[Deck] TinFins 3: Return of the Onion Burst

[.dk]

EDIT -- completely off topic...
http://www.thecouncil.es/tcdecks/deck.php?id=8398&iddeck=61187
WOW! :eek:

wow indeed! who needs brainstorm!? Not running Shallow Grave seems really odd.


Also, I can't say I agree that Spell Pierce is better than Pithing Needle in the sideboard. Needle can be pretty key against Deathrite Shaman, Ooze, Relic, Crypt, and even Sensei's Divining Top.
Wouldn't you rather just discard their hate T1 and win the following turn? If that doesn't work and the game goes longer, Spell Pierce becomes pretty bad. You really need a way to deal with the resolved permanents - we're not equipped to be able to fight on the stack over them.

[Freggle]

Also, I can't say I agree that Spell Pierce is better than Pithing Needle in the sideboard. Needle can be pretty key against Deathrite Shaman, Ooze, Relic, Crypt, and even Sensei's Divining Top.

Okay then what are the Massacre for? ...the Hurkyl's Recall seems really redundant.


Wouldn't you rather just discard their hate T1 and win the following turn?

Yeah if that is how it works I'd be really happy with that. You have no less change of doing that given my sample board less 2 mana sources. ...but now you also have the play of drop land pass turn. If they play some non-creature you don't like you counter it.


If that doesn't work and the game goes longer, Spell Pierce becomes pretty bad. You really need a way to deal with the resolved permanents - we're not equipped to be able to fight on the stack over them.

Given the nature of this deck it is my understanding the longer the game goes your chances of winning are less and less regardless. I thought this would give you more tools to fend off opposing discard, more tools to fight fast combo, as well as create a window to fend-off common yard hate to combo.

I just thought I'd bring it up for discussion. I think it warrants testing.

[phazonmutant]

Given the nature of this deck it is my understanding the longer the game goes your chances of winning are less and less regardless. I thought this would give you more tools to fend off opposing discard, more tools to fight fast combo, as well as create a window to fend-off common yard hate to combo.

I just thought I'd bring it up for discussion. I think it warrants testing.

Look man, Spell Pierce isn't what this deck wants. I've played a lot of different builds of Griselbrand storm in tournaments - I would wager more than anyone else on the planet (I know, niche micro-archetype, but still). I played 3 copies of Spell Pierce in the first versions of Count Chocula and got to the finals of 2 reasonably-sized GPTs. Eventually we realized discard is much, much better (and that's what I played in GP Atlanta). I played Pierce in some older builds of TinFins (see here (http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?24104-TinFins-3-Return-of-the-Onion-Burst&p=699099&viewfull=1#post699099)). Again, we quickly realized that it's not what the deck is looking for. We have tested Pierce. Maybe not in this exact build, but the card doesn't actually do anything different now than what it did before.

Koby made some excellent points and is a very smart guy, he's worth listening to. We all appreciate suggestions (look at what an impact Dela made with suggesting Children of Korlis!), but at some point you really do have to accept that maybe the suggestion just isn't good.

In case you don't see his points, here's another analysis:
1. This deck needs to win quickly. It can't afford to lose tempo by leaving up reactive counters like Spell Pierce because you're not actively progressing the gameplan of winning. Going for it and discard are both proactively making them not "have it".
2. It's a very dead rip if the game ever goes long. There are enough of those already, at least discard is multi-purpose and Silence is always live.
3. If you've ever played against Miracles with Pierce, you should know that it's very easy for them to play around Pierce if they put you on it. They don't tap out on their turn that much!


Okay then what are the Massacre for? ...the Hurkyl's Recall seems really redundant.

Those cards are meta calls and are in the board as much from momentum as anything else. Massacre is good against Maverick, Death & Taxes, and UW decks that turn fishy postboard (Meddling Mage, etc).
Hurkyl's Recall is obviously for Stax / Dragon Stompy / Moat Stompy (I'm looking at you, nedleeds :mad:). It may not be necessary if we're playing Abrupt Decay, but we're not sure if we should play Abrupt Decay.

[Falconer]

After I was on the wrong side of some Cavern of Soul Blowouts in Standard, has anyone already tested if Boseiju, Who Shelters All
fits in this deck? It is unfortunates that it comes into play tapped, can only produce colourless mana, and you need to pay life to make your instant and sorcerys uncounterable. But sometimes if you are desperate you need some desperate measures to fight back. Dealing with Rest in Peace should be much more easier if you don't need to worry about Counterbalance and Force of Will, and if you are able to protect your Shallow Grave as well it becomes less painfull if the Counterbalance is still in play after you dealed with the Rest in Peace. That Miracles in the recent builds don't attack your lands or your life before they already have taken over the game on the other side may help a Boseiju plan.

The decklist Koby linked looks a little bit like a "I don't have the cards" build. With Animate Dead winning on the Spot with Griselbrand seems a lot more unlikely than with regular TinFins. And yes no Brainstorm.

[Joe Eigo]

The decklist Koby linked looks a little bit like a "I don't have the cards" build. With Animate Dead winning on the Spot with Griselbrand seems a lot more unlikely than with regular TinFins. And yes no Brainstorm.

The list is f$$$ amazing, because it's older than this thread and has 90% of the cards in it we're using now including the children...? ;-)

[Azdraël]

Yea, that guy was a prophet. But he didn't have the brain wave to get his shallow out of his trunk when he saw Goryos.

[AEnesidem]

Hi guys,

first of all, congrats to Koby for the result!

i've been thinking about picking this up and have had a lot of fun in testing. It's the first time of my legacy lifetime i play something else than control. And it's the first time i'm actually playing a combo deck aside from dredge. The issue i have is: What do i side out?

last match i played i wanted to side in P-needles and wipe away because my opponent was playing bant and had: ooze and ethersworn canonist. So what should i have taken out?

[novatinhu]

Hello playing with the deck yesterday against blecher and have 1 question about children.

If I have 1 Children in play, and my opponent activates belcher can I go to negative life and sac children to get life back without lose the game? :really:

Thx

[dropsaway]

Hello playing with the deck yesterday against blecher and have 1 question about children.

If I have 1 Children in play, and my opponent activates belcher can I go to negative life and sac children to get life back without lose the game? :really:

Thx

Hi Novatinhu,

Children of Krolis Rulings:

9/25/2006 If your life total drops to 0 or less, it's too late to use this ability before losing the game.
9/25/2006 The life you gain is based on the total of all changes where your life total went down during the turn, not the net downward change. So if you lose 5 life, gain 3 life, and then lose 2 more life before activating this ability, the ability causes you gain 7 life, not 4.
Link: http://gatherer.wizards.com/pages/card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=110525

[nedleeds]

can I go to negative life

really?

[novatinhu]

really?

And your coment add what? nothing, just the usual: "I KNOW EVERYTHING, I'M GOD FUCK YOU MORTALS!!!"

Anyway thx Dropsaway!

[Koby]

I have been thinking about some scenarios I've played against in tournaments. I've come to the conclusion that we can beat 1 piece of hate with relative ease, but nearly impossible when it's either compounded hate or hate piece + countermagic. Is it realistic to attempt to beat the latter situations without completely morphing the deck?

Example:
Is it realistic for Dredge to beat Leyline of the Void + Grafdigger's Cage played on the first turn?
Is it realistic for Tin Fins to beat Leyline of the Void + Chalice of the Void @ 1 on the first turn?

[Megadeus]

really?

With Me losing the game on the stack... Ill sac children and since Im not at negative life the losing the game gets countered. Duh

[P-E]

I have been thinking about some scenarios I've played against in tournaments. I've come to the conclusion that we can beat 1 piece of hate with relative ease, but nearly impossible when it's either compounded hate or hate piece + countermagic. Is it realistic to attempt to beat the latter situations without completely morphing the deck?

Example:
Is it realistic for Dredge to beat Leyline of the Void + Grafdigger's Cage played on the first turn?
Is it realistic for Tin Fins to beat Leyline of the Void + Chalice of the Void @ 1 on the first turn?

I think couter+hate(surgical or extirpate) can be handle without morhping the deck

For your exemple the hate is really strong, and in your case serenity seems golden ^^

[Kich867]

And your coment add what? nothing, just the usual: "I KNOW EVERYTHING, I'M GOD FUCK YOU MORTALS!!!"

Anyway thx Dropsaway!

Your response might make more sense if he was taunting you over not knowing some obscure factoid about something very few people know about, but I don't think it's warranted when you ask a question that implies a misunderstanding of the most basic premise of the game: when your life total hits 0 you die. Even when you have a "You cannot lose the game" effect in play, you can't pay life you don't have (so if you are at 6, you cannot activate Griselbrand). There is no such thing as going into "negative life" that exists in magic.

A brief thought experiment you could have performed would have been to think about why no one had brought up your idea previously if it were possible? Like, if you -could- drop into negative life from Griselbrand, why is THAT not the #1 plan of the deck. Get Griselbrand out, go to -30 life, draw all but like 3 cards in your deck, then sac Children of Korlis to go back up to 20 or so and win. You'd think if that were possible that it would just be the default play for the deck, you know?

[Richard Cheese]

I have been thinking about some scenarios I've played against in tournaments. I've come to the conclusion that we can beat 1 piece of hate with relative ease, but nearly impossible when it's either compounded hate or hate piece + countermagic. Is it realistic to attempt to beat the latter situations without completely morphing the deck?

Example:
Is it realistic for Dredge to beat Leyline of the Void + Grafdigger's Cage played on the first turn?
Is it realistic for Tin Fins to beat Leyline of the Void + Chalice of the Void @ 1 on the first turn?

This is probably the most important discussion we can be having right now, and to answer: I don't really know that it is. The reason the deck is so consistent and generally able to play through countermagic game 1 is that we have a ton of redundancy built in. Multiple ways to bin Grizzlebees, plenty of ways to reanimate him, multiple win conditions. To bring in anti-hate means we're always watering some aspect down, unless we're completely switching gears, which is why we've tried so many transformational boards. Being reactive still seems like the best strategy so far, but it still feels like trading a GT-R for a Maxima. You're burning cantrips to find answers instead of combo pieces, and there just aren't as many answers as hate pieces, unless you've boarded in so much that you weaken the combo.

It may just be that TinFins is a deck that's doomed to wax and wane like Dredge. In an unprepared meta it's just a monster, but in it's current incarnation at least, it's fairly easy to hate out. The problem is if RiP/Helm continues to be a good win condition for control decks, the meta may never really be all that unprepared.

[ZimAshe]

this may sound silly, but what if instead of splashing green for AD we splash red for Overmaster?

[Cellar Door]

This is probably the most important discussion we can be having right now, and to answer: I don't really know that it is. The reason the deck is so consistent and generally able to play through countermagic game 1 is that we have a ton of redundancy built in. Multiple ways to bin Grizzlebees, plenty of ways to reanimate him, multiple win conditions. To bring in anti-hate means we're always watering some aspect down, unless we're completely switching gears, which is why we've tried so many transformational boards. Being reactive still seems like the best strategy so far, but it still feels like trading a GT-R for a Maxima. You're burning cantrips to find answers instead of combo pieces, and there just aren't as many answers as hate pieces, unless you've boarded in so much that you weaken the combo.

It may just be that TinFins is a deck that's doomed to wax and wane like Dredge. In an unprepared meta it's just a monster, but in it's current incarnation at least, it's fairly easy to hate out. The problem is if RiP/Helm continues to be a good win condition for control decks, the meta may never really be all that unprepared.

This^

Completely agree with everything you said here Richard. Almost everyone is gonna be packing some amount of graveyard hate somewhere in their 75. Fortunately, most of that hate can be played through. The problem occurs, like Koby said, when our opponents are running multiple forms of hate. The RiP/Helm decks are definitely our nightmare match. They run multiple forms of hate, not only in their board, but in their main 60. Other matches could easily become just as hostile if they decide to diversify their hate cards.

I've come to the conclusion that the only way to really fight an overly hostile meta is to have another list to audible into that is effective against an anti-graveyard/combo heavy meta.

I currently have two decks ready to go for the next open in Atlanta:

TinFins - for if the meta is not overly hostile or full of RiP/Helm

BUG Delver - For if the meta is overly prepared and/or full of RiP/Helm


In my testing BUG has been very effective against the RiP/Helm control lists. If the meta develops in such a way that it does not seem prudent to run a gy/combo deck, I'll play BUG instead. If the meta appears to still be heavily focused on combating midrange and other fair decks, then TinFins it will be.

[Koby]

this may sound silly, but what if instead of splashing green for AD we splash red for Overmaster?

Color me puzzled, but how would a one mana instant help us resolve other 1 mana instants against Counterbalance or Chalice?

@ Cellar Door -- this looks like a discussion more fitted for Format Discussion rather than this thread. However, regarding the transformational sideboard, there are two good options (and one poor):

#1) Reanimator -> Storm deck
#2) Reanimator -> Painter/Stone (maintains use of the fast mana, still vulnerable to Counterbalance...)
#3) Reanimator -> Tempo creatures (Delver, Goyf, Tombstalker, Clique)

[ZimAshe]

Color me puzzled, but how would a one mana instant help us resolve other 1 mana instants against Counterbalance or Chalice?

yeah brain fart. I'm a dufus :rolleyes:

[Megadeus]

I dont even think that it is the Counters this deck really is worried about as much as it is GY hate. You dont need overmaster when you have SIlence.

[Dela]

Here is a list I have been tinkering with. I'm thinking about putting 1 buried alive in the SB as a burning wish target and it probably needs a sorcery speed bounce as well as tendrills #2 in the SB

The main problem I see is that I don't think it addresses the matchup issue of RiP Miracles.

2 Badlands
4 Bloodstained Mire
4 Scalding Tarn
1 Shelldock Isle
1 Swamp
2 Underground Sea
2 Chrome Mox
4 Lotus Petal
4 Brainstorm
3 Cabal Therapy
1 Children of Korlis
4 Dark Ritual
4 Entomb
2 Gitaxian Probe
4 Sensei's Divining Top
4 Thoughtseize
4 Burning Wish
3 Goryo's Vengeance
4 Shallow Grave
2 Griselbrand
1 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn

Sideboard:

4 Lion's Eye Diamond
1 Chain of Vapor
1 Reanimate
3 Cabal Ritual
1 Ideas Unbound
4 Doomsday
1 Tendrils of Agony

[Falconer]

This is probably the most important discussion we can be having right now, and to answer: I don't really know that it is. The reason the deck is so consistent and generally able to play through countermagic game 1 is that we have a ton of redundancy built in. Multiple ways to bin Grizzlebees, plenty of ways to reanimate him, multiple win conditions. To bring in anti-hate means we're always watering some aspect down, unless we're completely switching gears, which is why we've tried so many transformational boards. Being reactive still seems like the best strategy so far, but it still feels like trading a GT-R for a Maxima. You're burning cantrips to find answers instead of combo pieces, and there just aren't as many answers as hate pieces, unless you've boarded in so much that you weaken the combo.

It may just be that TinFins is a deck that's doomed to wax and wane like Dredge. In an unprepared meta it's just a monster, but in it's current incarnation at least, it's fairly easy to hate out. The problem is if RiP/Helm continues to be a good win condition for control decks, the meta may never really be all that unprepared.

Even if the question is discussing TinFins specific, I think in general it is underrated that today some Decks have the ability to board into Mini Prison Decks with all the printed hate cards.

Remember playing Storm against Maverick? Okay you have bounce for Gaddock Teeg but they could have Mother of Runes. In that case you might want to play two bounce spells to get rid of Gaddock Teeg in response to Mother of Runes ability but if they also have Ethersworn Canonist that plan will also not work. Don't mentioned the case that maybe you only have two bounce spells and need to draw your entire Deck to make sure that you have both. Now you looking for Damnation until you remeber that with Gaddock Teeg in play you will also not be able to cast Damnation. That was the point where Storm started to look for Infest or Virtues Ruin as Sideboard Cards because they was the only Cards that was never dead.

The same could be said about Griselbrand Decks shortly after the printing of Griselbrand when everyone was running Humility, Karakas, Cursed Totem or some even more exotic cards.

If you playing a Combo Deck especially one based around the Graveyard or Storm you have to accept that if they want to beat you hard enough they can beat you if they try hard enough. But if they try hard enough they will lose sideboard slots against other decks and than they lose against something like Jund. Then they decide that loosing to Jund is not worth it to have 10 anti Graveyard Cards and oops the combo Deck come back.

Its part of the modern Legacy Metagame you trade free Wins when they are not prepared against free loses when they are prepared. And the only thing you can do about that is to analyze what are they boarding against us and is there a Card like Infest or Virtues Ruin that can safe us.

Maybe we need Devout Witness or Nevinyrral's Disk or Pernicious Deed or Trygon Predator, we only find out when we follow what the other Decks doing and prepare for it. Pull from Eternity was a first step in that direction but you can't just call at a day at that point instead you have to watch out from where you get attacked next. Look at the Miracles Thread how before SGC Las Vegas everyone who broad up the RIP/Helm Version was flamed how bad that Deck because it has so many dead cards in it. Remember that many player hate playing with and against Sensei's Diving Top because it is so time consuming and maybe we are really discussing what are we doing in the match up you only see once in a big tournament. In that case hope that it will happening in the swiss and not in the Top 8. And if everyone is playing RIP/ Helm Miracles put TinFins on the Bench watch out how the BUG Delver Player having fun with all the miracles deck until the Miracles player put Miracles on the Bench in favor of Jund to give the BUG Delver player some payback. And if everyone is playing Jund look how the Metagame come back to the current point, take TinFins of the Bench be happy again and wait until everything starts again. Or in other words yes we have bad Match Ups and we have Sideboard Cards that can destroy us, but how does that make TinFins different than any other Deck?

Edit some typos.

[Richard Cheese]

Color me puzzled, but how would a one mana instant help us resolve other 1 mana instants against Counterbalance or Chalice?

@ Cellar Door -- this looks like a discussion more fitted for Format Discussion rather than this thread. However, regarding the transformational sideboard, there are two good options (and one poor):

#1) Reanimator -> Storm deck
#2) Reanimator -> Painter/Stone (maintains use of the fast mana, still vulnerable to Counterbalance...)
#3) Reanimator -> Tempo creatures (Delver, Goyf, Tombstalker, Clique)

Depending on the UW list, going to the man-plan can be pretty bad too. A lot of them have an Energy Field or two and then you're just boned. Also people tend not to board out all their removal against us.

There's also the option of going all-in on Show and Tell and tuning the board to try and win on the stack. Silence, Show and Tell, Flusterstorm, and there's probably room for Forces as well. You'd pretty much have to have Needles still though, Karakas is just a douche like that.

This is what I've been testing lately, you could easily swap the Silences and Show and Tells to make it line up a lot more with Koby's list:


4 Polluted Delta
2 Underground Sea
1 Tundra
1 Island
1 Swamp
3 Marsh Flats
1 Scrubland

4 Lotus Petal
4 Dark Ritual
2 Chrome Mox

3 Goryo's Vengeance
4 Shallow Grave

4 Entomb
4 Griselbrand
1 Tendrils of Agony
1 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
1 Children of Korlis

4 Cabal Therapy
3 Thoughtseize
2 Show and Tell
2 Gitaxian Probe
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder

SB: 2 Chain of Vapor
SB: 2 Silence
SB: 2 Pithing Needle
SB: 2 Show and Tell
SB: 3 Flusterstorm
SB: 2 Force of Will
SB: 1 Inkwell Leviathan
SB: 1 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn


Looks janky, but then it always has.

[Azdraël]

@Falconer

Exactly. The problems of multiple hates above-adressed by Koby and the others are not new at all for Storm players. At such a point that at the end Maverick was not such a good Matchup at all (thalia + canon + MoR + Gaddock + random hate grave for PiF, WTF?!). But the same has always been for Control/UW/CB/(insert any shit comboers loath) deck boarding hatebears and anti-graveyards stuff. Yet, those match-ups have never been unwinnable. (It is particularly in those cases that I do love to keep G-Probe main)

In a nutshell, it is basically the same with any combo-like decks. Players are going to have to make a choice, either ensure the victory against Combo but weakens their side against any other deck, or either get the most versatile sideboard.

Other 2cts: I particularly love Disrupt as a sideboard tech. It counters early discards, early Counters, and possibly a Surgical. Trying it is adopting it, give it a go!

[Koby]

I have to say that Devout Witness looks to be the sickest tech ever. I just know it's not going to do squat in practice, but hilarious regardless. Being a discard outlet with an added effect is awesome!

[Azdraël]

Apart that it is a creature, white, costs 3, costs 2 to activate, and not active before T2/3, you made my night ahah.

[Koby]

Apart that it is a creature, white, costs 3, costs 2 to activate, and not active before T2/3, you made my night ahah.

Well, ya, obviously. Erase? Revoke Existence? Reverent Silence was a good card that we think might have merit going forward, but it does nothing to stop Counterbalance or a timely Force of Will. Basically, the anti-hate needs to answer Artifact && Enchantment spells while also being uncounterable, and possibly destroying/bouncing multiple copies of each. I don't think a card like that exists.

[Azdraël]

I knew you were ironical, no harm intended!

I'm afraid the best so far in Storm decks were Krosan Grip and Wipe away, with the capacity of handling both art/enchant + Counterspells, now to be replaced by Decay. So I might give it a try, as well as for Serenity. But I think the uncounterable effect is way better than the capacity of handling mutiple permanents, so +1 for Decay.

[walker]

Wow this thread is moving along fast. I'm glad to see the list I posted last week is catching on. Probe + therapy is nuts huh??

Going forward there are a few things I think are worth looking into.

What is the best number of griselbrand to play?

@koby- with 2 griselbrands, how often do you bin griselbrand without entomb? I ask because it seems like cutting the griselbrands makes the deck rely heavily on entomb to start the combo, which was never consistent for me in the past. What are your thoughts about 4 griselbrands in the maindeck?

Is 13 definitely the best number of lands? I'm down to 12 and it's been working out for me.

How necessary is reanimate? It seems cute but why not just run another goryos if you want more reanimation effects?

Is it worth exploring splashing green instead of white?

Besides abrupt decay green gives us access to carpet of flowers, rev silence, deed, trygon predator, ground seal, sylvan library, noxious revival, autumn's veil. Is there anything else worthwhile in green? I'm probably forgetting some obvious cards.. Even if green isn't the right splash color now, it could potentially offer a good strategy if you have a lot of chalice/countertop/hatebear decks in your meta.

Has anyone tried boarding into helmline/rip combo? I tried it once very briefly, but didn't get any conclusive results. If they slam a turn 2 RIP its hilarious to helm them. Possibly worth further exploring?

[.dk]

Wow this thread is moving along fast. I'm glad to see the list I posted last week is catching on. Probe + therapy is nuts huh??

Going forward there are a few things I think are worth looking into.

What is the best number of griselbrand to play?

@koby- with 2 griselbrands, how often do you bin griselbrand without entomb? I ask because it seems like cutting the griselbrands makes the deck rely heavily on entomb to start the combo, which was never consistent for me in the past. What are your thoughts about 4 griselbrands in the maindeck?

Is 13 definitely the best number of lands? I'm down to 12 and it's been working out for me.

How necessary is reanimate? It seems cute but why not just run another goryos if you want more reanimation effects?

Is it worth exploring splashing green instead of white?

Besides abrupt decay green gives us access to carpet of flowers, rev silence, deed, trygon predator, ground seal, sylvan library, noxious revival, autumn's veil. Is there anything else worthwhile in green? I'm probably forgetting some obvious cards.. Even if green isn't the right splash color now, it could potentially offer a good strategy if you have a lot of chalice/countertop/hatebear decks in your meta.

Has anyone tried boarding into helmline/rip combo? I tried it once very briefly, but didn't get any conclusive results. If they slam a turn 2 RIP its hilarious to helm them. Possibly worth further exploring?

I haven't tested enough with less than 3 Griselbrands to answer that question, but I think I can give some input on the others.

I'm not sure that I would go below 13 lands - usually the reasoning isn't that I need more, but really comes down to shuffle effects. I don't want to have less than 7 fetch lands and ideally have 8, which leaves only 5-6 slots left for mana producing lands. I can't see cutting the swamp, so you have some amount of duals - and depending on what colors you're splashing then you might need a couple of them to make sure that you can make the correct colors. 12 starts REALLY trimming either shuffle effects or access to color.

The reason Reanimate is there over the 4th Goryo's Vengeance is because Goryo's can't reanimate Children.

I've had a few ideas for a green splash floating around in my head - specifically with City of Solitude and Noxious Revival. Revival seemed pretty cool if you were also running Careful Study or Thought Scour. At the moment though, I think that Pull from Eternity is superior.

I've also tested RIP/Helm transformation as a sideboard strategy. It's perfectly fine sometimes - but the place where it seems awesome (against UW RIP/Helm), it's actually pretty bad. They end up bringing in a lot of countermagic, and it's tough to force through your combo. I tried 3 Helm, 3 RIP, 4 E-tutor, 3 Flusterstorm, 2 Spell Pierce. Maybe not optimal, but seemed like a decent place to start. in the end, I didn't really like it as it was tough to resolve Helm through taxing countermagic. Painter/Stone is probably better for that reason, as they've likely already boarded out their Swords to Plowshares and Abrupt Decays anyway.

[Koby]

Again, I never had an issue binning Griselbrand when it was in my hand - even demonstrated on camera. The only possible issue was not being able to find either Griselbrand (+discard) or Entomb. This was partially solved by running more cantrips and shuffle effects. Adding the 4th Goryo's doesn't provide the same effect as Reanimate, namely - returning Children of Korlis, or even using Reanimate offensively on opponent's creatures.

Removing white for green provides better anti-hate, but at the expense of Silence and Pull from Eternity. I can't say for sure if it's worth it yet, since I haven't tested a BU/g list yet.

[Richard Cheese]

Well, ya, obviously. Erase? Revoke Existence? Reverent Silence was a good card that we think might have merit going forward, but it does nothing to stop Counterbalance or a timely Force of Will. Basically, the anti-hate needs to answer Artifact && Enchantment spells while also being uncounterable, and possibly destroying/bouncing multiple copies of each. I don't think a card like that exists.

Teferi's Realm does everything except not get countered!

[phazonmutant]

Teferi's Realm does everything except not get countered!

Holy crap. Teferi's Realm seems nuts! It hits enchantments, artifacts, and creatures! (although not all at once)
I'm excited to try this out.


Koby, to answer the question you posted a page ago, I think this deck can usually beat heavy counterspells, light counterspells + discard, or heavy discard. It can't beat any of those plus strong grave hate reliably right now. It also has problems with prison from the get-go. Can it be further tuned to do so? Maybe...but I'm not hopeful after seeing how mediocre Abrupt Decay turned out to be - powerful, but very clunky. That's what it seems like most of the unexplored antihate options are.

So at that point, it could be correct to revisit transformational sideboards. There might be one we're missing, although again, not hopeful.

[Falconer]

Apart that it is a creature, white, costs 3, costs 2 to activate, and not active before T2/3, you made my night ahah.

Well this is a general problem against Counterbalance and Chalice if the Spell is cheap you are in danger that it will be countered because it is cheap and if it is expensive it will take some time until it is available because it is expensive. So pick your poison.

Well it might be an Idea not to go to a full transitional sideboard but to add a card that give you another angle of attack which does not depend on the graveyard or storm count or requires rituals but does not mess up the usual game plan. After boarding out three to four cards is quit common it might be an idea to see if we find a card where we know Miracles is worried about and where we can fit a playset into the board. After we discussed the problems of reactive cards lets focus on active cards. If you wondering what kind of cards gives a deck problems looking for the decks mirror strategy can be helpfull.

Currently Geist of Saint Traft is a common guest in this department before BUG and Jund became popular when the Miracles Mirror was more common Luminarch Ascension was preferred. Both are Threads that can put Miracles under a fast clock to find a very specific answer to this card. For Geist of Saint Traft a Sweeper or your own copy is necessary because Spot Removal does not work. Only that in the Miracle Mirror Sweeper are usually a death card that only under very specific situation will do something. This puts Miracle for the decission will I board out sweepers to reduce the death draws or keep I sweepers in to not lose against Geist. Luminarch Ascension will present them for an even greater problem not only need Miracles a Sweeper they also need Enchantment Removal to get rid of the Ascension before it creates another army. TinFin is also a Match Up where are not many reasons to keep sweepers in. This way we can present them the challenge find an aswer to this card while we are trying to find a way to get our combo going. We also have an even faster alternative to Luminarch Ascension in our main colour Bitterblossom. Non of this cards require us to completly change our sideboard even we have to find 3 to 4 slots which can be challenging enough. Geist of Saint Traft is a legendary creature too which means he also works with Goryo's Vengenance and with Shallow Grave obviously too. Non of this cards challenge our mana base more than the cards we are already running. These are cards that are able to operate when our plan A was shut down but does not require us to completly give up our plan A, all of them create a clock for Miracles which should give it some concerns. And after watching Kobys last stream and as a result understandig where his example come from, I think this cards can help in that Match Up too for the same reasons.

[Clown of Tresserhorn]

How hard is it to hit WW? Grand abolisher was pretty savage when I ran him in combo.

[.dk]

How hard is it to hit WW? Grand abolisher was pretty savage when I ran him in combo.

Never thought I'd see the day you'd post in this thread constructively... :o


WW is pretty difficult - but like City of Solitude, the effect he provides is pretty ideal. I suppose you could fetch a scrubland, and cast him off of a petal or something like that too. He can't be spell pierced or flusterstormed, which is awesome. I think you're right though, that he's worth testing to see if we can fit him in. Most likely opponent's removal will be boarded out in sideboard games anyway, making him even better (just like the Xantid Swarm in TES).

Oh, and as far as transformations go - i think there is more room to explore these. Not sure how much testing anyone has done with a Man plan. Seems like there are likely other options out there too depending on color splashes.

[Koby]

Well this is a general problem against Counterbalance and Chalice if the Spell is cheap you are in danger that it will be countered because it is cheap and if it is expensive it will take some time until it is available because it is expensive. So pick your poison.

Well it might be an Idea not to go to a full transitional sideboard but to add a card that give you another angle of attack which does not depend on the graveyard or storm count or requires rituals but does not mess up the usual game plan. After boarding out three to four cards is quit common it might be an idea to see if we find a card where we know Miracles is worried about and where we can fit a playset into the board. After we discussed the problems of reactive cards lets focus on active cards. If you wondering what kind of cards gives a deck problems looking for the decks mirror strategy can be helpfull.

Currently Geist of Saint Traft is a common guest in this department before BUG and Jund became popular when the Miracles Mirror was more common Luminarch Ascension was preferred. Both are Threads that can put Miracles under a fast clock to find a very specific answer to this card. For Geist of Saint Traft a Sweeper or your own copy is necessary because Spot Removal does not work. Only that in the Miracle Mirror Sweeper are usually a death card that only under very specific situation will do something. This puts Miracle for the decission will I board out sweepers to reduce the death draws or keep I sweepers in to not lose against Geist. Luminarch Ascension will present them for an even greater problem not only need Miracles a Sweeper they also need Enchantment Removal to get rid of the Ascension before it creates another army. TinFin is also a Match Up where are not many reasons to keep sweepers in. This way we can present them the challenge find an aswer to this card while we are trying to find a way to get our combo going. We also have an even faster alternative to Luminarch Ascension in our main colour Bitterblossom. Non of this cards require us to completly change our sideboard even we have to find 3 to 4 slots which can be challenging enough. Geist of Saint Traft is a legendary creature too which means he also works with Goryo's Vengenance and with Shallow Grave obviously too. Non of this cards challenge our mana base more than the cards we are already running. These are cards that are able to operate when our plan A was shut down but does not require us to completly give up our plan A, all of them create a clock for Miracles which should give it some concerns. And after watching Kobys last stream and as a result understandig where his example come from, I think this cards can help in that Match Up too for the same reasons.

Just wanted to let you know you're providing a lot of good feedback! This post has gotten a lot of gears turning in my noggin.

Bitterblossom especially seems good as an answer to this kind of grindy/prison style control. Being on color, cheap cost (and castable via Petal or Ritual on turn 1), are both good perks compared to GoST. I have a wild idea - board into 2-3 Cabal Ritual + 1-2 Tendrils in this matchup as well, to win with Storm count rather than reanimation.

[.dk]

Nifty ideas - more excuses to run Bitterblossom are always good in my book. Faerie beatdown with Mini Tendrils seems actually rather cool - and what's not to love about casting Tendrils for value? Furthermore, Bitterblossom is usually pretty insane with Cabal Therapy. We could practically turn into a discard based control deck.

[Clown of Tresserhorn]

Never thought I'd see the day you'd post in this thread constructively... :o


WW is pretty difficult - but like City of Solitude, the effect he provides is pretty ideal. I suppose you could fetch a scrubland, and cast him off of a petal or something like that too. He can't be spell pierced or flusterstormed, which is awesome. I think you're right though, that he's worth testing to see if we can fit him in. Most likely opponent's removal will be boarded out in sideboard games anyway, making him even better (just like the Xantid Swarm in TES).

Oh, and as far as transformations go - i think there is more room to explore these. Not sure how much testing anyone has done with a Man plan. Seems like there are likely other options out there too depending on color splashes.

For the record, Xantid swarm is probably poop. The reason I brought up Grand Abolisher is his unique ability to stop permanent hate. It hits: Top, DRS, Tormod's Crypt, Relic, etc. It may even stop Counterbalance itself (not sure on the rules, since it says "cant' activate abilities"...is this activated abilities or all abilities?). Not to mention, you can straight up win the game when he hits play, unlike swarm. But the price is probably too steep at WW.

[Richard Cheese]

For the record, Xantid swarm is probably poop. The reason I brought up Grand Abolisher is his unique ability to stop permanent hate. It hits: Top, DRS, Tormod's Crypt, Relic, etc. It may even stop Counterbalance itself (not sure on the rules, since it says "cant' activate abilities"...is this activated abilities or all abilities?). Not to mention, you can straight up win the game when he hits play, unlike swarm. But the price is probably too steep at WW.

Counterbalance is triggered so I think it won't get shut off, but Top will. I would assume a smart opponent would try to leave a 1 on top in that situation, which I guess we could still win through but it would be tough.

[Dark Ritual]

How do we combo through a counterbalance basically set at 1/chalice at 1? I honestly don't see how, outside of 4 lands + 4 petals hardcasting griselbrand. The amount of essential one drops in this deck is quite staggering. Or we have to draw up to 8 cards, pitch griselbrand, then shallow grave/goryo's vengeance him. Usually drawing up to 8 cards doesn't work so well in a deck that generally has under 5 cards in hand due to discard and entomb effects being cast early on.

The 4th goryo's vengeance is quite unneeded. Having reanimate or exhume in that slot is much better, as they get children back while goryo's vengeance does not, which is an issue sometimes when trying to combo out if you just draw all goryo's vengeances'.

Xantid swarm is not where this deck really wants to be. Doesn't solve counterbalance at all, and silence is usually superior. Card puts a strain on the mana too. Too bad we can't run bob due to the risk of flipping over certain 8 and 15 drops in our deck unless we straight up transformed into bob bitterblossom tendrils.dec postboard, where we go turn 1 bob, turn 2 blossom, turn 3 discard some of their stuffs and beatdown, turn 4 tendrils of agony.

[.dk]

For the record, Xantid swarm is probably poop. The reason I brought up Grand Abolisher is his unique ability to stop permanent hate. It hits: Top, DRS, Tormod's Crypt, Relic, etc. It may even stop Counterbalance itself (not sure on the rules, since it says "cant' activate abilities"...is this activated abilities or all abilities?). Not to mention, you can straight up win the game when he hits play, unlike swarm. But the price is probably too steep at WW.

Oh, completely agree. I wasn't suggesting adding bugs - i meant that Abolisher wouldn't be vulnerable and could be a good sideboard option for the same reason that bugs are good in TES.

Didn't mean to spur discussion about Xantid Swarm - was just using it as an analogy. It's trash in this deck.

[phazonmutant]

Teferi's Realm has hilarious applications with Batterskul. Also in case it's not obvious, it shuts off Chalice and 3ball if you name Artifacts, you can bin cards with Leyline of the Void / Rest in Peace phased out if you name Enchantment and they won't be exiled when they phase in, and it obviously shuts off Counterbalance. I'm liking this card a lot, although it seems pretty loose at first glance.


Richard Cheese is correct that Counterbalance still happens through Grand Abortionist.


Koby - grindy Bitterblossom Tendrils aggro? That sound awesome! All the more reason to have a pile of Chain of Vapors to board in. Now if only we had Necro to go along with our 2cc black threats and we'd have a standard deck :tongue:

[Richard Cheese]

Teferi's Realm has hilarious applications with Batterskul. Also in case it's not obvious, it shuts off Chalice and 3ball if you name Artifacts, you can bin cards with Leyline of the Void / Rest in Peace phased out if you name Enchantment and they won't be exiled when they phase in, and it obviously shuts off Counterbalance. I'm liking this card a lot, although it seems pretty loose at first glance.


Richard Cheese is correct that Counterbalance still happens through Grand Abortionist.


Koby - grindy Bitterblossom Tendrils aggro? That sound awesome! All the more reason to have a pile of Chain of Vapors to board in. Now if only we had Necro to go along with our 2cc black threats and we'd have a standard deck :tongue:

Also note that naming enchantments will cause it to phase itself out, so your opponent won't get to choose (if they get another turn).

I think it could actually not be terrible, providing we can make it stick.

[Freggle]

Teferi's Realm does everything except not get countered!

If you're going as deep as Teferi's Realm (which is cool) you might have luck with Devastation Tide, but a transformational board is likely better.

[Herjan]

Teferi's Realm has hilarious applications with Batterskul.

Sadly, doesn't work. Token permanents don't phase out with Teferi's Realm :cry:

I wonder if with probe in the deck now a Doomsday/Shelldock Isle transformational is possible.

[phazonmutant]

Sadly, doesn't work. Token permanents don't phase out with Teferi's Realm :cry:

I wonder if with probe in the deck now a Doomsday/Shelldock Isle transformational is possible.

Fair, I didn't specify. Naming artifact to phase out their Skull every turn is what I meant, sadly the Sapphire Charm trick doesn't work as you point out.

DD is certainly...more...reasonable. But that's not saying all that much. It looks like Dela is working on making that plan work. The list looks reasonable for that approach.

[catmint]

From my testing I still don't feel equipped well with anti-hate given there are many things that can come up. "Generic" answers like discard, silence, and bounce (decay) are generally better than more specific artifact or creature hate. You can be really attacked from a lots of different angles and I agree that if you are attacked from 2+ angels aka GY/permanent hate + counter/discard the %goes down a little too much for my taste, so I would like to theorycraft a little bit and talk about the underlying problems I see.

The thing about dredge (except for RIP, Leyline, Cage) is that even if hated, they don’t need to rely on anti-hate but their engine enables them to be a grindy aggro deck instead of the fast combo deck. Fins does not have this option. Also the available hate for Fins is much broader than for dredge (like burning the face or stupid stuff like needle on Griselbrand, canonist, Wasteland…).

So I have been testing the transform to man-plan not too extensively but enough to discard it. The thing is that people will have dead cards and/or board bad and keep some stupid removal in. Also, more important if you cast creatures, fair decks will do the same and will regularly trump you with their creatures/walkers/equipments/miracles. Especially if you have a medium start and not the god-hand. This experience also showed me that spending a couple of slots on alternative win-cons like Geist or Bitterblossom won’t bring you anywhere. This stuff will just get trumped, while diluting your deck more.

Coming back to anti-hate: It is an uphill battle by nature. You need a “2 card combo” + a certain life total and a 1-2 pieces of anti-hate to fight their 1-2 pieces of hate. The first problem you have is that for the deck hating us they can keep many different hands and dig for many different answers. 2 Spell Pierce and a brainstorm might be as good for an opposing deck as 1 Thoughtseize and 1 Surgical or 1 Rip and 1 Force of Will. So besides of the hate significantly outnumbering the anti-hate they do not need specific hate whereas we need specific anti-hate depending on which hate they bring to the table. Compare that again to dredge – having a bunch of counterspells might do nothing if they Draw-discard-dredge. Or compare it to TES where they toolbox for permanent hate without diluting the maindeck + are very often able to ignore gravehate/life-total and their natural maindeck setup fights the “counterspell-hate” already very effectively.

Now it is of course not easy going times for Dredge either, but I like the comparison because it shows what Finn’s lacking compared to when Dredge was strong. (TES is still strong to me by the way, but not an option unless you really master it).

So with this analysis which fits my experience of losing too much, my conclusions is that transforming is the way to go. Painter stone or RIP Helm look very funny – both taking advantage of enlightened tutor and silence as white protection comes naturally. Both option ignore GY hate & lifetotal + the redundancy (+ cantrips) as well as discard and silence make you equipped much better against opposing disruption. The surprise factor will also just randomly win games, which is what you want from the deck right? :smile: More white in the manabase and a maindeck that suits the transform would be necessary of course.

Happy to hear why people think anti-hate will get them there and results of successful transform tests are most welcome.

[Richard Cheese]

Fair, I didn't specify. Naming artifact to phase out their Skull every turn is what I meant, sadly the Sapphire Charm trick doesn't work as you point out.

DD is certainly...more...reasonable. But that's not saying all that much. It looks like Dela is working on making that plan work. The list looks reasonable for that approach.

If I'm reading this right, they wouldn't get their germ token back though:


702.24d The phasing event doesn’t actually cause a permanent to change zones or control, even though it’s treated as though it’s not on the battlefield and not under its controller’s control while it’s phased out. Zone-change triggers don’t trigger when a permanent phases in or out. Counters remain on a permanent while it’s phased out. Effects that check a phased-in permanent’s history won’t treat the phasing event as having caused the permanent to leave or enter the battlefield or its controller’s control.

Also no exile trigger for RiP, and possibly some other relevant stuff?

[H]

If I'm reading this right, they wouldn't get their germ token back though:

They would not. Even better is if they have a Batterskull on a Germ and you choose creatures to phase out. The Germ phases and the Batterskull does as well, indirectly; the Germ ceases to exist and so the Batterskull itself, which has nothing to return attached to, is exiled permanently.

[Koby]

They would not. Even better is if they have a Batterskull on a Germ and you choose creatures to phase out. The Germ phases and the Batterskull does as well, indirectly; the Germ ceases to exist and so the Batterskull itself, which has nothing to return attached to, is exiled permanently.

"At the beginning of each player's upkeep, that player chooses artifact, creature, land, or non-Aura enchantment. All nontoken permanents of that type phase out."

[H]

"At the beginning of each player's upkeep, that player chooses artifact, creature, land, or non-Aura enchantment. All nontoken permanents of that type phase out."

Ugh, sorry, that's what I get for figuring I knew what the card did and not checking.

[kihachi]

Is this still a decent deck to bring to Indy? I'm worried about the added exposure just like everyone else, but I still think a lot of decks will try to just bring in three Surgical Extractions against it and think they have its number.

I'm toying with the sideboard but currently not running white in the deck, so all I have is a combination of Massacre, extra Thoughtseizes, Abrupt Decay, Pithing Needle and Spell Pierce. Not sure if any non-white cards would be good. Chain of Vapor seems redundant with Decay and hard to fit in after I bring in 4 Decays and 3 Spell Pierces.

[ThomasDowd]

I may work on a doomsday(SI) board this weekend. I think it is good enough vs things you hate: rest in peace and CB. i always boarded it in with doomsday versus those slow decks and very rarely lost, even just jamming multiple doomsdays. it's pretty nice. you could maybe play a lab maniac but as it stands it is only 5 spots which is nice and compact enough to be reasonable, adding lab maniac makes things tighter.

I really do like grand abolisher and think he is a boss with 6+ actual white sources he shouldn't be too crazy to cast and he does beat down for 2.

will report back with results later in the weekend. all theory and massaging numbers in the 75. no physical playtesting, maybe after Monday I'll have some real games in.

I do like the degeneracy of the deck though and beating mild grave hate seems relatively easy.

How have probes been? i am skeptical in a deck where you want to be at 15 most of the time so you get two activations with griselbrand to 22 them( w/cthulu and gris) or kill them on the spot with tendrils. The info is king and having it cycle for free is pretty useful, i guess probe + fetch is only putting you to 17 and then a thoughtseize puts you to exactsies 15.

[phazonmutant]

Is this still a decent deck to bring to Indy? I'm worried about the added exposure just like everyone else, but I still think a lot of decks will try to just bring in three Surgical Extractions against it and think they have its number.

I'm toying with the sideboard but currently not running white in the deck, so all I have is a combination of Massacre, extra Thoughtseizes, Abrupt Decay, Pithing Needle and Spell Pierce. Not sure if any non-white cards would be good. Chain of Vapor seems redundant with Decay and hard to fit in after I bring in 4 Decays and 3 Spell Pierces.

Very sure white is worth it. Silence is very good against both combo decks and tempo decks. Gotta be able to play through the Pierces, Stifles, Dazes, etc. Pull from Eternity also pulls its weight as a generic anti-hate.

Don't play Pierce. Don't play Pierce. Don't play Pierce. We've talked about this, don't play Pierce. Also Chain is much better than AD against anything that's not Chalice or Counterbalance.



I may work on a doomsday(SI) board this weekend. I think it is good enough vs things you hate: rest in peace and CB. i always boarded it in with doomsday versus those slow decks and very rarely lost, even just jamming multiple doomsdays. it's pretty nice. you could maybe play a lab maniac but as it stands it is only 5 spots which is nice and compact enough to be reasonable, adding lab maniac makes things tighter.

I really do like grand abolisher and think he is a boss with 6+ actual white sources he shouldn't be too crazy to cast and he does beat down for 2.

will report back with results later in the weekend. all theory and massaging numbers in the 75. no physical playtesting, maybe after Monday I'll have some real games in.

I do like the degeneracy of the deck though and beating mild grave hate seems relatively easy.

How have probes been? i am skeptical in a deck where you want to be at 15 most of the time so you get two activations with griselbrand to 22 them( w/cthulu and gris) or kill them on the spot with tendrils. The info is king and having it cycle for free is pretty useful, i guess probe + fetch is only putting you to 17 and then a thoughtseize puts you to exactsies 15.

Cool, let us know how Doomsday works out. How does Lab Maniac help against Rest in Peace though? Grand Abortionist seems good in this matchup too.

Probes have been very, very solid. I love having the information and as insignificant as a straight-up cantrip seems, it does help the consistency a fair bit.

The difference in percentages of whiffing on drawing 21 vs. drawing 14 don't actually seem that large. I almost always kill on 14 cards, so the lifeloss isn't a huge deal. The added consistency in finding the combo is worth it to me.

[ThomasDowd]

Very sure white is worth it. Silence is very good against both combo decks and tempo decks. Gotta be able to play through the Pierces, Stifles, Dazes, etc. Pull from Eternity also pulls its weight as a generic anti-hate.

Don't play Pierce. Don't play Pierce. Don't play Pierce. We've talked about this, don't play Pierce. Also Chain is much better than AD against anything that's not Chalice or Counterbalance.




Cool, let us know how Doomsday works out. How does Lab Maniac help against Rest in Peace though? Grand Abortionist seems good in this matchup too.

Probes have been very, very solid. I love having the information and as insignificant as a straight-up cantrip seems, it does help the consistency a fair bit.

The difference in percentages of whiffing on drawing 21 vs. drawing 14 don't actually seem that large. I almost always kill on 14 cards, so the lifeloss isn't a huge deal. The added consistency in finding the combo is worth it to me.

you just cast him. maintain priority and cast a brainstorm, you build a stack that wins in like 2-3 turns with some disruption which is fine versus the control decks. it's probably pretty bad. since it costs 4+ mana.

also i meant drawing 14 before attacks so you can hit more pieces to emrakul and just kill them in the swing instead of having to tendrils them. both lines i'm sure are just as lethal.

[lordofthepit]

I may work on a doomsday(SI) board this weekend. I think it is good enough vs things you hate: rest in peace and CB. i always boarded it in with doomsday versus those slow decks and very rarely lost, even just jamming multiple doomsdays. it's pretty nice. you could maybe play a lab maniac but as it stands it is only 5 spots which is nice and compact enough to be reasonable, adding lab maniac makes things tighter.

What kind of Doomsday package would you bring in and try to create against Rest in Peace? Emrakul? It seems like RiP cuts off a lot of the good storm options.

[phazonmutant]

you just cast him. maintain priority and cast a brainstorm, you build a stack that wins in like 2-3 turns with some disruption which is fine versus the control decks. it's probably pretty bad. since it costs 4+ mana.

also i meant drawing 14 before attacks so you can hit more pieces to emrakul and just kill them in the swing instead of having to tendrils them. both lines i'm sure are just as lethal.

I think you're missing something. Even if you swing with Griselbrand, you can still kill them before they untap without casting Tendrils. As long as you can sac Children of Korlis at least twice and have Emrakul available to shuffle your graveyard into your library, you can gain infinite life and mana and then just cast Emrakul, take another turn, and attack. In my experience, you're very likely to be able to find a way to make Children with 14 cards, and once you do that, you're likely to find another way in another 14 cards, and from there it's cake.

It takes a lot longer in gametime, but that really shouldn't be an issue.

[Kryptor]

I have a question about the number of enablers (entomb).

This deck is only runs 4 entomb to get a creature in graveyard (with 2 Grizz the discard option is very rare). While testing i had often the problem that 4 entomb are not enugh and even with 4 bs and 4 ponder i am not able to find one.

I am not sure but maybe 1 - 2 burried alive or intuition helps ?

Does anyone else have this problem ?

[xfxf]

I've been goldfishing this deck and noticed that binning Griselbrand could become a problem area. This week I got paired against a TinFins player so upon countering his Entomb I went Cunning Wish into Surgical to extract his Entombs. It was a fairly easy game after that.

[Falconer]

@ Koby
I don’t think that in the Match Ups where I want Bitterblossom the Tendrils plan is the best way to win the match. Or how do you want to generate enough Mana to build up a high enough storm count if a Chalice on one counters your Dark Rituals or a Counterbalance counters all your Rituals? Actually I am happier to board out Tendrils when I bring in Bitterblossom. The Graveyard kill is easier to set up than the Storm kill with this deck. Try to land a Turn 1 Bitterblossom as you mentioned if you didn’t have a Turn 1 Griselbrand to give them something to worry about. If you just digging for your combo whether it is the Graveyard or the storm combo they will have a greater chance to dig for their answers, in the long run Sensei’s Diving Top or Jace the Mind Sculptor will trump cantrips. That’s why I did only promote making up a few slots for Bitterblossom instead going for a full transitional sideboard. If they have to fight the steady stream of attackers Bitterblossom provides and the possible Graveyard counter they have to divide their resources against different ways of attack. That provides them from overcommitting cards against one strategy and increases the danger for them that they run out of answers. Obviously this will only work if you can get your oops I win card down before they can shut it down with Counterbalance or Chalice, and it is difficult for them to remove it. I considered Phyrexian Crusader as alternative to Geist because his protection blanks Miracles Removal and Infect will prevent Lifegain from being useful. He also can be cast of a turn 1 Dark Ritual. But then I realised that Jace can bounce him into oblivion which means he is much more unlikely to get there then the alternatives which was the reason I discarded that idea.
@ catmint
With a transformational sideboard there is the question if you have enough slots to take in everything you need, don’t leave to many dead cards in and still don’t die to the same things as before. With hate hate you still have the change after you resolved it to still proceed as regulary. The challenge is only to find the real answers. And after you count counter as hate you should also count discard and Silence as hate hate and then the numbers are not as bad as you suggest.
Regarding devote sideboard slot to specific cards, obviously this should not be a general sideboard strategy but help you win the matchups you would not otherwise. I would not recommend boarding in Bitterblossom against Jund because as you said it will be trumped, against Burn it is really suicidal to bring Bitterblossom in. But against Jund and Burn I am not concerned that they protect their hate with counter which is the real problem we are discussing here. But if Miracles start to trump your Bitterblossom with creatures than something is wrong and Terminus and Supreme Verdict will only delay Bitterblossom not kill it. And if they then still have to find the answer to it and additional answers to you combo they are also running into the danger to find the wrong solutions to the answer which treats them the most at that point of time. The only challenge is to find the right hate and the right way to find it which leads me to the next topic.
@ Kryptor
Sometimes, yes. Intuition and Burried Alive was tested and slowed the Deck down too much.
@ all
I am currently pondering a list with Cunning Wish. The goal is to find the right answers to hate at the right time. It still needs to be tested but after most from you are already ahead in testing with this deck I thought it could be a good idea to share the idea for some brainstorming.
Some might ask why when it is running Cunning Wish doesn’t move an Entomb / Shallow Grave / Goryo’s Vengeance to Tutor it with Cunning Wish? Well after Intuition was to slow to set up the kill Cunning Wish for the Win Condition will be equally slow if not slower. But it will give you a toolbox to find the answer for the situation you are in. Situations that will slow you down no matter what but in this case you will find an answer.
Question to consider are, is a second green Mana producing Land needed to reliable have green Mana against Wasteland Decks for the sideboard cards? Two Cunning Wish was selected to avoid getting Wish flooded when you don’t need them, but are they enough when you need them or did this list need three?
For the sideboard, cards with more than one copy are considered to be boarded in, not necessary in the full number if you want to leave a Wish target in the board. One offs are for Wish Situations. If the numbers and cards are correct is part of the testing. The Krosan Grip was included for Leyline with Counter back up related situations. In addition it can permanently deal with a Sensei’s Diving Top because Split Second stop them from drawing a card in response.

Maindeck
1* Bayou
4* Marsh Flats
4* Polluted Delta
1* Scrubland
1* Swamp
1* Tundra
2* Underground Sea

1* Children of Korlis
1* Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
2* Griselbrand

4* Brainstorm
4* Cabal Therapy
2* Chrome Mox
2* Cunning Wish
4* Dark Ritual
4* Entomb
4* Gitaxian Probe
3* Goryo’s Vengeance
4* Lotus Petal
4* Ponder
4* Shallow Grave
1* Tendrils of Agony
2* Thoughtseize

Sideboard
3* Abrupt Decay
4* Bitterblossom
1* Hurkyl’s Recall
1* Krosan Grip
1* Pull from Eternity
2* Silence
2* Surgical Extraction
1* Tempest of Light

[Richard Cheese]

I have a question about the number of enablers (entomb).

This deck is only runs 4 entomb to get a creature in graveyard (with 2 Grizz the discard option is very rare). While testing i had often the problem that 4 entomb are not enugh and even with 4 bs and 4 ponder i am not able to find one.

I am not sure but maybe 1 - 2 burried alive or intuition helps ?

Does anyone else have this problem ?

Yeah I've had that problem since the very beginning, which is why I'm still hesitant to play less than 4 Grizzlebees.

@Falconer:
Keep us updated on C. Wish testing. It's something we briefly discussed before, but it was on the way to the airport to get out of Atlanta and I don't think it really went anywhere after that. My instinct is to say it's too slow/mana intensive for this kind of deck, but if it's providing the kind of silver-bullet answers we need, then maybe it's worth it.

Also just to update everyone, I did a little testing with Teferi's Realm and so far it's actually been pretty promising. To be fair though I haven't really run into any god hands from Countertop with it yet though.

[Koby]

Queue flying monkey theme from Wizard of Oz~

http://www.thecouncil.es/tcdecks/deck.php?id=10309

[.dk]

That Top8 is insane. Anything running silence seems like it would have killed!

Also interested to see how Cunning Wish tests out. I never tried it as I felt Intuition at 3 mana was already prohibitive when it was acting like the combo piece I usually wanted (Entomb) and I didn't have much success with Burning Wish in the past as it made anything I tried to do way too expensive.

[Remy]

Hey folks, I'm new to the Tin Fins band wagon (saw the initial primer awhile ago but just recently decided to give it another go) and I've been loving this deck.

Just to throw out an idea however, I myself am torn between the anti-hate sideboard and the transformative sideboard. I've been toying with the idea of a charbelcher sideboard. Since most of the lists are running in the 12-14 lands range, our sideboard strategy could simply be to sideboard out all the lands, and throw a charbelcher package in. Rendering all GY hate moot.

No list yet as I'm also still debating the core list (mostly what/how many cantrips/discard to MD). If I come up with something good I'll be sure post it up.

[Holden1669]

I feel like this shouldn't be a "New or Developmental" deck anymore.


Hey folks, I'm new to the Tin Fins band wagon (saw the initial primer awhile ago but just recently decided to give it another go) and I've been loving this deck.

Just to throw out an idea however, I myself am torn between the anti-hate sideboard and the transformative sideboard. I've been toying with the idea of a charbelcher sideboard. Since most of the lists are running in the 12-14 lands range, our sideboard strategy could simply be to sideboard out all the lands, and throw a charbelcher package in. Rendering all GY hate moot.

No list yet as I'm also still debating the core list (mostly what/how many cantrips/discard to MD). If I come up with something good I'll be sure post it up.

Charbelcher is all mana. Including a lot of free mana. Seems like too many cards to transform this deck into anything non-terrible.

[Herjan]

That Top8 is insane. Anything running silence seems like it would have killed!

Top8 is insane because out of 30 players almost everyone was playing combo, which was unexpected since in the past 6-7 events just a couple of people played combo.

[phazonmutant]

Queue flying monkey theme from Wizard of Oz~

http://www.thecouncil.es/tcdecks/deck.php?id=10309

Everything that I know and hold dear about deck construction was thrown out the window in that top8. Two copies of not-TinFins that seem like a slower, less compact version and 3 copies of ANT with this crazy split of 2 Ad Nauseam, 1 or 2 Burning Wish. Congrats to the pilots, but color me confused.

Looking at those Oozing decks does make me want to go back and look at Intuition again. It was always pretty sweet.

[Kar]

Oozing is discussed in another "new and developemental" Topic, ans it's indeed slower,but clearly strong though, with a fun board plan : 4-5 black 4-drops (Obliterator, desecration demon, even phyrexian vatmother).

[Azdraël]

Yea, that tournament is not relevant at all, without any offense to the Oozing topic. Wait for GP Strasbourg for maybe more TinFins!

[Holden1669]

Everything that I know and hold dear about deck construction was thrown out the window in that top8. Two copies of not-TinFins that seem like a slower, less compact version and 3 copies of ANT with this crazy split of 2 Ad Nauseam, 1 or 2 Burning Wish. Congrats to the pilots, but color me confused.

Looking at those Oozing decks does make me want to go back and look at Intuition again. It was always pretty sweet.

I could see going back to Intuition. I've had too many games recently where I'm just topdecking looking for an Entomb. I've been trying @Koby's list from Vegas and I really like Gitaxian Probe, Silence, and not having to run Gemstone mine but I miss having more Griselbrands to discard. Intuition in place of the maindeck Silence might work just as well.

Played online some yesterday and G1 against Esper Stoneblade he countered an Entomb. I was digging for another when he played Jace and started fatesealing me. I Thoughtseized him, took Snapcaster, then Reanimated Snapcaster to flashback the Entomb, Dark Ritual, Shallow Grave, game. Fun times.

[Richard Cheese]

I've been pretty happy with Koby's list, but I'm running -2 Probe, +2 Grizzle. I haven't felt like probe made a huge difference other than occasionally making Therapy better, but not really anything in terms of speed or consistency. It could reasonably be Careful Study for the extra dig, but I also haven't felt like that was very necessary with 4 Griz + 7 discard.

[ManyCookies]

So a rather basic and silly question, but how do I sideboard with this deck? As in given that I recognize a common threat (counterspells, probably gy hate etc.), what do I take out for what?

[baghdadbob]

Soooooooo... established atleast?

[Raystar]

I watched the SCG Indy coverage yesterday and Tin Fins was mentioned often but not highlighted as present in the tournament...do you guys know if anybody was playing it? If there were Tin Fins there, can we get some form of report?

[Finntrinsic]

I watched the SCG Indy coverage yesterday and Tin Fins was mentioned often but not highlighted as present in the tournament...do you guys know if anybody was playing it? If there were Tin Fins there, can we get some form of report?

I played Fins in Indy. Went 5-4 on the day Wins: Sneak & Show x3, Elves, Merfolk. Lost to Sneak & Show, Maverick (It still hurts), Walking Dead, and RUG Delver.

Got back to Madison WI at like 3 in the AM and am currently sending this out (on the downlow) from the office. Will post my list and some highlight from the event later today.

Overall theme from SCG Indy Legacy "Wow! Look at all the Combo."

-Finn

[dropsaway]

http://i.imgur.com/l0iaSfQ.jpg



Death Wish could be an alternative to the main deck against hate??? could help in the search for an answer in sideboarding, the children quickly pick up or yet another way to win the game by making a empty the warrens ...

[Koby]

Versatile tutors are sweet, but at 3 mana and half your life, the costs are too steep. I would consider this at 2 mana.

[dropsaway]

Versatile tutors are sweet, but at 3 mana and half your life, the costs are too steep. I would consider this at 2 mana.

playing with dark rituals, chrome mox, lotus petal ... etc. .. you still find difficult to fit this tutor.That deck is fast, no doubt about that, but as his performance grows, the hate for this deck also increases and that tutor can be a good outlet for other ways to win the game or get an answer to win. Anyway just testing it to see the potential of this card

[Ozymandias]

I've been having a lot of fun with the following transformational sideboards, just using Caleb Durward's stock list.

Beatdown/Discard SB:
4 Bitterblossom
4 Umezawa's Jitte
4 Dark Confidant
3 Snapcaster Mage

Snapcaster could be something better, but a lot of decks are ill-prepared to handle a stream of faeries, or Confidant's CA. Jitte makes everything a real threat. You cut all of the Goryo's, all of the fatties, entombs, and 2 shallow grave. I could see running Phyrexian Negator if you had Texas-sized balls.

I also like this sideboard

Storm Combo
4 Cabal Ritual
4 Lion's Eye Diamond
4 Infernal Tutor
1 Ad Nauseam
1 Ill-Gotten Gains
1 Chain of Vapor

This sideboard looks like it would work even better for Jacob Kory's list from Vegas. You cut mostly the same cards above, after which your deck looks like only slightly goofy Storm. Good versus GY hate, not great versus counterbalance.

[Azdraël]

playing with dark rituals, chrome mox, lotus petal ... etc. .. you still find difficult to fit this tutor.That deck is fast, no doubt about that, but as his performance grows, the hate for this deck also increases and that tutor can be a good outlet for other ways to win the game or get an answer to win. Anyway just testing it to see the potential of this card

We do not use Cunning Wish or Intuition a lot so far, that's not to play the same stuff which would eat up half your life and waste CoK's purpose.

[Tormod]

I played Koby's list at a 71 person Legacy event on Saturday.

Match 1 vs helm
Game 1: (I'm on the draw) turn 2 Rest in Peace, loss
Game 2: I turn 2 Grissy and Emmy, win
Game 3: turn 1 Graft diggers cage, loss
1-2

Match 2 vs Show and Tell (0-1)
Game 1: I turn 2, opponent scoops, win
Game 2: Opponent has Leyline of Santity, we battle, I cast discard (targetting self) and bin effects, my opponent responds with counter magic. Opponent casts Show and Tell, we both reveal Gris, legend rule. I untap, goryo's vengeance my Griselbrand into play, entomb for Emrakrul shallow grave, Swing for 22, win
2-0

Match 3 vs RUG Delver (1-1)
Game 1: I mull to 5 and Delver gets there, loss
Game 2: Turn 3 I play silence and combo out, win
Game 3: Oppont mulls to 5, I combo out turn 2, win
2-1

Match 4 vs RUG Delver (2-1)
Game 1: I dig and can't get a gris into the bin through counter magic, I die to delver with 5 reanimation spells in hand, loss
Game 2: I ponder, he plays graft digger's cage. I can't find my outs and Delver gets there, loss
0-2

Match 5 vs RUG Delver (2-2)
Game 1: I combo off dark ritual after a game of mana denial, win
Game 2: I lose to surgical extraction, and I don't find a pull from eternity, Delver gets there, loss
Game 3: Mana denial, I lose to surgical, Delver gets there, loss
2-1

2-3, I drop.

Tournament notes:
-graft diggers cage is pretty good, I want a back up plan like sb show and tell.
-Silence is very good, and could be used proactively to keep threats from being cast to buy time while digging.
-Considering Annul because it hits graft diggers cage and rest in peace
-Cabal Therapy should be used aggressively to find surgical extraction/hate post board.
-I found I won more games with Gitaxian Probe in the deck, than sided out.
-Rug is a tough match up, Pull from eternity should be 3 cards minimum.
-Helm is a very tough match up. Mulling is especially important here.
-I think ground seal in theory looks like better tech than pull from eternity, will need to test
-abrupt decay looks better than echoing turn right now, i think leyline of the void is not seeing much play.

[dropsaway]

We do not use Cunning Wish or Intuition a lot so far, that's not to play the same stuff which would eat up half your life and waste CoK's purpose.

After draw 14 cards with griselbrand halves of losing hit points would be tragic? to get a good answer to win the game? but understand that this card would only be a silver bullet.
Anyway, Keep playing and we play against hates.

[Azdraël]

I played Koby's list at a 71 person Legacy event on Saturday.


Match 2 vs Show and Tell (0-1)
Game 1: I turn 2, opponent scoops, win
Game 2: Opponent has Leyline of Santity, we battle with discard and counter magic.

seems like something got weird there lol?



After draw 14 cards with griselbrand halves of losing hit points would be tragic? to get a good answer to win the game? but understand that this card would only be a silver bullet.
Anyway, Keep playing and we play against hates.

The things is, I like my silver bullets to be effective as much before comboing than after drawing 14. To that regard, loosing life before comboing is not worth it at all. In addition, casting a ccm=3 after comboing means casting it at the expense of LP/Mox and DR. At that state of the game, Entomb + reanimate effects do the same, but those cards are actually essential before comboing as well.
Hope you see my point.

In any case,thx for contributing to try to solve the hate problems or the efficiency/consistancy of the pack.

[.dk]

I really don't think this deck can support any of the Wish variants when not running Lion's Eye Diamond. The additional mana required is just backbreaking.

Also - I disagree that Ground Seal is a better sideboard option than Pull from Eternity. Especially if we're already running white, we don't need to splash for another color to cast spells (same reason I'm not a huge fan of Abrupt Decay). Furthermore, Ground Seal shuts off Goryo's Vengeance and Reanimate, leaving you with only Shallow Grave to combo off with. I don't think that's enough, personally.

Looking forward to the SCG Indy report, btw! Also, we need to finish the primer before we can hit Established...

[Tormod]

seems like something got weird there lol?


lol, yah that doesn't make any sense at all.

I think I had discard, and i was using it to get a gris into the bin, and he kept countering my bin effects.
thanks for catching it, my bad.

[kihachi]

O gawd. Well, I just posted a super-long report and then lost it, so if anyone knows where to find posts that were supposedly "Saving" as I typed, let me know. Long story short, I went 6-2-1 at SCG with the deck and got 33rd. It was a blast. My list had no white, 4 Griz, 8 Discard spells, 0 Probes, 2 Reanimates. I think that about sums it up. Oh, the sideboard was 4 SnT, 4 Abrupt Decay, 4 Pithing Needle, 3 Surgical Extraction. I never used the Needles, never used the Extractions, though maybe I could've in some matchups, used the Decays a few times but only used all four against Helm, and used all four Show and Tells constantly.

EDIT: Found it!

I played TinFins at Indy and went 6-2-1. Took bad notes and have bad memory, but here goes:

Round 1 - RIP/Helm: Rest in peace indeed. I end up drawing here, which is not bad for what on paper obviously looks like our worst matchup. Game one he searches for and plays RIP. I don't remember if I'd attempted to combo off before it but regardless, I'm one turn away from hardcasting Griselbrand when he savagely peels Helm off the top for the win. Because magic is a game of skill.

Game two I think I attempt to go off turn one and my reanimation is countered; turn two I peel another one and go off. Because magic is a game of skill. Game three I punt away. I cast Reanimate on Griselbrand and have to wait til next turn to combo off. He has Counterbalance out so when I cast Reanimate into it I see a Force on top. He draws the Force and passes. I swing, then draw 14. I have an Abrupt Decay and a Thoughtseize in hand. I try Thoughtseize for the Force and he flips Brainstorm off Counterbalance. If I Decay that first I probably win. It ends when I can't finish him, he Swords's my Griz on his turn, and we go to turns. In turns I attempt to Show and Tell a Griselbrand and he blind flips (off a new Counterbalance; I obviously Decay'd the other one) a random Entreat. FML. I wouldn't have been able to win but maybe could have convinced him to scoop with Griz in play. Instead we draw. I'm feeling good after almost getting there in the worst MU.

Round 2 - Jund: Game one he goes first, I go off my turn one; he scoops on seeing Griz (not a terrible move in the draw bracket I guess). Game two I mull to 5 (I mull a lot that day as a whole. I won't always mention it. Welcome to playing a 13 land deck). He gets two Shaman going active and my mull is bad so I have no chance. He tells me after the match that he had a Mindbreak Trap in hand and would've hardcast it with the Shamans if need be. Game three I cast Reanimate on Griz turn one and he scoops.

Round 3 - U/R Delver: For budgetary reasons, he has only one Force of Will in the deck. I win the first game easily as all I see from him is a Mountain and a Goblin Guide. Game two he comes out with double Relic, but at one point casts a Delver with only two lands in play. My turn I play a reanimation spell, he cracks a Relic in response, I cast my second reanimation spell in response, and he loses because he cast that Delver. We play a third as well and he keeps all burn in hopes of putting me too low to go off; I make him discard a Bolt turn 1 and go off turn 2.

Round 4 - BUG?: This is the only match where my memory completely fails me. My notes say that I won game one and game three, and that at one point his hand had a Flusterstorm, Force, and four land in it including a Creeping Tar Pit. I do remember that game (game three) taking the Force and using a Dark Ritual to pay for Flusterstorm. That involved a little math and I was very proud of myself, haha.

Round 5 - Maverick: Game one he goes first, GSZ for Dryad Arbor. I cast one of two Thoughtseizes in hand and see Thalia, Teeg, Mom, Jitte, Fauna Shaman. At first I think I audibly say "oh crap" but he apparently does not pick up on this, so I take Thalia as the less obvious of the two hate cards. Second turn he rips Hierarch and plays Hierarch and Mom. Turn two I Thoughtseize Teeg away. He probably knows he's screwed since I took the anti-combo card and not, like, Jitte, so turn three he swings for two with exalted Arbor in a last-ditch attempt to do some damage, but I go off unhampered on my turn three. Game two he goes first, accelerates mana with something, I go, nothing too relevant, he goes turn two Knight (guess he didn't want to mull to hate), I go Reanimate on Griselbrand, eventually I draw 7, swing, draw 7, go up to 26 with Children and combo out.

Round 6 - Esper Stoneblade: There's about two hours between that match and my next one and I'm only slightly exaggerating. Not to blame this for my loss here; my opponent Bernie is a hell of a magic player and I hope to be half as good someday. He also is playing a deck that can attack me with discard and counters, and his deck is full of foils and black bordered foreign duals. OK, enough about that. Game one it looks like I start with a Thoughtseize and go off turn two. My Thoughtseize took a Spell Pierce and that was his only protection. Game two I Thoughtseize him and see two Forces, Jace, Stoneforge, Wasteland, Snapcaster. I don't remember what happens but I'm unable to fight through all of that after probably taking a Force. He beats me down with Batterskull and Stoneforge. Game three I keep a terrible seven with Chrome Mox as my only mana, no blue cards, and an Entomb. I don't remember if i even had a reanimation spell, but I didn't have the mana to play it or the cards to dig for it, or the blue to play those cards if I'd drawn them. I Thoughtseize him after he plays his Stoneforge but he counters it and is able to get the Batterskull down again, if I remember correctly. He also Cliques me and my hand is so bad he lets me keep it. I probably lost this matchup due to a combination of being outplayed, him having the answers, and keeping bad hands.

Round 7 - Esper Stoneblade: Finally I'm feeling the pain of being in the draw bracket. This one was more of a tilt/misplay loss, at least game one. He basically hits me with a Thoughtseize turn one, counters all of what I want to do, and I finally resolve a Reanimate on Griz but he plays Jace and bounces it. I could've potentially grinded it out; probably would've lost it anyway but going from 15 to 7 at my own hand didn't help. Worst part is I knew he had the Jace, and I may have even knew he had the land. I also got so lazy/tilty that I stopped writing down what he had off my Thoughtseizes, clearly willing to throw away this great record I was lucky to have. Aaaaaaanyway, then there was game two, and this happened:

http://i.imgur.com/PkhcrjQ.jpg

Because I'm an idiot. So of course my kind friend Doug would like me to take a moment to remind you:

http://i.imgur.com/OWbtI7Z.png

I also lost game two, unsurprisingly, mostly from getting my cantrips countered, and having my Show and Tells and Griselbrands Extracted.

Round 8 - Sneak Attack: After that match I decided I wasn't losing another one, at least not to myself. Game one I attempt a Thoughtseize and he Dazes it, and I go off without seeing anything more from him. Game two is more of the same; he Brainstorms in response to my Thoughtseize, then Dazes it, then I go off next turn. I'm not sure what he had or if that line made any sense, or if he was protecting his pieces, but he's so much slower than me that I think he should just try to counter me and then go off.

Round 9 - Sneak Attack: After that less stress-free match, I'm pretty psyched to see another Volcanic Island come down. Game one I start with fetchland, Dark Ritual, Entomb. He counters it. I cast a second Entomb. It resolves. I cast Reanimate targeting Griselbrand. Yeah, it was pretty dumb luck, but after this long day I'll take it. I try to go off but end up just winning off Griselbrand attacks. Game two is pretty funny, at least from my perspective. My hand is two land, Dark Rit, Entomb, three reanimation effects. I attempt a turn one Ritual, to which he says "I'm not falling for this again" and counters it. I'm pretty sure countering Entomb is always correct unless you have graveyard hate in hand or on board, BUT he tried that last game and it didn't work so this time he counters the Rit. I wait a turn, peel a Petal and go off on my turn two. AND, for the grand finale, and for the first time today, I go through the whole deck a few times and hardcast Emrakul. Because Emrakul.

Sorry for that wall of text, folks, but there's my SCG experience in a nutshell with the deck. I had a ton of fun and felt like it had game against anything, though obviously my kryptonite is good magic players piloting Stoneblade. Would be glad to get feedback, answer questions, etc.

Props:

St. Elmo's forever and always
Doug, for those great pictures as well as selling me many cards for the deck, and loaning me 4x Show and Tell
Marriott Hotel, for cleaning up that room

Slops:

Staying up til 4:30am Saturday night for no reason
No practice
Being 33rd on tiebreakers. Specifically, being the one out of twelve people with my record that was not in the top 32. D:

[phazonmutant]

Nice report, kihachi, congrats on placing in the money!

How do you feel about your list moving forward? Any need to remove S&T or add Silence?

[civet five]

For the transformational sideboard plan, has anyone considered LotV/Helm? They'll never see it coming, and turns their sideboarded hate into dead cards at worst and helpful at best.

Something like:
4 Leyline of the Void
4 Helm of Obedience
4 Spoils of the Vault
2 Rest in Peace
1 Duress/Thoughtseize/IoK

[phazonmutant]

For the transformational sideboard plan, has anyone considered LotV/Helm? They'll never see it coming, and turns their sideboarded hate into dead cards at worst and helpful at best.

Something like:
4 Leyline of the Void
4 Helm of Obedience
4 Spoils of the Vault
2 Rest in Peace
1 Duress/Thoughtseize/IoK

Yes, we've considered it. As exciting as it sounds, it's a 9 mana. 2 card combo against everyone except for Miracles with no sideboard cards for every other matchup.

[cogitoergosum]

How do you guys feel about bitter ordeal as a SB card? It might be interesting anti-hate tech. My initial thoughts are that it will be too slow, but I think it merits some testing. Taking RIP out of a miracles deck sounds like a solid way to shore up that match up, and due o the gravestorm, flusterstorm and mindbrek trap are the only cars that effectively counter it.

But now that I think about it, open game 2 with fetchland, dark rit, bitter ordeal-remove the 3 hate cards your opponent put in his deck. Sounds interesting.

[phazonmutant]

How do you guys feel about bitter ordeal as a SB card? It might be interesting anti-hate tech. My initial thoughts are that it will be too slow, but I think it merits some testing. Taking RIP out of a miracles deck sounds like a solid way to shore up that match up, and due o the gravestorm, flusterstorm and mindbrek trap are the only cars that effectively counter it.

But now that I think about it, open game 2 with fetchland, dark rit, bitter ordeal-remove the 3 hate cards your opponent put in his deck. Sounds interesting.

The biggest problem with Cap effects (besides costing a million mana) is that they don't deal with hate that they've drawn before you Cap them. We care about enough varieties of cards that Cranial Extraction effects are bad too (again, besides costing a million mana).

[Darkenslight]

How do you guys feel about bitter ordeal as a SB card? It might be interesting anti-hate tech. My initial thoughts are that it will be too slow, but I think it merits some testing. Taking RIP out of a miracles deck sounds like a solid way to shore up that match up, and due o the gravestorm, flusterstorm and mindbrek trap are the only cars that effectively counter it.

But now that I think about it, open game 2 with fetchland, dark rit, bitter ordeal-remove the 3 hate cards your opponent put in his deck. Sounds interesting.

The problem with that is that you're still reliant on the graveyard, as Gravestorm cares about permanents, not cards. Definitely useful mid-combo, to Extract hate form your opponent's deck.

[Koby]

If Cap'ing is the goal, then Sadistic Sacrament is the way to go; it plays perfectly off a Ritual.

EDIT: I doubt that Capping is the way to go.

[Freggle]

I had this thought the other day, and I thought I would bring it up for discussion.

Tin Fins is a 2 card in hand 3 mana combo. Flash / Hulk (what some to believe the best deck in Legacy ever) was a 2 card in hand 2 mana combo deck.

Tin Fins currently has 21 combo pieces including the discard whereas the most successful versions of Flash Hulk builds had 16 combo pieces surrounded with enablers namely Mystical Tutor. Reference (http://www.mtgtop8.com/event?e=387&d=206744) & Reference (http://www.mtgtop8.com/event?e=387&d=206750)

Is it possible there could be a build of Tin Fins that adopt a similar plan? Something like:


Combo Suite (17)
2 Griselbrand
1 Emrakul, The Aeons Torn
1 Children of Korlis
1 Tendrils of Agony
4 Entomb
4 Shallow Grave
4 Dark Ritual

Cantrips / Filter (12)
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
4 Lim-Dul's Vault

Disruption Suite (15)
4 Force of Will
4 Daze
4 Gitaxian Probe or Thoughtseize
3 Cabal Therapy


Mana (16)
4 Marsh Flats
4 Polluted Delta
1 Swamp
1 Scrubland
2 Underground Sea
4 Lotus Petal



This build gives you "answers" to common hate in the form of aggressive free tempo based counters. (the only thing this will not stop is Leyline of the Void.) Since Mystical Tutor is now banned this list looks to it slightly less powered Lim-Dul's Vault Lim-Dul's Vault effectively gives you Entomb or Shallow Grave 5-8. Lim-Dul's Vault will also allow for a toolbox sideboard. Is there any merit in perusing a deck like that?

I know it has been said here a few times that the deck should be more proactive as opposed to reactive, but I can't help from seeing some parallels to former powerhouse.

[Koby]

I had this thought the other day, and I thought I would bring it up for discussion.

Tin Fins is a 2 card in hand 3 mana combo. Flash / Hulk (what some to believe the best deck in Legacy ever) was a 2 card in hand 2 mana combo deck.

Tin Fins currently has 21 combo pieces including the discard whereas the most successful versions of Flash Hulk builds had 16 combo pieces surrounded with enablers namely Mystical Tutor. Reference (http://www.mtgtop8.com/event?e=387&d=206744) & Reference (http://www.mtgtop8.com/event?e=387&d=206750)

Is it possible there could be a build of Tin Fins that adopt a similar plan? Something like:

<snip>

Lim-Dul's Vault will also allow for a toolbox sideboard. Is there any merit in perusing a deck like that?

I know it has been said here a few times that the deck should be more proactive as opposed to reactive, but I can't help from seeing some parallels to former powerhouse.

This is a very interesting build. I'm actually excited to see this, and built it, and play it. I suspect that the Lim-dul's Vault might be 1 too many, and in place go for Goryo's Vengeance to make the combo phase a little more smooth. It will be determined through playtesting.

The idea of playing this list with Force of Will gets me hot & bothered. Totally dig it!

[pippo84]

I had this thought the other day, and I thought I would bring it up for discussion.

Tin Fins is a 2 card in hand 3 mana combo. Flash / Hulk (what some to believe the best deck in Legacy ever) was a 2 card in hand 2 mana combo deck.

Tin Fins currently has 21 combo pieces including the discard whereas the most successful versions of Flash Hulk builds had 16 combo pieces surrounded with enablers namely Mystical Tutor. Reference (http://www.mtgtop8.com/event?e=387&d=206744) & Reference (http://www.mtgtop8.com/event?e=387&d=206750)

Is it possible there could be a build of Tin Fins that adopt a similar plan? Something like:


Combo Suite (17)
2 Griselbrand
1 Emrakul, The Aeons Torn
1 Children of Korlis
1 Tendrils of Agony
4 Entomb
4 Shallow Grave
4 Dark Ritual

Cantrips / Filter (12)
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
4 Lim-Dul's Vault

Disruption Suite (15)
4 Force of Will
4 Daze
4 Gitaxian Probe or Thoughtseize
3 Cabal Therapy


Mana (16)
4 Marsh Flats
4 Polluted Delta
1 Swamp
1 Scrubland
2 Underground Sea
4 Lotus Petal



This build gives you "answers" to common hate in the form of aggressive free tempo based counters. (the only thing this will not stop is Leyline of the Void.) Since Mystical Tutor is now banned this list looks to it slightly less powered Lim-Dul's Vault Lim-Dul's Vault effectively gives you Entomb or Shallow Grave 5-8. Lim-Dul's Vault will also allow for a toolbox sideboard. Is there any merit in perusing a deck like that?

I know it has been said here a few times that the deck should be more proactive as opposed to reactive, but I can't help from seeing some parallels to former powerhouse.


Well, the main deck you proposed has the same shell as the one I played something like 2 years ago (Ooze Combo).
I'll write it down just for comparison even though the combo is different.

1 Necrotic Ooze
1 Triskelion
1 Phyrexian Devourer
1 Aquamoeba
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
4 Lim Dul's Vault
2 Personal Tutor
4 Force of Will
4 Thoughtseize
4 Buried Alive
4 Reanimate
2 Shallow Grave
4 Dark Ritual
4 Lotus Petal

4 Underground Sea
2 Island
2 Swamp
1 City of Traitors
4 Polluted Delta
2 Flooded Strand
1 Bloodstained Mire

As you see the search part is the same: ponders, brainstorms, lim Dul's vault all help to find the missing combo piece.
I think this is a viable option changing the combo cards:
Buried Alive -> Entomb
4 Ooze Pieces -> 2 Griselbrand, Emrakul, Children
Personal Tutor -> Probe

And so on..

Unfortunately I still haven't had a chance to test this changed list, but I will. I just began playing Tin Fins so I still have to see what I like and what I dislike from the "standard" list (Kobe's).

Anyways I think that the deck has potential, even though I feel it will mulligan a lot..

[phazonmutant]

I had this thought the other day, and I thought I would bring it up for discussion.

Tin Fins is a 2 card in hand 3 mana combo. Flash / Hulk (what some to believe the best deck in Legacy ever) was a 2 card in hand 2 mana combo deck.

Tin Fins currently has 21 combo pieces including the discard whereas the most successful versions of Flash Hulk builds had 16 combo pieces surrounded with enablers namely Mystical Tutor. Reference (http://www.mtgtop8.com/event?e=387&d=206744) & Reference (http://www.mtgtop8.com/event?e=387&d=206750)
...
This build gives you "answers" to common hate in the form of aggressive free tempo based counters. (the only thing this will not stop is Leyline of the Void.) Since Mystical Tutor is now banned this list looks to it slightly less powered Lim-Dul's Vault Lim-Dul's Vault effectively gives you Entomb or Shallow Grave 5-8. Lim-Dul's Vault will also allow for a toolbox sideboard. Is there any merit in perusing a deck like that?

I know it has been said here a few times that the deck should be more proactive as opposed to reactive, but I can't help from seeing some parallels to former powerhouse.

Wow. This list is awesome! I want to go out and try it... Great connection!
On first glance I'd want to shave a Daze, an LDV, and a Therapy for 2 Thoughtseize and a land, but that's just theorycrafting. Getting 1-2 Goryo's Vengeance in there seems like would be good too. The only way to find out is data! *scurries off to test*

[Falconer]

I also like Freggles Idea. With the 12 Cantrip and 2 Griselbrand Version and the 10 Cantrip and 4 Griselbrand Version I chained up to 6 Cantrip in one game and still did not find an Entomb or a Griselbrand + discard. As a result I also was wondering if we can find a Tutor for this deck. After Alliances was way before my time I didn’t considered Lim-Dûl’s Vault but I was considering Spoils of the Vault. Lim-Dûl’s Vault seems to have greater chances to archive what is needed. The only thing which I didn’t like about Freggles List on paper is the low amount of Mana Sources. It has 12 Lands + 4 Dark Ritual + 4 Lotus Petal compared to 14 Lands + 4 Dark Ritual + 4 Lotus Petal + 2 Chrome Mox of regular TinFin builds. Even with 14 lands I had a bunch of no land hands and even with 4 Lotus Petal and 2 Chrome Mox the most common way to lose after having a Griselbrand in play involved not finding Artifact Mana in up to 21 cards. Both problems only seem to increase with Freggles list.

Another Idea I am pondering, is if we need another back up plan then Tendrils. It doesn’t matter if the attack kill or the storm kill both kills require a previous Griselbrand in play. If we have a backup plan is it not better if this plan can also work if we don’t get Griselbrand into play but complement the Griselbrand plan if we get Griselbrand into play? Tendrils can complement Griselbrand well in this Deck but it can’t work without Griselbrand in this deck. However so far I have no Idea what this could be. Did anyone else thought about that topic?

I was playing two Grand Prix Trials with Tin Fins this weekend and for a couple of reasons I wasn’t doing very well. I discovered a few things here. The MUD Match Ups is nearly as bad as the RIP Miracle Match Up especially on the draw. How great you had a turn 1 Chalice of the Void, I have Entomb, Dark Ritual, 1 Mana Discard, 1 Mana Cantrips to dig for my reanimation spell and a Land *gg*. A Trinitysphere, my three Mana Dark Ritual is really a nice acceleration. Against other fast combo Decks like Storm you really should have Silence in the opening Hand or win the die roll or you lose knowing that the turn after they killed you, you could have killed them. After nearly everyone was playing combo to defeat Jund, this happened quit often. Especially during the larger one of both events I was just questing myself why I did not played RIP Miracles in this metagame. If other had the same Idea I think you can imagine what that will mean for TinFins in the near future. Especially after two wins from RIP Miracles in the last two SGC Open seem to support the idea that right now the right time for RIP Miracles has come. At least until everyone jumps onto the RIP Miracles Bandwagon and as a result give the Anti-Miracle Decks the chance to come back with a vengeance.

[kihachi]

Nice report, kihachi, congrats on placing in the money!

How do you feel about your list moving forward? Any need to remove S&T or add Silence?

Thanks!

I figured that the lack of Silence and existence of S&T and Decay would be questioned. I don't think Silence would be bad as a 1-2 of, but I wouldn't know what to cut. Don't want to cut a discard spell, as they are protection and potential combo pieces. I could cut what I normally cut to sideboard, which is a Children (bad grammar ftw) and a Chrome Mox, but those both add consistency to the maindeck. On the plus, it would open up Pull from Eternity in the board, but wouldn't allow Abrupt Decay, which I think shores up one of our worst matchups and one that will probably become more prevalent now with two straight SCG wins.

I also loved Show and Tell. It's a great compromise between a transformative sideboard and one with answers. I've also been thinking about Cabal Ritual to go with it in the board to up the off-chance of hardcasting Griz as another way around graveyard hate. S&T is great though because people will just keep hands with graveyard hate and nothing else against you.

As far as the Hulk-Flash inspired version of the deck, I don't know if it'll be that good without Mystical Tutor, but it's probably worth a shot. At the point where you have to cast clunky cards like Lim-Dul's Vault or Spoils of the Vault, it probably isn't better than the original deck (though I definitely could be wrong).

Lim Dul might be an interesting card in its own right, as it offers deep digging for little life loss, but the price of two mana might just be too d*mn high. Spoils looks like it's going to just do too much damage in many cases. When I was testing 4 Probes and 2 Thoughtseizes I honestly had a hard time goldfishing sometimes because of life loss. Granted, not often, but add in the fact that your opponent might slow you down and/or damage you, and its worrisome.

[Freggle]

After some minmal testing and modification of the list I posted earlier today I can say that Lim-Duls Vault does show quite a bit of potential. The initial conceptual list was too mana light as many suspected.

Here is a list that seems pretty wicked (I'm sure it is not optimal):

Combo Stuff
4 Shallow Grave
2 Griselbrand
2 Children of Korlis
4 Entomb
4 Dark Ritual
1 Laboratory Maniac
1 Show and Tell

Search Stuff
4 Lim-Dûl's Vault
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder

Disruption
3 Cabal Therapy
4 Force of Will
3 Daze

Mana
4 Marsh Flats
4 Polluted Delta
1 Swamp
4 Underground Sea
4 Lotus Petal
2 Verdant Catacombs
1 Chrome Mox

I cut the probes because they no longer seem needed, and it makes keeps harder to gauge (though I love the card and the information it provides.)

I tested dropping Emrakul & adding Laboratory Maniac based off of comments in here by Bobmans. I liked that it is an instant speed win, doesn't give a crap about what your opponent is doing and it is a hedge against a helm kill on it's own. With a grip of FOW's it is unlikely it will get removed when comboing & it saves a slot since we do not have to loop.

The single Show and Tell is mained as a hedge against G1 yard hate (because why not). With Vault it is surprisingly not too hard to assemble Grizzy / S&T in hand. Could / should just be a Chain of Vapor I guess, but it was fun.

Second Children is in there to ensure we deck ourselves.

I'm not sure if the cuts I did for mana are correct but this list functions perfectly fine. It can currently play through a lot of hate main, but I'd like to squeeze more targeted discard in there to make playing againt it much tougher. ...do you play around Daze? ...or do you play around discard?

[ThomasDowd]

the last two pages of this thread are getting real good. thought about trying to fit in Force the other day but couldn't figure out how to up the blue count. also you need a very good reason to run it over discard since discard is both an enabler and disruption which is huge, being able to do multiple things makes the cards very very good for you.

I played a list at the weekly last night went 0-2 drop playing against fish both rounds. hands were too slow( i probably kept some real stinkers) felt the pressure of wasteland. also running off of 3 hours of sleep, a full day of work and having not touched a magic card for 3 weeks and never playing tinfins before made it a poor outing.

after my first two rounds and then some games against rug before i came home to get more familiar. i changed some things today from how it felt yesterday. the doomsday board was never used and ultimately probably too cute and too many spots. I like having a third griselbrand as i was stuck often enough drawing to only entomb or fatty (7ish outs), and i wanted another discard outlet. I could even see maybe going 2/2 on study/probe.

still have no idea what the hell to do with the board.

2 Children of Korlis
1 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
3 Griselbrand

4 Brainstorm
4 Cabal Therapy
1 Careful Study
2 Chrome Mox
4 Dark Ritual
4 Entomb
3 Gitaxian Probe
3 Goryo's Vengeance
4 Lotus Petal
4 Ponder
4 Shallow Grave
1 Tendrils of Agony
3 Thoughtseize

4 Marsh Flats
4 Polluted Delta
1 Tundra
1 Swamp
3 Underground Sea

Sideboard:
6 ?
2 Chain of Vapor
1 Echoing Truth
2 Pull from Eternity
2 Silence
2 Surgical Extraction

i do like some of the board options up for discussion , but i hate the storm variant running off of IGG, since they are bringing in grave hate anyway.

[kihachi]

ThomasDowd - what about... -3 Probe, +1 Careful Study, +1 Griselbrand, +1 Thoughtseize?

I don't necessarily hate Probe but I think this increases the likelihood of drawing and binning a Griselbrand as an Entomb alternative. My exact list is pretty much your deck with those changes, but Reanimates instead of Studies. You could argue easily that the first half of the combo needs more help than the second half, and go with Careful Studies on that logic.

As for the sideboard I'm sure I'm in the minority here but as I explained above I really liked having 4 S&Ts to board in to, and I did it against pretty much every deck aside from Sneak and Show.

[Dark Ritual]

Almost zero reason to run force of will over unmask over countering e tutor/brainstorm -> rest in peace or other hate permanents landing before we can discard them. Our black count is quite high. Unmask also functions as a free discard outlet for our griselbrand, allowing us to turn 1 ponder into turn 2 unmask ourselves into shallow grave/vengeance without requiring any fast mana like moxen, petals, or dark rit's.

Spoils of the vault is the nut low in here. Hitting ourselves for 15 to find entomb to get griselbrand just invalidates our strategy of winning with griselbrand. There's also the awkward stuff that might happen when exiling cards like exiling tendrils of agony or emrakul or something.

Not really a fan of lab maniac over tendrils of agony. Having to loop your deck to cast emrakul isn't really an issue, as that's pure showboating unless something happened to tendrils that makes it so you can't cast tendrils. After drawing your deck one time your storm count is generally over 15 with ease, as you dark rit 4 times, mox twice, and petal 4 times and that's 10 storm before looking at gitaxian probe, duress just because, shallow grave, reanimate, children of korlis, etc. etc. Killing the opponent is trivial once you draw your entire deck. As for plow or something on maniac, you just drew your deck. You can cabal therapy their StP's away with ease, same with abrupt decays and company. Same with thoughtseize or just resolving silence. We're trying to make the deck more consistent in putting griselbrand in the yard, everything after that is simply elementary.

I like the LDV idea, interested to hear how it pans out.

EDIT: Yeah, I was wondering when this would hit established. Deck is gaining ground and decks do not simply get 2nd at an SCG Open.

[Richard Cheese]

Ok, there's still some formatting to be done, and new ideas are coming in so fast it will probably be outdated by next week, but the new primer is up in the first post. Established, here we come!

[Raystar]

Almost zero reason to run force of will over unmask over countering e tutor/brainstorm -> rest in peace or other hate permanents landing before we can discard them. Our black count is quite high. Unmask also functions as a free discard outlet for our griselbrand, allowing us to turn 1 ponder into turn 2 unmask ourselves into shallow grave/vengeance without requiring any fast mana like moxen, petals, or dark rit's.

Spoils of the vault is the nut low in here. Hitting ourselves for 15 to find entomb to get griselbrand just invalidates our strategy of winning with griselbrand. There's also the awkward stuff that might happen when exiling cards like exiling tendrils of agony or emrakul or something.

Not really a fan of lab maniac over tendrils of agony. Having to loop your deck to cast emrakul isn't really an issue, as that's pure showboating unless something happened to tendrils that makes it so you can't cast tendrils. After drawing your deck one time your storm count is generally over 15 with ease, as you dark rit 4 times, mox twice, and petal 4 times and that's 10 storm before looking at gitaxian probe, duress just because, shallow grave, reanimate, children of korlis, etc. etc. Killing the opponent is trivial once you draw your entire deck. As for plow or something on maniac, you just drew your deck. You can cabal therapy their StP's away with ease, same with abrupt decays and company. Same with thoughtseize or just resolving silence. We're trying to make the deck more consistent in putting griselbrand in the yard, everything after that is simply elementary.

I like the LDV idea, interested to hear how it pans out.

EDIT: Yeah, I was wondering when this would hit established. Deck is gaining ground and decks do not simply get 2nd at an SCG Open.

I believe Unmask exiles the card...it would be a bit overpowered otherwise...

[Lemnear]

I believe Unmask exiles the card...it would be a bit overpowered otherwise...

Read what he wrote. You Target yourself with Unmask to discard Griselbrand. There is nothing about Griselbrand being the pitched spell and binned doing so

[catmint]

If you play with more cantrips and tutors you loose the decks biggest strength: speed but gain more protection (force/daze). A normal tradeoff.

Remember with calebs list I goldfished: 14% T1, 40% turn2

If Lim duls vault is a mayor player you basically setting yourself up for turn 3. What I would like to abuse then is Gitaxian Probe and Thought Scour (or careful study). Probe can draw you in your pile for free and Scour can become a "cantripping entomb". Scour can also function as an entomb or a shuffle effect after a brainstorm. Ponder would have to go though.

The big advantage of this setup i guess is that it is easier to transform.

[Raystar]

Read what he wrote. You Target yourself with Unmask to discard Griselbrand. There is nothing about Griselbrand being the pitched spell and binned doing so

My bad, I misread what he said.

[Falconer]

@ Freggle
Just as constructive feedback, I also have two issues with your new list. After I was one of the people that had no confidence in your old Mana Base I can’t say that I love your new one more. You have 10 Fetch Lands but 5 Mana producing Lands. Shuffling effects are nice but a 2:1 ratio from Fetch Lands and Mana producing lands really seems off. Especially after the regular TinFin build running 8 Fetch Lands, 6 Mana producing Lands and two Chrome Moxes you have arrived at the same number at Mana Sources only with the ability to produce less Mana. Consider that Chrome Mox like Lotus Petal allow you to play Lim Dûl’s Vault on turn one, especially now that you have more blue cards to imprint into Chrome Mox. Do you have any reason to build the Mana Base that way?
The second one is your selection of Win Conditions. The beauty of the 1* Emrakul + 1* Tendrils builds is that you can win on the spot if you have a Griselbrand in play, either with 22 flying hasty damage or with a follow up Tendrils if you can’t find your Emrakul or an Entomb to get it into the grave. You have only the Laboratory Maniac which should makes you even more fragile if anything happens to the Laboratory Maniac. For example an Abrupt Decay could kill Laboratory Maniac in response to you attempting to deck yourself. And Abrupt Decay is currently a card which is maindecked by at least two important decks. After you are only running one Laboratory Maniac the chances that you can’t find a Maniac are as high as the chances of not finding an Emrakul but you have no Plan B for this Situation. While I am willing to discuss if there is a better Win condition than Tendrils for this Deck, I clearly like what Emrakul does for this Deck, sweeping the board, reshuffling the Graveyard to use some cards again as a result I consider dropping Emrakul the wrong idea for this Deck.

@ Richard Cheese
Nice Work with the primer.

[kihachi]

Richard Cheese - New primer is killer!

It made me consider my sideboarding at SCG Indy. I would bring Emrakul out a lot just to make space for sideboard cards, which I think is fine since you really just need to draw your deck and cast Tendrils. Not being able to get your Tendrils after multiple Children activations is possible but not probable.

But maybe keeping Emmy in and siding out Tendrils is the way to go? I wasn't often able to go off without attacking with Griselbrand, so the reanimate-swing for 22 plan isn't great to rely on. But I could just rely on drawing the deck and hardcasting him for the win. Also, most people won't make you go through the combo for a second time anyway, I've found. I don't have the guts to side out all the wincons and Mike Long them though.

So, do people think it's better to side out Emrakul or Tendrils?

[.dk]

I think it depends on what you think they're going to bring in. If you're suspecting Leyline of Sanctity, for example, it might be right to board out Tendrils and just go for Emrakul, since you'll have to get rid of Leyline anyway. You'll need bounce or removal for it one way or another if you're going for Tendrils, and I heard Emrakul removes Leyline just fine as it is anyway.

I can't think of a case where I would want to board out Emrakul though. He's just so useful in all of his modes.

/edit

@Freggle - I've tested lists similar to that pretty extensively in the past. A bit less countermagic (no Forces) and more discard, along with 2-3 LDV. Overall, I think it's a valid approach, but changes the general strategy of the deck. You're slowing down significantly vs. the standard Tin Fins lists, and trading that for protection in the form of countermagic to be able to go off protected almost assuredly on T3. I wasn't a huge fan of that for the reasons of cards like Extirpate, Leyline of the Void, and Knight of the Reliquary making Bojuka Bog basically invalidating the counterspells you have in hand. I feel that discard is superior in these cases as it can deal with multiple counterspells (in the case of Therapy), most grave hate (including 2 of the 3 mentioned above), as well as serve as combo pieces in an incredibly tight maindeck. My take anyway - since we're vulnerable along multiple lines (storm hate, graveyard hate), going off as soon as possible seems like a better plan to me so that they have less opportunity to draw or cantrip into hate.

[Kap'n Cook]

@Richard Cheese

Read the primer and while I don't think the Painter sideboard plan is the way to go for this deck, Humility doesn't actually stop the combo.

Also, Koby did a number on me in a 2-man with a Serenity out of the board

[Richard Cheese]

After some minmal testing and modification of the list I posted earlier today I can say that Lim-Duls Vault does show quite a bit of potential. The initial conceptual list was too mana light as many suspected.

Here is a list that seems pretty wicked (I'm sure it is not optimal):

Combo Stuff
4 Shallow Grave
2 Griselbrand
2 Children of Korlis
4 Entomb
4 Dark Ritual
1 Laboratory Maniac
1 Show and Tell

Search Stuff
4 Lim-Dûl's Vault
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder

Disruption
3 Cabal Therapy
4 Force of Will
3 Daze

Mana
4 Marsh Flats
4 Polluted Delta
1 Swamp
4 Underground Sea
4 Lotus Petal
2 Verdant Catacombs
1 Chrome Mox

I cut the probes because they no longer seem needed, and it makes keeps harder to gauge (though I love the card and the information it provides.)

I tested dropping Emrakul & adding Laboratory Maniac based off of comments in here by Bobmans. I liked that it is an instant speed win, doesn't give a crap about what your opponent is doing and it is a hedge against a helm kill on it's own. With a grip of FOW's it is unlikely it will get removed when comboing & it saves a slot since we do not have to loop.

The single Show and Tell is mained as a hedge against G1 yard hate (because why not). With Vault it is surprisingly not too hard to assemble Grizzy / S&T in hand. Could / should just be a Chain of Vapor I guess, but it was fun.

Second Children is in there to ensure we deck ourselves.

I'm not sure if the cuts I did for mana are correct but this list functions perfectly fine. It can currently play through a lot of hate main, but I'd like to squeeze more targeted discard in there to make playing againt it much tougher. ...do you play around Daze? ...or do you play around discard?


I really like how you're approaching this, and I'm interested to see how this version pans out. My $0.02: I don't think a straight comparison to Flash Hulk is really accurate, since that deck needs only two mana to go off, period, since Hulk tutors for the rest of the pieces and plays them for free. We actually need to generate a lot of mana even after we've resolved our critical reanimation spell, and we're fairly dependent on our life total for improving our odds of finding a win condition.

I will say though that by switching to Lab Maniac, you're getting closer to the all instant-speed Mogg Fanatic kill in Hulk, although I think you should be cutting Tendrils for it rather than Emrakul, since the shuffle effect can be critical sometimes. You might want to check out Chapin's article on Vintage Flash Hulk here (http://www.starcitygames.com/article/15566_Innovations---Counterbalance-Flash-in-Vintage.html). It might be worth looking at Pact of Negation over Daze, since you can technically win with the Pact trigger on the stack with Lab Maniac. I'm just not sure if the deck can do that consistently without casting Lotus Petals.

[Joe Eigo]

So, do people think it's better to side out Emrakul or Tendrils?

IF i side out a wincon it's always the Tendril's, since it's the least necessary, in my opinion. 95% of the time, if i won the first game, it was with Tendril's. So in case they board anything against that (e.g. mentioned Leyline of Sanctity or G.Teeg guy, ...) you will not have any in the deck anymore. And opponent having dead cards in deck = good for us.

[Koby]

Welcome to Established! :cool:

[Raystar]

Welcome to Established! :cool:

Great job guys!

[.dk]

Wahoo! Established! :)

Thanks again for everyone who has helped to get the deck to where it is! Next step... wtf do we do about a sideboard. :)

For those that haven't yet - check out the new primer! Hopefully it answers a lot of questions about the deck and some cards/concepts that have been considered and tested in the past.

[Dela]

FANTASTIC work on the primer! Great explanations of everything from the name all the way down to quirky deck interactions. Well done.

Food for thought: If we are looking for another shallow grave effect (or slowing the deck down) what about Corpse Dance? Sure +1 mana is an issue, but we all know how much better Shallow Grave is vs Goryo's

[.dk]

I actually bought a set of Corpse Dance a while back for that purpose, but never got around to testing it. Could be ok, but it makes Dark Ritual a bit less insane since you need another mana source. Probably worth testing it though.

[sdematt]

Welcome...to the real world (of Established Decks).

-Matt

[Megadeus]

This is cool to see no doubt

[Richard Cheese]

I actually bought a set of Corpse Dance a while back for that purpose, but never got around to testing it. Could be ok, but it makes Dark Ritual a bit less insane since you need another mana source. Probably worth testing it though.

Yeah I have a feeling the mana cost is going to make it a no-go. Still, my philosophy with this deck has always been "test it and see".

[kihachi]

I think you all are right that siding out Tendrils is better than Emrakul. The only thing that makes me wary of doing so is that if I need a Griselbrand attack to draw 7 more cards in search of a Children or Entomb to go off, I'm gonna have to hardcast Emrakul to win. Doable, just a PITA after you've done it once or twice. But again, many people will just scoop to you on your second or third game combo anyway. And laziness is no good reason to sideboard suboptimally.

As for the sideboard I still advocate for a mix of reactive cards and Show and Tells, but people who've been playing the deck longer than me are very against S&T. All I can say is what worked/works for me.

And to additional reanimation spells, I actually like Reanimate more than Corpse Dance. You can't go off the same with it as your initial reanimation spell but for me it still gets there a lot of times. And it grabs Children on the cheap, of course.

But I could see testing:
4 Shallow Grave
3 Goryo's Vengeance
1 Corpse Dance
1 Reanimate

I may goldfish that on Cockatrice a handful of times. Being able to cast the Entomb and reanimation spell off one Dark Ritual seems too good to ignore, but you can always Entomb EOT into Dark Rit for Corpse Dance the next turn.

[.dk]

I'm not convinced that Show and Tell is wrong out of the board for lists that are packing 4 Griselbrands and an Emrakul. Or possibly boarding in the rest of the set if you aren't running them all main. Its a very valid strategy that many decks don't have an answer to.

Just remember, as far as the sideboard goes - no one has yet figured out anything optimal. There has been success with various different sideboard strategies. I personally wouldn't rule much out, as far as sideboard strategies go. Some of that is going to depend on the meta that you're playing in too...

[Koby]

This is just from initial testing, but Lim-Dul's Vault is a good "digger" for those games when we're having trouble finding Entomb/Reanimation/Dark Ritual/whatever.

I'm going to incorporate 2 LDV in place of 2 Gitaxian Probes in my Vegas list for further testing. I may also swap the 2nd Chrome Mox for the 3rd Probe. It really is lousy seeing a Chrome Mox in the opening hand, so I'm inclined to cut one and play something similar to ANT in terms of mana base.

[kihachi]

I don't think there ever is an "optimal" sideboard, is there? Though with this deck the opponents' hate is pretty obvious so maybe we can come close. If I'm running green, would Ground Seal be a decent card for game three if they're bringing in Surgicals?

Koby - funny that you should mention LDV and Chrome Mox because now that I think of it, LDV actually makes Chrome Mox a lot better in the deck. Card DA aside, the worst thing about Mox is actually that it's limited to either blue or black in this deck. I could see a deck running a playset of LDV actually really liking Chrome Mox.

[.dk]

I don't think there ever is an "optimal" sideboard, is there? Though with this deck the opponents' hate is pretty obvious so maybe we can come close. If I'm running green, would Ground Seal be a decent card for game three if they're bringing in Surgicals?

Koby - funny that you should mention LDV and Chrome Mox because now that I think of it, LDV actually makes Chrome Mox a lot better in the deck. Card DA aside, the worst thing about Mox is actually that it's limited to either blue or black in this deck. I could see a deck running a playset of LDV actually really liking Chrome Mox.

Who knows if there is? That's been the whole problem. :)

Ground Seal is an option in Green, although I'm personally a bit more inclined to test City of Solitude as a Green answer, as it covers many more cases than Ground Seal does (but doesn't cantrip, and costs a colorless more).

I was running LDV's in the main and in the board in the December timeframe - they are indeed pretty awesome with Chrome Mox. However, that's usually not a huge deal either way. You generally never want to see 2 LDV's pre-combo, so if you happen to see the second, you can always imprint on the singleton Chrome Mox if it comes up in your LDV searching.

LDV also interacts favorably with Children of Korlis as well. If you're running LDV's, I think there is a good case to be made for sticking with 2 Children main as well. Since life total is so important when going off, having a kid in play when you dig deep with LDV can be a pretty big help.

[Freggle]

I'm trying to respond to a lot in a short time so sorry if I skipped over some stuff.

Almost zero reason to run force of will over unmask over countering e tutor/brainstorm -> rest in peace or other hate permanents landing before we can discard them. Our black count is quite high. Unmask also functions as a free discard outlet for our griselbrand, allowing us to turn 1 ponder into turn 2 unmask ourselves into shallow grave/vengeance without requiring any fast mana like moxen, petals, or dark rit's. I’ll cover this later when I talk about being a two trick pony.

Not really a fan of lab maniac over tendrils of agony. Having to loop your deck to cast emrakul isn't really an issue, as that's pure showboating unless something happened to tendrils that makes it so you can't cast tendrils. After drawing your deck one time your storm count is generally over 15 with ease, as you dark rit 4 times, mox twice, and petal 4 times and that's 10 storm before looking at gitaxian probe, duress just because, shallow grave, reanimate, children of korlis, etc. etc. … We're trying to make the deck more consistent in putting griselbrand in the yard, everything after that is simply elementary.
Exactly, it seems like something may be able to be cut from the combo package. If so that could offer a slot greater disruption and more consistency.

If you play with more cantrips and tutors you loose the decks biggest strength: speed but gain more protection (force/daze). A normal tradeoff.

Remember with calebs list I goldfished: 14% T1, 40% turn2

What you consider this decks biggest strength may be one of limiting factors of growth. As you say we gain more protection as a result of a loss of speed. It also as, you later touch on, it gains greater flexibility. I see this decks greatest strength being it’s compactness (and power level )of combo and it’s light land requirement. That frees up deck slots to allow potential for this deck to be more disruptive than most , and faster than the others.
Currently, I feel this deck is in a weird spot. Too slow, or too even, with pure combo, and not controly enough for control. It may be possible in the relativity that is magic to incorporate blue that in the early turns we can disrupt better in the first few turns only to combo more soundly a few turns later.
A deck with a healthy dose of both counter spells and discard is difficult to face. It is what makes Team America so good. The tutors allow us to at the very least feign being a two trick pony like main decking a singleton Show and Tell. Making boarding hate harder. I can see though that I may be talking about a different deck TinFins 4 perhaps.

Also, I ran preliminary stats on Calebs list, and I think your 14% was a tad low. Surprisingly what limits this number isn’t so much the Entomb but the Dark Ritual as you need 3 mana to combo. If you really wanted to make the deck faster you should consider Reanimate as it lightens the mana requirement in your opening 7. I know you can not attack. I know you loose 8 life, but it could still be pretty consistent. If you run 4 Childern it’s a bit over 60 % to find one in your first 14 cards (your initial 7 plus a Grizzy activation) to combo off T1. It’s also fairly likely you could just thoughtseize removal and attack / win t2, or entomb... In other words if if the goal of TinFins 3 is to try and find the fastest version try a max of Reanimate.
A list KINDA like this may work. …I just feel you’ll be running harder into Daze, Force, Pierce, Thoughtseize…
4 Reanimate
4 Children
4 Shallow
4 Dark Rit
4 Cabal T
3 Thought
4 Chrome
4 Entomb
4 Lotus Petal
4 grizzy
4 Goryo
4 LED
2 ESG
2 SSG
4 scrubland
1 Tendrils / Maniac
4 Marsh Flats



@ Freggle
Just as constructive feedback,…
Agreed. This lists are just like Blue Sky Sketches for me, and not finished products. There more-or-less to see if you can even cram all of these concepts together. It may do me better not to post them, but I felt for some it might be inspiration as to how to pull off FOW count, and flexibility. Abrubt Decay can be discarded as others have mentioned, Attacking for 22 & hedging against Brainfreeze/Grindstone are the best reasons to run Emrakul. I question shuffling in the combo, but it may be needed.


@Freggle - I've tested lists similar to that pretty extensively in the past. A bit less countermagic (no Forces) and more discard, along with 2-3 LDV. Overall, I think it's a valid approach, but changes the general strategy of the deck. You're slowing down significantly vs. the standard Tin Fins lists, and trading that for protection in the form of countermagic to be able to go off protected almost assuredly on T3. I wasn't a huge fan of that for the reasons of cards like Extirpate, Leyline of the Void, and Knight of the Reliquary making Bojuka Bog basically invalidating the counterspells you have in hand. I feel that discard is superior in these cases as it can deal with multiple counterspells (in the case of Therapy), most grave hate (including 2 of the 3 mentioned above), as well as serve as combo pieces in an incredibly tight maindeck. My take anyway - since we're vulnerable along multiple lines (storm hate, graveyard hate), going off as soon as possible seems like a better plan to me so that they have less opportunity to draw or cantrip into hate.
Cool. FYI I’m not trying to step on anyones toes. I don’t think the inclusion of counter magic results in the exclusion of discard. I put them in the Groyo slots to give the deck greater flexibility. Just because something can sidestep counter spells doesn’t mean your counter spells are invalidated for the game. Being a two trick pony (like others have mentioned about Dredge being grindy agro) could also help.

My $0.02: I don't think a straight comparison to Flash Hulk is really accurate You're right. It is not, but if you break down TES it runs on a similar formula. Combo stuff, Tutor, Cantrips. Now TES is generally considered to be better than Charbelcher because of it's disruption and consistency. This was just a discussion point to take it from the quasi TES / Charbelcher relm, and move it more towards a Hulk Flash Relm. For example TES can not incorporate FOW because of its cost and it's interaction with Ad Naseam. We can, and it could possibly the trump over those decks, and help vs. our control MU.


I will say though that by switching to Lab Maniac, you're getting closer to the all instant-speed Mogg Fanatic kill in Hulk, although I think you should be cutting Tendrils for it rather than Emrakul, since the shuffle effect can be critical sometimes. You might want to check out Chapin's article on Vintage Flash Hulk here (http://www.starcitygames.com/article/15566_Innovations---Counterbalance-Flash-in-Vintage.html). It might be worth looking at Pact of Negation over Daze, since you can technically win with the Pact trigger on the stack with Lab Maniac. I'm just not sure if the deck can do that consistently without casting Lotus Petals.

Doh, your right. Sorcery Speed. I'll be reading a lot including this.

I hope I got it all. Happy reanimating.

[catmint]

....

What you consider this decks biggest strength may be one of limiting factors of growth. As you say we gain more protection as a result of a loss of speed. It also as, you later touch on, it gains greater flexibility. I see this decks greatest strength being it’s compactness (and power level )of combo and it’s light land requirement. That frees up deck slots to allow potential for this deck to be more disruptive than most , and faster than the others.....

Low land count is only possible because you use temporary mana & chrome mox to go off in T1-3. If you want to play like other combo decks cantripping into combo & protection you need to make sure not to randomly loose to wasteland. That means either cutting the 3rd color and inreasing the land count (or both).

Gain more protection for the loss of speed is also relative. Unlike Storm we do not have routes to victory that totally ignore our life total. Beeing slower means you will more often loose to a fair deck curving out. Also beeing slower means you actually need more protection, because the opponent has more time to pile up hate.

[GiveMeYourOil]

I am running this list:

4 Griselbrand
2 Children of Korlis
1 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn

2 Chrome Mox
4 Lotus Petal

3 Ponder
3 Gitaxian Probe
4 Brainstorm

4 Dark Ritual
1 Reanimate
3 Thoughtseize
4 Cabal Therapy
4 Entomb
4 Shallow Grave
3 Goryo's Vengeance
1 Tendrils of Agony

4 Polluted Delta
3 Marsh Flats
1 Swamp
1 Tundra
1 Scrubland
3 Underground Sea
1 Island

Last week i tryed to run a 15 creature SB :

4 Delver Of Secrets
4 Dark Confidant
4 Nivmagus Elemental
3 Deathrite Shaman

Im not sure that that was the way to go.

So i want to try the Show and tell route, but with Counters.
I am not sure that Pact of Negation is good. But im really likeing the "free" counter ind this deck.

Next SB up for testing:

4 Show and Tell
4 Force of Will
4 Pact of Negation
1 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
2 Tidespout Tyrant

[alastair]

4 Delver Of Secrets
4 Dark Confidant
4 Nivmagus Elemental
3 Deathrite Shaman


I’ve persevered with the Chant / Bounce / Needle SB but remain unhappy. I’m not a fan of stressing the manabase deeper into W, or G and/or B; as the speed of 13 land + 10 ritual count has been working out well for me.

I’m keen to test a creature sideboard, but Delver / Nivmagus / Deathrite leaves you with a worse version than the opposing RUG / BUG list; and whilst a love Bob, I’m not convinced he draw us into enough threats.

I think a SB creature plan needs to trump opposing threats, 4 toughness beats Delver / Mongoose / Souls, and either Flight or Obliterator mean damage will get through. Ok, the likes of Tombstalker will always be a problem. Having tested the creature option, do you consider a sideboard on this basis to be a worthwhile exercise ?

Say:
2-3 Pact / Mindbreak / Needle / Chant
2-3 S&T (with 5 MD targets)

And some mix of 8-10:
4/4 flyers
3/4 flyers
Bitterblossom

[kihachi]

Who knows if there is? That's been the whole problem. :)

Ground Seal is an option in Green, although I'm personally a bit more inclined to test City of Solitude as a Green answer, as it covers many more cases than Ground Seal does (but doesn't cantrip, and costs a colorless more).

I was running LDV's in the main and in the board in the December timeframe - they are indeed pretty awesome with Chrome Mox. However, that's usually not a huge deal either way. You generally never want to see 2 LDV's pre-combo, so if you happen to see the second, you can always imprint on the singleton Chrome Mox if it comes up in your LDV searching.

LDV also interacts favorably with Children of Korlis as well. If you're running LDV's, I think there is a good case to be made for sticking with 2 Children main as well. Since life total is so important when going off, having a kid in play when you dig deep with LDV can be a pretty big help.

Three mana is tough to get to, but City of Solitude could be a solid sideboard card. I probably wouldn't bring it in against a deck with Wastelands though.

What I mean about "optimal" sideboards is that you're basically using it to prepare for the meta, though in our case the meta really just consists of the hate cards we expect to see. But what's optimal for one tournament in one area won't be optimal in other circumstances. So to me there's no such thing as an optimal sideboard. But there are obviously better or worse ones.

GiveMeYourOil - why do you want to add Show and Tells and Pact of Negation? You often don't win instantly off a Show and Tell, especially if you're putting Emrakul or Tidespout Tyrant into play.

[GiveMeYourOil]

GiveMeYourOil - why do you want to add Show and Tells and Pact of Negation? You often don't win instantly off a Show and Tell, especially if you're putting Emrakul or Tidespout Tyrant into play.

The pacts are to protect the Show and tell.

Or it could be used to protect you when you combo out. And i find that this deck dont have any spare Resources. Im even tempted to main deck these in game 1.
I keep loosing to FoW, and in my Meta, ppl know what i play and tend to mulligan to counter backup.

[bartmanqc]

Based on the recent talk about adding FoW and Daze to the MD, i've decided to try it this comming weekend at the LGS monthly legacy.
I'm pretty new to this archetype. I've played only about 20 matches against maybe 4 or 5 archetypes. I feel more confortable running counterspell in the deck for the sideboarded matches. Maybe they should be in the board...
That is why I want to switch to this version. It might give up some of the explosiveness of the original deck but with things like RiP in some maindeck, I feel like this is a reasonable thing to do.

I would like if you could give me some feedbacks on my list. Like everyone, I'm still not convince on the SB plan...


Main deck

2x Griselbrand
1x Children of Korlis
1x Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
1x Tendrils of Agony

4x Entomb
4x Shallow Grave
2x Goryo's Vengeance
4x Brainstorm
4x Ponder
3x Lim-Dul's Vault
4x Force of Will
3x Daze
4x Thoughtseize
2x Cabal Therapy
4x Dark Ritual
4x Lotus Petal

4x Polluted Delta
4x Marsh Flats
4x Underground Sea
1x Scrubland
1x Swamp
1x Island

Sideboard
3x Silence
3x Surgical Extraction
2x Pithing Needle
2x Chain of Vapor
1x Echoing Truth
2x Massacre
2x Pull from Eternity

I might replace Daze by Pact of Negation. Im also at 61 cards and don't really know what to cut. Is the manabase correct assuming in playing with silence and pull from eternity in the sideboard?

[.dk]

I think you want another white land source if you're leaning on Silence out of the sideboard. You might consider just changing the Island to Tundra and see how it plays.

I like the look of your list overall though, for incorporating counterspells and LDV main. I think I would likely only run 2 LDV, and add back in the 3rd Goryo's Vengeance, personally. Having hands with multiple LDV are usually not so hot - you may also consider cutting it for a single Chrome Mox as well. Having access to a 5th IMS after drawing from Griselbrand is pretty good (assuming you've played your land for the turn) - and as has been mentioned, can be used to imprint an extra LDV post drawing as a virtual Underground Sea.

I'm very interested to see the results of testing with these new lists - I had only ever tried LDV with discard spells. If any of you are testing these, can you please post the matchups you played and some percentages in addition to overall feel? Would like to start being able to make some data driven decisions for the deck. Maybe one of these days I'll get off my ass and finish my python scripts to goldfish various configurations of the deck to determine how soon we can combo with 0 protection, 1 protection, and 2 protection spells. Should actually be a bit easier to do that taking into account Daze and FoW than Thoughtseize, Therapy, and Probe...

[atopebenidorm]

I am testing with only one children of Korlis and 4 Griselbrand because Show and tell is very good . Liliana of the veil is awesome and 1º turn liliana = bye bye your hand and hatebears. Is very rough if your opponent doesn´t play Abrut decay. I will test Geist of saint traft because is another win condition and we can return with goryo´s vengeance and karakas (our hand), in 2º and 3º games with Liliana, the game often is long, and we can win with geist without problems.

4 Griselbrand
1 Children of Korlis
1 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
2 Chrome Mox
4 Lotus Petal
4 Ponder
3 Show and tell
4 Brainstorm
4 Dark Ritual
4 Thoughtseize
3 Cabal Therapy
4 Entomb
4 Shallow Grave
4 Goryo's Vengeance
1 Tendrils of Agony

4 Polluted Delta
2 Marsh Flats
2 Flooded Strand
1 Swamp
1 Island
1 Scrubland
2 Underground Sea


Side:

2 Geist of Saint Traft ( Goryo´s and Karakas friend, 6 power damage creature )
2 Duress
2 Karakas
1 Engineered Explosives
2 Echoing Truth
4 Liliana of the veil
2 Pull from the eternity

[Koby]

Boarding into Liliana seems to me as a novel approach to being GY hate against permanent based strategies. Interesting suggestion. I'll incorporate it into my testing regiment.

[Dia_Bot]

Has anyone tried to play Grand abolisher in the sideboard?
I've tested it out and so far it seems to be a nice inclusion. It stops the most played graveyard hate cards as well as counters and can be reanimated if countered.

[kihachi]

The pacts are to protect the Show and tell.

Or it could be used to protect you when you combo out. And i find that this deck dont have any spare Resources. Im even tempted to main deck these in game 1.
I keep loosing to FoW, and in my Meta, ppl know what i play and tend to mulligan to counter backup.

The reason I ask is, like I said, unless you're S&Ting Griz into play, your Pact protection will probably kill you next turn. And even then, it's hard to go off the same turn you S&T Griz into play because you can't attack to gain 7.

[Richard Cheese]

The reason I ask is, like I said, unless you're S&Ting Griz into play, your Pact protection will probably kill you next turn. And even then, it's hard to go off the same turn you S&T Griz into play because you can't attack to gain 7.

I would also not advice Pact if you're going for Show and Tell. Show and tell is slower, it's blue, and because you lose haste, you lose 7 cards. Often times you're going to find that a better plan is to just sit on a 7/7 flier and only try to combo off if your opponent has an answer for that. Since you're slowing down anyway, and you really need to win on the stack, Flusterstorm is a good option, as is Silence. If you're adding Flusterstorm and Show and Tell, you get close to having enough blue to support Force as well. I think my last SnT board looked something like this:

4 Show and Tell
3 Flusterstorm
3 Pithing Needle
2 Force of Will
1 Chain of Vapor
2 Echoing Truth


I opted for Truth over Chain because I hate the idea of giving someone the option to bounce my Griselbrand, but it's possible that situation won't come up enough that it's worth the extra mana.

[GiveMeYourOil]

I would also not advice Pact if you're going for Show and Tell. Show and tell is slower, it's blue, and because you lose haste, you lose 7 cards. Often times you're going to find that a better plan is to just sit on a 7/7 flier and only try to combo off if your opponent has an answer for that. Since you're slowing down anyway, and you really need to win on the stack, Flusterstorm is a good option, as is Silence. If you're adding Flusterstorm and Show and Tell, you get close to having enough blue to support Force as well. I think my last SnT board looked something like this:

4 Show and Tell
3 Flusterstorm
3 Pithing Needle
2 Force of Will
1 Chain of Vapor
2 Echoing Truth


I opted for Truth over Chain because I hate the idea of giving someone the option to bounce my Griselbrand, but it's possible that situation won't come up enough that it's worth the extra mana.

When you run 4 show and tell in the SB, Dont you also want more fattyes i the SB ? or is the 5 targets in main enuff (4 GB 1 Emrakrul) ?

[.dk]

When you run 4 show and tell in the SB, Dont you also want more fattyes i the SB ? or is the 5 targets in main enuff (4 GB 1 Emrakrul) ?

I generally found a couple Lim-Dul's Vaults to be sufficient to find whichever half of the SnT package you were missing when I was packing Show and Tell. You still have a very good shot at storming out off of Griselbrand if you Show and Tell him into play while running Children of Korlis, so that can still be the goal. More targets certainly wouldn't hurt if you're planning on winning in the attack step though. The question you bring up though I think is one of the reasons that most of us have shied away from Show and Tell recently.

[Richard Cheese]

When you run 4 show and tell in the SB, Dont you also want more fattyes i the SB ? or is the 5 targets in main enuff (4 GB 1 Emrakrul) ?

Probably so. That was actually from a list that ran 3 emrakul main, but no tendrils or children.

[kihachi]

I don't think it's so bad. 12-post runs 7 creatures and maindecks S&T. It's just another option to get a guy in play and if your opponent mulls to graveyard hate, you'll probably have some time to try and draw into whichever half of the combo you need.

You could always add three more Emrakuls but then you have the problem where you have 8 of one half of the combo and 4 of the other half, and if you don't have S&T those Emrakuls are dead cards. So then you start looking at adding Sneak Attack and you're completely transformational.

[Freggle]

You could always add three more Emrakuls but then you have the problem where you have 8 of one half of the combo and 4 of the other half, and if you don't have S&T those Emrakuls are dead cards. So then you start looking at adding Sneak Attack and you're completely transformational.

I think it's more like what .dk said. If you run 2-4 Lim-Dûl's Vault you wouldn't want (4) Show and Tell as your primary goal is still to win off of a reanimated Griselbrand. If that gets nerfed through some hate you could tutor for your Show and Tell or Griselbrand whichever you are missing.

I think the lists with the counter spells are more effective at this approach because it is slower, the lists with :u: can ward off some early hate better making the plan A stronger. There shouldn't be a need for Plan c Sneak Attack because if plan A or B is executed it should win on the spot. This could free-up board slots for whatever else. Just my 2 cents.

[phazonmutant]

I think it's more like what .dk said. If you run 2-4 Lim-Dûl's Vault you wouldn't want (4) Show and Tell as your primary goal is still to win off of a reanimated Griselbrand. If that gets nerfed through some hate you could tutor for your Show and Tell or Griselbrand whichever you are missing.

I think the lists with the counter spells are more effective at this approach because it is slower, the lists with :u: can ward off some early hate better making the plan A stronger. There shouldn't be a need for Plan c Sneak Attack because if plan A or B is executed it should win on the spot. This could free-up board slots for whatever else. Just my 2 cents.

Just want to raise the thought, if we're slowing down to add :u:, isn't traditional reanimator just better? They're more consistent at getting a man into play because they run 9+ ins and they run enough creatures to make S&T legitimate. The advantage of TinFins is that it's faster and can win through soft hate like Karakas, Maze of Ith, Swords to Plowshares, sometimes Deathrite, etc, but that really just doesn't seem like a compelling tradeoff for having consistency issues and more clunkers to draw if we're about comparably fast.

Absolutely blue could be worth it, I'd just like to hear your take on why it's good.

[Dela]

Went another 4-0 at my local legacy tournament tonight (20ish people). 4 weeks straight >< I beat RiP Miracles R1 (2-0), UR Delver R2 (2-1), Omniscience R3 (2-0), Esper Stoneblade R4 (2-0)


My list was 2 careful study, 2 gitaxian probe, 1 reanimate. SB had flusterstorms, show and tells, pithing needles, bounce, pull from eternity.

The most interesting match was the finals vs Stoneblade.

G1 I'm at 6 life, he has batterskull and stoneforge in play and plenty of untapped lands and is at 28 life. I have Brainstorm, Shallow Grave, and therapy in hand and 3 untapped lands and a Grisel in the yard. I therapy him naming Force and he shows a hand of snapcaster, land, lingering souls. Since he has a flusterstorm in his yard (UGH maindeck Flusterstorm) I can't go off so I brainstorm. BS sees Ritual, Land, Griselbrand so I take ritual. He plays snapcaster end of turn to brainstorm and represent lethal. On his turn I ritual and animate Gbrand to block batterskull. He goes to 32, I go to 10. He plays lingering souls and passes, I draw 7 before he is exiled and go to 3. Fresh 7 gets me there via storm.

G2 My opener is 2 entombs, shallow grave, 4 lands. I decide to keep after thinking a long while. I draw into another entomb and we play land go for awhile. Once he is a 3 lands and I'm sitting on 4, he casts Thoughsieze. I reveal 2x petal, 3x entomb, 1x shallow grave and a land. Strangely he takes an entomb. Next he surgicals my entombs so I respond by entombing for Emrakul. He responds with snapcaster mage. It is pointed out that his surgical is still on the stack and he can't cast another surgical. Emmy does his thing and shuffles, surgical fizzles, and I end of turn entomb again and cast Shallow Grave for grisel and win from there.

@Koby My friend Art from San Diego says he knows you and mentioned you tonight and I was like oh ya! Koby! and I said I'd say Hi from us. Haha small world - keep up the good work

[Richard Cheese]

Went another 4-0 at my local legacy tournament tonight (20ish people). 4 weeks straight >< I beat RiP Miracles R1 (2-0), UR Delver R2 (2-1), Omniscience R3 (2-0), Esper Stoneblade R4 (2-0)


Nice job. I'm guessing you were running 2 Griselbrand? I'm interested to hear how that Miracles match played out.

[Freggle]

Just want to raise the thought, if we're slowing down to add :u:, isn't traditional reanimator just better? They're more consistent at getting a man into play because they run 9+ ins and they run enough creatures to make S&T legitimate. The advantage of TinFins is that it's faster and can win through soft hate like Karakas, Maze of Ith, Swords to Plowshares, sometimes Deathrite, etc, but that really just doesn't seem like a compelling tradeoff for having consistency issues and more clunkers to draw if we're about comparably fast.

Absolutely blue could be worth it, I'd just like to hear your take on why it's good.

It really comes down an educated guess. After the printing of Force of Will in 1996 discard and combo got worse. After that combo decks had to have a way to interact with the hand or the stack. The current TinFins builds DO interact with the hand, and that is good. However, in MU's like Miracles they can just any segment of our line of play and win. Historically the most broken decks after Force of Will are combo control deck (Think Vintage gifts, or Flash Hulk). Since this deck has the ability to draw past a lot of stuff for a cheap cost it shows a good deal of potential to be a solid combo-control list.

We say that a blue list is slower, which is true, but how much slower is it really? I'm not a statistician, but I am a Magic player interested in the Statistics of decks and I have come up with this using the calculator found here: http://stattrek.com/online-calculator/hypergeometric.aspx If this information is wrong someone PLEASE correct me.

Lets Take Koby's Las Vegas List initial 7 no mulligan:

Chances of drawing (1) or more Black Sources: 0.900777106738533

Chances of drawing (1) or more Dark Ritual : 0.399499625744666

Chances of Drawing (1) or More Entomb: 0.399499625744666

Chances of drawing (1) or more Reanimation Spell: 0.653593571031819

Multiply all of that and you get 0.093963 That is the chance you get the hand to cast Mana source -> Dark Rit -> Entomb -> "Animate" = 9.39%

Now What are the odds of Koby going discard Grizzy -> Reanimate?

Chances of drawing (1) or more Black Sources: 0.900777106738533

Chances of drawing (1) or more Dark Ritual : 0.399499625744666

Chances of drawing (1) or more Reanimation Spell: 0.653593571031819

Chances of drawing (1) or more 1 mana discard spell: 0.541436077841381

Chances of Drawing (1) or more Grizzy: 0.221468926553672

Multiply it all and you get 0.028203 There is a 2.82% chance you get that hand.

There are other T1 hands but they are statistically negligible.

Lets see what happens to those numbers when we JUST put Lim-Duls in the Groyo Slots.

Your chances of drawing a reanimation spell T1 drops to 0.474562172526582. A variance of 17.91% which seems substantial, but lets see how that affect T1 "kills"

Entomb Route now becomes 0.068225 or 6.82% therefore you are 2.57% less likely to combo T1

...and the discard route now becomes 0.020477966 or 2.05% therefore you are .77% less likely to combo T1 via the discard route.

After Turn 2 the Stats should be roughly the same since your Lim-Duls can become whatever you need it to be. I personally don't see that being too much of a trade off to become combo control, and the possiblity to add two lines of play (Reanimation or Show and Tell)

Why TinFins over Reanimator, because as you say we can ignore common Legend hate and win on the spot. That does not change with or without :u:

[Dela]

Nice job. I'm guessing you were running 2 Griselbrand? I'm interested to hear how that Miracles match played out.

Actually I ran 3 Grisel. I am still undecided on the correct number but my list felt solid.

The RIP Miracles matchup went as smoothly as one could hope... G1 in the dark and on the play I kept a hand with the combo and a thoughtsieze. I was able to win on turn two.

G2 I kept a very disruption heavy hand. G probe, ts, cabal therapy and lands? I remember stripping his hand and comboing a few turns later when he had RIP in hand. I had the 1 bayou and reverent silence if needed as well as a few show and tell if needed. He complained after the match about the unfairness of the deck... I told him I was lucky and that RIP was my worst matchup. Shrug.

[alphastryk]

The RIP Miracles matchup went as smoothly as one could hope... G1 in the dark and on the play I kept a hand with the combo and a thoughtsieze. I was able to win on turn two.

G2 I kept a very disruption heavy hand. G probe, ts, cabal therapy and lands? I remember stripping his hand and comboing a few turns later when he had RIP in hand. I had the 1 bayou and reverent silence if needed as well as a few show and tell if needed. He complained after the match about the unfairness of the deck... I told him I was lucky and that RIP was my worst matchup. Shrug.

Yeah, sounds like maybe your opponent didn't know the matchup? I've always felt hugely favored with RIP Mriacles vs TinFins, especially if TinFins doesn't go off turn 1.

[Koby]

Yeah, sounds like maybe your opponent didn't know the matchup? I've always felt hugely favored with RIP Mriacles vs TinFins, especially if TinFins doesn't go off turn 1.

It struck me as just the variance associated with the Miracle player's opening hand. Some hand are just good - Brainstorm to hide RIP will lead to a loss for Tin Fins generally. In Vegas I went 2-1 and 0-2 against Miracles. The RIP version is obviously much better than traditional Miracles.

[kihachi]

It struck me as just the variance associated with the Miracle player's opening hand. Some hand are just good - Brainstorm to hide RIP will lead to a loss for Tin Fins generally. In Vegas I went 2-1 and 0-2 against Miracles. The RIP version is obviously much better than traditional Miracles.

I really want to go "Thought Scour you" after that play. I think I've seen it discussed before but I'm not sure that's actually a playable card. It would have to come in over Probes or Preordains if you're playing those, but you also would want to have 4 Griselbrand to maximize value. But it also has value in some corner cases, like the one where they hide cards from you with Brainstorm (if you have another mana open).

[Bobmans]

I really want to go "Thought Scour you" after that play. I think I've seen it discussed before but I'm not sure that's actually a playable card. It would have to come in over Probes or Preordains if you're playing those, but you also would want to have 4 Griselbrand to maximize value. But it also has value in some corner cases, like the one where they hide cards from you with Brainstorm (if you have another mana open).

I would choose careful study over thought scour and even preordain. This cus you get to choose what to throw away and keep what is usefull. Prordain digs deeper, but study actually can give you an in.

[Azdraël]

In my most recent tests I tend to prefer Hapless Researcher better than Careful Study, for his ability to do almost the same thing but at the moment you want. That makes a big difference when it comes to game 2/3 so as to fight the grave hate your opponent boards in. Not to mention Cabal flashback. In a nutshell, it is more pro-active than reacting if it makes sense.
So I'd rather go Ordain/ponder = Hapless > Careful > Thought Scour

[.dk]

In my most recent tests I tend to prefer Hapless Researcher better than Careful Study, for his ability to do almost the same thing but at the moment you want. That makes a big difference when it comes to game 2/3 so as to fight the grave hate your opponent boards in. Not to mention Cabal flashback. In a nutshell, it is more pro-active than reacting if it makes sense.
So I'd rather go Ordain/ponder = Hapless > Careful > Thought Scour

I suppose hapless researcher also dodges spell pierce, although I'm not sure anyone actually spell pierces careful study. I've never tested him in Tin Fins but he seems fine in a build running the full grip of Giselbrands. Can also reanimate him to use as a discard outlet if you need to do that too. Also like (as you said) his interaction with Cabal Therapy.

[phazonmutant]

Freggle - that's a really good answer! Makes me want to look at the raw numbers some more to see if it can guide deckbuilding.

I've played Hapless in a couple of builds and it's always been very solid. It's also useful to put an instant-speed discard in the bank so you can do tricksy things with Emrakul and reanimate effects. The Goblin Lackey staredown is always fun too.

[Baum]

Just another report, testing Lim-Dul's Vault:

The List:

4 Polluted Delta
2 Verdant Catacombs
2 Underground Sea
1 Bayou
1 Scrubland
1 Swamp
2 Gemstone Mine

4 Dark Ritual
4 Lotus Petal
2 Chrome Mox

3 Griselbrand
1 Children of Korlis
1 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
1 Tendrils of Agony

4 Entomb
4 Shallow Grave
3 Goryo's Vengeance
1 Reanimate
4 Cabal Therapy
3 Thoughtseize
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
2 Gitaxian Probe
2 Lim-Dûl's Vault

Sideboard

1 Pithing Needle
2 Chain of Vapor
3 Silence
2 Massacre
2 Pull from Eternity
2 Abrupt Decay
1 Reverent Silence
2 Surgical Extraction



Match 1 – Dredge
G1: 1st turn kill on the play.
G2: I was missing one mana source for the first turn combo. He took away my only Entomb with Cabal Therapy. Luckily, I still had Thoughtseize + Griselbrand and Goryo’s Vengeance. He passed the turn and I drew a Chrome Mox…
2:0

Match 2 – Zoo
G1: Save 2nd turn kill.
G2: A Thalia bought him enough time to kill me. I had a Lim-Dul’s Vault in Hand, but couldn’t find the 3rd Land to cast it and dig for a Chain of Vapor.
G3: That one was close. I fizzled in my combo turn and passed on 7 life, facing Gaddock Teeg and Kird Ape. He put me to 3 but didn’t topdeck a burn spell. Next turn, I smashed him with Emrakul. Lim-Dul’s Vault really shined in that game.
2:1

Match 3 – Death & Taxes with Green
G1: 1st turn kill on the play.
G2: He passed with white mana up. I therapied him for Swords to Plowshares, hitting two and killed him on my 1st turn.
2:0

Match 4 – Undercity Informer / Balustrade Spy / no Land Combo
Since we were sitting next to each other during the last round, we knew it would be a short match. ;)
The bad thing was that I lost the die roll…
G1: He took a mulligan to 6 but did not have the turn 1 kill. I kept a hand with Bayou, Therapy, Entomb and Goryo’s but no other mana sources. I got a bit lucky when I hit his only Balustrade Spy with my Therapy. If he had an Informer, I would have been dead on his 2nd turn. This way, he was looking for one of his guys while I was looking a mana source. I found it first.
G2: He opened with Leyline of Sanctity and Pithing Needle on Griselbrand. I knew he was packing Leylines but chose to ignore it and didn’t side in my Chains. I have to admit that the Needle was surprising. I had a Silence in my starting 7 (which is an instant win in response to him milling his library). I also had Reanimate + Entomb. He died to a “vanilla” 7/7 flyer a couple of turns later.
2:0


I have to admit that I got a little bit lucky with the matchups (no blue tempo decks or CounterTop). Anyway, I won the tournament and got a Badlands. :)

I’m pretty content with the current build. Lim-Dul’s Vault is awesome as a 2-off, especially if you have a mana artifact on your 1st turn and are able to cast the Vault on your opponent’s first end step. It almost felt like a small Doomsday in finding missing combo pieces and stacking the other 4 cards.
Three Griselbrands also seem fine. Of course, that’s just one small tournament, but I had a Grisel when I had to go the discard route but never got flooded with the guy.
I hope to play against the more difficult matchups the next time to get more valid data.


@ Richard Cheese and the other contributors to the primer:
I’d like to translate the primer for the German MtG Forum where I’m also posting. You probably won’t mind but I think I have to ask. ;)

[dameus]

In my most recent tests I tend to prefer Hapless Researcher better than Careful Study, for his ability to do almost the same thing but at the moment you want. That makes a big difference when it comes to game 2/3 so as to fight the grave hate your opponent boards in. Not to mention Cabal flashback. In a nutshell, it is more pro-active than reacting if it makes sense.
So I'd rather go Ordain/ponder = Hapless > Careful > Thought Scour

Keep in mind, on the down side, he also makes Shallow Grave worse. Now a bolt can mess up your intended rez plan when the Researcher is in play.

[phazonmutant]

Keep in mind, on the down side, he also makes Shallow Grave worse. Now a bolt can mess up your intended rez plan when the Researcher is in play.

That's true, but I've found that the upside is worth it. I'm not convinced that you do want to play Study effects, but if you do, I think I'd play Hapless Researcher first.
Something that's come up, Hymn to Tourach can randomly discard your Children of Korlis if you happen to have it in hand, which can mess up Shallow Graves. Just sayin', they're about equally likely.

I've been testing with Teferi's Realm, and I feel pretty comfortable with it. So far played against UW RiP Miracles and Sneak & Show, and it's come in against both. So I only won against Alphastryk when he didn't have Force and I had a turn 1 (2 games out of 6), but at least 2-3 of the other games were won solely on the back of Meddling Mage and Ethersworn Canonist, neither of which I've seen in other builds of Miracles. I feel like Teferi's Realm would be a good answer against an opponent without a disruptive clock (yeah, that Geist of Saint Taft ain't doin' shit). The Realm came in against Sneak & Show too, they just have a bunch of hate permanents and 3 Chain of Vapor wasn't enough to answer them.

The board I'm on right now:
3 Chain of Vapor
2 Teferi's Realm
2 Pull from Eternity
2 Massacre
3 Surgical Extraction
1 Silence
1 Cabal Therapy
1 Hurkyl's Recall

I have 2 Silence in the main and 5 discard spells.

Baum - props to the people testing Lim-Dul's Vault. It seems like a new interesting angle to take the deck (although I'm a little bit sceptical that it's needed)

[dameus]

Just wanted to share a couple epic escapes from a recent local tourney.
In a G2 vs OmniTell, we both played the waiting game. He was afraid to drop a S&T without the Omniscience and I was afraid to go for it without 2 rez spells, considering I already had a Gris in hand. He eventually S&T'ed an Omni while I dropped my Gris. He followed with an Emrakul. I was at 17 life and held 2 cards - CoK and a Petal. With no way to get CoK in play on his turn, I elected not to draw. He then took his extra turn. He Emrakul'ed me down to 2 and I had to sac all my permanents - except my Gris. On my turn, I managed to get home with a Gris attack, draw 7, sac CoK, draw 7, etc. My 1st time winning through an Emrakul attack!
I also had a fun side game vs a heavy blue Painter home brew. I Thoughtseized him on T1 and he revealed a full play set of FoW! While I spent the next few turns trying to fight thru the counter wall, he managed to get a Painter and 2 Isochron Scepter's into play - 1 w/ Word of Command and another with a Crypt-like effect. He kept making me punch myself each turn and managed to remove all my Griselbrands from the game. Luckily, he was down to 15 life from FoW and fetch damage. And I managed to Emrakul FTW!

[Cybey]

I top 8'ed in the Grand Prix Utrecht Legacy Championship (100+ players) with Tinsfins yesterday. My list was pretty much (or exactly?) Jacob Kory's list.
Will look at my notes this week and try to write a small report, but I do know I didn't write a lot down, so have to do a lot from memory. I went 5-1-1 (ID into top 8).

[.dk]

@Baum - I have no issues with translating the primer and posting. :) Just link to this thread along with it, and it's all good. Also, thanks for getting testing in with new card configs - the more of data we get, the faster we can tune.

@phazonmuant - Richard Cheese has been testing Teferi's Realm a lot lately and has been liking it a lot. It seems quite strong, really. Is 2 of enough? Although I suppose the casting cost is a little oppressive. What have your opponents usually chosen in their upkeeps against you?

@dameus - come play more Legacy up north! We're on every weekend dude! Which store are you playing at? TCG?

@Cybey - congrats on the awesome finish!

[Baum]

[...] I feel like Teferi's Realm would be a good answer against an opponent without a disruptive clock (yeah, that Geist of Saint Taft ain't doin' shit). The Realm came in against Sneak & Show too, they just have a bunch of hate permanents and 3 Chain of Vapor wasn't enough to answer them.
[...]

Maybe I'm getting it wrong, but how does Teferi's Realm help against a Geist?
During your upkeep you choose creatures -> Geist phases out.
In your opponent's next untap, Geist phases in again and can attack you.

[Koby]

I top 8'ed in the Grand Prix Utrecht Legacy Championship (100+ players) with Tinsfins yesterday. My list was pretty much (or exactly?) Jacob Kory's list.
Will look at my notes this week and try to write a small report, but I do know I didn't write a lot down, so have to do a lot from memory. I went 5-1-1 (ID into top 8).

I would be very interested in reading your report playing my list. At least it validates the list, rather than just my playing of it. :)

[kihachi]

Maybe I'm getting it wrong, but how does Teferi's Realm help against a Geist?
During your upkeep you choose creatures -> Geist phases out.
In your opponent's next untap, Geist phases in again and can attack you.

He says Realm will help against an opponent that does not have a disruptive clock. This is probably because it can't come down until turn three at the earliest. A deck with a disruptive clock will have your health too low before that. A deck with Geist in it, however, is not presenting a disruptive clock, because it also doesn't come down on turn 3 and is pretty late to the party against Tin Fins. It's not that Realm actually helps deal with a Geist, though I can see how one would read it that way. That's my guess anyway.

[Baum]

Ok, it makes sense this way.
I think I'll try the Realm out next weekend. Besides removing multiple hate enchantments or creatures, phasing out lands to shut off countermagic and then go off with mana artifacts just seems nice :)

[Richard Cheese]

Ok, it makes sense this way.
I think I'll try the Realm out next weekend. Besides removing multiple hate enchantments or creatures, phasing out lands to shut off countermagic and then go off with mana artifacts just seems nice :)

Also since most of what we're doing is instant-speed, you can just float a bunch of mana, name lands, then proceed to Entomb/Reanimate during your upkeep.

You also have my blessing for translating the primer. It's posted on a public section of an Internet forum, so I consider it public information at this point.


I played the following list at our local weekly yesterday:


4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
2 Gitaxian Probe

4 Entomb
4 Griselbrand
3 Goryo's Vengeance
4 Shallow Grave
1 Children of Korlis
1 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
1 Tendrils of Agony

4 Lotus Petal
4 Dark Ritual
2 Chrome Mox

4 Cabal Therapy
3 Thoughtseize
2 Silence

4 Polluted Delta
3 Underground Sea
1 Island
1 Swamp
3 Marsh Flats
1 Scrubland

SB: 2 Silence
SB: 2 Pithing Needle
SB: 4 Show and Tell
SB: 2 Flusterstorm
SB: 3 Teferi's Realm
SB: 2 Pull from Eternity


Unfortunately we didn't have many people this week so it was only 3 rounds, the first of which I missed because shit always breaks when I'm on call. The next two went well though. Beat a Junk/Loam Deck 2-1, then Belcher 2-0. Best play of the day was the very first game against Junk/Loam. I mull to 5, but it's a brilliant 5: 2x Fetch, Therapy, Grizzlebees, Goryo's. I'm worried about discard but since I'm on the play I know I beat Deathrite. Therapy myself, bin Grizz, pass, and he drops...Bojuka Bog! Of all the turn 1 plays, I never even considered that. I got him back game 3 by beating him from 6 life with an active Deathrite. Overall I'm very happy with the list as it, although I may swap another U.Sea for a second Scrubland, or possibly a Tundra because of the extra white and blue requirements out of the board.

[Holly]

Also since most of what we're doing is instant-speed, you can just float a bunch of mana, name lands, then proceed to Entomb/Reanimate during your upkeep.


What does it do for you to name lands? If you float mana, so can they or am I missing something right now?
Guess it shuts down daze..

On the other hand..it could work against some people.. you tap your lands to float mana, so do they. You go to Main -> Land -> Ritual -> Entomb/Shallow Grave and all they could have to stop it would be force.. Actually I really like it the more I think about it.

[phazonmutant]

Maybe I'm getting it wrong, but how does Teferi's Realm help against a Geist?
During your upkeep you choose creatures -> Geist phases out.
In your opponent's next untap, Geist phases in again and can attack you.

Sorry, I was trying to be cute instead of wording my statement clearly. Most Miracles decks have Geist instead of Canonist or Meddling Mage, but I'm in no way afraid of a turn 3 vanilla beater, even if it is a 3 turn clock. Canonist and Meddling Mage typically buy the Miracles player enough time by disrupting my gameplan that they can win off the back of Top, counterspells, and trumps like Counterbalance and Rest in Peace.



@phazonmuant - Richard Cheese has been testing Teferi's Realm a lot lately and has been liking it a lot. It seems quite strong, really. Is 2 of enough? Although I suppose the casting cost is a little oppressive. What have your opponents usually chosen in their upkeeps against you?

I had 3 in the board, and they were just too clunky to bring in all 3, even against Miracles. They are powerful late-game anti-hate, but a lot of the time you're mana constrained, so I preferred to have a mix of Chain of Vapor and Realm. Against Alphastryk's hatebears board I also brought in Massacre.
It was never really relevant what they named. Enchantment was named once because they thought that I wouldn't get a choice on my upkeep, but T-Money's Realm phases in my untap so that didn't work.
I love how confused everyone is by that card. In fact, I love it so much, I just bought 3 German Teferi's Realm! :cool:

[Richard Cheese]

What does it do for you to name lands? If you float mana, so can they or am I missing something right now?
Guess it shuts down daze..

On the other hand..it could work against some people.. you tap your lands to float mana, so do they. You go to Main -> Land -> Ritual -> Entomb/Shallow Grave and all they could have to stop it would be force.. Actually I really like it the more I think about it.

No you didn't miss anything, I just tend to say a bunch of stupid shit when I post from work. Guess I should look for a job where I don't have to be hammered to make it through the day.

[phazonmutant]

I keep on trying to convince myself to play fair decks instead of this at the upcoming SCG Atlanta, and it just isn't working. Getting some good testing in against a variety of gauntlet decks. Results so far:

Sneak & Show: 1-1 Pre (although it felt favored), 2-2 post (about even)
The key to this matchup is Silence postboard to fight through Leyline of Sanctity. Most people are on Grafdigger's Cage, so Chain is an excellent inclusion. To bring in so much hate or anti-hate they have to slow down a lot and I suspect most players will board out Show and Tell, so Therapies should be on Force and Sneak Attack mostly. You're the faster combo, so make them have it.

Esper Stoneblade: 3-1 preboard (very favored), haven't tested sideboard.

vs. Randos on Cockatrice: Inf-0 (this deck might be a bit unfair)

And of course some more random games against UW RiP Miracles: very unfavored. Hate bears suck. If you can go for it turn 1, always do. That's by far the most likely way to win.


Has anyone else had some good results at tournaments or some testing results? Freggle, any luck with the :u: build? I'm curious to see how that shakes out. I'm more focused on getting through the entire gauntlet with the :b: build for SCG ATL, but I'd be interested in testing it perhaps afterwards.

[Darklingske]

Esper Stoneblade: 3-1 preboard (very favored), haven't tested sideboard.

I did and the MU is very unfavored for us after boarding. Lots of counters (FoW, Pierce, Fluster, Snare), GYhate (Surgical) backed up with discard (TS, IoK) and a fast clock (Geist) is an uphill battle. I never won after boarding. But then again, Europe is always hostile for combo...

[phazonmutant]

I did and the MU is very unfavored for us after boarding. Lots of counters (FoW, Pierce, Fluster, Snare), GYhate (Surgical) backed up with discard (TS, IoK) and a fast clock (Geist) is an uphill battle. I never won after boarding. But then again, Europe is always hostile for combo...

Ah, interesting point. Most of the lists I'm using for gauntlet testing are from American tournaments, so if generally European lists are more geared to face combo in general, the matchups will be harder. I try to base lists on results from good players who've done well, but it seems like the only combo that's really had a presence here over the past 3 SCG opens has been Sneak & Show. There's always 1 or 2 Tendrils players in the top 32, but no one really has Flusterstorm, Canonist, or Snare.

[Darklingske]

Yeah, our meta has always a lot of combo (be it GY-based or not) and people keep playing a lot of combo-hate in the side. The last tournament I went to had the following top 8:
Stoneblade
Belcher
Reanimator
Pox
OmniTell
Sneak & Show x 2
Show & tell homebrew
So you can imaging that after that one, everybody started playing lots of combohate...

[Falconer]

I want to share my opinions about some cards after testing for discussion purposes. But before that I want to agree with Darklingske that the European Versions (I don’t know if there are really that big differences between European and American Esper Blade Lists) of Esper Blade feels unfavourable. But I have to point out that my opponent know what I was playing and always kept counter + hate heavy hands. Jace is also an annoyance when they start fatesealing you and with their load of discard and Counter they usually have the time to get to the point where they can play Jace.

Now to the cards I want to discuss.

Cunning Wish: Richard Cheese asked that I update you about my Wish build. I have discarded it. It did what I wanted it to do. Search for a Silver bullet when opposing hate prolonged the game. However for every game that that happened, there was three games where I needed Wish and didn’t had it because I was only playing two to avoid getting Wish flooded. But for this games there was roughly six games where I draw Wish when I didn’t need it because I was digging for my combo peace’s which my Wish build did not get. So increasing the Wish count to have it when needed would only increase the problem of having it when not needed. And after I still want the full Entomb in the main deck to keep the chances of drawing them high the not finding the combo peace’s problem will persist.

Lim-Dûl’s Vault: I have mixed results with LDV. For every game where it found me the cards I need and allow me to win with it there is the a game where I pay 5+ life and are not able to use Griselbrand effectively after it because of my low life total. However if I had paid 5+ Life it means that I would have not find what I need in the next 25+ cards. These are the games where Cantrips without shuffle effects also will not help you. In that case LDV just helps you to realise faster that you should try the next game. And in some of the games where LDV helped I also put 15+ cards away which I would consider the point where Cantrips are not a sure thing to hit because you need a shuffle effect and shuffle in a beneficial way which is also not a guarantee. So far I think 10 Cantrips + 2 LDV build are more consistent than 12 Cantrips + 0 LDV builds. But LDV is definitely not the dream card for this deck and we don’t need to discuss that if Mystical Tutor, Vampirical Tutor or even Imperial Seal would be available we wound not waste a second thinking about LDV.

Silence (I kill you): The more I draw it the more I like this card. A Silence in the opponents upkeep can decide a race who combos first against other fast control decks or helps you to keep your life total against Burn or UR Delver high enough to keep Griselbrands Draw ability relevant. Of course a Silence during you combo turn forces the opponent to use a counter on Silence which could help you to deal with the rest of the hand. If they don’t have the counter even Surgical Extraction or other instant Graveyard hate is not relevant. I really want the full playset of Silence in my 75 and at least two in my Maindeck. I am only searching for the slot.

Children of Korlis: I can’t decide if one or two is the right number. Usually you only want to draw it after you have Griselbrand in play because before it does nothing which is a strong argument for only one CoK. But if you need him to draw more cards you really don’t want to miss him, which is a strong argument for having two. Every time I play two CoK I get CoK flooded, if I play only one I miss him after Griselbrand. Maybe I need to run 1,5 CoK.

Reanimate: I really hate this card in TinFins and I can’t agree that the first Reanimate is more valuable than the fourth Goryo’s Vengeance. Our goal is to get Griselbrand into play and draw as many cards with him to win. If you need Reanimate to get him into play you will draw 14 to 21 cards less than with all the other reanimation spells. 7 because of the lack of haste and 7 to 14 more because you need to pay 8 life to get him into play with Reanimate. And depending on the Game you can go down quickly to 16 or even 15 life. As a trade of Griselbrand gets more vulnerable to removal or bounce compared to the other alternatives that get Griselbrand into play. Yes I know the purpose of Reanimate is after we draw many cards with Griselbrand to reanimate CoK. But after we are already drawing many cards with Griselbrand are we not already winning? I prefer a card that helps me to get to a point where I am winning (like in this case the fourth Goryo’s Vengeance) over a card that when I am already winning helps me to win more (like in this case Reanimate). Sure you can make the claim that Emrakul or Tendrils also don’t help you before you have Griselbrand in play. But these cards are the closer so you will need them. But if you play Emrakul and Tendrils and two CoK and Reanimate these are five cards you don’t want to see before you have Griselbrand in play. But statistically you will have at least one of these cards in every second opening hand. Reducing the number of dead draws should be a goal to make the deck more consistent. Yes I know Reanimate can also reanimate opposing creatures, but this has two issues as well. We can’t influence what our opponent is playing. Good luck reanimating High Tides best creature or compare the impact of the Goblin Lackey that you reanimated with the impact the opposing Goblin Lackey has in his own deck. And even if your opponent play a creature that is worth to get reanimated how do you get it into the Graveyard? The two ways we have are discard and Emrakul Annihilator. If Emrakul is annihilating the creature the chance that you do not longer need to reanimate is quite big. If you can afford to discard the opposing creatures, hate bears not included because I doubt you want to reanimate them, why are you not simple combo the cost seems to be clear? So far I have reanimated zero opposing creatures.

Pithing Needle: I am surprised how many of you are dropping this card from your Deck. I can understand that if you find an alternative to interact with your opponent that you need slots, but some dropping it without an alternative which seems strange to me. Sometimes a Pithing Needle on a card like Goblin Charbelcher just wins.

Massacre: Has anyone really cast this card? The only Deck I saw lately where I considered needing Massacre was Maverick which still sees more play than you would expect in the current Metagame. And even against Maverick because of Gaddock Teeg related issues I doubt that Massacre is the best solution here. And yes I still see Gaddock Teeg in Maverick because of Storm Decks.

Leyline of Sanctity: Maybe it is just because the Decks I faced but I really wondered if this Deck needs Leyline. Against other fast Combo Decks the Games often seem to come down to who wins the dice roll will win. And what will you do against a quick Goblin Charbelcher or Tendrils of Agony without Counters? Well at least both cards target and Leyline can stop that. Leyline can also stop many burn spells from Burn and UR Delver and as a result help you to keep your Life total in areas where Griselbrands draw ability still matters. Obviously there is also the anti-discard application in Match Ups where you need it. The only problem I have with Leyline are to find the slots.

[Cybey]

At Kory's request, I've tried to write a very small report of my Legacy Championship Top 8, but had to do most from memory, since I have not written down a lot of notes. First, the decklist:

2 Children of Korlis
1 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
2 Griselbrand

2 Chrome Mox
4 Lotus Petal
4 Brainstorm
4 Dark Ritual
4 Entomb
3 Goryo's Vengeance
4 Shallow Grave
1 Silence
4 Cabal Therapy
4 Gitaxian Probe
4 Ponder
1 Reanimate
1 Tendrils of Agony
2 Thoughtseize

1 Swamp
1 Island
2 Marsh Flats
2 Flooded Strand
4 Polluted Delta
1 Scrubland
2 Underground Sea

Sideboard
3 Pithing Needle
2 Silence
2 Massacre
3 Surgical Extraction
2 Chain of Vapor
1 Echoing Truth
2 Pull from Eternity


Round 1: Dredge (2-1)
Game 1: I mulligan to 6, and kept a hand with a Shallow Grave and some cantrips. Not a very fast hand, but definitely not a bad hand. I pretty much lost all dice rolls, so my opponent would start. He plays LED, land, makes red for Faithless looting, sacs LED in response, dredges, keeps dredging and puts about 12 tokens into play and has several Ichords in his graveyard. I draw, but it's not the card needed for the turn 1 kill.
Game 2: He mulligans to 5. I play first, fetch a land and play Thoughtseize on him. I see Ichorid, Narcomeiba, Careful Study, City of Brass and Breakthrough (which I throw away). I have a hand with 2x Dark Rituals, Petal and a Griselbrand. I knew I had a few more turns, since he hasn't hit a dredger yet and hardcast Griselbrand on turn 3. From there I draw 14 cards and go for the Emrakul kill.
Game 3: I destroy his hand with Thoughtseizes and Cabal Therapies. I kept a hand with 2x Surgical Extraction and remove his Breakthroughs and his Golgari Grave-trolls. This gave me sufficient time to build my hand. Looking at my notes, I see I fetch something, draw 7, play surgical, fetch again, sac a Children of Korlis, draw 7, reanimate Children, sac again, draw more and win from there.

Sideboard:
- in: 3x Surgical Extraction
- out: 3x Gitaxian Probe

Round 2: Jund (UBG) (2-1)
Game 1: Lost the dice roll and mulligan to 6. Turn 1 he plays a DRS. I couldn't get around it in time, and eventually get beaten down by a goyf (I think) and the DRS. I never showed him what I played.
Game 2: I play first and cantrip. His turn he plays his DRS again and passes. I play Pithing Needle on DRS. Next turn, I entomb Griselbrand and play Reanimate on him, putting me to 8 life and pass the turn. Next turn I attack and pass the turn, since I had suffient time and he has put a few creatures on the board which might get me for lethal if I would draw 7 and not find anything. Next turn, I draw 7, brainstorm and have sufficient cards to put Emrakul next to Griselbrand and swing for lethal.
Game 3: Think I got a turn 2 kill here. I see I fetched and draw 7 cards. From there the notes stop. He lost 1 life twice, so probably 2x fetch.

Sideboard:
- in: 3x Pithing Needle, 2x Chain of Vapor
- out: 1x Silence, 4x Gitaxian Probe

Round 3: Elves (2-0)
Game 1: I play Thoughtseize on him and see Glimpse of Nature, Elvish Visionary, Verdant C, Llanowar Elves and Gaea's Cradle and take the Glimpse. He plays DRS. Next turn, I reanimate Griselbrand, putting me to 10 and pass the turn. He makes a couple of elves. Next turn I draw 7 cards and find nothing, attack and pass the turn. He attacks for 2, puting me to 8. Basically I just kept attacking with Griselbrand until he died.
Game 2: We both mulligan to 6. He starts and fetches and plays an elf. I have the turn 1 kill. Put Griselbrand into play, draw 14, play Children of Korlis, draw another 14 cards and put Emrakul into play.

Sideboard:
- in: 3x Pithing Needle, 2x Chain of Vapor
- out: 4x Gitaxian Probe, 1x Cabal Therapy,

Round 4: TES (2-0)
Game 1: He started and played a Gemstone Mine. I already knew what he was playing, since I watched him the round before. I have the turn 1 kill with Griselbrand and Emrakul.
Game 2: I kept a mediocre hand with 2x Silence and a Children of Korlis. I knew that if I would play the Children, he would have a terrible time killing me with Tendrils, since I can just sac the Children before the lethal storm copy resolves. He starts and plays Gitaxian Probe twice, so he knew I had several Silences. I thoughtseize him and see LED, Dark Ritual (2x), Chrome Mox and Polluted Deta. I take one of the Rituals. I fire a few Cabal Therapies at him and we both just did the draw and go for a few turns, until I found my combo and did a tendrils from there.

Sideboard:
- in: 2x Silence, 2x Chain of Vapor
- out: 4x Gitaxian probe

Round 5: Punishing Jund (RUG ?) (1-2)
Game 1: Don't remember much from these games. The deck just didn't want to go off, and had to deal with turn 1 DRS on both games. Especially game 1, he did not know what I was playing, since I barely played anything.
Game 2: We both mulligan to 6, and think I had a decent hand. I put PIthing Needle on DRS, making his 2 DRS simple 1/1 elves. Just wasn't fast enough and goyf got the better of me. I tried to go off, but FoW hit me in the face.

Sideboard:
- in: 3x Pithing Needle
- out: 3x Gitaxian Probe


Round 6: Imperial Painter (2-1)
Game 1: I mulligan to 6, and he starts. He plays City of Traitors and passes the turn. I play a Tundra and cantrip. He plays Magus of the Moon and I'm sitting pretty with my Tundra Mountain and 2 fetchland in my hand. I draw and go a few turns, while he assembles his combo and does the Painter/Grindstone thing. I scoop before he gets a chance to see my library.
Game 2: I start and have the turn 1 kill with Griselbrand and Emrakul.
Game 3: He mulligans and starts, playing 2x Tormod's Crypt and a land. I have a Pithing Needle in hand, but decide to not play it yet. I thoughtseize him and see City of Traitors, 2x Simian Spirit Guide and an Imperial Recruiter. I take the recruiter. He hardcasts a Spirit guide and starts beating my with it. I fire 2 Cabal Therapies at him and destroy his hand. I cantrip into my combo, play the Pithing Needle and put Griselbrand and Emrakul into play.

Sideboard:
- in: 3x Pithing Needle, 2x Chain of Vapor
- out: Silence, 4x Gitaxian Probe

Round 7: I.D.


Top 8:
Round 8: BUG Control (0-2)
Game 1: Basically what happened here is that my deck refused to do anything. I mulligan to 6 and keep a mediocre hand with 3 land (shouldn't have done this). My first few draws all were land and just was too slow. He did not know what I was playing in game 2, since I actually didn't really play anything.
Game 2: Kept a decent hand with some cantrips, but again my draws screw me. At one point I play Brainstorm and draw 3 Lotus Petals...



Luckily top 8 decided before playing to split the prices, so I get away pretty good and got to go home.



The deck seems to run quite smooth and the amount of turn 1 kills are just insane. I do feel the deck does a horrible job against the Jund discard which seems to be everywhere and the counter heavy decks.

From my sideboard, the weakest and never used cards definitely were the Massacre and the Pull from Eternity. Never used either of them and never actually had to. I didn't want to run Show and Tell, because I feel they are simple too slow and just don't work with just 3 creatures. Pithing Needle is absolutely the MVP in the sideboard, since it gets around so much graveyard hate like Tormod's Crypt, DRS, Relic of Progenitus, etc.

[vennie]

Round 6: Imperial Painter (2-1)
Game 1: I mulligan to 6, and he starts. He plays City of Traitors and passes the turn. I play a Tundra and cantrip. He plays Magus of the Moon and I'm sitting pretty with my Tundra Mountain and 2 fetchland in my hand. I draw and go a few turns, while he assembles his combo and does the Painter/Grindstone thing. I scoop before he gets a chance to see my library.



This is not smart since u have a emrakul in ure deck that reshuffles ure deck after the grindstone does it's thing...

[alphastryk]

Massacre: Has anyone really cast this card? The only Deck I saw lately where I considered needing Massacre was Maverick which still sees more play than you would expect in the current Metagame. And even against Maverick because of Gaddock Teeg related issues I doubt that Massacre is the best solution here. And yes I still see Gaddock Teeg in Maverick because of Storm Decks.

We don't care about Teeg, we can loop Emrakul, no need to cast anything he stops. Massacre is for Thalia, Ethersworn Cannonist & Meddling Mage as far as I know, someone correct me if I'm wrong.

[.dk]

We don't care about Teeg, we can loop Emrakul, no need to cast anything he stops. Massacre is for Thalia, Ethersworn Cannonist & Meddling Mage as far as I know, someone correct me if I'm wrong.

You got it - Teeg is a don't care. The rest of the hatebears, particularly the ones you mentioned, can be huge problems though.

[Freggle]

Has anyone else had some good results at tournaments or some testing results? Freggle, any luck with the :u: build? I'm curious to see how that shakes out.

I haven't tested the :u: build vs. the :b: built to an extent in which I feel I can speak about it comfortably. Also, given the time between now and Atlanta, and the time it would take to do that I'm not sure I'm in the best position to put this together for you. I don't have a solid play group, and Cocktrice is down. I do not want to lead you in the wrong direction. Perhaps others can comment on any :u: build when it comes to play testing.

I also wanted to make a small not that the post in which I talk about percentages Kryptor PM'ed me about a small error.

Since I used the numbers of 1 or more it is calculating 1 to 4 on any of the cards we run 4 of, and since any given hand can only have a total number of 7 cards there would be a slight miscalculation in the probability of getting a certain hand because we could not have a hand of 4 Dark Ritual, 4 Entomb, 7 (2) mana reanimation spells, (16) mana sources because that would be a 31 card hand.

This miscalculation would lower the probability ever so slightly since the probability of getting 4 of (or max of) anything is very low.

I don't think that this would change the overall variance and ultimately the overall statement very much since the proportion of change would vary much given that everything was miscalculated in the same manner.

To do what I wanted to do accurately I would have had to use the "multidimentional hypergeometric distribution" fucntion not the "hypergeometric distribution" function. Hopefully that makes sense.

[Falconer]

We don't care about Teeg, we can loop Emrakul, no need to cast anything he stops. Massacre is for Thalia, Ethersworn Cannonist & Meddling Mage as far as I know, someone correct me if I'm wrong.

After my last post was already quit long I didn't wanted to go everywhere into the last detail. I am sorry if that lead to some confusion.

I am not worry about Gaddock Teeg stoping the Deck I am worried about Gaddock Teeg stoping the answers to the hate bear we care about. It is similar to Mother of Runes. Thalia alone makes Chain of Vapor more expensive, Thalia + Mother of Runes invalidates Chain of Vapor as an answer as long as you only have a single copy. The same is happening to Massacre when Thalia is joined by Gaddock Teeg. If we really consider Maverick as the primary hate bear deck we can face I would be much more comfortable in running Infest because compared to Massacre it can't be stoped by Teeg. Recent TinFin Lists run only two copys of Massacre and no way to tutor it. That means sometimes you need some time to find a copy of it, and that is the time Maverick has to establish a board position like Mother + Thalia + Teeg. And that is what I am worried about. Massacre is by now known tech especially after not only TinFin run that card but Storm too. As a result you should expect that the Maverick Player knows about that card and will not board out Teeg because of it.

[alphastryk]

After my last post was already quit long I didn't wanted to go everywhere into the last detail. I am sorry if that lead to some confusion.

I am not worry about Gaddock Teeg stoping the Deck I am worried about Gaddock Teeg stoping the answers to the hate bear we care about. It is similar to Mother of Runes. Thalia alone makes Chain of Vapor more expensive, Thalia + Mother of Runes invalidates Chain of Vapor as an answer as long as you only have a single copy. The same is happening to Massacre when Thalia is joined by Gaddock Teeg. If we really consider Maverick as the primary hate bear deck we can face I would be much more comfortable in running Infest because compared to Massacre it can't be stoped by Teeg. Recent TinFin Lists run only two copys of Massacre and no way to tutor it. That means sometimes you need some time to find a copy of it, and that is the time Maverick has to establish a board position like Mother + Thalia + Teeg. And that is what I am worried about. Massacre is by now known tech especially after not only TinFin run that card but Storm too. As a result you should expect that the Maverick Player knows about that card and will not board out Teeg because of it.

Ok, that makes a lot more sense. In my area at least, Maverick has disappeared for at least 4-5 months now, so it isn't as much of a concern, and I wasn't thinking about him protecting other hatebears.

[.dk]

hah, same. I actually haven't played a single game against maverick since GP Atlanta last year. Hadn't even considered it.

Massacre is useful against Miracles though, as they do tend to board in things like Canonist and Meddling Mage.

[Koby]

There is also Virtue's Ruin to ignore Gaddock Teeg stopping the Thalia/Canonist crimp plan. I'm not sure how castable it is, because the situations are always in flux with regards to G/W Hatebear decks. Dread of Night is likely better against Thalia, but you would need a second one or a Chain to deal with Canonist. Karakas deals with Thalia and Teeg, but not Canonist/Mom, so that's also insufficient. Basically it comes down to:

Massacre vs Virtue's Ruin

Or win on turn 1 / 2 and ignore it :D

Massacre is pretty sweet against Deadguy / Junk decks however, as it kills not only Thalia but also Deathrite Shaman. Against Maverick, it's weaker due to the selection of hatebears. Against all other Plains decks, Massacre shines.

[Falconer]

I am living in the area of Germany where I can walk to France and Luxembourgh. Germany was always a Maverick stronghold and for irregular Legacy players it is the deck which they dust of for Grand Prix and the Trials leading to the Grand Prix. In the areas of France on the other side of the boarder it seems that someone casted a standstill and as a result you see many decks that commonly are considered to be outdated including Maverick. Whats going on in Luxembourgh I will find out this weekend.

Even I was so far able to dodge it during the Tournaments I have seen a lot of Maverick during the last weeks of Grand Prix Trials for GP Strasbourgh.

@ Koby

Infest kills Deathrite Shaman too. But I agree winning on Turn 1 or 2 seems the best solution most of the time.:cool:

[.dk]

My strategy against Maverick was always to just mull to a fast hand. But honestly, it's a pretty tough matchup if you go past T2. Scavenging Ooze is pretty rough, and you need to make sure you don't play your Entomb straight into a random Mindcensor. I packed Dread of Night for SCG Denver last year, but I never played against Maverick. Also have tried both Virtue's Ruin and Infest in the wishboard of UBr lists sporting Burning Wish, but the situations never really came up to use them.

Virtues' Ruin vs. Infest = Ruin hits Linvala and Infest can hit Deathrite and an early Ooze. Casting cost of both suck.

[kihachi]

I want to share my opinions about some cards after testing for discussion purposes. But before that I want to agree with Darklingske that the European Versions (I don’t know if there are really that big differences between European and American Esper Blade Lists) of Esper Blade feels unfavourable. But I have to point out that my opponent know what I was playing and always kept counter + hate heavy hands. Jace is also an annoyance when they start fatesealing you and with their load of discard and Counter they usually have the time to get to the point where they can play Jace.

Just wanted to say first off, before I disagree with a bunch of stuff, that this is a great post, so thanks.


Lim-Dûl’s Vault: I have mixed results with LDV. For every game where it found me the cards I need and allow me to win with it there is the a game where I pay 5+ life and are not able to use Griselbrand effectively after it because of my low life total. However if I had paid 5+ Life it means that I would have not find what I need in the next 25+ cards. These are the games where Cantrips without shuffle effects also will not help you. In that case LDV just helps you to realise faster that you should try the next game. And in some of the games where LDV helped I also put 15+ cards away which I would consider the point where Cantrips are not a sure thing to hit because you need a shuffle effect and shuffle in a beneficial way which is also not a guarantee. So far I think 10 Cantrips + 2 LDV build are more consistent than 12 Cantrips + 0 LDV builds. But LDV is definitely not the dream card for this deck and we don’t need to discuss that if Mystical Tutor, Vampirical Tutor or even Imperial Seal would be available we wound not waste a second thinking about LDV.

Is your build specifically lacking in shuffle effects? I run 8 fetches and 4 Ponders, so a bad LDV to me would generally not be an indicator that I would've been screwed anyway. More likely, I would either shuffle up with a land after a Brainstorm, or shuffle on a Ponder after seeing three bad cards (or take the best card and crack a fetchland).

I think you make a solid case for LDV not being the greatest thing since sliced bread though. Most importantly though, it costs 2 mana. At one mana, it would definitely be a great Mystical Tutor substitute, but at two, I personally think it slows down the deck a lot.

The one thing I would like to test when I have a chance, and this is probably a longshot, but 4 LDV and 4 Chrome Mox. The Mox would be a huge sacrifice of card advantage for speed, but LDV is the best card to put on a Mox, and Mox lets you cast one on turn one, so it seems very complimentary.


Children of Korlis: I can’t decide if one or two is the right number. Usually you only want to draw it after you have Griselbrand in play because before it does nothing which is a strong argument for only one CoK. But if you need him to draw more cards you really don’t want to miss him, which is a strong argument for having two. Every time I play two CoK I get CoK flooded, if I play only one I miss him after Griselbrand. Maybe I need to run 1,5 CoK.

In my experience, 2 CoK gives you a lot of consistency and a dead one can often be shuffled back in with a Brainstorm. I will probably run 2 forever, but I generally cut one as my first cut for sideboard cards.


Reanimate: I really hate this card in TinFins and I can’t agree that the first Reanimate is more valuable than the fourth Goryo’s Vengeance. Our goal is to get Griselbrand into play and draw as many cards with him to win. If you need Reanimate to get him into play you will draw 14 to 21 cards less than with all the other reanimation spells. 7 because of the lack of haste and 7 to 14 more because you need to pay 8 life to get him into play with Reanimate. And depending on the Game you can go down quickly to 16 or even 15 life. As a trade of Griselbrand gets more vulnerable to removal or bounce compared to the other alternatives that get Griselbrand into play. Yes I know the purpose of Reanimate is after we draw many cards with Griselbrand to reanimate CoK. But after we are already drawing many cards with Griselbrand are we not already winning? I prefer a card that helps me to get to a point where I am winning (like in this case the fourth Goryo’s Vengeance) over a card that when I am already winning helps me to win more (like in this case Reanimate). Sure you can make the claim that Emrakul or Tendrils also don’t help you before you have Griselbrand in play. But these cards are the closer so you will need them. But if you play Emrakul and Tendrils and two CoK and Reanimate these are five cards you don’t want to see before you have Griselbrand in play. But statistically you will have at least one of these cards in every second opening hand. Reducing the number of dead draws should be a goal to make the deck more consistent. Yes I know Reanimate can also reanimate opposing creatures, but this has two issues as well. We can’t influence what our opponent is playing. Good luck reanimating High Tides best creature or compare the impact of the Goblin Lackey that you reanimated with the impact the opposing Goblin Lackey has in his own deck. And even if your opponent play a creature that is worth to get reanimated how do you get it into the Graveyard? The two ways we have are discard and Emrakul Annihilator. If Emrakul is annihilating the creature the chance that you do not longer need to reanimate is quite big. If you can afford to discard the opposing creatures, hate bears not included because I doubt you want to reanimate them, why are you not simple combo the cost seems to be clear? So far I have reanimated zero opposing creatures.

I like Reanimate a lot because unlike Goryo's, it actually can work on both Griselbrand and CoK. Reanimating Gris with it may not be ideal but I've won plenty of games with a turn one Gris this way. You can't combo off quickly but you often just win three turns later through attacks anyway. I've also fizzled plenty of times looking for something to reanimate CoK with post-combo, before adding 2 Reanimates to the equation. Especially if you used one Shallow Grave on Gris, and are at too low of life to draw 21 cards.


Leyline of Sanctity: Maybe it is just because the Decks I faced but I really wondered if this Deck needs Leyline. Against other fast Combo Decks the Games often seem to come down to who wins the dice roll will win. And what will you do against a quick Goblin Charbelcher or Tendrils of Agony without Counters? Well at least both cards target and Leyline can stop that. Leyline can also stop many burn spells from Burn and UR Delver and as a result help you to keep your Life total in areas where Griselbrands draw ability still matters. Obviously there is also the anti-discard application in Match Ups where you need it. The only problem I have with Leyline are to find the slots.

I like the idea of this Leyline, but I think the problem is that our biggest weakness post-board is graveyard hate, and generally if you can fight that hate you'll win. We answer their counterspells with discard, and we answer their discard with discard, Brainstorm, and redundancy. We answer their direct damage with speed. This is all good in theory, and I know it doesn't always work out that way, but the hardest thing for us to answer is the graveyard hate. Permanent-based hate can be played before we have a chance to make them discard it, and without an answer we lose. So devoting spots to combat discard and burn spells and maybe proactively hate out other decks, I don't think we can afford to make space for.

One idea I had while playing at SCG Indy was, could we run Cabal Ritual in the sideboard to attempt, in the long game, a hardcast Griselbrand? Once you hit threshold, three mana sources + a Dark Rit and a Cabal Rit = 8 mana. I know I've been close to the hardcast without Cabal Rit, so I think it's a possibility. I'm sure there are a million downsides though, so could someone please talk me out of this? :)

EDIT:


My strategy against Maverick was always to just mull to a fast hand. But honestly, it's a pretty tough matchup if you go past T2. Scavenging Ooze is pretty rough, and you need to make sure you don't play your Entomb straight into a random Mindcensor. I packed Dread of Night for SCG Denver last year, but I never played against Maverick. Also have tried both Virtue's Ruin and Infest in the wishboard of UBr lists sporting Burning Wish, but the situations never really came up to use them.

Virtues' Ruin vs. Infest = Ruin hits Linvala and Infest can hit Deathrite and an early Ooze. Casting cost of both suck.

I think a hand stocked with discard can compete pretty well with Maverick too. They generally can't get hate out against you on turn 1, so you have a chance to get rid of one piece of hate. Ooze will generally cost them a GSZ to grab, so they generally can't play one on turn 2 with mana up to activate it. Also, game one you can often hide what deck you're on for a bit so they'll try to beat you down with Knights instead of grabbing hatebears, and maybe you can bait their Mindcensors out with fetchlands.

[.dk]

One idea I had while playing at SCG Indy was, could we run Cabal Ritual in the sideboard to attempt, in the long game, a hardcast Griselbrand? Once you hit threshold, three mana sources + a Dark Rit and a Cabal Rit = 8 mana. I know I've been close to the hardcast without Cabal Rit, so I think it's a possibility. I'm sure there are a million downsides though, so could someone please talk me out of this? :)

Richard Cheese and I ran something like this a long time ago - and actually worked fairly well. We were running 4 Griselbrand main at the time (and I think you would need to board in the rest for this if you're aren't), along with some Cabal Rits and Show and Tells, among other things. I think I was testing Massacre Wurm then due to all of the critters out of Maverick. I think your biggest problem in this case is that you need more than just 4 Griselbrand to cast and Show and Tell in.

I know you asked to get talked out of it, but I was always rather fond of it... ;)

[phazonmutant]

One idea I had while playing at SCG Indy was, could we run Cabal Ritual in the sideboard to attempt, in the long game, a hardcast Griselbrand? Once you hit threshold, three mana sources + a Dark Rit and a Cabal Rit = 8 mana. I know I've been close to the hardcast without Cabal Rit, so I think it's a possibility. I'm sure there are a million downsides though, so could someone please talk me out of this? :)

Before the last SCG Atlanta, I was testing 4 Show and Tell and 4 Cabal Ritual for a while. It just never worked out the way I wanted it to - there was still the bottleneck of assembling your 2-card(+) combo and you were still vulnerable to counterspells, discard, and storm hate. It really seems like a good idea, but it just never did anything for me either before or at the starcity.

edit: more stuff!

The one thing I would like to test when I have a chance, and this is probably a longshot, but 4 LDV and 4 Chrome Mox. The Mox would be a huge sacrifice of card advantage for speed, but LDV is the best card to put on a Mox, and Mox lets you cast one on turn one, so it seems very complimentary.
LDV is really really bad in multiples. At GP Atlanta I played a deck with I think 3 Chrome Mox and 2 LDV, and it was still a problem drawing multiples of either one. That said, the times when you make an unwasteable Underground Sea and then tutor for the kill feel really good.
Overall I'm not a huge fan of relying multiple card-disadvantage spells. It doesn't make for a consistent deck through mulliganning. That's a big reason why I've cut down to 1 Chrome Mox and 1 Children of Korlis - I don't think any combo deck can afford to have a bunch of dead draws and still be resilient to mulliganning and discard.



To do what I wanted to do accurately I would have had to use the "multidimentional hypergeometric distribution" fucntion not the "hypergeometric distribution" function. Hopefully that makes sense.

I keep on having to relearn the excel functions when I try to do this math. They couldn't make the function prototypes any more confusing. Don't you just feel like a balla when you say "multidimensional hypergeometric distribution?"
Also thanks for the update.


Re: Massacre - If I expected to see a bunch of Maverick, I would honestly not expect this deck to do well. This slot is mostly for W decks that don't have access to Teeg, as others mentioned. I'm looking at you, UW Miracle-Fish-Bears. It can sometimes tag some hatebears out of Mav, but there isn't really a good solution outside of a playset of Dread of Night.


Cybey - thanks for the report! I think I'll put a Needle back in - I had forgotten how good it was at shutting down both hate and other people's combo. The biggest reason I've leaned away from it is because I realized Karakas just didn't matter - that was a huge incentive for it - and also BG/x players leaving in Abrupt Decay (incorrectly) and nuking my Needle on their Deathrite or whatever. That's actually a compounding factor for how I picked up my second loss and got massively tilted on my track to top8 at SCG Atlanta.


Falconer - I definitely agree Silence is awesome. I love having 2 in the main. Have to disagree about Reanimate though. As a bunch of people have mentioned, I've won a ton of times just Reanimating Griselbrand. I've also reanimated opponent's creatures - like my opponent's Meddling Mage that I Therapied (then named the Counterbalance in his hand :laugh:). That felt pretty good. I'm thinking of adding a second back in because it's so good at helping you be fast postboard.

[Deckerator]

Has anyone tried a list with 4x Force of Will? I know it slows the deck a bit but we have many blue cards in it and why not playing Force, if you can, to protect the Combo.

[Dark Ritual]

Has anyone tried a list with 4x Force of Will? I know it slows the deck a bit but we have many blue cards in it and why not playing Force, if you can, to protect the Combo.

Because force of will doesn't dump griselbrand in the yard like therapy and thoughtseize does? And discard is actually reliable at stripping opposing countermagic. Card has been tested, and it is awful. Usually I don't want to pitch cantrips to FoW in a combo deck, unless I naturally draw entomb reanimation spell every game but that is a pipe dream that has no consistency to it whatsoever.

I don't like show and tell in a deck with 4-5 targets including an emrakul that just dies to karakas off of show and tell or any form of interaction really. Rather just go for anti hate cards such as needle, pull from eternity, chain of vapor, etc. etc. that works quite well.

[Anthropoid]

First of I have to say great Deck and amazing work done with the Primer.
I have been an avid reader of every page so far.

I have a question I am kinda ashamed to ask but I will do it regardless.
My little brother saw me running the deck and was amazed by its sheer power
and the potential for broken stuff. He told me that he would pick Magic up again if
I build a version for him. My problem is the following: I dont really want to shell out
the cash for the duals again. I love my brother but being a student has also his downsides,
my pockets are not as deep as I would like.
So I'm building a rainbow manabase for him.
4x Gematone Mines
4x City of Brass
But how do I fill the other 5-6 land spots? Sound advice is appreciated.
Not running fetches also reduces the usefulness of brainstorm. Should such
a version still run it or would 4 Ponder 4 Preordain and X Gitaxian Probe or CS
the way to go. I know that this makes for a weaker version but the potential is
still there and my main goal is to make my bro happy! Thanks for proposals.

Now to my version:
I disliked the combination of thoughtseize and gitaxian probe due to the lifeloss.
Dont get me wrong I totally see the awesomeness of both of them. Especially Probe +
Cabal Therapy feels so good, also knowing if the coast is clear is great.
However I feel confident at blind therapying and thus made the following adjustments.

I'm running 4 Gbrand with the following cantrip configuration:
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
2 Preordain
2 Careful Study

Also 4 Silences instead of Toughtseize but here I am unsure. My meta is quite
Combo heavy and silence is often a timewalk for W.

Please bear with my writing english is not my native language and I'm creating
this post with my phone.

Feedback especially for the list of my bro would be great

[P-E]

without fetches you'll lack some shuffle effect
you can replace dual with ravlands or maybe m10 duals

[dameus]

@ Anthropoid

I think you'll miss the shuffle effects of fetch lands too much. Within a budget, try:
1x Swamp
1x Island
1x Watery Grave
1x Godless Shrine
6x fetch
4x Gemstone Mine

In many other decks, I too resist Thoughtseize for the life loss; but here, there's no good substitute.
You can do without Probe, though. Thoughtseize makes you more consistent (more pitch options), more resistant (protection), and makes your Therapies better, too.
I'd drop the 2x Preordains if you need space.

[phazonmutant]

Top 4'd my local tournament today. The store just bumped prize payout 3x (although we have to pay for entry now), so everyone was pretty pumped in top8. I refused to chop in the semis and was served some justice. My list has some minor changes from where I was at before Koby's list from SCG -- I feel like it's getting to a very refined state and the sideboard is actually starting to be good.

2 Griselbrand
1 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
1 Children of Korlis
1 Tendrils of Agony

4 Entomb
1 Intuition
4 Shallow Grave
3 Goryo's Vengeance
1 Reanimate

2 Silence
2 Thoughtseize
3 Cabal Therapy
4 Gitaxian Probe
4 Ponder
4 Brainstorm

1 Chrome Mox
4 Lotus Petal
4 Dark Ritual

4 Polluted Delta
3 Marsh Flats
2 Underground Sea
1 Tundra
1 Scrubland
1 Swamp
2 Gemstone Mine

// Sideboard
2 Chain of Vapor
2 Teferi's Realm
1 Pithing Needle
2 Massacre
2 Pull from Eternity
1 Silence
1 Cabal Therapy
1 Hurkyl's Recall
3 Surgical Extraction

I didn't drop a single game in the 3 rounds of swiss I played or in the quarterfinals. Felt pretty good. I ripped Entomb like a champ in 2 games, but I liked how Gitaxian Probe saw me deeper into the deck and told me what to play around. I tried to leave 2 Probes in at all times. I'm back to 1 Intuition in the main and it did good work in 3 of the games, I was very happy to have it. Twice it was Entomb, once it was Demonic for Goryo's Vengeance. Here's a quick report:

Round 1 - alphastryk with UW Miracles (like we don't play that matchup enough in testing :rolleyes:)
G1 - I'm on the play, Probe sees a hand that can't interact until turn 2 with Counterspell. I kill him on my turn 2.
G2 - I take his Force of Will with a Therapy and he taps out to find another piece of interaction with Brainstorm into Ponder. He doesn't and I kill him on my turn 2 again.
I got very lucky he kept a loose hand g1 and I had reasonable draws both games
Boarding: -1 Chrome Mox, -1 Tendrils, -3 Gitaxian Probe, +2 Teferi's Realm, +2 Massacre, +1 Chain of Vapor

Round 2 - Megadeus with UR Stiflenaught (he's abandoned storm, the traitor)
G1 - His Brainstorm bricks on interaction and I kill him on turn 3 through an useless Misdirection that Gitaxian Probe was kind enough to show me.
G2 - He says he doesn't have grave hate, but I'm not sure if I believed him. He's stuck on 1 land with stone nothing relevant in hand for a bit after Brainstorm bricks, but I'm just trying to draw the Entomb. He finally finds a Force with Ponder, but I strip it with Therapy and go off with my freshly-drawn Entomb.
Boarding: More Silence? Not sure since he doesn't have hate. I boarded in a couple of Chain of Vapor and a Pull for a couple Probes and the Tendrils.

Round 3 - RiP Enchantress
G1 - I Thoughtseize Rest in Peace then go off on my turn 2 or 3 when I rip Entomb.
G2 - Cabal Therapy blind-hit 2 Rest in Peace, which was enough to buy me time to put 3 lands in play to cast Intuition as Entomb and win from there.
Boarding: -1 Gitaxian Probe, -2 Silence, -1 Tendrils, +2 Teferi's Realm, +2 Chain of Vapor

Round 4 - ID

Quarters - Junk
G1 - I Thoughtseize and see nothing relevant in hand, and kill him on turn 2. It was taking a while to find mana to cast Tendrils, but after shuffling with Emrakul, he saw the writing on the wall.
G2 - He led on Deathrite, I led on a fetch. He played a Wasteland and Hymned me (using his Deathrite), which fortunately hit one a pair of cards I didn't care about. I double DR, Intuitioned for Griselbrand, and killed him from there.
Boarding: -3 Gitaxian Probe, -2 Silence, -1 Cabal Therapy, +2 Chain of Vapor, +2 Massacre, +2 Pull from Eternity (Junk sideboards attack from a lot of angles)

Semis - BUG Control
G1 - I kept a borderline speculative hand with a Gitaxian Probe, an out, mana and irrelevants. He got a triple Deathrite Shaman draw while I drew Emrakul, Children of Korlis, and no Brainstorms. He knew how to play around my deck and got there pretty easily.
G2 - I keep a fine hand with Ponder, a couple Rits, a couple Outs, Therapy, and lands, but Therapy whiffs and sees 2 Surgicals. He draws a Deathrite a couple of turns later while I'm trying to find Entomb, then I Brainstorm-lock myself. I finally find a way to play through 3 exile effects and Pierce with another Brainstorm into a hand of Entomb, DRx3, Goryo's, Shallow Grave, Reanimate, Pull, and 3 mana sources untapped, but he had essentially infinite outs to draw and did actually draw Force, Pierce x2, and Snapcaster to boot.

The BUG match was rough, but that player has experience playing GB/x in our store's meta, so he boards a lot of combo and grave hate cards. I kept a loose 7 g1, and he had a very good draw g2. Good beats.

Thoughts about the list post-tournament:
Besides the last match, the deck felt absurdly overpowered. For the most part, I wasn't searching for a way to put a man in the bin or get him out, only protection. I felt a little flooded several times and felt mana shy once or twice. It's definitely safe to cut a land, but I'm not sure which one. Gemstone Mine is an easy cut, but I'm nervous about the basic Swamp with only 13 lands. Another protection spell or the second reanimate are both reasonable. I was fairly happy with my sideboard and very happy with my maindeck otherwise.
There's a lot of people hating on Probe, but that card is absolutely nuts. It makes evaluating hands and sequencing much harder, but it's an all-star when used right. It gives you so much information for deciding when to go for it or not and helps dig into your deck. I've played it for mana more than 1/3 of the time it's in my hand (usually turn 2 or later), so it doesn't take all that much life. It doesn't really matter, anyway. Children is gross and this deck is fast.
I think Probe is a must-include in the same sense that you wouldn't imagine playing modern TES without Probe.

Edit: forgot cards in decklist.

[Cybey]

This is not smart since u have a emrakul in ure deck that reshuffles ure deck after the grindstone does it's thing...
I partially agree with you. But my opponent had a Painter's Servant and a Magus of the Moon in play, which could also attack for 4 damage each turn, killing me in only a few short turns. I only had a few outs (Petal, Mox, 1 basic land) and figured I'd rather be prepared for the next round while he had no idea what he was up against.


Phazonmutant - I also experienced that BUG Control is a very tough matchup for us, and I'm not entirely sure how to really improve this. This is also exactly the reason for me to play 3x Pithing Needle, since I really want to shut down those DRS to increase my odds of going off. My opponents have shown me several times what they boarded in and out against me and they always seem to board out their Abrupt Decays, so I'm not really worried about that. Reading your report I might add the Intuition again. How were the 2 Silence mainboard for you? I often found myself boarding them (or it, since I only play one) out game 2. Did you ever get to play Teferi's Realm? Because I really love the card, but I have serious doubts about how useful it really is, especially for 3 mana.

[Kich867]

I partially agree with you. But my opponent had a Painter's Servant and a Magus of the Moon in play, which could also attack for 4 damage each turn, killing me in only a few short turns. I only had a few outs (Petal, Mox, 1 basic land) and figured I'd rather be prepared for the next round while he had no idea what he was up against.

What point is there in sacrificing game one that you just win on the spot in, now giving yourself 2 more matches to kill him in? Because the alternative is he's up a game, you obviously should win the next one, but now instead of having 2 rounds to fight through his sideboard you have one and if he has it and you get a little unlucky you just lose.

That's not actually denying him any information, you're just throwing a game away. Even in the best situation for the opponent where he wins game 2, you're now on the play again which dramatically improves your chances of winning.

In the future, just take the win, because worst comes to worst you get to be on the play again.

[.dk]

Thoughts about the list post-tournament:
Besides the last match, the deck felt absurdly overpowered. For the most part, I wasn't searching for a way to put a man in the bin or get him out, only protection. I felt a little flooded several times and felt mana shy once or twice. It's definitely safe to cut a land, but I'm not sure which one. Gemstone Mine is an easy cut, but I'm nervous about the basic Swamp with only 13 lands. Another protection spell or the second reanimate are both reasonable. I was fairly happy with my sideboard and very happy with my maindeck otherwise.
There's a lot of people hating on Probe, but that card is absolutely nuts. It makes evaluating hands and sequencing much harder, but it's an all-star when used right. It gives you so much information for deciding when to go for it or not and helps dig into your deck. I've played it for mana more than 1/3 of the time it's in my hand (usually turn 2 or later), so it doesn't take all that much life. It doesn't really matter, anyway. Children is gross and this deck is fast.
I think Probe is a must-include in the same sense that you wouldn't imagine playing modern TES without Probe.


Nice finish! I'm back on 1 intuition main myself - with the list only running 2 Griselbrand now I feel like we're relying super heavily on Entomb, and having a 5th (albeit slow) seems necessary to me. Gitaxian Probe has been amazing in these lists as well, helping dig for more Entombs. I have also been trying Tendrils in the sideboard. I'm not 100% that it is correct yet, but it seems like the games where I want Tendrils are always post-board. In the games I've played so far, I've always boarded it in, as it does enable some really busted stuff. I hadn't considered going down to 1 Chrome Mox, though if I do, I may bring Tendrils back to maindeck.

Have the deck together on MODO now, so been getting used to the interface there in the Tournament Practice room. Hopefully will hit some Dailies in the coming weeks.

Fun story from last night against MUD: Managed to win a game through 2 lodestone golems on board beating me down, after having Thoughtseized away a Trinisphere. Was the first time I actually played this deck since GP Denver - forgot how insanely fun it can be!

[RaNDoMxGeSTuReS]

Not really a constructive comment, but I think this deck is cool and all.. don't really have any plans on playing it any time soon.

Just watching Sealab 2021 on YouTube.

Cool show.

[.dk]

Not really a constructive comment, but I think this deck is cool and all.. don't really have any plans on playing it any time soon.

Just watching Sealab 2021 on YouTube.

Cool show.

You've finally seen the true intent of the deck. To expose more people to Captain Murphy!

[Kich867]

You've finally seen the true intent of the deck. To expose more people to Captain Murphy!

Best quote from any television show ever: "Tell it to Queen Dopplepoppalus!" *Hits person with wrench*

[Bobmans]

The other day I played a small tournament. In this one game I faced imperial painter.dec. Lost game 1 one due to really bad draws. Kept a hand with probe and therapy. Dumb. i had to go for turn 1/2 hand. Game 2 was really exciting. He dropped a chalice @ one. I response with Entomb into GBees. Next turn i topped a shallow. played it and drew 21... nearly seeing myself fizzle. I drew some stuff along with petal, some land (still had to drop a land) and mox diamond. and from the last draw Hurkylls Recall (insane against those artifact decks) then went double ritual, tendrils. Game 3 he opened with 3 times tormod's crypt and followed with chalice @ 1 and had a second ready to cast @ 2. I scooped...

PLaying against MUD or those artifacts could be a real nightmare, luckily not to many people play that shit. Still i really feel safe packing hurkyl's recall.

[.dk]

Best quote from any television show ever: "Tell it to Queen Dopplepoppalus!" *Hits person with wrench*

Pretty sure that should be our response to anyone giving us shit for playing this deck. :)

[Dessyreqt]

Has anyone tried a list with 4x Force of Will? I know it slows the deck a bit but we have many blue cards in it and why not playing Force, if you can, to protect the Combo.

I've actually been playing with 4x Force and 3x Daze. It feels to me more broken because you still have plenty of ways to get Griselbrand in the yard and still have plenty of ways to bring him into play, AND you can stop stuff that might otherwise shut you down. Discard can't protect you from topdecked hate.

One thing I would say, is that if you go that route Lim-Dul's Vault is a MUST. While you still have plenty of ways to get your combo online, it's diluted compared to a stock list. Lim-Dul's Vault basically acts as a Vampiric Tutor most of the time, finding the card you are missing for only a couple of life points usually.

[Bobmans]

I've actually been playing with 4x Force and 3x Daze. It feels to me more broken because you still have plenty of ways to get Griselbrand in the yard and still have plenty of ways to bring him into play, AND you can stop stuff that might otherwise shut you down. Discard can't protect you from topdecked hate.

One thing I would say, is that if you go that route Lim-Dul's Vault is a MUST. While you still have plenty of ways to get your combo online, it's diluted compared to a stock list. Lim-Dul's Vault basically acts as a Vampiric Tutor most of the time, finding the card you are missing for only a couple of life points usually.

I am curious to you're decklist. Also you could play like 3 FoW, 2 Misdirection and some Daze. Anyway, enough blue count is really important. Also I see you running 4 Probes as well as 4 discard spells. Possibly 1 Intuition and 4 Brainstorm. 0 Ponder. 3 Lim-Dul's Vault. 2 GBees, 2 Children, 1 Emmy, ToA. 7 Instant Animate's and 4 Entomb. then 1 Chrome Mox, 4 Petal, 4 Ritual and 12 land counting 60, 19 of which are blue.

[Freggle]

For what it is worth I had success riffing on the below list on Cockatrice in solitaire mode (playing both decks.) I wouldn't call it official testing or actual play though.



Combo Stuff
4 Shallow Grave
2 Griselbrand
2 Children of Korlis
4 Entomb
4 Dark Ritual
1 Laboratory Maniac
1 Show and Tell

Search Stuff
4 Lim-Dûl's Vault
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder

Disruption
3 Cabal Therapy
4 Force of Will
3 Daze

Mana
4 Marsh Flats
4 Polluted Delta
1 Swamp
4 Underground Sea
4 Lotus Petal
2 Verdant Catacombs
1 Chrome Mox

Each deck I would save as versions, but I recently wiped my laptop (I kept getting my bank cards hacked) and lost all the variations from there (I think.) I was looking for more consistency, however the concept was fine.

[Megadeus]

Greg you will be happy to know I am going back to storm. ..playing fair sucks. Unless I get to play chalice. .. which doesn't even feel fair half the time. ..

[Dessyreqt]

I am curious to you're decklist.

8 Black Fetches
2 Underground Sea
1 Scrubland
1 Swamp
4 Lotus Petal
2 Chrome Mox
4 Dark Ritual

4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
3 Gitaxian Probe
3 Lim-Dul's Vault

4 Force of Will
3 Daze
3 Cabal Therapy

4 Entomb
4 Shallow Grave
1 Goryo's Vengeance

2 Griselbrand
1 Children of Korlis
1 Emrakul
1 Tendrils of Agony

It's not too different from a list that was posted earlier, but it works pretty well.

[Koby]

*** Turn 3.
*** Koby triggers Serenity.
*** Freggle sacrifices Tormod's Crypt, Tormod's Crypt, Rest in Peace, and Ground Seal.
*** Koby says "gg".
*** Koby casts Pithing Needle naming Karakas.
*** Koby casts Dark Ritual.
*** Koby casts Entomb.
*** Koby casts Shallow Grave.

[Freggle]

*** Turn 3.
*** Koby triggers Serenity.
*** Freggle sacrifices Tormod's Crypt, Tormod's Crypt, Rest in Peace, and Ground Seal.
*** Koby says "gg".
*** Koby casts Pithing Needle naming Karakas.
*** Koby casts Dark Ritual.
*** Koby casts Entomb.
*** Koby casts Shallow Grave.
LOL So True. Busted. :-D That was nutz and so was G2!

[Darklingske]

My list has some minor changes from where I was at before Koby's list from SCG -- I feel like it's getting to a very refined state and the sideboard is actually starting to be good.

2 Griselbrand
1 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
1 Children of Korlis
1 Tendrils of Agony
4 Entomb
1 Intuition

2 Silence
2 Thoughtseize
3 Cabal Therapy
4 Gitaxian Probe
4 Ponder
4 Brainstorm

1 Chrome Mox
4 Lotus Petal
4 Dark Ritual

4 Polluted Delta
3 Marsh Flats
2 Underground Sea
1 Tundra
1 Scrubland
1 Swamp
2 Gemstone Mine

// Sideboard
2 Chain of Vapor
2 Teferi's Realm
1 Pithing Needle
2 Massacre
2 Pull from Eternity
1 Silence
1 Cabal Therapy
1 Hurkyl's Recall
3 Surgical Extraction

Just noticed as I was looking through your list: you seem to be missing 8 cards from it. Could it be that those 8 cards are 4 Shallow Grave, 3 goryo's Vengeance & 1 Reanimate? Also, why do you play Gemstone Mine in this build? I understand the reasoning behind it in 4 color lists, but in 3-color it seems to me as a nuisance. What are your thoughts on it? I'm curious to know.

[phazonmutant]

Just noticed as I was looking through your list: you seem to be missing 8 cards from it. Could it be that those 8 cards are 4 Shallow Grave, 3 goryo's Vengeance & 1 Reanimate? Also, why do you play Gemstone Mine in this build? I understand the reasoning behind it in 4 color lists, but in 3-color it seems to me as a nuisance. What are your thoughts on it? I'm curious to know.

Haha, good catch! Exactly right, I'll edit the original post to avoid confusion. I thought the list looked off...

I talked a little bit about Gemstone Mine in the afterthoughts section, but I can elaborate. In testing, I wanted a land that could tap for U or B t1 and then B or W turn 2, so I thought it might be ok to have a couple Gemstone Mine. Also, having enough U sources for Chain and Teferi's Realm is important, but we can't skimp on W for Silence and Pull, and the deck wants a lot of B producing lands.
Now that I've played it more I've realized they're fine, but probably not necessary. A reasonable replacement is 1 Underground Sea and 1 Marsh Flats. I don't think I put a single Gemstone Mine in play over the course of the tournament even when I had 1 in hand because I could produce all my colors off of duals.

[Koby]

Graveyard hate? Ya not concerned about it.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7JgZZnbogA&rel=0&ap=%2526fmt%3D18

Sorry again Freggle. You got it pretty hard.

[Freggle]

Sorry again Freggle. You got it pretty hard.

:laugh: "You'll wish you had less fun."

"Serenity Now!"

[Bobmans]

"Serenity Now!"

Serenity is a real good find. Probs. That just solves so much issue's like the Leyline's, Chalice @ 1 or 0, RiP, Relic, Crypt, Humility, Counterbalance, etc.
This card could replace Hurkyl's Recall, CoV and Echoing Truth.

White is such a strong addition to this deck. Children, Silence, Pull from Eternity and now this card.

[kihachi]

The only thing that concerns me about Serenity is the prevalence of Abrupt Decay, plus cards like Disenchant. And it doesn't really do anything for us against Counterbalance.

It looks great against Enchantress though. :)

[.dk]

That's not true. If you resolve Serenity, during your next upkeep their Counterbalance and Rest in Peace are all destroyed... I'd say that's doing something against Counterbalance

[Kar]

Well, precisely, resolving it can be tough against counterbalance, that's why I think the deck cannot drop Abrupt Decay from the SB.
I could see it played on turn 2 on the play or 1 with a petal/mox on the draw to prevent the opposent from dropping his hate for 1 turn and going off next turn, but I'm not convinced by it as an efficient counterbalance-hate.

[Dick_Tator]

Hi guys.

I've been following the thread for a while (great work on the primer btw), ever since I saw Greg display the awesomeness that is Tinfins on camera at the SCG tournament a while ago. That deck just looks (and feels) insane! It's easily the most fun I've had playing Legacy.

Today I played the deck at the Danish Legacy Masters tournament, which is the unofficial Danish championships. 85 players played in the tournament, including most of Denmark's finest magic players along with a handful of people from Sweden. I ended up going an unimpressive 3-4, which landed me well out of reach of prizes, but this was mostly due to me playing badly. I should have been able to win at least one, and in all fairness probably two of the rounds that I ended up losing.

I won against TES (2-0), Mono-Blue Illusions (2-0), and Goblins (2-1). I lost against U/W/R CounterTop (1-2), RUG Delver (1-2), Merfolk (0-2) and Shardless BUG (1-2). Except for the Merfolk match, I managed to win game 1 in all my matches, which is one of the (many) reasons why I love this deck:-)

The CounterTop matchup still seems incredibly difficult, though the access to Abrupt Decay definitely helps. I definitely threw away the third game and in extension the match against BUG, and I probably could have beaten RUG in the third and decisive game as well, if only I had been playing tighter. I'll see if I can get around to writing a tournament report, if anyone is interested.

These are the 75 cards that I sleeved up:

Main Deck:

1 Swamp
1 Gemstone Mine
2 Underground Sea
1 Scrubland
1 Tundra
1 Bayou
3 Marsh Flats
4 Polluted Delta

2 Griselbrand
2 Children of Korlis
1 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn

4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
4 Gitaxian Probe
4 Cabal Therapy
2 Thoughtseize

4 Entomb
4 Shallow Grave
3 Goryo's Vengeance
1 Reanimate
4 Dark Ritual

4 Lotus Petal
1 Chrome Mox
1 Tendrils of Agony
1 Silence

Sideboard:

3 Abrupt Decay
2 Silence
2 Pull from Eternity
2 Surgical Extraction
2 Pithing Needle
2 Massacre
2 Chain of Vapor


A quick comment on my land base:

I previously ran 13 lands, but for today's tournament I decided to cut my basic Island in favor of 1 x Gemstone Mine & 1 x Bayou. I felt like I needed an out to Counterbalance and Rest in Peace, so I really wanted to play Abrupt Decay in my board. I wanted to be able to fetch the green source when I needed it, which led me to play one Bayou. Still, I wanted more green sources in the deck, and the Gemstone Mine gives me that without compromising my mana if I draw it without the Decay in hand. This built worked pretty well, and only once did I end up with an Abrupt Decay stuck in my hand without the means to cast it. However, I did miss the ability to fetch a basic Island when facing decks with Wastelands.


My sideboard felt somewhat lackluster, but perhaps I just need to figure out how to sideboard the different matchups. I'm especially sceptical of the Pull from Eternity. I seem to be boarding them in pretty often (whenever I suspect that my opponent may have access to cards like Surgical or Deathrite which may exile my cards), but so far I have never actually tried casting it. It seems that whenever I actually need it, I either don't draw it or I'm under too much pressure to be able to cast it.

I've been thinking of trying out a card like Defense Grid in my board, what do you guys think? It could effectively shut down most of our opponents' counterspell. Also, has anyone ever tested Abeyance? I seem to recall someone mentioning it in a previous post a while ago, but did anyone ever test it? I'm pretty sure that Silence is just better in this deck, but perhaps it warrants some testing at least?

If you guys have any comments or suggestions for improvements I would love to hear them.

[Fatal]

I have little diffrent approach for TinFins, I miss counterspells suit in it:


4 Dark Ritual
4 Lotus Petal
4 Chrome Mox
4 Entomb
3 Careful Study
4 Brainstorm
4 Force of Will
1 Tendrils of Agony
2 Griselbrand
1 Children of Korlis
4 Shallow Grave
3 Goryo's Vengeance
4 Polluted Delta
2 Underground Sea
1 Scrubland
1 Cabal Therapy
4 Gitaxian Probe
1 Swamp
3 Misty Rainforest
1 Island
4 Pact of Negation
1 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
SB:
3 Flusterstorm
3 Chain of Vapor
1 Tropical Island
3 Abrupt Decay
2 Cabal Therapy
3 Pithing Needle


8 MD free hardcounters is a best way to deal with all tempo decks, and answer for CB/Rest in Peace on SB with still having speed (free 8 mana sources - dodge daze's and spell pierces). I added Carful Study since I really hate playing thoughtsize myself.

Give a it a try :].

[.dk]

My sideboard felt somewhat lackluster, but perhaps I just need to figure out how to sideboard the different matchups. I'm especially sceptical of the Pull from Eternity. I seem to be boarding them in pretty often (whenever I suspect that my opponent may have access to cards like Surgical or Deathrite which may exile my cards), but so far I have never actually tried casting it. It seems that whenever I actually need it, I either don't draw it or I'm under too much pressure to be able to cast it.

I've been thinking of trying out a card like Defense Grid in my board, what do you guys think? It could effectively shut down most of our opponents' counterspell. Also, has anyone ever tested Abeyance? I seem to recall someone mentioning it in a previous post a while ago, but did anyone ever test it? I'm pretty sure that Silence is just better in this deck, but perhaps it warrants some testing at least?

If you guys have any comments or suggestions for improvements I would love to hear them.

Pull is quite good when you need it - it basically functions as Entomb after your targets have been removed (either by surgical, or your own Chrome Mox). They are situational, yes, but pretty much the only thing that has that effect. Unless you're fighting hate like Surgical, Deathrite, or Scavenging Ooze on the stack (as I think some people are trying), then having a way to get Griselbrand back after it's been RFG'd is awesome.

I'm not a huge fan of defense grid, as all it does is stop countermagic and surgical. Discard that we're already running can do the same thing. If City of Solitude were colorless only, that would probably be right. I've tested with that and it is just too hard to cast, and usually you're dead by then.

Richard Cheese and I tested Abeyance ages ago - I personally wasn't very impressed. It makes your combo turn cost a TON more mana to go off negating one of the strengths of the deack (the blistering speed). Thats another reason why I like Pull - it can be cast later, and isn't required the first time you combo. You're making them have the answers still, and if they do you can still recover. My take after testing all kinds of reactive options is to make sure that your build and whatever you're boarding in play into this deck's strength - speed. Make them answer you, because if they don't, you just win.

[Dick_Tator]

I have little diffrent approach for TinFins, I miss counterspells suit in it:


4 Dark Ritual
4 Lotus Petal
4 Chrome Mox
4 Entomb
3 Careful Study
4 Brainstorm
4 Force of Will
1 Tendrils of Agony
2 Griselbrand
1 Children of Korlis
4 Shallow Grave
3 Goryo's Vengeance
4 Polluted Delta
2 Underground Sea
1 Scrubland
1 Cabal Therapy
4 Gitaxian Probe
1 Swamp
3 Misty Rainforest
1 Island
4 Pact of Negation
1 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
SB:
3 Flusterstorm
3 Chain of Vapor
1 Tropical Island
3 Abrupt Decay
2 Cabal Therapy
3 Pithing Needle


8 MD free hardcounters is a best way to deal with all tempo decks, and answer for CB/Rest in Peace on SB with still having speed (free 8 mana sources - dodge daze's and spell pierces). I added Carful Study since I really hate playing thoughtsize myself.

Give a it a try :].

An interesting list. I'm not sure I agree with, or understand, some of the choices you've made for your list.

1) Since you only run 2 Griselbrand, wouldn't Ponder be better than Careful Study? I can't imagine that you'll be able to discard your two Griselbrand with Careful Study very often, and Ponder has the added bonus of allowing you to shuffle if needed.

2) A full set of Pact of Negation seems a bit over the top. You can rarely use them to counter your opponent's spells, because you'll not be able to pay the demanded five mana the following upkeep. Of course you can use them when you're going off to protect your combo, but couldn't Silence and discard achieve the same goal? I could possibly see the benefit of having a copy or two either in the board or perhaps main, but four seem to me to be way too many.

3) Why do you feel the need to play so many Chrome Moxes? I only play a singleton, and I feel that it is sufficient.

[j_rb]

I miss counterspells suit in it:


I have also been playing a list with counters since I've switched over from storm to tinfins and the deck feels so flash hulkish. I feel dirty when I win with the deck because the things so powerful.


4 Dark Ritual
4 Lotus Petal
2 Chrome Mox
4 Entomb
4 Brainstorm
4 Force of Will
2 Pact of Negation
1 Tendrils of Agony
2 Griselbrand
2 Children of Korlis
4 Shallow Grave
3 Goryo's Vengeance
1 Reanimate
3 Lim-Dûl's Vault
1 Emrakrul the Aeons Torn
3 Thoughtseize
4 Ponder

4 Polluted Delta
2 Underground Sea
1 Scrubland
1 Swamp
2 Misty Rainforest
1 Verdant Catacombs
1 Island


I know I'm not running probes but the decks workin great without them and I really like LDV in the list somewhere. They could be cut for probes if someone wanted to play probe.

[Darklingske]

Don't you have problems with only running 17 Blue cards for FoW? I get it that it is "just" run as protection for the combo, but even then. To me it seems you are a bit light on blue cards to optimally make use of FoW.

[Fatal]

The biggest strength of this deck is speed - like in fleshhulk - combo out turn 1-3 or it's not worth pick this deck.

Since you are ahead over opponent speed you take initiative that's why Pact of Negation are probably one of the best protection specially in Tempo MU. If he counter your combo your are already dead so there is a reason to protect your combo.

Ponder over Careful study - that was my thread on workshop - I pick up Careful study since you can discard drawn Fattie, its not often but it's mostly enough. Probably to test split 2 Careful study / 1 Ponder. Everytime I tested Ponders I wanted to be it careful study :) that's why I abandon Ponders.

You have only 4 Entombs - and 7 Reanimation's - with careful study its 7/7 but for sure it's not always working. Thinking to pick up one more Griselbrand but still don't know what to cut :).

This list which I posted running good numbers blue cards to support Forces - I never had problems with them.

[Dick_Tator]

Pull is quite good when you need it - it basically functions as Entomb after your targets have been removed (either by surgical, or your own Chrome Mox). They are situational, yes, but pretty much the only thing that has that effect. Unless you're fighting hate like Surgical, Deathrite, or Scavenging Ooze on the stack (as I think some people are trying), then having a way to get Griselbrand back after it's been RFG'd is awesome.

I'm not a huge fan of defense grid, as all it does is stop countermagic and surgical. Discard that we're already running can do the same thing. If City of Solitude were colorless only, that would probably be right. I've tested with that and it is just too hard to cast, and usually you're dead by then.

Richard Cheese and I tested Abeyance ages ago - I personally wasn't very impressed. It makes your combo turn cost a TON more mana to go off negating one of the strengths of the deack (the blistering speed). Thats another reason why I like Pull - it can be cast later, and isn't required the first time you combo. You're making them have the answers still, and if they do you can still recover. My take after testing all kinds of reactive options is to make sure that your build and whatever you're boarding in play into this deck's strength - speed. Make them answer you, because if they don't, you just win.

Hey .dk. Thanks for your reply.

I see your point about Pull, and I must admit that I do like the thought of having them in the deck as an insurance against Surgical, which could otherwise criple me severely. It was just that I had never actually tried casting Pull, it just always ends up being a dead card in my hand. But I guess it will be worth it, once I actually get to cast the damn thing and blow my opponent away:-)

Edit: I only now read your point about using Pull to bring back Griselbrand after you have exiled it with Chrome Mox - I never considered this, that's pretty cool:-)

If you don't like Defense Grid (and I think that you might be right about that) and City of Solitude is out of the question, then what do you usually board in against the heavy control decks like U/W CounterTop? Yesterday I typically boarded in Abrupt Decay and a couple extra Silence, which felt decent but not overwhelming.

I like your philosophy of playing to the deck's strenghts, I'll try to apply that to my deckbuilding in the future. And for what it's worth, I never wholeheartedly believed in Abeyance to begin with, as it does seem too expensive to cast, and compared to Silence, the added effect of shutting down any activated abilities does not seem enough to make up for the extra mana requirement. Plus it targets the player, which makes it useless against Leyline of Sanctity which is gaining popularity fast here in Denmark.

[Fatal]

Pull from Eternity has one big downside which isn't obviously right away - Goryo's Vengeance targeting any good player will wait to remove your Griselbrand in respond to it to do two for one, even if you cast it after you still fizzle your Goryo's Vengeance. Using it as removing from chrome mox is cute, but nothing more, specially that mostly list running only 2 chrome mox (which is in my opinion wrong - since speed is the most important thing in this deck).

Any countersuite would be just better - only reason to run Pull from Eternity would be Extripates ramparting which doesn't appears - but they are still can be discarded from cabal therapy.

Good side is that Shallow Grave doesn't target, same as Corpse Dance:)

[.dk]

Edit: I only now read your point about using Pull to bring back Griselbrand after you have exiled it with Chrome Mox - I never considered this, that's pretty cool:-)

If you don't like Defense Grid (and I think that you might be right about that) and City of Solitude is out of the question, then what do you usually board in against the heavy control decks like U/W CounterTop? Yesterday I typically boarded in Abrupt Decay and a couple extra Silence, which felt decent but not overwhelming.

I like your philosophy of playing to the deck's strenghts, I'll try to apply that to my deckbuilding in the future. And for what it's worth, I never wholeheartedly believed in Abeyance to begin with, as it does seem too expensive to cast, and compared to Silence, the added effect of shutting down any activated abilities does not seem enough to make up for the extra mana requirement. Plus it targets the player, which makes it useless against Leyline of Sanctity which is gaining popularity fast here in Denmark.

Also don't forget that you can imprint Children of Korlis onto Chrome Mox, and then Pull from Eternity Children into the graveyard to reanimate as well! Obviously all of these are extreme corner cases, but it may come up...

I think you're seeing the problem this deck has with Miracles/Countertop. It's a bad matchup with mediocre sideboard cards at best. A few things that people have been trying lately:

1. Abrupt Decay (as you mentioned). This seems mediocre at best to me in a similar vein as Abeyance. You need that extra mana (and color fixing) to be able to cast that as well as combo off. Sure, you can destroy whatever at the end of their turn but you're waiting long enough that they have an opportunity to land both of the big problems for us: Counterbalance and Rest in Peace. If you can only destroy one, you're still up shit creek.

2. Serenity. This was recently suggested by Koby and looks like he's been testing with it. Seems like a great answer if you can resolve it the turn before you go off.

3. Teferi's Realm. This was recently suggested by Richard Cheese - I think phazonmuant has tested this a bit as well. This sticks around longer than Serenity, so you don't necessarily need to resolve it the turn before you combo off. However the casting cost is a little ridiculous.

4. Reverent Silence. I (and maybe someone else, can't remember) suggested this a few weeks ago. It's unlikely that they'll have a 4 drop to counter it with Counterbalance and our opponent's life total is largely irrelevant. If we're combo-ing off, we can easily Tendrils for infinite, or get multiple Griselbrand and Emrakul attacks in. However, like with Abrupt Decay, this requires having some kind of Forest in play, which does make it a bit harder.

Good luck with testing, and maybe you'll stumble across a better option. :)

[.dk]

Pull from Eternity has one big downside which isn't obviously right away - Goryo's Vengeance targeting any good player will wait to remove your Griselbrand in respond to it to do two for one, even if you cast it after you still fizzle your Goryo's Vengeance. Using it as removing from chrome mox is cute, but nothing more, specially that mostly list running only 2 chrome mox (which is in my opinion wrong - since speed is the most important thing in this deck).

Any countersuite would be just better - only reason to run Pull from Eternity would be Extripates ramparting which doesn't appears - but they are still can be discarded from cabal therapy.

Good side is that Shallow Grave doesn't target, same as Corpse Dance:)

Well yes, of course Goryo's Vengeance doesn't work well with Pull from Eternity like Shallow Grave does. You do still have an option of not playing into your opponent's hate... Cast Silence first, get 2 reanimation spells in hand, etc. It's not like Pull is your ONLY option to fight graveyard based hate.

Also - it seems like you're suggesting running more than 2 Chrome Mox. I can't see how that is correct - having multiples stuck in your hand is the worst feeling in the world as you basically can't do anything. It's less bad in TES as you can at least cast them and not imprint anything to get storm count, but we practically don't even care about that. The critical mass of mana that we need is :B::B::B: - we really don't need a billion artifact based IMSes. You need them post combo-ing sometimes to make sure you can make Children - more Chrome Moxes isn't really going to do anything about that.

And I very much disagree that "any countersuite would be just better" - but feel free to prove me wrong. Countermagic doesn't support our combo whereas discard does.

[Karhumies]

Hi guys,

Have been out from Legacy scene for a couple of years. Back then, I tried to run a Dark Ritual -> Entomb -> Shallow Grave -> Jin-Gitaxias deck, animating in opponent's end step to make them discard down to 0, hopefully on T1. Main problems back then were StoP and Jin's poor racing skills. Anyways, I just recently found out the value of my Shallow Graves has spiked and googled the reason down to this thread. Great work on improving the deck concept, guys! :)

Since I am too lazy to go through all 37 pages, I will just ask from you if the following TecH has been tried yet:

General TecH

1x MD Terastodon
+ If you animate him in opponent's end step, it is possible to swing for 18 on your turn. It's an all-in strategy.
+ Reanimating Terastodon in opponent's combat phase can prevent him from swinging for lethal (4 blockers), and the elephants get to stay behind.
+ Gets rid of Ensnaring Bridge, Karakas, etc.
+ Works when there is not enough life remaining for Griselbrand. Also, no worries about "hitting" with the Griselbrand draw or not.
- not Legendary for Goryo's Vengeance
(+ not Legendary for Karakas -> this is the reason why I didn't run Goryo back then & also why I tried out a bunch of non-Legendaries)

1x MD Show and Tell
+ The alternative for casting a discard effect on yourself. No haste, but the guy sticks behind.
+ Does not use the graveyard.
(+ 1 SnT MD saves 1 SB slot if you are going for a SnT sideboard plan)
- The opponent gets to lay down stuff as well. This can be more problematic than you think.
- cmc 3, including a blue icon
- Since we don't run FoW, we don't need to worry about the blue card count -> makes SnT somewhat unnecessary.

3x SB Lim-Dul's Vault
+ Used the same way as people have used to run Enlightened tutor in the white decks: multiplies your SB singleton card count from 1->4. Without diluting your MD strategy too much, since it can tutor up the main pieces as well.


More situational / meta-specific TecH

1x MD Boseiju, Who Shelters All
+ Protects the reanimation effect
+/- Life loss, but we can apparently offset that
- Colorless: sucks as the only mana source or with D.Ritual
- Slow

1x MD Turbulent Dreams
+ MD Bounce
+ Discards from your hand
- UU
- Not instant
- Card disadvantage

1x SB Steal Enchantment
+ An effective way to get rid of Leylines (Void and Sanctity)
+ A sneaky but very marginal play is to SnT this into battlefield, and then proceed to reanimate as usual
+/- kind of requires you to run some LDVs in MD/SB because you don't want to dedicate more than 1 SB slot for this card
- UU
- Not castable in opponent's end step
- You need to know what the opponent is sideboarding in for this to be useful
- We don't need blue cards to pitch for FoW, making the card a complete miss sometimes


And I very much disagree that "any countersuite would be just better" - but feel free to prove me wrong. Countermagic doesn't support our combo whereas discard does.

This.

Even when the Griselbrand draw misses, you can flashback Cabal Therapy in the second main phase using the Griselbrand. What this essentially does is it makes sure you don't run out of Griselbrands out of your deck into exile.

[Karhumies]

Here's a goldfish list for trying out a bunch of stuff at once:

Land (15)

1x Bloodstained Mire
1x Boseiju, Who Shelters All
1x Gemstone Mine
1x Island
1x Marsh Flats
4x Polluted Delta
1x Scrubland
1x Swamp
3x Underground Sea
1x Verdant Catacombs

Creature (6)

2x Children of Korlis
1x Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
2x Griselbrand
1x Terastodon

Sorcery (13)

3x Cabal Therapy
4x Ponder
1x Show and Tell
1x Tendrils of Agony
4x Thoughtseize

Instant (20)

4x Brainstorm
4x Dark Ritual
4x Entomb
4x Goryo's Vengeance
4x Shallow Grave

Artifact (6)

2x Chrome Mox
4x Lotus Petal

Sideboard (15)

2x Ancient Tomb (necessary speed for going SnT route)
2x Echoing Truth (or Chain of Vapour)
2x Lim-Dûl's Vault
2x Pithing Needle
3x Show and Tell
1x Karakas (mostly just to get rid of opposing Karakas when going SnT route)
1x Steal Enchantment (or Engineered Explosives)
2x Teferi's Realm (this seems like an excellent catch-all)

If any MD card seems worse than an extra Tendrils, then it should prolly become an extra Tendrils. :P And if any SB card seems worse than an extra Silence / Orim's Chant, then it should prolly become that as well.

A big question is: do we need to run grave hate in our SB? Basically, moving the grave hate in from SB will slow us down considerably, and speed is amongst our greatest assets. Also, if the opponent brings in responses to expected grave hate, we could just blank those cards and slow them down by not bringing the hate in and trying to be faster...what are your thoughts regarding this issue?

[Karhumies]

Also, since some people have mentioned Laboratory Maniac as a potential win condition...

Transformational SB to go around grave hate:
4x Show and Tell
3x Lim-Dûl's Vault (set-up)
1x Thought Lash (combo with maniac)
2x Laboratory Maniac
2x Energy Field (for stalling)
1x Orim's Chant / Silence (protection)
2x Ancient Tomb

The problem here is protecting your Maniac/Energy Field/Thought Lash from removal. But if the opponent sideboards out removal (because you lack targets and/or Tendrils him G1) and brings in grave hate, it should not be a problem. Thought Lash is an alternative to Griselbrand for going through your deck in one go, which does not require life like Griselbrand does. Doubles as a staller card due to the prevention ability.

The downside is, it's a clunkier and slower SB package than just trying to fight through the hate. Especially since we don't have FoW backup, for which Maniac, Lash and LDV would even double up as blue pitchables.

[j_rb]

Don't you have problems with only running 17 Blue cards for FoW? I get it that it is "just" run as protection for the combo, but even then. To me it seems you are a bit light on blue cards to optimally make use of FoW.

Hasn't bit me in the ass yet. It probably will eventually. I've been trying to stick 3 probes in the deck to up the blue count but cant find room so I'll just play it as it is and take my losses to the random times where I can't force.

[Karhumies]

Here's a goldfish list for trying out a bunch of stuff at once:

Some thoughts after watching the SCG finals defeat video vs U/W Helm, and a day of goldfishing:

I think that potentially, 1st MD SnT > MD Silence in utility/versatility. Depends on the popularity of MD grave hate (e.g. Deathrite Shaman, Scavenging Ooze, Bojuka Bog) vs. all-in combo decks in your meta, though.

Potentially, 1st MD Terastodon > 3rd/4th MD Griselbrand. Most of the time, you are using Entomb->Griselbrand rather than Cabal Therapy yourself anyway, so it doesn't make a big difference in those cases. But a singleton Terastodon feels more versatile than a singleton MD Abrupt Decay or bounce effect. Depends also on the popularity of Karakas in your meta: reanimate Griselbrand to draw 14 cards, followed by a Karakas bounce and no lifelink is just not optimal for us if we miss Children of Korlis and they have a Tarmogoyf or something on the table for lethal (Tarmo should grow big enough in our discard step).

Boseiju gives mixed responses. Sometimes, it prevents us from T1 Entomb, T2 Animate (or from T1/T2 LDV). But at other times, it just pushes the critical spells through when everything else fails. Especially when going with a SnT sideboard plan vs. blue decks without Wasteland.

On sideboarding lands (Ancient Tomb, Karakas) - I know that some people consider running lands on the sideboard redundant. But if our SB plan is SnT, then we need both added speed (Tomb) and protection (Karakas) since we don't always have haste. Abrupt Decay seems like a solid alternative, though, if we plan to go through the hate rather than around it.

[Darklingske]

Took the Fins to a GPT past sunday. It was a dissapointment to be short. I had to mull a lot, didn't draw the right pieces at the right times and just had bad MU.

R1: Merfolk 2-1
G1 T2 combo through a pierce. G2 I mull to 5 and he has a fast clock with lots of counters backing up. G3 is a mull to 6 and a T1 kill with protection.
R2: Elves 2-1
I lose the die-roll, mull to 6 and he opens with T1 DRS. No T1 kill and stuck on 5 mana with 3 Shallows in hand and my opponent could activate shaman 3 times. G2 he scoops because he has to go home for an emergency. Win, but not the way I wanted.
R3: BUG control 0-2
G1 I mull to 6 and he destroys my hand with discard. G2 is a grindy one. Discard from both sides makes us living of the top of our library. Unfortunately he rips Jace the turn before I could try to combo and my doom is (fate)sealed.
R4: Elves 1-2
I mull to 6 and he opens with DRS. No T1 kill for me and I'm digging for extra shallows to combo through his DRS with Quirion backup. I can't find them in time and die in a quick attack of some elves and a Hoof. G2 combo T2. G3 is a copy of G1, except I mull to 5.
R5: Sneaky Show 0-1-1
G1 mull to 5 for me, 6 for him. My probe T1 shows a hand consisting of FoW, Pierce, S&T, Brainstorm, Fetch, Tomb. Hmmm, guess I'm gonna loose this game. G2 I drop Needle T1 on sneak attack, he drops T1 Cage. I try a T3 Serenity wich eats force. In the end time is called and we were still trying to hardcast a Griselbrand.
R6: Elves 1-2
Almost a copy of R4.

Well, a guess I'm gonna shelf this deck until the meta is better for this deck.

[Baum]

After testing Lim-Dul's Vault during two tournaments and a couple of test games, I'll cut it again.
The effect definately *is* awesome but it's too expensive in the long run. It shines in the games where you can cast it on T1 off a Lotus Petal to prepare a T2 Combo. But in most games I either had other cantrips that did the job or kept a 1-lander that prevented me from casting the vault anyway. For the next tournament, I'll try out Preordain. It's worse than Brainstorm and Ponder, but I still want to have additional cantrips. At the moment, my local metagame isn't blue enough to play maindeck Silences in that slot.

I'm also going to add the basic Island again. I got wasted out on G2 while digging for anti hate way to often.

[Koby]

Cutting Silence for metagame considerations is completely fine. I made a caveat when I posted my list -- this slot is flexible and I was using it to fight both Blue and Combo matchups. The 3rd Silence can move to the SB very easily.

The 14th and 15th land are also flexible if your metagame calls for it. I suspect I may go back up to 14 lands in my next iteration to hedge against a possible resurgence of Jund, BUG, or Esper -- the premier discard decks of the format.

[Dark Ritual]

Played this deck to a terrible 0-2 drop at SCG KC yesterday. Biggest problem? Never being able to find entomb in time. Ponder is infinitely better than careful study in this deck. When I ran careful study for about a week with 4 griselbrand's it wasn't even close to consistent in terms of binning griselbrand. Ponder see's 4 cards, study see's 2 and is card disadvantage on top of that if you don't find/have a griselbrand in hand.

Also, I feel the best answer for countertop is to run reverent silence and/or abrupt decay. Their deck is close to impossible to beat for us when they have gravehate, countertop, and countermagic to back it all up.

Probe was pretty decent, but at the same time cutting it makes room for lim-dul's vault, a card that this deck sorely needs in my eyes in order to find the right combo pieces/entomb almost always. Card is also a champ when imprinted on a mox.

As for my decklist, it's Koby's list -1 chrome mox +1 tundra. Sideboard was almost identical to his as well. I put in the tundra over mox because drawing mox in the opener is generally terrible. Wanted two white sources for children and more silences in the board because against the decks you want silence against they generally have wasteland or you want to be able to silence two times in one turn. Like RUG delver, as silence is godly against them or esper stoneblade. I might run this deck once more with something like -2 Probe -1 Ponder +3 LDV, but this requires testing. At the moment I'm going back to ANT, as ANT has no consistency issues when you run 16 cantrips to assemble your combo.

[Koby]

@Dark Ritual
Were the decks you faced had any impact on trying to find the combo? Did you face much disruption like discard, counters, or Wasteland?
The consistency issues are somewhat expected; and I somewhat agree with -1 Probe -1 Chrome Mox +2 LDV for more digging, while also bumping up to 14 lands. I'm sad to hear the deck didn't work out for you. Did you have much familiarity going into those matchups with which hands to keep?
Basically - Need more info :smile:

[.dk]

I'm actually back on 1x Intuition at the moment for the same reason, although it's very possible that 2xLDV is better. Might try running a bit with 1xIntuition, 1xLDV and see how often I wish Intuition was LDV.

Koby - how has Serenity been working for you out of the sideboard? Have you been able to successfully resolve it the turn before you combo often enough?

[Koby]

Not much testing recently. It's hard to find a matchup where Serenity is necessary. I've mostly faced BUG and Jund, neither of which run many permanent forms of g/y hate.

[phazonmutant]

I haven't had much time for testing either, but just got these in!
http://i.imgur.com/kHWxP2rl.jpg (http://imgur.com/kHWxP2r)

It may not be good, but it sure looks sweet. So the advantage for T-Money's Reich is CB might have a harder time countering 3s postboard and it deals proactively with hatebears if they find them or enchantments if they find those, but I'm not convinced it's worth the increased casting difficulty.
The problem with Abrupt Decay (besides making the mana worse) is that you really have to kill both Counterbalance and Rest in Peace going late. They have more hate to find than you have AD, so it just doesn't work.

Serenity is probably better against Enchantress and Prison? The reich is better against any decks that have hatebears plus some other form of permanent hate or possibly as a way to phase out their lands to stop counterspells?

So Abrupt Decay, Serenity, and Teferi's Realm all have their uses and maybe a split is warranted. I think Teferi's Realm plays best with Needle for Enchantress and Maverick and Chain of Vapor for Miracles, so I think it has the best holistic sideboard utility.

[jbone2016]

Somebody in KC mentioned something amusing......cloudshift.
Just in case you need to keep your Griselbees around.

[Zubba]

Hi new to these forums and to the deck but i have almost always played combo in legacy so i would not say i'am have no clue what i'am doing.
Just wanted to post in here and say that this deck is alot of fun and reminds me of my old Necrotic Ooze combo deck with buried alive ect.
I played the deck this weekend in 1 small Legacy tournament with only 25 people or so, in sweden we normally don't get that big legacy tournaments if you don't have them at big conventions.
Well it was my first real torunament with the deck went 3-1-1 to get into top 8.
i don't have any real report exept i know wich decks i played against.

Win 2-1 vs Foodchain combo (FoW, MD, Faeire Macabre, Surgical and Spell peirce)

Win 2-1 vs UR Delver (Surgical, FoW, Spell peirce, Daze)

Lost 1-2 Elves Combo (Deathrite Shaman Bojuka Bog with Crop Rotation and Toughtseize)

Win 2-0 Deadguy( Inquisition, Duress, Tormods Crypt, Deathrite Shaman)

Draw in the last round

Top 8

Won 2-1 vs High Tide (Normal High Tide all the counters in the universe and Cuning Wish after Surgical)

Lost 0-2 Vs Deadguy(Same as the one i won with 2-0)

the deck performed pretty well but i had to take mulligans alot and in the semi the deck just went no not today on me and i had to mull to 5 and 6.
The hands before thoose where not even close to keeps and i just had to throw them back.
The wierd thing was i flooded alot and almost all the losses i had was to me drawing like 5 lands or more i even managed to hardcast Griselbrand one game with 1 Dark Ritual, 1 Lotus Petal and lands.
I'am 100% sure this was just a fluke becuse i was only running 13 lands the decklist was this.

4 Shallow Grave
3 Goryo's Vengeanceimate
4 Entomb
3 Griselbrand
1 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
2 Children of Korlis
1 Tendrils of Agony
1 Silence
3 Thoughtseize
3 Cabal Therapy
4 Gitaxian Probe
4 Brainstorm
3 Ponder
4 Dark Ritual
4 Lotus Petal
2 Chrome Mox
4 Polluted Delta
3 Verdant Catacombs
1 Swamp
1 Island
1 Scrubland
2 Underground Sea

// Sideboard
2 Surgical Extraction
2 Silence
2 Pull from Eternity
3 Pithing Needle
1 Wipe Away
2 Chain of Vapor
2 Massacre
1 Serenity

[phazonmutant]

Zubba - congrats on the finish! You point out a problem that really has been the major complaint with the deck throughout its development - it just sometimes does nothing.

So here's a couple different ways to look at the consistency problem, ways we've tried to fix it, and some possible solutions.
It seems like people are pretty much going off of Koby's list (which was a good list!), but I think we've subsequently shown that there's some small tweaks to help with consistency, and it's frustrating that people seem to be ignoring them and then complaining that the deck doesn't do anything.

What we've done in the past:
Obviously before Children of Korlis, we had a lot of trouble killing them even when we comboed off. So .dk started playing Children as a 2-of and an Intuition and that fixed pretty much all the issues.
When I was testing for SCG Atlanta, I noticed a couple things - Chrome Mox sucks, and it didn't make sense that we were only playing 7 reanimation spells when traditional reanimator plays 10. So I added 2 Reanimates and cut Chrome Mox to 2. That list still had consistency issues (lost a couple games in SCG to drawing bricks).
CalebD took the list and I think hurt its consistency in his list but helped us realize the sideboard S&T isn't necessary.
Koby started testing and we noticed that there just wasn't enough velocity, so we added Gitaxian Probe. Probe was chosen to keep speed up, Preordain slows the deck way down. We did end up cutting Intuition, though. That's what he placed second with. People have been playing his list and doing mediocrely.

What have we done to help fix those changes?
After SCG Vegas, more testing has shown we only need 1 Emrakul, 2 Griselbrand, 1 Children and 1 Tendrils. Chrome Mox also sucks to draw multiples of, so 1 of that is fine too. The bottleneck is still ins, so .dk and I have been playing Intuition again and been happy with it.

Ok, so why am I advocating those changes? This seems pretty obvious to me, but people keep ignoring what I'm saying so I guess it's not obvious to everyone.
In a combo deck, you want to minimize dead draws. 90% of the time, you don't want to draw Children, Emrakul, Griselbrand, Tendrils, or Chrome Mox. So why play multiple if you can still easily go off without multiples?!
This deck is as much a reanimator deck as it is a storm deck (duh!). That means you're trying to find a 2-card combo. As anyone who's played Reanimator or Show and Tell before will tell you, sometimes your deck does stone nothing and you draw bricks and you want to kill yourself and light your deck on fire.

The biggest reason I've personally noticed for the deck not doing anything is keeping bad hands. This deck can mulligan to 4 cards and win on turn 1. Reanimator has always mulliganed well. If you're having trouble with consistency, goldfish a lot and figure out what hands you can keep and how low you can mulligan. This is my biggest weakness with TinFins and the majority of the games I lose are to questionable keeps.

So if any of y'all complain about consistency and I see 2 Children of Korlis or 2 Chrome Mox in your decklist without some explanation for why I'm wrong, I'm going to be grumpy.

[.dk]

^^ This.

[LMental]

What's the current list look like, then? There's more room, so what should be in those slots? (Well, actually, there's only one more slot, if we count one as filled by the Intuition.) And how's the SB?