Those are horrible once you lose the dice

[Zombie]

The "Problem" is that Silence is horrible to stop other combo decks (maybe aside storm) and to disrupt decks with various hate (counter+discard/counter+hatebear/all 3). It's only good against pure sorcery speed hate or passive decks with counters.

Haven't you usually championed TES exactly on the back of Silence being godlike vs. combo compared to Duress effects?

[oSeabass]

We may need to tinker about the Painter- & Esperblade-matchups. Those are horrible once you lose the dice

I am thinking about cards like Hurkyl's Recall against Painter. It is dead against Chalice on two, but I feel like most time they drop the Chalice on one to stop us. Do this in their end step to bounce stuff and clear the way for a combo the next turn, or even do this with Silence in hand to upkeep Silence-walk them and get 2 turns out of it to replay stuff, and then combo out... worse case, you can bounce their stuff and then Therapy it our of their hand on your turn. Slows the deck down a lot, but removes some problem stuff from play.

The other card I have been thinking about against Painter is Pulvarize. 4RR, You may sacrifice two Mountains instead of paying the mana cost... destroy all artifacts. Under a Blood Moon all your lands are Mountains, so tap them for mana, sac two of them for a free Pulverize (free Storm +1). The odds of them having Chalice on 6 is low. This also allows you to have a game 1 answer to Painter since you can just cast a Burning Wish with your two mountains and then blow up all Artifacts. Seems really narrow, and Hurkyl's Recall seems a lot better in our deck anyway... just brainstorming ideas.

[Lemnear]

Haven't you usually championed TES exactly on the back of Silence being godlike vs. combo compared to Duress effects?

Yes, I did. The issue is that Silence isn't backbreaking for non-storm combo but often eats away important Gemstone-counters just for timewalking where discard would solve the Problem and is the reason we don't run Chant alongside Silence but discard. We want the benefits of both angles: Silence for protection and Therapy for disruption.

Therefore I don't want to start a discussion about the protection; I just asked for input about the Thoughtseize+FoW+Cannonist-Menace i whitnessed at BoM and the T1 Thorns/Bloodmoons from Painter

[Jaycounet]

Thoughtseize + fow combo was just awfull during the bom because even if you have hand you cant cast it and you will loose your perfect hand right after. Means you need brainstorm to ide stuff + sure to draw silence or discard to combo right after. In one word you need to get perfect draw perfect time perfect everything
Hate was easier too manage blood moon do to rite of flamme / burning wish + petal led
If you add thorn .... need to get petal chain + land ... in your not out of tempo allready. We could think of wear and tear in the right color but i guess if blood moon + thorn on the board we will need 4/5 mana available

[Tammit67]

Legacy Champs 16th place report

Round 1: Sam with UWB Landstill
Sam is a Philly local player whom I’ve had the chance to face several times over the past couple months. Apparently he doesn’t remember my name…
Game 1: I win the die role and see scrubland, sea, brainstorm, wasteland, flooded strand, jace out of my opponents hand thanks to probe. I put him on stone blade from those cards and proceed sculpting my hand. He brainstorms into a solid 2 more force of wills while casually drawing a third while chunking me with Mishra’s factory after EoT cycling decree of justice (definitely not stoneblade at this point) and pitches a force and cunning wish to counter my cabal therapy. At some point he cunning wishes for extirpate to hit my infernal tutors. I’m too low for ad nauseum, so Diminishing returns it is! A probe post Dim Ret reveals I don’t have to fight through a 4th force of will this game, and I BW for tendrils.

Game 2: Another mull to 6 from Sam reveals not much of anything and I slowly tutor for redundant rituals and kill with past in flames. He has EE on 0 to stop goblins plan, but since he cast EE before I had the tokens to avoid the discard, my decision to bring in swarm pays off here.
1-0

Round 2: Ian with Esper Stoneblade
Ian is an amiable fellow whom I’ve seen around larger events, perhaps at a vendor’s table?
Game 1: Ian wins the die roll with stalled lands. My discard shows double force, double snap and later counterspell and stoneforge that he is fearful to cast since he’ll have to tap out. Instead, snapcaster at EoT starts chipping at me. I drop to 1 life as I cast probe and silence. I get snapcaster -> spell pierced but my dark ritual response lets me continue a chain and I naturally tendrils him thanks to the storm.

Game 2: Another slow start from Ian lets me set up Ad nauseum through double force of will. Thought seize and probe out of my hurt a little but I have too much mana for it to matter. Thanks Lion’s eye diamond!
2-0

Round 3: Rob on UBrwg Doomsday
Hey, its MisterCakes!
Game 1: I probe reveals silence, brainstorm, strand, karakas, petal, volc, and doomsday so I know what I am up against. The plan is to hold up silence while stripping his them comboing under its protection. I hit thoughtseize instead and can safely end it there.

Game 2: Thoughtseize takes doomsday but a top makes me wary of a silence floating on the top of his deck ready to stop me when I go for it. He runs out of cards and taps his one white source with a fetchland in play and it is time. I cast a seize number 2 and he reponds with the fetch. I respond with a silence and miscount storm and make goblins (tendrils would have been lethal) He dies on his next turn anyway, unable to find an answer.
3-0

Round 4: Will with OmniShow
Game 1: He preordains and hides a show and tell on top from my probe. I am forced to silence the following turn. He goes for cunning wish into release the ants after dropping in the omniscience, but after 10 or so flips, his force on top is met with my ad nauseum. He has a force of will though and I lose.

Game 2: Will starts with a leyline of sanctity (But naturally I have the chain of vapor). My discard hits him hard taking show and tell and later another enabler. I believe I get there with past in flames

Game 3: His hand enables a quick turn 3 show and tell into omniscience, but fails to have the kill. His show and tell however gives me xantid swarm for free! One trigger later I safely ad nauseum.
4-0

Round 5: Scott with Merfolk
Game 1: Scott wins the roll, mulls to 6 and opens with vial. I cast thoughtseize and see waste, force, silvergill adept, master of the pearl trident. I take Force, get wastelanded and then aggro’d out of the game when mutavault and another lord joins up. I cast 3 brainstorms asap here digging for a bomb, and that was possibly a mistake; waiting on the cantrips might have been better.

Game 2: Probe reveals Scott snap-kept 2 LoA, 2 island, mutavault, daze, relic of progen. I don’t see why it’s amazing, but he does get to play magic so I can’t be too hard on him. Predictably, relic does dick and I respond to a daze on my rite of flame with a ritual to win it through tutor chain. Thanks for the storm!

Game 3: I keep a hand I probably shouldn’t have in this matchup: I can strip him of counters very easily, but doing so leaves me with nothing to do! I die to some number of lords while wasteland and brainstorm lock seals it.
4-1

Round 6: Shawn with Reanimator.
Game 1: My opponent wins the die roll and leads with underground sea. I play gemstone and pass with silence available. Shawn draws, plays a delta and a lotus petal, and then he casts main phase entomb. I respond with silence and he has a moment of confusion about whether or not silence prevents entomb from resolving… (Clearly here to play vintage tomorrow!). He fetches a griselbrand after a judge clarifies he gets to tutor. I cast silence twice more in his upkeep on subsequent turns and go with ad nauseum.

Had Shawn cracked delta, cast petal, cast exhume (his reanimation spell) then maintained priority and casted the entomb, I wouldn’t have had a chance to silence. Something to think about.

Game 2: He can’t find a proper reanimation spell while Xantid swarm turns off his only meaningful interaction. A swift ad nauseum lets me get food from Reading Terminal Market.
5-1

Round 7: Steve with RUG Delver
Steve is a friend I’ve come to know through Chas Hinkle. He’s a good player who has celebrated moderate success with BURG delver recently and an opponent whom I’m not very confident facing. He also is apparently a recent sourcer?
Game 1: Turn one delver from him fails to flip and my hand is the nuts. Silence resolves thanks to casting dark ritual to pay for soft counters and ad nauseum takes it from here.

Game 2: These delvers don’t want to flip! Thoughtseize reveals a reasonable hand of Daze, REB, Force, Volc, Misty and force gets taken. I take minor beats as I sculpt mana and cast infernals to double up on rituals. Casting 2 rite of flames, responding to a pierce with dark ritual breaks me out of his soft counters and LED plus a wish gets me past in flames to run it all back. Sorry Steve
6-1

Round 8: Mike with elves
Mike was extremely nervous going into this match, saying repeatedly “I’ve never done this well before anywhere”.
Game 1: Probe and therapy see Savana, visionary, glimpse of nature, 2 heritage druids, and symbiote. I therapy the heritage to prevent a second turn hoof possibility while take minor beats. I cast ad nauseum from 14 life without playing a land drop, leaving an LED uncracked. I hit every tutor in the deck and some cantrips without hitting lands or initial mana sources. Perhaps I should have cracked the LED?

Game 2: He casts creatures, I cast half my deck.

Game 3: We ruin each others hands with discard and I lose double dark rituals to a single therapy. I should have simply hid them with a brainstorm I’d cast the turn earlier, but wasn’t thinking about it. We play draw go for a while as topdecked elves slowly whittle me down. I wish for Diminishing Returns for the hopeful save a turn early and he flashes back therapy to take it. Derp.
6-2

Round 9: Ben with Elves
Ben is a guy I went to college with whom has been playing elves for quite a while now, main decking Ruric Thar in this meta. Unfortunately for him I was fresh of the punt fest of round 8 and was angry.
Game 1: I am on the play and get to see the Ruric Thar waving at me from is opening hand. I’m sure he has other ways to get it into play besides natural order, but never decide to let him show me them. His hand of 2 visionary, 2 heritage, llanowar, forest, ruric, NO doesn’t interact.

Game 2: He mulligans aggressively as I happily keep a good 7 that includes chain of vapor. Gaddock teeg makes an appearance as I get beaten down to 9. Chain plus a number of LEDs enable the mana and storm to make me wish I was playing doomsday (I’m kidding, but chain of vapor is my favorite sideboard card). Dimishing returns puts this game away easily after a thoughtseize ensures I’m not about to be ambushed by mindbreak trap.
7-2

I squeak into 16th place over my round 6 opponent and earn $200
Props: Bryant for maintaining the decklist and primer here on the source.
Slops: Bryant for not coming to play on Saturday :(

[Megadeus]

Good stuff. God reading tourney reports has got me itching to punt with this deck again...

[Bryant Cook]

I squeak into 16th place over my round 6 opponent and earn $200
Props: Bryant for maintaining the decklist and primer here on the source.
Slops: Bryant for not coming to play on Saturday :(

Congrats.

I couldn't justify it after Indy the week before. It's a little rough, the prizes sucked and it's also not fair to my dog.

To everyone complaining about the protection package. I think some of the problems you may be facing may actually be from too many Cabal Therapy. While I love the card as much as the next guy, it's not exactly ideal on turn one or two without Probe and can cause awkward situations when you look at the different hate card. This is why I'm still running 3/2 on Therapy/Thoughtseize in the entire 75.

[Tammit67]

Congrats.

I couldn't justify it after Indy the week before. It's a little rough, the prizes sucked and it's also not fair to my dog.

To everyone complaining about the protection package. I think some of the problems you may be facing may actually be from too many Cabal Therapy. While I love the card as much as the next guy, it's not exactly ideal on turn one or two without Probe and can cause awkward situations when you look at the different hate card. This is why I'm still running 3/2 on Therapy/Thoughtseize in the entire 75.

Well you won't skip DC I hope. Thoughtseize was relevant for me all day. Any life loss from it was usually negligible or I can attribute to shoddy play. I'll run the same 75 in DC most likely

[Bryant Cook]

I'll definitely be in DC most likely playing the list in the opening post.

[Lemnear]

Thoughtseize + fow combo was just awfull during the bom because even if you have hand you cant cast it and you will loose your perfect hand right after. Means you need brainstorm to ide stuff + sure to draw silence or discard to combo right after. In one word you need to get perfect draw perfect time perfect everything
Hate was easier too manage blood moon do to rite of flamme / burning wish + petal led
If you add thorn .... need to get petal chain + land ... in your not out of tempo allready. We could think of wear and tear in the right color but i guess if blood moon + thorn on the board we will need 4/5 mana available

http://imageshack.com/a/img571/2993/7hm3.jpg (http://imageshack.com/i/fv7hm3j)Uploaded with ImageShack.com (http://imageshack.com)

[Lemnear]

http://imageshack.com/a/img9/8521/jq6p.jpg (http://imageshack.com/i/09jq6pj)Action![/URL]

http://imageshack.com/a/img600/8757/yy97.jpg (http://imageshack.com/i/goyy97j)The Judge Team[/URL]

[Jaycounet]

just to let you know i had a match against dredge who board in lineley against me during the bom ...

nice picture lemnear

[jandax]

http://imageshack.com/a/img571/2993/7hm3.jpg (http://imageshack.com/i/fv7hm3j)Uploaded with ImageShack.com (http://imageshack.com)

sad panda face behind the camera?

[Lemnear]

sad panda face behind the camera?

Game 3 and i was in the draw with a turn 1 kill then he landed the Sphere T1 off the Tomb. Things got worse with CB #2 as well as Sphere #2! Had to waste all my later drawn removal to prevent him killing me with Painter + Grindstone.

[Pelikanudo]

From my experience with Timmo ANT with 3 B.Wish,

The disruption package is 4 Therapys 3 Duress plus from Side 2 Inquisition and even 1 more duress, so in total vs decks like Combo you're playing total 10 discard effects!!. This is a fact that you just play discard, discard, discard until you are ready for the combo and just win. See How To Side from Timo Post. its is easy and effective.

This is just another kind of deck. At least in my meta I prefer playing ANT build if my main purpose is to win, however I love TES the most, do not change the 4 Silence main. or just change to ANT. Also, the fact that with pure ANT you can side in much more cards is a plus.

I tryed some time ago to make a deck with Mox Opal -> wasn't success, however the disruption package I ran was great, its behaviour was like TES in speed matters, but the disruption was 4 therapys 3 duress because of Manabase issues.

From my point of view I prefer to play TES as I enjoy this deck soo much.... (Still thinking that it is more funny withouth gitaxian... and full moxen.. just we need to have X-Ray or to be an Autist...mine is more like second case)

From the Timmo notes you side: -2 Gitaxian - 1 C.Mox = +2 Inquisition + 1 Duress, but in TES you can not this. Gitaxian has a lot of value in TES and in ANT you're substituing Gitaxian for more discard effects which let you see the opponent hand. Gitaxian really advances only one card.

I think its just a matter of taste. For me TES is even more difficult to play tan DD builds which are way easy to play once you have all the posible piles in mind, I can say I reached Top8 will all Combo Decks (ANT, DD, H.Tide) in my meta however with not TES . or only very few.

Once I thoutgh Bryant was the luckiest Combo player..., not even near the reality.

Just an opinion

[Megadeus]

Inquisition seems horrible in a format where the card you want to strip most is a 5 CMC spell

[DarkJester]

Inquisition seems horrible in a format where the card you want to strip most is a 5 CMC spell

Don't you think that this is a very one-sided point of view? You don't board out protection that is able to blank fow in matchup's where it's relevant. And, IoK may still discard the fow-pitch (in rare scenarios), hatebears-and artifacts, pierces, dazes, flusters, hymns, snares, CB, Top, .... the best argument against this card imo is the SB-Space, but it's far from horrible.
Thoughtseize seems to be better, though.

[Jay_Gatz]

Don't you think that this is a very one-sided point of view? You don't board out protection that is able to blank fow in matchup's where it's relevant. And, IoK may still discard the fow-pitch (in rare scenarios), hatebears-and artifacts, pierces, dazes, flusters, hymns, snares, CB, Top, .... the best argument against this card imo is the SB-Space, but it's far from horrible. Thoughtseize seems to be better, though. Force is the most played hard counter in the format, playing a card that doesn't answer it seems awful unless you are already maxed out on therapy duress and thoughtseize.

[DarkJester]

Force is the most played hard counter in the format, playing a card that doesn't answer it seems awful unless you are already maxed out on therapy duress and thoughtseize.

We are not talking about a Maindeck-Choice here. But because of the fact, that Pelikanudos post referred to a successful ANT-List from last year's Ovino and BoM, this shouldn't be discussed here. I just wanted to point out, that IoK is far from horrible in the right Metagame, maybe even before you max-out on thoughtseizes or duresses.

[Tammit67]

We are not talking about a Maindeck-Choice here. But because of the fact, that Pelikanudos post referred to a successful ANT-List from last year's Ovino and BoM, this shouldn't be discussed here. I just wanted to point out, that IoK is far from horrible in the right Metagame, maybe even before you max-out on thoughtseizes or duresses.

I dislike that it can't take mindbreak trap or natural order if I was so inclined. If such a metagame exists, I'm not convinced this is that meta.

[Megadeus]

I see what you mean about it being able to take hate bears, but I think I'd rather max out on TS. Being able to take hate bears AND force seems best

[Monkey_Island]

I was playing at the same table but finished my game earlier. Then I saw that game state with 2 Counterbalance + 2 Sphere against a shiny TES deck... I still feel bad for you!
Anyway it was nice meeting you and have a look to your awesome deck (even if I'm not into foils, it is still very impressive!).

[Lemnear]

I was playing at the same table but finished my game earlier. Then I saw that game state with 2 Counterbalance + 2 Sphere against a shiny TES deck... I still feel bad for you!
Anyway it was nice meeting you and have a look to your awesome deck (even if I'm not into foils, it is still very impressive!).

It was a pleasure to met you. ^^

I'm still a bit surprised that so many peeps were able to identify me even if I was not allowed to run my LED's or mistake my fellow Protegé Kai for being me (no wonder, because he's also from Berlin, also running full FOIL TES and also wore a Blazer and Beanie)

[Megadeus]

Sucks that they wouldnt let you run those LEDs. Is it just because they arent recognizable?

[Lemnear]

Sucks that they wouldnt let you run those LEDs. Is it just because they arent recognizable?

Yes. The Headjudge for the Mainevent told me, he'd prefer if I would replace them to make the card more recognizable for my opponents and I followed his wish. He however did not forbid me to play with my Diamonds. It was not a big deal because I had a second set with me.

I played the Lost Eye Diamonds on Friday withouts problems or complaints from Judges or opponents. I had nice peeps sitting across all day; some more chatty, some very focused, but no one was rude or Reckless shuffling my cards.

P.S.: I promise I'll make a bunch of pictures on the yearly MagicCardMarket-Tourney in 2 weeks

[Kael]

I am thinking about cards like Hurkyl's Recall against Painter. It is dead against Chalice on two, but I feel like most time they drop the Chalice on one to stop us. Do this in their end step to bounce stuff and clear the way for a combo the next turn, or even do this with Silence in hand to upkeep Silence-walk them and get 2 turns out of it to replay stuff, and then combo out... worse case, you can bounce their stuff and then Therapy it our of their hand on your turn. Slows the deck down a lot, but removes some problem stuff from play.

The other card I have been thinking about against Painter is Pulvarize. 4RR, You may sacrifice two Mountains instead of paying the mana cost... destroy all artifacts. Under a Blood Moon all your lands are Mountains, so tap them for mana, sac two of them for a free Pulverize (free Storm +1). The odds of them having Chalice on 6 is low. This also allows you to have a game 1 answer to Painter since you can just cast a Burning Wish with your two mountains and then blow up all Artifacts. Seems really narrow, and Hurkyl's Recall seems a lot better in our deck anyway... just brainstorming ideas.

First of all, are you really playing against Painter with CotV? That counters so many cards in their deck...They must really hate storm. Secondly, you should try Serenity instead of Hurkyl's. I think the occasional downside of not having W mana is more than made up by the ability to hit stuff like Leyline, Arcane Lab, Counterbalance, or whatever other crap you run into.

Pulverize seems loose, given that it only works against Painter and Dragon Stompy, and is completely uncastable if they don't have a Blood Moon down.

[HerrGevatter]

Hello,

I’m a relatively new Storm player from the Philadelphia area (Matt we might have played each other on occasion) who decided to pick up the deck after getting frustrated drawing too much with Miracles. I first played TES competitively at GP Charlotte in a side event (which I won, despite horrid misplays), and have been hooked ever since.

Since I had my best showing ever with TES at Legacy Champs this past weekend (7/2, Top 16), I wanted to share a little bit about my experience and card choices.

The Deck
My starting point was Bryant Cook’s list, with different fetches based on what I was lending out (1 Delta, 2 Mistys). Other than that, I ran the same 75 in the main.

For the sideboard, I added Reforge the Soul, Massacre, and Eye of Nowhere, removing DR, IGG, and CT. Despite the higher cost, I’ve found RtS much easier to cast than DR with RoF. I also find it easier not to have to juggle UU.

Eye of Nowhere may not be necessary, but it’s helped otherwise unwinnable games, and Massacre can be cast for free and is great against the usual hate bears (except Gaddock Teeg, but there’s always Grapeshot). Death & Taxes is popular here, and I expect it will be all over DC after Ari Lax’s win.

Matchups:
Round 1: 2-1 vs Imperial Painter. Double Sphere is hard to beat, but the deck can’t do much about Goblins. 1-0.

Round 2: 2-0 vs TES. He kept a no-lander game 1 and slow-played, thinking I might have counterspells. I was able to go off first. Game 2 I made more Goblins for the victory. 2-0.

Round 3 – 2-0 vs Death & Taxes. My opponent forgot to deboard and got a game loss; I then Turn 1ed him on the draw. 3-0.

Round 4 – 0-2 vs Sneak & Show. It’s very hard to win against resolved Griselbrand. 3-1.

Round 5 – 2-0 vs Sneak & Show. If they don’t resolve Griselbrand AND mull to oblivion… 4-1.

Round 6 – 2-0 vs Aggro Loam with Dark Depths/Thespian’s Stage. Game 2, my opponent set up his game-winning combo instead of playing a Thorn of Amethyst, and I was able to Tendrils him that turn. 5-1

Round 7 – 0-2 vs RUG Delver. Early Delver flips backed by hordes of countermagic won both games. This is the one match I lost due to pilot error. 5-2.

Round 8 – 2-1 vs Punishing Jund. I won game 2 after my opponent took himself to 13 life off Thoughtseizes and fetches, using PiF into the Grapeshot he’d made me discard earlier. I won game 3 in turns off a top-decked Silence to protect my Goblin horde. 6-2.

Round 9 – 2-1 vs Merfolk. He won Game 1 with pressure and counters, then kept a hand without Force of Will game 2 and lost to Turn 1 Goblins. In game 3 he didn’t counter my Rites, saving it for the Tutor in my hand – which was an Empty the Warrens. He was a real gentleman and gave me the 2-0 victory, though it didn’t make any difference.

Overall, I felt the deck was very well-positioned, despite lots of D&T and Miracles. Ad Nauseam is wonderful but not always necessary; I don’t think I played it at all in the first five matches. Goblins are very good. But with Miracles and D&T being so popular, I think three ADs and a Massacre are necessary evils.

Oh, and never, ever, play without Grapeshot.

Based on this thread I’m going to do some testing with Thoughtseize over the next two weeks before DC, but I’m still most concerned about the matchups with Sneak & Show and Reanimator. The third XS sounds like a good start, but I wish there were something more. If anybody (Bryant?) is testing Surgical Extractions, I’d love to hear about your results.

Thanks for all the advice posted here – I’m looking forward to lots of TES in DC!

[Megadeus]

Playing the deck for the first time in a couple of months tonight. Hopefully I remember how to do it still!! Old list with IGG I believe.

[Tammit67]

Hello,

I’m a relatively new Storm player from the Philadelphia area (Matt we might have played each other on occasion) who decided to pick up the deck after getting frustrated drawing too much with Miracles. I first played TES competitively at GP Charlotte in a side event (which I won, despite horrid misplays), and have been hooked ever since.

Since I had my best showing ever with TES at Legacy Champs this past weekend (7/2, Top 16), I wanted to share a little bit about my experience and card choices.

For the sideboard, I added Reforge the Soul, Massacre, and Eye of Nowhere, removing DR, IGG, and CT. Despite the higher cost, I’ve found RtS much easier to cast than DR with RoF. I also find it easier not to have to juggle UU.

Eye of Nowhere may not be necessary, but it’s helped otherwise unwinnable games, and Massacre can be cast for free and is great against the usual hate bears (except Gaddock Teeg, but there’s always Grapeshot). Death & Taxes is popular here, and I expect it will be all over DC after Ari Lax’s win.

Overall, I felt the deck was very well-positioned, despite lots of D&T and Miracles. Ad Nauseam is wonderful but not always necessary; I don’t think I played it at all in the first five matches. Goblins are very good. But with Miracles and D&T being so popular, I think three ADs and a Massacre are necessary evils.

Oh, and never, ever, play without Grapeshot.

Based on this thread I’m going to do some testing with Thoughtseize over the next two weeks before DC, but I’m still most concerned about the matchups with Sneak & Show and Reanimator. The third XS sounds like a good start, but I wish there were something more. If anybody (Bryant?) is testing Surgical Extractions, I’d love to hear about your results.

Thanks for all the advice posted here – I’m looking forward to lots of TES in DC!

Welcome to the Source! If we haven't met in person, we surely will soon.

If you are truly in Philly, Redcaps Corner right outside of 30th street station/Drexel university has weekly Legacy every Wednesday night and usually get 30 or so people. If you haven't heard of the Philly legacy Series that Top Deck Games+Redcaps Corner+Alternate Universes runs on a monthly basis, check the thread in tournament announcements.

Massacre is an interesting choice, but I really don't want to ever flip it to Ad Nauseum postboard. For me, the bounce/anti hate package in board has been sufficient to handle the minimal amounts of hate that comes down out of hatebear decks before I can sculpt a winning hand. I'd rather have therapy postboard to hit the bears I can't answer than having to massacre them away later. Massacre is going to look very embarrassing when death and taxes or maverick cast things off karakas/vial/deathrite, and TES is naturally fast enough that I don't feel you need to invest in a sweeper like that.

Xantid swarm has been so good for me particularly at Champs, winning me 4 games and possibly a 5th had I not messed up. If you are having trouble with reanimator (and why wouldn't you, the deck has a lot of disruptive capabilities), test out another swarm over GY hate. Usually you can combo off against other GY decks before they can get you (reducing the need for grave hate in the first place) and other matchups become better with swarm such as merfolk, sneak and show, omni tell, and reanimator (increasing the need for swarm). I don't think GY hate is optimal right now and looking to race in those matchups is where you want to be.

Diminishing returns has been very good for me, specifically because it costs 4. Being able to cast it easily and have mana floating in scenarios where my opponent has been attritioning my hand away has proved invaluable. Costing double UU comes up every so often, but more than anything not having the mana to finish the game off post Dim Ret is what kills me. Adding another mana on to Dim Ret can only increase the fizzling chance due to failure to have initial mana sources after its casting.

Eye to nowhere was a card I used to play with before the printing of abrupt decay. even in the more hectic, less clearly defined meta of a year ago, I found myself wishing for it maybe once a month between playtesting and tournaments. There are simply few things preboard I want to bounce that I cannot grapeshot and even fewer postboard that I cannot chain of vapor/abrupt decay. Wishable bounce hasn't been relevant for me. If you feel you need answers to both trinisphere and nether void preboard, go ahead but it isn't typical from what many of us are seeing at large events

:)

[HerrGevatter]

Welcome to the Source! If we haven't met in person, we surely will soon.

If you are truly in Philly, Redcaps Corner right outside of 30th street station/Drexel university has weekly Legacy every Wednesday night and usually get 30 or so people. If you haven't heard of the Philly legacy Series that Top Deck Games+Redcaps Corner+Alternate Universes runs on a monthly basis, check the thread in tournament announcements.

Massacre is an interesting choice, but I really don't want to ever flip it to Ad Nauseum postboard. For me, the bounce/anti hate package in board has been sufficient to handle the minimal amounts of hate that comes down out of hatebear decks before I can sculpt a winning hand. I'd rather have therapy postboard to hit the bears I can't answer than having to massacre them away later. Massacre is going to look very embarrassing when death and taxes or maverick cast things off karakas/vial/deathrite, and TES is naturally fast enough that I don't feel you need to invest in a sweeper like that.

Xantid swarm has been so good for me particularly at Champs, winning me 4 games and possibly a 5th had I not messed up. If you are having trouble with reanimator (and why wouldn't you, the deck has a lot of disruptive capabilities), test out another swarm over GY hate. Usually you can combo off against other GY decks before they can get you (reducing the need for grave hate in the first place) and other matchups become better with swarm such as merfolk, sneak and show, omni tell, and reanimator (increasing the need for swarm). I don't think GY hate is optimal right now and looking to race in those matchups is where you want to be.

Diminishing returns has been very good for me, specifically because it costs 4. Being able to cast it easily and have mana floating in scenarios where my opponent has been attritioning my hand away has proved invaluable. Costing double UU comes up every so often, but more than anything not having the mana to finish the game off post Dim Ret is what kills me. Adding another mana on to Dim Ret can only increase the fizzling chance due to failure to have initial mana sources after its casting.

Eye to nowhere was a card I used to play with before the printing of abrupt decay. even in the more hectic, less clearly defined meta of a year ago, I found myself wishing for it maybe once a month between playtesting and tournaments. There are simply few things preboard I want to bounce that I cannot grapeshot and even fewer postboard that I cannot chain of vapor/abrupt decay. Wishable bounce hasn't been relevant for me. If you feel you need answers to both trinisphere and nether void preboard, go ahead but it isn't typical from what many of us are seeing at large events

:)

I'm pretty positive we've met at Redcaps or Top Deck; I haven't made it out to AU too often. I'll try to introduce myself.

Massacre is in there strictly as a wish target; I'd never board it in. What I like is that it's free once you get it so you have a better chance of going off that turn. I should note it was a last-minute inclusion and I only wished for it once. Testing has been pretty limited.

I see your point about DS vs RtS; I guess I need to try it in more situations. But for right now, 3RR is easier to wrap my head around than 2UU.

I'll also try out another Xantid Swarm; it seems like a good idea.

[HerrGevatter]

I forgot to add that I don't use Eye a ton, but it's helped me win vs Chalice on zero or one and similar nonsense in game 1s. I'm not totally convinced it deserves the slot, but it's an effect I like having access to.

[Megadeus]

Lol just punted vs jund. Quad silence walk 4 turns in a row into an ad nauseam, died to surgical because I went for IGG instead of Pif. Yuck

[oSeabass]

First of all, are you really playing against Painter with CotV? That counters so many cards in their deck...They must really hate storm. Secondly, you should try Serenity instead of Hurkyl's. I think the occasional downside of not having W mana is more than made up by the ability to hit stuff like Leyline, Arcane Lab, Counterbalance, or whatever other crap you run into.

Pulverize seems loose, given that it only works against Painter and Dragon Stompy, and is completely uncastable if they don't have a Blood Moon down.

They are very loose, but I was just trying to get the ball rolling and the thoughts flowing on sideboard cards outside of "the norm". I still really like having the Topical Island in the board for Wasteland, and Port decks. I may go back to running a split on Abrupt Decay and one Hull Breach so I can tutor for it game one with a Chalice on 1 (slow play Wish into Hull Breach). It is still easy-ish to cast like ADecay, because Red is one of the colors from RoF and Volcanics. The green is still the issue, but having the Tropical Isl. in the board really helps sure that up to cast Decay and Hull Breach. Hull Breach being counterable is bad, but you can try and mind game the Countertop player into stacking a 1 on top with no mana left, or run an LED out to get countered just to be able to hit the Hull Breach. It is an expensive 2:1 on your side, but if a quick counterbalance comes downs on 2, running a 0 mana spell out to check the top of their deck is going to be very helpful.

[Final Fortune]

Regarding recent posts,

There's nothing wrong with discarding Silence for Duress, Cabal Therapy and Thoughtseize provided the metagame consists of other combo decks or prison decks that Silence can't disrupt, you're increasing the number of black cards in your deck for Chrome Mox, you're increasing the number of lands that can cast disruption and you can now cast your disruption off of Dark Rituals. The down side is that you're making your Diminishing Returns and Ill Gotten Gains weaker and their Leyline of Sanctity stronger, but that may very well be addressed by SBing an Infernal Tutor at any stage of the match or SBing a set of Xantid Swarms.

The manabase is more flexible than people seem to think, I've experimented with combinations of gold lands and prefer four City of Brass because life, frankly, is not as relevant of a resource as land drops and TES rarely wins before turn 3 unchallenged.

Playing with Thoughtseize allows you to cut a discard spell from the SB, however arguing that cutting a discard spell from the SB eliminates your ability to wish for a discard spell is a pretty daft statement because you don't have to SB a discard spell in at all vs any match up. Even something as odd as Tropical Island reads "counter target Daze" or "counter target one half of a Spell Pierce" while actually having the decency to cast your spells as well.

3rd Chrome Mox slot is debateable, I've seen people cut it, I've seen people substitute it for Mox Diamond but I think the choice a lot of people have over looked is that Simian Spirit Guide is still a really fucking good accelerant in this deck regardless of the marginal increase in average casting cost.

For people who get irritated at Silence requiring a Gemstone Mine, there's no reason to go to an extreme and cut Silence entirely from the deck, you can play 3, 2 or 1 just as easily as you can play 4 or 0, and you can SB X copies of Silence just as easily as you can SB X copies of Xantid Swarm.

I really think people follow Bryant's list a little too closesly instead of thinking for themselves, a lot of the disruption and acceleration slots are pretty amalgamous and people should be encouraged to differentiate if for no other reason it makes Cabal Therapy a hell of a lot worse vs us if X% of TES players are playing 3 Silence, 2 Thoughtseize, 2 Cabal Therapy instead of 4 Silence, 3 Cabal Therapy

[Bryant Cook]

Ran the deck in a decent sized local tonight going 6-0-1 on the night. To be fair, I only played against one Force of Will deck. But the deck ran incredibly smoothly, Thoughtseize was insane versus Manaless Dredge.

[Sinkhole]

Congratulations on your finishing Bryant! Facing only one FoW Deck in the whole tourney is really lucky :smile:.
Had you played against some Midrange Decks like Maverick, Rock or something else, too? I ask because,
i think tha tare the matchups were Thoughtseize would be better than all other discard, for picking out
hatebears, before they entering the board. Had you played one TS main and one in the sideboard, or two maindeck?

[Lemnear]

Congratulations on your finishing Bryant! Facing only one FoW Deck in the whole tourney is really lucky :smile:.
Had you played against some Midrange Decks like Maverick, Rock or something else, too? I ask because,
i think tha tare the matchups were Thoughtseize would be better than all other discard, for picking out
hatebears, before they entering the board. Had you played one TS main and one in the sideboard, or two maindeck?

The list is in the OP dood ^^

[Sinkhole]

The list is in the OP dood ^^

Yes of course! Just haven`t mentioned it, so I apologize for my scattiness. :wink:

[Megadeus]

Ran the deck in a decent sized local tonight going 6-0-1 on the night. To be fair, I only played against one Force of Will deck. But the deck ran incredibly smoothly, Thoughtseize was insane versus Manaless Dredge.

Thought seize was very solid for me as well Wednesday despite my 0-2 finish. Got to probe, see an unbeatable Teeg, then brainstorm for a petal into TS. I mean therapy would've been fine as well in that situation, but blind a maverick deck can have one of a million hate bears

[Lemnear]

Thought seize was very solid for me as well Wednesday despite my 0-2 finish. Got to probe, see an unbeatable Teeg, then brainstorm for a petal into TS. I mean therapy would've been fine as well in that situation, but blind a maverick deck can have one of a million hate bears

Blind-Name Thalia should be fine. It pretty unreal how good it is to follow up with EtW after disrupting your opponent with Therapy, just to mindtwist them after the Goblins hit the field. Won several games on the BoM with that interaction

[Jaycounet]

Blind-Name Thalia should be fine. It pretty unreal how good it is to follow up with EtW after disrupting your opponent with Therapy, just to mindtwist them after the Goblins hit the field. Won several games on the BoM with that interaction

blind cabal thalia he has gadock in hand and hoppefully you can cast ETW the same turn otherwise that would be another story

[Lemnear]

blind cabal thalia he has gadock in hand and hoppefully you can cast ETW the same turn otherwise that would be another story

Thalia is a 3-/4-off, Teeg a one-off. You can Grapeshot Teeg easily unlike Thalia. I'll gamble on that all day of the week :)

[Megadeus]

I agree that thalia is the proper name blind. I'm just saying

[oSeabass]

3 questions that came up in a recent Legacy night at my LGS.

1. Against a deck running white (Plateau in Goblins, Maverick, D&T, Nic Fit with White, etc.), game one a blind Cabal Therapy obviously names Thalia. Games 2 and 3 are where I get tripped up. Is it best to still name Thalia, when Ethersworn Canonist could be the plan? What if you are in game 3 and you Probed and saw a Canonist game 2 in their hand? Blind are you naming Thalia, or Canonist.....

I went with Canonist, because I felt like I could play around Thalia, it would just take more time to sculpt a hand with more mana as well as on turns before the combo I can use a land or two to play Lotus Petal and Chrome Mox pre-combo turn. Canonist seems the better name when we have spell mana (Dark Rit, RoF), and Thalia seems better when we have Artifact mana (Lotus, Mox, LED). Canonist isn't a pain when we have all artifact mana, since we can play it all still, and then find a spell to use next turn... where Thalia makes all the artifacts slower. Canonist is a pain when we have all ritual effects and can't chain them together.

Discuss!

2. Game 2 against Nic Fit, do you keep this hand on the draw?
Thoughtseize, Chrome Mox, Rof, RoF, Dark Rit, Petal, Brainstorm.

I ended up shipping it back. If it had a land (fetch, gold, UB) I think I keep this hand with the turn 1 Thoughtseize and then depending on the 2 draws (this turn, next turn)... save the Brainstorm for the end of their turn 3, before our turn 3. If we brick and are not crazy lucky going off turn 2 with what we draw turns 1/2 the Brainstorm is held to be defensive against Cabal Therapy/flashback. The question there would be, do we Brainstorm turn 2 main phase, and hope to draw into an infernal tutor for the IT->AN, or do we wait and save the Brainstorm for safety of 2 rituals against Therapy? I don't know if with that hand it is better to be aggro and dig, or to wait another turn against a non blue opponent with no real clock yet.

Also, is it worth it to drop the Mox turn 1 (say we keep it), using Thoughtseize to have us a black mana source on board? That way we are getting rid of 2 cards to get closer to IT Hellbent, as well as having less cards in hand for them to Hymn/Therapy out.

Discuss more :)

3. Against a deck like Fish with no real "hard" removal, only counters, you bring in the Xatid Swarms and a Trop in. You Probe early and see 3 counters (FoW x2, Spell Pierce). You have a City of Brass and a Trop in play and a hand with 2 Silence, 1 Swarm. Since we can assume Swarm will stay on the field once it resolves, is it worth spending earlier turns trying to Silence (1) and then cast Swarm to get it to resolve? If they Spell P. the Silence we then run Swarm into FoW (1). The next turn if we are good to go we can Silence (2) again to pull out the 3rd counter, and then hope they haven't drawn extra counters? Or do we just hold the Silences for a super combo turn? We can't durdle against Fish since they can get a strong clock very quickly and make AN very risky.

Discuss again again.


I went 2-2 last night with the deck, and it proved I was a bit rusty with it after playing other decks while trying to figure out what I want from the GP. I punted a game against Fish where I went for the combo, made a crap ton of black mana with Dark Rit after probing and seeing a no counterspell hand, got Storm up to about 6 and hit Burning Wish to the board with.... 4B floating. In that situation I missed having IGG, but if I was smart, I would have waited until I could make a R and been able to get EtW from board and put a decent clock down. Is it worth it (when the mistake is too late to stop) and just get and cast Tendrils to deal a chunk of damage and then try and rebuild and Burning Wish into Grapeshot for the last 6 or so damage? This seems like the right idea, but I was dumb and instead got Cabal Therapy to take 2 Ethersworn Canonist from their hand and just passed back. I considered getting Past in Flames so that on a later turn I could replay all my ritual effects and try and combo out again for exact/more. Which is the correct play against an aggressive clock deck like Fish, that has counters (and you already dun goofed)?

Get Past in Flames to recast it later and try and recombo off? Get Tendrils and hit them for 16/gain 16, and try and Grapeshot them out in later turns?



Thanks everyone.

[Jay_Gatz]

I'd almost always name Thalia, you can still play magic with canonists in play, most of the time with Thalia you have to burn too many resources to sculpt, kill her and then try to go off.

Against fish swarm is king so burning a silence to try to put it in play is fine but even if they force you are still probably fine. The average fish hand won't be good at both interacting and attacking at the same time and they have no way of building card advantage back up so making them burn 3 cards for 2 of yours is usually fine.

[Lemnear]

3 questions that came up in a recent Legacy night at my LGS.

1. Against a deck running white (Plateau in Goblins, Maverick, D&T, Nic Fit with White, etc.), game one a blind Cabal Therapy obviously names Thalia. Games 2 and 3 are where I get tripped up. Is it best to still name Thalia, when Ethersworn Canonist could be the plan? What if you are in game 3 and you Probed and saw a Canonist game 2 in their hand? Blind are you naming Thalia, or Canonist.....

I went with Canonist, because I felt like I could play around Thalia, it would just take more time to sculpt a hand with more mana as well as on turns before the combo I can use a land or two to play Lotus Petal and Chrome Mox pre-combo turn. Canonist seems the better name when we have spell mana (Dark Rit, RoF), and Thalia seems better when we have Artifact mana (Lotus, Mox, LED). Canonist isn't a pain when we have all artifact mana, since we can play it all still, and then find a spell to use next turn... where Thalia makes all the artifacts slower. Canonist is a pain when we have all ritual effects and can't chain them together.

depends in the opponents deck. Some decks are pretty blocked by Thalia and rather run Cannonist out of the board, creature centric ones obviously prefer Thalia. Moreover Thalia is MB material. I would make my decision accordingly.

2. Game 2 against Nic Fit, do you keep this hand on the draw?
Thoughtseize, Chrome Mox, Rof, RoF, Dark Rit, Petal, Brainstorm.

I ended up shipping it back. If it had a land (fetch, gold, UB) I think I keep this hand with the turn 1 Thoughtseize and then depending on the 2 draws (this turn, next turn)... save the Brainstorm for the end of their turn 3, before our turn 3. If we brick and are not crazy lucky going off turn 2 with what we draw turns 1/2 the Brainstorm is held to be defensive against Cabal Therapy/flashback. The question there would be, do we Brainstorm turn 2 main phase, and hope to draw into an infernal tutor for the IT->AN, or do we wait and save the Brainstorm for safety of 2 rituals against Therapy? I don't know if with that hand it is better to be aggro and dig, or to wait another turn against a non blue opponent with no real clock yet.

Also, is it worth it to drop the Mox turn 1 (say we keep it), using Thoughtseize to have us a black mana source on board? That way we are getting rid of 2 cards to get closer to IT Hellbent, as well as having less cards in hand for them to Hymn/Therapy out.

If you want to keep that hand, which should be ok, sit on the Brainstorm as long a possible

3. Against a deck like Fish with no real "hard" removal, only counters, you bring in the Xatid Swarms and a Trop in. You Probe early and see 3 counters (FoW x2, Spell Pierce). You have a City of Brass and a Trop in play and a hand with 2 Silence, 1 Swarm. Since we can assume Swarm will stay on the field once it resolves, is it worth spending earlier turns trying to Silence (1) and then cast Swarm to get it to resolve? If they Spell P. the Silence we then run Swarm into FoW (1). The next turn if we are good to go we can Silence (2) again to pull out the 3rd counter, and then hope they haven't drawn extra counters? Or do we just hold the Silences for a super combo turn? We can't durdle against Fish since they can get a strong clock very quickly and make AN very risky.

is Fish = Meervolk? I still wouldn't waste 2 cards, just for the Xantid :/

I went 2-2 last night with the deck, and it proved I was a bit rusty with it after playing other decks while trying to figure out what I want from the GP. I punted a game against Fish where I went for the combo, made a crap ton of black mana with Dark Rit after probing and seeing a no counterspell hand, got Storm up to about 6 and hit Burning Wish to the board with.... 4B floating. In that situation I missed having IGG, but if I was smart, I would have waited until I could make a R and been able to get EtW from board and put a decent clock down. Is it worth it (when the mistake is too late to stop) and just get and cast Tendrils to deal a chunk of damage and then try and rebuild and Burning Wish into Grapeshot for the last 6 or so damage? This seems like the right idea, but I was dumb and instead got Cabal Therapy to take 2 Ethersworn Canonist from their hand and just passed back. I considered getting Past in Flames so that on a later turn I could replay all my ritual effects and try and combo out again for exact/more. Which is the correct play against an aggressive clock deck like Fish, that has counters (and you already dun goofed)?

Get Past in Flames to recast it later and try and recombo off? Get Tendrils and hit them for 16/gain 16, and try and Grapeshot them out in later turns?



Thanks everyone.

[oSeabass]

Lemnear: Fish = Merfolk, yes.

I think I was too aggressive shipping the hand back. I def. want to play the Petal turn 1 if I don't get a Blue land so I can Brainstorm in response to Therapy. I am super scared to keep the Petal/Brainstorm/no land hand. I am still learning that a mediocre 7, is probably better then a meh 6, and way better then any 5 (unless it is godly 5 which isn't going to happen).

Thanks

[Lemnear]

Maybe I misread the Silence+Xantid-question. IF your opponent has Pierce + double FoW + double Pitch aka 5 blue cards in total, your line of play is valid

[Jay_Gatz]

It also greatly depends on board state

[oSeabass]

Maybe I misread the Silence+Xantid-question. IF your opponent has Pierce + double FoW + double Pitch aka 5 blue cards in total, your line of play is valid

Yea, it was Fow x2, Pierce, Mutavault, Lord of Atlantis, Silvergil Adept, Island.

I ended up just running the Swarm out into the open 1st instead, it ended up getting countered. The next turn Silence was met by Fow. The next turn I tried to combo out but had Trop, Volc, Sea in play with some weird cards. Basically I was always 1 mana away in color to do anything. Needed an extra Red for EtW, needed a U instead of X to do Diminishing Returns, etc. I realized after the game the importance of the Swarm, and wished I had played the Silence first to try and force it into play. This way, if I land it, I am golden. If I don't and the next turn I Silence again for the combo turn, if they use the 2nd FoW there I have taken out of their hand with 2 Silence and Swarm: FoW x2, Pierece, Blue card, Blue Card.... which doesn't leave them much. Instead I tried to just play the Swarm which got Forced, and left too many threats in their hand to put a clock on me (2 turns later I needed the mana in a rush to not die to lethal swing the next turn).

I now realize the importance of Swarm in the mono Blue match, as well as the ability to strip 2 cards from their hand by the way of looking like I am starting the combo turn and forcing them into using cards early and slowing the clock.
-----------------------------------------------
Also, related to Fish (Merfolk)... is EtW a viable option? Say they have like 2-3 Fish in play, they are probably going to be at least 3/3's and making like 16 goblins might not get there. Say they play 1 the next turn (when you pass for non haste goblins), they have 4 on board and pass. You are now staring at 4 Merfolk on board, at least 3/3s (12+ damage on the swing back), and you have 16 1/1's. If you can survive the swing with a lot of life, it is still risky because another lord or 2 the net turn (they have mana now), can make the 3/3s 5/5s and really just kill you out of no where. To hedge you gotta hold Goblins back?

So swing with 14, hold 2 back to not hemorrhage life and die to a swing back, they block 4, take 10 and go to 10. You have 2 untapped, and 10 tapped Goblins. If they alpha strike, you block the biggest so you don't die, and can win on the swing back.... but if they drop another fish you can't deal lethal. SO once again you have 10 facing down 1-2 untapped and a board of 5/5s on their end that can end the game if a few get by....

Long question short. Is Goblins a winnable route against a deck like Fish or Goblins (Fish is more scary cus they grow too fast), that can just create a huge board presence very quickly and just threaten a lethal swing? If we wait another turn to try and find a perfect hand, they swing for too much and we lose a bunch and make AN very unlikely. Without Silence, Diminishing Returns is risky. With their clock, AN is bad. What I am trying to say is the Merfolk (FISH) match is very tough since they have a very strong clock that grows insanely quick, as well as multiple counterspells (hard and soft). Is there a good strategy I am just not seeing in the SB cards, or is this matchup really as bad as I think it is? I see it as a 40/60 at best if we get a great hand, 30/70 if we are "slow" or have to mulligan.

[Lemnear]

I never lost a single game to Meerfolk. Either they are completely defensive or try to race you with a single FoW or MBT held back. Both modes are pretty easy to dismember imo.

EtW is a valid option. I'm used to blind-name FoW with Therapy, drop Goblins and flashback for their Lords. Was always enough, but i'm curious about other peeps experience

[oSeabass]

I never lost a single game to Meerfolk. Either they are completely defensive or try to race you with a single FoW or MBT held back. Both modes are pretty easy to dismember imo.

EtW is a valid option. I'm used to blind-name FoW with Therapy, drop Goblins and flashback for their Lords. Was always enough, but i'm curious about other peeps experience

With Therapy it seems good, but I had a slower hand which I think is what made it so tough. With a faster hand, being able to just Therapy before they can establish board presence seems elementary. I've had bad luck with the Blue Merfolk decks, and I probably need a lot more practice against decks like it, and RUG delver that have very good clocks as well as nice disruption.

It's the fair deck's I'm not as worried about, but the aggro control matches that seem rough. Goblins was tough with a turn 2 Thalia and then a Ringleader and friends joining the party.

[davelin]

I never lost a single game to Meerfolk. Either they are completely defensive or try to race you with a single FoW or MBT held back. Both modes are pretty easy to dismember imo.

EtW is a valid option. I'm used to blind-name FoW with Therapy, drop Goblins and flashback for their Lords. Was always enough, but i'm curious about other peeps experience

In my only recent matchup against the fish my experience was the same. Went 2-1 and lost the 1 only because I misplayed a mid-game Brainstorm not allowing me to get hellbent for the tutor in my hand. Merfolk doesn't play cantrips so they can't proactively dig/look for answers. Also because of deck construction there is usually less counters to fight through (typically no Stifles or Pierces). Finally, Swarm really shines post-board.

[haganbmj]

I agree that thalia is the proper name blind. I'm just saying

We were playing a list with 1 Cabal Therapy and 2 Duress main (+ some Therapies in the board).
This past Wednesday, Medadeus played 2 Thoughtseize over the Duresses mainboard, and they were relevant in this matchup where a Duress would have been much less so.
It felt fine to try since we've had a more creature-based meta lately, Teegs, Thalias, Canonists, etc have been showing up more than Force of Wills and Spell Pierces.

[Lemnear]

We were playing a list with 1 Cabal Therapy and 2 Duress main (+ some Therapies in the board).
This past Wednesday, Medadeus played 2 Thoughtseize over the Duresses mainboard, and they were relevant in this matchup where a Duress would have been much less so.
It felt fine to try since we've had a more creature-based meta lately, Teegs, Thalias, Canonists, etc have been showing up more than Force of Wills and Spell Pierces.

I still suggest to run more Therapy than Thoughtseize in your MB. I was used to run 3 Duress in the MB as discard spells until I realized a) how good mindtwisting your opponent after EtW is to reduce their possible outs and b) how important the option to create some cardadvantage can be in this deck.

It was awesome for my mate and me all the weekend at the BoM. I urge anyone to test the 3/1 MB/SB split themselves. You'll love it.

[haganbmj]

I still suggest to run more Therapy than Thoughtseize in your MB. I was used to run 3 Duress in the MB as discard spells until I realized a) how good mindtwisting your opponent after EtW is to reduce their possible outs and b) how important the option to create some cardadvantage can be in this deck.

It was awesome for my mate and me all the weekend at the BoM. I urge anyone to test the 3/1 MB/SB split themselves. You'll love it.

I'll definitely be giving it a shot going forward with the deck. Cabal is a powerful card with relevance at all points in the game.

[phazonmutant]

Had an interesting decision point today with TES. I'll lay out the scenario and hopefully we can get some discussion of it. I'll wait to say how it worked out for a day or so.

So it's game 3 against a relatively inexperienced Reanimator pilot. I had boarded out Empty, Silence, IT, for Swarm x2, Thoughtseize (list is stock except trying Carpet for Trop). (Critiques on boarding are welcome.) Game two I saw him board 7 or 8 cards and that he had boarded into at least some number of Show and Tells.

I have 2 RoF, BW, LED, Silence in hand; Volc, Sea, LP in play. He has LP, 2 Seas (1 untapped), it's several turns in, and he has BS and an unknown in hand. He's at 17.
In my graveyard I have Therapy, 2 GP, Ponder, BS, and some lands; he has a Reanimate (pitched to Study) and no men.

I cast Silence, he cast BS, lets it resolve. As I see them, relevant lines are Empty for 14 and Therapy him (and what do you name?), Diminishing Returns with Sea and R up, or Past in Flames with the same mana up.

What line do you take and why?

[lordofthepit]

Had an interesting decision point today with TES. I'll lay out the scenario and hopefully we can get some discussion of it. I'll wait to say how it worked out for a day or so.

So it's game 3 against a relatively inexperienced Reanimator pilot. I had boarded out Empty, Silence, IT, for Swarm x2, Thoughtseize (list is stock except trying Carpet for Trop). (Critiques on boarding are welcome.) Game two I saw him board 7 or 8 cards and that he had boarded into at least some number of Show and Tells.

I have 2 RoF, BW, LED, Silence in hand; Volc, Sea, LP in play. He has LP, 2 Seas (1 untapped), it's several turns in, and he has BS and an unknown in hand. He's at 17.
In my graveyard I have Therapy, 2 GP, Ponder, BS, and some lands; he has a Reanimate (pitched to Study) and no men.

I cast Silence, he cast BS, lets it resolve. As I see them, relevant lines are Empty for 14 and Therapy him (and what do you name?), Diminishing Returns with Sea and R up, or Past in Flames with the same mana up.

What line do you take and why?

Do you have a land drop for the turn? And he only has two cards after resolving Brainstorm?

I think you have about a 50% chance to win on the spot with Diminishing Returns (I didn't look this up, since I'm assuming I'm in your situation with no access to the primer), but if you whiff, I think you're an underdog (maybe 20% to win since the matchup doesn't seem all that favorable). Since he doesn't have any creatures in the yard, you're not getting any value out of casting Diminishing Returns reshuffling his graveyard. Also, I think you have a better than 60% chance at winning this with Goblins.

Past in Flames with U/B + R up would allow you to see five cards off two Probes and a Ponder, plus a sixth unknown if you choose to shuffle. You don't have any way of generating black mana from your known cards, so this is only better than the Goblins line if (1) you can hit Ritual + Wish/Tendrils (or Tutor with a way to get hellbent) in the three cantrips you get or (2) you can hit Wish to enable more Goblins to represent a one turn clock.

Assuming optimum play from your opponent, which may not be possible, the fact that he did not respond to your Silence tells me that he doesn't have any taxing counters. He probably didn't see a Force of Will off the Brainstorm either, although it's possible that he's gambling on you not being able to kill him this turn and elected to stack his deck in order to go off on his turn. There are some things to consider:
- It's likely he doesn't have Entomb, or he would have cast it in response to your Silence. However, it's possible that he has two different reanimate effects in hand and stacked Entomb on top of his library to ensure that he can go off on his turn with the perfect fatty of choice, winning regardless of what you name with a single blind Therapy. Alternatively, he may be trying to dissuade you from going with Diminishing Returns by representing that he doesn't have anything valuable to be reshuffled in hand/graveyard/top of library, but I wouldn't expect a "relatively inexperienced pilot" to next level you like that.
- It's possible that he could have resolved the Brainstorm as follows: fatty in hand + blank, which Careful Study and Reanimate effect on top of library protected from discard. Empty for 14 outraces any creature they can have besides Elesh Norn, Blazing Archon, or Sphinx of the Steel Wind, but it's highly unlikely they would keep the latter two in against you.

I would assume he did not have a way to bin a creature and reanimate it in his hand pre-Brainstorm, or he would have almost certainly cast it on his previous turn (I think it's entirely worth it to play into a Silence if you don't have Exhume + Entomb). He may have had Entomb but was holding it to wait on the Reanimate effect or to use it to shuffle off Brainstorm, or he may have had Careful Study but didn't have a creature until he cast Brainstorm. However, I don't think the chances that he hit whatever he was missing off Brainstorm is especially high, so I like the Empty plan better than the alternatives.

As for what to name, if he has Elesh Norn + another fatty in hand, stacking Careful Study and a reanimate effect on top, you lose on the spot, so it's not worth playing around that. You also lose to two reanimate effects in hand with Entomb on top, so don't play around that. He cannot stack Entomb and Reanimate on top, waiting to draw both without a cantrip, since a single swing would inactivate Reanimate. It is conceivable he could do this with Exhume, so he's more likely to hide an Exhume than a Reanimate. Therefore, I'd name Reanimate with Cabal Therapy. (It is also possible he found another cantrip, possibly with land in hand, and can play Entomb + Reanimate on his next turn as well, so it may be appropriate to name a cantrip, but I think it gets pretty weak here.)

[Final Fortune]

I think it's important not to get polarized on disruption, 4 Silence, 4 Cabal Therapy has an informational disadvantage game one 50% of the time despite being strong there after, where 4 Silence, 2 Cabal Therapy, 2 Thoughtseize can keep 1 Cabal Therapy in the MD, 1 Cabal Therapy in the SB and then swap out the 1 Cabal Therapy in the SB for a Thoughtseize if need be and you don't have to worry about being on the wrong side of a coin flip.

I may end up going for 3 Silence, 2 Cabal Therapy, 2 Thoughtseize with a SB Cabal Therapy and Xantid Swarms tho'.

[Lemnear]

I think it's important not to get polarized on disruption, 4 Silence, 4 Cabal Therapy has an informational disadvantage game one 50% of the time despite being strong there after, where 4 Silence, 2 Cabal Therapy, 2 Thoughtseize can keep 1 Cabal Therapy in the MD, 1 Cabal Therapy in the SB and then swap out the 1 Cabal Therapy in the SB for a Thoughtseize if need be and you don't have to worry about being on the wrong side of a coin flip.

I may end up going for 3 Silence, 2 Cabal Therapy, 2 Thoughtseize with a SB Cabal Therapy and Xantid Swarms tho'.

Boarding discard for discard is a waste of SB space atm as I'm curious how you fit in 8 protection spells in your MB. If I have to fire Therapy blind for a T1/T2 kill I gladly name FoW (or MBT against non-blue) which are likely the only cards that matter here. The longer game 1 goes because you've lost the dice or the opponent building a counterwall, the better Therapy gets. This is moreover a painful fact once you face the later paired with a clock like Delver..


Had an interesting decision point today with TES. I'll lay out the scenario and hopefully we can get some discussion of it. I'll wait to say how it worked out for a day or so.

So it's game 3 against a relatively inexperienced Reanimator pilot. I had boarded out Empty, Silence, IT, for Swarm x2, Thoughtseize (list is stock except trying Carpet for Trop). (Critiques on boarding are welcome.) Game two I saw him board 7 or 8 cards and that he had boarded into at least some number of Show and Tells.

I have 2 RoF, BW, LED, Silence in hand; Volc, Sea, LP in play. He has LP, 2 Seas (1 untapped), it's several turns in, and he has BS and an unknown in hand. He's at 17.
In my graveyard I have Therapy, 2 GP, Ponder, BS, and some lands; he has a Reanimate (pitched to Study) and no men.

I cast Silence, he cast BS, lets it resolve. As I see them, relevant lines are Empty for 14 and Therapy him (and what do you name?), Diminishing Returns with Sea and R up, or Past in Flames with the same mana up.

What line do you take and why?

Fetch Telemin Performance and see your opponent rage-quit as you take his Griselbrand to kill him or lock him out with Iona, Jin-Gitaxias or other nonsense

I once added the Telemin for the reason to not being forced to spin the Dim.Returns-Roulette against combo

[Asthereal]

Lemnear's remnark that he didn't like Silence as much as he used to pushed me to try my own three colour hybrid TES list at the tournament yesterday. Let me write a very brief report and my fiundings on the list. The tourney was attended by 36 people, but the prize support was great, so it did attract quite a few strong local players.

My weapon of choice:

4 Gitaxian Probe
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
4 Infernal Tutor
3 Burning Wish
1 Empty the Warrens
1 Ad Nauseam /21

4 Lion's Eye Diamond
4 Lotus Petal
2 Chrome Mox
4 Dark Ritual
4 Rite of Flame /18

4 Duress
3 Cabal Therapy /7

3 Underground Sea
2 Volcanic Island
1 Badlands
3 Polluted Delta
3 Scalding Tarn
2 Bloodstained Mire /14

Side:
1 Tendrils of Agony
2 Empy the Warrens
1 Past in Flames.
1 Ill-Gotten Gains
1 Reforge the Soul
1 Burning Wish
1 Grapeshot.
1 Shattering Spree
1 Cabal Therapy
1 Thoughtseize
4 Chain of Vapor /15

Idea of the list: more fetch improves cantrips, more land reduces no-land mulligans. So the list aims to be able to go off more or less at TES speed, but with slightly improved redundancy, at the cost of the splash colours, so my sideboard is worse and I have no access to Silence. Discard will have to do.

Round 1 against Sneak&Show: lost 0-2. Game 1 he topdecked like a maniac from a totally lost position. Game 2 I drew 5 discard spells against his Leyline of Sanctity. One of the games I had to mull because I couldn't find a land. Not a very awesome round.

Round 2 against Canadian Thresh: won 2-1. Game 1 I fought through a FoW and a large amount of soft counters, but I managed to get there with EtW. Game 2 I couldn't find a discard spell for his Flusterstorm, and his guys got there. Game 3 he had no real clock, but a hand full of blue cards. I fought through all of them to get 8 goblins from an in hand EtW, but I couldn't kill him with them because time in the round was called a turn too soon. But... in turn 5 I cantripped into the nuts and Grapeshot his last life away. Luck to compensate for last round.

Round 3 against OmniHalls: lost 1-2. Game 1 is rather long: I disrupt his combo, create Goblins, dsrupt further, while he Wishes for Echoingv Truth to get rid of the army, but afterwards I just go off against his empty hand. Game 2 and 3 are equally awkward with me trying to fight through his permission, making goblins that get Echoing Thruthed, but not finding enough stuff to either go off myself through his newly drawn permission, or to stop him. One of the games contained a frustrating four turns of draw-go which ended when he Brainstormed into a protected combo kill. Very awkward round, perhaps with some mistakes on my side.

Round 4 against TES (TomT): lost 0-2. Both games I draw very awkward hands. He is on the play game 1 and has a Silence. When I Duress, he manages to hide his good stuff, and he just goes off turn 2. Game 2 I end up with all Probes and both Moxen, which I have to try to get rid of. I fail to cantrip into anything, and my only option is to create 14 goblins with a very crafty turn full of casting rediculously bad cards. The next turn he goes off with Ad Nauseam, and when I see he has me, I start to help him and we end up with 148 goblins on his side to match my 14, and a Grapeshot of 49 on my head. :eek:

Round 5 against TES again: won 2-0. Game one I am on the play and I Duress his Infernal away. He has Silence and a Petal still, but if I took Silence he would just have gone off turn one, so I had no choice. His turn consisted of land->Ponder, go. Major mistake to not play the Petal, because now he had no way to interact with my turn. I punished the mistake by going off. Game 2 I wreck his hand. At some point I miscalculate one mana, and pass the turn when I could have gone off. He punishes it by drawing a Wish and go off via Past in Flames. At some point he notices he needs to get hellbent for his flashback Infernal, but he has just Pondered into a Silence he cannot cast. Turned out this was his first time ever playing Legacy, or TES for that matter. He is happy with the lessons learned, and afterwards we talk a bit about important parts of playing Storm.

Round 6 against Maverick: won 2-0. Game 1 is rediculous. He is on the play and starts Forest->Hierarch. I have a slow hand and start land->Ponder. He topdecks Thalia and casts it, but stumbles on mana. I play many lands, Wish for Grapeshot and destroy both the Hierarch and the Thalia on turn 4, while he gets SFM and a Jitte in play. I bruned many resources and have to settle for 8 goblins. He at some point finds a new mana guy, but no lands. The turn after casting his new mana guy he decides to equip Jitte instead of casting a new Thalia. This mistake is punished by me Therapying Thalia away. He proceeds to kill most of my guys and build a board with his freshly drawn land, and when I am on 6 life I find the means to go off with Infernal. At this point I have all six lands on the table, but no life from Ad Nauseam, and no rituals for PiF or Gains. Natural spell chain also isn't an option because of his Jitte counters (4 more life). I have to settle for Reforge the Soul and brick (Infernal but no way to go hellbent). I pass, he hits me to 3 life and I have to kill him now or I just die. I proceed to cantrip 5 times, and the very last Ponder, after shuffling, finds me the LED I need to win. I cast my rituals and LED, infernal for my last Wish for Tendrils in a 12 Storm natural spell chain on turn 20 or so. YEAH! Game 2 he mulls to six and starts Forest, Zenith for Arbor. I start Petal into Brainstorm. I put AdN on top, cast 2x LED, Probe-respons sac both LEDs, cast AdN into a nice kill. That's more like it. :tongue:

Findings:
1. I really missed Swarm and Silence!
2. Other than the issue mentioned in 1, the deck plays out really nicely.
3. My draw skills are terrible. I draw way too many awkward hands.

Over all I would recommend we stick to rainbow lands, Silences and Swarms. There are just too many mirror matches and Show and Tell decks around to drop the five colour build. Also, I cantrip into crap anyway, so why bother improving cantrips with more fetch anyway? :cool:

[Lemnear]

I start feeling there was a misunderstanding: I do love Silence. I just don't like drawing it against various hate (hatebears+Counter+discard) after losing the dice all day which happend in the BoM Mainevent over and over again

[Asthereal]

Well, I wanted to try this list for some time now, and I reconed this was a good moment. It turned out it wasn't. :tongue:
Anyway, losing dice rolls is part of the game. This touney I lost 4 and won only 2, though I feel it often didn't matter that much.

[Lemnear]

Well, I wanted to try this list for some time now, and I reconed this was a good moment. It turned out it wasn't. :tongue:
Anyway, losing dice rolls is part of the game. This touney I lost 4 and won only 2, though I feel it often didn't matter that much.

Better than winning 3 out of 14 dicerolls like I did on BoM ;)

[Asthereal]

Better than winning 3 out of 14 dicerolls like I did on BoM ;)
True. :wink:

Anyway, I had a fierce discussion with the four Probes in my deck, and decided one should go. As awesome as it is to review my notes and almost always know what my opponents are holding, drawing multiple Probes just messes up my planning, because I never know what I'll draw off them, which makes mulligan decisions virtually impossible to optimize. And since my poker skills are absolutely terrible, I feel the need to optimize my ability to calculate odds.

My list is now the OP, except for -1 Probe, +1 fetch, and 4x Silence, 3x Duress as main deck protection package.
The sideboard holds a third Swarm, a Tropical Island, 2x Chain, 2x Decay and a Duress to Wish for. I decided to hold on to Gains, simply because I used it more often than Past in Flames in last testing round.

[Megadeus]

I was on the fence about IGG but I got burned by my own stupidity by it so I'd cut it.

What do you guys think of a singleton Karakas in the board? My meta is full of bears with hate, and I've tested it in ANT where it is very good.

[Lemnear]

I was on the fence about IGG but I got burned by my own stupidity by it so I'd cut it.

What do you guys think of a singleton Karakas in the board? My meta is full of bears with hate, and I've tested it in ANT where it is very good.

Before BoM the topic crossed our mind, but the slots it competes with are likely the Chains, which are more useful overall as Bryant was kind to outline in a PM

@Asthereal:
You should go to therapy with the Probes and fix your relationship (Pun intended). The worse your poker skills are, the better Probe is imo.

I however can't argue against the 3 MB Duress per sé as I once ran those myself, but the changing metagame with more hatebears and very tight play made the shift necessary to a) hit creatures, b) create cardadvantage in grindy matchups (especially while playing 8-vs.-7-cards) and c) to manover less goblins to a victory by stripping your opponents outs/cantrips.

As long as Goblins are the most common Route to victory (like in the current metagame with lots of UWR Delver, RUG Delver, Esperblade, Deathblade), Therapy is pure cardadvantage and completely negates SFM->Batterskull which was a common backbreaker for our aggro-routine.

Once you rode the Macho Madness with Probe +Therapy + EtW going, you'll never wanna go back, bother! Uhhhh yeeeeeeah! ;D

[Asthereal]

I rode that last tournament. I thought it was going to be epic, but it turned out to be rather mediocre, much to my surprise. But as I wrote already, I didn't encounter the matchups where it would be best. Instead Silence and Swarm should have been MVPs, while I was staring down a Leyline of Sanctity with five discard spells in hand during my Brainstorm, trying to decide which two I should shuffle away. My opponent that game was paranormally gifted by the way, since he used up his only counterspell to counter my other Brainstorm. If he hadn't done that, I would have been able to shuffle away four of the five discard spells, and perhaps I would then have been able to create 20 Goblins or so.

Then again, at moments I was just rediculously unlucky, so who knows how my list woyuld have performed if it were piloted by an expert who would draw only normal hands...

[phazonmutant]

Fetch Telemin Performance and see your opponent rage-quit as you take his Griselbrand to kill him or lock him out with Iona, Jin-Gitaxias or other nonsense

I once added the Telemin for the reason to not being forced to spin the Dim.Returns-Roulette against combo

Come on, that's not an answer.


Do you have a land drop for the turn? And he only has two cards after resolving Brainstorm?

I didn't think about it at the time, but I believe that I did. He does only have 2 cards.

[HerrGevatter]

No love from Drew Levin today for TES - http://www.starcitygames.com/article/27306_The-Road-To-DC-Your-Combo-Primer.html. Real knock in the comments!

The deck has some weaknesses for sure - what deck doesn't - but I think (as Asthereal noted in his testing) that Silence is a big reason to play TES over ANT. I just don't think I'd be comfortable with only one win condition (Tendrils) in ANT, or with only discard for disruption (great tournament results by some players notwithstanding).

Thoughts?

[Lemnear]

Come on, that's not an answer.

Ok, lets try again. Unless he has already 3 lands in play, he needs to get a creature into play with 2 cards and the next 1-2 draws. If you saw any potential discard outlets, reanimate spells or such, the EtW Route isn't unreasonable here

considering that he didn't cast entomb in response and pitched Reanimate earlier to Study I would suspect him holding a creature and floating S&T. With 3 mana floating yourself and a possible landdrop still in reach, I would go for DimRet here to prevent a blowout if he prepared a fatal blowout on top of his Library. You might still wanna gamble with EtW if you feel your opponent isn't experiences enough to setup such a comeback


No love from Drew Levin today for TES - http://www.starcitygames.com/article/27306_The-Road-To-DC-Your-Combo-Primer.html. Real knock in the comments!

The deck has some weaknesses for sure - what deck doesn't - but I think (as Asthereal noted in his testing) that Silence is a big reason to play TES over ANT. I just don't think I'd be comfortable with only one win condition (Tendrils) in ANT, or with only discard for disruption (great tournament results by some players notwithstanding).

Thoughts?

The Main weakness of this deck is it's pilot; the Main advantage is that it is hard to hate out by it's several angles of attack and various engines.

[alphastryk]

Had an interesting decision point today with TES. I'll lay out the scenario and hopefully we can get some discussion of it. I'll wait to say how it worked out for a day or so.

So it's game 3 against a relatively inexperienced Reanimator pilot. I had boarded out Empty, Silence, IT, for Swarm x2, Thoughtseize (list is stock except trying Carpet for Trop). (Critiques on boarding are welcome.) Game two I saw him board 7 or 8 cards and that he had boarded into at least some number of Show and Tells.

I have 2 RoF, BW, LED, Silence in hand; Volc, Sea, LP in play. He has LP, 2 Seas (1 untapped), it's several turns in, and he has BS and an unknown in hand. He's at 17.
In my graveyard I have Therapy, 2 GP, Ponder, BS, and some lands; he has a Reanimate (pitched to Study) and no men.

I cast Silence, he cast BS, lets it resolve. As I see them, relevant lines are Empty for 14 and Therapy him (and what do you name?), Diminishing Returns with Sea and R up, or Past in Flames with the same mana up.

What line do you take and why?

I think you have to Diminishing Returns, as you lose to most if not all of the men he would leave in vs TES. Emptying seems like it loses to too many things, and I like taking away his options, which also might let you pick more at his hand or silence-walk him even if you brick.

[mario91234]

Was reading the last couple of pages in the ant thread earlier and am completely baffled. Maindeck bolts and siding in tendrils vs rug? Are any of these ideas actually real?

Aside from that, what is the correct boarding vs uwr delver? Decays?

-mario


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[davelin]

Was reading the last couple of pages in the ant thread earlier and am completely baffled. Maindeck bolts and siding in tendrils vs rug? Are any of these ideas actually real?

Aside from that, what is the correct boarding vs uwr delver? Decays?

-mario


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I'm bringing in a therapy for IT, adjusting if I see or suspect meddling mage or canonist.

[Lemnear]

Was reading the last couple of pages in the ant thread earlier and am completely baffled. Maindeck bolts and siding in tendrils vs rug? Are any of these ideas actually real?

Aside from that, what is the correct boarding vs uwr delver? Decays?

-mario


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I sometimes have no clue what's going on there either. ;)

As they usually board in Cannonists/Meddling mage and keep their SFM's I bring indeed in 3 decays. Somehow many UWR pilots have the stupid habit to bring in Rest In Piece ... nevermind.

This matchup is a prime example why I run Therapies.


I'm bringing in a therapy for IT, adjusting if I see or suspect meddling mage or canonist.

It's known that they bring in permament-based hate, so not adding solutions is pretty brave. Still have 2 discard spells in your sb?

[davelin]

I sometimes have no clue what's going on there either. ;)

As they usually board in Cannonists/Meddling mage and keep their SFM's I bring indeed in 3 decays. Somehow many UWR pilots have the stupid habit to bring in Rest In Piece ... nevermind.

This matchup is a prime example why I run Therapies.



It's known that they bring in permament-based hate, so not adding solutions is pretty brave. Still have 2 discard spells in your sb?

Yes, I haven't tried/tested many of the maindeck/SB changes that have been advocated as of late.

[Bryant Cook]

This matchup is a prime example why I run Therapies.

We get it dude. You love Cabal Therapy.

However, Cabal Therapy while is very good isn't always the card you need. Which is why I'm running a Thoughtseize as well, sometimes you don't have the Gitaxian Probe to just know what they have and you need to cast it turn one. Against Miracles I've seen Cannonist and Counterbalance postboard. Both are awful to see turn two, these are situations where Thoughtseize is just better than Therapy.

[Lemnear]

We get it dude. You love Cabal Therapy.

However, Cabal Therapy while is very good isn't always the card you need. Which is why I'm running a Thoughtseize as well, sometimes you don't have the Gitaxian Probe to just know what they have and you need to cast it turn one. Against Miracles I've seen Cannonist and Counterbalance postboard. Both are awful to see turn two, these are situations where Thoughtseize is just better than Therapy.

I agree for that example, aside the fact that were talking about possible one-/two-offs in our starting grip regarding your suggested list. CB is the bigger threat and you can cantrip into a solution under a Cannonist unlike CB and adding up the numbers of those cards in MB/SB for calculation, blind-naming CB for a non-T1-Action-hand should be the right play regardless. However, you are right about me beating a dead horse. I'll stop that

http://www.necro-equine-sadism.com/beating-a-dead-horse.jpg

[phazonmutant]

Ok, got some decent discussion on the reanimator scenario I posted. Thanks everyone!

Lordofthepit - I was thinking along your lines. I pretty much immediately ruled out Past in Flames, which left it down to Empty or DimRet. Ended up going with Empty. I disagree with the name on Therapy though. In order to cast Entomb in response to Silence, he would have had to crack Petal, so I felt like Entomb was the right call. Also it seemed unlikely for him to Brainstorm into exactly perfects, so I thought that Entomb was the most likely to give him top-deck outs.

Alphastryk - I think that given that I hadn't made my land drop, DimRet is the correct call. Empty does lose to a lot of things, but he'd have to hit basically perfect. I felt like it was more certain. The point of me asking about this scenario was to get different opinions though.

Lemnear - I think mentioning that he had pitched Reanimate may have been a red herring. He lost game 2 because he tried to be controlling the point of not trying to find his combo. I suspected he had pitched Reanimate to keep a counterspell I played through a couple turns ago. Your analysis could still definitely be correct though.

In any case, what actually happened is he Brainstormed into Show and Tell and Elesh Norn, both of which he (obviously) kept in his hand. The 2 lands and the Petal on board were enough to cast Show and Tell the turn after I Emptied.

[Lemnear]

Strange. I would at least have hid the S&T on top rather than keeping the whole combo in hand.

There a still a lot of options possible with him having 2 cards in hand and knowing the next 2 coming that going for EtW would have left a bad taste in my mouth. Elesh, Blazing Archon or a big lifelinking Demon would result in a loss, so assembling a 2-card combo with Show + creature or entomb + exhume is within reach, that's why I would have chosen dim.ret. as I stated ... even if that is a high-risk-high-reward-play.

I'm sorry to hear you hitting the worst case however


Edit: Hu? Did a mod finally fix your username ��

[Jaycounet]

The Main weakness of this deck is it's pilot; the Main advantage is that it is hard to hate out by it's several angles of attack and various engines.

you're fully right !
as the perfect example last saturday i've cast ad nauseam at 7 lifes instead diminishing return again dredge ^^ (it was so epic in my mind ... ) i can guess that i've lost this one

[phazonmutant]

Strange. I would at least have hid the S&T on top rather than keeping the whole combo in hand.

There a still a lot of options possible with him having 2 cards in hand and knowing the next 2 coming that going for EtW would have left a bad taste in my mouth. Elesh, Blazing Archon or a big lifelinking Demon would result in a loss, so assembling a 2-card combo with Show + creature or entomb + exhume is within reach, that's why I would have chosen dim.ret. as I stated ... even if that is a high-risk-high-reward-play.

I'm sorry to hear you hitting the worst case however


Edit: Hu? Did a mod finally fix your username ��

Fair point. I think I need to get more comfortable with Diminishing Returns. Obviously the solution is to play more Burning Long in vintage ^.^ Fortunately the game was at some random local not DC this weekend.

Yup, finally got my username fixed.

[Lemnear]

you're fully right !
as the perfect example last saturday i've cast ad nauseam at 7 lifes instead diminishing return again dredge ^^ (it was so epic in my mind ... ) i can guess that i've lost this one

You may be relieved to hear that I fumbled a lot at BoM too ^^

You can keep on flipping cards to AN 4 more times being on 1 life already to find the nuts (trial round 1); slice through double Clique + karakas + countertop (round 2); just to die off AN by flipping 3 Wish + Infernal + EtW + 3 cantrips in a row off 16 life (mainevent round 3); or naming the wrong sweeper after flashbacking CT with a lethal amount of goblins in play against Miracles (mainevent round 4)


Hope i can take notes on the yearly MCM tournament the upcoming weekend. Last testing on a thursday LGS event

[mario91234]

Tempted to put a griselbrand in my board for DC. Seems really bad off AN but the nuts vs omni halls.

[Holly]

I can't follow your line of thoughts.

You want your 1 off (non wish target) to matter in a matchup? You're really trying to draw/cantrip into it for them going off (and have enough white mana ready for Silence (which you also need though you can probably draw it off Griselbrand) since otherwise they will just kill you)? Yeah.. no.

Then I'd rather play the Telemin Performance to kill them with 7 mana (1 less then Griselbrand hardcast & easier to achiev) and gain some percentage in different matchups..

[Lemnear]

Wow ... just wow *GraspForWords*

May I suggest TinFins if you want to play Tendrils alongside Griselbrand instead?!

[Megadeus]

Im glad Im not the only one that was confused about Griselbrand lol.

[mario91234]

I just wanted to do something sweet... :(

[Megadeus]

It's just too narrow of a situation. You are playing a 1 of that you have no way to find outside of can tripping, that is strictly for the SnT MU, which is still even only good if they are on the SnT plan. Basically what everyone is saying that in the SnT MU, you would rather be cantripping to find a way to go off with protection rather than finding your one of Griselbrand that you need to find by T2 or 3 most likely. And even then you still just lose to sneak attack

[Lemnear]

I just wanted to do something sweet... :(

Stealing your opponents Griselbrand is much sweeter ^^


Even if I'm sure that we now have more meta-slots in SB available than ever, this tech is just too unrelyable and cute. I would rather add some Carpets to the SB considering that I have trouble beating Wasteland + Daze + Stifle + FoW + Snare + Pierce + Thoughtseize + Flusterstorm in games 2 & 3 against german t.hold.

[mario91234]

Curious as to the correct sideboarding vs the incarnations of delver and merfolk.

Specifically, RUG, UWR, BUG, Grixis, and Standstill Fish

Are there play/draw sideboarding differences? Are swarms appropriate with the increase in reactive permission despite dieing to bolt/decay?

[Megadeus]

Curious as to the correct sideboarding vs the incarnations of delver and merfolk.

Specifically, RUG, UWR, BUG, Grixis, and Standstill Fish

Are there play/draw sideboarding differences? Are swarms appropriate with the increase in reactive permission despite dieing to bolt/decay?

I think it was determined that you dont want to bring in swarms... At least for a time that was generally agreed upon I think. I generally was boarding in Therapy and taking out an IT. If I was on the Carpet of Flowers plan I would board that in as well. Though to what expense I am uncertain.

[Lemnear]

I think it was determined that you dont want to bring in swarms... At least for a time that was generally agreed upon I think. I generally was boarding in Therapy and taking out an IT. If I was on the Carpet of Flowers plan I would board that in as well. Though to what expense I am uncertain.

If your local Tempo players are tight Bastards, you might find the Moxen expendable if Ad Nauseam is barely managable to pull off in the early turns.

For the S&T matchup, i would not dilute the board too much with Carpets because S&T has no mana disruption

[Bubba046]

Round 5 against TES again: won 2-0. Game one I am on the play and I Duress his Infernal away. He has Silence and a Petal still, but if I took Silence he would just have gone off turn one, so I had no choice. His turn consisted of land->Ponder, go. Major mistake to not play the Petal, because now he had no way to interact with my turn. I punished the mistake by going off. Game 2 I wreck his hand. At some point I miscalculate one mana, and pass the turn when I could have gone off. He punishes it by drawing a Wish and go off via Past in Flames. At some point he notices he needs to get hellbent for his flashback Infernal, but he has just Pondered into a Silence he cannot cast. Turned out this was his first time ever playing Legacy, or TES for that matter. He is happy with the lessons learned, and afterwards we talk a bit about important parts of playing Storm.


That would be me, I am new to legacy and just finished building the deck. I learned a lot from the event and from your advice. Thanks again for the information!

So I still have a question remaining. Why are we running 4 Infernal 4 Burning mainboard and not 3 Infernal 4 Burning mainboard (leaving an Infernal in the sideboard)?

[davelin]

That would be me, I am new to legacy and just finished building the deck. I learned a lot from the event and from your advice. Thanks again for the information!

So I still have a question remaining. Why are we running 4 Infernal 4 Burning mainboard and not 3 Infernal 4 Burning mainboard (leaving an Infernal in the sideboard)?

Wishing for Infernal is a slow line for a deck that wants speed. We sideboard this config for slower matchups.

[Final Fortune]

Wishing for Infernal is a slow line for a deck that wants speed. We sideboard this config for slower matchups.

I SB an Infernal Tutor for a 13th land MD, considering the critical match ups are all FoW.dec and we SB out an Infernal Tutor game 2 vs all FoW.dec 100% of the time I'd rather pre-board it for a 4th fetchland. I think the perception of being a turn 1 to 2 Storm deck is more important than the reality of it, it causes your opponent to mulligan to FoW out of paranoia/necessity and it's more or less free card advantage.

The threat of speed is more relevant than the reality of it IMO, unlike Belcher/Hermit esq decks you can actually build up a mana base and gain card advantage off of your disruption.

[Zombie]

Curious about how you'd play this:
Unknown opponent, G1, you're going first.

Gemstone, Ponder, LED, Ritual, Rite, Wish, Infernal.
1) Keep?
Supposing you keep, go Gemstone, Ponder.
Ponder shows Duress, Silence, Gemstone.
2) Keep, aiming for T2 or would you shuffle?

3) Supposing you keep and put Silence on bottom, would you go:
Gemstone, Ritual, Duress, kill
or
Gemstone, Rite, Ritual, Duress, kill?

[mario91234]

Play diamond turn 1 and depending on what their t1 play/nothing is act accordingly.


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[Lemnear]

@SB Infernal

I think that is debatable atm. I only have 1 SB discard left and don't do that boarding anymore but side in a lone Swarm instead which is nice if you don't see a Bolt in their hand with Probe or use it to immediately flashback a Therapy.

Overall the Tempo matchup changed a lot. bUrg, Esper and UWR offer fresh tools to fight us and our Goblins, but I feel we still have not adjusted to those new subtypes which have access to Batterskull, Hatebears, Discard, sweepers etc. unlike the previous Tempo Primus RUG Delver which was limited to counter. The now occuring various hate is more difficult to overcome and therefore I suggest tinkering in that direction. The damn Therapies were my approach to keep Goblins alive against SFM -> Batterskull attempts from UWR but that's possibly not enough as is sb'ing Infernal <-> discard.

[davelin]

Curious about how you'd play this:
Unknown opponent, G1, you're going first.

Gemstone, Ponder, LED, Ritual, Rite, Wish, Infernal.
1) Keep?
Supposing you keep, go Gemstone, Ponder.
Ponder shows Duress, Silence, Gemstone.
2) Keep, aiming for T2 or would you shuffle?

3) Supposing you keep and put Silence on bottom, would you go:
Gemstone, Ritual, Duress, kill
or
Gemstone, Rite, Ritual, Duress, kill?


Easy keeps, both on the initial 7 and ponder. I would stack Gemstone, Ritual, Silence (draw Gemstone). T2 highly dependant on what happens on opponent's turn, Gemstone -> Duress is very possible line of play

[Lemnear]

Curious about how you'd play this:
Unknown opponent, G1, you're going first.

Gemstone, Ponder, LED, Ritual, Rite, Wish, Infernal.
1) Keep?
Supposing you keep, go Gemstone, Ponder.
Ponder shows Duress, Silence, Gemstone.
2) Keep, aiming for T2 or would you shuffle?

3) Supposing you keep and put Silence on bottom, would you go:
Gemstone, Ritual, Duress, kill
or
Gemstone, Rite, Ritual, Duress, kill?

1) yes

2) keep again. All your hand lacks is a way to fight through possible defense. The Ponder gave you another manasource for your RoF + DR as well as a certain Résistance to Wasteland. Taking Gemstone and float Duress is correct.

3) depends on their first landdrop tbh. If it indicates something alongside Tempo or Combo, you might simply Duress and wait another turn for Silence into EtW with that hand against Tempo or seize an opponents combo (unfortunately you ran Duress over Thoughtseize so taking a Thalia from a possible Maverick-opponent is impossible but thanks to your mana it's not a problem to sidestep that issue with a turn 2 kill). None of the 2 options you presented iss imo acceptable against a Blue Dual/Fetch from your opponent because any Daze, Pierce or FoW will cause you to brick for several turns losing one or even 2 Rituals in the process. IF you still opt to test your luck against an opponent (him either not countering DR or only keeping 1 counterspell.), start with DR after dropping the second Gemstone Mine in your turn 2 and cast Duress. Follow up with Infernal for another LED/RoF, cast all your mana and Wish for EtW (Telemin if your Duress indicates You are playing against combo) and drop at least 16 Goblins.

Hilariously I kept such a hand in yesterdays tourney but got dismembered by runna-runna-double-Wasteland off his top and him still having a counter in addition

[Lemnear]

Sometimesy job plain sux. Sitting in the aircraft at 2:15am and the MCM tourney starting at 10am :((

Edit: no tourney for me today. Job's in the way again <_<

[Final Fortune]

@SB Infernal

I think that is debatable atm. I only have 1 SB discard left and don't do that boarding anymore but side in a lone Swarm instead which is nice if you don't see a Bolt in their hand with Probe or use it to immediately flashback a Therapy.

Overall the Tempo matchup changed a lot. bUrg, Esper and UWR offer fresh tools to fight us and our Goblins, but I feel we still have not adjusted to those new subtypes which have access to Batterskull, Hatebears, Discard, sweepers etc. unlike the previous Tempo Primus RUG Delver which was limited to counter. The now occuring various hate is more difficult to overcome and therefore I suggest tinkering in that direction. The damn Therapies were my approach to keep Goblins alive against SFM -> Batterskull attempts from UWR but that's possibly not enough as is sb'ing Infernal <-> discard.

And that's the problem with 4xCabal Therapy, considering ANT already plays 4xCabal Therapy the smart(er) aggro-control players are differentiating their disruption, permission and hate in order to make Cabal Therapy unreliable, Brainstorm aside, I don't think people are going to play 3 Meddling Mage as opposed to 1 Vendillion Clique, 1 Meddling Mage and 1 Ethersworn Cannonist or 4 Spell Pierce, 4 Daze as oppoed to 3 Spell Pierce, 3 Daze, 3 Spell Snare etc. considering how abundant and equivalent a lot of cards are at their roll in eternal formats.

Leyline of Sanctity forced us to play Silence over Orim's Chant, I think smarter SBing will force us not to be overly reliant on Cabal Therapy.

[davelin]

Sometimesy job plain sux. Sitting in the aircraft at 2:15am and the MCM tourney starting at 10am :((

Edit: no tourney for me today. Job's in the way again <_<

:frown:

[Lemnear]

And that's the problem with 4xCabal Therapy, considering ANT already plays 4xCabal Therapy the smart(er) aggro-control players are differentiating their disruption, permission and hate in order to make Cabal Therapy unreliable, Brainstorm aside, I don't think people are going to play 3 Meddling Mage as opposed to 1 Vendillion Clique, 1 Meddling Mage and 1 Ethersworn Cannonist or 4 Spell Pierce, 4 Daze as oppoed to 3 Spell Pierce, 3 Daze, 3 Spell Snare etc. considering how abundant and equivalent a lot of cards are at their roll in eternal formats.

Leyline of Sanctity forced us to play Silence over Orim's Chant, I think smarter SBing will force us not to be overly reliant on Cabal Therapy.

We already have various disruption in Silence, Discard and Swarms. Diverse hate against us is annoying but it's not like Duress would fare much better than Therapy against an opponent holding Cannonist, Stifle, FoW and Thoughtseize at all. The point was about doubling the effect of the discard once Goblins are added to the calculation and make even a mid-sized-amount of those pretty deadly if they come with a free mindtwist.

It's an age-old problem of storm to deal with several angles of disruption, that why I asked about a stroke of genius from the Community because I'm too buisy to make some tests myself atm.

I doubt, that SB leaves us any reliant on Therapy, because against the matchups that matter, all Therapy + the Goblin-plan leave the MB in game 2 for the swarms (plus either Tendrils or Chains depending on the matchup). Maybe I misinterpreted your last Sentence ... If so, forgive me

[davelin]

We already have various disruption in Silence, Discard and Swarms. Diverse hate against us is annoying but it's not like Duress would fare much better than Therapy against an opponent holding Cannonist, Stifle, FoW and Thoughtseize at all. The point was about doubling the effect of the discard once Goblins are added to the calculation and make even a mid-sized-amount of those pretty deadly if they come with a free mindtwist.

It's an age-old problem of storm to deal with several angles of disruption, that why I asked about a stroke of genius from the Community because I'm too buisy to make some tests myself atm.

I doubt, that SB leaves us any reliant on Therapy, because against the matchups that matter, all Therapy + the Goblin-plan leave the MB in game 2 for the swarms (plus either Tendrils or Chains depending on the matchup). Maybe I misinterpreted your last Sentence ... If so, forgive me

Oh, you're testing with the card Stroke of Genius? :wink:

[Lemnear]

Hands down, it appears that this November is already a horrible month for TES. Seems like the end of the midrange era is at hand and the future hold the various flavors of tempo...

[BrettF]

My friend just picked up the blue red delver with full waste and stifle. Alot harder to storm out than the old price of progress bluered delver lists.

[mario91234]

6-3 with 2 byes this weekend. Lost to ur omni halls, uwr delver, and rug. I punted one game from stacking ponder wrong which wouldve beaten trip force , daze fluster. Played in sunday series and lost to the duke in semifinals. Got good experience with deck for vegas. Looking forward to everyone else's stories.


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[davelin]

Hands down, it appears that this November is already a horrible month for TES. Seems like the end of the midrange era is at hand and the future hold the various flavors of tempo...

I'm hoping that tempo pretty much narrows down to the best TNN deck which I'm guessing is going to be some flavor of UWx in order to take advantage of SFM/equipment. I think storm can succeed in such an environment since ANT/TES doesn't care all that much about TNN.

[Bryant Cook]

Some notes on the weekend:

1) I suck. There was a match where I could've possibly won, but who knows. Here's the situation, it's game three, my opponent has a Stoneforge and a Delver equipped with Sword of Feast and Famine. He pondered and kept on his turn. I know both of his other cards are lands. I'm at 13, my opponent is at 17 - storm is 5, haven't played a land. I resolve Ad Nauseam with RB floating and an untapped Gemstone Mine, it reveals Burning Wish, Silence, Burning Wish, Empty the Warrens, Silence, Gitaxian Probe, Giataxian Probe, Underground Sea, Rite of Flame (One in the yard). Do you stop at 1? I've used one Lotus Petal prior to this. I thought for sure his last card was Stifle.

I revealed Ponder and died.

2) Tropical Island was super good all weekend, against UWr, Sneak Show and Miracles.

3) 6-3 day one with two byes in your preferred format is worse than being diagnosed with Cancer.

4) Kevin Mckee is awesome, I now own 4 Japanese foil Cabal Therapy.

5) Got Alexander to match the signature on my other Sea.

6) Ari played TES and went 6-3 with three byes. I really wanted us both to crush.

7) Lists are awesome.

8) I met a gentleman who was 8-1 at the end of day 1 with the deck.

9) I signed a whiteboardered Grapeshot.

10) He whiteboardered everything. Yes, even the LEDs.

11) I would play the same seventy-five all over again.

12) Bad luck happens sometimes.

13) I had a situation where Brainstorming into Dark Ritual and Infernal Tutor for Abrupt Decay on Dueling Grounds won me a round.

14) Thalia is a hooker.

15) It was nice meeting some of you.

16) Lists are still awesome.

17) Thank you.

[MTG Junkie]

One of my opponents was like so your TEZ right,after i beat him. (I was like o boy he we go) I said no im playing ANT. He then asks whats the difference between TEZ and ANT (I dont even play the deck and was offended lol) I said well first off its called The Epic Storm! lol

[Lemnear]

I'm hoping that tempo pretty much narrows down to the best TNN deck which I'm guessing is going to be some flavor of UWx in order to take advantage of SFM/equipment. I think storm can succeed in such an environment since ANT/TES doesn't care all that much about TNN.

I'm just pretty much annoyed to play against the various flavors of 3-color-delvers, every round, every week and may need a break from that shit or an innovation against tempo

[Pelikanudo]

Related to:
1) I suck. There was a match where I could've possibly won, but who knows. Here's the situation, it's game three, my opponent has a Stoneforge and a Delver equipped with Sword of Feast and Famine. He pondered and kept on his turn. I know both of his other cards are lands. I'm at 13, my opponent is at 17 - storm is 5, haven't played a land. I resolve Ad Nauseam with RB floating and an untapped Gemstone Mine, it reveals Burning Wish, Silence, Burning Wish, Empty the Warrens, Silence, Gitaxian Probe, Giataxian Probe, Underground Sea, Rite of Flame (One in the yard). Do you stop at 1? I've used one Lotus Petal prior to this. I thought for sure his last card was Stifle.

You stop before Ponder and
with BR Floating and gemstone, you play Undergroud sea --> Total 4 mana + 2 from RoF= 8 storm--> B.Wish to Tendrils total = 16 life (need 1 f** point) you hold b.wish for next turn and doublé gitaxian will find the mana for grapshoting, depending on the mana already in play for next turn and on the gitaxian plus Step draw, I think this is the way.
The reallity is that if he kept then it can be pierce or stifle or daze or fluster or surgical and all of these things shuts the plan. but he maybe simply 'kept', paranoids.

[Bryant Cook]

Related to:
1) I suck. There was a match where I could've possibly won, but who knows. Here's the situation, it's game three, my opponent has a Stoneforge and a Delver equipped with Sword of Feast and Famine. He pondered and kept on his turn. I know both of his other cards are lands. I'm at 13, my opponent is at 17 - storm is 5, haven't played a land. I resolve Ad Nauseam with RB floating and an untapped Gemstone Mine, it reveals Burning Wish, Silence, Burning Wish, Empty the Warrens, Silence, Gitaxian Probe, Giataxian Probe, Underground Sea, Rite of Flame (One in the yard). Do you stop at 1? I've used one Lotus Petal prior to this. I thought for sure his last card was Stifle.

You stop before Ponder and
with BR Floating and gemstone, you play Undergroud sea --> Total 4 mana + 2 from RoF= 8 storm--> B.Wish to Tendrils total = 16 life (need 1 f** point) you hold b.wish for next turn and doublé gitaxian will find the mana for grapshoting, depending on the mana already in play for next turn and on the gitaxian plus Step draw, I think this is the way.
The reallity is that if he kept then it can be pierce or stifle or daze or fluster or surgical and all of these things shuts the plan. but he maybe simply 'kept', paranoids.

I had three lands to start the turn, two Gemstones with one counter each and Underground Sea.

[Jay_Gatz]

I betrayed Bryant this weekend and played a 3 wish ANT abomination to an 11-4 finish getting me 64th place. My mana was awful and I got punished for it in two of my rounds so I'm re-sleeving TES for the time being.

[Bryant Cook]

Grand Prix Washington DC Postmortem by Ari Lax (http://www.starcitygames.com/article/27362_Grand-Prix-Washington-DC-Postmortem.html#comments)

[Lemnear]

Grand Prix Washington DC Postmortem by Ari Lax (http://www.starcitygames.com/article/27362_Grand-Prix-Washington-DC-Postmortem.html#comments)

Thx for the link. Premium access ran out, so maybe anyone would like to summarize? Any new ideas?

[mario91234]

He talks about how combo can beat multiple permission spells, that we are a turn faster and he mentions that he sided in past in flames (he played iggy and deathmark) He went over his flawed assumptions on card availability and gloated about himself. One interesting mention was on playing against storm and the difficulty associated with it.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk (http://tapatalk.com/m?id=1)

[davelin]

Thx for the link. Premium access ran out, so maybe anyone would like to summarize? Any new ideas?

Hopefully not breaking any forum rules. To summarize -

1) TNN wasn't as prevalent in the earlier rounds
2) Storm loses against certain draws. The examples he gave were nut draws so not sure if that's new.
3) Playing against storm can be hard since most don't know how to properly play storm
4) Likes TES over ANT because of less Stifle targets and Wasteland isn't as much an issue (not sure I agree with this last point)

[HerrGevatter]

Sadly I went 6-3 in DC with one bye, failing to (likely) make Day 2 due to pilot error - the worst mistake I've ever made in competitive magic.

Game 3 vs Shardless BUG, I have 2x Underground Sea, Gemstone Mine with one counter, and Xantid Swarm. I'm at 7. My opponent is at 16, has Vendilion Clique and lands, and likely lots of counterspells in hand. I attack with Swarm, then play Rite of Flame, Dark Ritual, Burning Wish for Grapeshot, and Empty the Warrens for 8 Goblins. It's a race.

My opponent attacks me to 4 with his Clique and passes back; I draw a Gemstone Mine - yes! I can actually cast the Grapeshot! So I swing with Xantid Swarm and Grapeshot the Clique...and then try to attack with my Goblins.

:-(

Needless to say he rips Deathrite Shaman next turn and drains me for the win.

The deck was a great choice for the meta as I started off 5-0, but I didn't play well enough to win. Next time, I guess. Maybe I'll get to meet some of you other Stormers then, too.

[jandax]

Here's a situational food-for-thought:

Opening hand is a 14 goblin hand; Lands, rituals, a Burning Wish, an LED, and a Gitaxian Probe. It's game two on the play of the RUG matchup and you lead with a probe to see they have Rough/Tumble in hand and two lands, but no Force of Will so your hand is guaranteed to resolve.

The question: Do you go all in on the goblins to put RUG at at least 6 (less if they have fetchlands) and hope to draw-step into a hand to finish them off? The line of thought being they'll damage themselves to make a wee Tendril or Grapeshot lethal, provided your top deck skills are complete.

Back to the situation at hand, what do you do?

[Royce Walter]

1) I suck. There was a match where I could've possibly won, but who knows. Here's the situation, it's game three, my opponent has a Stoneforge and a Delver equipped with Sword of Feast and Famine. He pondered and kept on his turn. I know both of his other cards are lands. I'm at 13, my opponent is at 17 - storm is 5, haven't played a land. I resolve Ad Nauseam with RB floating and an untapped Gemstone Mine, it reveals Burning Wish, Silence, Burning Wish, Empty the Warrens, Silence, Gitaxian Probe, Giataxian Probe, Underground Sea, Rite of Flame (One in the yard).


2 + 1 + 2 + 4 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 = 13, you cheater. next time just say you're at 5 and keep flipping.

[davelin]

Here's a situational food-for-thought:

Opening hand is a 14 goblin hand; Lands, rituals, a Burning Wish, an LED, and a Gitaxian Probe. It's game two on the play of the RUG matchup and you lead with a probe to see they have Rough/Tumble in hand and two lands, but no Force of Will so your hand is guaranteed to resolve.

The question: Do you go all in on the goblins to put RUG at at least 6 (less if they have fetchlands) and hope to draw-step into a hand to finish them off? The line of thought being they'll damage themselves to make a wee Tendril or Grapeshot lethal, provided your top deck skills are complete.

Back to the situation at hand, what do you do?

I wouldn't mind twist myself even if I can bring my opponent to 6.

[HerrGevatter]

Here's a situational food-for-thought:

Opening hand is a 14 goblin hand; Lands, rituals, a Burning Wish, an LED, and a Gitaxian Probe. It's game two on the play of the RUG matchup and you lead with a probe to see they have Rough/Tumble in hand and two lands, but no Force of Will so your hand is guaranteed to resolve.

The question: Do you go all in on the goblins to put RUG at at least 6 (less if they have fetchlands) and hope to draw-step into a hand to finish them off? The line of thought being they'll damage themselves to make a wee Tendril or Grapeshot lethal, provided your top deck skills are complete.

Back to the situation at hand, what do you do?

I made almost this exact play and it didn't work out for me. I saw fetch, brainstorm, spell pierce, spell snare x2, rough//tumble, daze. He brainstormed into a second land and I couldn't recover.

The difference is I had the Empty the Warrens in hand, not a Burning Wish. With a Burning Wish in hand I'd do something else, whether it be Reforge the Soul, Diminishing Returns, or even Past in Flames. But probably one of the first two.

[Bryant Cook]

2 + 1 + 2 + 4 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 = 13, you cheater. next time just say you're at 5 and keep flipping.

Asshat. It might've been one Silence or one Probe, but it really doesn't matter.

[Lemnear]

Back to the situation at hand, what do you do?

Depending on yoir opponents hand, you either slow roll till you find a second protection spell to dismember rough/tumble or you go for dim.ret.

Wasting all your resources without a chance to kill your opponent for turns is a losing play, so goblins are no option

[Jay_Gatz]

2 + 1 + 2 + 4 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 = 13, you cheater. next time just say you're at 5 and keep flipping.
No one can claim that storm players are good at math.

[Koby]

An interesting scenario came up in Joe's Miracle stream tonite.

It's Game 3 versus The EPIC Storm. We made a misplay by letting Xantid Swarm resolve, then decided to jump in front of it with Clique and hopefully disrupt on the combo player's Turn 3. He has not made a land drop, and Storm is 1 (Clique).

http://i.imgur.com/uB7AGN2.png

What should the Miracle player take, and why?
Assume that the Sideboard for BWish has no limit, and any Sorcery could be used.
We don't know what card is on top of the deck.

Show your work :)

[Sloshthedark]

An interesting scenario came up in Joe's Miracle stream tonite.

Show your work :)

looks simple, DR - because you're dead with CC 0 on your top

[Lemnear]

Answered this already in the Miracles Thread. Slosh is spot-on.

[ThomasDowd]

An interesting scenario came up in Joe's Miracle stream tonite.

It's Game 3 versus The EPIC Storm. We made a misplay by letting Xantid Swarm resolve, then decided to jump in front of it with Clique and hopefully disrupt on the combo player's Turn 3. He has not made a land drop, and Storm is 1 (Clique).

http://i.imgur.com/uB7AGN2.png

What should the Miracle player take, and why?
Assume that the Sideboard for BWish has no limit, and any Sorcery could be used.
We don't know what card is on top of the deck.

Show your work :)

Storm side.

No cards taken: go for it. lead with rite of flame> rite of flame( see the flip). wish If resolves. get kill engine( IGG/PiF). d rit. petal. kill engine( recurring second wish.

-loses to CB on one or two
CB player counter the second ritual. if you don't stop that you likely lose on the spot unless the top card is a two. a one in this situation also stops them cold.

Wish taken: one unknown, no redundancy, but they can also draw out to one of the 6 tutors left (6/37) / land
- loses to CB on two. two lines open if CB is 0 or 1: rip 0 cmc mana source(9 lands, 2petals, 3 chrome mox, 4 LED.) and DR(likely beats CB on one) or ritual out ( beats CB on 0)

-petal taken:best card to take is the petal stops line that beats CB on one. hardest line for tendrils player i think. prevents DR from just being cast if another card is taken and a 0 mana source is drawn: 9 lands, 2petals, 3 chrome mox, 4 LED. ( 18/37 outs almost 50%. don't take wish)
-loses to CB on one or two


depends on the left over remains in CB deck. not sure on distribution( helpful form CB player viewpoint, which i presume would know the contents of their deck ;))

I know I wouldn't play CB without knowing my outs by heart

too much ritual redundancy (hope for a one)
taking the petal puts them off the 6 mana required if you have a one( stops the line that has a chance to beat the one on top)
and a two just stops them


edit: was the last ponder a shuffle or a set?
if he is attacking with swarm he is killing you now so presumably has all he needs. the third card down on ponder if set is probably not relevant, but still has the most chances to be a zero mana source to open up the most ways to beat CB.

[Lemnear]

Storm side.

No cards taken: go for it. lead with rite of flame> rite of flame( see the flip). wish If resolves. get kill engine( IGG/PiF). d rit. petal. kill engine( recurring second wish.

-loses to CB on one or two
CB player counter the second ritual. if you don't stop that you likely lose on the spot unless the top card is a two. a one in this situation also stops them cold.

Wish taken: one unknown, no redundancy, but they can also draw out to one of the 6 tutors left (6/37) / land
- loses to CB on two. two lines open if CB is 0 or 1: rip 0 cmc mana source(9 lands, 2petals, 3 chrome mox, 4 LED.) and DR(likely beats CB on one) or ritual out ( beats CB on 0)

-petal taken:best card to take is the petal stops line that beats CB on one. hardest line for tendrils player i think. prevents DR from just being cast if another card is taken and a 0 mana source is drawn: 9 lands, 2petals, 3 chrome mox, 4 LED. ( 18/37 outs almost 50%. don't take wish)
-loses to CB on one or two


depends on the left over remains in CB deck. not sure on distribution( helpful form CB player viewpoint, which i presume would know the contents of their deck ;))

I know I wouldn't play CB without knowing my outs by heart

too much ritual redundancy (hope for a one)
taking the petal puts them off the 6 mana required if you have a one( stops the line that has a chance to beat the one on top)
and a two just stops them


edit: was the last ponder a shuffle or a set?
if he is attacking with swarm he is killing you now so presumably has all he needs. the third card down on ponder if set is probably not relevant, but still has the most chances to be a zero mana source to open up the most ways to beat CB.

Why should you take the Petal as a +1 manasource instead of a +2 one especially with an active Counterbalance in a deck playing 22+ 0cc cards?

[ThomasDowd]

Why should you take the Petal as a +1 manasource instead of a +2 one especially with an active Counterbalance in a deck playing 22+ 0cc cards?

don't know. I think taking the second line from them is better when the top card is unknown than relying on the coin flip from counterbalance. can't stop the ritual line unless you hit a one, there are still draws(9 lands+probes, + rituals) that win them the game if you take a ritual through a zero on CB. note: these draws also have a chance to win through a one on CB (+any artifact mana,- probes- rituals)

Taking petal nukes their zero line and you need a one.

Might be having the luxury of choice but it makes me feel more in control and comfortable about the situation. knowing that i have the means to beat 0 and 1 is convenient (dead to 2 anyway). taking redundant mana such as rituals when if you don't hit a one on CB you are likely dead anyway seems like a waste.

the only cards i wouldn't want are the disruption, mana cantrips, and BW so maybe 15 ish cards? the infernal tutors are still pretty good. can go get another rite or rit depending on what you took.


i think the situation is all in on having a one on top for CB

[Lemnear]

don't know. I think taking the second line from them is better when the top card is unknown than relying on the coin flip from counterbalance. can't stop the ritual line unless you hit a one, there are still draws(9 lands+probes, + rituals) that win them the game if you take a ritual through a zero on CB. note: these draws also have a chance to win through a one on CB (+any artifact mana,- probes- rituals)

Taking petal nukes their zero line and you need a one.

Might be having the luxury of choice but it makes me feel more in control and comfortable about the situation. knowing that i have the means to beat 0 and 1 is convenient (dead to 2 anyway). taking redundant mana such as rituals when if you don't hit a one on CB you are likely dead anyway seems like a waste.

the only cards i wouldn't want are the disruption, mana cantrips, and BW so maybe 15 ish cards? the infernal tutors are still pretty good. can go get another rite or rit depending on what you took.


i think the situation is all in on having a one on top for CB

The point is that they need the "redundant mana" to do anything that matters and still need to beat the blind-flip. Sure they can rip a discard off the top and Ride the Goblins, but you still have the Brainstorm left to find a solution the next turn. The Ritual limits the options to a minimum

[Megadeus]

I think I take a burning wish, which would cut him from getting pif and killing me. Assuming of course I don't have a 1 or two on top

[HammafistRoob]

Can't "ride the goblins" against us here, we have EE. I would take a Wish since we have FoW for the other one.

[Lemnear]

Can't "ride the goblins" against us here, we have EE. I would take a Wish since we have FoW for the other one.

You can't counter the Wish played this turn thanks to Xantid. If you bottom down a Wish and they draw a discard like Duress, they can get rid of the EE and smash your face with Goblins until you (hopefully) find a solution with the Brainstorm left.

If they draw mana off the Clique they can go for Diminishing Returns with even more mana floating than the 3 they already have, unless you have the 1cc topdeck which negates all outs regardless

[JPoJohnson]

The Dark Ritual is easily the right card to take.



Things to keep in mind, guys:

1. Miracles cannot cast spells this turn due to the attacking Xantid Swarm[/card] (Other than the [cards]Vendilion Clique that was cast in response to the attack).
2. A Counterbalance reveal of 1 or 2 will shut down the storm player for this turn.



What I want to know is this: Why not cast Brainstorm in response and be able to somewhat control what the top card would be at that point? I think there's a much greater chance of the storm player holding redundancy in his hand than being able to beat a 1 or 2 perma-counter trigger for his turn. Am I mistaken? Placing Counterspell back on top means that I need 1 of 60 cards in my hand (Ad Nauseam) and finding and placing a 1CMC back on top shuts down cantrips/rituals. I think putting a 2CMC blind on top would be a good choice and would most likely burn through several of their rituals and a tutor in one go.

[davelin]

Geez that interface is ugly..

[Megadeus]

If you BS in response you can't clique and he gets to keep swarm. I like the block, take wish. If you don't take wish, assuming nothing on top to counter anything, he can go, rite RR, rite RRRR, PETAL, wish RR, RETURNS with a petal left and a land drop to make.

[Lemnear]

If you BS in response you can't clique and he gets to keep swarm. I like the block, take wish. If you don't take wish, assuming nothing on top to counter anything, he can go, rite RR, rite RRRR, PETAL, wish RR, RETURNS with a petal left and a land drop to make.

There a two wishes. Taking one results into Dim.Ret. with AT LEAST 3 mana float or EtW if he drew into a discard Spell. Taking nothing results into a PIF kill. Taking Ritual results into a Dim.Ret. with a single mana float.

To me, the last seems the best from the perspective of Miracles

[Koby]

There a two wishes. Taking one results into Dim.Ret. with AT LEAST 3 mana float or EtW if he drew into a discard Spell. Taking nothing results into a PIF kill. Taking Ritual results into a Dim.Ret. with a single mana float.

To me, the last seems the best from the perspective of Miracles

That was my "less than 1 minute" conclusion as well, but there were a lot of differing opinions about that line of play from the other viewers. (FYI, I was viewing, not playing. The actions taken in the game don't really matter for this decision point.)

For consideration:
What card would replace Dark Ritual that could worsen the scenario for Miracles?
Would there be a substantial difference in replacing Dark Ritual with a land (net -1 mana)? With LED (net +1 mana)?

The assumption is neither player knows the top card of the Miracles deck.

A Zero on top would stop Lotus Petal and a potential LED topdeck, thus shutting off the 3rd source of black. See note below.
A One on top would stop all the rituals. Thanks for playing. GG.
A Two on top would stop all the tutors. Thanks for playing. GG.


Assuming Miracles having a Zero on top (since all others are auto-wins), taking the DR would make black mana the choke point and limit the win conditions to EtW. The live re-draws off Clique would then be:


3 Gemstone Mine, 2 City of Brass, 1 Underground Sea, 2 fetchlands = 8 lands
3 Dark Ritual
EDIT: 2 Rite of Flame
1 Thoughtseize & 2 Cabal Therapy
1 Ad Nauseam
+ cantrips -- outside the scope of this analysis. I don't have time to work these scenarios out.


A total of 17 cards in a 47 card deck, or 36.2% live draws. Seems low for TES and high for Miracles to chose this line.
This 36.2% would allow TES to play three (4?) lines:

Cast discard to muck the EE, then proceed to EtW for (Clique,Petal,RoF,RoF,Discard,BW->EtW,EtW) 14 Goblins, which gives Miracles 2 draw steps to find a sweeper.
Cast Dark Ritual to win with a PIF line (rituals, BW->PIF, rituals, BW->Tendrils)
Cast Rite of Flame to win with a PIF line (Mine->RoF(RR),RoF(RRRR),RoF(RRRRRRR), BW->PIF (R),RoF(RRRR), RoF(RRRRRR), RoF(RRRRRRR), BW->Tendrils (RRRRR+USea+Petal) = Strom 10)
Cast Ad Nauseam with R floating from 19 life
Would a land help in this case? It only changes the mana from 9 to 8, and prevents BW->Thoughtseize, then BW->EtW

Alternatively, DReturns is still open, but with only a single R left over. TES would need to draw a Dark Ritual and a land to be able to win out of this situation. I'm not sure how good those odds are.

Are there any other lines I'm missing from the TES perspective?

(Bryant's list from the OP is used for consideration, which plays 2 Cabal Therapy and 1 Thoughtseize maindeck. Assume this is G1 too for simplicity.)

[Bryant Cook]

That was my "less than 1 minute" conclusion as well, but there were a lot of differing opinions about that line of play from the other viewers. (FYI, I was viewing, not playing. The actions taken in the game don't really matter for this decision point.)

For consideration:
What card would replace Dark Ritual that could worsen the scenario for Miracles?
Would there be a substantial difference in replacing Dark Ritual with a land (net -1 mana)? With LED (net +1 mana)?

The assumption is neither player knows the top card of the Miracles deck.

A Zero on top would stop Lotus Petal and a potential LED topdeck, thus shutting off the 3rd source of black. See note below.
A One on top would stop all the rituals. Thanks for playing. GG.
A Two on top would stop all the tutors. Thanks for playing. GG.


Assuming Miracles having a Zero on top (since all others are auto-wins), taking the DR would make black mana the choke point and limit the win conditions to EtW. The live re-draws off Clique would then be:


3 Gemstone Mine, 2 City of Brass, 1 Underground Sea, 2 fetchlands = 8 lands
3 Dark Ritual
1 Thoughtseize & 2 Cabal Therapy
1 Ad Nauseam
+ cantrips -- outside the scope of this analysis. I don't have time to work these scenarios out.


A total of 15 cards in a 47 card deck, or 31.9% live draws. Seems low for TES and high for Miracles to chose this line.
This 31.9% would allow TES to play three (4?) lines:

Cast discard to muck the EE, then proceed to EtW for (Clique,Petal,RoF,RoF,Discard,BW->EtW,EtW) 14 Goblins, which gives Miracles 2 draw steps to find a sweeper.
Cast Dark Ritual to win with a PIF line (rituals, BW->PIF, rituals, BW->Tendrils)
Cast Ad Nauseam with R floating from 19 life
Would a land help in this case? It only changes the mana from 9 to 8, and prevents BW->Thoughtseize, then BW->EtW

Alternatively, DReturns is still open, but with only a single R left over. TES would need to draw a Dark Ritual and a land to be able to win out of this situation. I'm not sure how good those odds are.

Are there any other lines I'm missing from the TES perspective?

(Bryant's list from the OP is used for consideration, which plays 2 Cabal Therapy and 1 Thoughtseize maindeck. Assume this is G1 too for simplicity.)

If he drew a third Rite of Flame a Past in Flames kill would also be a consideration.

[Koby]

If he drew a third Rite of Flame a Past in Flames kill would also be a consideration.

Noted. I'll adjust the post to account for it.

[Lemnear]

That was my "less than 1 minute" conclusion as well, but there were a lot of differing opinions about that line of play from the other viewers. (FYI, I was viewing, not playing. The actions taken in the game don't really matter for this decision point.)

For consideration:
What card would replace Dark Ritual that could worsen the scenario for Miracles?
Would there be a substantial difference in replacing Dark Ritual with a land (net -1 mana)? With LED (net +1 mana)?

The assumption is neither player knows the top card of the Miracles deck.

A Zero on top would stop Lotus Petal and a potential LED topdeck, thus shutting off the 3rd source of black. See note below.
A One on top would stop all the rituals. Thanks for playing. GG.
A Two on top would stop all the tutors. Thanks for playing. GG.


Assuming Miracles having a Zero on top (since all others are auto-wins), taking the DR would make black mana the choke point and limit the win conditions to EtW. The live re-draws off Clique would then be:


3 Gemstone Mine, 2 City of Brass, 1 Underground Sea, 2 fetchlands = 8 lands
3 Dark Ritual
EDIT: 2 Rite of Flame
1 Thoughtseize & 2 Cabal Therapy
1 Ad Nauseam
+ cantrips -- outside the scope of this analysis. I don't have time to work these scenarios out.


A total of 17 cards in a 47 card deck, or 36.2% live draws. Seems low for TES and high for Miracles to chose this line.
This 36.2% would allow TES to play three (4?) lines:

Cast discard to muck the EE, then proceed to EtW for (Clique,Petal,RoF,RoF,Discard,BW->EtW,EtW) 14 Goblins, which gives Miracles 2 draw steps to find a sweeper.
Cast Dark Ritual to win with a PIF line (rituals, BW->PIF, rituals, BW->Tendrils)
Cast Rite of Flame to win with a PIF line (Mine->RoF(RR),RoF(RRRR),RoF(RRRRRRR), BW->PIF (R),RoF(RRRR), RoF(RRRRRR), RoF(RRRRRRR), BW->Tendrils (RRRRR+USea+Petal) = Strom 10)
Cast Ad Nauseam with R floating from 19 life
Would a land help in this case? It only changes the mana from 9 to 8, and prevents BW->Thoughtseize, then BW->EtW

Alternatively, DReturns is still open, but with only a single R left over. TES would need to draw a Dark Ritual and a land to be able to win out of this situation. I'm not sure how good those odds are.

Are there any other lines I'm missing from the TES perspective?

(Bryant's list from the OP is used for consideration, which plays 2 Cabal Therapy and 1 Thoughtseize maindeck. Assume this is G1 too for simplicity.)

I tip my hat for all the work you put into this.

As I mentioned earlier, the chance to have a 0cc card on top is pretty damn high and every 1cc or 2cc on top is a game winner as well. Making black mana the "chokepoint" is ergo a wise decision considering the gamestate and the possible blanks TES might draw.

[Dzra]

3) 6-3 day one with two byes in your preferred format is worse than being diagnosed with Cancer.

12) Bad luck happens sometimes.

14) Thalia is a hooker.

I would like to second these sentiments.

[Holtzi]

Hello everyone,

I recently started playing, well honestly trying to play, TES as I was looking for a fun Deck for my return to Legacy.
A friend of mine is playing a Bant Build which I find hard to overcome.
Preboard the matchup seems ok overall.

Maindeck he has 4 Force of Will and 3 Spell Pierce combined with a clock mainly consisting of 4 Goyfs and 3 Geist of Saint Traft.
But postboard it gets really hard for me. He boards in 2 Flusterstorm, 2 Surgical Extractions , 2 Ethersworn Canonist and a 2nd Clique.
I´m not sure how to board properly against this deck.

Atm I take out 1x Ponder/1Infernal Tutor/1Chromme Mox for 2xChain of Vapor and 1 Thoughtseize.
Not sure whether Xantid Swarms or Silence are better in this matchup.

I hope you can help me with this problem as my winrate is only about 25% in matches :frown:

Greetings Holtzi

[Megadeus]

Combination Permanent Based hate like Canonist plus seemingly infinite countermagic is just not easy to deal with. You just dont have the time. Do you guys think just straight boarding in the second empty to hopefully improve the odds of going off for goblins on T1 is a decent idea?

[Asthereal]

Combination Permanent Based hate like Canonist plus seemingly infinite countermagic is just not easy to deal with. You just dont have the time. Do you guys think just straight boarding in the second empty to hopefully improve the odds of going off for goblins on T1 is a decent idea?
Improving one card (boarding in EtW for something less optimal) but worsening four (Wish cannot find EtW anymore) seems bad.
Perhaps you should find room for a second EtW in the sideboard if you really want to board one in.

[Lemnear]

Hello everyone,

I recently started playing, well honestly trying to play, TES as I was looking for a fun Deck for my return to Legacy.
A friend of mine is playing a Bant Build which I find hard to overcome.
Preboard the matchup seems ok overall.

Maindeck he has 4 Force of Will and 3 Spell Pierce combined with a clock mainly consisting of 4 Goyfs and 3 Geist of Saint Traft.
But postboard it gets really hard for me. He boards in 2 Flusterstorm, 2 Surgical Extractions , 2 Ethersworn Canonist and a 2nd Clique.
I´m not sure how to board properly against this deck.

Atm I take out 1x Ponder/1Infernal Tutor/1Chromme Mox for 2xChain of Vapor and 1 Thoughtseize.
Not sure whether Xantid Swarms or Silence are better in this matchup.

I hope you can help me with this problem as my winrate is only about 25% in matches :frown:

Greetings Holtzi

7 Counterspells is no resistance tbh. You should overcome that easily and Surgical Extraction is pointless against TES. Boarding out speed-components is wrong as you can't let him establish a hatebear and counters. I would bring in Swarms (as he will boar out StoP) and permament removal for the Silences and a Ponder. You can just sidestep the hate or race it.

Greetings from Berlin

[Asthereal]

Surgical Extraction is pointless against TES.
I must disagree with you on this. If Bant has enough not very useful cards to board out, Extractions should definitely come in. How are you going to win if he counters a Wish and the Extracts all of them? Assuming the Bant player also has SFM->Batterskull, you might not want to have Empty the Warrens as only out...
Another one I faced in testing was when I was setting up a "Brainstorm, Probe-resp. sac two LEDs" kill, and I realised the Extraction made me shuffle away my Ad Nauseam. Fringe case, I give you that, but it happened.

Of course Extractions are not the biggest issue, but they can be a nuisance.

Other than that you are right. Fighting through 9 permission spells post board is fine. The Canonists will be a problem, so perhaps I would board -1 Mox, -1 Infernal, +2 Chain. TES should never board too much. The deck can be a bit scetchy as it is, we shouldn't make it worse.

(Edit: made an error in my last bit.)

[Lemnear]

I must disagree with you on this. If Bant has enough not very useful cards to board out, Extractions should definitely come in. How are you going to win if he counters a Wish and the Extracts all of them? Assuming the Bant player also has SFM->Batterskull, you might not want to have Empty the Warrens as only out...
Another one I faced in testing was when I was setting up a "Brainstorm, Probe-resp. sac two LEDs" kill, and I realised the Extraction made me shuffle away my Ad Nauseam. Fringe case, I give you that, but it happened.

Of course Extractions are not the biggest issue, but they can be a nuisance.

Other than that you are right. Fighting through 9 permission spells post board is fine. The Canonists will be a problem, so perhaps I would board -1 Mox, -1 Infernal, +2 Chain. TES should never board too much. The deck can be a bit scetchy as it is, we shouldn't make it worse.

(Edit: made an error in my last bit.)

The SFM->Batterskull nonsense is the reason I switched to the 4 Therapies in my 75 to get rid of that shit and keep Goblins as an option alive.

Get a Wish countered and extracted is a worst-case-scenario but you can sure work around that. I see Bant and UWR players keep boarding RIP and Extraction against me and I was never impressed. For your last part, I disagree with that boarding plan, because you want to go for AN asap against limited counters and hatebears. This isn't Tempo that forced you into the midgame

[Asthereal]

So you would side just one Chain and run a greater risk of losing against a resolved Canonist?
Swarms should help though. Perhaps -3 Silence, +2 Swarm, +1 discard spell (Batterskull).

[Mindlash]

So you would side just one Chain and run a greater risk of losing against a resolved Canonist?
Swarms should help though. Perhaps -3 Silence, +2 Swarm, +1 discard spell (Batterskull).

He sides in 2 Chain of Vapor as he said: -4 Silence, -1 Ponder, +3 Xantid Swarm, +2 Chain of Vapor.
I guess 3 Cabal Therapy as discard spells should be enough to handle Batterskull due to the possibility to flashback it through goblins. More discard may be ok, but I do not like the idea of siding to much. Lemnear also plays only one Cabal Therapy in his sideboard to make it wishable if I remember correctly. There is no sideable discard in his board I think.

[Asthereal]

Ah, I misread that.

[Lemnear]

He sides in 2 Chain of Vapor as he said: -4 Silence, -1 Ponder, +3 Xantid Swarm, +2 Chain of Vapor.
I guess 3 Cabal Therapy as discard spells should be enough to handle Batterskull due to the possibility to flashback it through goblins. More discard may be ok, but I do not like the idea of siding to much. Lemnear also plays only one Cabal Therapy in his sideboard to make it wishable if I remember correctly. There is no sideable discard in his board I think.

I'm so proud of you, Chris ;D

Thus as an Alternative, you can think about Decays instead of the chains if you worry about the counterspells, but I always end up flipping the Decays to Ad Nauseam ;P



Edit 1: I'm still trying to fit faces to usernames after the BoM. There were 2 french gentlemen that I had a chat with after the rounds, I'm not able to remember their names. Forgive me :(
Jaycounet is the only frenchman I sure remember :)

Edit 2: Mindlash, It's still outta my mind, that your Friend was able to identify me soly of my dices and appearance :D Greetings to him.

Edit 3: Still thinking about adjustments according to my latest issues about the uprising various hate, which is hard to beat.

Edit 4: thinking about HotS Vol. 6 ... Not sure where to find a variable and balanced metagame to catch some of the more interresting matchups like Patriot, bUrg Delver, Esperblade, etc. rather than the combo- & combo-hate-metagame of Berlin after the downfall of my previous playgroup.

Edit 5: Maybe setting up a stream instead of those reports ... reports are so 2004. Yeah, I'm a dinosaur...

[Machahiko]

Watching stream with commentary would be very interesting, I'd follow and watch for sure. MTGO axed daily events so tournaments are kind of out of picture. Someone from source should set up a tournament in cockatrice AND stream that tournament with commentary. :)

[Mindlash]

Edit 2: Mindlash, It's still outta my mind, that your Friend was able to identify me soly of my dices and appearance :D Greetings to him.


Hehe yeah I showed him the picture of your deck and dices, because I am just not able to get some dices in mana colors that I really like and yours did look good. I still do not get why online shops only sell dices in packs of 50 or the ones who sell them as singles want you to get to 20 € order before shipping -.- It seems I am doomed to write down mana and storm till the end of days even in private games :D

Lars also has rough times here because he plays Jund and our friends are all playing Dredge, ANT, TES or Belcher :D Maybe some evil memories flashed in his mind while seeing your deck and dices at BOM :D

I am still unsure about what to play at the next big tournament in Hanau at the end of the year. After BOM I gave Timo's ANT list a try at a bigger tournament. Starting 4:0 I was pretty confident about the deck only to loose the following two rounds to RUG and Reanimator (the last one due to not finding business in a million cantrips after going off with PiF). Maybe I give Jona's list a try with additional stormspells after boarding and more businessspells in general it might have won me those games :/

I still like TES very much too...but there where two rough games versus tempo where my mana got raped that hard...I really wanted to bite the table :D But I guess I will take my TES cards with to Hanau for at least a trial or something like that. After going off no strom deck storms harder which is lots of fun to me :D

Greetings Chris

Edit:


Watching stream with commentary would be very interesting, I'd follow and watch for sure. MTGO axed daily events so tournaments are kind of out of picture. Someone from source should set up a tournament in cockatrice AND stream that tournament with commentary. :)

I am not sure if it works. Aren't there some legal issues with Cockatrice and Hasbro? I don't know if sites like twitch and so on are ok with streaming this. Though I must admit the quality of the games would be a lot better in this way :)

[Machahiko]

Well, MTGO tournaments got axed, I guess you could still play the matches in MTGO but it would be a nightmare to have someone to do a commentary on these. MTGO also shuts out a lot of people who don't want to waste their money on a product that doesn't get developed at all and you don't have any security about how long your cards are going to be relevant there. What if MTGO just shuts down or tournaments never come back, your investment that could be over 1000€ would be lost forever.

The legal hassle between Hasbro, Wizards and cockatrice do make this hard and I don't want any troubles to the source due to this.

[deviant]

If you want to do something like this on modo though, I have most of the delver decks built and can play the bad guy for you :)
Or if you want to do the ever-delightful tes mirror I could do that too <3

[Lemnear]

Maybe it was more revealing that I said that I'm from Berlin and know Carsten. Lars only counted 1 + 1 together. Tbh, meeting all the awesome peeps that weekend was by far the best about BoM :)


While ANT has significant advantages against stifles and softcounters due to Cabal Ritual and PIF to flashback the Discard, the hatebear issue favors TES because you are simply faster than those. However, the combination of stuff like hatebears, counters and/or discard across recent archtypes is a problem for both storm-subtypes and with either you'll stumble at some point. I'm still trying to find a solution, regardless of the storm-subtype.


If you want to do something like this on modo though, I have most of the delver decks built and can play the bad guy for you :)
Or if you want to do the ever-delightful tes mirror I could do that too <3

I can play the storm mirror with Carsten Kotter or my Protegé Kai every week ... i'm satisfied ;)

I still don't have a MODO account; not planning to make one tbh

[Mindlash]

While ANT has significant advantages against stifles and softcounters due to Cabal Ritual and PIF to flashback the Discard, the hatebear issue favors TES because you are simply faster than those. However, the combination of stuff like hatebears, counters and/or discard across recent archtypes is a problem for both storm-subtypes and with either you'll stumble at some point. I'm still trying to find a solution, regardless of the storm-subtype.

Outrunning hatebears was my reason to take TES to BOM over ANT. I was exhausted of seeing turn 2 Teegs and Cannonists and go the long road with ANT every time while TES gave me some of those early (free) wins against those hatebear decks :) But it is good to have access to both decks and pick them dependant on my mood :D

Whats with Toxic Deluge? It is the only card to answer all hatebears as far as I know. But for ANT without Burning Wish I hate to reveal them to AN and in TES 3 CMC may be a bit to much for a wish target.

[Lemnear]

Outrunning hatebears was my reason to take TES to BOM over ANT. I was exhausted of seeing turn 2 Teegs and Cannonists and go the long road with ANT every time while TES gave me some of those early (free) wins against those hatebear decks :) But it is good to have access to both decks and pick them dependant on my mood :D

Whats with Toxic Deluge? It is the only card to answer all hatebears as far as I know. But for ANT without Burning Wish I hate to reveal them to AN and in TES 3 CMC may be a bit to much for a wish target.

Yes, the deck did a good work overwhelming D&T round 1 in the Mainevent for me. :)

If a single hatebear would be a problem, Disfigure, Pyroclasm or DoN would do the trick too without killing you off AN flips or preventing AN due to the overall lifeloss as a result of using the card. 3cc is still a lot of mana to have available.

The Problem is that boarding solutions to permaments doesn't help with fighting through countermagic, nor is Silence able to overcome Counter + Discard/Hatebear which was a problem at the BoM and is since when

[BrettF]

TES Report
sdematt’s Vancouver Legacy Fall Classic

I started off with Lemnear’s list and considered a few changes:
1- Ari and Bryant both said they regretting not having the 2nd SB discard to board one in.
2- I havent sided in my decays in month’s so im gonna try and metagame with those slots instead.
3- My read on the meta was that nobody plays much delver, theres a ton of combo mirrors, and Matt is for sure on Junk. +1 Telemin, +1 Deathmark.

4 Lion's Eye Diamond
4 Lotus Petal
4 Dark Ritual
4 Gitaxian Probe
4 Ponder
4 Brainstorm
2 Underground Sea
1 Volcanic Island
4 Burning Wish
3 Cabal Therapy
4 Silence
1 Ad Nauseam
3 Misty Rainforest
4 Gemstone Mine
2 City of Brass
3 Chrome Mox
4 Rite of Flame
1 Empty the Warrens
4 Infernal Tutor
SB: 1 Massacre
SB: 1 Deathmark
SB: 1 Telemin Performance
SB: 1 Cabal Therapy
SB: 1 Thoughtseize
SB: 2 Chain of Vapor
SB: 2 Xantid Swarm
SB: 1 Grapeshot
SB: 1 Empty the Warrens
SB: 1 Diminishing Returns
SB: 1 Past in Flames
SB: 1 Ill-Gotten Gains
SB: 1 Tendrils of Agony

Zach on UWR Delver

R1G1- Zach starts on the play with delver and clocks me hard. I try to diminishing returns with silence on my last turn but i whiff.
SB: -1 Infernal Tutor, -1 ponder//+1 Cabal therapy, +1 Chain of vapor
R1G2- I Probe and see force so i can’t blitz him, but he has no clock. We both develop for a while and i set up a protected past in flames kill before he can clock me out.
R1G3- Probe reveals some sweet counters but no clock again. I hit him with some cabal therapy and he taps out on turn 3 to play a geist. I look down at my notes and am sure he is missing a blue card to pitch to force now, so i ad nauseam and win.

1-0

Chad(Warfordium) on ANT
R2G1- I kept a loose one with ETW, therapy and silence. Chad starts with duress on my cabal therapy. I hold up silence while i brick on draws and chad is stuck on one swamp. Chad duresses my silence and passes. I hail mary and make goblins flashing back therapy on cabal ritual. Double hit! Chad has two turns to draw LED for a PIF loop, he finds it.
SB: -1 Empty//+1 Cabal Therapy
R2G2 - I keep double cantrip, silence, LED, and lands. Ponder and decide draw an LED and leave a ponder on top. Cast LEDx2. Pass. Chad duresses and takes my ponder in hand. I draw the ponder from the top, cast it, shuffle, draw an LED. Cast LED (3 in play now). hold up silence. pass.
Chad cantrips. pass. I draw land, pass. Chad duresses into a silence and passes. He looks ready to combo so this is my last turn to draw buisness. brick. pass the turn. chad kills me.

1-1

Kayda on Merfolk
R3G1 - I’m on the play with a possible turn one hand. I probe seeing daze and tons of fish. Ponder. Pass. Kayda plays Vial, passes. I Make 12 goblins around daze and it gets there in combat.
SB: -1 Infernal, -1 Chrome Mox, - 1 ponder//+2 Xantid swarm, +1 Cabal Therapy
R3G2 - Kayda starts with Cursecatcher, i follow with xantid swarm. She lays a second catcher. I probe and find out my xantid is VS a hand of merfolk and no counters, but Xantid cant do anything about the catchers. I have to get like 4 lands in play to do anything. on the turn before im dead i xantid and then burning wish, she catchers me down from 6 floating to 4 floating. i go for diminishing returns and draw blanks and die.
R3G3 - I turn one on the play Probe and brainstorm into making 16 goblins. Gets there.

2-1

Matt(sdematt) on GBWrock
R4G1 - I’m on the play with a possible blitz but i brick my turn 1 brainstorm. Matt hits me back with some discard into lilliana. I peel an infernal with all my mana on board and go into an adnauseam from 15 and win.
SB: -4 silence, -1 empty//+2 chain of vapor, +1cabal therapy +1 Thoughtseize +1 Deathmark
R4G2 - Matt mulls to 6 and thoughtseizes me. I return fire and my thoughtseize reveals his 5 lands in hand! I rebuild for a turn or two and adnauseam into a win.

3-1

Marcel on UWR delver
R5G1 - We grind for a while and he beats me down. I get to Silence Diminishing Returns with UBR floating but i miss.
SB: -1 Infernal Tutor, -1 Ponder // +1 Cabal Therapy +1 Chain of Vapor
R5G2 - I turn 2 probe seeing Bolt, Bolt, Brainstorm, Brainstorm, Stoneforge, land. I therapy on brainstorms, make 14 goblins, flashback therapy on lightning bolt. Bring him to exactly 0 through batterskull.
R5G3 - We grind but then he gets me with probe seeing my 3 LEDS in hand and then Meddling mage on LED. Damn! Marcel wins.

3-2

*TOP8*
We had 17 players so even though i was 3-2 i made it to the top8 in 8th place.

Trenton on Shardless BUG (was 5-0 in swiss so hes on the play)
R6G1 - He mulls to 6 and doesnt have a discard spell for me. I gamble on his FoW and clear with 14 goblins that he cant answer.
SB: -1 infernal, -1 Chrome mox, -1 Poder//+2 Xantid Swarm +1 Cabal Therapy
R6G2 - He mulls to 6 again and lacks a spell again. I probe him seeing FOW but no blue card. I draw into a blitz for 16 goblins. He tries to draw golgari charm for 2 turns but cant find it.

4-2

Marcel on UWR delver (same from the swiss)
R7G1 - I’m on the draw and keep a good hand for grinding. I spend all game fighting his hand while he beats me down. I even bluff a couple silences to bait his counters out. I end up playing my 6th land and casting adnauseam from 9 but it doesnt get there.
SB: -1 Infernal tutor -1 Ponder // +1 Chain of Vapor +1 Cabal Therapy
R7G2 - I probe turn one and see Marcel kept a no land hand with live FOW. His hand is so good that if he draws a land i don’t think i can win though. I try to assemble a protected kill but he has a land by that time. We continue to grind for many many turns but since hes on the back foot from not getting an early clock. I end up protecting a huge past in flames and he scoops.
R7G3 - I probe and see no FOW, make 14 goblins and he cant answer it.

5-2

Finals VS Matt (sdematt)

R8G1 - I’m on the draw and it takes me a couple turns to find a kill through thoughtseize wasteland and lilliana. I end up burning wishing for diminishing returns, and casting it the next turn with R floating and a free land drop. It gets there into lethal tendrils.
SB: -4 silence, -1 empty//+2 chain of vapor, +1cabal therapy +1 Thoughtseize +1 Deathmark
R8G2 - Matt mulls to 6 and thoughtseizes me. I don’t have a good play and he follows with Teeg, Thalia, Tarmogoyf, Double Cabal therapy. I scoop.
R8G3 - I Cabal therapy Matt’s thalia. He Thoughtseizes me. I set up for an Adnauseam floating 6 on my next turn. He runs a thalia off the top! Damn! I cast my two LEDs, make a land drop, pass. He’s got two deathrites now, passes. If i draw a land or a burning wish i can either adnauseam with 6 floating even with thalia in play, or burning wish into massacre kill all his dudes. But i miss. He beats me down. I miss again. I’m dead!

5-3 (which somehow made me second place!) I win a SP Volcanic Island.

Hindsight:
-The deathmark might as well have been a karakas, then i could bring it in against rug for extra daze protection at least.
-I didn't draw burning wish against chad but i think it was the right call having Telemin SB.
-2 xantid swarms SB is enough
-2 discard spells SB is important, i wished for thoughtseize a lot while grinding VS tempo.
-Massacre didn't get cast but it's nice knowing your burning wishes are secret pyroclasms.
-No regrets cutting Abrupt Decays.
-Boarding up to 4 cabal therapy main while still rocking the goblins plan is sweet. Name FOW, Goblins, Flashback naming stoneforge/golgari charm/pernicious deed/pyroclasm/electrickery/engineered explosives ETC. Thanks Lemnear.

If anyone would have boarded differently let me know how and why, i am a humble learner of storm. Thank you!

[Lemnear]

Was a bit confused as you refered to me for the list, as I run the 4th fetch over the 3rd Mox as you know until I realized that you talked about the Therapies and the Telemin. :)

I'm investigating the options to replace the Chains (as Leyline left my Metagame and I rarely saw it at the BoM) to boost the Tempo-matchup. Having 1-2 additional copies of EtW in the SB to board in those in a deck with 4 CT in the 75 is something I have to take a closer look at to mimic the gameplan of Grinding Station.

Don't you think it's time to let IGG go? ;)

Small remark: in your second game against UWR you need to take the SFM with the flashback as you might have realized ... That's what CT is for: prevent your opponent from finding a solution to the Goblins



Congratz!
Give your Volcanic a good-night-Kiss ;D

[BrettF]

@Lemnear
Not ready to cut IGG. if i opened IT,BW,LED in my hand id be sad to not have that line available.

And yea i misjudged on that game deffinitly. He was better off not having to draw another stoneforge.

[Megadeus]

Was a bit confused as you refered to me for the list, as I run the 4th fetch over the 3rd Mox as you know until I realized that you talked about the Therapies and the Telemin. :)

I'm investigating the options to replace the Chains (as Leyline left my Metagame and I rarely saw it at the BoM) to boost the Tempo-matchup. Having 1-2 additional copies of EtW in the SB to board in those in a deck with 4 CT in the 75 is something I have to take a closer look at to mimic the gameplan of Grinding Station.

Don't you think it's time to let IGG go? ;)

Small remark: in your second game against UWR you need to take the SFM with the flashback as you might have realized ... That's what CT is for: prevent your opponent from finding a solution to the Goblins



Congratz!
Give your Volcanic a good-night-Kiss ;D
I agree with maybe finding another slot for an empty or two in the board. Like I said on the last page, I think boarding in an empty to possibly improve your odds of drawing it seems pretty solid vs the tempo MU, which seems to be a pretty popular archetype at the moment.

[Lemnear]

I agree with maybe finding another slot for an empty or two in the board. Like I said on the last page, I think boarding in an empty to possibly improve your odds of drawing it seems pretty solid vs the tempo MU, which seems to be a pretty popular archetype at the moment.

The idea of 3 EtW in the side popped up at the BoM as we were drunk in our hotel ... If i remember correctly :)

The difference is that boarding in the single copy of EtW kills your 4 Wishes in that matchup and the only option to increase natural EtW-draws postboard is to run more of them in the board. Obviously that results in you boarding out the Ad Nauseam + X for that idea. But atm it's just exactly that: an idea to test

[Final Fortune]

I agree in full, running the full set of ETW and Therapies has been amazing vs Delver.dec post-board. I think it's time we cut the Xantid Swarms, stop metagaming vs Reanimator and Show&Tell and just put all of our concentration into winning vs Delver and Miracles. At this point, I don't think we need anything more than Telemin Performance or Bribery vs Reanimator and Show&Tell, the Xantid Swarms are just awkward without a gold land because you can't win on the same turn you cast it like Silence and I'm really tired of boarding in Tropical Island for mana stability.

A SB like,

1 Tendrils of Agony
1 Grape Shot
3 Empty the Warrens
1 Diminishing Returns
1 Past in Flames
1 Telemin Performance
1 Cabal Therapy
3 Abrupt Decay

Seems pretty bare bones

I think you're going to find that if you stick with that SB plan tho' that you're going to want the 3rd Chrome Mox in order to be able to shit out Goblins T1.

[Megadeus]

Idk I like Swarm. It is actually decent vs those MU's because it allows for a silence that they can't interact with. It may actually be worse vs SnT though since Im sure some of the time your SnT opponent will be boarding in Pyroclasm.

[Lemnear]

I agree in full, running the full set of ETW and Therapies has been amazing vs Delver.dec post-board. I think it's time we cut the Xantid Swarms, stop metagaming vs Reanimator and Show&Tell and just put all of our concentration into winning vs Delver, hatebears and Miracles. At this point, I don't think we need anything more than Telemin Performance or Bribery vs Reanimator and Show&Tell, the Xantid Swarms are just awkward without a gold land because you can't win on the same turn you cast it like Silence and I'm really tired of boarding in Tropical Island for mana stability.

A SB like,

1 Tendrils of Agony
1 Grape Shot
3 Empty the Warrens
1 Diminishing Returns
1 Past in Flames
1 Telemin Performance
1 Cabal Therapy
3 Abrupt Decay

Seems pretty bare bones

I think you're going to find that if you stick with that SB plan tho' that you're going to want the 3rd Chrome Mox in order to be able to shit out Goblins T1.

Exactly the SB I had in mind (still wanted to keep 3 Swarms as your suggested board is only 12 cards) and the return of the 3rd Mox was in the back of my head as well, as we rely more on the natural T1 EtW and need less stable mana to fight through defense that once was my idea by switching the Mox for the 4th fetch


Edit: fixed your post

Edit 2: I really like the idea of profiting more from the speed of the deck and to race hatebears.

[Final Fortune]

Idk I like Swarm. It is actually decent vs those MU's because it allows for a silence that they can't interact with. It may actually be worse vs SnT though since Im sure some of the time your SnT opponent will be boarding in Pyroclasm.

The problem I have with Xantid Swarm is that one of its strengths is being able to cast it before the combo turn in order to recouperate the mana, and our manabase runs at 6 as opposed to 8 golden lands compared to the old days so the inherent efficiency of the card is much less and really requires a Tropical Island in the SB. Assumming you do fetch the Tropical Island in order to cast the Xantid Swarm, you now have an otherwise worthless land on the board for comboing out - so it's kind of a vicious cycle.

Personally, I'm pretty happy with just the base 8 disruption spells in the deck (4 Silence/4 Therapy) and then just hurling tokens at them. Playing the full set of ETW was old tech, but we never played it with a full set of Therapy before - which makes it pretty insane.

[Megadeus]

I like it in theory. I'm just not sure how good it is. I mean testing definitely needs to be done, but it seems like a decent plan. Though withtheup tick in golgari charm and even zealous persecution i guess we shall see

[Lemnear]

I like it in theory. I'm just not sure how good it is. I mean testing definitely needs to be done, but it seems like a decent plan. Though withtheup tick in golgari charm and even zealous persecution i guess we shall see

Yes, those are the options I already faced at the BoM weekend. I admit, I lived the dream twice there:

1) Blindcall FoW with Therapy, strip a FoW, make 12 Goblins, flashback for ZP in his hand while only having 1 mana left, win

2) he Drops SFM turn 3, digs for Skull, I Probe to see Spell Pierce and Skull + X, Therapy which he pierces, making 14 Goblins, flashback CT for Skull, win

[Lemnear]

For references:

5-Color-Goblins

4 Gemstone Mine
2 City of Brass
2 Underground Sea
1 Volcanic Island
1 Scalding Tarn
1 Misty Rainforest
1 Flooded Strand
3 Chrome Mox
4 Lotus Petal
4 Lion’s Eye Diamond
4 Dark Ritual
4 Rite of Flame
4 Burning Wish
4 Infernal Tutor
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
4 Gitaxian Probe
4 Silence
3 Cabal Therapy
1 Empty the Warrens
1 Ad Nauseam


3 Xantid Swarm
3 Abrupt Decay
1 Cabal Therapy
1 Telemin Performance
1 Grapeshot
3 Empty the Warrens
1 Tendrils of Agony
1 Past in Flames
1 Diminishing Returns



Edit: 27 users browsing?! Wow

[Bryant Cook]

My newest list is on the opening post.

I think with the rise of UWr, along with the continuation of RUG it's tough to justify not playing Carpet of Flowers. I've made room by shaving the second discard spell and the two copies of Chain of Vapor. I've replaced one of the Chains with Revoke Existence so that we're not absolutely cold to Leyline of Sanctity (Note Lemnear's list up above lacks an answer). The problem with not having an answer to Leyline is that we'll be forced to make Goblins in a match-up where they could play out kill us after we pass the turn. That said, I'm not sold on Revoke. Part of me wonders if it should still be a Chain of Vapor for more versatility, the brightside is we'll have a Wishable answer to non-creature problems.

EDIT: Also, Lemnear, it's called Five-Color-Aggro-Goblins.