[Deck] Imperial Painter

[Moomba]

I'm gonna assume it's their multi purpose for chalice or board wipes against delver/pyro/d&t. That's the only thing I can think of

Sadly went 2/4 day 2. Could have played better specifically in 2 of the matches but oh well, was not as focused as I should have been

[mcbain]

I'm gonna assume it's their multi purpose for chalice or board wipes against delver/pyro/d&t. That's the only thing I can think of

Sadly went 2/4 day 2. Could have played better specifically in 2 of the matches but oh well, was not as focused as I should have been

In Seattle I bricked Day 2. I know the feeling.

Momme Grupp's has put up two recent high place finishes with this list. While he seems to have turned for some match up's the fiery remain. Honestly I not quite sure where it I want that card. It feels to slow in many situations but given the opportunity it would be a huge board wipe.

Dnt, feels to slow and high cmc, clears the whole team and artifacts potentially.
shardless, could nuke DRS and lily.
grixis, nuke team for big card advantage
eldrazi, clear little team and clear chalice
miracles, could nuke a jace or mentor - potentially through a counterbalance

Thoughts? If anyone knows Momme's contact I would be appreciative.

[G le p]

Hi,
I made 11. place at gp prague with a 12-2-1 record with this list:


Grand prix Prague had one painter in the top 16.

Two stand outs are the fiery confluence and sudden shock in the sideboard.

Creatures (16)
3 Goblin Welder
4 Painter's Servant
1 Spellskite
1 Phyrexian Revoker
1 Jaya Ballard, Task Mage
4 Imperial Recruiter
2 Simian Spirit Guide

Instants (8)
4 Pyroblast
3 Red Elemental Blast
1 Enlightened Tutor

Artifacts (14)
4 Grindstone
3 Sensei's Divining Top
3 Lotus Petal
3 Ensnaring Bridge

Entchantments (4)
4 Blood Moon

Lands (18)
4 Ancient Tomb
3 City of Traitors
4 Mountain
2 Plateau
3 Arid Mesa
2 Scalding Tarn
1 Great Furnace

60 Cards

Sideboard (15)
1 Red Elemental Blast
1 Surgical Extraction
3 Ethersworn Canonist
2 Containment Priest
3 Sudden Shock
1 Magus of the Moon
3 Fiery Confluence
1 Koth of the Hammer


Unfortunately I dont have the time to write a full report but I can give a short summary on my tournement and the sideboard.

Round 1: vs. Eldrazi (2:0)
Round 2: vs. Opp. didn't show up (2:0)
Round 3: vs. Affinity (2:0)
Round 4: vs. Eldrazi (2:0)
Round 5: vs. Miracles (1:2)
Round 6: vs. DnT (2:1)
Round 7: vs. BUG Delver (2:0)
Round 8: vs. Maverick (2:1)
Round 9: vs. BUG Delver (2:1)

8-1 after day 1

Round 10: vs. Shardless Sultai (1:2)
Round 11: vs. BUG Delver (2:1)
Round 12: vs. Eldrazi (2:1)
Round 13: vs. Eldrazi (2:1)
Round 14: vs. Sneak Show/Omni hybrid (2:0)
Round 15: vs. Imperial Taxes (1: 1 :1)

12-2-1 after day 2

Some words on the maindeck:

I think I didnt lost a single match where I resolved top during the first 3 turns. I have tested with 4 tops main several weeks but flooded on tops quite often so I went back to 3 copies. Maybe I try 4 copies again but I really don't know what to cut...
Wouldn't change anything else.

On the sideboard:

Sudden Shock was the best sb card by far. It killed Mentor without making a single token for him, Deathrite Shamans multiple times with a missing activation because there can't be a response to sudden shock, Thalia multiple times (with karakas on the field), Revokers multiple times with Mom around, Quasali Pridemage with lots of pretty good targets on my side of the battlefield and Scavenging Ooze with a full graveyard. The people always do there things instant speed when they can (which isn't a mistake) but with sudden shock they lose lots of value from there cards. I only had a single combo mu so this is of course a fact why sudden shock was that good for me.
I have tested Fiery Confluence online a lot after mono red stompy boarded it against me one time. The card is insane. I have noticed that people tend to spend lifepoints quite aggressive against painter. With sudden shock and fiery confluence you have lots of burn in your deck after boarding against several decks to punish greedy players. This strategy won me at leats two games, by burning 6-12 points with fiery confluence/sudden shock. I lost several matches against grixis delver (testing before gp) due to random needles and null rods and of course against young pyromancer. In this mu the confluence is perfect because it cleares the board and get rid of those random artifacts (I don't want to bring in explicit artifact hate for 1-2 cards). With fiery confluence I had the feeling that the postboard matches are in our favour. Unfortunately I didn't played a single match against grixis at the GP. I've boarded the confluence against Dnt (altough it is a bit clunky here) and always could cast it even under thalia (don't underestimate how much mana our deck can produce in short time). Always traded 3-1 or better with it.

Matchups:

I will not talk about eldrazi or bug delver because these are just pretty good mu's.
Won against maverick in 3rd extr turn. These were pretty nice games with fiery confluence winning me game 3 because he flooded his board with creatures to get me dead as fast as he can.
Against miracles I had 4 turns to in game 3 to topdeck fiery confluence to win (Opp on 6 life) but entreat kills me after all. Game 2 was won by koth through countertop lock.
The Sneak Show game was interesting, with him keeping a greedy hand with 2 petal as only blue sources. After brainstorm and ponder he still has no blue mana and casts blood moon with city and mountain (mistake in my opinion). I resolve revoker on sneak attack and mill is library with the combo in play, to get a look at his build and try to put together is hand (all forces in the deck). Without blue mana on his side I'm not afraid and cast bridge -> my game. Game 2 he draws lots of lands and I have priest, canonist and bridge in play with blast in hand...
Game 2 and 3 against shardless I got thoughtseized multiple times and drew a lot of lands.

On the last match:

This was of course the win and in match. I was 10th before round 15 and he was 9th -> We had to play.
He plays Dnt with a red splah for recruiters and magus of the moon. I played the same deck at GP Lille last year, so I am familiar with the deck.
I take game 1 with a turn 4 protected combo on the draw. By this time he has jitte online with 2 counters.
Game 2 I have to mulligan and keep 6 "okay" cards. I stabilize on 7 life and 2 bridges but he recruiters for pia and kiran nalaar with enough artifacts on the field.
Game 3 starts much like game 2. He has lots of preasure but confluence wipes is board with me having 7 life. After that I get jaya and painter going which is unchecked for 4/5 turns and put me far ahead. By now I have 2 bridges in play as well and a revoker on pia and kiran nallar. We are very low on time at this point. With Welder I change is vials in grave and play and "kill" his revokers on grindstone. In 3rd extra turn I topdeck SDT but no grindstone in the top 3...
After 5 extra turns I still have no grindstone but is board is just nonsense and I could draw an extra card with welder /top every 2nd turn. I would expect to win 90%-95% of the games with this board state but he didn't want to concede so it's a draw and I'm out for top 8.
Anyway, 11th place is still great and I had a lot of fun playing the deck (as usual). I have tried a lot of legacy decks and this one is by far the one with the most fun factor by a lot. In addition it is really well positioned right now in my opinion.

[Moomba]

Congratulations on your good finish. Sucks about that win and in, and very jealous of your match ups through out your rounds :tongue:

[L10]

Congrats to your finish as well! It is a shame you nearly made top 8. I just have a few questions for you.
1) Do you think the white splash is worth it for the singleton E. Tutor? Does the power level of E. Canonist and C. Priest warrant the white splash?
2) Why Surgical Extraction over Faerie Macabre or RIP, both of which can be tutored for.
3) Why no Manic Vandal or Viashino Heretic in the 75? Given the power level of artifacts people play, such as Chalice, Jitte, or Revoker, having a Silver Bullets seems like a good idea.

Thanks!

[mcbain]

Great job and thanks for giving us your two cents. Many painter players have their own way of sideboarding so when you have the time if you elaborate on a few of your strategies that would be awesome.

Again, congrats and to bad on the top 8.

Sent from my SM-G925W8 using Tapatalk

[Mapson]

@Glep Sucks about rd 15 but congrats. How did you feel about spellskite. I didn't like it when I tried. I'm also curious, about how your omni/sneak match went. I had a hard time against them this weekend. any tips.

[G le p]

@L10
1) I'm not the biggest fan of enlightened tutor because it is slow and card disadvantage. But I can see the advantage that this slot acts as a 4th top/Bridge/ 5th Moon to tutor for in certain mu's. That's why there is only one where most people play two. Canonist and priest are definitely perfect at what you need, to win the bad combo mu's. White is in my opinion the best sb color, so playing a mono deck doesn't make sense for me.
2) Priest can be tutored as well, if you want grave hate to be tutored in my list. Surgical has other advantages of seeing the opponents deck and hand. I usually board it in against miracles (and of course in some combo mu's and lands/aggro loam) because they are very light on win cons or taking all there plows/balances is pretty good as well... Maybe it's just a personal preference. I don't like RIP in painter cause it shuts down your own welder's and doesn't function as a clock like priest does for example. Priest also shuts down GSZ and Natural Order.
3) I played viashino heretic a long time but found it to easy to be answered if one wants to destroy multiple artifacts. fiery confluence solves this problem perfect and killed about 8 chalices in my 4 eldrazi games at the GP.

@mcbain
Due to my time "problems" at the moment I would like to answer this question in maybe two weeks? =)

@Mapson
I play spellskite over one year now and never found him bad. Protects your Hatebears in combo mu's, protects the lock pieces and the combo, allstar against burn and infect and blocks good as well.

[drude1]

I can definitely see the value of confluence. It's why I have a hard time moving away from 3 color painter (w/ black) just because Kolaghan's Command is so good. as we can tell from Columbus GP, the 3 major players seem to be delver (typically grixis), Miracles, and eldrazi. I really think we need a good answer to chalice and confluence gets there. I can totally see replacing pyrokinesis as I always want that card to be able to go to the face or to planewalkers.

Well done on the finish.

[mcbain]

Went 3-0 against eldrazi in my league run yesterday running a very similar list to Glep.

The match-up is very play draw dependent. As with any chalice deck I prioritize landing a welder or stone turn one so I can still win through chalice easily enough. This goes for merfolk as well.

While I didn't get to cast the fiery confluence there were countless turns where if I had drawn it the game would have been over very fast. Total blow out territory.

One thing that I wanted to highlight was the lack of miracles in Gleps run - one, which was a 0-2 loss. Speaking from my day two GP run last fall the vast majority of my loses was to close miracles games.

Currently, at least in the north American meta, I feel it is still worth gearing your deck to miracles - like Jack has been doing with his recent legacy challenge win.

Moving forward a blend of these two decks might be the happy medium were looking for.

Sent from my SM-G925W8 using Tapatalk

[Uroborian]

In 5 rounds of the GP and 5 of the GP rebound I faced miracles 6 times and 2 death and taxes twice. Now my experience isn't the norm but my bad luck train was rolling the whole weekend.

[Stils1]

Played at the GP Prague's main event with list similar to Cook's:

4 Ancient Tomb
3 City of Traitors
2 Plateau
5 Fetch
1 Great Furnace
4 Mountain

4 Imperial Recruiter
4 Painter's Servant
3 Goblin Welder
2 Simian Spirit Guide
1 Magus of the Moon
1 Koth of the Hammer
1 Phyrexian Revoker

4 Blood Moon
4 Grindstone
3 Lotus Petal
3 Sensei's Divining Top
1 Ensnaring Bridge
1 Lion's Eye Diamond

4 Pyroblast
2 Red Elemental Blast
3 enlightened tutor

Side

3 Lightning Bolt
1 Manic Vandal
1 ethersworn canonist
1 Tormod's Crypt
1 Rest in Peace
1 ensnaring bridge
1 trinisphere
1 engineered explosives
2 Sulfur Elemental
2 Ajani Vengeant
1 Sphere of Law

Went 5-4 on first day beating Miracles, 2 Eldrazis, Stoneblade and BUG Delver. I lost to Infect, Burn, AggroLoam and Shardless BUG.
On sunday i played Star Legacy side event with the same list going 4-0-1 (and split in the final round for lots of prize stars). The first opponent didnt' show up. Then i beat 2 reanimators, miracles and played a draw against goblins.


LED was an underperformer so i consider switching it for another main deck Bridge. Koth shined in the maindeck in place of Jaya, no love for her. Ajani Vengeant was nuts against miracles. Blood Moon MVP.

Had really nice time playing in Prague. Could say I had a 'blast ;)

[Wasteland]

I was 5:0:1 ad the same sideevent as Stils1 (who drew against a friend of mine^^) with the following list:

Moonraker 12

//lands (19):
4x ancient tomb
3x city of traitors
2x mountain
3x plateau
1x great furnace
4x arid mesa
2x bloodstained mire

//creatures (17):
4x painter's servant
4x imperial recruiter
2x goblin welder
1x magus of the moon
1x Jaya Ballard, task mage
1x spellskite
1x duergar hedge-mage
3x simian spirit guide

//other spells (24):
4x pyroblast
2x red elemental blast
2x enlighteened tutor
4x grindstone
4x blood moon
2x ensnaring bridge
3x lotus petal
3x sensei's divining top

//sideboard (15):
4x ethersworn canonist
1x containment priest
1x kor firewalker
1x rest in peace
1x circle of protection: red
2x Chandra, pyromaster
1x engineered explosives
1x ensnaring bridge
3x sudden demise

Duergar hedge mage for the chalice-Problem, in the Sideboard i would cut out the firewalker for the next tournament, the rest was quite awesome - but i see the upsides of sudden shock over sudden demise and will definetly test it! Chandra was complete bonkers with the bridge-plan and perhaps i even want to test a singleton cunning sparkmage...

Greetz,
Marius Hausmann

[L10]

@L10
1) I'm not the biggest fan of enlightened tutor because it is slow and card disadvantage. But I can see the advantage that this slot acts as a 4th top/Bridge/ 5th Moon to tutor for in certain mu's. That's why there is only one where most people play two. Canonist and priest are definitely perfect at what you need, to win the bad combo mu's. White is in my opinion the best sb color, so playing a mono deck doesn't make sense for me.
2) Priest can be tutored as well, if you want grave hate to be tutored in my list. Surgical has other advantages of seeing the opponents deck and hand. I usually board it in against miracles (and of course in some combo mu's and lands/aggro loam) because they are very light on win cons or taking all there plows/balances is pretty good as well... Maybe it's just a personal preference. I don't like RIP in painter cause it shuts down your own welder's and doesn't function as a clock like priest does for example. Priest also shuts down GSZ and Natural Order.
3) I played viashino heretic a long time but found it to easy to be answered if one wants to destroy multiple artifacts. fiery confluence solves this problem perfect and killed about 8 chalices in my 4 eldrazi games at the GP.
1) I never liked Enlightened Tutor for the same reason. Even when I splashed white, I didn't play Enlightened Tutor. Maybe I will give one a shot.
2) Without Faerie or RIP or Tormods Crypt, what is your game plan against Emrakul? Do you side out your Grindstone and play pure control? Because the one-off Surgical would not be enough.
3) I will give Fiery Confluence a lot shot.

Thanks for your insight!

[drude1]

Just reading everyone's comments I'm a little surprised by a couple things. I will just preface this by saying that 95% of my experience with the deck in the last 3 months has been online, where I have played against a crap-ton of Miracles and delver variants in general but lately have been seeing more Reanimator, Eldrazi and other fast combo.

A: I am surprised by the lack of love for Nahiri. She has been so ridiculous for me against Miracles that if I get her on the board, I haven't lost a game yet. Right now I am testing one copy of Mindslaver to cheat in and it just wins flat out. I have played every other Planeswalker there is (Chandra for a long time, Koth, Ajani, Daretti) and in my opinion, against Miracles it's not even close.

B: Now that I've been testing Fiery Confluence for a few days, it is definitely the real deal. It's a tad spendy and I haven't had a chance to test it against elves yet, where I think it may be a turn too slow, but it has just wrecked opponent's boards and done vital work against hateful artifacts (primarily needles and null rods). People have played around with the card in the past but I have to thank GLEP for bringing it back to my/our attention.

C: For people who question Spellskite, I will say I am always happy to see that card. Especially with Infect taking the GP, Spellskite single-handedly wrecks that deck and will probably be a more important tool going forth.

D: I totally get that e.tutor is card disadvantage. But the card selection it provides is invaluable. Especially against combo decks that are potentially faster than us (eg storm, dredge, belcher), it is vital to either have the hate in your hand or have a turn one e.tutor to hit turn 2 hate. I actually beat belcher yesterday by having t1 tutor into t2 e.e to wipe his goblin hoard in two games. It also makes getting a turn two blood moon way more consistent. I don't think there are many opponents where we favor the long game, so the card disadvantage typically isn't as significant of an issue for us.

E: I have to agree with the increase in ensnaring bridges. I was following Jack's lead and going down to one in the main for a while but then started getting my ass handed to me by Eldrazi. Also with the surge in Reanimator lately it's an important card to hit early, especially game one when we typically don't have any grave hate in our deck.

Again, just my opinions. The biggest thing for me though recently is that I've gone from probably 30% against Miracles to 60-65%. If they hit the early top/CB then four/+ drops are usually our only chance (unless you are playing vexing shusher). And the truth is, Miracles (at least in my opinion) is the most pervasive deck in the format right now. If you don't have a decent MU against them then you aren't realistically getting very far in any larger tournament.

[CptHaddock]

1) I never liked Enlightened Tutor for the same reason. Even when I splashed white, I didn't play Enlightened Tutor. Maybe I will give one a shot.


:eek:



Again, just my opinions. The biggest thing for me though recently is that I've gone from probably 30% against Miracles to 60-65%. If they hit the early top/CB then four/+ drops are usually our only chance (unless you are playing vexing shusher). And the truth is, Miracles (at least in my opinion) is the most pervasive deck in the format right now. If you don't have a decent MU against them then you aren't realistically getting very far in any larger tournament.

Was the win rate change purely because of nahiri? Or have you changed your playstyle or approach to this matchup? Maybe a combination of both? My approach recently has been mulligan a little aggressively to find atleast 1 blast. Then either go the aggro route or the grindy combo route depending on what the other contents of my hand are.

Fiery Confluence looks sweet, i'm going to try it at some time in the future.

[Moomba]

100% agree with everything you said drude1. Still trying to decide if I want any of my Nahiri in the md though, (was 1 md 1 sb but have decided to go 2 sb)

With 4 miracles being top 8 in Columbus and 8 in top 16 it clearly shows that you've got to have a solid ass plan for them. Testing confluence right now and planning on picking up painter on mtgo soon, so we'll see how that all goes.

[SDBobPlissken]

Just reading everyone's comments I'm a little surprised by a couple things. I will just preface this by saying that 95% of my experience with the deck in the last 3 months has been online, where I have played against a crap-ton of Miracles and delver variants in general but lately have been seeing more Reanimator, Eldrazi and other fast combo.

A: I am surprised by the lack of love for Nahiri. She has been so ridiculous for me against Miracles that if I get her on the board, I haven't lost a game yet. Right now I am testing one copy of Mindslaver to cheat in and it just wins flat out. I have played every other Planeswalker there is (Chandra for a long time, Koth, Ajani, Daretti) and in my opinion, against Miracles it's not even close.

B: Now that I've been testing Fiery Confluence for a few days, it is definitely the real deal. It's a tad spendy and I haven't had a chance to test it against elves yet, where I think it may be a turn too slow, but it has just wrecked opponent's boards and done vital work against hateful artifacts (primarily needles and null rods). People have played around with the card in the past but I have to thank GLEP for bringing it back to my/our attention.

C: For people who question Spellskite, I will say I am always happy to see that card. Especially with Infect taking the GP, Spellskite single-handedly wrecks that deck and will probably be a more important tool going forth.

D: I totally get that e.tutor is card disadvantage. But the card selection it provides is invaluable. Especially against combo decks that are potentially faster than us (eg storm, dredge, belcher), it is vital to either have the hate in your hand or have a turn one e.tutor to hit turn 2 hate. I actually beat belcher yesterday by having t1 tutor into t2 e.e to wipe his goblin hoard in two games. It also makes getting a turn two blood moon way more consistent. I don't think there are many opponents where we favor the long game, so the card disadvantage typically isn't as significant of an issue for us.

E: I have to agree with the increase in ensnaring bridges. I was following Jack's lead and going down to one in the main for a while but then started getting my ass handed to me by Eldrazi. Also with the surge in Reanimator lately it's an important card to hit early, especially game one when we typically don't have any grave hate in our deck.

Again, just my opinions. The biggest thing for me though recently is that I've gone from probably 30% against Miracles to 60-65%. If they hit the early top/CB then four/+ drops are usually our only chance (unless you are playing vexing shusher). And the truth is, Miracles (at least in my opinion) is the most pervasive deck in the format right now. If you don't have a decent MU against them then you aren't realistically getting very far in any larger tournament.

Would you mind posting your list with fiery confluence and nahiri? I was really excited about nahiri when it was first spoiled and bought 3 foil copies upon release. I played with 1 md 1 sb for a little but ajani (2 sb) has been pretty good for me with miracles and burn. (I always run into the burn player at tournaments hence the sphere of law in the sb). I'm playing jack's list with a different sb ( 2 ajani, 2 sulfur elemental, 2 containment priest, 1 hedge Mage, 1 rest in peace, 1 canonist, 1 thorn, 2 sudden shock, 1 ensnaring bridge, 1 sphere of law, 1 REB). Is fiery confluence really that good against eldrazi? I feel like it's too slow especially if they have a thorn out. I'd rather recruit for hedgemage and destroy chalice and have two chump blockers.

[Fallen_Empire]

I dropped from the event very early because I was sick. I was happy to meet a few fellow Painters as well. Also there was a Sweet Mono Blue Painter running around I didnt get a chance to talk to the guy though.

Do tell? :cool:

[Soldier of Fortune]

Hey guys,

I went 8-3 drop with Shortcake this weekend. I didn't have any byes so all I could do was hope lady luck was on my side and not face burn. Besides that, I felt pretty good about every match up. Here is the list I played:

4 Imperial Recruiters
4 Painter's Servant
4 Grindstone
4 Blood Moon
4 Pyroblast
3 Goblin Welder
3 Red Elemental Blast
3 Lotus Petal
2 Simian Spirit Guide
2 Sensei's Divining Top
2 Ensnaring Bridge
2 Enlightened Tutor
1 Jaya Ballard
1 Phyrexian Revoker
1 Magus of the Moon
1 Engineered Explosives

4 Bloodstained Mire
4 Ancient Tomb
4 Mountain
3 City of Traitors
2 Plateau
1 Wooded Foothills
1 Great Furnace

Sideboard
2 Koth
1 Crypt
1 RIP
4 Lightning Bolt
1 3Sphere
1 Canonist
1 Manic Vandal
1 Sulfur Elemental
1 Pyrokinesis
1 Magus of Moon
1 (Can't remember of top of my head)

Round 1: Lady luck decided to fuck with me and I get paired against Burn. The night before I decided to cut the Sphere of Law just cause this match up is terrible and I'd rather use the spot for the Pyrokinesis. I can't combo before he burns me out and quickly lose 0-2. Well, that's a shitty way to start the day. (0-1)

Round 2: I get a little luckier and get paired against Merfolk. I lose game one cause I never see a blast or G-stone. Games two and three I am able to land a bridge and my opponent can't beat it. (1-1)

Round 3: Finally, the big bad Eldrazi. This is the match up I was hoping for all weekend. He's on the play and lands a turn one chalice. I draw and land a turn moon. Chain recruiters and beat him down. Game two he gets me down to three but eventually I am able to land a bridge and get Koth to ultimate and kill him. (2-1)

Round 4: My opponent wins the die roll and chooses to draw. I mull immediately searching for a fast combo hand. My six reveals a turn two win and that's all she wrote. Game two I play revoker turn one naming phantasmagoria, turn two I get a crypt and turn three a RIP to end the game. (3-1)

Round 5: Shardless. I didn't take very many notes on this match but I recall it being super grindy. I win both games with the combo. (4-1)

Round 6: My opponent is on Deathblade. Its his first Legacy event and he is super stoked to be X-1. I'm able to combo him early game one with Pyro back up. Game two he is on the play and starts by thoughseizeing my turn one blood moon. I go to my draw and what do you know, its a blood moon. Slam it turn one and beat him down with dorks. After the match he told me that he played no basics. Sorry. (5-1)

Round 7: I'm up against Grixis Delver. My opponent has never played against Painter. I lose game one. Game two I land a early G-stone. I land a painter with three mana open and a monkey/blast in hand. My opponent takes the bait and attempts to bolt painter eot and I combo in response. Game three is kind of a blur but I recall winning with some welder shenanigans. (6-1)

Round 8: I get turn'd two by Infect. Game two I'm able to land a 3sphere and a bridge but cant empty my hand fast enough and die. (6-2)

Round 9: Eldrazi. I win my second die roll of the day. I don't know what my opponent is on but I have a turn two win. I start with painter, petal and pass. He plays mimic and passes. I eot tutor for stone and turn 2 him with my second sol land. Game two I land a moon but he still gets me down to 3. Finally I'm able to land a bridge and eventually Koth ultimate gets me there. (7-2)

The deck felt very good after day one. Managed to dodge miracles, storm and d&t. There was a bunch in the top tables so I knew it was just a matter of time.

Round 10: I win the die roll and start with a Bloodstained mire. My opponent draws and plays land, mox diamond, mana bond and gets stage+depth but doesn't have enough mana to activate. I eot tutor for moon and he scoops after I play a sol land. Game two I mull to six and keep a shitty hand with RIP. It ends up being gripped and I get locked out with ports and wastelands and can't recover. Game three my opener has a crypt and a bridge in it but doesn't do anything and feels slow. I mull to six and get rewarded with a turn one moon. Yay! (8-2)

Round 11: It finally happens, my opponent is on Miracles. I manage to win game one with the combo. My opponent has counter/top assembled but he mostly tapped out for something so I find my window to play the painter I'd been holding and he doesn't find a 2CMC on top and I win. Game two I lose to Entreat after he tears, snap, tears my two bridges. Game three goes to time, he finds a Mentor on turn two but is empty handed and we are both in top deck mode. I have a painter in play on blue. I have two draws to find a g-stone and win but come up with blanks and lose the game on turn 5. (8-3)

I'm bummed but not upset cause it was a really good match and my opponent played at a great pace. I'm still in contention for top 64 but its almost noon and I really wanted to play in the Vintage Challenge.

Round 12: I get paired up against Grixis Delver and win game one with an early blood moon. During sideboarding my opponent asks if I care about the pro points at all (I don't) and that he is only one pro point away from the pro tour or some shit like that. I lose game two and decide to give him the game and drop so I can make the Vintage Challenge.

All in all, the deck felt great and the whole weekend was fun. I got to meet a couple other Painters and even got to witness Shortcake vs. Grixis Painter round 4. I'm the guy who has the all white bordered Painter deck for those of you that saw me play. Anyways, sorry for the long ass post.

[zangoasyl]

Hey guys,

I went 8-3 drop with Shortcake this weekend. I didn't have any byes so all I could do was hope lady luck was on my side and not face burn. Besides that, I felt pretty good about every match up. Here is the list I played:

[...]

All in all, the deck felt great and the whole weekend was fun. I got to meet a couple other Painters and even got to witness Shortcake vs. Grixis Painter round 4. I'm the guy who has the all white bordered Painter deck for those of you that saw me play. Anyways, sorry for the long ass post.
Don't you worry about a long post! Awesome reading and congrats on a not too bad finish! Keep your head up high!

[Jimbrewersbro]

This may have been discussed previously but it seems like there is a lot of momentum for the banning of top. Can the deck survive without top? What would replace it?

[Moomba]

We'll be fine without top, their are planeswalkers or enchantments we can used to get a weaker replacement for it. If top does go, I believe it would benefit the meta game for us more than it would hurt.

[Jimbrewersbro]

We'll be fine without top, their are planeswalkers or enchantments we can used to get a weaker replacement for it. If top does go, I believe it would benefit the meta game for us more than it would hurt.

I'm happy for the optimism. What cards do you specifically have in mind? Please don't say Tibalt

[Moomba]

Chandra, Darreti, and Nahiri all have card filtration options. Another card I test for a brief period was Outpost Seige. But I'll go back to test that slot if / when that ban is ever made.

[Morcrux]

It would hurt a lot, but we still got recruiter and tutors to find our pieces, which is the most important. So no, deck won't die, but we just won't be able to grind as well as of now.

Tbh I'd rather have miracles around than losing top, I don't feel the matchup is that unwinable. I'd argument that Terminus would be the better ban to not entirely kill Miracles archetype as well as crippling others like Painter, 12-Post, somewhat storm and probably some more.

[LeoCop 90]

i think top it's more important to this deck than some people may realize. Losing it would be really bad.

Moreover, i'm just averse to a top banning because it's just wrong to remove the only good option non blue decks have to get card quality. They can ban counterbalance or terminus, or both, and miracle would be severely hurt leaving any other deck untouched. or they can just leave everything as it is.... i never had problems with miracles.

[SDBobPlissken]

i think top it's more important to this deck than some people may realize. Losing it would be really bad.

Moreover, i'm just averse to a top banning because it's just wrong to remove the only good option non blue decks have to get card quality. They can ban counterbalance or terminus, or both, and miracle would be severely hurt leaving any other deck untouched. or they can just leave everything as it is.... i never had problems with miracles.

I agree. Really think counterbalance is going to get the axe if it's any card in that deck. It is unique to that deck while top is in other legacy decks, especially non blue ones which I don't think WotC would want to punish. I feel like top stalls the game so much in miracles because they need to activated many times a turn (either your turn or their turn) because of the counterbalance trigger whereas other decks don't activate as much. Having top would still enable all of their miracle cards such as terminus and entreat, they just wouldn't be able to have a recurring counter spell effect.

I really think that without top painter becomes a lot worse. It's one of our only library manipulation as well as its cmc is only one. It is an artifact for welder shenanigans. Turn 1 top is a very good play and if a top is in your opening hand with some sol lands and no type of red land you might be more apt to keep the opening hand if you have top. I think it would increase our mulligans. Just my 2 cents.

[jandax]

I've seen a few lists recently with just one or twerp sulfur elementals. Question; why so few? Wouldn't you want to reasonably be able to see it since it can't be recruiter'd?

[Kap'n Cook]

Went 6-3 at Eternal Extravaganza 4. I ended up shaving a bolt in the board for the 7th blast, but I think its probably correct to have both in there. The record was buoyed by a no show in a later round, although I did lose a close game 3 to 4c Delver when I had the game locked up at 3 life and needed to fade him drawing a bolt for probably three turns and he got there.

[Soldier of Fortune]

Went 6-3 at Eternal Extravaganza 4. I ended up shaving a bolt in the board for the 7th blast, but I think its probably correct to have both in there. The record was buoyed by a no show in a later round, although I did lose a close game 3 to 4c Delver when I had the game locked up at 3 life and needed to fade him drawing a bolt for probably three turns and he got there.


That's a very respectable showing. I went back up seven blasts because my mega has seen an influx of omni-show. I main board all seven tho. What were you're other two loses?

[Kap'n Cook]

Other two losses were to Imperial DnT and 4c Delver again where he started probe probe natural sea into ponder. I assumed ant so I powered out a t1 revoker on led using a spirit monkey and proceeded to get wrecked by deathrites and dazes

[MGB]

Does Nahiri the Harbinger have any place in this deck potentially?

[CptHaddock]

Does Nahiri the Harbinger have any place in this deck potentially?

Yep, although we can't play the emrakul + nahiri combo she's pretty solid in this deckWe've been discussing this for the last couple of pages if you want more depth. People have been running her both maindeck and in the side.

[Nouille]

Does Nahiri the Harbinger have any place in this deck potentially?

Was not fan of the card by just reading the abilities, but after a test, it definitely have a place in the deck. I personally opted for a 1 MD/1 side split. The card provides a reliable option to win locked games. The 1 main deck is super solid vs chalice on 1 and vs counterbalance, and it will never be a bad draw since the card need to be counter by the opponent. The sweet thing about the card is the +2 ability: +2 means that Nahiri can have 6 counters on the casting turn, which is big. It will often act like a lightening rod and give you time to combo. Sometimes opponent fear the emrakul combo also, and forget about the original combo of the deck.
Played a little tournament last week, Nahiri was MVP on the two games I casted it (vs NicFit and Eldrazi).

[Mapson]

Playing 2x Nahiri, 1 man, 1 sb. With an emrakul in the side. It's been fantastic

[jandax]

I've seen a few lists recently with just one or two sulfur elementals. Question; why so few? Wouldn't you want to reasonably be able to see it since it can't be recruiter'd?

Can this not get lost in a pages old conversation please? Legit question is legit

[SDBobPlissken]

Can this not get lost in a pages old conversation please? Legit question is legit

I play two in the board just because there are a lot of D&T as well as Imperial taxes running around in my meta as well as giving splash protection against monastary strategies. I only play two because I can't really fit anymore in the board without taking away from other important sideboard slots. Yeah it can't be recruiter'd for but with two for games two and three and senseis divining top I think it's worth it to run as an answer to Thalia, mother of runes, and flicker wisps.

[jandax]

What are your odds of seeing them? Would you up it to three if you got the room?

[SDBobPlissken]

What are your odds of seeing them? Would you up it to three if you got the room?

My current sideboard is

2 ajani
2 containment priest
2 sulfur elemental
2 burn spells (going back and forth between lightning bolt and sudden shock)
1 rest in peace
1 ensnaring bridge
1 sphere of law
1 red elemental blast
1 thorn
1 canonist
1 Duergar hedge Mage

I suppose maybe I could cut the sphere of law but then my burn match up becomes worse as well as UR delver which has been giving me trouble lately. I don't know if it's worth it to play a third sulfur elemental. I feel as though the D&T matchup isn't terrible to begin with but that card definitely tilts it in our favor of drawn. I have lost to D&T because I got decked. We had such a prison going on where I had three ensnaring bridges out and he had a bunch of needles and revokers on grindstone.

I don't know off hand the exact times I've seen them when boarded in, but when I did or if I had drawn it it would have tilted the state of the game in my favor. What do you think I should cut out of my board? i use to play 3 pyrokinesis in the board. The sulfur elemental a just kind of took their place.

I am going to start testing this sideboard

3 burn spells
2 sulfur elemental
1 ensnaring bridge
1 duergar hedge Mage
1 canonist
1 thorn
1 sphere of law
1 red elemental blast
1 rest in peace
1 nahiri
1 emrakul
1 containment priest

Putting a nahiri in the md and cutting down to 2 enlightened tutors.

[jandax]

I think the mage can go. Nahiri plays its roll a bit better. Fwiw I've found Burrenton Forge Tender/worhip to be the anti red combo. But i play 3 tutors md.

And that's why i was questioning the nahiri/Emrakul and RiP/helm. If others are going to be doing the combo, life miracles for example, rip/helm is an insta kill and trumps Emrakul. Maybe i just don't wanna see the day where painter run an Emrakul :cry:

[Morcrux]

IMO Emrakul doesn't have a place in Painter, but Nahiri still does. She functions very well without a finisher for her ult, and we'd rather not have a clunky draw, especially emra which messes with the yard.

I've never really tried RiP/Helm combo as I believe a 1/1 split combo is fragile, and multiple RiPs is worthless (so is Helm without RiP).
But if Miracles starts packing Emrakuls it's worth considering for sure.

[SDBobPlissken]

I think the mage can go. Nahiri plays its roll a bit better. Fwiw I've found Burrenton Forge Tender/worhip to be the anti red combo. But i play 3 tutors md.

And that's why i was questioning the nahiri/Emrakul and RiP/helm. If others are going to be doing the combo, life miracles for example, rip/helm is an insta kill and trumps Emrakul. Maybe i just don't wanna see the day where painter run an Emrakul :cry:

I usually bring in my one of rest in peace when I am playing tarmogoyf strategies. Would you bring in multiple rest in peace on this matchup and the helm as wel? If so do you side out your grindstones?

[CptHaddock]

I think the mage can go. Nahiri plays its roll a bit better. Fwiw I've found Burrenton Forge Tender/worhip to be the anti red combo. But i play 3 tutors md.

Nahiri is great but she really doesn't deal directly with chalices and equipment. It seems silly to remove all artifact hate in lieu of nahiri. I don't know how you can say she has the same function as mage.


I usually bring in my one of rest in peace when I am playing tarmogoyf strategies. Would you bring in multiple rest in peace on this matchup and the helm as wel? If so do you side out your grindstones?

What goyf matchups? I think the only time I bring in RIP against goyf strategies is against jund and rug delver. Against BUG decks I think that goblin welder is one of our best cards and it seems a little silly to shut him down.

I don't think you want the package against delver decks but I would probably bring it in against BGx decks. It's a win condition that is hard for them to interact with them.

[jandax]

Nahiri is great but she really doesn't deal directly with chalices and equipment. It seems silly to remove all artifact hate in lieu of nahiri. I don't know how you can say she has the same function as mage.



What goyf matchups? I think the only time I bring in RIP against goyf strategies is against jund and rug delver. Against BUG decks I think that goblin welder is one of our best cards and it seems a little silly to shut him down.

I don't think you want the package against delver decks but I would probably bring it in against BGx decks. It's a win condition that is hard for them to interact with them.


I'm biased because I play a md vandal. I play that card in the 75 instead of Mage because of the mana requirements. Nahiri is still good under a moon. Mage pales under a moon.



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[Wasteland]

@Jandax u estimate vandal better then duergar hedge-mage? (i play with 3 Plateau and 6 fetchlands for more white sources and more shuffling, so i'm not totally sure about that...)

[jandax]

Well I was basing that off of the standard mana base. With more white sources I totally see it living up to its potential


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[Morcrux]

I think it's fair to argument that Vandal performs better against chalice, as it can drop T2 without SSG/Petal, and functions with ex. 1 mountain and x sols. It's not too often Hedge won't be able to trigger, but it does happen.

So in this regard, I'd say Vandal fits better main if you drop Jaya because atm Eldrazi is a thing and you'll probably need a reliant chalice-cracker.
But duergar's ability is generally better against fair decks, and would fit better in sb between the two.

[jandax]

I agree to all that and want to add that i expect to play against a bit of X/2's and blue combo and control. Mostly the fair decks where i want to be playing more mono red style, slamming moons and what not.

[mcbain]

I would sooner run 1-2 engineered explosives in the main then start playing vandal. Vandal, while fast at getting rid of chalice, often rots in your hand on account of no "may" in is text. Mage on the other hand can be deployed as and when needed.

I will not argue that a chalice from eldrazi is bad for us but honestly, we are 75% favoured in that match up and chalice on 1 doesn't stop any of our bombs against them. I have won ALL of my games when they start with chalice on 1.

My focus would be directed to gaining % against miracles not something we have one of the best match ups against.

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[Morcrux]

I would sooner run 1-2 engineered explosives in the main then start playing vandal. Vandal, while fast at getting rid of chalice, often rots in your hand on account of no "may" in is text. Mage on the other hand can be deployed as and when needed.

I will not argue that a chalice from eldrazi is bad for us but honestly, we are 75% favoured in that match up and chalice on 1 doesn't stop any of our bombs against them. I have won ALL of my games when they start with chalice on 1.


Just wanna point out that I assumed pre-board while comparing, and personally I've never swayed from Duergar in SB (and Jaya main atm).

And ofc, eldrazi is not at all a bad matchup. But I gotta ask tho, how do you win through T1 chalice without landing welder/grindstone first?
My only thoughts would be a planeswalker, which isn't too normal main, or Jaya. That's why I stated Vandal main could be fair if you drop Jaya, but I wouldn't play him otherwise.

[SDBobPlissken]

Playing two fiery confluence in the board instead of two sulfur elemental. Fiery confluence is a thing. Might want to go up to three. Still open to bringing sulfur elemental back. Oh and the NJ Devils got Taylor Hall. Totally unrelated but fuck yeah.

[drude1]

Yeah, I've been playing three fiery confluence in my board now and totally dig them. I wasn't a huge fan of sulfur elemental. It wasn't bad but confluence does so much more. I have probably used for the artifact destruction more than anything. Although you do have to be careful about making sure all targets are still in play at resolution. I had a game where I did two damage to all creatures and killed an artifact. In response my opponent killed the artifact and confluence fizzled.


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[Stevestamopz]

Playing two fiery confluence in the board instead of two sulfur elemental. Fiery confluence is a thing. Might want to go up to three. Still open to bringing sulfur elemental back. Oh and the NJ Devils got Taylor Hall. Totally unrelated but fuck yeah.

Yeah you blew me the fuck out with Fiery Confluence on modo yesterday... (I was the one playing Taxcake). Feels like a deece card.

[SDBobPlissken]

Yeah, I've been playing three fiery confluence in my board now and totally dig them. I wasn't a huge fan of sulfur elemental. It wasn't bad but confluence does so much more. I have probably used for the artifact destruction more than anything. Although you do have to be careful about making sure all targets are still in play at resolution. I had a game where I did two damage to all creatures and killed an artifact. In response my opponent killed the artifact and confluence fizzled.


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But if at least one target is still legal it will resolve and just have no effect on the illegal targets no?

[Morcrux]

But if at least one target is still legal it will resolve and just have no effect on the illegal targets no?

Yeah, you only have to be careful if you pick 2x wipe and an artifact destroy, anything else should be quite safe.

[Uroborian]

Depending on the state your outcome wasn't to bad. Still a 2 for 1 and they had to get rid of their artifact removal. As long as the board state didn't kill you it isn't a bad outcome.

[drude1]

Depending on the state your outcome wasn't to bad. Still a 2 for 1 and they had to get rid of their artifact removal. As long as the board state didn't kill you it isn't a bad outcome.

Well, it was against Death & Taxes and it should have been like a 5 for 1 do it was not great for me. Luckily, I had a second one in my hand and was able to wipe the board the next turn so it didn't cost me the game. It was a heads up play by my opponent though and i just wanted to point that out.

Nothing else going on on this board?? So I caught a guy on TWITCH the other day who was streaming painter and he was playing with Nahiri and Emrakul in the board. Anyone else catch this or is this guy on this board at all? Just wondering how that is working out. I know most people on here aren't big fans of the strategy but has anyone else actually tested it?

[zangoasyl]

Yeah, I've been playing three fiery confluence in my board now and totally dig them. I wasn't a huge fan of sulfur elemental. It wasn't bad but confluence does so much more. I have probably used for the artifact destruction more than anything. Although you do have to be careful about making sure all targets are still in play at resolution. I had a game where I did two damage to all creatures and killed an artifact. In response my opponent killed the artifact and confluence fizzled.


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Hey, I don't get that one. The ruling of the confluence says:
[...]
11/4/2015 If all targets for the chosen modes become illegal before the Confluence resolves, the spell will be countered and none of its effects will happen. If at least one target is still legal, the spell will resolve but will have no effect on any illegal targets.

In my understanding the szenario you described should result in you sweeping the board and only the third mode of the confluence fizzling or what am I getting wrong?

edit: the moment I posted this I got it - you only have one target, hence it fizzles... my bad...

[Lyle Hopkins]

I'm interested if anyone has tested Monastery Mentor in Imperial Painter. I've been playing one copy in the main deck for a little while now and it seems pretty good, especially when you board in more removal. It might be a good alternative win condition while opponents are focusing on disrupting the Painter's Servant and Grindstone combo. Monastery Mentor also helps turn some of the deck's dead draws, like multiple copies of Sensei's Divining Top and Grindstone, into tokens.

P.S.
It's always a pleasure to see you stream, Jack.

[drude1]

I'm interested if anyone has tested Monastery Mentor in Imperial Painter. I've been playing one copy in the main deck for a little while now and it seems pretty good, especially when you board in more removal. It might be a good alternative win condition while opponents are focusing on disrupting the Painter's Servant and Grindstone combo. Monastery Mentor also helps turn some of the decks dead draws, like multiple copies of Sensei's Divining Top and Grindstone, into tokens.

P.S.
It's always a pleasure to see you stream, Jack.

That's really funny. I was just watching the Vs video today on SCG and was thinking about the exact same thing. How many times have you searched for it with a recruiter? That's one of the most appealing things for me as well. I do think that you would probably want to side into more instants in order to protect it from something like a bolt, etc. Mentor certainly does combo well with multiple tops though. I think it's worth testing. Doesn't really fit with our game plan but you could certainly improve the beat down plan plan against decks like 12 post. He also stabilizes the battlefield quickly as well which could be very helpful.


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[SDBobPlissken]

I caught the end of Jack's stream last night. Sick win against miracles. Switched to two nahiri in the board instead of 2 ajani and it did a lot of work. Between nahiri and fiery confluence I pretty much stole my two wins against monastery miracles last night. Game 2 my opponent had me locked out with counter top but I just kept beating down with my line painter servant until I get him down to 8 life from all his fetching. He terminus' my lone painter and I cast fiery confluence dealing 6 damage to him. Next turn I cast a nahiri and I'm able to exile his counterbalance and bolt for the win. The following game I'm able to turn 2 nahiri with monkey blast back up and he double forces pretty much depleting all his resources. We are both in top deck mode. I'm able to ultimate a nahiri to get the grindstone after recruiting for painter. He attempts to terminus but I was able to blast it.

Question: against monastery miracles do most people here side out moons? I usually keep 2 in and side out the rest (magus included). Against legends I typically just side out magus.

[Morcrux]

Mentor has been spoken about before, but if I recall the subject was dropped pretty quickly. It's simply not as effective as in miracles due to our lack of Force, Brainstorm etc to trigger it in response to removal, so if they got removal we'll probably just net 1 token. We got blasts, but it's not a reliable answer as we'd need painter out (and you'd only recruit one of them).

Top-Top still works tho, so it may still be a recruitable 1 or 2-turn clock if they miss removal, which doesn't seem too shabby. I've considered it in board as I don't see the need of alt wincon main (except Jaya) but never really tested it, and atm I'm digging Nahiri for that purpose :)

[drude1]

@bob: yeah, I do the exact same thing with blood moon. I cut down the numbers but maybe leave one or two in. They will search for basics but moon still helps shut down shuffle effects with later fetch lands which is helpful.
@morcrux: totally agree. Mentor might be a cute idea as a one or two of if you are looking to clock you opponent quickly. The problem is it still isn't great against Miracles due to terminus. But might actually not be terrible as another board stabilizer against Grixis or similar things. It's utility is somewhat limited for us though. And yes, Nahiri is definitely my favorite "alt win" against miracles as well. I understand it doesn't actually win the game but it's utility is quite amazing.
Speaking of which, still no word on the streamer who plays Nahiri with emrakul in the board. I know to speak of it is heresy on this bird but I'm just curious how it has worked for people who have actually tried it.


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[Mapson]

The streamer was Rudy Briksza. He was using my list. I didn't ask how emrakul was for him but she's been good for me. Being able to just end grindy games where my opponents have been stockpiling on removal has been good. Also it's randomly won me same games against omno/sneak

[drude1]

The streamer was Rudy Briksza. He was using my list. I didn't ask how emrakul was for him but she's been good for me. Being able to just end grindy games where my opponents have been stockpiling on removal has been good. Also it's randomly won me same games against omno/sneak

Do you side out your bridges on that plan or just try to skate around it with welder or a blast or something? Also, how many Nahiri's are you playing and how are you splitting them? All in board or any main?

[mcbain]

I feel a good place to start in improving our miracles match up. I know I've been favoured against it in many tournaments, but it just feels like I'm such an underdog when it really matters pushing for top 8.

After board the miracles deck is so stacked when it comes to artifact, enchantment and creature removal. They run fine under a blood moon, sure you limit there fetching but unless your cutting them off white mana your going to lose.

The PlainsWalker route via Koth, chandra ,ajani, and now nahari seem to be the ideal route.

The fact that nahari gets you out of the counter balance lock is huge.

Ajani is great at locking down white mana while a blood moon is in play but your game plan should not be attempting to set up a complex board state everytime.

Is Grindstone and blood moon things we really want to be doing against them? Really we can run 8 Pyroblast effects, counter balance removal, creature removal and plainswalkers and just out value them.

What would a transformational sideboard look like to you?

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[SDBobPlissken]

Were there any painters at scg Worcester? Two other decks running blood moon made top8 and while painter may not match up well against them I feel like the decks they played against match up pretty well. If only we were able to run chalice without shutting off key parts of our deck.

In regards to miracles. I've been running into a lot of legends and I find the best way to victory is to run a recruiter chain keeping one in your hand. Just beat down while they try to stabilize. When they terminus start the chain again. Good thing about recruiter is it is not card disadvantage like e tutor. So while you are beating down and casting recruiters you can also cast combo pieces or keep in hand for when they waste all their removal on your 1/1's. I recently went 4 turns with 3 recruiters a painter, and a grindstone on board. Got him down to an extremely low amount of life and then idk if he misplayed or what but he council's judgments tapping all white and I activate the grindstone in response.

SB was a bit different after he brought in his two mentors for the entreat the Angels. Nahiri and fiery confluence were Allstars again during the match up even though I still lost the round.

I was so close to comboing in game 3 that I kept trying to do that because he wasn't taking a lot of damage from his fetches. I feel like if I had just went the recruiter chain plan that game it might have been a different outcome. It's pretty cool when your opponent feels the need to stp a 1/1 that you already got your value out of.

[Mapson]

Do you side out your bridges on that plan or just try to skate around it with welder or a blast or something? Also, how many Nahiri's are you playing and how are you splitting them? All in board or any main?

one side, one main, one emmy in the board. I've been taking bridge out against miracles so it's a non issue there. I haven't lost the mu since trying this approach (but it's a small sample size) Against other decks where I want the second nahiri, I've been debating if I want the emmy or not, and when I do bring it in I usually have to rely on welder for my bridges, but having one dead card isn't the worst thing in the world.

According to the metagame breakdown a painter player made it to day two although I did not see them. I fell a win short at 6-3 after getting paired down and losing the last round to an x-1-2.

rd 1 - miracles, 2-0 - mvp:nahiri
rd 2 eldrazi 2-0 - mvp ensnaring bridge
rd 3: ??? idr but I won
rd 4 eldrazi 2-0
rd 5 elves 2-0 - mvp blood moon (took it out game two but g1 he was stuck on one forest that I blew up)
rd 6 1-2 burn - (she played joe lossett rd 7 on camera)
rd 7 burn 2-1 - mvp, my opponent's lack of skill.
rd 8 rug delver - 1-2 punted g1 by going for it on my turn, getting stifled and leaving him with the mana on his turn to brainstorm into bolt so I die. That being said he could still brainstorm in response to activation, find the bolt, and kill me on his upkeep, but there's a reasonably high chance he doesn't brainstorm there.
rd 9 elves - 2-1, lost with a top out and grindstone being the 4th card in my deck after my previous attempts to combo being abrupt decayed.

[drude1]

Yeah, didn't see a lot of painter being represented at the Open. Seeing two other blood moon decks in the top 8 was interesting though.
I did manage to take down our local SCG IQ with Painter this weekend. Now I get to go play standard and modern at the invitational in December! [emoji15](not excited).


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[SDBobPlissken]

What are people's take on Jund and Nic Fit? Been running into it a bunch online and now in paper too. I bring in the burn and extra bridge and side out 2 REB's, Jaya, etc. how do other people attack these match ups?

[DoomPenguin]

Hey guys, I played Painter in Worcester hoping to overcome my 16th place at SCG Philly but sadly crashed and burned after making day 2.

I liked the list I ran before and didn't have a ton of time for testing outside a couple weekly legacy events (which I did well in) so my only changes where to the SB with -1 Thorn of Amethyst, -1 Ensnaring Bridge, +1 Pyroclasm, +1 Koth of the Hammer.

Day 1 I beat:

Storm
Burn
Mono-Black Reanimator
Dredge
Dragon Stompy
RW Stompy
Shardless BUG

Lost to:

Miracles
UW Helm/RIP combo

Day 2 I beat:

Elves
Burn

Lost to:

Lands
Infect
Miracles
UW Stoneblade/Countertop


As you can see UW decks were my bane, although against the Helm/RIP deck I simply felt like I got very unlucky and against the Stoneblade deck I played extremely poorly as it was Round 15 and I was tired and tilted. The miracles matches always felt like they were just barely out of reach. I've generally done well against the deck in the past but I definitely need to practice and improve this matchup for next time.

The loss to lands was mulliganing both games and never seeing a Blood Moon while my opponent had a fast combo and Krosan Grip. Losing to Infect was also sad as I thought I had G1 locked with a Blood Moon and Bridge but Noble Hierarch + Become Immense + Beserk got me. G2 I resolved a turn 1 Moon but opponent has basic forest and two Nobles in opener plus enough gas to kill me quickly.

Overall I still like the deck and will probably try out the white splash once I get a few Plateaus, although I still think the mono red version is fine. Miracles is definitely the biggest problem as I felt like my other losses can be chalked up to variance and poor play on my part. I think I might try to fit the 8th blast and another Koth into the board for now.

[drude1]

What are people's take on Jund and Nic Fit? Been running into it a bunch online and now in paper too. I bring in the burn and extra bridge and side out 2 REB's, Jaya, etc. how do other people attack these match ups?

For me these are two completely different MUs. I play jund like I play Shardless BUG, my first priority is to drop a blood moon. Unless you get out a moon or can combo crazy fast, you will get out-tempo'd. If you can shut off 2/3+ of their deck, obviously things get a little easier. Nic fit I try to combo ASAP. I agree with the sideboarding though. Jaya is pretty bad in both MUs. I typically will take out some # of moons against Nic fit because they have so many basics and can have a stable land base early with veteran explorer. I do side in some grave hate against them (mainly RiP) in order to shut off some of their lines or acceleration with explorer. Burn is definitely decent against both.


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[drude1]

As you may or may not be able to guess by the frequency of my posts recently, I've been playing this deck a lot lately. Two further observations I have made recently...

1. fiery confluence is so good that I can hardly contain myself. I have won 3 straight matches strictly due to that card. My last match my opponent is playing some bant goyf deck and he has beat me down to 2 and I stabilize with a bridge. He is at 12 due to fetches, and a few hits with the Grid (which also takes out a Noble Hierarch he is trying to equip with a jitte). I have no cards and top deck confluence...I decide to just hit the dome since if he deals with my bridge I'm dead anyway. Down to 6. Next top deck, confluence for the win...12 damage in 2 turns. I have probably killed about 10 Jaces and armies of mentor/tokens with the card as well. So good.

2. Emrakul sucks. I tried playing a copy of Emrakul in the SB with Nahiri and it was awful. Nahiri is still so good and I have ultimated the same Nahiri 3 times in a game against Miracles, but STILL LOST due to Terminus. Switched back to 1 copy of Mindslaver and have played against Miracles once and ultimated Nahiri into Mindslaver and in response brought it back with welder and opponent immediately scooped. Still open to other possible Nahiri targets FTW but for now I guess I will stick to Mindslaver.

Ok. That's all for now. Really digging this deck again. Was playing Eldrazi for a while but that deck is garbage. Not sure what my second pet deck will be yet now. Probably should try to cast brainstorms for a change. :rolleyes:

[CptHaddock]

1. fiery confluence is so good that I can hardly contain myself. I have won 3 straight matches strictly due to that card. My last match my opponent is playing some bant goyf deck and he has beat me down to 2 and I stabilize with a bridge. He is at 12 due to fetches, and a few hits with the Grid (which also takes out a Noble Hierarch he is trying to equip with a jitte). I have no cards and top deck confluence...I decide to just hit the dome since if he deals with my bridge I'm dead anyway. Down to 6. Next top deck, confluence for the win...12 damage in 2 turns. I have probably killed about 10 Jaces and armies of mentor/tokens with the card as well. So good.


Card is straight gas. Every game where I cast it goes something like this, I put the card on the stack, opponent reads the card, opponent goes "oh" and the game swings heavily in my favor. I am very happy that they printed a card that can act as multiple burn, artifact destruction and a board wipe spell all at the same thing.

So as a bit of an aside on recent discussions, do you guys bring in burn against aggro loam?

[SDBobPlissken]

I think fiery confluence is one of the greatest things to happen to this deck in a while. I recently went up to 3 in the board. I really want to include it in the main. I've found jaya and magus to be underwhelming recently. Thinking of maybe moving one or both to the side. Revoker has been mehhhh recently too. I feel like revoker is good if you play more than one of them. With just one I think it's kinda eating up a slot for say a third ensnaring bridge (I play one main one side).

For aggro loam I usually side in all burn and rip and take out Jaya, 2 REB, magus, maybe 1 or two e tutors.

[phoenix4]

So I played a legacy tournament in Sweden yesterday, 56 players, ended up 3rd. Yay, Tundra for me :P

This is the list I played:

Main:
4 Ancient Tomb
3 City of Traitors
1 Great Furnace
4 Bloodstained Mire
2 Arid Mesa
2 Plateau
3 Mountain

4 Goblin Welder
1 Manic Vandal
3 Imperial Recruiter
1 Phyrexian Revoker
2 Simian Spirit Guide
1 Magus of the Moon
1 Jaya Ballard, Task Mage
4 Painter's Servant

4 Lotus Petal
4 Blood Moon
2 Enlightened Tutor
3 Red Elemental Blast
3 Sensei's Divining Top
4 Pyroblast
4 Grindstone

Sideboard:
4 Sudden Shock
1 Enlightened Tutor
1 Tormod's Crypt
1 Thorn of Amethyst
1 Ethersworn Canonist
1 Trinisphere
1 Duergar Hedge-Mage
1 Fiery Confluence
1 Engineered Explosives
2 Rest in Peace
1 Magus of the Moat

Round 1
Against Esper Green (Made that up)

Stock Esper list with the slight DRS splash, plus some sideboard cards
Won 2-1, due to an excited me with a hand that was turn 2 combo, but dead to his turn 1 StP :/

It's been a long time since I've played that deck and I felt a little empty inside, when he started pulling basic lands from the top of his library. But in the end I won and moving on.

Round 2
Playing against Storm (ANT), he's on the play and game 1 is him finding all the mana he needs, but's missing that 1 tutor to kill me. Revoker on LED, followed by a moon a few turns later seals the deal.
Game 2 is almost like playing MUD against him, turn 1 Tomb into Revoker, turn 2 Trinisphere. Which sets me up for a slow beating, into playing Rest in Peace.... Yummy :D 2-0

Round 3
We were 4 guys taking the train to this tournament and know I'm playing the first one.
My friend was playing a new take on the Miracle deck called BDM (Big Dick Miracles - for some random reason) which is 4 Monastery Mentors and the rest is stock - almost
My draws were a lot better than his, which gives me a 2-0 victory and a very good feeling so far.

Round 4
BUG Delver!
I always get a good feeling when I'm sitting across the table for this deck. Over the years I've taken a few different strategies on this MU, but this time, I took my time ingame. I actually made a mistake, searching up and playing a Goblin Welder with my opponent having an active DRS :/

Long story short I had my PS removed from the yard, but right before he could untap and kill me, I saw a PS with my top, draw it, he can't do anything about it and now we're 4-0

Round 5
ID

Round 6
ID into top 8 ;)

1/8 finals
During the last round of swiss, I wrote down what the other contenders for top 8 were playing. This paid of when I sat down for the quarters, being the higher seed (Spellcheck?) I draw 7 cards, which had a turn 1 Blood Moon. This against a Jund version of Scapeshift is probably really good, which it is.
Game 2 isn't much more different: A quick moon and it really wasn't the most difficult of MU :)

1/4 finals
So, I beat BUG Delver earlier in the tournament, this time it's another friend, HJ Goddik. He's a beast on different versions of BUG Delver which is what happens to me :/
Not enough lands, and he has counters for all the Blood Moons in the 2 games we play. Losing always sucks, but when your only loss of the day is to a friend and that same friend wins the whole thing, you really can't be THAT mad :D

I know it's not the best TR you can have, but it's a start :D

[Nouille]

So I played a legacy tournament in Sweden yesterday, 56 players, ended up 3rd. Yay, Tundra for me :P


Gratz for the nice run. Intresting choice to replace all the ensnaring bridge plan with the magus of the moat. I'm curious to know if you would make any change to your main deck or to the side after this event !

[phoenix4]

Gratz for the nice run. Intresting choice to replace all the ensnaring bridge plan with the magus of the moat. I'm curious to know if you would make any change to your main deck or to the side after this event !

Well, in order to be able to reliably get MoatyMagus down against Eldrazi (Which he's primarily ment for), I think you have to go a little more white :)

Also, I'm still missing the 4th Recruiter :D

Other than that, I'm fairly happy with it... Maybe a revoker more OR trying a more Revoker oriented build :D

[CptHaddock]

Well, in order to be able to reliably get MoatyMagus down against Eldrazi (Which he's primarily ment for), I think you have to go a little more white :)

Also, I'm still missing the 4th Recruiter :D

Other than that, I'm fairly happy with it... Maybe a revoker more OR trying a more Revoker oriented build :D

Magus seems like a really weird choice if you wanted to metagame against eldrazi. I think the matchup is already pretty good but if you wanted more for the matchup I would rather up the number of ensnaring bridges and play more artifact destruction main (which you already did with manic vandal). Magus just seems awkward, his 4 mana cost is fine but the WW is pretty questionable for our deck to get. He's also an 0/3 which gets hit by every removal spell in the format even something like dismember and jitte, both of which I have seen eldrazi play.

Regardless congrats on your success. It's always nice to see people do well with painter.

[Mapson]

Well, in order to be able to reliably get MoatyMagus down against Eldrazi (Which he's primarily ment for), I think you have to go a little more white :)

Also, I'm still missing the 4th Recruiter :D

Other than that, I'm fairly happy with it... Maybe a revoker more OR trying a more Revoker oriented build :D

I'm curious why you want more revokers? Most of us aren't in love with that card.

[drude1]

Yeah, I have to agree that magus of the Moat seems bad. I get why you would want a card like that as it would be searchable with recruiter, but at double white and so susceptible to dismember, jitte and warping wail (not to mention other MUs with cards like lightning bolt) it just seems sub-optimal.
As far as playing multiple revokers I assume it's for redundancy. It's easy to deal with one revoker but more difficult to deal with two or three a set to the same thing. I considered actually playing a pithing needle in its place but a) it's not searchable with recruiter and b) it doesn't shut off LED.





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[Lyle Hopkins]

I feel a good place to start in improving our miracles match up. I know I've been favoured against it in many tournaments, but it just feels like I'm such an underdog when it really matters pushing for top 8.

After board the miracles deck is so stacked when it comes to artifact, enchantment and creature removal. They run fine under a blood moon, sure you limit there fetching but unless your cutting them off white mana your going to lose.

The PlainsWalker route via Koth, chandra ,ajani, and now nahari seem to be the ideal route.

The fact that nahari gets you out of the counter balance lock is huge.

Ajani is great at locking down white mana while a blood moon is in play but your game plan should not be attempting to set up a complex board state everytime.

Is Grindstone and blood moon things we really want to be doing against them? Really we can run 8 Pyroblast effects, counter balance removal, creature removal and plainswalkers and just out value them.

What would a transformational sideboard look like to you?

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I think improving the Miracles match up is a good idea. Jack might be onto something with the four copies of Lightning Bolt and two planeswalkers out of the sideboard. Being able to take out Jace, the Mind Sculptor with Lightning Bolt seems great, but I can also understand the desire to play Sudden Shock to remove Monastery Mentor before it gets out of hand. Concerning which planeswalker to run, I think Nahiri, the Harbinger's ability to remove Counterbalance gives her the edge. Also, it's probably a safe bet running eight blasts in the 75.

I typically board out Blood Moon, Lotus Petal, and some number of Enlightened Tutor against them (not sure if this is ideal). It never crossed my mind to cut Grindstone, but that certainly doesn't mean it isn't worth exploring.

Is it worth running Vexing Shusher? What about Batterskull or some other equipment? Or even something really unconventional like land destruction (while keeping the moons in of course)?

There is currently quite a bit of discussion (https://www.reddit.com/r/MTGLegacy/comments/4tgk4g/official_how_to_beat_miracles_thread/)on the Legacy subreddit concerning how to beat Miracles for anyone who is interested.

[CptHaddock]

I think improving the Miracles match up is a good idea. Jack might be onto something with the four copies of Lightning Bolt and two planeswalkers out of the sideboard. Being able to take out Jace, the Mind Sculptor with Lightning Bolt seems great, but I can also understand the desire to play Sudden Shock to remove Monastery Mentor before it gets out of hand. Concerning which planeswalker to run, I think Nahiri, the Harbinger's ability to remove Counterbalance gives her the edge. Also, it's probably a safe bet running eight blasts in the 75.

I typically board out Blood Moon, Lotus Petal, and some number of Enlightened Tutor against them (not sure if this is ideal). It never crossed my mind to cut Grindstone, but that certainly doesn't mean it isn't worth exploring.

Is it worth running Vexing Shusher? What about Batterskull or some other equipment? Or even something really unconventional like land destruction (while keeping the moons in of course)?

There is currently quite a bit of discussion (https://www.reddit.com/r/MTGLegacy/comments/4tgk4g/official_how_to_beat_miracles_thread/)on the Legacy subreddit concerning how to beat Miracles for anyone who is interested.

I wouldn't board out grindstones against miracles, that card is just too important in that matchup even if you don't have the ability to combo out your opponent. It gives you the ability to interact with your opponent in such as way that most miracles lists don't have an answer to preboard. Even postboard you can force your miracles opponent to play in weird ways.

Ajani Vengeant is probably the best route if you want a board control card that can threaten to Armageddon your opponent.

I think that the problem with Vexing Shusher is that they are too narrow and too easily taken care off. I think that because of our colors we need to have a bit of versatility in our sideboard cards, cards should atleast come in for multiple matchups and either enhance our game plan or give us an alternative to our game plan. Cards like Fiery Confluence are great because in 1 card we have the ability to destroy artifacts, wipe the board and also either close the game or kill planeswalkers.

[Kap'n Cook]

Just starting to mess around with a new idea, we'll see if it's worth getting rid of so many bullets. I mainly just wanted to do this to try out Nahiri, as I had not yet gotten around to testing the card yet. Here is the list I'm jamming:

4 Ancient Tomb
3 City of Traitors
2 Plateau
1 Great Furnace
2 wooded foothills
3 bloodstained mire
4 Mountain

4 Imperial Recruiter
4 Painter's Servant
3 Goblin Welder
2 Simian Spirit Guide
1 Magus of the Moon
1 Jaya Ballard, Task Mage

4 Blood Moon
4 Grindstone
3 Lotus Petal
3 Sensei's Divining Top
1 Ensnaring Bridge
1 Lion's Eye Diamond

4 Pyroblast
3 Red Elemental Blast
3 enlightened tutor

The board

4 Lightning Bolt
2 Sulfur Elemental
2 Ajani Vengeant
2 Nahiri, the Harbinger
1 duergar hedge-Mage
1 ethersworn canonist
1 Tormod's Crypt
1 ensnaring bridge
1 engineered explosives

Basically the changes are dropping the revoker, trinisphere, and RIP from the 75, putting the 7th blast main (probably the card that makes the most sense there, followed closely by 1 Nahiri or the Explosives) and adding in the extra walkers to wreck miracles. The board plan has to change up from what I've been doing somewhat in the past, meaning early moon, but chopping those 5 and the fast mana and other stuff lets you bring in a ton of good cards vs miracles. Obviously my hesitation is dropping all the bullets for lesser matchups, but the hope is that the 3 tutors and the help from LED let you race storm and dredge, while you hope to have good hands for harder matchups like Sneak and Show and Dark Confidant Loam-ish decks.

Also, I realize that the ideal fetch configuration should be 4 Tarns to mask miracles and sneak and show (tombs and petals) and 1 other (Mesa for miracles, mire for storm/grixis, foothills for RUG) but I'm lazy.

[drude1]

I think improving the Miracles match up is a good idea. Jack might be onto something with the four copies of Lightning Bolt and two planeswalkers out of the sideboard. Being able to take out Jace, the Mind Sculptor with Lightning Bolt seems great, but I can also understand the desire to play Sudden Shock to remove Monastery Mentor before it gets out of hand. Concerning which planeswalker to run, I think Nahiri, the Harbinger's ability to remove Counterbalance gives her the edge. Also, it's probably a safe bet running eight blasts in the 75.

I typically board out Blood Moon, Lotus Petal, and some number of Enlightened Tutor against them (not sure if this is ideal). It never crossed my mind to cut Grindstone, but that certainly doesn't mean it isn't worth exploring.

Is it worth running Vexing Shusher? What about Batterskull or some other equipment? Or even something really unconventional like land destruction (while keeping the moons in of course)?

There is currently quite a bit of discussion (https://www.reddit.com/r/MTGLegacy/comments/4tgk4g/official_how_to_beat_miracles_thread/)on the Legacy subreddit concerning how to beat Miracles for anyone who is interested.

I would LOVE to have this conversation in more detail. Miracles is so pervasive right now and the match-up is 50/50 at best. In doing some looking at winning Painter decks right now (on MTGGoldfish) there was a list that went 5-0 online that actually played 2 Nahiri and an Emrakul main. I have been playing around with this list (I know, I just said I thought Emrakul was garbage) and it has obviously performed pretty well game 1 against Miracles. There are a couple of interesting interactions as well. For example, if you have the combo out along with a welder but can't mill our your opponent (eg they have Emrakul), you can target yourself and weld in anything you want in response to the Emrakul trigger. Anyway, with 2 Nahiri main, the Miracles MU improves. As for how to beat it post-board, it would be worth having a discussion about what cards are good. I did read over the reddit discussion and it didn't really have a lot to offer. In general, I think you beat miracles in one of these ways:

1. stop the top: multiple revokers, pithing needle, chalice on 1 (not great for us), ???
2. tax their lands: 3 sphere, moon, winter orb?, boil, curse of Marit Lage?
3. have kill conditions they have a hard time dealing with: planeswalkers primarily. How much can we load up on these? Which ones? To some degree any non-creature permanent is somewhat difficult for Miracles to deal with. The question then becomes is it worth it to keep painter's servant in? As for other creature based answers, they all seem bad to me. Revoker is okay against top but they always just deal with it. Same for vexing shusher. The big problem with vexing shusher is that you need 3 red plus what ever other mana you need to get that one spell through. For example, I need 4 red mana to play shusher, cast a blast and make it uncounterable to kill a counterbalance and then they just kill it. Many people will then say "well then they aren't using their removal against your PS" but that really isn't true because of terminus (which kills multiple creatures at once) and snapcaster. I'm not saying that we have to cut all creatures completely, but I think our greatest weakness in the MU is that we are trying to win with a creature based combo and their deck is just riddled with removal in one form or another....I also REALLY HATE Wear/Tear.

So, the real question is, how all-in do we go against the Miracles MU? Go as far as a "transitional SB"? What would that look like indeed?

edit: wish I would have seen Jack's post before writing this, but it's still relevant. Very interested in talking about Jack's list. In particular, do most people actually feel like Magus and Jaya are vital to the main deck?

[mcbain]

This is great miracles discussion.

After sideboard your miracles opponents will typically have:
4 swords
2-3 wear tear
3-4 snap caster
4 counter balance
3-4 terminus
Fetch basics

Why do we want to pursue creatures, artifacts and enchantments..... your just asking to get 2:1'd all day long.

This discussion focusing on a slower 8 blast with Walker game is the right approach in my mind.

I have been experimenting with nahari, Koth, chandra, and ajani right now.

I'd also consider a basic Plains in the board. In a long miracles game you need to hit your lands. You can also play Arid Mesa and Fetch for your Plains against things like delver and dnt to keep your mana base stable.

In addition to the Plains I have been trying multiple 2-3 hedge mage, which has been quite strong against not only miracles but also chalice or equipment decks.

Finally fiery confluence continues to win me games I have right winning. 2 in the sideboard is a must.

The hedge mage and confluence are great and blowing up needles on your walkers for blow out turns.

I'll post my list later. I've gotten lots of 4-1 leagues but have yet to seal up a 5-0.





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[phoenix4]

I'm curious why you want more revokers? Most of us aren't in love with that card.

In a meta filled with Deathrites and stuff, while playing 4 Welders, I personally feel that Revokers are another way of fucking up the OP's gameplan. Of course against burn and stuff, it usually don't harass them as much, but to shut of LED's or Petal's against storm is ..... always nice :D

I can agree that MoatyMagus should probably be another Ensaring Bridge - your arguments concidered :D

[Morcrux]

I think people forget that "they just remove Revoker" means one less removal for servant. I wouldn't rely on it for a lock (max 1 main), but most decks needs it removed at some point, and shutting ex. Deathrite or Top in the meantime is valuable.
However I've never really recruited it, so a Needle (prolly SB) instead isn't out of mind.

Love the increased planeswalker-count in Jack's list. Dropping a lot of combo-hate, but in this era of miracles it's probably fine. There's some storm, but best game against them is fast combo anyway and 3 E.tutor main should do a little bit more work.
I'm slightly worried about dropping 3sphere/thorn in regard Grixis/UR delver tho, as I find them quite useful there too. But I guess Ajani and Confluence makes up for it?

[drude1]

Wow, this board has been pretty stagnant lately. I guess not much new going on with the deck. No tech from the new set[emoji15].
So I've been playing the 2 Nahiri, Emrakul main for a while now and actually really like. Or I should say I really like the two Nahiri anyway. They are pure gas and I am never sorry to see them. I had a match yesterday where I was on the play and dropped Nahiri turn one and my opponent scooped. Turns out they were playing Grixis delver so I couldn't believe they scooped game one. Must have had all dazes or something. Nahiri also got me game 2 after they surgicaled my grindstones. People have been doing that to me a lot lately which is kinda funny. I understand the reasoning behind it but I feel like it never works. I just end up beating them to death with my other threats. Did win the Minneapolis SCG IQ a few weeks ago with the deck but then went 3-3 in our local Legacy cup tourney. Bad losses to infect made me squeeze in spellskite to the main again. That's about it.


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[Weebo]

I just put the deck together but I haven't actually played it yet, so I have nothing to contribute. It's a pretty stock list right now, but I'd like to experiment with Nahiri and Confluences main at some point because I really like the idea of having those. The list as it stands is below, but I think there are probably tweaks to be made before I run it. Sideboard is just thrown together right now and is something I'll finalize sometime before playing. Local meta is likely to have a pretty good mix of recognizable decks. It's lighter on Miracles and combo, heavier on DnT, Elves, and Nic Fit, and sees regular other decks. I'm realistically unlikely to play it at anything larger than a weekly. Feedback is appreciated.

3 Arid Mesa
3 Bloodstained Mire
2 Plateau
4 Mountain
4 Ancient Tomb
3 City of Traitors
1 Great Furnace

4 Imperial Recruiter
4 Painter's Servant
3 Goblin Welder
2 Simian Spirit Guide
1 Jaya Ballard, Task Mage
1 Magus of the Moon
1 Phyrexian Revoker

4 Blood Moon
4 Grindstone
3 Lotus Petal
4 Red Elemental Blast
3 Pyroblast
3 Sensei's Divining Top
2 Enlightened Tutor
1 Ensnaring Bridge

SB:
3 Lightning Bolt
2 Fiery Confluence
2 Nahiri, the Harbinger
1 Containment Priest
1 Duergar Hedge-Mage
1 Engineered Explosives
1 Ensnaring Bridge
1 Ethersworn Canonist
1 Faerie Macabre
1 Rest in Peace

[Morcrux]

Feedback is appreciated.

List seems quite sweet to start out with! Just a couple edits main I'd suggest:
First off, while 20 lands could be nice, 19 has proven to be a sweetspot for the more explosive :wr: list. However you play 6 fetches, so might be fair (slighly better for top, tho I'd like to fill the spot with gas instead).
Other is that I'd only include either Revoker or Magus, with choice depending on meta. It's more of a personal thing, but I've never felt it's neccesary to have both, as recruiter is rarely used for anything else than fetching painter during game 1 anyway.
It would open another space main, where I'd add the second bridge (eventually explsoives as a catch-all). Revoker is also fair in sb (I use needle atm).

But again, these are personal opinions, and your list consist of good choices that can be justified!




So I've been playing the 2 Nahiri, Emrakul main for a while now and actually really like. Or I should say I really like the two Nahiri anyway. They are pure gas and I am never sorry to see them. I had a match yesterday where I was on the play and dropped Nahiri turn one and my opponent scooped. Turns out they were playing Grixis delver so I couldn't believe they scooped game one. Must have had all dazes or something. Nahiri also got me game 2 after they surgicaled my grindstones.
Yeah I'm also loving Nahiri and she's not leaving anytime soon. Since I'm playing 2 of her side without alt.ult, I've been playing 1 Ajani sb as well for those grindy matchups where another wincon does work (like bug, DnT, others). Been working great so far, dropping in 3 effective planeswalkers against Miracles is fantastic!
Also hooked up your mention of needle, and I really wonder why it's not been much discussed before. Still works with welder/tutor, and much harder to get rid of than revoker.. I find it pretty great actually, but might be because my meta is low on storm atm.

[Weebo]

List seems quite sweet to start out with! Just a couple edits main I'd suggest:
First off, while 20 lands could be nice, 19 has proven to be a sweetspot for the more explosive :wr: list. However you play 6 fetches, so might be fair (slighly better for top, tho I'd like to fill the spot with gas instead).
Other is that I'd only include either Revoker or Magus, with choice depending on meta. It's more of a personal thing, but I've never felt it's neccesary to have both, as recruiter is rarely used for anything else than fetching painter during game 1 anyway.
It would open another space main, where I'd add the second bridge (eventually explsoives as a catch-all). Revoker is also fair in sb (I use needle atm).

But again, these are personal opinions, and your list consist of good choices that can be justified!The main reason for 20 lands is that I'd like to fit a Confluence main, largely as a meta call. Cutting Magus could be a good spot - I'm a lot more likely to see DnT/Elves than Delver or Shardless, so I'd prefer Revoker and you make a good point about the toolbox options. I'm not sure how I feel about a second Bridge main with the ETutors, but that could be a good call.

I think I'll drop a fetch and Magus in favor of Explosives and something else. I want to play around with a more straightforward (and lower curve) list before moving Nahiri and/or Confluence main, which may reverse my opinion on the land cut but that's for the future. Thanks for the input!

[drude1]

The main reason for 20 lands is that I'd like to fit a Confluence main, largely as a meta call. Cutting Magus could be a good spot - I'm a lot more likely to see DnT/Elves than Delver or Shardless, so I'd prefer Revoker and you make a good point about the toolbox options. I'm not sure how I feel about a second Bridge main with the ETutors, but that could be a good call.

I think I'll drop a fetch and Magus in favor of Explosives and something else. I want to play around with a more straightforward (and lower curve) list before moving Nahiri and/or Confluence main, which may reverse my opinion on the land cut but that's for the future. Thanks for the input!

Yeah, I would agree with with most of Morcrux's suggestions. In particular, I think people should be running either a 2/2 or 3/1 split with tutor and bridge. You really want to have relatively good access to it in certain MUs.
This is another personal preference thing maybe, but I think sudden shock has an edge over lightning bolt as burn of choice. It's way better against Miracles as your opponent can often get Mentor over 3 in response to a bolt. Bolt obviously is a little better against Jace and in the mirror, but sudden shock is leaps and bounds better in the the infect, grixis delver, D&T and elves MUs, mostly because your opponent can't respond with things like mother of runes, elemental tokens, growth effects, etc. Having said that, I don't think anyone would necessarily fault you for either one.

@morcrux: yeah, I still go back and forth with that. Needle is obviously way better against Miracles and various lands, but revoker is does have the nod in the Storm MUs and it shuts off opponent's mox diamonds, lotus petals, etc. Both are probably fine against Sneak Attack. If it wasn't for storm I would definitely be on needle.

[Valleysdai]

Hey all, I'm part way through building imperial painter and reading this thread has helped greatly.

During proxy testing I tried a playset of FoWs in a boros only deck, which worked surprisingly well with how easy it is to get painter's servant out. I am not putting them into my build yet due to cost.

In my current list I am running gamble, it has great interaction with welder. What are people's thoughts on gamble in the final build?

I'll put my current list up soon for feedback.

[jandax]

Personally i love gamble, one of my favorite cards evar. It's old tutor tech from mono red builds of old. Only really good with at least three welders in your main.

[Nouille]

Hey all, I'm part way through building imperial painter and reading this thread has helped greatly.

During proxy testing I tried a playset of FoWs in a boros only deck, which worked surprisingly well with how easy it is to get painter's servant out. I am not putting them into my build yet due to cost.

In my current list I am running gamble, it has great interaction with welder. What are people's thoughts on gamble in the final build?

I'll put my current list up soon for feedback.

I used to play gamble (and faithless looting) in Painter, with a funky monoR list including 4 welders and spicy cards like wurmcoil, but to be honnest, it's more funny to play than really effective. The faithless was a nice card, but the gamble was often a dead draw or, if in starting hand, a card more able to destroy a good hand than to build it...

For the force of will question, I almost agree. Yes, it is stong, and you'll often be able to play a painter, but then, why no more pyroblasts ? Ok, it needs one more mana but it induces no card disaventage and can destroy permanents. But, since exiling unnecessary lands for counterspell effect is cool, i choose to play misdirection in sideboard. Misdirection allow to counter a counter if needed (just like a foW) + it is suuuuper strong vs abrupt decay/hymn to tourach/ancestral visions (unlike foW). To conclude, in my opinion : Force of will in painter : no, but misdirection in the side : why not ! :)

[drude1]

Yeah, everyone else has pretty much covered these but I would concur that Gamble is probably only playable in a different build of the deck that ran a full playset of Welders and tricky little things like wurmcoil, mindslaver, LED, etc. You will really wish your Gamble was a tutor when you are trying to land a blood moon or you are playing Grixis delver and they are just picking off your welders.

As for FoW, I agree that I would probably first max out on blasts as they read "hard counter or vindicate" vs ditching a card. That is unless you are actually playing a R/U version of the list where you don't need painter to be out for it to work. I would also then agree that Misdirection would still get the nod over FoW as it can answer abrupt decay and can be pretty back breaking against discard. Again though, I think these cards lead a person to force out their painters early just to expose them to removal before the time is right. It sucks to play your painter in order to turn on your FoW just to have it decay'd or bolted so you have to throw away your FoW and another card against their bolt. Having said that, if you are maxed out on blasts and still want more counterspells, then FoW could definitely be your ticket. Also remember though that it could easily get stranded in your hand which can sometimes hurt. I will purposefully go down on Red Elemental Blasts against decks like Eldrazi or D&T because I don't want to have a hand full of cards I can't play while they are beating my face under my Ensnaring Bridge.

[Kap'n Cook]

In before the infinite questions of "hey I can't afford recruiters can I still play this guy instead even though it can't grab painter" from new people

http://static.starcitygames.com/www/images/article/16August2016Preview01.png

[cab0747]

In before the infinite questions of "hey I can't afford recruiters can I still play this guy instead even though it can't grab painter" from new people

http://static.starcitygames.com/www/images/article/16August2016Preview01.png

Soooooo..... ?


Can't cast it under blood moon without petals and that makes it real bad with bridges. Not an acceptable substitute in my opinion (but I've been away from the deck for almost a year now).

I always thought recruiter would be cool in modern or standard. It's a shame this dropped in conspiracy.

Edit: The inability to.get painter is a pretty big problem too.

[Valleysdai]

In before the infinite questions of "hey I can't afford recruiters can I still play this guy instead even though it can't grab painter" from new people

http://static.starcitygames.com/www/images/article/16August2016Preview01.png

The issue with it is that it doesn't get painter and a few of the cards that answer certain situations.

[CptHaddock]

Soooooo..... ?


Can't cast it under blood moon without petals and that makes it real bad with bridges. Not an acceptable substitute in my opinion (but I've been away from the deck for almost a year now).

I always thought recruiter would be cool in modern or standard. It's a shame this dropped in conspiracy.



The issue with it is that it doesn't get painter and a few of the cards that answer certain situations.

http://i.imgur.com/axJmn.gif

Jack was just being sarcastic because that question gets asked a lot.

[jandax]

[emoji23]

Dat .gif

My hero


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[Nouille]

We were talking about gamble in painter few posts before, but actually, the new daretti might give a new chance to the RB Painter build including 4 goblins, minslaver, LED and entomb !

https://i.redd.it/uiu3g1rvdyfx.png

Imo, it's far from broken, but i may give a try to this.
What do you guys think about it ?

[mcbain]

The fact that it makes artifacts to welder is pretty spicy. On top of that it can kill things makes it very interesting. Then add the 3cc and it has potential.

It would have to be built around though and may dillute our deck into a win more.

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[drude1]

We were talking about gamble in painter few posts before, but actually, the new daretti might give a new chance to the RB Painter build including 4 goblins, minslaver, LED and entomb !

https://i.redd.it/uiu3g1rvdyfx.png

Imo, it's far from broken, but i may give a try to this.
What do you guys think about it ?

Wow, that's pretty strong. He protects himself to some degree, has really strong removal, and his ultimate is definitely relevant. I liked playing black in general. It's almost a recent embarrassment of riches in the Planeswalker category now. Don't know if he is better than Nahiri though. Nahiri's ultimate is just so good. Obviously the creature removal is better with Darretti but he still can't take care of a counterbalance on the table.


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[mcbain]

Honestly, im not concerned about counterbalance. Its the wear and tear that really blows us out of the water.

Painter has 6-8 blasts among other removal. So long as you dont push into the miracles player they will respect you. Many games have been won when im on the draw and elect to not play t1 welder or top because i want to represent blast. Whether i have it or not. Loosing to a t2 counterbalance is unacceptable.

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[zangoasyl]

http://media-dominaria.cursecdn.com/avatars/126/343/636070256859674145.png
Now this guy looks like a nice addition to our sideboard!
Put it on three against S&T-Decks, put it on two against storm, as well as having a working protection against abrupt decay...

thoughts?

[cab0747]

http://i.imgur.com/axJmn.gif

Jack was just being sarcastic because that question gets asked a lot.


Haha, I know he was joking. I guess my sarcasm didn't translate well through text.

[Valleysdai]

http://i.imgur.com/axJmn.gif

Jack was just being sarcastic because that question gets asked a lot.

I gathered but got in with the reason why so that a lot of people don't keep asking why :P

[CptHaddock]

Now this guy looks like a nice addition to our sideboard!
Put it on three against S&T-Decks, put it on two against storm, as well as having a working protection against abrupt decay...

thoughts?

Card is obviously insane but the double white is a major deal breaker. Also just to note this guy on 3 stops us from playing ensnaring bridge and on 2 RIP and we can't really play him at 1...

[Valleysdai]

Here is my current list, what do you guys think?

Creatures
1 manic vandal
4 imperial recruiter
1 magus of the moon
4 painter's servant
1 ethersworn canonist
2 simian spirit guide
1 jaya ballard
3 goblin welder
1 spirit of the labyrinth

Enchantments
4 blood moon

Artifacts
3 lotus petal
1 pithing needle
1 Ensnaring Bridge
4 grindstone
2 Sensei's Divining Top

Instants
4 pyroblast
3 red elemental blast
3 enlightened tutor

Lands
2 mountain
1 plains
1 great furnace
3 arid mesa
2 plateau
4 ancient tomb
4 city of traitors

Sideboard
1 nahiri, the harbinger
1 engineered explosives
2 shattering spree
2 fiery confluence
1 ensnaring bridge
1 spirit of the labyrinth
1 rest in peace
1 duergar hedge-mage
1 grafdigger's cage
1 tormod's crypt (may cut)
1 ethersworn canonist
2 surgical extraction

[entity]

Hello everyone,

I remember Wastelands being discussed here a long time ago, but I can't find that discussion and/or potential decklists now. Was there a conclusion reached on them not being worth it? Did anyone gave it a try in a bigger event? I'm playing in a small local Legacy event tomorrow and feeling up for some experimentation right now...

[mcbain]

Michael keller i believe was experimenting with them. I recall they were run in the spells slot and not the lands spot.

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[entity]

Michael keller i believe was experimenting with them. I recall they were run in the spells slot and not the lands spot.

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Thank you! This helped me find tournament report and a list.

[Michael Keller]

Michael keller i believe was experimenting with them. I recall they were run in the spells slot and not the lands spot.

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Wasteland was okay, but it was really more preferential than anything else.

[mcbain]

Valleysdai, i don know exactly what your meta looks like but i would try a more typical list first. Something by andrew wright or similar in the last few months perhaps.

Often ground can be made up by being familar with the deck and not odd choices. Overall it looks like a version of the deck from the days of dig througb time and omnishow.

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[Valleysdai]

Valleysdai, i don know exactly what your meta looks like but i would try a more typical list first. Something by andrew wright or similar in the last few months perhaps.

Often ground can be made up by being familar with the deck and not odd choices. Overall it looks like a version of the deck from the days of dig througb time and omnishow.

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Thanks, I didn't realise that it resembled a previous version of the deck. My meta has quite a lot of miracles (who's meta doesn't?), a few d&t, elves and sometimes ant, tin fins, reanimator, eldrazi and burn.

What are the odd choices in the deck? The answers for various decks main?

[CptHaddock]

Thanks, I didn't realise that it resembled a previous version of the deck. My meta has quite a lot of miracles (who's meta doesn't?), a few d&t, elves and sometimes ant, tin fins, reanimator, eldrazi and burn.

What are the odd choices in the deck? The answers for various decks main?

One of the biggest issues that we have with deckbuilding is that we tend to get a little lost with all the cards that we can play. People tend to see the best results with more streamlined lists, metagaming is nice but sometimes it ends up hurting you a lot more than helping you when you don't see the matchups that you are aiming for. It seems like your list is really all over the place. You have spirit for miracles, vandal for d&t and canonist for combo matchups.

I think that vandal (please upgrade to Duergar Hedge-Mage!) and pithing needle are nice (you might also want to try another revoker here) but unless you're facing elves/storm week after week I wouldn't play her main. The spirit just seems like an awkward 3/1 beater, I think if you want a slot in your maindeck that is good against miracles and has some applications vs other decks you might want to try a planeswalker e.g. nahiri, ajani, koth, etc.

[Valleysdai]

One of the biggest issues that we have with deckbuilding is that we tend to get a little lost with all the cards that we can play. People tend to see the best results with more streamlined lists, metagaming is nice but sometimes it ends up hurting you a lot more than helping you when you don't see the matchups that you are aiming for. It seems like your list is really all over the place. You have spirit for miracles, vandal for d&t and canonist for combo matchups.

I think that vandal (please upgrade to Duergar Hedge-Mage!) and pithing needle are nice (you might also want to try another revoker here) but unless you're facing elves/storm week after week I wouldn't play her main. The spirit just seems like an awkward 3/1 beater, I think if you want a slot in your maindeck that is good against miracles and has some applications vs other decks you might want to try a planeswalker e.g. nahiri, ajani, koth, etc.

(Chaos) Elves is the most likely match up that I am to face due to it being run by the person who I get a lift to events with.

The canonist and spirit I thought to try because after seeing quite a few decks played (especially elves) I was noticing how oftwn they drae/play more than 1 card per turn. So I thought have those to slow/stop them while I focus on comboing off.

The manic vandal is there due to the lack of land restriction to use his ability and I find pithing needle better than revoker due to the prevalence of spot removal (especially exile)

[Kap'n Cook]

With regards to main deck tutor targets I'm believing more and more that pure speed with zero targets beyond magus and jaya is the best course of action in game 1. Especially considering that targeted hate for the deck (needle wear tear etc) will be non existent. I'm probably going to chop maindeck revoker for something, not sure yet but I'll post a newer list when the meta settles. Pretty sure an LED is probably the right call main if you're at 3 tutors.

Also painter homies I'll be driving out to Cali so I'm looking to maybe crash at some places along the way two weeks from now. If anyone wants to hang for a night hit me up with a PM.

[drude1]

http://media-dominaria.cursecdn.com/avatars/126/343/636070256859674145.png
Now this guy looks like a nice addition to our sideboard!
Put it on three against S&T-Decks, put it on two against storm, as well as having a working protection against abrupt decay...

thoughts?

Yes! This set is really trying to be nice to us. This guy seems very strong in the board as you mentioned. I will definitely at least play around with this card for a while and see how it performs.
However, I was playing around with new Daretti and he actually seems very clunky. I think you would be better off building around him, welder, entomb and maybe looting and reanimate and just play some artifact reanimation thing. It's not good at putting a combo together though because you never seem to have the right pieces at the right time. Our R/W build seems much more efficient at getting what you need with tutors. If someone else comes up with a list that works though, I would love to see it.

@valleydai: your newest list only seems to run 17 lands or did I just count that wrong? That seems uber greedy and I think you would mulligan a lot to 0-1 land hands.

I also am in agreement with Jack that, especially game one, you don't need most of the supporting cast line revokers and such as you are just trying to combo off faster than they can win. Having said that, I still play 1 X Canonist main to help head off combo decks that can be faster than us (storm, Omnitell, elves, belcher, etc). I like Canonist because she also protects our combo. If you land painter with Canonist out and three mana up, you basically win the game. I am also playing 7 blasts main and the Nahiri combo for decks that play chalice or Emrakul in their main. These are just personal preferences though. I don't play Jaya but if I weren't playing Nahiri then Jaya would have to be included in the main. I just found that I would usually much rather draw Nahiri over Jaya in most scenarios.

@Jack: well Minneapolis is probably a little out of your way but I would be happy to offer you our guest room for a night if your plans bring you to the area.


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[Valleysdai]

@valleydai: your newest list only seems to run 17 lands or did I just count that wrong? That seems uber greedy and I think you would mulligan a lot to 0-1 land hands.


Yeah, there are only 17 lands, I did have 18 but was told by a more experienced player to have 17 and run an extra petal to speed it up due to having a lot of lotuses and simians.

[jandax]

Which experienced people? All the ones who play this deck for years run 19 lands, maybe 20 for mono red. 17 is to few. This isn't storm.

[Valleysdai]

Which experienced people? All the ones who play this deck for years run 19 lands, maybe 20 for mono red. 17 is to few. This isn't storm.

I'm not sure who they are on here but they do very well in the uk.

Usually when I play more than 19 lands I always suffer with mana flooding. Currently I need to finish the deck to a highenough standard before I can test in a highly competitive environment.

[jandax]

19 is the accepted norm, it's been working for years. When starting out, don't try to reinvent the wheel. People have put tons of time in on testing and it'd be a waste of your time not to adopt a standard list to start off with. From there you should play some tournaments with it, not for results but for experience. No better testing environment, really


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[Kap'n Cook]

19 land is the optimal configuration for the stock shortcake lists. Usually the 19th land is player choice between plains, 4th city, or great furnace. I have played 17 and 18 in mono red and white when Seth and I were testing initial white splashes more seriously in 2013 and even then we were trying some number of chrome moxen to compensate for the reduced land count. The low number of white cards made chrome mox unplayable, while 17 and 18 land were too few to reliably handle our curve of 3 drops while also navigating wasteland.

20 lands usually came at the expense of more fast mana. I know a lot of popular mono red lists of old loved the 8484 mana split of sol land, fetch, mountain, simian, but that is not conducive to running enlightened tutor and the added speed/color requirement it gives you.

[SDBobPlissken]

I've said it before and I'll say it again... Fiery confluence is the shit. It has been a factor in my wins for the past month. I'm currently playing 3 in the board and want to maybe move one to the main deck, well because I'm a big fan of one ofs. If anything it gives your opponent the illusion that they need to worry about it. I'm playing jack's current md from the first page with a few changes to the board. Anyone else think this deserves a main deck slot?

[mcbain]

It would be pretty spicy as a 1 of. Trouble is the real value comes from blowing up thier sideboard hate against you. If you open the kimono to soon it might spoil it.



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[Morcrux]

I'm no fan of it main. It's the tits against half the meta, and worthless against the other. I mean, if they're low on weak creatures and with no relevant artifacts, 6 burn doesn't do anything either since it's a 1-of.
I'd say maindeck should consist of pure consistency and speed, and leave the spicy stuff in sb.

That being said, I also play 3 confluence side, besides 4 bolt and 1 Ajani, which pretty much sums up for an alternate (and effective) burn plan I bring in against stuff like Omnitell. Seeing how DnT probably will rise with new conspiracy, confluence's not gonna leave in a good while either ~

[Poron]

http://media-dominaria.cursecdn.com/avatars/126/343/636070256859674145.png
Now this guy looks like a nice addition to our sideboard!
Put it on three against S&T-Decks, put it on two against storm, as well as having a working protection against abrupt decay...

thoughts?

Meddling Mage is still better against what this is strong.

SnT and Storm decks

[LeoCop 90]

I'm currently playing two fiery confluences maindeck in my dragon stompy list and i can confirm they are fantastic. But stompy is a prison/aggro deck so even when there are no small creatures or artifacts, 6 to the face can be very relevant. In painter it should be a sideboard card i think.

[drude1]

Meddling Mage is still better against what this is strong.

SnT and Storm decks

??? First, we don't play blue, so your point is kinda irrelevant. Second, this card is much stronger against storm than meddling mage. They can deal with meddling mage via abrupt decay. This card shuts off both abrupt decay and the tutors, making it very difficult to deal with for the storm player.

Still loving confluence myself but don't love it main in my current configuration. It is close though. If it was instant speed, I would probably main it as then it would have relevance against decks like storm or show and tell. 6 damage to the face in response to a griselbrand activation or ad nauseum is pretty good. At sorcery speed though it is kinda dead to several MUs. I also think D&T will probably gain popularity with the new Conspiracy cards to I may up my sideboard count as well.

[jandax]

What are people boarding out when burn like confluence/etc comes in?

I am sure I have bad habits of leaving things in that should come out because I've been on the deck five years now. If anyone with exp boarding in burn (for creature and burn match ups I'm assuming) let me pick your brain please very much.


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[SDBobPlissken]

i go by what I see but usually my main cuts are magus (if it can be dealt with by swords or bolt), Jaya (seems too slow for games 2 and 3), Reb (if it was a non blue deck), lions eye diamond, any number of e tutors if moon and bridge is good and they are playing wasteland, sometimes I'll cut a top if they are playing it too and revoker seems good to leave in.

[tired_papasmurf]

Oh boy oh boy is Kaladesh exciting. A land that tutors for Artifacts, a planeswalker that tutors for artifacts, some kind of weird obelisk thing that might find an artifact.

I can only hope this set gives us something we can use, what with all the artifact related shenanigans running around.

[drude1]

Oh boy oh boy is Kaladesh exciting. A land that tutors for Artifacts, a planeswalker that tutors for artifacts, some kind of weird obelisk thing that might find an artifact.

I can only hope this set gives us something we can use, what with all the artifact related shenanigans running around.

Yeah, this seems like an obvious inclusion although it clearly doesn't play well with Blood Moon.

http://www.magicspoiler.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/Inventors-Fair-216x302.png

[SDBobPlissken]

Oh boy oh boy is Kaladesh exciting. A land that tutors for Artifacts, a planeswalker that tutors for artifacts, some kind of weird obelisk thing that might find an artifact.

I can only hope this set gives us something we can use, what with all the artifact related shenanigans running around.

Anyone considering splashing blue for that new planeswalker?

[Morcrux]

Anyone considering splashing blue for that new planeswalker?

Althought the ultimate is game-winning (as for most planeswalkers), it's slow af and she got no protection. The +1 is lame too. Unless you got a Recruiter out to value that -2, I don't see any use for her.

I doubt this will see any play anywhere besides commander or some janky tech that abuses -2.

[Jimbrewersbro]

Is anyone else excited to put the new Chandra in. Seems good for the miracles matchup as alternate win condition.

[mcbain]

She seems very legit.

Card draw, mana, damage. I havent even read her ultimate yet.

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[zangoasyl]

http://www.magicspoiler.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Chandra-Torch-of-Defiance-Planeswalker.jpg

[Morcrux]

http://mythicspoiler.com/kld/cards/chandratorchofdefiance.jpg

Now that's more interesting. Not sure if it's worth replacing Nahiri for her as I like the CB exile, but could be in Ajani's slot(s). Really like that the mana is +1

[GundamGuy]

I don't think new Chandra makes the cut for R/W builds but is something to consider for Mono-Red Builds if that every becomes the flavor of the month again.

[Jungian Thing]

I'm back.

Have been off playing edh and generally letting life get in the way but I am back slinging shortcake! My deck is an old list but I placed with it recently at a smaller tournament so not too unhappy. Updating is a labour of love because the deck a fully pimp, miscuts, signed and altered...

I have picked up bling LED an ET signed by Richard Garfield and one Nahiri. I guess I want to know, what have the last two years has become the must have for the deck? I'm looking at you Jack.

And where are all the vids???

[tired_papasmurf]

I guess I want to know, what have the last two years has become the must have for the deck??

As a frame of reference, what was the last latest hotness you ogled last time you checked in?

[l33twash0r]

Finally got the set of Recruiters so guess its time to build this deck. Any tips how good the Nahiri build is? Seen few do well in MODO atleast.

[mcbain]

http://mythicspoiler.com/kld/cards/paintersservant.html

In other news. Masterpiece painter's servant.

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[MGB]

Finally got the set of Recruiters so guess its time to build this deck. Any tips how good the Nahiri build is? Seen few do well in MODO atleast.

Did you get Portal ones? How much did you pay total for your playset?

[Kap'n Cook]

I'm back.

Have been off playing edh and generally letting life get in the way but I am back slinging shortcake! My deck is an old list but I placed with it recently at a smaller tournament so not too unhappy. Updating is a labour of love because the deck a fully pimp, miscuts, signed and altered...

I have picked up bling LED an ET signed by Richard Garfield and one Nahiri. I guess I want to know, what have the last two years has become the must have for the deck? I'm looking at you Jack.

And where are all the vids???

I'm going to be trying out a bunch of different things. I've been pretty unhappy with the board in general, feel like there isn't a cohesive plan for what should be happening. Guess I'll just post sometime in the future when I'm more comfortable with a list.

[tired_papasmurf]

http://mythicspoiler.com/kld/cards/paintersservant.html

In other news. Masterpiece painter's servant.

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Tombs, Fetches, Painters, Petals. So much bling for such a relatively niche deck.

[Jungian Thing]

As a frame of reference, what was the last latest hotness you ogled last time you checked in?

This was me recently http://mtgtop8.com/event?e=13386&d=278499&f=LE and here is half of it http://imgur.com/AgCGNVv the rest is similarly unique.

Of all things I lost to Goblins.

Ok, thanks Jack, I'll slow down my purchasing of bling. I have been pretty explosive and winning from a meta that seems to have little idea of what the deck does. Miracles is hard once the lock is on so I go for a quick grind. Burn still Insta scoop. Would be great to go back through your twitch vids but they aren't up anymore.

[Moomba]

Why couldn't they have added Grindstone, WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!

[apple713]

Why couldn't they have added Grindstone, WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!

Reserve list

[NathanS2k]

Reserve list

I don't remember seeing grindstone on the reserve list.:confused:

[l33twash0r]

Did you get Portal ones? How much did you pay total for your playset?

Traded set of Judge Rewards for ~poor/hp Ancestral.

[Jungian Thing]

I don't remember seeing grindstone on the reserve list.:confused:

Yep, because it isn't.

[Morcrux]

Grindstone might still show up as mastercraft promo in the next set, there'll be 20 there too.
However I doubt Ensnaring Bridge and Top will their place amongst them due to flavour-fail (japanese toy and resisting structure?), so I doubt we'll be able to bling out all our artifacts.

I've never had the hots for promos, but it could be awesome to have bronze-colored frames on all artifacts in a almost mono-red deck. Just a few of them is a bit meh tho.

[Cyanhur]

Hi everybody,

I was at BoM Paris last week with R/W painter and i am back with so many question :cry:.

I finished at round 9 with 4-1-4.

What can i do vs combo deck kill turn 1 or 2? my 4 lost was 2 Reanim (with grisell turn 1 or turn 2 eatch time), lost vs elves with blue, lost vs Tin Fin (grisel turn 1 and grisel turn 1 + storm).

I love legacy, i think it is the best format. I love painter combo and moon effect but i am lost :frown:.

I will go to the Eternal Weekend at Paris (22 october). Would you advice for me? maybe grixis painter deck ?

(sorry for my bad English)

[CptHaddock]

Hi everybody,

I was at BoM Paris last week with R/W painter and i am back with so many question :cry:.

I finished at round 9 with 4-1-4.

What can i do vs combo deck kill turn 1 or 2? my 4 lost was 2 Reanim (with grisell turn 1 or turn 2 eatch time), lost vs elves with blue, lost vs Tin Fin (grisel turn 1 and grisel turn 1 + storm).

I love legacy, i think it is the best format. I love painter combo and moon effect but i am lost :frown:.

I will go to the Eternal Weekend at Paris (22 october). Would you advice for me? maybe grixis painter deck ?

(sorry for my bad English)

If you're expecting to run into a lot of combo at an event I would recommend running an Ethersworn Canonist main, if you are on the play you can at least attempt to slow down your opponent a little. Postboard i'd just keep hands with quick graveyard/combo hate and hope you are faster than your opponent. Surgical Extraction also gives you a way to interact turn 1 if your opponent goes off. I think the only time i've beaten reanimator is when my opponent forced pitching a tidespout tyrant :cool:.

Elves has always been a sketchy matchup for me, it feels very 50/50 but I think we're the faster/more interactive deck but they're the more consistent deck. Not sure what advice to give here other than keep hands that can interact with them early on and don't expect to win on the back of a moon on the draw.

[CptHaddock]

Ended up going 4-3 at a win a lotus event, went 4-0 into 0-3. Ending up beating burn, miracles, aggro loam and white eldrazi. Lost to aggro loam, bug delver (lost 1 game because I was an idiot and didn't keep track of time going to 5 guys) and grixis delver. On the plus side I got to meet Mapson and he's a pretty chill dude.

Besides that poor result i've been wanting to run an EE main but I have no idea what to cut. My first thoughts were swapping the Magus with an EE in the board or maybe a top. I really don't want to cut the revoker because of the number of d&t players running around. Do you guys have any recommendations?

4 Ancient Tomb
3 City of Traitors
2 Plateau
1 Great Furnace
2 wooded foothills
3 bloodstained mire
4 Mountain

4 Imperial Recruiter
4 Painter's Servant
3 Goblin Welder
2 Simian Spirit Guide
1 Phyrexian Revoker
1 Jaya Ballard, Task Mage
1 Magus of the Moon

4 Blood Moon
4 Grindstone
3 Sensei's Divining Top
3 Lotus Petal
1 Lion's Eye Diamond
1 Ensnaring Bridge

4 Pyroblast
2 Red Elemental Blast
3 enlightened tutor

[Nouille]

My list is slightly different of yours but i can still give you my 2 cents.
In my opinion, 7 tutors for painter is too much, i found 5 to be the sweet number. I currently run 3 recruiters and 2 e.tutors, and I feel quite confident to get an early painter with 5 tutors + 4 painters = 11/60 (+sensei top help...). For me these 2 are the more obvious cuts. As a personal pref, I would cut the magus of the moon. Blood moon is so strong because of the lack of legs. I am ok with monoR list with magus, but since we got a tutor for the moon with the white splash, I prefer to focus on landing the enchant. Recently, I also found Jaya to be irrelevant most of the time. I don't know if it's due to the match-ups I faced, but I sided it out 90% of the G2/3 in my last matches, and I am seriously considering cutting it from the 75...

I might also change a mountain for a plain to be able to cast tutors and side cards under BM. Somtimes it will make you mulligan, but this is quite unusual.

Anyhow, I never felt the need of EE in painter, would be curious to see if it works fine. I'm curious of the succeed you got with the LED also. Most of my hand with LED were super clunky when i tried it, some months ago.

(sry for my english...)

[Morcrux]

Besides that poor result i've been wanting to run an EE main but I have no idea what to cut. My first thoughts were swapping the Magus with an EE in the board or maybe a top. I really don't want to cut the revoker because of the number of d&t players running around. Do you guys have any recommendations?


I'd let go of Jaya.
She's really good for getting out of freaky moments and curbstomping barreled opponents or merfolk, but all in all those are fringe moments or win-more. She's often a dead draw pre-board, and you also bring in EE to deal with chalices which are one of the big reasons to have her main anyway.

I'd also discuss against mb Revoker, but the meta-call is understandable. 1-of Needle side's been working great for me tho, leaving mainboard open for more speed game 1.




In my opinion, 7 tutors for painter is too much, i found 5 to be the sweet number.
Don't forget that E-tutor fetch Grindstone too! Especially game 1 we'll want to access both pieces asap. At least in my opinion. In dire needs it also grabs Ensnaring Bridge/EE, making them available as 1-ofs.

[Nouille]

Don't forget that E-tutor fetch Grindstone too! Especially game 1 we'll want to access both pieces asap. At least in my opinion. In dire needs it also grabs Ensnaring Bridge/EE, making them available as 1-ofs.

Yup, I totaly emphasize this point, my sentence was a big shortcut in order to state my point of view (in the same way, recruiter is not only a tutor for painter obviously...). But I still think 7 tutors too much. The problem with e.tutor is the card disavantage, and runing 3 of is a lot. I used to play 2 recruiters and 3 tutors when i didn't have my recruiters playset, and well... I was often hellbent turn 3/4 haha. At least it synergize with ensnaring bridge !

[Morcrux]

Yup, I totaly emphasize this point, my sentence was a big shortcut in order to state my point of view (in the same way, recruiter is not only a tutor for painter obviously...). But I still think 7 tutors too much. The problem with e.tutor is the card disavantage, and runing 3 of is a lot. I used to play 2 recruiters and 3 tutors when i didn't have my recruiters playset, and well... I was often hellbent turn 3/4 haha. At least it synergize with ensnaring bridge !

Not too long ago I'd agree, I disliked the card. It is indeed card disadvantage, but in the core we're a combo deck, needing quality over quantity. Or in this case combo pieces.
I often side out 2-3 tutors alongside fast-mana, but I really like having 11 Painters and 7 Grindstones for the first game against unknown opponent.

But that's just my 2 cents, there are several ways this deck can play out. My point was to not water down E.tutor to a painter-only tutor :)

[CptHaddock]

My list is slightly different of yours but i can still give you my 2 cents.
In my opinion, 7 tutors for painter is too much, i found 5 to be the sweet number. I currently run 3 recruiters and 2 e.tutors, and I feel quite confident to get an early painter with 5 tutors + 4 painters = 11/60 (+sensei top help...). For me these 2 are the more obvious cuts. As a personal pref, I would cut the magus of the moon. Blood moon is so strong because of the lack of legs. I am ok with monoR list with magus, but since we got a tutor for the moon with the white splash, I prefer to focus on landing the enchant. Recently, I also found Jaya to be irrelevant most of the time. I don't know if it's due to the match-ups I faced, but I sided it out 90% of the G2/3 in my last matches, and I am seriously considering cutting it from the 75...


Maybe our playstyles are different but this seems like an odd change to me. I'll admit i'm way too brave and keep hands sometimes that most painter players probably wouldn't keep. I think that first and foremost we're a combo deck and we should definitely try to focus on our combo in any way possible. any non combo thing that we try to do ends up being kind of medicore because of how clunky some of our cards are. I've tried doing fancy stuff in the past like playing an Ajani main to hedge against decks like shardless and miracles but it's always just ended up blowing up in my face. If you haven't tried 3 e-tutors main I would highly recommend it, it changes up the dynamics of a lot of your matchups.



I might also change a mountain for a plain to be able to cast tutors and side cards under BM. Somtimes it will make you mulligan, but this is quite unusual.


I tried a plains but in my games I was getting a lot of hands that were Plains + Sol land with the rest of the cards being red. I'm going to take a little break from painter but i'm going to try it at some point in the future.



Anyhow, I never felt the need of EE in painter, would be curious to see if it works fine. I'm curious of the succeed you got with the LED also. Most of my hand with LED were super clunky when i tried it, some months ago.

(sry for my english...)

I like LED, I was a little suspicious of it when I started playing but i've turned around quite a bit. It speeds us up considerable and when you are racing against decks like storm/elves having the ability to turn 1/2 them a lot sooner becomes really relevant. If you have garbage in your hand but have a recruiter it basically just becomes a black lotus. I usually side it out against blue decks if I show it to them game 1 but you can usually put the fear of god into people by playing a combo piece and an LED. I don't think it's 100% needed but it's one of those things that is nice to have.

I like EE in general, it's a fantastic catch all for most of what gives us trouble. It kills delvers, drs, chalices, pyromancer tokens and sometimes even gets 2 drops like revokers.
Just having the ability to X for 1 your opponent seems really good.


I'd let go of Jaya.
She's really good for getting out of freaky moments and curbstomping barreled opponents or merfolk, but all in all those are fringe moments or win-more. She's often a dead draw pre-board, and you also bring in EE to deal with chalices which are one of the big reasons to have her main anyway.

I'd also discuss against mb Revoker, but the meta-call is understandable. 1-of Needle side's been working great for me tho, leaving mainboard open for more speed game 1.


I figure i'll just address the Jaya thing at once since both of you brought her up. I'm probably just being very stubborn about removing but I just like having her in the deck. She feels like if she isn't dealt with soon she just ends up taking over the game. Do you guys run a Nahiri in her place? It feels wrong to not play our 3 drop planeswalker in the 75.

I think for the time being i'm going to switch the EE and Magus around from the main and side. Thanks folks!

[Morcrux]

It feels wrong to not play our 3 drop planeswalker in the 75.

Also understandable, wasn't cool cutting her but felt necessary :)



709.1c A flip card’s color and mana cost don’t change if the permanent is flipped. Also, any changes to it by external effects will still apply.

Just want to point this out, since the rule was changed as of "Shadows over Innistrad". This means EE can't kill Delver alongside elemental tokens anymore :<
But as far as I'm concerned there ain't any other flip-cards than Delver in legacy atm, so EE is still boss at killing stuff.

[CptHaddock]

Also understandable, wasn't cool cutting her but felt necessary :)

Just want to point out that there was a cmc rule change with the flip-cards as of Shadows of Innistrad. The flip-side no longer got 0 cmc, but shares the cost of the front, thus EE can't kill Delver alongside elemental tokens anymore :<
But as far as I'm concerned there ain't any other flip-cards than Delver in legacy atm, so EE is still boss at killing stuff.

I guess each situation you are going to use it is going to be different but I think overall it's a good change in general. I think having the ability to kill a delver and a drs (or mongoose if people still play that card anymore) is WAY better than killing delver and tokens.

[kinghrothgar12]

Hey all. I recently picked up the deck and have been having a blast with it at local tournaments. I took it to scg classic in orlando this weekend, and I went x-3 losing to burn in all three matchups and the day before, I played in a classic, going x-1 (again losing to burn). The match seems downright unwinnable unless I happen to combo quickly and have 1/2 protections spells to stop him from killing painter.

What can I do to improve the matchup? Is there a way I can morph the sideboard without negatively affecting other matchups? Or, do I just have to hope to be lucky and not get matched against burn?

This is my list for reference:

3 Goblin Welder
4 Imperial Recruiter
1 Jaya Ballard, Task Mage
4 Painter's Servant
1 Phyrexian Revoker
2 Simian Spirit Guide
1 Spellskite
Creatures [16]
4 Blood Moon
1 Enlightened Tutor
3 Ensnaring Bridge
4 Grindstone
3 Lotus Petal
4 Pyroblast
3 Red Elemental Blast
3 Sensei's Divining Top
Spells [25]
4 Ancient Tomb
3 Arid Mesa
3 City of Traitors
1 Great Furnace
4 Mountain
2 Plateau
2 Scalding Tarn

2 Containment Priest
3 Ethersworn Canonist
3 Fiery Confluence
1 Magus of the Moon
2 Nahiri
3 Sudden Shock
1 Surgical Extraction

[CptHaddock]

Hey all. I recently picked up the deck and have been having a blast with it at local tournaments. I took it to scg classic in orlando this weekend, and I went x-3 losing to burn in all three matchups and the day before, I played in a classic, going x-1 (again losing to burn). The match seems downright unwinnable unless I happen to combo quickly and have 1/2 protections spells to stop him from killing painter.

What can I do to improve the matchup? Is there a way I can morph the sideboard without negatively affecting other matchups? Or, do I just have to hope to be lucky and not get matched against burn?


Yeah the burn matchup is pretty bad... You got the strategy down, pretty much combo off before they get going. We have a good variety of cards against burn like Spellskite, Warmth, Sphere of Law, Leyline of Sanctity, Absolute Law, Burrenton Forge-Tender & Worship, etc. The issue that a lot of these cards cut down on some of the versatility of some of the sideboard slots and they're also some combination of clunky and slow.

If you want a silver bullet against burn i'd recommend Sphere of Law, Warmth or Leyline of Sanctity (also pretty solid against discard and storm).

[Kap'n Cook]

Here is what I've been trying with up and down success. I played some leagues and usually go at least 3-2. Big test was a paper tourney where I misplayed a few times for a bad showing but followed it up with a 5-0 league so I think it has merit with this meta.

19 usual land
Recruiter/Painter
3 welder
2 ssg
Jaya

Stone/moon
3 top
3 petal
1 Bridge/led/EE

7 blast
3 tutor

Sb
3 lightning bolt
2 pyroclasm
2 sulfur elemental
2 nahiri
Hedge Mage
Thorn
Crypt
Canonist
Bridge
Revoker/magus depending on expected meta

EE main is much more valuable at this current stage. I put the clasms in for the 4c delver matchup but it has great utility all around.

[CptHaddock]

Here is what I've been trying with up and down success. I played some leagues and usually go at least 3-2. Big test was a paper tourney where I misplayed a few times for a bad showing but followed it up with a 5-0 league so I think it has merit with this meta.

19 usual land
Recruiter/Painter
3 welder
2 ssg
Jaya

Stone/moon
3 top
3 petal
1 Bridge/led/EE

7 blast
3 tutor

Sb
3 lightning bolt
2 pyroclasm
2 sulfur elemental
2 nahiri
Hedge Mage
Thorn
Crypt
Canonist
Bridge
Revoker/magus depending on expected meta

EE main is much more valuable at this current stage. I put the clasms in for the 4c delver matchup but it has great utility all around.

I'm sure plenty of people have asked you this already but have you gotten the chance to try out fiery confluence? The 4 cmc is a bummer especially in delver matchups but I think having a high ceiling makes up for it.

[Kap'n Cook]

I'm sure plenty of people have asked you this already but have you gotten the chance to try out fiery confluence? The 4 cmc is a bummer especially in delver matchups but I think having a high ceiling makes up for it.


I know others have been swearing by them, but I didn't really like them to be honest. The matchups where I truly wanted them the cmc felt too high and it was too slow for me. Usual case is that you can cast it turn 3 (barring disruption) and a sweeper like that felt too slow vs elves, infect for example. DnT is even harder because they pressure your mana. I'd rather just run a cheaper effect like pyroclasm and lose out on the ability to dome for 6 or also handle chalice

[G le p]

I know others have been swearing by them, but I didn't really like them to be honest. The matchups where I truly wanted them the cmc felt too high and it was too slow for me. Usual case is that you can cast it turn 3 (barring disruption) and a sweeper like that felt too slow vs elves, infect for example. DnT is even harder because they pressure your mana. I'd rather just run a cheaper effect like pyroclasm and lose out on the ability to dome for 6 or also handle chalice

I played a lot against Dnt with painter and in every single game a had confluence I was able to cast it and win the game a few turns later. Feeling like the only matches I lose to Dnt are where they have pretty fast jitte hands with multiple wastelands/ports.
The elves MU gets slower post board because of the disruption they board in. So it's not that much of a problem casting (if you still have it after therapy...) it here. And against infect I wouldn't board in all 3 confluence (assuming you have 3), 1 or maybe 2 not more. in my opinion infect is just a pretty good MU and becomes even better after boardind with sudden shock/blasts/Moon/creatures to block that are 1/1 or bigger.
The only delver MU where I would bring in confluence is grixis. there only softcounters post board are 1 spell pierce and 4 daze (assuming most played noah walker list) and with sudden shocks and blasts there is almost no way they have you dead by turn 4. So again there should be the time to resolve it. And often they must spent their counters on your other bombs...
The reason I played confluence is by a lack of sideboard slots. I wanted some kind of mass removal and artifact destruction and that in reasonable numbers so I would draw it when I needed it at GP Prague. Eldrazi was pretty big at that time so there was the need of a card like that. With less Eldrazi around I can see going down from 3 confluence to maybe 2.

[jandax]

Some people like to go deep, but jack seems to always stay in the middle of the road, and he puts up results. Maybe investigating what lies beneath is more important than one card verses the other?

[zangoasyl]

Some people like to go deep, but jack seems to always stay in the middle of the road, and he puts up results. Maybe investigating what lies beneath is more important than one card verses the other?
Soooo true

[Morcrux]

Both routes got their ups and downs, and in the end I suppose it's meta dependant. Confluence can bring big blowouts to the table, but at the cost of less consistency compared to cheaper versions.

I've been running 3 confluence 4 bolt to test the alternate burn plan against certain matchups, and can't say it's been impressive. I mean, it's like a 4-6 cards combo that might snag some creatures along the way, and not to mention it's hella lot to side in. I think we're better off resolving RiP/Crypt alongside normal combo against eldrazi-decks, as we can even tutor those.

But that's my 2 cents, G le P had his results with burn-plan after all so in theory it's potential, and could be swell in certain metas. But in general I think Jack's on the right path atm, seeing how much % is occupied by miracles/DnT/Grixis in the international meta. In the long run a more castable cost is more valueable than the extra points of damage.

[CovenantElite30]

Both routes got their ups and downs, and in the end I suppose it's meta dependant. Confluence can bring big blowouts to the table, but at the cost of less consistency compared to cheaper versions.

I've been running 3 confluence 4 bolt to test the alternate burn plan against certain matchups, and can't say it's been impressive. I mean, it's like a 4-6 cards combo that might snag some creatures along the way, and not to mention it's hella lot to side in. I think we're better off resolving RiP/Crypt alongside normal combo against eldrazi-decks, as we can even tutor those.

But that's my 2 cents, G le P had his results with burn-plan after all so in theory it's potential, and could be swell in certain metas. But in general I think Jack's on the right path atm, seeing how much % is occupied by miracles/DnT/Grixis in the international meta. In the long run a more castable cost is more valueable than the extra points of damage.
How do you think the deck fairs now in the current meta?

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[CptHaddock]

How do you think the deck fairs now in the current meta?

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If we're looking at the DTB I think we're favored against Eldrazi and D&T. I think that ant/infect are 50/50 maybe 40/60 at most. Miracles and Grixis are a pain in the rear but completely beatable.

[CovenantElite30]

If we're looking at the DTB I think we're favored against Eldrazi and D&T. I think that ant/infect are 50/50 maybe 40/60 at most. Miracles and Grixis are a pain in the rear but completely beatable.
How many new Chandra would you put in the deck?

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[CovenantElite30]

If we're looking at the DTB I think we're favored against Eldrazi and D&T. I think that ant/infect are 50/50 maybe 40/60 at most. Miracles and Grixis are a pain in the rear but completely beatable.

I'm new to the deck, I put together the following list base on decks I've seen.

Let me know any changes you would make. Thank you.


4 Mountain
1 Great Furnace
2 Scalding Tarn
2 Plateau
3 Arid Mesa
3 City of Traitors
4 Ancient Tomb

1 Jaya Ballard, Task Mage
1 Phyrexian Revoker
1 Magus of the Moon
3 Goblin Welder
4 Imperial Recruiter
4 Painter's Servant
2 Simian Spirit Guide
1 Spellskite

3 Lotus Petal
4 Grindstone
2 Enlightened Tutor
2 Ensnaring Bridge
4 Blood Moon
2 Red Elemental Blast
3 Sensei's Divining Top
4 Pyroblast


Sideboard
1 Surgical Extraction
3 Ethersworn Canonist
2 Containment Priest
2 Red Elemental Blast
3 Sudden Shock
1 Koth of the Hammer
3 Fiery Confluence

[CovenantElite30]

If soemone could explain the pros and cons of each version that would help me a lot pick the version I would like to play. I feel like the straight red version is the most consistent version.

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[Morcrux]

If soemone could explain the pros and cons of each version that would help me a lot pick the version I would like to play. I feel like the straight red version is the most consistent version.

White splash is by far the most consistent as you can find your combo pieces with Enlightened Tutor, and it's the version that most run atm. The list you posted is pretty close to the "stock list", but the differences lies in tutor-targets, number of blasts/tutors and the sb.

The strength with mono-red compared to white splash is that the manabase sustains Wastelands better, and you won't find situations where you won't be able to cast something due to lack of white mana. That being said, those are pretty minor drawbacks as sol lands are the most targeted by wastelands, and in worst case Lotus Petal handle white mana problems any day. The extra sb "silver bullets" in white + E.Tutor main outweights any weakness the splashed manabase contains, at least in my opinion.

I do believe mono-red is better for learning the deck tho, as E.Tutor can offer some hard choices since the card-disadvantage can be back-breaking if used wrong (often it's just fetch grindstone/painter and win next-turn, but yeah). Also the sideboard choices in white is more focused than red, so you'll need to know the metagame in some degree.

Blue version(s) isn't considered Imperial Painter and plays out quite differently, so you'll need to visit another forum if you'd like to know the details about those ~


How many new Chandra would you put in the deck?
Personally I'm going to try out 2 in the sb as alternate wincons, especially against miracles. Koth was a king a few years back but got excluded with the realease of Monastery Mentor, since he just got beaten down before ult. Chandra on the other hand is able to Flame Slash mentor.
The removal->wincon may also be useful against other grindy decks like bigger BUG, maverick, bant, stoneblade and some others.

[CovenantElite30]

Personally I'm going to try out 2 in the sb as alternate wincons, especially against miracles. Koth was a king a few years back but got excluded with the realease of Monastery Mentor, since he just got beaten down before ult. Chandra on the other hand is able to Flame Slash mentor.
The removal->wincon may also be useful against other grindy decks like bigger BUG, maverick, bant, stoneblade and some others.

Thanks for the advice! Any plans to move the new Chandra to the main? Also i've seen list play 2 Nahiri, the Harbinger in the side, what's your opinion on that card over Chandra? How has your current build been doing?

Sorry for all the questions.

[Morcrux]

Thanks for the advice! Any plans to move the new Chandra to the main? Also i've seen list play 2 Nahiri, the Harbinger in the side, what's your opinion on that card over Chandra? How has your current build been doing?

I've done quite well locally, but alas I live in a relatively small country. There's usually about 13 or 45 people on the tourneys here depending on event size, so results aren't flashy.
Been playing 2 Nahiri sb since she got out, but she'll be out in place of Chandra for a while testing now. Nahiri is the perfect tech against miracles, but unless you're playing something like emrakul (which I don't like either), she's not really coming in anywhere else.
I hope Chandra will fit that better, but if it turns out she can't handle miracles well enough, I might fall back to Nahiri if counterbalance is too present in the meta.

As for moving planeswalkers to main, I don't think this is the deck for it. In the core this is a combo deck and game 1 I'd go all in for resolving it asap, as you can see is greatly reflected in my list atm.
Fast combo can beat anything without Emrakul main, but planeswalkers are dead to other combo decks. This is however my opinion based on what I've experienced, there are other guys here who thinks and plays differently.
After all, some people played Chandra, Pyromaster for a little while as a card-engine, althought it didn't become a big hit. Might as well test the new one if you like to play safer.

[GundamGuy]

White splash is by far the most consistent as you can find your combo pieces with Enlightened Tutor, and it's the version that most run atm. The list you posted is pretty close to the "stock list", but the differences lies in tutor-targets, number of blasts/tutors and the sb.

The strength with mono-red compared to white splash is that the manabase sustains Wastelands better, and you won't find situations where you won't be able to cast something due to lack of white mana. That being said, those are pretty minor drawbacks as sol lands are the most targeted by wastelands, and in worst case Lotus Petal handle white mana problems any day. The extra sb "silver bullets" in white + E.Tutor main outweights any weakness the splashed manabase contains, at least in my opinion.

I do believe mono-red is better for learning the deck tho, as E.Tutor can offer some hard choices since the card-disadvantage can be back-breaking if used wrong (often it's just fetch grindstone/painter and win next-turn, but yeah). Also the sideboard choices in white is more focused than red, so you'll need to know the metagame in some degree.

Blue version(s) isn't considered Imperial Painter and plays out quite differently, so you'll need to visit another forum if you'd like to know the details about those ~


Personally I'm going to try out 2 in the sb as alternate wincons, especially against miracles. Koth was a king a few years back but got excluded with the realease of Monastery Mentor, since he just got beaten down before ult. Chandra on the other hand is able to Flame Slash mentor.
The removal->wincon may also be useful against other grindy decks like bigger BUG, maverick, bant, stoneblade and some others.

I think you did a good job of explaining Mono-Red vs. RW, but as someone who has had success with both, I think it's important to highlight that Mono-Red is really playing up the denial / prison aspects of this deck. It's not really the same deck as RW Painter if we want to get right down to it.

[jandax]

Agreed, mono red lists highlight aggressive skills. RW lists allow the player to better out play the field instead of hating on it and winning there after.

[CovenantElite30]

Agreed, mono red lists highlight aggressive skills. RW lists allow the player to better out play the field instead of hating on it and winning there after.

So I'm about 15 matches into the deck and I'm about 5-10. I don't consider myself a bad player either. I've had a lot of success with lands which in my opinion is probably one of the hardest decks to play. The way I would sum up this deck to anyone new like me whose "trying" to get into this deck. It comes down to the saying "Jack of all traits and a master of none". The deck is a prism deck, a combo deck, a control deck, a burn deck, a tutor deck, but not all that good at any of those things. I was exaggerating on the last couple, however in saying that I find its really not that great at being a prism deck. I play dragon stompy, now that is a prism deck. It's not even really great at the combo, easy to break up, generally very slow. Lands / Hexmage two other decks I play a lot, both are great at the combo. Onto control, it's only controlling when you land a painter. If you find yourself playing against a lot of abrupt decays, which from my experience is in the majority of the decks do to counterbalance, you'll never keep painter on the field.

I guess I'm being very bitter right now as this deck is supposed to be very powerful, but doesn't seem to do anything better then any other deck.

Any new deck I pickup I give it 100 matches. If I'm not over 60% win rate on it, I drop it. So will report back after I get there.

The deck just loses to anything that plays creatures basically, because they pressure you and can mess with the combo really easily.

Any insight on my frustrations would be appreciated.

[THATONE]

Just curious about this deck- it seems extremely powerful on paper, but I don't actually see it performing. It's MTGO and RL placements are quite rare- why is that? Also how do you guys feel about the UR version in terms of consistency and counterspell protection? Minus the blood moon lock, which is a huge deal of course.

[entity]

Just curious about this deck- it seems extremely powerful on paper, but I don't actually see it performing. It's MTGO and RL placements are quite rare- why is that? Also how do you guys feel about the UR version in terms of consistency and counterspell protection? Minus the blood moon lock, which is a huge deal of course.

UR version has another thread somewhere nearby. That's an entirely different deck :)
Low results, are suspect, are at least partially due to loww number of players playing the deck. Then add to that the fact that pro players (who make the decks visible oftentimes) highly prefer Brainstorm decks, and this isn't one. Then add to the fact that without heavy sideboarding this deck is not suitable to underdeveloped/budget metagames as Burn matchup is abysmal (I have a dedicated Warmth slot in my SB...).
As for MTGO, there are some results here and there. Clearly not enough. If all goes well I expect to add to these results next year :)

[Mapson]

Just curious about this deck- it seems extremely powerful on paper, but I don't actually see it performing. It's MTGO and RL placements are quite rare- why is that? Also how do you guys feel about the UR version in terms of consistency and counterspell protection? Minus the blood moon lock, which is a huge deal of course.

The two decks are very different as already stated. I like to play both. The blue version feels more consistent but it's also very all in. If not immediately able to interact with hate it's likely to fold and doesn't get free wins like this deck. If you'd like to talk more please comment on the ur painted stone thread or on my recent tournament report.

[Morcrux]

I guess I'm being very bitter right now as this deck is supposed to be very powerful, but doesn't seem to do anything better then any other deck.

Any new deck I pickup I give it 100 matches. If I'm not over 60% win rate on it, I drop it. So will report back after I get there.

The deck just loses to anything that plays creatures basically, because they pressure you and can mess with the combo really easily.

If it did much better than other decks everyone would play it. Althought it's probably Imperial Recruiter which is the main reason for why more people don't play this, since he's so expensive and only works in Painter or Aluren.

If you're just looking for big tournament numbers, then this deck probably ain't for you. That being said, the deck has won or top 8'd several bigger tournaments in the past, and Jack is still going strong on mtgo. On GP Lille 2015, several of us made 6-3 and a couple made day 2, and that was in a time where Omnitell (maybe our worst matchup) was THE thing.

So yeah, deck doesn`t perform like the brainstorming Tier 1 topdogs, but it can pull its weight with a good pilot. That ain't gonna happen after a mere 15 games, heck maybe even 100 isn't enough. This goes for every legacy deck ever so I`m sure you already knew.

The important question is wheter you enjoy playing it or not; I sure as hell do.

[RingoDeathStarr]

It took me significantly more than 15, or even 50 matches to get the swing of this deck. The main reason for that, I believe, is that Painter really relies on reading your opponent, and the amount of respect they have for your ability to just win out of nowhere. Yes, all of Legacy is played in the hand to some degree, but as you remark upon Painter not being a good control deck, or kind of a halfway threat on numerous fronts, knowing which threat you are and being perceived as in a game or match is fundamental.

The way I see it, there are basically 3 outcomes in every game with the deck. The first is that you slam a moon, or a quick combo, and basically pull it off, with or without counter back-up, and with constant pressure, or you run into bad draws and lose. The second is that you get a bad hand, and basically get steamrolled, as this deck doesn't usually draw out of pressure very well unless it's hate pieces are particularly potent in the matchup. The third is that you struggle back and forth, and either win through prison elements, partial pressure, and SDT allowing you to rebuild to a point where you can either nickel and dime them out with attackers/planeswalkers, or create a win-or-lose turn where you go for the combo with multiple counters.

What this amounts to, in my opinion, is that with experience, you can leverage your opponent's time and mana if you understand the key pieces, and how your hand and board currently is matching up against their's. Typically, aside from getting run over by an aggressive board, you will find that you really only care about a couple cards in the long term of the game. Forcing a BUG player to represent Abrupt Decay while you have a Grindstone and/or 5 mana or a Painter, instead of just activating, whether they have it or not, is going to waste 2 mana of their turn for x turns, while you can draw into REB to force the issue by targeting a land, draw a Welder to make it irrelevant, draw a second Painter, draw a land and another Grindstone, draw a Blood Moon to make them float AD mana etc. etc. just as an example...Which one of these draws saves you could vary greatly based on something like DRS or Wasteland, and so when playing from behind, I'm usually trying to hold onto my resources until a coherent plan takes shape if I can spare the life total.

Aside from this sort of thing, which varies a lot by match-up, the other very difficult bit is learning what hands you can keep against what decks, how to use fast mana in this deck and if it's actually good in your hand, and how you need to play and rebuild after a shitty hand or mulligan. I put a lot of value in SDT in keeping hands, and when it doesn't look like the combo is going to come off quickly, I typically use E-Tutors and top spins and fetches to try and land Moons and Ensnaring Bridges, and keep my life total reasonably high by chaining recruiters, or getting Welder to preserve locks/draw many cards with Top, etc. while the rest comes together. I usually try to leave combo pieces floating in the top 3 until I have to look for something else, so that your opponent doesn't know how close you are to killing them if there's probes and therapies, thoughtseizes, etc. involved. I find that usually if you go for the combo after letting them have time to set up, you've wasted all of your looks on those combo pieces, made them less likely to draw in the future, and put essentially no pressure on them. For most decks, Blood Moon and Bridge must be dealt with either immediately or eventually, and so you can almost guarantee that they will trade for a card you care about if you do eventually get the combo ready. A lot of the time, it is worth waiting to play the whole combo and activation out in one turn if the game has gone long, as correct sequencing, particularly if you can slow roll a Sol land, could get them to make a mistake or not counter something they have an answer for next turn. This is kind of the variant of the turn 2 kill, where it goes: T:1 sol land, painter, t2: grindstone resolves? one mana floating, ok, sol land #2 / activate grindstone.

Anyway, the deck is quite good, has a lot of play, and rewards experience, and can do well against most decks aside from like, Tin-Fins or Burn, but consistency is probably it's biggest issue due to some pretty awful schizophrenic opening hands at times. The game plan is solid, but you don't get that many chances at it unless you play your opponent correctly and create convincing narratives that buy you time to win.

[CptHaddock]

I'll +1 what Morcrux and Ringo said and give my 2 cents as well. I think that one of the biggest misnomers that newer players have about Imperial Painter is that it's a prison deck with this random combo thrown in there. As silly as this sounds one of the biggest breakthroughs that I had when I started playing this deck was realizing that we are a combo deck and not some janky prison deck. The lock pieces help us combo off by prevent some portion of the opponent's gameplan.

If you haven't i'd read Seth's posts about the deck here (http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?25661-Deck-Imperial-Painter&p=785907&viewfull=1#post785907) and here (http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?25661-Deck-Imperial-Painter&p=836366&viewfull=1#post836366). I think they're very informative and they really helped me understand the deck.

[mcbain]

I'm new to the deck, I put together the following list base on decks I've seen.

Let me know any changes you would make. Thank you.


4Mountain
1Great Furnace
2Scalding Tarn
2Plateau
3Arid Mesa
3City of Traitors
4Ancient Tomb

1Jaya Ballard, Task Mage
1Phyrexian Revoker
1Magus of the Moon
3Goblin Welder
4Imperial Recruiter
4Painter's Servant
2Simian Spirit Guide
1Spellskite

3Lotus Petal
4Grindstone
2Enlightened Tutor
2Ensnaring Bridge
4Blood Moon
2Red Elemental Blast
3Sensei's Divining Top
4Pyroblast


Sideboard
1Surgical Extraction
3Ethersworn Canonist
2Containment Priest
2Red Elemental Blast
3Sudden Shock
1Koth of the Hammer
3Fiery Confluence

If your new to the deck you will get more wins out of first playing the deck a while and understanding the lines of play then tinkering with cards.

The list you put up seems fine to start.

Sent from my SM-G925W8 using Tapatalk

[SDBobPlissken]

I agree with the other posters. Anyone piloting this deck needs a lot of practice doing it especially with the Rw version. I use to enjoy playing the mono red version better because it was less complicated to play. But the consistency that the Rw version brings with enlightened tutor and the sideboard options far outweighs the mono red version. I would say it took me the better part of a year piloting the deck to get really comfortable with it and know what lines of play to take. When I first picked it up I was kinda new to legacy so it was a lack of knowledge of the format that was my initial struggle with the deck.

Recently played in a Swiss tournament at my LGS

5 red fetch
1 great furnace
4 mountain
4 tomb
3 city of traitors
2 plateau

4 recruiter
4 painter
1 jaya
1 revoker
2 ssg
3 goblin welder

4 grindstone
4pyroblast
2 red blast
3 e tutor
1 led
1 bridge
3 petals
3 sdt
1 engineered explosives
4 blood moon

SB:
1 canonist
1 rip
1 magus of the moon
3 lightning bolt
3 fiery confluence
2 ensnaring bridge
1 red blast
1 thorn of amathyst
2 nahiri harbinger



Round 1 vs UR delver

I'm familiar with my opponent as he is with me. His version plays wasteland and is heavy on counter magic and burn. I believe his only creatures in the deck are 4 delver, 3 snapcaster mage, and 2 true name with maybe 2 lava mans in the board. Game 1 I mull to 5 and run into a lot of counter magic and wastelands. Game 2 I end up getting wasted again and lost due to trying to play around daze. He showed me he boarded them out and if I had just used my petal to cast the painter I would have won. Lesson learned. I always found that most of my opponents left dazes in against painter.

Round 2 bug delver w/ accumulated knowledge.

I had never seen this version before but I end up landing a painter and stone after he forced my t1 welder and then forced my pyroblast of his brainstorm while he was low on cards in hand. -1 led, -1 jaya, -1 revoker, -2 e tutor, +3 bolt, +2 confluence, +1 blast. Game 2 I mull to 5 again and end up keeping a t1 moon hand with only a tomb and two petals. Moon ends up getting forced and he wastes my tomb and when I finally find find a mesa it ends up getting stifled. Game 3 my blasts and bolts end up taking care of his creatures. We keep trading cards and counters and he becomes hell bent while I have a top on play. I eventually play a moon with a pyroblast on top of my library. He attempts to counter the moon and I activate top to blast it. He ends up scooping.

Round 3 vs eldrazi stompy

I'm on the play and play turn 1 stone followed by a turn to painter off a sol land. He scoops.
+2 bridge, +1 magus, +3 confluence, +1 bolt -1 welder, -3 e tutor, -1 jaya, -2 red blast. He gets a t1 chalice with some threats on the board. I land a turn 2 blood moon. I'm able to confluence on t3 with all my lands tapped. He gets another chalice out but I end up landing a bridge. We play draw go for a while. He ends up getting ratchet bomb up to two counters but I find a 2nd confluence to blow up the ratchet blob chalice and his endless one 1/1 and displacer. He plays chalice for three which I end up blowing up with a 3rd confluence and I'm able to recruit for painter and play the combo all in one turn.

Round 4 vs zombardment

This match was against a good friend who I play against a lot so we both know eachother's deck in and out. I have to worry about him getting out bitterblossom along with contamination (and I thought blood moon messed with people's mana bases). I mull to 5 again. I'm able to clear his board with explosives I think it was a few grave crawlers a death rite and some other one drop. He plays that new zombie that gets +1 +1 for all zombies in the yard and he's able to tap 2 zombies and lose a life to draw a card while I am hiding under a bridge. I'm at 7 life and he just keeps creating zombies and eventually find goblin bombardment to win.
-2 red blast, -1 jaya, -2 blood moon, -1 revoker, -2 welder, +1 rip, +3 bolt, +3 confluence, +1 bridge. I land a turn 2 rip to slow him down and end up combining before he can beat me down. Game 3 I e tutor for rip at the end of his turn 1 to play a turn 2 rip. I end up dropping ee down to get rid of his 1 drop creatures and his needle on stone. He builds back up and has lethal on board but no green mana for golgari charm, decay, or k grip. I end of turn e tutor for led and play painter, stone, and led to combo off.

Ended up getting $30 store credit. Felt really comfortable playing the deck and even though I had to mulligan a lot it wasn't too bad. I feel like I am sideboarding too much in my matches but it hasn't hurt too much. An active jaya is great but I feel like it doesn't happen too often and is pretty slow. I moved magus to the board in place of hedge mage because with the three confluence I found that I was rarely bringing the hedge mage in. Instead of magus in the main deck I put in the one of explosives to have a 2nd and faster answer to chalice on 1 (eldrazi) game 1. Relying on a painter with an active jaya wasn't working well for me. Explosives has been really good so far for me and that along with confluence definitely helped me clear the board to get the wins. Side note I finished foiling out the deck (everything that could be foil) so it was extra fun to play 😁. I know there was some discussion a while back about which five fetches to play, 3 tarn and 2 mesa to possibly conceal your deck as miracles or sneak and show in the early part of the game. I play 2 tarn and 1 of each other red fetch. I still find people casting surgical on a fetch or putting a needle on one so that is my reasoning.

[jandax]

Question, in round 4 you said you were hiding behind a bridge game one but don't have main deck bridges? I am confuse

[SDBobPlissken]

Question, in round 4 you said you were hiding behind a bridge game one but don't have main deck bridges? I am confuse

I played one ensnaring bridge main and two in the board for this tournament. I put "bridge" instead of ensnaring bridge in the deck list. Sorry for the confusion. I want to go up to two main deck but don't know what to cut. Every week I'm at this shop I usually see at least 3-4 people playing eldrazi, a Merfolk player, and 3-4 death and taxes players. Fortunately I have not seen alot of miracles there anymore. Online against miracles I have been chaining recruiters together when the combo hasn't been working and attacking the life total instead of recruiting for painter. Do other people do this consistently? My record against miracles is probably still negative but it has been improving a lot.

[jandax]

Ahh okay I overlooked that bridge then.

As for chaining recruiters, that's often the way to go against miracles. Always keep one or two in hand, because if they counter the last one and then terminus you're off your clock and on to theirs


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[CptHaddock]

I played one ensnaring bridge main and two in the board for this tournament. I put "bridge" instead of ensnaring bridge in the deck list. Sorry for the confusion. I want to go up to two main deck but don't know what to cut. Every week I'm at this shop I usually see at least 3-4 people playing eldrazi, a Merfolk player, and 3-4 death and taxes players. Fortunately I have not seen alot of miracles there anymore. Online against miracles I have been chaining recruiters together when the combo hasn't been working and attacking the life total instead of recruiting for painter. Do other people do this consistently? My record against miracles is probably still negative but it has been improving a lot.

I think it really depends on the contents of your opening hand. I look for some combination of the following: blasts + grindstone, top, e-tutors/recruiter and ofc lands. I like having an early grindstone against them because it's one of the unique ways that we can interact with them game 1. Although it's gotten a little worse with miracles playing some number of EEs maindeck.

If i'm on the play i'll keep a slightly janky hand with a turn 1 moon just because sometimes you can really screw them over with a turn 1 moon. I think most of my last few miracles games have been won by having the combo although I did almost live the dream of double fiery confluence + double sudden shock a miracles player to death recently. He ended up countering one of the fiery confluences so I had to beat down with a recruiter. :frown:

If you're looking for another bridge main I think the best course of action might be to swap a bridge in your sideboard with the revoker in the main.

[Kap'n Cook]

I was jammin epic storm on modo while waiting for kaladesh but I got my 2 Chandras now so it's paint time. I'll try to get some video stream going more regularly hopefully next week, but on west coast time. Fuck with me

[zangoasyl]

I was jammin epic storm on modo while waiting for kaladesh but I got my 2 Chandras now so it's paint time. I'll try to get some video stream going more regularly hopefully next week, but on west coast time. Fuck with me
Interesting mana base in your tes deck, but congrats on the results!

Do you plan to switch nahiri for Chandra or do you go for both?

[CptHaddock]

I was jammin epic storm on modo while waiting for kaladesh but I got my 2 Chandras now so it's paint time. I'll try to get some video stream going more regularly hopefully next week, but on west coast time. Fuck with me

http://www.lovethisgif.com/uploaded_images/74326-Waynes-World-Excellent-Gif.gif

[GundamGuy]

I'll +1 what Morcrux and Ringo said and give my 2 cents as well. I think that one of the biggest misnomers that newer players have about Imperial Painter is that it's a prison deck with this random combo thrown in there. As silly as this sounds one of the biggest breakthroughs that I had when I started playing this deck was realizing that we are a combo deck and not some janky prison deck. The lock pieces help us combo off by prevent some portion of the opponent's gameplan.

If you haven't i'd read Seth's posts about the deck here (http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?25661-Deck-Imperial-Painter&p=785907&viewfull=1#post785907) and here (http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?25661-Deck-Imperial-Painter&p=836366&viewfull=1#post836366). I think they're very informative and they really helped me understand the deck.

Isn't that basically the gameplan of a prison deck? :wink:

Just picking a little. I know what you mean, and yeah Painter was never exactly in the same camp as Stax or Lands. The main point is that the Mono-Red version was/is good when the lock pieces are stronger because the game plan is basically combo quick against decks with no disruption, or play a lock piece (Blood Moon, Ensnaring Bridge, etc...) to prevent the opponents game plan. As those lock pieces cover less of the meta additional efforts have to be made to close the door on people which is why RW which is better at finding the exact card you need is good even though it has more mana color issues and card disadvantage issues.

I've been out of the game for a good 9-12 months (though I did play side events at GP DC, and won a good few matches (about 6) with a janky Mono-Red build with Wastelands.) so I'm not going to jump in suggesting builds right now, but a quick look at the decks to beat has me pretty optimistic that a good version of painter can be built right now.


Onto control, it's only controlling when you land a painter. If you find yourself playing against a lot of abrupt decays, which from my experience is in the majority of the decks do to counterbalance, you'll never keep painter on the field.


Painter really isn't in the deck to be a control all-star, I think you are approaching this wrong. Yes you get one mana instant speed vindicate that can also counter spells when you have a painter on Blue, but I don't think you should play most matches seeing painter as a control piece. The real strength of REB and Pyroblast is that Blue is the most prominent color in legacy, not that you can turn everything blue and go to town (that's just a plus). Most decks with Abrupt decay (not fast combo which you have to approach differently) you should first lock the door with Blood moon or Magus of the Moon then combo with painter, or force them to spend their abrupt decays on Blood moons or Magus of the Moons.

It is entirely possible to win off of a single Magus of the Moon vs. some decks. With the Magus locking them out all the cards in their deck and dealing them 20. That said I'm not sure if Magus is in the good camp or bad camp right now, it varies based on the make up of the meta.

[Jungian Thing]

I played my bling shortcake on the weekend, frankly it is hard not to play anything else… I was close to slinging Death and Taxes but I flipped a coin and was relieved when it came up painter. I painted the LGS in a bi-weekly tournament that is proxy friendly which gives the gang (15 this weekend) an opportunity to try out some decks less travelled. Not me. I don’t play proxies… In my painter deck, I don’t play unblinged cards either, this makes the card pool less flexible than most. I am playing shortcake with some retro cards but it is listing an LED and a few other things. Honestly, I am not convinced that at my standard the fine tuning makes much of a difference.

I went 3-1 ID’ing on the fifth for a locked out top 4 and then lost there. Here is the report.

Match 1 (2-1) 12 Posts
Game 1
Why? I look around and there really is only one other player on Sneak and Show that I would least want on my first round. I had played him a couple of weeks before and got my combo out and he extended his hand in concession before I set it off. I accepted and then asked if I could see his deck and he obliged. It contained Emrakul. He was not going to make that mistake again. My game plan is simple. Blood Moon and then drift some red weenies his way. This is pretty much how game one rolls. They all come out to chip in, painter, welder, recruiters chaining. It’s a cinderella story!! I can’t believe it and my hands don’t stop shaking.

Game 2
I board bridge, crypts and RIP. I don’t get a moon and whilst I keep a hand with painter and Crypt, I see no GS but I build a bridge and he eventually naturally casts an Emrakul with Karakas in play for infinite turns. He tells me how is going to beat me. I am unimpressed and ask him to show me the cards that he thinks will get Emmy around a bridge, and yep he has them.

Game 3
I keep the board and go with a hand containing a magus that comes down turn two and the red weenie drift commences! Painter and Magus take a further 7 turns to smack face and I do have the combo ready on the final turn but I go with the safer “kill you” option as opposed to the “you die” one that I normally prefer.


I win!!! And it feels like I am playing a really bad Death and Taxes which is even better. He tells me after that he is building Miracles *ugh*

Match 2 (0-2) Grixis

Game 1
God Damn! He has an answer to everything and wastes my AT. I am so countered that I check his GY for the fifth FoW I am sure just dropped my whatever. He summons a Big Fish and whilst I am on 18, I have only one mountain on the field and I am hellbent. The fish and a gobshite draining me are clearly going to finish me so I concede rather than putting myself through it.

Game 2
This was epic. Possibly the best game of the day. I have a slowly developing board and am one turn, ONE TURN!!! from grinding him as I sit behind my bridge but a couple of previous hits from delver and me playing too fast and too loose with Ancient Tomb puts me in bolt distance and he does.

Match 3 (2-1) Stax

Game 1
I thought I was sitting across from an esper or DnT but an early combo grinds him before I really know what is happening. A few artifacts hit the field. MUD? Affinity?

Game 2
I don’t sideboard. STAX!!!! I can’t get the grind on but turn sideways with red weenies. I have him on 3 and really think I am in when the whole thing goes backwards. Smokestack and Tangle Wire or is it tangle wire and smokestack? He rubs it in that he chooses stack order and he wants it Smokestack and then Tangle Wire. I am incredulous not knowing the full transcript of rule 603. He suggests I can call a judge if I want. He doesn't, but I hear him add, "you ignorant fuck" to it. The whole thing is delivered in just the right way to put me on the tilt. I loose everything and roll my eyes as I extend my hand with a life total of 17. There is no way out. I quip that I really don’t know how to deal with that and he glibly replies that I just need to get an early grind on.

Game 3
Manic Vandal in. I get an early grind on. Turn 2 kill. two tombs, painter and GS. He smiles and says “see!” (you ignorant fuck).

This match up really threw me and I am still thinking about it. What to board? What to Stony Silence? Aura of Silence? Ancient Grudge? Shatter Storm?

Match 4 Esper (2-0)

Game 1
God, I don’t know what happened here. Turn 2 grind. He does get to fetch…

Game 2
My first painter is sent farming. Turn 4 grind. He gets to fetch again.

Round 5 we ID into top four.

Top 4 (0-2)
I am in second place so I am on the play. I know I am against Grixis Delver.

Game 1
I mull to 5 looking for the perfect hand. He does what Grixis does and I have no answers. I concede having been locked out by no lands and a big fish from him with gobshite draining me.

Game 2
Rinse repeat.

I am not sure what happened here. I really think painter is a shoe in on Grixis but the two rounds I lose are just that. Could it be my confidence is such that I take too many risks? I will need to jam more delver games and get back to you.

[L10]

My success vs. Grixis is directly proportional to the number of Fiery Confluence I sideboard in. It usually wipes the board + kill an annoying artifact. It's also not rare for me to just kill them with Fiery Confluence.

[CptHaddock]

A pretty cool looking painter list (https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/488320#online) went 5-0. What do you guys think?

4 Ancient Tomb
3 Arid Mesa
4 Blood Moon
2 Bloodstained Mire
3 Chandra, Torch of Defiance
3 City of Traitors
2 Enlightened Tutor
3 Ensnaring Bridge
2 Goblin Welder
4 Grindstone
4 Imperial Recruiter
4 Lotus Petal
1 Magus of the Moon
5 Mountain
4 Painter's Servant
2 Plateau
4 Pyroblast
2 Red Elemental Blast
4 Sensei's Divining Top

1 Duergar Hedge-Mage
1 Ethersworn Canonist
2 Firebolt
2 Koth of the Hammer
3 Kozilek's Return
1 Phyrexian Revoker
1 Ratchet Bomb
1 Rest in Peace
1 Thorn of Amethyst
1 Tormod's Crypt
1 Trinisphere



Game 1
I mull to 5 looking for the perfect hand. He does what Grixis does and I have no answers. I concede having been locked out by no lands and a big fish from him with gobshite draining me.

Game 2
Rinse repeat.

I am not sure what happened here. I really think painter is a shoe in on Grixis but the two rounds I lose are just that. Could it be my confidence is such that I take too many risks? I will need to jam more delver games and get back to you.

This sounds like the majority of matchups that I have had against Grixis, i've lost more matches that actually matter to Grixis than to any other delver deck. The matches I win feel more like my opponents doing silly things like not keeping a hand with force against a turn 1 blood moon deck or them bringing in blasts against me and having 4 completely useless cards postboard.

[Jimbrewersbro]

I kinda love the list. I have been running something similar, but with only two bridges and two Chandra main. It offers a nice secondary win condition of sitting behind a bridge and going for the emblem. I am intrigued by the idea of running three each main, it looks like at the expense of some welders. The only slight concern is the mana curve went up and there are still only 19 lands. Seems like that could lead to screw more often.

[drude1]

Yeah, very interesting list. The biggest issue I would have is that it looks like an absolute dog to any deck that isn't turning creatures sideways for the win. This deck is definitely built more for creature based decks like delver, eldrazi and death and taxes. Game one is almost auto-loss to Storm, Sneak and Show (with Omniscience), oops all spells etc. This is a deck where I would at least play one copy of Canonist or Revoker or some sort of combo hate main or you really have no chance. Obviously he has some of that in the board so things get better post-board. But then do you side out the chandras in those MUs? Probably does have a pretty good MU against Miracles though with 5 Planeswalkers though.

[Jimbrewersbro]

Yeah, very interesting list. The biggest issue I would have is that it looks like an absolute dog to any deck that isn't turning creatures sideways for the win. This deck is definitely built more for creature based decks like delver, eldrazi and death and taxes. Game one is almost auto-loss to Storm, Sneak and Show (with Omniscience), oops all spells etc. This is a deck where I would at least play one copy of Canonist or Revoker or some sort of combo hate main or you really have no chance. Obviously he has some of that in the board so things get better post-board. But then do you side out the chandras in those MUs? Probably does have a pretty good MU against Miracles though with 5 Planeswalkers though.

I agree, but the regular short cake lists have the same issue. I see very few running canonist main deck. Even then its only one piece of hate main against combo.

[CptHaddock]

I agree, but the regular short cake lists have the same issue. I see very few running canonist main deck. Even then its only one piece of hate main against combo.

Imo if you're playing a list close to what Jack has been playing (LED, 3 tutors) you can race combo pretty decently (barring show and tell because that matchup is still terrible) so the extra combo hate is nice but not entirely needed. I don't think we're beating the faster combo decks e.g. tes, belcher, tinfins and oops that much barring an asteroid hitting our opponent game 1 anyways.

[drude1]

Imo if you're playing a list close to what Jack has been playing (LED, 3 tutors) you can race combo pretty decently (barring show and tell because that matchup is still terrible) so the extra combo hate is nice but not entirely needed. I don't think we're beating the faster combo decks e.g. tes, belcher, tinfins and oops that much barring an asteroid hitting our opponent game 1 anyways.

This is exactly my point. This list is running 3 bridge and 3 Planeswalkers that really do nothing against combo. The standard list is just going to be that much faster as to sometimes race other combo decks. Having said that, I actually do still run 1 x Canonist in the main for combo (great against storm, high tide, elves, oops, blecher, etc).


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[mcbain]

Painter is a combo deck - in game 1. Many times we are forced to either abandon or modify this plan for games two and three for strategies which are "immune" or "resistant" to our general combo. Emerkul comes to mind for many.

I believe miracles fits into this category as well.

Local meta's aside, at any significant legacy tournament Miracles will be a top tier competitive deck. I feel that the current approach is not enough for a painter player to reasonably win a 6 round legacy event. After sideboard a miracles player will bring an armada of removal and interaction for our plan and simply grind the painter player into dust. Swords, ware/tear, terminus, snapcaster, Mentor, counterbalance, etc. etc. A painter player trying to "go under" this game plan is just foolhardy.

I believe jack has built the foundation for the best approach to this. Sulfur elemental's, Adjani's/nahiri's, lightning bolt's, as well as the typical gamut of hedge-mage among others. I believe the next approach is go one step further, for all intents and purposes, a transformation sideboard.

-4 painter servant
-4 grindstone

The thesis is to go combo-less and force your opponent to play around it while executing a much more robust and sustainable game plan. Let their removal and interaction rot.

Play a better long game then them.

I still am playing around with cards as potential options but thus far would be interested in:

2-3 sulfur elemental
3-4 plainswalkers (2 new chandra, 2 adjani)
1-2 hedge-mage
3-4 lightning bolt
0-1 plains (your 20th land)

**This also provides a strong base for games against Death and Taxes and delver match ups (although the combo is there fine there - this plan might be stronger).**

I would post a list, but at this point is not about the list, its about the idea of how to approach certain match ups.

[Kap'n Cook]

Painter is a combo deck - in game 1. Many times we are forced to either abandon or modify this plan for games two and three for strategies which are "immune" or "resistant" to our general combo. Emerkul comes to mind for many.

I believe miracles fits into this category as well.

Local meta's aside, at any significant legacy tournament Miracles will be a top tier competitive deck. I feel that the current approach is not enough for a painter player to reasonably win a 6 round legacy event. After sideboard a miracles player will bring an armada of removal and interaction for our plan and simply grind the painter player into dust. Swords, ware/tear, terminus, snapcaster, Mentor, counterbalance, etc. etc. A painter player trying to "go under" this game plan is just foolhardy.

I believe jack has built the foundation for the best approach to this. Sulfur elemental's, Adjani's/nahiri's, lightning bolt's, as well as the typical gamut of hedge-mage among others. I believe the next approach is go one step further, for all intents and purposes, a transformation sideboard.

-4 painter servant
-4 grindstone

The thesis is to go combo-less and force your opponent to play around it while executing a much more robust and sustainable game plan. Let their removal and interaction rot.

Play a better long game then them.

I still am playing around with cards as potential options but thus far would be interested in:

2-3 sulfur elemental
3-4 plainswalkers (2 new chandra, 2 adjani)
1-2 hedge-mage
3-4 lightning bolt
0-1 plains (your 20th land)

**This also provides a strong base for games against Death and Taxes and delver match ups (although the combo is there fine there - this plan might be stronger).**

I would post a list, but at this point is not about the list, its about the idea of how to approach certain match ups.



So I agree about parts of your post, but for the general miracles strategy I don't. Boarding out the combo is not the best course of action to beat them, mainly since we are not set up to be a premier aggro or control deck aka we run a lot of really bad cards that are only good when they are together. Taking out the combo leaves you with what, like 4 recruiters some welders, and random planeswalkers to try to deal them 20 damage. Rather, the combo lets you attack from multiple angles and frankly is sometimes the only way to escape weak board states. The combo facilitates the beatdown by hamstringing them. So many times I have forced them to do something because I have painter/stone out with mana ready to go but not activating it while i keep attacking with dorks. This leads to even trades on card advantage, which then clears the way for walkers or another painter to close it out. I'll go into how I'm boarding in a second. Plus Grindstone can screw up their balance and guard against fateseal. I wouldn't ever side it out.

For the parts I agree with, the general sideboard construction you are talking about is where I am currently heading. This is what I am playing, with some good results (two 4-1 leagues)

3 Lightning Bolt
2 Pyroclasm
1 Duergar Hedge-Mage
1 Ethersworn Canonist
1 Tormod's Crypt
1 ensnaring bridge
2 Sulfur Elemental
2 Chandra, Torch of Defiance
2 Nahiri, the Harbinger

It sets up nicely vs DnT which I know is huge in paper, nice against miracles, and has enough removal for 4c delver. Those are the three main pillars, and the numbers translate nicely into the boarding. With this setup, I have chosen to face ANT as mainly a race, also because even before that thorn didn't really do much to stall them, Eldrazi and Miracles keep it in check, and thorn was only being used in a few matchups. Miser's crypt is the least used card, but is totally necessary.

Anyways, for Miracles I have usually been siding in the 3 bolts, hedge, 2 sulfur, 4 walker, 2nd bridge. That is a lot to bring out, but it is actually a very clean transition that keeps the combo in: 3 petal, 1 led, 3 tutor, 4 moon. Yes, it is slower, but the change in card quality for us helps us have a stronger mid-game that can fight through their plethora of removal. Actual walker breakdown I'm still less sure about, but with the boarding out of the moons sadly we can't play Koth. It's really a competition between Ajani, Chandra, and Nahiri, the optimal split will need to be worked on. Just my two cents.

And yes, I don't have a Magus in the 75 and I still feel queasy every match knowing I don't have access to one.

Edit: now that I think more about it in the morning, I think I've been leaving one tutor in against miracles rather than bringing the second bridge in

[CptHaddock]

How'd all the folks that ended up going to EE end up doing? I ended up going 2-3 drop losing to grixis delver, UR omnitell (His apes were bigger than my apes) and infect. All the matchups felt winnable. I think I could have mulligan'd a little more aggressively to sideboard cards but ended up keeping hands that didn't really align with what my opponents did e.g. kept an ensnaring bridge hand against the pyromancer draw from grixis and kept a hand with a single burn spell against the infect player who just played a bunch of creatures out on his first few turns.

It looked like there were a fair number of painter players, round 1 I sat next to 2 of them and I saw a couple more walking around watching matches. Had a bunch of people also tell me that they were 4 recruiters away from building painter which is always good.

[L10]

I was at EE as well, playing mono-red Painter. I won vs. 12-Post, Grixis Delver, Maverick, 8 Thalia Eldrazi Stompy, and Burn (first time ever). Lost vs. Burn, Omni, and Dragon Stompy. I am not going to write a tournament report because frankly, I have a terrible memory, and I forgot my notebook for note taking. :( I can, however, give my impressions.

I had resolved Chandra seven times yesterday and won six of them (even once vs. Burn), three times from the ultimate (once with double Top). I lost to Ace on Dragon Stompy, but he mentioned if I was more aggressive with Chandra -3, she may have won me the game. I only won four matches with Grindstone. The rest involved a combination Chandra burn, Jaya burn, 1/x + 2/x beats, Rabblemaster, or Fiery Confluence to the face.

Filigree was able to net me six life vs. Burn and traded with Guide once.

This was the deck I was on: http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/14-09-16-guZ-mono-red-painter/
This was the SB strat I was on: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1gG0JOU__rzlBIXKtBd0IUp-Uz1lDuTzuI8q-JPIyNX0/edit

Filigree was cute and did work, but was never a tutor target I was actively looking for. So it falls in the category of win-more. I may swap it out for a second Rabblemaster in the SB.

Thanks to Mapson and G le p for your feedbacks!

PS: I think the threat of combo has won me more game than actually comboing off. In my opinion, and from my own experience, Imperial Painter is a prison deck first and a combo deck second.

[Kap'n Cook]

Imperial Painter is a prison deck first and a combo deck second.

😫😫😫

[L10]

http://darksouls.wdfiles.com/local--files/multiplayer-items/i-m-sorry-carving.png

I tend to find the Painter + Grindstone combo unreliable and easily disrupted. The ability to win out of nowhere is fantastic, and I think the inherent synergy/utility that both Painter and Grindstone provides makes this deck great. But a lot of times, all you need is a Grey Ogre to win the game, which is why I am partial to mono-red. I started playing Painter with Shortcake. It also had to do with person style and physilosophy. I still think Shortcake is strong, but is not how I want to approach the game.

[mcbain]

Jack, firstly I agree with each of your points but struggle to agree with the whole - similar to your comment about my post. My goal currently is to explore alternative paradigms to the match up, specifically the sideboard match up. I simply find executing a game plan against a deck with a seemingly infinite amount of removal and interaction to be the literal definition of insanity.


Taking out the combo leaves you with what, like 4 recruiters some welders, and random planeswalkers to try to deal them 20 damage. Yes, this is true. Our opponent will die to a sulfur elemental and goblin welder. In many match ups a miracles deck will side out most of their win conditions simply because it doesn't matter and gets in the way of the game plan. This is no different.

Rather, the combo lets you attack from multiple angles and frankly is sometimes the only way to escape weak board states. The combo facilitates the beatdown by hamstringing them. Again, yes. However our multiple angles are quickly become one big angle which our opponent has covered off with removal.


Plus Grindstone can screw up their balance and guard against fateseal. I wouldn't ever side it out.
I hate grindstoning a miracles player. Give you cards to snapcaster, clear your deck of lands - essentially a punisher mechanic. Fate seal, sure there is that.


My long-game approach to miracles attempts:

1. maintain a strong early game due to keeping acceleration in (4 lotus, 1 SSG) to allow for early protected planeswalkers, blood moons.
2. help keep "red mana up" while developing our board and stave off slightly aggressive miracles players who could land an early CB.
3. improve our blood moon game against them by keeping petals and boarding in a plains to allow us to cast our white mana bombs while locking out their mana, shuffle effects, and flexibility.
4. improve our anti-plains plan by playing blood moons and adjani (and points 1 and 2) a painter player can set up situations more easily wherein a miracles player looses access to white mana, severely hurting their ability to interact.
5. After sideboard WE become the better top deck. Through a combination of welder, planeswalkers, and 4x top's we can out draw our opponent.

I could maybe see leaving 1 of each in for the combo but I really tired of trying to overwhelm the best deck in the format by seemingly playing right into it.

I agree with your assessment of the pillars of a paper format from a perspective which we care about - Miracles, delver, and DnT. I would add one caveat for me, storm, but it seems to be somewhat regional. Decks like Eldrazi do put up the numbers but are not worth our consideration on account of our overwhelming cards like blood moon, painter and bridge.

On a final note I feel the pyroclasm spot is between fiery confluence, pyrokenesis, and pyroclasm - largely preference, meta, and finer deck synergy.

[CptHaddock]

Jack, firstly I agree with each of your points but struggle to agree with the whole - similar to your comment about my post. My goal currently is to explore alternative paradigms to the match up, specifically the sideboard match up. I simply find executing a game plan against a deck with a seemingly infinite amount of removal and interaction to be the literal definition of insanity.

Yes, this is true. Our opponent will die to a sulfur elemental and goblin welder. In many match ups a miracles deck will side out most of their win conditions simply because it doesn't matter and gets in the way of the game plan. This is no different.
Again, yes. However our multiple angles are quickly become one big angle which our opponent has covered off with removal.

I hate grindstoning a miracles player. Give you cards to snapcaster, clear your deck of lands - essentially a punisher mechanic. Fate seal, sure there is that.


Fwiw, miracles used to be a match I really struggled against but now i've found that it's a lot easier to play against. I can understand the frustration, it's really aggravating sometimes when you do everything in your power to win but your opponent just has all the right answers at the right time. I've started approaching this matchup like we're a combo/control deck with the most important cards in this matchup being top, grindstone and obviously blasts. Top allows us to play a longer game and filter through garbage. I think that most of the games that I lose against miracles are games where I run out of gas and have to rely on topdecks, top really helps to mitigate this. Grindstone is just a way that we can interact with them either through or counterbalance lock or screwing up their miracles triggers. Blasts are pretty self explanatory. Postboard is the same thing but i'm more willing to keep hands with some of my sideboard cards substituted for a couple of those core pieces.

I really don't aggressively grindstone in this matchup unless i'm under the impression that my opponent is attempting to set up a miracles, they reveal something that I don't want them to have or (very rarely) I feel like I can't keep up with the card advantage they are getting from a predict. Turn 1 moon is pretty solid too when you're on the play but I would not rely on that only on the draw/postboard. The biggest point is that you just have to keep a counterbalance off the table, every other threat that they play is arbitrary. From what i've seen most miracles players shave some number of entreats because of how clunky they end up being and bring in cards like clique and venser as slightly less clunky win conditions. Sometimes we just don't get hands that align well with what they're doing and just lose e.g. getting the blast heavy hand against the mentor draw.

Imo the best alternative gameplan to miracles is planeswalkers, in general (minus counterspells) there are a lot fewer ways for miracles players to actually interact with planeswalkers. I think that you can make a case for a more aggressive plan with some combination of the rabblemaster effects but imo their deck is very well equipped to deal with that when we don't play cotv like the moon stompy decks do.



My long-game approach to miracles attempts:

1. maintain a strong early game due to keeping acceleration in (4 lotus, 1 SSG) to allow for early protected planeswalkers, blood moons.
2. help keep "red mana up" while developing our board and stave off slightly aggressive miracles players who could land an early CB.
3. improve our blood moon game against them by keeping petals and boarding in a plains to allow us to cast our white mana bombs while locking out their mana, shuffle effects, and flexibility.
4. improve our anti-plains plan by playing blood moons and adjani (and points 1 and 2) a painter player can set up situations more easily wherein a miracles player looses access to white mana, severely hurting their ability to interact.
5. After sideboard WE become the better top deck. Through a combination of welder, planeswalkers, and 4x top's we can out draw our opponent.

I could maybe see leaving 1 of each in for the combo but I really tired of trying to overwhelm the best deck in the format by seemingly playing right into it.


I think that this is where our strategies differ. I think that giving up some portion of the early game is fine because it gives us time to setup our later turns. I usually shave some amount of moon, fast mana and e-tutors for sideboard cards that are just better. What we get from the sideboard is just way better than what we're boarding out. Minus the planeswalkers I don't really think there are very many big threats that we can slam early that single handedly win us the game. You can probably make an argument for blood moon but postboard most miracles players will more than likely keep hands that can interact with it in some capacity. Postboard you basically just force your opponent to deal with so many different angles to attack i.e. the combo, planeswalkers and creature beatdowns that you can force them to awkwardly dig for an answer.



On a final note I feel the pyroclasm spot is between fiery confluence, pyrokenesis, and pyroclasm - largely preference, meta, and finer deck synergy.

In agreement here, I think right now you can probably make an argument for any of the burn/board wipes. The big caveat on fiery confluence is that you're trying to resolve a 4 cmc card in a format full of wastelands, ports and dazes/spell pierces so there will be times that you lose to not being able to cast your boardsweeper on time. Otherwise I think it's a card with a pretty high ceiling and having modal stuff in red is always a plus.


http://darksouls.wdfiles.com/local--files/multiplayer-items/i-m-sorry-carving.png

I tend to find the Painter + Grindstone combo unreliable and easily disrupted. The ability to win out of nowhere is fantastic, and I think the inherent synergy/utility that both Painter and Grindstone provides makes this deck great. But a lot of times, all you need is a Grey Ogre to win the game, which is why I am partial to mono-red. I started playing Painter with Shortcake. It also had to do with person style and physilosophy. I still think Shortcake is strong, but is not how I want to approach the game.

I've found the opposite, I think we're surprisingly resilient. This is all hyperbole but I think that I don't think that i've won any of my recent matches with creature beatdown. Between the pyromancers, mentors and other white weenies it's just something that is getting hard to do. Almost all of which outclass most of the crappy creatures that we play minus painter (1/3 :cool:) so it's a lot easier focusing on the combo than it is actually trying to win via creature beatdown. In the end though sometimes you gotta send harambe into the redzone and show your opponent you mean business. Just my 2 cents though.

[drude1]

Fwiw, miracles used to be a match I really struggled against but now i've found that it's a lot easier to play against. I can understand the frustration, it's really aggravating sometimes when you do everything in your power to win but your opponent just has all the right answers at the right time. I've started approaching this matchup like we're a combo/control deck with the most important cards in this matchup being top, grindstone and obviously blasts. Top allows us to play a longer game and filter through garbage. I think that most of the games that I lose against miracles are games where I run out of gas and have to rely on topdecks, top really helps to mitigate this. Grindstone is just a way that we can interact with them either through or counterbalance lock or screwing up their miracles triggers. Blasts are pretty self explanatory. Postboard is the same thing but i'm more willing to keep hands with some of my sideboard cards substituted for a couple of those core pieces.

I really don't aggressively grindstone in this matchup unless i'm under the impression that my opponent is attempting to set up a miracles, they reveal something that I don't want them to have or (very rarely) I feel like I can't keep up with the card advantage they are getting from a predict. Turn 1 moon is pretty solid too when you're on the play but I would not rely on that only on the draw/postboard. The biggest point is that you just have to keep a counterbalance off the table, every other threat that they play is arbitrary. From what i've seen most miracles players shave some number of entreats because of how clunky they end up being and bring in cards like clique and venser as slightly less clunky win conditions. Sometimes we just don't get hands that align well with what they're doing and just lose e.g. getting the blast heavy hand against the mentor draw.

Imo the best alternative gameplan to miracles is planeswalkers, in general (minus counterspells) there are a lot fewer ways for miracles players to actually interact with planeswalkers. I think that you can make a case for a more aggressive plan with some combination of the rabblemaster effects but imo their deck is very well equipped to deal with that when we don't play cotv like the moon stompy decks do.



I think that this is where our strategies differ. I think that giving up some portion of the early game is fine because it gives us time to setup our later turns. I usually shave some amount of moon, fast mana and e-tutors for sideboard cards that are just better. What we get from the sideboard is just way better than what we're boarding out. Minus the planeswalkers I don't really think there are very many big threats that we can slam early that single handedly win us the game. You can probably make an argument for blood moon but postboard most miracles players will more than likely keep hands that can interact with it in some capacity. Postboard you basically just force your opponent to deal with so many different angles to attack i.e. the combo, planeswalkers and creature beatdowns that you can force them to awkwardly dig for an answer.



In agreement here, I think right now you can probably make an argument for any of the burn/board wipes. The big caveat on fiery confluence is that you're trying to resolve a 4 cmc card in a format full of wastelands, ports and dazes/spell pierces so there will be times that you lose to not being able to cast your boardsweeper on time. Otherwise I think it's a card with a pretty high ceiling and having modal stuff in red is always a plus.



I've found the opposite, I think we're surprisingly resilient. This is all hyperbole but I think that I don't think that i've won any of my recent matches with creature beatdown. Between the pyromancers, mentors and other white weenies it's just something that is getting hard to do. Almost all of which outclass most of the crappy creatures that we play minus painter (1/3 :cool:) so it's a lot easier focusing on the combo than it is actually trying to win via creature beatdown. In the end though sometimes you gotta send harambe into the redzone and show your opponent you mean business. Just my 2 cents though.

<This. (Me like)

Weighing in myself, I would never side out grindstone against Miracles for most of the reasons stated above. First, you can completely mess with their game plan. Grindstone in response to a top draw activation is really good. Also, I have VERY AGGRESSIVELY grindstoned many Miracles players and have won dozens of games that way. You will never see a Miracles player get more salty than when they get grindstoned to death 2-4 cards at a time. As long as I am not advancing their game plan by doing so (i.e., they have a top out and I'm just giving them more looks), grindstoning can often hit the 3-4 actual threats they have. The rest is just fluff.
Don't get me wrong, I also think jamming in Planeswalkers against Miracles is definitely where we want to be. I haven't had a lot of experience with the new Chandra yet. Both ultimates I assume just win the game. I think Chandra is probably better at taking out creatures as they don't have to be tapped. However, I also really like the enchantment removal of Nahiri and the fact that, although Nahiri's ultimate is a little more fragile, you get there much quicker and it usually wins on the spot.
As for confluence vs pyroclasm vs etc., I agree...play what you like. I am still on confluence as it has single-handedly won me so many games because of the artifact removal attached. If that wasn't there, I would certainly be playing something else.


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[L10]

I've found the opposite, I think we're surprisingly resilient. This is all hyperbole but I think that I don't think that i've won any of my recent matches with creature beatdown. Between the pyromancers, mentors and other white weenies it's just something that is getting hard to do. Almost all of which outclass most of the crappy creatures that we play minus painter (1/3 :cool:) so it's a lot easier focusing on the combo than it is actually trying to win via creature beatdown. In the end though sometimes you gotta send harambe into the redzone and show your opponent you mean business. Just my 2 cents though.

That's fair. My main point is that if you can prevent your opponent from winning, the win condition itself is usually a matter of convenience. Whether it be the Painter+Grindstone, Chandra burn/ultimate, Jaya burn, or beatdown. Against combo decks, Miracles, and Shardless BUG, I often find Goblin Rabblemaster to be a decent win condition. Against Emrakul, I always SB out my Grindstones because I do not want to assemble a three card combo. This is why I consider Imperial Painter a prison deck first, and a combo deck second.

[drude1]

Took down a big prize local legacy tourney yesterday to win a play-set of Eternal Masters. Admittedly, it was a magical day as far as pairings went.
First, here's the list I played (which I would CERTAINLY NOT PLAY AGAIN!)...


// Lands
4 [ZEN] Arid Mesa
1 [MR] Great Furnace
3 [EX] City of Traitors
2 [B] Plateau
4 [TE] Ancient Tomb
3 [ZEN] Mountain (3a)
1 [ZEN] Marsh Flats
1 [ZEN] Plains (4)

// Creatures
4 [SHM] Painter's Servant
3 [P3] Imperial Recruiter
2 [UL] Goblin Welder
1 [ALA] Ethersworn Canonist
2 [PLC] Simian Spirit Guide

// Spells
4 [TE] Grindstone
4 [IA] Pyroblast
4 [CH] Blood Moon
3 [SH] Ensnaring Bridge
3 [ARE] Enlightened Tutor
3 [B] Red Elemental Blast
3 [TE] Lotus Petal
3 [CHK] Sensei's Divining Top
2 [SOI] Nahiri, the Harbinger

// Sideboard
SB: 1 [RTR] Rest in Peace
SB: 1 [C14] Containment Priest
SB: 1 [OD] Sphere of Law
SB: 1 [DS] Trinisphere
SB: 1 [FUT] Magus of the Moon
SB: 1 [MMA] Engineered Explosives
SB: 1 [M15] Tormod's Crypt
SB: 2 [C15] Fiery Confluence
SB: 3 [MMA] Sudden Shock
SB: 1 [CMD] Duergar Hedge-Mage
SB: 1 [KLD] Chandra, Torch of Defiance
SB: 1 [SOM] Mindslaver

I was expecting a lot of Eldrazi and Miracles/control so I went with an ensnaring bridge heavy build for the Eldrazi and maindeck planewalkers for Miracles.
One thing I realized with this build though is that I had no alt win condition other than dork beatdown against Emrakul decks. That would be the biggest benefit of playing Chandra main over Nahiri. Anyway, more on that later.

Tourney was 5 rounds with I think 28 people and went like this:

Rnd 1 vs Death and Taxes

This guy was playing a very updated version of the list with a full compliment of new Thalia, white recruiter and Sanctum Prelate. I know that Sanctum Prelate did MAJOR work for him all day and it really makes me want to play it in the board. Game 1 I stumbled on mana and payed for it with Thalia and mana denial lands.
Game 2: I was able to land a bridge to start to stabilize but was again short on mana so had a bunch of 3 drops in my hand. He was able to blink out the bridge with a flickerwisp and finish me off.
0-2, 0-1 matches *thought this was going to be a short day.

Rnd 2 vs infect

Game 1 my opponent kept a very strange hand of no threats. He had a few counters and lands and dealt with my early drops (a grindstone and 2 blood moons I think). Eventually though I got redundant pieces out and I don't think he ever saw a threat on the board.

Game 2 he dropped 3 threats right away but I saw an early blood moon and a sudden shock and I think I took 2 poison all game before I was able to combo off.
2-0, 1-1 matches

Rnd 3 vs Maverick (with dark depths combo)
Game 1 he dropped a turn 1 deathrite followed by a turn 2 knight of the reliquary. I played a turn 1 top and had some blasts and blood moon in hand. Opponent plays a thespians stage turn 3 and basically has an instant speed 20/20 flying indestructible dude on the ready and passes. My end of turn is to spin the top, hoping to see a bridge. I don't. My turn 3 I play a fetch land, fetch, and blind draw from the top hoping to hit either a blind bridge or painter so that I could play painter and blast his stage in response to it's trigger. I miss. So, I am basically dead and decide to just hold my breath and play the blood moon. Of course, my opponent activates knight in response but doesn't actually tap the land he sacs for mana and ends up grabbing a Plains! I'm alive! He swings a couple times with dudes but I am able to combo off before he kills me.
Game 2 he is drops turn 2 qasali pridemage in response to my turn 1 grindstone but I am able to sudden shock it away before he can use it and I combo off by turn 4.
2-0, 2-1 matches

Rnd 4 vs Lands
I get a turn 2 Blood Moon via a turn 1 enlightened tutor both games and its over. He does make the huge mistake of fetching non-basic on his turn 1 and shows me 2 krosan grips in his hand that he can't play at the end of the game.

2-0, 3-1 matches

Rnd 5: ID into top 8, 6th place.

Top 8

Rnd 1 vs 12-Post

I've played this guys several times in the past and 12-post is his pet deck as painter is mine, so we both know what we are playing. He usually knows to only keep a hand where he has a basic or a way to get a basic early. Fortunately, this didn't happen and both games were won with a very early blood moon (he tried to counter my game two blood moon with a hydroblast but I had pyroblast backup with a monkey to pitch), followed by dork beats. I never did see Nahiri but this is a MU that it wouldn't have helped much and I wish I would have been playing Chandra and/or Ghirapar Aether Grid in it's place.

Top 4 vs Eldrazi
Auto-win. With 3 ensnaring bridge, that and blood moons just shut this deck down.

Finals vs Death & Taxes (the guy who beat me round 1)
So first place was the EM playset or $400 store credit and 2nd was Tundra or $125 store credit. I offer him a draw and we would just split the store credit. He obviously declines, knowing how he wrecked me Rnd 1.
Game 1 more of the same and I am locked down and dead pretty early.

Game 2 I see more of my SB and am able to control his board and have time to combo off after I lock down most of his lands with a moon.

Game 3: he has to mulligan to 5. Before he takes his second mulligan, I actually offer him a draw again and he still declines. So he draws his 5 cards. He plays a turn 1 wasteland and no vial. I play a fetch and pass. He plays turn 2 port and passes. I play 2nd fetch. He misses his third land drop and I play third fetch and crack them all to play a blood moon. He never sees a basic plains. GG. Greedy sir.

Like I said, I generally had really good MUs other than D&T. Never saw Miracles although there was a lot of land-still type decks there where planeswalkers would still have been good. I kinda like the triple bridge build right now. I am seriously considering going back to the aether grid build with opals in place of the monkeys and 4 great furnace. Replace the 2 Nahiri's main with a grid and either a Chandra or something like Jaya, LED or Chandra.
I can't stress enough how good sudden shocks have been for me. Any other burn spell would have been a game loss against the Pridemage and in the D&T game, as he always had an early mother out. I also took out Sulfur Elementals in place of the Chandra and Mindslaver the night before the tourney because they just weren't performing that well against Miracles for me online. I obviously wish I had them still against the D&T MU.

Anyway, it was fun to play in a paper tournament again and do well. I did qualify for the SCQ Invitational with this deck earlier in the summer so am going to Atlanta in December for that. Guess I need to start concentrating on Modern and Standard for a little while :eek:. Kinda hope I scrub out early and can play in the Legacy Classic on Sunday.

[CptHaddock]

SB: 1 [SOM] Mindslaver


I saw that and went :eek: but read the report and didn't see any mention of mindslaver and became :cry:. I have no self control so if I was playing 1 in the board I would bring it in every game. I'm also a fan of sudden shock, primarily because i'm a child who wants his hand held in the infect matchup.

On a more serious note that manabase looks sketch as hell. Running Nahiri main certainly warrants a basic plains but I imagine that with 2 non-red producing lands you can get a lot of awkward hands. I imagine since you're potentially changing the manabase after this tournament it's not something you'd try in the future?


Hate to tag along your report but I ended up winning an IQ as well. Got $250 and ended up spending some of that buying some beta REBs. Matchups played like they normally play out and only 1 really stands out and I am still kicking myself for punting that one.

I'll post my list below. I think the only changes that I want to make is find a way to fit some board control planeswalkers in the board. I feel like we want some combination of game winning planeswalkers e.g. koth, nahiri, chandra and some amount of board control planeswalkers i.e. chandra and ajani. I haven't gotten a chance to try out Chandra but she seems like she's in both camps.

2-0 Shardless
1-2 BG Turbo Depths (This would have been a 2-0 but I punted game 1 by conceding when I had him dead, won game 2 by manually grinding him out with 2 grindstones and lost game 3 by keeping a kind of slow hand and not finding a bridge or moon effect.)
2-1 RUG Delver
2-0 Miracles
ID

We did a top 4 since we didn't have many people show up and it was weird. GWu Enchantress, BG Turbo Depths, Rw Painter and RUG Delver which was the most normal of the bunch.

2-1 BG Turbo Depths (Rematch, no punting in this match.)
2-0 RUG Delver



4 Ancient Tomb
3 City of Traitors
2 Plateau
1 Great Furnace
5 Fetch Lands
4 Mountain

4 Imperial Recruiter
4 Painter's Servant
3 Goblin Welder
2 Simian Spirit Guide
1 Jaya Ballard, Task Mage
1 Phyrexian Revoker

4 Blood Moon
4 Grindstone
3 Sensei's Divining Top
3 Lotus Petal
1 Lion's Eye Diamond
1 Ensnaring Bridge
1 Engineered Explosives

4 Pyroblast
2 Red Elemental Blast
3 enlightened tutor

The board

4 Sudden Shock
2 Fiery Confluence
1 Ethersworn Canonist
1 Trinisphere
1 Rest in Peace
1 Tormod's Crypt
1 Ensnaring Bridge
1 Duergar Hedge-Mage
1 Magus of the Moon
2 Nahiri, the Harbinger (Because i'm a pauper and don't want to pay around $40 for 2 Chandras.)

[drude1]

I saw that and went :eek: but read the report and didn't see any mention of mindslaver and became :cry:. I have no self control so if I was playing 1 in the board I would bring it in every game. I'm also a fan of sudden shock, primarily because i'm a child who wants his hand held in the infect matchup.

On a more serious note that manabase looks sketch as hell. Running Nahiri main certainly warrants a basic plains but I imagine that with 2 non-red producing lands you can get a lot of awkward hands. I imagine since you're potentially changing the manabase after this tournament it's not something you'd try in the future?


Not quite sure what you mean by sketchy manabase...playing a plains over the fourth Mountain you mean? 2 non-red producing lands? There are 8 non-red producing lands: 4 tomb, 3 city and the Plains. Most people only play 7, I get it. But like you said, with 6 spells in my main that need white mana I wanted to hedge the white a little bit more. I never had a problem.

Mindslaver comes in against control MUs such as Miracles. You basically are either hard-casting it or more likely Nahiri ultimate for it. It's a little gimmicky but it has straight out won me multiple games against Miracles online so I wanted to try it out. As it turns out, I never played against control so it didn't come in. I also never actually saw Nahiri all day. The biggest flaw in my list was that Nahiri couldn't actually do anything for me against Emrakul decks. If you are going to play Nahiri as an alt win condition, you need Emrakul or Mindslaver or something like that in the main to make her ultimate worthwhile. That alone is why I would play Chandra main and Nahiri in the board. I also do really like Aether Grid as an alt win condition as it also serves to lend a hand in MUs like elves and D&T. The problem with that build in general though is 2 cards: Null rod and Pernicious Deed. Those two cards just wreck an artifact heavy build of the deck. Nothing like getting your lands shut off or destroyed by splash hate.
If I were to play a non-Aether Grid build of the deck today I would run this:


// Lands
4 [ZEN] Arid Mesa
1 [MR] Great Furnace
3 [EX] City of Traitors
2 [B] Plateau
4 [TE] Ancient Tomb
4 [ZEN] Mountain (3a)
1 [BFZ] Plains (4F)

// Creatures
4 [SHM] Painter's Servant
3 [P3] Imperial Recruiter
2 [UL] Goblin Welder
1 [NPH] Spellskite
1 [ALA] Ethersworn Canonist
2 [PLC] Simian Spirit Guide

// Spells
4 [TE] Grindstone
4 [IA] Pyroblast
4 [CH] Blood Moon
2 [SH] Ensnaring Bridge
3 [ARE] Enlightened Tutor
3 [B] Red Elemental Blast
3 [TE] Lotus Petal
3 [CHK] Sensei's Divining Top
1 [KLD] Chandra, Torch of Defiance
1 [MI] Flex (Lion's Eye Diamond or Jaya or 3rd bridge)

// Sideboard
SB: 2 [SOI] Nahiri, the Harbinger
SB: 1 [RTR] Rest in Peace
SB: 1 [C14] Containment Priest
SB: 1 [OD] Sphere of Law
SB: 1 [DS] Trinisphere
SB: 1 [FUT] Magus of the Moon
SB: 1 [MMA] Engineered Explosives
SB: 1 [M15] Tormod's Crypt
SB: 2 [C15] Fiery Confluence
SB: 3 [MMA] Sudden Shock
SB: 1 [CMD] Duergar Hedge-Mage

This is what I would play right now if I wanted to play Aether Grid:


// Lands
4 [ZEN] Arid Mesa
4 [MR] Great Furnace
3 [EX] City of Traitors
1 [B] Plateau
4 [TE] Ancient Tomb
3 [ZEN] Mountain (3a)

// Creatures
4 [SHM] Painter's Servant
3 [P3] Imperial Recruiter
3 [UL] Goblin Welder
1 [ALA] Ethersworn Canonist

// Spells
4 [TE] Grindstone
4 [IA] Pyroblast
4 [CH] Blood Moon
2 [SH] Ensnaring Bridge
3 [ARE] Enlightened Tutor
3 [B] Red Elemental Blast
3 [TE] Lotus Petal
3 [CHK] Sensei's Divining Top
1 [MI] Lion's Eye Diamond
2 [SOM] Mox Opal
1 [ORI] Ghirapur AEther Grid

// Sideboard
SB: 2 [SOI] Nahiri, the Harbinger
SB: 1 [RTR] Rest in Peace
SB: 1 [C14] Containment Priest
SB: 1 [OD] Sphere of Law
SB: 1 [DS] Trinisphere
SB: 1 [FUT] Magus of the Moon
SB: 1 [MMA] Engineered Explosives
SB: 1 [M15] Tormod's Crypt
SB: 2 [C15] Fiery Confluence
SB: 3 [MMA] Sudden Shock
SB: 1 [TSP] Jaya Ballard, Task Mage

the only thing I struggle with in this list is that I would ideally like 3 x of tutor, REB and bridge. If I knew I was going to see a lot of D&T and eldrazi I would shave a blast instead of the bridge. I would also cut the plains in this build because all 5 of my "fast mana" produce white. Like I said, if wasn't for null rod and deed, I would play this list all day. It's also a little weaker to wasteland but the mox opals kinda make up for that.

Also, congrats on your IQ win. You going to Atlanta?

[zangoasyl]

Congrats to both of you!
And it definitely is nice reading...

[CptHaddock]

Not quite sure what you mean by sketchy manabase...playing a plains over the fourth Mountain you mean? 2 non-red producing lands? There are 8 non-red producing lands: 4 tomb, 3 city and the Plains. Most people only play 7, I get it. But like you said, with 6 spells in my main that need white mana I wanted to hedge the white a little bit more. I never had a problem.

Mindslaver comes in against control MUs such as Miracles. You basically are either hard-casting it or more likely Nahiri ultimate for it. It's a little gimmicky but it has straight out won me multiple games against Miracles online so I wanted to try it out. As it turns out, I never played against control so it didn't come in. I also never actually saw Nahiri all day. The biggest flaw in my list was that Nahiri couldn't actually do anything for me against Emrakul decks. If you are going to play Nahiri as an alt win condition, you need Emrakul or Mindslaver or something like that in the main to make her ultimate worthwhile. That alone is why I would play Chandra main and Nahiri in the board. I also do really like Aether Grid as an alt win condition as it also serves to lend a hand in MUs like elves and D&T. The problem with that build in general though is 2 cards: Null rod and Pernicious Deed. Those two cards just wreck an artifact heavy build of the deck. Nothing like getting your lands shut off or destroyed by splash hate.

Also, congrats on your IQ win. You going to Atlanta?


Yeah mostly the Plains + Non-red fetch. Although this is probably just me misevaluating the games I had where I tried to run a basic plains (alongside with changing my fetches to arid mesa) which didn't lead to good results. Glad it worked out for you. I feel the same way about Nahiri as well but I haven't found a good target for her ultimate that I like. I've run into too many situations against miracles where a combo piece gets surgical'd and the best target for the nahiri ultimate is a recruiter. Mindslaver seems really interesting and I think i'm going to try it out, thanks for the suggestion.

Congrats on your win as well, I someone how forgot to include that in my original post. Not really planning on going to Atlanta as I primarily play legacy, I just went to the IQ because it was a legacy even in the area and I was free this past weekend. Hopefully I didn't rob anyone who actually wanted to go the invitational of going.

@zangoasyl Thanks!

[zangoasyl]

Guys, do you think this has sb potential or is the cmc too high?
Seems like a good catch all, even Jace or cb from miracles but obviously has some drawbacks, especially when considering opponent's fatties...
http://media.wizards.com/2016/bn8f9t2zc_C16/MQZlOGSAzZ_EN.png

[chaosjace]

Guys, do you think this has sb potential or is the cmc too high?
Seems like a good catch all, even Jace or cb from miracles but obviously has some drawbacks, especially when considering opponent's fatties...
http://media.wizards.com/2016/bn8f9t2zc_C16/MQZlOGSAzZ_EN.png

What are you bringing this in against? I don't personally think the CMC is too high but I can't imagine what you want it against. We have blasts for Jace or CB.

[mcbain]

Hi all,

I top 4'd our regional NW Legacy event with Strawberry Shortcake last weekend losing in the semi's to 4c Loam on two very strong chalice draws and two average to poor draws on my end. All around a great time though.

The event is streamed and the metagame is well reported and documented (not sure if fully updated, although I did win the Feb 20, 2016 tourney as well which is posted there):

http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?30223-Card-Kingdom-Mox-Boarding-House-Legacy-Metagame-Results

and

https://www.twitch.tv/cardkingdom/v/97854630 I am streamed at about the 3 hour mark against RUG Delver where I get run over game 1 due to no red sources and claw back the next two games.

My matches were:
2-0 Eldrazi MVP: Jaya
2-0 Aluren MVP: Ajani
2-1 Miracles MVP: Ajani
2-1 Canadian Threshold MVP: Ajani
ID Grixis Delver
ID Dnt (I think)
2-1 Tin Fins (QF) MVP: Opponent getting disruption heavy hands g2/3 and not just killing me t1, although he did turn 1 me in game 1.
1-2 4c Loam (SF) MVP: bad draws and dying to chalice on one both games.

My List was:

4 Ancient Tomb
4 Arid Mesa
1 Wooded Foothills
3 City of Traitors
1 Great Furnace
4 Mountain
2 Plateau

3 Goblin Welder
4 Imperial Recruiter
1 Jaya Ballard, Task Mage
4 Painter's Servant
1 Simian Spirit Guide
1 Phyrexian Revoker

2 Enlightened Tutor
4 Pyroblast
2 Red Elemental Blast

4 Blood Moon
1 Engineered Explosives
3 Ensnaring Bridge
4 Grindstone
4 Lotus Petal
3 Sensei's Divining Top

SIDEBOARD

2 Ajani Vengent
1 Duergar Hedge-Mage
2 Ethersworn Canonist
3 sudden shock
2 Sulfur Elemental
1 rest in peace
1 sphere of law
1 warmth
1 plains
1 enlightened tutor


Some quick explanations:

Plains - Was great all day. Sideboard out your one wooded foothills or lotus petal against any decks where you want to cast blood moon and have access to white. Against miracles brought in for a petal to provide better long term mana.
Warmth / sphere of law - day of meta call after seeing a few to many burn players. Would have been a sulfur elemental and a 3ball otherwise, maybe a fiery confluence...
Sudden shock - where you want to be. Very good in a meta with aluren.
Ajani - I used all of Ajani's abilities during the day. I won game 3 on miracles after I just helixed him for 6. Geddon'd Aluren. Helix against delver. Very strong card. Will be testing new Chandra some more, not sure if she is better or not. Ajani is much better than Koth and most chandras. The ability to lock things down is huge. Often people are operating on one basic under a moon and Adjani just seals the deal.
Revoker - didn't really do anything all day but was never sad to see it.
Eng. Explosives - wasn't that great for me during the day. Realistically it was still a very strong out to have, I just never had it at the right times. I did preemptively put it down on 2 against miracles which was good.


If I were to play next weekend it would run the same except for perhaps changing the warmth and sphere of law.

[chaosjace]

Hi all,

I top 4'd our regional NW Legacy event with Strawberry Shortcake last weekend losing in the semi's to 4c Loam on two very strong chalice draws and two average to poor draws on my end. All around a great time though.


I learned A LOT watching your match, Goblin Welder is capable of things I never considered.
Thank you for sharing this!

[mcbain]

I learned A LOT watching your match, Goblin Welder is capable of things I never considered.
Thank you for sharing this!

Goblin welder is the reason you will fall in love with this deck. Quite often its one of the best cards in the deck. And yes, that game two against RUG really shows some of the strengths of the welder. Glad you liked it.

[Moomba]

Well that one announcer thinks he understands Painter, but pretty much never agreed with anything he said.

Also, did you not side in Rest in Peace vs RUG? Shuts off Goose and Goyf, just wondering on your thoughts behind it.

[L10]

The RIP trigger can be Stifled and RIP turns off Welder, which is also good. Though, I'd still probably SB RIP in.

[Mapson]

Personally I still side rip in but I don't prioritize it

[CptHaddock]

@mcbain Congrats! I caught the tail end of the match you had against tinfins and thought I recognized the name.

@Frenzied Fugue discussion. The card seems super powerful but it's really dependent on what your opponent plays. I would much rather have strong cards that work regardless of my opponents gameplan rather than cards that depend on my opponent doing things.


Well that one announcer thinks he understands Painter, but pretty much never agreed with anything he said.

Also, did you not side in Rest in Peace vs RUG? Shuts off Goose and Goyf, just wondering on your thoughts behind it.

Maybe I misheard but the commentator said something about painter being bad against Eldrazi too...

[mcbain]

Honestly, i was never quite sure if he was grixis or not. He had very heavy delver draws. RIP is definetly a bring in against BUG and RUG decks for goyf's, goose, DRS.



Sent from my SM-G925W8 using Tapatalk

[Moomba]

@mcbain Congrats! I caught the tail end of the match you had against tinfins and thought I recognized the name.

@Frenzied Fugue discussion. The card seems super powerful but it's really dependent on what your opponent plays. I would much rather have strong cards that work regardless of my opponents gameplan rather than cards that depend on my opponent doing things.



Maybe I misheard but the commentator said something about painter being bad against Eldrazi too...

Oh he definitely did. Also said our deck is meant to beat Miracles.

[Valleysdai]

I'll be going to a legacy fnm tonight (I'll put a report up when I'm back) and am wondering what you guys think I can cut from my list for a sudden shock

4 imperial recruiter (I only have 1 so have gamble, E. Tutor and a welder)
4 painter's servant
3 goblin welder
2 simian spirit guide
1 magus of the moon
1 jaya ballard
1 ethersworn canonist

4 grindstone
3 lotus petal
2 Sensei's divining top
1 ensnaring bridge

4 blood moon

1 nahiri, harbinger

4 pyroblast
3 red elemental blast
3 enlightened tutor

4 city of traitors (using 4 crystal vein)
4 ancient tomb
4 arid mesa (using 1 bloodstained)
3 mountain
2 plateau
1 plains
1 great furnace

Side board

1 trinisphere (using surgical extraction)
1 spellskite
1 sudden shock
1 Kozilek's return
1 ensnaring bridge
1 duergar hedge-mage
1 wear/tear
1 rest in peace
1 grafdigger's cage
1 ethersworn canonist
1 engineered explosives
1 pithing needle
1 chandra, torch of defiance
2 fiery confluence

[Morcrux]

I'll be going to a legacy fnm tonight (I'll put a report up when I'm back) and am wondering what you guys think I can cut from my list for a sudden shock
Side board

1 trinisphere (using surgical extraction)
1 spellskite
1 sudden shock
1 Kozilek's return
1 ensnaring bridge
1 duergar hedge-mage
1 wear/tear
1 rest in peace
1 grafdigger's cage
1 ethersworn canonist
1 engineered explosives
1 pithing needle
1 chandra, torch of defiance
2 fiery confluence

That's quite the sideboard!
Most of it are valid options, except for wear/tear which isn't too useful in our list as it can't be fetched in any way. A Hedge-Mage is usually enough, eventually paired with an Engineered Explosives as I see you got too.

I'm no big fan of Kozilek's Return in legacy as the devoid isn't of use and especially in our deck we can't utilize the eldrazi-trigger. Could be another Sudden Shock, maybe a Pyroclasm, or if your meta is high on DnT I'd a Sulfur Elemental or 3rd Fiery Confluence.

[CptHaddock]

I'll be going to a legacy fnm tonight (I'll put a report up when I'm back) and am wondering what you guys think I can cut from my list for a sudden shock

4 imperial recruiter (I only have 1 so have gamble, E. Tutor and a welder)
4 painter's servant
3 goblin welder
2 simian spirit guide
1 magus of the moon
1 jaya ballard
1 ethersworn canonist

4 grindstone
3 lotus petal
2 Sensei's divining top
1 ensnaring bridge

4 blood moon

1 nahiri, harbinger

4 pyroblast
3 red elemental blast
3 enlightened tutor

4 city of traitors (using 4 crystal vein)
4 ancient tomb
4 arid mesa (using 1 bloodstained)
3 mountain
2 plateau
1 plains
1 great furnace

Side board

1 trinisphere (using surgical extraction)
1 spellskite
1 sudden shock
1 Kozilek's return
1 ensnaring bridge
1 duergar hedge-mage
1 wear/tear
1 rest in peace
1 grafdigger's cage
1 ethersworn canonist
1 engineered explosives
1 pithing needle
1 chandra, torch of defiance
2 fiery confluence

Are the cards listed in parenthesis what you are actually running? If so I think i'd get rid of a cage, kozilek's return or wear/tear. Cage is kind of meh in general with how the metagame is and it can cause some awkward situations with welder since you're running gambles. I don't think a singleton wear/tear or return is going to do anything. I would actually consider playing a 2nd hedge-mage over the wear/tear. We don't play brainstorm so our only way to find them to dig through our deck via top.

As general advice I think i'd play a 2nd gamble over another e-tutor. The card disadvantage that comes with playing 4 e-tutors is really going to hurt and with gambles you still have a chance of finding some of the 1 offs you're playing.

I think that return is fine. In general I think that you want diversify the cmc of your removal because of the number of chalice decks and d&t running around. The devoid is really only relevant in the d&t matchup and when people randomly have cards like chill and absolute law in their board. Like I said in a previous post I think that most playable removal spells now are viable, you just have to figure out how you want to play the deck.

[Valleysdai]

That's quite the sideboard!
Most of it are valid options, except for wear/tear which isn't too useful in our list as it can't be fetched in any way. A Hedge-Mage is usually enough, eventually paired with an Engineered Explosives as I see you got too.

I'm no big fan of Kozilek's Return in legacy as the devoid isn't of use and especially in our deck we can't utilize the eldrazi-trigger. Could be another Sudden Shock, maybe a Pyroclasm, or if your meta is high on DnT I'd a Sulfur Elemental or 3rd Fiery Confluence.

I find that the double plains can be an issue wit hedge-mage when I need to get rid of an enchantment, also the triple mana option of wear/tear has been very useful against miracles.

In regards to the Kozilek's return, I get a lift with one of the guys and he plays elves, the instant speed is what interests me because it can wipe most boards suddenly and put the opponent off.


As general advice I think i'd play a 2nd gamble over another e-tutor. The card disadvantage that comes with playing 4 e-tutors is really going to hurt and with gambles you still have a chance of finding some of the 1 offs you're playing.

With the gamble I did have 2 but I played against burn where I had 2 in hand and each time I gambled for a painter to win the match it discarded them. I realised that the certainty of enlightened tutor outweighs the card disadvantage it provides, also it is instant speed.

[drude1]

Actually, gamble is not any better with card advantage anyway since you have to discard a card. There is just a chance that you get the card you need in hand immediately rather than a draw later. If you went with multiple copies of gamble I would
Definitely run a full play set of welders so that you can recur in whatever gets discarded. I don't think you need two Canonist.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Morcrux]

I find that the double plains can be an issue wit hedge-mage when I need to get rid of an enchantment, also the triple mana option of wear/tear has been very useful against miracles.

In regards to the Kozilek's return, I get a lift with one of the guys and he plays elves, the instant speed is what interests me because it can wipe most boards suddenly and put the opponent off.

The enchantment-part of Hedge-Mage is pretty much only relevant against miracles, and they'll leave your plateaus alone.

For instant-speed wipe, I'd recommend Pyrokinesis, that one will always lock out elves while having mana to play out your own plan.

[CptHaddock]

Went to SCG Baltimore this weekend and did pretty meh. I did see that 2 painter players made day 2 with 1 being imperial. Was it one of you folks?

[waz]

Yes, I hope to have a report up today after work.

[Report]
I went 9-6, losing my last round to Goryo's Vengeance for a 71st place finish in a 500+ person event, and just missing t64 and cashing.

Going into this tournament I was not sure what to play. After a few rough patches with the deck, I put it down for a while and was playing miracles. That has been my go to deck for a while, and I was undecided as to play, to the point that I brought both with me to Baltimore. I made an 11pm decision on Friday to play painter, and looked through the past few pages for various ideas on builds, as well as referencing past experience with the deck. This is what I registered:

3 Goblin Welder
4 Painter's Servant
4 Imperial Recruiter
2 Simian Spirit Guide
1 Jaya Ballard
1 Magus of the Moon

3 Enlightened Tutor
4 Pyroblast
2 REB

4 Blood Moon

4 Grindstone
3 Sensei's Divining Top
1 Engineered Explosives
1 Ensnaring Bridge
3 Lotus Petal
1 LED

4 Arid Mesa
1 Scalding Tarn
4 Mountain
2 Plateau
1 Great Furnace
4 Ancient Tomb
3 City of Traitors

Sideboard:

2 Fiery Confluence
2 Sudden Shock
2 Chandra Torch of Defiance
1 Sulfur Elemental
1 Nahiri the Harbinger
1 Containment Priest
1 Plains
1 Ensnaring Bridge
1 Ethersworn Canonist
1 Tormod's Crypt
1 Duergar Hedgemage
1 Sphere of Law

The Sideboard was the part I had the least amount of time to prepare. I wanted to find a spot for phyrexian revoker in the 75, but ultimately could not. Last minute changes were Priest for RIP, Shocks instead of bolts, and Plains over Sulfur Elemental #2.

Rd 1: Chris on R/B Reanimator/Goryo's Vengeance
G1: We both mulled to 6, he was on the play. I didn't know what he was on but he looted and discarded a griselbrand. I get a fast combo.
G2: Brought in Crypt, Priest and Bridge. He mulled to 6. He has a slow hand, and I get a fast moon followed by a bridge. I chip in damage until I can assemble the combo.
1-0

Rd 2: Jaime on Miracles
G1: I was on the play. T1 Moon resolves, to which he played Island, top. Another fast combo kill.
G2: I sided out some acceleration, very similar to Jack's suggestion, brought in the Walker Package, Plains, shocks, confluences and elemental. Another fast combo kill
2-0

Rd 3: Jacob on U/B Reanimator
G1: I was on the play, he had a fast Griselbrand and I couldn't assemble the combo fast enough.
G2: Same siding as above. Game 2 was more of a grind fest, with Jaya getting exhumed, but I died to Griselbrand + Tidespout beats.
2-1

Rd 4: Dan on 4c Delver
G1: I was on the play, drop a T1 Moon, and he conceded without ever a land or spell. I had no idea what he was on, guessed it was Eldrazi.
G2: Sided in Confluence, Bridge, Hedgemage. He got a deathrite out, but I locked him under moon + bridge, killed his deathrite and he was dead.
3-1

Rd 5: Todd on R/B Reanimator
G1: I was on the play, and mulled to 5. He pregamed 2 Chancellor of the annex. I played an ancient tomb and passed. He T1d a griselbrand into unmask. Conceded.
G2: Siding as previously. Again died to a fast griselbrand + Iona before I could combo.
3-2

Rd 6: Michael on Eldrazi
G1: He was on the play. He T2d a Thought-knot. I drew Magus to shut his mana down, followed by painter + blast. Combo kill.
G2: Same siding as Rd 4. He kept a slow hand after a mull to 5 and I combo without facing any pressure.
4-2

Rd 7: Mark on Punishing Maverick/Naya Knight
G1: He was on the play, fetched Forest/Plateau and dropped Pridemage. I dropped Moon. We went through a dance of him attacking and then blowing up the moon and playing another Pridemage. The 3rd Moon stuck and I was able to take enough hits before comboing.
G2: Same siding as Rd 4, with addition of Crypt for Knight of the Reliquary. I died to Batterskull beats.
G3: On the play, I dropped a T1 Moon and that was pretty much it.
5-2

Rd 8: Eetai on Death & Taxes
G1: He was on the play. I take chip damage until I can force the combo to stick and combo out. Moon shut down karakas for any managara/thalia tricks.
G2: Sideboard similar to the Miracles matchup, also bring in Hedgemage, Priest and Bridge. Again take chip damage and eventually combo.
6-2

Rd 9: Connor on Punishing Jund
G1: He was on the play and I died to a flurry of creatures.
G2: Sideboard similar to Rd 8 but did not bring in Nahiri. I was on the play and combo kill. He didn't understand the combo G1, having only seen the grindstone.
G3: He adjusted his sideboard plan. This was a very long affair, I sat behind a bridge and multiple moons, he had bob + library. I was not able to find the confluences for his nullrod/needle or Chandras before I died to 2x Bolt + PFire + Deathrite.
6-3

Rd 10: Cassidy on Merfolk
G1: I was on the play and she mulled. T1 Moon was met by an Island I took a few beats before dropping a bridge. She conceded to the bridge. Moon shut off cavern and mutavault.
G2: Sided in confluences, shocks, Hedgemage. I mulled to 6, she mulled to 4. She had kept a no Island hand, her blue vial got blasted, chalice got hedgemaged, and I comboed without too much pressure.
7-3

Rd 11: Keith on Infect
G1: He was on the play. He got an early hierarch, I got a fast Moon. I eventually block his hierarch with a painter, he pumped, and I blasted in response. On to G2:
G2: Side in Shocks, confluences. Hierarch led to blighted agent which resolves through a REB. Moon shut down any further shenanigans, I went up to 6 poison, have a painter out, and four mana with land in hand. Top deck stone, resolve stone, play land and grind for the win.
8-3

Rd 12: Alex on Death and Taxes
G1: I mulled to 6 and get ground out by the value after he blinks my bridge twice with two flickerwisps.
G2: Same siding as above. Nahiri took out a problematic aether vial, Chandra kept the board stable and I beat down. He dies to Chandra's exile.
G3. He was on the play, I can't find enough mana for his thalia + pony and die before being able to get both combo pieces online or before finding a bridge.
8-4

Rd 13: Caleb on Storm.
G1: He was on the play. I die on T2.
G2: Side in Ethersworn and Crypt. He mulled to 6 and kept. I recruitered for ethersworn and it stuck. I beat down until I can combo.
G3. We both mull. I blasted a brainstorm and he didn't have much follow up. Beat down for the win.
9-4

Rd 14: Justin on U/R Delver
G1: He was on the play. T1 Delver dealt a lot of damage, it was blasted, but snapcasters did the rest of the damage.
G2: Similar siding to Eldrazi. He had an early lavamancer, and I was never able to develop my mana to do anything effective.
9-5

Rd 15: Kyle on R/B Reanimator/Goryo's Vengeance [Turns out, this was the same list as Rd 1]
G1: I was on the play and mull to 6. I got a turn, followed by a T1 hasty griselbrand + borborygmos enraged and died to damage + lands.
G2: Siding same as Rd 1. He mulled to 5. I powered out a bridge and combo as quick as possible.
G3: I keep a sketchy hand that has a T2 bridge. I never got a turn, as I died to hasty griselbrand + borborygmos enraged and damage + lands to the dome.
9-6 (final)

Games like the reanimator matchups were why I had originally put the deck down, after messing around with a blue splash that sideboarded into sneak and omnishow. It's possible that they might have gone differently if I had faerie macabre instead of priest to recruiter for. The free aspect of macabre is very appealing. In the reanimator matchups I also missed having revoker to make the demon just a big flying idiot. I felt like Jack's advice of viewing the storm matchup as a race is very well taken and definitely helped in that match. Moons were great all day, and I was never sad to see Magus, including his single-handedly turning around the Eldrazi matchup.

Additionally, its possible the shocks should have been bolts, which would have come in against reanimator. I do like the split second for mentor, but I never saw the monks. Additionally, fiery confluences were great all day.

My notes aren't that great, so this is mostly done from memory, and it was a very long weekend.

[Kap'n Cook]

A weekend of paint for me. I started out playing the Legacy Challenge online. Was only middling around when I decided to just drop even though I probably could have gotten entry back. I was expecting a lot of graveyard combo and eldrazi so I kind of switched up the list at the last second to account for that, putting a second bridge main over a top, adding a second crypt to the board, and swapping the 3rd bolt for the 3rd pyroclasm. The results were only meh. I lost a super tight game 3 to miracles in round 1 where he had only one card left on turn 4 or something, having fow'd and then swordsing my first painter, and had the last swords to kill my second painter. died to mentor swarm next turn. Sad part is that I had two blasts in my hand, just needed to draw any mana source on my turn and didnt. Went for it and died. Beat dredge pretty easily round 2, lost to the four color chalice loam deck in 3 games, beat turbo depths, and then lost to b/r reanimator. Pretty frustrating as that deck seems quick as shit and is way harder than regular u/b reanimator.

Anyways so that was pretty annoying and I debated not playing a paper even today as I don't even have the 2nd Nahiri or any new chandras in paper yet. I decided to go anyways and went back to my normal maindeck (listed below). I'm extremely sold on it. The overall redundancy in combo and recursion and speed makes it really easy to go under a lot of decks in game 1, while having just enough extra 1-ofs like bridge, ee, and jaya to at least have a shot at the long game if it (hopefully not) gets that far. Then you can slow down the deck in whatever direction you need to post-board to deal with the different angles of hate you expect to see.

4 Ancient Tomb
3 City of Traitors
2 Plateau
1 Great Furnace
2 wooded foothills
3 bloodstained mire
4 Mountain

4 Imperial Recruiter
4 Painter's Servant
3 Goblin Welder
2 Simian Spirit Guide
1 Jaya Ballard, Task Mage

4 Blood Moon
4 Grindstone
3 Sensei's Divining Top
3 Lotus Petal
1 Lion's Eye Diamond
1 Ensnaring Bridge
1 Engineered Explosives

4 Pyroblast
3 Red Elemental Blast
3 enlightened tutor


For the board, that's where things got a little more interesting since I didn't have 3 of the walkers that I have been running online. I did throw in a 2nd crypt for the same reasons listed above, as well as bringing back magus since its probably the highest impact rec target for certain matchups, and added in 1 ajani v. I ended up at this:

3 bolt
2 pyroclasm
2 sulfur elemental
2 Tormod's Crypt
1 Ethersworn Canonist
1 Duergar Hedge-mage
1 Ensnaring Bridge
1 Ajani V
1 Nahiri
1 Magus

the 5-0 was burn, bant deathblade, grixis (4c) delver, rg lands, rug lands double draw then beat dnt to get the t4 split. I was on the fence about led after the challenge, but it facilitated a lot of early kills. magus won a game vs lands and I feel more comfortable when he's in the 75, but I'm not sure how much he helps our worse matchups. He obviously makes our good matchups much better like eldrazi and bug.

Another thought crossed my mind when I brought in ajani for g3 vs dnt and made me think of the usual board I had been running with 4 walkers. Yes, I agree that miracles is much better with all of them, but how many other matchups are we bringing in 4 planeswalkers? At least for me not too many. I realized that I was only ever really bringing in 1 chandra and very rarely both.. Having one though as a late game bomb to top through the deck for seems a lot better and frees up a precious sideboard slot. I think two nahiri is still very good for the digging ability and for the game vs counterbalance, and she helps dig for the 1 chandra as well. This is me just rambling mainly, it just felt like nahiri does more of what we want faster. Not entirely sure where that would leave my board, probably something like:

3 bolt
2 pyroclasm
2 sulfur elemental
2 Nahiri
1 chandra
1 tormod's crypt
1 hedge mage
1 canonist
1 bridge
X-Spot

Last spot probably meta dependent? (magus, crypt, 8 blast, priest, whatever) I still don't think any taxing effect (thorn, 3sphere) deserves a spot as combo has enough to deal with in miracles, delver, dnt, and eldrazi. Sulfur Elementals have been amazing, and I am regularly using every board piece (save 2nd chandra), which I think is a good sign for the current build.

Thoughts as always appreciated following my random too-long musings haha

[tired_papasmurf]

A weekend of paint for me. I started out playing the Legacy Challenge online. Was only middling around when I decided to just drop even though I probably could have gotten entry back. I was expecting a lot of graveyard combo and eldrazi so I kind of switched up the list at the last second to account for that, putting a second bridge main over a top, adding a second crypt to the board, and swapping the 3rd bolt for the 3rd pyroclasm. The results were only meh. I lost a super tight game 3 to miracles in round 1 where he had only one card left on turn 4 or something, having fow'd and then swordsing my first painter, and had the last swords to kill my second painter. died to mentor swarm next turn. Sad part is that I had two blasts in my hand, just needed to draw any mana source on my turn and didnt. Went for it and died. Beat dredge pretty easily round 2, lost to the four color chalice loam deck in 3 games, beat turbo depths, and then lost to b/r reanimator. Pretty frustrating as that deck seems quick as shit and is way harder than regular u/b reanimator.

Anyways so that was pretty annoying and I debated not playing a paper even today as I don't even have the 2nd Nahiri or any new chandras in paper yet. I decided to go anyways and went back to my normal maindeck (listed below). I'm extremely sold on it. The overall redundancy in combo and recursion and speed makes it really easy to go under a lot of decks in game 1, while having just enough extra 1-ofs like bridge, ee, and jaya to at least have a shot at the long game if it (hopefully not) gets that far. Then you can slow down the deck in whatever direction you need to post-board to deal with the different angles of hate you expect to see.

4 Ancient Tomb
3 City of Traitors
2 Plateau
1 Great Furnace
2 wooded foothills
3 bloodstained mire
4 Mountain

4 Imperial Recruiter
4 Painter's Servant
3 Goblin Welder
2 Simian Spirit Guide
1 Jaya Ballard, Task Mage

4 Blood Moon
4 Grindstone
3 Sensei's Divining Top
3 Lotus Petal
1 Lion's Eye Diamond
1 Ensnaring Bridge
1 Engineered Explosives

4 Pyroblast
3 Red Elemental Blast
3 enlightened tutor


For the board, that's where things got a little more interesting since I didn't have 3 of the walkers that I have been running online. I did throw in a 2nd crypt for the same reasons listed above, as well as bringing back magus since its probably the highest impact rec target for certain matchups, and added in 1 ajani v. I ended up at this:

3 bolt
2 pyroclasm
2 sulfur elemental
2 Tormod's Crypt
1 Ethersworn Canonist
1 Duergar Hedge-mage
1 Ensnaring Bridge
1 Ajani V
1 Nahiri
1 Magus

the 5-0 was burn, bant deathblade, grixis (4c) delver, rg lands, rug lands double draw then beat dnt to get the t4 split. I was on the fence about led after the challenge, but it facilitated a lot of early kills. magus won a game vs lands and I feel more comfortable when he's in the 75, but I'm not sure how much he helps our worse matchups. He obviously makes our good matchups much better like eldrazi and bug.

Another thought crossed my mind when I brought in ajani for g3 vs dnt and made me think of the usual board I had been running with 4 walkers. Yes, I agree that miracles is much better with all of them, but how many other matchups are we bringing in 4 planeswalkers? At least for me not too many. I realized that I was only ever really bringing in 1 chandra and very rarely both.. Having one though as a late game bomb to top through the deck for seems a lot better and frees up a precious sideboard slot. I think two nahiri is still very good for the digging ability and for the game vs counterbalance, and she helps dig for the 1 chandra as well. This is me just rambling mainly, it just felt like nahiri does more of what we want faster. Not entirely sure where that would leave my board, probably something like:

3 bolt
2 pyroclasm
2 sulfur elemental
2 Nahiri
1 chandra
1 tormod's crypt
1 hedge mage
1 canonist
1 bridge
X-Spot

Last spot probably meta dependent? (magus, crypt, 8 blast, priest, whatever) I still don't think any taxing effect (thorn, 3sphere) deserves a spot as combo has enough to deal with in miracles, delver, dnt, and eldrazi. Sulfur Elementals have been amazing, and I am regularly using every board piece (save 2nd chandra), which I think is a good sign for the current build.

Thoughts as always appreciated following my random too-long musings haha

In the Reanimator match up, how do you play the Crypts? I tried them out, but it seemed like everytime I did they just played the Needle they brought in for Grindstone and comboed out that turn. Do I just get bad beats when playing the Crypts or is there another way to "correctly" playing them other than rofl-slamming it T1?

[drude1]

Yeah man, I absolutely hate that BR Reanimator matchup as well. That deck reminds me more of Tin-fins. I've been T1'd vs that deck more than any other recently. I think the benefit of crypt is that you can drop it turn 1 and at least make them find a needle so you get a couple more turns. If it gets really popular I think we will have to consider cards like surgical or faerie macabre. As with all graveyard decks, it's usually a good idea to mix up your hate. I am playing one crypt and one RiP myself.

Its interesting that you've liked sulfur elementals so much. I tried them and didn't like them at all. Granted, I didn't give them much of a chance. I also have to admit I've actually really liked the new Chandra. I'm still playing two Nahiri in my board but The fact that Chandra's ultimate is gaming winning on its own is a big plus. I think a 1/2 split is right.

Did anyone see anything from the new commander decks that could be good?


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[drude1]

Anyone going to the invitational/legacy classic in Atlanta?


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