[Deck] TinFins 3: Return of the Onion Burst

[Acclimation]

What does your sideboard look like?

I feel that 4 Silence is almost necessary in the 75, because when it's good, it's amazing (or the deadest card ever, which is why most of mine chill in the sideboard).

Surgical you can easily get away with 2, same with Chain, Massacre, Serenity, and Needle.

With 2 of each that I listed and 4 Silence, you have 14 cards, which could be a third of either Surgical, Chain, or Needle, or just be an empty slot for 61/14 shenanigans.

[Secretly.A.Bee]

At the moment without taking the silence out of the main deck it looks as follows:

3 S. Extraction
3 Pithing Needle
3 Chain of Vapor
3 Silence
3 Serenity

It's hugely generic feeling but so far it feels good overall. This is an attempt to make my main Deck better for my really fair meta.

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Edit: I forget if SCM has been tried. It gives options to discarded or countered entombs and other combo pieces along with a better ability to flashback therapy along with its target. I think it has good synergy and application here. Thoughts?

[Acclimation]

You could probably cut a Serenity. 2 has felt fine for me, and with LDV & our cantrips, finding one should be no problem.

That being said, I don't know how often you run into decks that require Serenity, so 3 could be very necessary.


In general, you could get away with cutting 1 of any sideboard slot besides Silence, due to how Chain overlaps with most of our hate, barring Surgical and Silence, and Surgical is less needed than Silence.

[Secretly.A.Bee]

Needle has been least useful for me. What do you use it against? DRS and...? Can't come up with much else. May drop that to 2. Other option is Extraction. I edited above as well.

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[Acclimation]

Needle has been least useful for me. What do you use it against? DRS and...? Can't come up with much else. May drop that to 2. Other option is Extraction. I edited above as well.

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Needle hits DRS, Liliana, JTMS, Karakas, Sneak Attack, Isochron Scepter (some times you run into Scepter decks if you have a bad day and enter the "jungle"), Mangara, Scavenging Ooze, Nihil Spellbomb, Relic, Sensei's Divining Top, Tormod's Crypt, Maze of Ith, Knight of the Reliquary, Thespian's Stage, Wasteland, Rishadan Port, Aether Vial, and many more.

Out of all of those, the only one I haven't had to name are Scepter (never in the Jungle!) and Thespian's Stage (don't play against enough lands). The rest of these are potential threats that can wreck our day pretty easily, but for the low cost of 1 mana, we can turn them off and do the monster mash.


As for Snapcaster Mage, while I've always liked the idea of having it as a utility spell, I feel as though the mana requirements are too much. It's making our spells cost 3 cmc at a minimum, which can be difficult for our deck. It can also mess up our Shallow Graves (well timed removal, for example).

I feel as though the mana requirements are the biggest strike against SCM. It's an interesting suggestion that can give us a lot of options, but it requires a cut to be made, and what do we cut out of an already tight list?



Out of curiosity, what decks are you running into, what comprises this "fair" meta of yours? I want to better understand the situation to make better suggestions.

[Secretly.A.Bee]

I play against stax, esperblade, elves, dredge, SnT, and JunkBlade. Stax, blade variants, elves mainly, though.

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[Acclimation]

I play against stax, esperblade, elves, dredge, SnT, and JunkBlade. Stax, blade variants, elves mainly, though.

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I retract my suggestion of cutting a Serenity.

If you feel that your Dredge match-up is as good with 2 Extractions instead of 3, then I think you can get away with that cut.

Needle seems like it can hit a lot of things in that meta, between equipment, to spell lands, to various hate bears and hate trinkets. Chain I could see getting a cut, since it does overlap with a lot of your counterhate.


So, i'd probably cut a Chain first, with a Needle a close second, and Surgical a somewhat distant third. I still hold that any non Silence sideboard slot is more than fine at 2 per card, with increasing one or two spells to having 3 copies as per meta requirements.

[entreri_fans]

You set it up to have more cards in your library so you don't deck yourself.

When you take that second turn, you've likely already swung with Griselbrand, so you just need 1 swing with Emrakul to win.

That being said, if I'm looping my deck for infinite mana, I'll just kill them with Tendrils instead, but sometimes the situation requires the hard cast Emrakul to win.

oh, thx for your reply, Creen! I see how it works.

I also see your post in salvation about sideboard guide, it's very helpful. thx very much!

[Secretly.A.Bee]

Ended up dropping a Chain of Vapor (down to 2) to get my sideboard set up. I am currently testing 2 Snapcaster Mage. I like it so far. It's wierd, haven't quite got a handle on how to play him exactly, at least in this deck, but he hasn't screwed me yet. I understand the small amount of anti-synergy with Shallow Grave, but as long as you keep it in mind, it doesn't seem to be a problem. I dropped a Ponder and...hum. I don't remember what else I dropped...Crap. Anyway, just a heads up. Just one thing, it helps tear their hand apart since you have a creature to sac to flash back the therapy with. Gives you more protected kills.

-ABC

[kingsey]

That was tough to watch on scg Dallas. The guys deck totally let him down.... I was pumped for a top 8!

[Koby]

Sad to see. I'm curious as to what the hands that were mulliganed were.

[Acclimation]

Here's the list that got top 16.

Nathan Zamora
Creatures (6)

2 Children of Korlis
1 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
3 Griselbrand
Lands (14)

1 Island
1 Swamp
2 Marsh Flats
1 Misty Rainforest
4 Polluted Delta
1 Scalding Tarn
1 Tundra
3 Underground Sea
Spells (40)

1 Chrome Mox
4 Lotus Petal
4 Brainstorm
4 Dark Ritual
4 Entomb
3 Goryo's Vengeance
1 Lim-Dul's Vault
4 Shallow Grave
1 Silence
3 Cabal Therapy
4 Gitaxian Probe
4 Ponder
1 Reanimate
2 Thoughtseize
Sideboard

2 Pithing Needle
2 Chain of Vapor
1 Echoing Truth
2 Mindbreak Trap
1 Pull from Eternity
2 Silence
2 Surgical Extraction
2 Massacre
1 Thoughtseize


2 Children, 3 Griselbrand, 3 Therapy, 1 LDV, 14 lands, 3 Silence between the 75, 60 card maindeck, 15 card sideboard with Mindbreak Trap and Pull from Eternity are the key points I'm picking out of the list.

Clearly it worked out pretty well for him until the end, I wish I was home to see the feature match.

I'm curious if Nathan takes part in our thread so we can pick his brain over his choices and get a report.

[.dk]

Also of note is no Tendrils in the 75.

I've been thinking more on ABC bringing back up Snapcaster Mage. That seems like a really good suggestion that can help with some of the current build's weak points, namely being able to flashback Entomb and provides a way to flashback Cabal Therapy for more disruption as well. I saw Koby mention the 3rd LDV earlier - I think I would try the 1st Snapcaster before the 3rd LDV, and may try the 2nd Snapcaster in place of the 2nd LDV as well. Just a thought anyway.

There is still a non-zero chance that I play this at GPDC next weekend, so we'll see. Graveyard hate seems like it is at a minimum right now, but I worry about the amount of tempo decks that seem to be running around at the moment.

[Secretly.A.Bee]

Indeed. Tempo is killing me. It's so bad I'm thinking of putting this down. Esperblade has been a true terror to face, a trifecta of discard, permission and fast beats to just wreck me every time. Getting griselbrand stifled also sucks.

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[Wess]

I haven't been to this thread in awhile, I'm very surprised to see that people have dropped Force, and are going with the ANT disruption package. IMO Force of Will is the MVP of the deck, I've been playing it quite a bit online, and, IMO without it, this deck isn't near tier 1, here's why FOW is so, so good in this deck:

Turn 0-1 chance of comboing: Many times you have to choose whether to play it safe and cast a thoughtseize/cabal therapy OR go for it, FOW enables you to go for the turn 0-1 kill
Graveyard Hate: I agree with the direction of the sideboard, it should deal with hate, not transform. FOW is an allstar in this regards, as it allows you to counter the opponents gy hate (ie. grafdiggers's cage), and then combo off on your turn. Without FOW you can't do anything about the hate, except fish for you 1-2 answers you likely sideboarded in.
Other combo decks: FOW makes the deck go from a 50/50 against: ANT, Belcher, Hypergenesis, Ooops All Spells, to a heavy favourite in those match-ups.
Disruption: If the opponent silences you when you reanimate Griz, or otherwise disrupts you, you can draw with Griz and safely pass the turn if you've drawn FOW. You then have time to set-up the win in the next turns.


Also if you are taking this deck to the tournament, I would expect moderate to heavy gy hate. The Oops All Spells deck is becoming pretty well represented on MTGO lately, and its a very tough deck to beat without 4 LOTV.

I will post by current decklist tomorrow, I've also cut Emrakul from the maindeck, as I find Tendrils is the better kill in almost every situation, I only bring in Emrakul if I think they will play a Leyline of Sanctity, or if they have surgical extractions.

Cheers,

Wess

[Secretly.A.Bee]

I would like very much to see your list. I dunno but wouldn't pact be better here?

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EDIT: Just went 2-1 against True-Name Esperblade. I'm not playing a list anymore without 2x Snapcaster. They are nuts. Played through 2 FoW and a Pierce. Crazy. I think I just got revitalized on this deck. Test Snappy.

[entreri_fans]

Hi, Wess!

I think in order to support Force of Will in Tin-Fins, you need at least 16 other blue cards to make it effective.

I guess you must run 4 ponder + 4 brainstorm which are the best cantrips in Legacy.

so what about other blue cards? are you running careful study? if so, maybe maximizing Griselbrand is needed.

just curious to see you list:)

[.dk]

I think I would play Pact or Daze before Force in this deck. The blue count isn't high enough, and we're already a card disadvantage machine.

ABC - what is the list that you're running right now with 2 snappy's?

[Wess]

Ok, here is my current list, it's not perfectly tuned (ie exact land configuration, sideboard for meta, etc). This builds strength is that its more resilient to disruption and hate than the ANT (cabal therapy and silence) package, has a better mid-game and top-deck if something goes wrong, and is better at finding sideboard cards.

I also run a list with +3 Daze, +1 Lim Dul's Vault and -4 Gitaxian Probe, or a combination, still testing to see what the right mix is. Even 1 Daze in the list is strong, because if your opponent sees you running it, they might slow down a turn trying to play around it. The weak point of Daze is that its much better when you are on the play, but we usually win game 1 anyways, its game 2 that is tough when the opponent is on the play, so, its a meta call.

Creatures 3

Children of Korlis X 1
Griselbrand X 2

Protection 39

Force of Will X 4
Thoughtseize X 3
Gitaxian Probe X 4
Brainstorm X 4
Ponder X 4
Preordain X 2
Dark Ritual X 4
Goryo's Vengeance X 3
Shallow Grave X 4
Reanimate X 1
Entomb X 4
Tendrils of Agony X 1
Misdirection X 1

Artifact 5

Lotus Petal X 4
Chrome Mox X 1

Lands 13

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


Sideboard 15

Emrakul the Eons Torn X 1
Silence X 3
Children of Korlis X 1
Chain of Vapor X 2
Echoing Truth X 1
Surgical Extraction X 3
Massacre X 2
Flusterstorm X 1
Infest X 1

[Secretly.A.Bee]

ABC - what is the list that you're running right now with 2 snappy's?

Currently running:

6
1 Emrakul
1 Children
2 Grizz
2 Snappy

41
1 Tendrils
4 Entomb
4 Dark Rit
4 Petal
1 C. Mox
4 Shallow Grave
3 Goryo's Vengeance
4 Brainstorm
2 Ponder
2 Careful Study
4 Probe
4 Cabal Therapy
2 Thoughtseize
2 LDV

14
4 Delta
4 Flats
2 USea
1 Tundra
1 Scrubland
1 Swamp
1 Island

SB
2 CoV
3 Serenity
3 Surgical Extraction
4 Silence
3 Pithing Needle

I've been really liking it. Snapcaster changed things for me against Tempo. Between it and LDV, I have some pretty good lines of play.

-ABC

[.dk]

Very similar to what I had in my head to test out, although I think I would prefer 4 Ponders to the 2/2 split with Careful Study, and I still like the Tendrils in the main (but we don't need to debate that).

Any specific lines that you're referring to, or just the obvious ones of snapping back countered spells and cantrips and having something to sac to Cabal Therapy?

[Secretly.A.Bee]

Very similar to what I had in my head to test out, although I think I would prefer 4 Ponders to the 2/2 split with Careful Study, and I still like the Tendrils in the main (but we don't need to debate that).

Any specific lines that you're referring to, or just the obvious ones of snapping back countered spells and cantrips and having something to sac to Cabal Therapy?

I edited my post, I do have Tendrils in there, I do not have 3 USea, only 2. Lands at 14. Sorry about that, it felt like I was missing something and I didn't want to tear my deck apart to post, so I went from memory. Also, the Entomb line is the main one, but I've also gotten to combo off turn one thanks to a Snapped-back Brainstorm. It was lucky, but it worked. Also, being able to sacrifice to Therapy is just what the doctor ordered. Makes them a better choice in my opinion. I'm testing Careful Study. So far, I actually kinda like it. Lets me dump grizz, which for some reason is pretty relevant as I seem to draw Grizz often.

-ABC

[Koby]

I'm still hesitant to run Snapcaster Mage for the Therapy line because it could interfere with Shallow Grave. Perhaps we can revise the decklist to run 4 Goryo's and 3 Shallow Grave instead, so there's lesser opportunity to interfere.

[.dk]

Definitely need the Reanimate then, IMO to make sure that you can reanimate Children of Korlis. If I have some time between other testing this week, I will likely test with 4 Shallow Grave / 3 Goryo's and see how often Snapcaster mucks up Shallow Grave. It definitely will sometimes, the question is whether or not it is often enough to change to the overall split of instant speed reanimation.

[Secretly.A.Bee]

I haven't had a problem, honestly. Don't go into auto - pilot and it will do okay.

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[phazonmutant]

Bee: how does adding Snapcaster to a graveyard centric deck help with consistency? I guess i can see how having more things for the tempo player to fight through is good (although costing 3makes me dubious), but what about against decks that actually play grave hate?

Wess: thanks for sharing your list. It reminds me a lot of next level reanimator. Any consideration for stifle? I could see cutting the Misdirection and a cantrip for a couple.

[alastair]

I haven't had a problem, honestly. Don't go into auto - pilot and it will do okay.


Not convinced by Tiago, but its worth testing. He's fairly mana intensive, although buyback on Therapy is something I often wish for. I would worry about interference with Shallow Grave. A simple response of Bolt Tiago with Shallow Grave on the stack will not make for a good reanimation experience. The offset to increase Vengeance is far from ideal when reanimating Children.

Still a fan of Tendrills, and periodically switch SB into ANT. Your complete inability to beat Ethersworn and Chalice frustrate me with ANT builds, but there nothing nicer that dropping LED after they resolve RIP.

[Joe Eigo]

Ok, here is my current list, it's not perfectly tuned (ie exact land configuration, sideboard for meta, etc). This builds strength is that its more resilient to disruption and hate than the ANT (cabal therapy and silence) package, has a better mid-game and top-deck if something goes wrong, and is better at finding sideboard cards.

I also run a list with +3 Daze, +1 Lim Dul's Vault and -4 Gitaxian Probe, or a combination, still testing to see what the right mix is. Even 1 Daze in the list is strong, because if your opponent sees you running it, they might slow down a turn trying to play around it. The weak point of Daze is that its much better when you are on the play, but we usually win game 1 anyways, its game 2 that is tough when the opponent is on the play, so, its a meta call.

Creatures 3

Children of Korlis X 1
Griselbrand X 2

Protection 39

Force of Will X 4
Thoughtseize X 3
Gitaxian Probe X 4
Brainstorm X 4
Ponder X 4
Preordain X 2
Dark Ritual X 4
Goryo's Vengeance X 3
Shallow Grave X 4
Reanimate X 1
Entomb X 4
Tendrils of Agony X 1
Misdirection X 1

Artifact 5

Lotus Petal X 4
Chrome Mox X 1

Lands 13

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


Sideboard 15

Emrakul the Eons Torn X 1
Silence X 3
Children of Korlis X 1
Chain of Vapor X 2
Echoing Truth X 1
Surgical Extraction X 3
Massacre X 2
Flusterstorm X 1
Infest X 1

A while back i also played a list which was basically the "default" list and FoW.

Went like:

-4 Cabal Therapy, -4 Gitaxian Probe, -2 LDV (-1 Tendrils, -1 Silence)

+4 Careful Study, + 4 Force of Will, +2 Preordain (+2 Griselbrand...)

Is must say i wasn't toooo happy with the Forces. Is just liked the idea that you have instant protection beforce combo AND you have answers for opponent if you fizzle(!). The best thing was Owning Miracles 2-0 by FoWing an Enlightened Tutored Rest in Peace Game 1 and wipe the board with Serenity Game 2.

But i may test FoW again without the study switching though...!

Another thing regarding Therapy Flashback (and btw cheating Grisel into play...): Have you guys ever considered to use some Gamekeeper's in Tin Fins... ? Or is it just not good enough ?

[.dk]

Gamekeeper is a bit rough. It's 4CMC which is a stretch already (hence some people's apprehension to Snapcaster), and would require a solid 4th color to have access to. The other problem might be... what if you flip Children of Korlis off of your library? Pretty sure your Gamekeeper's instantly get ripped up then. :)

[Secretly.A.Bee]

Well, I will be waiting for your guys' concensus on SCM, but I think it's something that will stay in my list until something close to Entomb gets printed again (lol). It's like LDV, only exactly opposite, if that makes sense.

-ABC

[BeardTron]

I did it...I read the entire thread (over the last week). Couple things I wanted to say: First off, reading this thread has been a real pleasure. I started playing Magic back in February of this year and 90% of what I've played has been Standard (easier to learn the game w/ a smaller card pool). I want to switch to a non-rotating format so I've been looking at Modern and Legacy. I've played some Modern locally, and it's okay. Legacy really excites me, just from reading about it. I've proxied up 4 Legacy decks so far and Tin Fins is one of them and I'll be honest, it's one I am the most excited about so far just because it's so damn fun to play as well as how awesome this thread is and all of the ideas/conversation going on about it. I'm used to the Standard threads on Salvation where people mostly just yell at each other.

So far, I've just been playing on my own at home w/ the Proxy decks (UW Miracles, EsperBlade, UB Tezz and Tin Fins...and soon to add Death/Taxes as well) and have a friend who is going to join in with me next week. With Legacy, I want to be sure I actually love the deck before buying in as it's an investement :smile:

As far as Tin Fins goes: Any thoughts to phazonmutant's post on page 62 (post 1231)? Over the course of the thread there's been discussion about Show/Tell. I don't have an informed opinion yet as I haven't tested w/ S&T (Going largely off of Koby's most recent list currently) but it does seem interesting.

There's not much I can really say that hasn't already been said. I am still running 2 Children main but will start testing with 1. The interactions I've had w/ Children have been so awesome thus far that I have a hard time wanting to cut one. Tendrils is kind of becoming a "pet card" for me as I just love building storm and casting it in this deck (maybe it's because I am new to playing any type of storm strategy). It provides that extra angle and gives an out in certain scenarios.

I'm going to keep testing w/ Proxies over the next couple months, but I am already close to wanting to pull the trigger and begin buying the pieces for this deck.

*Side Note: I already like Legacy more than Modern

[Koby]

Welcome to the game, the format, The Source, but specifically to this thread! Thanks for the dedication to have read through all our ideas from beginning to end!

Many of the changes I've arrived at have been due to min/max'ing the basic idea to give me the most confident and consistent list to take into tournaments. It's always good to have fresh perspectives on the list and the archetype, so don't feel shy about giving us some feedback on what makes sense, what doesn't, and what can be improved. My own list has not changed at all in 6 months, and not for lack of trying either - but I sometimes design my decks into a spot that I cannot modify them anymore. Perhaps a fresh look with a new focus would find another way to get this deck more consistent.

Ultimately, this deck may just be a real powerhouse that can only operate when the right conditions exist: low amount of graveyard and storm hate & unprepared opponents.

[Secretly.A.Bee]

Koby. Are you willing to play test scm and give me your feedback?

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[BeardTron]

Ultimately, this deck may just be a real powerhouse that can only operate when the right conditions exist: low amount of graveyard and storm hate & unprepared opponents.


This is the main concern I've kept in mind while playing this deck (playing it with a jack-assed smile on face, mind you). I've inquired to a semi-local shop that runs a weekly Legacy event and their attendance is about 15-20 people each week. I'm fearful that it'd be very easy for people to pack specific hate against this deck since it is a relatively small tourney, resulting in me getting stomped each week. Thus, I'm still a little bit reserved if this deck is "the right choice" for a 1st Legacy deck.

@secretly - I effing love SCM so I may try your list out. Have you had many conflicts with Shallow Grave since last you posted? I suppose it wouldn't be too difficult to sculpt your plays so that Shallow Grave wouldn't lose much of its efficiency. I think I'd def want x1 Reanimate in a SCM list though. Could help balance it out. Either way...I'm intrigued. /// Ya, I've been digging Stoneblade for sure. Although, if I went that route, I'd likely start w/ UW as it'd reduce the initial buy-in cost.

[Secretly.A.Bee]

Not a first, but if you like all in combo it's a close second. I currently play this and Esper death blade.

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[.dk]

I wouldn't keep this deck around as my only choice. It's pretty easy to beat if your opponents are prepared for you - it's much more suited to a large event (GP, BoM, etc.) than local weeklies. That said, it does share a lot of cards in common with other blue/black combo decks, so it wouldn't be that much of a stretch to have this in addition to a couple others.

ABC - I need to get some snapcasters on MODO, but once I do that I'll probably be testing that configuration (likely next week after DC)

Oh yes - and welcome to the thread and Legacy BeardTron. :)

[Richard Cheese]

@Joe: Gamekeeper, no. I did play around with a Polymorph board with Dimir Keyrune and Creeping Tar Pit. It's just worse than Show and Tell though. Still a two-card combo, still more susceptible to counters, but way slower.

@BeardTron: Great to have another fan of the deck, and I agree with Koby, this is a deck that preys on unprepared metas. Play it for a few weeklies, then switch to something else for a bit. You might catch them unprepared enough initially to build yourself a nice bit of store credit!

On Show and Tell, I think there's still a case to be made for making the board SnT-centric. If you do though, I think the keys will be controlling the stack by packing lots of counters to go with it, and having another out. The only SnT board I ran and liked also had 3x Cabal Ritual, and even then I'd leave 2-3 reanimation spells and a couple Entombs in.

Also definitely try with just one Children. Tendrils is really more of a backup plan, and Children is the enabler for that. It's a straight-up dead draw pre-combo, and this is a deck where you want to devote as many resources as possible to starting your combo as quickly as possible.

[Acclimation]

Almost 90% of the time, the resources it would take for me to go for Children are the same ones that it would take for me to just get out Emrakul instead. Yes, there are times where I don't draw instant reanimation (just reanimate) or a single petal+children but no Dark Ritual, but it only happens once every couple of weeks. I feel as though Children is a bit of a crutch, and 1 is the right number.


As far as "unprepared opponents" go, every time I come home and play in a Legacy tournament, everyone knows that I'm playing Tinfins and I've still won or placed top 8 in all but 1 event, and half of these people are my jackass friends who know how to play against the deck and would love to beat me. I'm not sure how much of that is luck (probably a good amount), but even when you are a known quantity, you can still have a lot of wins.

[Secretly.A.Bee]

Right, most decks have outs. It's finding it in time and knowing what to do with it that can be difficult for your opponent. I agree and concur that one children is plenty. I have never played more than one and I've never had a problem. I go for tendrils often. Maybe that's wrong but I love tendrils and storm and while I have a freaking awesome emrakul (foil Japanese game day promo), there is something special about using a card that wizards has repeatedly called a mistake to win a game, especially in conjunction with grizz and entomb. This deck should be named "the Wizards Mistake Archive".


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[P-E]

I'm really enjoying TinFins lately.
I'm frequently kicked on cockatrice due to t1 wins or tendrils kills through hate.


the build is strong , i play classic koby but with 1 vault MD to go down to 60.

Lately i faced a lots of MUD, when they do t1 chalice what is the best plan? mine is find a grisel and discard it eot then reanimate next turn. It's often enough to chains cabal+goryo/grave for 3 turns and take the match
G2 is lot easier with serenity+needle, i don't know if bring CoV is good due to chalice. Needle is here for relic/crypt+kuldotha. Taking out some discard silence probe reanimate OTD while i tend to keep discard OTP.
What's your boarding plan against MUD?

[Secretly.A.Bee]

Umm...you can't do that. It removes the creature from the game at eot. CoV is bad against MUD. Chalice stops it and trini makes it not worth your while. Hope you go first and get a good fast hand. I beat Geddon stax today 2-0 and dragon stompy 2-1. Out: 3 probe, in: 3 Serenity. If you think you need it, needle can randomly help against wasteland and whatever PW they are running, but historically this is just a terrible matchup.

-ABC

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[Acclimation]

He's saccing Griselbrand to flashback Cabal Therapy. Grave and Goryo only exile if the creature is on the battlefield at the beginning of the next end step, but if you kill it off or bounce it, it goes to that specific zone.

It may be countered by chalice, but it doesn't stop you from casting it.

I usually bring in 1 Chain against Chalice decks, alongside my 2 Serenity. Sometimes Chalice players drop it at x=2, which makes the game awkward, so having Chains is security.

[Secretly.A.Bee]

Touch'e. Didn't see anything about therapy so I didn't get there. Also, I guess that works against n00bs, but in my meta, people know that you chalice correctly; at 1. Then at 2 if you draw it. The reason you don't chalice @ 2 first is because you can't chalice @ 1 because it will be countered by the chalice @ 2.

-ABC

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[P-E]

Thanks for answers.
I only have 2 serenity in side otherwise i d bring the 3
But yeah one chain could be good one opponent got trini blightsteel after serenity i wish i had chain but i just shallow at his end step and attack and ritual tendrils manually. Tombs always hurt them enough

[Koby]

Matchups like MUD or other Chalicedecks are were we would want to vary the CMC of bounce; so Echoing Truth, Hurkyl's Recall, or Rebuild would all be appropriate in such a metagame.

[kingsey]

played at a local last night, just missed the $ due to terrible breakers.

Lost 1-2 to rug. Stifles on my mana base hurt, I just couldn't get a stable base.
Win 2-0 to shardless bug. Cabal on Fow both games then win
win 2-1 vs Burn
win 2-0 vs young frankenstien? Both games had the absolute nuts.

Still love the deck. Going to try the pact of negation over probes next week.

[Secretly.A.Bee]

Mind sharing your list?

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[P-E]

So how many tin fins day 2 at DC ?
i saw Allen pennington made day2

[.dk]

Not sure, although I thought I saw a couple people close. I didn't play Tin fins in the main event.

I did, however play it in a couple 8-mans today with a joke of a sideboard. :) Haven't played this in paper for a long time - felt good turn 1ing people again. Although, I did seem to fizzle a bit more often than I remembered...

[Koby]

OK boys & girls, I think our job is done here. Pay attention to the card featured on the side of the screen, the quality of the event, and the audience of the event.

Oh yeah, and the length of time the card is up...

http://www.twitch.tv/magic/b/480336562?t=52m40s

[Secretly.A.Bee]

Not sure, although I thought I saw a couple people close. I didn't play Tin fins in the main event.

I did, however play it in a couple 8-mans today with a joke of a sideboard. :) Haven't played this in paper for a long time - felt good turn 1ing people again. Although, I did seem to fizzle a bit more often than I remembered...

Fizzle? How? Did you do something to your list?

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[P-E]

someone has allen's list ?
wondering what was his side as i saw some MBT ^^

[Koby]

http://i.imgur.com/07Tvejs.png

From his last stream: http://www.twitch.tv/acpennington/b/477610238

Also, in list form: http://mtgstats.com/Deck.aspx?DeckID=625983

[P-E]

thx koby
if i have enough tests i'll play Tinfins at GP Paris

[.dk]

Fizzle? How? Did you do something to your list?

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Nope - the maindeck I was running was:

1 Emrakul
2 Griselbrand
1 Children of Korlis

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

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

Just was getting some extremely poor luck - like no IMS off of draw 14's or 21's, or no Entomb or Children off of the same, etc. Most of those games I still won the following turn anyway. Just seemed like bad variance to me.

[BeardTron]

OK boys & girls, I think our job is done here. Pay attention to the card featured on the side of the screen, the quality of the event, and the audience of the event.

Oh yeah, and the length of time the card is up...

http://www.twitch.tv/magic/b/480336562?t=52m40s


Children = Money

Awesome job beating Ari, who is one of the best storm players around...(wonder what he thinks of Tin Fins)

Mindbreak Trap is good...

[Luklinda]

OK boys & girls, I think our job is done here. Pay attention to the card featured on the side of the screen, the quality of the event, and the audience of the event.

Oh yeah, and the length of time the card is up...

http://www.twitch.tv/magic/b/480336562?t=52m40s

Doesn't Children get pulled up on cam like every Tin-Fins game?

On a side note, the commentary is getting worse and worse:

"It's one of those things where, even if somebody [that I used to know] won a tournament with this exact same decklist a couple of weeks ago - I mean, people, they get to choose which cards they place in their deck, right?"

I'd rather hear them talk about what they had for breakfast if they're that desperate to fill air time. Or at least hire John Madden to talk about it. Maybe pay him in chicken wings.

[Secretly.A.Bee]

Mindbreak Trap is good...

...in a heavy storm environment or a big event. Otherwise it's wasted SB slots and that's not something this deck needs...Also, how lucky was it to hit 2 MBT against Ari? Honestly, that's the reason he won. Had he not had BOTH of them, he would have lost. Not hitting a reanimation spell for that long is something that's never happened to me yet, but I run 2 copies of LDV, something I would recommend, and that game 2 is a perfect case-in-point for this.

@ .dk: Have you had an opportunity to test SCM? I keep on finding reasons to like it, and I STILL haven't been boned by it's body yet (lol, I made myself laugh just there). I'm running the standard 4 Shallow, 3 Vengeance reanimation package WITHOUT Reanimate and I'm doing great. I don't play against a lot of blue, but I play against Esper Deathblade with True-Name maindecked, with Cliques in the side for the combo matchup (they pretty much suck against us unless they get a counter-heavy hand and can actually make it to turn 3, and even then, it's touch and go).

-ABC

[nevilshute]

Hey there. I'm trying out Tin Fins with a counter suite as my main line of disruption. I know this has been somewhat debated before, but I've been unable to find an article arguing pros and cons (if anyone can drop a link it would be much appreciated).

In this primer they are touched upon briefly and the reasons cited for not running counter magic are that "in this deck they don't help get Griselbrand in the yard, and we usually don't have the mana open for Pierce, or the blue count for Force".

To break down these arguments I'd suggest that the first one - the fact that cabal therapy and thoughtseize can be used to bin a Griselbrand from our hand which a counterspell obviously cannot - is much less relevant in a deck running only 2 Griselbrands than in a deck running 4 Griselbrands which, I believe, was more en vogue during the time of the genesis of the deck. With 2 we are much less likely to get one into our hand and will therefore need a discard outlet to discard ourselves more rarely too.

To keep a mana open for Pierce is a big no no. I'll agree with that. No Spell Pierces thanks. But Daze? It helps protect us while comboing and will often be able to help us get there as we tend to combo during the early turns. It also helps us towards the last point which was that we need a high enough blue count.

In the list that I'm testing my blue count is 17 with the forces. Not the highest in the world, but high enough to be valid imo.

Now why run Force and Daze? I personally feel like it's a very powerful line of protection and helps make the deck more resilient. Reanimator runs the same disruption package as I do and their combo enabler is very similar. Granted they need counter magic to ride Griselbrand to victory over the course of several turns whereas we'll just win on the spot making counter magic less necessary. But just because it is more of a necessity in Reanimator doesn't mean it's not the right choice for us.

Anyway, I could be talking out of my ass and I'm not saying this is the way to go for sure or anything, but I'm trying it out and have so far tested against some guys in my playgroup to some success. As you can see I've trimmed the Silences from the mainboard as 1 or 2 just felt a bit too random for my taste. I've also kept in 3x discard in the shape of Cabal Therapy as I recognize that card's power, both in terms of binning a creature from our hand, casting after an attack by emrakul to then get emmy back into the library and of course to take stuff from my opponent's hand.

Here's my list:

4x Dark Ritual
4x Entomb
4x Shallow Grave
3x Goryo's Vengeance
3x Cabal Therapy
2x Griselbrand
1x Tendrils of Agony
1x Reanimate
4x Brainstorm
4x Force of Will
3x Daze
3x Ponder
3x Gitaxian Probe
1x Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
4x Lotus Petal
1x Chrome Mox
1x Children of Korlis
2x Underground Sea
2x Tundra
1x Island
1x Swamp
4x Polluted Delta
3x Flooded Strand
1x Marsh Flats

Sideboard:
3x Massacre
3x Pithing Needle
2x Serenity
3x Chain of Vapor
1x Echoing Truth
3x Silence

I'd love to hear some thoughts :)

[Secretly.A.Bee]

Daze is just bad in a deck with 12-14 lands. Discard on yourself is more relevant Than You are giving credit. Its for after the combo has begun; drawing emrakul often happens after 3-4 griselbrand activations. You must have a way to get that Emmy into the graveyard. I don't think countering disruption is a viable option, especially with all the tempo, midrange and combo In the metagame. Discard provides information as well as utility.

-ABC

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[nevilshute]

Daze is just bad in a deck with 12-14 lands. Discard on yourself is more relevant Than You are giving credit. Its for after the combo has begun; drawing emrakul often happens after 3-4 griselbrand activations. You must have a way to get that Emmy into the graveyard. I don't think countering disruption is a viable option, especially with all the tempo, midrange and combo In the metagame. Discard provides information as well as utility.

-ABC

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I've tried to factor in the issue of enough islands for Daze to be viable. That factoring has basically resulted in swapping the Scrubland for a second Tundra. 5 out of my 6 lands are islands that way.

Arguing that 14 lands is too low to make Daze viable is not, strictly speaking, correct imo. RUG-delver, the quintessential Daze deck, effectively only runs 14 lands as 4 out of their 18 are Wastelands. That leaves them with 14 lands, 8 of which are fetches. They are then left with 6 islands, we have 5. Just how significant that difference is I don't know. Alternatively we could scimp on the basic swamp and run 3 Underground Seas. I might try that out if I find that the one basic swamp is messing up my Daze plan, but more testing is needed for now.

[.dk]

Discard on yourself is more relevant Than You are giving credit. Its for after the combo has begun; drawing emrakul often happens after 3-4 griselbrand activations. You must have a way to get that Emmy into the graveyard.

This. In a deck with only 4 entombs, you need a way to get Children of Korlis or Emrakul into the yard after drawing with Griselbrand. Sometimes you don't draw entomb (which was my problem on Sunday). Of course, sometimes you don't draw any of them... so yeah.

If you're running counters as protection, I feel that Careful Study becomes a must-have to serve the same purpose during combo. This also bolsters your blue count for Force of Will. However... as nevilshute mentioned - we're really only running 2-3 good targets for Careful Study to begin with, which makes the card much weaker in general.

This was the line of thought we originally took a year ago when we were running 4 Griselbrands - the protection suite in the earliest incarnations of the deck was Force of Will, and Careful Study was definitely needed to provide the blue count. But even then, Careful Study and Force of Will were both pretty mediocre. Self discard was much more relevant when running more Griselbrands (pre-combo), and served as more protection anyway.

My biggest issue with this deck at the moment is that it is so all in on Entomb in the current configuration, but we only get to run 4. LDV helps with this, but a lot of times by the time you can cast LDV, it's too late. Same with Snapcaster. Can we have Mystical Tutor back please?

Also - haven't tested SCM yet - have only been back from DC for a day, and I didn't have them with me while I was at the event.

[cogitoergosum]

Can they just print us a black merchant scroll?

[.dk]

That would work. :)

[Koby]

I'd be happy with Demonic Tutor, but that's likely too good.

[P-E]

vampiric is fine enough to me no need of demonic ^^
ah good old times when 4 vampiric were standard legal :cry:

[Acclimation]

I've been loving LDV more and more recently, to the point where I give it priority over other cantrips if I can cast it. I've been in situations where I have a hand with 2 cantrips, LDV, a land or two, dark rit, and then either reanimation or entomb, needing that last piece to go off. For awhile, I would go for my second cantrip immediately on t2, in hopes that I can luck sack into that missing piece and go off that turn, and had moderate success with this strategy. However, the games where that didn't happen were often horribly awful or took longer to win. On the flipside, burning my LDV on t2 often found me the piece that I needed and potentially a solid stack depending on my hand, resulting in a t3 win.

It should be obvious, taking the slower, but precise path over the cheaper #YOLOSWAGHOPEIGETTHERE lucksack game plan, but it did take me longer than I should have to actually do that.

LDV isn't perfect, but at 2 mana, what else is there? Infernal Tutor isn't an option, since LED doesn't play too well with the current list, and other options to get hellbent are fairly awful.

We can go turbo bad and play Time of Need and more discard effects! Green isn't a hard splash, and gives us cool cards such as Carpet of Flowers, Abrupt Decay, and Reverent Silence.

:rolleyes:

[Secretly.A.Bee]

I dunno. My list hasn't changed in over a week, maybe 2. I'm happy with it. SCM made it for me. I have always gone LDV before anything else unless I have a very good reason to not.

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[Ferrarix]

Hello
Thanks to Takichoma, I am playing the deck for 3 weeks now.
I was playing an aggro reanimator of my self then I moved slots with 2 goryo s and two shallow.
After the bom I ve decided to go further on and to build a more competitive deck.
So here is my list of tin fit with some counters
The mains idea is to protect your self and increase the chance to go first or second turn
I ve done some turn 1 kills was fun but I really have a problem with the side

TIN FINS COUNTER
Manabase /13
1 island
1 swamp
2 polluted delta
2 underground sea
1 verdant catacombs
1 bayou
1 marsh flats
1 plateau
2 bloodstained mire
1 badlands

4 lotus petal
2 chrome mox

4 dark ritual
4 brainstorm
2 ponder ( I ve tried more but it wasn t good at all)
2 lim dul s vault ( very good card)

4 entomb
4 shallow grave
3 goryo s vengeance
1 reanimate

4 daze (helps you protect against tendrils and discard on fow when toss has been lost and protect your combo against fow
2 force of will (tes and ant)
1 silence (protection)

1 sensei s divining top (can be good with fetch at all)

1 children of korlis
1 emrakul the aeons torn
2 griselbrand
1 putrid imp (only two discards so it helps when you draw em ra or grisel)

2 thougtseize

1 grapeshot (alternative kill in main)
1 tendrils of agony ( alternative kill in main)


Sideboard
4 abrupt decay
11 slots engineered plague (elves merfolk nemesis)

[nevilshute]

Took Tin Fins to a tournament for the first time on the weekend. Entered a legacy sideevent (18 players) at a Theros Sealed PTQ.

Went 4-1 and got 40$ worth of store credit which was nice :)

Rnd 1: Won 2-0 against Affinity

Rnd 2: Won 2-0 against Lands

Rnd 3: Lost 1-2 against Jund

Rnd 4: Won 2-0 against UB Omniclash

Rnd 5: Won 2-1 against Combo Elves

I played a version with Force of Will and Daze in place of some discard and silence effects. It was only really relevant in the Omniclash matchup where I was able to combo off on turn two through a force with my own force which was nice.

The round I lost was a bit of a bummer as I would have liked to beat Jund even if it's not quite as easy a matchup for combo decks as some like to make it out to be.

Game 1 I win convincingly as I have it on turn 1. Game 2 I mulligan to 5 and eventually settle on a hand that is missing both protection and one half of the combo. He lands a Scavinging Ooze on turn two and even though I pick up a Chain of Vapor I'm still missing a combo piece. Then comes the discard and I don't recover. At one point I discard him and see he is holding a Surgical Extraction too. Game 3 I have a hand with Entomb, 2 Shallow Grave, 2 lands, brainstorm and daze. I go land go, he goes land go. EoT I entomb for Griselbrand and am thinking as long as he isn't holding a Surgical Extraction I win now... unfortunately he does have an extraction and also plays around daze. I still feel it was the right thing to go off there... odds are greater that he doesn't have it and I am bound to get discarded sooner or later anyway if I wait.

Was a lot of fun to play the deck (especially funny to hear the Omniclash player moan about how BORING it was to sit and watch me go off - because it's a lot of fun to watch your opponent cast enter the infinite, right). Will definitely be bringing it again :)

For reference this is my list:

4x Dark Ritual
4x Entomb
4x Shallow Grave
3x Goryo's Vengeance
3x Cabal Therapy
2x Griselbrand
1x Reanimate
1x Tendrils of Agony
4x Brainstorm
4x Force of Will
3x Daze
3x Ponder
3x Gitaxian Probe
4x Lotus Petal
1x Chrome Mox
1x Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
1x Children of Korlis
4x Flooded Strand
4x Polluted Delta
2x Underground Sea
2x Tundra
1x Island
1x Swamp

4x Silence
3x Massacre
3x Pithing Needle
3x Chain of Vapor
2x Serenity

[Richard Cheese]

Played in our weekly tourney yesterday, only 10 people but I managed to go 3-1 before scrubbing out mega hard in top 4. Beat UW(x?) with TNN and countertop (t2, t1, didn't see much of his deck), Burn, Deathblade (found the second Entomb to beat DRS with Shallow Grave), lost to RUG. Got paired against BUG Pod Nic Fit in Top 4, so naturally I just punt the shit out of what should be an easy matchup. Still nearly got there off a natural Tendrils, but his Ooze gave him just enough life to stay in it.

All in all, deck felt good, but I'm not totally convinced on 2x LDV yet. I think I used it once yesterday, but only because I had the Probe to draw what I needed anyway. It's so good at digging eot to set up a combo, but once you start going off it feels pretty useless.

[Secretly.A.Bee]

I like it for my chrome imprint. Pitching something that is completely irrelevant after the combo feels good. Pre-combo it's awesomely powerful, you just have to be certain of what it is you are looking for. Fwiw, I run 2 chrome.

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[Finntrinsic]

Took Tin Fins to a tournament for the first time on the weekend. Entered a legacy sideevent (18 players) at a Theros Sealed PTQ.


Was a lot of fun to play the deck (especially funny to hear the Omniclash player moan about how BORING it was to sit and watch me go off - because it's a lot of fun to watch your opponent cast enter the infinite, right).



^^^^^THIS!!!! So MUCH THIS!!!!

Nothing in the world more fun than listening to a filthy combo player cry because they have to sit through someone else's filthy combo. :tongue:

So...Large $$$ Legacy event local for me this weekend. Have been playing Fins most of the year and all the locals will likely put me on it. Should I care? I have the resources to build most of the recently successful blade & XUG decks. Just have no real interest in playing them. Thoughts?

-Finn

[Luklinda]

^^^^^THIS!!!! So MUCH THIS!!!!

Nothing in the world more fun than listening to a filthy combo player cry because they have to sit through someone else's filthy combo. :tongue:

So...Large $$$ Legacy event local for me this weekend. Have been playing Fins most of the year and all the locals will likely put me on it. Should I care? I have the resources to build most of the recently successful blade & XUG decks. Just have no real interest in playing them. Thoughts?

-Finn

From Star Wars: A New Hope:

Commander #1: We've analyzed their attack, sir, and there is a danger. Should I have your ship standing by?
Governor Tarkin: Evacuate? In our moment of triumph? I think you overestimate their chances.

Grand Moff Tarkin says go forth and storm on, rebels be damned!

[Richard Cheese]

^^^^^THIS!!!! So MUCH THIS!!!!

Nothing in the world more fun than listening to a filthy combo player cry because they have to sit through someone else's filthy combo. :tongue:

So...Large $$$ Legacy event local for me this weekend. Have been playing Fins most of the year and all the locals will likely put me on it. Should I care? I have the resources to build most of the recently successful blade & XUG decks. Just have no real interest in playing them. Thoughts?

-Finn

Depends on a lot of things. What's the rest of the meta look like, are there other storm or graveyard-based strategies doing well lately that are likely to get you caught in their crossfire, maybe most importantly, have you been winning?

[phazonmutant]

^^^^^THIS!!!! So MUCH THIS!!!!

Nothing in the world more fun than listening to a filthy combo player cry because they have to sit through someone else's filthy combo. :tongue:

So...Large $$$ Legacy event local for me this weekend. Have been playing Fins most of the year and all the locals will likely put me on it. Should I care? I have the resources to build most of the recently successful blade & XUG decks. Just have no real interest in playing them. Thoughts?

-Finn

#yolo

[Secretly.A.Bee]

Yolo? What is that? And if you have been doing well with it, play it. What is your list? What is your meta likely to be? The answers to these questions will be the determining factors in answering the question of whether or not you should play Tin fins.

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[Acclimation]

It's always correct to play Tinfins.

[Secretly.A.Bee]

Lol. Awesome.

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[Darkenslight]

It's always correct to play Tinfins.

Except when they're prepared for the Onion Burst, of course. :p

[Acclimation]

Except when they're prepared for the Onion Burst, of course. :p

Then you actually have to work for it and become a better player, which leads to easier time Onion Bursting in the future.

Win/Win in my book :D

[.dk]

Then you actually have to work for it and become a better player, which leads to easier time Onion Bursting in the future.

Win/Win in my book :D

Exactly. The one time it's wrong to play Tin Fins is when Griselbrand is no longer a legal card in the format.

[phazonmutant]

Exactly. The one time it's wrong to play Tin Fins is when Griselbrand is no longer a legal card in the format.

Even I'm back on TinFins (for a local or two). Testing Show and Tells in the main like I suggested a while back. The only thing I've noticed so far is that having 4 Griselbrands and a Tendrils sucks.


Yolo? What is that?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z5Otla5157c

[Richard Cheese]

It's always correct to play Tinfins.

You'll wish you had less fun!!!#$!$@#

[Secretly.A.Bee]

Let us know how it goes, Finntrinsic. Good luck.

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[Koby]

Played in the Invi for two rounds; and the Legacy Trial.
Round 5 vs Sneak Show, we split games then I got out topdecked into Griselbrand. :/
Round 6 vs iPainter, clean 2-0
Dropped at that point as it was pointless to fide the bubble at X-3

In the trial,
R1 vs D&T, split games then just won on turn 1. Easy peasy.
R2 vs RUG Delver, I had too much fun and cast Emrakul 5 times
R3 vs Deathblade, Karakas is kind of a joke when you're at 18 life vs no disruption. G2 I mull to six, opp leads with USea and DRS. I open with Petal, Silence (resolves), Petal Ritual Entomb Goryo's, draw 14, land Chain of Vapor the DRS, Therapy DrS and hit a second, see Surgical, flashback Therapy on Surgical. Next turn i setup Emrakul to armageddon him.
R4 vs Deathblade, we split games and then lose to DRS while trying to dig the an enabler. Game ends with him holding 5 counters and a Brainstorm. Them breaks.

Playing this tomorrow in the Legacy Open.

[.dk]

Sucks the invi didn't go well for you - good luck in the open Koby!

[Acclimation]

Played in a small 6 man event this week, went 2-1, playing against D&T, TES, and Oops all spells, losing to TES.

Same 61 maindeck, but I had a joke sideboard that wasn't relevant outside of a single Chain of Vapor and Pithing Needle.

My loss to TES was due to it being against a friend who knew what I was on, with openers of Karakas and Chant effects, and lucky as hell draws (his words) that killed me the turn before I could get him.

The other two games were hilariously easy, with the guy playing D&T never having played the deck before and letting me swing with an untapped Karakas on the field and Oops is a terrible deck.

[Secretly.A.Bee]

Yes, oops is janky at best.

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[Wess]

I love playing this deck, I think its well positioned with true name nemesis decks in the format now. Have been winning lots of booster packs with the deck on MTGO, going 4-0 and 3-1 the deck. I played the cabal therapy-thoughtseize-silence package for a while and it seemed very sub-par. We only play 12-14 land, and running 3 colours is bad. Also, the UBW version of the deck just seems slow and more vulnerable to hate. The UB version seems faster and more consistent, here's the current list I'm running:

4 Entomb
4 Dark Ritual
2 Griselbrand
4 Ponder
4 Shallow Grave
1 Children of Korlis
3 Goryo's Vengeance
1 Tendrils of Agony
4 Gitaxian Probe
1 Reanimate
4 Lotus Petal
1 Chrome Mox
4 Brainstorm
2 Lim-Dûl's Vault
4 Daze
4 Force of Will

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

Sideboard:
1 Chain of Vapor
1 Mindbreak Trap
4 Surgical Extraction
1 Echoing Truth
1 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
1 Children of Korlis
2 Massacre
1 Flusterstorm
3 Snapcaster Mage

Sideboard is always the weakest, never sure what to do with it, I hardly ever side anything in, except for Surgical against gy decks, and Emrakul for odd things. I really should be running 1 Emrakul in the main, and if the deck gets more popular and people play against it properly, I will have to cut a card and move him in.

EDIT: Here's my UBw list that I accidentally played in a tourno yesterday

someguy604 (4-0)
Legacy Daily #6488664 on 12/23/2013
Download a .dek file for use in Magic Online

Main Deck
60 cards

2 Flooded Strand
1 Island
2 Marsh Flats
4 Polluted Delta
1 Scrubland
1 Tundra
2 Underground Sea
13 lands

1 Children of Korlis
2 Griselbrand
3 creatures

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

Sideboard
1 Chain of Vapor
1 Children of Korlis
1 Echoing Truth
1 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
1 Flusterstorm
2 Force of Will
2 Massacre
1 Mindbreak Trap
1 Silence
4 Surgical Extraction
15 sideboard cards

[Secretly.A.Bee]

I do love the deck, but with your current build (protection suite specifically) I feel like your tempo and blue control mu's are bad. Discard fares so much better against blue in my combo experiences.

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[Wess]

I do love the deck, but with your current build (protection suite specifically) I feel like your tempo and blue control mu's are bad. Discard fares so much better against blue in my combo experiences.

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Well, after playing both UBw and UB both extensively, I can say that actually the UB version has a much stronger game against tempo, you should try it. Reason is the mana denial of stifle and wasteland mean you're not going to be able to cast silence and combo same turn, or thoughtseize. In general, I find discard sub-par against brainstorm decks. With UB, your mana is a lot more solid, and you can combo off turn 1 and 2 with free protection. Tempo is actually a pretty easy match-up, their threats are too slow, and if they tap-out to play a delver or DRS turn 1 or 2, you've basically won.

[Secretly.A.Bee]

I only run silence in my board. I guess your logic makes good sense but don't you miss therapy? I mean, I like knowing that I can discard things I draw. I like it's diverse nature. Also, no Emmy md? That's not something I can really get behind. I think he is necessary.

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[Richard Cheese]

I only run silence in my board. I guess your logic makes good sense but don't you miss therapy? I mean, I like knowing that I can discard things I draw. I like it's diverse nature. Also, no Emmy md? That's not something I can really get behind. I think he is necessary.

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Agree with both points here. Emrakul is generally a much more reliable and cheaper win condition, and having self-targeting discard makes the deck so much more consistent pre and post-combo.

[Wess]

Yeah, for sure, that's why I put the note at the bottom that I should have a Emrakul maindeck, but, the only reason I would want an Emrakul main is if my tendrils got discarded, so either I add the Emmy, or switch my kill to Lab Maniac.

As for discard vs counters, I guess it's your preference in playstyle, the reason that I play Tinfins over traditional Reanimator is for the speed, which is our best asset against gy hate games 2 and 3, and the free counters make the deck faster, in that you can you can combo with protection turn 0-1-2, and you slow your opponent down 1 turn with daze+force when they play their hate.

With UBw the most common scenario I get, is I have the ability to combo off turn 1 or 2, entomb in hand, with a discard spell or silence. If I go for it blindly, I can auto-lose, and the discard offers me no protection. If I play the discard, I lose the ability to entomb on their turn, and they might have gy hate and disruption in their hand. If I wait another turn to get white mana for silence (IF I even have the fetch or petal and left over mana to combo), then I lose 1 turn. With daze+force, I can drop a Underground Sea, pass the turn, see what they do on their turn, then make the decision counter what they play or combo on their endstep with protection.

[Secretly.A.Bee]

Sorry, missed the tidbit about Emmy being in the main. I do like that option with the c-spells. I'm keeping your UB list in mind.

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[Acclimation]

No guts, no glory.

I want my protection to be aggressive, provide me with information, and overall flexible. Counterspells do only one thing, and I don't like having limited options for those slots.

[Imperial]

Ah, mulling down to five to get a T1 Grisel and a stacked win against elves is so fun. Feels really good to be playing this deck! :smile:

[MST negates]

Hello all,
Love the time and thought that went into this thread and have reviewed almost every other external piece of info I can find on Tin Fins(twitch and youtube duels w it). As I am relatively new to MTG I am finding it a bit hard to justify the lands until I am sure I will be playing for years to come(and can convince my significant other, more-so the latter). Because of this I was wondering how much of a hindrance it would be to make the lands with a playset of: City of Brass, Gemstone Mine, Underground River (and debating replacing 1 of 2 LDV with 1 basic swamp), and if there would be any better replacements for those if deemed acceptable.

[Secretly.A.Bee]

No. The amount of life loss that you will accrue with a mana base such as that will be detrimental to the list as a whole. It will absolutely neuter griselbrand, and thus the deck.

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[.dk]

I mean, you can build it however you want, and it just won't be optimal. It's not like it's unplayable or anything. The thing with a City/Gemstone manabase is really the cases where you aren't going off T1. So, you may want to just mulligan more aggressively if you don't have a fetch/dual manabase to try to get a T1 hand more often. You may also want to add more Chrome Moxes or Mox Diamonds in that case to attempt to speed up the deck to get your mana out faster. There is probably a decent enough build there, would just take some tweaking. :)

But if you decide to get the lands... get fetches first. They will make your Brainstorms much better, and hence not force you to try to go all in on T1.

[MST negates]

Thank you both for the comments/suggestions. Yea the brainstorm issue is biggest concern, second to possibly fizzling more often (as little of a difference it makes I have to assume every land removed makes for better draws off GB). Will play with the build and look into the mox diamonds (currently 2 chrome mox) and will report back with how well/bad it does. Where I'm at now though it looks like I'll have to slowly upgrade it w/ this build, then fetch lands & some watery grave's, then finally the correct land base.

[Secretly.A.Bee]

If you are going to play sub-par lands, I would suggest darkslick shores first. I'm not sure after that about the next best choice for the lands but you are almost always sure to be within its restriction.

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[phazonmutant]

Hello all,
Love the time and thought that went into this thread and have reviewed almost every other external piece of info I can find on Tin Fins(twitch and youtube duels w it). As I am relatively new to MTG I am finding it a bit hard to justify the lands until I am sure I will be playing for years to come(and can convince my significant other, more-so the latter). Because of this I was wondering how much of a hindrance it would be to make the lands with a playset of: City of Brass, Gemstone Mine, Underground River (and debating replacing 1 of 2 LDV with 1 basic swamp), and if there would be any better replacements for those if deemed acceptable.

1) Ask yourself if you're playing Magic to win tournaments or to play with friends. Both are fine, but I have to assume the goal of the people on this forum is winning. Otherwise, there's basically no point.
2) You're thinking about the buy-in the wrong way. Legacy cards are liquid and appreciating assets. In the 3 years I've been playing Legacy, my Seas and Deltas have doubled in value.
3) There is a budget/casual subforum on this site.


In other news, I played TinFins in some local tournaments. Wasn't especially thrilled with the Show and Tell package (although small sample size, etc). It was ok in the matches I boarded it in to sidestep overwhelming hate (like Elves), but in the match I played against danyul, he simply Needled Griselbrand and raced. Cutting the Probes didn't hurt as much as I thought it would, but having 4 Griselbrand main kinda sucked. The deck's still a hell of a lot of fun to play and I'd like to try Wess's build out sometime, but I think I'll be putting it aside again for now.

[Secretly.A.Bee]

What is your list? I have never and will never play 4 griselbrand in this deck. It's a waste of slots and a bad topdeck.

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[.dk]

What is your list? I have never and will never play 4 griselbrand in this deck. It's a waste of slots and a bad topdeck.

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If you're boarding into Show and Tell, then you want 4 Griselbrands. Based on some fun GP experience with that plan (GP Denver in particular), I can't say I would advocate that strategy, but it certainly could be viable.

I still haven't tested out Snapcasters yet (sorry bout that! sometime, hopefully... holiday stuff has been kicking my ass) to buy back entombs... But if I were on a more "standard" list, I think I would likely be playing 3 Griselbrands main to reduce dependence on Entomb.

[Richard Cheese]

If you're boarding into Show and Tell, then you want 4 Griselbrands. Based on some fun GP experience with that plan (GP Denver in particular), I can't say I would advocate that strategy, but it certainly could be viable.

I still haven't tested out Snapcasters yet (sorry bout that! sometime, hopefully... holiday stuff has been kicking my ass) to buy back entombs... But if I were on a more "standard" list, I think I would likely be playing 3 Griselbrands main to reduce dependence on Entomb.

Along the lines of Snapcaster, I'm wondering if it might be worth testing a single/2-of Intuition again. Same cmc, and while it has less utility, it does have the added benefit of being able to bin multiple Grizzlebees at instant speed, which could potentially be useful against an active Deathrite. It also tutors, which can be nice.

[Koby]

I think doing so would warrant another land (possibly to 15, and most certainly a Basic Island). I can imagine cutting both LDV and a Gitaxian Probe to fit these in, and possibly another Probe for the 3rd Griselbrand?

[Richard Cheese]

I think doing so would warrant another land (possibly to 15, and most certainly a Basic Island). I can imagine cutting both LDV and a Gitaxian Probe to fit these in, and possibly another Probe for the 3rd Griselbrand?

I already run 3 Griselbrand, but I'm on 13 land/2 Mox. I'll probably goldfish some games with Intuition in the place of one LDV and see if the casting cost is really an issue, or if it makes any impact at all.

[Secretly.A.Bee]

But its soooooo slooooow. If it costs 3 I think it would be better if you can cast it off a rit. I understand turn 2 rit, disrupt w discard and then intuition, but it seems to slow. Snapcaster sidesteps the need of mana number 3 because of eot trix.

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[Richard Cheese]

Eot tricks?

[.dk]

Snapcaster sidesteps the need of mana number 3 because of eot trix.

Wait, huh? You still need 3 mana to be be able to cast Snapcaster and Flashback Entomb. I wanted to test Snappy to be able to rebuy other spells (Brainstorm, Discard, etc.) in addition to Entomb, which was the potential advantage I was thinking of over Intuition. Also weird utility with reanimating and getting the trigger too - but that's potentially a problem interfering with Shallow Grave.

[Secretly.A.Bee]

You can eot give flash back, untap and cast the spell on your turn just like you can eot shallow grave and not sac him til the end of your turn. This way, you don't have to hit land drop number 3.

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[.dk]

<redacted>

On second thought and some discussion with Richard Cheese, I don't think that works. It doesn't have the same delayed trigger that Shallow Grave and Goryo's Vengeance have that trigger at the End Step.

[Koby]

You can eot give flash back, untap and cast the spell on your turn just like you can eot shallow grave and not sac him til the end of your turn. This way, you don't have to hit land drop number 3.

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Incorrect. Snapcaster Mage grants flashback until end of turn, which is very much different from Shallow Grave triggering at the beginning of the end step.

[Richard Cheese]

I don't think it works that way. Snapcaster is worded differently than Shallow/Goryo's.

Snapcaster


When Snapcaster Mage enters the battlefield, target instant or sorcery card in your graveyard gains flashback until end of turn.

Goryo's

Return target legendary creature card from your graveyard to the battlefield. That creature gains haste. Exile it at the beginning of the next end step.

I could be wrong, can someone clarify?

Edit: Ninja'd by Koby. Story of my life.

[Secretly.A.Bee]

I gotta just start asking rulings here. I was told it works. Seemed all too broken and I should have checked it out further.

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[Wess]

I've continued tweaking the UB version, I'm especially a lot happier with the sideboard. I play exclusively online, so, the SB is tuned to that meta. I'm 18-2 in tournament matches with this build so far:

Main Deck
60 cards

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

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

4 Brainstorm
1 Chrome Mox
4 Dark Ritual
4 Daze
4 Entomb
4 Force of Will
4 Gitaxian Probe
3 Goryo's Vengeance
2 Lim-DÆl's Vault
4 Lotus Petal
4 Ponder
1 Reanimate
4 Shallow Grave
1 Tendrils of Agony
44 other spells

Sideboard
1 Chain of Vapor
1 Children of Korlis
1 Echoing Truth
1 Flusterstorm
1 Griselbrand
2 Massacre
1 Pact of Negation
2 Pithing Needle
4 Surgical Extraction
1 Swan Song
15 sideboard cards

[D@N]

with so many counterspells what do you do if your entombs get rfg? also with no pull from eternity g2-g3 how would you win if grisel is removed, hes the "ad nauseum" that you need to draw enough cards for the tendrils win.

[.dk]

with so many counterspells what do you do if your entombs get rfg? also with no pull from eternity g2-g3 how would you win if grisel is removed, hes the "ad nauseum" that you need to draw enough cards for the tendrils win.

While I don't think that Pull from Eternity is needed in the current meta (I think you can make a case for it with more Deathrite Shamans around), I do share your concern about no discard spells. Counterspells can be pretty good at protecting your spells on the stack, but you're very much all-in on Entomb without any discard effects. That would worry me a bit.

But that said, I can see why going to 1 Griselbrand main makes a lot of sense if you're intent on forcing your Entomb to resolve via countermagic.

[Wess]

with so many counterspells what do you do if your entombs get rfg? also with no pull from eternity g2-g3 how would you win if grisel is removed, hes the "ad nauseum" that you need to draw enough cards for the tendrils win.

Hey Dan, cool, probably met you before, good to see another Vancouverite on the board, though, as said I don't play paper magic anymore.

As for the questions, well, I i have to say, firstly, I really don't mean to post to say my build is the best, and this is how it should be, just posting my tuning of the list if anyone wants to test it out. Now, to the specific questions, I've never had my Entomb RFG'd (I assume you're talking about surgical extraction or extirpate) , nor would I care if it was. Surgical and Extirpate aren't widely played, and the only way entomb is in my GY is if I put Gris in there or they discarded it. So, the only way they could get my entomb is if they discarded it, then cast surgical, the only real chance an opponent would have is doing that on turn 1.

As for RFG Gris, again, its never happened. Swords yes, but that is a fluke, and if they run swords or surgical, I put and extra copy of Gris in from the side and keep Emrakul in as an alt.

Also, pull from eternity is terrible, it turns the combo into a 3 or 4 card combo on 3 colours, and if they're RFG'ing you, they are playing disruption.

[Wombo Combo]

If you are not playing discard, doesn't Gitaxian Probe lose a lot of it's value?

[Acclimation]

If you are not playing discard, doesn't Gitaxian Probe lose a lot of it's value?

It still provides information, which is nice when you are sitting on a counterspell (know what is important), as well as being a free cantrip that allows you to keep greedy hand.

[Wombo Combo]

I guess a better question would be why would you play GP over something like preordain in that list? The only advantage probe gives is information. If you are all in on entomb, I would think seeing more cards would be better.

[Koby]

I guess a better question would be why would you play GP over something like preordain in that list? The only advantage probe gives is information. If you are all in on entomb, I would think seeing more cards would be better.

Preordain is slow, and requires a basic Island to operate well in this deck. With only 13-14 lands, sometimes you won't have the luxury to cantrip and setup. Otherwise, Sensei's Divining Top would be playable.

[Wess]

If you are not playing discard, doesn't Gitaxian Probe lose a lot of it's value?

No, Gitaxian probe is still great for a number of reasons:

-It gives you info whether you can combo off or not, and games 2 and 3 what hate your opponent has
-It's awesome with Lim-Dul's Vault and hiding cards with brainstorm. Sometimes I have neither an entomb or reanimation spell, with a probe, I can get both same turn
-Free cantrip, deck-thinner
-Up's blue count for FOW
-Ups storm count for Tendrils
-Free life loss when comboing with Children
-Lastly, very niche case, but it has happened to me twice this week, when Tendrils is last card in deck, it will safely draw it.

[phazonmutant]

No, Gitaxian probe is still great for a number of reasons:

-It gives you info whether you can combo off or not, and games 2 and 3 what hate your opponent has
-It's awesome with Lim-Dul's Vault and hiding cards with brainstorm. Sometimes I have neither an entomb or reanimation spell, with a probe, I can get both same turn
-Free cantrip, deck-thinner
-Up's blue count for FOW
-Ups storm count for Tendrils
-Free life loss when comboing with Children
-Lastly, very niche case, but it has happened to me twice this week, when Tendrils is last card in deck, it will safely draw it.

Any thought to cutting Tendrils from the main? With counterspells, the case seems especially clear for cutting it - chances are you can draw a counterspell if they try to plow Griselbrand. Karakas can still be a problem, but that can be overcome with Pithing Needle or a boarded Tendrils.

I know, I know, it's really annoying to combo out without Tendrils. It's very doable though.

[Secretly.A.Bee]

I'd rather run a 61 md 14 sb configuration before dropping tendrils to the side.

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[Acclimation]

I'd rather run a 61 md 14 sb configuration before dropping tendrils to the side.

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You say 61/14 like it's a bad thing :tongue:

[Koby]

You say 61/14 like it's a bad thing :tongue:

I've left my mark on the MTG world. :tongue: Well that and getting Children of Korlis on GP DC's video coverage for a solid 8 minutes.

[Secretly.A.Bee]

Nope, not a bad thing. My lists, irregardless of archetype, often run 61. It's the 14 card board that's new. I like it, though. I just don't ever want to play this list without tendrils main.

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[Wess]

Any thought to cutting Tendrils from the main? With counterspells, the case seems especially clear for cutting it - chances are you can draw a counterspell if they try to plow Griselbrand. Karakas can still be a problem, but that can be overcome with Pithing Needle or a boarded Tendrils.

I know, I know, it's really annoying to combo out without Tendrils. It's very doable though.


80% of all my games I combo out with Tendrils, I rarely ever go for an Emrakul + Griselbrand attack for the win. There are a lot of reasons for this, and its always dependent on the situation. Ie. Sometimes they have a red mana source up, and I don't want to reduce my life total within Bolt range. Or, they have a white mana source, and I might not be able to counter the swords. Or, mostly, I just don't get the black mana source, ritual, entomb and reanimate spell in my draw 7 or 14.

Came top seed in 44 man Daily tourno yesterday, same list, I think I will cut the Children in sideboard for another PON, its been really good so far. I was skeptical of it at first but its been great every time I've drawn it. I usually cut Gitaxian Probe when I sideboard, and/or 1 lim-duls vault, chrome mox, or FOW.

someguy604 (4-0)
Legacy Daily #6488942 on 01/02/2014

Main Deck
60 cards

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

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

4 Brainstorm
1 Chrome Mox
4 Dark Ritual
4 Daze
4 Entomb
4 Force of Will
4 Gitaxian Probe
3 Goryo's Vengeance
2 Lim-DÆl's Vault
4 Lotus Petal
4 Ponder
1 Reanimate
4 Shallow Grave
1 Tendrils of Agony
44 other spells

Sideboard
1 Chain of Vapor
1 Children of Korlis
1 Echoing Truth
1 Flusterstorm
1 Griselbrand
2 Massacre
1 Pact of Negation
2 Pithing Needle
4 Surgical Extraction
1 Swan Song
15 sideboard cards

[Richard Cheese]

Or, mostly, I just don't get the black mana source, ritual, entomb and reanimate spell in my draw 7 or 14.

Are you just naturally drawing Tendrils or Children + Petal a lot then? I feel like statistically the opposite should be way more common, and that's what I've seen in practice as well. That said, it sounds like you are dominating with the deck, and as long as that's the case I'd just stick with it.

[Acclimation]

Are you just naturally drawing Tendrils or Children + Petal a lot then? I feel like statistically the opposite should be way more common, and that's what I've seen in practice as well. That said, it sounds like you are dominating with the deck, and as long as that's the case I'd just stick with it.

I'm also curious about this, I get Emrakul for 85% of my kills, but I wonder if that using aggressive discard clears the way for Emrakul much better than counterspells, and counterspells do a much better job of getting in Tendrils for lethal.

Interesting results though, deck looks solid.

[Richard Cheese]

I'm also curious about this, I get Emrakul for 85% of my kills, but I wonder if that using aggressive discard clears the way for Emrakul much better than counterspells, and counterspells do a much better job of getting in Tendrils for lethal.

Interesting results though, deck looks solid.

To me it's not about fighting hate, it's just that you likely have 3 copies of Entomb and 7 Reanimation effects to draw into, as opposed to 1 each of Tendrils/Children. Granted, entomb/reanimate gets you Children, but in most situations it also just gets you insta-win with Emrakul....Winrakul.

[Freggle]

I've continued tweaking the UB version, I'm especially a lot happier with the sideboard. I play exclusively online, so, the SB is tuned to that meta. I'm 18-2 in tournament matches with this build so far:

Main Deck
60 cards

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

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

4 Brainstorm
1 Chrome Mox
4 Dark Ritual
4 Daze
4 Entomb
4 Force of Will
4 Gitaxian Probe
3 Goryo's Vengeance
2 Lim-DÆl's Vault
4 Lotus Petal
4 Ponder
1 Reanimate
4 Shallow Grave
1 Tendrils of Agony
44 other spells

Sideboard
1 Chain of Vapor
1 Children of Korlis
1 Echoing Truth
1 Flusterstorm
1 Griselbrand
2 Massacre
1 Pact of Negation
2 Pithing Needle
4 Surgical Extraction
1 Swan Song
15 sideboard cards

Wess, this is exciting to see. I was just talking with a friend today about the UB version. Then it got the wheels spinning. I was thinking about what Richard Cheese said back in March. That Pact of Negation could be better for this deck than Force of will. I'd be curious to know how often you use your counters defensively on your opponents turn (to stop x,y,z hate) as opposed to proactively (to protect your combo) on your turn. If it's primarily on your turn than I would think Pact main would be a better choice.

Does it work generally as planned where opponents try and race their hate to the board and slam it into a Daze?

Did you ever play the discard version? ...if so is there any interaction you miss i.e. hand info, or the discard your guy win?

Both versions are powerful I just think in my heart of hearts that the UB version would have the edge because early counters are like time walks whereas discard is just option depletion. People brainstorming their goodies away will always be the bane of discard. Things alway have to make it through the stack.

I really want to buy in on this and help tweak it, but I have to be honest that my heart and mind is too deep into Enchantress to do so right now. If you ever want to test or chat I'm on MTGO as well same name. Freggle.

[D@N]

Hey Dan, cool, probably met you before, good to see another Vancouverite on the board, though, as said I don't play paper magic anymore.

As for the questions, well, I i have to say, firstly, I really don't mean to post to say my build is the best, and this is how it should be, just posting my tuning of the list if anyone wants to test it out. Now, to the specific questions, I've never had my Entomb RFG'd (I assume you're talking about surgical extraction or extirpate) , nor would I care if it was. Surgical and Extirpate aren't widely played, and the only way entomb is in my GY is if I put Gris in there or they discarded it. So, the only way they could get my entomb is if they discarded it, then cast surgical, the only real chance an opponent would have is doing that on turn 1.

As for RFG Gris, again, its never happened. Swords yes, but that is a fluke, and if they run swords or surgical, I put and extra copy of Gris in from the side and keep Emrakul in as an alt.

Also, pull from eternity is terrible, it turns the combo into a 3 or 4 card combo on 3 colours, and if they're RFG'ing you, they are playing disruption.

Is this the same wess that used to hold legacy events DT couple years ago?

I also didnt mean to come off harsh I was just wondering how the counterspells were working for you. I personally like the discard version especially with therapy and probe. I cant count how many times Ive taken a hard counter and was able to still go off with enough mana to pay for the soft ones and opponent was holding. The only thing Im having a problem is fetching then thoughtseizing a red deck of some sort then not wanting to -14 myself for fear of the bolt. Went to scg seattle in nov with the deck and with just making it the week before and playing it on cockatrice a couple times the deck seems absorbedly powerful. I went 5-3 drop only because my last round I had a very frustrating oppo. and still had a 2+ hr drive back to van.

In the local meta here and cockatrice I cant remember how many times Ive been extirpated or surgical'd and have almost wanted to up the pulls to 3 sb but I need the silence for the tes/ant match. Also what kind of sideboarding guide do people follow? I find myself taking out the obvious against decks like rdw and dredge but I usually take out probes and some 1 ofs for silence and such for the blue/fast combo decks. Im running the basic list with discard and my sb is

3 pithing needle
3 surgical extraction
1 massacre
3 silence
2 chain of vapour
1 echoing truth
2 pull from eternity

Also congrats to I believe it was richard cheese for the deck tech vid at gp dc nice seeing a fellow source'r slaying mere mortals at a big event.

[Acclimation]

Is this the same wess that used to hold legacy events DT couple years ago?

I also didnt mean to come off harsh I was just wondering how the counterspells were working for you. I personally like the discard version especially with therapy and probe. I cant count how many times Ive taken a hard counter and was able to still go off with enough mana to pay for the soft ones and opponent was holding. The only thing Im having a problem is fetching then thoughtseizing a red deck of some sort then not wanting to -14 myself for fear of the bolt. Went to scg seattle in nov with the deck and with just making it the week before and playing it on cockatrice a couple times the deck seems absorbedly powerful. I went 5-3 drop only because my last round I had a very frustrating oppo. and still had a 2+ hr drive back to van.

In the local meta here and cockatrice I cant remember how many times Ive been extirpated or surgical'd and have almost wanted to up the pulls to 3 sb but I need the silence for the tes/ant match. Also what kind of sideboarding guide do people follow? I find myself taking out the obvious against decks like rdw and dredge but I usually take out probes and some 1 ofs for silence and such for the blue/fast combo decks. Im running the basic list with discard and my sb is

3 pithing needle
3 surgical extraction
1 massacre
3 silence
2 chain of vapour
1 echoing truth
2 pull from eternity

Also congrats to I believe it was richard cheese for the deck tech vid at gp dc nice seeing a fellow source'r slaying mere mortals at a big event.


The sideboard I have been using looks something like this:

2 Surgical Extraction
2 Pithing Needle
2 Massacre
3 Silence
2 Chain of Vapor
2 Serenity
1 Flex Slot (sideboarding notes below assume this to be a Chain of Vapor)

This puts me at 14 cards, since I run 61 main deck. The reason why we have 14 cards is to allow us to take out more cards than we put in, which will have us at 60 cards for certain match ups.

That flex slot is usually one of the following: Chain of Vapor, Surgical Extraction, or Pithing Needle, and changes based on what I feel the meta is.

Chain is the safe choice- It hits all forms of permanent hate that we will come across and which is common for GY based decks (Leyline, gy hating artifacts, RiP, DRS, Scooze, etc), while also hitting storm hate cards (thalia and thalia like tax effects, ethersworn canonist, chalice of the void, trinisphere, etc) AND dealing with random permanents that can give us trouble to buy time (Vial, equipment, delvers, goyfs, planeswalkers, etc). If you don't know what kind of meta you are going to be playing in, Chain of Vapor is the correct choice because it's broad.

Needle is great when you predict a lot of activated ability related hate or decks that Needle can disrupt (Sneak Attack). Turning off Deathrite Shaman, Karakas, and Relic are common uses for me. I get a lot of mileage out of my Needles.

Surgical is self explanatory: when there's a lot of Dredge, Reanimator, and maybe even the mirror match, 3 Surgical has been working well for me.

If you want to run 15 cards, then I would recommend Chain for the first flex slot, then either Needle or Surgical for the last, with a bias towards Needle.

The notes I have for sideboarding are as follows:

UWR blade: -1 Reanimate -4 Probe -1 Ponder -1 LDV
+2 Silence +3 Chain +2 Massacre

Esper blade: +3 Silence +2 Chain +2 Massacre
-4 Probe -1 Reanimate -1 LDV -1 Ponder

RUG: -3 Probe -1 Thoughtseize -2 LDV
+3 Silence +2 chain

Miracle/Countertop: -1 Reanimate -1 Goryo -1 Mox -4 Probe -1 Ponder
+3 Chain +2 Serenity +2 Needle

Death and Taxes: +2 Needle +2 Chain +2 Massacre
-2 LDV -4 Probe -1 Reanimate

Goblins: +2 Needle +3 Chain
- 1 Ponder -2 LDV -3 Probe

Sneak Show (works for Omnitell too): +2 Surgical/or Silence +2 Needle +2 Chain
- 4 Probe -2 LDV -1 Ponder

Jund: -3 Probe
+2 Needle +1 Chain

TES/ANT: -1 Swamp -2 ldv -1 Reanimate OR -1 Swamp
+3 Silence (or 2 Silence/1 Surgical) OR +0 nothing in

Shardless BUG: -3 Probe
+2 Needle +1 Chain

I've been using these since November, and I've had some good success. Maindeck pretty much the same, but I've gone -1 Silence +1 Thoughtseize for the time being.

As far as Pull is concerned, that card is extremely mediocre, if you are having trouble with Extraction effects, try to be more aggressive with your discard against them, or be more careful of when you Entomb. Silence is also an answer to Extraction effects on your combo turn.

Against red decks, you need to be wary of Bolt, but you can't let yourself be afraid of drawing cards. Typically against burn, I'll attempt to set myself up to reanimate Griselbrand multiple turns in a row, and potentially Tendrils if I can. However, I'm a greedy mofo and will just #YOLOSWAG draw myself down low and win with Emrakul more often than not.

Echoing Truth isn't that great in the sideboard, Chain typically gets the job done, and against Chalice decks you should be bringing in Serenity anyway, so the cmc factor shouldn't be a worry.

If need be, I can go into more detail on certain match-ups, these notes were the result of a collaboration between Koby and I (mostly his ideas backed up by my experiences against some of these decks).

[.dk]

The sideboard I have been using looks something like this:

2 Surgical
2 Pithing Needle
2 Massacre
3 Silence
2 Chain of Vapor
2 Serenity
1 Flex Slot

<Lots more amazing words...>

Because no one else has said it yet, this is an awesome post describing how to use a reactive sideboard for this deck. Richard, you should probably update the primer and link to this one from the opening post. :)

[Acclimation]

Because no one else has said it yet, this is an awesome post describing how to use a reactive sideboard for this deck. Richard, you should probably update the primer and link to this one from the opening post. :)

Cleaned up the post, since parts of it was copied/pasted from my Google Drive. Some of it I haven't tested myself, so it could be wrong, but theoretically it should be sound.

[Acclimation]

Anybody have any fun stories or results (good or bad) that they wish to share and potentially get analyzed?

Personally, I have nothing, but since SCG St. Louis is in 5 weeks and is a 20 min drive for me, I'm going to start looking into the format and get some good testing in, so if people have questions about a certain match-up, I will try to get in some games and share results.

[movadomk5]

Anybody have any fun stories or results (good or bad) that they wish to share and potentially get analyzed?

Personally, I have nothing, but since SCG St. Louis is in 5 weeks and is a 20 min drive for me, I'm going to start looking into the format and get some good testing in, so if people have questions about a certain match-up, I will try to get in some games and share results.

I was doing good with the deck then decided to try the counter version posted a few weeks ago. I loved how it played but have decided go to Koby/Acclamation build. I've been struggling tho, not sure it's the meta, deck, or simply play style being aggressive enough with my mulls and plays.

[Secretly.A.Bee]

I have something. I switched to reanimator for two weeks and I have to say that I hated it. I can't believe that people will dog on this deck for being "unreliable" and have nothing to say about reanimator epic bad draws. I'm back and won't be leaving again. Just dumb, I don't care if it did top8 in Orlando.

Sent from my SM-N900V using Tapatalk

[Wess]

Wess, this is exciting to see. I was just talking with a friend today about the UB version. Then it got the wheels spinning. I was thinking about what Richard Cheese said back in March. That Pact of Negation could be better for this deck than Force of will. I'd be curious to know how often you use your counters defensively on your opponents turn (to stop x,y,z hate) as opposed to proactively (to protect your combo) on your turn. If it's primarily on your turn than I would think Pact main would be a better choice.

Does it work generally as planned where opponents try and race their hate to the board and slam it into a Daze?

Did you ever play the discard version? ...if so is there any interaction you miss i.e. hand info, or the discard your guy win?

Both versions are powerful I just think in my heart of hearts that the UB version would have the edge because early counters are like time walks whereas discard is just option depletion. People brainstorming their goodies away will always be the bane of discard. Things alway have to make it through the stack.

I really want to buy in on this and help tweak it, but I have to be honest that my heart and mind is too deep into Enchantress to do so right now. If you ever want to test or chat I'm on MTGO as well same name. Freggle.

Sorry for the late reply...PON is really only a sideboard card, and even then, it competes with Swan Song, Flusterstorm, and spell pierce for the spot, all which may be better. The counters are key in games 2 and 3 to counter your opponents hate, so, PON wouldn't help you. The only decks that PON helps against is control and tempo, where I'm preferring flusterstorm at the moment.

I used to play the discard version, but I only play the UB version now, as its more consistent, faster, and resilient than UBW.


Is this the same wess that used to hold legacy events DT couple years ago?

I also didnt mean to come off harsh I was just wondering how the counterspells were working for you. I personally like the discard version especially with therapy and probe. I cant count how many times Ive taken a hard counter and was able to still go off with enough mana to pay for the soft ones and opponent was holding. The only thing Im having a problem is fetching then thoughtseizing a red deck of some sort then not wanting to -14 myself for fear of the bolt. Went to scg seattle in nov with the deck and with just making it the week before and playing it on cockatrice a couple times the deck seems absorbedly powerful. I went 5-3 drop only because my last round I had a very frustrating oppo. and still had a 2+ hr drive back to van.

In the local meta here and cockatrice I cant remember how many times Ive been extirpated or surgical'd and have almost wanted to up the pulls to 3 sb but I need the silence for the tes/ant match. Also what kind of sideboarding guide do people follow? I find myself taking out the obvious against decks like rdw and dredge but I usually take out probes and some 1 ofs for silence and such for the blue/fast combo decks. Im running the basic list with discard and my sb is

3 pithing needle
3 surgical extraction
1 massacre
3 silence
2 chain of vapour
1 echoing truth
2 pull from eternity

Also congrats to I believe it was richard cheese for the deck tech vid at gp dc nice seeing a fellow source'r slaying mere mortals at a big event.

Hey Dan, yeah, that was me. I don't play paper magic anymore because its too time consuming, and there wasn't a good scene here. As for the decks, UB and UBW, maybe it comes down to playstyle, not sure how other people play the deck, but I play it very aggressively, and will take a lot of mulligans to get the right opening hand based on what my opponent is playing.
As for the sideboard, I find pithing needle and massacre usually being my go to cards, but, its decks like death and taxes that I just can't beat, and random stuff, so I'm thinking of testing out some ratchet bombs in the sideboard, because they hit everything. A lot of decks now seem to dedicate 4 sideboard slots for gy hate, and often i'm facing multiple copies. so I'm thinking some sort of board wipe out of the side is necessary. That and you don't know what gy hate your opponent is playing game 2, so you rarely know what is best to side in.

[movadomk5]

Sorry for the late reply...PON is really only a sideboard card, and even then, it competes with Swan Song, Flusterstorm, and spell pierce for the spot, all which may be better. The counters are key in games 2 and 3 to counter your opponents hate, so, PON wouldn't help you. The only decks that PON helps against is control and tempo, where I'm preferring flusterstorm at the moment.

I used to play the discard version, but I only play the UB version now, as its more consistent, faster, and resilient than UBW.



Hey Dan, yeah, that was me. I don't play paper magic anymore because its too time consuming, and there wasn't a good scene here. As for the decks, UB and UBW, maybe it comes down to playstyle, not sure how other people play the deck, but I play it very aggressively, and will take a lot of mulligans to get the right opening hand based on what my opponent is playing.
As for the sideboard, I find pithing needle and massacre usually being my go to cards, but, its decks like death and taxes that I just can't beat, and random stuff, so I'm thinking of testing out some ratchet bombs in the sideboard, because they hit everything. A lot of decks now seem to dedicate 4 sideboard slots for gy hate, and often i'm facing multiple copies. so I'm thinking some sort of board wipe out of the side is necessary. That and you don't know what gy hate your opponent is playing game 2, so you rarely know what is best to side in.

So in your "UB" version the only way to get children out is via petal or reanimate?

[D@N]

Yes the scene in vancouver was pretty bad when you played, and as far as time comsuming dont the dailies takes like 4+ hours?. Either way recently we have been getting a larger crowd, like we had 20 something for an event today at surrey place mall. Although i didnt play tin fins today i should have. I think your bad m/u with death and taxes comes from little discard and relying on just entomb for bodies in yard, but if you are doing good with the deck then stick with it. We are also trying to get a big turnout next weekend for the gp since we can get all the vancouver and victoria/surrounding players in it. Last gp i think we had a 40+ player side event.

[Acclimation]

As for the sideboard, I find pithing needle and massacre usually being my go to cards, but, its decks like death and taxes that I just can't beat, and random stuff, so I'm thinking of testing out some ratchet bombs in the sideboard, because they hit everything. A lot of decks now seem to dedicate 4 sideboard slots for gy hate, and often i'm facing multiple copies. so I'm thinking some sort of board wipe out of the side is necessary. That and you don't know what gy hate your opponent is playing game 2, so you rarely know what is best to side in.


Honestly, if you don't know what hate they could be bringing in, the best plan is to keep it simple- don't board in much, maybe 2 Chain of Vapor, since it will deal with any hate beyond Surgical and Extirpate.

For the most part though, you can guess the hate based on the deck:

Relic: I see this in Death and Taxes, Sneak and Show, Merfolk, Goblins, and occasionally Jund, RUG, and Stoneblade

Nihil Spellbomb: Jund, Shardless BUG, and other black based midrange decks.

Tormod's Crypt: Most decks don't play this guy, since Relic and Spellbomb cantrip, but sometimes it shows up. This is one you plan around in game 3.

Rest in Peace: White based control decks, D&T, MiracleTop, Stoneblade, Maverick

Deathrite Shaman: Any deck with creatures in G/B. This guy is mainboard, so you will see it.

Scavenging Ooze: Maverick, sometimes Jund.

Leyline of the Void: Dredge, some Pox lists. This one is a favorite of casual players, so this one could come out of nowhere.

Bojuka Bog: Land shenanigans decks, if you see Life from the Loam, expect one of these guys as at least a one of.

Karakas: (not gy hate) if you see a Loam, you can expect a Karakas as well, otherwise D&T, Maverick, and sometimes Stoneblade and Miracle decks run this guy.

Surgical: Lots of combo decks will play this one, as will Jund and Shardless. I've also seen random other decks run this, since it is essentially free.

Extirpate: Black based control decks play this one, but it's less common.

Mindbreak Trap: Scrub card for scrub players. Seriously though, you will see this in decks that lack stack control, or in decks of people that OMIGAWDIHATESTORM. If there is a card that will catch you with your pants down, it's this one.

Grafdigger's Cage: I've only seen this one in RUG, but I can imagine it showing up in UWR lists as well. Usually a one of in RUG sideboards, this is why I bring in Chain of Vapor against them.


Needle handles most of these, but require knowledge or good guesses to correctly anticipate what to name if you are going in blind. Chain deals with the same ones as Needle, minus the lands, but can handle Grafdigger, RiP, and Leyline. The remainder are reactive, and you should be able to hit them with Discard or counterspells depending on your protection package.

[entreri_fans]

so this is really mini report:tongue: in a 8-man tournament. It's my first time to play Tin-Fins in real match.

My list is just the standard 60/15. The SB choices are according to Acclimation's post just in this page, thanks Acclimation!

Round 1 Dredge. Win the roll and I am on the play.

Game1, my opening hand is something like 2 lands, entomb, probe, brainstorm, lotus, petal, ponder. solid keep I think. I go probe turn 1, seeing my opponent has a therapy, 2 dredgers and random stuffs, and probe draws me a Goryo's Revenge. so I play a land and says go. My opponent thinks I am playing the deck I always play(Reanimator), so he therapy me. I respond, entombing Griselbrand and let therapy resolve. He blind therapy for animate dead, which I don't have:tongue:. And in turn 2, I get Griselbrand into play and draw my whole deck, leading to a lethal tendrils.

Sideboard: Although I have multiple surgical extractions in my SB, I just want to try to race Dredge this time. So I gamble and don't sideboard anything.

Game2, I keep a hand of something like land, land, petal, entomb, thoughtseize, brainstorm, shallow grave. so a it's a turn 2 kill if unmolested. My opponent goes first. Turn 1, he plays a city of brass and pass the turn. I don't think my opponent will need to SB something to fight another grave-deck, because dredge is ridiculously fast itself. But it is also not reasonable for him to keep a hand that does nothing turn 1, espcially against a really fast combo deck. So I thoughtseize him turn 1 and find a surgical extraction(!), discard it for sure. I play a petal and says go. My opponent turn 2 dredges something like 15+ cards into his graveyard, only to find one therapy. He plays an putrid imp and flashback the therapy at me. I again, entomb Griselbrand and let therapy resolve. He names Goryo's Revengence and I don't have again. So in my turn 2, I shallow grave the demon, drawing something like 21 cards, putting Emmy into play, and finally swing for 22. Really a lucky game, I avoid being caught for 2 times, really lucky:cool:


Round 2 Mono Red Sneak Attack. Lose the roll and on the draw.

Game1, I thought the guy is playing 12post(which he usually plays), so I thought it could be a good matchup, cauz I am much faster. I keep a hand of 2 land, thoughtseize, therapy, 2 shallow grave, ponder. So I thought it's going to be a grinding game. But his turn 1 chalice@1 is holy crap:cry:. so I only play a land. He trinisphere turn 2. I play a land. He Magus of Moon turn 3. I play a land. He turn 4 Through the Breach into Worldspine Wurm, and I am dead.

Sideboard: I think I board in 3 Serenity and 2 chain of vapor. Board out 4 probe and 1 therapy I think.

Game2, I keep a hand of a turn 2 kill: entomb, shallow grave, land, petal and other cards(but no SB pieces). I can't mull that cauz if he don't play something devastating turn 1, he's dead. So I gamble. Turns out he doesn't play any spell in his first turn. So I go off in my turn 2. I draw something like 28 cards but fails to finish him off. So after attcking him with my demon, I thoughtseize him, discarding something irrelevant. He plays nothing turn 2. So in my turn 3, I shallow grave Emmy and kill him.

Game3, I think I have a hand of 2 land, Griselbrand, thoughtseize, therapy, shallow grave, petal. I don't know if I should keep. But I finally keep cauz I have at least a way to discard Griselbrand(I'm on the draw now), and still have a way to go off turn 2(because of petal). As expected, my opponent chalice@1 in his first turn. I do nothing and naturally discard the demon in my discard step. He plays a land his turn 2 and says go. So I shallow grave my demon. But I still can't finish the combo under the chalice@1(uncastable ritual and children), after drawing 21 cards. So I cabal therapy him(get countered), flashback therapy(get countered) and get Griselbrand into graveyard. With enough reanimating spells in my hand, I decide to kill him after 2 attacks in following turns. But he turn 3 Through the Breach into Emmy and I am dead:frown:.

Then I drop because of personal affairs.

I am a little disappointed with my defeat against my round 2 opponent. In the 2 games I lost, He both draws the hate pieces and combo pieces. Without either of them, I can win. But that's just magic:smile:

Anyway, Tin-Fins is absolutely ridiculous. I can understand I am lucky, because in the games I win, I always draw entomb. But even if without entomb there are always other ways in discarding the demon. Thanks for all you innovators who optimize the deck:smile:

Besides, do you have some suggestions in fighting the not so popular(but still troublesome) chalice aggro decks? I will be grateful for any opinion:tongue:

[Acclimation]

My list is just the standard 60/15. The SB choices are according to Acclimation's post just in this page, thanks Acclimation!

:D





Round 2 Mono Red Sneak Attack. Lose the roll and on the draw.

Game1, I thought the guy is playing 12post(which he usually plays), so I thought it could be a good matchup, cauz I am much faster. I keep a hand of 2 land, thoughtseize, therapy, 2 shallow grave, ponder. So I thought it's going to be a grinding game. But his turn 1 chalice@1 is holy crap:cry:. so I only play a land. He trinisphere turn 2. I play a land. He Magus of Moon turn 3. I play a land. He turn 4 Through the Breach into Worldspine Wurm, and I am dead.

Sideboard: I think I board in 3 Serenity and 2 chain of vapor. Board out 4 probe and 1 therapy I think.

Game2, I keep a hand of a turn 2 kill: entomb, shallow grave, land, petal and other cards(but no SB pieces). I can't mull that cauz if he don't play something devastating turn 1, he's dead. So I gamble. Turns out he doesn't play any spell in his first turn. So I go off in my turn 2. I draw something like 28 cards but fails to finish him off. So after attcking him with my demon, I thoughtseize him, discarding something irrelevant. He plays nothing turn 2. So in my turn 3, I shallow grave Emmy and kill him.

Game3, I think I have a hand of 2 land, Griselbrand, thoughtseize, therapy, shallow grave, petal. I don't know if I should keep. But I finally keep cauz I have at least a way to discard Griselbrand(I'm on the draw now), and still have a way to go off turn 2(because of petal). As expected, my opponent chalice@1 in his first turn. I do nothing and naturally discard the demon in my discard step. He plays a land his turn 2 and says go. So I shallow grave my demon. But I still can't finish the combo under the chalice@1(uncastable ritual and children), after drawing 21 cards. So I cabal therapy him(get countered), flashback therapy(get countered) and get Griselbrand into graveyard. With enough reanimating spells in my hand, I decide to kill him after 2 attacks in following turns. But he turn 3 Through the Breach into Emmy and I am dead:frown:.

Then I drop because of personal affairs.

I am a little disappointed with my defeat against my round 2 opponent. In the 2 games I lost, He both draws the hate pieces and combo pieces. Without either of them, I can win. But that's just magic:smile:

Anyway, Tin-Fins is absolutely ridiculous. I can understand I am lucky, because in the games I win, I always draw entomb. But even if without entomb there are always other ways in discarding the demon. Thanks for all you innovators who optimize the deck:smile:

Besides, do you have some suggestions in fighting the not so popular(but still troublesome) chalice aggro decks? I will be grateful for any opinion:tongue:

Mono Red sneak Attack is a tricky one. It's a jungle deck- one that you tend to see after you go x-2 early on in a tournament. A good friend of mine has the deck (he's had multiple Deck techs at Opens with the deck), so we've played just some quick no-sb rounds in between rounds at tournaments. I think we ended up breaking even, as I kept some garbage hands.

Since they have Chalice and Blood Moon and Trinisphere main deck in some number for each, it's really important to have that early discard to keep those lock pieces off the field.

We're about the same speed as they are, a bit faster if anything, but their disruption can lock us out of the game completely.

I think that for this match-up, I would go something like: -1 Underground -1 Ponder -2 Lim-Dul's Vault +2 Serenity +1 Chain of Vapor

We want to slim the deck to 60 cards and be quick, while still having the ability to beat the Hate Rocks they have.

Normally, I would side out a Swamp, but due to Blood Moon, I leave it in and remove a Sea. Ponder and LDV are a bit slow for this match, so we take them out. Serenity and Chain keep us in games that Chalice comes down.

Magus of the Moon is awkward for us to deal with outside of Chain of Vapor, but with Petals and Mox, it shouldn't be too hard to combo through it.

I should see my friend the weekend of the Open in STL, so I can get some games in and see if my thoughts pan out.

[SilkSpectre]

Hello everyone,

I just started building this deck and am excited to play with it. As you might have guessed, I got some questions regarding the manabase. I can get a Tundra, a Scrubland and two Underground Seas, but I only play with Modern fetches, so no Polluted Delta's for me. How would you build a manabase without the ally colored fetches? Thanks!

[Secretly.A.Bee]

I would argue that you need the deltas because of the basics this Deck runs. If you don’t want to buy or trade for them I guess you are just going to have to be okay with a sub-par mana base. I play 4 delta 2 flats and 2 strands although I've considered 3 flats and a single strand. 4 flats, and then any 4 blue fetches is your best bet.

Sent from my SM-N900V using Tapatalk

[Acclimation]

Hello everyone,

I just started building this deck and am excited to play with it. As you might have guessed, I got some questions regarding the manabase. I can get a Tundra, a Scrubland and two Underground Seas, but I only play with Modern fetches, so no Polluted Delta's for me. How would you build a manabase without the ally colored fetches? Thanks!

I have seen a lot of people use 4 Verdant Catacombs and 4 Marsh Flats as their fetches and do fine.

If we are basing the mana base of off the list I run, the only land Verdant can't hit is the Tundra, which isn't too large of a deal, since the deck is Black hungry and there are other Blue sources in the deck.

If you don't have Verdant Catacombs and run Scalding Tarn or Misty Rainforest, it gets to be a bit awkward: you can't fetch the basic Swamp nor the Scrubland.

With your lands, you can get away with a mana base that looks like this:

2 Underground Sea
1 Tundra
1 Scrubland
1 Swamp
4 Verdant Catacombs
4 Marsh Flats

Which puts you at 13 lands- totally viable with this deck, since it allows you to run 4 Probe and be at 60 cards (I run 61 maindeck with 14 lands and 4 Probe, so the 4th Probe and 14th land are slots 60 and 61, in no particular order).

If I were to rank the Zendikar fetches it would be:

1)Marsh Flats (this fetches everything, you want a playset)
2) Verdant Catacombs (only misses the Tundra)
3) Scalding Tarn
3) Misty Rainforest (Both of these are unable to fetch the Swamp, which can be a huge deal)
5) Arid Mesa (Only fetches 2 lands, this one is obviously bad)

If you plan on working towards purchasing the mana base, I would recommend buying a 3rd Underground Sea before any Deltas, 14 lands feels just a little bit better than 13 for most match-ups, and I don't feel as though running an extra basic works well enough to run in that 14th slot.

Hope this helps!


(Side note, edited my post about GY hate, I forgot about Grafdigger's Cage)

[DavidHernandez]

Hi all,

I've run the deck three times in San Diego tournaments. The tournaments are small, < 20 people. I've taken 3rd place 3 times, even though I defeated people with higher standings (stupid statistics...apparently, if you lose a game to the only guy who beat you, and there are 5 people with the same record, the guy who beat you wins ... even though you beat the guy who beat him... so confusing...)

Besides playtesting with humans, I've run simulations with the deck hundreds of times and have been playing the following list:

Deck: Tin Fins dh 1-13-2013

Counts : 61 main / 15 sideboard

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

Spells:43
1 Chrome Mox
4 Lotus Petal
1 Mox Diamond
4 Brainstorm
4 Cabal Therapy
4 Dark Ritual
4 Entomb
2 Gitaxian Probe
2 Ponder
1 Reanimate
1 Silence
1 Thoughtseize
4 Daze
3 Goryo's Vengeance
1 Lim-Dul's Vault
4 Shallow Grave
1 Show and Tell
1 Tendrils of Agony

Lands:14
3 Marsh Flats
4 Polluted Delta
2 Scrubland
1 Swamp
1 Tundra
3 Underground Sea


Sideboard:15
2 Chain of Vapor
3 Pithing Needle
1 Pull from Eternity
3 Silence
3 Surgical Extraction
1 Echoing Truth
2 Serenity

I wanted early counter ability, and Daze has been great. The first time I played in-tournament I ran the Force of Will version (thanks Joey Valente!) but found it too inconsistent. I dropped FoW and tinkered a bit until I came to this build.

I wanted Show & Tell for the times that graveyards disappear...we have at least one player with RIP x 3 in their main (and that's who I lost to anyway...) Also, there are times you can get it turn one. It gives another way to combo out, and I am never sorry to see it.

I originally had 4 Ponders and 4 Git Probes. I HATED drawing the extra Ponders and dropped 2 of them almost immediately. I don't miss the Git Probes either.

3 Pithing Needles are too many for the board out here. I will replace one, or drop it entirely and run 14 in the board. I liked the Pull From Eternity and used it once, which won the match and blew away my opponent. Even though posters here have said "remove it" I won't at this time. It was great.

I found 13 lands to be short. I was always wanting more. Adding the second Scrubland solved a lot of problems and gave me backup for white. Also, I added a Mox Diamond because I found it helped me get an extra spell while using the mass of lands in-hand when drawing with Gris. I tried a second Chrome Mox but when it came up early it was dead, while the Mox Diamond found more play. This turned out to be true in testing and in actual play.

I ran Echoing Truth in the board and was glad I did. Sending multiples back to the opponent's hand was rewarding. Also, I don't like having a copy of Chain of Vapor send back my stuff. Sometimes, Chain will kill you. Echoing Truth got around bad situations at least once. True, sometimes (rarely) that extra mana may hurt, but I'd rather have insurance for those rare times that Chain isn't the right card.

Someone a few pages back asked if anyone had hard cast Gris. I hard-cast Gris once, with Gris in hand and 2 Dark Rituals. The deck seemed to be stalling, and then my land popped up, allowing the hard cast. Thank goodness for the extra Scrubland!

Overall, I was 4-1-0 the past 3 weeks. Matchups and tie-breakers have kept me from taking first place each week. We'll see if it's better this week, but as for my current build...I'm sold. I don't even mind running 61/15.

It's very consistent, and as I gain more experience I think it will only run better.

Dave

[.dk]

Cool build - if I were to run countermagic, Daze would probably be my choice as well. Or possibly Pact. Glad someone else also tested the singleton Mox Diamond as well - I did prefer it to the second Chrome Mox in general, especially after comboing. Makes for some really flexible openers too.

Did you feel that you were lacking in filtering by only playing 2 ponders? Looking at your list the singleton Show and Tell seems odd, especially with only 3 targets, so I could see that being the 3rd ponder too.

[Koby]

Hi all,

Hi David, glad to see you picking up the deck!


I've run the deck three times in San Diego tournaments. The tournaments are small, < 20 people. I've taken 3rd place 3 times, even though I defeated people with higher standings (stupid statistics...apparently, if you lose a game to the only guy who beat you, and there are 5 people with the same record, the guy who beat you wins ... even though you beat the guy who beat him... so confusing...)

Besides playtesting with humans, I've run simulations with the deck hundreds of times and have been playing the following list:

Deck: Tin Fins dh 1-13-2013

Counts : 61 main / 15 sideboard

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

Spells:43
1 Chrome Mox
4 Lotus Petal
1 Mox Diamond
4 Brainstorm
4 Cabal Therapy
4 Dark Ritual
4 Entomb
2 Gitaxian Probe
2 Ponder
1 Reanimate
1 Silence
1 Thoughtseize
4 Daze
3 Goryo's Vengeance
1 Lim-Dul's Vault
4 Shallow Grave
1 Show and Tell
1 Tendrils of Agony

Lands:14
3 Marsh Flats
4 Polluted Delta
2 Scrubland
1 Swamp
1 Tundra
3 Underground Sea


Sideboard:15
2 Chain of Vapor
3 Pithing Needle
1 Pull from Eternity
3 Silence
3 Surgical Extraction
1 Echoing Truth
2 Serenity


The Daze seems like an interesting take. I know Joey has tried the counter version too, and reported mild success with it. I'll start with your version here and see what I come up with (no promises, MTG has taken a back seat to other things lately).


I wanted early counter ability, and Daze has been great. The first time I played in-tournament I ran the Force of Will version but found it too inconsistent. I dropped FoW and tinkered a bit until I came to this build.

I wanted Show & Tell for the times that graveyards disappear...we have at least one player with RIP x 3 in their main (and that's who I lost to anyway...) Also, there are times you can get it turn one. It gives another way to combo out, and I am never sorry to see it.

I originally had 4 Ponders and 4 Git Probes. I HATED drawing the extra Ponders and dropped 2 of them almost immediately. I don't miss the Git Probes either.

I can sometimes agree with Ponder, but not Gitaxian Probe. The information and cycling is very important for a deck that relies on winning before turn 3 when most of the format finally gets up to speed.


3 Pithing Needles are too many for the board out here. I will replace one, or drop it entirely and run 14 in the board. I liked the Pull From Eternity and used it once, which won the match and blew away my opponent. Even though posters here have said "remove it" I won't at this time. It was great.

Logan and I agree that 3 Needles are excessive. It's hard to find cards to cut for them in SB games.


I found 13 lands to be short. I was always wanting more. Adding the second Scrubland solved a lot of problems and gave me backup for white. Also, I added a Mox Diamond because I found it helped me get an extra spell while using the mass of lands in-hand when drawing with Gris. I tried a second Chrome Mox but when it came up early it was dead, while the Mox Diamond found more play. This turned out to be true in testing and in actual play.

I came to the same conclusions regarding 13 / 14 lands. Likewise with the 2nd Chrome Mox, but I haven't tried a Mox Diamond in it's place yet. I'll put in some more testing with it soon.


I ran Echoing Truth in the board and was glad I did. Sending multiples back to the opponent's hand was rewarding. Also, I don't like having a copy of Chain of Vapor send back my stuff. Sometimes, Chain will kill you. Echoing Truth got around bad situations at least once. True, sometimes (rarely) that extra mana may hurt, but I'd rather have insurance for those rare times that Chain isn't the right card.

Most bounce will work I think. I usually try to get the most bang out of the little mana this deck can operate on, and that's where Echoing Truth may be a little slow. Chains also helps with the Storm plan, which I frankly adore!


Someone a few pages back asked if anyone had hard cast Gris. I hard-cast Gris once, with Gris in hand and 2 Dark Rituals. The deck seemed to be stalling, and then my land popped up, allowing the hard cast. Thank goodness for the extra Scrubland!
Hard casting Griselbrand is fun. Hard casting Emrakul is more fun :laugh:


Overall, I was 4-1-0 the past 3 weeks. Matchups and tie-breakers have kept me from taking first place each week. We'll see if it's better this week, but as for my current build...I'm sold. I don't even mind running 61/15.

It's very consistent, and as I gain more experience I think it will only run better.

Dave

Thanks for the vote of confidence. Looking forward to hearing some tales from the SD crew about yours and Joey's exploits.
Peace.

[DavidHernandez]

Cool build - if I were to run countermagic, Daze would probably be my choice as well. Or possibly Pact. Glad someone else also tested the singleton Mox Diamond as well - I did prefer it to the second Chrome Mox in general, especially after comboing. Makes for some really flexible openers too.

Did you feel that you were lacking in filtering by only playing 2 ponders? Looking at your list the singleton Show and Tell seems odd, especially with only 3 targets, so I could see that being the 3rd ponder too.

Joey V. and I have talked about Pact of Negation. I haven't tested it yet, so can't really comment with hard facts. In theory, I like it, but it seems it will only be helpful if you're going off. At that point, Daze could be just as good, and if you happen to fizzle...Daze won't kill you.

As for the Mox Diamond, I'm really glad to hear I'm not the only one who tried it. I find it extremely helpful overall, and as you noted, it can make for some great and flexible openers. Also, when you just have to have that extra mana when going off, and you need White for Children or Black for whatever, it's a literal life-saver. It has saved me from fizzling a couple of times, and there is always an unusable land in-hand when going off.

I do not feel like I have a lack of filtering with only 2 Ponder's. The single Show and Tell is insurance, and I like it. I tried 2 S&T with 1 Ponder, but then I was missing shuffle effects, which Ponder is so good at that there are days I prefer it over Brainstorm. Right now, I'm thinking that if I could run 2 S&T, I would...but the singleton has been good to me. With more play time this could change of course. I could argue to run 2 Silence instead, but then it would be used as a tempo-gainer in the early game, while S&T in an opening hand can lead to Gris on turn one...which, in fact, happened once on Thursday night.


Hi David, glad to see you picking up the deck!
Hey! Yeah, I'm loving it!


I can sometimes agree with Ponder, but not Gitaxian Probe. The information and cycling is very important for a deck that relies on winning before turn 3 when most of the format finally gets up to speed.
True, and I do "get" that. But I think the inclusion of Daze helped here. I have not missed the Git Probes ... yet.


Logan and I agree that 3 Needles are excessive. It's hard to find cards to cut for them in SB games.
Yeah! I thought 3 Needles were going to be the right number, but found myself only putting in 2 at a time. Just can't remove some stuff from the main deck and have it work. 2 seems like the right number to me.


I came to the same conclusions regarding 13 / 14 lands. Likewise with the 2nd Chrome Mox, but I haven't tried a Mox Diamond in it's place yet. I'll put in some more testing with it soon.
I had tried out 15 lands, but then I had too many in hand, while 13 left me mulling once or twice. With 14 plus the Diamond, I've found it to be much more consistent.


Thanks for the vote of confidence. Looking forward to hearing some tales from the SD crew about yours and Joey's exploits.
Peace.
We have some really good players in SD, even with the small turnouts. Several Top 8 qualifiers at SCG, Grand Prix, Opens, and Invitationals, and at least one Top 8 Nat'ls (me). It's a great testing ground, though if you screw up twice you might as well drop out, which can make for a frustrating evening.

Joey has had some great ideas for this deck. I tried his FoW/Daze version and finished 3rd with it, but should have won the tourney. That was my first time playing the deck, and I didn't understand some of the inner workings, which forced a tie when I had the win in my hand (on turns, holding entomb, 2xdark rit, Reanimate, Goryo's, Shallow Grave, with 1 scrubland and one lotus petal open. Opponent holding 2 face-up Surgical Extractions and one unkown card. I didn't understand Priority properly, so that on my turn I failed to cast dark rit x 2 --> entomb --> Reanimate, after which he could Surgical, then I Goryo's, then he Surgical's, then I Shallow Grave. My error cost me the match, settling for a tie, which put me in third instead of first. Live and learn.)

That being said, I found the FoW version too inconsistent. Either there wasn't enough blue for FoW, or the cards I was holding were needed for drawing. But in testing, I really wanted a free counter. Joey mentioned Pact while keeping Daze, but I didn't like the thought of Pact on a fizzle. Daze on the other hand, seems good all the time. When going off, you're going to have an Island in play, and the opponent is only going to have zero to 2 lands. It's usually good enough to cast Daze and win, so for now I'll keep running 4 Daze.

I've read your blog and watched your matches, including the MTGO. Very helpful!

I think this deck is fabulous.

Dave

[entreri_fans]

thanks, Acclimation! I will try your suggestion:smile:

[Acclimation]

thanks, Acclimation! I will try your suggestion:smile:

:)


@Dave: Only nitpicks I have with the list is the 2/2 Ponder/Probe, and the 1of Show and Tell, for reasons already mentioned by others.

Mox Diamond is one of those cards that I love the idea of, but can never get around to testing it, mostly due to not owning any. I do know that one of my bottlenecks when combo-ing is the lack of mana sources. Seeing it early though can be a bit better than Chrome, but can create some awkward situations that are probably low in probability to happen, but would happen to me anyway.


Otherwise, keep at it, success stories are great.

[DavidHernandez]

:)


@Dave: Only nitpicks I have with the list is the 2/2 Ponder/Probe, and the 1of Show and Tell, for reasons already mentioned by others.

Mox Diamond is one of those cards that I love the idea of, but can never get around to testing it, mostly due to not owning any. I do know that one of my bottlenecks when combo-ing is the lack of mana sources. Seeing it early though can be a bit better than Chrome, but can create some awkward situations that are probably low in probability to happen, but would happen to me anyway.

Again, I think Daze changes the dynamic a bit, as does the single S&T. I recommend you proxy a Mox Diamond and try the list, just to get a feel for what I'm seeing. No one has to try it in a tournament...there's always MWS/MTGO/MTGdeckbuilder.net and good 'ole goldfishing.

The only nitpick I have is nitpicking without trying it.....LOL. And of course, I'll try it by pulling the S&T again and adding a third Git Probe. It's amazing that even with 61 cards (blasphemy!) I want MORE. MOOORREEEEE.

Dave

[Secretly.A.Bee]

I did try it when I first built the deck and I hated seeing it pre-griz. That's why I moved on. I think it's not terrible but it's also not my first pick. And also I have grand prix foil alt art chrome moxen lol.

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[DavidHernandez]

...also I have grand prix foil alt art chrome moxen lol.
Sweet!!! You are almost required to put those into every deck just for the coolness/amazing factor!

[Secretly.A.Bee]

They haven't seen much play since I put storm down at the spoiling of mental misstep so it's nice to have the opportunity once again. I don't think 14 lands is enough to justify the Diamond. It's probably better than chrome after a grizz hits but in the end I have to make the most well-rounded choice overall. I can see its allures, I just can't do it.

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[.dk]

For what its worth, I ran 1 Mox Diamond and 1 Chrome Mox at GP Denver, and that configuration worked out very well for me, although I think I may have been running 15 lands there. Don't remember my list well enough anymore from that timeframe. It helped a couple times against wasteland decks, and also was great post Griselbrand at casting Children of Korlis if I didn't have reanimation for it (I think I was running more Children then too).

[DavidHernandez]

For what its worth, I ran 1 Mox Diamond and 1 Chrome Mox at GP Denver, and that configuration worked out very well for me, although I think I may have been running 15 lands there. Don't remember my list well enough anymore from that timeframe. It helped a couple times against wasteland decks, and also was great post Griselbrand at casting Children of Korlis if I didn't have reanimation for it (I think I was running more Children then too).
Yeah, I just know that after testing and testing and testing and being pissed off at needing just one more mana source, the Diamond filled the gap with a 14-land count that I really like. It works for me.

Magic is interesting in that the same deck can work so differently for each person. Some people run control decks with 21 lands, and I will never run them with less than 23...etc.

[Koby]

Yeah, I just know that after testing and testing and testing and being pissed off at needing just one more mana source, the Diamond filled the gap with a 14-land count that I really like. It works for me.

Magic is interesting in that the same deck can work so differently for each person. Some people run control decks with 21 lands, and I will never run them with less than 23...etc.

That's why I find it so interesting that we're all experiencing the same "mana" results -- 13 lands is on the border of being just enough, except against decks with Wasteland. And likewise, when going off with Griselbrand, 4 Lotus Petal + 1 Chrome Mox is just a tad too short.

[pandaman]

It's not just this deck, Oozing has the same problem. 1 Chrome and 4 Petal sometimes feels a little light on when drawing off Griselbrand, especially considering you might have used one or two already.

I never thought of Mox Diamond though, I will test it out. Thanks Tin Fins players for a great new idea.

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[warfordium]

I had a floody, high-variance time with TinFins this past weekend, so Mox Diamond is something I'm interested in talking about. I like the misers chrome mox in ANT as a post-AdNaus IMS, and in general my "wish it was faster" issue with the current combo lists mostly come down to the paucity of IMS (obviously LED is not so useful to this deck). I will try a diamond.... but what to cut!?

[.dk]

I had a floody, high-variance time with TinFins this past weekend, so Mox Diamond is something I'm interested in talking about. I like the misers chrome mox in ANT as a post-AdNaus IMS, and in general my "wish it was faster" issue with the current combo lists mostly come down to the paucity of IMS (obviously LED is not so useful to this deck). I will try a diamond.... but what to cut!?

If you're running Koby's maindeck, you could try cutting the singleton Silence from the main. Or possibly the reanimate, since Diamond makes casting Children way easier during your combo turn.

[Secretly.A.Bee]

Diamond actually makes silence better, too. I don't play any Reanimate, which is different from most lists I have seen, but this allows me a little wiggle room. Afaik it's never been a problem and I feel like it's a panic button that I don't need but maybe I'm wrong. Also, I'm still rocking the 2x Snapcaster Mage if anyone is interested. I really love it. I think I will move to testing some number of dazes, whatever I can find room for. Probably 3, lose the 2 Thoughtseize and something else (not sure what). Cool little trick I used the other day with snapcaster was probe for 2 life, Dark Rit into therapy (countered), therapy (countered), scm on therapy, flashback therapy, flashback therapy.

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[pandaman]

Diamond actually makes silence better, too. I don't play any Reanimate, which is different from most lists I have seen, but this allows me a little wiggle room. Afaik it's never been a problem and I feel like it's a panic button that I don't need but maybe I'm wrong. Also, I'm still rocking the 2x Snapcaster Mage if anyone is interested. I really love it. I think I will move to testing some number of dazes, whatever I can find room for. Probably 3, lose the 2 Thoughtseize and something else (not sure what). Cool little trick I used the other day with snapcaster was probe for 2 life, Dark Rit into therapy (countered), therapy (countered), scm on therapy, flashback therapy, flashback therapy.

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I bow to this play. Wow!

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[Secretly.A.Bee]

We both ended up handless but it was better than staring down TNN and goyf + bolt. I finally pulled off the win, I just got lucky with my cantrips before my opponent.

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[pandaman]

I can understand why your opponent was countering your Therapy attempts. Playing off the top in this deck, as well as Oozing, isn't that bad, I mostly tend to rip the win before my opponent can get me.

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[DavidHernandez]

I find that I am losing games/matches because I can't go searching for creatures. I had two instances where I had Goryo's x 1 and Shallow Grave x 2 in hand, only to never draw Entomb. I had 5 lands in play, and in one case a Dark Ritual in hand, but no way to get a creature into the yard. Lost 2 matches because of this.

I was so frustrated that I almost tossed my cards across the room.

I'm considering 2 x Buried Alive. I tested it a few times (goldfishing) and it doesn't suck, but it's not optimal. I do hate the casting cost, but unless we add some kind of search engine I don't know what else can be done.

Any ideas?

FYI, Daze has been a champ every game.

Dave

[Secretly.A.Bee]

Some people run 3-4 Griz. This way your discard will double as entombs 5-X more often. I also play a 2/2 split on ponder/careful study. That helps as well. Try being more aggressive with your mulligans.

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[.dk]

That was the reason we added LDV to the deck as well, to tutor up Entombs.

[Koby]

More Ponders also help find the necessary pieces as well.

In part with that, sequencing cantrips for maximum efficacy is just as important in this deck as it is for Storm and Doomsday lists. All three archetypes run very few enablers, and rely heavily on cantrips to find their necessary components.

In general:

Brainstorm to be paired with a shuffle effect (Fetchlands, Entomb, then Ponder).
Ponder when looking for a land (in case of a miss, to shuffle the top 3).
Gitaxian Probe to dig as deep as possible into newer cards prior to the other cantrips.

Others have written much better guides including AJ Sacher, Carsten Kotter, and others. The is one of the important skills in playing this deck to its highest potential. I'm still learning to be better at this skill every time I play.

[Secretly.A.Bee]

Others have written much better guides including AJ Sacher, Carsten Kotter, and others.

Links?

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[Koby]

AJ Sacher's 'Pondering Brainstorm' (http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/legacy/19780-Fishing-Lessons-Pondering-Brainstorm.html)
Carsten Kotter's most recent 'Trippin' article (http://www.starcitygames.com/article/26862_Trippin.html)
Carsten Kotter's older 'Yes We Cantrip!' artcile (http://www.starcitygames.com/php/news/print.php?Article=20707)

[BeardTron]

I find that I am losing games/matches because I can't go searching for creatures. I had two instances where I had Goryo's x 1 and Shallow Grave x 2 in hand, only to never draw Entomb. I had 5 lands in play, and in one case a Dark Ritual in hand, but no way to get a creature into the yard. Lost 2 matches because of this.

I was so frustrated that I almost tossed my cards across the room.

I'm considering 2 x Buried Alive. I tested it a few times (goldfishing) and it doesn't suck, but it's not optimal. I do hate the casting cost, but unless we add some kind of search engine I don't know what else can be done.

Any ideas?

FYI, Daze has been a champ every game.

Dave

Played against a TinFins brew recently on MTGO and the guy was running Burning Wish main. I can't recall if Wish has been discussed here but it was pretty dominant for him and I asked him how the Wish package was going for him compared to the standard lists and he said the Wish version has been better ...Who knows what he's been playing against and what not...but could run some Wish main with an Entomb in the Board...

[pandaman]

You can't Burning Wish for Entomb, can you? It's an Instant and BWish only gets sorceries? Or was he running sorcery speed reanimation and disruption in the board? Did he have Buried Alive in there?

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[BeardTron]

You can't Burning Wish for Entomb, can you? It's an Instant and BWish only gets sorceries? Or was he running sorcery speed reanimation and disruption in the board? Did he have Buried Alive in there?

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Ha, yes I meant Buried, not Entomb...airhead moment. I think he also had Reanimate in the side.

[pandaman]

Thoughtseize before combo would be nice, as would Cabal Therapy to sac Griselbrand to the graveyard rather than letting him go to exile. I think I will try this.

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[Secretly.A.Bee]

Afaik, red has been discussed and ultimately been found wanting, mainly because it opens us up to more disruption than we so far as a collective are willing to be opened up to (Wasteland). We are reanimator combo, not storm. We are extremely reliant on the yard in ways storm *can* sidestep that specific form of hate via Ad Nauseam, which allows them to be more resilient to wasteland + grave hate. We have an option that allows us to also sidestep yard hate, but Show and Tell has been found to be too clunky. We use it as a sideboard strategy to combat grave hate, but it is far from wonderful.

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[Koby]

Moreover, BWish is an enabler that starts at 2 mana. The deck would need to add additional lands to support a strategy that needs 2+X to get started. The beauty of Entomb/Shallow Grave is that it's 3 mana in total to get the combo, together playable off a Dark Ritual. They're also very easily chain back to back across a turn and can still go off turn 2. Ultimately, for those specific reasons BWish was not tested extensively.

BWish at its best gets Reanimate (1), Exhume (2), or Buried Alive (3). That slows the deck down too much to make the combo effective.

[Cacks]

In a similar vein to burning wish for buried alive, I've been playing tinfins for a little while now and did previously run 2 (even 3, at times) personal tutor, with one buried alive as a target (also 1 reanimate, 1 exhume, 1 show and tell). It gave some good consistency, although I now run 2 LDV, with 2 careful study (in addition to 4 ponder, 4 brainstorm), 3 G'brand and still one show and tell (which I love for the additional angle it gives) which I am finding much more stable.

[Secretly.A.Bee]

That seems extremely slow and bad. I'm glad you made the switch. I'm pretty sure we tested Intuition in a previous setting (Tin Fins 2) and it, while better than buried alive, was still sub-standard to the current state of the deck. As an update, I'm trying a list with daze as well as therapy, and also no Snapcasters. Snapcaster is weak as far as synergies go with Daze. Daze costs 4 used in tandem with it and also returning a land one time will cause it to be, except for niche cases, a dead draw. I know that most if not all of you didn't test him, but overall I still like him. He adds some good synergies with, afaik, minimal problems.

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[Acclimation]

I'm just going to stick to the same list as always- it ain't broke, so I ain't gonna fix it.

Everyone else keep on trying new things though, there's probably some card or interaction out there that we haven't tried that will knock the deck up a notch.

[Secretly.A.Bee]

Honestly Daze builds feel better than pure discard builds. I suggest giving it a go.

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[cogitoergosum]

Just saw that this list posted 2nd place at StarCityGames.com Invitational Qualifier on 1/19/2014: http://sales.starcitygames.com//deckdatabase/displaydeck.php?DeckID=63199

Sorry, I hate deck tagging-especially when the deck is not mine.

[Secretly.A.Bee]

I don't like the build, but I'm glad he did well.

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[cogitoergosum]

I don't like it either, and you can tell it is budget (watery grave/ Gemstone mine). But I figured everyone should see a list that placed well recently.

[phazonmutant]

Teferi's Realm, mwahaha. My tech is making waves :cool:

Bee - you're liking Daze? Have you been playing it in tournaments? It was super bad when I tried it a long time ago.

[Secretly.A.Bee]

I have been too preoccupied with esperblade as of late to play it in any tournaments, and the tourneys available to me are slim to none anyway. I was going to go to SCG St. Louis but family matters interfered. I do plan on making it to legacy champs at GenCon this year but again, unless they ban TNN, I will probably still be on Esperblade. I can be such a sell-out. Also, how long ago did you try it? It does have its down-sides, but I do still have 4 discard spells main, plus 2-3 (can't remember) Probe. All this information allows Daze to be extremely strong.

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[Richard Cheese]

Teferi's Realm, mwahaha. My tech is making waves :cool:

Bee - you're liking Daze? Have you been playing it in tournaments? It was super bad when I tried it a long time ago.

Wat? (http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?24104-TinFins-3-Return-of-the-Onion-Burst&p=708429&viewfull=1#post708429)

[movadomk5]

I've been running Daze in my build lately and have only lost to countertop builds mainly. I dropped silence and Thoughtseize for 3 Daze. It's nice when trying to go off early, counter mb hate or simply make them tap out when you think or no they have a swords in hand.

I also cut to 60/15 dropping reanimate and 1 Ponder for a mox diamond and it seems a little better. This could all just be my sampling of the deck lately.

[Razorwynd]

Wat? (http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?24104-TinFins-3-Return-of-the-Onion-Burst&p=708429&viewfull=1#post708429)

I think somebody was caught taking credit for something the shouldn't have...

[Secretly.A.Bee]

Meh, it's only average tech. Nothing groundbreaking. However, credit is due where credit is due.

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[Acclimation]

Oh snap!




Re-reading some of the thread makes me laugh at how often shit gets asked about over and over and over again. It feels like certain topics have a cycle of 5-20 pages before being brought up again.

I remember reading all of the posts where people brought up Daze and Pact and got immediately shot down due to prior testing showing Silence/Discard being better. And yet, the topic comes back again and again, for a couple reasons.

1) Some people much prefer counterspells to protect their combo. This is understandable. Other people prefer Silence/Discard for their protection. I am one of these people, since I spent years playing DDFT with some number of Silence and Discard to protect me, so that's my comfort zone. Which is the big point here: protection comes down to your comfort zone. That being said, I haven't seen much results out of counterspell lists, and I don't put much stock in small scale tournaments for result testing, whether they be at your LGS or an MTGO daily.

2) The deck has changed slightly over the last year. We narrowed down the creatures in the deck, went back and forth on LDV, played with a splash, talked about S&T in both main and side, went from a stock 60/15 to 61/14, and so on. I consider the current level of Tinfins to be the list that myself and Koby have been playing/working on. People have been trying different things to take that to the next level, which is good.

3) The meta has been slowly changing over the last year, between new cards breathing life into archetypes (DRS and TNN) and the decks that pop up to combat those new decks. 10 months ago Daze and Pact weren't correct, but they could be in the current meta. Some people in this thread advocate it and have been posting some small scale results, so they might be on to something.

So, this post is essentially this: Comfort Zones. I think Discard and Silence are best because that's what has worked for me and put up results. Other people, on the other hand, have the worst luck when playing with the list I've been playing and just draw like garbage, or get obliterated by counters or hate, or just straight up can't make the deck work for them. They could be doing something wrong (likely) but I know that sometimes decklists just don't give you the same results as others. Take my adventures with Modern Griselbanned for example, I can't get good results with the deck no matter how tight I play, yet others have no problem with it. So, perhaps the people who can't make the discard list work as well for them are trying out counterspells and are having much better luck. And that might be due to any number of factors, but I chalk it up to having more confidence in counterspells to protect them- that comfort zone. People play better when they are playing with that comfort zone- Gerry T wrote an article months ago about comfort zones (or playing what you know, which is similar) IIRC.

tl;dr

1) Play protection that you are comfortable with, whether it be Silence, Daze, Therapy, Force or so on. You will play stronger with whatever spells you have more faith in.

2) If you are confident in your choices for the deck and people are skeptical, go out and get some results, the bigger the tournament the better. Results speak louder than forum opinion based theory crafting.

3) Keep an open mind. At the end of the day, there will be a package that puts up the best results for a given meta, and if you are playing to be super tryhard, you need to be flexible enough to change your list accordingly.


Now, replace the Daze/Counterspells/Discard/Silence with things such as 2nd CoK, 2nd Chrome Mox, Mox Diamond, Show and Tell, 3-4 Griselbrand, 0 Tendrils, not having LDV, Snapcaster, Careful Study, different color splash, and sideboard specific cards. You should find that it's somewhat applicable- people want to play with certain cards in the deck because of comfort zone and ideas of how the deck should operate within a certain meta.

I hoping that my late night rant makes coherent sense; I feel like this is just ramblings of a madman.

[movadomk5]

Acclimation I agree with what you said 100%. I had a good run with the stock list you and Koby run including Koby watching me in person blow my win and in for a gpt top 8.

With that being said a few weeks back I switched to the counter version to try it out and had great success. Then following week I went back and had a miserable time which I can only credit to miss playing the deck to the wrong protection package.

I think this will be the never ending struggle with the deck and the meta that it's being played in. I have tried to keep my conversations about the deck to a minimum and only discuss it with local pilots and with Koby on occasion. It's nice tho to here small reports on how other people's tweaks are going in their meta but hard to argue with the results people like you and Koby have put up on multiple occasions.

[phazonmutant]

Wat? (http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?24104-TinFins-3-Return-of-the-Onion-Burst&p=708429&viewfull=1#post708429)


http://i.imgur.com/kHWxP2rl.jpg (http://imgur.com/kHWxP2r)

I am the führer of the 3 Reichs. (King of the castle! (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZNSaCJiixw))

[pandaman]

Guys, how are you finding your exposure to Wasteland with the current manabase? Given that there is a lot of it around, has anyone tested a basic Island? Or is the deck so reliant on speed that you hate it when you draw it? I just got so sick of getting locked off my Brainstorms and Ponders I have chucked one in, and I am really liking it. 4 Polluted Delta and 1 Flooded Strand give you fetches to dig it out, too. It is only very rarely I have to mulligan a no-Black hand, so I have been finding the trade off worth it. *note, this is with Oozing, which is a different deck, but similar enough that my experience with mana should be relevant to you guys.

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[Secretly.A.Bee]

It's been tested. It's an acceptable choice. It was actually an almost auto-include when I started playing this deck several months ago.

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[pandaman]

Thanks for letting me know. I hope that with TNN not getting the axe the meta warps to combat it, giving this deck room to run rampant!

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[Secretly.A.Bee]

I've hedged my bets. I play this and True-Blade Control lol.

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[pandaman]

Haha, well played, sir! But honestly, I think TNN is the best thing that he happened for this deck for ages. I love people tapping out for it on Turn 3.

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[Acclimation]

Wasteland is easy to play around, as is Stifle.

Don't fetch unless you need to, get the basic Swamp early, and don't be afraid to Ponder for a land.

Alternatively, you can #YOLOSWAG and just win really fast instead.

[Koby]

I found basic Island more hindering to going off than useful against Wasteland. Just play another USea so you still have access to Blue and Black mana.

[Acclimation]

Check out this list that won a GPT over in Paris:

Sylvain Grolleau
Grand Prix Trial Winner – Legacy
Main Deck
60 cards

1 Bayou
1 Island
2 Misty Rainforest
4 Polluted Delta
1 Swamp
1 Tropical Island
4 Underground Sea
1 Verdant Catacombs
15 lands

1 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
4 Griselbrand
2 Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur
7 creatures

4 Brainstorm
3 Cabal Therapy
4 Careful Study
3 Dark Ritual
2 Daze
4 Entomb
1 Exhume
4 Force of Will
2 Gitaxian Probe
3 Goryo's Vengeance
4 Lotus Petal
4 Shallow Grave
38 other spells

Sideboard
2 Abrupt Decay
2 Chain of Vapor
1 Duress
1 Hurkyl's Recall
3 Massacre
2 Pithing Needle
2 Reverent Silence
1 Swan Song
1 Thoughtseize


It's definitely different from the lists we've been discussing.

Big differences: Green splash, Jin Gitaxias, Exhume, various sideboard cards.

If this guy played the list in the GP, I wonder if he made day 2.

[Darklingske]

He didn't make D2. Ended on the 231st place with 6-3 record.

[Secretly.A.Bee]

His game plan seems weak, hinging quite a bit on reanimating Jin eoot to give him some protection and some fuel. I prefer a much more direct route, and as I've voiced often, the storm route.

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[Tachikoma]

Check out this list that won a GPT over in Paris:

Sylvain Grolleau
Grand Prix Trial Winner – Legacy
Main Deck
60 cards

1 Bayou
1 Island
2 Misty Rainforest
4 Polluted Delta
1 Swamp
1 Tropical Island
4 Underground Sea
1 Verdant Catacombs
15 lands

1 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
4 Griselbrand
2 Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur
7 creatures

4 Brainstorm
3 Cabal Therapy
4 Careful Study
3 Dark Ritual
2 Daze
4 Entomb
1 Exhume
4 Force of Will
2 Gitaxian Probe
3 Goryo's Vengeance
4 Lotus Petal
4 Shallow Grave
38 other spells

Sideboard
2 Abrupt Decay
2 Chain of Vapor
1 Duress
1 Hurkyl's Recall
3 Massacre
2 Pithing Needle
2 Reverent Silence
1 Swan Song
1 Thoughtseize


It's definitely different from the lists we've been discussing.

Big differences: Green splash, Jin Gitaxias, Exhume, various sideboard cards.

If this guy played the list in the GP, I wonder if he made day 2.

It's something like "Next Level Next Level Reanimator" :) I've seen that same list doing Top 8 at a 60 people GP Trial a few weeks ago here in Paris.
As far as I know from the original Next Level Reanimator list, the main change are the 3 Dark Rituals to allow T1 kills and I think the original had a Show and Tell sideboard plan too.

In fact if you swap the 2 Jin with Children + Tendrills, replace 2 USea by moxen you basically have a Countermagic/Careful Study version of Tin Fins ... which rewinds 30-40 pages back in this thread doesn't it ? :)

But such good results are probably worth having a closer look :)
Each time I see another Reanimator deck "which seems to have the same weaknesses as we do, maybe even more because it does not kill on the spot" doing good, I can't help asking myself why are there so few Tin Fins at the big tournaments top 8 ?
(Not to mention classic Reanimator, which just did Top 8 again at GP Paris)

[Acclimation]

Each time I see another Reanimator deck "which seems to have the same weaknesses as we do, maybe even more because it does not kill on the spot" doing good, I can't help asking myself why are there so few Tin Fins at the big tournaments top 8 ?



I always attribute this to people not having the testicular fortitude to play Tinfins, usually with the phrases "too much of a glass cannon" or "Deathrite Shaman is too popular" or even "Deck is bad."


Not saying that the deck is an unstoppable juggernaut, but it's definitely a strong deck, and if more people actually played it at tournaments we could probably break into DTB.



Of course, now that I say that, watch me go x-3 drop next weekend at the Open.

[Secretly.A.Bee]

I'm trying like hell to make it to St. Louis. Dunno if I will make it but if I do, I'm debating playing tin fins. Reanimator is doing to well for me to ignore.

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[alastair]

Paris 6-3 losing my win and in to Day 2 on a poor cabal therapy…… but this at least gave me all of Sunday to play sanctioned Vintage. I was set on playing Team America, but after looking over trials on the Friday the deck was everywhere and the mirror is miserable. Faced TA in 5 out of 9 rounds in the GP.

Pretty stock list with 2 GB, 1 FSM, 1 Child, 3-2-1 Therapy-Seize-Silence, 1 Mox, 4-3-1 Reanimate’s, and 14 land. With so many DRS, and quite a few UW decks running RIP, I didn’t want to spend SB games beating hate, so played Painter.

4 Painter
4 Grindstone
3 Enlightened Tutor
2 Chains of Vapour
1 Echoing Truth
1 Grafdiggers

I lost 1 SB game on the Painter plan as the TA player kept all Decay’s and had the double delver, but won the rest. This was the first time I played Painter and it was significantly better than the ANT SB options, primarily as I got to keep my bounce.

The deck was solid all weekend, not to many auto-keep turn 1 hands, but very few mulls so I can’t complain. It is still a good choice.

[Richard Cheese]

Paris 6-3 losing my win and in to Day 2 on a poor cabal therapy…… but this at least gave me all of Sunday to play sanctioned Vintage. I was set on playing Team America, but after looking over trials on the Friday the deck was everywhere and the mirror is miserable. Faced TA in 5 out of 9 rounds in the GP.

Pretty stock list with 2 GB, 1 FSM, 1 Child, 3-2-1 Therapy-Seize-Silence, 1 Mox, 4-3-1 Reanimate’s, and 14 land. With so many DRS, and quite a few UW decks running RIP, I didn’t want to spend SB games beating hate, so played Painter.

4 Painter
4 Grindstone
3 Enlightened Tutor
2 Chains of Vapour
1 Echoing Truth
1 Grafdiggers

I lost 1 SB game on the Painter plan as the TA player kept all Decay’s and had the double delver, but won the rest. This was the first time I played Painter and it was significantly better than the ANT SB options, primarily as I got to keep my bounce.

The deck was solid all weekend, not to many auto-keep turn 1 hands, but very few mulls so I can’t complain. It is still a good choice.

Awesome result! I might have to test that Painter board, as I still have a soft spot for transformational combo. What did you typically pull for that?

[Acclimation]

Awesome result! I might have to test that Painter board, as I still have a soft spot for transformational combo. What did you typically pull for that?

-2 Gris
-1 CoK
-1 Emmy
-8 Reanimate
-4 Entomb

Is -16 cards, so probably some combination of those if you bring in the entire sideboard.

Perhaps -4 creatures, -7 insta reanimate, 3 Entomb, leaving Reanimate and an Entomb in for +14 cards (sans grafdigger's) to enable a line of play of Entomb>Painter>Reanimate.

Just spitballing here.

[Koby]

Awesome result! I might have to test that Painter board, as I still have a soft spot for transformational combo. What did you typically pull for that?

What's old is new again.

:laugh:



Right now it seems like Surgical Extraction is taking a backseat to Deathrite and Rest In Peace, and single shot stuff like Spellbomb and Crypt, so I don't feel it's necessary to completely abandon the reanimation plan postboard. I did speak to Koby a bit at the event, and he suggested Painter/Grindstone. I haven't messed with it much, but it doesn't seem like a bad plan if you're avoiding the graveyard entirely. It's compact and cost-efficient, and it probably isn't a big deal to splash red for a bunch of red blasts in the board. I guess the question is whether it's worth making the manabase worse at all in the main deck just to enable a secondary sideboard plan.

[alastair]

I only brought Cage in when appropriate, but always 2+ pieces of bounce. I always left reanimate in as its good for Painter or a Goyf you happen to take, and 1-2 Shallow Grave if you go long on Painter (but it’s a pretty poor), or the Child as a chump blocker (again pretty bad, but preferable to an 59 card deck).

[Richard Cheese]

What's old is new again.

:laugh:

You know I actually picked up Grindstones after that, despite never really having an interest in any other Painter deck. Ended up not testing it because the Painters were strangely hard to find (apparently still are), and Sneak/Show got all popular so Emrakul was everywhere.

Did you ever end up doing any testing with it?

[Koby]

Did you ever end up doing any testing with it?

Nope, as soon as I picked up interest in the deck Greg and I started tweaking with reactive SB cards and that still seems to work for us (and Logan too). I don't play enough these days to suggest any alternatives.

[Acclimation]

Reactive sideboards are for serious face games, transformation sideboards for fun.


Speaking of sideboards, currently trying to figure out the board against Team America.

Looking at the first place list from Paris, I would assume that they would go -4 Decay + Hymn, Pierce, Force, Grafdigger's Cage.

That would bring them to 9 mainboard counterspells, so Silence is necessary here. Due to Grafdigger's Cage, we need to bring in Chain of Vapor to deal with both it and DRS.

So, +3 Silence +2 Chain of Vapor.

As for what to take out, it gets tricky: Do we treat them like RUG with discard or Jund/Shardless with counterspells?

Our board against RUG is -3 Probe -1 Thoughtseize -2 LDV for +3 Silence +2 Chain

Against Jund and Shardless -3 Probe for +2 Needle +1 chain

I'm thinking that our starting point will be -3 Probe. I want to keep Thoughtseize in, and LDV is helpful if we need to rebuild after ravaging each other with discard. I'm not a fan of Reanimate, since they could potentially bring in sacrifice effects, and we do want to keep our life total comfortable in this match. With that in mind, we can do away with the 4th probe to bring us to -4 Probe and -1 Reanimate

I'm thinking -4 Probe -1 Reanimate for +3 Silence +2 Chain of Vapor

Does anyone have any thoughts or questions to my line of logic?

[Koby]

Does anyone have any thoughts or questions to my line of logic?

I would treat is more like Shardless. The GP winning list runs less than 20 blue spells, and maybe 22 after board. Daze is a bit of a nuisance, but Force of Will is the main headache, along with all the discard. Even with their discard (2 'Seize 4 Hymn), Silence only helps to a degree.

I suggest +1 Silence +2 Needle +2 Chains, taking out 1 Reanimate, 4 Probe. Silence thus, would act like a discard spell on FoW, but having too many makes the mana base weak against a 4 Wasteland deck.

[Acclimation]

I would treat is more like Shardless. The GP winning list runs less than 20 blue spells, and maybe 22 after board. Daze is a bit of a nuisance, but Force of Will is the main headache, along with all the discard. Even with their discard (2 'Seize 4 Hymn), Silence only helps to a degree.

I suggest +1 Silence +2 Needle +2 Chains, taking out 1 Reanimate, 4 Probe. Silence thus, would act like a discard spell on FoW, but having too many makes the mana base weak against a 4 Wasteland deck.

That's fair.

So we're on the same page, do you still think that the mainboard package should be 0 Silence 3 Thoughtseize 4 Therapy or back to 1/2/4?

I'm still favoring 0/3/4.

[Koby]

I think it's appropriate to go to 3/4 Seize/Therapy, or even down to 2/4 and back to 60 cards. Combo is not as prevalent lately.

[Acclimation]

I'm thinking that for STL, staying at 61 cards is about right. People favor Show and Tell decks, BUG will likely be popular, and I've seen a fair bit of Belcher and TES in the area too.

It might be incorrect, but I'm pretty confident in the 61/14 for this tournament.

[Acclimation]

Placed 51st at St.Louis today, with a record of 6-3. Was running hot at 6-1, then lost in the last 2 rounds due to mulligans/drawing bad.

Also went 3-1 in the Legacy Trial on Saturday.

Will do a full report later, just wanted to give an update.

[Secretly.A.Bee]

Nice. I missed going by a miserable 50 bucks. Can't wait for the report.

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[DavidHernandez]

Well, after frustrating results last month, this is the list I am finally happy with. I will play it Thursday night, 2/27/14, at our local store. In testing, I think it works out the kinks that pissed me off...LOL.

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

Creatures
4 Griselbrand
1 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
1 Children of Korlis
6 creatures

Spells
4 Entomb
4 Shallow Grave
3 Goryo's Vengeance
1 Reanimate
2 Brainstorm
2 Ponder
1 Lim-Dul's Vault
3 Cabal Therapy
1 Tendrils of Agony
4 Lotus Petal
1 Chrome Mox
4 Dark Ritual
1 Mox Diamond
4 Daze
4 Careful Study

Edit: I built this before seeing the GP build, which I don't happen to like. Jin-Git is a crutch imo, and this deck plays enough on a turn to warrant Tendrils in the main. And adding Green just for 2 SB Abrupt Decays doesn't seem as good as adding White for Serenity and Silence.

Try this build out in MTG Deck Builder or MWS. Consistent Turn 2 wins with it in testing.

Dave

[Acclimation]

Here's my report from the Legacy Open Trial that took place on Saturday. My notes were in another notebook, which I loaned to a friend who ripped the pages out, so my memory is a bit spotty.

Played the same list as I always do.

Round 1: Junk Stoneblade 2-0

So, 150 players in the Trial, and round 1 I get paired up with my friend. Go figure.

He has Deathrite and Discard, but it's not enough- easy 2-0, nothing spectacular happened.

Round 2: Affinity 2-0

Game 1 he vomits his entire hand and goes to work. With some fancy footwork with a low life total and 2 Children of Korlis activations, I get the win

sb: +2 Serenity +2 Chain -4 Probe

Game 2: He mulls down to 5, and leads off with Signal Pest. He ends up with a couple of Vault Skirge and Grafdigger's Cage, so the turn I combo off I swing with both Griselbrand and Emrakul and storm for 9.

Round 3: Death and Taxes 1-2

I get it game 1 on turn 2. Easy peasy.

sb: see sideboard notes post

Game 2, couldn't draw to save my life. Got beat down with Swords

Game 3, he opens with Grafdigger's cage, but I have Chain, so I feel good. Get stuck with a hand of Rit, Rit, Grave, Goryo, Griselbrand, Chain and drew lands and cantrips, but no discard nor Entomb. He topdecks a RiP and plays it. And right on cue, I draw Entomb, go figure. I cantrip like mad to find my other Chain, but am unable to do so before he beats me.

Round 4: Dredge 2-0

Game 1 I have a hand that goes off on t2, and proceed to do so with Griselbrand+Tendrils

Game 2 Got him on the second turn again. The only spells he cast were Faithless Looting, and a landfall trigger on his Bloodghast.


Deck drew sad in that Death and Taxes match up, which is something we have a pretty good match-up against. Game is sometimes hard.


Next post will have my Legacy Open report.

[Acclimation]

Okay, now for the real stuff. Legacy Open, 9 rounds of Swiss. This time, I have my notes in front of me, so it should be somewhat more detailed.

Same list, same sideboard plan.

Round 1: Jund 2-0

Jund is one of my favorite match-ups with this deck. They rarely interact on the stack, rely too much on Deathrite Shaman to clear the graveyard, and I've played against it more than any other match-up.

Game 1 He mulligans and I thoughtseize him, seeing a hand of land, land, Abrupt Decayx2, Liliana, and Tarmogoyf. I nab the Goyf, and Therapy the Liliana on the next turn. I get him on the third turn when my Gitaxian Probe reveals more land and the same Decays.

Game 2: I get him on the third turn after he plays 2 Deathrite Shaman. Needle too good here.

As it turns out, it was this guy's first Legacy tournament. Was pretty cool though, and not even remotely butthurt.

Round 2: Ant 2-1

Continuing the trend of getting paired against my friends, I get paired up against my friend, Chris.

Game 1 I combo on t1, but am unable to draw into any Lotus Petal. I finish the job on t3.

Game 2 We ravage each other with discard, and end up playing land, go for 3 turns. He eventually topdecks an Infernal tutor and gets me (was at 12 due to aggressive Probing and Thoughtseizing).

Game 3 I have the t1 Entomb, t2 Shallow Grave, so I go for it. He Extirpates my Griselbrand in response to the Grave. I have Emrakul in hand, and proceed to draw lands and brick on cantrips. He eventually attempts to combo from 14 life, and on his Infernal Tutor, realizes that he boarded out Ad Nauseum for Telemerin Performance and doesn't have the mana to combo with Past in Flames. He goes for Performance, mills most of my library and gets Children of Korlis. 3 Turns go by before I top deck my last Shallow Grave and Discard to pitch Emrakul from my hand and win. That was a game I should have lost, but got extremely lucky. Never give up until lethal is presented, folks.

Round 3: Maverick 1-2 (This guy placed top 16)

Having used up all my bullshit luck last round, this one goes poorly for me.

Game 1 I get game 1, but have to get him over the course of 2 turns. He GSZ for a Gaddock Teeg the turn before I go off, and I brick on my draw 7s- all I needed was a Lotus Petal to seal the deal. I get him next turn with Children of Korlis fueled draws.

Game 2: He gets out multiple bears, but Massacre takes care of them. The turn before I go off, he top decks a Maze of Ith, and between that and his Karakas, he gets me.

At this point, he asks me if I go to Opens often. I say yes, and he looks at the slip and goes "Oh shit, you're Logan Creen, I watched you stomp people on Twitch!" #egoboost

Game 3: I get out a Massacre, hit some good discard, Needle a Karakas, but ended up having a clock put on me with a Sword of Fire and Ice. He is tapped out and attempt to go off after he gets in one swing with the Sword. Unluckily for me, he drew Extraction off of the Sword and seals the deal.

Round 4: Burn 2-1

This guy also recognized me. As soon as we sat down, he asked "you still playing that reanimator list?" My ego is loving the recognition, but the loss of surprise is annoying me.

Game 1 I keep a somewhat risky hand with some discard after he mulls down to 6. I look at his hand and see Chain Lightning, Grim Lavamancer x2, Rift Bolt, and 2 Mountains. I end up getting a Griselbrand up, but my life total was too low to do anything, and I was unable to draw into anything to help me out.

For sideboarding, I took out -4 Probe, -1 LDV, and -1 Reanimate for +3 Silence and +3 Chain

I blind Therapy turn 2 naming Pyrostatic Pillar, and see that he has Ensnaring Bridge, a Lavamancer, and a Flame Rift, alongside some land. I combo from 14 life, getting him with Tendrils on my second main phase with a little help from Children of Korlis.

Game 3 He opens with a Grafdigger's Cage, and follows up with a Goblin Guide and a Rift Bolt. I Silence on his upkeep to prevent Rift Bolt from coming down. Next turn he plays another Guide and then I Chain the Cage on his End step. I combo off on the next turn, but brick on my draw to seal the deal, and pass with 8 life to his 12. He groans about being greedy and not playing the other Cage he had in hand over the Goblin Guide (I Therapied them on my second main phase). Crossing my fingers that he doesn't draw into a 4 damage spell, he draws into Sulferic Vortex- which throws a kink into my plans. Luckily, I kept Brainstorm, an Entomb, and Emrakul and had enough land to Brainstorm away Emrakul, Entomb, then Shallow Grave, winning with 1 life (I had to fetch). #toocloseforcomfort

Round 5: Miracles 2-0

If there was one match up I didn't want to play against, it was Miracles (RUG too, but I feel more confident in that).

Game 1 I Thoughtseize and see a hand of Top, Counterbalance x2, JTMS, Vendillion Clique, and lands. I nab the Top, and pass. Next turn, I follow up with a Therapy and nab Counterbalance. He ends up drawing nothing but land, and I Entomb at the end of his 3rd turn. He flashes Clique in on my draw step, and I Shallow Grave in response. Ended up winning that turn.

Game 2 I get my turn 1 Thoughtseize Misdirected; I pitch my Emrakul and get a shuffle. He Flusterstorms one of my Reanimation attempts, but over the course of 3 turns I reanimate Griselbrand and swing in.

This round, while not a free win, I felt like I won pretty easily. I kept him on the back foot all game and was able to win without much resistance. He brought in Flusterstorms, Humility, Pithing Needle, Karakas, Rest in Peace, and a Relic of Progenitus. A mountain of hate, and only saw 3 pieces (I thoughtseized RIP on my first turn).

Round 6: Sneak and Show 2-0

Game 1 I get in some discard, then get out Griselbrand on t4. He brainstorms, but found nothing. I reanimate Children twice, and attempt to Tendrils him when I can't get an Entomb for Emrakul. I didn't keep track, but I knew it was 10. He insisted that I only cast 9 spells, and that one of my Petals I cast the turn before. We argue back and forth (I forgot that he played a spell on my turn), and just swing in for game anyway.

Clearly this guy is a huge scumbag.

Game 2 though, my deck has my back. My opening 7 was land, ritual, entomb, shallow grave x2, thoughtseize, ponder. He plays a fetch and passes. Praying for a Lotus petal, I draw and get one. I thoughtseize and see land, ashen rider, petal, emmy, and bs x2. I take the Brainstorm. Play the Petal, rit, and entomb. He brainstorms, gets grumpy and lets me proceed. I draw 14 and get that Emrakul. I swing in, and he throws his hand into his graveyard and starts to scoop his lands and graveyard. I scoop up my land and hand, and he goes off saying that I should pick up my cards until he does, since some people would call a Judge. I have 2 friends watching our game (one standing over his shoulder game 2 due to tight space in the rows). He angrily makes a faint line on the slip, so I call a judge over to get him to actually sign it so we don't get called up to the Judge center later. He glares at me and I finish packing up and leave. Seriously, fuck that guy and his shitty attitude. As I walk away, my friends catch up and we start laughing. Apparently he drew a Grafdigger's Cage and a Spell Pierce off the brainstorm. That justice.

Round 7 Sneak and Show 2-1

Game 1 I keep a hand with Emrakul, Griselbrand, 3 fetches, and 2 Ponders. Risky, but my gut told me to go for it. I draw a Probe and see he's on Sneak and Show. I Cantrip and discard and keep him from comboing. He eventually goes for it and I put in Griselbrand. I draw and do Children things and get him with Tendrils.

Game 2 I Surgical his Misty Rainforest to get some info on his hand. As it turns out, he only had 1 Misty Rainforest in the deck, but a couple of counterspells in hand, as well as Sower of Temptation, Emrakul, and Griselbrand. Eventually, he attempts to Show and Tell when I have Griselbrand in hand. I consider dropping my land instead, in case he drops Sower. Decide to #YOLO and go for Griselbrand, figuring I had a 50/50 shot at him putting in not Sower. WRONG. I draw 7, but don't draw anything useful. End up dead to my own Griselbrand.

Game 3 I Surgical his Brainstorm after he mulligans and sees Tidespout Tyrant, a Petal, and a Show and Tell. I have Griselbrand in hand, as well as a Dark Ritual and a Shallow Grave. He shows and I tell, then he plays the Petal to bounce my Griselbrand. I draw 14 in response, then kill him on the next turn.

Round 8 Esper Deathblade 0-2 (This guy top 8'd)

And now it all goes downhill.

I win the roll and get this hand: Rit, Rit, Shallow Grave, Reanimate, Entomb, Entomb, Probe. Being the greedy fuck that I am, I keep it- I draw any IMS and I win. I Probe, see no counterspells and draw... Brainstorm! 5 turns later and I draw my first land. By then he had the counterspell to stop me, and lethal on board.

Game 2 I get another stacked opener that only needs an IMS to go off. I mull down to 6 and get yet another hand that needs an IMS to go off t1. Deck is taunting me. Mull to 5 and get 2 lands, Ponder, Dark Rit, and Brainstorm. Luckily he mulled to 5 as well. Neither one of us draw any business, so he just drops Snapcaster Mage into play. I spin my wheels cantripping while he gets another Snapcaster. I get an Entomb and Shallow Grave after I cast Lim-Dul's Vault, but he has the counterspell to stop my Shallow Grave. Snapcaster beatdown and Tar Pit get me the turn after.

Round 9 Team America 1-2

I was sitting at 34th at the beginning of this round, and my opponent was 41st, so we discuss drawing, but since there was no incentive for him to do so, we play it out for the hell of it. So far, my two losses were from people who were x-1 still, so I figure that I could maybe squeak into top 16 if I won.

Due to seeing two Daze from my Probe, I'm prevented from going off early, so I cantrip for lands and discard to slow him down. I resolve LDV and after 5 life find what I need. He flips a Delver with a third Daze after I get rid of one. With lethal on board next turn, I have the mana to fight through both Daze. I swing, and decide to draw 7 for yolo tendrils. I hit my land drop and play Children and draw more cards. I Shallow Grave Children and draw even more. I have 5 mana floating, 5 B from rituals and 2 blue available from Mox and my last Petal, and 5 cards left in my deck. I brain storm and don't hit tendrils. Cast LDV with 4 cards left. We're both laughing at this point, so I flip over my deck, and Tendrils was the bottom card. I put it on top and draw it with Probe. Tendrils for 36. Game was silly and left us with 15 min on the clock.

Game 2 He sticks a Cage and 2 Deathrite Shaman, and despite landing a Needle and Chain on Cage, I brick on my draws and die to 2 turns of Deathrite Shaman swings.

Game 3 we have 5 minutes left and try to play fast. I attempt to combo, but he has the Spell Pierce the first time. I stick a Griselbrand and swing after he taps out for Vclique, and brick on draws again. He lands a Tombstalker and gets me on a fast clock. I stall out with Children, but he ends up getting me on t5.

So, I ended up placing 51st, 6-3 record. I was stoked to be 6-1, but just got unlucky on my mulligans and draws. In general, I found that a lot of my bricks were due to not having a mana source to continue comboing. I almost want to make room for another Mox, Chrome or Diamond (probably Diamond), but I'm unsure what to cut. I'm rather fond of Probe, I feel that cutting a land might be right but could make our opening hands a bit worse, and our other slots have their uses. I'm thinking that I could cut the 3rd Thoughtseize for it and retain consistency.

Other things I noticed: I won more on t3 than usual, with multiple games in which I reanimated twice over two turns to win. I did use Children much more than I have in the past. The sideboarding choices were all correct. I chalk up my losses due to hitting the bad end of variance.

Would still play the deck as is in another tournament, very much confident in the list, but would like to play around with Mox Diamond. Unfortunately, I had to give back the 2 Underground Seas I was borrowing, so testing isn't going to happen on my end in the near future.

Props:
Getting mentioned indirectly in the top 8 profile for casting Lim-Dul's Vault
Getting a t1 win versus a scumbag
Placing in money
Getting recognized by multiple people
Winning a game that I shouldn't have won
2 Chainz being stuck in my head all day

Slops:
Playing against my friends during events
Bad opening hands/mulligans ruining my run at the end

[DavidHernandez]

@Acclimation: AWESOME REPORT! Very helpful. Thank you! You did great. Those games where we draw an opening hand of awesomeness, and then don't see land for 20 cards, suck.

Dave

[Acclimation]

@Acclimation: AWESOME REPORT! Very helpful. Thank you! You did great. Those games where we draw an opening hand of awesomeness, and then don't see land for 20 cards, suck.

Dave

Thank you!

I have long since accepted that those games happen, and they don't stop me from playing the deck.

Because when you run hot with this deck, it's amazing.

[DavidHernandez]

Thank you!

I have long since accepted that those games happen, and they don't stop me from playing the deck.

Because when you run hot with this deck, it's amazing.
I completely agree. Just today I was thinking about a game I had where I mulled to 4 and never saw a mana source. Then drew for several turns and still never saw a mana source of any kind. I had seen 25 cards and not a single mana source. As you say, those games happen.

Then the next game you win on turn 1. #awesomeness

LOL.

[Cybey]

4 Painter
4 Grindstone
3 Enlightened Tutor
2 Chains of Vapour
1 Echoing Truth
1 Grafdiggers


Thinking of trying this, since it looks fun. In my metagame there are a LOT of UW(R) decks, who all play several Rest in Peace in their sideboards. I am actually considering to running a single Helm of Obedience in the sideboard for when they drop Rest in Peace.

[.dk]

Great showing Logan - sucks that the variance gods weren't entirely on your side.

[Secretly.A.Bee]

Thanks for the report. It sucks when this list mana screws you.

Sent from my SM-N900V using Tapatalk

[Acclimation]

The deck giveth the deck taketh.

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

[DavidHernandez]

The deck giveth the deck taketh.

"So say we all!"

d.

[pandaman]

The deck giveth the deck taketh.

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

Blessed be the name of The Lords Grislbrand and Emrakul.

Sent from my Nexus 4 using Tapatalk

[Mindlash]

Okay, now for the real stuff. Legacy Open, 9 rounds of Swiss. This time, I have my notes in front of me, so it should be somewhat more detailed.

Same list, same sideboard plan.

Round 1: Jund 2-0

Jund is one of my favorite match-ups with this deck. They rarely interact on the stack, rely too much on Deathrite Shaman to clear the graveyard, and I've played against it more than any other match-up.

Game 1 He mulligans and I thoughtseize him, seeing a hand of land, land, Abrupt Decayx2, Liliana, and Tarmogoyf. I nab the Goyf, and Therapy the Liliana on the next turn. I get him on the third turn when my Gitaxian Probe reveals more land and the same Decays.

Game 2: I get him on the third turn after he plays 2 Deathrite Shaman. Needle too good here.

As it turns out, it was this guy's first Legacy tournament. Was pretty cool though, and not even remotely butthurt.

Round 2: Ant 2-1

Continuing the trend of getting paired against my friends, I get paired up against my friend, Chris.

Game 1 I combo on t1, but am unable to draw into any Lotus Petal. I finish the job on t3.

Game 2 We ravage each other with discard, and end up playing land, go for 3 turns. He eventually topdecks an Infernal tutor and gets me (was at 12 due to aggressive Probing and Thoughtseizing).

Game 3 I have the t1 Entomb, t2 Shallow Grave, so I go for it. He Extirpates my Griselbrand in response to the Grave. I have Emrakul in hand, and proceed to draw lands and brick on cantrips. He eventually attempts to combo from 14 life, and on his Infernal Tutor, realizes that he boarded out Ad Nauseum for Telemerin Performance and doesn't have the mana to combo with Past in Flames. He goes for Performance, mills most of my library and gets Children of Korlis. 3 Turns go by before I top deck my last Shallow Grave and Discard to pitch Emrakul from my hand and win. That was a game I should have lost, but got extremely lucky. Never give up until lethal is presented, folks.

Round 3: Maverick 1-2 (This guy placed top 16)

Having used up all my bullshit luck last round, this one goes poorly for me.

Game 1 I get game 1, but have to get him over the course of 2 turns. He GSZ for a Gaddock Teeg the turn before I go off, and I brick on my draw 7s- all I needed was a Lotus Petal to seal the deal. I get him next turn with Children of Korlis fueled draws.

Game 2: He gets out multiple bears, but Massacre takes care of them. The turn before I go off, he top decks a Maze of Ith, and between that and his Karakas, he gets me.

At this point, he asks me if I go to Opens often. I say yes, and he looks at the slip and goes "Oh shit, you're Logan Creen, I watched you stomp people on Twitch!" #egoboost

Game 3: I get out a Massacre, hit some good discard, Needle a Karakas, but ended up having a clock put on me with a Sword of Fire and Ice. He is tapped out and attempt to go off after he gets in one swing with the Sword. Unluckily for me, he drew Extraction off of the Sword and seals the deal.

Round 4: Burn 2-1

This guy also recognized me. As soon as we sat down, he asked "you still playing that reanimator list?" My ego is loving the recognition, but the loss of surprise is annoying me.

Game 1 I keep a somewhat risky hand with some discard after he mulls down to 6. I look at his hand and see Chain Lightning, Grim Lavamancer x2, Rift Bolt, and 2 Mountains. I end up getting a Griselbrand up, but my life total was too low to do anything, and I was unable to draw into anything to help me out.

For sideboarding, I took out -4 Probe, -1 LDV, and -1 Reanimate for +3 Silence and +3 Chain

I blind Therapy turn 2 naming Pyrostatic Pillar, and see that he has Ensnaring Bridge, a Lavamancer, and a Flame Rift, alongside some land. I combo from 14 life, getting him with Tendrils on my second main phase with a little help from Children of Korlis.

Game 3 He opens with a Grafdigger's Cage, and follows up with a Goblin Guide and a Rift Bolt. I Silence on his upkeep to prevent Rift Bolt from coming down. Next turn he plays another Guide and then I Chain the Cage on his End step. I combo off on the next turn, but brick on my draw to seal the deal, and pass with 8 life to his 12. He groans about being greedy and not playing the other Cage he had in hand over the Goblin Guide (I Therapied them on my second main phase). Crossing my fingers that he doesn't draw into a 4 damage spell, he draws into Sulferic Vortex- which throws a kink into my plans. Luckily, I kept Brainstorm, an Entomb, and Emrakul and had enough land to Brainstorm away Emrakul, Entomb, then Shallow Grave, winning with 1 life (I had to fetch). #toocloseforcomfort

Round 5: Miracles 2-0

If there was one match up I didn't want to play against, it was Miracles (RUG too, but I feel more confident in that).

Game 1 I Thoughtseize and see a hand of Top, Counterbalance x2, JTMS, Vendillion Clique, and lands. I nab the Top, and pass. Next turn, I follow up with a Therapy and nab Counterbalance. He ends up drawing nothing but land, and I Entomb at the end of his 3rd turn. He flashes Clique in on my draw step, and I Shallow Grave in response. Ended up winning that turn.

Game 2 I get my turn 1 Thoughtseize Misdirected; I pitch my Emrakul and get a shuffle. He Flusterstorms one of my Reanimation attempts, but over the course of 3 turns I reanimate Griselbrand and swing in.

This round, while not a free win, I felt like I won pretty easily. I kept him on the back foot all game and was able to win without much resistance. He brought in Flusterstorms, Humility, Pithing Needle, Karakas, Rest in Peace, and a Relic of Progenitus. A mountain of hate, and only saw 3 pieces (I thoughtseized RIP on my first turn).

Round 6: Sneak and Show 2-0

Game 1 I get in some discard, then get out Griselbrand on t4. He brainstorms, but found nothing. I reanimate Children twice, and attempt to Tendrils him when I can't get an Entomb for Emrakul. I didn't keep track, but I knew it was 10. He insisted that I only cast 9 spells, and that one of my Petals I cast the turn before. We argue back and forth (I forgot that he played a spell on my turn), and just swing in for game anyway.

Clearly this guy is a huge scumbag.

Game 2 though, my deck has my back. My opening 7 was land, ritual, entomb, shallow grave x2, thoughtseize, ponder. He plays a fetch and passes. Praying for a Lotus petal, I draw and get one. I thoughtseize and see land, ashen rider, petal, emmy, and bs x2. I take the Brainstorm. Play the Petal, rit, and entomb. He brainstorms, gets grumpy and lets me proceed. I draw 14 and get that Emrakul. I swing in, and he throws his hand into his graveyard and starts to scoop his lands and graveyard. I scoop up my land and hand, and he goes off saying that I should pick up my cards until he does, since some people would call a Judge. I have 2 friends watching our game (one standing over his shoulder game 2 due to tight space in the rows). He angrily makes a faint line on the slip, so I call a judge over to get him to actually sign it so we don't get called up to the Judge center later. He glares at me and I finish packing up and leave. Seriously, fuck that guy and his shitty attitude. As I walk away, my friends catch up and we start laughing. Apparently he drew a Grafdigger's Cage and a Spell Pierce off the brainstorm. That justice.

Round 7 Sneak and Show 2-1

Game 1 I keep a hand with Emrakul, Griselbrand, 3 fetches, and 2 Ponders. Risky, but my gut told me to go for it. I draw a Probe and see he's on Sneak and Show. I Cantrip and discard and keep him from comboing. He eventually goes for it and I put in Griselbrand. I draw and do Children things and get him with Tendrils.

Game 2 I Surgical his Misty Rainforest to get some info on his hand. As it turns out, he only had 1 Misty Rainforest in the deck, but a couple of counterspells in hand, as well as Sower of Temptation, Emrakul, and Griselbrand. Eventually, he attempts to Show and Tell when I have Griselbrand in hand. I consider dropping my land instead, in case he drops Sower. Decide to #YOLO and go for Griselbrand, figuring I had a 50/50 shot at him putting in not Sower. WRONG. I draw 7, but don't draw anything useful. End up dead to my own Griselbrand.

Game 3 I Surgical his Brainstorm after he mulligans and sees Tidespout Tyrant, a Petal, and a Show and Tell. I have Griselbrand in hand, as well as a Dark Ritual and a Shallow Grave. He shows and I tell, then he plays the Petal to bounce my Griselbrand. I draw 14 in response, then kill him on the next turn.

Round 8 Esper Deathblade 0-2 (This guy top 8'd)

And now it all goes downhill.

I win the roll and get this hand: Rit, Rit, Shallow Grave, Reanimate, Entomb, Entomb, Probe. Being the greedy fuck that I am, I keep it- I draw any IMS and I win. I Probe, see no counterspells and draw... Brainstorm! 5 turns later and I draw my first land. By then he had the counterspell to stop me, and lethal on board.

Game 2 I get another stacked opener that only needs an IMS to go off. I mull down to 6 and get yet another hand that needs an IMS to go off t1. Deck is taunting me. Mull to 5 and get 2 lands, Ponder, Dark Rit, and Brainstorm. Luckily he mulled to 5 as well. Neither one of us draw any business, so he just drops Snapcaster Mage into play. I spin my wheels cantripping while he gets another Snapcaster. I get an Entomb and Shallow Grave after I cast Lim-Dul's Vault, but he has the counterspell to stop my Shallow Grave. Snapcaster beatdown and Tar Pit get me the turn after.

Round 9 Team America 1-2

I was sitting at 34th at the beginning of this round, and my opponent was 41st, so we discuss drawing, but since there was no incentive for him to do so, we play it out for the hell of it. So far, my two losses were from people who were x-1 still, so I figure that I could maybe squeak into top 16 if I won.

Due to seeing two Daze from my Probe, I'm prevented from going off early, so I cantrip for lands and discard to slow him down. I resolve LDV and after 5 life find what I need. He flips a Delver with a third Daze after I get rid of one. With lethal on board next turn, I have the mana to fight through both Daze. I swing, and decide to draw 7 for yolo tendrils. I hit my land drop and play Children and draw more cards. I Shallow Grave Children and draw even more. I have 5 mana floating, 5 B from rituals and 2 blue available from Mox and my last Petal, and 5 cards left in my deck. I brain storm and don't hit tendrils. Cast LDV with 4 cards left. We're both laughing at this point, so I flip over my deck, and Tendrils was the bottom card. I put it on top and draw it with Probe. Tendrils for 36. Game was silly and left us with 15 min on the clock.

Game 2 He sticks a Cage and 2 Deathrite Shaman, and despite landing a Needle and Chain on Cage, I brick on my draws and die to 2 turns of Deathrite Shaman swings.

Game 3 we have 5 minutes left and try to play fast. I attempt to combo, but he has the Spell Pierce the first time. I stick a Griselbrand and swing after he taps out for Vclique, and brick on draws again. He lands a Tombstalker and gets me on a fast clock. I stall out with Children, but he ends up getting me on t5.

So, I ended up placing 51st, 6-3 record. I was stoked to be 6-1, but just got unlucky on my mulligans and draws. In general, I found that a lot of my bricks were due to not having a mana source to continue comboing. I almost want to make room for another Mox, Chrome or Diamond (probably Diamond), but I'm unsure what to cut. I'm rather fond of Probe, I feel that cutting a land might be right but could make our opening hands a bit worse, and our other slots have their uses. I'm thinking that I could cut the 3rd Thoughtseize for it and retain consistency.

Other things I noticed: I won more on t3 than usual, with multiple games in which I reanimated twice over two turns to win. I did use Children much more than I have in the past. The sideboarding choices were all correct. I chalk up my losses due to hitting the bad end of variance.

Would still play the deck as is in another tournament, very much confident in the list, but would like to play around with Mox Diamond. Unfortunately, I had to give back the 2 Underground Seas I was borrowing, so testing isn't going to happen on my end in the near future.

Props:
Getting mentioned indirectly in the top 8 profile for casting Lim-Dul's Vault
Getting a t1 win versus a scumbag
Placing in money
Getting recognized by multiple people
Winning a game that I shouldn't have won
2 Chainz being stuck in my head all day

Slops:
Playing against my friends during events
Bad opening hands/mulligans ruining my run at the end

Congrats on the strong finishes.

I tried Tinfins myself after playing lots of TES and ANT games for a little diversification :)
Can't settle on a list though.
I have the feeling that the decklists I tried suffered from some inconsitencies.

In your report you mentioned that you are playing your same list as always, using the same boarding plans, but I am unable to find it...scrolling back lots of pages.

The only thing I found is that you are playing 61/14 ;)

Is it possible to share your list?

Thanks in advance.

Regards Chris

[Acclimation]

http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/tin-fins-05-03-13-1/

Currently in bed, so here's a quick link.

I talked about sideboards on page 70 or 71 IIRC. It was a long post, with another post nearby talking about various hate people bring in for us.

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

[Mindlash]

http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/tin-fins-05-03-13-1/

Currently in bed, so here's a quick link.

I talked about sideboards on page 70 or 71 IIRC. It was a long post, with another post nearby talking about various hate people bring in for us.

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

Thanks for the fast reply. I will definitly give it a try :)

[Acclimation]

No problem! It's Koby's creation, and I have had lots of success with it.

Biggest problem I have comes from needing a petal to continue comboing, but it doesn't come up too often.

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

[Mindlash]

No problem! It's Koby's creation, and I have had lots of success with it.

Biggest problem I have comes from needing a petal to continue comboing, but it doesn't come up too often.

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

I tried to solve this with a second Chrome Mox instead of a dual. Not sure about it yet. Neither would have mattered in 40 goldfished games.

I seem to struggle with finding Entomb in those Games where I did not start with one. Tried a list with more Griselbrands and exchanged Ponder for Careful Study. Study was nice to get some fat into the grave, but in all other situations and especially in board games Ponder is superior by far...addionally...more Griselbrands on starting seven suck as well :D

What I am pretty sure on is that 4/3 protection suit fits me better than 4/2/1.

I am probably not mulliganing right with this deck. If I do not kill on turn 1 or 2 I am not satisfied ;)

But I will definitly give this list a try. Like the sideboard too. Started with Lelay's list from Stormboards with a transformational board.

Greetings Chris

[Koby]

I'd gauge the Turn 1 win percentage is around 20-30% of the time. Adding Turn 2 kills to that metric bumps it up to about 50-60%, if not more. I don't have exact numbers on this since I have not kept any statistics whatsoever. It's all based on experience.

My list is shown on my log (see signature), or this recent top finish (http://www.tcdecks.net/deck.php?id=11952&iddeck=87539). I recently pushed the Silence to the SB in a tournament anticipating lower amount of combo decks. It's the same 75 however.

I was going to post a detailed note about my Sunday tourney where I placed T4, but my browser ate the post before I finished it, so here's Version 2:

41 players @ Card Addiction Legacy
R1: Classic Reanimator (2-1)
R2: Quad Laser Dredge (2-1)
R3: Cheater Miracles [maindeck REB] (2-0)
R4: Esper Stoneblade [heavy counters] (0-2)
R5: Loam Depths (2-0)
R6: ANT (ID)
T8: Esper Stoneblade [different player] (2-0)
T4: ANT (0-2)

Won a Tropical Island. Woot!

I managed one Turn 1 kill, vs the Miracles player when he mulliganed to five. It contained no lands!
I hard cast Griselbrand once, also vs Miracles when he was Brainstorm locked without a 2nd Island.

It's hard to beat a Esper Stoneblade holding 2 Counterspell, 1 FoW, 1 Flusterstorm when your opponent has 5 lands in play to your 1.
Don't keep a hand that contains 2 Griselbrand and Emrakul unless it also has a Dark Ritual, discard, and Shallow Grave along with a land. You'll lose otherwise.

[DavidHernandez]

I tried to solve this with a second Chrome Mox instead of a dual. Not sure about it yet. Neither would have mattered in 40 goldfished games.

I seem to struggle with finding Entomb in those Games where I did not start with one. Tried a list with more Griselbrands and exchanged Ponder for Careful Study. Study was nice to get some fat into the grave, but in all other situations and especially in board games Ponder is superior by far...addionally...more Griselbrands on starting seven suck as well :D

What I am pretty sure on is that 4/3 protection suit fits me better than 4/2/1.

I am probably not mulliganing right with this deck. If I do not kill on turn 1 or 2 I am not satisfied ;)

But I will definitly give this list a try. Like the sideboard too. Started with Lelay's list from Stormboards with a transformational board.

Greetings Chris
Several of us have seen this kind of problem. If you're going to run a 61/14 list from previous posts, try 14 land, 1 Chrome Mox, and one Mox Diamond. It seems to work really well. The Diamond shows up right in the middle of combo-ing off, and gives you that one mana source you need to cast your Dark Rituals and win.

Currently I'm running 15 lands, 1 Chrome, 1 Diamond, and I'm much happier...but I've taken a turn from the traditional Tin Fins list and added Daze along with Careful Study.

Dave

[Acclimation]

I tried to solve this with a second Chrome Mox instead of a dual. Not sure about it yet. Neither would have mattered in 40 goldfished games.

I seem to struggle with finding Entomb in those Games where I did not start with one. Tried a list with more Griselbrands and exchanged Ponder for Careful Study. Study was nice to get some fat into the grave, but in all other situations and especially in board games Ponder is superior by far...addionally...more Griselbrands on starting seven suck as well :D

What I am pretty sure on is that 4/3 protection suit fits me better than 4/2/1.

I am probably not mulliganing right with this deck. If I do not kill on turn 1 or 2 I am not satisfied ;)

But I will definitly give this list a try. Like the sideboard too. Started with Lelay's list from Stormboards with a transformational board.

Greetings Chris

Lim-Dul's Vault has been a big help in making the deck more consistent. I love casting it on t2 to secure a t3.

As Koby mentioned, the Silence was dropped to the board due to less combo being around.

In fact, if you click on his blog, read the Tinfins hands post, it has a lot of good info on mulligans and how to play things out.

Last thing to note, I highly recommend learning how to play with a reactive sideboard. Many of the transformational ones are slower, and learning how to fight through hate makes you stronger with the deck.



It's hard to beat a Esper Stoneblade holding 2 Counterspell, 1 FoW, 1 Flusterstorm when your opponent has 5 lands in play to your 1.
Don't keep a hand that contains 2 Griselbrand and Emrakul unless it also has a Dark Ritual, discard, and Shallow Grave along with a land. You'll lose otherwise.

That's how I lost to Deathblade! 1 land vs gorillion counterspells.




I'd gauge the Turn 1 win percentage is around 20-30% of the time. Adding Turn 2 kills to that metric bumps it up to about 50-60%, if not more. I don't have exact numbers on this since I have not kept any statistics whatsoever. It's all based on experience.

I've played a lot of games and feel like this is accurate. I should probably keep some statistics, but that's too much work.



41 players @ Card Addiction Legacy
R1: Classic Reanimator (2-1)
R2: Quad Laser Dredge (2-1)
R3: Cheater Miracles [maindeck REB] (2-0)
R4: Esper Stoneblade [heavy counters] (0-2)
R5: Loam Depths (2-0)
R6: ANT (ID)
T8: Esper Stoneblade [different player] (2-0)
T4: ANT (0-2)

Won a Tropical Island. Woot!


Good showing! Sucks that the detailed report got eaten.

[cogitoergosum]

Went 4-0 and a local legacy event tonight. I don't usually do tournament reports but I figured i'd throw this up. I ran Koby's list with a 15 card SB (3 chain of vapor).

Round 1 vs. Dredge

The pilot doesn't usually play legacy and was just filling in so we had an even number. I won 2-0 by outracing him, nothing really notable happened.

Round 2 Vs. Lands

I win game 1 on turn 2.

Game two he goes chalice for one on t1, and I cant find an answer before I get hit with a 20/20.

Game 3 was long. He gets an early chalice on 0 and sphere of resistance. I get a Grizzle into play twice but can't storm out, leaving him at 6 life. I end up keep a land to drop, petal, entomb, shallow, chain of vapor, entomb, and ponder. He end up with another chalice at 0 and another sphere of resistance. End of his turn, I bounce his sphere. He decides to play confidant on his turn instead of recasting sphere. This misplay costs him the game, as on his turn I have just enough mana to get out another grizzle and seal the deal.

Round 3 vs. Junk Depths

Game 1 is a t1 win.

Game two is really long. I get a couple grizzle swings in but im playing through chalice at 0 and thalia. I get her down to 6 life, with tendrils and a ritual and jst enough mana to go lethal. However, I dont realize I have no lands left in my deck when I fetch. I scoop, neglecting to realize I should have tendrils for 4 and hoped she died to her Dark Confidant, but im at 4 looking at thalia, bob, and knight of the reliquary and I scooped thinking I was done for.

Game three I win on turn 3. Turn one she plays double mox diamond, chalice at 0, chalice at 1, my turn two I land a serenity and 6 for 1 her. I combo out on my next turn.

Round 4 vs. Burn

I decide to draw for the money on the line, but we played the games anyway and I ended up winning. I was a little worried about playing burn and dying when trying to combo, but I probably should have played it out. G1 I fizzle while comboing, not getting enough to to tendrils and has to swing the grizzle.

Game 2 I win on turn 2 or 3, easy game.

Game three I go off t2 and draw my entire deck, got to 100 life for fun, and cast tendrils for about 40.

All in all it was a great tournament. Won some cash and had a good time. Serenity was an all star and LDV was amazing every time I had it, including being able to imprint it against a port/ wasteland deck. I definitely think the U/B/W version is the one to play.

Cheers!

[Acclimation]

Another good showing! Team Griselbanned doing work this week!

Getting a 6 for 1 off of Serenity feels so good- I did that to a friend playing lands last Friday while we were play testing.

[Richard Cheese]

All these great reports, making me want to start running this bad boy again. FWIW, I've stuck to the 13 land/2 mox configuration and have been pretty happy with that when going off. I don't feel like I get screwed any harder than when running 14 lands, although I haven't been keeping stats so I could be completely talking out of my ass.

Regardless, congrats to all of you guys for the great finishes.