[Deck] Angel Stompy

[Bargoth]

As an ATS player, the first thing I can think of would be to attack early mana production. If you can Swords an early Bird or ideally Rofellos then its a huge hit. Getting a Jitte onto an evasion creature should be pretty effective at this too. But removing Rofellos is clearly better then putting him in the graveyard. Obviously getting Seal of Cleansing hitting Survival is a pain, it's usally atleast a one turn speed bump as I have to Eternal Witness it back. But with those two things combined and two or three creatures- you can hopefully provide a fast enough clock that the ATS player can't stabalize before its too late.

I'm not sure about RGSA, I haven't played it much.

[midnightAce]

Bargoth is correct, you attack their early mana productions vial StP and Jitte/SoFI. If ATS is rampent in a certain meta, I can see Kami of Ancient Law being played in the SB. It allows for addtional SotF destruction, as well as keeping the beats tempo of the deck.

Something I would need to remind though:


Getting a Jitte onto an evasion creature should be pretty effective at this too.

I have on many occasionls Jitted the Mother and charge her in. Jitte only cares about combat damage, even with Wall of Roots, the Jitte still gets the counters and still does the job of wiping down BoP, Ranger and Rofellos himself. Don't be afraid of charging in even with a Suntail when they played an early Tradewind. The more counter you have on Jitte, the more control you have of the board.


As for RGSA, the only beats you have to worry there is Baloth, Angel usually beats him in the face, and Mother of Ruins can block Trolls all day with Protection. Silver Knight > FTK, and your shadow guy will probably take the game in a few swings. (Red removal is the only removal they have.)

[Zilla]

Absolutely right. Of the upper tier, this deck's biggest problems have always been Solidarity and Landstill, in that order. One of the reasons I advocated its use, particularly several months ago, was because it was strong against the red matchup, as well as the Survival matchup. Between ATS and RGSA, ATS is the harder of the two matchups, because you can answer most of RGSA's threats with Silver Knight, SoFI, and Jitte, their FTK's are subpar against your predominantly immune threats, and they have essentially no maindecked answer for Angel.

Against ATS, the assumption that you attack mana production is absolutely correct; remove Birds, Walls, and Rofellos at all costs. Keep Survival off the table. Get SoFI and/or Jitte online as quickly as possible. If possible, keep 4 counters on Jitte in case they resolve Tradewind. Only use them to remove mana producers or to deal lethal damage.

By far and away the biggest threat that Survival packs against Angel Stompy is Frog lock. It can only answer the lock if it has an active Jitte, or if it can alpha strike the turn after forcing a Frog sac on the opponent's EOT with an StP. Because of this, I strongly recommend running Pithing Needle in a Survival-heavy meta. Not only does it shut down Survival itself (which is particularly strong against ATS, since their artifact removal is typically ony 1 or 2 cards and require Survival to fetch them), but it also shuts down Tradewind, and Spore Frog. With Pithing Needle from the board, both of these matchups remain quite positive.

As an aside, I advocate Brandon's addition of Honorable Passage to the board for that meta. While the red matchups are pretty good, they've evolved quite a bit since this deck's creation, and the extra punch provided by Passage can provide a helpful boost to turn the tide in these matchups.

All that said, it bears repeating that Angel Stompy is a metagame deck. As long as it remains mono-white (which in most cases I think it should to maintain its strong red/RGSA matchups), it's likely never going to have a strong Solidarity matchup* without dedicating at least half ther SB to beating it. Landstill, on the other hand, is a much better matchup, though at least slightly unfavorable I think.

If the deck could use any development now, it would be in finding a way to consistently beat Landstill without significantly impacting the deck's already positive matchups. When I get some time, I'll do some more testing to see if I can come up with any new tech. I encourage people to consider the problem themselves and suggest any ideas they have on the matter. It'd be nice to see Angel Stompy be a viable metagame choice at GP:Philly, but I don't think this can necessarily happen until the deck is tuned to consistently perform against Landstill.

* This technically not true. The deck can stay mono-white and post positive results by maindecking Enlightened Tutor and Sphere of Resistance, with Rule of Law in the board. Because Tutor finds P. Wave, Seal of Cleansing and Equipment, you can make room for Tutor and Sphere by removing redundant copies of these cards. Limited testing indicates that this strategy is effective. The problem, of course, is that it does impact your positive matchups, and weakens your Landstill matchup, since a countered threat searched for by Enlightened Tutor is both tempo and card disadvantage. I don't really advocate this plan in anything but an extremely Solidarity-heavy meta. Then again, I don't really think you should be playing this deck in that kind of meta, so the point is probably moot.

[MasterBlaster]

I wasn't sure if stping a bop would be worth it, but if you say its good i'll give it a try. Thanks. Also, do you think that armageddon is worth siding in versus survival, or is it pretty much pointless with their mana creatures.

Currently the only things I have to hate out survival in my sb are 2 tormod's crypts and I recently added 2 scrabbling claws. Is that enough?

[Zilla]

Geddon is pretty bad against Survival. It's slow and they have ways to play around it. Even in decks that maindeck Geddon, I typically side it out against Survival. As I said in my previous post, Pithing Needle is all you really need to win the Survival matchup handily.

[Lotus2133]

Geddon is pretty bad against Survival. It's slow and they have ways to play around it. Even in decks that maindeck Geddon, I typically side it out against Survival. As I said in my previous post, Pithing Needle is all you really need to win the Survival matchup handily.
Wouldn't geddon be pretty good against ATS? Seems to me that you could be swinging in the beats while they are rebuilding.

[troopatroop]

yea, If you're going first and they have a slow start.

By the time you reach turn 4, If they have a tradewind rider out you CAN'T cast armageddon. They'll bounce your shit to no tommorrow and lock you down with your own card. You don't want to give your opponents synergy like that.

[midnightAce]

That is correct. If they indeed have an active Tradewind, you'll be forced to replay multiple threats per turn, that means your lands are best left intact.

If you are looking at the higher end of the curve for answer, Wave is much more relevent in ATS match up than Gedden. At the same 4 cc, (The white and colouless mana should be irrelevent.) Wave is a much better drop, by removing their entire critter line of defence, giving you 1 or 2 turns of time to alpha strike repeatedly. Wave also gives an answer to Frog lock for 2-3 turns to allow further damage to go through.

The notion of ATS rebuilds its mana base slow is not entirely correct. RGSA and ATS will both most likely have a Ranger by the time you cast Geddon, that one land they bounced will allow them to recover very fast. Especially ATS, having 4 BoP, x Wall of Roots, with a SotF out, it will take them 2 turns at most to build up again, (Wood Elf is the savage.) Of course, if you managed to keep SotF off the table, then you are already in the winning position, and you should NOT Gedden and give up the mana for your control elements such as StP and Disenchant/Seal.

@MasterBlaster: Furnace over Claw, always. Simply because Furnace forces the bottom card to be removed, as opposed to the Claw, giving the option of choice to the oppoenent which card to remove.

[Vincent]

I attended Gen Con and played what you call Angel Stompy (for the record, I refused to attach that AWFUL name to my deck, and simply registered it as what it is WW/U). In the main event, I posted a 5-3 record with all three losses attributed to muligans to 5 with 1 white source of mana each loss. And 4-2 in the $500 event good enough for 9th. But I will post my list, and I firmly believe that I am maybe 4 or 5 cards off of what is the perfect list for the environment.

Men 21
4 Mother of Runes - MVP
4 Soltari Preist - Love it, but might need something better
4 Silver Knight - Insane
4 Meddling Mage - Insane
3 Exalted Angel - I'm starting to love her less and less
2 True Believer - I audibled to this last minute... it's flacid

Spells 19
4 Swords to Plowshares
4 Tithe
4 Armageddon
2 Sword of Fire and Ice
1 Sword of Light and Shadow - I played a sui black and landed this on a silver knight looking at a negator... GG
2 Umazawa's Jitte - Infu@kingsane card
2 Enlightened Tutor - I like this over steelshaper's gift with my side

Mana 20
3 Chrome Mox
3 Ancient Tomb
3 Flooded Strand
3 Tundra
8 Plains

Sideboard
3 In the Eye of Chaos - Insane I dropped this turn 1 vs Solidarity and followed with a geddon... Thanks for trying...
3 Back to Basics - Also insane... Landstill bit it to this
3 Null Rod - Less than amazing, but I won't take them all out
3 Seal of Cleansing - nessicary evil
3 Tividar's Crusade - Insane card when it shows up. Goblin players typically are awful and overextend, this card abuses that advantage.


I'm open to all comments, I will write a report of my matchups when I don't have to be to work in 6 minutes

Thanks

John Donovan

[GRAH]

Interesting build.

The thing you need to drop most is Enlightened Tutor. It's not a good card here, and certainly isn't worth the tempo loss. I wouldn't suggest S's Gift, either, though.

I'm really surprised that you didn't include Mask of Memory. It's an insane card in drawing threats.

Here's how I'd change it:

-2 True Believer (bad. bad. bad.)
-1 Armageddon (Zilla's AS 2.0 only included 3 MDed. I agree.)
-2 Enlightened Tutor
-1 Sword of Light and Shadow (I see how this could be good, but white and black are both underpowered colors. SB it.)
-1 Flooded Strand (you can afford to drop a land)

+3 Mask of Memory
+4 Suntail Hawk/Soltari Foot Soldier (unblockable one-drops are good in this deck.)

As for your SB, the weakest link is Null Rod. With Belcher no longer a force, Pithing Needle is strictly better. Back to Basics seems suboptimal, too. You're playing 6 nonbasics out of 14 lands (not counting Strands in either, obv). It seems like it could do some damage to you. Also, is Tivadar's Crusade needed? From my experience I have good matchups versus Goblins. Of course, that was mostly back when we still played Parallax Wave over Geddon.

[midnightAce]

It is an interesting build.

The inclusion of E.Tutor over Gift is obviously used in conjuction with the vast number of SB options avilible to the deck.

While I agree with some of Grah's suggestions, I would like to wait for your tournement report first, and base the changes upon that. I'm particularly interested to see if you were paired with any combo decks and how those match ups went.

EDIT: I'm also very looking forward to your explination of love/hate relationship with the Angel. (Seems more hate than love... :D )

Lastly, congrats on placing 9th in the side event, 500 is pretty good.

Ace

[Zilla]

Vincent:

First, welcome to The Source. Congrats on your performance, and on your updates to the list.

I see you've been working with the AS 2.0 skeleton as a base. To be honest, I've had very little time to dedicate testing that version, and so I haven't been totally convinced that it's the right direction to go. I also see you're using E. Tutor over Gifts, which, as I've said, I've tested a lot of times and typically not been overly happy with. With the way you've built your sideboard, though, I understand the reasoning behind them, and I think that Tutor is likely the better choice in these circumstances.

A few questions/observations about your build:

1. How have the Geddons been treating you? It was one of my most questionable changes with the 2.0 build. In many matchups, I was really missing the maindecked Parallax Waves. Particularly against Survival and Goblins, they're insanely good, where Armageddon is bad against both of these archetypes. Even against Landstill I miss P. Wave as a way to dodge mass removal, although Geddon is obviously strong there too.

2. Whether you run Wave or Geddon in this slot, it's probably better off as a 3-of. A third Tutor may be a good choice here.

3. How's your Solidarity matchup? Obviously Eye of Chaos, Mage, and Geddon are strong here, but how much have you tested this matchup? I know you did well against it in the tournament, but have you tested it thoroughly outside of a tournament setting? How's it looking now?

4. I know Eye of Chaos has been suggested before, but I'm not sure it's a good idea over a combination of Rule of Law and Arcane Lab for a few reasons: a) It hurts your mana consistency by shutting down your own Tithes. b) It's not as good against the sorcery speed variants of the High Tide combo. c) It's not as good against Tendrils-based combo decks. Additionally, by running a combination of Rule of Law and Arcane Lab, you can dodge Echoing Truth by playing one of each. What are your thoughts?

5. How's your Goblins matchup without Parallax Waves? Obviously Jitte and Silver Knights are powerhouses here, and I imagine Meddling Mage is good in shutting down Vials and Anarchies, but this can be a difficult matchup for AS, even with the P. Waves. Given the extreme popularity of Goblins right now, how is this matchup panning out for your build?

6. Aside from the Sui matchup, how's Sword of Light and Shadow working out for you? Ostensibly, it was included in the 2.0 build as a way to recur threats against Landstill, and to protect them from StP. Is that working for you? Has it even been an issue?

7. I think we all agree that True Believer is pretty suboptimal. Depending on how your Goblins matchup is, I might consider Silver Knight or Longbow Archer in this slot as additional defense against a massive creature onslaught.

8. I don't agree with a lot of Grah's suggestions above. Specifically, I think E. Tutor is likely a necessary evil in a build with so many important enchantments and artifacts both main and in the board. I also disagree that you can afford to drop a Strand... both because that would drop you to only 9 ways to consistently get a turn 2 blue source (not including Chrome Moxen), and because, as you said, the majority of your losses was caused by having to mull down to 5 due to mana screw. I'm also coming to wonder if the evading 1 drop is all that important to the deck's strategy. Particularly when you have E. Tutors in addition to your Tithes and Moms as a turn 1 play.

8. I agree with Grah about Null Rod. It's strong against Belcher and Ravager, both of which are nearly non-existent in the modern meta. Pithing Needle seems like a natural fit for this slot, since it's strong against Belcher and Ravager as well, and is also very good against Landstill, Survival, and great number of other decks in the field right now.

9. How's your Landstill matchup? Right now I think it's the most important focus for the deck's evolution, because a) it's one of the deck's weaker matchups, particularly because this build seems to have an improved game against Soldiarity, and b) because Landstill is going to be absolutely everywhere at GP:Philly if GenCon's metagame was any indicator at all; 3 Landstill builds made the Top8 there.

That's all I got for now. Thanks for taking the time to post your decklist.

[Vincent]

Zilla,
I'd like to start off thanking you for the welcome to the board, and for your defense of the e-tutors =) They proved to be the right play, as I audibled to them last minute.

I am using the internet at my college so I don't have time to type a detailed report yet, but I will comment on what has been said so far about my build and answer questions.

First of all... Mask of Memory, while a solid card, is flacid and useless in many matchups. I almost don't want it against goblins. It doesn't do anything to help me win there. and against landstill, always in testing, while I was swinging with it, they ended up rocking my world with plows or blocked my men before it ever drew me a card.

Steelshapers Gift - Yes, the card is amazing, but as I was looking around at the format the morning of, all I saw was solidarity, landstill, and goblins. I knew I needed a reliable way to search up my sideboard options. In particular, the In the Eye and the Back to Basics.

Soltari Foot Soldier - Yes, this may take the place of the true believers, at the same time, I'll never forget the game vs solidarity with a true believer, a mom, and a meddling mage naming cunning wish vs. Solidarity...


Zilla,
1. The geddons were the god damn ballz... I wouldn't swap them out for anything. Half the time when I had two, I had a chrome mox to imprint one and didn't regret having the 4th. More often than not, I wanted to have one in the first few turns, but the 4th might be out before Philly, I'm not sure yet, I guess once I know if I have the first round bye or not, I will know for sure.

2. Yes, that may be the slot for the 3rd tutor, that was the thought.

3. The Solidarity matchup is terrible game one unless I land a mage naming High Tide... That's always my first call because it makes them human until they cunning wish. Games 2 and 3 are MUCH more in my favor with In the Eye. I played against the deck in round 1 of the champs and geddoned with my opponent unable to FoW with 4 damage a turn on the board. Seems like a win condition to me..

4. In the Eye of Chaos is the way to go. Cunning wish being the only removal for the card, it costs 6. Even if they high tide once, they are still playing with just the land they are running without any acceleration. The card is nuts, not to mention it comes in against any random control (non/landstill) to force thier hand and watch thier FoW's cost 5, a card, and a life. I LOVE this card. BTW, anyone have any, i had to borrow mine for this event.. I need 3 for philly.

5. The goblin matchup without the wave is obviously tough, but in every instance where I laid silver knight turn 2, or just man on turn 2, and followed up with a plow for the warchief, the game was all but over. The Jitte was AMAZING. I firmly believe this card is nessicary in the deck. There will be an adjustment to make this matchup a little more favorable shortly, and I will just leak that it will be a 1 of enchantment in the board, calling for that 3rd tutor in the main. (Thanks to the east coast crew for the suggestion!!)

6. I only played the sword of W/B in the $500 side, and I had it in play against a w/b sui-aggro that had a negator facing down my silver knight equipped.... It needs more testing, it may become my main deck slot for the goblin answer.

7. Thanks for the longbow archer suggestion, seems better than true believer...

8. Thanks for the defending... You are absolutely correct, I was almost thinking of a 4th strand, but I'm not too sure about that yet. Yes, I like thinning, but I still like being able to draw lands here and there.

9. The landstill matchup is fairly decent post board. Back to Basics is amazing here. Maind deck, it's a little rough, but the 4 geddons have made is a bit easier.

I will go in to more detail later, but i have to work in 5 minutes. But more coming soon including a full analisys of the deck card for card along with the replacements I am considering.


John

[Slay]

In The Eye of Chaos is pretty ass. The only way it does anything at all is if you can back it up with another piece of hate. Literally, it slows them down at most 1-2 turns. They just have to find a few more combo pieces to go off. Seriously, it's not an issue for a Solidarity player with a brain. If a Solidarity player has 6 lands and a few High Tides/Resets, he can easily make 20+ mana. You simpyl don't have the clock to race it, unless you follow up with other pieces of hate, which is certainly possible but requires too much of you, you have to cast them early enough to matter and follow it up with more hate. Statistically speaking, it's fairly difficult, but not overly so. I'd much rather have it be Rule of Law.
-Slay

[midnightAce]

@Slay

Unforutnately, I disagree with you completely on this one. Here is the break down:

The only instants in the decks are StP, Tithe and E.Tutor. Tithe can be imprinted on Chrome to help facilitate the mana consistency, or it can be played on turn 1/2 even just for one Plain. StP is removed enitirely against Solidarity. E.Tutor is used to find the Eye, unfortunately, we can't have multiple Eyes in play, but paying 2 for another E.Tutor for a SoFI to speed up the clock is still worth it. So at this point in time, we establish that SBing Eye doesn't hurt the deck itself.

Now we move onto whether it's better or worse than Rule of Law. They cost the same, and you want to play both as early as possible. However, Rule of Law forbids the deck to play multiple threats, something that's needed to establish a good clock, the trade off, however, is that you can have multiples in play.

Enter Echoing Truth. Most Solidarity decks packs 1cc, 2cc, and 3cc bounce to over come possible Chalice. A standard of Chain of Vapour, Echoing Truth, Rebuild is common in the SB. To get rid of Eye or Rule, EOT Wish and another EOT bounce, it's the same. (Echoing Truth negates the pro of having multiples of Law.)

Enter the difference. To bounce Law, Solidarity can do it during the spread of turn 3/4. To bounce Eye, Solidarity can do it during the spread of turn 6/7, or burn a Tide and do it on 5/6. Those extra turns are extrememly important.


In The Eye of Chaos is pretty ass. The only way it does anything at all is if you can back it up with another piece of hate.

But the deck does pack additional hate, in the form of Geddon and Mage. With 6 mana accelerants, it's not uncommon for the deck to Geddon on turn 3. Eye + Mage naming Wish is close to a hard lock on Solidarity, and this lock can be achieved on turn 3. I believe, this list, is up to date, one of the better ones to combat Solidarity.

I do however have a concern. There are various configurations of Tendril.dec and Brainfreeze.dec that are socery speed, relying on LED and Dimishing Returns and such, did you happen to come across any of those combo decks? If so, how did the match ups go? Thank you for the explinations.

Ace

EDIT: Lol, even the suboptimal True Believer in this case is considered hate. Go go go super dollar rare. :D

[Slay]

The difference between ITEOC and Rule of Law is that Solidarity can go off with ITEOC on the board. And as I said earlier, you do need another spell to back ITEOC up, because if Solidarity gets to 6 lands and has all that time to optimize its hand, albeit slowly, you're still going to lose. Rule of Law makes them find the Cunning Wish, because without a Cunning Wish, they can't win. If oyu use Rule of Law, you're making your opponent find answers, whereas with ITEOC, you're making yourself find the second hate-piece. The difference is profound in how both of you go about playing the game.
-Slay

[midnightAce]

Okay, I understand what you are saying here. I think, at this point, we can agree that both Eye and Law are simply short stop measures. Something like resolved Geddon is much more prefered.

In that sense, Eye helps fight off Solidarity's FoWs, allowing for more hate/beats to go through. They also slow down Solidarity's hand sculptings.

Also Eye has applications against other control decks or even burn decks to some extend. (6 cc + 2 Mountain Fireblast is definately not the way to go.) While I blieve Rule of Law is a much narrow-er card.

All that being said, there is merits to what you are saying. I blieve, if the E.Tutor number was bumped up to 3, there is no reason not to include 2 Eye and 2 Law in the SB. Having an Eye and a Law out seriously slows down Solidarity deck enough to beat it, and it doesn't suffer the problem of Echoing Truth, and I haven't seen any Tempest of Light in Solidarity's SB.

[Zilla]

1. The geddons were the god damn ballz... I wouldn't swap them out for anything. Half the time when I had two, I had a chrome mox to imprint one and didn't regret having the 4th.
Good to hear. The thing I don't like, however, is that as previously mentioned, they're rather weak in the Goblins/Survival matchups. Incidentally, these are the amtchups where P. Wave is at its very best. Have you considered P. Wave in the Null Rod slot to bolster these matchups?


2. Yes, that may be the slot for the 3rd tutor, that was the thought.

Word.


3. The Solidarity matchup is terrible game one unless I land a mage naming High Tide... That's always my first call because it makes them human until they cunning wish. Games 2 and 3 are MUCH more in my favor with In the Eye. I played against the deck in round 1 of the champs and geddoned with my opponent unable to FoW with 4 damage a turn on the board. Seems like a win condition to me..

Well, you've definitely got the hate for it. I tested a similar build against Solidarity about a month ago runno the blue splash for Mage, with 3 E. Tutor, 2 Rule of Law, 2 Arcane Lab, and 3 maindecked Geddons and the matchup seemed fairly positive post board, so I mainly wanted to confirm that your testing mirrored my experiences.


4. In the Eye of Chaos is the way to go. Cunning wish being the only removal for the card, it costs 6. Even if they high tide once, they are still playing with just the land they are running without any acceleration. The card is nuts, not to mention it comes in against any random control (non/landstill) to force thier hand and watch thier FoW's cost 5, a card, and a life. I LOVE this card.

I'll give it more testing. My main qualm with it is that it's not as solid against sorcery-speed High Tide, Tendrils combo and Doomsday combo, but I suppose the point is moot until those decks establish some kind of prominence in the metagame. I'm content to let Slay and midnightAce continue arguing the pros and cons for us.


5. The goblin matchup without the wave is obviously tough, but in every instance where I laid silver knight turn 2, or just man on turn 2, and followed up with a plow for the warchief, the game was all but over. The Jitte was AMAZING. I firmly believe this card is nessicary in the deck. There will be an adjustment to make this matchup a little more favorable shortly, and I will just leak that it will be a 1 of enchantment in the board, calling for that 3rd tutor in the main. (Thanks to the east coast crew for the suggestion!!)

A few things to note about my experiences with Goblins. I found that the Goblins matchup tended to be positive without the Waves when playing with AS2.0, simply because the Gifts consistently got me Jitte ftw by turn 3 or so. There shouldn't be much reason that the E. Tutor build is any different. The problem I ran across, hwoever, was when I started testing against a Goblins opponent who was maindeck Jittes of his own. Without the Jittes, I found I quickly lost my edge in this matchup. Because their Jittes essentially "Disenchant" your own, this tended to cause real problems. Additional tech is needed. What's the 1-of enchantment in the board? Sphere of Law? If you don't want to leak it on the boards, PM it to me if you feel comfortable with it. I doubt I'll be making it to GP Philly, and if I do, I won't be playing Goblins. ;p


6. I only played the sword of W/B in the $500 side, and I had it in play against a w/b sui-aggro that had a negator facing down my silver knight equipped.... It needs more testing, it may become my main deck slot for the goblin answer.

I could see this slot becoming something else. For it to be truly effective in the Landstill matchup, you sort of have to run multiples of it to dodge their artifact removal, and I'm not really a fan of them outside that matchup. They might be better in the board, or being dropped entirely.


7. Thanks for the longbow archer suggestion, seems better than true believer...

White Knight might actually be better, but it's probably a metagame call. There just aren't that many attacking fliers in this format. The only one that comes to mind is Hypnotic Specter, and I suppose Madness' creatures if they have a Wonder in the yard, but that's been moot for a long while. While Longbow Archer may be the nuts against Hyppie, remember that the rest of Sui's threats will get owned by White Knight. If I'm staring down a Negator on the other side of the table, I'm definitely going to want White Knight over Longbow Archer. Against Goblins and Survival, they're functionally identical. I might also try to squeeze a single Isamaru into one of the open creature slots, just because it helps your curve and your overall tempo a bit.


8. Thanks for the defending... You are absolutely correct, I was almost thinking of a 4th strand, but I'm not too sure about that yet. Yes, I like thinning, but I still like being able to draw lands here and there.

The thinning is essentially irrellevant with Fetchlands, mathematically speaking. I recommend against more fetches, because the less basic Plains you have, the more likely you are to have dead Tithes in the late game. I think 3 Fetch, 4 Tithe, and 3 Tundra is probably just about ideal, as it provides for 10 ways to get a blue source, which in my experience is the magic number for light splashes.


9. The landstill matchup is fairly decent post board. Back to Basics is amazing here. Maind deck, it's a little rough, but the 4 geddons have made is a bit easier.

This bears more testing and perhaps more attention from a development standpoint. Right now, I think Landstill is the most important matchup upon which to focus. There will be tons of it at GP Philly.

[cpt_ginu]

In order to address the landstill matchup we need to examine what makes it so bad .... Disk + Vengance/Wrath with Disk and Vengance being way more of a problem. With enchantment based hate and landstill having a 2cc answer to it it isn't all that good looking. One of the largest problems is recovering from a wrath effect. This deck in my testing didn't have enough threats to recover sufficently from a disk/wrath fast enough. It's not like this deck can pull 3-4 more creatures off the top of its library or consistently lay something with a power and butt greater than 2. Dont give me crap about overextending this deck desnt have the strenghth of threats to not play creatures. 2/2's for 2 and a 4/5 are good but not unstopable. How can you loose game one then try to win out using hate that may only have a "suprise factor" associated with it. Game 3 they will know what you have for them and you cant protect it or force it through counters, so you have to hope they make a mistake.

@Donovan:
How many landstill matchup did you play? How did they play out?

Dont forget the anachary/scoop in round 8, that one didn't seem to matter how large your hand started at.

What in the world was the meddling mage naming in the mirror matches, i assume you tried to get either a jitte or angel advantage and ride it on home with the mage.

BTW this is Corey one of Vromans friends-we talked for a bit in between matches and outside, and i dont intende any offense by what ive said.

It just seemed going into the tournament this wasn't going to be the deck to play due to its landstill matchup. I guessed that there wuld be too much of that and not enough good answers in white/blue to make this matchup better.

[Vincent]

Zilla,
Yes, Parralax Wave has been the thought for the null rod spots. I almost wish there was more artifact in the environment. I hate Null Rod being Flacid and Useless


For the In The Eye Of Chaos Vs. Rule of Law... Look, Rule of law has it's merits, but it's much easier for that deck to hate out than In the Eye. I rune 4 geddons and 4 meddling mages to go with my In the Eye. If I drop an early in the eye, and I can't resolve either one of the other 8 cards in the deck, then I should lose anyway. Not to mention that smart players are going to name High Tide with thier first mage every time unless In the Eye is in play, then you name Cunning Wish. After testing this matchup further, I firmly believe that In The Eye will never leave my board again. Tendrils Combo and Doomsday Combo are almost unplayable. If someone runs them, I'll watch thier matches in the 0-3 area while I'm getting at least a round 1 if not round 2 bye. I've got the round 1 secured already.

White Knight... Yeah, I'm going to have to agree here. The first striker with the pro black bonus seems good. I will conceed to this wisdom. This is why I wanted to get on this board, if anything else, just to talk to Zilla, cause he seems to be the master of WW. I'm glad someone else out there cards about the archtype as much as I do. I have been testing this LONG before I saw a decklist, so when I got introduced to The Source at Gen Con and saw your list, I was surprised to see how close I was while building without help.

As for the landstill matchup. I am not sure what to do here. I could be a shitter and run Second Sunrise, but I want to make it to Hawaii, and not miss the money. I need to test this matchup a lot more. I will bring results to the board when I have better answers. The main answer seems to be meddling mages naming wrath and plow, and casting geddon early and often.

As for the landstill matchups I played at Gen Con, there were two. The first was a game 1 crushing where I geddoned on turn 4 with 2 men in play. after getting the turn 3 geddon countered. Game two went like this (Him, Flooded Strand go, me Flooded Strand go, him Flooded Strand, crack, standstill, me in response, crack, and tithe, him, while I'm shuffling, draw cards and put standstill in the yard, me call judge and move on the the next round.
My second matchup, i won game 1, and game two he wrathed twice, game 3, I have no men in play and he has 6 lands and 1 card in hand, I geddon, he cycles and makes men, I don't draw a plains in time to stop his offense and lose. I drew for 4 turns with a mana source.

In the 8th round vs. the shitter running the mono red that somehow finished 2nd, game two and three were mulligans down and no 2nd mana source. The guy was an awful player who made TONS of terrible play errors, along with our champion who had one of the worst play errors I've seen with Goblins yet.
(Block your Pup with fanatic, combat damage on the stack, bolt your pup, resolve damage without sacing the fanatic.)

After watching the finals, I felt bad for the legitimacy of our format.

In the mirror matches, what was named completely depended on the board position and what was in my opponents graveyard. Often, it was disenchant or mask of memory seeing as they are both run but not in my version.
I ended up beating the mirror with jittes, since not all versions of this are running it yet. (but they should be)
The other move I pulled was sidding out my swords of fire and ice and that was the first card named.

I will have more later, but again, until I have internet at home again, I will be on here on and off. Thanks all, keep the comments coming.

[Zilla]

@Eye of Chaos: I'll give it more testing. I still worry about its effectiveness against sorcery speed High Tide, but it may not be prevalent enough to matter.

@White Knight: It's also decent in that it can chump block a Tog all day long, if GAT exists in your emta at all. 2 Knights is probably a decent addition here.

@Landstill: The B2B's should go a long way. You might consider testing both Waves and B2B's post board against Landstill. Note that Wave helps you dodge board sweepers, which is clearly what makes you lose this matchup. While Landstill may have better card advantage than you do, your threats are better than theirs. All you really need to do to win here is find a way to negate the board sweepers, and Wave often does this with a high degree of effectiveness. It also permanently removes Decree tokens, and gets Factories and Conclaves out of the way of your attackers, which speeds up your clock and hurts their mana production.

Second Sunrise sucks against Landstill, unfortunately. Remember that the effect is symmetrical; you get your critters back, but so too do they get their board sweeper back, which means that Sunrise buys you a turn at best. It's not a viable answer.

Incidentally, this matchup is one of the main reasons why I don't like E. Tutor in the deck; it turns a well-timed Counterspell or Disenchant into a 2 for 1, which is card advantage you can't afford to lose. I'd be inclined to side them out for this matchup, even though they can tutor up Waves and B2B's. The Tutors are very strong against Solidarity and other decks though, so I'd say they're probably warranted overall.

[midnightAce]

This will sound crazy and I'm basing it on pure theratical speculation POV, would Tide be worth the SB spot as a one'of? It's essentially a crappy Tutor-able one sided Geddon, temporary, nevertheless useful. You can deny them white or blue mana, depending on the board position. Seeing how Stifle and Teferi's Response are no longer main decked in most Landstills, the only way they can deal with it would be Disenchant and Counterspell/FoW. Burn off a counter baiting with a non-creature spell is always a good play against Landstill. But the deck itself probably have trouble producing UU, so... my points might be moot. Any thoughts?

[Zilla]

I think you hit the nail on the head with producing UU. You've only got 10 ways to fetch blue, and only 3 actual producers, all of which are non-basic. Landstill is going to hit them first with the Wastes, even over the Tombs if they know what's what. Back to Basics and Geddon are likely all the land disruption you need here. The most important missing element is keeping your threats ont he table.

[midnightAce]

Yea, well, that aside, is B2B doing well for everybody who has played/tested with them? The only problem I have with them is that Angel Stompy typically have a much higher curve than that of traiditional WW, simply because of the equipments. I'm just worried that B2B will affect the deck itself so much, that you cannot cast threats/equip on the same turn. Has that ever been a concern? Or am I missing something here?

[Rivs]

@Godzilla: Second sunrise only returns permanents put into the graveyard, so they only get a sweeper back if it is deed or disk.

SOrry to chime in with something that void of content, but i thought it might be useful to know.

Additionally, today i got creamed by AS playing vials and city of traitors. I was just wondering if vials could be added (and the deck vastly restructured) to fit B2B in the sideboard while at the same time keeping the mana consistent and the blue splash for Pikula safer.
Not that i think THAt is a big idea, but it seemed a waste of a post just rules lawyering about second sunrise. Cheers.

[Zilla]

@Rivs:

Thanks for the clarification. I was aware that it only affected permanents, but my wording was unclear. I mean to say specifically that Sunrise can be a liability because Landstill (or other decks for that matter) may get their sweepers back. In a meta without Deeds or Disks though, it might be a viable option.

@B2B:

I was testing it earlier today and I wasn't that impressed with it. Landstill is running a lot of basics these days, and if they know you're packing B2B, they can play around it fairly easily. Obviously it temporarily shuts down manlands as attackers, but that doesn't stop them from using them as blockers until they can resolve a massive Decree or an Eternal Dragon as an alternative win, or just digging until they find Disenchant or Vengeance. It was only really good when it was a complete surprise, and only then if I played it directly following a Wrath of God or something else that forced them to tap out completely. I'm not overly impressed with it.

I was also kind of underwhelmed by the Enlightened Tutors, against Landstill especially, and other decks like Vial Goblins. Once again, the card and tempo disadvantage felt like massive setbacks. They're great in the Solidarity matchup, but outside of it I'm just not convinced.

I hate to say it, but the Meddlers felt weak in both the Landstill and Goblins matchups as well. Again, they're utterly savage in the Solidarity matchup, but they're poor threats against Vial Goblins, and not very efficient control because they can be dodged with Lackey or Vial. Against Landstill, it can theoretically be effective, but with as many ways as they have to remove creatures, it's really hit-or-miss when it comes to what you name with them. If you name WoG, they may have the StP to get rid of him. If you name StP, they may have the WoG. Or the Vengeance. It just didn't feel very strong unless it was in multiples, and that's assuming they both resolved. Before turn 4.

In short, the deck running the blue splash very clearly has the ability to beat Solidarity, but it does feel somewhat weaker in the Landstill and Goblins matchups.

Right now, I think Angel Stompy's real strength in the format right now is in its ability to be tuned to consistently smash red, including Goblins, Burn, RG Beats, and RGSA, many or all of which are running rampant right now. If its weakness to eaither Landstill or Solidarity could be shored up, the remaining poor matchup would be an acceptable tradeoff in the current meta.

My focus right now is going to be first in creating a build which consistently smashing red (I'm talking at least 65/45 here), and then attempting to make changes to that build which either improve the Landstill or Solidarity matchup. That decision will come when I can determine what the perfect anti-red build looks like, and how changes to beat either combo or control will affect that specific build's red matchup.

[sauceding]

Well, after talking a bit with niknight, I have a small bit of input for trying to help out control/Solidarity matchup. One of them is the main deck Armageddon if it comes to it, and True Believer is still used/an option.

Splashing blue into Solidarity would make us creep toward the deck that top8ed BAII. By doing so, we make the deck far more expensive to make (not always an issue), and take away from the WW beatfest styling. Instead, it becomes a "Solution" deck, and we might go into Meddling Mage. Sure, it can help in Solidarity matchups, but when you mentioned its poor performance against Gobbos, it doesn't look too hot except as a one turn stall-blocker. Not a great thought when you consider Gobbos is an easy deck for any Extended player to port in.

But since Angel Stompy can be tuned to beat Gobbos and red, let's go that direction, because there is a higher chance of players enterring the format to pick up those decks due to financial concerns and love for just tapping your lands, putting a card down, and winning without having to think about whether to play a spell now or later based on the opponent's deck (except for Survival).

Because Landstill and Gobbos aren't great matchups for UW, I don't think it's too hot. Solidarity isn't a very rampant archetype (you won't run into a meta that Solidarity is the most-widely used archetype in anytime soon), so I think we can let the mono colored build slide for now and focus on more ways to improve upon Solidarity within white.

[midnightAce]

I'm sorry, sir, I'm having some difficulty understanding exactly what is being said here.

My interpretation of your point is that it seems that it's easy for new players to enter the format porting Extended Gobbos, therefore, AS should be concentrated in MonoWhite to stay competitive against a potential field of Red.decs?

I don't know if that's what you intended to say, but regarding that aspect: The deck does well against aggro, especially aggro with red components to it, due to Jitte, SoFI, Angel and Silver Knight, I think most of the effort should be put in maintain the already favourable aggro matchups, and while improving odds against Landstill. Landstill is much more of a headache than Solidarity at the moment, and it is almost as widely played as Gobbos.

[Zilla]

We need to put this conversation into context:

1. The direction of the discussion over the last few pages has been related to Vincent's blue-splashed build which took 9th in the $500 Lagacy tourney at GenCon. He was running maindecked E. Tutors, Geddons, and Meddling Mages, with a lot of enchantments in the board aimed at hating Landstill and Solidarity. My references to a blue splash are comments upon his decklist. (You can see it on the page before this one.)

2. After testing, it became clear to me that a) the blue splash does very little to improve the Landstill matchup, b) is much better against Solidarity but weakens the Goblins/aggro matchup, and c) Enlightened Tutor still kind of sucks.

3. Ace, you understood sauceding's assessment pretty much correctly; that the blue splash improves the Solidarity matchup, but doesn't improve the Landstill matchup, and hurts the aggro matchup.

As such, Angel Stompy's role in the metagame is probably best served as a mono-white build dedicated to smashing the fuck out of aggro (red in particular), and accepting Solidarity as an autoloss, because it's not as much a metagame concern in most metas, where red is very much a metagame concern in almost all metas. I do think it's possible to tune the mono-white build to beat Landstill, at least post-board.

My own priority for development on the archetype right now is to a) make it consistently smash all things red and b) have at least a 50/50 game against Landstill in 2 out of 3 games. Anything more is probably unrealistic for the archetype, and frankly, I'm pretty happy with a deck that can smash the hell out of red, because Goblins, Burn, and RG Beats are absolutely everywhere right now. Angel Stompy was and always has been a metagame deck, and right now the metagame looks very much like the one the deck was originally designed to beat.

[umbowta]

I don't see how Armageddon would do to much against Solidarity. Yes, this deck could conceivably cast geddon on turn two, but is it likely that you will have a significant enough threat in play? If you cast it on turn three, Solidarity is likely to just go off in your face.

Simply put, you need to stop solidarity from goldfishing you. Meddling Mage can slow them down a turn, but, we've all heard how Mage isn't the goods against gobbos.

Rule of Law, True Believer, and Ivory Mask all serve a similar purpose in giving Solidarity something to work around, before they goldfish you (mask is too slow).

If you happen to splash red you get Sirrocco, Pillar, REB, and Pyroblast to screw solidarity over. I personally have tested the 8 blast board. I like it but it takes up 8 freakin slots in the board. Granted, those slots are good against Landstill and Solidarity, but its still 8 slots. If the tier 1 is Gobbos, Solidarity, Landstill, and Some version of NQG or Survival, the 8 blasts can help you win the matches you're not already winning while the other slots can be filled with some combination of graveyard hate, pithing needles, and whatever else(like there's any room left).

[Zilla]

Armageddon alone does not stop Solidarity, and no one suggested that it does. In conjunction with Meddling Mage and In the Eye of Chaos or Rule of Law, however, Armageddon is golden, because it keeps them from quickly digging for answers to your roadblocks on the board and gives you the time you need to win the damage race. All this has been discussed, ad infinitum. That's really not the point. Tuning Angel Stompy to beat Solidarity makes it lose to the decks it was designed to beat. The direction it should be taking is a focused annihilation of aggro with the ability to beat Landstill. Solidarity isn't that prevalent, and it's not worth weakening all of your other matchups just to beat it, in my opinion.

[umbowta]

All this has been discussed, ad infinitumYou hit the nail on the head there. It seems like the last several pages have been dedicated to the swirling discussion revolving around the solidarity/landstill matchups and the use of E-tutor. I have no further point to make so I'll end here.

[sauceding]

So if what GodzillA says is true, we can't realistically beat standstill without putting the gobbo matchup in jeopardy. So this means that we end up with a narrow matchup horizon that makes Angel Stompy the deck of choice for a majority-red meta if we scan the tournament scene beforehand. This is actually quite good in one point of view, and very bad from another. There is no reason to leave a deck in this place, we just need to keep searching for the right card to use. Even if it takes looking at every white card ever printed or pre-boarding against Solidarity/Landstill.

[Zilla]

No. What I said was that you can't significantly improve the Solidarity matchup without harming your positive aggro matchups. I do think there's probably a way to improve the Landstill matchup without harming the aggro matchup.

[dsg123456789]

As an avid Landstill player who really wants to see 1.5 become a format as supported as 1.X (old notation throwbacks), the only threat that I could realistically see your deck producing would be some kind of extremely fast clock. That is what screws up the goblin matchup for us, and if you could get some kind of 4-6 power boost for a few turns, that could shut us down. Once we get rolling, we (Landstill players) will eventually win. You have to catch us off guard, by preventing a turn 2 standstill from seeming like a good idea, and then following up with a massive pump. Empyrial plate might fit in this category, while simultaneously preventing you from overextending. If anyone wants a Landstill opponent, my AIM is listed, and I'm often on. I'd be glad to help you advance your deck.

[Zilla]

With regards to Standstill itself, Seal of Cleansing is actually an answer, particularly because it can be played on first turn. It's night ideal, but it does alleviate the problem somewhat. Aside from that, Second Sunrise deserves testing in the board, despite what I said about it earlier. Because most Landstill builds are running Vengenace over Disk these days, it may be enough to keep Landstill off balance until the damage is done. It's really the board wipers that allow Landstill to win this matchup. A solid answer to those may be all it takes. Because Landstill is typically tapping out on the turns it's casting its board wipers, Sunrise has a reasonably high chance of resolving. I won't know more until I test it.

[Mulletus]

Im not gong to read 27 pages about this deck..... But with the way the metagame is looking with landstill, solidarity, and goblins.... I wouldn't be a bit surprized if this deck wins philly. It isn't the hardest deck to beat..... But it has the best matchup against the top three decks, even before sideboard. With the right pilot, this deck will be the underdog to go all the way.

[t3h.sWaRm]

The deck has good matchups against Goblins, not Landstill(YET!), and definately not Solidarity.

BTW, back at the red splash, I would say it could be better than blue against Solidarity for REBs, Sirocco, and against Landstill it has Promise of Power.

[Obfuscate Freely]

Promise of Power is a black card with three black mana in its casting cost.

Maybe you meant Ruination? or Blood Moon? Price of Progress? Those might help out against Landstill.

[t3h.sWaRm]

Whooooops, heh. I meant Price of Progress...all I remembered was PoP. Ruination and Blood Moon also seems like they would be very effective against landstill. Any help for Solidarity from red besides the REBs and Sirocco(which probably won't ever resolve where it would be effective :( )?

EDIT - I looked at above posts and found Scald and even better, Pyrostatic(?) Pillar. The pillar completely destroys Solidarity or at least does some(a good amount) of damage to them and some time to get rid of it. BTW, Obstinate Familiar would be savage tech.

[Zilla]

Everything I've seen from Solidarity players is that they fear Sirocco much more than Pillar. On the other hand, Pillar is strong against other Storm combo, so it might be okay in some metagames.

The real issue, though, is that the splashes tend to hurt the positive matchups enough not to be worthwhile, at least the blue and black ones. I haven't tried red yet, but I'm thinking that PoP isn't going to be enough against Landstill, nor is Blood Moon. I've got some ideas in the mono-white architecture for beating Landstill, but I won't say more till I've done some thorough testing.

[Eldariel]

Hmm, still considering Enlightened Tutor, how about, instead of just dropping it, trying to make it worth it in the other match-ups too? Moat, Reverence, Sphere of Law, Worship, Ghostly Prison, etc. all wreck Goblins pretty bad. They have no creatures with power 3+, so a resolved Reverence would mean they can't attack, Sphere of Law would mean only Piledrivers could deal damage, Ghostly Prison would make their mass-attack tactics very ineffective, etc.

For Landstill, how about Equipoise? They'll certainly have more land than you soon enough, having their lands phase out can seriously hamper their ability to do much anything. Then again, getting it to resolve is another matter. Perhaps there would be something to do with Limited Resources too (since they need 6 lands to cast Vengeance). Ankh of Mishra seems promising too. Winter Orb or Tangle Wire might work fine as well. I'm basing these ideas on the fact that Landstill is a mana-intensive deck, so that's the most logical part of it to attack to.

[Rivs]

Well, the two possible routes seem to be second sunrise or mana denial. In fact, the deck has it easy, it could conceivably run aether vial and mana denial (in addition to armageddon) to out resource landstill, but i don't know where to fit the vials.

ON a quick aside, what about FoF for the blue splash builds? It seems decent.

[t3h.sWaRm]

Question about Equipoise, I haven't played a phasing cards for a while. When do they fade back in? During the upkeep? If so, do they fade in before or after Equipoise's ability triggers? To make it simpler, if you have 2 lands and they have 5, could you phase out the same 3 every turn?

I'm not sure, but I think Tangle Wire was mentioned before(I don't remember if/why it was dismissed), and I highly doubt Ankh's ability to do much against Landstill. Winter orb seems somewhat promising. I'll have to give it testing, however, I have not many Landstill players to play(good or bad?:))

Question about AEther Vial, if it's set at 3, can you play morphs for free with it?

FoF is a little bit expensive, and I'm not sure the deck needs it. It usually takes my a while to even get my hand out and anyway, although in the landstill matchup it could become useful when you get the topdeck mode.

[Eldariel]

Oh, damn, it appears I might've misunderstood the card. It phases them out only for your turn, no help there. I already thought I had stumbled upon a hidden bomb. Without Sands of Time...

[t3h.sWaRm]

As did I...heh :)

[Zilla]

Hmm, still considering Enlightened Tutor, how about, instead of just dropping it, trying to make it worth it in the other match-ups too?
That's essentially what Vincent did with his build at GenCon. You can read about that a page or two back. It apparently worked pretty well for him, but I tested that build and I was typically unhappy to see them. They tended to be a turn too slow against Goblins, and they telegraphed my threat to Landstill, which was nearly always countered, meaning a 2 for 1 in the favor. It very clearly improved the Solidarity matchup, but at the cost of consistency in the other two matchups. As with every other time I've tested E. Tutor in the deck (and there have been lots), I'm just not impressed.

@Aether Vial:

I tested them briefly and I just wasn't that pleased with them. It was discussed a few pages back... (I really need to start a fresh thread, this 27 pages thing is getting cumbersome). But the main thing is that you essentially have to drop threats to make room for them. In a deck like Fish, this is acceptable because you have slots dedicated to draw, which will dig you into the fewer threats that you have. In Angel Stompy, there tends to be much less draw, and you therefore notice the lack of threats much more throughout a given game.

[Carlos El Salvador]

@Aether Vial:

I tested them briefly and I just wasn't that pleased with them. It was discussed a few pages back... (I really need to start a fresh thread, this 27 pages thing is getting cumbersome). But the main thing is that you essentially have to drop threats to make room for them. In a deck like Fish, this is acceptable because you have slots dedicated to draw, which will dig you into the fewer threats that you have. In Angel Stompy, there tends to be much less draw, and you therefore notice the lack of threats much more throughout a given game.
AEther vial, while not that very good in the mono white build of the deck, is golden in any build touching a second color for evil creature of death and destruction (meddeling mage.) But I understand that is a moot point. Mage improves one matchup siginficantly, and that is solidarity in my friend and mine's testing. Aether vial, however, improves the any blue deck ™ matchup and decks where you will be forced to race. I know that's a ballsy comment, but on turn 3 you can drop your sword and a second two drop as opposed to just your SOFI or Jitte. My friend was playing tutor, but in the end, decided that mage and tutor could not be in the same deck, as they really started to break down his consistancy. He has also gone up to six with his vial and dropped angels against counter heavey decks before, so they wouldn't be countered and were left to be delt with with mass removal. My two pennies.

[sauceding]

Yeah, but the life gain aspect of Angel is golden against red decks. Dropping it might as well make us change the deck name to "Solution". We've already agreed that the blue build just takes away from our basic advantage against red, which is the major plus in this deck. I would like to know how your friend's build performs against Gobbos and Burn, as it seems we cannot make two matchups better without taking away from the other two matchups.

[umbowta]

Everything I've seen from Solidarity players is that they fear Sirocco much more than Pillar. On the other hand, Pillar is strong against other Storm combo, so it might be okay in some metagames.Imo, both of these cards are only appropriate for the right meta. I think running Sirocco or Pillar in philly would be bad simply because neither one is stellar against Landstill. Obviously , if you're running red for the board, REB would get a 3-4 slots. Then you could look at Pillar or Sirocco for solidarity, and Bloodmoon, Winter Orb, geddon against Landstill. Why not just fill 3-4 more slots with Pyroblast, which is good in both matches.

Landstill uses draw spells to dig for board sweeping effects. Targeting the draw with blasts, while not overcommitting can turn wrath and disk into one for ones. Taking away landstill's card advantage is obviously going to net huge results. In this matchup, I'd much rather have a bunch of blasts than Jittes and Parallax wave, in spite of the wave's abilty to dodge removal. The blasts help you limit the amount of removal that ever sees play by working against them drawing it.

With 8 blasts, Solidarity is easy to play against. Nailing High Tide and/or reset(dangerous play there) can effectively slow them down enough to give you the win. Swords to Plowshares, Seal of Cleansing, and Parallax Tide are dead enough in this match to make room for some blasts.


I've got some ideas in the mono-white architecture for beating Landstill, but I won't say more till I've done some thorough testing.You have my interest.

[midnightAce]

I agree some what to the Blast plan. However, Blasts in itself is not a threat. It doesn't offer clock of any kind. While the same thing can be said with the equipments, general consensus is that equipments speeds up the clock once a creature is active and able.

Targeting Blasts to Standstill and FoF and such will seriously hamper Landstill's ability to dig for an answer, I agree. But at the same time, they can still randomly top deck a board sweeper.

Goblins have Ringleader alone to recover within a turn. Matron/Ringleader to recover within two turns. What does AS, mono or otherwise have that can recover quickly and load the board up with threats again? That's one of the routes me and my friends are currently testing. To load up the creature count in the deck and pushing it to 28-30, to ensure the threat density is as high as some Goblin decks. (This applies for mono-white.)

The other one we are currently testing is the red splash. Other than Blasts, we are testing some very debatable choices:

a) Four Burning Wish: Esentially 7 Geddon main. (4 Wish, 1 in the Side, 3 Main) Also other late game breakers such as DoJ, things like Pyroclasm to make sure the Gobbo match is not weakened. (Having 8 pro red critters + Mom means that Pyroclasm has virtually no effect on you.) Other assorted goodies such as Pillage to target manlands and Crucibles.

b) Three/Four Browbeats: I know it's jank, I know giving your opponent choice is bad, but it does well for what it does. Five damage in a none-burn deck is quite a bit, most times when Landstill stabilize, they are under 10 life. If Landstill lets us draw, we potentially draws into multiple threats/equipments, which means Landstill has to equally be able to top deck answers as well.

c) Four Mask of Memory to the side: Again, this is almost exclusively SBed in against Landstill. This is the one of the few viable draw engines that fit the deck's primarty game plan.

I will present further data when I feel confident that my test results are valid. I'm waiting for Zilla's mono white version as well.

PS. The more I think about it, the more it's starting to bug me. Empyrial Plate is not without its merits. On a shadow creature, it does indeed prevents you from over extending and still be a viable FAST clock. Sure that one can argue a single StP ruins the day, but the Plate's bonus by itself is very threatening since the deck packs full of evasion creatures.

[dsg123456789]

When I re-suggested plate as a landstill player, the idea was that even if the creature got StP'd, you could just play one more, and you would be swinging for 8+ a turn with it (2 lands, creature, and plate are all you need in play to swing on turn 3). A threat that huge would immediately cause landstill to dig for disenchants, and when landstill freaks out, its in trouble (because you normally just cruise, sweeping when its needed). Landstill doesn't "dig" very well, with only 2 FoF that could be used in a Empyrial Plate situation.

[midnightAce]

Correct...
...
...
...
Here comes the ugly "butt"...

First of all, consider Plate vs SoFI, assuming that you are holding a full hand, and the equipment is equiped on say... Soltari Priest, Plate nets you 10 damage a turn (Full hand + draw phase for this turn), where as SoFI nets you 6 damages and a card. While the 4 damage is indeed a whopper, in all the other matchups, (mostly targeted towards aggro), Plate will likely to do much much less damage and doesn't have the versitility of SoFI and Jitte to establish board control. So then... how do we fit Plate into main such that our game 1 vs Landstill can put on this kind of pressure without removing our much needed "tech" equipments such as SoFI and Jitte?

My solution is Steelshaper's Gift, and possibly even a copy of the Gift to the side if I decide to try to implement this concept into the W/r version, but A LOT of testing is needed to determine the perfect numbers of each to consistently draw them.

So far, the Gobbo match has NOT been compromised due to Pyroclasm and the inclusion of 3 Legionares. However, Goblin builds that runs multiple Kings is much tougher to beat, because they now have the ability to bypass all the blockers and go for alpha strike due to Mountain Walk. Jitte is now much more important than ever to keep that in check. However, I do not forsee it to be a problem, as I am also working to including 2 Wave main as well.

[Zilla]

@8 Blast Plan:

It's not good. Solidarity is packing the 8 blast plan itself, as a means of answering all the red-based hate it's encountering in the metagame. Solidarity wrecks Angel Stompy game 1. Game 2, if you're both siding in an equal amount of hate which serve identical purposes on both sides, there's no reason at all that they're not going to maintain an extremely strong game against you. The difference between a Blast and a resolved Sirocco is that a Blast keeps you from losing momentarily. A resolved Sirocco typically wins you the game right then and there. That's a very significant difference.

Your suggestion that the 8 blast plan is better against more decks (i.e., Landstill) might be valid, except that Blasts are actually pretty shitty against Landstill. First, it requires you to remove actual threats in favor of non-threats. Second, playing with blasts is like playing with a Sphere of Resistance targeting yourself. You absolutely have to leave your one mana untapped at all times for it to be effective. This hurts your tempo and slows down your clock, which in turn takes you to the late game, where Landstill will inevitably put it in you, so to speak.

Also, REB doesn't answer Standstill once it's already on the table, which is far and away the most important blue card in Landstill's deck. All the others, with the exception of FoF, are 1-for-1 trades in card advantage (or 2-for-1 in the case of FoW), which is exactly the same trade you'd be making if you Blasted them.

Lastly, Blasts do nothing to address the real reason that Landstill beats you, which is board sweepers. The deck needs to concentrate on ways to beat Wrath, Vengeance, and Disk. The problems caused by Landstill's blue cards are totally superfluous if you have no way to answer their mass removal, because that's what wins them games.

In short, the red splash itself is questionable. The red splash for an 8 Blast plan in the board is almost certainly a bad idea.

[midnightAce]

Yea, like I said in my previous post, Blast itself it not a clock.

Currently my red splash evolves primarily around Burning Wish.

1 Geddon (3 main)
1 Pyroclasm
1 DoJ
1 DoA/Obliterate
1 Echoing Ruin
1 Steelshaper's Gift
1 Browbeat (3 main, this is for another version that concentrates more on card advantage)
8 open slots to address other concerns.

The builds that I am currently testing completely ignores the existence of Solidarity/Storm.dec. It focuses only on two aspects of the meta game, Landstill and aggro, aggro being divided into four catagories: Gobbos, Red-based aggro, none-red-based aggros, and Burn.dec.

It will take me at least till Sunday to sort through 32 hours of testing notes for the first version and post additional detail. In the main time, I actually suggest Zilla or Grah or somebody reinitialize the thread in a similar fashion as the Landstill thread in LMF, summarizing both the traditional AS, (fully loaded with equipments) and the newer version, (toolbox styled). This 28 page monster makes me happy in terms of sheer volume of information, but makes it very hard to reference and revisit. :D

[t3h.sWaRm]

I await your results. Some question I hope to be answered:

4 Burning Wish seems like it may be too many, have you been happy everytime you've see one?

How have the Browbeats been working? Does it slow the deck down much?

DoA(Decree of Anihilation right?), even in the SB seems to be wasting space. You already have Armageddon in the SB and 3 MD, do you really need another card to destroy all lands?

Goblin Legionnaire: I love this guy. He's a solid 2 drop with a great ability. If we decide to splash red, I'd make him of 4 of, probably taking out the Soltari Priests(although I'd really hate to, there aren't many creatures we can take out :( ). How has he been in your testing?

What cards did you take out to make room for 4x Burning Wish and 3x Browbeat? Obviously an Armageddon was moved to the SB, but what else got the axe?

[Zilla]

I intend on restarting the thread fairly soon, but first I want a good reason for doing it. In other words, some real innovation in the archetype backed by solid playtesting which produces a new list. Let me know how that goes. ;)

[sauceding]

The problem of avoiding the board sweepers (or bypassing them) of Lanstill isn't easy to solve. Think of the ways Standstill gets rid of your creatures:
-Swords to Plowshares
Stopped by Mother of Runes (when useable)
-Disk (if not outdated)/Vengeance
Nothing

So we can't get much that will help us there...only card I can think of is Otherworldly Journey, which I scowl at the thought of using.

[Zilla]

Seal of Cleansing is a much more effective answer to Standstill because it's proactive as opposed to reactive.

As for ways to avoid board sweepers: The fact that most Landstill builds are no longer running Disk makes Second Sunrise a highly promising SB choice. It's good against Anarchy too. Something to consider. Parallax Wave also fills this role. In fact, I'm not entirely convinced that Wave isn't better than Geddon in the Landstill matchup, and I know that it's better against Goblins.

[umbowta]

@8 Blast Plan:

It's not good. Solidarity is packing the 8 blast plan itself, as a means of answering all the red-based hate it's encountering in the metagame.Shit! I had not realized that this was already the case. Sure enough though...from the gpt winning list
Sideboard
1 Twincast
1 Stroke of Genius
1 Turnabout
1 Words of Wisdom
1 Chain of Vapor
1 Echoing Truth
1 Evacuation
4 Hydroblast
4 Blue Elemental Blast

Against the red decks I board -4 FoW -3 Twincast and -1 Meditate to board in the 8 blast. That has made my matchup against them absolutely ridiculously in my favor.:angry: 8 blast is still working for me here but its only a matter of time.

[sauceding]

Well, after a lot of thought I come back to that Angel Stompy list with red. How could it be conducted such that you have a good chance of getting Plateaus and get the right cards in for Solidarity? Obviously Tithe comes up, so I guess it's inclusion is necessary. When I started drawing up the list, it came out something like:
(Updated September 4 at 9:47 AM)
//Lands (15):
4 Ancient Tomb
4 Plateau
7 Plains
//Critters (21):
4 Mother of Runes
4 Silver Knight
4 Soltari Priest
4 Exalted Angel
4 Boros Swiftblade
1 Isamaru, Hound of Konda
//Spells(24):
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Tithe
4 Swords to Plowshares
3 Umezawa's Jitte
2 Sword of Fire and Ice
4 Armageddon/Parallax Wave (choice by testing)
3 Chrome Mox
//Sideboard (15):
2 Decree of Justice
4 Red Elemental Blast
3 Mask of Memory
3 Honorable Passage
3 Disenchant

Right now, the Mask plan for Landstill (along with Decree of Justice and some Red Elemental Blasts for a couple of annoying spells if necessary) will have to hold up. Honorable Passage for red-based decks, and Disenchant as the worldly life-saver versus...well...a couple of decks out there.

The problem I see with adding in red is making the mana base shifty. Now there are more wasteland targets, less white spells for Chrome Mox, and...yeah. I'd probably try to add in Parallax Wave somehow, just as an idea to move past board-wipe effects.

As a weird idea, would Glowrider provide any help for Solidarity?

[t3h.sWaRm]

Well, a big reason the red splash is being considered is because of a rumored card in Ravica:

RW
Doublestrike
1/2

Its cheap cost and its amazing ability(Doublestrike) is what we are here to try and brake with amazing equipments such as Jitte and to a lesser extent, SoFaI. Another rumored card, Lightning Helix, may also prove promising for AS with a red splash.

RW
Instant(?)
Lightning Helix deals 3 damage to target creature or player, you gain 3 life.(This was from memory, correct me if I'm wrong)

From your list:
-1 SoLS
-4 Soltari Preist(I'm not sure if I really want to cut this guy, but what else can I cut??)
-4 Lightning Bolt
+1 Umezawa's Jitte
+4 1/2 Doublestriker (we need a nickname, was its name revealed?)
+4 Lightning Helix


Your not running Steelshaper's Gift, so 1 SoLS is virtually useless. I find that Jitte is HUGE in almost every matchup, mainly because of its versitility(versatility?). I really like the Gifts version better but I guess thats a matter of opinion. As for you debated slot, I'm also not sure of what to put in. True believer was brought up before, but dismissed for not being important enough. Soltari Foot Soldier was also brought up and dismissed because Hawk was just better most of the time. So Suntail Hawk was in, but now, with less relying on hitting the player(SoFaI), I'm debating whether or not he is worth the slot. One of the problems with removing the Hawk is that it is often very useful since hes one of the few flyers we have in the deck(angel can be very slow sometimes). Another is that he is a solid 1 drop. All of my replacement ideas are 2cc(mainly Goblin Legionnaire) and I'm thinking it could mess up the curve. I've got a list I'm working on but I'm going to try and test it more before I post it.

Another RW decklist is currently being tested by MidnightAce involving Burning Wish to search for answers(Armageddon and such). When he's done testing he'll post his results.

[Zilla]

Its cheap cost and its amazing ability(Doublestrike) is what we are here to try and brake with amazing equipments such as Jitte and to a lesser extent, SoFaI.
Agreed. This card is one of the biggest reasons to try red in the deck, aside from the sideboard benefits which become available.


-4 Soltari Preist(I'm not sure if I really want to cut this guy, but what else can I cut??)
From sauceding's list? How about the "4 True Believer/Suntail Hawk/Soltari Foot Soldier/anything" slot? The doublestriker definitely falls into the "anything" catetgory, and while it may not be a 1 drop, it makes up for it by kicking ass. The Priests are still strong enough to run because they're difficult to remove and their evasion is top notch with equipment. Furthermore, with the red splash, I think Pyroclasm deserves testing, especially for the Goblins matchup. Mother of Runes, Priest, Silver Knight, and Angel are all essentially unaffected by Pyroclasm, and that, my friend, is synergy.


+4 1/2 Doublestriker (we need a nickname, was its name revealed?)
It's called Boros Swiftblade.


Your not running Steelshaper's Gift, so 1 SoLS is virtually useless. I find that Jitte is HUGE in almost every matchup, mainly because of its versitility(versatility?). I really like the Gifts version better but I guess thats a matter of opinion.
Agreed. The SoLS has been pretty lackluster in my testing. SoFI, Jitte, and Mask remain the strongest available choices. I'm not totally convinced one way or the other between a Gifts build and a non-Gifts build yet. Either 3 Jitte, 2 SoFI, 2 Mask, or 2 Jitte, 1 SoFI, 2 Mask, and 2 Gifts are the configurations I'm testing now. I haven't made any firm conclusions as to which one is the best.


As for you debated slot, I'm also not sure of what to put in.
Put Boros Swiftblades here. The curve is fine. You have Tithe, Mom, and Isamaru as 1 drops, and Gifts if you run them. You also have Jitte, and Mask as 1 drops with Tomb, and a whole bunch of other options available with Chrome Mox. I don't think your curve will be a problem.


A few other things:

@ Lightning Helix:

I'm not convinced Lightning Helix is better than Lightning Bolt in this deck. More 1 drops = good. You have lifegain from Angel and Jitte already, which may be enough. Not saying I'm certain either way, but I don't think Helix is an auto-include over Bolt.

@ Parallax Wave:

I miss it. A LOT. I've been testing the Armageddon build for awhile now, and the only place where it seems to really shine is in the Solidarity matchup, which still isn't that good unless you dedicate your board to reaming it.

Wave, on the otherhand, is brutal against Goblins (where Geddon sucks ass), and, in my experience, is actually stronger against Landstill than Geddon. Yeah, I said it. The problem is this: the only time it's easy to resolve a Geddon is when the Landstill player is tapped out. The only time they're tapped out is after a WoG or Vengeance, in which case you have no threats on the table and Geddon is an awful idea. If you cast Geddon early on (pre turn 4), then you will likely have only one or two small threats on the table, and Landstill will easily recover because they pack more lands than you do and they have a draw engine.

The times where Geddon has been very strong against Landstill for me have been few and far between. I either don't resolve it when it would be good, or have it when my board position can't support it. Parallax Wave, on the other hand, removes opposing threats (including the ever-annoying recurring Manlands), permanently removes Decree tokens, and protects your threats from boardsweepers.

I'd venture to say that, in Angel Stompy, where your threats are relatively slow, and you have no Wastelands to back it up, Armageddon is actually worse against Landstill than Parallax Wave. As far as beating Solidarity is concerned? If it's that big a deal, you've got access to REB, Sirocco, and Pillar now, if it really comes down to it.

@Glowrider:

Glowrider is savage against Solidarity, yes. Better than a lot of other permanent based standalone hate. It's not as good in A. Stompy as, say, GW Thresh, because you have a lot of non-creature cards in the deck, but objectively speaking, Glowrider is a strong anti-Solidarity card.

[Bastian]

Is Boros Swiftblade alone good enough to make us change an entire deck?

Let's see what it is:

1/2 creature with double strike for RW

Now, the fact that it has double strike is awesome, but it's just good if you have SoFI or Jitte equipped. Otherwise it's no better than a 2/2 first striker with no protection or other evasive abilities which will probably end up dying, a lot, to either larger creatures it can't kill, unless equipped or direct damage.

You compromise your mana base to play this, by adding more non-basic lands and you're wasting slots on what is, quite basically, a 2/2 first striker with no other abilities (unless you see equipment). But alone it's really worse than any other 2cc creature in the deck.

On to the new burn spell...

Lightning Helix truly shines if you can stick it on an Isochron Scepter, but other than that you'll prefer to be playing something more easily castable, I think, like Lightning Bolt. It won't make any sense on playing a 2cc instant that deals 3 damage unless I've already packed up 4 bolts and that means wasting more slots of this deck...

Already dedicated R/W weenie decks can and will probably try to use either but in Angel Stompy it really is a bad idea.



Edited By Bastian on 1125834850

[sauceding]

Lightning Helix doesn't cross my mind as any better of a spell to use than Lightning Bolt...with Bolt, you spend one mana to deal 3 damage. With Helix, you spend two mana to deal three damage and also pay for the less spectacular Healing Salve effect, which I personally don't think is in our best interest to play.

Glowrider is a weird idea, but in the end I wouldn't discard it just yet. If Solidarity was a high factor in any meta, I'd go to using it (at the cost of making Swords to Plowshares cost more mana to play). It might be the only matchup in which you'd resort to using it, but if it comes down to always losing to the Solidarity player...

Parallax Wave can be viewed as more helpful against the matchups where Armageddon is mainly used, which would probably warrant Armageddon being rethought. If it isn't much help against what we use it against, don't use it at all. Wave is certainly more helpful against the matchup we want to beat (and mirror).

[umbowta]

@ Boros Swiftblade

Just look at the creature slot which it is replacing. Suntail Hawk/Soltari Foot Soldier. Boros is simply a much stronger threat than either one of those.

@ Lightning Helix

I would prefer the bolt any day. There are already 12 solid 2 drops and I dont want helix in my way of casting them. If I'm forced to remove a threat on turn two, I'd like to be able to have the option of accompanying that removal with one of my one drops, or a tithe, or leaving it open for EOT removal. Lightning Bolt, along with StP, allow that to happen.

@ Pyroclasm

My testing thusfar, in W/r Stompy has shown Pyroclasm to be subpar. One would think that the obvious synergy between almost all of the creatures in this deck and Pyroclasm would make it good. However, the deck that it would affect the most, Goblins, can quickly recover the next turn with hasty gobbos like ringleader and warchief. I have not tested enough to exclude it yet, but my gut says blah. If only clasm were an instant.

[t3h.sWaRm]

@Pyroclasm: Do we really need another way to run over Goblins, especially maindeck? It's an overall easy matchup, except for the God hands they get(which ARE beatable with a decent hand). Another reason I don't want to play it MD is that it's a somewhat narrow card, being great against Goblins and various Weenie decks(however they're bound to have Silver Knights and might also have Mom and Preist) but not so good against other decks.

@Armageddon: Well I haven't gotten around to even playing it in my deck so Parallax Wave is still in there, mainly since nobody around here has it and I'm not paying $10 for it at the local store:O.

@Boros(thanks for clearing that up:D): He's not the ONLY reason to splash red. The SB options (REB, Pillar, Sirocco, PoP, etc...) also helped us make up our minds to TRY the red splash. So far no build has been thouroughly tested enough to say if it's better than the monowhite version. If we do choose to stick with the red splash, its hard for me to see Boros not being in the deck, as a 3 of maybe. The likelyhood(?) of getting an equipment every game is pretty high(I don't think i've ever NOT had one:laugh:) so Boros will probably never be just a 2/2(only deals 1 first strike damage).

@Lightning Helix: Your right, the life gain from Angel and Jitte may be enough already and in that case, Lightning Bolt is probably a better choice because of its 1cc.

@Glowrider: I always thought this card costed 1W :(. In the Solidarity matchup this guy really good, to say the least, stalling for at least 2 turns if you drop him early(any later and your dead anyway). I was thinking of testing him, REB, and Sirocco as 4 ofs in my board to battle Solidarity, but that it would take up 12 SB slots, leaving me with only 3 to battle every other deck(probably not the best idea).

@Goblin Legionnaire: Discuss him! The reason I put Boros over Preist was that the "anything" slot was taken by this guy. The decision to make now is if he's better than Soltari Preist. He too has evasion(though in a different sense) and has the ability to deal damage when a WoG effect hits play. What do you guys think?

@sauceding's decklist: No Disenchants? How has this been treating you. I rarely dislike seeing a Disenchant in my hand. They are almost never useless(Burn+Solidarity are probably the only matchups where they are), and destroy key artifacts//enchantments (SoTF, opposing Jittes, etc...). How do you guys feel about removing it from the deck? I see it has helped make room for Lightning Bolt, which I really like in the deck as well.

[sauceding]

There are Disenchant's in the sideboard t3h.swarm. I'm not set on what to cut for the Disenchant's md yet, as it kind of is hard to test when the build uses cards that aren't out yet. Rest assured that when Ravnica becomes legal I'll figure out the position it will fit in. Several months ago when I was using the mono white list I didn't use Disenchant in the md, and it was fine most of the time.

[cartman34]

I don´t think this Deck needs any removal since it has a good machtup against almost every other Aggro Deck in the format.Exalted Angel,Wave,Jitte,SIlver Knight and StP are all you need.

[Zilla]

Is Boros Swiftblade alone good enough to make us change an entire deck?
Alone? No. The fact that it isn't winning is a good enough reason to change an entire deck though. Currently, the deck isn't winning enough of its matchups in the months-old mono-white variation to be worth playing. Red (theoretically) strengthens your bad matchups by providing solid SB answers to Solidarity, and providing direct damage as a means of finishing the Landstill matchup after a board wipe.

Angel Stompy is uniquely equipped (no pun intended) to abuse the Swiftblade, because the deck's entire infrastructure is based around the premise of resolving a 2cc threat, equipping it early via Tomb or Mox, and protecting it with Mom/P. Wave. If Swiftblade is playable in any established archetype, it would be this one.

I've said it a bunch of times, and I'll repeat it because it's super important: Angel Stompy was from its inception and always has been strictly a metagame deck. For it to continue to be viable, it must adapt to the changing metagame. Aside from minor tweaks, the deck has changed very little since its post-Sep. 1 incarnation last year. There's no reason not to try the red splash, because the worst you can do is make it worse than it already is, in which case you try something else.

It's possible that a more sweeping change is necessary, dedicating even more slots to burn, because it may be necessary in order to beat Landstill. Magma Jet is a decent option because of its ability to give you card quality, Lightning Bolt is an obvious choice, and Helix is probably good too. Price of Progress may be a good SB option against Landstill as well.

Right now, development for the archetype is way up in the air. The mono-white version has been tweaked and re-tooled to no end. People have tried splashing blue, people have splashed both blue and black, and now there's no reason not to explore the red splash.

[midnightAce]

Before I go into the main post, there is couple of things I'll respond to first:

a) Geddon (Relevent only to Landstill matchups.)
In my extensive testing of MonoWhiteAS and W/r AS, I find that Gedden often resolves, and when it does, it usually kills myself. The reason is simple, on turn 4/5/6, Landstill taps out for Wrath/Vengeance, this is where if I cast a Geddon, they'll let it resolve, even WITH FoW in hand, because there is no relevent threat/clock on the table and they are CONFIDENT, with 26 lands and 4 Brainstorm, it's in their favour to recover faster than me, and it often is the case.
Now, the deck, with its Moxen and Tomb has the ability to cast Geddon on turn 2... the big question is... WHY? Do you really want to cast Geddon on turn 2? If you went first, opponent has a single land in play? If you went second, opponent has 2 lands in play? What's this, none-fair trade? It's not the fact that resolving Geddon is hard, it's the fact that resolving a Gedden, with more than one relevent threat on the table, and still hoping for opponent not holding a white source and StP that's hard.
Late Geddon, now we get into the turn 12-20 sort of Geddons. First of all, Geddon is a terrible topdeck, it's not a threat, offers no clock, no pressure on the opponenet. Most Landstill mainboards 2 Crucibles, some even more, and by now they have found 1, perhaps even 2. As the turns drag on, Landstill have the ability to float the mana, allow Geddon to resolve and cycle for rather large number of Soldiers. Now we are the ones without answer, with no mana to cast Wave or Angel.
All these points have made me reconsider Geddon as a mainboard option.

@Boros Swiftblade
Its strongest interaction is with Jitte and SoFI, the ability to swing twice with Jitte/SoFI and win. This kind of clock is scary even for Vial Goblins. Of course, without the equipments, Silve Knight kicks its ass left and right, but the same thing could be said for the creature that it's replacing, Suntail Hawk/Soltari Soldier. Wtf are those guys? 20 turn clock? At least the Swiftblade is a 10 turn clock on its own, and has a toughness of 2 butt so that it doesn't get Gempalm Incinerated early. Besides, Landstill is a problematic matchup, that's a fact, although splashing red may or may not be the right direction, but it's also a proven fact that there is more hate cards for blue in red than in white.

@Wave
Zilla is right, I miss it terribly. While we do not really lack creature removal, its the Wave's ability to save our creatures, even morph Angels that I miss. With Moxen and Tombs, Wave usually comes down on turn 3 as opposed to turn 4. Being able to come down before the critical turn which Wrath hits is one of the best things AS can do against Landstill. Forcing them to dig answers while taking beats, or burn those StPs only to see the threats come back later.
Wave also has awsome application in Vial Goblin matchups, aside from saving creatures from the dreaded Anarchy, I often play it early, and keep the Warchiefs removed. Without haste and reduction in cost, Goblins slows down 2 even 3 turns. Once the Jitte is a Silver Knight and swinging, the game is pretty much over. (By which time, Wave #2/3 comes down as well.)
While it's a dead card against combo, I believe it's application is verstile enough to warrent its inclusion in the main deck.

@Lightining Helix
Haven't finished testing yet.

@Glowrider
Right now, I'm pretending that Solidarity does not exit, and only concentrating on Landstill, Vial Goblin and rest of aggro varients decks.

@Pyroclasm
Useful in the B.Wish version, more on that later.

@Goblin Legionnaire
t3h.sWaRm, could you explain what you meant by "He too has evasion"? I understand once it come down, as long as you keep R untapped, you have 2 damage for sure, but the creature has poor synegy with eqiupments when you compare it to the Swiftblade, and even poor-er synegy against Vial Goblin, as I demonstrated in the Helix thread. It gets Gempalmed very early because itself is a goblin, and always needing to keep R open hurts tempo quite a bit. (If it was like Fanatic, sack and throw, I would consider him, but with mana cost attatched to it, it's much less attractive.)

Now that I addressed most of the points, I'll get into the main post. (It's retardedly long, don't say I didn't warn you. :p )

Introduction

Based on the most recent results from Legacy Worlds and the general T4/T8, it is quite clear that Landstill and Vial Goblin (Both Mono Red and Splashing versions) are both popular in terms of player base as well as dominating in terms of placements. If Angel Stompy is to become Tier 1, it must have a 50/50 against both decks in game 1.

The deck's primary creature core, especially the Silver Knights and the Exalted Angels is particularly hard for Goblins to deal with. The Soltari Priest is actually less than spetacular simply because the shadow ability in this matchup is more of draw back than advantage. But neverthless, any one of these creatures loaded with Jitte/SoFI can swing the game around in one swing. Generally, AS has a good matchup against those little red men.

Moving onto Landstill. The dominating variation of Landstill is currently UW, with close to 7/8 board reseting effects, it's AS's toughest matchups short of combo. (For the purpose of focus, I completely pushaside all combo decks.) Unlike Goblins, the deck does not have Ringleader-equivalent creatures to help with the recover after a Wrath/Vengeance. So in that sense, AS suffers greatly from the continous X for 1 trades that Landstill pulls. On top of that, AS has no way of sneaking creatures in, every single creature must be hard cast and hope to be resolved.

These disadvantages aside, there are advantages. In Goblins, a single Piledriver or a single Warchielf wlil probably not be able to go all the way. But in AS, utilizing effects of powerful equipments, a single Silver Knight with some equips can often go all the way if left unchecked.

The Thinking Process

So then is it possible, to force Landstill to trade one for one and slowly grind out its card advantage? What single creature in white (Reasonably mana cost, of course.), does Landstill fear so much, that it must be dispatched ASAP?

None.

Okay, while that is not a paticularly encouraging start, it brings up another point. Most UW Landstill doesn't run life gain (Pulse) main deck. That means, 20 is your goal, no more, and possibly less, since during the course of a game, Landstill probably fetch couple of times, even more with Crucible out. So in other words, AS needs to squeeze out every points of damage possible, and it needs to allow its creature to deal as much damage as possible before Wrath/blocker comes down.

In the process of testing ASV1.0, a question often came up on turn 2. Most of the time, on turn 2, I have WW avilible to me, I usually also have dropped a Suntail/Soltari/Mother the previous turn. I would swing, (Yes, even with MoR.) and then I'm left with a choice, what do I cast?

--> Silver Knight/Soltari Priest
Yep, very solid, especially the Priest, being able to complately ignore opposing Factories and just go all the way. However, the moment you cast this, that Wrath is going +1.

--> Jitte
Not as solid, simply because next turn, you spend 2 to equip, and you swing. You have potentially gained 4 life with 4 mana over the course of two turns. Jitte is not as good against Landstill as it would against creature decks, simply because it takes THREE turns to be active if casted early. One turn to cast, one turn to equip and swing, and the third turn for the counter to start doing RELEVENT things, such as speeding up the clock, and that all, can be stopped with a single StP/Disenchant on the opponent's turn 2/3.

So I started to look at Empyrial Plate. The first thing I did was compare plate to SoFI.

If a creature with SoFI successfully swings through, the advantage is 4 more damage and a card. If a creature with Plate successfully swings through, I would need 4 cards in my hand to make up for the first part, and no way of making up for the second part. But the Plate is one less to cast than SoFI, so it can dodge Counterspells much better. Also, if I do have 4 cards or more in hand, 1/1s become 5/5s and 2/2s becomes 6/6s. That is better than SoFIs' 1/1 -> 3/3, and 2/2 -> 4/4. Mother of Ruins for example, can now swing through without trading with a Factory, instead, kill the Factory.

Then how do I keep a full hand? My instinct says hold back creatures. That makes sense, because that's what I'm trying to do here, forcing Wrath go to for one for one trades. With a plate, essentially all of the creatres are gigantic, and it must be dealt with or blocked, because the amount of damage from a full hand is desvistating.

But that was not enough, I still need to make consistent land drops to ensure I can hard cast the things on the upper end of the curve, and losing the draw from SoFI means now this deck is without draw of any kind. I thought about Mask of Memory, but again, it doesn't boost creatures, and that's huge. Having a Silver Knight facing Factory, doesn't really matter how many Mask you load onto that guy, it doesn't do much.

I looked at the Archived for inspiration, all signs points to Land Tax. Well, the deck runs Tithe, which is like semi-tax, but the effect is a one shot deal, so I looked at Weathered Wayfarer. (Please do not post irrelevent responses like "Go post this in WWW thread." I know where I'm going with this.)

Now, activation needs mana cost. That pissed me off a bit, but the ability to tutor up any lands is just too good to pass on. So far, the primary strategy of this particular test version is as follows:
Cast creature turn 1/2, load it up with Plate, and swing until it dies, cast another, repeat.
Being able to tutor up Wasteland to get rid of blockers as well as destabilizing Landstill's mana base is important to this strategy. If Vial Goblins can run 4 Waste and 4 Ports to keep Landstill off WW, why can't AS? We have a even better chance because we can tutor the lands with Wayfare.

Formation

By studying Alix's deck's mana base, I came up with the following mana base:

12 Plains
1 Ancient Tomb
1 Dust Bowl
4 Wasteland
1 Mishra's Factory
4 Tithe

Based on the the accepted creature core of the deck, I came up with the following:

1 Isamaru, Hound of Konda
4 Silver Knights
4 Weathered Wayfarer
4 Soltari Priest
2 Soltari Soldier
2 Suntail Hawk
4 Exalted Angel

I split the 1cc into 1 Isamaru, 4 Wayfarer and 2 Suntail Hawk + 2 SS because the former portion of 1cc can block turn 1 Lackey, but the latter portion cannot. However, the latter portion is excellent with Plate, boosting the Shadow count to 6, ensure that I will draw one early on in the game and be able to Plate it.

That's 44 cards, giving me 16 slots for utility and equipments.

StPs are no brainer. The deck needs Plate for its primary strategy, it's not Legendary, there is no draw back in multiples. However, it cuts into other equipment slots. (Going with something like 21 creature vs. 12 equipments is a big NO-NO.) The Plate is less than spetacular against Goblins, as it loses the SoFI's ability to shoot problematic Goblins, so after some testing, I came up with the following:

3 Steelshaper's Gift
3 Empyrial Plate
1 Jitte
1 SoFI
1 SoLS
4 StP
3 Parallax Wave

So to sum up the deck list:

Angel Stompy Test Variation V2.0

//Creatures
1 Isamaru, Hound of Konda
4 Silver Knights
4 Weathered Wayfarer
4 Soltari Priest
2 Soltari Soldier
2 Suntail Hawk
4 Exalted Angel

//Utility
3 Steelshaper's Gift
3 Empyrial Plate
1 Jitte
1 SoFI
1 SoLS
4 StP
3 Parallax Wave

//Mana Base
12 Plains
1 Ancient Tomb
1 Dust Bowl
4 Wasteland
1 Mishra's Factory
4 Tithe

Now, the matchups.

This deck has approximately a 35/65 chance against Landstill and 60/40 chance against Goblins in Game 1. In both matchups, Wave plays two distinct but crucial roles. Again, I must stress that the Wave's ability to save your own creatures is a golden one. Couple of points to note:

a) Although the deck only has one Jitte, having 4 Gifts means you will access it fast while against Goblins. It should be your primary tutor target ASAP.

b) Remember that you can activate Wayfare EoT and Upkeep to grab 2 Wastelands in hand. That is important as well. On top of deck thining, it forces Landstill to crack for basic Island and Plains, making WW and UU much harder to obtain in the early stages of the game.

c) If you are confident, or have drawn a absolutely awsome hand, don't heistate to search for the Tomb via Wayfare and go for the super aggro that the deck used to go for. Very aggro decks can handle Wave/StP/Jitte counter removal, and even fewer can race against early Angel.

d) The games against Landstill tend to drag on quite long, due to the play style of this deck. Be sure to manage the time wisely. I have on many occasions won the testing games, only to realize that it took me close to 25-30 minutes. That is not very good in an actual tournement setting.


This deck, is in no way, shape, or form, optimized. I need suggestions, things outside of the box, and a lot of help from Zilla and Freely to make it work right. I know that I said in the previous post that I was working on the W/r version, that was before I saw the Swiftblade. With addion of Blade, the W/r is going under some dratstic changes as well. I'm also hoping for more playable WR spells out of Rav, so until the set spoiler to close to be finished, I intend to put W/r AS on hold, and work on this MonoWhite build exclusively.

Thanks for your time to read this peice of long ass junk. All comments welcome.

EDIT: One thing to I hate to point out is that as the number of board wiping spells played by Landstill increase, the % drops more and more, and the match up is more and more to Landstill's favourite. For the last portion of the testing, we tested against a Landstill build that removed the 2 EDs for 2 additional Vengeance, so 4 Wrath and 4 Vengeance main, that was ugly. I also edited the %s to reflect a Landstill deck with 7 wiping effects, 4 Wrath, 1 Disk, 2 Vegeance. Hate to say it, it doesn't look so good. When different parts of the deck comes together, it works wonders. But it's simply very difficult to recover Wrath after Wrath, even if they continue to Wrath ONE creature, it's still hard to race the FoF, because that gets them the best card quality relevent to the current position. Standstill sometimes busts into 3 lands or something, which is not scary, but the FoF just nabs that Wrath or Crucible or Vegeance and make Landstill one happy camper.

[scrumdogg]

Wayfarer is good tech in many ways, it provides another one drop (stupid Lackeys....) and can smooth the manabase issues considerably. Also, since I have yet to successfully equip Jitte to a Tithe, that seems like a positive as well.

A possible card swap I would like to discuss is replacing the Soltari Priests with Auriok Champions. Both are pro-red, both cost WW. Priest is more aggressive & has evasion while the Champion gains you time versus aggro (especially red based aggro....) and can block. I've been testing the Champion in a WWu based version aimed more solidly at combo & goblins and have been pleased. The Landstill matchup is still problematic, but I did not think of accessing LD with the Wayfarer. I will have to test that package, but what are thoughts on Champion, especially in a meta infested with Goblins? If suboptimal, it could easily be sided out versus Solidarity, although it is not horrible Game 1.

[t3h.sWaRm]

Goblin Legionnaire: Well, I say he has some form of evasion since many people don't like blocking him for same reason people don't like blocking Mogg Fanatic. If they block, you can just let the damage go on the stack and sacrifice him to either kill another creature or do 2 damage to the player, making him a 2 for 1 many times.

Wasteland: I'm not sure I really like the idea of cutting Tombs(or in my case, City of Traitors) for Wastelands. Sure, I may REALLY want to kill some of Landstill's annoying non-basics, but the acceleration provided by Tomb is phenomenal, allowing such things as me attacking with a Silver Knight(or any other creature) equiped with a Jitte turn 3(or 2 w/ mox, which you also cut, but I was thinking about cutting them anyway) or having an unmorphed Exalted Angel attacking turn 3. I know you can use the Wayfayer to fetch the Tomb, but 1)You would have to have it and 2) It may be too slow. I have't liked Wayfayer in the past because it can take some time to get it activated and the opponent can play around it. I'll test Wayfayer, but I doubt I'll like him. Anyway, how about trying a mana base like:
11x Plains
4x Ancient Tomb
3x Wasteland
1x Dust Bowl
4x Tithe
Which lets you keep the Ancient Tombs+Non basic hate. The Wayfayer can still search for the Dust Bowl, which is crazy late game, and with 3 Wastelands, you get them somewhat reliably or can search for them if you don't.

Mishra's Factory: Same thing as with Wastelands. I would like to have them in the deck, but I'm not sure if they'll make the manabase too unstable. Their ability to dodge WoG effects do warrant testing, however.

Auriok Champion: If your meta is infested with Goblins, this guy is definately better than Soltari Preist. A solid blocker with pro red, he also lets you gain quite a bit of life to help you win the race. Preists drawback for being "unblockable" is that he cannot block himself, something I find I want to do quite often, especially versus Goblins(huge Piledrivers = :( ).

[midnightAce]

However, the problem with having "the nutz" draws is clear... you overextend and you die to Wrath. While Plain + Tomb + Angel + going first + no FoW = resolved Angel. The third turn, when you turn her face up, chances are, it'll be StPed. Essentially, Landstill have just Time Walked you 2 turns with a StP, and as grim as it may sound, this type of situation happens more often then you think.

I admit I simply ripped off WWW's mana base, it has been working fine for me. If I were to include Tombs, it might help accelerate the Plate. I would keep the Plain count at 12, the reason is on the first few pages of the thread. The original AS with 11 Plains, 4 Tithe and 3 Chrome Mox was having trouble getting WW reliably, this deck sometimes suffer the same fate if Wayfare or Tithe is not drawn. I will test the mana base based on your suggestion, except for -1 Tomb +1 Plain.

Seven non-white mana producing land is as far as the mana base can support, unlike Goblins, we can't go full out with 4 Waste 4 Ports, simply because we don't have mana cheating abilities. Unless you are willing to cut another Tomb, I don't think Factory can be fit into your mana base.

Auriok Champion is a solid SB choice against Goblin to replace the Priests, I agree. However I would never put her in mainboard, especially with the amount of Landstill running around. Shadow creatures are your best weapon against Landstill, by passing Factories, Decree tokens, and other assorted junk and get the damage through.

[Draco2156]

My question, is

should we go for a blue splash pre ravnica, or red splash? I'm asking this because I'm planning on taking Angel Stompy to GPT Philly on the 10th of September.

Blue currently offers us
arcane lab
stifle
meddling mage
iridescent angel maybe

Red offers us
lightning bolt
FTK
magma jet
REB
Pillar
Sirocco

Which is better pre-ravnica?

[t3h.sWaRm]

@midnightAce: You're probably right about that, it's happened to me a few times :(. Either way, I'll be testing out the Wayfayer and the manabase.

@Draco2156: Well, we're not sure if any splash would benefit the deck. We are simply exploring the options provided by each color to see if it's worth a splash at all. You may be better off going with the tested monowhite version of the deck. Anyway, if you would like to splash a color, based on the list you provided and my limited amount of time right now, I'm going to have to say that the red splash is probably better. First of all NO Irridescent Angel, she's useless. Secondly, all of the blue cards you pointed out are mostly only really useful against Solidarity. Mage and Stifle can be used elsewhere, but their effects are mostly minimul and not worth the slots.

In contrast, red, in addition to providing a variety of Solidarity hate, also provides SB cards for other matchups. FTK is interesting, however I do not think it will fit in the deck. Lightning Bolt is a very useful card red offers the red splash, giving AS another form of creature removal. The main matchups we are trying to improve are Landstill and if at all possible... Solidarity, but we do not want to mess with the decks already good matchups(unless we happen to make them better :)) For Landstill Promise of Power is just amazing(if it resolves). My W/r AS SB looks something like:
2x REB
2x Pyroblast
4x Promise of Power
4x Sirocco
3x ?? ??

If you expect Landstill and Solidarity to be all over the place at GPT Philly, then that SB is pretty powerful(in theory, haven't tested it yet).

BTW is Land Tax legal in 1.5? Sorry for my extreme laziness(lazyness?) but my computer is quite slow and it would take me around 10 minutes to search for it. I've also got to finish a bit of work for school [glare] .

[sauceding]

Mmm...Draco2156 was the one who suggested Glowrider to me. Anyway, I don't like Sirocco, it's too narrow. Rather Pyrostatic Pillar to handle all Storm-based combo decks we run into.

Pre-ravnica, I would only go to blue splash if I was to splash at all. Meddling Mage on Cunning Wish/good combo card would work well, but for red I want to wait until Ravnica for Boros Swiftblade. Just a quick thought, but you can't limit a field to just control and combo. There's bound to be a good number of Gobbos running around, which you beat anyway (run Honorable Passage perhaps). And I suppose you mean Price of Progress, eh? Not to mention that Decree of Justice is a nice card against Landstill.

In the end, I like blue better pre-rav and red for post-rav. It's anyone's call though, you can make a hateful board, but for only one face of the matchups (red-colored vs. control/combo).

[midnightAce]

2x REB
2x Pyroblast
4x Promise of Power
4x Sirocco
3x ?? ??

Note: PoP = Price of Progress in most cases... Promise of Power is a black card with BBB in the casting cost.

[tivadar]

Hmm, don't underestimate Stifle. Oddly enough, I first added stifle to help against solidarity, where it actually doesn't help at all because by the time they fire off, they probably have 50 FOWs in their hand anyways..., however, I've found stifle amazing against Gobbo and pretty good against any deck that runs fetch lands. Against gobbo, just let them drop that ringleader then stifle it's come into play ability. Now they payed 4 mana for a 2/2 haster. Obviously against fetch it works as a 1 mana land destruction, and it also kills off the decree of justice.

Anyways, I run UW stompy/control (started as UW control, moved to UW control/stompy, now UW stompy/control) and my current build is as follows:

// Lands
2 Island
4 Plains
4 Ancient Tomb
4 Flooded Strand
4 Tundra
// Creatures
3 Exalted Angel
3 Meddling Mage
4 Silver Knight
4 Mother of Runes
// Spells
3 Impulse
3 Stifle
4 Swords to Plowshares
4 Tithe
4 Force of Will
2 Decree of Justice
// Artifacts
3 Pithing Needle
2 Sword of Fire and Ice
2 Umezawa's Jitte
// Sideboard
SB: 3 Disenchant
SB: 3 In the Eye of Chaos
SB: 3 Parallax Tide
SB: 3 Parallax Wave
SB: 3 Tsabo's Web

I'll do a bit of explaining. First off, let me say that I've been going back and forth between mainboarding needle and disenchant and just find needle more versatile. The one situation I'd rather have disenchant is when a crucible hits the table, but even then, I can have a needle naming factory or conclave. Also, I've been trying to decide between tithe and something like Remote Farm. I don't like Chrome Mox, as it provides too much card disadvantage. Yes, I know Remote Farm isn't widely used, but it can be quite effective especially when combined with things like tithe. Honestly, for all my testing, it's done fairly well.

Anyways, an explanation of the non-standard cards:

Stifle - As stated above, awesome against gobbo, too bad it doesn't work on standstill... But wait till the sideboard hits the table and you remove 5 of their lands then stifle the leaves play ability..., nice amount of synergy there.

FOW - Great for stopping the Wraths and whatnot. I ran counterspell for a while, but never had the mana I needed. I'd rather pack force and be able to stop a threat with no free mana.

Meddling Mage - Everyone shoots this card down, but in my experience, it really doesn't weaken the red matchup much at all. A lot of gobbo decks I've seen splash with for STP. Assuming I'm feeling good about my situation, playing Meddling and naming STP can be a big boost. Also, obviously, against solidarity this combined with mother rocks. Sure they can use evacuation, but one would hope you could kill them by turn 7...

Impulse - Since I run less creatures, and less equipment than standard stompy, dig is very important. This card provides the means to do that at instant speed for just 2 mana. If I have a creature, but no equipment, I can dig for that, if I have equipment but no creature, dig for the creature.

Decree - With the double shot lands, this can provide me with a bunch of chump blockers, or even someone to throw my equipment on when I'm out of creatures. In addition, it also sneaks by a standstill, and I've won a game or two by playing it against landstill at the right time.

Sideboard:

Disenchant - Since I'm using pithing mainboard, still useful in most matchups.

ITEOC - Sorry, but hands down better than anything else I've ever seen against solidarity. Get this and a meddling out (naming cunning wish) and you've got a near lock against solidarity. This could be traded for Arcane Lab or the white one (sadly, can't remember it's name, I choose blue when I can, better for FOW), which is just about as good, but the fact is that ITEOC is better standalone than Arcane Lab.

Parallax Tide - for landstill mainly, though also good against solidarity. And don't worry, the UU2 isn't so hard to get with this deck. Also, combined with stifle, keeps the removed cards out of the game. This card still needs testing, but from what I've seen so far, it's been working very well.

Parallax Wave - For gobbo and other swarm style decks. Also have to test this one a bit to see how it performs against Landstill to protect my creatures, hadn't considered that before.

The deck plays much more like a control deck than standard AS, but it contains some aspects of both and leans more, I believe, towards AS.

[midnightAce]

Interesting build. I have a couple of questions.

First of all, I noticed that you have a total of 18 lands, while with Tithe, I think it could be stable, but how big of a Decree can you usually cycle up to? If it's only for 1 or 2, does it warrents its inclusion?

Second, the low blue card count. You run 13 blue cards in total main board. Is that enough blue card supporting FoW in your testing?

Lastly, has Tide really be that solid to you? Even with Tombs, they come down as early as turn 3, with Landstill's own Wasteland and such, do you usually find yourself fetching for basic Islands just to cast the Tide?

[tivadar]

First off, I can't Decree big unless I get lucky. Typically I decree for 2 or 3, which doesn't sound like much, but when you consider that it's 2 or 3 creatures at no card expense it's not bad. You could be right. I've been debating other cards such as raise the alarm, or funeral pyre, but the fact is that against landstill, my games tend to run long, and when they do, cycling a decree can be a huge advantage, especially if they have a standstill up. If a landstill deck has to break it's own standstill, that's pretty much game...

As for blue cards, it fluctuates between 13 and 15 generally. I actually think I'm switching back to brainstorm rather than impulse (this actually helps my manabase a bit as well). Honestly, I've had very little trouble coming up with a blue card in hand for Force. There's been occassions where I've had to decide between stifling their fetch or wasteland and saving it for a force. Also, I'd say about 1/4th of the time or so I end up hard casting the force rather than dropping a blue card. In general, this is in response to something like akroma's vengeance when I know they don't have any counter options in hand.

As for Tide's being useful, that's one I'm just beginning to test. Against solidarity, I'm most likely going to be fetching tundras, with no worry of wasteland. Against landstill, I very commonly fetch basic lands rather than duals with strands, though normally I grab a plain first, if I have a situation with a tide I know I want to cast, I can always fetch island then tundra, and then they can decide whether they want to save their wasteland to burn a counter on tide, or use it to bury my tundra, and have to wait an extra turn for their lands.

Anyways, I'm still tinkering with the build. Against goblins, I believe it's pretty much as solid as AS, or at least very close, much thanks to FOW and Stifle. Right now, the deck needs to be tinkered to work better against landstill and solidarity, where it's matchups are ok, but not stunning. Honestly it's got a much better matchup against solidarity now than it does landstill I believe. I'm also testing eight-and-a-half-tails over mother, as mother lacks the offensive force that tails possesses. I'll let you know what I decide...

[Boogy_Boy]

Hi guys.

Just some cards I am wondering:

Tangle Wire-
Seems like a good idea. All we need to do is tap some equipments, and tapping those doesn't really affect us. Against goblins, they'd either tap out the land or the creatures. It's also quite a nice diruption against Landstill who have little to no permanent other than land on the board.

Hunted Llamasu- (Ravnica)
WW2, 5/5 Flying
Target opponent put a 4/4 black token creature into play.
Well... Block it with Mother of Runes, remove it with Parrallax Wave. Worst come to worse, block it ??? It really is a not a big draw back for a 5/5 flying....

So what do u guys think of these cards?



As for the RW Swiftblade guy... well... he got not evasion... The chance of him getting through is pretty much nil. But that's just me.

Also, I don't see the need for Jitte... seriously. It's only a +4/+4. Yes it can do some spot removal, and gain life (which isn't used that often). But it's just slow. 2 mana to cast, and usually another turn to equip. THEN ANOTHER turn to use the counters... Unless swiftblade makes the cut (which I doubt), I think Jitte needs to be reconsidered... :p

[tivadar]

@Boros - I'm not sure how he'd pan out, but remember, if you do get him and equipment into play, he's basically a "must kill", so your opponent will have to waste spot removal on him very likely, and not wait for mass removal. He could be good, but will take testing.

@Tanglewire - It's been tried in the "White Lightning" deck, I honestly don't know how well this one plays out, but it seems like it would work well against things like solidarity (making them tap their mana producers) and possibly landstill. The only thing I'd be worried about is overcommitting yourself in prep for the tanglewire and then having it countered. You'd definetly have to wait a couple of turns before being able to throw down the wire. Has anyone playtested this? Also, my guess is that against gobbos, this wouldn't be effective at all, seeing as gobbos will most likely beat you to the punch in terms of number of permanents on the board...

@Llamasu - Good, but no better than an exalted really. At best, you could cast this second turn and swing with it third. The same is true of exalted, and I'd prefer to have that instead. Granted with LLamasu, you don't need a resource commitment two turns in a row, but it also doesn't have lifegain.

@Jitte - This is one thing I have playtested, against a variety of decks too. But it comes down to this, against any sort of aggro (including burn), jitte shines through as truly amazing and there's nothing better (ok, so maybe sofi is close). Against solidarity, jitte sucks (it's got a turn wait on it essentially). I will say this, however, you'll be using those counters more often for removal than you will for the +4/+4 bonus...

Ohhh, and P.S. I love Eight-and-a-half-tails. He's not quite as good early, but if you make it past third turn or so, suddenly he can protect your equipment as well as your creatures, and swing while doing it...

[midnightAce]

@Boros -- The set generally is offering a lot of good RW stuff, what actually makes the cut and what doesn't would depend largely on the weeks of testing that's to come, no need to rush to conlclusions. :cool:

@Wire -- Unfortunately, this deck does not pack insane clock to abuse the Wire. If the Wire is down early, Landstill waits till turn 5 to Wrath instead of turn 4. If the Wire gets down late, a Counterspell will be waiting for it. (Trust me, Landstill that packs upwards of 6/7/8 board sweepers could care less if you casted a Silver Knight or two.)

@Llamasu
Again, the same logic can be applied to the opposing deck. Landstill can StP the Llmasu, and suddenly, you are looking down at a 4/4 that YOU gave him/her. It's not really worth the risk.

@Jitte
See Vial Goblins.

PS.
Swiftblade does get the damage done. Say you equip Swiftblade with a SoFI, he's a 3/4 DS guy. Pro red aside, (note that Mother of Ruin can grant pro whatever to the Swiftblade with Jitte to ensure 4 counters, good game.), let's say opponent blocks with any 3 toughness guy, the First Strike portion will kill the blocker, and the normal damage portion will get through and trigger the equipments. So in that sense, Swiftblade does have evasion. (My bad, such instance only works if Swiftblade has Trample as well as Double Strike, I apologize the confusion that it may have caused.)

[midnightAce]

I apologize, the instance which I described only works if Swiftblade has Trample as well as Double Strike, I was thinking about Dragon Tyrant vs. Exalted Angel when I was typing that. Again, I apologize for that rules oversight. Post edited to reflect change.

[Carlos El Salvador]

Tividar is correct, play on.

As far as not running Jitte, yeah, it's probibly the weakest slot in the solidarity matchup, but against anything aggro or control, it's a shiny beacon of shiny hope and shinefullness.
Also, boy, If your playing Jitte and not equipping on the same turn, your seriously playing the card totally wrong.

In the Eye of Chaos was a card that churned up that so happens to totally own instant-speed storm based combo. (Like what? Heh, you know.)

Other items:

Llamasuu is a good angel substitution, maybe even could replace the angel, seeing as you don't have to sepnd two turns on him, has one extra power as well... but as we all know, giving your oppoent d00ds sucks.

I used to play W/u Lightning back in the day. It was good. tangle wire dosn't slow anything down engouth to where you can win though, the main stratagy for Landstill is to just kill anything they deem an immidiate threat with swords, wait until they draw a wrath, and just mop up from there.

[Zilla]

Llamasuu is a good angel substitution, maybe even could replace the angel, seeing as you don't have to sepnd two turns on him, has one extra power as well...
Nooooooo!

IBA says:


Let's compare; In a vacuum, because if you honestly need to preface your arguments with, "Cards x, y, and z, if drawn and cast, make this creature whose only appeal is it's relatively high power/toughness for a supposedly low amount of mana hardly noticeable!", then you can justly boast yourself inaccessible to the light;

Hunted Lammasu; Swing for 5. Your opponent swings back (again, assuming they have no creatures besides the one you gave them) for 4.

Net Life: +1

Exalted Angel; Swing for 4. Gain 4. Assuming, again, that your opponent has neither creature removal nor creatures to swing back;

Net Life: +8

In other words, Exalted Angel is 8 times better than Hunted Lammasu.
Normally I am loathe to suggest that anyone should listen to IBA, but in this case, he's completely correct. The curve can't support both Lamasu and Angel, and Angel is FAR superior.

[tivadar]

Just a couple suggestions. One which I actually mentioned above.

Swap Mother of Runes with Eight-and-a-half-tails:
Mother is pretty flacid without another creature. Sure, if you get some equip, you can swing with it, but then you can't protect yourself as well. Tails offers the ability to swing as well as protect, and grants pro:white, repeatedly, for all your permanents. As a first turn play, they're pretty much equal against most types of decks. You can't use the mother cause it's a tap ability, and you can't use the Tails cause you don't have the mana. However, the mother dies to fanatic, where Tails lives on. Tails is more of a mana pit than mother, but I think it's worth the tradeoff. It also has the nice benefit that when your gobbo opponent casts Anarchy, you can turn all their lands and creatures white as well...

Tsabo's Web as Sideboard for Landstill:
Since I splash blue, solidarity is very little of a problem for me. Landstill decks come down to a race where I try to play creatures, and my opponent tries to remove them, oftentimes using mass removal to get a single creature. While some would argue Tsabo's is a tempo slower, I'd disagree. Essentially, playing it first turn forces my opponent to slow down his play until he gets a disenchant. And also, even after the disenchant, it nets you a card advantage, because there's no way they're going to let it stay in play. It's also a good response after your opponent casts a board sweeper and has all his lands tapped.

Anyways, I looked over a lot of this thread, but it's quite a few pages. Have either one of these been tested before?

[GRAH]

Mother also takes no mana to give protections (you rarely have 3 spare mana, unless you're losing), AND is a 1-drop, which helps smooth out the mana curve.

[Zilla]

Yeah, the bottom line is that one of the deck's strongest plays is turn 1 Mom, turn 2 morph protected by Mom, turn 3 attacking Angel. 8.5 Tails can't do that. And is legendary. You could theoretically replace one Mom with 8.5 Tails. Maybe.

[sauceding]

One of the biggest problems with using 8.5 Tails would probably be that it's protection ability is overshadowed by Mother of Runes (as mentioned). That, and any player would rather be playing some more critters than two or three mana to save a fox when you can just tap to save the MoR. Both of such arguments have been outlined. But the third argument against it is that there won't be a turn where you just sit there and happen to have three or so mana. Most turns will be spent equipping creatures, slapping down guys (and those equipments), and sending your guys into the redzone. I don't think in the first four turns you'll be willing to not play any guys just so you can have one creature be unblockable for once (at the cost of a good amount of mana) when you can have even more damage on the way on the next turn. In the end, the lack of mana cost from MoR's ability takes the cake.

Second, there is the happy possibility that we might end up in red or blue. As we know with the guild plans, WR is pushed more than WU. Compulsive Research is the only card I've seen so far that in the back of my mind could be cardadvantage we could use for UW(get through land flood if ever you haven't won yet), but then again I don't imagine that a sorcery could make it that far. On the other side, Boros Swiftblade is already receiving good marks. Then I saw these few cards:
Boros Guildmage RW for a nutty combat trick possibility
Boros Recruit r or w for a 1/1 first strike
Skyknight Legionnaire 1RW for a 2/2 flying haste

Given, there are better options for Boros Recruit and Skyknight Legionnaire, but it they are interesting nonetheless. However, Boros Guildmage is the one I want to focus on. For two mana, you get a guy who can speed up the rate at which newly dropped critters can be attacking and having the nice ability of First Strike. I don't expect the last two to make the cut, but Guildmage just looks so cool.

[tivadar]

Hmm, I guess it's just my experience that if i have a creature out, it's either going to get killed immediately, or it's going to live until mass removal hits the board. Especially against landstill, where it's a battle of playing creatures and having them immediately erased next turn, or swords'ed on the spot. Because of this, Tails just seemed more appealing to me. Obviously it's a better late game draw, as by then, you'll have enough mana to protect it as soon as it gets into play (all you really need is two, let's face it, swords is what you want to protect against), and it can swing as well. However, you're right about it being more of a mana commitment early on.

As for the other suggestions:

@Recruit: Well, we've basically got this card already, it's called Tundra Wolf, and it doesn't seem to get used as is, so I doubt the recruit will see much play either.

@Guildmage: Combat tricks don't tend to work so well, especially when they're combat tricks your opponent can see. In addition, the only truly important ability here is the haste, and to use that first turn, it requires 3 mana anyways, and once again, the creature has no evasion, I'd go with the skyknight first.

@Skyknight: Seems to me that Haste boils down to something very similar to Doublestrike in terms of how this deck runs. Either I can swing the first turn it's out, and swing the next, or I can double swing the next turn. With that said, skyknight is 1 more mana than swiftblade, but has evasion. Haste is huge, because it lets you work your draw engine immediately after a wrath without your opponent having time to free up their mana. Sure, it can be thwarted by STP if they have 1 free or a Force, but I see this as a much more viable option than swiftblade because it swings quicker and evades better. Sure, after its first turn, swiftblade becomes better. But when have you ever had something survive that long against any reasonable deck anyways? Perhaps against the solidarity matchup, but I'll take the skyknight against landstill any day.

[sauceding]

Yeah, as I said, the Recruit has an abysmal chance of being used. Perhaps I just like the gulidmage, but for the same two mana I could have a doublestriker. It is true that the best combat tricks are unseen, or can be bluffed in (unlike this one, which is obviously there).

[Alfred]

The problem with Skyknight is that Leonin Skyhunter has already been printed, and is probably better for this deck. In regards to Boros Swiftblade, let's get over him already, Skyhunter Skirmisher has been printed and is better because it has evasion. Who cares if it comes out a turn later when it won't be chump blocked.

[sauceding]

This is very true Alfred. Maybe in the slightest case the one extra toughness in Boros Swiftblade will be worth it, and I also had the same fear with Skyknight that it's just a copy of Leonin Skyhunter. In the end, Ravnica does just give us cheap imitations of the past. We need something a little better than that, considering we don't use all of the cards that they imitate.

[quodo]

Hi everyone. First post here. :)
I do think Boros Legionnaire is better than it's mono white flyong counterpart. The 1 more thoughtness is good against alot of things (chump blockers, jitte token, fire/ice repartition) Also, the fact it can attack one turn before allows a goldfish T4 kill, and THATS good.

T1 Plains
T2 Mountain > Boros
T3 Tomb > Jitte > Equipped >Boros deals 6 and Jitte has 2 counters
T4 attack for the kill (boros is 5 attack plus counters plus 5 = 14)
Note that Mox can speed you up of one turn. (So if you're very lucky, you can kill on turn 3)

Boros is a winning plan by itself.

I may come up with a list soon.

[tivadar]

One thing to consider is that splashing red weakens the mirror matchup, as we all know how much red hate this deck packs to begin with...

[midnightAce]

One thing to consider is that splashing red weakens the mirror matchup, as we all know how much red hate this deck packs to begin with...
Not really. In my experiences with various degrees of mirror matches (MonoWhite vs MonoWhite, MonoWhite vs W/u, W/u vs W/u, MonoWhite vs W/b, MonoWhite vs W/r and W/r vs W/r), the key thing is get an active Jitte ASAP. There is nothing to do with red hate or none-basic hate or whatever, it's all about getting the Jitte online, use it to shoot off the Mother of Ruins, then StP opposing Angels and go in for the win. In the builds that retain Parallax Wave, it's about cast as many creatures as humanly possible, and if no Jitte is found, just cast multiple Waves and go full out.

EDIT:
As for the argument that
RW 1/2 DS = WW1 1/1 Flying DS, that's not really accurate. The turn which it comes down is essentially in an aggro deck. The fact is, if it was W2 1/1 Flying DS, I would actually try him out as a 3'of in the deck, because it's acceleratable via Tomb, but with WW1, it's not. You can argue that Chrome accelerate it out on turn 2, well, the same arguement can be made for the Swiftblade that it can be Chromed out on turn 1, and that's HUGE. The fact is, other than the Angel, none of the creatures are that threatening, so equipment is generally needed to make ANY creature good.

[Boogy_Boy]

Hi hi~

Just one quick question. Doesn't anyone feel that this deck need another 3 mana (Tomb accelerable) threat other than Angel?

I mean, I'm sure some of you have had the situation of having a tomb and a plain in play with a Soltari Priest/Silver Knight in hand second turn?

Perhaps Something like Soltari Champion with W2 CC?

Often times, after playing a
T1: Plain, Hawk,

I'd want to play a
T2: Tomb, Angel.
instead of a
T2: Mask, equip (or Sword oFI)


I just feel that we need around 3 or 4 more tomb accelerable threats...

Edit, had a little look around. Defender of Law from UL? It can be a nice tempo to cast this after a WoG and equip to swing next turn as tho it has haste. It has Pro Red as well, so it can come down as the gobbos anounce attack and run into this.

[Zilla]

Turn 2 options with a Plains and a Tomb in play:

1. Morphed Angel.
2. Sword of Fire and Ice.
3. Steelshaper's Gift > Jitte.
4. Mother of Runes, Isamaru, Lions, Suntail, or Tithe + Mask of Memory or Jitte.
5. Chrome Mox + Silver Knight or Soltari Priest + Mask or Jitte.
6. Chrome Mox + Mother of Runes, Isamaru, Lions, or Suntail + Mask and equip or Jitte or Sword of Fire and Ice.
7. Chrome Mox + Armageddon or Parallax Wave.

What exactly is the problem?

[Eldariel]

Some options for the Landstill match-up in white:

Raise the Alarm: Seeing that the fearsome sweepers are sorcery-speed, Raise the Alarm at EoT followed by equipping and swinging appears a fine strategy indeed. Heck, Raise at the EoT, followed by Arma is guaranteed to make them gringe.
Promise of Bunrei: Seriously, who's going to Wrath if they know they'll be facing down 4 spirits after it? Vengeance is a problem here, since it destroys the promise too, making it not-the-perfect-foil, but it seems great indeed against Wrath.
Second Sunrise: Ok, so it returns their Disc and requires you to keep mana open. Then again, Disc might be dead from disenchants already before this, it still comes into play tapped after SS, and they don't generally play it anyways. A great foil to Vengeance or Wrath, both of which generally tap you out. As a bonus, if you happen to be holding Raise the Alarm (assuming you play it), you can cast it at the EoT if they didn't do anything, warranting a Sunrise.
Kjeldoran Outpost: Ok, I'm getting sidetracked here. There's Wasteland, but else this slow little token-producer would make card costless tokens to equip and swing with, breaking 1/1 or better with sweepers.
Parallax Wave: We all know what this does, neuters Vengeance totally and basically ignores Wrath too. One of the better cards around.
Otherworldly Journey: Well, as long as we're considering LS matchup, the ability to avoid a sweeper and have a bigger creature as the consequence does probably have some merit.
Angelic Renewal: Another foil to Wrath, this time a bit cheaper, but still suffering of the 'can't touch Vengeance'-syndrome.
Miraculous Recovery: Well, an awful card to be sure, but in this match-up, it just might do something. After a sweeper, "At your EoT, take back Exalted Angel and swing for 5 + any equipment I feel like casting" does have some merit.
Death or Glory: Ok, I'm getting desperate, but reanimating a couple of creatures in the midgame should have some promise against all the sweepers.
Abeyance: Delays them by a turn and draws a card, doesn't seem like all that bad an option. Also usable to force through spells on your own turn.
Flickerform: Ravnica-card, 2 mana Enchantment-Aura. 2WW, enchanted creature and all its auras are removed from the game. Return the creature enchanted by all its Auras to play under your control at the end of turn.

Seems like a potential way to just win against Landstill, if you get to untap with a creature enchanted by that. That is, unless they happen to draw multiple StPs and haven't used them against earlier threats.
Planar Guide: Well, 2WW is a lot, but it's a creature and it allows all your creatures to dodge the removal. Again, the fact that it requires mana open is problematic, I'd prefer proactive solutions if any.
Glowrider: Well, it postpones his spells by a turn. Too bad he's such a bad beater.
Tanglewire: Slows him down by a couple of turns if cast at the right time, while hurting you practically not at all. Might work fine in combination with Armageddon.
Winter Orb: What can I say, they don't recover very fast with this, while you've got Tombs and Moxes.

EDIT: How could've I forgotten? Cursed Scroll! Comes out early, pings for a long time and you just cast another one if they Vengeance, leaving them open. Does have some promise.


On an unrelated note, I think Chalice of the Void looks like a promising sideboard card, it kicks Burn (Chalice for 1), Solidarity (Chalice for 1 slows them down immensely and kills a good part of their tutors), Belcher (Chalice for 0) and a lots of random decks. In all those match-ups, save perhaps burn, you can almost empty your own 1-slot anyways. And this deck has Tomb and Mox to easily power out the Chalice for 1 on turn 1.

[tivadar]

@Eldariel's Suggestions:

Raise the Alarm: Decent Token producer, and 2 for 1 advantage. Also, as you said, good in response to the landstill. Though I wouldn't recommend sideboarding it against landstill. Also, if you're thinking creatures at instant speed, take a look at funeral pyre as well. Granted you need a card in your graveyard, but it gives you a 1/1 flyer for 1 at instant speed, not a bad deal.
Promise: Eh, sure, it COULD give you 4 1/1's, but who's actually going to put your creature in the graveyard with this in play. Also, don't forget about swords, they can just remove things from the game. No surprise factor, no dice.
Second Sunrise: Here's a decent one, return ALL permanents you lost, including the equipment. Sure you have to keep the mana free, but you can slowplay a bit with the equipment hopefully and have a few extra mana when they hit their wrath/vengeance amount. Decent, possibly worth boarding.
Kjeldoran Outpost: A land that kills one of your other lands, and is an excellent wasteland target? I think not. Also slows down your tempo. Terrible card for this deck.
Parallax Wave: Obviously good, probably not as good as Second Sunrise in terms of reviving from a wrath, but doesn't need a mana reserve, and has other applications. Lots of decks already mainboard this guy as the "temporary targetted wrath".
Otherworldly Journey: I think people underestimate this card. I wouldn't suggest boarding it just for landstill, but it's not a bad mainboard, also because it can flip those angels, as well as saving things from targetted or mass removal, and put it immediately back into play more powerful. Can also be used to remove opponent's threats. I think I'd mainboard Wave before this however.
Angelic Renewal: Yuck, one creature, sure, it revives it, but does nothing for removed and also is a dead card in a lot of cases. Just run a creature instead of this, it's nearly as good.
Miraculous Recovery: Almost strictly worse than Second Sunrise. Sure it's an instant speed creature with +1/+1, but I'd rather just put in a creature that I can presumably cast for a lot less than what this costs.
Death or Glory: Sorcery, they can just wrath or Vengeance next turn again, and it's rather costly for a deck with a relatively low mana curve. Go for something else instead.
Abeyance: Not going to help, giving yourself a turn most likely isn't going to win you the game. It may help, but I'd rather have another creature.
Flickerform, Planar Guide: Ability costs 4, for that I could have a Wave out and protect a bunch of my creatures. Sure I can protect them repeatedly with this, but requires a big mana commitment to be open on the board.

The rest I'm not going to bother with. There's a 'White Lightning' deck that uses tanglewire, however, that you could check out. As for chalice, it's been tested and is occassionally used in Angel Stompy, the problem being that it shuts down a lot of your threats as well in many cases. Against solidarity, that's not a problem, as any threat will kill them if they can't go off. Against other decks, it can hurt you just as much as it hurts them. Lastly, if you want to do well against landstill, beat them in their own game, and think about Decree for your board. A lot of your games will run long, and being able to yank 5 or 6 1/1's out of your butt along with a card which they can't counter is a pretty nifty trick.

[Zilla]

Tivadar's responses were all pretty astute, and I agree with them. In my experience, the most consistent way to beat Landstill, at least in the mono-W build, is a combination of 3-4 Parallax Waves as an answer to Wrath/Vengeance, and 3-4 Decrees from the board. He's absolutely correct that most of your games here will go long, and with Tithe, Chrome Mox, and Ancient Tomb, it's not uncommon to have more mana production than they do in the late game.

Incidentally, one card that's gone unmentioned and may deserve consideration (in fact it was a one-of in the very very first pre-Sep. '04 Angel Stompy build) is Eternal Dragon. Landstill has StP for it, but if they've used them on your earlier threats, it's a potent recurring late game threat against them.

Another card which deserves testing in the SB is Supression Field. Yes, it hits a lot of your own threats, but in many cases it simply forces you to slow play like you would have been doing anyway. It hurts Landstill MUCH more than it does you.

[Eldariel]

How about the cards that went unmentioned? Cursed Scroll? Glowrider?

Hmm, about Miraclous Recovery, I'm trying to keep in mind that this deck wants to be aggressive and thus not keep mana open on opponent's turn, so Recovery is a card you can cast once you run into a sitiuation of a rather empty board. Then leave mana open, at opponent's EoT, Recovery, etc.

As for Promise of Bunrei, you have more threats than they have StPs and counters, ergo they'll either have to kill a creature of yours at some point, or die.


But yea, I agree with most of your assestments, I'm just seeking ways to improve the match-up, possibly dedicating some sideboard slots. Perhaps even playing EDragon main, for Plainscycling early on and an eternal dragon later on (playing the Dragon in aggro seems retarded though, but meh).

[tivadar]

When I think about subbing a card into my angel stompy, I first ask myself, "is it better to draw this or a creature?" Many times, the answer is obviously a creature. And I have to slap myself a few times for even considering the card. Miraculous recovery is a creature at instant speed for 5 mana. Decree at the same cost is 2 uncounterable creatures at instant speed (yes, they are smaller) that doesn't break a standstill and also nets you a card. To me, the second is just better than the first, because my equipment is what really wins me the game.

Cursed scroll is two repeatable damage which also requires you to have an empty hand. Me, I'd rather be drawing a creature and swinging than playing scroll, which makes all the equipment I may have out dead cards.

The reason I say Second Sunrise is better is because it presumably nets you more than one card (creatures and equipment) for the three mana you spent, which gives you the card advantage this deck is lacking against landstill. The same is true of decree. Against landstill where the game runs past the 4th turn (fairly common) it comes down to topdecking, your creatures vs. their removal. I'll choose decree for multiple creatures as well as being a cantrip, and hopefully even making that counterspell a dead card for them. With Miraculous, you presumably won't be able to cast it immediately after the wrath/vengeance, or if you could, you'd clearly be better off with second sunrise. If you wait a turn, then it can be countered, or the creature can simply be removed.

Glowrider may work in slowing them down just enough to get the kill in, but keep in mind, it will also slow down the speed at which you can get your equipment out, and at which you can use your swords and parallax waves and disenchants/seals, the second being the most crucial in a landstill matchup. I'll give you that it warrants testing, but my feeling is you'll find it slows you down just as much as it slows landstill down.

As for Promise, well, you're essentially correct, if they have to mass remove your creatures with wrath, then this is a good card. The problem is, this doesn't affect their three other removal tools (swords, akromas, disk) at all. In addition, I haven't seen a landstill deck that didn't run disenchant. If they are packing, then it's card for card, netting you no advantage, when they still have an engine.

Oddly enough, though it seems atypical for this deck, I think of what nets me quick card advantage without significantly slowing my tempo. Eternal Dragon could do this, but my experience with it is that it's just too mana intensive to really help me. I've come to embrace tsabo's web, which nets you a card advantage, seeing as they basically have to disenchant it or can't drop a standstill or attack with their manlands. If they disenchant, you net a card off the comes into play ability. If they force of will it, you net a card off their discard. Essentially, it's a win/win situation. I'd look more favorably on eternal dragon if I could consistently get its mana engine to work without slowing down my tempo significantly. In the late game, yes, it's good, but early on, it's pretty close to a dead draw.

Keep in mind, I splash blue for meddling (naming STP almost every time) as well as stifle (fetchlands and disks) and force/counterspell (on their mass removal). Also, I have moved away from chrome mox, for their inherent card disadvantage. Because landstill is so prevalent in the format, I focus on beating it. The other matchups i consider (but don't have to worry so much about) are gobbos, survival variants, burn, and gro.

We all know how well this deck does against gobbos, so my sideboard isn't packed for that deck. Against survival variants, disenchants/seals and pithings will be your savior, as well as my meddlings. Against burn, true believer will help, and it also helps in the solidarity matchup. Finally, against gro/other graveyard trix, I'd suggest some form of graveyard removal. I'd been playing around with funeral pyre, honor the fallen, and Tormod's Crypt. I'd simply go with the crypt, but its issue is that a null rod shuts it as well as all of my equipment down (bad thing). Funeral is great for netting a creature, but just doesn't get rid of enough in the gro matchup. Honor the fallen is great in any survival matchup, but affects nothing at all in gro essentially.

Sure, you can say I'm silly for not considering other decks as much (though I have tested). But my theory is these are the decks that will see the most play, so I'm not going to worry about the others quite as much as I would these.

[scrumdogg]

I'v been running/testing a build with Wayfarers that is U/W for Rootwater Thief and Meddling Mage, sideboarding Devoted Caretakers (and maindecking Samurais, Auriok Champions, & True Belivers as well) aimed more at combo (Solidarity) and red (ALL red) with Sword of Light & Shadow instead of SoFI. It has been doing very well versus combo, extremely well versus red, but Landstill is still no better than 50/50. I'm changing out a couple of critters (going from 29 to 26-7) to add some Tithes back in (as Wayfarer seems to attract a lot of hostility after Game 1....). The plan is to slow play & use SoLS recursion to run them out of removal. Ideas? Thoughts? Suggestions? The deck is way more toward the control end of the aggro-control spectrum, but I am more comfortable playing the deck that way anyway. Nothing above 3cc in the deck at the moment (I believe I even sideboarded the Angels...too slow...). I need to add a fourth Sword to the SB (crucial in the long game) and probably a way to retrieve artifacts from graveyard. I would love to find a good 'disenchant' creature in U/W that could benefit from Sword recursion...but I do NOT want to become U/W/G (despite my love for green, it would not be right for this deck....and all the green stuff I want is GG anyway - Zealot, Witness, etc).

[TheDrunkDwarf]

I actually think that spashing green might be pretty nice for angel stompy. Just think of the cards you could run:

Watchwolf - 3/3 for GW, a new ravnica powerhouse

Anurid Brushhopper - 3cc for a 3/4 isnt bad, and its ability to dodge anything (combined with angel stompy's nice drawing) is very powerful.

Birds of Paradise - Green offers some nice mana accelerators/fixers, which might help stabalize the somewhat shaky manabase in angel stompy.

Troll Ascetic - One of the most resilient beaters out there. Nuff said.

Rancor - Not sure about this. Obviously, any aggro-green decks love rancor. It might find a spot in angel stompy, but the deck already packs swords n' jitte...

[Zilla]

Green doesn't solve any of the problems that Angel Stompy has. To clarify: it has trouble with a) combo and b) mass removal. Green is notoriously unimpressive against these problems. At best, it has Root Maze against the former and Caller of the Claw against the latter. Blue and red both have stronger answers to the deck's problems than green does. Even black does, in fact.

[midnightAce]

I'v been running/testing a build with Wayfarers that is U/W for Rootwater Thief and Meddling Mage, sideboarding Devoted Caretakers (and maindecking Samurais, Auriok Champions, & True Belivers as well) aimed more at combo (Solidarity) and red (ALL red) with Sword of Light & Shadow instead of SoFI. It has been doing very well versus combo, extremely well versus red, but Landstill is still no better than 50/50. I'm changing out a couple of critters (going from 29 to 26-7) to add some Tithes back in (as Wayfarer seems to attract a lot of hostility after Game 1....). The plan is to slow play & use SoLS recursion to run them out of removal. Ideas? Thoughts? Suggestions? The deck is way more toward the control end of the aggro-control spectrum, but I am more comfortable playing the deck that way anyway. Nothing above 3cc in the deck at the moment (I believe I even sideboarded the Angels...too slow...). I need to add a fourth Sword to the SB (crucial in the long game) and probably a way to retrieve artifacts from graveyard. I would love to find a good 'disenchant' creature in U/W that could benefit from Sword recursion...but I do NOT want to become U/W/G (despite my love for green, it would not be right for this deck....and all the green stuff I want is GG anyway - Zealot, Witness, etc).
Scrumdogg, you mentioned maindeck Samurais, are you talking about SotP? If so, then you need to take a look at your SoLS recursion strategy there, very un-synegenic. If you are building the deck centering around Wayfarer, then I blieve you should take Freely's list as a reference point, simply because he placed well with it on the GP Trials. I know you are creating two colour decks and his version of mono, but the idea is there. Good luck.

[scrumdogg]

True, but that can be played around if you know what you're doing. SotP is just too good a drop versus Landstill (they have to deal with it) and it has been good to me versus other major archetypes including Survival. I looked at Ob Freely's list & I respect him as a player & deckbuilder but we play differently. I firmly believe U/W is the right path, I just need something to put control over the edge.

[midnightAce]

Indeed, Ob. Freely's list was where I got my initial inspiration of fitting Wayfarer into AS, to tutor out Wastelands and continously disrupt Landstill's mana base.

As for SotP, I have a love/hate relationship with him. The best part about SotP is actually playing it in the Geddon version. This stops all the Crucible sillyness, and makes Geddon a must counter instead of a "let it resolve and I'll recover couple of turns later" spell, and its Bushido allows for it to trade one for one with a un-sick Factory, something that Silver Knight can never accomplish without the help of equipments.

The hate part of the relationship comes from the fact that I don't know if they are mainboard worthy in a general meta. (At this point in time, I consider the following a general meta, feel free to disagree: 30% Landstill, 30% Goblins, 10% Storm.dec, 10% Red based or splashed aggro other than Goblin, 10% Fish/Gro varients, and 10% other.) Would SotP be an effective mainboard choice? If so, what to take out for it?

Of course, if the deck under goes fundemental changes, shifting drastically in terms of both the role assignment of the deck as well as the deck's primary strategy (from smash to grind), then SotP definately deserves some consideration, and SoLS is definately worth its weight in gold.

[TheDrunkDwarf]

Has anyone considered Thran Turbine as an alternate source of acceleration? Its dirt cheap, and it an easily be used to take care of equip costs, or to power something like Skycloud Expanse. I'm sure theres an artifact out there which will let you convert colorless mana to colored mana, allowing you to play spells with it as well. Just a thought...

[etakspeelstae]

Has anyone considered Thran Turbine as an alternate source of acceleration? Its dirt cheap, and it an easily be used to take care of equip costs, or to power something like Skycloud Expanse. I'm sure theres an artifact out there which will let you convert colorless mana to colored mana, allowing you to play spells with it as well. Just a thought...
Equip is sorcery speed and thus the Turbine does nothing but mana burn you. So it shouldn't be considered.

Post cleaned up. Put what you said into not so mean terms.

-braves



Edited By braves54321 on 1127103782

[scars4eyes]

second sunrise, is a very good card against the landstill matchup. i played in the vegas gpt and got second with angel stompy. I used a combo of second sunrise, tsabos web, cataclysm, armageddons against landstill. i used tsabos web since there are alot of fish decks floating also. the only thing that stopped me was timelimits against a Shahrazad, even though i tormod's crypted most of his deck timelimits forced me to concede and get low on life, then i drew 13 land in the main game and lost. 13 land, theres only 3 land left after that, not including dead cards like tithe and chrome mox. The other losses were to burn, where i got both of us down to 1 life and my opponent gets the nuts and i cant swords my own creature. and in the top 2 my loss was to goblins. that deck just gets the nutz draw that i cant stop. in the top 4 i played against the same goblin deck piloted by another player and i got the nuts triple silver knight and second game 1 silver knight and a mother with a sofi.

Read this (http://mtgthesource.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=2590) and adhere to it, please. - Zilla

[urza_insane]

Green doesn't solve any of the problems that Angel Stompy has. To clarify: it has trouble with a) combo and b) mass removal. Green is notoriously unimpressive against these problems. At best, it has Root Maze against the former and Caller of the Claw against the latter. Blue and red both have stronger answers to the deck's problems than green does. Even black does, in fact.

I actually 100% disagree with this assessment. Green, in my opinion, offers the best card to play against landstill - Anurid Brushhopper. I'll admit that I'm not exactly playing Angel Stompy (mine started as Angel Fish, but has mutated a great deal away from it), but I do run Mother, Silver Knight, Angel, and Jitte as my main threat base. Anurid is amazing against both Aggro and Control. A 3/4 body is not something either likes to see very often, being able to stand against Mishra's Factory and being basically invincible. Green gives you an incredibly solid beater that mass removal can't hit. Another must counter for most Landstill builds.

[frogboy]

You pitch two cards to get a three power beater. That Wrath that you just pitched two cards and lost another creature to? How many more cards do you have to throw away to keep your mediocre man around? You want your land in the lategame, because Decree of Justice is actually insane. (Eternal Dragon is, too, but we mostly added that because we needed like half a white source for consistancy.) You want your creatures because they're, well, good.

[scars4eyes]

anurid brushopper was good when land tax was legal. but im sure most of you guys knew that. if your afraid of wrath and vengence, really look into second sunrise. you might now put down a creature every turn but as soon as you see them with double white you start getting cautious.

[tivadar]

Yeah I agree. Anurid is a major card disadvantage to save one creature. There are other options. Second Sunrise, Otherworldly Journey, and if you choose to splash blue, you could just FOW the stupid mass removal. Don't forget, that if they happen to be packing stifle and have only one extra mana open, then they can stifle the comes into play ability as well, putting you at a MAJOR disadvantage.

[scrumdogg]

Would an equipment package of Swords of Light and Shadow + Masks of Memory (and Jittes obviously) overcome the disadvantage of Brushhopper? The SoLS retrieves creatures discarded, as well as fogging attempts at aggro with it's life gain. Several hits with SoLS make it much harder to get lethal Decree strikes to occur. Plus the ability to recur guys seems to give Landstill (and many other decks which rely on board control) difficulty.

[noobslayer]

If I could recommend anything, I'd recommend running Phillip Stolze' build. I've watched him play it a few times and am quite impressed with its results. It seems to be working quite well. I don't know if he has updated or modified since this list has gone up, but none the less it still looks rather solid.

<a href="http://sales.starcitygames.com/deckdatabase/displaydeck.php?DeckID=123053c" target="_blank">http://sales.starcitygames.com/deckdat (http://sales.starcitygames.com/deckdatabase/displaydeck.php?DeckID=12305).... Stompy

EDIT: The above link is gay. This one works hopefully (http://mtgthesource.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=1826) Just scroll down.

[Brushwagg]

I would love to find a good 'disenchant' creature in U/W that could benefit from Sword recursion..

I don't know if this is what you had in mind but,

Reliquary Monk
2W
Creature — Cleric
2/2
Rules Text (Oracle): When Reliquary Monk is put into a graveyard from play, destroy target artifact or enchantment.

You just have to be careful not to destroy one of your equipment, but it might help in the Landstill match, killing the Crucibles and it can be brought back via the SoLS.

[scars4eyes]

or you could use devout witness.

Read this (http://mtgthesource.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=2590) and adhere to it, please. - Zilla

[TheDrunkDwarf]

If I could recommend anything, I'd recommend running Phillip Stolze' build. I've watched him play it a few times and am quite impressed with its results. It seems to be working quite well. I don't know if he has updated or modified since this list has gone up, but none the less it still looks rather solid.

Hrmm... Well, it does look significantly different from my build, but definatly solid. 3 colors is too much for me (I dont got the duals for it. :D ). Phil's build seems more controlish; Its a little slower, giving up some top tier beaters for meddling mage and duress. I dont like dropping mother of runes though. Turn 1 mom, turn 2 morph with mom's protection is always an optimal play. I suppose a turn 1 mage (for some removal spell) or duress might be able to accomplish the same thing though...

As for anurid: Yes, obviously theres card disadvantage (initially) here. But, angel stompy's card advantage engine is equipment-based, and therefore requires creatures to be in play. The thing about anurid is that your turn following a wrath, you got a 3/4 beater (with haste) in play, and your free to equip as many masks and swords to him as you want, quickly generating card advantage for yourself. There is always to possibility of stifle + wrath + 5 mana, but there's also the possiblility of counterspell + wrath + 6 mana, stopping SS as well...
I dont like second sunrise. Keeping mana open with prevent you from playing threats, which will worsen your overall speed vs. control and even allow them to 'bluff' you into thinking they got some board clearer in thier hand. I do not think the benefits of SS makeup for its possible card advantage.

What do people think about main decking Samurai of the Pale Curtain and Haunted Angel? The samurai is a nice beater, which also ruins some graveyard-dependent decks, and has great synergy with the 2w costing 3/3 flyer.

Double-posts merged. - Zilla

[Zilla]

Samurai has actually been discussed in this thread before. He's just not significantly better than any of the other beatsticks in the deck. He combos decently with Haunted Angel, but the problem is that Angel absolutely sucks by itself, and your opponent can take advantage of it way too easily even if you do have Samurai in play. Flamebreak, for example, not only kills them both but gives your opponent a 3/3 flying beater.Same goes for Wrath of God. Even double Lightning Bolt is savagely bad for you. There's no reason to weaken your threatbase for what is essentially an unviable combo.

[noobslayer]

off topic

Just so you know, flamebreak doesn't kill them both, only the samurai (read non-flyers).

/off topic

[Zilla]

True enough. Make it Rolling Earthquake then. :p

[Eldariel]

Actually, I'm fairly sure, you're wrong, Godzilla. All the creatures put to the grave at the same time as Samurai are removed from the game as well. After some seeking, I found a rules article on the subject: http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=mtgcom/daily/jc10, 4th question from the top, making it slightly better. The point of double-bolt still applies, but WoGs, Rolling Earthquakes and the whole lot remove the Angel from the game too, thus depriving your opponent of the token.

[Zilla]

Even if you're correct, the words "Haunted Angel" and "combo" should never ever be put into the same sentence together.

[Eldariel]

Even if you're correct, the words "Haunted Angel" and "combo" should never ever be put into the same sentence together.
Agreed. It takes valuable deckspace without providing anything relevant. I'd really rather have an Exalted Angel than a Haunted Angel anyways, and although Samurai was fine back when Survival was on the top, Goblins, Landstill and Solidarity all more or less shrug at it. Landstill's Crucible might lose little functionality, but with the amount of ways they have to deal with the Samurai, if it appears a problem to them, they can rid themselves of it very easily. I'd rather take Silver Knight and a dozen time easier Goblin match-up myself.

[Boogy_Boy]

Just wanted to say. OMG

I just realised... This deck can be made purely with cards with black bordered cards!!!! :p (Oh such an important contribution...) At a reasonable price as well (No black bordered dual land :D )

*ahem* anyway. Now that Ravnica is out (sort of). Has anyone tried the red splash? It was so excitedly talked about in like one or two pages back....

REB surely can help out the Landstill matchup, and Sirocco can help beat solidarity.

Also, what about shrapnel blast? With all the equipment/mox lying around it can be quite handy. It can be quite handy when Landstill tap out for FoF/Decree and we can blast them. Even if they have FoW in hand, it's still a 2 for 2 trade. 5 Damage is really nothing to scuff at, and that mox is just going to get disked/vengeanced away at a point anyway.

[Majestyk1136]

I haven't had a chance to troll this entire thread, but has anybody come up with a reasonable way of beating landstill with this deck out of the sideboard (other than just beating the hell out of them one guy at a time) ?

[NoGameShow]

I haven't had a chance to troll this entire thread, but has anybody come up with a reasonable way of beating landstill with this deck out of the sideboard (other than just beating the hell out of them one guy at a time) ?
Landstill is one of this decks toughest matchups. It was discussed a few pages back what the best thing to do against them is things like Tsabo's Web have been discussed but the main deterrent we have against them is Pithing Needle. Other than that some players (myself included) have moved their Armageddons out of the sideboard into the main deck. This has improved my game one against them quite a bit because it's a must counter for them. Long story short I think the Landstill matchup is still largely up in the air unless I missed some new tech.


Oh and I almost forgot, Welcome to the Source.

[Majestyk1136]

An idea that I have been toying with lately has been the inclusion of Otherworldly Journey to the Deck. Not only does it give your men the chance to dodge Landstill's mass removal spells it makes them bigger, is a combat trick that works quite well with damage on the stack and it Flips Exalted Angel for 1W while giving her a +1/+1 counter.

It's just a baby Astral Slide that is actually quite dangerous for your opponent who has no idea it's coming.

EDIT: Thanks for the welcome!

[tivadar]

I've played otherworldly and my main beef w/ it is it's just a dead card far too often. If you miss your window you're stuck w/ no creatures and a no-fun card. Out of curiosity, has anyone played w/ mishra's factory or conclave? (If you can't beat them, join them).

[Majestyk1136]

The keys are: Don't overextend into a Wrath/Vengeance/Disk
Don't start your list: "4 Otherworldly Journey"

and you ought to be fine. It's like a counterspell that says, "Counter target gimp Removal spell/ability that would whack your man"

Strong like Bull.

[Vimes]

Just wanted to say. OMG

I just realised... This deck can be made purely with cards with black bordered cards!!!! :p (Oh such an important contribution...) At a reasonable price as well (No black bordered dual land :D )

*ahem* anyway. Now that Ravnica is out (sort of). Has anyone tried the red splash? It was so excitedly talked about in like one or two pages back....

REB surely can help out the Landstill matchup, and Sirocco can help beat solidarity.

Also, what about shrapnel blast? With all the equipment/mox lying around it can be quite handy. It can be quite handy when Landstill tap out for FoF/Decree and we can blast them. Even if they have FoW in hand, it's still a 2 for 2 trade. 5 Damage is really nothing to scuff at, and that mox is just going to get disked/vengeanced away at a point anyway.
Why is it that people like black bordered cards? I really don't get it...

On the white splash, Havoc might also help the landstill matchup. Plus, Boros Swiftblade is a house with equipment.

[Anonymous]

I was bored and checking some of the new guys in Ravnica, and I came upon this guy. He looks to be svg in Angel Stompy with a Red Splash.

Sunhome Enforcer
Set & Rarity: Ravnica: City of Guilds uncommon

Printings: Ravnica
Cost: 2RW
Card Type: Creature — Giant Soldier
P/T: 2/4
Rules Text (Oracle): Whenever Sunhome Enforcer deals combat damage, you gain that much life.
1R: Sunhome Enforcer gets +1/+0 until end of turn.
“Law soothed his savage heart. Where fury once burned, the enduring flame of order now shines.”
—Razia

Props to Greg Staples for some pimp artwork.

[t3h.sWaRm]

I think his high cc makes him not playable. I'd rather have an Angel than him so I don't think he'll make the cut.

How about Sunforger with the red splash. It can do as a 1 of in the Gift version and +4+0 isn't so bad. I really love its ability, but we don't have much to search for besides STP and Lightning Bolt. Do you think the new equipment could have a place in the deck?

[Citrus-God]

I don't know. Red Could be a good splash. With Lightning Bolts, Lightning Helix, Grim Lavamancer, and even Goblin Legionaire, going around, it could do something.

I'm still currently testing the Red Splash. It's okay, but I also added in Blue as well...

Problem with Red is that, it's that, the Lavamancer and Goblin need Mana around to do something, but Geddon' would be good food for Lavamancer...


// Mana 23
4 Tithe
3 Chrome Mox
3 Ancient Tomb
3 Flooded Strand
2 Windswept Heath
4 Plateau
4 Tundra

// Creatures 20
4 Grim Lavamancer
4 Goblin Legionaire
4 Meddling Mage
4 Silver Knight
4 Exalted Angel


// Spells 17
4 Swords to Plowshares
4 Fire // Ice
3 Sword of Fire and Ice
2 Umezawa's Jitte
2 Seal of Cleansing
2 Armageddon


// Sideboard 15
2 Armageddon
2 Seal of Cleansing
4 Red Elemental Blast
2 In the Eyes of the Chaos
2 Absolute Law
2 Worship
1 Umezawa's Jitte

[t3h.sWaRm]

A huge problem with that list is Wasteland. You have abosolutely 0 basics, so if they get a Wasteland lock going, you lose. Is the blue splash for ONLY Meddling Mage(Sirocco could replace In the Eyes of Chaos for anti Solidarity cards) really worth the more unstable manabase?

Also, I'm not so sure that Lavamancer belongs in this deck, even with the red splash. Mother of Runes just seems WAY too important(at least to me) to take out. How useful has he been? If you do keep him in, I would think about taking out 1-2 Fire//Ice since the deck would have the Lavamancers + STP to kill little creatures already.

I think that we've all agreed Parallax Wave is better than Armageddon. Even against Landstilll, Wave can save your creatures from a board sweeper, whereas Armageddon just tries to buy you time. Wave can also steal opponents' creatures for the win in an otherwise unwinnable situation.

As for your sideboard, white doesn't really have good answers to Solidarity, so I'd take out 2 Rule of Law and make it 4 Sirocco(-2 In the Eyes of Chaos as well). 1 turn earlier could make the difference of whether or not they have a FoW, and at instant speed its more versatile.

Since blue would be taken out the manabase could be:
4x Tithe
4x Ancient Tomb
2x Windswept Heath
2x Flooded Strand
4x Plateau
5x Plains
3x Chrome Mox

[scars4eyes]

I dont have an issue with landstill. I run 2 cataclysm
1 armageddon
2 tsabos web
3 second sunrises

the only thing i dont do well against is goblins
they are pretty tough, when they get the nutz draw and im stuck with solitari priest.

they kill me before jitte is activated. i have to have silver knights to beat them.

Hello, and welcome to The Source! Please read the forum rules (http://mtgthesource.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=2619)---Frogboy



Edited By frogboy on 1128187417

[Vimes]

Could someone please post a current build? There haven't been any in the last few pages, I don't think.

There have been four in the last four pages. Three on page 29, and one at the bottom of 32. Read the thread---Frogboy



Edited By frogboy on 1128191229

[Citrus-God]

A huge problem with that list is Wasteland. You have abosolutely 0 basics, so if they get a Wasteland lock going, you lose. Is the blue splash for ONLY Meddling Mage(Sirocco could replace In the Eyes of Chaos for anti Solidarity cards) really worth the more unstable manabase?

Also, I'm not so sure that Lavamancer belongs in this deck, even with the red splash. Mother of Runes just seems WAY too important(at least to me) to take out. How useful has he been? If you do keep him in, I would think about taking out 1-2 Fire//Ice since the deck would have the Lavamancers + STP to kill little creatures already.

I think that we've all agreed Parallax Wave is better than Armageddon. Even against Landstilll, Wave can save your creatures from a board sweeper, whereas Armageddon just tries to buy you time. Wave can also steal opponents' creatures for the win in an otherwise unwinnable situation.

As for your sideboard, white doesn't really have good answers to Solidarity, so I'd take out 2 Rule of Law and make it 4 Sirocco(-2 In the Eyes of Chaos as well). 1 turn earlier could make the difference of whether or not they have a FoW, and at instant speed its more versatile.

Since blue would be taken out the manabase could be:
4x Tithe
4x Ancient Tomb
2x Windswept Heath
2x Flooded Strand
4x Plateau
5x Plains
3x Chrome Mox
... I don't think that was Rule of Law. It was Absolute Law. I hate Goblins And burn...

Lavamancers helped me a lot. Especially after Geddon'. Blue was just for Fire // Ice and Pikula. Other then that, saves me from a WoG. But I guess Blue is unneeded...

And for le list...


// Mana 23
4 Tithe
3 Chome Mox
4 Ancient Tomb
2 Flooded Strand
2 Windswept Heath
4 Plateau
4 Plains


// Creatures 20
4 Mother of Runes
4 Grim Lavamancer
4 Silver Knight
4 Solitari Priest
4 Exalted Angel


// Spells 17
4 Swords to Plowshares
4 Parallax Wave
3 Sword of Fire and Ice
2 Umezawa's Jitte
2 Mask of Memory
2 Seal of Cleansing


// Sideboard 15
1 Umezawa's Jitte
2 Seal of Cleansing
4 Armageddon
4 Red Elemental Blast
4 Sirocco

[Majestyk1136]

Boy did I have a bad weekend playing this deck...

Only play this deck if you suspect that the field is going to be chock full of Aggro (Goblins, Zoo, Burn, Sligh) because this deck just rolls to control and combo.

My list:
//NAME: Angel Stomps
4 Exalted Angel
3 Isamaru, Hound of Konda
4 Silver Knight
3 Kami of Ancient Law
4 Mother of Runes
3 Steelshaper's Gift
3 Umezawa's Jitte
1 Sword of Fire and Ice
4 Swords to Plowshares
3 Soltari Priest
2 Otherworldly Journey
3 Armageddon
3 Disenchant
4 Tithe
3 Chrome Mox
4 Ancient Tomb
6 Plains
2 Windswept Heath
1 Tundra
SB: 4 Chill
SB: 3 Chalice of the Void
SB: 1 In the Eye of Chaos
SB: 1 Armageddon
SB: 3 Tormod's Crypt
SB: 3 Seal of Cleansing

As much as I love this list, it is still inconsistent and draw dependent. Mulliganning with this thing is like scratching a lottery Ticket at best.

So I played this at the Grand Prix Philly Trial in Denver over the weekend. Here's what Happened.

Round 1: Some kid with San Diego Zoo.
Game 1: I crush him after he mulls and can't find more than 1 land.
Game 2. He makes some Guys. I kill them with STP and Jitte. Then he dies. 1-0, 2-0-0

Round 2: Some other Guy playing Goblins
Game 1: I win the roll and keep a hand that has a first turn Silver Knight. Jitte Shows up and makes a mockery of the game.
Game 2: I get a First turn Silver Knight again. Steelshaper's gift for SoFI = teh win. 2-0, 4-0-0

Round 3 Brandon Buen w/Landstill-Tog Hybrid.
Brandon's deck reminds me of Odyssey-Onslaught block style 'Tog decks with the maindeck Standstills. But he has Manlands to help out.
Game 1: I get a first turn Hound of Konda. It dies. I get a second turn Shadow. It dies. I play a morph. It dies. I play Geddon. It's countered. I finally get Morph to stick who grows up to be an Angel that wins the game.
Game 2. Brandon sides in more ways to kill men. I play men. They die. I play more men. They Die. I play Mom. Engineered Plague for "Clerics" comes down. I 'Geddon on consecutive turns. They're countered. I die to Manlands.
Game 3: I draw equipment and nothing to do with them. I died to lots of dude removal and a Psychatog. 2-1, 5-2-0

Round 3: Dude playing a Pattern Rector Deck.
I know what this guy's playing from watching him get scalped by a Landstill player earlier. It's going to be ugly.
Game 1: He doesn't know what to name with Therapy so he whiffs. I play some guys and start the beats but can't finish up before a massive deed clears the board (along with his Pattern of Rebirth Wearing Academy Rector.) Phyrexian Ghoul and Symbiotic Wurm tapdance on my skull.
Game 2: I get an early morph, but my lands never show up so what would have been fatal attacks were instead petty annoyances while my opponent sets up Form of the Dragon + Akroma. I Swords Akroma but my 9 pieces of Enchantment hate are hiding. Super Tech! 2-2, 5-4-0

Round 5 Nate playing 10-land Stompy
This is fantastic. This guy is a Doctoral Candidate at my Alma Mater. Really. He's playing by what my estimation is a terrible deck. It just rolls to decks packing FoW and Swords in my estimation. However, I'm even worse off than he is.
Game 1: I'm in a terrible state at this point. Having begun 2-0 and lost the last 2 rounds so badly have shaken me. I take a questionable hand that would be fine if I draw a swords. He immediately leaps out with Land grant for Taiga, Kird Ape. He shows me his maindeck Berserk in his hand to go along with Rogue Elephant and other Stoopid Stompy guys and Rancor. I go Mom. Weak. He attacks me as I stall on lands and can't find answers. Down come Elephant, Rancor and Briar Shield. I start to wish I had instead stuck a Shotgun in my mouth this morning instead of a Toothbrush. Berserk does its thing. I die.
Game 2: I take another hand that needs a single plains/tithe/Mox to be explosive and winning. Angel, Jitte, Tomb and Plains look at me. I never draw it. I manage to Otherworldly Journey a Morph with damage on the stack. My opponent is stunned by this MacGuyver play and calls a Judge. The Judge confirms I'm not a loco weed, but my angel Dies to a Berserked monster wearing a bunch of Rancors. Stupid. I die some more and miss Top 8. 2-3, 5-6-0

In summation, I would say this deck is feces against anything that isn't stupid. By stupid I mean "one game plan." This deck has one plan. Play men. Make them good with a Jitte. Play 'Geddon. Win. There are no more options really. If this plan doesn't materialize you are just dead.

The best way to characterize this deck in my opinion is to analogize it with chucking a rock. If the throw (your opening hand) is good, the rock will probably hit the target. There is no opportunity to outplay your opponent really and no way to change the course of the rock once it's left your hand. Control decks tend to have the capacity to correct the course of their throws in midflight. This deck however is on a simple glide path: That of a stone.

I suppose what torques me off the most is that I had Landstill registered and sitting there ready to go. Instead I fell victim to the desire to play with "cool things." Let this be a lesson to you: If you are going into a random and relatively unknown meta ALWAYS PLAY THE MOST POWERFUL OR "BEST" DECK. It will give you the best opportunity to outplay and survive against random opponents. However, even in an Aggro-rich environment, don't play this deck. You are completely dependent on the top of your deck. If you don't draw the cards you need from the top you are dead. Just like me.

[MasterBlaster]

Nice post Majestyk1136.

On the subject of the deck being draw dependent, and mulligaining being almost futile I couldn't agree more.

However I have to disagree on the deck having trouble in aggro environments. I would suggest that if you are having trouble you should try parallax wave instead of armageddons, or dropping otherworldly journeys or 2 of your steelshaper's gifts for two more sword of fire and ice.(Also, while not happening often, parallax wave can be an awesome defensive weapon for dodging board sweepers.)

Aggro has always been the easiest match-up for me with this deck while survival, landstill, and solidarity make angelstompy roll over and play dead.

I hope my ranting has been helpful.

[Majestyk1136]

The reason for playing less Swords and more Gifts is that Swords and Jittes make bad imprints on Chrome Mox. Also, multiple redundant pieces of equipment are either "Win more" or "you lose if you topdeck this in place of a man." Basically, I never was hurting for equipment. I was always hurting for men. I frequently found myself with a couple of naked pieces of equipment on the board and nobody to carry it!

Steelshaper's Gift is nice because it reduces the odds of you drawing a dead/redundant/win more piece of equipment. Much like Tithe it drops the number of possible dead draws off the top of your deck and is another way of trumping your opponent in a Jitte War. Of course Sword is an utter house, but you only need 1. What is a second hard-to-cast/uncastable piece of equipment going to get you ultimately? I know... Dead.

As far as Otherworldly Journey goes, it was one of the best things in the deck all day. I can't tell you the number of times that targeted removal missed a Morph and ended up with them facing a 5/6 Angel in both testing and at the tournament. It's a worthwhile inclusion in what must be considered an otherwise marginal deck.

Parallax Wave, while it might have been cute in some matchups was no better than Armageddon because the control decks had more removal than was necessary to deal with my guys and the Aggro decks could have waited out the Wave. The games where I needed it I was kold anyways. What I needed frequently was extra ways to blow up all of my opponent's lands. They just had the countermagic.

Don't play this deck. It is random mcrandom.

[midnightAce]

Boy did I have a bad weekend playing this deck...

Only play this deck if you suspect that the field is going to be chock full of Aggro (Goblins, Zoo, Burn, Sligh) because this deck just rolls to control and combo.

My list:
//NAME: Angel Stomps
4 Exalted Angel
3 Isamaru, Hound of Konda
4 Silver Knight
3 Kami of Ancient Law
4 Mother of Runes
3 Steelshaper's Gift
3 Umezawa's Jitte
1 Sword of Fire and Ice
4 Swords to Plowshares
3 Soltari Priest
2 Otherworldly Journey
3 Armageddon
3 Disenchant
4 Tithe
3 Chrome Mox
4 Ancient Tomb
6 Plains
2 Windswept Heath
1 Tundra
SB: 4 Chill
SB: 3 Chalice of the Void
SB: 1 In the Eye of Chaos
SB: 1 Armageddon
SB: 3 Tormod's Crypt
SB: 3 Seal of Cleansing

As much as I love this list, it is still inconsistent and draw dependent. Mulliganning with this thing is like scratching a lottery Ticket at best.

So I played this at the Grand Prix Philly Trial in Denver over the weekend. Here's what Happened.

Round 1: Some kid with San Diego Zoo.
Game 1: I crush him after he mulls and can't find more than 1 land.
Game 2. He makes some Guys. I kill them with STP and Jitte. Then he dies. 1-0, 2-0-0

Round 2: Some other Guy playing Goblins
Game 1: I win the roll and keep a hand that has a first turn Silver Knight. Jitte Shows up and makes a mockery of the game.
Game 2: I get a First turn Silver Knight again. Steelshaper's gift for SoFI = teh win. 2-0, 4-0-0

Round 3 Brandon Buen w/Landstill-Tog Hybrid.
Brandon's deck reminds me of Odyssey-Onslaught block style 'Tog decks with the maindeck Standstills. But he has Manlands to help out.
Game 1: I get a first turn Hound of Konda. It dies. I get a second turn Shadow. It dies. I play a morph. It dies. I play Geddon. It's countered. I finally get Morph to stick who grows up to be an Angel that wins the game.
Game 2. Brandon sides in more ways to kill men. I play men. They die. I play more men. They Die. I play Mom. Engineered Plague for "Clerics" comes down. I 'Geddon on consecutive turns. They're countered. I die to Manlands.
Game 3: I draw equipment and nothing to do with them. I died to lots of dude removal and a Psychatog. 2-1, 5-2-0

Round 3: Dude playing a Pattern Rector Deck.
I know what this guy's playing from watching him get scalped by a Landstill player earlier. It's going to be ugly.
Game 1: He doesn't know what to name with Therapy so he whiffs. I play some guys and start the beats but can't finish up before a massive deed clears the board (along with his Pattern of Rebirth Wearing Academy Rector.) Phyrexian Ghoul and Symbiotic Wurm tapdance on my skull.
Game 2: I get an early morph, but my lands never show up so what would have been fatal attacks were instead petty annoyances while my opponent sets up Form of the Dragon + Akroma. I Swords Akroma but my 9 pieces of Enchantment hate are hiding. Super Tech! 2-2, 5-4-0

Round 5 Nate playing 10-land Stompy
This is fantastic. This guy is a Doctoral Candidate at my Alma Mater. Really. He's playing by what my estimation is a terrible deck. It just rolls to decks packing FoW and Swords in my estimation. However, I'm even worse off than he is.
Game 1: I'm in a terrible state at this point. Having begun 2-0 and lost the last 2 rounds so badly have shaken me. I take a questionable hand that would be fine if I draw a swords. He immediately leaps out with Land grant for Taiga, Kird Ape. He shows me his maindeck Berserk in his hand to go along with Rogue Elephant and other Stoopid Stompy guys and Rancor. I go Mom. Weak. He attacks me as I stall on lands and can't find answers. Down come Elephant, Rancor and Briar Shield. I start to wish I had instead stuck a Shotgun in my mouth this morning instead of a Toothbrush. Berserk does its thing. I die.
Game 2: I take another hand that needs a single plains/tithe/Mox to be explosive and winning. Angel, Jitte, Tomb and Plains look at me. I never draw it. I manage to Otherworldly Journey a Morph with damage on the stack. My opponent is stunned by this MacGuyver play and calls a Judge. The Judge confirms I'm not a loco weed, but my angel Dies to a Berserked monster wearing a bunch of Rancors. Stupid. I die some more and miss Top 8. 2-3, 5-6-0

In summation, I would say this deck is feces against anything that isn't stupid. By stupid I mean "one game plan." This deck has one plan. Play men. Make them good with a Jitte. Play 'Geddon. Win. There are no more options really. If this plan doesn't materialize you are just dead.

The best way to characterize this deck in my opinion is to analogize it with chucking a rock. If the throw (your opening hand) is good, the rock will probably hit the target. There is no opportunity to outplay your opponent really and no way to change the course of the rock once it's left your hand. Control decks tend to have the capacity to correct the course of their throws in midflight. This deck however is on a simple glide path: That of a stone.

I suppose what torques me off the most is that I had Landstill registered and sitting there ready to go. Instead I fell victim to the desire to play with "cool things." Let this be a lesson to you: If you are going into a random and relatively unknown meta ALWAYS PLAY THE MOST POWERFUL OR "BEST" DECK. It will give you the best opportunity to outplay and survive against random opponents. However, even in an Aggro-rich environment, don't play this deck. You are completely dependent on the top of your deck. If you don't draw the cards you need from the top you are dead. Just like me.
Welcome to The Source.

It's a very nice report, props for giving AS a try in a large event.

Onto the actual deck. I don't know how much of this thread you have gone through, being a 30 something page monster, I don't expect people to go through every little bit, but I do highly encourage you to pay extra attention to Zilla and Grah's posts, they are the most insightful and packs a lot of useful informations.

At this time, I can address one of your complains. Too much equipment, not enough creatures. You have 21 creatures to 4 peice of equipments and 7 equipment slots. That is the correct ratio. However, once you casted a Jitte, your Gifts are just good for one thing, fetching a SoFI, after that is done, you end up with approximately 6 peice of dead cards in your deck until your opponenet decides to blow things up. That's not really productive use of both Gift and the equipment slot. My suggestion there is

-1 Jitte
+1 SoLS

I really believe that having more options, as well as the ability to recur threats is very important the control matchup, even more so than Geddon the lands.

The second point I want to response is the OJ. It seems to have worked very well for you, protection against target removals, and an Angel flipper. Parallax Wave has been mentioned, it too, protects your guys from massive removal and targeted removal, and it also slows down opposing aggro/aggro-control decks. I believe it to be a much better choice than Gedden mainboard. I would also like you bring to your attention this peice of common:

Shelter
Instant 1W
Target creature you control gains protection from the color of your choice until end of turn.
Draw a card.

It cycles at worst, and allows for insane protection against targeted removals, and it has nice combat trick application, allowing your guy to smash through a horde of creatures and get of a SoFI trigger off. While it's some what redundent with MoR, as you have noticed, MoR doesn't stick around very long at all in games.

The one thing I highly disagree with your deck is your mana base. You have 5 Wasteland-able mana source, 6 thining effects, and only 6 Plains + 1 Tundra to be reliably fetched out. If you take a look at most of the mono white builds, you'll see that at least 11 Plains is needed to ensure 4 consecutive land drops in the first 4 turns. I highly advise the inclusion of at least 4 more Plains.

I will post my new decklist that incorperates Rav shortly for those of you who are interested.

[GRAH]

Yes, I was disturbingly productive for this deck a couple months ago. :(

This was my last list:

11 Plains
4 Ancient Tomb
3 Chrome Mox
4 Tithe

4 Mother of Runes
1 Isamaru, Hound of Konda
4 Suntail Hawk
4 Silver Knight
4 Soltari Priest
4 Exalted Angel

4 Swords to Plowshares
3 Disenchant
3 Mask of Memory
2 Sword of Fire and Ice
3 Parallax Wave
2 Umezawa's Jitte

SB:
3 Armageddon
3 Decree of Justice
1 Disenchant
3 Rule of Law
3 Tormod's Crypt
2 Worship

To be honest, the only thing I'd change is the MD Disenchants. I don't think they're needed anymore.

Steelshaper's Gift is a poor choice, though. If you play it and the toolbox, when your single toolbox piece gets countered/blown up, you no longer have any left.

So, from that list, I'd do:

-3 Disenchant
-5 Plains
-1 Isamaru
-1 Mask of Memory
+4 Flooded Strand
+2 Tundra
+4 Meddling Mage

The SB is pretty outdated, too. I'd change it to this:

3 Armageddon
3 Disenchant
3 In The Eye of Chaos
1 Parallax Wave
3 Pithing Needle
2 Worship

I happen to like the blue splash, myself.

That said, I'm not going back to this deck. Its Goblins matchups is a lot worse than it should be. That's a really bad thing, since it needs a good Goblins matchup. Even with Parallax Wave, all the pro-reds, and SoFnI, I still had trouble against them.

[umbowta]

That's a really bad thing, since it needs a good Goblins matchup. Even with Parallax Wave, all the pro-reds, and SoFnI, I still had trouble against them.
I did some testing a couple of weeks ago against Vial Gobbos and had a less than stellar evening. In short, I got my ass handed to me. I didn't post it on here because I didn't want the harsher critics to give me shit about how it must have been me not playing the deck right. I was overwhelmed game after game. Oh yeah, a cycled incinerator with a shitload of gobbos on the table makes Exalted Angel's ass look small. One last thing, that lame ass goblin, you know his name, Goblin Lookout. That little fucker trumped my Silver Knight defense on more than one occasion. Who the hell plays Goblin Lookout, you ask? Those who don't own Pyromancer.

[Don Juan-Suave]

I thought the general concensus was Goblins is a favorable match. In my experience, this deck rips other aggro decks apart. Against control and High Tide, Armageddon is key. Don't cast Armageddon if you have no board position or no lands in your hand. (There is some skill involved in playing this deck.) I have 2 maindecked and 2 sideboarded. Parrallax Wave is a necessity -- no less than 4. I am not scared of Wrath of God because equipments allow me to ride one creature to victory. However, Oblivion Stone / Akroma's Vengeance / Nevinyrral's Disk is scary. My only suggestion is Second Sunrise but I doubt its effectiveness. Maybe it is better to bite the bullet and take the loss of equipments. Since control decks are generally slow, Eternal Dragon is an awesome answer to most forms of removal / counter / discard. It is good even without equipment. One or two should be sufficient. Eternal Dragon also makes the mana base alittle more consistent but is not very synergistic with Armageddon, which I consider one of the best card in the deck. Many games, after Armageddon, it is game over for the victory.

The evolution of "Angel Stompy" is to make it slower. No one is focusing on Savannah Lion beatdowns anymore -- white is not fast enough. In its mono-White state, the deck has game against aggro and control. Against combo, just pray and hope. As the metagame becomes more comboish, the deck becomes weaker. I want to fit in Suppression Field somewhere, but equipment (especially Jitte) will be much slower to use and will hamper upon the deck's creature removals.

From my experience, the mana base is shaky as it is. Many times, I had to mulligan. Adding another color might not be stable for the mana base. The strength of the deck is in its ability to play the mid-game and long game well. It is also easy to develop board position after Armageddon.

[tivadar]

My opinion on AS is that to determine its play against combo/control you need only throw another S onto its abbrev, it's terrible. Trying to fix this via SB just doesn't work b/c there's too much ground to make up. However, fixing via splash works well (read better). From my experience, splashing one color (max 1 colored mana per card) works w/o messing up the mana base. Extending to 2 is a stretch, and I've failed in trying to do it while retaining the speed of the deck. In my opinion, the only future for this deck is splash. So what to splash?

Green - probably the worst choice, though seedtime and dosan come to mind. Really not much help against combo or creature removal.

Red - due to the current meta (ravnica + solidarity) this has been getting attention. I for one don't think it'll go far because of weaknesses w/ many combo bases and no major help, though it does sport good non-basic hate.

Blue - It's what I run. Force of Will blocks removal at no speed cost. Meddling provides a swinger and a combo stopper in one. And stifle serves as a great utility card. Blue was built to stop combo. Also decent non-basic hate w/ back to basics.

Black - Also a good choice. Duress nukes combo, and drops removal before you even see it. Also awesome graveyard hate. Nonbasics still trample you though.

All in all, I'd say blue and black are the most viable. Recently one deck ran both, but I'm really curious how they managed not to mull or get wastelanded out half the time. Anyways, in some ways splashing changes some of the fundamentals the deck was founded on, but doesn't change the playstyle much at all.

Does anyone else see much of a future for this deck w/o splash?

Current mana-base:

3 Island
5 Plains
3 Ancient Tomb
4 Flooded Strand
3 Remote Farm
4 Tundra

No one uses the farms, but they seem to get the job done for me...

[NoGameShow]

anyone else see much of a future for this deck w/o splash?
Yes, I see a bright future for this deck without a splash. I have been playing mono white and will keep playing mono white until I hear of someone who has done serious testing, not just a few games but hardcore testing with the splash. I have done quite a bit of testing against AStompy's "bad matches" I have the deck right where I want it in the solidarity match against them I have..

Maindeck:
3 Armageddon
3 True Believer

Armageddon is a must counter or a must respond to by going off card this can lead to sloppy playing and the solidarity player attempting to go off when they aren't ready. True Believer plus mother of runes has stolen me quite a few games by spooking the solidarity player into countering it only to geddon the next turn.

Sideboard:
4 Orim's Chant/Abeyance (I prefer the chants because it's a combat trick)
3 Rule of law (in my rotating slot these slots are based on how I feel the solidarity density will be at Philly).

Game 2 gets much better it's great to draw a hand with two pieces of your hate and catch the solidarity player with their pants down.

I'm in the final stages of refining the landstill match up right now I'm running the geddons maindeck against them then the sideboard gives me

3 pithing needle
3 tsabo's Web

These six cards improve the match up almost the best i think it can get right now I'm working on trying an idea borrowed form the goblin decks and run 4 Rishadan ports to try and lock off their double white for a turn or two. Granted we don't have the same alpha strike abilities as Goblins but a couple turns could prove to be enough.

In summation try the splashes if you want a friend of mine is testing a blue splash version and I am very interested in his results but do not disregard the possibility of mono white I believe it is still the most viable version of Angel Stompy.

[midnightAce]

I would like to direct some single card disucssion to these particular mainboard and sideboard choices.

Mother of Runes -- She sucks against Landstill. Plain and simple. In the Landstill matchup, she's utterly useless, don't even bother giving me the "protecting creatures from StP" junk, because most of the time WoG or Vegeance just takes away everything. Does anybody feel the same way? If so, is there any better 1cc drop, or just creature in general that can be sided in against Landstill to take the MoR's spot? (Doesn't have to be 1cc.)

Supression Field -- For those of you who hasn't caught up yet, it's a 1W Enchantment that reads All activated abilities cost 2 more to play. That's right, takes 3 fucking mana to activate a Factory for Landstill, 4 mana for a Conclave, 4 mana to cycle the ED to get the white mana, 2 mana to pop a fetch, and FIVE mana for base cycling of DoJ for chump blockers. The only activated ability in AS deck would be MoR, (See above.) and equipments. Now, since both SoFI and SoLS are triggered abilities, the only hurting part is equiping them. I actually side OUT my Jittes against Landstill because it does very little other than boosting my creatures. (If I'm gaining life from the Jitte counters, chance are, I lost that game.) So does anybody think it's a solid choice for SB? First turn Supression Field means to Landstill "No fetchland until turn turn 3." That seriously slows the deck down as well as denies Landstill white mana in the early stage of the game.

[Majestyk1136]

At this time, I can address one of your complains. Too much equipment, not enough creatures. You have 21 creatures to 4 peice of equipments and 7 equipment slots. That is the correct ratio. However, once you casted a Jitte, your Gifts are just good for one thing, fetching a SoFI, after that is done, you end up with approximately 6 peice of dead cards in your deck until your opponenet decides to blow things up. That's not really productive use of both Gift and the equipment slot. My suggestion there is

-1 Jitte
+1 SoLS

I really believe that having more options, as well as the ability to recur threats is very important the control matchup, even more so than Geddon the lands.

The second point I want to response is the OJ. It seems to have worked very well for you, protection against target removals, and an Angel flipper. Parallax Wave has been mentioned, it too, protects your guys from massive removal and targeted removal, and it also slows down opposing aggro/aggro-control decks. I believe it to be a much better choice than Gedden mainboard. I would also like you bring to your attention this peice of common:

Shelter
Instant 1W
Target creature you control gains protection from the color of your choice until end of turn.
Draw a card.

It cycles at worst, and allows for insane protection against targeted removals, and it has nice combat trick application, allowing your guy to smash through a horde of creatures and get of a SoFI trigger off. While it's some what redundent with MoR, as you have noticed, MoR doesn't stick around very long at all in games.

The one thing I highly disagree with your deck is your mana base. You have 5 Wasteland-able mana source, 6 thining effects, and only 6 Plains + 1 Tundra to be reliably fetched out. If you take a look at most of the mono white builds, you'll see that at least 11 Plains is needed to ensure 4 consecutive land drops in the first 4 turns. I highly advise the inclusion of at least 4 more Plains.

I will post my new decklist that incorperates Rav shortly for those of you who are interested.
Thanks for the welcome. In regards to your comments I would say that Steelshaper's Gift worked out well for me all weekend. It gives you essentially 6 ways of drawing a Jitte in your opening grip. It also means that you can either get ahead in Jitte wars, get your Sword or cheaply replace a destroyed Jitte. Jittes and Swords = bad imprints on a Mox. Note that the Gift also thins the deck so the odds of you drawing guys/land go up and the odds of drawing redundant Equipment go down.

As far as Shelter goes, it's nice but the black opponents I was facing were using Edicts to kill guys and not targeting them directly. Parallax Wave or OwJ were the only reasonable solutions that I could envision.

As far as the manabase goes, I've tweaked this and tweaked this. As far as this specific build goes, I was expecting to see a ton of Goblins, burn and generic aggro. Not Stompy, Extended Combo decks or the randomness that was that 'TogStill deck. That guy was playing Raven Guild Master for crying out loud... Earlier there was a guy that was playing Pox against him and named the Master with Therapy... and Hit!

So I'm going to stand by my initial idea. There is little reason (at least in my mind) to intentionally not play the "best" deck. This falls under Piemaster's Top Ten Metagaming Mistakes: Refusal to play the "Best" Deck. Learn how to outplay your opponents instead of "Outdecking" them. Using the best deck that you can find is critical. Don't give in to the temptation to play with "cool things," no matter how tempting the Metagame seems to be. If you are a better player than your opponent even if your deck isn't optimal for that particular matchup you should still be favored to win. No less a luminary than Zvi has already chosen what he considered to be the "best" deck for the current state of this format.

Finally, DON'T PLAY A DECK THAT HAS THE ABILITY TO CONSISTENTLY BEAT ITSELF. Magic is hard enough as it is. Don't make it harder by playing a deck that maximizes the luck factor and minimizes the skill factor. Certainly there is a skill to playing this deck, but it's mainly the art of the Mulligan. If you don't know how to Mulligan this properly then you're walking in to a world of hurt. Also, unless you play Mask of Memory you're not drawing extra cards. Period. The card you get from the Sword is almost irrelevant because if you connect with a Sword-Man even once it just becomes hard to lose.

The trouble that I've seen with the mask is that it tends to not do enough unless you're playing with Suntail. If you're playing with Suntail you're accepting that there are going to be plenty of times that you dump out a 1/1 Dork and say "go." Then, unless you get the mask/jitte/sword on him he's going to peck for 1. That's not very threatening. It's also crap against Gobbos. 1/1's with no way of defending themselves are toast against the Gobbos. At least Isamaru can survive in a fight against quite a few Goblins or trade with a Piledriver. However, he's still just a Vanilla 2/2 that dies alot. That doesn't make him bad, it just makes him one of the most solid 1-drops you can ever make. But that's beside the point.

This deck beats itself almost as frequently as it plays itself into a winning position. For example: I didnt' have a single Wasteland activated against me on Saturday. Know why? My opponents were content to let me kill myself with the Tomb. They also figured they'd need the land in case 'Geddon got off.

Oi. That's enough. I'm currently working on an entirely different route for this format. Combo is sorely underdeveloped and there are too many cards available in this card pool to sit around and rehash Ideas that have consistently proven themselves to be essentially second rate. It's time to innovate!

[umbowta]

Supression Field can do alot of wonderful things but it definately sucks ass with equips and wave. Field seems like it could help with the Landstill match as well as nearly all combo matches besides Solidarity. Field even has potential against Gobbos: makes Vial suck, makes Fanatic suck, makes Wasteland and Port suck, makes Kiki slow down, and SGC too. The whole, " no fetchland until turn 3", has the potential to ass rape nearly every deck out there as soooo many of them are running fetches in multiplicity. However, while Jitte, SoFI,etc, and Parallax Wave remain an integral part to this decks strategy, Supression Field is not an easy fit. I'm not saying the Field sucks. I'm just saying that it is kind of masochistic in AS.


Mother of Runes -- She sucks against Landstill. Plain and simple.Mother of Runes sucks against any competent player who knows they had better get rid of the bitch before the shit hits the fan.
Angel Stompy is a huge favorite in my area. I started splashing red in AS, taking many cues from Throbbing Pink Weenie(at times just playing TPW straight up). I cut Mommy for Lightning bolt a long time ago and I have never looked back. Plain and simply, I got fucking sick and tired of wasting my turn one mana to watch a Mom die before she even got active. Bolt is better in the Mirror because I kill their mom and Morph and Hawk/ Foot Soldier. Knights and Priests can trade whenever I don't have StP for their a$$. And, as you said, Mom sucks against Landstill, period. Bolt(or two) has ended the game for me in that matchup on a couple of occasions.

Anyway, I'm going to look at using Supression Field in a W/R Angel SS that doesn't depend on Equips or Wave for t3h win. Considerations will be Bolt, Helix, and Jet for removal that doubles as kill. I have a feeling it won't come together as well as I want it to, but I'm still going to do it.

Kickin ass with Angel Stompy might be good for Braggin...but just add Red...That Angel is Raggin.

[MasterBlaster]

MidnightAce-I noticed the same thing about Mother of Runes in the Landstill matchup. She's total ass. The way I have my deck currently setup I side her out for Armageddons.

Suppression Field is a very nice card but I don't think it belongs in a deck with 5+ equips and 4 Mother of Runes and 3-4 Parallax Waves. But than again it could give AS the few turns it needs against Landstill. Only testing can really show how good it is.

[midnightAce]

Before I respond, I would like to address the following first.

@Majestyk1136
This is something you should probably keep in mind while stating over and over again "Don't play this deck."

Nobody in this thread, including the original deck creator Zilla, has ever suggested this deck to be the top GP choice. In fact, many people following this thread knows the deck rolls over to control and combo. That said, we are not trying to play with "cool things" or building a deck on luck factor here. The reason for this thread is for people to improve the deck archtype, mono or splash or otherwise.

As for the deck's ability to "beat itself". Well, decks such as SDZoo, Pox, TheRock, Stax, Burn (no Browbeats) and many many others have virtually limited or no draw spell in them at all. It doesn't mean that these decks aren't viable, but rather something must be done to these decks to make them consistent. Jitte for example, has the ability to completely crash the other guy's creatures, that's card advantage right there.

Basically, what I'm saying is that, most of us who keeps close track of the thread and the deck knows it's strong points and weakness, nobody is filing bogus claims that this deck is "OMFG THE DECK TO BEAT!!!", so let's just improve the deck for what it is, there is very little need of lecturing about "Piemaster's Top Ten Metagaming Mistakes". :cool:

Onto the actual deck.

In my recent builds of MonoWhiteAS, I run only 2, but most often 1 Gift, that's it. With the exception of Jitte, I have cut down SoFI and SoLS down to 1 each. Month and month of testing all points to one thing: this is an aggro deck, creature is the backbone of the deck, not the equipments. No matter how awsome Jitte or SoFl or SoLS is, they are junk when there are no creature to wield them. If the deck is to achieve true aggro-CONTROL, the control element must come from spells or creature, not equipments. (With the exception of Jitte, I mean, come on, the card is more broken than the stuff that comes out of paper shredders.)

@OwJ vs Shelter
OwJ saves creatures from mass removals as well as targeted removals, but Shelter saves creatures from targeted removals as well as draws the card and can help creature get the damage through, especially if MoR is removed from mainboard. Both have its pros and cons, I will test both to determine which is more viable as a mainboard choice.

@MoR
So the consesus is that MoR is bad and removal of this card from mainboard seems to be the way to go. In TPW, Bolts are a nice choice, but in MWAS, what's a reasonable substitution? Most the deck list is already running Isamaru as a one'of in main, I'm extremely relucdent to add more of the Legendary Hound, the reason benig it's Legendary. Does anybody have any suggestions of a creature substitute for the 4 slots of MoR?

@Supression Field
I understand its limitations. For now, I'm simply suggesting this card as a SB choice against Landstill, to slow it down enough to get the damage through. As I said in my post, I side OUT the Jittes against Landstill, and MoR is likely to be removed from mainboard. If I'm using Supression Field, I would have to side out the Wave as well, that actually lowers the entire deck's mana curve, which might not be a bad thing. So I guess the next question is, is Supression Field strong enough for the entire MWAS deck to be reshaped to incorperate this card mainboard? It has application against every deck right now except for Solidarity and NQG, and can be imprinted on C.Mox at its worst.

I had a very amusing test session just now, and it goes something like this:

Me: Swing with 2 Silver Knights. (Supression Field in play.)
Opp: Pay 3, make my Factory a 2/2, blocking a Silver Knight.
Me: Okay, no effects.
Opp: Before damage goes on stack, tap to make it a 3/3.
Me: Okay, one Silver die, you take two.
Teammate: *Cough
Me: What?
Teammate: *Cough
Me: WTF?
Teammate: Takes 2 extra for the Factory to pump itself.
Me + Opp: OH, SHIT!!!

:D I was one happy dude on estesy .

With Supression field in play, Landstill loses all its ability to produce effective blockers, it must, rely on counters, StP and board wiping effects to deal with the threats. Making early threats extremely hard for them to deal with.

If anybody else has done testing with regards to Supression Field, please let me know, I'm very interested in comparing the results to my own.

[Majestyk1136]

I was unaware that citing generally accepted Magic Theory was "lecturing" or verboten. ???

My argument is that the basis of the deck is flawed. Improvement of the deck in this case would mean "take it apart and start over from scratch."

The decks that you cited as ones that can beat themselves are generally considered to be bottom feeders as well. People hew onto thse decks for a variety of reasons. Those reasons include but are not limited to Card Availability, desire to play a pet deck that they have "teched out" for a specific matchup and the siren's call of playing with "cool things."

No matter how cool playing Jitte as a one-sided Abyss is (believe me, I know the feeling from my experience last saturday) it is an irrelevant threat in the face of many matchups. As has already been stated it is pointless to have a Jitte out there with nobody to wield it. It is equally pointless to just play 1-2 Jittes on the random chance of drawing it and putting it on your one awesome man. So the solution is to heap a bunch of cheap idiots on the table that die alot.

So why would you play this unless your meta consists of 90% "cheap idiot" decks? Jitte may own those people but is at best an irritation to the remaining 10% of players that choose to ignore it and clobber your men instead, leaving a naked Jitte on the board and making you look like an impotent bozo.

If you choose to spend your time on this you are perfectly free to do so. I just think that concentrating on this strategy doesn't necessarily equate to innovation because there are a dozen decks just like it by the relevant measurements.

The question then becomes: Can this deck do something those other decks cannot? The answer is "probably not," without a major facelift.

[kabal]

@Majestyk1136
Interesting that you mentioned giving AS or WW in general a face lift, because I was doing such a thing about month ago. I found that neither WWW nor AS were giving me the results I wanted. Below is my hybrid. I don't currently have time to post how was deck has been performing pre-board, but I will later.

// Lands
14 Plains
3 Ancient Tomb

// Creatures
4 Exalted Angel
3 Savannah Lions
4 Silver Knight
2 Isamaru, Hound of Konda
3 Icatian Javelineers
4 Mother of Runes
4 Soltari Priest

// Enchantments
3 Crusade
2 Parallax Wave

// Spells
2 Disenchant
4 Swords to Plowshares
3 Tithe

// Artifacts
3 Chrome Mox
2 Sword of Fire and Ice

[lolosoon]

@MoR : I see some WW Builds playing Samurai of the Pale Curtain instead of Mothers trying to stop Landstills annoying Crucible land recursion.

I think that SotPC is more a pain in the ass of Storm combo deck like Ill-Gotten Gain/Tendrils (nausea ?!) or Doomsday/Helm/Tendrils.

Also it's a bear... but is it worth the slot ?!

My 2 cents...

Soon.

[legacyplayer0]

Samurai of the Pale Curtain is a great choice against landstill. As lolosoon said, it stops Crucible recursion, but more importantly, it doesn't get stopped by a pumpable factory, which is a huge plus. It also happens to be one toughness higher than the power of any non-piledriver goblin, which is deffinitely a plus.
Well I'm already posting, so I may as well comment on Mother of Runes. It's bad. Really bad. All it does it protect Angel, which can easily be done with proper disruption, and chump block, which isn't a big deal. I would run it in the mono-white version, but not with a splash. It's simply too weak to run when you have access to a whole other color or two. Not to mention that as many others have said, it sucks against landstill. A lot. When I built Angel Stompy, I never even tested Mother of Runes, and I have had no regrets about excluding it.

[midnightAce]

So why would you play this unless your meta consists of 90% "cheap idiot" decks? Jitte may own those people but is at best an irritation to the remaining 10% of players that choose to ignore it and clobber your men instead, leaving a naked Jitte on the board and making you look like an impotent bozo.

If you choose to spend your time on this you are perfectly free to do so. I just think that concentrating on this strategy doesn't necessarily equate to innovation because there are a dozen decks just like it by the relevant measurements.
Lol, nicely put. The thing is, the primary goal of this deck is to smash face. Same holds true for the entire aggro deck column as well as aggro-control decks. Its strategy is simple, swing, equip, swing some more, with StP and Wave to remove opposing blockers. Same thing holds true for SDZoo type of decks, Bolt, Incinerate, remove blockers, swing with Apes, Trolls, etc. Same thing holds true for for NQG and Fish varients, counter blockers or problematic spells, fly over creatures and swing. Same holds true for Goblins even, cast little red men, swing, cast more little red men.

The old WW archtypes did not have acess to equipments, and they did well. AS before had limited amount of equipments as well, and it does fine without it. The deck's primary strategy is cast creature and attack, not rely on equipments. If you are playing it with heavy reliance on equipments, you have already lost. (Your desire to draw a Jitte ASAP for example, reflects in your deck list.)

The deck's primary strategy is not at fault. Rather it's the amount of support that's needed.

Goblins gets Wrathed and Vengeanced equaly as AS, but still pulls through from time to time. That is beacuse:
a) They pack disruption.
b) They have "card draw", aka Ringleader.

It's probably not a good idea to jump at the white Ringleader equalvelent, but adding mana disruption is definately a consideration.

NOQ and Fish gets Wrathed much as well, but they got counters to back up some of their threats. AS has already start to adapt with OwJ and Wave to protect their threats, that is the right step in my POV.

Zoo varients have burn spells to act as reach in case their primary strategy fails, if AS does get splashed red, such inclusions as Lightening Helix and Lightening Bolt would also act well as reach and double as removals.

If you have tried Zilla's MonoWhite AS V2.0 list a couple of pages back, it's extremely fine tuned and smashes aggro in all forms 90% of the time. The meta game constantly changes, the top tier deck right now is Goblin and Landstill. AS has proven itself to have close to 70/30 against Goblin, if the deck's percentage vs Landstill can be tuned close to 50/50, I'll gladly take it to the GP with me.

On an off topic note, you speak of innovation, "one should always play the best deck avilible". That to me, is absurd. One should always play a deck that he/she has confidence in and is comfortable with. There are guys out there who can't hold back a FoW if their life depended on it, asking them to pilot Landstill would be to ask them to burn up their Black Lotus. Don't laugh, it's true. Others hates combat damage math with a passion, asking them to pilot AS and stack First Strike damage is like asking them to rip up their Time Walk. If in block constructed, or Standard, everybody piloted the best deck at all times, decks like BlueTron, or BlackHand, or Gift Control would never come to be. (Sorry if I got some of the names wrong, not really into T2.) You speak of innovation, okay, I believe making a AS more viable to be an innovative thing, and I don't believe fine tuning Landstill with a comb and figure out exactly how many basic Plains should be ran to be an innovative thing. That's just my personal opinion on the whole issue, if you believe that I have offened you in any way, feel free to let me know and I will delete the corsponding portion.

@kabal
I'm interested in seeing the results.

@lolosoon
SotP was discussed on 2 seperate occasions, the first time on the first 10 pages of the thread, and the second time on the last 5 pages of the thread, feel free to check it out. The conclusion seems to be that since Survival based decks have died off, it doesn't seem to be a good mainboard choice. However, since MoR seems to be going out of the mainboard, it could be a solid choice.

[Majestyk1136]

No offense taken. None was meant, conversely. I guess my perspective stems from one of being a person that plays in multiple formats with multiple decks.

I play limited, where combat math, attacking and blocking are king.

I play Standard. In the past year I have played B/G Aggro, Mono Blue Tron and G/R Freshmaker. 3 different decks with 3 different philosophies that focus on entirely different aspects of the game.

I play Vintage, where deck design, card economy and tight play are rewarded.

And I recently have joined the Legacy community where things are still in flux. The critical elements of Legacy haven't been well defined as of yet. Are turns (ie land drops, untap phases and attack phases) the most important thing? Or is card economy going to be the grail of this format? No one knows yet.

What I would like to think is that I could walk into any event with a relevant deck and compete due to my familiarity with the key elements of the game in general, because there are some key facets that always translate between formats. Maybe that's the bias that I come from and I can't expect people to always "hold that FoW until the right moment" or figure out the precise number of attacks that it will take to finish up and whether or not to alpha strike.

One thing that I am sure of however is that there are somewhere on the order of 6 Aggro decks that are competing for the title of Top Dog in Legacy. This is a symptom of the maladies that I cited earlier. I have no solution for it. It's just going to take time for this format to mature and for the chaff to be separated from the wheat.

The solution is not obvious. How could it be with a card pool of over 6000 cards? I'm not advocating complete abandonment of entire archetypes as chaff. But what I am advocating is concentrating our resources on attempting to find real solutions to the problems in the format.

Is Landstill really the nut-high strategy in this format? Is that possible? Much like Keeper from the dark ages of Vintage this deck is simply waiting for a deck to come along and knock it off.

The trouble is that we don't have decent ways to fight the most brutally efficient card drawing mechanism in the format: Standstill.

Its position as the Ancestral Recall of the format and its ability to be played as a 4-of effectively neuters aggro (as it is dependent upon playing spells, strangely enough) due to the resultant need to overextend in order to actually kill Landstill prior to it gaining utter control over the situation.

So. Where does this leave us? Unless this deck (AS) can find some way to combat the troubling inability to defeat the card drawing mechanism of landstill (either through speed or recovery of card economy because the other phases of the game are irrelevant due to landstill's inevitability) we need to work on another solution.

Maybe you have to sacrifice something against the other Aggro decks. This may mean taking a 70/30 matchup against Goblins and making it 60/40 in order to not get blown out 30/70 by every non-aggro deck in the format.

I will end my rambling. And I will let you know what I come up with.

[MasterBlaster]

So the consesus is that MoR is bad and removal of this card from mainboard seems to be the way to go.
I was just saying that when I play against Landstill MoR is a dead card as AS's main problem is with board sweepers and not with targeted removal.

When I play against Landstill I side out MoR so I can play both Armageddons and Parallax Waves.

(Plus I don't like it when U/R Landstill players tap MoR with Fire/Ice and say they tapped my mom. [glare] )

[tivadar]

The main prob this deck has w/ landstill is that it still tries to play through the landstill rather than under it. If your opponent has STP, Landstill in his hand then your options are pretty limited. The fact is that this deck can't beat landstill (consistently) by breaking the still. Three card advantage is just too huge for them. So, we look at ways to play around it. Seal is an option, but slows your own pace considerably and won't always beat a landstill out. Certainly we could follow gobbos and add vial in (I haven't heard of any testing w/ this...). Or you could try to beat landstill at it's own game and run manlands. It's not like our basic count is dangerously low or anything! A turn 1 jitte though Tomb suddenly turns into a "no still" situation for your opponent b/c they don't know if you're holding a factory. Decree has also been discussed, though many would say it slows the deck down. With 4 mana (including the factory) you can now attach and swing only to have your man disappear the next turn wrath.

Obviously this makes you more susceptible to wasteland, but it's really no worse than tomb. I think my main point is that this deck, in all its variants, can't outgun landstill before they get their lock on. I think developing not a quicker clock, but rather a better answer w/ standstill on the table is the way to go.

I've done some initial testing w/ factories and had pretty good success. I splash blue for FOW, stifle, and meddling. So far I've played 4 and won 3. This is obviously nothing conclusive, but each of the openers were reasonable. Also, the manlands didn't seem to hurt my gobbo matchup either (blue works wonders here w/ stifle and FOW).

Just wondering if manlands had been debated. I'll do some testing and get back w/ more results.

P.S. Apologize for the abbreviations. I dislocated my finger. While it is in a pretty splint, it makes typing rather difficult.

[pristineadept]

A friend of mine runs this deck at our card shop but his build varies a little he only runs 3 mothers and 2 jitte and sword and then 3 mask and he doesnt run isamaru 4 parrallax wave and his sideboard is way different his sideboard is 4:armaggedon 3:decree of justice 4:true believer 4:disenchant. I also think he runs more lands and no main deck artifact or enchant hate. He has been working on the deck forever though too his favorite creature was exalted angel in fact he dveloped the concpet for this deck a while back but he didnt think ancient tomb at first he ran city of traitors and i think he ran more shadow creatures. I like your build though I think it would be to mana hungary.

[midnightAce]

@pristineadept

While I value your input on the deck, it would be nice if you can put some commas and periods in that post. It's very hard for me to follow the sentences and figuring out which part belongs to which sentence. Some punctuation would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

[TsumiBand]

If Landstill's such a concern, and Mother of Runes is turning into a bad call, doesn't -4 Mom, +4 Aether Vial improve that matchup? Especially now that W/r is being looked at, drawing the Vial lets us hold onto Helix/Bolt/StP and then EoT the good stuff. Also lets us play Equipment and another spell in the early game. I know we can't Vial out Angel, oh NOS, but she has her own alternate casting cost anyway. It's not like the strategy behind running Angel changes when Vial is included.
@ Blue splash: Running Force with 12 Blue cards? The general consensus is 17 Blue spells is the smallest acceptable number to reliably FoW when needed. If it works for you, fantastic, but I remember having issues FoWning when I was running Force, Brainstorm, Mage and Curiosity in 4s.

[legacyplayer0]

@red splash:If you splash red, you may as well just play red/white sligh, becuase running red while still using the Angel Stompy frame improves its matches a lot less than splashing blue or black.
@FoW: I tested it while building my 3c version of the deck back when it was blue/white, and it hardly ever helped, and the card disadvantage hurt because most of my blue spells were threats that would have helped a lot if I got to play them instead. If you need to have a say in what your opponent can or cannot cast, just splash black.

[umbowta]

@red splash:If you splash red, you may as well just play red/white slighQuoted for truth. The biggest red splash I've been playing is 4 Lightning Bolts main and a side board full of red nastys that screw over Solidarity and Landstill. A comittment to any more mainboard red spells ends up in R/W sligh. At that point you should just play Goblin Sligh or Vial Goblins because they are just better than R/W sligh.

I've wanted to try Magma Jet or Helix but there isn't anything worth cutting to make them fit. I could cut equips to make them fit, but then I might as well just play TPW. Cut Seal of Cleansing? No. Cut critters? With all the Equips...No.

[TsumiBand]

See I disagree with a lot of that.
First of all, anyone who subscribes to the "if playing X manabase play Y deck over Z deck" is offering little in the way of constructive critisism. Talk like that would have prevented a deck like Fish from growing into its various counterparts and becoming a force in Vintage.
Second, the advantages that good "WR Sligh" builds have over Goblins is the ability to not get rolled by the hate. Mainly the rise of Engineered Plague and -x/-x board sweepers that would be played are averted in that (a) there is no unifying creature type in the deck (b) -x/-x effects get rolled by good Equipment cards.
Along similar lines, White's creatures are way hardier than Red's and as such your dick isn't flapping in the breeze when the burn runs out. I don't know if anyone here has actually witnessed the mental retardation of a Boros Swiftblade with either Jitte or SoFI, not just on paper but ingame crushings. It's stupid. It offers White Weenie the chance to kill a whole turn sooner than it should; nut draw = turn 3 gg.
What I'd rather talk about, besides why the deck doesn't work, is how to augment the things that DO work. Boros is a house with Equipment. The burn almost always makes the kill a half-turn faster. Exalted is one of the best creatures in the game, everyone knows this. 8 ways of life total going +20 makes aggro flinch. The only thing lacking is the consistency and sometimes the mulligan rate is a little high for my taste. I don't think I'm just trying to breathe life into a pet deck here, WW/r has a potential turn 3 kill and a consistent turn 5. I think it can be more consistent than ever now.

[legacyplayer0]

By red/white sligh, I didn't mean sligh with a white splash, but a deck with mainly white creatures, and mainly red removal plus Jitte. I've played against and seen it played against other people, and it has absolutely no need to run Angel or more equipment. It plays cheap creatures, and kills all the blockers. Using a more angel stopmy-like strategy would only slow the deck down. Use a color that strengthens your bad matchups instead.

[umbowta]

First of all, anyone who subscribes to the "if playing X manabase play Y deck over Z deck" is offering little in the way of constructive critisism.Telling someone to play a better deck is constructive criticism. It doesn't help them fix their crappy deck, but it does help them win more. I don't subscribe to "blah blah blah", I have tested and I'm giving my honest opinion. I love R/W sligh. In fact I am one of its few proponents. However, I have experienced, first hand, the detriment a near 50/50 r/w/ manabase can have on the consistency of the game plan. I'll say it again, I love R/W sligh, but I'm not taking it to a tournament because it's not consistent enough yet. If you want to play fast, face smashing aggro, Gobs is currently the choice of champions. That said, this is the AS thread, not the R/W sligh thread.
Talk like that would have prevented a deck like Fish from growing into its various counterparts and becoming a force in Vintage.
Talk like that is what helped the deck get rid of flaws and get where it is today in vintage.


By red/white sligh, I didn't mean sligh with a white splash, but a deck with mainly white creatures, and mainly red removal plus Jitte. I've played against and seen it played against other people, and it has absolutely no need to run Angel or more equipment. It plays cheap creatures, and kills all the blockers. Using a more angel stopmy-like strategy would only slow the deck down. Use a color that strengthens your bad matchups insteadYeah, you're right. I'm trying to shove red in here because I like it and I want it to work.

[TsumiBand]

Who said anything about a 50/50 manabase? Gross. The extent of the red in my deck is like, 4 duals and a mountain. Between fetches and Tithes that's fine.
@ fish comments; You missed the point. Fish evolved but it's still Fish; the concept at the time was not well received at first by the 'bigger' players, but they had to admit it gave Keeper hard times and since there was no other real aggro in the format the creatures weren't bad. It wasn't until aggro decks that worked came along that Fish started changing its lineup, but it's not even about that so much. Standard wisdom when Gay Fish was in its infancy would have prevented the archetype from being expanded on; running a mere 4 Force of Wills coupled with Standstill as card draw? Cloud of Fairies, fucking Faerie Conclave? The fuck? Instead of turning the deck into mono-blue control, they kept the concept the same and morphed it into Gay/r, once bigger creatures started coming along. Now there's so many permutations of Gay Fish it's almost hard to keep up. But the fact remains, the deck continued to function in the same way.
If WW/r ends up turning into w/r sligh, whatever. I just want to maintain the successful elements and keep the decklist relevant. It just seemed prudent to post here, being that Angel Stompy was the basis for my decklist and everyone's looking for the correct color to splash. Had I the means I'd probably play a third color; I liked the AS build that went to Big Arse II and played with it for a while.

[umbowta]

The extent of the red in my deck is like, 4 duals and a mountain. Between fetches and Tithes that's fine.
I think we agree more than you think. That is exactly how I take care of the Red splash in AS.

4 plateaus
1 mountain
3 bloodstained mire
4 tithe

= 12 ways for me to get my splash color.



If WW/r ends up turning into w/r sligh, whatever.It does, if you want it to be efficient anyway.
I just want to maintain the successful elements and keep the decklist relevantMe too. Unfortunately, the biggest Maindeck red inclusion I've had sucess with thusfar is 4 x Lightning Bolt.

[legacyplayer0]

Recently, my G/r Survival Advantage has taken a huge plunge. It used to be very favorable, but now that RGSA plays Wall of Blossoms, I have lost my last 2 RGSA matches. I have been using a Wbu Angel, similar to the one I took to BAII, so I have access to numerous RGSA hate cards, the best of which are Pithing Needle, Perish, Acid Rain, Spectral Lynx, and Kami of Ancient Law. The question is, which choices will improve the matchup the most while using the smallest number of card slots.

[Slay]

You don't beat RGSA through hate cards. You beat RGSA with evading creatures like fliers or shadow, and equipment. If oyu play a hate card they'll play around it, and you'll lose the game.
-Slay

[t3h.sWaRm]

Needle is great for RGSA and can also help with many other matches. That would definately go in my board if I saw any Survival Variant, heck, I might put them in anyway.

[SenilePack]

Indeed, Pithing Needle is a good addition to any Side Board, because it can stop so many cards including manlands, SotF, and Aether Vial.

[tivadar]

I've switched my MB Disenchant to Pithing just because out of all the situations I can think of when disenchant would be useful, there's only a few them when pithing wouldn't be more useful.

Only thing I worry about without disenchant are crucible, null rod, and, ironically enough, pithing needles. Suppression field may become an issue as well.

[t3h.sWaRm]

That's a pretty good idea. I'll try it out, since I don't even see Crucible OR Null Rod much. I agree the Suppression Fields could be a problem, Disenchants are still in my Board though.

[legacyplayer0]

If you're worried about Suppression Field, just run Kami of Ancient Law MD. It is never a dead card, and helps vs Survival and Standstills too.

[Morte]

Hi everybody! This is my first post to The Source.

I play in a very aggro environment, so I think AS is a good choice. However, I think Majestyk1136’s doubts have surely reason to be.
It's a while I'm playing various AS variants: and I agree that the standard build of the deck is a bit inconsistent and draw depending. So I tried to increase the chances of getting good openings and finding the right cards, adding deck manipulation and minimizing bad draws on the middle-late game.

To reach this goal I splashed blue to play Brainstorm and Serum Vision together: whit 1cc they don’t slow down the deck, while they improve greatly our openings and later draws. I’m using a full 8 fetchlands pack for the same reason. Also Thites help ‘storm shuffling the deck.

It's not a draw engine, it's a finding engine: with high deck manipulation, it's like you have more than 4 of the cards you play.

This is my current list:


Creatures: (17)

4 Meddling Mage
4 Soltari Priest
4 Silver Knight
4 Exalted Angel
1 Isamaru, Hound of Konda

Equipments (5):

3 Sword of Fire and Ice
2 Umezawa's Jitte

Draw/Control (16):

4 Swords to Plowshares
4 Brainstorm
4 Serum Vision
2 Tithe
2 Disenchant

Lands (22):

4 Flooded Strand
4 Windswept Heat
1 Island
4 Plains
4 Tundra
3 Ancient Tomb
2 Wasteland


I don’t play moxen because their card disadvantage is the opposite of what I want.

Usually I spent first turn to set up my hand with cantrips (if I don’t need to stop a Lackey with StP or Isamaru).
Second turn is the only one where I usually have something more important to do than cantrip; from turn three, cantrips are always welcome.

My attempt is to be sure to attack with an equipped-hard to manage boy asap, as in every AS. The difference is that my strategy realizes always.

To make space for cantrips, I kept only the most solid creatures (with the obvious addiction of Meddling Mages) and the most unbalancing equipments (Mask of Memory can help… Sword or Jitte can win!)

In conclusion, this variant makes the deck more consistent, improving its capability to set up its best winning condition, while cutting down less effective situations: cards I draw are always strong, not reliant to the context (like MoR or OJ, for example).

The deck worked well in my tests: better than mono-white, red-splash or other blue-splash I tried before. I think there is no aggro/aggro-control deck you should fear, while combo is not too scary: thanks to deck manipulation, I can play more than one Mage before it’s too late, and Sword’s protection from blue helps closing the lock. Siding +4 In the Eye of Chaos (-4StP) doubles my options.

Landstill is, as always, the biggest problem. Blue could help with Back to Basics, but I think Tsabo’s Web works better in this deck.

I think I'll also try the exchange Disenchant<-->Pithing Needle suggested by Tivadar (my hero! I hate :angry: gobbs: )

I will appreciate any suggestion… And I apologize for my English (Goblin-English, maybe!; )

[tivadar]

I've started a thread on this actually, it's devoted to Angel Splash (Angel stompy with u splashed for control). Feel free to take a look, the builds are pretty similar. Also, my name tivadar actually preceded the Magic card, I made it up for an RPG I played. Fate, it would seem, is not without a sense of irony...

Angel Splash Thread (http://mtgthesource.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=1137)

My one comment is that it feels like you have too many lands. I'm running 20 lands with 2 tithes and it's been fine for me. You have 2 extra, and more scry. I'm guessing you don't need this much. Of course, you do have more colorless... anyways, take a look and post there. I think this deck has real potential as a contender.

[Wynk]

hi guys, I've been working on my WW deck, and its pretty clear WW tends to beat goblins due to all the pro red creatures. Perhaps we could gear the deck more towards mana denial to help against control?

4 auriok champion (I know its a 1/1, but its a great play against goblins and burn, ; its also adequate against tog and U/R landstill)
4 silver knight
4 soltari priest
4 whipcorder (this deck fears large creatures; these die frequently, but buy you a few extra turns)
2 exalted angel (too mana intensive for more)

4 aether vial (cheats mana costs, makes goblins cry)
4 winter orb (turn one vial, turn 2 orb helps with control)
2 armageddon

3 mask of memory (against most decks, I need draw over big men; see SOFI in board)

3 swords to plowshares
3 disenchants
4 ghostly prison (orb and prison delays nearly all aggro)

14 plains
1 undiscovered paradise
4 wasteland

sideboard control oriented
4 glowrider
4 rule of law
1 disenchant
1 sword to plowshares
2 armageddon
3 sword of fire/ice

Note: aether vial allows you to cheat mana costs under orbs or when geddon shows up. Its a critical part of the deck.

The synergy between orb and ghostly prisons really help against aggro. Given the number of pro red men, aether vial, and SOFI in the sideboard, this deck should have the same chance as typical AS againt goblins.

Against control, aether vial, wasteland, and orb combine to form a decent mana denial strategy. Glowriders come in from the board as well. Armageddons will nearly always be countered. Limiting access to resources enables your small weak men to have a chance.

Against Rabid Wombat, orb and armageddon really help reign them in. Until they sideboard sacred ground.
The sideboard attempts to continue the mana denial strategy with glowriders and more armageddons. The rule of laws are for solidarity and to slow down burn. With aether vial, you won't feel them yourself.

Unfortunately, given the small size of my creatures and pre-sideboard lack of pump, solidarity/control is put on a very slow clock. Orb/glowrider/rule of law/armageddon are your only hope. And nearly all of these answers costs 3+.

I've tested the deck a bit, but not nearly enough to post results yet. Still, I can honestly say I don't fear goblins, and the lack of explosiveness with ancient tomb/angel is made up for with painless mana consistency. There is no "just win" aspect to the deck though.

Sadly, given that 90% of your men/permanents are at 2, chalice, deed, and EE kill everything.

What do you guys think of this variation of AS?

[Eldariel]

hi guys, I've been working on my WW deck, and its pretty clear WW tends to beat goblins due to all the pro red creatures. Perhaps we could gear the deck more towards mana denial to help against control?

4 auriok champion (I know its a 1/1, but its a great play against goblins and burn, ; its also adequate against tog and U/R landstill)
4 silver knight
4 soltari priest
4 whipcorder (this deck fears large creatures; these die frequently, but buy you a few extra turns)
2 exalted angel (too mana intensive for more)

4 aether vial (cheats mana costs, makes goblins cry)
4 winter orb (turn one vial, turn 2 orb helps with control)
2 armageddon

3 mask of memory (against most decks, I need draw over big men; see SOFI in board)

3 swords to plowshares
3 disenchants
4 ghostly prison (orb and prison delays nearly all aggro)

14 plains
1 undiscovered paradise
4 wasteland

sideboard control oriented
4 glowrider
4 rule of law
1 disenchant
1 sword to plowshares
2 armageddon
3 sword of fire/ice

Note: aether vial allows you to cheat mana costs under orbs or when geddon shows up. Its a critical part of the deck.

The synergy between orb and ghostly prisons really help against aggro. Given the number of pro red men, aether vial, and SOFI in the sideboard, this deck should have the same chance as typical AS againt goblins.

Against control, aether vial, wasteland, and orb combine to form a decent mana denial strategy. Glowriders come in from the board as well. Armageddons will nearly always be countered. Limiting access to resources enables your small weak men to have a chance.

Against Rabid Wombat, orb and armageddon really help reign them in. Until they sideboard sacred ground.
The sideboard attempts to continue the mana denial strategy with glowriders and more armageddons. The rule of laws are for solidarity and to slow down burn. With aether vial, you won't feel them yourself.

Unfortunately, given the small size of my creatures and pre-sideboard lack of pump, solidarity/control is put on a very slow clock. Orb/glowrider/rule of law/armageddon are your only hope. And nearly all of these answers costs 3+.

I've tested the deck a bit, but not nearly enough to post results yet. Still, I can honestly say I don't fear goblins, and the lack of explosiveness with ancient tomb/angel is made up for with painless mana consistency. There is no "just win" aspect to the deck though.

Sadly, given that 90% of your men/permanents are at 2, chalice, deed, and EE kill everything.

What do you guys think of this variation of AS?
I really think you'd be better off playing WW than Angel Stompy-strategy there. The Exalted Angels and Mask of Memory are really the last pieces of Angel Stompy-puzzle left in your deck, I'd suggest going WWW, Weathered White Weenie (for Weathered Wayfarer) instead, since Wayfarer is a house against control, fetching Wasteland after Wasteland. Auriok Champion is really a choice I disagree with, seeing that against control and combo, it's going to worthless. It's a purely anti-Goblin card really (although, Pikula's Deadguy might not like pro-black too much), and you're playing it in the main. About 60% of your matches, it's going to be a Soul Warden for WW. The rest are going to be Burn or Goblins.

If you want to run Whipcorder, I'd run some Ramosian Sergeants too, for additional ways to generate card advantage. Good against Goblins if you get it online (although not synergistic with Orb). Isamaru and some more 1-drops definately belong though. Also, I really think you'd want Jitte there. You need an anti-burn plan.

[Wynk]

Eldariel: thank you for your suggestions. I appreciate the response and will test them out. Perhaps this is really more of a WWW deck then and wayfarers may be a better choice in the champions slot. They also contribute to the mana denial aspect ot the deck.

I admit the Champions are weak. However, they do provide an excellent roadblock against goblins, and are not so bad against burn. As about 1/2 of the decks I face are red based, its not so bad main deck.

[scrumdogg]

Champions are fine, but not as a 4 of. In our testing, we disagreed on the need for Champion (some people preferred a more aggressive creature) but no one could deny it's power versus Goblins and Tog. Tog nneds to find either Wonder/Brawn or Berserk with Champion on the board because it cannot hit it with a black spell or Tog it out. The fact that Bikini Chick also gains you life every time a creature enters play makes Tog decks kill more difficult. The lifegain is a huge bonus against Burn/Sligh/RDW on top of the ability to block or attack at will. It combined best with a Jitte versus those decks as that made a 4 point life swing every turn (or removal on demand). The major issue was combo, not control, though. Bikini Chick does nothing to Solidarity, although the ability to Vial in Mages (and in our build True Believer) was a major factor. Champion almost always got sided out, except against Tendrils based combo. Versus control, the Landstill variants, etc. we were running Sword of Light and Shadow over SoFI because of the ability to run a seemingly endess succession of guys. Those guys would in turn either A) pick up equipment and bash for an effect & get back more guys (who get held in reserve) or B) suck out removal, at which point we rinse & repeat. The ability ot dictate when your opponent can use STP is a nice bonus as well as the life gain aspect versus aggro & aggro control that truly cares about life total (gain 3 life every time it hits does not make Dr. Teeth smile). Of the people who had the deck together for Philly, 1 chickened out, 1 got screwed by work, and I got talked into another deck (although to be fair, it was a tossup what to play anyway) :cool:

EDIT: Weathered Wayfarer is a house, a beast, a beating. Between mana smoothing, ability to string Wastelands, and ability to pick up a Jitte or Sword, he is a 4 of in the deck.

[Wynk]

I haven't tested this idea out, but with the addition of wayfarers, splashing for meddling mage would be fairly simple. Ather vial plus wayfarers plus tundras give the deck many ways to cast it.


Also, given the orbs, chaining together wastelands seems incredible.

I like the champions. But I think you're right, its not a 4 of in the deck. However, given the prevalance of control/aggro, and lack of combo, it might be decent in the main anyway.

I like the sword of light and shadow idea. Is it that much better than SOFI against control though? I thought the extra 2 damage to the dome would be fairly effective in that matchup.

-4 whipcorder
+4 wayfarers

-3 mask of memory
+3 Jitte

-3 plains
+3 tundras

sideboard changes:
4 glowrider
4 meddling mage
3 true believers
1 disenchant
1 sword to plowshares
2 armageddon


Thank you guys for the suggestions. :D [/B]

[tivadar]

Actually I find SOFI almost strictly better. Even against control, if they're going to hit you with targetted removal, it's going to be STP, and they're probably going to do it in response to the equip. Should a creature get through, SOFI guarentees you a card, and two extra damage, SOLS may get you a card, and gives you three life. Fairly obvious which one is better there... I use SOLS though because it rocks against burn and gro.

[Zilla]

Wayfarer White Weenie has its own thread (http://mtgthesource.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=2639). If you wish to discuss it, please do so there.

[MasterBlaster]

I thought I should post my current decklist and explain the changes I made.
So without further ado, my decklist:

16 Snow-Covered Plains
4 Ancient Tomb
3 Chrome Mox

4 Mother of Runes
4 Savannah Lions
1 Isamaru, Hound of Konda
4 Silver Knight
4 Soltari Priest
2 True Believer
4 Exalted Angel

3 Sword of Fire and Ice
2 Umezawa's Jitte

4 Swords to Plowshares
3 Parallax Wave
2 Seal of Cleansing

My card choice explanation:
-2 Mask of Memory
+2 True Believer
True Believer protects from combo and discard which I feel are becoming more prevalent in the U.S. metagame. Also it really really sucks to draw MoM after a wrath.

-4 Lantern Kami/Suntail Hawk
+4 Savannah Lions
Savannah Lions keeps combo on a faster clock. Which is especially important against Solidarity. Also with 2 less equipment Hawk/Kami isn't looking so hot.

-16 Plains
+16 Snow-Covered Plains
They look pretty and are purple. They also say "T: add W" which is always a helpful reminder for me.

The one problem I currently have with the deck is that 2 Seal of Cleansing seems like too few artifact/enchantment removal spots. It sucks to have your opponent imprint a Scepter with STP, Diabolic Edict, etc. It equally sucks when Engineered Plague names Cleric. What should I take out for a 3rd Seal of Cleansing? Any other suggestions/comments on my build?

[Majestyk1136]

Less equipment. Clearly less equipment. Having more gas is always more important than trying to win-more. Try going for the Steelshaper's Gift plan with a bit less EQ and add some more disruption/utility.

Edit: I agree that Suntail Hawk/Lantern Kami have no place here. Maybe in White Weenie, but your men have to get more mileage than just being 1/1 fliers that die to a cycled Gempalm.

[MasterBlaster]

Try going for the Steelshaper's Gift plan with a bit less EQ and add some more disruption/utility.
The problems with Steelshaper's Gift as I see it is:

1. You waste mana to fetch it.
2. Once your opponent counters/destroys that piece of equipment you fetched you're probably really f***ed as Gift takes the place of equips.(In other words you might not have any more equips in the deck.)
3. If I add 4 gifts to the deck I would also have to remove at least 1 non-equip card.

I honestly don't see what advantage Gift would give me above more equips. Sure, it could let me search for a Sword of Light and Shadow in the mirror match. But that would stand a good chance of being destroyed and then I'm down 2 cards in the equip slots. I'd rather keep the card and tempo advantage and be redundant with SoFI and Jitte.

Also I've done more testing with my decklist today, and I'm very happy with the creature base. There's never an equip on the board without somebody to carry it since I went -2 MoM +2 True Believers. 23 creatures means that I hardly ever let the pressure off my opponent, and it's proven hard for them to regain control.

[Daze]

Well here's my list and experiences with the deck:

// Lands
10 [UG] Plains
4 [TE] Ancient Tomb
1 [UNH] Plains

// Creatures
4 [UL] Mother of Runes
1 [CHK] Isamaru, Hound of Konda
4 [TE] Soltari Priest
4 [ON] Exalted Angel
4 [CHK] Lantern Kami
4 [SC] Silver Knight

// Spells
1 [DS] Sword of Fire and Ice
4 [VI] Tithe
4 [R] Swords to Plowshares
3 [NE] Parallax Wave
2 [MR] Mask of Memory
3 [MR] Chrome Mox
2 [BOK] Umezawa's Jitte
2 [FD] Steelshaper's Gift
3 [A] Disenchant

// Sideboard
SB: 3 [P2] Armageddon
SB: 3 [SOK] Pithing Needle
SB: 3 [ON] True Believer
SB: 3 [WL] Aura of Silence
SB: 3 [FD] Auriok Champion


Mana Base:

Worked very well, Tithe just rocks, Chrome Mox is a must, not only because of 1st round Angel (which happens more often than i thought...:D) but because it's always great in the first ..uhm...4 turns. You could also play 2, but 3 worked well for me.

Creatures:

Mother of Runes- Sometimes gamebreaking, sometimes just a dead card. I'm really not sure about her, e.g. Mother+True Believer is game vs Solidarity (to 95%) but doesn't do a thing vs Cursed Scroll. She has much potential and I'll play her until i find something better or someone/thing convinces me... Maybe I should try to replace her with another beater (Soltari Soldier), have to test.

Isamaru: is a nice vanilla, altough i miss the evasion. Still, a great card, especially after a WoG you are happy to topdeck one.

Soltari Priest: the evasion is really good, however, if i could play 8 Silver Knights, i would do so. But since there is no real alternative, he still is the best choice for that slot.



Latern Kami: I don't think Lions are great anymore, maybe it's just my meta, but imo evasion is much more important. Soltari Soldier of course does a better job therefor, but a kami can do some nice things as blocking Hippies with MoR.

Steelshaper's Gift and the Equipments were VERY nice, Gift doesn't cost u a turn that often. I'd like to include a Sword of Light and Shadow also, but I also think i need the 2 Jittes because they are just broken.

Parallax Wave: Seems it's like a good vine; the first 15 matches it didn't do a thing, now the last 10 games, it rocked aout 5 times. Maybe i cut it, maybe i should test it a little bit more.

Disenchant: Because i want to test Aura of Silence SB, i replaced the Seals with Disenchants; most of the time i had to sac the Seal immediatly, it was destroyed before my opponent played his/her keycards or i would have had enough mana to cast disenchant instead.

Silver Knight, Exalted Angel, StP:...

SB: I haven't done much with it yet, Armageddon seems clear, as does the Needle; Believer is rgeat vs Solidarity, Belcher, Discard, etc. Aura of Silence isn't tested yet, but it should be cool vs Belcher and Staxx, altough it's quite expensive. The Champion is there vs Burn, Gobbos, Tog, Trix, ...


I've played my 1st tournament with this deck and went 3rd place, let's see what it remember...

1st Game: Burn
It was a direct burn deck, trying to kill as fast as possible via direct damage (playing things like Flame Rift). First game, he got me down to 4, then i stabilized via Angel. 2nd and 3rd game he just burned me down. At that time i hadn't got the Champion side and i hope losing vs Burn won't happen to me again any time soon. One spell less and he would have lost, but so he killed me just before i could get any lifegain going. He never burned any creatures but the angels and the Jitte was too slow.

2nd Game: W/B Ying Yang

The game i made the worst playing mistakes ever... As I said, it was my 1st tournament and i was nervous. 1st game I kept a nice hand with one land and a mox, but for some reason only god knows i just played the land, waiting for something better to imprint. He did a Ritual-Duress (Mox)- Sinkhole and i never saw more than one land. 2nd game he got screwed and i could finish him with an equiped Priest. 3rd game I had a Believer with Jitte and a MoR and attacked, for soem reason, with both. He smothered the believer, next turn the mother. His 2 cursed Scrolls finallyseemed to turn the tide with him at 6 life. Luckily i topdecked an Angel and won :;):.

3rd Game:Burn again

This was not such a direct variant than the first and i won easily 2 games, altough a Cursed Scroll caused some serious trouble.

4th game: Staxx

1st game i could get an angel down 2nd round and won. 2nd round he was able to get of Tangle Wire and a Stack-at 3 life. I made a mistake again by forgetting Karn's ability, attacked and then died to the horde of artifacts. 3rd game was really close-that's the only thing i remember...
I had no Auras of Silence yet, otherwise these matches would maybe have been easier.

5th game: U/R Fish

Both games won easily, one time because he got screwed, 2nd time because he could only counter the first angel, then 2nd one then killed him.


All in all, the deck did quite good, it has serious problems to deal with Cursed Scroll, i never drew a removalfor it; still i'm not sure about MoR, Parallax Wave, Kami vs Soltari Soldier, a slot for SoLS and my sideboard.
If someone could say me what to board out vs the different matchups, that would be really great.

[MasterBlaster]

still i'm not sure about MoR, Parallax Wave, Kami vs Soltari Soldier, a slot for SoLS and my sideboard.
If someone could say me what to board out vs the different matchups, that would be really great.
Mother of Runes and Parallax Wave have proven to be very important in my experiences with the deck.

MoR lets your men sneek past chump blockers, dodge targeted removal, and she chump blocks herself without dieing.

Parallax Wave serves a similar function in that it removes blockers/attackers, and can help you dodge targeted removal and board sweepers by removing your own guys.

In my eyes the perfect Angel Stompy sideboard would look something like:
4 Armageddon
3 Pithing Needle
3 Rule of Law
2 Seal of Cleansing
3 Phyrexian Furnace

Sideboarding:
Against Landstill take out MoR for Armageddon.
Also Pithing Needle should be sided in, but I don't know what to remove for it.

Stax should be sided against the same as Landstill. Except of course you should add more disenchant effects in place of Steelshaper's Gift or MoM.

Against NotQuiteGro side in Armageddon, Pithing Needle for their fetchlands, and Phyrexian Furnace if you have it to keep them off of threshold. Side out Disenchant.

Against a pure Burn deck side in True Believer and Armageddon. Take out Steelshaper's Gift or MoM.

Against any Survival deck side in Pithing Needle for Survival and whatever graveyard hate is available to you, and whatever you do don't side out creature hate.

Against Solidarity side in Armageddon, True Believer, Pithing Needle for fetches, and Rule of Law if you have them. It shouldn't be hard figuring out what to take out in this matchup.

The sideboarding suggestions might not be the best in the world, but I hope it helped.

[AnwarA101]

I'm wondering if anyone has considered this deck for the current metagame. I played the deck last week mainly because my meta has more Goblins and Gro than any other deck or to be more accurate Gro or Goblins are the only decks that seem to win at our weekly tournies. So I started to look around and to see what might happen to have a good game against both of these decks and this deck seemed like it would fit the bill.

I did pretty well - I went 2-0 first Goblins in the swiss winning all 4 games that I played against the deck. I drew with Gro in the swiss due to time. I did end up losing to Gro in top 4 in three games as well. I sideboarded by bringing in 3 Armageddons for Gro, but I'm not sure if this is the right call because Gro can often have at least a creature out by the time you geddon. Are there good board cards against Gro? Is this deck worthwhile in the current meta?

[Zilla]

Haha. Funny you should bring this up, cause I'd just picked it back up again as well. With Solidarity almost entirely out of the picture, and Landstill much less popular as well, it's really not a bad time to be running the deck. It's got pretty good game against Gro and Goblins, and can be tuned to beat Rifter and Deadguy. It's very solid against Dredge-a-Tog and Ichorid.dec as well. So far, the worst matchup for it in testing has been CAL, but no one's really playing it at the moment, and you could theoretically run Tempest of Light to answer it. Tempest is good in the Rifter and Enchantress matchups as well.

Also, I've been testing a build splashing red for Bolt, Helix, Swiftblade, and Pyroclasm in the board for a better goblins matchup. Swiftblade rocks ass, but the Pyroclasm plan against Goblins hasn't been as spectacular as I'd like, because they can often kill your Plateaus, which hurts white mana production, which can screw up your whole gameplan. Basically, the manabase needs work, but I think it can be tweaked for stability.

[Whit3 Ghost]

What about running the Boros Deck Wins manabase for maximum stability? Although it does leave you more open to Wasteland and B2B it allows you to get the colors you need consistantly.

[B is for Big Job]

What about running the Boros Deck Wins manabase for maximum stability? Although it does leave you more open to Wasteland and B2B it allows you to get the colors you need consistantly.
The fact that wasteland just about kicks this deck in the nuts most of the time isnt good. Also, not many people play B2B, so thats not much of a consern which is answered by disenchant/ seal

[quodo]

I went to Lille with an unfishinished Angel Stompy, using the blue splash for Meddling Mage. Here is the list :

4 Silver Knight
4 White Knight
4 Exalted Angel
4 Mother of Runes
3 Enlightened Tutor
4 Swords to Plowshares
2 Umezawa's Jitte
2 Sword of Fire and Ice
3 Meddling Mage
3 Chrome Mox
3 Parallax Wave
1 Worship
1 Isamaru, Hound of Konda
1 Tangle Wire
1 Tithe

3 Ancient Tomb
1 City of Traitors
3 Tundra
1 Island
4 Flooded Strand
8 Plains

Sideboard :
3 Chalice of the Void
3 Armagguedon
1 In the Eye of Chaos
1 Seal of Cleansing
2 Pithing Needle
2 Chill
1 Rule of Law
2 Tormod's Crypt

I went 5/4 on day 1, and didn't made it into day 2. Also, I think that my deck needed changes, like playing a fourth Mage, instead of the Tangle. A second Tithe may be needed, but I'm not sold on this card. I would rather play a third Jitte as a replacement of the first one. The only Worship was not a bad idea at all, and it made me won some game. (and the T8 proved my choice was quite right).
The Tutor-box is really good in this deck, even if it makes you lose a bit of tempo. Finding the Jitte or Sword against Goblins, removing the threats with a Wave, or being able to protect an Angel with it when you need it is really good.

About the matchups : this deck ALWAYS win against mono-red Goblins. (Well, not always, only 90%, it's a card game). Even post sideboard. Anarchy rarely solves the problem. Pithing Needle is much more problematic, but the Seal can deal with it. An early Angel or some Silver Knight equipped is game. Parallax Wave buys you a lot of time.
Against Gobbos with White, it's a bit harder, mainly because they play Swords to Plowshare maindeck, and sideboard Disenchant.
The Gro matchup is far more difficult, because they tend to counter your 2 only threats against them : Mother and Angel. The rest is not really difficult for them to kill. Note that the Red splased version is less effective than the White one in this particular case, because you get better protection from SoFaI and Silver Knight.

About the mainboard choices, you may ask why I played White Knight. It is really simple. Against Goblins, a 2/2 first strike is really big. It kills any of their men, and they have to use one of their spot removals to get rid of it. Against Pikula, even if the deck doesn't deserve such an attention, it is an unblockable attacker. They have to use StP to kill it, or one of the Scrolls (if they use the basic version). I prefer this to Soltari Priest, which wont be able to stop a Shade.

Hope this will help a bit. This deck rocks, I'm only a bad player ^^.

[Wynk]

I know this is probably a bad idea, but if you run a blue splash for meddling mage, why don't you add a serendib efreet in place of the white knight?

3/4 flying for (2)U and minimal drawback seems worth it to me. its out of burn range, has evasion, and doesn't have the two turn investment angel does. THe life loss won't be an issue unless your're playing a defensive game or against burn.

[Whit3 Ghost]

White Knight kills Piledriver on turn 2.

[B is for Big Job]

White Knight kills Piledriver on turn 2.
Also kills every other goblin in the deck, and it doesnt die to incinerator or siege bang flingage.

[Lego]

That looks like a pretty good build. Did you ever have problems with Ancient Tomb? Sometimes I've had an issue playing 4 of them, not getting enough colored mana, or with the life loss hurting too much. It is quite nice to have a turn 2 attacking Exalted Angel though.

On a side note, can someone teach me how to play Parallax Wave?

[Wynk]

actually, white knight does die to seige gang and incinerator. But as the board says, it is a strong card that can take out every goblin in combat. I guess its a good meta game choice.

[quodo]

@Lego_Army_Man : About the Tombs, it was sometime a pain to get 2 of them, but it rarely happens, or when you get the second, the first one has just taken a Wasteland. I sometime got mana screwd because of the lonely Island, but until i'll get the Ravnica U/W Shockland, I'll continue playing it.

The use of Wave really depend on the game you're facing. Against Gobbos, it removes their threats (undertand : Warchief, King, Piledriver, Kiki or Lackey), but it sometimes protect one of your Angels from being Incinerated. When they side in Anarchy, you just have to drop it to get an extra 5 turns ^^.
Against Control (Landstill and co), it protects your threats from their removal. It's a "must counter" for them, and even more if they play Manlands.
Against combo, it really depends. If you're facing Aluren, Reanimator or Life, you can use it to disrupt their combo. Against other decks such as Solidarity or Belcher, it will have almost no use (never hesitate to side it out).

Here is the list I should have played (you can compare to the one I had to play) :

4 Silver Knight
4 White Knight
4 Mother of Runes
4 Exalted Angel
4 Meddling Mage
4 Swords to Plowshare
3 Enlightened Tutor
3 Parallax Wave
3 Chrome Mox
2 Umezawa's Jitte
2 Sword of Fire and Ice
2 Tithe
1 Isamaru, Hound of Konda

4 Flooded Strand
4 Tundra
4 Ancient Tomb
1 Island
7 Plains

Sideboard :
3 Chalice of Void
3 In the Eye of Chaos
3 Armgueddon
2 Pithing Needle
2 Tormods Crypt
1 Aura of Silence
1 Seal of Cleansing

The Aura of Silence was there to get rid of ennemy's Chalice, which simply ruins the life of a deck with so many threats on the 2-mana slot. In the Eye of Chaos were here against solidarity, but I'm not sure they are needed, and maybe a 1 Rule of Law/1 Arcane Lab/1 Anything would be better.
Playing 2 Tormods is not really needed as well. If I look at the current meta, here is how I would change the Sideboard :

3 Chalice of Void
3 Armagueddon
2 Pithing Needle
1 Tormod's Crypt
1 Back to Basic
1 Worship
1 Rule of Law
1 Arcane Laboratory
1 Seal of Cleansing
1 Aura of Silence

Thoughts ?

[MasterBlaster]

I took my AngelStompy build to an FNM and was undefeated all day. I ended up splitting for first.

The highlights of the day for me (aside from winning) was beating a 4-color Threshold deck piloted by a very competant player, and beating burn in game 3 after he played Anarchy, Flashfires, Anarchy, Anarchy.

Has anybody else had success with this archetype recently since Threshold became a DTB?

Is there any new earth-shattering tech people have discovered for Angel Stompy? I've recently considered adding a couple Cursed Scrolls to my mainboard to help against Zoo and Weenie decks, and give myself another win condition versus slow control.

[Zilla]

Has anybody else had success with this archetype recently since Threshold became a DTB?
Yes. Success in the sense that it smashes Thresh and can be tuned to smash Goblins. Its weakness to combo and control remain its biggest problems, but in a metagame populated mostly with aggro, Goblins, and Thresh, it's an excellent metagame choice.

[Lukas Preuss]

I was just wondering what the current lists look like and why they have such a good matchup against Threshold.

I've been testing Angel Stompy with a red splash for Boros Swiftblade and some burn, but during my testing, the Threshold matchup was something like 50%-50%.

Maybe I'm missing something. What are the decks strength's against Threshold?

Thanks in advance. :)

[Eldariel]

How about a Wu (possibly Wur) Stompy with Trinket Mage, Pithing Needle (I think that's one card that never runs out of targets) and possibly Engineered Explosives? Just borrowing some Extended tech, courtesy of Tsuyoshi Fujita. Explosives allows for putting a big dent at Goblins' way, depending on if they've got some stupid Siege-Gang Commander out (wiping tokens for 0 could be good at that point), or not (1 for Lackeys, Vials and friends sounds pretty good too), Needles do a lot in lots of match-ups, especially against many combo decks, but also against Goblins (Gempalm Incinerator, or if you need to answer a Vial, or possibly Sharpshooter, or Siege-Gang Commander, or etc.). It'd also give us access to Sea Drake as an option, since turn 1 Sea Drake is also an incredible play (Mox, Tomb, Drake, return Tomb to hand, it fails to find another land, but that doesn't force a sacrifice).

[Zilla]

I was just wondering what the current lists look like and why they have such a good matchup against Threshold.
Actually, the list I was testing was also splashing red for Swiftblade and Lightning Helix. In roughly 12 games of testing, I think I cast a Helix maybe once, so I don't think it's particularly necessary.

It was my experience that if you exploit Gro's low threat count, you'll win rather handily. You've got 4x Swords, 3x Parallax Wave, 2-3x Jitte, and 2-3x SoFI acting as creature removal. All I did was make sure to hit every threat I could as soon as I could. I played aggressively every single game. In most instances, I was careful to play around Daze, but I would occasionally bait it with a threat I didn't care too much about.

Because they don't put a lot of pressure on you right away, it's safe to play a bit slowly. Lead with your least important threats first, working your way up to the most important ones. This forces them to make tough decisions about where and when to use countermagic. Parallax Wave is one of your most important cards in this matchup. Always be looking for an opportunity to sneak it through a counterwall.

Aside from that, just play aggressively. Play as many threats as you can every turn. Another of Gro's weaknesses is a complete lack of mass removal for non-Goblins, (excepting Pyroclasm, which isn't particularly effective against this deck anyway). Simply exploit this weakness by having more threats than they can handle. Slap equipment on them liberally and go to town.

[Lego]

The main reason I have a problem running this deck is combo. I haven't been seeing too many control decks around here, but I find it does okay against them anyway. Combo, however, is a huge problem. I basically only win if they fizzle. What can we do about that?

I haven't tested Rule of Law, because I thought it cost 3W, but now that I see that it doesn't, would you recommend that? I guess it shuts down everything, right? Solidarity, Nausea, Gamekeeper, and Iggy all can't go off with it in play, but does it buy you enough time while they are finding an answer?

[Zilla]

Like I said, combo has never been this deck's strong point. Frankly, if you're in a meta with a significant combo presence, I'd be inclined to suggest that you don't play it. You can load up your board with things like Defense Grid, Pithing Needle, Glowrider, Tormod's Crypt, Phyrexian Furnace, Rule of Law, True Believer, etc., but honestly I'm not sure it's worth the trouble.

Another option is to splash blue for Meddling Mage and perhaps black for Duress. Both ideas have been tried before, some with relative success. Me, I prefer the consistency of the mono-white version, but I don't tend to play it if I'm seeing a lot of combo in my area.

[Bun Bun, Lord of Darkness]

Personally, I play in a metagame (if it can so be called) of extreme scrubitude. The only "real" decks at the tournament that I most recently attended were 1 Pikula Homebrew, 1 RW Slide, and 1 Aluren (w/ little enchantment/artifact removal as I remember, so Rule of Law beats them). I know about the deck's problems vs. control and combo, but I was wondering how the deck fares against Homebrew.

[Zilla]

Honestly? I haven't tested Deadguy. Testing against Sui Black was pretty solid though, particularly if you run White Knight in the Priest/Mother of Runes slot. The main place that Deadguy could prove troublesome is the extreme mana disruption, particularly with the added threat of Vindicate. If you can keep your manabase solid, the rest is easy. Your threats smash theirs, and you have far more removal than they do. I'll have to do some more testing to know for certain.

A few suggestions I'd have if you're concerned about Deadguy:

1. Run more land. You have some wiggle room with the Priest/Mom/MD Disenchant slots. I'd suggest adding 1 or 2 more Plains to the list in the opening post.

2. Consider running basic Plains in place of Tithe. A first turn Duress grabbing a Tithe can genuinely screw up your day.

3. Consider Suntail Hawk in the Lions slot. Having blockers for Hyppie can be key, particularly when they've got equipment attached.

4. If all else fails, consider Sacred Ground in the SB, as it's golden against land destruction strategies. It may not be necessary after the first two suggestions though.

Like I said, I'll do some testing and let you know, but I'm pretty confident you can tune a build to beat Deadguy.

[Zilla]

Update:

I gave the Deadguy matchup soime preliminary testing today. I played 10 games against CorruptedAngel, pre-SB. The results were 2-8, Angel Stompy's favor, and one of those losses was a mull to 5, keeping a one land hand.

First, the list I was running, for reference:

14 Plains
3 Ancient Tomb
3 Chrome Mox
2 Tithe

3 Isamaru, Hound of Konda
4 Savannah Lions
4 Icatian Javelineers
4 Silver Knight
4 White Knight
4 Exalted Angel

4 Swords to Plowshares
3 Parallax Wave

3 Mask of Memory
2 Umezawa's Jitte
2 Sword of Fire and Ice


A few comments/observations:

1. As you might notice, a lot of the more passive cards have been removed for more aggressive ones. Mother of Runes came out for Icatian Javelineers, which is excellent additional removal for Confidant, and occasionally for Shade. In pairs, they can remove every creature in Deadguy's arsenal. 2 MD Disenchant came out for 2 more Isamaru. Deadguy has real problems dealing with lots of creatures, so threat density is key.

2. Removed 2 Tithe for 2 basic Plains. It seemed to work quite well. The manabase can probably use a bit more optimization, but it's pretty close.

3. Soltari Priest was dropped for White Knight. Knight isn't only good against Deadguy, although it's exceedingly strong there, obviously. The first strike is also invaliable against Goblins, and even other aggro when equipped. Priest's evasion can often be a liability when you want chump blockers. Also, Darkblast kills Priest, where Knight is perfectly safe.

4. Deadguy's biggest threat against you (aside from concentrated land destruction, of course), is Cursed Scroll. Luckily, they only have 2 of them, and often times they're too slow to matter. Nevertheless, it's important to get a creature equipped with SoFI or Jitte asap to defend against Scroll. Post board, I think the only thing I'd bother bringing in is 3 Disenchant just to answer Scroll and Pithing Needle, which they're sure to bring in against your equipment, P. Wave, and Javelineers.

5. Really what makes this matchup favorable is the fact that your threats are better than theirs, there are more of them, and they don't run very much removal at all. 4 StP from the board may improve the matchup for them a bit, but I'm fairly certain it won't be enough. I'll do at least 10 games post board later and come back with more info.

6. Once you've equipped any threat with SofI or Jitte, or resolved an Angel, the game is essentially over. Their removal is insufficient to deal with such a threat, and you can ride them to victory. Further, it's often not unsafe to play your Angels morphed on turn 2 or 3, since they basically have no MD removal to cope with such a tactic in the early game.


That's the basic jist of things. You are unquestionably the aggro deck in this matchup, and if you play like it, and are careful about how you mull (think long and hard before keeping 1 or 2 land hands), you should do very well. I'll get more results later for the post-board matchup.

EDIT:

Update. Tested 10 games against Deadguy post-SB. The results were again 2-8, Angel Stompy's favor, although some of the games were much closer than in the pre-board testing. A few things:

1. He brought in 2x Darkblast and 4x StP. The added removal definitely helped him. The Darkblasts were solid against Lions and Javelineers specifically.

2. I brought in 3x Pithing Needle for 1x Mask, 1x Angel, 1x Parallax Wave, mainly due to their high cc's. Needle named Cursed Scroll pretty much every time, even in multiples. Scroll is far and away the deck's biggest strength against you, because it hits nearly every creature in your deck, including White Knights and morphed Angels. Shut it down and you're golden.

3. The games he won were due to spectacular land destruction against hands without more than 3 sources. The deck can withstand a couple of Sinkhole effects in most cases, but 3 or more in the first few turns can mean game in a lot of circumstances. That said, it happens infrequently enough that it's probably not worth wasting SB slots for.


That's about all there is to say on the matter. I would feel confident taking this build to a tournament where I expected to see a lot of Deadguy, Thresh, and/or Goblins.

[TsumiBand]

A few questions, since ww.dec and variants have always been my favorite:
56 card decklist. I assume Chrome Mox is the missing element?
Does this build mean you don't advocate the use of a splash color? I recognize the resilience in the manabase to Wasteland, but so far I've been quite pleased in sporting Boros tech. Especially when running 8 burn spells in the main, the 'combo' that is Mask + burn spells is great.
Which leads to another question. Is Mask of Memory really that good now that the only creature with evasion is Exalted Angel?

[Bane of the Living]

Zilla, what was the rest of your sb?

Why no way to handle combo or control maindeck?
Are you confident enough against nausea, bomber man, solidarity, flamevault? ect.

I seem to get my ass kicked only by versions packing aether vial. It's a pain in the ass to handle combat speed knights.

[Zilla]

56 card decklist. I assume Chrome Mox is the missing element?
Actually, it was a 57 card decklist, and your assumption was correct; the missing element was 3 Chrome Moxen. List updated. Thanks for catching the oversight.


Does this build mean you don't advocate the use of a splash color? I recognize the resilience in the manabase to Wasteland, but so far I've been quite pleased in sporting Boros tech. Especially when running 8 burn spells in the main, the 'combo' that is Mask + burn spells is great.
What it means is that I was testing a build designed specifically to do well against Deadguy, which logically means no splash. I've tested the red splash for Swiftblade, and I agree he's a total house when equipped. In a build splashing red, I'd probably go back up to 4 Tithes (since they act as fetchlands), replace the Javelineers with Moms (to protect Swiftblade in addition to Angel) and get 4 Plateaus and 2-3 fetches in there. I might or might not drop Lions or Waves for Bolts.

So to answer your question, no, I don't necessarily endorse only the mono-white build, but the purpose of this excercise was to determine if the deck could consistently beat Deadguy, so staying mono-white and running White Knight over Boros seemed the logical thing to do.


Which leads to another question. Is Mask of Memory really that good now that the only creature with evasion is Exalted Angel?
I always go back and forth on which equipment should be a 3-of. At times it's 3 Jitte or even 3 SoFI. The inclusion of the third Mask in this build was conscious; with the addition of Javelineer over Mom and 2 more Isamarus, you now have 11 1cc attackers for turn 2, as opposed to the earlier build's 5. (I didn't include Mom in this count because I typically wanted to keep it untapped for defensive purposes.) Mask is at its very best when it's being cast and equipped to an attacker as early as turn 2, and this build is far more inclined to achieve that. Further, Mask is technically the "cheapest" of the equipment at 3 to cast and equip, where Jitte and Sword cost 4 and 5 respectively. As such, you tend to want to see Mask earlier in the game, so it makes sense to run more of them. Lastly, if you do connect with it, it helps you draw into mana so you don't miss land drops and helps you stay on top of your opponent with constant threats.

Again, though, this build was tweaked a bit to beat Deadguy. In a meta with a much higher Goblin count, I'd probably run the 3rd Jitte over the 3rd Mask, because Jitte just flat-out wins games in that matchup.



Zilla, what was the rest of your sb?
It was just sort of a generic one, mainly because I threw this list together specifically to test this matchup. The SB was:

3 Tormod's Crypt
3 Pithing Needle
3 Disenchant
3 Tivadar's Crusade
3 Armageddon

The only thing I brought in for Deadguy was Needle, because it answered Scroll, which was my main concern. The Crypts are there for Dredge Tog and Gro, the Crusades are there for obvious reasons, the Geddons are anti-control, and Disenchant is just a good idea.

As for the combo matchup, I'm not gonna lie... I gave it no consideration when making this build. Very simply put, I expect to either get very very lucky or to flat-out lose against combo. That's seriously my gameplan. If I really wanted to tune the deck to beat combo I could, but then every other mathcup suffers. To be blunt, if you're in a metagame with a light combo presence, I might add 3-4 Rule of Law to the SB and hope it was enough. I wouldn't go further than that. If there's a very high contingent of combo in your meta, I strongly recommend playing a different deck. This thing was designed to beat aggro and aggro-control, which it does. It can go about 50-50 with most control (yes, this is a giant generalization), but it really really hates combo. You can't beat everything.


I seem to get my ass kicked only by versions packing aether vial. It's a pain in the ass to handle combat speed knights.
I've never seen a version with Vials outside of my own testing, and I was never a huge fan of them there. The deck can't really afford to dilute its threatbase for such a thing, in my opinion. As for what to do against it, my suggestion would be to bring in Pithing Needle, and remove 3 of one of your pieces of equipment. I'd name Vial with my first Needle and whatever you removed with consecutive Needles.

[Bane of the Living]

This is the current build played by the 2 better AS players in my store.
Give or take a few cards.


6 Plains
1 Island
3 Tundra
4 Flooded Strand
3 Ancient Tomb
4 Aether Vial

3 Weathered Wayfinder
3 Savannah Lions
4 Meddling Mage
3 Soltari Priest
4 Silver Knight
3 White Knight
4 Exalted Angel

4 Swords to Plowshares
3 Parallax Wave

3 Mask of Memory
3 Umezawa's Jitte
2 Sword of Fire and Ice

The Vial does shine with all the equips for the obvious + of being able to vial out a dude and equiping the same turn for maximum ass whupping. Mage certainly buts a bit more fight in the combo game, at least enough to make it worth playing out. Vial helps with any U probs mage might give you. Did I mention vial makes your anti counter measures +.

A question tho, why would you play rule of law over orims chant? It seems most combo decks learnt how to include anti rule of law/mage plans while going off, but an orims chant in response to a tapped out solidarity player or tendrils in response to wish is quite good. Not to mention you can bring it in against control as a way to make-sure-geddon.

[Krieger]

A question tho, why would you play rule of law over orims chant?

Rule of law is a permanent and is harder to deal with from Solidaritys stand point. Solidarity can respond to the Orim’s chant by continuing to go off. If you resolve an early Rule of Law it they have to find a bounce spell while still only playing one spell per turn.

[tivadar]

The trick is to play orim's at the right time. If you do it when they've tapped out for the first or second time, then they really can't do much about it. Orim's is actually pretty effective against solidarity if you know when to play it...

In response to below..., I figured we were assuming the solidarity player would go off as soon as he hit the landcount he needed for it. If he has to cast his untap effect before all his mana is spent, then he won't be untapping all his lands for full mana. While it's possible he could still go off, and cast another untap effect afterwards, it does put a kink in his plan. In addition, you can go off after high tide, making him cast another tide presumably before untapping.

Rule of law is a better defense against solidarity, but they can still go off around it as well by simply unsummoning it. It also requires a much larger mana commitment. It's not so much a question of the solidarity player being retarded, it's one of if he's backed into a corner or not, something AS should be good at doing to him.

[Lukas Preuss]

If the Solidarity player isn't retarded, he will not spend his entire mana before playing the untap effect. Thus, he will be able to respond to your Chant and go off around it...

[jrp]

As Lukas said, Orim's Chant is not very effective against Solidarity. AS doesn't (usually) have enough of a clock to force a Solidarity player to try to go off before turn 4 or 5. AS is a proactive deck, why would you want to have to leave your mana open to potentially cast a chant? Dropping a clock, plus an enchantment (something that isn't super easy for Solidarity to deal with) seems much better than sitting back on some highly reactive instants hoping you play the chant at the right time. You could never really know when to play the chant.....the Solidarity player might have 2 or 3 untap effects, and really needs the Meditate or Wish to go through.... or it could be the other way around. You as the AS player have no way of knowing. Just my $.02.

Also, has anybody playtested Glowrider in the AS sideboard? I know IBA was running it in his Wombat board against Solidarity for awhile.

[Zilla]

@bane:

That looks like a pretty solid list... but there's a seperate thread for U/W Angel Stompy here (http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1125). It should be discussed there.

@Orim's Chant:

jrp's right on the money. AS is highly proactive; reactive answers kinda suck ass for you. Also, Chant buys you a single turn in most cases; AS doesn't usually have enough pressure to capitalize on that single turn.

@Glowrider:

I've tested it a lot, and I like it. He's easily castable turn 2 with a Tomb or a Mox, and you tend to side out most of your non-creature cards in the Solidarity matchup anyway. The main problem with him, though, is that if the Solidarity player is running Evacuation in the board, he can just remove it and go off like normal. This is particularly bad in the builds splashing blue for Meddling Mage, because Evacuation hits both. In fact, in the W/U builds I've played, I run 4 Mages, 2-3 Rule of Law, and 2-3 Arcane Laboratory in the board. The 2/2 or 3/3 split of enchantment hate makes you less succeptible to Echoing Truth.

[tivadar]

Just a question, has Devoted Caretaker been tested in place of Mother in this deck? Someone brought it up on the UW thread, and I've just started some playtesting. Against goblins, it's definetly the better choice as it can stop a first turn lackey, and block 1/1's without dying. While mom can block lackey, fanatic very frequently takes her out before she gets a chance to do so (or incinerator), they can't do this with devoted caretaker. Also, caretaker is good for protecting your lands in the homebrew matchup.

[calosso]

What about that new card from guildpact called order of the stars?
He could pe played over the Mother of runes spot.

Card type: Creature

Creature type: Human Cleric

Power/Toughness:0/1

Casting cost:

Card text: Defender (This creature can’t attack.)
As Order of the Stars comes into play, choose a color.
Order of the Stars has protection from the chosen color.

[Ewokslayer]

What about that card is better than mother of runes exactly?
In fact, What about that card isn't complete crap?
You do know Mother of Runes gives other creatures protection correct?
Mother of Runes protects 2/2 morph creatures for a critical turn, allows a equipment creature to breakthrough a creature wall to draw some cards, or just you know swings for actual damage instead of sitting there with a finger up its butt.
Crap limited creatures don't make for good legacy cards.

[Zilla]

@Devoted Caretaker:

The main issue is that the deck can rarely afford the mana investment. Furthermore, it won't make your creatures unblockable, which is what I use Mom for the vast majority of the time anyhow.

@Order of the Stars:

What Ewok said. It doesn't protect your other threats and it can't be equipped and attack if it needs to. It'd be a wholly defensive card in an almost wholly aggressive deck.

[tivadar]

@godzilla: devoted caretaker

Ran some more testing and you're right. The fact is that devoted is better than Mom against goblin because of the 2 toughness. Against homebrew it might have a bit of an edge. However, against UGW Gro, Mom really does shine through. I did a search for thresh/gro/threshold on this thread and didn't see a whole lot of talk about it. A couple claims that this deck crushed it but that's about it. It's currently one of my hardest matchups pre-board (my board is in flux almost all the time, so I don't bother testing a lot with it...).

The deck has a decent counter base, and its creatures are just plain better than yours after they make threshold. Sure you can board for crypt, but I'm not even sure that's the best answer given how quickly the deck fills up their graveyard again and the fact that crypt is inherently card disadvantage with no obvious benefit. One thing I've noticed is that the deck's main weakness is its mana base. Armageddon can work, but by the time you're able to play it, they'll probably be able to get a bear on the table and that'll pretty much give them threshold. I'm wondering if boarding wastelands isn't the way to go. You could easily block off their early white or green mana to kill their development considering the large number of fetches the deck runs. Any thoughts?

[Zilla]

I'm pretty sure I've already posted my thoughts, but maybe that was in the Thresh thread... I'll recap a few key points:

1. Play as aggressively as possible. You shouldn't be trying to control the board, aside from clearing their threats out of your attackers' way.

2. You have more threats than they do. A LOT more threats. They don't have mass removal, so it's safe to commit to the board heavily.

3. The fact that their creatures are bigger than yours become wholly irrellevant the moment you equip one of them. It's also irrellevant when you have a Mother of Runes protecting them when they block or attack.

4. You have more removal than they have threats. You've got 3 Parallax Wave, 4 StP, 3 Jitte, and 2 SoFI. They have 10 threats total. Simply remove every single threat you see every chance you get.

5. Parallax Wave is key in this matchup. If you're not running it, it will be much harder for you.

6. If you're playing against UGw, feel free to play a morphed Angel at your earliest opportunity. If they don't have StP or a counter, you essentially win. I know this sounds overly simple, and obviously there are exceptions, but by and large, an unanswered Angel attacking by turn 2 or 3 means you win. This isn't a safe tactic against UGr because of their burn contingent, however.

7. That's mostly it. You have more threats and more removal than they do. Play aggressively and overwhelm them. It's been working pretty consistently for me.

[AnwarA101]

I'm curious what is the manabase people are running for Angel Stompy? I've run something like 13 Plains, 3 Chrome Mox, and 3 Tithe and 4 Ancient Tomb. I think running at least 16 white sources is important because you almost always want double white on turn 2. I'm not really sure about Tithe, but I know that sometimes its nice to imprint it on Chrome Mox, but otherwise its just worse than a Plains. I feel that the manabase is fairly clunky in that you don't always transition to the right amount of lands like having a first turn face down Angel, but not having the mana to flip her up on turn 2 is just one example.

I agree with you Zilla that is what the Angel Stompy strategy has to be, but many of your threats are either very expensive like Angel and Wave or can be Pithing Needled such as Jitte or Sword of Fire and Ice. Gro's card selection always seems to help it find the answer it needs at that given moment while still dropping a threat and forcing you to answer it. This isn't always the case, but it occurs often enough that Angel Stompy's game against Gro only seems slightly favorable. In our testing last week it was about 60/40 in favor of Angel Stompy.

[MasterBlaster]

@Anwar

My manabase is:
16 Snow-Covered Plains
4 Ancient Tomb
3 Chrome Mox

The benefits and troubles of Tithe were discussed around page 40-41 of this thread.

[Zilla]

This isn't always the case, but it occurs often enough that Angel Stompy's game against Gro only seems slightly favorable. In our testing last week it was about 60/40 in favor of Angel Stompy.
Duly noted, and I think I agree. My experience hasn't been that Angel Stompy has an overwhelmingly positive matchup with Thresh - just that it is, in fact, positive.

Further, I'd be lying if I said my testing was fully complete. I've tested against both splashes, but only 3-5 games apiece, and without SB. Clearly that's not going to provide all the data you really need for a conclusive answer, but it's enough to tell that you have an advantage.

[tivadar]

@Gro: Ok, seems fair enough and consistent with what I'm seeing. Someone describing us as "crushing" them was probably a bit off. I'd say 60-40 or so sounds about right (even with my Wu build). It's definetly one of the matches, given three games, that can swing either way, and they're also very hard to board against. All the good cards I'd like to board are black (leyline, planar void), and crypt is only a one time deal, and is also a good pithing target. Think I might just stick with geddon against them.

[thenick2000]

I would guess that the matchup analysis does vary depending on which version of Grow you are playing against. I believe the Red splash of Grow would be harder to beat because they have quite a bit of burn (8-12) spells. The more control version of Grow I believe Angel Stompy has a better matchup against. I do agree Angel Stompy has an advantage in this matchup, but I don't believe the odds are that high. I would say game 1 55/45 and possiblity better in games 2 and 3 depending on the version of Grow that your facing. I would also like to factor in play skill someway, but thats something that a number can't measure.

[tivadar]

Funny, I would say the exact opposite. I think we have a much better matchup against the UGR than we do against the UGW because we have more creautres that are immune to R than we do to W. This means that lightning bolt for example can't take out our silver knights like sword can. Also, UGW has Mystic Enforcer, which is just a force to be reckoned with on the table. Of course, I play Wu, which can run Bleb as well, so bit different of story...

[Zilla]

Tivadar's right... UGr is a lot better than UGw, mainly because of all the Pro:Red creatures, and also because UGr doesn't get Worship from the sideboard.

[thenick2000]

After seeing the red splash of Threshold in action today at a Legacy tournament in Geneseo for a Mox Emerald, I've definetely saw how bad a matchup it is for red grow against Angel Stompy. I first thought maybe it would be better, but with all the pro red creatures, it clearly is not. Threshold with the white splash does have a better matchup, but I still believe it to be somewhat difficult for Grow.

I guess its easier when you see this matchup 4 times in a big tournament before you realize how bad it is.

[lolosoon]

Just one (silly ?!) thing :

Play MD True Believer and Samurai of the Pale Curtain. It wreck Pox !!(especially when Nether Spirit is one of their kill conditions)

Well, you'll ask : Who plays pox ?!

ME !

Ok, what good player plays pox ?!

Err... Ok, forgot 'bout that T__T


;)

[Lukas Preuss]

Actually, I tried True Believer in the Sideboard, because together with Mother of Runes, he is quite good against combo decks like Solidarity, since most builds don't run Evacuation in the board anymore.

It's not a win, but it makes the matchup more favourable. I'm not sure, if it's worth the effort though...

[tivadar]

Actually, solidarity is the last thing I'd put in a True Believer for. However, against belcher (which still rears its head on occasions), and now against homebrew, it can be good. It shuts down 90% of homebrew's card advantage engine (making you discard cards), and also is at least a bit harder to kill with darkblast. Problem is, this deck already has a ridiculously good matchup against homebrew...

[Zilla]

Actually, Lukas is right... True Believer is solid against Solidarity if they're not running Evacuation in the board. Backed by Mother of Runes, it's essentially a hard lock, and even without, it's an excellent speedbump.

[tivadar]

Does the deck really not board evacuation anymore? Just seems like a bad idea. Just know that with evacuation, in my testing, it didn't help that much because they can go off around it, and then just hit it right before the brain freeze. Plus, with mom, why can't they just go off and fetch 2 spot removals? Just that my experience against the deck is once they get to a certain point going off, they can do just about anything they'd like. It's the same reason you never name Brainfreeze with Meddling against the deck, it just doesn't do a whole lot...

[Zilla]

People seem to be under this mistaken impression that Solidarity has infinite mana when it's going off. Double Wish/Chain of Vapor is 8 mana on its own. If nothing else, the extra cost will buy you a couple extra turns to steal the game. It gets exponentially harder for them to win if you have more than 1 Believer or Mom, as well. This is all based on the notion that Solidarity isn't running Evacuation in the board anymore. I wouldn't know, because as far as I know, no one but Deep6er actually plays it anymore.

[Lego]

I stopped playing it and picked up Spring Tide, which should be able to deal with the True Believers a bit better. I run Echoing Truth in the side, and Snap main. Snap the Mother of Runes, Echoing Truth your True Believers, something like that.

Still, it can be a good enough speed bump to take the game. You usually only need one or two more turns to win. But maindeck?

[Bane of the Living]

True Believer beat me when I was playing a guy with Flame Vault. He was playing some crazy version with Lightining Greaves!

[Zilla]

I stopped playing it and picked up Spring Tide, which should be able to deal with the True Believers a bit better. I run Echoing Truth in the side, and Snap main. Snap the Mother of Runes, Echoing Truth your True Believers, something like that.

Still, it can be a good enough speed bump to take the game. You usually only need one or two more turns to win. But maindeck?
True, Spring Tide will have a better time of it if you're running Believer. Then again, Angel Stompy has tons of creature removal. Jitte, StP, or Parallax Wave means you can remove creature in response to Snap, keeping them from untapping with it. It's a fair trade, really.

Maindeck? Unless you're in an extremely combo or Deadguy heavy meta? No way. And if you're in a combo heavy met, you should probably be playing a different deck.


EDIT: Amusingly enough, Mono-White Angel Stompy made Top at GP: Richmond's Duel for Duels today. The list is one card off from the list in the opening post of this thread; it runs 1 basic Plains over the 4th Tithe. The SB is a couple cards different as well, but overall it's near identical. Gearhart won the whole thing with Solidarity. Good times.

[Lukas Preuss]

Just that my experience against the deck is once they get to a certain point going off, they can do just about anything they'd like.

Well, if you give your True Believer Protection from Blue during your upkeep, the Solidarity player can't really go off around it (at least he will have extreme difficulties). After he lets your Protection resolve, he can't bounce the Believer anymore without Evacuation.
So, he would have to go off during your upkeep, without Resets. It's possible (and easier with maindeck Twincasts), but it's a pain in the ass for them... :)