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

[Bryant Cook]

Bryant, I've been wondering, how do you handle storm combo mirrors with no Thoughtseize in board? Given how bad EtW is, I tended to swap it for Tendrils or PiF, but with no discard spell to Wish for, I think the only viable card to side in would be Tendrils. It's just too awkward having nothing really impactful to Wish for if you side the PiF in and have no Seize. As I've tested more, I've founded boarding in Tutor to be hit-or-miss, but Tendrils seems just ok as well.

Also, for you or anyone else using the more current list, does anyone else side out a discard spell against control, to open it up as a Wish target? I've enjoyed it, especially in games where I'm waiting on Decay or bringing Swarm in anyway.

I would side in Tutor as the games go longer if they're not over in a turn, making PIF a great wish target.

I side out a Therapy because Empty is bad against Miracles making Therapy less important. Duress is also a much higher value as it guarantees hitting the problematic card on turn 1/2 (One of the few match-ups where the is relevant). My current plan against Miracles is -1 ETW, -1 Therapy, -2 Chrome Mox, -4 Ponder, +3 Decay, +2 Swarm, +2 Pithing Needle and +1 Tendrils. I prefer to keep on the mox rather than a single ponder as this is a match-up where Ad Nauseam shines, I want to make damn sure after it resolves that I win.

[Lemnear]

I love it! But I hate the Thoughtseize, so I've put the Cabal Therapy as a wish target.

There is no reason to not just play a Duress in the SB then, if you hate the lifeloss.


Duress requires less play skill?
Therapy is the best card as Wish target?

For a Silence list it also makes sense not to play a full set if you often get into trouble with the fact that Probe is the only peek effect you have apart from burning your first Therapy. That was for me the main reason not to run 4x Therapy in my old Silence list.

We have 2-3 Duress, 4 Probes and even the option to Wish for Thoughtseize/Duress. Thats 7-10 peek-effects. In addition to that we still have our rule of thumb: "Name what your fear". Especially under the assumption, that this is an EtW-Deck, you absolutely want to draw Therapies asap to make a quick EtW deadly.

Silence is a weak argument for reducing Therapies, as the value of the white instant in the current metagame is not that good for (hopefully) known reasons.


I don't know why you are cutting the Gemstones now that Wasteland is on it's minimum.

Unless you also decide to run Basics, replacing Gemstones with Fetches/Duals has nothing to do with Wasteland. Increasing the number of lands was a reaction to Daze and Wasteland which also had positive side effects for mulligans, but if you run Gemstones or Duals/Fetches doesn't matter. You can even say, that the reduction of Wastelands in the average metagame makes only running Tropical/Bayou paired with additional shuffle effects more appealing than several Gemstones which deplete, offer no shuffle and reveal your decks identity, because your sole green manasource gets rarely destroyed then anyways. Ergo, cutting Gemstones is no reaction to Wastelands, but rather to our reduced color requirements, with the goal to increase card quality in combination with our cantrips.

[wonderPreaux]

I would side in Tutor as the games go longer if they're not over in a turn, making PIF a great wish target.

I side out a Therapy because Empty is bad against Miracles making Therapy less important. Duress is also a much higher value as it guarantees hitting the problematic card on turn 1/2 (One of the few match-ups where the is relevant). My current plan against Miracles is -1 ETW, -1 Therapy, -2 Chrome Mox, -4 Ponder, +3 Decay, +2 Swarm, +2 Pithing Needle and +1 Tendrils. I prefer to keep on the mox rather than a single ponder as this is a match-up where Ad Nauseam shines, I want to make damn sure after it resolves that I win.

What prompted the switch to boarding in Xantid Swarm? Is it just to increase threat density and "make them have it"? Being the more risk-averse guy, I tend to leave Swarms in the sb, since StP is pretty popular to leave in, given fear of Pyromancer or Swarm.

[Bryant Cook]

What prompted the switch to boarding in Xantid Swarm? Is it just to increase threat density and "make them have it"? Being the more risk-averse guy, I tend to leave Swarms in the sb, since StP is pretty popular to leave in, given fear of Pyromancer or Swarm.

Pyroclasm out of Miracles against storm? I have not seen this be a common thing at all. I like the ability to switch protection, making wish a disruption spell in one of the few match-ups we need it against. While adding in one additional protection spell that just happens to be amazing against Pierce/Flusterstorm and Sensei's Diving Top.

Miracles shouldn't be leaving in STP, I could see a few Terminus but definitely not 'Clasm.

[wonderPreaux]

Pyroclasm out of Miracles against storm? I have not seen this be a common thing at all. I like the ability to switch protection, making wish a disruption spell in one of the few match-ups we need it against. While adding in one additional protection spell that just happens to be amazing against Pierce/Flusterstorm and Sensei's Diving Top.

Miracles shouldn't be leaving in STP, I could see a few Terminus but definitely not 'Clasm.

Pyroclasms? I was referring to Young Pyromancer, which some ANT players use. I sometimes see Miracles players keeping in 1-3 StP, as a function of paranoia or lack of cards to side in. I'll give Swarm a try, see how it turns out.

[Lemnear]

Sleepless night and crazy ideas ... doing math for them at 1am ...

[Tengo_Hambre]

So here's what i'm planning to play for GPNJ:

4 Misty Rainforest
4 Gemstone Mine
2 Underground Sea
2 Volcanic Island
1 Tropical Island

4 Rite of Flame
4 Dark Ritual
4 Lotus Petal
4 Chrome Mox
4 LED

4 Gitaxian Probe
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder

4 Cabal Therapy
2 Duress

4 Burning Wish
3 Infernal Tutor
1 Ad Nauseam
1 Empty the Warrens

Sideboard:

3 Xantid Swarm
3 Abrupt Decay
1 Pithing Needle
1 Past in Flames
1 Grapeshot
1 Void Snare
1 Tendrils of Agony
1 Thoughtseize
1 Massacre
1 Empty the Warrens
1 Infernal Tutor

I know the 4 Chrome mox is pretty unorthodox, and while i admit it's bad to draw multiples, they still get you a free storm count in a pinch, and more importantly they're awesome to hit off of Ad Nauseam (which i find myself going for very often). It seems like a small change but i feel like I almost never brick off of Ad Nauseam while i did much more often (relatively) with the 3 duress/3 mox split.

Also looking for some thoughts on the manabase. i'm contemplating cutting a gemstone for a Polluted Delta, maybe 2. Also not sold on the Bayou; i keep too many 1 Land+Cantrip hands to not have access to blue (hence sticking to the Trop. card availability would be an issue too if i wanted to switch to the bayou)

I'm curious to get some miracles sideboarding advice (and sideboarding advice in general-I've read the OP but would like to get more specifics and other opinions); i tend to over-sideboard against them and am at the point of wondering if it might be better to just not sideboard at all and try to get in underneath them (which would require leaving in EtW; something i know Bryant is adamantly against.) Is this a reasonable plan on the play? on the draw i think i have to sideboard since they're going to hit counterspell mana before i can go for it most of the time. I'm also on the fence about how to get a second pithing needle in there. right now, i'm thinking i might go to a 2-2 split with abrupt decay/needle since Abrupt Decay makes Ad Nauseam noticeably worse and strains the manabase more too. Thoughts/Advice are appreciated! Also, Bryant, do you have any consistency issues when you cut all 4 ponders against miracles? i feel like cutting all of them would make us really susceptible to variance (though i also have no idea what else to cut to make room for all the sideboard cards targeted at the matchup. -1 EtW, -2 Mox, -1 to 2 Therapy...can we maybe afford to cut a mine and go to 12 land? maybe trim a Gitaxian probe as our worst cantrip and since we're cutting therapies down too)

[Bryant Cook]

Pyroclasms? I was referring to Young Pyromancer, which some ANT players use. I sometimes see Miracles players keeping in 1-3 StP, as a function of paranoia or lack of cards to side in. I'll give Swarm a try, see how it turns out.

Apparently I read what I want to read.

[Bryant Cook]

Also, Bryant, do you have any consistency issues when you cut all 4 ponders against miracles? i feel like cutting all of them would make us really susceptible to variance (though i also have no idea what else to cut to make room for all the sideboard cards targeted at the matchup. -1 EtW, -2 Mox, -1 to 2 Therapy...can we maybe afford to cut a mine and go to 12 land? maybe trim a Gitaxian probe as our worst cantrip and since we're cutting therapies down too)

The deck is very redundant, the match-up is a slow one if you don't open with the nuts. You'll have time to sculpt your hand naturally or adjust with Probes and Brainstorms. Not to mention, most of the time in that match-up Ponder digs for protection.

I also, don't see the point in people posting lists from a long time ago asking what we think. There's a reason Lemnear and I (along with others) have moved on from Silence, City of Brass/Mana Confluence, 4 Chrome Mox, Grapeshot and some of the other ideas that have been thrown around in the last week. I think most of it is "Hey, the GP is coming up and this is what I played last time." Which isn't awful, but don't be afraid to try out some of the updates either, we made them for good reason and have sound logic behind it.

[Lemnear]

So here's what i'm planning to play for GPNJ:

4 Misty Rainforest
4 Gemstone Mine
2 Underground Sea
2 Volcanic Island
1 Tropical Island

4 Rite of Flame
4 Dark Ritual
4 Lotus Petal
4 Chrome Mox
4 LED

4 Gitaxian Probe
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder

4 Cabal Therapy
2 Duress

4 Burning Wish
3 Infernal Tutor
1 Ad Nauseam
1 Empty the Warrens

Sideboard:

3 Xantid Swarm
3 Abrupt Decay
1 Pithing Needle
1 Past in Flames
1 Grapeshot
1 Void Snare
1 Tendrils of Agony
1 Thoughtseize
1 Massacre
1 Empty the Warrens
1 Infernal Tutor

I know the 4 Chrome mox is pretty unorthodox, and while i admit it's bad to draw multiples, they still get you a free storm count in a pinch, and more importantly they're awesome to hit off of Ad Nauseam (which i find myself going for very often). It seems like a small change but i feel like I almost never brick off of Ad Nauseam while i did much more often (relatively) with the 3 duress/3 mox split.

Bricking off Ad Nauseam with 3 Moxen is pretty unusual if you have 13+ life left anyways. The problem with Moxen is that you nearly never want to see them in your hand as they are a virtual mulligan taken which isn't really appealing if you need to generate 6+ mana from your cards turn 1/2/3 in addition to optional protection and the needed business-spell. (P.S. I'm working on a solution for this atm)


Also looking for some thoughts on the manabase. i'm contemplating cutting a gemstone for a Polluted Delta, maybe 2. Also not sold on the Bayou; i keep too many 1 Land+Cantrip hands to not have access to blue (hence sticking to the Trop. card availability would be an issue too if i wanted to switch to the bayou)

I discussed the up- & downsides of Tropical/Bayou in this thread. As usual, the credo is: Take from this thread what you think helps/applies and ignore the rest. If you prefer Tropical for the reason of keeping a one-lander plus cantrip, do it :)


I'm curious to get some miracles sideboarding advice (and sideboarding advice in general-I've read the OP but would like to get more specifics and other opinions); i tend to over-sideboard against them and am at the point of wondering if it might be better to just not sideboard at all and try to get in underneath them (which would require leaving in EtW; something i know Bryant is adamantly against.)

I don't see a general problem of EtW against Miracles if you can minimize their library manipulation to find a sweeper (aka flashback Therapy for their Ponders/Brainstorms/SDTs), but you have to open up slots for your SB cards. Abrupt Decay is a 2cc card and painful to flip for Ad Nauseam if you have to stop revealing cards at 4 life to not die the sudden death by flipping EtW. If you remove the EtW, you can savely keep going with your Ad Nauseam down to two life which means drawing about 2-4 cards extra to find what you are looking for.

So, removing EtW is not only relevant because it's Value is waxing and waning with your opponents cantrips, but because of creating a balance of cmc for Ad Nauseam.


Is this a reasonable plan on the play?

I fear not. Your opponent on miracles will keep a very defensive hand games 2 & 3 anyways to drag out the game. If you don't have the nuts in your opener, the Game will go down the drain within 3 turns if you don't board countermeasures.


on the draw i think i have to sideboard since they're going to hit counterspell mana before i can go for it most of the time. I'm also on the fence about how to get a second pithing needle in there. right now, i'm thinking i might go to a 2-2 split with abrupt decay/needle since Abrupt Decay makes Ad Nauseam noticeably worse and strains the manabase more too.

The matchup isn't about blitzing your opponent T1/2 so you have time to make landdrops. You absolutely need 3-4 Decays to get out from the countertop-lock and, as described before, the cmc issue with Ad Nauseam is adressed if you board balanced.

You seem to think too hard about Ad Nauseam overall if you run 4 Moxen and even cut down Decays just because of cmc. I'm totally fine with casting a non-lethal Ad Nauseam, mindtwist my opponents Hand and ship the turn with a packed grip of 7 cards to cast the PIF-loop once I untap. There is no reason to force Ad Nauseam into ToA.


Thoughts/Advice are appreciated! Also, Bryant, do you have any consistency issues when you cut all 4 ponders against miracles? i feel like cutting all of them would make us really susceptible to variance (though i also have no idea what else to cut to make room for all the sideboard cards targeted at the matchup. -1 EtW, -2 Mox, -1 to 2 Therapy...can we maybe afford to cut a mine and go to 12 land? maybe trim a Gitaxian probe as our worst cantrip and since we're cutting therapies down too)

I guess it's fine to chop the Therapies if you bring in Xantids in their place.

[vercadium]

Pyroclasms? I was referring to Young Pyromancer, which some ANT players use. I sometimes see Miracles players keeping in 1-3 StP, as a function of paranoia or lack of cards to side in. I'll give Swarm a try, see how it turns out.

I agree that Xantid Swarm is mediocre in the match-up as I too find the Miracles players keeping in removal (definitely Terminus at the very least) in-case of Young Pyromancer/Xantid Swarm.

That said, I think the decision isn't based on how good Xantid Swarm is, but how necessary Ponder is - it's certainly possible that I would prefer 2 Ponder in their place to find Duress etc, but there's no denying that Xantid Swarm is the more impactful card and for that reason alone it's probably preferred. Miracles also has access to so much manipulation that while usually it would be excellent making some of their cards "dead" by having 0 targets for removal, they are able to filter those away when not needed.

[Asthereal]

We have 2-3 Duress, 4 Probes and even the option to Wish for Thoughtseize/Duress. Thats 7-10 peek-effects. In addition to that we still have our rule of thumb: "Name what your fear". Especially under the assumption, that this is an EtW-Deck, you absolutely want to draw Therapies asap to make a quick EtW deadly.

Silence is a weak argument for reducing Therapies, as the value of the white instant in the current metagame is not that good for (hopefully) known reasons.
You asked for reasons. I stated the reasons I could think of.
I didn't say I agreed with the choices. :wink:

I would probably go for 4x Therapy, 3x Duress main with 2x Thoughtseize side.
That's the package that feels best.
But right now I am sort of hooked on a different deck... :eek:

[Lemnear]

You asked for reasons. I stated the reasons I could think of.
I didn't say I agreed with the choices. :wink:

I would probably go for 4x Therapy, 3x Duress main with 2x Thoughtseize side.
That's the package that feels best.
But right now I am sort of hooked on a different deck... :eek:

Yeah, and I added the points which shatter those possible reasons. I just tried to support your post, showing that there are no reasons to not run 4 Therapies in the MB as an EtW deck. I did not try to correct you, pal :)

P.S. sent a wall of text to the FB think-tank. Too bad that I can't afford to run foils of the new cards in testing ... actually I doubt ANYONE can ;D

P.P.S. yes, it's a hint. ;P

[Lemnear]

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girl, children of all ages,

We ran Chrome Moxen as a neccessary evil for years and they are just horrible in terms of providing an acceptable mana/investment-ratio for playing around softcounter with the need to maximize the mana you can generate from your starting hand to make T1/2/3 combos possible, which is the reason I looked for alternatives. As we have no propper replacement for the inital mana, I pondered about picking up the idea of "floating mana into Ad Nauseam" Bryant toyed with in form of Cabal Ritual again, as it also helps to overcome softcounters like the currently omnipresent Daze and known annoyances like Thalia and Thorn of Amethyst.

The previous issue was the increased converted manacost of running Cabal Rituals alongside the 4cc-sudden-death EtW and 8 Tutors/Wishes, which made Ad Nauseam flips pretty bad despite the floated mana, so I looked for options to get a serious manaboost to play around Daze, support the SB Infernal playlines, speed up our mana while removing the Moxen but avoid to increase the average manacosts. Greedy, isn't it?

In order to play without additional, initial manasources, I evaluated the MB EtW and think we can consider to cut it atm, not only because of the sweepers played in SBs, but because I feel that being able to go down to 2 life with Ad Nauseam instead of 4 and the extra cards drawn as a result, possibly outweights having a 6-mana-playline with the Infernals. Ergo, I moved the EtW to the SB to board it back if we play against a deck where we want the maximum of cheap, quick playlines (Like Burn or D&T), but for the maindeck, with all the Daze-decks in the current meta, I consider it a bit of a waste to grab EtW instead of Ad Nauseam with Infernal Tutor, especially with now more potent manasources in the deck:

4 Burning Wish
4 Infernal Tutor
1 Ad Nauseam
2 Duress
4 Cabal Therapy
4 Dark Ritual
4 Rite of Flame
4 Lion's Eye Diamond
4 Lotus Petal
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
4 Gitaxian Probe
4 City of Traitors
4 Polluted Delta
4 Misty Rainforest
2 Underground Sea
2 Volcanic Island
1 Bayou

As you eagle eyes have spotted, I cut the Moxen to squeeze in 4 City of Traitors for testing how the removal of the 4cc card and the chance to float mana into Ad Nauseam (like U.Sea, CoT, DR, LED, IT) affects flips.

The key is to treat City of Traitors not like a land, but as a colorless ritual obviously. Compared to Cabal Ritual it doesn't need your graveyard to provide the maximum manaboost, and doesn't deal any damage if revealed to Ad Nauseam. Mind, that more than 1/3 of your deck is 0cc and the biggest cmc you can reveal to Ad Nauseam is 2. That means that flipping 15+ cards to Ad Nauseam is pretty common now which comes handy, if paired with a floated red or black mana to get around the need for more initial manasources to reveal via Ad Nauseam. Thr additional benefit of our colorless ritual in testing is that it makes it pretty easy to power through Thalia and Thorn of Amethyst as well as supporting playlines with the SB Infernal Tutor.

Thanks for your attention. Further testing results will follow.

[Bryant Cook]

I'd like to note that Cabal Ritual was mainly played as a way to justify moving the Infernal Tutor to the sideboard as a Wish target and then was found to not be needed. The idea wasn't really for floating mana, it was to provide enough to cast Burning Wish for Infernal Tutor for Ad Nauseam which the list you're proposing can't do anyway.

• Something I'd be worried about is that this list is incredibly slow against decks like Burn/Death & Taxes where you need to win quickly. Making me wonder why it's better than ANT?
• You took away our four mana turn one Belcher approach which slows down the deck aside from losing the Chrome Moxes.
• Without an LED its going to be difficult to become Hellbent with 17 lands in the deck.
• Initial mana sources will now be at a premium because you're going to want red and black when going off, but you have City of Traitors instead of a potential colored source. This is also assuming you don't need to cast a Brainstorm or Ponder that turn.
• This list is a one-trick pony. When the Ad Nauseam route is cut off, it'll be much more difficult to win since it has nothing else going on in the main deck making Infernal Tutor even worse.

These are my initial thoughts.

[Lemnear]

• Something I'd be worried about is that this list is incredibly slow against decks like Burn/Death & Taxes where you need to win quickly. Making me wonder why it's better than ANT?


yes, your options for B+R turn 1 are reduced by 3/60 (ignoring the factor: color-matching imprint), but I don't see numbers of these belcher-mode-victims in any relation to the presence of blue Daze-matchups. I currently test 2 EtW in the SB to board one back if you are paired against one of these decks. Overall, I did not have the impression during testing that the deck got generally slower especially under the aspect that you get two mana from a single card instead of just 1 mana out of two cards. I'll keep an eye on that.

• You took away our four mana turn one Belcher approach which slows down the deck aside from losing the Chrome Moxes.


yes, I took away a chance of 1/60 to have the EtW naturally in your hand.

• Without an LED its going to be difficult to become Hellbent with 17 lands in the deck.


possibly. We need Brainstorm or LED to get lands out of our hand if they block our Infernal Tutor. Pretty much the same problem like having a hand filled with cantrips: we need to play them.

• This list is a one-trick pony. When the Ad Nauseam route is cut off, it'll be much more difficult to win since it has nothing else going on in the main deck making Infernal Tutor even worse.


if the AN is cut off, that means that our opponent had several turns to deal damage to us. It's not that EtW was ever an appealing option to cast turn 3+ even if you still can IT->Wish->EtW with that setup in cornercases. If we face the problem of low life we can take the same routes as before: PIF or Natural Chain.

These are my initial thoughts.

[Bryant Cook]

The whole responding within a quote is awful. I can't just reply to it, great.

You can Belcher mode blue decks, we've been doing it for years. Win before things come online or before they can cantrip into their counters/answers. You also opted not to respond with why that list is better than ANT, it's certainly not as fast as standard TES lists.

That's not what I meant, I was referring to a Tutor effect being on the stack with four mana. Your argument on FB was that we usually just wait for another turn to cast Ad Nauseam anyway, which I generally don't do. I'm fine with making Goblins and then forcing them to have the answer through Cabal Therapies*– another card that just became worse without the Empty the Warrens in the main. Four mana into ETW is great against these Burn/UR Delver/ Death and Taxes match-ups. Which are worse with your suggested list.

At 17 lands you don't expect to have Hellbent issues? Even with Brainstorm and LED, Brainstorm is going to draw you into more lands. Current lists don't have as much of an issue because of Mox helping become hellbent in the games where we've already used a Brainstorm and don't have access to an LED. Your Brainstorms now are going to be used to make sure you can win without a land in your hand instead of sculpting/protecting cards.

Not necessarily in these UR Delver/Burn match-ups that are very popular at the moment. PIF or Natural chain won't be easy without tons of time to play out all of those lands and the lack of Chrome Mox to increase storm, the life loss because of Probes becomes a liability in these matches.

[Asthereal]

yes, I took away a chance of 1/60 to have the EtW naturally in your hand.
It's more than 1/60. It's actually 12% chance to draw it in a 7 card opening hand.
But Bryant is right. Infernal > Empty is our most aggressive start, and the bigger reason to play Empty main.

Chrome Mox is just bad. Any possible replacement is worth a look.
Perhaps you should just keep the old list and go -3 Mox, +3 City. See what happens.
No need to remove Empty as well. At least, none that I see.

(PS. Edited this post like five times. Sorry to those who read earlier versions. I'm not sharp today.)

[JamieW89]

No more chant-effects, no more gold lands, discussion about basics and cabal rits and now the cutting of chrome moxen, I can certainly approve of all these developments :D.
However, I can't imagine 4 City of Traitors actually working very well here, I've tried 1-2 Crystal Vein (and 2 City of Traitors once) a couple of times in ANT (which has less restrictive IMS requirements) and it wasn't all that great.

[Howishotgun]

This may sound bad, but why not try out mox opal or mox diamond instead of chrome mox? They are mostly to get the mana after an ad nauseam. With mox diamond you usually will hit at least 1 land to make it work. While mox opal might not have enough artifacts for it to fire. Mox diamond could also help out with getting hell bent when you have multiple lands in hand with tutor. Sounds like a fringe moment but it might work instead of chrome mox.

[Asthereal]

This may sound bad, but why not try out mox opal or mox diamond instead of chrome mox? They are mostly to get the mana after an ad nauseam. With mox diamond you usually will hit at least 1 land to make it work. While mox opal might not have enough artifacts for it to fire. Mox diamond could also help out with getting hell bent when you have multiple lands in hand with tutor. Sounds like a fringe moment but it might work instead of chrome mox.
Tried both. Both were absolutely terrible in testing.
But thanks for the suggestion. :wink:

[JamieW89]

This may sound bad, but why not try out mox opal or mox diamond instead of chrome mox? They are mostly to get the mana after an ad nauseam. With mox diamond you usually will hit at least 1 land to make it work. While mox opal might not have enough artifacts for it to fire. Mox diamond could also help out with getting hell bent when you have multiple lands in hand with tutor. Sounds like a fringe moment but it might work instead of chrome mox.

Chrome Mox is insane post-AdN, its replacement would have to be better pre-AdN. I can't imagine Mox Diamond with ~13/14 lands or Mox Opals with 8 other artifacts.

[Bryant Cook]

I just don't hate Chrome Mox as much as other people. The only way I see something better better was if Simian Spirit Guide had a cousin that didn't hurt us so badly off of Ad Nauseam.

[Lemnear]

The whole responding within a quote is awful. I can't just reply to it, great.

You can Belcher mode blue decks, we've been doing it for years. Win before things come online or before they can cantrip into their counters/answers. You also opted not to respond with why that list is better than ANT, it's certainly not as fast as standard TES lists.

That's not what I meant, I was referring to a Tutor effect being on the stack with four mana. Your argument on FB was that we usually just wait for another turn to cast Ad Nauseam anyway, which I generally don't do. I'm fine with making Goblins and then forcing them to have the answer through Cabal Therapies*– another card that just became worse without the Empty the Warrens in the main. Four mana into ETW is great against these Burn/UR Delver/ Death and Taxes match-ups. Which are worse with your suggested list.

At 17 lands you don't expect to have Hellbent issues? Even with Brainstorm and LED, Brainstorm is going to draw you into more lands. Current lists don't have as much of an issue because of Mox helping become hellbent in the games where we've already used a Brainstorm and don't have access to an LED. Your Brainstorms now are going to be used to make sure you can win without a land in your hand instead of sculpting/protecting cards.

Not necessarily in these UR Delver/Burn match-ups that are very popular at the moment. PIF or Natural chain won't be easy without tons of time to play out all of those lands and the lack of Chrome Mox to increase storm, the life loss because of Probes becomes a liability in these matches.

The advantages of having Infernal + Wish, more possibilities for quick combos, being not affected by graveyard-hate and having much better AN flips than ANT all remain true. You still have access to EtW via all 8 Tutor effects, but I cannot deny that the line for the Infernals is quite costy and you have overall less combinations to drop Goblins turn 1, a playline which was less successful for me in most postboard games if people try to drag out games thanks to very defensive hands and boarded sweepers. That's one of the reasons I looked for options which are more useful in the midgame than Mox is.

I said in the Mikro-primer that I want EtW back in the Main for Burn/D&T/etc. just because this configuration is not as good to support the Belcher playlines than the Mox-list is. Especially in games 2 & 3 against UR Delver I wasn't thrilled to cast EtW because of the heavy sideboarding I faced lately. Game 1 was pretty easy due to all the mana.

Getting hellbent is a problem to have in mind. Personally I rather pass the turn because I have to drop a land than having to pass the turn because I can't play around softcounters.

[MotleyJu]

I think TES is well positioned going into the GP this weekend, but the one thing that worries me are Stompy and other similar decks that will be packing maindeck Chalices and Trinispheres to hate on the Delver decks. Do people have thoughts on a wish-able artifact hate card for the sideboard? I was wondering if it was possible to make room for Hull Breach, but open to other suggestions if people have them.

[wonderPreaux]

I think TES is well positioned going into the GP this weekend, but the one thing that worries me are Stompy and other similar decks that will be packing maindeck Chalices and Trinispheres to hate on the Delver decks. Do people have thoughts on a wish-able artifact hate card for the sideboard? I was wondering if it was possible to make room for Hull Breach, but open to other suggestions if people have them.

Given how many turns it could take to assemble a red land + other land, then wish through however many thorns there are, then grab your breach/spree w/e, AND get the required mana (all of which requires non basic sources) while the opponent is wasting you and/or smacking you, seems pretty bad. I'd rather try to dunk them t1 with Goblins than have some long-shot plan of getting 2~4 red mana against a Wasteland deck and then Shatering Spree them or w/e

@Lemnear/new list discussion in general

Is there a reason to not just run Crystal Vein? In terms of a +2 mana one-shot, Vein does that, but it also sits around letting you pay for Infernal Tutor to dupe things, Wish for... stuff, and just helping you build up mana against control. I also don't like 4 city of traitors, just because opening with multiples sounds terrible, like with Chrome Mox. You may consider something like this:

4 Burning Wish
3 Infernal Tutor
1 Ad Nauseam
1 Empty the Warrens (This could be another Infernal Tutor if you're really so inclined to drop EtW)

4 Dark Ritual
4 Rite of Flame
4 Lion's Eye Diamond
4 Lotus Petal
1 Chrome Mox

4 Ponder
4 Brainstorm
4 Gitaxian Probe

4 Cabal Therapy
3 Duress

4 Polluted Delta
4 Gemstone Mine (You can make these Basics/Fetches if you want, I like a few more Green sources and I'm just spitballing here anyway)
2 Crystal Vein
2 Underground Sea
2 Volcanic Island
1 Bayou

Mmmm, all that Daze-proofing.

[MoorishIdol]

Hey ya'll,

I wanted to ask a different type of question. Does anyone have suggestions the physical aspects of playing storm in paper?

I started playing on cockatrice a little bit ago and just found it so much easier in many repsects. Organizing the cards, playing quickly, counting ect. seems way hard in person compared to behind a screen.

I've taken to WonderPreaux's one handed way of counting storm so I can do that under the table without revealing what I'm doing. I don't want to sort my hand or make motions that give away that I'm counting mana.

I also kind of have a hard time with keeping track of everything in an efficient manner. I want it to be clear to my opponent that everything is kosher but also not take a 15 min turn. I usually bust out the B/U/R dice and have a way of organizing my GY that reflects the storm count but it can be a little tricky to show whether artifacts in play came down that turn and how many times exiled cards have been played. I think it might be nice to just write it all down but that is very time consuming. Maybe some of you have a better shorthand than me?

Anyways, I would love your suggestions on how to efficiently manage the table when you're playing storm.

Thanks!

[Zombie]

I use dice to keep track of mana and storm count. White for storm, appropriate color for mana usually.

[PopyMartins]

I use dice to keep track of mana and storm count. White for storm, appropriate color for mana usually.
Exactly what I do. I keep 10 dices with me wherever I go with my TES. 4 D20s, U, R and B for counting mana, white for storm count, 3 D6s with colored sides my gf made for me, for Moxen and 2 standard D6 for gemstones. It works pretty well, never had a problem.

[Howishotgun]

I use dice to keep track of mana and storm count. White for storm, appropriate color for mana usually.

I use to use dice also when keeping track of storm and mana floating. But recently after picking up the deck again I have forced myself to do everything without paper or dice. It is harder to do but once I got the hang of it all it went much faster. Practice makes perfect.

[PopyMartins]

I use to use dice also when keeping track of storm and mana floating. But recently after picking up the deck again I have forced myself to do everything without paper or dice. It is harder to do but once I got the hang of it all it went much faster. Practice makes perfect.
Yeah, but when your opponent keeps asking you your storm count andana floating and you need to show him why, it actually makes everything much slower.

[phazonmutant]

Hey ya'll,

I wanted to ask a different type of question. Does anyone have suggestions the physical aspects of playing storm in paper?

I started playing on cockatrice a little bit ago and just found it so much easier in many repsects. Organizing the cards, playing quickly, counting ect. seems way hard in person compared to behind a screen.

I've taken to WonderPreaux's one handed way of counting storm so I can do that under the table without revealing what I'm doing. I don't want to sort my hand or make motions that give away that I'm counting mana.

I also kind of have a hard time with keeping track of everything in an efficient manner. I want it to be clear to my opponent that everything is kosher but also not take a 15 min turn. I usually bust out the B/U/R dice and have a way of organizing my GY that reflects the storm count but it can be a little tricky to show whether artifacts in play came down that turn and how many times exiled cards have been played. I think it might be nice to just write it all down but that is very time consuming. Maybe some of you have a better shorthand than me?

Anyways, I would love your suggestions on how to efficiently manage the table when you're playing storm.

Thanks!

If you know your line, then you should be able to keep track of it in your head. One day in playtesting I stopped bothering with dice or paper, just verbally announcing storm and mana. It's faster for playtesting and helps you make really sure you know the line. Besides, you should be able to easily recreate it from the graveyard.

The only point of keeping track of mana and storm in some other way is for disputes, so I tend to use paper at big events. A paper trail is the only thing that's going to help there. Writing stuff down takes less time than fiddling with dice - mark storm with tallies because they're monotonically increasing, mana in columns per color and scratch out changes.

[itrytostorm]

If you know your line, then you should be able to keep track of it in your head. One day in playtesting I stopped bothering with dice or paper, just verbally announcing storm and mana. It's faster for playtesting and helps you make really sure you know the line. Besides, you should be able to easily recreate it from the graveyard.

The only point of keeping track of mana and storm in some other way is for disputes, so I tend to use paper at big events. A paper trail is the only thing that's going to help there. Writing stuff down takes less time than fiddling with dice - mark storm with tallies because they're monotonically increasing, mana in columns per color and scratch out changes.

100% correct. Pen and paper if you are at any competitive REL event. Table can get bumped, you can hit the wrong dice, and it's nice to have an insurance policy of how the mana and storm progressed. This is especially the case when a judge gets called.

[Lemnear]

It's more than 1/60. It's actually 12% chance to draw it in a 7 card opening hand.
But Bryant is right. Infernal > Empty is our most aggressive start, and the bigger reason to play Empty main.

Chrome Mox is just bad. Any possible replacement is worth a look.
Perhaps you should just keep the old list and go -3 Mox, +3 City. See what happens.
No need to remove Empty as well. At least, none that I see.

(PS. Edited this post like five times. Sorry to those who read earlier versions. I'm not sharp today.)

Yes, it's our most aggressive start for game 1. My Problem is that the plan is less reliable for games 2 & 3 (against blue) and the price for running it is having Moxen in your deck. Given how often we board out EtW for games 2 & 3, I had to question myself if the natural EtW and 6-mana playlines via 3-4 Infernals game 1 outweights the downside of drawing Moxen (game 1/2/3) in matchups where you want quality mana to overcome Daze, Thalia or simply squeeze more mana out of each of your cards (mulligans!). I set the Belcher-matchups into relation with the matchups in which EtW and Moxen are quite bad (in general/after turn 1/after sideboarding) and came to the conclusion (for the current metagame) that I can bear the lost probability for free wins if I get stronger mana and more cards off AN instead. Removing the EtW and so certain options for 4-6 mana playlines, drastically increases the number of cards you can flip to AN as you don't have to stop at 4 life anymore, which is required if you plan to play with fewer IMS and rely on floated mana and Lotus Petals post AN. Obviously, the ability to generate a whooping 2 mana off a single card compared to the 2-for-1 with Moxen made floating mana into AN (and so removing the need to flip an IMS for each mana floated) pretty common and balanced out the loss of Moxen if you look at your manapool post-AN. It's also clear that softcounters can't keep you at bay anymore which made me passing turns after turns in the past to find enough initial mana to play around them

[Bryant Cook]

Yes, it's our most aggressive start for game 1. My Problem is that the plan is less reliable for games 2 & 3 (against blue) and the price for running it is having Moxen in your deck. Given how often we board out EtW for games 2 & 3, I had to question myself if the natural EtW and 6-mana playlines via 3-4 Infernals game 1 outweights the downside of drawing Moxen (game 1/2/3) in matchups where you want quality mana to overcome Daze, Thalia or simply squeeze more mana out of each of your cards (mulligans!). I set the Belcher-matchups into relation with the matchups in which EtW and Moxen are quite bad (in general/after turn 1/after sideboarding) and came to the conclusion (for the current metagame) that I can bear the lost probability for free wins if I get stronger mana and more cards off AN instead. Removing the EtW and so certain options for 4-6 mana playlines, drastically increases the number of cards you can flip to AN as you don't have to stop at 4 life anymore, which is required if you plan to play with fewer IMS and rely on floated mana and Lotus Petals post AN. Obviously, the ability to generate a whooping 2 mana off a single card compared to the 2-for-1 with Moxen made floating mana into AN (and so removing the need to flip an IMS for each mana floated) pretty common and balanced out the loss of Moxen if you look at your manapool post-AN. It's also clear that softcounters can't keep you at bay anymore which made me passing turns after turns in the past to find enough initial mana to play around them

So, I ask again. Why is the list you're suggesting any better than ANT? I'm not sure if it is.

[tescrin]

I've had a guy use chunks of actual (torn up) lands (with the symbols left on them) to represent the mana. That was kinda neat.

Normally I offer to help keep track of storm opponent's stuff too (with verbal verification of things that way I hopefully don't get lost.)

EDIT:

and came to the conclusion (for the current metagame) that I can bear the lost probability for free wins if I get stronger mana and more cards off AN instead. Removing the EtW and so certain options for 4-6 mana playlines, drastically increases the number of cards you can flip to AN as you don't have to stop at 4 life anymore

While this is true, I caution you that you'll be insta-gibbed by M.Mage on Burning Wish (unless you have a Decay or Chain handy.) I feel like you may also have issues casting Decay or Chains without more Moxen since you'll usually have used your land drop, the LEDs are dead, and the chances of having multiple petals and a decay are low.

While M.Mage is hardly everywhere, it is splashed for even in Junk or BUG decks by high(ish) profile players; meaning it's a popular sideboard card even when they're not on WU.

Even if it's not as popular yet; the no-Empty plan implies a short-lived version of the list simply because the list is so easily countered by a strong hatebear.

[wonderPreaux]

I'm going to be streaming this build tomorrow to see if this interest in Sol Land effects over Chrome Mox has merit:
http://puu.sh/cPULu/a0bf0c3ddb.jpg

I'm just gonna practice a few rounds and then if it seems to work alright, then I might run it in the daily. Here are some thoughts on the particulars:

*I think 4 Gemstone Mine might be correct. Sol Lands actually take your land drop, so the ability to have any color off of one land might be important to the continued flow of spells on the turn you deploy the Sol Land. With that in mind, I don't see basics coexisting with Sol Lands, and I might be running 4 Gemstones by tomorrow.
*I think Crystal Vein is better than City of Traitors. Both provide you a 1-shot of mana on the turn you go off, but Crystal Vein can stick around and actually support you during turns that you're setting up. This seems more valuable to me because in addition to tempo, you also want landdrops against control, where the colorless mana can power Wish for Massacre or Tendrils, or Tutor to double discard spells, all the while you can keep hitting land drops and develop.
*I don't think it's correct to be running 0 Chrome Mox. I'm going for a 2-1 split on Crystal-Chrome, because the only issue I really see with Chrome Mox is opening with 2 of them (an issue I think City of Traitors also shares). Opening with Chrome Mox in TES is a lot like opening Tendrils in ANT, it's not theoretically ideal, but it opens up some unique lines and you can leverage it to your advantage. Ramping out Tutors to dupe stuff or Wish to find EtW turn 1 is a great ability to have, as is the ability to build your own colored source in a deck whose kills often involve 2 colors.
*ATM, I'm maining 8 Tutor/Wishes. I think keeping Bayou in the side over Tutor balances having 2 extra lands. The Bayou isn't that great in game 1s as it can't cast cantrips and while Crystal Vein isn't any better (in fact, its probably a touch worse in terms of quality t1 plays), I don't think there's enough space for both game 1. To help with the speed loss of an extra land, the full 4 Infernal Tutors contribute to faster kills off Goblin bursts and the like.
*I think Ad Nauseam is probably going to be worse here. Pretty logical thinking here, Vein only makes your Ad Nauseam better if you had it pre-Nauseam, because it increases your possible floating mana, otherwise it's terrible since my main goal post-Nauseam is trying to put together red and black mana, neither of which a Sol Land provides. In combo or control matches, though, idk if its really going to matter, given that the former doesn't really touch your life total until their fundamental turn and the latter giving you so much time actually makes the lands much more valuable than Moxen. For tempo, I'm inclined to favor Vein as it doesn't eat your hand and contributes double mana for spell chains to Tendrils, which is often a relevant play when tempo constricts your Ad Nauseam use. Against aggro/midrange hatebear stuffs, this is probably where you actually suffer, since Vein isn't as effective at putting together kills, again, doesn't provide red or black. It's a shame all those depletion lands that actually produce colors come into play tapped.

[Lemnear]

So, I ask again. Why is the list you're suggesting any better than ANT? I'm not sure if it is.

I mentioned them before: better AN, no GY dependancy, still plenty of option for T1 combos, no issues to find a business-Spell, etc.

It's impossible for me to say "this list is generally better" because my testing is limited and therefore I felt like throwing the concept into the thread for even more feedback and I'm thankful for expressed concerns and critique


I've had a guy use chunks of actual (torn up) lands (with the symbols left on them) to represent the mana. That was kinda neat.

Normally I offer to help keep track of storm opponent's stuff too (with verbal verification of things that way I hopefully don't get lost.)

EDIT:


While this is true, I caution you that you'll be insta-gibbed by M.Mage on Burning Wish (unless you have a Decay or Chain handy.) I feel like you may also have issues casting Decay or Chains without more Moxen since you'll usually have used your land drop, the LEDs are dead, and the chances of having multiple petals and a decay are low.

While M.Mage is hardly everywhere, it is splashed for even in Junk or BUG decks by high(ish) profile players; meaning it's a popular sideboard card even when they're not on WU.

Even if it's not as popular yet; the no-Empty plan implies a short-lived version of the list simply because the list is so easily countered by a strong hatebear.

Thankfully Meddling Mage is not a MB card and we can board back an EtW/CoV/Decay/etc for games 2/3 if your opponent tries to catch you with a Meddling Mage. Casting Decay is not a topic for me as we need a Petal/Tropical/Bayou anyways for the green mana and Moxen are rarely helpful to generate green mana and even black mana needs a discard Spell/Tutor/Ritual to spare.

These days we are used to operate off 2 lands anyways and CoT does not affect that. The impact of CoT most likely doesn't come up before turn 2 (matching Acclerator and Tutor) or turn 3, but the intent was to strengthen the decks ability to go for the later turns if your opponent keeps very defensive hands in games 2 & 3 in a metagame which is currently 70%+ blue and 26%+ Delver+Daze.


Edit:

I'm going to be streaming this build tomorrow to see if this interest in Sol Land effects over Chrome Mox has merit:
http://puu.sh/cPULu/a0bf0c3ddb.jpg

I'm just gonna practice a few rounds and then if it seems to work alright, then I might run it in the daily. Here are some thoughts on the particulars:

*I think 4 Gemstone Mine might be correct. Sol Lands actually take your land drop, so the ability to have any color off of one land might be important to the continued flow of spells on the turn you deploy the Sol Land. With that in mind, I don't see basics coexisting with Sol Lands, and I might be running 4 Gemstones by tomorrow.
*I think Crystal Vein is better than City of Traitors. Both provide you a 1-shot of mana on the turn you go off, but Crystal Vein can stick around and actually support you during turns that you're setting up. This seems more valuable to me because in addition to tempo, you also want landdrops against control, where the colorless mana can power Wish for Massacre or Tendrils, or Tutor to double discard spells, all the while you can keep hitting land drops and develop.
*I don't think it's correct to be running 0 Chrome Mox. I'm going for a 2-1 split on Crystal-Chrome, because the only issue I really see with Chrome Mox is opening with 2 of them (an issue I think City of Traitors also shares). Opening with Chrome Mox in TES is a lot like opening Tendrils in ANT, it's not theoretically ideal, but it opens up some unique lines and you can leverage it to your advantage. Ramping out Tutors to dupe stuff or Wish to find EtW turn 1 is a great ability to have, as is the ability to build your own colored source in a deck whose kills often involve 2 colors.
*ATM, I'm maining 8 Tutor/Wishes. I think keeping Bayou in the side over Tutor balances having 2 extra lands. The Bayou isn't that great in game 1s as it can't cast cantrips and while Crystal Vein isn't any better (in fact, its probably a touch worse in terms of quality t1 plays), I don't think there's enough space for both game 1. To help with the speed loss of an extra land, the full 4 Infernal Tutors contribute to faster kills off Goblin bursts and the like.
*I think Ad Nauseam is probably going to be worse here. Pretty logical thinking here, Vein only makes your Ad Nauseam better if you had it pre-Nauseam, because it increases your possible floating mana, otherwise it's terrible since my main goal post-Nauseam is trying to put together red and black mana, neither of which a Sol Land provides. In combo or control matches, though, idk if its really going to matter, given that the former doesn't really touch your life total until their fundamental turn and the latter giving you so much time actually makes the lands much more valuable than Moxen. For tempo, I'm inclined to favor Vein as it doesn't eat your hand and contributes double mana for spell chains to Tendrils, which is often a relevant play when tempo constricts your Ad Nauseam use. Against aggro/midrange hatebear stuffs, this is probably where you actually suffer, since Vein isn't as effective at putting together kills, again, doesn't provide red or black. It's a shame all those depletion lands that actually produce colors come into play tapped.

First of all, I suggest to goldfish with the Ad Nauseam here to see how many more cards you can safely flip if your highest cmc in the deck to reveal is 2 instead of 4 and set this into relation with damage suffered, potentially flooded mana and the loss of 3 IMS to get a feeling, that casting AN with zero floating but 1-2 Petals burned isn't a base for killing the same turn, but passing the turn with a packed hand post-AN (but still a safe lifecount) or passing the turn to cast AN with flooded mana or a landdrop still to make the next turn, is the more successful route. This gave me headaches for the last two days.

I don't see Gemstones as required as the deck still operates mainly off two colored IMS (unless you have color-matching Rituals/Tutors) and CoT isn't affecting that. CoT is rarely relevant before turn 2 and that is fine for me, as I considered it a card to give us more power for games which last longer than 3-4 turns total, which is exactly the timeframe Moxen and EtW become a horrible topdeck and ANT has significant advantages thanks to Cabal Ritual.

My problem with Crystal Vein (I tested all 3 sol-lands) is, that it did not help me maneuvering my setup spells around Daze/Pierce and Thalia. I can name a situation, with one against D&T, where I was able to wish for Massacre through a Thalia thanks to CoT just to sit on the Massacre until a fetch showed up to grab U.Sea, let the CoT pay for the Thalia to cast Massacre, as example of how the extra mana without sacrificing made a difference.

I once opened a hand of CoT, CoT, Petal, Ponder, IT, LED and thought that two CoT were pretty good ;P. I however considered to move the Bayou back into the SB because I have CoT to play around Daze and possibly don't need 13 lands then. I have not tried this because of essentially losing another colored IMS.

As hinted before, if you have only Petals as artifact IMS' left in your deck, floating mana and having a potential landdrop left for your AN-turn reaches a whole different level of relevance, as it was the shift to 2cc as the highest cost to flip to draw into THAT required Ritual, LED, Petal, RoF with the extra cards you get as a result. Cutting EtW was the painful last step I made to say "ok, floated mana & more cards flipped but -3 IMS ... that could balance each other out"


P.S. What's your time for streaming? Maybe I can jump on that stream if timezones work out fine

[Dice_Box]

I'm going to be streaming this build tomorrow to see if this interest in Sol Land effects over Chrome

You know that build will both slow you down and make an Ad Nauseam kill harder yes?

[Lemnear]

You know that build will both slow you down and make an Ad Nauseam kill harder yes?

I beg to differ: you have more mana to skip the 6-mana playline and go for AN directly instead. You don't have to pass (several) turn(s) just because you can't find/generate the mana to play around Daze/Pierce. You have more mana for playlines involving the SB Infernal. You draw more cards off AN than with the EtW list. You lose options for 4-6 mana playlines via Natural EtW or if you have Infernal + hellbent (mainly relevant for game 1s and non-blue matchups which are about 30% only atm)

[wonderPreaux]

You know that build will both slow you down and make an Ad Nauseam kill harder yes?

Yeah, this makes the goldfish ad nauseam worse. but in situations where you have to play though taxing counters or where you are waiting to assemble protection and hitting the land drops anyways, I feel like this could be a decent upgrade. I've never played it, so I can't say "yes, this is overall better", but I can see matchups where it could contribute and I'm going to investigate it's potential.

@Lemnear
I feel if your most ready example of City of Traitors being great is in a matchup where EtW is a good fix (DnT), I could just run EtW main and then have lands that are actually good at staying around in control matchups. You say the Sol Lands are contributing when the games go long, and I think Vein is the land best suited for that because its a consistent mana source when I'm playing stuff out to set up, and then it's still a booster when I'm actually moving in. If testing reveals my config to be subpar, I'll switch it up, but I think this is a good starting point and maining all 4 Tutors and EtW gives me good coverage for matchups like DnT as it is. I stream at 1:30 am cet, so i cant imagine that being an ideal timezone for you, but I'll post a summary/review in the thread after. Likely, I'll just be spending the first few games evaluating the Ad Nauseams, as you say.

[Lemnear]

Yeah, this makes the goldfish ad nauseam worse. but in situations where you have to play though taxing counters or where you are waiting to assemble protection and hitting the land drops anyways, I feel like this could be a decent upgrade. I've never played it, so I can't say "yes, this is overall better", but I can see matchups where it could contribute and I'm going to investigate it's potential.

@Lemnear
I feel if your most ready example of City of Traitors being great is in a matchup where EtW is a good fix (DnT), I could just run EtW main and then have lands that are actually good at staying around in control matchups. You say the Sol Lands are contributing when the games go long, and I think Vein is the land best suited for that because its a consistent mana source when I'm playing stuff out to set up, and then it's still a booster when I'm actually moving in. If testing reveals my config to be subpar, I'll switch it up, but I think this is a good starting point and maining all 4 Tutors and EtW gives me good coverage for matchups like DnT as it is. I stream at 1:30 am cet, so i cant imagine that being an ideal timezone for you, but I'll post a summary/review in the thread after. Likely, I'll just be spending the first few games evaluating the Ad Nauseams, as you say.

That's more I could hope for. Thanks for your time, Max

[ThomasDowd]

so you are trading +1(colorless) once via a land drop for possible multiple +1's and storm count? on the plus side you might squeeze out an extra +1 (colorless, blegch). I feel like the deck requires colored mana so much that choking on that is a downside.

the line of playing AN with 0 floating with land drop spent is severely diminished.

I swapped to TES for better AN's with the ability to cast with none floating and the frustration of not connecting when casting AN with 0 floating in ANT.

on the surface i am not a fan.

[Lemnear]

so you are trading +1(colorless) once via a land drop for possible multiple +1's and storm count? on the plus side you might squeeze out an extra +1 (colorless, blegch). I feel like the deck requires colored mana so much that choking on that is a downside.

the line of playing AN with 0 floating with land drop spent is severely diminished.

I swapped to TES for better AN's with the ability to cast with none floating and the frustration of not connecting when casting AN with 0 floating in ANT.

on the surface i am not a fan.

You trade a landdrop for a +2 colorless boost instead of investing 2 cards to create +1 colored mana and shift the focus of mana acceleration from post-AN to pre-AN, losing outs for T1 Goblins, but gaining the ability to grind & power through Daze/Thalia/Thorn & more.

If you have 4 Petals left in your deck, and near full life, going for AN isn't that bad, given that you can go down to 2 life with a list which is 35% 0cc. You are free to just pick appart your opponents hand with a Petal+Ritual+Discard you found via AN and just use a PIF line the upcoming turn to finish your opponent off if you can't win with only a single IMS. All is possible.

The biggest change aside the lost T1 Infernal into EtW Belcher-Mode (edit: the 6-mana playline, as it still works for 8) is that casting a lazy AN with zero float and your landdrop made, doesn't read "you win THIS turn in 85% of cases" anymore. On the other side: if you get to float a mana and possibly still have a landdrop to make, you can even cast AN successfully with only 9-10 lifepoints left as you'll draw an average 3-4 extra cards compared to the EtW list. The difference to ANT is that you'll flip a lot more cards to AN before your lifepoints get critical and the Chance to get hands on a Petal AND kill of that single IMS (thanks to DR & RoF and Wish compared to DR and CR) is much greater. Obviously that is even more true if you have a floated mana or a landdrop left; in that case AN is a no-brainer with that list.

[oracL3]

hi guys,it's about a couple of months that i started to follow this thread and at the same time i started to play TES (i play dredge too). Cause i'm not so experienced with this deck i need some help about general strategy with Ux decks, UR Delver for example. I mean, when i play vs a delver deck, i have to face Fow, Daze, Stifle so in the initial phase it's very tough for me to do something especially when a Delver is beating me. I red in various topic that in this matchup it's important to have a lot of mana for facing counters, but when i get sufficient mana fonts is too late beacause i have very low life. So what's ur suggestions??

PS. Cause i'm new on this thread, are there some post in which there is some kind of sideboard strategy?? In the first page there is a guide, but i mean something like this http://jupitergames.info/articles/2013/53251/cooks-kitchen-a-sideboarding-guide-for-the-epic-storm
This is ok for me but talks about an older list than the actual.
Thanks to all :)

[Lemnear]

hi guys,it's about a couple of months that i started to follow this thread and at the same time i started to play TES (i play dredge too). Cause i'm not so experienced with this deck i need some help about general strategy with Ux decks, UR Delver for example. I mean, when i play vs a delver deck, i have to face Fow, Daze, Stifle so in the initial phase it's very tough for me to do something especially when a Delver is beating me. I red in various topic that in this matchup it's important to have a lot of mana for facing counters, but when i get sufficient mana fonts is too late beacause i have very low life. So what's ur suggestions??

It's pretty simple: if you need time to develop your mana and your lifepoints are dropping quickly, you stop caring for Ad Nauseam but sculpt a hand, which can win with PIF (like doubling RoFs/DRs with Infernal), a Natural spellchain (usually saving up Probes and play 8-vs.-7 cards during your turn) or evaluate if EtWs usual two-turn-clock is still faster than opponents attacks with Delver. As most Delver lists these days drop Wasteland & Stifle for Treasure Cruise, I don't see the early mana-denial as problematic as it was two years ago


PS. Cause i'm new on this thread, are there some post in which there is some kind of sideboard strategy?? In the first page there is a guide, but i mean something like this http://jupitergames.info/articles/2013/53251/cooks-kitchen-a-sideboarding-guide-for-the-epic-storm
This is ok for me but talks about an older list than the actual.
Thanks to all :)

These +/- sideboard guides are outdated too fast. If you consider the meta-development after each release of an Expansion or every change that TES went through over the last year, you need to update the sideboard guide every 3 weeks which also requires extended tests beforehand. No one has the time to do that stuff, so Bryant wrote the strategic SB guide in the OP to give boarding concepts rather than a boarding cardlist so you can categorize opposing decks and identify the weakest cards in your MB to be replaced with SB cards which help more.

[oracL3]

It's pretty simple: if you need time to develop your mana and your lifepoints are dropping quickly, you stop caring for Ad Nauseam but sculpt a hand, which can win with PIF (like doubling RoFs/DRs with Infernal), a Natural spellchain (usually saving up Probes and play 8-vs.-7 cards during your turn) or evaluate if EtWs usual two-turn-clock is still faster than opponents attacks with Delver. As most Delver lists these days drop Wasteland & Stifle for Treasure Cruise, I don't see the early mana-denial as problematic as it was two years ago

I tried the PIF way but for me it's really hard to get the total amount of mana for winning the same turn. Generally, in the simplest case PIF goes through IT>BW>PIF>IT>BW>ToA that requires 16 mana, so i need at least 3 lands (3 mana), 2 D.R. (+4 total mana= +2 mana and +2 mana with flashback), 1 RoF (+2total mana=+1 mana + 1 mana with flashback) and 2 leds (6 total mana) 1 lotus petal for a total of 15mana. But usually it's not enough because i need extra mana for protecting my hand with Duress or Cabal Therapy. Maybe i'm missing something, but i don't see other ways to go (poor experience).
With the natural spell chain how do u get a ToA for 20?? u need at least 9 spells + 1 ToA, so in the same turn u have to play 9 spell that requires a lot of mana too.
Thank u :)

[Lemnear]

I tried the PIF way but for me it's really hard to get the total amount of mana for winning the same turn. Generally, in the simplest case PIF goes through IT>BW>PIF>IT>BW>ToA that requires 16 mana, so i need at least 3 lands (3 mana), 2 D.R. (+4 total mana= +2 mana and +2 mana with flashback), 1 RoF (+2total mana=+1 mana + 1 mana with flashback) and 2 leds (6 total mana) 1 lotus petal for a total of 15mana. But usually it's not enough because i need extra mana for protecting my hand with Duress or Cabal Therapy. Maybe i'm missing something, but i don't see other ways to go (poor experience).
With the natural spell chain how do u get a ToA for 20?? u need at least 9 spells + 1 ToA, so in the same turn u have to play 9 spell that requires a lot of mana too.
Thank u :)

PIF

I don't know what gives you the idea that you have to cast all these in a single turn. If you have a Ritual, an Infernal and a Wish in hand for example, you can use your turn 2 to double the Ritual with infernal, and depending on your mana, Wish->PIF on the next turn to combo off or just pass the turn with PIF in hand. You reduce the required mana to 5-8 depending on your combination of cards. There is no need to do hilarious 15 mana pre-PIF playlines.

You can also cantrip for turns into rituals and a Wish, grab PIF, play your Rituals into PIF, flashback your Rituals, and cantrip with flashbacked Ponders/Brainstorms/Probes right into the next Infernal/Wish to kill.

In general, your softspot for a PIF playline is having 2 Tutors + a combination of 3 Ritual/RoF effects.

Natural Spellchain

What's the big deal if playing out your mana also generates storm, cantrips replace themselves, Discard also generates storm, Probes cost Zero mana, your opponent is damaging himself with fechlands/Probes so you need most likely 9 storm instead of 10, the IT->BW->ToA playline is 3 storm without ever costing a card and you can have up to 8 cards for such a combo in your own hand?

This deck is 50% mana anyways, so as an example, you can start with Petal into Ritual into Probe into Therapy (FoW) into LED into tapping two lands into RoF into Infernal into Wish into ToA is 9 storm for example. If you need more examples, Bryant has written "storm hands" articles for that and you can also see playlines with Natural Chains if you browse though my "Heart of the Storm" articles. You can find the links at the bottom of the primer.

[redhamjack]

Hey sourcers. I'm 8/1 at the GP with TES. No byes style

I'll try to keep you updated!


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[saur]

Hey sourcers. I'm 8/1 at the GP with TES. No byes style

I'll try to keep you updated!


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Good luck dude! We're cheering for you!

[Niggurath]

Hey sourcers. I'm 8/1 at the GP with TES. No byes style

I'll try to keep you updated!


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Hey, good luck! Crush'em all. Are you planning on writting a report?

[Final Fortune]

I've been running Fetchland based TES for awhile, 8 Fetchlands, 2 Underground Sea, 1 Volcanic Island, 1 Badlands, 1 Island with a SBed Tropical Island for Abrupt Decay, and I think if you guys are trying to play MD Crystal Vein and City of Traitors in order to make match ups vs taxing effects better then you should probably consider SBing them instead because your SBs seem flooded with redundant disruption and answers anyway.

Try cutting some of the chaff to make the deck more modular.

[redhamjack]

Hey, good luck! Crush'em all. Are you planning on writting a report?

I took brief notes so I might. Beat Elves x2, Reanimator, uwr delver, burn, ru delver, and one other that escapes me. I lost round 3 to sneak and show off t1 emrakul from him gs 1&2


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[Bryant Cook]

I've been running Fetchland based TES for awhile, 8 Fetchlands, 2 Underground Sea, 1 Volcanic Island, 1 Badlands, 1 Island with a SBed Tropical Island for Abrupt Decay, and I think if you guys are trying to play MD Crystal Vein and City of Traitors in order to make match ups vs taxing effects better then you should probably consider SBing them instead because your SBs seem flooded with redundant disruption and answers anyway.

Try cutting some of the chaff to make the deck more modular.

For what it's worth, I dislike the Crystal Vein/City of Traitors plan (But if I did do one, I'd opt for Vein). Especially when taxing counters are at a low, if you're watching the GP: Coverage a lot of the UR decks have been cutting Daze.

[Final Fortune]

For what it's worth, I dislike the Crystal Vein/City of Traitors plan (But if I did do one, I'd opt for Vein). Especially when taxing counters are at a low, if you're watching the GP: Coverage a lot of the UR decks have been cutting Daze.

I'm not sold on it either, but I think SBing more land for the match ups where you want to cut Chrome Mox has some degree of merrit - it worked out reasonably well in Dredge for example.

[Lemnear]

I'm not sold on it either, but I think SBing more land for the match ups where you want to cut Chrome Mox has some degree of merrit - it worked out reasonably well in Dredge for example.

I used to run Wastelands in my vintage storm decks to kill Workshops and Academy while also playing around Thorn and stuff, but switching Moxen for SB lands in big style in Legacy is a waste of space

[KaiSchafroth]

Believe I just heard Royce confirmed T8 in NJ; congrats!

[Lemnear]

Believe I just heard Royce confirmed T8 in NJ; congrats!

Yeah, he and Phillip drew themselves into Top 8

[Bryant Cook]

Royce is on ANT, not TES – congrats nonetheless.

[Pelikanudo]

Lem, Looked at that list! good approach!

One suggestion if I'm allowed:

it will run totally 17 lands which is a huge amount, DDFT runs 16 as example I won't know how can this affect to the hellbent issue.

Therefore, the first thing I will try to do will be to compress to 4 Gemstones and No Bayou in base - we have then 16 lands.
The problem with C.M is that I really consider it as any percentage of my lands-mana generators, shit I just sometimes use it as the unique mana generator to win games!. meaning that I asume sometimes I just will use C.M as my main mana source even! having total 15-or 15 and a half of mana generators.
Well if we dont consider CoT a land then you' re playing just 12 and a half land and 8 fetches meaning you really can lock yourself as an example of the result. or not getting the correct mana at the ritgh moment. Having any number of C.M reduced drastically this possibility.

Also, I recognice at the begginning I was an Anti EtW until Bahamut conviced me, from that time and the switch to full discard I don't remember a first Game lost in ages.
So maybe the second thing will be to include EtW somehow instead of the resulting 17th land.

The 3rd thing will be to maybe include a 3rd duress instead of 4th CoT having then 15 lands...
Definately it will be just my Build but replacing 3C.M. for 3CoT.

But I just cannot disagree on the statements Bryant pointed just after the posted List.
I hate C.M. also but I really think it is a neccesary evil in the TES strategy. remember Surgical precission means having the possibility of a T1-2 Win!

Well just my first thoughts do with them what you see convenient. ;)


To whom may interest:
An anecdote not related to the subject about a Legacy Storm Player that will win the GP

the other day played UR Burn in the GP Madrid modern,I just copy-pasted a list, looked some other lists, and changed SwiftShitSpears for more SuperSnaps and hoping my good skills made me win the GP... Yeah, you know it I'm TFM.
One thing I stated was that there were no Win 3 Turn decks in that format, it is forbidded even preordain! and met a good boy who played creatures with ciclying like Street wraith and other Unknown cards and I remember in first game he plays suddently EoT Stuff with cascade -> Living End to Ou Yeah win me..., I think I laughed and told him that a sorcery card wasn't playable EoT... Well, just wanted to practice my english... I'm a good boy! and he laughed too...

The 2nd game, I just put in more counters and in the turn before I lost also, it was, - well, is keeping 2 counters ok for me to not to loose on 4th turn?, I think so, he does: Stuff With Cascade -> counter, Tap for red mana (sure pyro doesn't exist either) -> Ricochet Trap, (I wonder how many of you know this card). there were no lands untapped from my opponents side, and I play my 2nd Counter knowing FoW can't be played in this shitty format which also and even only let Serum visions as the best cantrip to play-> he does, SSG->2nd Ricochet Trap. Glory for him. and suddently I notice I will not win the GP even I was winning all the rounds before. the reason was simple: People tryes to win and test for this purpose.

That is what happens to a prepotent Storm Player that tryes with no effort win some money in a GP event - I think it's my second, well I won 4 match ups!
Another magic Legacy friend and me were laughing at a format that forbids Preordain and let Treasure Cruise see play...

[culby218]

Royce on to the semis!!! Congrats on making the PT as well.

[Lemnear]

Lem, Looked at that list! good approach!

One suggestion if I'm allowed:

it will run totally 17 lands which is a huge amount, DDFT runs 16 as example I won't know how can this affect to the hellbent issue.

Therefore, the first thing I will try to do will be to compress to 4 Gemstones and No Bayou in base - we have then 16 lands.
The problem with C.M is that I really consider it as any percentage of my lands-mana generators, shit I just sometimes use it as the unique mana generator to win games!. meaning that I asume sometimes I just will use C.M as my main mana source even! having total 15-or 15 and a half of mana generators.
Well if we dont consider CoT a land then you' re playing just 12 and a half land and 8 fetches meaning you really can lock yourself as an example of the result. or not getting the correct mana at the ritgh moment. Having any number of C.M reduced drastically this possibility.

Also, I recognice at the begginning I was an Anti EtW until Bahamut conviced me, from that time and the switch to full discard I don't remember a first Game lost in ages.
So maybe the second thing will be to include EtW somehow instead of the resulting 17th land.

The 3rd thing will be to maybe include a 3rd duress instead of 4th CoT having then 15 lands...
Definately it will be just my Build but replacing 3C.M. for 3CoT.

But I just cannot disagree on the statements Bryant pointed just after the posted List.
I hate C.M. also but I really think it is a neccesary evil in the TES strategy. remember Surgical precission means having the possibility of a T1-2 Win!

Well just my first thoughts do with them what you see convenient. ;)

I think you guys miss an important topic: how many turns/landdrops you play, in average, against decks with protection?

Realistically, you play at least 3 turns in that case, you want to make your landdrops and you run a shitload of cantrips to grab LED or shuffle lands away if you fear that infernal could become blocked. The issue only appears during turn 1 & 2 and I make the bold statement, that I doubt, that you successfully combo off T1/2 more than 18% looking at all games (pre- & post-board), but that the majority of these kills require/feature LED. I suggest setting all this into relation and deeply think about that. It can't be, that we discuss a possible addition aimed for games lasting longer than two turns (which are sure more than half the games I play, especially the post-board ones) with arguments like "but Chrome Mox can give us hellbent turn 1". Tell me honestly how many times, Mox was required for you to get hellbent for a turn 1 combo?

Just to highlight: I did not remove EtW, because I (the guy, who brought you the "tri-force" of Probe/Therapy/EtW in the first place) suddenly think the card is bad. I still love to fling the tri-force, but you sure realize, that the hate for the goblin burst did not decrese and that we board it out often to not scoop to Golgari Charm, Zealous Persecution, Terminus, Engineered Explosives, Izzet Staticaster, Toxic Deluge, Electrickery and stuff. Why bother with Moxen every game 2 & 3 if the main reason to run them is boarded out so often? With the current low on MB defense against storm game 1, I was lately able to win as easy with AN as with EtW, so I chopped the 6-mana playline off Infernal to DRASTICALLY improve the number of cards you can flip to Ad Nauseam which balanced out the loss of the 3 IMS named Chrome Mox.

I don't get why you think you lose the ability to combo turn 1 or 2 just because of the moxen. You still have plenty of 6/7/8/9 mana playlines for turns 1/2/3 which can even profit from the manaboost.


things to have in your head:

~70% of the meta are FoW-decks
~28% of the meta are Daze-decks
In every game 2 & 3 against those decks, you play against a very defensive hand
You need to overcome the defense which takes time
You have a ~18% chance to find a T1/2 combo in your opener

Question: Can we seriously justify the focus on T1/2 and likely give away every game lasting longer than these turns?



Edit: There is sure a lot of space for discussion in regards to CoT vs. Vein and how many to run ... or not. It's hard to discuss if the concept is still not clear

[Bryant Cook]

I think what you're failing to realize is the deck you're attempting to make is just a worse version of ANT.

• Without Chrome Mox you're slower, it's a fact. No amount of City of Traitors will change this. In match-ups like Death and Taxes/Elves/MUD/Maverick/Burn we need to win quickly before we're either dead or they play something critical. Mox helps us do this, more importantly it allows for even more turn one Empty the Warrens by letting us cantrip into the missing piece AND THEN make goblins.

• Our rituals aren't as strong as ANT's if we wait, we don't have the natural powerful PIFs that they do that they gain by being slower. What do we gain? I don't see much of anything.

• We now have issues with becoming hellbent with 16-17 lands, even more than ANT.

• You're praising greatness against soft-counters in a metagame that is currently cutting them.

• You've removed the turn one Empty plan off of six mana and the synergies with Therapy making the deck weaker.

• Only having Ad Nauseam makes us very narrow in our approaches and everything becomes too costly. What about the games you don't draw your Sol lands, that will happen.

• Color issues will happen in a 3.5 color deck that's trying to support colorless lands.

• Half the removal spells you mentioned rarely see play and the others are only out of 2 decks.

[itrytostorm]

I went 3-1 in a grinder, 4-4 main event, and 2-1 in 2 win a boxes. I'm loving the position of the deck (running the 6 fetch md bayou version). I'll post my notes later.

[Bryant Cook]

I had a few friends day two with TES after chatting with them and then Royce, I may try out Carpet of Flowers over Needle as the TES players said it was really underwhelming on the weekend with the lack of Reanimator/S&S running around. I would still side in Carpets against Miracles making the SB-ing plan:

-3 Chrome Mox
-2/3 Ponder
-1 Cabal Therapy
-1 Empty the Warrens

+2 Carpet of Flowers
+2 Xantid Swarm
+3 Abrupt Decay
+0/1 Tendrils of Agony

Having Carpet also allows us to become stronger against the UR/UWR Delver/SFM decks after they side in their soft counters they've been shaving from their main decks for Treasure Cruise.

[redhamjack]

So I wound up with 27 points after starting day two a disappointing 1-3. My overall record was 9-3 (8-1 day 1), so with another win I could have likely moneyed, but I couldn't justify missing a day of work on a couple of $200 coin-flips. I wish I could have stayed but was pretty tilted and I'm glad I had a ride back with my friends (who were going further west than I).

My list:

4 Ponder
4 Brainstrom
4 Gitaxian Probe

3 Infernal Tutor
4 Burning Wish
1 Ad Nauseam
1 Empty the Warrens

4 Cabal Therapy
2 Thoughtsieze

3 Chrome Mox
4 Lotus Petal
4 Lions Eye Diamond
4 Dark Ritual
4 Rite of Flame
2 Cabal Ritual

2 Misty Rainforest
2 Polluted Delta
2 Scalding Tarn
2 Underground Sea
2 Volcanic Island
2 Gemstone Mine

SB:

1 Empty the Warrens
1 Past In Flames
1 Tendrils of Agony
1 Infernal Tutor
1 Massacare
1 Temlin Performance
1 Tropical Island
2 Abrupt Decay
2 Xantid Swarm
2 Pithing Needle
2 Chain of Vapor

I settled on the Temlin Performance after seeing and hearing a lot of folks on storm this weekend. It allows you to steal a game in the storm matchup, helps with Sneak and Show, and can occasionally win you a game against any creature-less deck (Energy Field/RiP Miracles). Honestly, it won me one game all weekend, and likely could have just been another slot. I never really wanted the sideboard discard spell, but right now I'm replacing the Preformance with a Void Snare.

I never sided in Abrupt Decay (None of my matches called for it) and every time I sided in Needle it was disappointing. I might try to look for another card to use here, but there isn't much that gives us that kind of flexibility.

The other choice I made was 12 lands, 6 discard, 2 cabal ritual. I had no problems finding lands, and only mulliganed a few times the whole weekend. 6 discard gives you one when you need one, but doesn't overwhelm your hand. I like 6, but could definitely see the desire to run 7. I'm running Thoughtsieze because a lot of the cards I hate losing to are creatures and in my mind it's worth the two life. I like the extra speed offered by Cabal Ritual game one. The other benefit is a ton of players will see the Cabal Ritual and bring in a lot of graveyard hate game two, hopefully blanking more relevant threats. I usually side out these two first for any sideboard card.

32X doesn't warrant too much discussion. I'm disappointed in how I played day two. It was my first ever GP Day Two and I think part of it was nerves and the cards not being there. I had 2 turns to find any win con against dredge. 2 ponders shuffled me into nothing and a brainstorm locked me out of that one. Gave up tough long game 2&3s against RU and RUW. I look forward to continuing to practice with the deck. I still feel like I'm learning something every game I play with it.

Thanks to all of you guys on here. I don't post too much, but I appreciate your effort at evolving this deck. Keep storming!

[Final Fortune]

I used to run Wastelands in my vintage storm decks to kill Workshops and Academy while also playing around Thorn and stuff, but switching Moxen for SB lands in big style in Legacy is a waste of space

It's only a waste of space if you presume it's a waste of space, I find being able to modulate my mana sources between speed and consistency based on the deck I'm facing extremely useful, I don't care if it's a land, Carpet of Flowers or Cabal Ritual some times you just want to be able to play like TES and other times you just want to play like so your deck is better adapted to withstand whatever it's facing rather than trying to address the problem directly with more situational cards. You're pretty much trying to do the same thing, except back wards so you can keep a bunch of do nothing cards (IMO) like Pithing Needling in your board and drop matches vs Death&Taxes etc. by not being able to gold fish game 1 in time.

[Lemnear]

It's only a waste of space if you presume it's a waste of space, I find being able to modulate my mana sources between speed and consistency based on the deck I'm facing extremely useful, I don't care if it's a land, Carpet of Flowers or Cabal Ritual some times you just want to be able to play like TES and other times you just want to play like so your deck is better adapted to withstand whatever it's facing rather than trying to address the problem directly with more situational cards. You're pretty much trying to do the same thing, except back wards so you can keep a bunch of do nothing cards (IMO) like Pithing Needling in your board and drop matches vs Death&Taxes etc. by not being able to gold fish game 1 in time.

Modular mana does not solve your problem of drawing a potential slow hand against Eidolon and Thalia. Adding this fact to the density of blue decks in the metagame, I don't see myself running "stockup" mana in the SB rather than strong MB mana and fixes for problematic matchups in the side.


Edit (a bit late, because I was not in the mood and had barely time):

• Without Chrome Mox you're slower, it's a fact. No amount of City of Traitors will change this. In match-ups like Death and Taxes/Elves/MUD/Maverick/Burn we need to win quickly before we're either dead or they play something critical. Mox helps us do this, more importantly it allows for even more turn one Empty the Warrens by letting us cantrip into the missing piece AND THEN make goblins.

I'm fully aware that our T1/2 burst suffers which is primary relevant against D&T, Burn and other fringe decks (Goblins are not a super good play against Elves tbh), but not in most other games where we need to slice through defense or sculpt a hand for 1-2 turns.


• Our rituals aren't as strong as ANT's if we wait, we don't have the natural powerful PIFs that they do that they gain by being slower. What do we gain? I don't see much of anything.

Correct. That why I hope that the combination of DR, RoF and CoT can compensate for that. We gain a graveyard independent way to go beyond turn 3 with an advantage otherwise only CR can offer.


• We now have issues with becoming hellbent with 16-17 lands, even more than ANT.

Possibly. Encountered the problem 5 times so far and 4 times I was able to fix it with a Brainstorm or a LED.


• You're praising greatness against soft-counters in a metagame that is currently cutting them.

I still see Daze, Pierce and Thalia played, even if Pierce is going down due to UR Cruise taking RUG Delvers spot. If players cut down the softcounters it still offers the manaboost to power the combo


• You've removed the turn one Empty plan off of six mana and the synergies with Therapy making the deck weaker.

No, I removed the turn 1, 6-mana EtW via one of your 3 MB Infernals and the natural drawn EtW. Thats all.


• Only having Ad Nauseam makes us very narrow in our approaches and everything becomes too costly. What about the games you don't draw your Sol lands, that will happen.

I'm not sure what you want to express with the last sentence. If you want to highlight them not offering mana if revealed to Ad Nauseam, then I like to hint at the lowered manacost and more outs to draw Petals. Tbh, I don't see a Problem


• Color issues will happen in a 3.5 color deck that's trying to support colorless lands.

The 3 Moxen can only fix these if you have also an on-color card to spare. I'll sure have an eye on that topic

[Bryant Cook]

I'm fully aware that our T1/2 burst suffers which is primary relevant against D&T, Burn and other fringe decks (Goblins are not a super good play against Elves tbh), but not in most other games where we need to slice through defense or sculpt a hand for 1-2 turns.
In my opinion, Goblins are fine on the play since Elves is a turn three deck. But you don't ever encounter hands where Mox allows you to cast Duress/Therapy on turn two and then win with the mana it generates? Because I do. I think you as well as some other people make Mox out to be a lot worse than it actually is. The card is fine, it's not fantastic but it's the best option we have.



Correct. That why I hope that the combination of DR, RoF and CoT can compensate for that. We gain a graveyard independent way to go beyond turn 3 with an advantage otherwise only CR can offer.
Chaining Tutors to win hasn't been much of an issue past turn three if need be, I don't see Sol Lands having a big influence there. Especially at the cost of making Ad Nauseam worse.



Possibly. Encountered the problem 5 times so far and 4 times I was able to fix it with a Brainstorm or a LED.
I'm going to call this one a small sample size, also, in real gameplay you won't want to be using Brainstorms to get hellbent. You'll want to sculpt and hide cards from disruption.



I still see Daze, Pierce and Thalia played, even if Pierce is going down due to UR Cruise taking RUG Delvers spot. If players cut down the softcounters it still offers the manaboost to power the combo

The Thalia argument is absurd since even with Sol Lands they don't generate enough mana to win through her anyway. Pierce is on the decline and we can help agains soft counters post-board with Carpet of Flowers.



No, I removed the turn 1, 6-mana EtW via one of your 3 MB Infernals and the natural drawn EtW. Thats all.

Which is relevant. When I won the Grand Prix side event in Boston in the finals two games in a row I went six mana into Empty the Warren – both times with Infernal Tutors! I can have on lookers vouch for me on this one. It's an important line that you removed.



I'm not sure what you want to express with the last sentence. If you want to highlight them not offering mana if revealed to Ad Nauseam, then I like to hint at the lowered manacost and more outs to draw Petals. Tbh, I don't see a Problem

There are games in which we don't draw the Chrome Mox/Empty the Warrens slot. This will hurt your Ad Nauseams, even with a slightly lowered curve (1 card from 4cmc to 0). There's a reason ANTs Ad Nauseams are worse and relying on four Lotus Petal is part of it.

Also, your gameplan now is very one dimensional AND costly. In order to do anything you must Ad Nauseam or Burning Wish (even more expensive if you have to tutor for it).



The 3 Moxen can only fix these if you have also an on-color card to spare. I'll sure have an eye on that topic

Not true, while it can produce the desired color – making a blue to filter as a colorless is still valuable opening up Volcanic Island/Underground Sea to tap for the appropriate color.

[Final Fortune]

Modular mana does not solve your problem of drawing a potential slow hand against Eidolon and Thalia. Adding this fact to the density of blue decks in the metagame, I don't see myself running "stockup" mana in the SB rather than strong MB mana and fixes for problematic matchups in the side.

Huh? It doesn't "solve" the problem of drawing a slow hand vs Eidolon or Thalia but it decreases the statistical likelyhood compared to cutting Chome Mox and playing 14+ lands. I don't expect any given card to solve any given problem, some times when you Thoughtseize they have 2 hate bears, that doesn't mean Thoughtseize's ability to discard creatures is irrelevant.

I don't see what match up Pithing Needle is "fixing," you guys are playing a lot of shit in your SBs these days that doesn't do much of anything other than take up space. Personally I'm happy to give Reanimator a favourable match up, if it means I can play a better deck vs the majority of Islands out there. If you want to ruin the fundamental turn of your MD in order to play cards you could've SB instead, that's your business I suppose.

[Tammit67]

My list:

4 Ponder
4 Brainstrom
4 Preordain

3 Infernal Tutor
4 Burning Wish
1 Ad Nauseam
1 Empty the Warrens

4 Cabal Therapy
2 Thoughtsieze

3 Chrome Mox
4 Lotus Petal
4 Lions Eye Diamond
4 Dark Ritual
4 Rite of Flame
2 Cabal Ritual

2 Misty Rainforest
2 Polluted Delta
2 Scalding Tarn
2 Underground Sea
2 Volcanic Island
2 Gemstone Mine

SB:

1 Empty the Warrens
1 Past In Flames
1 Tendrils of Agony
1 Infernal Tutor
1 Massacare
1 Temlin Performance
1 Tropical Island
2 Abrupt Decay
2 Xantid Swarm
2 Pithing Needle
2 Chain of Vapor



4 Preordain and 0 Gitaxian probe?

[redhamjack]

Complete brainfart. I typed my post on our way home and I was extremely tired. Must have missed that before I posted. I actually run 4 probe, 0 preordain. I've edited my post. Sorry about that!

[Tammit67]

Complete brainfart. I typed my post on our way home and I was extremely tired. Must have missed that before I posted. I actually run 4 probe, 0 preordain. I've edited my post. Sorry about that!

Congrats on your day one performance, hope to see your name up there again at other events.

[itrytostorm]

Just the win/losses:

Grinder - Beat UR Delver twice with no siding (super easy), Enchantress on turn 1 and 2, then lost to Junk Stompy. Main deck Chalice and 3 ball got me.

Main Event - Bye, Lost to Merfolk with main deck chalice, beat Cheerio's, beat UR Delver, lost to Infect, lost to Reanimator, beat Dredge, lost to BUG Delver.

Win-a-box - Got in a pod with 3 UR Delver, Nic Fits, 2 Elves, Affinity so I was pretty happy. Rolled on Elves and Nic Fits, then "drew" with the UR Delver player with me getting 20 packs and the BS sleeves knowing he was a heavy underdog. Tried another one but lost to UR Delver.

I feel like a lot of the losses came from poor rips. Against infect and Reanimator I had them with 0 coutners and/or Xantid in play. Even with Iona in play I was live with the Chain in hand but couldn't draw a tutor for my life. Merfolk ripped running Cursecastcher, Chalice after I Probed and layed on Xantid. Overall I'm happy with how I played and may try out a Carpet of Flowers over a Needle. Keep storming, everyone :)

Ran the stock list:
Dig:
4 Ponder
4 Gitaxian Probe
4 Brainstorm

Disruption:
3 Duress
4 Cabal Therapy

Tutors:
4 Burning Wish
3 Infernal Tutor

Mana:
4 Rite of Flame
4 Lotus Petal
3 Chrome Mox
4 Lion's Eye Diamond
4 Dark Ritual

"Finishers":
1 Empty the Warrens
1 Ad Nauseam

Land:
3 Misty Rainforest
2 Underground Sea
2 Volcanic Island
2 Polluted Delta
2 Gemstone Mine
1 Bayou
1 Bloodstained Mire

SB: 3 Abrupt Decay
SB: 1 Void Snare
SB: 1 Tendrils of Agony
SB: 1 Past in Flames
SB: 1 Infernal Tutor
SB: 1 Empty the Warrens
SB: 1 Massacre
SB: 2 Xantid Swarm
SB: 2 Chain of Vapor

[Lemnear]

In my opinion, Goblins are fine on the play since Elves is a turn three deck. But you don't ever encounter hands where Mox allows you to cast Duress/Therapy on turn two and then win with the mana it generates? Because I do. I think you as well as some other people make Mox out to be a lot worse than it actually is. The card is fine, it's not fantastic but it's the best option we have.

Elves are able to shit out quite some blockers by turn 2 and run a combination of discard, MBT, Nullrod + NO->Ruric Thar postboard. EtW is not quite a win on the draw.

Sure I know the hands which have 7 mana, a duress and an Infernal/Wish. I'm just fed up to die in beauty if I don't have the nuts and my opponent is able to drag out the match for 2-4 turns because my hand does not contain 7+ mana, a Tutor/Wish and a protection-spell, because I can't ever catch up, if I have to 2-for-1 myself for the chrome mox. I know it's the best option for going for AN flips with zero floating, but I think we can run without it and still be the best AN deck


Chaining Tutors to win hasn't been much of an issue past turn three if need be, I don't see Sol Lands having a big influence there. Especially at the cost of making Ad Nauseam worse.

I put quite a lot of time into calculation to determine IF Ad Nauseam actually became worse and if you can float a single colored mana into AN and factor the extra cards you draw thanks to the removal of the 4cc card and the overall lowered cc, the result is unsurprisingly on par.


The Thalia argument is absurd since even with Sol Lands they don't generate enough mana to win through her anyway. Pierce is on the decline and we can help agains soft counters post-board with Carpet of Flowers.

It's not about winning through her; it's about being able to cantrip/Wish for solutions. With CoT, I can save the SB space for stuff like Carpet, don't have to bother getting hands on a green source, nor am required to play against at least two islands in play to have the same +2 manaboost CoT gives (however colorless)


There are games in which we don't draw the Chrome Mox/Empty the Warrens slot. This will hurt your Ad Nauseams, even with a slightly lowered curve (1 card from 4cmc to 0). There's a reason ANTs Ad Nauseams are worse and relying on four Lotus Petal is part of it.

ANT suffers because of their increased number of cantrips (to reveal) and additional 3-4cc cards they flip like PIF, ToA, Grim Tutor or the like.


Huh? It doesn't "solve" the problem of drawing a slow hand vs Eidolon or Thalia but it decreases the statistical likelyhood compared to cutting Chome Mox and playing 14+ lands. I don't expect any given card to solve any given problem, some times when you Thoughtseize they have 2 hate bears, that doesn't mean Thoughtseize's ability to discard creatures is irrelevant.

I don't see what match up Pithing Needle is "fixing," you guys are playing a lot of shit in your SBs these days that doesn't do much of anything other than take up space. Personally I'm happy to give Reanimator a favourable match up, if it means I can play a better deck vs the majority of Islands out there. If you want to ruin the fundamental turn of your MD in order to play cards you could've SB instead, that's your business I suppose.

Yeah Mox increases the possibility of T1/2 Goblins while CoT helps to recover from a landed Thalia game 1, then you did not had a clue that you needed to hold a very fast hand. Postboard is a totally different game as there are options like 2nd EtW from the SB, CoVs or other stuff against hatebears to consider.

"A lot of shit"? Decay, Needle, Xantid and CoV are "shit"? Have you noticed that we actually reduced the number of fancy 1-offs in the sideboard since we cutted Silence? I'm eager to hear your suggestions, if Needle on Griselbrand or SDT is such a bad play for your taste.

You need to realize, that the current structure of the metagame delayed our combo turn (especially Postboard) with the number of non-blue decks (our T1/2 combo prey) keeping to drop. What I consider relevant for the decks development is, that now more than 85% of decks we face either run Turn 1 discard (since Hymn got replaced by Thoughtseize in most BUG lists and give us less time to act) and/or free counterspells and I try to analyze how much those can delay us and how we can make up for the time our opponents gained. I'm no longer fine with focusing on a shrinking number of matchups and dedicating MB slots to them rather than SB slots. If CoT is the solution or if we pickup the Cabal Rituals again to play them alongside of Dark Ritual and Rite of Flame, does not change the direction I choose with the deck for the moment (as it still has much better ANs than ANT, still has more T1/2 combo-lines and still gives a fuck about DRS/RIP). Take this as a summary.

[Lemnear]

My dear friends, would you mind to list me your losses and reasons for them (details welcomed!) you suffered at the GP for my data collection? Thanks a lot

[Bryant Cook]

Elves are able to shit out quite some blockers by turn 2 and run a combination of discard, MBT, Nullrod + NO->Ruric Thar postboard. EtW is not quite a win on the draw.

Sure I know the hands which have 7 mana, a duress and an Infernal/Wish. I'm just fed up to die in beauty if I don't have the nuts and my opponent is able to drag out the match for 2-4 turns because my hand does not contain 7+ mana, a Tutor/Wish and a protection-spell, because I can't ever catch up, if I have to 2-for-1 myself for the chrome mox. I know it's the best option for going for AN flips with zero floating, but I think we can run without it and still be the best AN deck

Which is why I stated on the play - 12-16 Goblins on turn one should be Elves. We've also been discussing game one's this entire time, since your arguments have all been directed at them this entire time.

To use your argument with too many lands, "Just fix it with Brainstorm." shuffle those Chrome Moxes back. Late game Moxen still have value in being free storm counts if the mana off them isn't required to make the natural kill without an engine much easier. It's about being consistent and I don't believe we can do that with only four Petals and still be the best Ad Nauseam deck.

Let's create a situation:

You've used two Lotus Petals to power out Ad Nauseam and you're at sixteen life with nothing floating. Do you stop at eight against UR Delver because you're likely dead if your Ad Nauseam fails? Your list only makes Ad Nauseams, what if you've expended your resources? It's not a pretty picture.


I put quite a lot of time into calculation to determine IF Ad Nauseam actually became worse and if you can float a single colored mana into AN and factor the extra cards you draw thanks to the removal of the 4cc card and the overall lowered cc, the result is unsurprisingly on par. I'm sure you have, like I stated all you did was change a 4cc to a 0. The problem is now your initial mana sources are unreliable and you won't always be able to float mana.


It's not about winning through her; it's about being able to cantrip/Wish for solutions. With CoT, I can save the SB space for stuff like Carpet, don't have to bother getting hands on a green source, nor am required to play against at least two islands in play to have the same +2 manaboost CoT gives (however colorless)

We can Wish/Cantrip without a colorless land in our deck that causes us to be worse in other match-ups. I'd rather have Carpet in my sideboard to make me better against taxing counters than ruin my maindeck. I consider taking away some of our strengths in being fast against certain match-ups, removing the Cabal Therapy synergies and color issues ruining our deck. We can fix these metagame issues with two sideboard slots - I'll do that.


ANT suffers because of their increased number of cantrips (to reveal) and additional 3-4cc cards they flip like PIF, ToA, Grim Tutor or the like.

But part of it is still relying on Lotus Petals as initial mana sources, we've all lost games with Ad Nauseam without ever revealing a 4cc card.


EDIT: I updated the opening post with my newest list and some of the content.

[redhamjack]

My dear friends, would you mind to list me your losses and reasons for them (details welcomed!) you suffered at the GP for my data collection? Thanks a lot

I my loss day 1 was to Sneak and Show. He won the die-roll, probes me, sees a hand with some potential, drops ancient tomb, lotus petal, and resolves show and tell into Emmy. He wins next turn.

Game 2 I'm on the play. Mull to 6, keep a hand with t2 potential but no protection. I shuffle away my ponder into nothing while he makes a t1 emmy. He has flusterstorm and force of will in hand.

At the very least this loss let me get food which wasn't afforded to slower players.

Day 2 I lose to R/U after stealing game 1. Games 2 and 3 he just had all the protection against me and played them well. He brought in a ton of cards and had way more counters than I had threats. My notes show me probing into Daze, Pierce, Pierce, Fow, Fow, Land. Just loaded on counters.

I also lost to dredge in tough games 2 and 3. I won die roll, went on the play and after a probe shows me what I'm against I tendrils t2. Game 2 he's on the play and has the luckiest dredges into therapies and narcomebias and bridges and just all of the things. Game 3 I'm on the play and keep a 6 card hand with everything but a win con (a brainstorm and a ponder though). Neither find me action and he gets me on his t3.

My final loss was to RWU. I won preboards, but post he had mages, pierces, forces, flusterstorms and too much hate for me to fight through. I was also pretty tilted at losing my previous two matches, which might have helped him.

[Lemnear]

I my loss day 1 was to Sneak and Show. He won the die-roll, probes me, sees a hand with some potential, drops ancient tomb, lotus petal, and resolves show and tell into Emmy. He wins next turn.

Game 2 I'm on the play. Mull to 6, keep a hand with t2 potential but no protection. I shuffle away my ponder into nothing while he makes a t1 emmy. He has flusterstorm and force of will in hand.

At the very least this loss let me get food which wasn't afforded to slower players.

Day 2 I lose to R/U after stealing game 1. Games 2 and 3 he just had all the protection against me and played them well. He brought in a ton of cards and had way more counters than I had threats. My notes show me probing into Daze, Pierce, Pierce, Fow, Fow, Land. Just loaded on counters.

I also lost to dredge in tough games 2 and 3. I won die roll, went on the play and after a probe shows me what I'm against I tendrils t2. Game 2 he's on the play and has the luckiest dredges into therapies and narcomebias and bridges and just all of the things. Game 3 I'm on the play and keep a 6 card hand with everything but a win con (a brainstorm and a ponder though). Neither find me action and he gets me on his t3.

My final loss was to RWU. I won preboards, but post he had mages, pierces, forces, flusterstorms and too much hate for me to fight through. I was also pretty tilted at losing my previous two matches, which might have helped him.

Thanks!

Just from your gut feeling: How many games did you steal with a T1/2 IT->EtW this weekend? How many games you played did go longer than your turn 3?

[redhamjack]

Thanks!

Just from your gut feeling: How many games did you steal with a T1/2 IT->EtW this weekend? How many games you played did go longer than your turn 3?

Actually quite a few, I'd say I won games with t1 warrens at least 8 or 9 times day 1. So many opponents were not prepared for it game 1, and I even stole a couple of game 2s and 3s with it. I was always worried about pyroclasm and friends but nobody seemed to have them. I am leery of going for goblins game 2 after stealing a game 1 with it because I fear people bring in hate for that plan, but maybe I'm overestimating the depth of folk's sideboards.

I've seen the discussion in here about going for EtW against elves, and I won two games against two elves players with the red men, but I always had cabal therapy support. Without therapy I wouldn't want to go for 12 goblins t1.

As far as the number of games that went past t3, I'd say a few of my games went longer than t3. I won 3 or 4 with 3 lands in play, but I also lost a few, maybe 3 on saturday, and 6 on Sunday :( that went long and my attrition couldn't keep up.

[That nice guy]

Long time lurker, first time poster in this thread. I really want to thank Bryant Cook and Lemnear for developing this deck. It's a gentleman's pleasure to pilot. I've been testing/gold-fishing it for years and it finally seems time to unleash the vintage skills.

I pose this question to the more experienced players: has anyone tested a single grim tutor in the 75 somewhere? I'm almost sure it's not good enough being a 3-drop that costs you 3 life on the flip and on resolution, but I am tempted to test due to the fact that the only games I lose tend to be when I'm derdalling with blue cantrips into not what I want. I always seem to have the mana. Like I said, I'm ALMOST sure it's bad, but I have to ask if anyone's tested since it nags at me.

Which leads me to my testing observations ...

My thoughts so far:
The only thing different about my 75 from the OP/primer is the sideboard (3 card difference). I don't think carpet is worth it. Yeah it's great in the format right now, but I'm 8-0 against UR delver in tournament games and the only decks I lose to are reanimator and UW control, and to a lesser extent Esper with a loaded hand (Eg: thoughtseize, FoW, clique, daze, ect). (sometimes I do lose to variance/derdaly hands) Anyway, I don't think carpet is super in the matches I'm not winning. Needle just buys you a lot of time and messes with the worst matches. My current side looks like this:

3 Abrupt Decay
2 Xantid Swarm
2 Pithing Needle
1 Chain of Vapor (I like to keep 1 for post ad nausea and a 4th non-burning answer)
1 Shattering spree (2 people at my local always plays chalice decks, and everyone(UW especially) bring in cannonist against me)
1 Void Snare
1 Infernal Tutor
1 Massacre
1 Tendrils of Agony
1 Empty the Warrens
1 Past in Flames

I'm thinking of cutting a swarm for another chain, I'd board in chain a lot more than I'd bring in swarm, I'm bringing a shit ton of cards in against UW already and I like ponders there, and finally, I like chaining something EoT and then therapying it away, or just winning w/ natural storm. Chain can also buy time or build storm, while zantid is good but doesn't auto beat counterbalance anyway, I'll rely on needles for that.

Crystal Vein/city of T is dumb. Just play carpet, it's so much better, it's like a green dark ritual/rite ever tun.

I'd say 3 out of every 4 wins I get against UR are from goblin tokens.

I messed around with Bribery in the side as a option for the LOLz against reanimator and LED-Dredge, but I don't think it's worth the slot. It does feel really really good though! Take Grissle Daddy -> Win! I've also taken Elesh Norn against ichorid and he couldn't win. Taking Iona if you can't be sure of a win is fun too. Anyway, I'm cutting out the antics since if I can burning for that I'll prolly win anyway and getting 2 blue is meh.Like I said, it was for the LOLz at locals.


If you're just picking this deck up, here are tips not in the primer (I think) that I'll share
1. it's always a good idea to leave an extra LED un-poped on ad nausea if you can because hellbent is a thing. Learned that the hard way. I know it seems obvious but the tunnel vision got me.
2. your opponents rite of flames count when you cast RoF, so read your cards I guess. In the mirror I was playing against a jedi and if I just chose the RoF off a probe-> cabal I would have won that turn.
3. AN is an instant, casting it EoT off dark rit is sometimes the play, when if they counter it you can next turn win now that they don't have a counter or you can just untap. Rare but be aware.
4. If you open up on a shaky hand, don't rely on BS if you don't already have the fetch, if you don't find it you'll prolly get stuck for two turns. When I switched from fetchbase to gemstones I realized this the hard way. If you're playing the 7/8 fetch I'd prolly go for it.
In general I'm going with the gemstones from here because I like guaranteed decay games 2-3, but man i miss the fetches and a single basic island for the derdle hands. If I cut swarms for chains/needles I just might go to 2 gemstones only.

P.S.
Does anyone have some data on how many goblins minimum are need against which decks T1? Or to I have to make graphs?

P.P.S.
Thanks again cook, you've come a long way since I met you at a Mana Leak Open and you were playing Tomb of Urami, LOLz. I remember trading you a Gemstone mine in Mass and thinking that the deck wouldn't get anymore broken cards that wouldn't get banned. I was wrong.
I hope people appreciated my attempt at contributions.

[Asthereal]

I pose this question to the more experienced players: has anyone tested a single grim tutor in the 75 somewhere? I'm almost sure it's not good enough being a 3-drop that costs you 3 life on the flip and on resolution, but I am tempted to test due to the fact that the only games I lose tend to be when I'm derdalling with blue cantrips into not what I want. I always seem to have the mana. Like I said, I'm ALMOST sure it's bad, but I have to ask if anyone's tested since it nags at me.
This deck is optimized for Burning Wish. In this deck Wish is miles better than Grim Tutor.
In ANT it's a different story, since ANT makes more mana, but has trouble making a lot of red mana.

This deck is good at casting Ad Nauseam. If you feel you have not enough business, you can try:
1. A second Ad Nauseam main deck.
2. Just put the Infernal in the main, like we used to have.

I personally feel it's completely fine to cut a Ponder. I know most here don't agree, but cantripping into cantrips is a thing, and TES doesn't like to do that as much as ANT does. I tried 3 Ponder once and it felt good. I should have won all my rounds that tourney. I didn't, but that was all my fault for not sequencing my plays properly and missing an obvious opportunity to grab the win.

[vercadium]

I pose this question to the more experienced players: has anyone tested a single grim tutor in the 75 somewhere? I'm almost sure it's not good enough being a 3-drop that costs you 3 life on the flip and on resolution, but I am tempted to test due to the fact that the only games I lose tend to be when I'm derdalling with blue cantrips into not what I want. I always seem to have the mana. Like I said, I'm ALMOST sure it's bad, but I have to ask if anyone's tested since it nags at me.

Yes, it's been tested - both the cost and life loss are too great in an Ad Nauseam deck that already has such a high saturation of tutors. The effect is very powerful, which is what makes it not completely terrible. Note that some people in Europe only run 3 Burning Wish (with 4 MD Infernal Tutor) - I'm not saying this is correct, but I raise this point to illustrate that while tutor redundancy and density is a desirable trait, drawing multiples is very poor and the sweet spot (in my opinion) appears to be either 7 or 8 tutors in the 75. Burning Wish and Infernal Tutor are superior and fill those spots.


I don't think carpet is worth it. Yeah it's great in the format right now, but I'm 8-0 against UR delver in tournament games and the only decks I lose to are reanimator and UW control, and to a lesser extent Esper with a loaded hand (Eg: thoughtseize, FoW, clique, daze, ect). (sometimes I do lose to variance/derdaly hands) Anyway, I don't think carpet is super in the matches I'm not winning. Needle just buys you a lot of time and messes with the worst matches.

I agree with you. While I understand the logic behind Carpet of Flowers, there's less soft counters and Wasteland than ever before (although, the card is still very good against the remaining copies they do have). I too prefer Pithing Needle at the moment, particularly as Show and Tell is still moderately popular in my region. I am going to do some further testing before I make a final decision on this however.


I'm thinking of cutting a swarm for another chain, I'd board in chain a lot more than I'd bring in swarm, I'm bringing a shit ton of cards in against UW already and I like ponders there, and finally, I like chaining something EoT and then therapying it away, or just winning w/ natural storm. Chain can also buy time or build storm, while zantid is good but doesn't auto beat counterbalance anyway, I'll rely on needles for that.

Xantid Swarm isn't necessarily included in the sideboard for Miracles, even though Bryant has began bringing it in against them in recent times. I agree with Bryant in that, even if it doesn't perform that well against them, I feel it is better than a Ponder that would otherwise take that slot.

Its original purpose (which it is still stellar at accomplishing) was to beat Show and Tell/Reanimator (and of course more scarcely played decks list Merfolk and High Tide). If your meta has any of these decks, it might be worth keeping 2 copies regardless of whether or not you agree to bring it in against Miracles. There is some overlap however as both Xantid Swarm and Pithing Needle invalidate Griselbrand and Sensei's Diving Top (to an extent). Do we need the full 4 copies of both? Perhaps Carpet of Flowers is better than Pithing Needle if Xantid Swarm already handling these issues? Xantid Swarm is easier for many decks to deal with than Pithing Needle though.

I'm unsure on these issues at the moment, but I'll be sticking with 2 Xantid Swarm and 2 Pithing Needle for the time being - I don't have any complaints regarding their effectiveness.

Aside from this, I like having the 2 Chain of Vapor, so if I were you I would indeed find room for the second as they're very versatile. Perhaps there's something else you could shave? If there's no Leyline of Sanctity in your meta, I would suggest shaving the Void Snare instead of the Chain of Vapor (to make the required space for your Shattering Spree).


Does anyone have some data on how many goblins minimum are need against which decks T1? Or to I have to make graphs?

I have a screenshot of a Facebook post from Ari Lax 2 years back were he breaks down this (specifically in relation to Stoneforge Mystic) - it could be out of date now, but I'll post it here in a day or two anyway (if I remember this time :p). I don't have graphs though and it would be nice to have the data for more fringe decks!

I hope you have found this helpful. Cheers!

[Lemnear]

I pose this question to the more experienced players: has anyone tested a single grim tutor in the 75 somewhere? I'm almost sure it's not good enough being a 3-drop that costs you 3 life on the flip and on resolution, but I am tempted to test due to the fact that the only games I lose tend to be when I'm derdalling with blue cantrips into not what I want. I always seem to have the mana. Like I said, I'm ALMOST sure it's bad, but I have to ask if anyone's tested since it nags at me.

Yes and it is horrible in a deck which evolves around Ad Nauseam. Grim is a dead flip if you hit it below 7 life. Even tutoring for AN with Grim is wacky because of the extra mana and lost life. It is a reasonable card in ANT is you give less of a fuck about AN but even there, needing to have 7 life for a PIF loop left isn't hot and the reason ANT has still not found a real solution for the desired Infernal 5-6.


My thoughts so far:
The only thing different about my 75 from the OP/primer is the sideboard (3 card difference). I don't think carpet is worth it. Yeah it's great in the format right now, but I'm 8-0 against UR delver in tournament games and the only decks I lose to are reanimator and UW control, and to a lesser extent Esper with a loaded hand (Eg: thoughtseize, FoW, clique, daze, ect). (sometimes I do lose to variance/derdaly hands) Anyway, I don't think carpet is super in the matches I'm not winning. Needle just buys you a lot of time and messes with the worst matches.

Honestly, since blue decks started to cut Stifle, Wasteland and Pierce, all that doesn't pack multiple angles of attack like BUG, Esper, Deathblade or Miracles, became pretty managable no matter your build.


My current side looks like this:

3 Abrupt Decay
2 Xantid Swarm
2 Pithing Needle
1 Chain of Vapor (I like to keep 1 for post ad nausea and a 4th non-burning answer)
1 Shattering spree (2 people at my local always plays chalice decks, and everyone(UW especially) bring in cannonist against me)
1 Void Snare
1 Infernal Tutor
1 Massacre
1 Tendrils of Agony
1 Empty the Warrens
1 Past in Flames

I'm thinking of cutting a swarm for another chain, I'd board in chain a lot more than I'd bring in swarm, I'm bringing a shit ton of cards in against UW already and I like ponders there, and finally, I like chaining something EoT and then therapying it away, or just winning w/ natural storm. Chain can also buy time or build storm, while zantid is good but doesn't auto beat counterbalance anyway, I'll rely on needles for that.

Why are you running Spree if you have the belcher mode for your local players (you know before turn 1 what they are playing) and Decays Postboard? Swarm and Needle target the same matchup more or less, so it's a personal choice and what you want the card exactly to do.


Crystal Vein/city of T is dumb. Just play carpet, it's so much better, it's like a green dark ritual/rite ever tun.

First question: Would you play Carpet mainboard? If not, do you want to dedicate several SB slots for modular mana which also require green mana to initiate? I don't. We are obviously not talking about the same idea in context of mana. Have you tested the setup to experience the benefits and limitations, or is this just a gut-reaction? I remember the same extreme reactions back when I suggested cutting Silence xD

[Bryant Cook]

First question: Would you play Carpet mainboard? If not, do you want to dedicate several SB slots for modular mana which also require green mana to initiate? I don't. We are obviously not talking about the same idea in context of mana. Have you tested the setup to experience the benefits and limitations, or is this just a gut-reaction? I remember the same extreme reactions back when I suggested cutting Silence xD

He was talking about the list I recommended in the updated Opening Post, where I do play Carpet of Flowers in the sideboard. Yes, I do want several green spells in my sideboard if they're the best spells at what they do. I'm running a pair of Gemstone Mine along with the searchable Bayou in order to be able to support these cards.

There's a huge difference between cutting Chrome Mox for additional lands and swapping Silence back to Duress. Extreme reactions are somewhat to be expected when you're suggesting an overhaul of the deck's core.

[Lemnear]

He was talking about the list I recommended in the updated Opening Post, where I do play Carpet of Flowers in the sideboard. Yes, I do want several green spells in my sideboard if they're the best spells at what they do. I'm running a pair of Gemstone Mine along with the searchable Bayou in order to be able to support these cards.

There's a huge difference between cutting Chrome Mox for additional lands and swapping Silence back to Duress. Extreme reactions are somewhat to be expected when you're suggesting an overhaul of the deck's core.

For me the message was "why should I bother with crappy CoT if I can fix mana issues with Carpet?" and he seems to miss that such suggested transition don't come without "a rats tail".

I care a lot about that secondary effects of changes like manacurve, color-balance, etc. and that's why I took the time and honest to explain changes/ideas, their weaknesses and required changes to play-routines, which include working towards floating mana among others for this particular idea. It drives me mad if I, despite all the explanation, see comments like "but it's worse if you cast AN with zero float!" which are not only obvious, because I mentioned the issue and work-arounds from the start, BUT reveal a certain lack of thought-flexibility, maybe because the deck spoiled it's pilots by it's Ad Nauseams (despite zero mana float) pretty much guaranteeing a win the same turn you casted it. I chopped that; I know what the result is; I communicated it. The same as for T1 Goblins or hellbent-problems. Maybe I should have picked another videogame reference for explaining the change as the "Triforce" was sticky for Probe/Therapy/EtW *laugh*

I don't feel we simply "swapped" Silence and Duress, as the "rats tail" (is that used in AE or BE the same way as in german?) was no more timewalking, no more blanking counterspells like Spell Snare or Stifle, no more outs to Leyline of Sanctity, etc. which I got flak for in Nov '13 despite me hinting on the benefits which I thought should make up for the losses.

Maybe this idea, which I begun to work at after Kai Thiele messaged me on FB about him looking for a storm deck "which can blow out your opponent early BUT ALSO can grind", is even more controverse than the removal of Silence and I admit, I wasn't prepared to fight so hard for people at least goldfishing with it (and do it with the required change of the routine), before the idea gets neglected, which created a balance between ANTs midgame manapower and TES' efficient Ad Nauseams & quick combos, which I think is the direction Kai was asking for (who hates EtW anyways) even if I think that the numbers sure need tweaking.

I recommend rewatching most of Bryants matches in video-list of the OP to get a feeling of how often games go to turn 3 and beyond vs. turn 1 goblins and the role of drawn Moxen.

[Bryant Cook]

For me the message was "why should I bother with crappy CoT if I can fix mana issues with Carpet?" and he seems to miss that such suggested transition don't come without "a rats tail". My guess to what "A rats tail" means is downside? My counterargument would be, even if that was his attitude it has merit. Why change the core of our deck, when we can fix your suggested issues with a sideboard slot? You're sacrificing a lot to gain very little in my opinion.


I care a lot about that secondary effects of changes like manacurve, color-balance, etc. and that's why I took the time and honest to explain changes/ideas, their weaknesses and required changes to play-routines, which include working towards floating mana among others for this particular idea. It drives me mad if I, despite all the explanation, see comments like "but it's worse if you cast AN with zero float!" which are not only obvious, because I mentioned the issue and work-arounds from the start, BUT reveal a certain lack of thought-flexibility, maybe because the deck spoiled it's pilots by it's Ad Nauseams (despite zero mana float) pretty much guaranteeing a win the same turn you casted it. I chopped that; I know what the result is; I communicated it. The same as for T1 Goblins or hellbent-problems. Maybe I should have picked another videogame reference for explaining the change as the "Triforce" was sticky for Probe/Therapy/EtW *laugh*

I put a lot of thought into my comments, concerns and deck decisions. Just because we don't see eye to eye doesn't mean either one of us is wrong, from where I'm standing you're views on what you want to accomplish are moving toward a slower deck that resembles ANT. I don't want that as it causes us to become something else, where you're going may end up being another hybrid of the two. In either case, if I made a change that drastic I wouldn't expect others to be so ecstatic about it.


I don't feel we simply "swapped" Silence and Duress, as the "rats tail" (is that used in AE or BE the same way as in german?) was no more timewalking, no more blanking counterspells like Spell Snare or Stifle, no more outs to Leyline of Sanctity, etc. which I got flak for in Nov '13 despite me hinting on the benefits which I thought should make up for the losses.

Sure, they each have upsides and downsides. We made the switch more based on the fact that discard strategies were becoming incredibly popular in which Silence did nothing and the fact that Duress is better paired with Cabal Therapy. It was a swap, moving on.


Maybe this idea, which I begun to work at after Kai Thiele messaged me on FB about him looking for a storm deck "which can blow out your opponent early BUT ALSO can grind", is even more controverse than the removal of Silence and I admit, I wasn't prepared to fight so hard for people at least goldfishing with it (and do it with the required change of the routine), before the idea gets neglected, which created a balance between ANTs midgame manapower and TES' efficient Ad Nauseams & quick combos, which I think is the direction Kai was asking for (who hates EtW anyways) even if I think that the numbers sure need tweaking.

Perhaps you're looking for a different deck? It's not our problem if Kai hates Empty, I still love it. If you're actively trying to merge the two decks, I think you're looking in the wrong place.


I recommend rewatching most of Bryants matches in video-list of the OP to get a feeling of how often games go to turn 3 and beyond vs. turn 1 goblins and the role of drawn Moxen.

Sure, watch the one where Empty single handily beats Ben Friedman for me or how fast my match was against Todd Anderson or Reid Duke. There's also videos where the games go long and the deck prevails, look at my finals match against Ben Green. TES has late-game power too, while it may not be as strong as ANTs it's still there – we happen to be much faster so our late game is less relevant.

[Ancestral]

@bryant cook, thanks for the update on your recent list. At my LGS there are a lot of bug delvers, you would bring in xantid swarm against them? you recommend other cards in sideboard for this matchup besides the ones you have ?

[Bryant Cook]

@bryant cook, thanks for the update on your recent list. At my LGS there are a lot of bug delvers, you would bring in xantid swarm against them? you recommend other cards in sideboard for this matchup besides the ones you have ?

Not to be rude, but if you read the opening post you would've found your answer under "Tempo decks" where I specifically state not to side them in against BUG Delver. I wouldn't sideboard for that match-up as Carpet is worse due to the number of Bayou/Deathrite Shaman paired with Abrupt Decay.

[culby218]

Not to be rude, but if you read the opening post you would've found your answer under "Tempo decks" where I specifically state not to side them in against BUG Delver. I wouldn't sideboard for that match-up as Carpet is worse due to the number of Bayou/Deathrite Shaman paired with Abrupt Decay.

Bryant, what are your thoughts on going up a duress and down a cabal and possibly moving it back to the board as a wish target?

[Bryant Cook]

Bryant, what are your thoughts on going up a duress and down a cabal and possibly moving it back to the board as a wish target?

I would only do that if you're not playing Empty in the main deck, the synergy between the two is incredible and often steals games. Therapy is also good in more match-ups, unlike Duress. Lastly, I'm likely not going to play a protection spell wish target in the near future, it's often a wasted slot.

[Ancestral]

Not to be rude, but if you read the opening post you would've found your answer under "Tempo decks" where I specifically state not to side them in against BUG Delver. I wouldn't sideboard for that match-up as Carpet is worse due to the number of Bayou/Deathrite Shaman paired with Abrupt Decay.


hum i see, i didn´t saw that point, sorry about that ;) i hope to see you more on camera in scg events or other big events :D

[vizari]

I've been on TES for about a week. Forgive me if the answers to my questions are obvious.

I find myself wanting an additional storm engine when Ad Nauseam isn't possible. Does anyone remember where the removal of Diminishing Returns and Ill-Gotten Gains occurred in the thread? I tried the 'Advanced Search' function but it doesn't seem to work too well. Has anyone tested Infernal Contract in the side board? I like that it can be cast off just Burning Wish + LED, and perhaps 4 cards is enough to turn around a losing game depending on what you already have in hand.

Carpet of Flowers, Chain of Vapor and Abrupt Decay have been all stars in the SB for me. I haven't found much use for Void Snare quite yet. In which matchups is it at its best? (only Leyline of Sanctity?)
If it's determined that Xantid Swarm isn't good against Miracles, then is it really worth playing? Wouldn't needles be better because they also stabilize our mana base against Wasteland decks?

I've been toying with Goblin War Strike and Telemin Performance. It's quite pleasing when I'm able to win off of those, even though they're likely "incorrect".

When trying to bait out counters with Burning Wish, I feel like there should be a "set up" spell we can grab in the case they let it resolve. I try to trade my tutors for their counters when I have multiples. If wish resolves, and I expect them to counter it, I'm not sure what I even want to grab. This makes me think that it might be nice to be able to grab either a Thoughtseize or Rite of Flame. When I'm flooded on tutors I try to use Infernal Tutor to copy my RoF so that I can have 3x RoF on my kill turn which is usually sufficient for PiF kills since the Infernal is already in the GY.
Is there a better way I should go about playing around multiple hard counters? I try to dig for discard but can't always find it, so I resort to "trading" with their spells. I suppose this is a scenario when Silence is preferable because it's more of a "must" counter, at least if they don't know what's in your hand: http://imgur.com/OKEBEtt

[wonderPreaux]

I've been on TES for about a week. Forgive me if the answers to my questions are obvious.

I find myself wanting an additional storm engine when Ad Nauseam isn't possible. Does anyone remember where the removal of Diminishing Returns and Ill-Gotten Gains occurred in the thread? I tried the 'Advanced Search' function but it doesn't seem to work too well. Has anyone tested Infernal Contract in the side board? I like that it can be cast off just Burning Wish + LED, and perhaps 4 cards is enough to turn around a losing game depending on what you already have in hand.
Past in Flames is your backup engine typically, since it's very resilient against discard. Contract seems bad because in a matchup where youre quickly losing life, you wouldnt want to cut your life in half against them anyway. Cruise was tested a while ago, but i dont know if anyone particularly liked it. I might consider IGG, just because Burn and Storm are really popular on MTGO, but I don't think its that good.


Carpet of Flowers, Chain of Vapor and Abrupt Decay have been all stars in the SB for me. I haven't found much use for Void Snare quite yet. In which matchups is it at its best? (only Leyline of Sanctity?)
If it's determined that Xantid Swarm isn't good against Miracles, then is it really worth playing? Wouldn't needles be better because they also stabilize our mana base against Wasteland decks?

I've been toying with Goblin War Strike and Telemin Performance. It's quite pleasing when I'm able to win off of those, even though they're likely "incorrect".
Snare is just a catch all, stops you from losing to, like, Teeg or Leyline or something odd like Marit Lage. It also has corner-case applications like getting a Batterskull off your back by bouncing the token so they have to return and show it in again. In weird scenarios it can also bounce an artifact and replay it, so between it, snare, and LED/Petal you can trade 3 mana for 3 storm if youre trying a natural spell chain.


When trying to bait out counters with Burning Wish, I feel like there should be a "set up" spell we can grab in the case they let it resolve. I try to trade my tutors for their counters when I have multiples. If wish resolves, and I expect them to counter it, I'm not sure what I even want to grab. This makes me think that it might be nice to be able to grab either a Thoughtseize or Rite of Flame. When I'm flooded on tutors I try to use Infernal Tutor to copy my RoF so that I can have 3x RoF on my kill turn which is usually sufficient for PiF kills since the Infernal is already in the GY.
Tutor copying Rituals is fine. I wouldnt side Rite out for the reason that opening multiples is important. If the primer's sb plans, you'll notice Ponder gets sided out as a singleton a lot. It's an ok Wish target when youre just using Wish as bait. I can think of a couple times I've wished for Ponders, I've had one strange game where I baited w/ a Wish, grabbed EtW, baited with a Tutor, ended up duping the EtW, and then storming out with both, it was odd. Generally, though, even without SB Thoughtseize or w/e, it's easy to get value from Wishes.


Is there a better way I should go about playing around multiple hard counters? I try to dig for discard but can't always find it, so I resort to "trading" with their spells. I suppose this is a scenario when Silence is preferable because it's more of a "must" counter, at least if they don't know what's in your hand: http://imgur.com/OKEBEtt
I wouldn't start trading until you're at 8 in hand, since making repeated probing trades to gain info/erode defenses stopped being good now that blue decks can just refill with Dig/Cruise. Against Stoneblade or Delver or w/e, if I can't go off fast, I just focus on hitting land drops, building up to 8 and then forcing though with multiple tools to break through. This is particularly good on the draw, and also because Wish increases storm count and makes Tendrils kills pretty viable.

EDIT: As an aside, if Stoneblade continues to increase in popularity, and techs that I see like Envelop and Counterspell become more prevalent, I may actually load up 5c TES...

[Lemnear]

I've been on TES for about a week. Forgive me if the answers to my questions are obvious.

I find myself wanting an additional storm engine when Ad Nauseam isn't possible. Does anyone remember where the removal of Diminishing Returns and Ill-Gotten Gains occurred in the thread? I tried the 'Advanced Search' function but it doesn't seem to work too well. Has anyone tested Infernal Contract in the side board? I like that it can be cast off just Burning Wish + LED, and perhaps 4 cards is enough to turn around a losing game depending on what you already have in hand.

Dim.Ret and IGG left the deck after Silence was cut as the cards are simply bad against any blue deck and not required against non-blue due to the fact that those decks cannot prevent EtW or AN anyways. You can find most on the topic around Dec. '13 inthis thread. Bryant toyed with Infernal Contract and I with Doomsday. Both cards were simply not good enough to win from a position which rendered AN and EtW useless. PIF was the only card which did and remained in the SB as our primary Backup engine. Trying to "turn around" a game with TES is doomed as you have to be the aggressor in each game you play. If you lose the Position in which your opponent can only react to your plays and he/she is suddenly in the drivers seat, you are going to lose anyways.

In many games in which your life total drops fast, you don't even need an engine but can work towards a natural spellchain instead


Carpet of Flowers, Chain of Vapor and Abrupt Decay have been all stars in the SB for me. I haven't found much use for Void Snare quite yet. In which matchups is it at its best? (only Leyline of Sanctity?)
If it's determined that Xantid Swarm isn't good against Miracles, then is it really worth playing? Wouldn't needles be better because they also stabilize our mana base against Wasteland decks?

Void Snare is a catch-all for game 1's and for redundant bounce-effects game 2 and 3. Ergo you are never dead to unexpected hate like Leyline, game 1 Ruric Thar/Eidolon/Marit Lage/etc. You get the idea. As the OP highlights, Xantids are not for Miracles but for decks which are unable to remove it and overload on non-creature-counters like Flusterstorm/Spell Pierce/Spell Snare/Stifle. Examples are Reanimator/SneakShow/12-Post/Meerfolk/etc. Boarding them against Miracles is gambling against their reduced removal game 2/3 and reasonable if your find the slots to board them in addition to your other hate. Both Needle and Xantids are valid options.


I've been toying with Goblin War Strike and Telemin Performance. It's quite pleasing when I'm able to win off of those, even though they're likely "incorrect".

While Telemin or Bribery are reasonable options for local metas, War Strike is totally off. If you resolved EtW, your opponent has to be dead. Period. Opting for a Wish AFTER you already cast EtW is not only an unlikely scenario but also a pure win-more.


When trying to bait out counters with Burning Wish, I feel like there should be a "set up" spell we can grab in the case they let it resolve. I try to trade my tutors for their counters when I have multiples. If wish resolves, and I expect them to counter it, I'm not sure what I even want to grab.

Casting Wishes without the intent to grab something from the Sideboard is a hilarious waste of time, cards and mana. It's like casting Ponder and having to clue what you are looking for in the first place and losing as a result of drawing cards you like, but not the cards you actually need. PIF is always nice to have as is EtW is you have the option to burst out a few Goblins with CT(s) in the graveyard. This is really not a topic at all


This makes me think that it might be nice to be able to grab either a Thoughtseize or Rite of Flame. When I'm flooded on tutors I try to use Infernal Tutor to copy my RoF so that I can have 3x RoF on my kill turn which is usually sufficient for PiF kills since the Infernal is already in the GY.

You want to Wish for RoF and then Wiah again for PIF? You want to remove cheap Rituals from a deck which wants to flip them to AN or have then in your owning hand for T1/2 Goblin bursts? This suggestion is not sound


Is there a better way I should go about playing around multiple hard counters? I try to dig for discard but can't always find it, so I resort to "trading" with their spells. I suppose this is a scenario when Silence is preferable because it's more of a "must" counter, at least if they don't know what's in your hand: http://imgur.com/OKEBEtt

Multiple hardcounters? Usually you can exhaust those with discard and PIF to flashback the discard and cantrips. Most problems also don't even occur if you are fast enough. Silence does not necessarily help if your opponent indeed has several castable hardcounters. You can only strip 1 counter like discard would unless the hardcounters you talk about are exactly the ones I mentioned before in terms of Xantid Swarm.


Edit:


EDIT: As an aside, if Stoneblade continues to increase in popularity, and techs that I see like Envelop and Counterspell become more prevalent, I may actually load up 5c TES...

I fear hatebears from their SB much more than additional counters. All those counters and especially slow ones like counterspell are a joke. It's your Bread and Butter to dismember passive opponents sitting behind counters. In fact, the whole Stoneblade-supertype was the reason I split up with the white Instant

[redhamjack]

So one card I haven't seen discussed much is overmaster.

http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=29868

I'm going to be trying is as my flex sideboard slot. I've often felt that I have to use wishes to bait counters, and if they don't bite, I'm not punishing them enough with whatever I wish for. This is a mini silence that can help you force through an infernal. You can also use the draw trigger plus LEDs for fun with brainstorm set-up.

I don't know for sure that it will be good, but I'm going to try it this week in testing. Anyone have experience with this card?


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[Lemnear]

So one card I haven't seen discussed much is overmaster.

http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=29868

I'm going to be trying is as my flex sideboard slot. I've often felt that I have to use wishes to bait counters, and if they don't bite, I'm not punishing them enough with whatever I wish for. This is a mini silence that can help you force through an infernal. You can also use the draw trigger plus LEDs for fun with brainstorm set-up.

I don't know for sure that it will be good, but I'm going to try it this week in testing. Anyone have experience with this card?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

First: read the card. It says the NEXT instant or sorcery. It's totally pointless if your Infernal/Wish can't be countered but the fetched AN/EtW can still be FoW'd or Flusterstormed. It costs also 1 mana ... the same amount a discard Spell costs to get rid of the counterspell you want to Dodge with Overmaster.

[Bryant Cook]

So one card I haven't seen discussed much is overmaster.

http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=29868

I'm going to be trying is as my flex sideboard slot. I've often felt that I have to use wishes to bait counters, and if they don't bite, I'm not punishing them enough with whatever I wish for. This is a mini silence that can help you force through an infernal. You can also use the draw trigger plus LEDs for fun with brainstorm set-up.

I don't know for sure that it will be good, but I'm going to try it this week in testing. Anyone have experience with this card?


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It's actually pretty bad with Infernal Tutor as it requires you to have an LED (You're no longer hellbent). Also, you're forced to get Empty the Warrens as Ad Nauseam can be countered. I'd say it's pretty weak.

[redhamjack]

Good points. I guess a discard spell would be better. I was going through every rbu sorcery for potential wish targets thought I might have found a diamond in the rough


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[wonderPreaux]

I fear hatebears from their SB much more than additional counters. All those counters and especially slow ones like counterspell are a joke. It's your Bread and Butter to dismember passive opponents sitting behind counters. In fact, the whole Stoneblade-supertype was the reason I split up with the white Instant

The only hatebear of I've seen is Meddling Mage, which can't actually beat me if I side in Tendrils. Canonist detracts from their flurry of plays w/ Pyromancer, and black control is at an all time low due to Cruise. If this trend continues, and I have to looks at cards like Envelop and Hydroblast, then doesn't it make sense to be playing Silence? Not only that, but Storm has been 30% of the meta in the last 2 dailies I played...

[Lemnear]

The only hatebear of I've seen is Meddling Mage, which can't actually beat me if I side in Tendrils. Canonist detracts from their flurry of plays w/ Pyromancer, and black control is at an all time low due to Cruise. If this trend continues, and I have to looks at cards like Envelop and Hydroblast, then doesn't it make sense to be playing Silence? Not only that, but Storm has been 30% of the meta in the last 2 dailies I played...

Forgot that people started mindlessly copying BBDs UWR Pyromancer build. I still had the classic Patriot in mind for that color combination and those decks ran Canonist + Meddling Mage in the SB like Deathblade does. Storm Mirrors are no reason for Silence unless you keep playing against idiots. This matchup is defined by delaying your opponents combo with stategic targeted discard and most ANT players know they can't race you anyways so they mull into discard to drag out the game and their Cabal Rituals take over which leaves the Silence plan pretty vulnerable as it presents the same laughable one-trick pony Mindbreak Trap is because it is revealed via Duress/Therapy/Probe

[MiracleMan]

Is there any collection of data to give approximate percentages for Match-Ups?

[Lemnear]

Is there any collection of data to give approximate percentages for Match-Ups?

No. I can't take any matchup-percentages serious anyways, which is clear if you look through most opening posts throughout this forum. The best you can get is an understanding of the problems which can occur in each matchup instead and estimate how this impacts your gameplan

[Asthereal]

Testing a newish idea right now: swapping all three Chrome Moxen for Simian Spirit Guides. Reason: SSG is MUCH better when you have it in your hand, though it's weaker post Ad Nauseam. Played about 20 games with this setup tonight. Findings thus far:

1. Do NOT go for Ad Nauseam without mana floating, we need preferably B. But with a mana floating after Ad Nauseam I have not killed myself yet. SSG costs a lot of life, but the mana helps me win, so it's not that bad.
2. The SSG in hand is very good. Especially against taxing counters, but generally it is just nice to have.
3. The fact that SSG doesn't make storm has yet to be an issue.
4. Infernal Tutor is marginally worse without LED since going hellbent is now slightly harder. Good thing I run one on side now.
5. The fact that SSG ONLY makes red mana has not yet been a problem, but I expect it will prove a challenge every now and then.

Edit: list for reference.

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

Accelleration:
4 Lion's Eye Diamond
4 Lotus Petal
4 Dark Ritual
4 Rite of Flame
3 Simian Spirit Guide /19

Protection:
4 Cabal Therapy
3 Duress /7

Lands:
3 Gemstone Mine
2 Underground Sea
2 Volcanic Island
3 Misty Rainforest
3 Polluted Delta /13

Sideboard:
1 Tendrils of Agony
1 Empty the Warrens
1 Past of Flames
1 Diminishing Returns.
1 Infernal Tutor
1 Grapeshot
1 Void Snare
1 Duress.
2 Chain of Vapor
2 Abrupt Decay
2 Xantid Swarm
1 Tropical Island /15

[Lemnear]

Testing a newish idea right now: swapping all three Chrome Moxen for Simian Spirit Guides. Reason: SSG is MUCH better when you have it in your hand, though it's weaker post Ad Nauseam. Played about 20 games with this setup tonight. Findings thus far:

1. Do NOT go for Ad Nauseam without mana floating, we need preferably B. But with a mana floating after Ad Nauseam I have not killed myself yet. SSG costs a lot of life, but the mana helps me win, so it's not that bad.
2. The SSG in hand is very good. Especially against taxing counters, but generally it is just nice to have.
3. The fact that SSG doesn't make storm has yet to be an issue.
4. Infernal Tutor is marginally worse without LED since going hellbent is now slightly harder. Good thing I run one on side now.
5. The fact that SSG ONLY makes red mana has not yet been a problem, but I expect it will prove a challenge every now and then.

Edit: list for reference.

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

Accelleration:
4 Lion's Eye Diamond
4 Lotus Petal
4 Dark Ritual
4 Rite of Flame
3 Simian Spirit Guide /19

Protection:
4 Cabal Therapy
3 Duress /7

Lands:
3 Gemstone Mine
2 Underground Sea
2 Volcanic Island
3 Misty Rainforest
3 Polluted Delta /13

Sideboard:
1 Tendrils of Agony
1 Empty the Warrens
1 Past of Flames
1 Diminishing Returns.
1 Infernal Tutor
1 Grapeshot
1 Void Snare
1 Duress.
2 Chain of Vapor
2 Abrupt Decay
2 Xantid Swarm
1 Tropical Island /15

Imo it's up for debate if the "requirement" for floated mana is any easier to achieve than with the Sol lands even if the card sure has clear advantages over the Mox in your starting grip and is sure better than the Sol Lands.

The Problem every time I tested two or more SSGs was the damage, if I have things like Probes, Fetchlands, opposing Bolts/Delvers to consider during my goldfishing. You want to get hands on Petals, Rituals, Rites and Diamonds paired with a tutor or Wish instead of flipping SSGs, EtW or cantrips and dealing yourself 3 damage on the way towards the prior set of cards via AN flips isn't helping (how much less cards do 3 damage equal via Ad Nauseam? 3-5 says my gut with this configuration). I even had to cut EtW from the Main for my flips with an estimated mana floated and my testing with SSG tells me that you deal yourself about 9 damage during the game before AN flipped the 5th card in an average goldfish game and I expect it to be very critical with all the Delvers and Bolts around.

[Asthereal]

Imo it's up for debate if the "requirement" for floated mana is any easier to achieve than with the Sol lands even if the card sure has clear advantages over the Mox in your starting grip and is sure better than the Sol Lands.

The Problem every time I tested two or more SSGs was the damage, if I have things like Probes, Fetchlands, opposing Bolts/Delvers to consider during my goldfishing. You want to get hands on Petals, Rituals, Rites and Diamonds paired with a tutor or Wish instead of flipping SSGs, EtW or cantrips and dealing yourself 3 damage on the way towards the prior set of cards via AN flips isn't helping (how much less cards do 3 damage equal via Ad Nauseam? 3-5 says my gut with this configuration). I even had to cut EtW from the Main for my flips with an estimated mana floated and my testing with SSG tells me that you deal yourself about 9 damage during the game before AN flipped the 5th card in an average goldfish game and I expect it to be very critical with all the Delvers and Bolts around.
It sure has its disadvantages, but I want to try it out.
Mox just sucks when you draw it. Two cards to make one mana is just bad.
I'm not sold on it yet, but so far it has been fine actually.

For the math: the OP list has an average CMC of ~0,95 I believe (not counting Ad Nauseam).
So every SSG flip "costs" 3,16 cards.
So Ad Nauseam now requires more to set up, to make fizzling as unlikely as possible.

[vercadium]

Just a quick post - I've now played a fair amount since making the switch from Tropical Island to Bayou and it has performed very well for me. I now believe it is superior to the Tropical Island; especially given that we board out Ponder so frequently when bringing in our green cards.

[Lemnear]

Just a quick post - I've now played a fair amount since making the switch from Tropical Island to Bayou and it has performed very well for me. I now believe it is superior to the Tropical Island; especially given that we board out Ponder so frequently when bringing in our green cards.

That's an excellent point, Adam. The T1 cantrip issue is indeed less of a topic if Ponders are the premier slots to board.


It sure has its disadvantages, but I want to try it out.
Mox just sucks when you draw it. Two cards to make one mana is just bad.
I'm not sold on it yet, but so far it has been fine actually.

For the math: the OP list has an average CMC of ~0,95 I believe (not counting Ad Nauseam).
So every SSG flip "costs" 3,16 cards.
So Ad Nauseam now requires more to set up, to make fizzling as unlikely as possible.

Testing is always fine. I've just been there and tried it too. The calculation for flipped cards also needs to take into consideration that you need to stop once you go below 4 life as your list Features 4 sudden-Death cards now, and comes on top of the estimated loss in cards via cmc you already calculated with 3,16. A third point to consider would be stopping to flip cards early so you can pass a turn if your flips are so bad that you can't win the same turn due to a lack of mana (say you flip 2 Tutors, 2 SSG, etc. but not enough Rituals to power up 6-8 mana). So, there are 3 factors that harm your ANs in the end.

Two cards to make a single mana is in fact bad pre-AN as you have to create 6+ mana for your T1/2 combo with your handcards (mulligans!). There is space for discussion if a 3cc red initial mana Source is better in an Ad Nauseam deck than colorless Sol Lands in terms of floating mana and damage off flips, if you are as willing as I am to put more work into AN setups.

[Asthereal]

Just a quick post - I've now played a fair amount since making the switch from Tropical Island to Bayou and it has performed very well for me. I now believe it is superior to the Tropical Island; especially given that we board out Ponder so frequently when bringing in our green cards.
I don't like Bayou, but it has the same problems as Tropical:
In a dual heavy mana base you need three lands to be able to cast all your cards.
From that point of view, casting cantrips to find more lands may be necessary.
And for casting cantrips, I need blue, hence my choice for Tropical.

At some point I suggested Taiga instead, which got burned to the ground.
Reason: it doesn't cast utility cards (Duress, Therapy). Which is true, of course.
The upside of it, is that with Sea and Taiga, we get to cast everything we have from two lands.
And the first land we fetch is Sea anyways, so it doesn't have to be that big of an issue.
But during testing I too often didn't really like Taiga, so I'm back at Tropical. Which is fine I think.

[Lemnear]

I don't like Bayou, but it has the same problems as Tropical:
In a dual heavy mana base you need three lands to be able to cast all your cards.
From that point of view, casting cantrips to find more lands may be necessary.
And for casting cantrips, I need blue, hence my choice for Tropical.

At some point I suggested Taiga instead, which got burned to the ground.
Reason: it doesn't cast utility cards (Duress, Therapy). Which is true, of course.
The upside of it, is that with Sea and Taiga, we get to cast everything we have from two lands.
And the first land we fetch is Sea anyways, so it doesn't have to be that big of an issue.
But during testing I too often didn't really like Taiga, so I'm back at Tropical. Which is fine I think.

The advantage of Taiga + U.Sea is casting Abrupt Decay which Volcanic + Bayou can't. The downside however is that the Taiga + U.Sea combination is unable to support a cantrip-into-disruption playline which I still consider more relevant for turn 3 Kills than the ability of cast Decay off two lands against matchups which are very slow anyways and you have plenty of time to drop 3+ lands.

[Asthereal]

The advantage of Taiga + U.Sea is casting Abrupt Decay which Volcanic + Bayou can't. The downside however is that the Taiga + U.Sea combination is unable to support a cantrip-into-disruption playline which I still consider more relevant for turn 3 Kills than the ability of cast Decay off two lands against matchups which are very slow anyways and you have plenty of time to drop 3+ lands.
You don't board Decays against hate bear decks?

But the reasons are valid. I only posted the Taiga thing to show the complete picture.
I don't run Taiga, because it doesn't help me set up from a bad situation. Tropical does.

[Lemnear]

You don't board Decays against hate bear decks?

But the reasons are valid. I only posted the Taiga thing to show the complete picture.
I don't run Taiga, because it doesn't help me set up from a bad situation. Tropical does.

I do not if I have at least 2 CoV in the board, otherwise I board them for games on the draw as I can't even use a single turn for setting up the Belcher Mode. I board out the Ponders as a result and sit on Fetches forever, with the exception of Wishing for Massacre against D&T.

[Asthereal]

I do not if I have at least 2 CoV in the board, otherwise I board them for games on the draw as I can't even use a single turn for setting up the Belcher Mode. I board out the Ponders as a result and sit on Fetches forever, with the exception of Wishing for Massacre against D&T.
Ok. :smile: I don't play Massacre, because there's not enough Death & Taxes and Maverick in the Netherlands to commit a slot to. Besides, it's still a fine matchup.



Testing is always fine. I've just been there and tried it too. The calculation for flipped cards also needs to take into consideration that you need to stop once you go below 4 life as your list Features 4 sudden-Death cards now, and comes on top of the estimated loss in cards via cmc you already calculated with 3,16. A third point to consider would be stopping to flip cards early so you can pass a turn if your flips are so bad that you can't win the same turn due to a lack of mana (say you flip 2 Tutors, 2 SSG, etc. but not enough Rituals to power up 6-8 mana). So, there are 3 factors that harm your ANs in the end.

Two cards to make a single mana is in fact bad pre-AN as you have to create 6+ mana for your T1/2 combo with your handcards (mulligans!). There is space for discussion if a 3cc red initial mana Source is better in an Ad Nauseam deck than colorless Sol Lands in terms of floating mana and damage off flips, if you are as willing as I am to put more work into AN setups.
Perhaps SSG asks for a slightly different playing approach.
Perhaps playing SSG is not optimal.
Perhaps a split between SSG and Mox is optimal.
I'm not sure yet, but I'll keep trying for a while.

Chrome Mox is by far our worst card, and I am willing to put up with a great deal to be able to ditch it. :tongue:

[Lemnear]

Ok. :smile: I don't play Massacre, because there's not enough Death & Taxes and Maverick in the Netherlands to commit a slot to. Besides, it's still a fine matchup.

That's fine! As I ever say: Take from the thread, discussion and lists what offers value for you, your metagame and playstyle and ignore the rest. :)


NINJA-EDIT:

Chrome Mox is by far our worst card, and I am willing to put up with a great deal to be able to ditch it. :tongue:

Same here. That's what the meddling is all about.


Perhaps SSG asks for a slightly different playing approach.

The most important observation; the core of any approach to TES without Moxen; the reason I was so annoyed to read "but AN with zero mana float are much worse!". You HAVE to change your play routine pre-AN if a resolved AN without mana float isn't a guaranteed win anymore and because you are used to flip all these 0cc IMS' you had in the deck before.

[Asthereal]

That's fine! As I ever say: Take from the thread, discussion and lists what offers value for you, your metagame and playstyle and ignore the rest. :)
True. :wink:

Edit: decided not to use this part for edits. :cool: Oh wait...

[Lemnear]

True. :wink:

I will reserve this spot in my post to edit in my reaction to your reaction to the edit of my last post. :laugh::eek::tongue:

We're back to NINJA EDIT WARS?

NINJA-EDIT:
added edit as reaction to your last edit in my last post

[Asthereal]

We're back to NINJA EDIT WARS?
I hope not. That's really confusing. :rolleyes:


Surprise, still a ninja edit!!! :cry:

The most important observation; the core of any approach to TES without Moxen; the reason I was so annoyed to read "but AN with zero mana float are much worse!". You HAVE to change your play routine pre-AN if a resolved AN without mana float isn't a guaranteed win anymore and because you are used to flip all these 0cc IMS' you had in the deck before.
Exactly. It's like in ANT. It requires a slightly different setup.
That doesn't necessarily make it worse.
It is if you play the exact same way as before, but that's just not very smart.

TES used to play out differently in the past anyway.
We've adapted from Ill-Gotten Gains to Past in Flames, which requires a different setup.
The addition of Cabal Therapy is another example, because we can now go for Empty in situations where we couldn't before.
The deck is changing all the time, and our approach adapts to the new tech. Or at least it should. :smile:

[Bryant Cook]

My problem with these suggestions is that they slow the deck down, which I am not interested in doing. Waiting until you have mana to float and the removal of Empty from the main deck causes the deck to be slower. If we're slower, we might as well play multiple Cabal Rituals and Past in Flames.

[Lemnear]

My problem with these suggestions is that they slow the deck down, which I am not interested in doing. Waiting until you have mana to float and the removal of Empty from the main deck causes the deck to be slower. If we're slower, we might as well play multiple Cabal Rituals and Past in Flames.

Except that you still have double the business spells compared to ANT for quick combos via LED and can't be hated out/slowed down by graveyard hate, which is there I see the spot for this particular idea between ANT and Mox-TES

[Asthereal]

My problem with these suggestions is that they slow the deck down, which I am not interested in doing. Waiting until you have mana to float and the removal of Empty from the main deck causes the deck to be slower. If we're slower, we might as well play multiple Cabal Rituals and Past in Flames.
That depends. Coughing up an army of Goblin tokens is actually easier with SSG.
It's true that setting up Ad Nauseam is slightly harder with SSG over Mox.
So it kind of depends on what you want to do.

I will keep on testing this idea, because in the first round it wasn't as annoying as I feared it would be.

[vercadium]

Turns out I have a little more time today after all :) I'll present my opinion on Peter's proposed 'Sol Land' plan that's been talked about here for the past few weeks. I haven't dismissed any opinions without thought and, for the record, I can appreciate the time that went into forming the long explanation posts. I understand what you're trying to achieve and the logic behind it.


My problem with these suggestions is that they slow the deck down, which I am not interested in doing. Waiting until you have mana to float and the removal of Empty from the main deck causes the deck to be slower.

I agree with Bryant. People are entitled to a different perception, but to me, TES is a Belcher deck with disruption that uses blue cards to increase consistency and is still capable of winning a long game. I'd estimate I win around half of my games through outright aggression (either T1 kill or T1 set-up, T2 kill) and destroying them before they can interact in any relevant way. I am wary of taking any direction that moves the deck away from this; cutting Empty the Warrens, removing Chrome Moxen and increasing the land count all do exactly that.

If we're deciding to instead play a longer game, that raises the ANT vs Sol Storm(?) discussion...

I had typed a few paragraphs around this, but honestly, it's a difficult argument. Both approaches are defensible. For example, I understand that avoiding using the graveyard as a primary resource is a positive move (being forced to rely on Past in Flames when against graveyard hate is truly awful), but the power level of Cabal Ritual cannot be denied and the likelihood of the aforementioned graveyard scenario occurring is debatable. Perhaps a conclusion could be reached after testing both decks. Regardless, I won't be spending any more thought on it - in my opinion, the benefits to a slower approach, whatever approach that may be, come at too high a cost.

This is a matter of opinion, but I think we just need to get over it. There's nothing better than Chrome Mox that we aren't already playing. I don't even think the card is bad! I actually think it's pretty good! Sure, I dislike it in multiples pre-Ad Nauseam as much as the next man - it's frustrating and it does occur a little more than I would like, but I honestly don't think there's a decent remedy for that.

If it were possible to run 2.5 Chrome Mox I'd be delighted. Until then, find me something decent to replace the 3rd Chrome Mox with and I'll consider it, but I won't be leaving the other 2 at home any time soon.

The nearest 'solution' is the Simian Spirit Guide approach that Asthereal has been discussing, so I'll give my opinion on that too:

I appreciate you taking the time to take another look at this card (particularly your objectivity when doing it), but while you've discovered that some of the cons aren't that relevant in practice, I think the overall detriment (extra Ad Nauseam life-loss, colour restriction, lack of storm count and its lack of help with becoming hellbent) make the card worse than the moxen - even if any one drawback isn't significant.

[Lemnear]

I agree with Bryant. People are entitled to a different perception, but to me, TES is a Belcher deck with disruption that uses blue cards to increase consistency and is still capable of winning a long game. I'd estimate I win around half of my games through outright aggression (either T1 kill or T1 set-up, T2 kill) and destroying them before they can interact in any relevant way. I am wary of taking any direction that moves the deck away from this; cutting Empty the Warrens, removing Chrome Moxen and increasing the land count all do exactly that.

I don't think the metagame will be exceptionally vulnerable to Goblins, not that Eli Kassis (Grixis Control), Brian Braun-Duin (Jeskai Stoneblade) and Bob Huang (UR Delver) showed that Ponder, Brainstorm, Probe, Young Pyromancer and Treasure Cruise define a core which you have to be prepared for as a player.

This has the downside that pyromancer is a suprisingly efficient anti-EtW plan if you can't get going T1/2 and that people will be prepared for that threat in the future which also harms our EtW plan, as more SB slots will be dedicated to x/1 creatures like it was the case during TNNs heights. On top of that, we have to expect heavy stack-countermeasures in Games 2 & 3 which pushes our critical turn beyond turn 2 anyways. This and the vulnerability of goblins (Miracles!) leave me with doubts about the heavy focus on the EtW-plan and I thought about limiting it to Burning Wish for 6 and to Infernal for 8 mana. The Sol Storm idea aims to a T2/3 AN with EtW as a backup/surprise-plan.

While we are at "get going T1/2": I'm a bit baffled about the emphasis on Moxen to combo turn 1/2, as my notes are pretty clear that the key-card for T1/2 combos is LED considering that we have to squeeze out 6+ mana out of a maximum of 7 cards which is pretty unlikely to do turn 1 (hellbent aside) without the Diamond. Without a Diamond, but a Mox in hand and a Tutor/Wish required, you have 4 cards left to generate 5 more mana which is very unlikely to achieve considering that no card left blocks your hellbent despite the Mox. So, if (according to my own notes) 7/8 of my T1 combos (~17% since taking notes in 2012) are fueled by LED, the hellbent-issue Moxen should adress and is present by running more lands, isn't applying.


If we're deciding to instead play a longer game, that raises the ANT vs Sol Storm(?) discussion...

I had typed a few paragraphs around this, but honestly, it's a difficult argument. Both approaches are defensible. For example, I understand that avoiding using the graveyard as a primary resource is a positive move (being forced to rely on Past in Flames when against graveyard hate is truly awful), but the power level of Cabal Ritual cannot be denied and the likelihood of the aforementioned graveyard scenario occurring is debatable.

Yeah, graveyard hate is still underplayed if I look at the GP Top 16 decklists and Top 8 of the last 2 SCG Opens. I guess we need more reports from storm players to see if the gap of hate between EU and US is as vast TheCouncil, MtgTop8 and other websites imply. The more relevant point is that CR feeds PIF loops much better than AN due to the cmc, which is something to consider if we gauge the +2 colorless against the +3 black.


Perhaps a conclusion could be reached after testing both decks. Regardless, I won't be spending any more thought on it - in my opinion, the benefits to a slower approach, whatever approach that may be, come at too high a cost.

Vice versa. You sacrifice a lot of potential for games lasting longer than two turns (which are in fact the majority of games you'll play) to support a card, which you often side out games 2 & 3 and has it's strongest applications against a slowly diminishing slice of the metagame, while hoping that a chance for T1 kills of less than 20% can make up for the rest. Atm I can't justify this for myself.


This is a matter of opinion, but I think we just need to get over it. There's nothing better than Chrome Mox that we aren't already playing. I don't even think the card is bad! I actually think it's pretty good! Sure, I dislike it in multiples pre-Ad Nauseam as much as the next man - it's frustrating and it does occur a little more than I would like, but I honestly don't think there's a decent remedy for that.

If it were possible to run 2.5 Chrome Mox I'd be delighted. Until then, find me something decent to replace the 3rd Chrome Mox with and I'll consider it, but I won't be leaving the other 2 at home any time soon.

The nearest 'solution' is the Simian Spirit Guide approach that Asthereal has been discussing, so I'll give my opinion on that too:

I appreciate you taking the time to take another look at this card (particularly your objectivity when doing it), but while you've discovered that some of the cons aren't that relevant in practice, I think the overall detriment (extra Ad Nauseam life-loss, colour restriction, lack of storm count and its lack of help with becoming hellbent) make the card worse than the moxen - even if any one drawback isn't significant.

There is (currently) nothing better available to support T1/2 goblin bursts, no doubt. That was however never the question or the topic. ;)

[Bryant Cook]

That depends. Coughing up an army of Goblin tokens is actually easier with SSG.
It's true that setting up Ad Nauseam is slightly harder with SSG over Mox.
So it kind of depends on what you want to do.

I will keep on testing this idea, because in the first round it wasn't as annoying as I feared it would be.

I'd like to have both options be effective which is why I run Chrome Mox and not SSG.


I don't think the metagame will be exceptionally vulnerable to Goblins, not that Eli Kassis (Grixis Control), Brian Braun-Duin (Jeskai Stoneblade) and Bob Huang (UR Delver) showed that Ponder, Brainstorm, Probe, Young Pyromancer and Treasure Cruise define a core which you have to be prepared for as a player.

This has the downside that pyromancer is a suprisingly efficient anti-EtW plan if you can't get going T1/2 and that people will be prepared for that threat in the future which also harms our EtW plan, as more SB slots will be dedicated to x/1 creatures like it was the case during TNNs heights. On top of that, we have to expect heavy stack-countermeasures in Games 2 & 3 which pushes our critical turn beyond turn 2 anyways. This and the vulnerability of goblins (Miracles!) leave me with doubts about the heavy focus on the EtW-plan and I thought about limiting it to Burning Wish for 6 and to Infernal for 8 mana. The Sol Storm idea aims to a T2/3 AN with EtW as a backup/surprise-plan.

The problem with this logic is that BG/x decks came to power to fight off TNN with Golgari Charm/Toxic Deluge which aren't seeing any play because those decks aren't. They don't capitalize capitalize on Cruise as much which is why their numbers are much lower. While I agree that ETW is weak after turn three, the game plan has always been to avoid it after then anyway - I don't see why that would be any different now. A UR Delver deck even with turn two Pyromancer shouldn't be able to fend off a goblin ambush, they don't play enough spells in one turn to make this happen.

If you're attempting for turn three Ad Nauseam, it's likely too slow against those UR Delver decks anyway with Delver and Swiftswear.


While we are at "get going T1/2": I'm a bit baffled about the emphasis on Moxen to combo turn 1/2, as my notes are pretty clear that the key-card for T1/2 combos is LED considering that we have to squeeze out 6+ mana out of a maximum of 7 cards which is pretty unlikely to do turn 1 (hellbent aside) without the Diamond. Without a Diamond, but a Mox in hand and a Tutor/Wish required, you have 4 cards left to generate 5 more mana which is very unlikely to achieve considering that no card left blocks your hellbent despite the Mox. So, if (according to my own notes) 7/8 of my T1 combos (~17% since taking notes in 2012) are fueled by LED, the hellbent-issue Moxen should adress and is present by running more lands, isn't applying.

You're failing to see that Mox provides the extra push the deck needs, Dark Ritual paired with Lion's Eye Diamond is only four mana (There's only four Petals in the deck). We want to be able to cast Ad Nauseam. Rite of Flame, Rite of Flame, Lion's Eye Diamond, won't work when there's a black mana needed for Infernal Tutor on turn one. Mox isn't the enabler, it's a support piece.


Yeah, graveyard hate is still underplayed if I look at the GP Top 16 decklists and Top 8 of the last 2 SCG Opens. I guess we need more reports from storm players to see if the gap of hate between EU and US is as vast TheCouncil, MtgTop8 and other websites imply. The more relevant point is that CR feeds PIF loops much better than AN due to the cmc, which is something to consider if we gauge the +2 colorless against the +3 black.

An idea I had earlier was -3 Chrome Mox, -1 ETW, -1 Cabal Therapy, +3 Cabal Ritual, +1 Past in Flames, +1 Duress. That said, I don't know how I feel about this.

[Lemnear]

I'd like to have both options be effective whichThe problem with this logic is that BG/x decks came to power to fight off TNN with Golgari Charm/Toxic Deluge which aren't seeing any play because those decks aren't. They don't capitalize capitalize on Cruise as much which is why their numbers are much lower. While I agree that ETW is weak after turn three, the game plan has always been to avoid it after then anyway - I don't see why that would be any different now. A UR Delver deck even with turn two Pyromancer shouldn't be able to fend off a goblin ambush, they don't play enough spells in one turn to make this happen.

If you're attempting for turn three Ad Nauseam, it's likely too slow against those UR Delver decks anyway with Delver and Swiftswear.

All these UR Delver and UWR Stoneblades have efficient answers to the current metagame in Pyroclasm and Electrickery which is the current flavor of reaction to the metagame and I expect that part of sideboards to expand now while the defense against Ad Nauseam (at least mainboard) is lacking due to the cut of Wastelands and Spell Pierces.

Against UR you have a point with AN depending on your opponents hand. It can be either a game similar to Burn.dec or like one against Tempo.


You're failing to see that Mox provides the extra push the deck needs, Dark Ritual paired with Lion's Eye Diamond is only four mana (There's only four Petals in the deck). We want to be able to cast Ad Nauseam. Rite of Flame, Rite of Flame, Lion's Eye Diamond, won't work when there's a black mana needed for Infernal Tutor on turn one. Mox isn't the enabler, it's a support piece.

A support piece with an diminishing impact after turn 2. It's not that I can't pick an an example of a mulligan-hand like Probe, Petal, RoF, BW, RoF, CoT to hint on the difference two colorless mana can make if you need to squeeze out the maximum mana from a limited number of cards available which is even more important if you have to spend resources to overcome opponing defense.


An idea I had earlier was -3 Chrome Mox, -1 ETW, -1 Cabal Therapy, +3 Cabal Ritual, +1 Past in Flames, +1 Duress. That said, I don't know how I feel about this.

That deck is called TNT and well-explored territory. Bad AN flips AND graveyard depending, with a less stable manabase than ANT

[d0nkey]

How has testing gone with the crystal veins?

I don't like them personally because there are only 9 cards in the deck that use colorless mana in the main. The mana probably helps a lot, post tutor/wish, but I think the loss of initial colors is too great to warrant the change.

I have been testing cutting down to 2 chrome mox and adding an additional land. So far it seems okay but I don't think it makes all that much of a difference. Here is my list for refrence:

4 brainstorm
4 ponder
4 gitaxian probe
4 cabal therapy
3 duress
4 burning wish
3 infernal tutor
1 ad nauseum
1 empty the warrens
4 dark ritual
4 lion's eye diamond
4 rite of flame
4 lotus petal
2 chrome mox
2 underground sea
1 volcanic island
4 gemstone mine
2 city of brass
1 tropical island
1 scalding tarn
1 polluted delta
1 misty rainforest
1 flooded strand

SB
1 tendrils
1 past in flame
1 empty the warrens
1 grapeshot
1 infernal tutor
1 massacre
1 void snare
3 abrupt decay
2 xantid swarm
2 pithing needle
1 chain of vapor


Notes:

-Yes, I play city of brass. Someday I'l pick up mana confluence, but I told myself it wouldn't get them unless I lost a game due to a Port tapping out my CoB. I also don't play the second volcanic. Purely a cost decision. I don't play magic much these days, but I like keeping this deck around for the random legacy events. But yes, they should be something else.

-Yes, I still play grapeshot. The ability to storm20 a guy for being a shitty player to play against outweighs any benefit from the extra SB slot for me. It is irrational, but I love me some storm20.

[Lemnear]

How has testing gone with the crystal veins?


yes, and I'm unsure if its better or worse than CoT. It depends a lot on how the game flows (at which point you drop the Sol lands; suck as second land just to see a fetch soon later) and if you play against Thalia and aggressive Dazes or not. I keep testing

I don't like them personally because there are only 9 cards in the deck that use colorless mana in the main. The mana probably helps a lot, post tutor/wish, but I think the loss of initial colors is too great to warrant the change.


...the most important spells! I don't ever played a longer game (read longer than turn 1/2 combo) off Chrome Mox, but rather tried to shuffle it away asap and so I never witnessed a significant difference to the Sol land setup.

Notes:

-Yes, I play city of brass. Someday I'l pick up mana confluence, but I told myself it wouldn't get them unless I lost a game due to a Port tapping out my CoB. I also don't play the second volcanic. Purely a cost decision. I don't play magic much these days, but I like keeping this deck around for the random legacy events. But yes, they should be something else.

-Yes, I still play grapeshot. The ability to storm20 a guy for being a shitty player to play against outweighs any benefit from the extra SB slot for me. It is irrational, but I love me some storm20.


the topic isn't CoB vs. MC; It is why you decided to play only 4 fetchlands?

[d0nkey]

While you are right that the most important spells in the deck need the extra colorless mana, without the colored mana to setup into the combo turn it won't matter. That's the only reason why I don't like them. Wasteland and stifle is still a thing where I'm from.


Well, I don't own a second volcanic, nor do I plan on getting one. That is why I didn't mess with the lands all that much. I should probably cut a city for the 5th fetch though regardless. I'll give that a try but the reason for playing fetches is to fix the colors, and if I get hit with a wasteland, I can't really fix my colors with a fetch without playing the 2nd volcanic. So extra fetches doesn't seem to give me a whole lot of benefit. I can see a 5th being better than a city of brass, but I can't see playing 6 fetches without the second volcanic at minimum.

[Lemnear]

While you are right that the most important spells in the deck need the extra colorless mana, without the colored mana to setup into the combo turn it won't matter. That's the only reason why I don't like them. Wasteland and stifle is still a thing where I'm from.


Well, I don't own a second volcanic, nor do I plan on getting one. That is why I didn't mess with the lands all that much. I should probably cut a city for the 5th fetch though regardless. I'll give that a try but the reason for playing fetches is to fix the colors, and if I get hit with a wasteland, I can't really fix my colors with a fetch without playing the 2nd volcanic. So extra fetches doesn't seem to give me a whole lot of benefit. I can see a 5th being better than a city of brass, but I can't see playing 6 fetches without the second volcanic at minimum.

The reason for more fetches is having more shuffle effects to maximize your cantrips and not for fixing colors. If you don't have a second Volcanic, I fear you have to live with that downside.

[d0nkey]

The reason for more fetches is having more shuffle effects to maximize your cantrips and not for fixing colors. If you don't have a second Volcanic, I fear you have to live with that downside.

Yes, and I am okay with that. It isn't really that big of a deal when I'm looking to combo out on turn 1, 2 or 3. I'm sacrificing the late game manipulation because I don't want to even be there in the first place. Maybe I play this deck too aggressively.

But to get back on topic, how often are you finding yourself missing a color of mana while using crystal vein? I would be surprised if you haven't ran into that issue at all yet. TES needs a red and black mana available as soon as possible; it needs the colorless mana afterwards. That's why chrome mox is a great fit even with it's obvious drawbacks. Crystal vein / City of Traitors seems like a better fit for ANT, and I'm surprised I haven't seen it in any ANT lists now that I think about it.

[Lemnear]

Yes, and I am okay with that. It isn't really that big of a deal when I'm looking to combo out on turn 1, 2 or 3. I'm sacrificing the late game manipulation because I don't want to even be there in the first place. Maybe I play this deck too aggressively.

But to get back on topic, how often are you finding yourself missing a color of mana while using crystal vein? I would be surprised if you haven't ran into that issue at all yet. TES needs a red and black mana available as soon as possible; it needs the colorless mana afterwards. That's why chrome mox is a great fit even with it's obvious drawbacks. Crystal vein / City of Traitors seems like a better fit for ANT, and I'm surprised I haven't seen it in any ANT lists now that I think about it.

In 2010 Sol Lands were not that uncommon in ANT (which ran several ANs and ToAs during that time), but with the prining of PIF and the shift towards the maximum on shuffle-effects and color-fixing, the +2 mana were less relevant in the face of Cabal Rituals.

I sure ran into the situation in which I had only 1 colored mana, a Vein, but an unfortunate combination of Ritual/Rite/Infernal/Wish in hand, but there is a reason I run 8 fetches and 12 cantrips to fix the problem within a turn or two (possibly changing the setup into a mono-colored). This possible delay however is less of a problem if you don't have planned to race your opponent with an unprotected EtW anyways. I had this in mind as I decided to cut the MB EtW because of the value-drop it suffers because of the lacking, early color-fix and extra mana/stormcount of Moxen.

How was your success-rate against defensive-hands in games 2 & 3 if you sacrifice so much shuffling/fixing/manapower? Just because the deck is able to overpower your opponent T1/2/3 doesn't mean that its generally fine to lose every longer game due to variance and underpowered cards.

[Bryant Cook]

In 2010 Sol Lands were not that uncommon in ANT (which ran several ANs and ToAs during that time), but with the prining of PIF and the shift towards the maximum on shuffle-effects and color-fixing, the +2 mana were less relevant in the face of Cabal Rituals.

To be fair, they also ran more Ad Nauseam at the time.

[Asthereal]

How was your success-rate against defensive-hands in games 2 & 3 if you sacrifice so much shuffling/fixing/manapower? Just because the deck is able to overpower your opponent T1/2/3 doesn't mean that its generally fine to lose every longer game due to variance and underpowered cards.
Lem, you know exactly how this runs.
You played the same lands for years.

4x Gemstone Mine
2x City of Brass
2x Underground Sea
1x Volcanic Island
3x Fetch

This was the core of TES for at least three years.
Adding a fetch and a Tropical only adds to consistency in longer games.

[Lemnear]

Lem, you know exactly how this runs.
You played the same lands for years.

4x Gemstone Mine
2x City of Brass
2x Underground Sea
1x Volcanic Island
3x Fetch

This was the core of TES for at least three years.
Adding a fetch and a Tropical only adds to consistency in longer games.

I did not play the full rainbow 12- lands manabase for more than a year now. I never played that base in a post-TNN/multi-angle-hate/Miracle/Treasure Cruise world, so I asked about his recent experience

[d0nkey]

In 2010 Sol Lands were not that uncommon in ANT (which ran several ANs and ToAs during that time), but with the prining of PIF and the shift towards the maximum on shuffle-effects and color-fixing, the +2 mana were less relevant in the face of Cabal Rituals.

I sure ran into the situation in which I had only 1 colored mana, a Vein, but an unfortunate combination of Ritual/Rite/Infernal/Wish in hand, but there is a reason I run 8 fetches and 12 cantrips to fix the problem within a turn or two (possibly changing the setup into a mono-colored). This possible delay however is less of a problem if you don't have planned to race your opponent with an unprotected EtW anyways. I had this in mind as I decided to cut the MB EtW because of the value-drop it suffers because of the lacking, early color-fix and extra mana/stormcount of Moxen.

How was your success-rate against defensive-hands in games 2 & 3 if you sacrifice so much shuffling/fixing/manapower? Just because the deck is able to overpower your opponent T1/2/3 doesn't mean that its generally fine to lose every longer game due to variance and underpowered cards.

I haven't been able to get a lot of testing in lately unfortunately. Our local scene has died a little bit.

But I feel confident in grindy games 2 and 3. Would I like to have more shuffle effects for these games? Sure. But this deck has to have a black and a red to combo out and I don't want to risk not having access to both because I needed to setup with green for an abrupt decay. (I guess this is why bayou is better than trop).

Has anyone tried Rain of Filth in TES? With my manabase (gemstones), I don't see this as a good option, but for the people that have a more stable manabase, it seems like it could be good vs grindy games. I could see rain of filth taking on the role of crystal veins for the added burst if you just went with more duals, or even basics.

[Final Fortune]

I ran 2 Chrome Mox and 1 Simian Spirit Guide awhile back and didn't have a strong opinion about it one way or the other, the damage and storm weren't very relevant but color fixing and permanent mana sources were an issue off of Diminishing Returns. It might be better if you're not playing with a D7 any more, but I don't think the Pros of drawing Chrome Mox less are worth the draw backs of Simian Spirit Guide as personally I don't mind drawing Chrome Mox until the 2nd copy.

I don't care if its City of Traitors or Cabal Ritual, SB mana sources I think are really under estimated in terms of their utility and I don't think Reanimator is a large enough part of the meta to warrant narrow SB cards like Pithing Needle.

[Bryant Cook]

I ran 2 Chrome Mox and 1 Simian Spirit Guide awhile back and didn't have a strong opinion about it one way or the other, the damage and storm weren't very relevant but color fixing and permanent mana sources were an issue off of Diminishing Returns. It might be better if you're not playing with a D7 any more, but I don't think the Pros of drawing Chrome Mox less are worth the draw backs of Simian Spirit Guide as personally I don't mind drawing Chrome Mox until the 2nd copy.

I don't care if its City of Traitors or Cabal Ritual, SB mana sources I think are really under estimated in terms of their utility and I don't think Reanimator is a large enough part of the meta to warrant narrow SB cards like Pithing Needle.

I'll agree with the Chrome Mox sentiment until the second copy. I almost never mind having one.

[Lemnear]

I ran 2 Chrome Mox and 1 Simian Spirit Guide awhile back and didn't have a strong opinion about it one way or the other, the damage and storm weren't very relevant but color fixing and permanent mana sources were an issue off of Diminishing Returns. It might be better if you're not playing with a D7 any more, but I don't think the Pros of drawing Chrome Mox less are worth the draw backs of Simian Spirit Guide as personally I don't mind drawing Chrome Mox until the 2nd copy.

I don't care if its City of Traitors or Cabal Ritual, SB mana sources I think are really under estimated in terms of their utility and I don't think Reanimator is a large enough part of the meta to warrant narrow SB cards like Pithing Needle.

I agree that modular mana is an option if you face decks like tempo or control but have enough victims for your greedy G1 setup like we had end of 2011. These days, the decks you can overwhelm with the Belcher-Mode because they have no countermeasures (reads discard, Counter, Resistors or hatebears) is close to Zero and the whole development over the years (more lands, more Fetches, less colors) are geared towards reacting to that. My personal feeling however is that we cossed the point, where we have to consider the sie, defensive matchups as our standard and not the victims to out Belcher-Mode and react via our MB setup rather than our SB setup.

P.S.: will edit this post without 6 shots and 5 beers. Damnit!

[oracL3]

PIF

I don't know what gives you the idea that you have to cast all these in a single turn. If you have a Ritual, an Infernal and a Wish in hand for example, you can use your turn 2 to double the Ritual with infernal, and depending on your mana, Wish->PIF on the next turn to combo off or just pass the turn with PIF in hand. You reduce the required mana to 5-8 depending on your combination of cards. There is no need to do hilarious 15 mana pre-PIF playlines.

You can also cantrip for turns into rituals and a Wish, grab PIF, play your Rituals into PIF, flashback your Rituals, and cantrip with flashbacked Ponders/Brainstorms/Probes right into the next Infernal/Wish to kill.

In general, your softspot for a PIF playline is having 2 Tutors + a combination of 3 Ritual/RoF effects.

Natural Spellchain

What's the big deal if playing out your mana also generates storm, cantrips replace themselves, Discard also generates storm, Probes cost Zero mana, your opponent is damaging himself with fechlands/Probes so you need most likely 9 storm instead of 10, the IT->BW->ToA playline is 3 storm without ever costing a card and you can have up to 8 cards for such a combo in your own hand?

This deck is 50% mana anyways, so as an example, you can start with Petal into Ritual into Probe into Therapy (FoW) into LED into tapping two lands into RoF into Infernal into Wish into ToA is 9 storm for example. If you need more examples, Bryant has written "storm hands" articles for that and you can also see playlines with Natural Chains if you browse though my "Heart of the Storm" articles. You can find the links at the bottom of the primer.
Hi, i tried this options but i had no luck with ur delver. I ve played some games vs delver and had won only one when on turn 2 i ETWed my oppo with 14 goblin. About the opening hand, there is an optimal combo of cards vs delver decks?
Ty

[wonderPreaux]

To followup on a lot of talk about various techs and stuff, I wanted to post this list and see what people think:

Bombs/Win-Cons
4 Burning Wish
3 Infernal Tutor
1 Ad Nauseam

Mana Acceleration
4 Dark Ritual
4 Rite of Flame
4 Lion's Eye Diamond
4 Lotus Petal
2 Cabal Ritual
2 Chrome Mox

Cantrips
4 Gitaxian Probe
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder

Protection
7 Cabal Therapy/Duress

Land
4 Gemstone Mine
4 Misty Rainforest
2 Underground Sea
2 Volcanic Island
1 Bayou

Sideboard
1 Tendrils of Agony
1 Empty the Warrens
1 Grapeshot/Thoughtseize/Cabal Therapy?
1 Infernal Tutor
1 Past in Flames
1 Void Snare
1 Massacre
2 Chain of Vapor/Pyroblast/Decay+Pyroblast/Decay+Chain
3 Xantid Swarm
3 Abrupt Decay

The primary change here is that 1 EtW and 1 Chrome Mox became Cabal Rituals. Of all the stuff discussed about mana, making Ad Nauseam effective, or having alternative choices to it, this is what I think the most effective config is.

Cabal Rituals vs. Chrome Mox vs. Sol Lands etc.
I ended up with a 2-2 split of Cabal Rituals and Chrome Mox, just looking at the strategy of making the most effective use of Ad Nauseam. It's a lot harder, in my experience, to have a land drop after Ad Nauseam than it is to have some mana floating, and I don't really like the idea of delaying my combo shot just so I can land a sol land drop or build up some extra mana because then I'm vulnerable to discard or extra damage or hatebears etc.

Chrome Mox is just the best card there is at making Ad Nauseams with no land-drop or floating mana successful, at least when I'm already playing 4 Lotus Petal. As much as people might want to eschew it, I've found the Ad Nauseam just isn't as good without it. This isn't Tin Fins where you can stop midstream and readjust your life total to keep going or know for sure how many cards you're digging to, Chrome Mox is what makes the variance acceptable, in my opinion, and dropping it down to 2 is just to decrease the chance of seeing too many of them pre-combo.

Cabal Ritual is added in as a concession to all the high-damage strats and such in the format, it's easier to PiF loop or Tutor chain when you have high power Rituals. Removing EtW means that the 2 CMC isn't that clunky, since it's the highest CMC you'll ever encounter. While this deck isn't the best at Threshold, it's still worthwhile ramp for going off fast.

No EtW
So, this is probably the most contentious choice, considering that replacing stuff with Cabal Rituals was already a thing that happened last summer. However, as much as Cabal Ritual gets sided out a lot, EtW gets sided out a lot as well. Also, the matches where it is sided out, EtW is terrible. Think big creature combo, storm combo, control, etc. In general, I just find that I don't want EtW a lot, except in random hatebear decks or as a win-con when I see an opponent as exposed, in other words, a Wish target. Given that classic RUG Delver isn't really a thing anymore, and Young Pyromancer is a much a source of EtW hate as it is a wincon, I can't really think of a non-hatebear deck where I'm looking for EtW except for maybe having it in my opener. While some may lament the loss of the "6-mana plan", it still exists 4/7 of the time through Burning Wish, and with Cabal Ritual in CM/EtW's stead you can get extra ramp to make that 6-mana happen, or give you the 7th mana to just help make Tutor fetch Ad Nauseam instead the other 3/7ths of the time.

Sideboard/Optional slots
I'm a little unsure on the balance of discard spells and sb slots. With no EtW main, one could consider 4 Duress + 3 Cabal Therapy, the issue I see there is that in matchups like Burn or Elves you have another Duress to side out and Abrupt Decay seems really meh in those scenarios. Moreover, a lot of fast EtW hands tend to involve LED, and discarding Therapy just to flash it back is a cool synergy in creature matchups where you don't need protection but do want to strip a key card.

For the sideboard, idk if Pyroblast is worthwhile. Given the BBD-clones playing stoenblade with just Meddling Mage and Cliques as disruption, Pyroblast could be really good, as would Grapeshot. On the other hand, Chain of Vapor is the tried and true efficient method of handling creatures in non-blue matchups and, as stated, it would be a little clunky to just lean on Decay for that. You could run a couple Decay with/without Grapeshot against the Meddling Mage decks, as well. IDK about Pithing Needle lately, just because I still lose to Counterbalance with it up, and Xantid Swarm is a much higher upside potential.

Grapeshot is serving a role of "clean Storm kill not named Tendrils of Agony". You can use it or ToA in the main to play around Extraction, its flexible, etc. If you choose to main it, it's also cheap enough to not significantly impact Ad Nauseam, fwiw.

[Mastikor]

I like that, I've been thinking exactly the same -1 EtW - 1 CMox +2 Cabal Ritual. Seems good on paper, please share if you get any feedback from playing. Another option I considered is PiF instead of EtW, with some number of Cabal Rituals in the list.

As for sideboard, I think REB/Pyro is worth at least 1 slot. As for the discard slot, I like playing the 4th Duress. I also like Carpet, but haven't tested it yet. Is it good enough?

[wonderPreaux]

I like that, I've been thinking exactly the same -1 EtW - 1 CMox +2 Cabal Ritual. Seems good on paper, please share if you get any feedback from playing. Another option I considered is PiF instead of EtW, with some number of Cabal Rituals in the list.

As for sideboard, I think REB/Pyro is worth at least 1 slot. As for the discard slot, I like playing the 4th Duress. I also like Carpet, but haven't tested it yet. Is it good enough?

I don't think PiF quite works main deck, i think Lem mentioned once swapping it with AdNaus maindeck against Burn, but with Burning Wish exiling itself and having to find all my win cons, its awkward to say the least.

My original draft of this used 2 Pyroblasts and Grapeshot to keep ahead of Meddling Mage, and also have some use for natural storm chains, since Burning Wish doesn't require Hellbent. I could see 1 copy making it's way into the board. Carpet seems interesting, I just can't figure out how I'd have space for it.

[sawatarix]

What a coincidence, yesterday i had the same thought process: kick out the empty the warrens + chrome mox #3 in order to make room for cabal rituals.

Then i started to test against every single delver deck out there to see how we can grind them out with additional mana boost. (I think it's clear that i shouldn't test a superfast Deck like TES against Elves or Lands)

I have been sucessful so far by killing the opponent via tutor/wish chain or pifloop when ad nauseam was already dead.
It really works,finally i also kicked out rite of flame #4 for a cabal ritual #3 but i've no idea if its good.

[wonderPreaux]

What a coincidence, yesterday i had the same thought process: kick out the empty the warrens + chrome mox #3 in order to make room for cabal rituals.

Then i started to test against every single delver deck out there to see how we can grind them out with additional mana boost. (I think it's clear that i shouldn't test a superfast Deck like TES against Elves or Lands)

I have been sucessful so far by killing the opponent via tutor/wish chain or pifloop when ad nauseam was already dead.
It really works,finally i also kicked out rite of flame #4 for a cabal ritual #3 but i've no idea if its good.

I wouldn't go cutting Rite, it's important for getting double red for Wish -> PiF/EtW/Grapeshot

[Mastikor]

I don't think cutting RoF is ever a good idea since it automatically weakens the remaining ones. For 3rd Cabal, I'd consider cutting a land (although I like 13), maybe a Duress or even a Ponder. Even 61 cards may not be horrible, but I think 2 Cabals are enough. Note that we still have to keep the CMC as low as possible and imo that was the main thing behind the idea of droping the EtW.

[Lemnear]

I don't think cutting RoF is ever a good idea since it automatically weakens the remaining ones. For 3rd Cabal, I'd consider cutting a land (although I like 13), maybe a Duress or even a Ponder. Even 61 cards may not be horrible, but I think 2 Cabals are enough. Note that we still have to keep the CMC as low as possible and imo that was the main thing behind the idea of droping the EtW.

If you reduce the number of initial manasources post-AN, you have to make up for it by being able flipping more cards to Ad Nauseam. Not being forced to stop at 4 life is a huge difference as I already mentioned several times.

I'm glad we finally reached the point where people test without the EtW main with Max summarizing my points about the strategic removal of that spell outside of the cmc issue

Mind that if you play with 10+ Rituals, you can swap AN for PIF+ToA postboard against Burn and UR Delver and call it a day because you also run 7 Tutors and ergo Dodge the whole problem of Tutor shortage which occurs in ANT at times

Just one thing: consider to move to full Fetches and a second green dual in the SB to support 2-3 CR as Moxen + Gemstones are really not that good in combination with CRs


Edit:
Max, I doubt Sol Land vs. CR is really a matter of speed overall (arguing with the hatebear matchup) considering that Thres.hold rarely comes online before turn 3 anyways which was the timeframe I had in mind for the Sol land to be relevant in case of matching Rituals/Tutors (turn 2) and un-matched ones (turn 3).

I don't want to swap the numbers of CT and Duresses not only because of the boarding slots which was one point to step away from that idea but because I'm fine with dismembering defense over turns, drop EtW and use the flashbacks to blow out possible comebacks


Edit 2:
I think it's worth discussion how the 0cc of Sol Lands relate to the 2cc of CRs for AN (also with PIF in mind)

[Bryant Cook]

I put together the list suggested above (I'm still on two Gemstones - I think it's necessary, especially when I'm running seven green cards in my sideboard). I've goldfished about twenty games, so far I like it - the ability to go very low on Ad Nauseam has been nice, Tutor chaining is more reliable and PIF is a stronger option (The real gain over the SOL lands). We're a little slower on Infernal hands since making ETW tokens cost more than Ad Nauseam now, but I think it's an acceptable trade-off.

I think four Duress may be the way to go if Empty isn't in our Main Deck anymore as it's more reliable, which brings me to my next point. Lem, weren't you just saying a page ago how we shouldn't be using ETW past turn two? Now you're using it to justify more Cabal Therapy!

I really disagee on shaving any number of Rite of Flame as it's effect severely diminishes.

[Lemnear]

I put together the list suggested above (I'm still on two Gemstones - I think it's necessary, especially when I'm running seven green cards in my sideboard). I've goldfished about twenty games, so far I like it - the ability to go very low on Ad Nauseam has been nice, Tutor chaining is more reliable and PIF is a stronger option (The real gain over the SOL lands). We're a little slower on Infernal hands since making ETW tokens cost more than Ad Nauseam now, but I think it's an acceptable trade-off.

I think four Duress may be the way to go if Empty isn't in our Main Deck anymore as it's more reliable, which brings me to my next point. Lem, weren't you just saying a page ago how we shouldn't be using ETW past turn two? Now you're using it to justify more Cabal Therapy!

I really disagee on shaving any number of Rite of Flame as it's effect severely diminishes.

Yes, I'm not a big fan of going for EtW turn 3 or beyond. It is however an option to consider if you are running low on life/possible stormcount/cards at some point and if you used Therapies rather than Duresses to dismember your opponents defense to this point, you can use the flashback to ride the goblins to victory. I think it is important to keep this option available on top of the fact that Duress can't strip creatures.

[Bryant Cook]

Stream of thought: I'm not sure if I want/need Carpet of Flowers if we've added in Cabal Ritual. I may switch back to either Needles or Xantid + X.

Edit: This is what I've been goldfishing this morning:

4 Polluted Delta
2 Misty Rainforest
2 Gemstone Mine
2 Underground Sea
2 Volcanic Island
1 Bayou

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

3 Infernal Tutor
4 Burning Wish
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
4 Gitaxian Probe
4 Cabal Therapy
3 Duress
1 Ad Nauseam

Sideboard
3 Abrupt Decay
2 Xantid Swarm
2 Pithing Needle
2 Chain of Vapor
1 Void Snare
1 Infernal Tutor
1 Massacre
1 Tendrils of Agony
1 Empty the Warrens
1 Past in Flames

[wonderPreaux]

Mind that if you play with 10+ Rituals, you can swap AN for PIF+ToA postboard against Burn and UR Delver and call it a day because you also run 7 Tutors and ergo Dodge the whole problem of Tutor shortage which occurs in ANT at times
This is actually a pretty good point in favor of Cabal Ritual right now, if you play online there's loads of Burn and UR and Treasure Burn etc. Carpet isn't even good in 2/3 of those scenarios, and Carpet/Lands just can't be flashed back. Moreover, having more Tutors means you aren't as reliant on cantrips, so with everyone and their brother's maining/siding red blast effects you can ignore it some games and make them feel foolish.


Edit: Max, I doubt Sol Land vs. CR is really a matter of speed overall (arguing with the hatebear matchup) considering that Thres.hold rarely comes online before turn 3 anyways which was the timeframe I had in mind for the Sol land to be relevant in case of matching Rituals/Tutors (turn 2) and un-matched ones (turn 3).

I don't want to swap the numbers of CT and Duresses not only because of the boarding slots which was one point to step away from that idea but because I'm fine with dismembering defense over turns, drop EtW and use the flashbacks to blow out possible comebacks
When I mean speed vs lands, I'm mostly thinking how, if you have a fistful of rituals and you have an opening, you can slam them all, whereas you can always only play one land a turn. Regarding the CMC, I think that's a matter of expected value, Cabal Ritual isn't really a great card except pre-Ad Nauseam, but it is very useful for PiF/chaining when we're not even thinking of Ad Nauseam. I think we're in a meta where Ad Nauseam isn't as strong, so increasing the power of secondary/tertiary lines probably has a higher marginal yield. A lot of the matchups where Ad Nauseam is good, it's pretty much a goldfish, so the removal of EtW and it's replacement with Cabal Ritual is reasonable even then.


I put together the list suggested above (I'm still on two Gemstones - I think it's necessary, especially when I'm running seven green cards in my sideboard). I've goldfished about twenty games, so far I like it - the ability to go very low on Ad Nauseam has been nice, Tutor chaining is more reliable and PIF is a stronger option (The real gain over the SOL lands). We're a little slower on Infernal hands since making ETW tokens cost more than Ad Nauseam now, but I think it's an acceptable trade-off.
I don't know how correct my initial draft of 4 Gemstone was, I just liked the idea because my list had 3 Swarms and the ability to chain Swarm one turn into discard or cantrips the other turns was pretty appealing.


I think four Duress may be the way to go if Empty isn't in our Main Deck anymore as it's more reliable, which brings me to my next point. Lem, weren't you just saying a page ago how we shouldn't be using ETW past turn two? Now you're using it to justify more Cabal Therapy!
The only thing making me apprehensive about 4 Duress is how awkward it would feel against Elves having to side in 2 Abrupt Decays to fill slots after 2 Chain of Vapor. Has anyone considered siding in Pithing Needle against Elves? A lot of turn 2/3 combos from Elves rely a lot on t1 DRS/Quiron Ranger, Needling them could be a far smoother way of delaying them compared to Decay.


I really disagee on shaving any number of Rite of Flame as it's effect severely diminishes.
For anyone considering cutting a Rite, just remember the 4th Rite generates a net gain of +4 mana! That's better than Cabal Ritual and LED.


Stream of thought: I'm not sure if I want/need Carpet of Flowers if we've added in Cabal Ritual. I may switch back to either Needles or Xantid + X.

Edit: This is what I've been goldfishing this morning:

4 Polluted Delta
2 Misty Rainforest
2 Gemstone Mine
2 Underground Sea
2 Volcanic Island
1 Bayou

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

3 Infernal Tutor
4 Burning Wish
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
4 Gitaxian Probe
4 Cabal Therapy
3 Duress
1 Ad Nauseam

Sideboard
3 Abrupt Decay
2 Xantid Swarm
2 Pithing Needle
2 Chain of Vapor
1 Void Snare
1 Infernal Tutor
1 Massacre
1 Tendrils of Agony
1 Empty the Warrens
1 Past in Flames
I couldn't find room for Carpet, this looks rather solid, given the points discussed above. I'm a little peeved at the idea of bringing in Decays against Esperblade, but it's likely necessary to have those Decays and Needles given Miracles and the former's use against those trendy Chalice decks.

[That nice guy]

I play the deck with a strategic mixture of foils and non-foils, the reason I do this is so I can write down/make note of situations on flex slots and then review it after enough games. For example, I'll run something like 2 foil chrome mox but when I see the non-foil I always ask, "what should that have been". Here is what I've found:

1. Just wanted to mention that after turn 3/4 Empty the Warrens is the card I throw under chrome mox whenever I can, but it happens a lot. Make of that data what you will.

2. After 300+ games I've found that it's about even as to whether it should be cabal ritual. And yes, I factored in the value of PiF options. What I'm saying is, for every time it would have been better seeing cabal, there was also a game I would have lost when I absolutely had to Ad N without mana floating. I'm saying Ultimately, with my testing so far, it doesn't matter which you choose. I'd go with whatever fits your play-style, and I like the mox because I tend to either be very aggressive, or very conservative (cantripping till the last moment hiding moxen I don't want), with no in-between. I also think the meta calls for aggression, but when Esper dominates I will try the ritual.

3. I know it sounds bad, but the majority of the time when I see the non-foil mox it would be good as a chain of vapor. I could either
A. buy myself time by bouncing a threat EoT. It's also good to hit a Top Eot so that UW can't float a counter to protect it from duress.
B. I can build the natural storm. Good after using wish bait for Tendrils,
C. Post (and even sometimes pre) ad nausea I can deal with a annoying board piece (Ex. Eidolon, flipped delver, germ token, elf). If they want to use a counter on it to protect their piece, so be it. This is great when your enemy UW player rushes a Counter Balance onto the board without a top just to hope.
D. But my favorite part of the idea is that it opens up a SB slot.
E. In matches where you know you wont use it, and you wont use natural storm off it, you can throw it under a mox and cantrip while saving fetchlands to go the long route.

4. Back in the BUG meta I ran the third mox as an Island to cantrip-durdle until I was ready and protect my hand with BS. The fetchable option definitely outweighed when I got it or mox in my hand naturally. I don't think in today's meta this is the right call, but it's an option if you truley hate mox as much as this thread suggests.

Conclusion, Personally I just don't mind seeing 1 mox.


The only thing making me apprehensive about 4 Duress is how awkward it would feel against Elves having to side in 2 Abrupt Decays to fill slots after 2 Chain of Vapor. Has anyone considered siding in Pithing Needle against Elves? A lot of turn 2/3 combos from Elves rely a lot on t1 DRS/Quiron Ranger, Needling them could be a far smoother way of delaying them compared to Decay.

As the hugest pithing advocate, I had good experiences bringing them in, but only on the draw.

Interesting story: I was playing in a tournament less than a week ago and I kept a hand on the play with needle, 1 Probe, game 2 against UW control. His hand was CB, Top, Fow, BS, Flooded Strand, Pierce, Terminus. I was so happy! I played land needle and he choose to burn the Fow/BS just to save his only land. I didn't blow him out like I could have, but getting rid of that Fow was clutch. So yeah, I almost always bring needles in on the play.



So there is something I wanted to get some feedback from the community on. In the matches where I have tried to side in the Infernal I've found that Burning is just not so good. Any suggestions on sweet lines with burning? I find PiF is not reliable. So maybe that's another argument for cabal?

[laserstone]

Played my local with the new Rituals main, no mainboard ETW. Went 4-0, won a Wasteland.
M1 (Maverick): G1 Adnaus turn 1, win. G2 PiF kill - cabal ritual really shined.
M2 (UWR Delver): G1 Natural spellchain. G2 Past in flames Kill.
M3 (UR Delver): G1 natural chain. G2 Past in Flames kill.
M4 (MUD): G1 Turn 2 Ad Nauseam through a chalice on 1. Cabal ritual won me the game here since I got around chalice. G2: MUD does its thing. G3: Pass the turn Adnaus on turn 2, Past in Flames kill on turn 3.

Thoughts: There were definitely places where not having the mainboard ETW hurt, especially against UWR, but no 4-mana spells in the main means I can confidently Adnaus down to 1 or 2 without worrying about dying. Cutting EtW forces us to be more of a tendrils deck than a goblins deck, and that seems to me like where we want to be in this meta.
Regarding Cabal Ritual: Saved me in some clutch situations (e.g. Chalice on 1). CRit makes the sideboard Infernal really good, and enables PiF to a ridiculous level. In 10 locals with TES, I'd used PiF only once, and last night I PiFd for the win at least once every round. I personally really like it.

[wonderPreaux]

11. Just wanted to mention that after turn 3/4 Empty the Warrens is the card I throw under chrome mox whenever I can, but it happens a lot. Make of that data what you will.
Thats a pretty relatable sentiment, late game EtW just isn't that fun against Elves, Pyromancer, Top/Terminus, Batterskull etc.


2. After 300+ games I've found that it's about even as to whether it should be cabal ritual. And yes, I factored in the value of PiF options. What I'm saying is, for every time it would have been better seeing cabal, there was also a game I would have lost when I absolutely had to Ad N without mana floating. I'm saying Ultimately, with my testing so far, it doesn't matter which you choose. I'd go with whatever fits your play-style, and I like the mox because I tend to either be very aggressive, or very conservative (cantripping till the last moment hiding moxen I don't want), with no in-between. I also think the meta calls for aggression, but when Esper dominates I will try the ritual.
I don't really think Esper is really that good these days, but with a lot of the meta throwing Lightning Bolts around, it's likely worth the stronger Tutor chain/PiF lines.


3. I know it sounds bad, but the majority of the time when I see the non-foil mox it would be good as a chain of vapor. I could either
A. buy myself time by bouncing a threat EoT. It's also good to hit a Top Eot so that UW can't float a counter to protect it from duress.
B. I can build the natural storm. Good after using wish bait for Tendrils,
C. Post (and even sometimes pre) ad nausea I can deal with a annoying board piece (Ex. Eidolon, flipped delver, germ token, elf). If they want to use a counter on it to protect their piece, so be it. This is great when your enemy UW player rushes a Counter Balance onto the board without a top just to hope.
D. But my favorite part of the idea is that it opens up a SB slot.
E. In matches where you know you wont use it, and you wont use natural storm off it, you can throw it under a mox and cantrip while saving fetchlands to go the long route.
We do have Void Snare for hitting outs. The problem with freeing SB slots by maining sb cards is that there are matchups where Chain of Vapor just doesn't matter or shouldn't matter. The "throw it under a mox" argument is pretty sketchy given that youre saying "you can just mulligan when its not useful". i want as few mulligans, literal or effective, as possible, since this deck decays really quickly on mulligans, unless you happen to mull into LEDs or other high-power cards


So there is something I wanted to get some feedback from the community on. In the matches where I have tried to side in the Infernal I've found that Burning is just not so good. Any suggestions on sweet lines with burning? I find PiF is not reliable. So maybe that's another argument for cabal?
For games where you're siding Infernal in, its to combo faster, usually with EtW against hatebear decks like Burn/DnT, so the Wish line is simply for EtW. The other case is something like the storm mirror, where Wish finds PiF, and I suppose this is where you lose out not having SB discard, since that was typically the other option. There are cases where it makes sense to just go t1 EtW against ANT, i suppose if you were really desperate you could Void Snare + Duress/Therapy an LED or something, too.


Ultimately, with my testing so far, it doesn't matter which you choose. I'd go with whatever fits your play-style
I take issue with this statement in particular. "Play-style" just isn't good reasoning. I get that Legacy has a lot of pet-deck mentality and preference rationale, but you shouldn't have a card in your deck because it "seems ok for you". There are situations where, among Chrome Mox and Cabal Ritual, one is OBJECTIVELY better than the other, and a very small number of cases where theyre both equivalently good. If you take the likelihood of these various scenarios occurring and multiply them by their effective difference, you get the expected value of effectiveness for both cards, again, objective difference, not subjective. The odds that each EV is exactly the same is very, very, VERY unlikely and if one is even a fraction of a percent better, you should be playing that one, regardless of how you "feel" about it.

[Bryant Cook]

http://sales.starcitygames.com//deckdatabase/displaydeck.php?DeckID=76818

TES took 10th (Mislabeled).

Whoever it is clearly follows the thread.

[Lemnear]

http://sales.starcitygames.com//deckdatabase/displaydeck.php?DeckID=76818

TES took 10th (Mislabeled).

Whoever it is clearly follows the thread.

I glad about the 2 storm decks in T16 in general. May the user piloting the list say "hi" ;)

[oracL3]

Hi guys does anyone explain me why ant decks are performing better than tes deck at major tournament? I mean, according to the placement lists i ve noticed that there s always an ant deck instead of a tes one. I m pro tes but i really don't understand this difference in the results. Ty :-)

[Mastikor]

Hi guys does anyone explain me why ant decks are performing better than tes deck at major tournament? I mean, according to the placement lists i ve noticed that there s always an ant deck instead of a tes one. I m pro tes but i really don't understand this difference in the results. Ty :-)

I think it's just because ANT is much more popular and played than TES.

[Battle7]

Hello, I’m Daniel Battle, long-time lurker and first time poster.

I got 10th at the SCG open this weekend with a record of 7-2 (link in Bryant's post above). I also drew into the Top 32 of the last Legacy Open in Atlanta around two months ago with TES.

Results:
2-0 High Tide (Feline Longmore)
2-1 UR Delver
0-2 Shardless BUG
0-2 Dredge
2-1 Omni-Tell
2-1 Reanimator
2-1 Tezzeret
2-0 Hypergensis
2-0 Infect
Final record: 7-2

Notes:
-I only killed with Empty once. I would also have won against Shardless with them but he ripped his MD Pulse G1. Empty was revealed many more times to Ad Nauseum then it was useful for casting, so I’m definitely looking into the 2 Cabal Ritual 2 Chrome Mox version.
-I drew 2 Chrome Mox a lot of times throughout the day, and it was awful. That’s another reason why going down to two Moxes would be great.
-Most games were won with Ad Nauseum, a couple were won with a natural spell chain, and no wins with Past in Flames.
-The loses to dredge were me keeping a slow hand g1 and continuously drawing lands G1 so I couldn't become hellbent, and dying off an Ad Nauseum G2.

Overall, I love the deck, and will probably try the Cabal version on MTGO over the next couple of weeks. Unfortunately, there are not any Opens in the southeast for the first half of next year, so I don't know when I'll be able to play a live event again. :/

[Asthereal]

Hello, I’m Daniel Battle, long-time lurker and first time poster.

I got 10th at the SCG open this weekend with a record of 7-2 (link in Bryant's post above). I also drew into the Top 32 of the last Legacy Open in Atlanta around two months ago with TES.

Results:
2-0 High Tide (Feline Longmore)
2-1 UR Delver
0-2 Shardless BUG
0-2 Dredge
2-1 Omni-Tell
2-1 Reanimator
2-1 Tezzeret
2-0 Hypergensis
2-0 Infect
Final record: 7-2

Notes:
-I only killed with Empty once. I would also have won against Shardless with them but he ripped his MD Pulse G1. Empty was revealed many more times to Ad Nauseum then it was useful for casting, so I’m definitely looking into the 2 Cabal Ritual 2 Chrome Mox version.
-I drew 2 Chrome Mox a lot of times throughout the day, and it was awful. That’s another reason why going down to two Moxes would be great.
-Most games were won with Ad Nauseum, a couple were won with a natural spell chain, and no wins with Past in Flames.
-The loses to dredge were me keeping a slow hand g1 and continuously drawing lands G1 so I couldn't become hellbent, and dying off an Ad Nauseum G2.

Overall, I love the deck, and will probably try the Cabal version on MTGO over the next couple of weeks. Unfortunately, there are not any Opens in the southeast for the first half of next year, so I don't know when I'll be able to play a live event again. :/
Hi Daniel!
Welcome to the active part of The Source.
Nice of you to come say hi. :smile:

Sounds like your losses were rather unlucky. The list you ran should not kill itself with Ad Nauseam, and losing to the one-of topdeck speaks for itself. We've all been there I'm afraid. I have two questions, one TES-related and one not. So TES first: how did you like the mana base with 6x fetch, 2x Mine and the Bayou? Have you ever been annoyed with the Bayou and wished you ran it in the board (or that is was a Trop or so)?

And for the non-TES-related question: What kind of list was the Hypergenesis deck you played against in round 8, and what the hell was that doing so high up in the rankings? I got curious about that. :wink:

[Battle7]

Hi Daniel!
Welcome to the active part of The Source.
Nice of you to come say hi. :smile:

Sounds like your losses were rather unlucky. The list you ran should not kill itself with Ad Nauseam, and losing to the one-of topdeck speaks for itself. We've all been there I'm afraid. I have two questions, one TES-related and one not. So TES first: how did you like the mana base with 6x fetch, 2x Mine and the Bayou? Have you ever been annoyed with the Bayou and wished you ran it in the board (or that is was a Trop or so)?

And for the non-TES-related question: What kind of list was the Hypergenesis deck you played against in round 8, and what the hell was that doing so high up in the rankings? I got curious about that. :wink:

Thanks!

The manabase was great. I was happy with the Bayou all day, and it never really hurt. Being able to combo off the Bayou definitely made it feel better then a Tropical.

The Hypergenesis deck was playing some of the damage enchantments (Warstorm Surge, Wound Reflection), Gisela, Hellkite, Emrakul, Progenitus, and Temur Ascendency, along with 8 Spirit Guides. She just happened to draw the wrong half of the deck against me, though the deck seems fairly weak to discard. She said she had a lot of T1 kills, so it seems like she had some good matchups and was running above average. It was definitely a cool deck though!

[Mastikor]

Congrats on the finish. How were the Carpets in SB?

[Asthereal]

The manabase was great. I was happy with the Bayou all day, and it never really hurt. Being able to combo off the Bayou definitely made it feel better then a Tropical.
Good to hear. I have been running +1 Mine and the green Dual in the board, but I want more sideboard space. :rolleyes:


The Hypergenesis deck was playing some of the damage enchantments (Warstorm Surge, Wound Reflection), Gisela, Hellkite, Emrakul, Progenitus, and Temur Ascendency, along with 8 Spirit Guides. She just happened to draw the wrong half of the deck against me, though the deck seems fairly weak to discard. She said she had a lot of T1 kills, so it seems like she had some good matchups and was running above average. It was definitely a cool deck though!
Wow, that sounds even worse than my Chancellor of the Tangle / Hypergenesis deck. And that was an absolute nightmare. For its pilot. :laugh:

[Battle7]

Congrats on the finish. How were the Carpets in SB?

They were good against the 1 Delver deck I played against. 3 was definitely too many, but I also played a below average amount of Delver decks. I could see cutting them all together if Cabal Rituals are played, but I still like the card.

[Bryant Cook]

I might be going to a Lotus event on Saturday. If I do, I'll likely be trying the Cabal Ritual over Empty list. It's been about two months since I've played TES in a legacy event, I just wish some of these artists I've shipped to would send stuff back already. Seriously, Pete Venters has had my Tendrils, Grapeshot, Massacre and Pithing Needles since mid-September (I've made contact with him and he says they're in a pile on his table waiting to be signed).

[ThomasDowd]

Hi guys does anyone explain me why ant decks are performing better than tes deck at major tournament? I mean, according to the placement lists i ve noticed that there s always an ant deck instead of a tes one. I m pro tes but i really don't understand this difference in the results. Ty :-)

ANT is much more linear. TES is a little less so and the window feels smaller a lot of the time. in my experience playing both my mistakes were less punished with ANT than TES

also better lucky than good plays a role with density of population

[Bryant Cook]

ANT is much more linear. TES is a little less so and the window feels smaller a lot of the time. in my experience playing both my mistakes were less punished with ANT than TES

also better lucky than good plays a role with density of population

I normally try to stay out of ANT vs TES discussions at this point since there's very little to gain. However, criticisms of decks based on how forgiving they are of your play mistakes doesn't really fly for me. You want to win events? Play tight, don't mess up. Regardless of which deck one chooses.

[vercadium]

I might be going to a Lotus event on Saturday. If I do, I'll likely be trying the Cabal Ritual over Empty list. It's been about two months since I've played TES in a legacy event, I just wish some of these artists I've shipped to would send stuff back already. Seriously, Pete Venters has had my Tendrils, Grapeshot, Massacre and Pithing Needles since mid-September (I've made contact with him and he says they're in a pile on his table waiting to be signed).

I just hope they're not sitting loose on his desk and warping like crazy. :(

[That nice guy]

We do have Void Snare for hitting outs. The problem with freeing SB slots by maining sb cards is that there are matchups where Chain of Vapor just doesn't matter or shouldn't matter. The "throw it under a mox" argument is pretty sketchy given that youre saying "you can just mulligan when its not useful". i want as few mulligans, literal or effective, as possible, since this deck decays really quickly on mulligans, unless you happen to mull into LEDs or other high-power cards

I take issue with this statement in particular. "Play-style" just isn't good reasoning. I get that Legacy has a lot of pet-deck mentality and preference rationale, but you shouldn't have a card in your deck because it "seems ok for you". There are situations where, among Chrome Mox and Cabal Ritual, one is OBJECTIVELY better than the other, and a very small number of cases where theyre both equivalently good. If you take the likelihood of these various scenarios occurring and multiply them by their effective difference, you get the expected value of effectiveness for both cards, again, objective difference, not subjective. The odds that each EV is exactly the same is very, very, VERY unlikely and if one is even a fraction of a percent better, you should be playing that one, regardless of how you "feel" about it.

I think your right about the chain, but I was just considering it as a stall/other route to natural storm. I have a lot of prison in my meta (hence the SB spree) so I think a lot of my opponents learned that chalice on 2 decimates me. So I like having a MD answer after Ad N. It's a meta call, but a bad one.

As far as the "play style" reasoning goes I think you're right in theory, but I think either I didn't explain it clearly or you misunderstood. What I was getting at was, it depends how comfortable you are as a gambler. There are a lot of times when I'll have a decision where there's a higher probability of winning than losing in making a decision, but I have the alternative option of sculpting to hope things change. I personally like to go for it even if I think I only have a small percent advantage rather than wait. I think mox is better at this earlier rush strategy and therefor it fits my style better, since there will always be unknowns and likelihoods are not always clear.

[d0nkey]

I remember some number of months/years back we tried a 2 cabal ritual / 2 chrome mox split.

I also remember people not being too excited with the change. What's different this time around?

[wonderPreaux]

As far as the "play style" reasoning goes I think you're right in theory, but I think either I didn't explain it clearly or you misunderstood. What I was getting at was, it depends how comfortable you are as a gambler. There are a lot of times when I'll have a decision where there's a higher probability of winning than losing in making a decision, but I have the alternative option of sculpting to hope things change. I personally like to go for it even if I think I only have a small percent advantage rather than wait. I think mox is better at this earlier rush strategy and therefor it fits my style better, since there will always be unknowns and likelihoods are not always clear.

No, I think I understand what you're saying, I just think your reasoning is imperfect. For example, in the "go for it or don't" scenario you described, there is a statistically and objectively correct choice, it's just that to reach that answer you need immaculate understanding of the game state, or you'd need to play out the exact scenario over and over hundreds/thousands of times. A good gambler actually takes on as little variance as possible.

As far as Cabal Ritual vs. Chrome Mox, it's not as though Cabal is terrible at accelerating you in the early game, unthreshed, it still boosts mana by 1 and that is relevant. It's just a good bonus for PiF/tutor chains and I honestly think it's contributing more than a MD EtW. Removing a Chrome Mox is the next step as Rituals have to travel in at least pairs and the marginal value of the 2nd Rit is likely higher than the 3rd Mox.

re: what's different this time around. the difference here is that this time EtW was removed instead of Duress, and Bolts are appearing so much more in the format right now that divesting from Ad Nauseam while reducing variance by not having a 4 cmc card floating around in the main is a big deal.

[Lemnear]

I remember some number of months/years back we tried a 2 cabal ritual / 2 chrome mox split.

I also remember people not being too excited with the change. What's different this time around?

The difference is within the slots we replaced for the Cabals paired with the fact that we reduced the amount of rainbow lands in favor of more fetches which feed thresh. A significant problem with the previous list also was the self-inflicted damage, which we now removed the EtW for adressing the issue.

[laserstone]

How to approach the Miracles matchup? I'm playing the Cabal Rit list as of now, -1 pithing +1 decay. Going to be at an SCG soon, looking for some prep help.

[That nice guy]

How to approach the Miracles matchup? I'm playing the Cabal Rit list as of now, -1 pithing +1 decay. Going to be at an SCG soon, looking for some prep help.

Honestly, Miracles is a tough match. I played a black version tonight that ran Nethervoid and Etutor, we drew because of his lack of wins. Both games he first turn Etutors for cannonist. :( Here are the tips that work for me:

1. I've found that a natural storm chain is what usually gets me there after keeping a hand with Decay. Otherwise you want something super busted with duress effects to go off before CB hits.
2. Stay away from Empty if you can, but I have won with it in dire circumstances. I always side out Empty and always side in a 10drills. Throw Empty under Mox if you get stuck with it. I say this because Terminus, Supreme Verdict, Detention Sphere, Engineered Explosives, and possibly even energy field can ruin your day and even if you can flash back a Therapy they prolly have it lurking somewhere under top.
3. On the play Probe needle is really good against them. A lot of times I play against players that keep 1 landers just because they see a Force and something else good with Brainstorm. So you can name a fetch sometimes, it's only a small value added but it's value. Also see 4.
4. If they don't have Counter Balance on deck try to chain/decay their top at End of Turn so they can't float a counter, then punch through the next turn with hand disruption. This is why I personally like Needle better than Xantid, since it hits your other shit matches and still shuts down top. Needle does the same to 10Post when they board in 14 SB cards and try to hide them with top.
5. If they're not playing the RiP version, building a Past in Flames plan is good since you can flash it back after a counter. See below.
6. Bait with extra tutors. If infernal actually resolves get a ritual/rite to form a PiF plan. If wish resolves you can just grab the PiF to save you 2 mana on the next turn.
7. Siding out a copy of Thearapy isn't a bad plan as a wish target. I do it. Many times, you just need more answers.
8. On the play hand disruption is sweet, but if you're not on the play you want to save it if you have the decay.
9. I've won a game by using a Dark rit -> Ad N Eot, let it get countered, go to my turn Break Out.
10. Slow hands aren't necessarily bad! Yes their deck gets stronger as time goes by, but you also get to sculpt and draw.
11. I always like to keep in one copy of Mox, because if you can get a very early Ad N I want to be absolutely sure I can combo out. That said mox sux here otherwise because as the game goes on it gets worse. Therefore, I only have one in the deck to lessen my odds of seeing it naturally.
12. Some people swear by Carpet of Flowers, I'd like to have 1/2 but I just can't find space. Also, I have a standard for all of my SB cards where I ask myself, If things are looking grim and I think I'm going to lose, will starting with X or top-decking it change that? I like carpet, I really do, I just can't fit it compared to other cards.
13. Remember that UW is a deck all about having the right answers at the right time, think about what they don't have, and what will be hard to get. If you can try to go off on the first turn, may the odds be ever in your favor.

That said here is my board plan:
-3 Ponder
-2 Chrome Mox
-1 Cabal Therapy
-1 Empty the Warrens

+3 Abrupt Decay
+2 Needle
+1 Chain
+1 Tendrils of Agony

Yeah, I know chain isn't the best, but seeing top is scary. See #4. Chain does hit Leyline, meddling, detention Sphere on artifacts/EE, and cannonist, ect, ect which I have seen UW bring in. That said, I'm thinking about stopping the chain shenanigans to put back a ponder since sculpting is sweet and I'll just bring the chain in if I see anything I just mentioned.

I'm having a tough time with this match-up too, so I'm open to criticism.

[Lemnear]

You can even board the Xantids in Addition to bitch-test your opponents remaining removal suit. EtW isn't necessarily bad unless you play against T1 SDT or the Ponder variants of Miracles; it's a fact that they cut within their creature removal to make space for SB cards and you can catch them with EtW. Depends on what your opponents hand looks like.

[Bryant Cook]

I there there's a real lack of understanding the sideboarding concepts on your side.

Chain of Vapor is awful here. If they have a counterbalance they'll likely counter it and if you target top, you're down a card and they're plus one. Not great.

I don't like siding out a protection spell in a control based match-up without bringing in other protection which is why it was acceptable when siding in Xantids. It's about remaining neutral while having higher impact cards.

These things said, I would likely side like this:

-2 Chrome Mox
-2 Cabal Ritual
-2 Ponder
-1 Cabal Therapy

+3 Abrupt Decay
+2 Pithing Needle
+2 Xantid Swarm

This isn't a match-up where we need the additional mana from Chrome Mox and Cabal Ritual will likely be hurt by them bringing in Rest in Peace. It's acceptable to side out a Therapy if bringing in other protection as it allows for Wish to essentially become a protection spell. Ponder is a flex spot. I don't believe you need to bring in Tendrils, I haven't seen too many Meddling Mages out of Miracles. If they do have them, we have Abrupt Decay. If you decide to bring in Tendrils, I'd likely side out another Ponder.

[Lemnear]

Found a neat gold uncommon in my random box yesterday evening. Got to test this as a sideboard tech.

[redhamjack]

So I'm happy to hear of more people getting onboard with Cabal Ritual. I've been running 2x of the CR for a few months now, including at the GP and I've had success with it. I have not cut EtW from the main, rather I opt to go -1 discard (6 total) - 1 land (12 main, sb tropical...I know the arguments for Bayou, just haven't found the time to test them myself yet) to run the 2 rituals.

I frequently cut EtW if I win with it game 1 because all of their hate for 1/1s comes in. I have won more game 1s than I can count on the back of EtW and I would not cut it from our 60 at this time. Moving it to the board games 2&3 is reasonable, but I love it game 1, especially with 4 therapies in the main.

Another point to consider is that randoms will see your Cabal Ritual g1 and side in graveyard hate that we simply don't care about. Cabal Ritual is my most frequently sided out card for this reason, and every time someone taps out t2 to play RIP against me I smile my ass off.

One question for you guys, what is your take on Defense Grid? I've found its a wrecking for UR builds that run super mana light, but I often hate paying 2 for it. Has anyone else tested with this card?



My list, for reference:

4 Ponder; 4 Brainstrom; 4 Gitaxian Probe

3 Infernal Tutor; 4 Burning Wish; 1 Ad Nauseam; 1 Empty the Warrens

4 Cabal Therapy; 2 Thoughtsieze

3 Chrome Mox; 4 Lotus Petal; 4 Lions Eye Diamond

4 Dark Ritual; 4 Rite of Flame; 2 Cabal Ritual

2 Misty Rainforest; 2 Polluted Delta; 2 Scalding Tarn; 2 Underground Sea; 2 Volcanic Island; 2 Gemstone Mine

SB:

1 Empty the Warrens; 1 Past In Flames; 1 Tendrils of Agony; 1 Infernal Tutor; 1 Massacare; 1 Shattering Spree; 1 Tropical Island
2 Abrupt Decay; 2 Xantid Swarm; 2 Pithing Needle/Defense Grid; 2 Chain of Vapor

[disgustipated]

I there there's a real lack of understanding the sideboarding concepts on your side.

Chain of Vapor is awful here. If they have a counterbalance they'll likely counter it and if you target top, you're down a card and they're plus one. Not great.

I don't like siding out a protection spell in a control based match-up without bringing in other protection which is why it was acceptable when siding in Xantids. It's about remaining neutral while having higher impact cards.

These things said, I would likely side like this:

-2 Chrome Mox
-2 Cabal Ritual
-2 Ponder
-1 Cabal Therapy

+3 Abrupt Decay
+2 Pithing Needle
+2 Xantid Swarm

This isn't a match-up where we need the additional mana from Chrome Mox and Cabal Ritual will likely be hurt by them bringing in Rest in Peace. It's acceptable to side out a Therapy if bringing in other protection as it allows for Wish to essentially become a protection spell. Ponder is a flex spot. I don't believe you need to bring in Tendrils, I haven't seen too many Meddling Mages out of Miracles. If they do have them, we have Abrupt Decay. If you decide to bring in Tendrils, I'd likely side out another Ponder.

I've had Chain of Vapor win me the game a few times in the past week versus Miracles when playing Doomsday. Granted, I can't side in Needle for Top when on DDFT. But if you Decay or Therapy away their Counterbalance (or they simply don't draw it), you can Duress/Therapy and then bounce their top so they can't have access to a counter via top post Duress/Therapy. Example: I Duress, he casts Brainstorm (presumably to hide FoW), Brainstorm resolves, and I Chain of Vapor his Top with Duress still on the stack. This might be a corner case, but I thought it was worth mentioning.

The jury is still out on whether or not Xantid Swarm is worth bringing in against Miracles. It's nice when they side out creature removal and you can slip it in on T1 before CB drops. I find the problem is when you have to fish for AD for a few turns they've managed to gather a plethora of counters since you haven't been able to cast any discard spells. XS might make those useless; so you don't have to AD CB and then try to work through their counters before they slam another CB.

[Bryant Cook]

I've had Chain of Vapor win me the game a few times in the past week versus Miracles when playing Doomsday. Granted, I can't side in Needle for Top when on DDFT. But if you Decay or Therapy away their Counterbalance (or they simply don't draw it), you can Duress/Therapy and then bounce their top so they can't have access to a counter via top post Duress/Therapy. Example: I Duress, he casts Brainstorm (presumably to hide FoW), Brainstorm resolves, and I Chain of Vapor his Top with Duress still on the stack. This might be a corner case, but I thought it was worth mentioning.

The jury is still out on whether or not Xantid Swarm is worth bringing in against Miracles. It's nice when they side out creature removal and you can slip it in on T1 before CB drops. I find the problem is when you have to fish for AD for a few turns they've managed to gather a plethora of counters since you haven't been able to cast any discard spells. XS might make those useless; so you don't have to AD CB and then try to work through their counters before they slam another CB.

And I've won a game against burn by attacking with two Simian Spirit Guides for four turns. That doesn't mean it was right or what we should be aiming to do.

I fail to comprehend why you would want to put yourself in a position where you need a bounce spell and a discard spell in order to deal with the top card of their deck, when you can just play Xantid Swarm. If they leave in removal, there's only two of them in your deck that you can shuffle away. If you don't draw them, they have dead draws in their removal. Xantid is incredibly effective considering most lists are siding or playing Flusterstorms paired with Spell Pierce. Not to mention that your example only works if they don't have anything else doing on in their hand which is rarely the case.

[disgustipated]

And I've won a game against burn by attacking with two Simian Spirit Guides for four turns. That doesn't mean it was right or what we should be aiming to do.

I fail to comprehend why you would want to put yourself in a position where you need a bounce spell and a discard spell in order to deal with the top card of their deck, when you can just play Xantid Swarm. If they leave in removal, there's only two of them in your deck that you can shuffle away. If you don't draw them, they have dead draws in their removal. Xantid is incredibly effective considering most lists are siding or playing Flusterstorms paired with Spell Pierce. Not to mention that your example only works if they don't have anything else doing on in their hand which is rarely the case.

I'm not sure if 2-3 sideboard slots are sufficient for nullifying the top 3 of their deck. I feel this is a weakness of having strictly discard since Silence was dropped. I don't see the connection between SSG beatdown and the Chain/Discard combo. If you have 7 discard spells (11 including BW?), its not uncommon to find yourself in situation where 1 of 2 CoVs are in your hand while also holding a discard spell. CoV beats hate bears for U and has the added benefit of adding to storm for natural Tendrils (since ETW isn't always optimal versus decks that pack hate bears).

When I played Miracles, or when I am playing with Silence and Top, my sole mission is to float counters on top of my deck to ambush discard dependent combo. I think this is a common occurrence and a situation we can't overcome without running important spells blindly into potential Top draws or drawing 1 of 2 or 3 Swarms that may or may not be killed by lingering removal spells post SB.

[Bryant Cook]

I'm not sure if 2-3 sideboard slots are sufficient for nullifying the top 3 of their deck. I feel this is a weakness of having strictly discard since Silence was dropped. I don't see the connection between SSG beatdown and the Chain/Discard combo. If you have 7 discard spells (11 including BW?), its not uncommon to find yourself in situation where 1 of 2 CoVs are in your hand while also holding a discard spell. CoV beats hate bears for U and has the added benefit of adding to storm for natural Tendrils (since ETW isn't always optimal versus decks that pack hate bears).

When I played Miracles, or when I am playing with Silence and Top, my sole mission is to float counters on top of my deck to ambush discard dependent combo. I think this is a common occurrence and a situation we can't overcome without running important spells blindly into potential Top draws or drawing 1 of 2 or 3 Swarms that may or may not be killed by lingering removal spells post SB.

I was pointing out an example of situations that are rare that don't really matter.

We have Needles and Decays to answer Top, in addition to Xantid Swarm if that's what is required of us. Siding in Chain of Vapor is just worse than all of these options. Not to mention that we're not running Swarm for just top, while it's a benefit, the card is an all-star in other match-ups as well (See: Reanimator & Sneak Show).

[wonderPreaux]

The jury is still out on whether or not Xantid Swarm is worth bringing in against Miracles. It's nice when they side out creature removal and you can slip it in on T1 before CB drops. I find the problem is when you have to fish for AD for a few turns they've managed to gather a plethora of counters since you haven't been able to cast any discard spells. XS might make those useless; so you don't have to AD CB and then try to work through their counters before they slam another CB.

I'd like to make the case for Xantid Swarm here, I started out as a conservative Xantid Swarm user, but I became a believer as I played the Miracles matchup more. Swarm's role as a Silence on legs (wings??) increases in value the more the density and variation of opposing counters increases. The fault in the all-discard protection plan is that if the opponent has something like FoW, Fluster/Counterspell and Envelop/Snare in hand, you have to wait for solutions for every single one to get into your hand (won't even touch how terrible it is trying to deal with a SCM in that mix). Miracles is definitely the one that wins out most often in situations where you're forced to play draw-go like this, with Xantid Swarm you get to maintain the aggression that most often leads to success.

Attacking Miracles by denying them their inevitability is what makes Xantid Swarm a valuable player, an extra bonus is that it also saves mana on the combo turn if successful, which leads to even more speed. If I drop the Swarm turn 1, realistically, how is Miracles responding? StP/Terminus is one answer, FoW is the other, since the varied counters that Miracles might play can't touch Swarm.

In the former case, removal, it's an even trade that forces them to tap out mana and delays the establishment of Top/Balance. This gives you a greater chance to make discard effective by giving you an extra turn to find it (you don't always open Duress), or preventing them from sticking Top or Brainstorming (You also catch a small edge if they Terminus your Swarm as they have one less Terminus for possible Goblins). In the latter case, FoW, you effectively created a Hymn to Tourach for G that only hits their good cards, as you'd have to deal with the FoW at some point and any blue card they have postboard is some kind of threatening thing (possible exception, Jace). Late game, the opponent is stuck keeping removal in mind for Swarm, and if you draw Swarm you can simply lay it down for Storm, flash a Therapy (I believe you have priority to Therapy before they can StP), or Brainstorm it away.

Xantid Swarm is also a huge difference-maker in Fatty or mono-U combo matchups, so it's not as though its hard to justify the slots.

[disgustipated]

I'd like to make the case for Xantid Swarm here, I started out as a conservative Xantid Swarm user, but I became a believer as I played the Miracles matchup more. Swarm's role as a Silence on legs (wings??) increases in value the more the density and variation of opposing counters increases. The fault in the all-discard protection plan is that if the opponent has something like FoW, Fluster/Counterspell and Envelop/Snare in hand, you have to wait for solutions for every single one to get into your hand (won't even touch how terrible it is trying to deal with a SCM in that mix). Miracles is definitely the one that wins out most often in situations where you're forced to play draw-go like this, with Xantid Swarm you get to maintain the aggression that most often leads to success.

Attacking Miracles by denying them their inevitability is what makes Xantid Swarm a valuable player, an extra bonus is that it also saves mana on the combo turn if successful, which leads to even more speed. If I drop the Swarm turn 1, realistically, how is Miracles responding? StP/Terminus is one answer, FoW is the other, since the varied counters that Miracles might play can't touch Swarm.

In the former case, removal, it's an even trade that forces them to tap out mana and delays the establishment of Top/Balance. This gives you a greater chance to make discard effective by giving you an extra turn to find it (you don't always open Duress), or preventing them from sticking Top or Brainstorming (You also catch a small edge if they Terminus your Swarm as they have one less Terminus for possible Goblins). In the latter case, FoW, you effectively created a Hymn to Tourach for G that only hits their good cards, as you'd have to deal with the FoW at some point and any blue card they have postboard is some kind of threatening thing (possible exception, Jace). Late game, the opponent is stuck keeping removal in mind for Swarm, and if you draw Swarm you can simply lay it down for Storm, flash a Therapy (I believe you have priority to Therapy before they can StP), or Brainstorm it away.

Xantid Swarm is also a huge difference-maker in Fatty or mono-U combo matchups, so it's not as though its hard to justify the slots.

I think Bryant's suggestion of 2 Needle and 2 Swarm sounds good. However, if not playing Needle in SB, then a minimum of 3 Swarms should probably be in the SB to obviate this dilemma. I might add that I've found Swarms to be quite effective against Infect as well, which seems to be gaining popularity as of late.

If we all start putting Xantid Swarms in our SB though, how long until Miracles players begin keeping in their creature removal? And if this does happen, is that a good thing or a bad thing? Sure, with only 2-3 Swarms, they might end up with dead cards in their hand instead of counters, but if our turns are spent dropping Xantid Swarm and passing then they have more time to find and play Counterbalance. Then we have to find our 2nd sideboard card (AD). Playing against Miracles feels a bit like sinking into quicksand. The more steps we take to set up the kill, the more time they have to circumvent the set up. Their ability to circumvent, though, comes largely from Top - which is why Pithing Needle might be a boon in this matchup. I don't disagree that Xantid Swarm can be effective against Miracles, my only complaint is that its not as "elegant" of a solution as I'd like. Although, perhaps that's the reason Miracles is a DTB - no easy answer to their strategy.

Let's say we've dropped our Swarm, passed the turn, and it comes back to us. Our hand still needs some sculpting and we're not quite ready to go off, so we attack, then proceed to Duress, brainstorm, fetch, etc. unfettered by whatever counters they might have. If we see a hand with both creature removal *and* counters, which do we take? I'm concerned that we might be inclined to take the creature removal, only to have them draw another STP or flip Terminus, and then we lose to the 3+ counters in their hand.

[wonderPreaux]

If we all start putting Xantid Swarms in our SB though, how long until Miracles players begin keeping in their creature removal? And if this does happen, is that a good thing or a bad thing? Sure, with only 2-3 Swarms, they might end up with dead cards in their hand instead of counters, but if our turns are spent dropping Xantid Swarm and passing then they have more time to find and play Counterbalance. Then we have to find our 2nd sideboard card (AD). Playing against Miracles feels a bit like sinking into quicksand. The more steps we take to set up the kill, the more time they have to circumvent the set up. Their ability to circumvent, though, comes largely from Top - which is why Pithing Needle might be a boon in this matchup. I don't disagree that Xantid Swarm can be effective against Miracles, my only complaint is that its not as "elegant" of a solution as I'd like. Although, perhaps that's the reason Miracles is a DTB - no easy answer to their strategy.
There are no elegant solutions to Miracles, I imagine thats rather the point of control, that no combo or aggro deck can simply or consistently tear you down. A lot of the time when I beat Miracles, it's because they couldn't find a Terminus for Goblins, they tapped out at the wrong time, I had an Abrupt Decay at the right time, etc. Some things do just have to go right for you.


Let's say we've dropped our Swarm, passed the turn, and it comes back to us. Our hand still needs some sculpting and we're not quite ready to go off, so we attack, then proceed to Duress, brainstorm, fetch, etc. unfettered by whatever counters they might have. If we see a hand with both creature removal *and* counters, which do we take? I'm concerned that we might be inclined to take the creature removal, only to have them draw another STP or flip Terminus, and then we lose to the 3+ counters in their hand.
Well, if they have multiple counters, it makes sense to take, say, their 1 removal. The odds are against them to get subsequent removal, and sitting around waiting for discard to match 3+ counters is the real quicksand sinking thing. If they only have 1 counter, go ahead and take it and for them to spend mana on removal.

[That nice guy]

I there there's a real lack of understanding the sideboarding concepts on your side.

Chain of Vapor is awful here. If they have a counterbalance they'll likely counter it and if you target top, you're down a card and they're plus one. Not great.

I don't like siding out a protection spell in a control based match-up without bringing in other protection which is why it was acceptable when siding in Xantids. It's about remaining neutral while having higher impact cards.

These things said, I would likely side like this:

-2 Chrome Mox
-2 Cabal Ritual
-2 Ponder
-1 Cabal Therapy

+3 Abrupt Decay
+2 Pithing Needle
+2 Xantid Swarm

This isn't a match-up where we need the additional mana from Chrome Mox and Cabal Ritual will likely be hurt by them bringing in Rest in Peace. It's acceptable to side out a Therapy if bringing in other protection as it allows for Wish to essentially become a protection spell. Ponder is a flex spot. I don't believe you need to bring in Tendrils, I haven't seen too many Meddling Mages out of Miracles. If they do have them, we have Abrupt Decay. If you decide to bring in Tendrils, I'd likely side out another Ponder.

I understand Chain is awful, but I think it's necessary with my SB. I don't run swarm so top-floating is super scary. Also, When I'm doing the draw go thing (waiting for business/sculpting) with a CB on deck, I usually lose to a second piece of hate coming down: meddling Mage, Cannonist, Leyline, top floating a spell, ect., ect. So the one chain is there to help prevent that. I'm honestly considering cutting it for a 4th decay.

As far as the sided in tendrills is concerned, I do fear the Mage, and getting the natural chain through counters is something I've gotten good at. That said I'm still running the version with Empty in the main since I have not decided on the cabal rituals.

O, and I totally see your point with swarm over the cabal, now. Thanks.

[Lemnear]

I understand Chain is awful, but I think it's necessary with my SB. I don't run swarm so top-floating is super scary. Also, When I'm doing the draw go thing (waiting for business/sculpting) with a CB on deck, I usually lose to a second piece of hate coming down: meddling Mage, Cannonist, Leyline, top floating a spell, ect., ect. So the one chain is there to help prevent that. I'm honestly considering cutting it for a 4th decay.

As far as the sided in tendrills is concerned, I do fear the Mage, and getting the natural chain through counters is something I've gotten good at. That said I'm still running the version with Empty in the main since I have not decided on the cabal rituals.

O, and I totally see your point with swarm over the cabal, now. Thanks.

In danger of sounding like a douche: do you justify boarding a bad card because of a hole in your SB constellation and a highly questionable gameplan (draw, go)? As mentioned my other users before: you block floated counters with Xantid or Needle. You can't afford 2-for-1 yourself just to get rid of a floated counter

The joke about Meddling Mage/Canonist from Miracles SB is that it became pretty rare alongside Terminus postboard.

[Bryant Cook]

Played a local tonight. Won it, going undefeated.

Won two games via Empty the Warrens
Won two games via Past in Flames
Won two games via Natural Spell Chain
Won four games via Ad Nauseam

Cabal Ritual was great, still having Chrome Mox off of Ad Nauseam was nice too.

[aCatNamedBootsy]

Played a local tonight. Won it, going undefeated.

Won two games via Empty the Warrens
Won two games via Past in Flames
Won two games via Natural Spell Chain
Won four games via Ad Nauseam

Cabal Ritual was great, still having Chrome Mox off of Ad Nauseam was nice too.

What were your matchups? Was there ever a game where you could've gone off turn one if you had an EtW in the main?

[Bryant Cook]

What were your matchups? Was there ever a game where you could've gone off turn one if you had an EtW in the main?

UR Delver (MD Eidelons)
Belcher
Deathblade
Affinity Prison (Chalices, Revokers, Cannonists, SFM -> Batterskull + Sword + Thopter, Mox Opals)
Affinity Prison (Chalices, Revokers, Cannonists, SFM -> Batterskull + Sword + Thopter, Mox Opals)

There was one game, in which I could've dropped 12 Goblins on turn one if I had Empty in the main. Instead it resulted in a turn two Ad Nauseam.

I tried siding in PIF + Tendrils over Ad Nauseam versus UR Delver. It made my draws seem much slower as in our third game I opened a hand that would've been an Ad Nauseam kill on turn one which became Goblins (Infernal for Wish for Empty). Not sure on how I feel about that plan, it is also dreadful if they have sided in Cages.

Needles were great against Belcher.

Deathblade wasn't much of a problem.

The Affinity Prison was kind of rough, Void Snare came up big in a situation where I Decayed a Cannonist end step. Untapped, Rite of Flame, Petal, Wish, Void Snare his Revoker on LED, LED, LED, Infernal, Wish, Tendrils.

[Lemnear]

There was one game, in which I could've dropped 12 Goblins on turn one if I had Empty in the main. Instead it resulted in a turn two Ad Nauseam.

Basically "skip a turn and the EtW-gamble to go for AN directly"? Wasn't this one of the topics we had recently here? ;)

[Bryant Cook]

Basically "skip a turn and the EtW-gamble to go for AN directly"? Wasn't this one of the topics we had recently here? ;)

It matters in matches with Thalia, Chalice, Wastelands and then other fast match-ups like Burn. It's not as simple as it appears to be.

[That nice guy]

So I stuck with the tried and true (3 chrome mox) and lost my first match to UR yesterday, I'm now 9-1 against them. The guy sits down in front of me and says, "crap, I hate storm". He's on the play and snap-keeps with a happy face. I assumed he has FoW in his hand (or Fow and dig), and for some reason kept a hand of land, fetch, BS, PonderX2, dark rit, Ad N. He goes T1 swift spear, probe, probe Swing. I sculpt pass after drawing land. He goes bolt, chain lightning, swing. Long story short Ad N didn't get me there at such a low life.
Game 3 I open bad hand with 2x Mox, mulligan, bad hand with mox, keep 5 to die the turn before I would have won.

That said, I won my next match against D&T with me seeing a plains, vial game 1, by emptying for 14 and riding them home thanks to mox.

Round 3 - irrelevant

Round 4 - Esper deathblade baited/duressed through counters/thoughtseize then managed to Empty(maindeck), flashback cabal, win. If it was a past in flames I think I still could have won, it just would have taken me longer.


So yeah, IDK about dumping mox for sure yet, but I'll definitely try it at my next tournament.



In danger of sounding like a douche: do you justify boarding a bad card because of a hole in your SB constellation and a highly questionable gameplan (draw, go)? As mentioned my other users before: you block floated counters with Xantid or Needle. You can't afford 2-for-1 yourself just to get rid of a floated counter

The joke about Meddling Mage/Canonist from Miracles SB is that it became pretty rare alongside Terminus postboard.

I board in everything you guys board in. I just want to bring one more piece in. Draw, go isn't my gameplan, but when you therapy/probe and see you have no option, it happens, douche.

I play against a much worse meta. Besides the 3 stax decks, D&T, and traditional miracles list, my worst match every week is UWb miracles which chooses to keep a hand with counters, E tutor turn 1 for Cannonist, play Nethervoid turn 4, that's what I have to face every week, so yeah I want an additional chain. I was just pointing out that chain has options in dire straits. That said I would only bring it in against UW running E-tutor.

Also, if cannonist/meddling is on the board, they don't need terminus as anything other than a backup plan. But in my meta, they side out swords/terminus because they can always Etutor for detention sphere, energy field, or EE.

[That nice guy]

Not sure on how I feel about that plan, it is also dreadful if they have sided in Cages.


I can't tell you how many times I see players side in RiP, cage, ect. just because they have dead cards, or are just bad. D&T did it against me last night (running the mox build) and I was like, man I don't care.

[Asthereal]

I play against a much worse meta. Besides the 3 stax decks, D&T, and traditional miracles list, my worst match every week is UWb miracles which chooses to keep a hand with counters, E tutor turn 1 for Cannonist, play Nethervoid turn 4, that's what I have to face every week, so yeah I want an additional chain. I was just pointing out that chain has options in dire straits. That said I would only bring it in against UW running E-tutor.
Am I correct in assuming your choice for TES in your meta is wrong? It sounds very wrong. Don't get me wrong, this deck is awesome and playing against a hostile meta is very good for experience, but please try not to draw too many conclusions out of it concerning the "optimal" list. A hostile meta is a hostile meta, not a reason for suboptimal choices. Your optimal choice is probably to simply play Goblins or Jund in such a meta.

[itrytostorm]

I can't tell you how many times I see players side in RiP, cage, ect. just because they have dead cards, or are just bad. D&T did it against me last night (running the mox build) and I was like, man I don't care.

While we often don't care, it can eliminate some lines that just win. I would've had D&T beat through Revoker on LED had it not been for RiP, so I had to do a risky AN that didn't work out.

[Lemnear]

Am I correct in assuming your choice for TES in your meta is wrong? It sounds very wrong. Don't get me wrong, this deck is awesome and playing against a hostile meta is very good for experience, but please try not to draw too many conclusions out of it concerning the "optimal" list. A hostile meta is a hostile meta, not a reason for suboptimal choices. Your optimal choice is probably to simply play Goblins or Jund in such a meta.

I asume you are talking about Cabal vs. Moxen in a meta which is heavily warped towards favoring the Belcher-mode?

[tescrin]

I can't tell you how many times I see players side in RiP, cage, ect. just because they have dead cards, or are just bad. D&T did it against me last night (running the mox build) and I was like, man I don't care.

As a non-storm player I don't see how having "you can't use the grave" cards to augment your actual storm hate is bad. If I discard half of your hand and you PiF then I die anyway. If I happen to have Cage/DRS while discarding your hand I've cut off the main ANT route to victory, and at least one BW route (IGG or PiF, depending on era.) I wouldn't keep a hand for just grave-hate, but having a Cage/Spellbomb instead of a Plow is pretty handy. Pyro-sideboards are covered by EtW hate making the side-out moot.

Nerfing Cabal Rit is a thing too IMO.

EDIT: It's worth noting that a non-trivial portion of the meta (especially with the constantly evolving lists) can't tell the difference between ANT or TES; making grave hate a safer bet.

[redhamjack]

Not to change the topic, but I was wondering if I could get an opinion on trying to cast spells thru a chalice at 1.

At my local tonight an opponent of mine resolved a chalice at 1 and seemed to forget about it, he tried at one point to resolve a top through it. I was fairly sure I could have end of turned ritual, ritual ad naus with out him stopping me. I didn't do it and lost g2 (won g3) but I was wondering about the ethics of this?

I know it's not technically cheating (they should know their cards, etc) but I would feel shitty winning this way. Has anyone had any experience with this? Any thoughts?


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[Tom T]

Not to change the topic, but I was wondering if I could get an opinion on trying to cast spells thru a chalice at 1.

At my local tonight an opponent of mine resolved a chalice at 1 and seemed to forget about it, he tried at one point to resolve a top through it. I was fairly sure I could have end of turned ritual, ritual ad naus with out him stopping me. I didn't do it and lost g2 (won g3) but I was wondering about the ethics of this?

I know it's not technically cheating (they should know their cards, etc) but I would feel shitty winning this way. Has anyone had any experience with this? Any thoughts?


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It's their trigger so you're not responsible. Chalice doesn't imply you can't cast your spells. It says that when you do, they might get countered but you can still play them. I've resolved Brainstorm through Chalice@1 heaps of times :P. It's a little dick'y, but so is playing Chalice of the Void.

Also on beating Chalice@1;
Artifact mana and Empty are your friend.

Tom

[itrytostorm]

Not to change the topic, but I was wondering if I could get an opinion on trying to cast spells thru a chalice at 1.

At my local tonight an opponent of mine resolved a chalice at 1 and seemed to forget about it, he tried at one point to resolve a top through it. I was fairly sure I could have end of turned ritual, ritual ad naus with out him stopping me. I didn't do it and lost g2 (won g3) but I was wondering about the ethics of this?

I know it's not technically cheating (they should know their cards, etc) but I would feel shitty winning this way. Has anyone had any experience with this? Any thoughts?


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Some friends and I had this same discussion at eternal weekend when Steve Menedian played Musical Tutor through my friends Chalice on 1 to get Grudge. While he thinks it's a bad rule since a trigger is a trigger, you have to play to the rules.

The subject is tricky, but it's not like you're stacking a deck or marking sleeves.

[davelin]

Not to change the topic, but I was wondering if I could get an opinion on trying to cast spells thru a chalice at 1.

At my local tonight an opponent of mine resolved a chalice at 1 and seemed to forget about it, he tried at one point to resolve a top through it. I was fairly sure I could have end of turned ritual, ritual ad naus with out him stopping me. I didn't do it and lost g2 (won g3) but I was wondering about the ethics of this?

I know it's not technically cheating (they should know their cards, etc) but I would feel shitty winning this way. Has anyone had any experience with this? Any thoughts?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

In my opinion context matters i.e. are we talking about a regular REL event like an FNM or something more competitive?

[Lemnear]

Chalice has no may-trigger. All spells whichs cmc equal the counters on chalice are countered. No player can legally sneak spells past a chalice. It's not dick'y; it's plain cheating. It's like ignoring Nullrod and still sacrifice your LEDs

[Holly]

Chalice has no may-trigger. All spells whichs cmc equal the counters on chalice are countered. No player can legally sneak spells past a chalice. It's not dick'y; it's plain cheating. It's like ignoring Nullrod and still sacrifice your LEDs

Thats not how the rules currently work.

[tescrin]

Thats not how the rules currently work.

It's an unfortunate double-standard. If I have Spirit of the Labyrinth in play, you have to make sure you don't draw an extra card or you *lose the game.* If I have a Chalice of the Void, you get to troll me by making me announce everything despite you attempting to make illegal plays.

I hope WotC rectifies this at some point. I don't even think you can get an opponent a warning if they acknowledge knowing about the trigger to a judge. The judge would likely want to, but I assume any sort of appeal would win out for the Dbag.

TL,DR? I hope it changes, but he can legally get away with it I believe. then again, if there's anything buried in the rules text about doing it multiple times you could hose yourself with warnings (though I don't think there is.)

[redhamjack]

In my opinion context matters i.e. are we talking about a regular REL event like an FNM or something more competitive?

This was a weekly legacy local event, which is a big part of why I didn't go for it.

I'm interested to hear both sides. At a GP round 9 at 6/2 are you more likely to try? Would you never do it at a local, but at an SCG Open is it "ok"?

[M+1]

Some people here really need to update their rules knowledge. For almost two years now, it has been possible to forget triggered abilities, even 'mandatory' triggers. Players must demonstrate awereness of their own triggered abilities. If they do not, and if the game progresses far enough, the trigger is considered forgotten, and never happened.

It is not a 'shitty' play to play your spells into an enemy chalice of the void, because the rules on this point are very clear.
This is all you need to know:

4.4 Triggered Abilities
Players are expected to remember their own triggered abilities; intentionally ignoring one is Cheating. Players are
not required to point out the existence of triggered abilities that they do not control, though they may do so within
a turn if they wish.

Triggered abilities are considered to be forgotten by their controller once they have taken an action past the point
where the triggered ability would have an observable impact on the game. Triggered abilities that are forgotten are
not considered to have gone onto the stack.

[Tom T]

Chalice has no may-trigger. All spells whichs cmc equal the counters on chalice are countered. No player can legally sneak spells past a chalice. It's not dick'y; it's plain cheating. It's like ignoring Nullrod and still sacrifice your LEDs

Also, Chalice is a triggered ability which can be forgotten on purpose as M+1 pointed out and Null Rod has a static ability.

[Holly]

Also, Chalice is a triggered ability which can be forgotten on purpose as M+1 pointed out and Null Rod has a static ability.

Not quite true.. if you control Chalice you must not forget about it for a moment to cast something, as pointed out thats cheating.

[Bryant Cook]

Played the list to a 5-1-1 record today, losing only in top 8 to Omnishow. Needles were sort of lackluster again, I definitely want another Xantid and something else over them.

[wonderPreaux]

Played the list to a 5-1-1 record today, losing only in top 8 to Omnishow. Needles were sort of lackluster again, I definitely want another Xantid and something else over them.

ATM I'm testing 4 Duress main, so my Needle slots are a 4th Therapy and a 2nd Tendrils (could be Xantid, but I'm still unsure how to handle UWR blade decks and 2nd Tendrils seems alright). You could do Xantid and Therapy.

Though, since I'm posting, how have peoples experiences with UR Delver/UWR Stoneblade been? The whole plan of grinding them out seems harder when you have fewer lands, and sandbagging cantrips to not get REB'd feels so much worse when you're playing TES over ANT. The latter stoneblade matchup feels uncomfortably loseable, depending on how their draws go.

[Bryant Cook]

ATM I'm testing 4 Duress main, so my Needle slots are a 4th Therapy and a 2nd Tendrils (could be Xantid, but I'm still unsure how to handle UWR blade decks and 2nd Tendrils seems alright). You could do Xantid and Therapy.

Though, since I'm posting, how have peoples experiences with UR Delver/UWR Stoneblade been? The whole plan of grinding them out seems harder when you have fewer lands, and sandbagging cantrips to not get REB'd feels so much worse when you're playing TES over ANT. The latter stoneblade matchup feels uncomfortably loseable, depending on how their draws go.

I might try this but my second slot being the third Xantid over the second Tendrils. I never want a second Tendrils, in fact, so far I've hated siding in the Past in Flames + Tendrils over the Ad Nauseam package almost every time.

[wonderPreaux]

I might try this but my second slot being the third Xantid over the second Tendrils. I never want a second Tendrils, in fact, so far I've hated siding in the Past in Flames + Tendrils over the Ad Nauseam package almost every time.

One time where I was going to use the 2nd Tendrils testing last night, i actual forgot i had it :/ it probably could be a Grapeshot or something actually. I wasn't siding PiF over Ad Nausdeam though, it was just 2 Tendrils, 1 main 1 side to mini Tendrils for life or win through counters. Do you have any advice on the UWR Stoneblade matchup? I got savaged by BBD's version, which dropped SFM for more counters and had 4 Meddling Mage, 2 Extraction after board. It feels like early game, if you can beat whatever 1-2 of Pierce/Fluster/FoW they opened/cantripped into, it's possible to win, but after the first Meddling Mage/Cruise/Dig it gets much harder, and each subsequent drop of such a card compounds how far behind you become.

[Asthereal]

One time where I was going to use the 2nd Tendrils testing last night, i actual forgot i had it :/ it probably could be a Grapeshot or something actually. I wasn't siding PiF over Ad Nausdeam though, it was just 2 Tendrils, 1 main 1 side to mini Tendrils for life or win through counters. Do you have any advice on the UWR Stoneblade matchup? I got savaged by BBD's version, which dropped SFM for more counters and had 4 Meddling Mage, 2 Extraction after board. It feels like early game, if you can beat whatever 1-2 of Pierce/Fluster/FoW they opened/cantripped into, it's possible to win, but after the first Meddling Mage/Cruise/Dig it gets much harder, and each subsequent drop of such a card compounds how far behind you become.
Isn't Empty the Warrens good against that? Postboard I mean. If they don't have stuff like Electrickery, and they don't run SFM anymore after game 1, the Goblins plan suddenly looks quite good again.

[wonderPreaux]

Isn't Empty the Warrens good against that? Postboard I mean. If they don't have stuff like Electrickery, and they don't run SFM anymore after game 1, the Goblins plan suddenly looks quite good again.
I didn't know he had no SFM until after the match, I just think it's interesting such a variant is out there. Generally I think it's probably a good way to handle it, though. His first of 4 Meddling Mages g2 came down on Wish for Massacre and that reason, likely.

[Bryant Cook]

I don't side in Tendrils in that match-up. But it really depends on how much I think the opponent knows, for the most part I just side in Decays. Even if you side in the Tendrils, you don't need to keep one in the sideboard. One win condition in each place for each tutor is fine.

[That nice guy]

Am I correct in assuming your choice for TES in your meta is wrong? It sounds very wrong. Don't get me wrong, this deck is awesome and playing against a hostile meta is very good for experience, but please try not to draw too many conclusions out of it concerning the "optimal" list. A hostile meta is a hostile meta, not a reason for suboptimal choices. Your optimal choice is probably to simply play Goblins or Jund in such a meta.

My favorite part about playing this deck is that I feel like I level up as a player when I play it. I really want to get to the point where I can Top-8 a huge meta and playing in my environment helps me do that. On 12/2/14 my first round was against W stax and beating that 2-0 was a lot of fun.


As a non-storm player I don't see how having "you can't use the grave" cards to augment your actual storm hate is bad. If I discard half of your hand and you PiF then I die anyway. If I happen to have Cage/DRS while discarding your hand I've cut off the main ANT route to victory, and at least one BW route (IGG or PiF, depending on era.) I wouldn't keep a hand for just grave-hate, but having a Cage/Spellbomb instead of a Plow is pretty handy. Pyro-sideboards are covered by EtW hate making the side-out moot.

Nerfing Cabal Rit is a thing too IMO.

EDIT: It's worth noting that a non-trivial portion of the meta (especially with the constantly evolving lists) can't tell the difference between ANT or TES; making grave hate a safer bet.

I can't tell you how many times I see players side in RiP, cage, ect. just because they have dead cards, or are just bad.

As you can see from what I said, it's either "they have dead cards, or are just bad" taking out swords for grave hate is legit. Taking out something that makes you deck function like a swiftspear or a ponder just gives storm time since you're diluting your own deck.

[laserstone]

Played at SCG Portland today, didn't do spectacular, but it was fine for my first time at an SCG, and I learnt a lot.

I played the standard list, no Empty, +2 Cabal Rit. Went 5-4, losing rd. 9 (and prizes) by one Ad Nauseam flip to burn with Eidolon out (needed CoV before Ponder and it was vice versa).
Beat :
Miracles, 2-0
MUD, 2-1
Miracles, 2-0
RUG Delver, 2-0
Chalice Merfolk, 2-0

Lost:
Burn, 1-2
No chalice Merfolk, 1-2 (fizzled on Adnaus from 16 game 3)
Death and Taxes, 1-2 (fizzled on Adnaus from 19 game 3)
Jeskai Stoneblande, 0-2

Overall, I think I played pretty tight, definitely screwed up here and there (but not too often), variance won me and lost me a few games, some more important than others. I lost to generally good matchups and beat generally bad ones, which is amusing.
Cabal Rits were great all day, definitely won me some important matches. It felt great going Adnaus from 11 or 12 and not worrying about taking 4 off Empty.
We're much less an Empty deck now, but that's good - I only used Empty once in 9 rounds, and it was a Turn-1 against MUD. All my other games I felt either a) Empty would have been bad or b) I didn't need it to win.

[Lemnear]

What means "fizzled" in that context? Did you draw yourself dead? No mana float?

[oracL3]

Hi can u tell us something more about delver match? How did u win? Tnx

[laserstone]

What means "fizzled" in that context? Did you draw yourself dead? No mana float?

I Ad Naused with no floating and no land drop (both times it was turn 1).
Both times I drew 20 to 25 cards and didn't find a petal or a chrome mox.

[laserstone]

Hi can u tell us something more about delver match? How did u win? Tnx

Game one, he mulled to a creature heavy hand and no force. I spent turns 1 and 2 digging for tutor and won on turn 3. 3-LED, 3 ritual (one cabal) , 1 tutor in hand. 2 lands on board. Plenty of gas to go off.
Game 2 I Ad Naused from 11 on turn 3 after digging for discard and stripping stifle and force. With BR floating it was easy to get there.

[Lemnear]

I Ad Naused with no floating and no land drop (both times it was turn 1).
Both times I drew 20 to 25 cards and didn't find a petal or a chrome mox.

So? Stop out of Bolt-range and setup a PIF kill next turn? I don't see a reason why you need to lose these game 3's despite 20 cards advantage

[Bryant Cook]

So? Stop out of Bolt-range and setup a PIF kill next turn? I don't see a reason why you need to lose these game 3's despite 20 cards advantage

My exact thoughts.

[laserstone]

So? Stop out of Bolt-range and setup a PIF kill next turn? I don't see a reason why you need to lose these game 3's despite 20 cards advantage

It wasn't an option. Against the merfolk player, he had lethal on board and I had to go for it.

Against the D&T player, he had a hand with Canonist, Revoker. I had a T1 Adnaus, so on my turn 1 I Ad Nauseam'd down to 2 without finding the IMS, set up the PiF kill with a CoV in hand to bounce the hatebear on my turn before going off - but he topdecked Thalia on his turn and I couldn't cast CoV for 2 AND go off with just 2 lands in play.

[resmaster]

I Ad Naused with no floating and no land drop (both times it was turn 1).
Both times I drew 20 to 25 cards and didn't find a petal or a chrome mox.


It wasn't an option. Against the merfolk player, he had lethal on board and I had to go for it

He had lethal on board on turn 1? :confused:

[Lemnear]

It wasn't an option. Against the merfolk player, he had lethal on board and I had to go for it.

Against the D&T player, he had a hand with Canonist, Revoker. I had a T1 Adnaus, so on my turn 1 I Ad Nauseam'd down to 2 without finding the IMS, set up the PiF kill with a CoV in hand to bounce the hatebear on my turn before going off - but he topdecked Thalia on his turn and I couldn't cast CoV for 2 AND go off with just 2 lands in play.

Meerfolk had lethal on board despite your turn 1 Ad Nauseam? Something isn't sound.

Against D&T you can draw a bunch of cards, sculpt a hand which can Wish for massacre or contains CoV to break out the softlock and go to the PIF loop and a filled 'yard later. You can basically just keep two tutors and mana (lands) after dropping your LEDs and make your landdrops to grind out your opponent at this point.

I don't see a reason to be that greedy on Ad Nauseam and force yourself into flipping one of the (up to 6) remaining IMS or dying. Just because I suggested removing EtW to be able to go down to two, doesn't mean you have to ;)

Edit: I thought it is clear that once we reduce the number of Moxen, pilots are aware of the fact that resolving AN without a mana float, doesn't equal winning the game via Auto-pilot

[laserstone]

He had lethal on board on turn 1? :confused:

LOL. That's my bad, it's tough to remember the details after 9 rounds :) I had quite a few turn 1's, and they kind of blend together after a bit.
More like turn 3. First turns he swung with small Trickster and turn 3 he played his lord, with another in hand to vial in. The turn 1 was game 2 (successful). Game 1 I lost to fast beats + bad play.

Thanks, lemnear, for the input. I'm a new player by comparison (only two months of practice at locals), and above all it was an educational experience.

[Plague Sliver]

This is definitely a deck that, despite being super fast, rewards patient play and seeing those PiF lines where possible. It's why the deck rocks. I used to jam Ad Nauseam all the time too, now that we have more rituals it's a little easier to play patiently.

Actually I think you did well, all things considered. Good learning experience, that's where it's at.

[Lemnear]

Good learning experience, that's where it's at.

+1

[ManCharm]

Bryant, you earlier mentioned you're trying a build where you cut your Empty for a Cabal Ritual as a one of? I'm just curious, I didn't follow that statement well I guess, sorry.

[Bryant Cook]

Bryant, you earlier mentioned you're trying a build where you cut your Empty for a Cabal Ritual as a one of? I'm just curious, I didn't follow that statement well I guess, sorry.

Try reading the last three or four pages of the thread.

[ManCharm]

Try reading the last three or four pages of the thread.

OH durrr, thanks man, I missed like two whole pages, I try to keep up so I don't much on my foot like that.

[ManCharm]

In the lists playing Cabal Ritual and cutting a MD kill spell, is there a reason to play the 4th Infernal Tutor in the side any longer?

[Lemnear]

In the lists playing Cabal Ritual and cutting a MD kill spell, is there a reason to play the 4th Infernal Tutor in the side any longer?

More Rituals -> more mana for Wish into SB Infernal into MB AN.
More Rituals -> more mana for Wish into SB PIF
More Rituals -> more mana for Tutor chains (Wish into SB Infernal into MB Wish into SB ToA)


Edit: started the discussion about cutting EtW on page 301 and Max came up with the Cabal/Mox split on page 308. I suggest joining the chain of arguments from there :)

[Lemnear]

Just because I talked about it on Twitter, it might be fair to share here too: I'm testing Trygon Predator in the Sol land build as a repeatable, evasive, damage dealing Abrupt Decay to maul MUD, D&T, Countertop, etc. with cardadvantage while also decresing the required stormcount for natural spellchains.

Have a good evening. I'll continue mine with SKY Sport - Champions League :)

[KaiSchafroth]

Just because I talked about it on Twitter, it might be fair to share here too: I'm testing Trygon Predator in the Sol land build as a repeatable, evasive, damage dealing Abrupt Decay to maul MUD, D&T, Countertop, etc. with cardadvantage while also decresing the required stormcount for natural spellchains.

Have a good evening. I'll continue mine with SKY Sport - Champions League :)


Interested to see testing results on this; report coming soon I'm guessing?

[paeng4983]

I was goldfishing with the list that has no wincon in our main, my only concern here is:
(I don't know if it has been brought up lately, forgive me for not back page reading =-p)
Will it be better if Burning Wish is in the sideboard instead of having an Infernal Tutor?
Thanks.
^_^
HAPPY HOLIDAYS TO ALL TES PLAYERS AROUND THE GLOBE AS WELL.
:cool:

[death]

Burning Wish would be a waste of sideboard slot. You'd be better off just cutting 1 or 2 in the main deck.

@Trygon Predator - it will be countered/Plow'd before it even touches a Counterbalance. Against MUD, again too slow, by turn 4 you're already locked out or dead. Against D&T, aren't you supposed to be more worried about hate bears?

Might as well go with a beatdown plan with Desecration Demon or Master of the Feast.

[Lemnear]

@Trygon Predator - it will be countered/Plow'd before it even touches a Counterbalance. Against MUD, again too slow, by turn 4 you're already locked out or dead. Against D&T, aren't you supposed to be more worried about hate bears?

3cc is a bitch to counter via Counterbalance and Miracles will tone down creature removal anyways (I give you REBs for counters). The matchup has top priority for testing though, even it can take a while. It however adresses Counterbalance AND SDT which is pretty nice. I don't get what you want to tell me by "MUD and turn 4", if Trygon is not blocked by a Thorn and you can pay extra mana via Sol Lands to cast it and it breaking any lock on itself. How should they make up for the cardadvantage if you drop a Trygon? We know about Trygons effectiveness in Vintage, against Vault/Key and MUD so I guess it's worth a look. Against D&T, it kills Revoker, Canonist, Vial, Jitte and stuff, so the only creature left that matters is Thalia and against that particular hatebear both Decay and Trygon cost 3 mana. Mind, that Trygon even survives Massacre. The point about Trygon is the cardadvantage of not having to trade 1-for-1 as you are supposed to do with Decays which is more than just handy against matchups you want to board the Decays against.

[Lemnear]

Interested to see testing results on this; report coming soon I'm guessing?

A roundup after I finished the first testing rounds, yeah


I was goldfishing with the list that has no wincon in our main, my only concern here is:
(I don't know if it has been brought up lately, forgive me for not back page reading =-p)
Will it be better if Burning Wish is in the sideboard instead of having an Infernal Tutor?
Thanks.
^_^
HAPPY HOLIDAYS TO ALL TES PLAYERS AROUND THE GLOBE AS WELL.
:cool:

You absolutely want to hit a Wish with AN for the cheapest line of winning, so I can't see us ever running less than 4 if we have our kill-conditions in the SB. That being said, I'm not sure that lines it should open up if you stick a Wish into the SB other than Wish->Wish->ToA/EtW. With an SB Infernal you can go Wish->IT->Wish->ToA/EtW without harming your AN flips or natural chains :/


Edit: Meh, wasn't supposed to end up as a double post. Sorry

[vercadium]

Trygon Predator is interesting, but I don't think the sol lands are a relevant factor for moving to the card as It can't be powered out earlier than normal using them. My biggest concern with the card is turning on the opponents Pyroblast(s)/Red Elemental Blast(s), but answering both Top and Counterbalance is a big deal, so I'm eager to see how it tests.

[Lemnear]

Trygon Predator is interesting, but I don't think the sol lands are a relevant factor for moving to the card as It can't be powered out earlier than normal using them. My biggest concern with the card is turning on the opponents Pyroblast(s)/Red Elemental Blast(s), but answering both Top and Counterbalance is a big deal, so I'm eager to see how it tests.

It isn't primary a matter of "earlier", but of "reliable" and "through Thorn/Daze/Thalia/Lodestone/Sphere of Resistance/etc." which got me thinking of this combination

[vercadium]

It isn't primary a matter of "earlier", but of "reliable" and "through Thorn/Daze/Thalia/Lodestone/Sphere of Resistance/etc." which got me thinking of this combination

That's a fair point; I understand your reasoning now.

EDIT: That said, I wouldn't be wanting to bring it in against decks that cast Daze and it can be played through Thalia regardless as it's a creature. Seems amazing against MUD though and I'm hopeful for its effectiveness against Miracles.

[Lemnear]

That's a fair point; I understand your reasoning now.

EDIT: That said, I wouldn't be wanting to bring it in against decks that cast Daze and it can be played through Thalia regardless as it's a creature. Seems amazing against MUD though and I'm hopeful for its effectiveness against Miracles.

Well, I should have highlighted that the Thalia/Thorn-aspect was more aimed at Abrupt Decay for comparison, which would cost 3 total as well, but is a one-shot, while I hope that TP is able to stall those decks endlessly as Trygon can block Thalia and kills about all threats coming from MUD/D&T/Painter/etc.

It even survives Massacre if you throw it at your opposing Blade/Patriot/D&T/etc. players head!

[TheYoungster]

Burning Wish would be a waste of sideboard slot. You'd be better off just cutting 1 or 2 in the main deck.

@Trygon Predator - it will be countered/Plow'd before it even touches a Counterbalance. Against MUD, again too slow, by turn 4 you're already locked out or dead. Against D&T, aren't you supposed to be more worried about hate bears?

Might as well go with a beatdown plan with Desecration Demon or Master of the Feast.

I think you are vastly overestimating the ability of MUD actually lock decks out. I've been playing MUD for about a year now and it is by no means a prison deck. Assuming you lost game 1 and you are on the play, you will almost always be able to cast trygon on turn 3 with their best starts (T1 Chalice 1, T2 Trinisphere T3 Lodestone), in that case chalice and trinisphere don't stop it and Lodestone is too late. Even if Lodestone comes down turn 2 then if you play a sol land you can cast it. If you are playing Post MUD then there start might be really slow (T1 cloudpost go) and you can cast trygon on time, or just kill them before they get the chance to play anything. MUD is a very fragile deck at times and 1 discard spell can really muck things up for the deck because of the nature of it being a chalice Sol land deck. MUD can lock storm out of games with no answers but it is very hard for the deck to prevent decks from playing 3 drop creatures, even a deck as land light as TES. Storm is one of the few decks that can be locked out by MUD with consistency but only 4 of the most consistently played cards in the deck stop trygon (Lodestone, thorn of amethyst or other forms of disruption that impede Trygon aren't unanimous)

Against miracles I would assume they just have terminus, red blasts and one or two swords(though I have never played miracles and am just getting into TES so I could be wrong) so I think Trygon could be reasonable there.

Against D&T just blanking 2 of their hatebears and stopping vial so they can't port you freely sounds good enough to warrant the inclusion to me.

[Lemnear]

I think you are vastly overestimating the ability of MUD actually lock decks out. I've been playing MUD for about a year now and it is by no means a prison deck. Assuming you lost game 1 and you are on the play, you will almost always be able to cast trygon on turn 3 with their best starts (T1 Chalice 1, T2 Trinisphere T3 Lodestone), in that case chalice and trinisphere don't stop it and Lodestone is too late. Even if Lodestone comes down turn 2 then if you play a sol land you can cast it. If you are playing Post MUD then there start might be really slow (T1 cloudpost go) and you can cast trygon on time, or just kill them before they get the chance to play anything. MUD is a very fragile deck at times and 1 discard spell can really muck things up for the deck because of the nature of it being a chalice Sol land deck. MUD can lock storm out of games with no answers but it is very hard for the deck to prevent decks from playing 3 drop creatures, even a deck as land light as TES. Storm is one of the few decks that can be locked out by MUD with consistency but only 4 of the most consistently played cards in the deck stop trygon (Lodestone, thorn of amethyst or other forms of disruption that impede Trygon aren't unanimous)

Against miracles I would assume they just have terminus, red blasts and one or two swords(though I have never played miracles and am just getting into TES so I could be wrong) so I think Trygon could be reasonable there.

Against D&T just blanking 2 of their hatebears and stopping vial so they can't port you freely sounds good enough to warrant the inclusion to me.

Thanks for finding your way to this thread and giving more first-hand insight about MUD. Against D&T you find targets in Spirit of the Labyrinth, Canonist, Revoker, Vial and the complete SFM package including Batterskull, so I have high hopes on Trygon pretty much negating half their deck. For Miracles, I have to take some Terminus, Blasts, Plows alongside the FoWs into consideration. Will be hell to get out decent data from that matchup

[Asthereal]

Against Miracles the effectiveness of Trygon Predator depends on a great number of things. What would Miracles usually board?

The list Lossett plays (legends, main deck Pyroblast) will postboard have at least 3 Pyroblast effects, which counter or kill Trygon. On the other hand, he now runs 2 Pyroclasm in the board, which they might prefer over Terminus, since it doesn't require a Miracle to cast against a row of Goblin tokens. Clasm doesn't kill Trygon, so that's nice, but there's no guarantee they'll board it over Terminus, since the latter only costs W, where the Clasm costs 1R. Also, the Legends list runs 3 Clique, which blocks and kills Trygon, so that's pretty nasty. So for the Legends/splash red Miracles list, I feel Trygon is not that strong in theory.

The Helm/RiP list is of course a different story. They have more targets for Trygon, and they have no creatures that can block it, except for Entreat. So there Trygon looks a bit better.

The Ponder&No nonsense list that is rather popular right now has the REB/Pyroblast effects on side, and no Cliques main (usually also not that many one side), so that's a bit in between.

I'm not sure how this looks theorycraftingwise (wow, such word :eek:).


EDIT: On a lighter note, I kind of like the newish list with 2x Chrome Mox, 2x Cabal Ritual.
The extra mana that sometimes makes is pretty awesome. Awesome enough for me to be tempted to try out weird stuff as Wish targets, like Entreat the Angels (for when I have low Storm count) or Epic Experiment (because, well, it's Epic!).

[Royce Walter]

Awesome enough for me to be tempted to try out weird stuff as Wish targets, like Entreat the Angels (for when I have low Storm count) or Epic Experiment (because, well, it's Epic!).

What the fuck?

[d0nkey]

What the fuck?

Actually, Epic Experiment is interesting...

[Asthereal]

What the fuck?
Can't a man have any fun anymore these days? :rolleyes:

But okay, I'll explain.
In my test run against Jund I had on two occasions 2x LED on the board and not so much life.
I draw Wish (second time I Pondered into Wish), and natural spell chain, Ad Nauseam or Past in Flames weren't an option, so I was wondering what other cool stuff I could do with 7+ mana post Wish, and those two came up. I'm not saying you should play either of them, but both are pretty cool and will make the opponent make a sound quite similar to what you wrote down here. :tongue:

[d0nkey]

Can't a man have any fun anymore these days? :rolleyes:

But okay, I'll explain.
In my test run against Jund I had on two occasions 2x LED on the board and not so much life.
I draw Wish (second time I Pondered into Wish), and natural spell chain, Ad Nauseam or Past in Flames weren't an option, so I was wondering what other cool stuff I could do with 7+ mana post Wish, and those two came up. I'm not saying you should play either of them, but both are pretty cool and will make the opponent make a sound quite similar to what you wrote down here. :tongue:

I actually thought of Jund and Pox when you mentioned those 2 cards. Not sure they would make the 75 for me, but that scenario you mention does come up from time to time.