[Deck] Angel Stompy [Archive] - Page 4

Krieger

02-11-2006, 01:11 PM

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.

@ Godzilla- I agree that that Solidarity does not have infinite mana but when you do little to disrupt them it only prevents them from playing one spell which is Brainfreeze, granted it is the win condition .You can in the mean time start to combo off and easily find a Cunning Wish because unless you have drawn another sideboard cards you are not disrupting them. For that reason Rule of Law and Armageddon are better against Solidarity because they dispupt or limit the spells they play so they are less likely to combo off.Where as if you play True Believer they play all the draw and dig to get the Cunning wish to answer True Believer .

As for Deep6er is not the only person that still plays Solidarity in fact I placed 16th at the Duel for Duals geting knocked out of contention of top 8 by AnwarA101 playing Sucide Black . Evacuation is still in my curent sideboard as I believe it should be in the current metagame.

Zilla

02-11-2006, 06:07 PM

@ Krieger:

I'm not suggesting that True Believer is superior to Rule of Law in the Solidarity matchup, just that it is a suitable option which happens to be less narrow than Rule of Law, in that it can also be used as a speedbump against other decks which target the player, like Belcher and Deadguy. If you're using this slot specifically for Solidarity hate, Rule of Law or Glowrider are almost certainly better.

Eldariel

02-11-2006, 08:09 PM

They aren't all that narrow though, Iggy Pop, Nausea, Belcher and all storm-combo (I realize belcher isn't storm combo, but it'll have awful time going off with playing its mana accelerants one at a time, especially since this makes all ritual-like cards dead) more or less fold to Rule of Law, and Glowrider can even be a good sideboard card against many flavours of control, delaying their board sweepers by a turn. Actually, these cards appear worse against Solidarity than against the other decks, as solidarity nowadays packs 8 counters + Wishboard to stop them with, while the combo protection in Iggy Pop, Nausea or Belcher is far more feeble.

Chalice of the Void is of course an interesting option as the deck packs Moxes and Tombs to drop it for 1 turn 1, and against Belcher, it can be dropped for 0 always. It doesn't have as limited usefulness, but it probably isn't worth bringing in in non-combo matches, as Stompy has relevant 1-mana cards too. The possible exception to this rule is Threshold.

MasterBlaster

02-12-2006, 01:28 PM

I was wondering if anybody has tried Cursed Scroll before in this deck.

I've been playing 2 of them mainboard in the Mask of Memory slot. I haven't done an incredible amount of testing yet, but so far it looks really positive. It has shown to be especially helpful in the mirror match where Mother of Runes could be a problem. It would also help against Threshold as it allows a Silver Knight to take down a Werebear, as well as being able to kill a Meddling Mage.

Sad Alien

02-12-2006, 10:31 PM

I thought of that too until I remembered that I was running Sword of Fire and Ice. After testing it for awhile I realized that the deck just can't empty its hand fast enough to make Scroll useful. If you can live with the untechiness of running Scroll and SoFI in the same deck then sure, knock yourself out. I just didn't find it very good in the deck.

Bongo

02-16-2006, 06:39 PM

I'm testing the following version right now:

Mana 23:
16 Plains
4 Ancient Tomb
3 Chrome Mox

Creatures 21:
4 Mother of Runes
2 Savannah Lions
3 Isamaru, Hound of Konda
4 Silver Knight
4 Soltari Priest
4 Exalted Angel

Spells 10:
4 Swords to Plowshares
4 Parallax Wave
2 Seal of Cleansing

Equipment 6:
2 Mask of Memory
2 Umezawa's Jitte
2 Sword of Fire and Ice

Sideboard 15:
2 Seal of Cleansing
4 Pithing Needle
4 Armageddon
5 OPEN SLOTS

Some explanations:

- The version without Tithe mulligans less than the version with it, hence no Tithe. It was mostly used as Mox fodder anyway. Duress also doesn't wreck you anymore.

- Isamaru is one of the best 1 drops available to white, so I run 3.
I'm even thinking about adding the fourth one, because the first one goes to the graveyard most of the times, and an additional one to follow up is never bad. In cases where an Isamaru on the board isn't killed, you're ahead most of the time anyway. Additional Isamaru's can also be discarded to Mask of Memory.
Savannah Lions were fillers.

- Four copies of Parallax Wave because it's insane tempo advantage, protection and removal. Vastly underrated.

- Only 6 equipments because the seventh lead to mulligans and clogged up hands when the creatures got killed. The equip ratio of 7:2 seems ideal.

-----------------------------------------------------

My remaining concern is the sideboard.

Assuming there is no Landstill, no Solidarity, no Stax and no Flamevault, how would you fill the last 5 slots?

Zilla

02-16-2006, 09:44 PM

- The version without Tithe mulligans less than the version with it, hence no Tithe. It was mostly used as Mox fodder anyway.
And now you don't have them, which means your Moxen are less reliable. This is a real tossup. I've become increasingly concerned about the deck's mana stability lately myself, and I definitely think it needs tweaking, but I'm not sure removing Tithe entirely is the way to go. I've actually been more inclined to go -1 Tithe, -1 Chrome Mox, +2 Plains. Testing has shown that the consistency is pretty good that way. I'd like to hear more what you think about this.

- Isamaru is one of the best 1 drops available to white, so I run 3.
I'm even thinking about adding the fourth one, because the first one goes to the graveyard most of the times, and an additional one to follow up is never bad. In cases where an Isamaru on the board isn't killed, you're ahead most of the time anyway. Additional Isamaru's can also be discarded to Mask of Memory.
Savannah Lions were fillers.

We're on the same page here. I've upped to 4 Isamaru myself. Lions were fillers, and Isamaru does the job better. Extras can be pitched to Mask or Mox. Besides, their survivability is so low that you usually only have to wait a turn or two before the first gets killed off anyhow.

- Four copies of Parallax Wave because it's insane tempo advantage, protection and removal. Vastly underrated.
Hallefuckinglujah. The original build ran 4, and I always argued against dropping to 3. I did so because they're terrible against combo, but in aggro matchups they're the best card in the deck.

- Only 6 equipments because the seventh lead to mulligans and clogged up hands when the creatures got killed. The equip ratio of 7:2 seems ideal.
Again we're on the same page. I've also dropped to 6 equip. Any more than that simply becomes too redundant.

Assuming there is no Landstill, no Solidarity, no Stax and no Flamevault, how would you fill the last 5 slots?
My board has been focusing on the deck's bad matchups. That means combo, primarily, but also cycling based control. So, first inclusion right off the bat:

3-4 Armageddon: Anti-High Tide, and a total house against Rifter. If you're sure you're not going to come up against High Tide, I'd be tempted to try Winter Orb in this slot, because it dodges Sacred Ground.

3-4 Pithing Needle: This isn't totally necessary, depending on your metagame. The main reason I tend to run it is because it's good against unexpected problems. It shuts down Tog, Flame-Vault, Survival, Salvager Game's combo, and a whole mess of other things. Unless you're going for a highly specialized sideboard, I'd run them.

2-4 Disenchant/Seal of Cleansing: I've actually switched back to Disenchant. The only reason I ran Seal in the first place was because it could answer a Standstill without triggering it. With Landstill almost entirely out of the picture, I prefer Disenchant because of the instant speed and the surprise factor. I say 2-4 because I keep going back and forth between 2 and 0 in the maindeck. It depends on the metagame, of course, and Disenchant is good for randomness, but sometimes I just want more beatstick in this slot. Another option here is Tempest of Light, because it removes all enchantments, and a lot of the things you want to be removing with these aren't going to be artifacts. I'd rather have Tempest against UGw's Worships, for example. I'd also rather have them in the Rifter/Wombat/Slide matchup. Most problem artifacts can be dealt with by Needle, so Tempest is worth considering here.

0-4 Rule of Law/Glowrider: Depends on whether or not you see combo. If you do, you're going to want this. Rule of Law is more assymetrical against Storm combo, but Glowrider is another threat and is useful against a wider array of combo, so it's meta dependent.

2-4 Tormod's Crypt/Phyrexian Furnace: Good against Thresh, and probably worth running for that reason alone. I prefer Crypt to Furnace simply because the deck's mana curve is very tight, and I can rarely afford the extra investment. Occasionally I'll run 2 Crypt and 1-2 Furnace as a means of dodging Pithing Needle, however. Crypt is also solid against Tog, Life from the Loam, Salvager Game, and all sorts of other things.

0-3 Worship: OMG, tech! This is highly meta dependent, and I wouldn't advocate running them in most metas, but it's an option simply because a lot of decks simply don't have an answer to this at all. Occasionally I'll bring it in against UGw Thresh, of all things. There's nothing more entertaining than having them drop Worship on turn 4, followed by a Worship of your own on the following turn. They've invariably drawn more cards than you have, and a lot of builds aren't running Naturalize, so you can just deck them. That's a bad example, though, really. It's just an option to consider. Like I said, I wouldn't run them in most metas.

So that's about it. The major questions in my mind are as follows:

1. What to do about the manabase? Like I said, I agree it needs tweaking. I'm just hesitant to remove Tithe entirely. Mox seems dead more often than Tithe, really. What combination of Mox and Tithe should there be? Should one more mana source be added? I occasionally consider dropping another card for one more Plains, because the deck is very mana hungry. It's a tough call.

2. 6 or 7 equipment? And in what combination? Right now I'm thinking 6 is probably the best way to go. Sometimes I drop Mask entirely and run 3 each of Sword and Jitte. It depends a lot on whether I expect to see a lot of blockers. Right now I'm inclined to agree that the 2/2/2 split is the way to go.

3. Maindeck Disenchant? Probably a metagame call, but tough to say.

4. 3 or 4 Parallax Wave? Again, probably a metagame call. Wave is utterly savage against mass removal of all kinds, including Anarchy. It's also excellent mass removal on its own.

5. The Isamaru/Lions slot is in contention. I think 3 Isamaru is a given, and the 4th is extremely likely as well. But what about those remaining 3-4 slots (assuming you don't run Disenchant main)? Lions? An evasive 1cc flier? Icatian Javelineers? Tough call. 3-4 Isamaru/2 Lions/2 Disenchant is probably about right, because it gives you the most aggressive options for combo, which is your greatest concern.

Anyway, I can tell you've done a lot of testing with the deck, Bongo, because all of your changes are in places I myself have been considering. I'm interested in your input here, because I'm having trouble coming to any definite conclusions myself.

Eldariel

02-16-2006, 10:51 PM

Would Abolish warrant any consideration in the present meta as a Disenchant-replacement? I mean, it's very nice to be able to blast a Time Vault while tapped out, or to fake tap-out and blast that opposing Jitte. All in all, free spells just feel pretty good and with Tithes and Swords, it almost seems like you might have an extra Plains or two in hand every now and then.

Zilla

02-17-2006, 12:09 AM

The very original (pre-ban) build of Angel Stompy ran Abolish as a 3-of in the board, in addition to Disenchants. Of course, it was facing fully powered Welder MUD, which was the main reasoning behind its inclusion. At the time, the deck had a more consistent draw engine (Skullclamp), so it could find excess Plains to pitch more easily. In the modern meta, I simply think they're unnecessary. There's not any particularly compelling reason why you need to cast free Disenchants. It's necessary when Welder MUD is destroying all your lands and forcing you to tap down every turn, but in this environment? Outside of the Stax matchup it's particularly better than Disenchant at much of anything.

Bongo

02-17-2006, 07:36 AM

I'm glad to hear you arrived at similar conclusions.

1. What to do about the manabase? Like I said, I agree it needs tweaking. I'm just hesitant to remove Tithe entirely. Mox seems dead more often than Tithe, really. What combination of Mox and Tithe should there be? Should one more mana source be added? I occasionally consider dropping another card for one more Plains, because the deck is very mana hungry. It's a tough call.

This is the most difficult problem. Since the deck is voraciously mana-hungry, it needs a perfect manabase, but it is very hard to figure out the right configuration. Right now, I'm inclined to go with:

16 Plains
4 Ancient Tomb
2 Tithe
2 Chrome Mox

24 is a bit on the high-side, but I absolutely hate getting mana-screwed in the early game. Superfluous mana in the lategame can be discarded to Mask anyway.

2. 6 or 7 equipment? And in what combination? Right now I'm thinking 6 is probably the best way to go. Sometimes I drop Mask entirely and run 3 each of Sword and Jitte. It depends a lot on whether I expect to see a lot of blockers. Right now I'm inclined to agree that the 2/2/2 split is the way to go.

The 2/2/2 split is indeed the way to go. As said before, 7 is too many. I also wouldn't drop Mask, the card-drawing and filtering is invaluable. The fact that it is the cheapest of the three to play and equip is crucial, that single mana makes quite a difference in a deck as manahungry as this one.
If you drop Mask and go 3/3, you also have one less card-drawer.

3. Maindeck Disenchant? Probably a metagame call, but tough to say.

I run 2 copies maindeck and they have been very useful against so many things game 1 and make sure you don't lose to random things. While Goblins only has Vial and Threshold no targets (or sometimes Needle) game 1, I think those matchups are good enough that you can afford to run 2 maindeck.
I run Seal over Disenchant even without Landstill in the picture. Angel Stompy is very manahungry and can't afford to keep two mana open, especially not in the early-game. I think it's better to drop it when you have some "breathing room" than to keep mana open.
The psychological aspect that your opponent has to play around you (not you reacting to your opponent) is also a bonus, although this just might be my playstyle.

4. 3 or 4 Parallax Wave? Again, probably a metagame call. Wave is utterly savage against mass removal of all kinds, including Anarchy. It's also excellent mass removal on its own.

Run four. Against anything but combo, these are fucking amazing. I don't get why people dislike this card.

5. The Isamaru/Lions slot is in contention. I think 3 Isamaru is a given, and the 4th is extremely likely as well. But what about those remaining 3-4 slots (assuming you don't run Disenchant main)? Lions? An evasive 1cc flier? Icatian Javelineers? Tough call. 3-4 Isamaru/2 Lions/2 Disenchant is probably about right, because it gives you the most aggressive options for combo, which is your greatest concern.

You're right about Isamaru, I'm also running 4 now.
If you choose not to run Disenchant in the maindeck, I would recommend Savannah Lions to increase the early game pressure. I have found that sometimes you are light on actual threats, especially when you had to pitch a creature to Chrome Mox, so adding some creatures is a good idea.
Suntail Hawk is nice for connecting with Mask/Sword, but just crap without it, so I don't run them anymore.

One last thing: I see a different philosophy in our sideboards. While you want to improve your bad matchups, I don't devote a single slot to those.

My reason: Angel Stompy is a metagame deck. It is strong against aggro and aggro/control. If your metagame has a good amount of combo, I wouldn't play AS. It is better to use the sideboard to make the mediocre/good matchups into easy wins.

Zilla

02-17-2006, 02:57 PM

One last thing: I see a different philosophy in our sideboards. While you want to improve your bad matchups, I don't devote a single slot to those.

My reason: Angel Stompy is a metagame deck. It is strong against aggro and aggro/control. If your metagame has a good amount of combo, I wouldn't play AS. It is better to use the sideboard to make the mediocre/good matchups into easy wins.
Actually, dispersed throughout the 30+ pages of this thread, I've said the same thing about 10 times. The bottom line is that I wouldn't play Angel Stompy in a combo-heavy meta. I'd rather focus my board on improving my slightly shakier matchups. With that said, however, I thought it made sense to be thorough about all the options. Besides, if you ever thought that Angel Stompy was a good metagame call at a larger tournament, you could still expect to see some combo, and it wouldn't hurt to have a way to deal with it.

Now as for your open sideboard slots specifically? Assuming you wanted to ignore combo altogether, I'd get 3 Crypts in there at the very least for Thresh. I'd consider Tempest of Light in addition to the Seals because it's so good against Worship and Wombat and Rifter. In a very Goblins heavy meta, you can turn a positive matchup into a crushingly positive one with a couple Tivadar's Crusade. Abolish was mentioned earlier, and it's a good supplement against Stax or Ravager. Decree of Justice can be good in control matchups where the game goes long and they have tons of mass removal.

Without knowing what you're facing, it's hard to say exactly.

Bongo

02-22-2006, 07:11 PM

Your updated list on the first page is very close to mine.

There's one point of discussion though: What do you think about Seal of Cleansing over Disenchant?

I don't like Disenchant that much because it's a reactive answer in a proactive deck. Keeping two mana open is difficult as I wanted to tap out most of the time.
While Seal can't be played at instant speed, it is proactive and forces the opponent to play around you.

tivadar

02-22-2006, 08:03 PM

This is the most difficult problem. Since the deck is voraciously mana-hungry, it needs a perfect manabase, but it is very hard to figure out the right configuration. Right now, I'm inclined to go with:

16 Plains
4 Ancient Tomb
2 Tithe
2 Chrome Mox

24 is a bit on the high-side, but I absolutely hate getting mana-screwed in the early game. Superfluous mana in the lategame can be discarded to Mask anyway.

Considering your last statement, why not run fetches? I realize you don't need duals, but the thinning they provide can really help the lategame, should you not get an active Mask. They also have good synergy with tithe if you sac them at the right time.

calosso

02-22-2006, 08:23 PM

Considering your last statement, why not run fetches? I realize you don't need duals, but the thinning they provide can really help the lategame

Using fetchlands does not thin out your deck enough to make a diffrence that is why is is not run in goblins. The only times you really should use fetchlands is if you are running more than one color or if you need an additional shuffling effect.

Zilla

02-22-2006, 08:37 PM

There's one point of discussion though: What do you think about Seal of Cleansing over Disenchant?

I don't like Disenchant that much because it's a reactive answer in a proactive deck. Keeping two mana open is difficult as I wanted to tap out most of the time.
While Seal can't be played at instant speed, it is proactive and forces the opponent to play around you.
I used to run Seal of Cleansing over Disenchant, but the main reason was because I wanted a turn 1 answer to Standstill. Landstill isn't really an issue anymore, so I switched back to Disenchant. The main reason I don't like Seal is because I don't want my opponent playing around it or answering it with removal or Pithing Needle before they play a key enchantment or artifact. I'm open to the possibility that Seal is the better choice, but overall, the reactive vs. proactive issue almost never comes up in testing. In most instances, Seal was played and used on the same turn. Maybe we play the deck differently, but the nature of the manacurve has almost always been that I have other things I want to be doing with my mana. By the time I'm ready to cast Seal, my hand is empty and I have a ton of mana in play, which means the reactive nature of Disenchant is irrellevant as far as tempo is concerned.

Seal has better synergy with Armageddon, though. That's one thing to consider. I'm just not sure it outweighs problems which might arise from Stifle, Needle, and enchantment hate. I also hate to lose the surprise factor. It's a tough call.

On a side note, about the manabase, I'm pretty sure 3 Tithe is the right number. They're almost always good, but you don't want your hand clogged with multiples. Chrome Mox is another tough question. Sometimes it's just brutal, sometimes it sucks ass. A part of me is tempted to start running City of Traitors in this slot again, but the white consistency is super important. It's a tough call. I may drop to 2 Chrome Mox. The only way we're going to figure this out for sure is extremely thorough testing.

Considering your last statement, why not run fetches? I realize you don't need duals, but the thinning they provide can really help the lategame, should you not get an active Mask. They also have good synergy with tithe if you sac them at the right time.
Mathematically, the deck thinning provided by 4 fetches is infinitesmal. I think the added damage combined with potential Stifleability makes it not worthwhile.

scarface

02-22-2006, 09:08 PM

Mathematically, the deck thinning provided by 4 fetches is infinitesmal. I think the added damage combined with potential Stifleability makes it not worthwhile.
I'm not sure if this point has been brought up, but fetches do have quite a bit of synergy with tithe (casting it in response to your own fetch). It may not be significant enough to warrant their inclusion, but it at least deserves some consideration.

Zilla

02-22-2006, 09:10 PM

I'm not sure if this point has been brought up, but fetches do have quite a bit of synergy with tithe. It may not be significant enough to warrant their inclusion, but it at least deserves some consideration.
Meh. I guess I'll test it, but I doubt it will matter often enough to be worthwhile. We'll see.

Bongo

02-22-2006, 09:15 PM

You're right on the Disenchant/Seal issue. Actually, I was going to switch to Disenchant anyway, but still had some doubts and wanted to hear a sound opinion.

Now the tricky part: the manabase.
I wouldn't add City of Traitors, AS needs white mana more than colorless mana. 4 Ancient Tombs are enough.

A compromise between my manabase and yours looks to be the most stable. That would be:

15 Plains
4 Ancient Tomb
3 Tithe
2 Chrome Mox

I am still not a big fan of Tithe, so I may go back to the 16/4/2/2 set-up again.

Zilla

02-22-2006, 09:36 PM

Note that the original build of Angel stompy ran 4 Tombs and 3 Cities. It worked quite well. Then again, it also had 2 maindecked Decree of Justice, as well as 4 Whipchorders, which meant there were more colorless mana sinks. My main problem with Chrome Mox is that I get it too often where I only have one or two white cards in my opening grip and the rest being equipment, which meant that Chrome Mox just sat there doing nothing. I may drop to 2 as you suggest. I've tested it, and I keep flip-flopping.

As for Tithe, I love it, especially with Chrome Mox. The ability to play Chrome Mox on the draw, cast Tithe for 2 lands, then play a land drop, for example, is an excellent play. You recoup the card disadvantage of Mox and have the accelleration for turn 2. In my mind, the only question is whether to run 3 or 4. I'm pretty certain that 2 is too few.

tivadar

02-23-2006, 09:39 AM

Mathematically, the deck thinning provided by 4 fetches is infinitesmal. I think the added damage combined with potential Stifleability makes it not worthwhile.

Mathematically, the deck thinning provided by 4 tithes is at best 2*infinitesmal... Sure it's small, but every little bit helps, does it not? Shuffle effects aren't important in this deck, but scarface is right about the tithe synergy. I'm running 2c, so it definetly warrants inclusion, but even in mono-white, the fact is that an opening hand with 2 fetches is a heck of a lot better than an opening hand with 2 tithes (or a fetch and a tomb vs tithe and tomb). I'm not going to argue to drop tithe, but I think it's dangerous as more than a 2-of, 3-of at the most, as you'll be drawing into more dead hands.

Using fetchlands does not thin out your deck enough to make a diffrence that is why is is not run in goblins. The only times you really should use fetchlands is if you are running more than one color or if you need an additional shuffling effect.

Wow, gobbo dropped their 8 or so fetches? No offense, this may be true, but every gobbo build I've ran into still runs 4-8 fetchlands, Sonne ran 8. I'm going to go with majority over the source in this instance and assume at least a few of those people know what they're talking about...

Joe Eigo

02-23-2006, 11:10 AM

Wow, gobbo dropped their 8 or so fetches? No offense, this may be true, but every gobbo build I've ran into still runs 4-8 fetchlands, Sonne ran 8. I'm going to go with majority over the source in this instance and assume at least a few of those people know what they're talking about...

I think the main reason to run Fetches in Goblins is because of Ringleader. Since it reveals more cars then just one, the thinning effect has a little more influenced on it.

frogboy

02-23-2006, 11:52 AM

Bongo

02-23-2006, 02:00 PM

As for Tithe, I love it, especially with Chrome Mox. The ability to play Chrome Mox on the draw, cast Tithe for 2 lands, then play a land drop, for example, is an excellent play.

This is true, but there are situations where Mox doesn't come up and you're holding Tithe, in which case the tempo loss really hurts.
The fact that it pitches to Chrome Mox, and has good synergy with Armageddon post-board are the only reasons I'm running Tithe.
While sometimes it is indeed awesome, there are also some hands where I wish that Tithe had been a simple plains.

On the other hand, I'm pretty sure 2 Chrome Mox is the way to go.

tivadar

02-23-2006, 03:59 PM

Actually, fetchlands have poor synergy with Ringleader, because after the first, shuffling your deck moves the nongoblins at the bottom back into a random portion of the library, perhaps to be drawn. Generally the life loss from fetchlands isn't worth the percentage point or so likelihood that you'll draw more spells - adding them to RDW was so that Grim Lavamancer would have some toys to play with, not to facilitate good draws in the late game.

I'm guessing it breaks even at worst. After all, after the first ringleader, you don't see people not playing goblin matron so they can cast a second ringleader. Commonly they matron INTO second ringleader to begin with (or kikki). Anyways, that's not the point.

The real question is if the thinning warrants the damage. My main point is that I don't think you want 4 tithe, and I think any time you would be going with 4 tithe, you should seriously consider going 2 fetch 2 tithe instead to reduce your mulligans early game, or, for the other way of looking at it, reduce your landcount and increase your good draws late game. 24 mana sources is just huge, even with 2 of them being tithe. Gro eeks by with 17, and that's nothing to ignore. It means if you get into a topdecking match with them, they win.

I think it's time this deck considered its mana base. It's true enough that when things go well, it tramples over the opponent, but it's far too easy to get a bad draw/mul hand, or to draw into way too many lands later on. Mask alleviates this a bit, but a smart opponent is going to wack your creatures before you get your equipment active, and it would be nice to have some way to better your draws when this happens.

Zilla

02-23-2006, 03:59 PM

This is true, but there are situations where Mox doesn't come up and you're holding Tithe, in which case the tempo loss really hurts.
The fact that it pitches to Chrome Mox, and has good synergy with Armageddon post-board are the only reasons I'm running Tithe.
While sometimes it is indeed awesome, there are also some hands where I wish that Tithe had been a simple plains.
This was simply one example. Note that the deck ran Tithe as a 4-of before Chrome Mox was even legal in this format. Tithe provides very real card advantage in many games, as well as significant deckthinning. The tempo cost isn't actually that significant an issue, because the deck's curve supports it quite well. You have very few 1 drops, and you have very few 3 drops. In having another 1cc instant, you're able to round out your mana usage every turn, and that's good for tempo. That they have excellent synergy with Chrome Mox is just icing.

In my mind, the problem with Tithe isn't tempo - it's about drawing them when you'd rather have a Plains. Most often this is in the opening draw, where you have 1-2 Tithe and an Ancient Tomb, or on turn 2 after you've used a Chrome Mox and a Tomb to power out a morph, and instead of a Plains to unmorph your Angel on turn 2 you get Tithe. These are the instances we want to avoid, but all that really means is we need to find the best balance of Plains to non-Plains mana sources. This was the impetus for adding another Plains, and for dropping Tithe for another Plains as well. Again, I'm pretty sure 3 is the right number.

As for Chrome Mox, it's a much mroe complex thing. You have to take into consideration how often you find yourself saying "if I topdeck a Chrome Mox or a Tomb this game is mine", because I find myself saying it a lot. The nature of the equipment in the deck means that often times, 1 extra mana literally buys you entire turns by not only casting equipment but equipping it on the same turn. And in many cases, in so doing, your opponent's defenses are down, and you gain the benefit for it because of this extra turn. From SoFI that means an immediate return on your Moxen's card investment. Same goes for Mask of Memory. With Jitte it just wins you the game. :tongue:

The point is, the need for speed has to be balanced with the need for card advantage. Another thing to consider is that Chrome Mox is only particularly good in the first turn or two; topdecking it is crap. For any kind of consistency in drawing it in the opening 7, you ideally want it as a 4-of, but at least as a 3-of. As a 4-of, you'd draw multiples too often and you certainly don't want that. So 3 is likely the correct number. It's a tough call though.

In the end, I think thorough testing is going to be the sole measure of these things. I'll be working on it and let you know what I find.

Mathematically, the deck thinning provided by 4 tithes is at best 2*infinitesmal... Sure it's small, but every little bit helps, does it not?
Not if that fetch gets Stifled or Needled. Then it can cost you the entire game, and for what? Less than half a percentage point less of a chance of topdecking another land? You have to ask yourself if the risk is worth the reward. You said yourself this deck's manabase is fragile. We all know it. I'm simply pointing out that adding fetchlands has the potential to destabilize it even further, for what amounts to no net gain as far as thinning is concerned. The only reason it might deserve consideration is for potential synergy with Tithe.

I think it's time this deck considered its mana base.
That's all we've been discussing here for the last week... did you not notice?

tivadar

02-23-2006, 04:25 PM

That's all we've been discussing here for the last week... did you not notice?

I meant in more than a "how many of this, how many of that" sense. This is a low CC deck on the whole, and intuitively this should mean it can run as few lands as something like Grow, possibly less when you consider it's mono. The fact is though, that it can't (Gro has better scry, can fetch all of its duals, and doesn't have colorless sources). It is one of the most mana-heavy decks out there (excepting Landstill, which I'm not entirely sure counts), and on top of that has very little thinning. It's not a problem of numbers of cards, it's an issue with the cards themselves. We run 3 tombs when most of our creatures require WW to get out. Sure they accel the eq, but they essentially push our land requirements through the roof.

I'm not saying I have the answers. In fact I know I don't, and it's one of the main reasons I run 2 colors. I know there are possibilities, however, as my original version of this deck ran Remote Farm in place of Tomb. Granted, I've since switched to Tomb, but even in that version of the deck I only ran around 20-22 lands (this was also a 2 color with tithe and 4 fetches, at the time I had no brainstorms).

Anyways, the obvious weakness of farm is the "comes into play tapped", as it will slow you down a bit and make a T2 flipped angel impossible, but it also is a single card that guarentees you WW turn 2 pending wasteland. My final version of the deck ran 3 Farm, 3 Tomb, 0 Mox, 2 Tithe, before it came under drastic changes. Has Farm been considered to fix the mana problems of the deck? Are there any other cards worth considering (I never liked ruins of troikar, double boost of WW generally meant creature then equipment equipped, single boost just does one of the two, there's been talk of vial, but that comes with problems of its own and takes the deck down a different path).

Bongo

02-23-2006, 05:19 PM

You have to take into consideration how often you find yourself saying "if I topdeck a Chrome Mox or a Tomb this game is mine", because I find myself saying it a lot.

Yeah, same here.

However, I also found myself saying "if that Tithe had been a plains, this game would have been mine". But other than our preference for Tithe, we seem to be on the same page here, because I'm also running three for the moment.

When I first tried AS, I ran 4 Chrome Mox and 4 Tithe, thinking I could get both speed and card advantage. It quickly became apparent that led to a lot of unplayable hands and a high mulligan ratio.
I gradually decreased the number of both cards, and the mulligan percentage got smaller each time. The minimal loss of speed by dropping a few Moxen is worth the gain in additional consistency in my opinion.

3 Chrome Mox might seem like the way to go, but sometimes I had to pitch a crucial white card to it while holding equipment and lands. That's why I'm leaning towards 2 copies.

I can't wait to see your testing results though.

@tivadar: What cards are you splashing for?

Zilla

02-23-2006, 06:00 PM

I meant in more than a "how many of this, how many of that" sense. This is a low CC deck on the whole, and intuitively this should mean it can run as few lands as something like Grow, possibly less when you consider it's mono.
This is just totally inaccurate. Gro's curve tops out almost entirely at 2. There are 2 cards in the entire deck that cost more than that. Furthermore, as you already mentioned, the deck is running a massive amount of cantrips to smooth its draws into land, as well as accelleration in the form of Werebear.

Now look at Angel Stompy. Assuming you count Tithes as mana sources, the deck has 12 cards in the 1cc slot compared to Gro's ~20. It has ~10 2cc's compared to Gro's ~20. Now you start getting into equipment. It is wrong to assume that Mask and Jitte cost 2, and SoFI costs 3. For the sake of tempo, you want to be casting and equipping your threats on the same turn whenever possible. Mask has a virtual cost of 3. Jitte has a virtual cost of 4. SoFI has a virtual cost of 5. Parallax Wave costs 4. In many cases, Exalted Angel costs 6. This means that where Gro has 2 cards in the entire deck which cost more than 2 (excluding FoW which is almost never hardcast), Angel Stompy has 14. This means that it wants to have 5 mana by turn 4-5 in essentially every single game. To suggest that Gro and Angel Stompy have even remotely similar manabases is beyond ridiculous.

midnightAce

02-23-2006, 06:41 PM

As mentioned earlier, the original AS ran 3 DoJs, 4 Whipcorders for both Drain and additional creature control, as well as Skullclamps. I pretty much picked up AS back then and started playing.

The reason Tomb and City can co-exist in that particular deck is largely due to 8 morph creatures, 2W cycling and continuous mana investment into the Clamp. (Which gets you cards, so you are bound to hit a white source sooner or later.) Based on the current config of the deck, Tomb + City does seem a bit overkill.

I have tried Remote Farm, Ruins of Trokair, Talisman of Progress (in mono white), Mox Diamond, and even Fountain of Cho. (Yea, I went there...) In the end, I simply went back to Plains. I have to conclude that some combination of Chrome/Tithe/Plain/Tomb is the ideal way to go. Of course, there is always the possiblity of running City in place of Tombs and run 4 Tithe in conjuction with Cities to maxmize the use of Tithe. But as Zilla has said in the previous posts, there are simply many instances where I want to top deck a 4th or 5th mana source, slap down my Jitte/SoFI, equip it on the same turn and swing.

tivadar

02-24-2006, 01:20 AM

@tivadar: What cards are you splashing for?

There's a thread on this in the Developmental Forum so I'll try to be brief here. Basically, the deck splashes blue for two reasons, a better combo/control matchup via meddling mage, and a grow-style landbase via scrying. Originally it ran only Brainstorm, but Serum Visions has been found to be really good by a few of us.

The deck runs 18 creatures, adding 4 meddlings and 2 Serendibs to the mix, 19 lands (with 3 tombs, no mox), 5 equipment (3/2 or 2/3 on jitte and sofi), and 8 scry (4 serum visions, 4 brainstorm). Admittedly it's a hair slower than traditional AS, but it's a lot more consistent and generally has fewer dead draws/mulligans. There are some open slots right now (6), but the numbers above are pretty well agreed upon by those who have tried it. Feel free to look us up, we're on New and Developmental as I said.

@Godzilla:

I never said that our manabase was similar to grows, just that we have a similar CC ratio to what Grow has, while this may not be true card for card, both decks aim to hit the 4 mana mark (possibly 5 for Sofi with AS). Grow peaks at 4 lands, and wants to hit a land-drop the first 4 turns typically, perhaps only 3 if they get an active werebear, or 4 in 5 if they have to use daze. Grow likes to be able to play their Fledgling/Mystic by 4th turn, as in many matches it's a big part of their gameplan. I was wrong though, this deck will NEVER meet Grow's landcount, they just have too much scrying. But there's no reason it shouldn't be able to approach it, or at least be as good as gobbo (running 22 lands, 8 of which are fetch).

Zilla

02-24-2006, 01:43 AM

@Godzilla:

I never said that our manabase was similar to grows, just that we have a similar CC ratio to what Grow has, while this may not be true card for card, both decks aim to hit the 4 mana mark (possibly 5 for Sofi with AS). Grow peaks at 4 lands, and wants to hit a land-drop the first 4 turns typically, perhaps only 3 if they get an active werebear, or 4 in 5 if they have to use daze. Grow likes to be able to play their Fledgling/Mystic by 4th turn, as in many matches it's a big part of their gameplan. I was wrong though, this deck will NEVER meet Grow's landcount, they just have too much scrying. But there's no reason it shouldn't be able to approach it, or at least be as good as gobbo (running 22 lands, 8 of which are fetch).
Even so, Thresh can operate quite easily on 2 mana if it has to. 1/30th of the deck requires 4 or more mana. Fully 1/4th of Angel Stompy warrants 4 or more mana, meaning it operates much less efficiently on a lower base. Further, Thresh has 12-16 cantrips, which count for roughly 6 lands by themselves. The two simply aren't comparable.

BlindMage

03-09-2006, 03:00 AM

I have what I hope is a quick question. I have to confess to not reading the entirety of this 40-page thread, so I apologize in advance if this has already been addressed.

When I first got frusterated with losing with my homebrew rogue decks, AS was the first "net deck" that I built. There were many things that I liked about it, which I need not enumerate, since the others posting in this thread already know them firsthand. There was one thing, however, that eventually caused me to stop playing AS. The deck kept running out of steam. I kept haveing games where I simply did not have enough threats to put 20 damage on the other side of the table in a timely fashion. This seemed like an unforgiveable weakness for an aggro deck, so I moved on. Have other people experianced this problem? Has it been fixed, or was it due to incorrect play on my part?

Bargoth

03-09-2006, 04:05 AM

As far as agro decks go AS has more steam than most I would say. Most of the creaures are threatening on there own, a Silver Knight and any of the other smaller creatures is often quite a bit of pressure. Given that it plays Exalted Angel, it certianly has larger threats than your average dedicated agro deck. Then to keep momentum it plays 4 (give or take) piecies of Cantriping equipment. The deck certianly seems to have the means to apply continous pressure.

As a side note I was wondering if anyone had thought about Thermal Glider in this deck. I have read through most of the thread at different times and dont believe I had seen mention of him, so I just thought I would mention it. I was thinking it could possibly be used in the Savannah Lions/Disenchant/4th Hound slot, as a 3-of, it adds another pro-red, evasive 2/1. Giving the deck another pro red blocker against Goblins, and a means outside Angel to block Fledgling Dragon. At 2W it's not the best priced creature for sure, but with Ancient Tomb and Chrome Mox it can still come down turn two without much trouble. Just another idea to throw around.

MasterBlaster

03-09-2006, 09:14 AM

@Bargoth-If you're worried about Fledgling Dragon than you also have StP and Parallax Wave. That gives AS 11-12 answers to the dragon. Also AS already has an evasive pro-red 2/1 creature in the form of Soltari Priest. AS has such a good game against EVERY red deck that another pro-red creature is probably just a wasted slot.

@Blindmage-The only matchup where I have ever had trouble keeping the proper threat density is against Landstill. But thats to be expected as Landstill is the decks toughest matchup(much worse than solidarity in my experience). Could you go into more detail about your troubles with AS?

Zilla

03-09-2006, 08:38 PM

I've been testing some pretty severe changes to the manabase, so I thought I'd post my current list, in case others would like to give it a try, and let me know how it works out for them. The list:

//NAME: Angel Stompy

// Mana
16 Plains
4 Ancient Tomb
2 City of Traitors

// Beats
4 Mother of Runes
4 Isamaru, Hound of Konda
2 Savannah Lions
4 Silver Knight
4 Soltari Priest
4 Exalted Angel

// Equipment
2 Mask of Memory
2 Umezawa's Jitte
2 Sword of Fire and Ice

// Spells
4 Swords to Plowshares
2 Disenchant
4 Parallax Wave

// Sideboard
SB: 3 Tormod's Crypt
SB: 4 Pithing Needle
SB: 2 Disenchant
SB: 2 Tempest of Light
SB: 4 Armageddon

A few points of discussion:

1. As you can see, the Tithes and Moxen have been removed. I've argued in favor of these cards for quite some time, but honestly, I'm quite happy with how it's been playing now. You lose some card advantage opportunities without Tithe, but you gain a great deal of stability and resilience to Duress in return. The modern build is running a lot more 1cc cards than the original build, which means that the tempo hit from Tithe is going to be more and more significant. One of the main arguments for Tithe's inclusion has been its synergy with Chrome Mox, and with that out of the picture, Tithe looks even less attractive.

2. The City of Traitors may seem odd, but they are quite suitable for their purpose. While Chrome Mox allow for turn 1 Knight or Priest, or the extremely occasional turn 1 Angel, they do so at the cost of consistency, card advantage, and ultimately, threat density. Explosive first turn plays are all well and good, but too often I found myself flipping a turn 2 Angel to have it Swordsed, leaving me with a nearly empty hand and no threats on the board.

Furthermore, I often found myself with Chrome Mox and a handful of equipment I can't pitch to it. It's also a horendously bad topdeck. Basically, I found that I was unhappy to see it more often than I was happy to. This just isn't right.

At first glance, it may seem that there aren't enough colorless cards to warrant the Cities, but in fact there are 14, and that's not including the cost of equipping. They were in the original build, and despite the modern build's lack of maindeck Skullclamp and Decree of Justice, they've been working out very well in testing.

3. The removal of Tithe and Moxen has also opened up two more slots to dedicate to actual threats. This may or may not be correct; it's possible that one more Plains is necessary, but so far, the 22 land count has proved fairly consistent. The two open slots have been filled with more early game threats in the form of Savannah Lions, which makes your equipment more reliable, and keeps the pressure on against combo and control.

4. In certain metagames, (specifically ones without a lot of Rifter or Landstill), I might even advocate running the full 4 Savannah Lions, with 4 Disenchants in the board. Against a lot of the prevalent decks, Disenchant isn't particularly strong or necessary in game 1. They're totally dead against Gro, and while they can answer Aether Vial against Goblins, I'd typically rather just have more answers to a turn 1 Lackey in that matchup. In the end, this is a metagame call.

5. Testing with 6 equipment has been positive, and I think it's the right way to go. It keeps your hand from getting clogged with them, but allows you to draw into them when you need them with a high degree of consistency. The 2/2/2 split has been treating me well.

6. The sideboard is not set in stone, and it obviously ignores Storm-based combo. The Pithing Needles, Disenchants, and Geddons are almost universally worth including. The Crypts are in there for Thresh and Salvager Game, but they're not totally necessary, and could easily be replaced with Rule of Law or Glowrider for Storm combo. The Tempests of Light are an additional answer to problematic enchantments like Humility, Moat, Lightning Rift, Astral Slide, and Solitary Confinement. I include them mainly because Rifter is a concern in my meta. Again, they could be replaced with Rule of Law, Glowrider, or even Tivadar's Crusade for Goblins.

That's where I'm at with it right now. I think the deck is nearing full optimization for the modern meta. More testing is warranted, of course, but so far it looks rock solid. If you all have the time, give it some testing and let me know what you think.

BlindMage

03-09-2006, 10:37 PM

Could you go into more detail about your troubles with AS?

I'll try, though it was some time ago. It seems worth noting that since this was some time ago, I was using an older list, but it was nearly the same as the one Zilla just posted, except that I was naturally using the older manabase, with the moxen and Tithes.

The problem that I encountered was not having a high enough threat density. Clearly, this didn't happen every game, but as I have said, it happened often enough to get me to stop playing the deck. The threat density problem manifested most often as manaflood, which I could never quite understand, since the list I used was the one with only 15 lands. More specifically, I tended to start fine, but unless I won quickly with priest+SoFI or something similar, I found my topdecks to be poor at supporting my initial offensive. The other problem was that I needed to mulligan alot. I kept having hands where the only mana was colorless, or which included too many lands, or too high an equipment/creature ratio. I hope this enumeration helps to clarify my origonal question.

MasterBlaster

03-10-2006, 10:32 AM

@Blindmage-I've never had many troubles with manaflood.
My manabase is:
16 plains
4 Ancient Tomb
3 Chrome Mox

The only other person I know that plays AS(well, he plays a white-weenie variant at least) also plays tithes, and he gets manaflooded regularly(and he has a low-land count). Do you think the problem is caused by Tithes? Dropping Tithes for Plains would at least get rid of your "only colorless mana" problem.

Zilla

03-10-2006, 03:24 PM

The only other person I know that plays AS(well, he plays a white-weenie variant at least) also plays tithes, and he gets manaflooded regularly(and he has a low-land count). Do you think the problem is caused by Tithes? Dropping Tithes for Plains would at least get rid of your "only colorless mana" problem.
Tithe should have the opposite effect; if anything it should be thinning the deck and helping to prevent mana flood. My guess would be a difference in shuffling techniques. Seriously. Either that or he's running more lands than he should be to begin with.

BlindMage

03-10-2006, 05:10 PM

Tithe should have the opposite effect; if anything it should be thinning the deck and helping to prevent mana flood. My guess would be a difference in shuffling techniques. Seriously. Either that or he's running more lands than he should be to begin with.

Shuffling technique? I never considered that, but I don't have similar problems with other decks. As for running more lands than I should, my manabase for AS was:

11 Plains
4 Ancient Tomb
4 Chrome Mox
4 Tithe

Anyway, I'm inclined to think that the main culprit for my threat-density problems was the Chrome Mox, I plan to try the deck again sans moxen, and maybe sans tithes.

On a differant note, I noticed that you, Zilla, are running 4 maindeck Isamaru. Have you found their legendarity to not be a problem? Or is it because you simply intend to slow-play anyway (I remember you saying that Rifter was a big metagame concern in your area)?

Bongo

03-10-2006, 06:41 PM

4 Isamaru are not a problem due to the fact that it gets killed pretty quickly. If not, you should be in a very good position anyway. You can even discard useless copies to Mask of Memory.

---------------------------------------------

Finally.

Finally you got rid of that Mox/Tithe baggage.
As I said before, the smaller the number of both cards, the smaller the mulligan percentage.
I have three points regarding your build:

1. This is minor, but I would run the following manabase:

17 Plains
4 Ancient Tomb
1 City of Traitors

You have 14 cards to use the 5 non-Plains on, which is about a ratio of 3:1. The ratio of spells to mana is also roughly 3:1, so that would make everything in sync. It also slightly reduces the chance of having two 2mana lands in your opening grip, thus reducing the mulligan ratio.

2. I wouldn't drop Disenchant from the maindeck. It is very good against random or rogue decks, which pop up quite often in such an open metagame.
It also is not completely dead against Gro, as I have been seeing version which run Worship maindeck. Without Disenchant, you autolose game 1 except if you manage to deck them, which is possible but ugly.

3. Tempest of Light in the SB? I don't get that. Supposing it goes in against Rifter, but even then it doesn't make that much sense, since it is not that effective against them. I rather take Armageddon, in combination with pinpoint Disenchants to take out random Sacred Grounds. Are you playing in an Enchantress heavy-metagame?

Zilla

03-10-2006, 07:57 PM

1. This is minor, but I would run the following manabase:
17 Plains
4 Ancient Tomb
1 City of Traitors

Disagreed. It's possible that the deck should be running 17 Plains, but not at the cost of the second City. It's important to remember that Cities don't stick around like Tombs do. It's quite often that you need the double-colorless tempo boost more than once in a game. If City didn't leave play, I might agree with your assessment, but because of this, I do not.

2. I wouldn't drop Disenchant from the maindeck. It is very good against random or rogue decks, which pop up quite often in such an open metagame.
The thing is, the deck already has a habit of smashing randomness. And the vast majority of the artifacts or enchantments which are problematic for you are SB hate cards, not MD inclusions. I think it's wrong to suggest that either choice is always correcty. It's quite clearly a metagame call.

It also is not completely dead against Gro, as I have been seeing version which run Worship maindeck. Without Disenchant, you autolose game 1 except if you manage to deck them, which is possible but ugly.
The number of Gro builds running maindeck Worship are vastly outweighed by the ones that are not. Given that Disenchant is totally dead game one against most Gro builds in existence, if I were basing my decision on Gro alone, I wouldn't run MD Disenchant. Further, it's really not a scoop. First, they have to draw it and resolve it before you murder them. Next, they have to kill you before they deck themselves, which is not as easy as it sounds. Obviously it's not pretty, and it is to be avoided if at all possible, but again, the instances where this is going to be relevant are extremely few and far between.

3. Tempest of Light in the SB? I don't get that. Supposing it goes in against Rifter, but even then it doesn't make that much sense, since it is not that effective against them.
It really is. They run 7 enchantments at a minimum. Some run Slide on top of that. The ability to remove all problematic enchantments at once is a real boon. It's also good against Sacred Ground, which completely nullifies your Armageddons otherwise. I bring them both in for this matchup. Like I said, though, that slot is just filler. It's good in my meta. I don't propose that it's good in all metas, or even the majority of them. It's a solid choice against Rifter, though.

It's also good against Enchantress, as you noted. Further, it's solid against other randomness like CAL, where you can hit Confinement and Assault in one fell swoop. It's just a solid catchall ansxwer for these types of decks. If combo is present in your meta, these slots should be Glowrider or Rule of Law.

tivadar

03-13-2006, 10:32 AM

Zilla

03-13-2006, 04:07 PM

I really do think the manabase change is a step in the right direction. Just out of curiosity, since I don't think this got a response last time I asked, has Remote Farm been considered? It's a double boost of white mana though it comes into play tapped. I'd say if anything it would fill the City of Traitors spot?
I tested it some. You simply can't afford the hit to tempo in many cases. The deck is running a lot of cards in the 1cc range, and the CiP tends to lose as much tempo as it eventually gains. You often need the extra mana by turn two, which means skipping your turn 1 play to get it. This means missing the opportunity to play Mother of Runes turn 1 to protect a turn 2 morph, or missing a turn 1 Isamaru to equip and attack with a Mask of Memory turn 2. The deck thrives on these early plays, and Remote Farm doesn't allow for it the way City (or Mox) does.

Once again, I still like fetchlands as well. This deck could support 8 plains/8 fetch pretty easily, or a more conservative 10 plains/6 fetch. The thinning provided by this is pretty significant, though one is right to look at the extra damage.The thinning provided by fetches is mathematically insignificant until you've used 3 or more of them, and even then it changes your likelihood of drawing a land by something very close to 1%. The argument could be made that any less chance of drawing land in the late game is worth it, but then the counterargument could be made that 8 fetchlands + 4 Ancient Tombs = not a combo.

Here's the bottom line: if you're not splashing a color in this deck, there's absolutely no good reason to be running fetches. In conjunction with Tombs, the life loss they cause will lose you more games than their miniscule thinning wins you. I promise.

MasterBlaster

03-13-2006, 04:39 PM

Here's the bottom line: if you're not splashing a color in this deck, there's absolutely no good reason to be running fetches.

I'll second that. This has been covered numerous times in this thread. Fetches thin your deck very minimally, but the 1 point of damage can cost you games. Plus you don't want to be Stifled away from double-white.

Zilla

03-13-2006, 05:31 PM

I'll second that. This has been covered numerous times in this thread. Fetches thin your deck very minimally, but the 1 point of damage can cost you games. Plus you don't want to be Stifled away from double-white.
Or Needled, for that matter.

tivadar

03-13-2006, 08:06 PM

Or Needled, for that matter.

Well, I'll concede that you're probably right about fetchlands since you've done more testing with mono than I have. Though honestly, stifle isn't played in the format (maybe in one or two thresh decks), and if they pithing your fetch, you really ought to thank them, as they could have pithinged your mom or jitte or sword.

I do however heartily agree with dropping chrome. I know that I tried adding it, but the card disadvantage just plain sucked to be blunt, though running splash is obviously very different from mono. The only thing I'd be concerned about is getting WW in a deck running 6 colorless sources. However, I don't see that being a huge problem. The real big advantage, however, is that this deck has dropped ~2 lands, which may seem minor, but every little land drop helps pack more punch into this deck. Dropping tithe is what makes this possible really I believe.

Since this deck now gets W2 as quickly/easily, and possibly more easily, than WW, would looking at some creature changes be a good idea? The first obvious thing that comes to mind is thermal glider > soltari priest. Thermal is probably slightly better (loses a bit of evasion, gains the ability to block, and fledgling dragon...). The other thing to consider is that you can go mom, thermal, sofi or jitte, whereas you could only go mom, soltari, jitte the other way around.

One last thing, why savannah lions? This deck can win by swarming without equip, but rarely does. Against gobbo, lions get nailed by fanatic. Against combo, they're still not fast enough to win the game. Against landstill, they're blocked by conclave or factory. Against threshold, they're probably decent. I know we had toyed around with devoted caretaker in the WU thread. Just throwing it out there, cause this protects you a bit more against control, isn't fanaticable on second turn, but is probably a hair weaker against threshold (though it does protect your equip/creatures in that matchup).

Rambo

04-10-2006, 08:38 PM

I just though I would try to revive this thread since angel stompy has started placing in the top 8 in a couple large tourneys, so this deck doesn't deserve to die.

tivadar

04-10-2006, 09:23 PM

I just though I would try to revive this thread since angel stompy has started placing in the top 8 in a couple large tourneys, so this deck doesn't deserve to die.

I don't think this deck has every really been out of the "top 8". Granted it didn't show at GP, but it's around and it's powerful. The problem is mainly that it hasn't hit the top. Though I'll give you that the fact that of the 3 people running it, 2 placed top 8 is pretty impressive. Also, always look at who's piloting the deck. As long as you're piloting a reasonable deck, then most of it is playskill. Sure decks have their good and bad matchups, but it's all about knowing what to play when.

One thing I'm very impressed with is that a mono-white version T8'ed when there was a good deal of solidarity in the field, and we all know how bad that typically is for this deck. Trying to predict the meta now is nigh impossible. Apparently solidarity is back, who knew...

Lego

04-12-2006, 04:26 PM

The only reason I finished in the T8 is that Zilla apparently has a pretty good relationship with God, and he asked him to help me out on this one. I didn't dodge Solidarity all day, by the way. I had to offer Herbig a chance to wind down, take a nap, and prepare for the Top 8.

As for the viability of this deck, run away. This deck is bad. No one plays it, no one should play it, and you shouldn't sideboard against it. That's my stance, and I'm sticking to it. You also shouldn't play combo, because combo is bad. You should play aggro decks that aren't this. That's the only thing viable in this meta. Maybe if I keep saying it enough, it'll work :wink:

MasterBlaster

04-13-2006, 01:10 PM

This deck is bad. No one plays it, no one should play it, and you shouldn't sideboard against it. That's my stance, and I'm sticking to it. You also shouldn't play combo, because combo is bad. You should play aggro decks that aren't this. That's the only thing viable in this meta. Maybe if I keep saying it enough, it'll work :wink:

I agree completely. Everyone should play red-based aggro decks and never sideboard Anarchy or Flashfires.

Seriously though, the last time I played this deck was at a 15 man(geek?) tournament where I took first. In the final round of swiss I beat Carlos El Salvador who was playing Solidarity 2-1. Cursed Scroll activation in response to Meditate for the win!

Lego

04-14-2006, 01:16 PM

Hold on, you played Angel Stompy with Cursed Scroll? Can you explain?

MasterBlaster

04-14-2006, 03:00 PM

Yeah, I play two Cursed Scroll in the slot that most people play two Mask of Memory.

If I remember right my list is now something like this:
17 Plains
4 Ancient Tomb
2 City of Traitors

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

2 Umezawa's Jitte
3 Sword of Fire and Ice
2 Cursed Scroll
4 Swords to Plowshares
2 Seal of Cleansing
3 Parallax Wave

Cursed Scroll has definitely won me games that I had no business winning otherwise(such as games where I don't draw a creature until turn 6).

Cool things about Cursed Scroll:
1. It can do crowd control versus goblins while you attack with a SoFIed creature.
2. Scroll and Silver Knight can take down a Werebear.
3. Takes out enemy Mother of Runes.
4. If they Pithing Needle Cursed Scroll who cares you only run two and you can still equip.

I haven't done the most amount of testing with the Scroll, but like I said it wins me games I have no business winning.

Bane of the Living

04-14-2006, 06:06 PM

White Weenie used Scroll since back in Tempest and it was a good tactic then. Maybe its techy now.

Speaking of Tempest. I havent really played WITH Angel Stompy much, just beaten it all the time. JK JK JK ! !

Has anyone ever given Emperial Plate a try? Its nuts with Soltari Butt Fucker, and its just crazy when Mask of Memory is in play. Maybe it would be better than the all out weenie rush? Unblockable + Weapon ftw?

Speaking of Tempest...

Why no Soltari Monks? The only times AS nails me is when they have a shadowed bitch w/ a Jitte. It seems with Black Thresh playing Ghastly Demise, and with silly Dead Guy about, Monk wouldnt be half bad. Correct me if Im wrong?

Why does no one play Tithe anymore?

Zilla

04-14-2006, 07:19 PM

White Weenie used Scroll since back in Tempest and it was a good tactic then. Maybe its techy now.
Maybe. I could see it being useful in the long game against control.

Has anyone ever given Emperial Plate a try?
Yes, a long time ago. It was pretty unimpressive. Believe it or not, it rarely improves the deck's clock more than SoFI, and often it's slower. It's always less versatile. Same goes for Jitte. And if you want to replace Mask of Memory with it, you have no card draw, which makes it inherently weaker. It's a no go.

Why no Soltari Monks? The only times AS nails me is when they have a shadowed bitch w/ a Jitte.
Because there's not anything you'd want to replace with them. With the prevalence of red removal in the format, Silver Knight and Soltari Priest are almost always better as far as your 2 drops go. You want at least 6 1 drops to maintain your curve properly, and you sure don't want to replace Angels with them. Furthermore, you want to keep your shadow dudes to a relative minimum, because chump blockers are actually very important in many aggro matchups.

It seems with Black Thresh playing Ghastly Demise, and with silly Dead Guy about, Monk wouldnt be half bad. Correct me if Im wrong?
Deadguy's removal consists mainly of StP, Cursed Scroll, and Engineered Plague. Pro: Black is irrellevant in all cases. It's good only against Darkblast in this matchup.

If UGb Thresh were to become super popular, then a 2/2 split between Priests and Monks might be acceptable, or theoretically a 3/3 split, removing Lions (though my gut instinct says this is a bad idea). For right now though, I think the emtagame dictates that Priest is largely superior to Monk.

Why does no one play Tithe anymore?
Because the occasional card advantage was not worth the contant inconsistency. One of the deck's biggest weaknesses was that it needed to mull due to manascrew very regularly, despite running 23 mana sources. In the games where it didn't need to mull, it often became manaflooded. Furthermore, it's a hit to tempo. This used to be less relevant, but the deck runs mroe 1 drops now than ever before, so this hit to tempo is more detrimental. The new build has a more stable manabase, and it's only running 22 sources, which means it's also less prone to mana-flood.

On a side note, I'm considering switching back from City of Traitors to Chrome Moxen. Even with 16 Plains, the deck too often has to mull to get WW in the opening grip, often because City of Traitors doesn't produce white. I will be testing Chrome Moxen as a two-of in this slot. If I find the card disadvantage too egregious, I'll replace them with basic Plains. The current manabase in testing is:

16 Plains
4 Ancient Tomb
2 Chrome Mox

@MasterBlaster:

About your list, I played a a list with an identical manabase at a tournament a couple weeks ago, including the 17th Plains. I only lost 2 games all day, and both were because I had to mull to 5 due to drawing too many colorless sources. In almost every single other game I played that day, I drew 4 or 5 land hands. I'm convinced of two things: 1) the deck wants more white sources, and 2) the deck doesn't want more than 22 manasources. Hence the manabase listed above.

I'd recommend trying the manabase I listed. Then I'd recommend using that extra slot for the 4th Parallax Wave, because it's the best card in the deck. Really, it ought to be called Parallax Stompy.

Lastly, I strongly recommend swapping your Lion to Hound ratio. I haven't regretted the change at all. 2/2 is so much better in so many matchups than a 2/1. You rarely draw multiples, and when you do, the first one rarely survives long enough for the second one to stay dead in hand. And if you're running chrome Mox, you have a way to pitch multiples, even if you're not running Mask of Memory.

Eldariel

04-14-2006, 07:28 PM

On a side note, I'm considering switching back from City of Traitors to Chrome Moxen. Even with 16 Plains, the deck too often has to mull to get WW in the opening grip, often because City of Traitors doesn't produce white. I will be testing Chrome Moxen as a two-of in this slot. If I find the card disadvantage too egregious, I'll replace them with basic Plains. The current manabase in testing is:

16 Plains
4 Ancient Tomb
2 Chrome Mox

Agreed, in my experience a deck that wants to consistently support 2 coloured mana of any given colour needs 18 sources of that colour; classic WW-lists tend to agree as well.

Bane of the Living

04-14-2006, 08:13 PM

Eldariel

04-14-2006, 08:16 PM

Zilla thanks for the quick info. Most of those things should be common knowledge I suppose, but you dont catch crap like that till your the one playing the deck.

Whos more favored right now? True Believer or Glowrider?

Glowrider. It actually does something. Believer's advantage is, it can actually be played in the maindeck as it's a Bear while Rider is a 1-power little man. However, if talking about stopping a combo, Solidarity can generally ignore True Believer if they're SBing Evacuation/you lack Mommy/Sword. They'll have to pay 4 for their Wish and 2, 3 or 6 (depending on what they have for bounce and whether you've got Mom/Sword) for their bounce spell as they can't hope to go off with Rider in play (they need at least 5 lands and a High Tide (costing U1 now) to Evacuation your Glowrider too, and they couldn't go off that turn either). So Rider is definately better, they can go off with True Believer in play, they can't go off with Glowrider in play, so they're forced to deal with Glowrider BEFORE they can generate ridiculous amounts of mana, while they can deal with True Believer AFTER they've got ridiculous amounts of mana. I'd personally play Rule of Law+Glowrider SB against them if I wanted to heavily influence Solidarity/combo match-up. When on play, you can generally spit out either one before they get Remand online, that's a big plus. When on draw, things are rougher.

MasterBlaster

04-14-2006, 08:40 PM

About your list, I played a a list with an identical manabase at a tournament a couple weeks ago, including the 17th Plains. I only lost 2 games all day, and both were because I had to mull to 5 due to drawing too many colorless sources. In almost every single other game I played that day, I drew 4 or 5 land hands. I'm convinced of two things: 1) the deck wants more white sources, and 2) the deck doesn't want more than 22 manasources. Hence the manabase listed above.

I'd recommend trying the manabase I listed. Then I'd recommend using that extra slot for the 4th Parallax Wave, because it's the best card in the deck. Really, it ought to be called Parallax Stompy.

Lastly, I strongly recommend swapping your Lion to Hound ratio. I haven't regretted the change at all. 2/2 is so much better in so many matchups than a 2/1. You rarely draw multiples, and when you do, the first one rarely survives long enough for the second one to stay dead in hand. And if you're running chrome Mox, you have a way to pitch multiples, even if you're not running Mask of Memory.

I haven't had a real chance to adequately test the City of Traitors yet. I've just played a few games with them in my deck, but I do like them so far.

About the whole Lions vs Hound thing, I think Lions is too important for this deck when it has to go balls out racing against decks like Solidarity, Landstill, etc. For instance against Solidarity you don't want to be holding back second and third copies of your most efficient creature. Similarly two Lions can chump block and kill a big creature(Burning-Tree Shaman, Werebear) whereas a Hound in play and a Hound in hand can't accomplish much. Also it seems to me that the main reason for not running Lions is Mogg Fanatic taking out 2 creatures at once. But if your facing a red deck you'll probably win regardless.

Zilla

04-14-2006, 08:44 PM

About the whole Lions vs Hound thing, I think Lions is too important for this deck when it has to go balls out racing against decks like Solidarity, Landstill, etc. For instance against Solidarity you don't want to be holding back second and third copies of your most efficient creature. Similarly two Lions can chump block and kill a big creature(Burning-Tree Shaman, Werebear) whereas a Hound in play and a Hound in hand can't accomplish much. Also it seems to me that the main reason for not running Lions is Mogg Fanatic taking out 2 creatures at once. But if your facing a red deck you'll probably win regardless.
There's also Darkblast, E. Plague, Jitte, and the ability to chump opposing 1/1's. Furthermore, while Goblins is a positive matchup, it's not a bye. Given the choice between chumping a Lackey or surviving a Fanatic sac and not, I'll choose the former every time. At the very least I recommend testing it, because the disadvantage is minimal nearly to the point of irrellevance. If nothing else, I'd do a 2/3 split.

MasterBlaster

04-14-2006, 08:56 PM

Anusien

04-14-2006, 10:07 PM

Good points. But I don't think that Engineered Plague is a real problem for Savannah Lions when Angel Stompy also runs 8 clerics.

I'll consider dropping a Lions or two for more Hounds, but to me the Hound seems to be only better against other aggro decks, which AS already does well against.
Aggro decks also consistute the majority of the field. Against combo decks you're not going to see multiples of the Hound unless they get a craptastic draw; the game just won't go on long enough. Against control, if you keep a Hound in play long enough to either rawdog a second or get Mask up, it sounds like you have a huge advantage anyway.

However, Hound is infinitely better versus aggro. Goblins has 8 ways to kill your Lions if they're on the play, following turn 1 Lackey. Nervermind the increased resistance to Sharpshooter or the ability to block a Matron and not die. Hound also does better against unthreshed creatures, Fire/Ice and Jitte counters.

MasterBlaster

04-15-2006, 12:11 AM

Aggro decks also consistute the majority of the field.
Against that majority of the field my game is already great. Even with 4 subpar Savannah Lions and only 1 godly Isamaru I still manage to beat any aggro deck I face(almost all the time).

Against combo decks you're not going to see multiples of the Hound unless they get a craptastic draw; the game just won't go on long enough. Against control, if you keep a Hound in play long enough to either rawdog a second or get Mask up, it sounds like you have a huge advantage anyway.
You make it sound as if its impossible for me to get multiple Hounds in my opening hand. When I face combo my goal is to go empty my hand of all creatures and attack until my opponent stops moving. If I'm sitting with an extra Hound in hand my job will be that much more difficult because an extra Hound pretty much equals a missed draw.

However, Hound is infinitely better versus aggro. Goblins has 8 ways to kill your Lions if they're on the play, following turn 1 Lackey. Nervermind the increased resistance to Sharpshooter or the ability to block a Matron and not die. Hound also does better against unthreshed creatures, Fire/Ice and Jitte counters.
1. A Goblin player will get a first turn Lackey 46.6% of the time if they choose to play.
2. I will have a Swords to Plowshares in my hand after I draw my 8th card 53.3% of the time.
3. That means the chance the Goblin player will successfully attack me with a Lackey is 21.8%.

Thats without figuring in my single Isamaru and the probability of whether or not my 4 Lions would be killed. When I consider the Isamaru and 4 Lions(assuming the Goblin player has 8 answers to my Lions and nobody misses a land drop) the chance the Lackey will hit me is 13.8%, I think(and thats still not taking into consideration Mother of Runes blocking the Lackey). And even if they do hit me with a Lackey I will STILL probably win.

Also why in the hell would I block a Goblin Matron with a Savannah Lions? Thats what Silver Knights and Mother of Runes are for.
Lion > Matron = I don't block.
And why would my opponent attack with ANY unthreshed creatures, regardless of what creatures I have on the board?

The bottom line is I'm skeptical of slightly improving my aggro matchup(which is already positive) at the expense of slightly worsening my combo/control matchup(which is far from stellar).

tivadar

04-15-2006, 12:28 PM

Ok, with 2 isamaru in deck rather than 1, your odds of getting both in the first 10 cards is 3.3%, in the first 12, it goes up to a whopping 5%. If you can't kill your opponent in that time frame, then you've got other problems against combo.

Against gro, your opponent will most likely play an early goose or bear. If you've got isamaru out, you can attack, with lions, you can't. This is a BIG deal if you have mask of memory on the board. Your opponent will trade with lions in a second, but you'll gain card advantage with isamaru.

So let's review:
Against aggro: Isamaru mildly better
Against gobbo: Isamaru better
Against gro: Isamaru better
Against combo: Lions better 5% of the time

I wouldn't run Isamaru as more than a 3 of, but running 4 lions, 1 hound just seems like a bad choice.

SillyMetalGAT

04-15-2006, 02:03 PM

I agree with Tivadar, you would be crazy to not run more than 1 hound. Even if he is legendary, hes the best creature you have available next to Angel.

My question is, how frequently is this deck dropping Angel 1st turn with the Blue splash?

Lego

04-15-2006, 02:31 PM

Zilla basically said everything I would have said, so I'll try not to repeat everything. Parallax Wave is the best card in the deck, play 4. Iamaru is 100% better than Savannah Lions, play 4. Savanah Lions is the weakest card in the deck, and I've considered replacing him many times.

@ Soltari discussion: If you're looking for more Shadow creatures, I would consider replacing a couple of Savannah Lions with Soltari Foot Soldiers. No protection or anything, but if you're playing 4 Isamaru, you've probably got room for the Foot Soldiers, and it will bring your Shadow count to 6, allowing your equipment to hit more often. I'll test this out.

About the white sources. In Syracuse, I had several problems with white sources. Often I would keep an iffy hand with only one white source and have a large problem getting the second white source. I didn't specifically keep track of how many times I wanted a 2 mana land and how many times I got one, but I would be willing to trade a bit of explosiveness for that much more consistency. Against a lot of decks, Silver Knight on turn 2 is the best play you can make (maybe second to Angel, but you still need the second white to unmorph) and the two most powerful spells in the deck require double white.

@ZillA: I've been considering taking out the City of Traitors for Plains, but I will test the Moxen in their place. They offer the random chance of turn 2 unmorphed swinging Angel, and you know how much I like Cool Plays (tm) :smile: Keep us updated on how your testing goes.

@Blue Splash: This is the mono-white thread, but for the sake of argument, I'd say turn 1 Angel happens next to never. Even when I played 4 Ancient Tomb, 4 Chrome Mox, first turn Angel was pretty rare, and the Blue splash often doesn't play 4 Angel or four Ancient Tombs, so the possibility is going to be even more rare. As the meta looks now, mono-white is perfect as far as I'm concerned, but if combo keeps become popular, I might switch to the 3C version.

MasterBlaster

04-15-2006, 02:54 PM

Ok, with 2 isamaru in deck rather than 1, your odds of getting both in the first 10 cards is 3.3%, in the first 12, it goes up to a whopping 5%. If you can't kill your opponent in that time frame, then you've got other problems against combo.
I'm not saying running 2 Isamaru is bad. I'm saying that running 4 Isamaru(as Godzilla suggested) can be bad. Also when I'm 12 cards deep in my deck I'm only in turn 5. Angel Stompy usually goldfishes a turn 5/6 win.

Against gro, your opponent will most likely play an early goose or bear. If you've got isamaru out, you can attack, with lions, you can't. This is a BIG deal if you have mask of memory on the board. Your opponent will trade with lions in a second, but you'll gain card advantage with isamaru.
If I have Savannah Lions in play against Gro my Lions will always enter combat assuming that Gro doesn't have threshold. Would a Gro player EVER even block my Lions with an unthreshed creature? I already have around 7 or 8 more creatures than Gro has, so if they want to throw away a creature(which in a few turns will be a 4/4) to deal with my 2/1 than I would gladly make that trade. Also when they do have threshold I can throw 2 Savannah Lions in the path of a Werebear. If I have 4 Isamaru(which again is what I'm arguing against) I can't double-block to get rid of their Werebear.

tivadar

04-15-2006, 07:56 PM

Fair enough, I agree, 4 hounds are too many. However, you question about gro blocking the lions, the answer is yes in most cases, especially if those lions are equipped with jitte or mask of memory. Gro doesn't care how many creatures they have on the board, and will gladly go 1 for 1 with your creatures in most cases. What they do care about is how many creatures YOU have on the board, and they'd like to keep that number at 0. After threshold, either one of these become a moot point, as they're both bad.

As I said, my experience has been that 3 is too many, but 2 is just right. This is with a slightly different deck, though, which has the ability to dig a bit more, so I'd suggest definetly 2, but give 3 a shot and see how it works out. If you'd like some percentages for drawing multiples in the first x turns, just let me know, probabilities are my thing, why test when you can get the actual numbers...

Jolfer

04-15-2006, 09:24 PM

I've never had a problem running 3. It isn't that often that you draw multiples in a game, let alone your opening hand. But it's even more rare that your oppenent doesn't kill one early in the game anyway, espeically when you drop/they know you're about to drop an early Jitte/SoFI/Mask. Also, if you're running chrome moxen and draw multiples you can often pitch one off to that.

MasterBlaster

04-15-2006, 10:50 PM

Forgive me for changing the topic but has anyone else tried Cursed Scroll in this deck?

I haven't been able to do the most testing with it as decent playtest partners are hard to come by and legacy tournaments in my area are three weeks apart, and over 40 miles away, but I like what it does for the control and aggro matchups.

Against Landstill or MWC it can be a real headache because even after a Wrath of God and a flurry of Swords to Plowshares you will still be shocking their life every turn, and against slow decks its definitely not to be underestimated. Also the ability to eliminate an active enemy Mother of Runes is an absolute lifesaver.

My main reason for taking out Mask of Memory for Cursed Scroll are that MoM is a terrible topdeck after a Wrath of God and the card draw on its own isn't enough to warrant its inclusion in my opinion.

Zilla

04-16-2006, 01:18 AM

Also why in the hell would I block a Goblin Matron with a Savannah Lions?
That's not the question you should be asking. The question is why wouldn't your opponent block Lions with Matron? Hounds can safely attack into Goblins in that scenario and trade 2 for 1, if it trades at all. Savannah Lions can't attack at all, unless you want to trade a real threat for a trivial one. And you do want to be playing aggressively against Goblins as much as possible. If you hold back and try to build up your ground forces against them, they'll overwhelm you with Matron/Ringleader advantage. This is in addition to the obvious weakness against Fanatic, Lackey, and Sharpshooter.

I will reiterate: Goblins is not a bye, and it's much more prevalent than combo. I would by far rather be prepared to beat them than cater to an infinitesmal advantage in an already overwhelmingly bad matchup. A 3/2 split could theoretically be acceptable, but statistically speaking, 3 Hounds will almost never preclude you from playing as aggressively as you want to be.

Further, given the deck's threat density and extremely tight mana curve, I almost never find myself out of threats to play by the fourth turn, which is the only relevant one against combo, and that's running the full 4 hounds.

I've tested this a lot. I encourage you to do the same, because with all due respect, your assertions greatly overestimate the drawback in comparison to my own experiences with it. That includes testing against combo.

MasterBlaster

04-16-2006, 01:32 AM

@Godzilla
I'll take your word on it that 4 Hounds are the nuts. I know that you've done a shit-ton of testing. I would like to say that in my meta Goblins is probably the most common archetype, but I've never seen it played anywhere near its full potential and its really not something I'm concerned about when I play Angel Stompy.

Zilla

04-16-2006, 01:42 AM

I'll take your word on it that 4 Hounds are the nuts.
I don't want you to take my word for it. I want you to test it yourself. I'm not infallible or anything. It's just that if you're going to disagree with me I want it to be from experience, ya dig?

SillyMetalGAT

04-16-2006, 09:26 AM

I will reiterate: Goblins is not a bye, and it's much more prevalent than combo.

At the D4Ds there were 6 Solidarity decks and 2 Salvagers. I don't know about ohter combo decks but that right there is more than the number of Goblins. The way I see it, we were in a VERY aggro heavy format when GP philly came around. Now the format seems to be shifting to Combo because it beats aggro. Maybe this thread should be a little more worried about Combo than Goblins, you guys pretty much have the optimal decklist against them.

tivadar

04-16-2006, 12:20 PM

At the D4Ds there were 6 Solidarity decks and 2 Salvagers. I don't know about ohter combo decks but that right there is more than the number of Goblins. The way I see it, we were in a VERY aggro heavy format when GP philly came around. Now the format seems to be shifting to Combo because it beats aggro. Maybe this thread should be a little more worried about Combo than Goblins, you guys pretty much have the optimal decklist against them.

I've been thinking more and more about this actually. Combo/aggro control do seem to becoming more popular than straight aggro at this point. That SHOULD mean this deck is a bad choice (it's meant to beat aggro, not combo, and is only mediocre against control), however, it seems to still be placing well. Also, was D4D a bit of a fluke? All the other metas I've seen seem to still be aggro oriented (with gobbo and gro being most popular and solidarity only making up a minority).

SillyMetalGAT

04-16-2006, 12:23 PM

I dont know about that, even here Goblins is dead. We haven't had a goblin deck place Top 4 for about a month now. GRO seems to be the Aggro deck to beat. Thats just what i'm seeing. Im also seeing decks like Nausea, Solidarity, Salvagers, and Combo Ravager around here. Combo is hitting the Northeast pretty hard, im expecting a Summer of Combo when Infernal Tutor drops. Can this deck survive through the combo meta?

MasterBlaster

04-16-2006, 04:43 PM

I don't want you to take my word for it. I want you to test it yourself. I'm not infallible or anything. It's just that if you're going to disagree with me I want it to be from experience, ya dig?

I can't exactly get any testing done and I probably won't be able to play AngelStompy again, or any Magic, until sometime in the Fall, but I dig.

Zilla

04-16-2006, 07:37 PM

Can this deck survive through the combo meta?
It depends what the combo is and how much of your sideboard you want to dedicate to it.

Salvager Game isn't actually that problematic a matchup for you. I'm not saying it's an extremely positive one, but you do have a lot of answers to it. Swords to Plowshares, Parallax Wave, Tormod's Crypt, and Pithing Needle are all extremely potent tools in this matchup. They can win through it if they manage to maintain a steady stream of Duresses and Therapies, but in most cases they have to have them in multiples for them to effectively answer the myriad hate you have in store for them.

Against Solidarity/Spring Tide, most AS sideboards have 4x Armageddon at the least, as well as Pithing Needle for fetchlands. If you want to, you can focus the hate with 4 Rule of Law or 4 Glowrider, which will make the matchup a winnable one, though it won't be particularly favorable.

The deck will have obvious problems against Nausea, simply because it's faster than the other options. Then again, it's less stable, and less effective against the rest of the field. Infernal Tutor may or may not change this equation; I don't care to speculate.

"Combo" Ravager is irrellevant. It's still an aggro deck and Angel Stompy destroys it.

The answer to your question depends upon what type of combo is played, and how much of it. Obviously it's not this deck's forte, and in a very combo-heavy meta, I would advise against playing this deck. However, what you're talking about is a major shift in the metagame. Even if you're seeing a decline in Goblins, the metagame is still largely aggro. For example, at Kadi's tournament there were 2 Salvager Game decks and 6 Solidarity decks out 56 decks total. That means that combo accounts for roughly 15% of the metagame. Control and prison weighed in more heavily with around 15 decks, comprising about 27% of the metagame. You're left with roughly 58% of the field being comprised of aggro or aggro-control, most of which are positive matchups for Angel Stompy. Furthermore, it's important to note that a good portion of the control decks being played were experimental, and didn't make it anywhere near the Top 8, meaning they should logically be given less consideration with regards to the archetype's prevalence as a whole.

To summate, I think it will take a much stronger shift towards combo and control to obvate this deck's strategy. I'm not saying it can't happen, but it hasn't yet, and it doesn't make sense to tailor the deck to changes in the metagame which have not yet occurred.

Incidentally, Isamaru, while being superior to Lions in almost every aggro/aggro-control matchup, also tends to be better in control matchups, where you typically want to be slow-playing your threats anyway so as not to walk into mass removal. In a general sense, Lions is marginally better against 15% of the field, where Hounds is notably better against the remaining 85%. This is why I don't find arguments against multiple Hounds to be particularly compelling.

Lego

04-17-2006, 02:03 PM

As ZillA already said, it really depends on the combo. The only deck I've seriously had a problem with is Solidarity. You can make the matchup a little worse than 50/50 post-board, but you're still going to lose almost every pre-board game. That's always been my biggest fear, and if Solidarity is prevelant in your area, you probably shouldn't play this deck.

Now, if other forms of combo are big instead, this deck is probably still a good choice. You have outs against any deck that relies on creatures to win. I've found Salvagers to be at least even, because it's better for them pre-side and much better for you post-side. Nause is tough, but you can do fun things like Turn 2 Morphed Angel *and* Disenchant on their Helm. They are inconsistent enough that it's not a big metagame threat, and they will kill themselves every now and then, saving you the trouble.

Otherwise you're looking at combo decks that aren't really played much, and you've still got a winnable matchup versus most of them. Belcher is doable with Disenchant/Pithing Needle, as well as Swords if they're going the Welder route. Survival combo is almost always good for you, with all your creature removal plus Disenchant/Needle for Survival. Ravager Combo isn't even funny, and rolls to a single Parallax Wave. I played versus Affinity at the DLD and rolled him. He was never in it either game.

But in the end, I don't think the meta has shifted nearly enough for this deck to have any problems. It is still heavily aggro, and even aggro-control decks are usually a pretty good matchup for you. Most control decks are at least even matchups as well, and can be boarded against.

I think the strength of this deck is that it packs a very powerful maindeck with hard to beat creatures and good disruption, it is very difficult to sideboard against, and it has some great sideboard options against a lot of other decks. If you're confident with the deck, it's still a very good choice, and will remain so as long as combo stays less than 1/4 of the meta. When combo gets bigger, we'll have to rehash this conversation (and probably consider 3C.)

Eldariel

04-20-2006, 11:30 AM

Would it be the time to maindeck Glowrider now? Goblins seem to be in decline and Glowrider just does ugly things to Threshold and makes the combo match-ups winnable pre-board too. It also postpones all the relevant sweepers in Rifter by a turn. It's quite bad against Goblins, basically a 2/1 beater which hurts AS-player more than the Goblin-player, but the Goblin match-up was pretty good last I checked and I don't see a 4-card switch really making it that much worse (unless some smarty gets the idea of removing Silver Knight for Glowrider, which obviously is not an option). This'd also make the 'combo SB' much easier as you've got 4 hatecards in the main, you wouldn't need to dedicate the whole damn SB just to make Solidarity winnable, while still actually keeping it winnable both pre- and post-board. Perhaps with a Rule of Law+Armageddon-SB, it'd even be favourable post-board.

MasterBlaster

04-20-2006, 12:19 PM

@Eldariel
If you're encountering so much combo that Glowrider starts to sound like a good maindeck card, than you should probably put down AngelStompy and pick up Gro or Fish.

Eldariel

04-20-2006, 12:25 PM

@Eldariel
If you're encountering so much combo that Glowrider starts to sound like a good maindeck card, than you should probably put down AngelStompy and pick up Gro or Fish.

Well, my primary point was it's incredible utility against basically every top tier deck sans Goblins. Not only combo, but Gro, Rifter and company as well.

bigredmeanie

04-20-2006, 01:53 PM

Glowrider isn't that great against Rifter they don't cast many spells, and would gladly pay 1 more for the few thay do cast.

Caleb

04-20-2006, 01:57 PM

Yeah, plus it dies to Slice and Dice.

I dunno, I don't really like it MD as it hits you too. STP, additional Chrome Moxen, Wave, Equipment... that's a good bit of stuff.

Zilla

04-20-2006, 04:41 PM

Outside of anything but an extremely combo or control heavy meta I'd advise against Glowrider in the maindeck, and in a meta like that, I'd advise against playing Angel Stompy in the first place.

The problems with Glowrider in a general sense:

1. While it's good against Thresh, it's terrible against Goblins, it's bad against random aggro (and there's still a ton of that in the metagame), and it's quite bad against Rifter, which hardly casts anything.

2. It's a terrible threat. It has low power and is easily removed, which is the opposite of most other threats in the deck.

In short, Glowrider is a highly specialized card, good in very specific matchups, but generally not very strong. That makes it a sideboard card, I would think.

tivadar

04-21-2006, 08:43 PM

Out of curiosity, what's the current feeling on mox vs. traitors? I'm splashing blue, but have tried traitors over mox. While I find it's good against most controlish matchups, it does seem to hurt my aggro matchup just enough.

Lego

04-22-2006, 12:17 AM

My general thoughts on City of Traitors in general is that the deck does not have enough White. I think 17-18 sources are generally good, because your deck simply will not function properly without double white on turn 2. This might be different with a splash, especially if you're splashing for draw. That being the case, I'm not sure there is room for the Cities.

I'm not exactly sure about the Chrome Moxen yet. I think I have to do a lot more testing, because they have been encouraging me to make bad plays (i.e. overextending) which I'm not a fan of, but otherwise they seem more explosive than the Cities.

Shriekmaw

04-22-2006, 12:29 AM

@ tivadar

I've been running the 3 color angel stompy for a few months over here in Syracuse and after the Dual Land Draft I've discovered that I'm not a big fan of blue in the deck as I was earlier. Recently, I've cut the blue splash and just play Angel Stompy with a black splash.

If your interested I can post my decklist and sb for it. Its still a work in progress, but has shown good results so far in our metagame. Just something to consider if you don't see a lot of control/combo decks in your area.

Bongo

04-22-2006, 11:39 AM

Not to toot my own horn here, but I've said a couple posts before that 6 colorless lands are too much.

Actually, I'm going with the following configuration right now:

18 Plains
3 Ancient Tomb
1 Chrome Mox

While it may seem odd, I've been pretty satisfied with 19 white sources, practically ensuring WW on the second turn.
You should think of the single Mox as the fourth Ancient Tomb here. Drawing a second Tomb was kinda meh if I didn't have enough sinks for it, or if I was low on life without an Exalted Angel ready.
Chrome Mox is nice, but 2 copies are the maximum number for AS in my opinion, as I didn't like imprinting a decent card on it (especially against decks packing counters). I went down to one, which has been fine so far.

Although this configuration is a lot less likely to pop out Angels on the second turn, the chance to keep your opening hand improved significantly. I think trading some splashy plays for a lower mulligan ratio and higher mana consistency is more than worth it.

What do you think?

Dr.ugs

04-22-2006, 02:12 PM

Whats the logic behind running a single copy of chrome mox?Why not cut it completly because you won´t draw it when you need it.

tivadar

05-06-2006, 08:45 AM

Ok, not quite done throwing out the random suggestions here... I've been testing against gobbo lately (with a 2c version) and have found my matchups worse than I'd like them to be. This is largely due to the fact that I've been experimenting boarding 0 cards for the matchup and relying on my main deck to do the job. Since this hasn't worked, I've gone back to the drawing board. I'm not a big fan of tivadar's crusade (despite the name) just because it's expensive, and mainly because it's a sorcery. But how about Rain of Blades? For only 1 mana you kill half their attacking force (which should mean half their creatures). Two in hand means that you take down their entire force at instant speed. On top of that, it's not a dead card in other matchups. Recently I've been looking for non-targetting removal type spells against the stupid goose, this fits that bill early game, and if nothing else puts the goose in reach of a silver knight late game. Just looking for what everyone thinks of the card.

Atwa

05-06-2006, 09:11 AM

tivadar

05-06-2006, 09:42 AM

It doens't look too bad, but what is your maindeck configuration?
Packing 4 Parallax Wave, 4 Swords to Plowshares, 4 Silver knight, 4 Mother of Runes, 2 Sword of Fire and Ice and 2 Jitte, it looks to me Goblins can't be really that hard to beat.

I am not saying it is an easy match, because goblins is a very fast, very good deck which sometimes just wins, but half your maindeck already "beats" goblins.

My matchup against them isn't terrible actually, just not as good as I'd like. One thing that's given them the edge is the fact that they're not running vial, I believe, which actually speeds up their deck in the early game. I also fell on some bad draws, and seeing as I'm 2c, I don't have Wave, but I do have FoW right now. Wave is a bit better against gobbo, but both are good. I'm also only packing 2 Mothers, and at the time had no Hounds (up to 2 now).

The matchup went sour mainly because first game I didn't see a silver knight, and they burnt my other creatures (even after a FoW'ed lackey turn 1). Second match had them bringing in anarchy, which just really hurts. I had 3 silvers, 1 untapped, and they had 2 piledrivers. They hit me with anarchy and swung for 16 that turn. I made a small play mistake, we were both at 3 lands, and I cast a silver and played pithing (had stifle in hand). The next turn he found a fetch, fetched 4th land, and cast anarchy. If I had held the pithing, I could have stifled the fetch.

Atwa

05-06-2006, 10:21 AM

Oke, now I understand, you are playing 3c Angel Stompy. There is an other tread for that deck, maybe someone had already posted an answer to your problem.

f|i[p]

05-10-2006, 06:55 AM

Hi. I've been playing angel stompy for casual play for quite some time now, and have finally decided to try it out in a real legacy tournament, I took out some of the cards I usually use for it(for casual), and replaced them with legacy legal cards.

This is the first time ever, that I am joining a tournament so bear with me, I don’t know much about the legacy tournaments here. But my friend has told me what kinds of decks to expect from it. There should be around 30-40 decks composed of:

Mostly:

Goblin Vial
Suicide Black

Some:
R/W Rifter
U/G Madness
Random Rogue Decks
Survival decks (don't really know which one)

1-3 Threshold decks
1-3 Solidarity decks

There are probably other decks that I don't know about that would be in the tournament, like Rock or scepter chant... But as for what my friend remembers Goblins and suicide black are the most dominant decks.

Pros:
I am not sure about the other decks that would show up, but I am quite sure that it’s mostly composed of Creature based decks which this deck is supposed crush.

Also, I don’t think anyone plays Angel Stompy or has even played against it over here, so bringing this deck in would be a surprise and probably catch the players off guard.

Cons:
I as a player lack the tournament experience and the knowledge I would gain playing against optimal tournament decks. But then again, there is always a first for everything.

I was wondering if anyone could offer me help on the deck. Currently ive replaced some cards with the ones that are available to me.

//NAME: Angel Stompy

// Mana
16 Plains
4 Ancient Tomb
2 Chrome Mox

// Beats
4 Mother of Runes
3 Isamaru, Hound of Konda
2 White Knight
4 Silver Knight
4 Soltari Priest
4 Exalted Angel

// Equipment
2 Mask of Memory
2 Umezawa's Jitte
2 Sword of Fire and Ice

// Spells
4 Swords to Plowshares
2 Seal of cleansing
3 Parallax Wave
2 Cursed scroll

// Sideboard
SB: 3 Tormod's Crypt
SB: 2 Worship
SB: 2 Seal of Cleansing
SB: 2 Tempest of Light
SB: 3 Armageddon
SB: 3 open

As for the side board I really dont know what to put in it. If you could, I would really appreciate if you could help me out on the side board as well as the main decked cards.

Cards you might question:

worship: to give a boost, to an already positive match up against most
creature based decks.

Cursed scroll : this card seems to be helping me a lot against control decks
but can be replaced if proven to be inferior to any card that
Could take its place.

White Knight: I am not a big fan of savannah lions as they die too easily, I
replaced them with White knights as my friend has informed me
that there are lots of suicide black or the likes.

Chrome mox: I am not so happy with city of traitors and went back to
Moxen.

Seal of cleansing: I just thought that with a lot of black decks running about
I’m sure discard would go around as much.

I don’t even know if I should put Tormod's Crypt in the side board, as to there
are only a few threshold decks.

I think this deck would do really good in this tournament as long as I play it right. Thank you in advance, I currently have till the 26th of May to prepare for it. I think thats enough time to prepare..

tivadar

05-10-2006, 08:59 AM

You're going to need something to deal with Solidarity. Even if you don't think it will be showing up in force, it's your weakest matchup by far and you should board for it before boarding for threshold (which is a much better matchup). I might drop a crypt and add 4 glowriders, they double for the solidarity and the gro matchup. Also, while armageddon is good against solidarity, if you can't accellerate it out they can go off in response to you casting it. Even if you do accellerate it out, you better be sure you have them on a quick enough clock.

BullBar

05-10-2006, 09:46 AM

MasterBlaster

05-10-2006, 02:21 PM

Rule of law is also good against storm combo. However if you're expecting a lot of combo than you probably shouldn't play Angel Stompy.

Zilla

05-10-2006, 03:47 PM

Attn: All Angelstompy players! Iggy Pop has had a quantum leap in tempo and reliability thanx to Infernal Tutor. You might want to devote a few neurons to sorting out some definitive tech for this matchup, which will likely be more common as the technology spreads.
My initial reaction is Mom and True Believer. Thoughts?
This is an age-old discussion, but I forgive you for not reading through all 40ish pages of this thread to find that out. MB is correct - Rule of Law is anti-storm card numbah one. Glowrider is neck and neck with it as well, since it's a threat as well as an essentially one-sided Sphere of Resistance. True Believer is the third option, but it's likely not on par with the other two because although it prevents your opponent from winning until they can answer it, it does nothing to slow them down in the meanwhile, unlike the other two options.

In short, if you really want to beat IGG and Co., and you're willing to dedicate half your board to it, you'll find that 4 Rule of Law and 4 Glowrider go a long, long way there.

f|i[p]

05-10-2006, 11:34 PM

As a matter of fact, I am not expecting a lot of combo decks, hence the reason I
am playing angel stompy in the tournament. around 1-4 decks would be a fair assumption.

If there was a split between suicide black and goblins, would cutting down silver knights to 3 and adding another white knight to 3 be smart?

But I still think that red would be the prevalent color, as there would also be burn that’s why I don’t intend to change the Soltari Priests to Monks.

// Beats
4 Mother of Runes
3 Isamaru, Hound of Konda
3 White Knight
3 Silver Knight
4 Soltari Priest
4 Exalted Angel

I would also like a basic rundown on what to side in and side out against specific match ups. Like threshold, suicide black, goblins and rifter. Just a basic run down on what to expect, what I should do against them would be a lot of help. Thank you.

MasterBlaster

05-11-2006, 01:33 AM

Against Rifter you should side in Armageddon and enchantment hate and I think you should side out Mother of Runes and Swords to Plowshares.

If you expect a lot of Suicide than you should try to find some Light of Day for your sideboard. Also you better hope that they don't side in Virtue's Ruin.

f|i[p]

05-11-2006, 05:53 AM

I don't think anyone is going to sideboard against angel stompy or white weenie variants as, nobody here has played against this deck yet. They dont even know what it is...

Bongo

05-11-2006, 02:46 PM

In a creature-heavy meta like you described above, you absolutely want 4 Parallax Wave as they are gamebreaking. I also recommend the full 4 Silver Knight. 2 copies of White Knight should be enough even in a Suicide heavy meta.

If you can afford it, some Pithing Needles in the sideboard are an allround solution to things that may come up in an unknown meta.

f|i[p]

05-12-2006, 12:29 AM

Thanks, I will try to get 1 more parallax wave. I only have 3 at the moment, as for the needles, I can't afford them at the moment. I'll try to borrow if I can. But if I don't get to borrow needles, I'll need a side board alternative.

Lego

05-12-2006, 02:46 PM

Your deck actually looks quite good. I'd recommend the 4th Isamaru and the 4th Parallax Wave, especially if you expect a lot of Goblins. Isamaru is a house in that matchup, and a single Parallax Wave will often win the game.

I would also switch the Seal of Cleansing to Disenchant, but it's not a big deal. Disenchant is better versus Stax and can break a Chant lock, but those situations have honestly never come up. I just feel like Disenchant is better.

f|i[p]

05-13-2006, 12:27 AM

So what would you kindly propose to take out? cursed scroll or the white knights for the 4th isamaru and wave... im still in the process of testing the scrolls. But as for now it shines against control decks, im quite sure of this.But im very much open to suggestions, I also would need help on the sideboard... wht do you think should I put incase I don't get any needles?

I could put in cards that would help me to crush suicide or goblins better... but then again.. I really don't know what to put if I don't get to borrow needles.

My current sideboard

3 Armageddon
3 Tormond's Crypt
2 Worship
2 Tempest of light
2 disenchant
3 open

MasterBlaster

05-13-2006, 01:00 AM

']So what would you kindly propose to take out? cursed scroll or the white knights for the 4th isamaru and wave...
If I were you I would take out the 2 Mask of Memory. But then again I really dislike that card so I might be biased.

Lego

05-13-2006, 04:11 PM

Mask is good, but you can take those out if you want to keep the Cursed Scrolls in. Any of those switches would be fine, there are a few cards that can come and go and you'll still be playing a pretty optimal list.

My board for Kaddy's tournament was the following:

3 Armageddon
2 Disenchant
3 Pithing Needle
3 Tormod's Crypt
4 Rule of Law

Your board looks good so far. I'm not sure what matchups you would bring the Worships in for. If you find the Pithing Needles, I would board them. Otherwise, you can up the numbers of the cards that are already there (Armageddon, Tormod's Crypt) or add a couple of removal spells, or board for specific matchups (Null Rod or whatever, depending on the matchup you're boarding for)

f|i[p]

05-13-2006, 10:12 PM

MY metagame

A lot of
Goblin Vial
Suicide Black

Some:
R/W Rifter
U/G Madness
Random Control Decks
Random Rogue Decks
Burn

1-3 survival variants
1-3 Threshold decks
1-3 Solidarity decks

I'm boarding in worship for any aggro decks, from goblins, suicide black, madness and threshold. I know angel stompy has a slight favor in this matchups but I do want to make sure that it is favorable..thus boarding worship for any aggro deck thats going to show up(which is roughly 80 percent). Is there any other card better than worship that could help me more against aggro decks? I just thought worship was one of the best.

I was actually particularly concerned about board sweepers like wrath of god.

Is there any card I could side board against control decks in particular? It doesn't have to be second sunrise, ghostway or the likes of those cards. It could simply just be cards that would disrupt control players. Like tangle wire, winter orb but I really wouldnt know... thats whY im here.. Thank you in advance.

tivadar

05-13-2006, 10:21 PM

I'd suggest glowrider. It doubles in the combo and the control matchup, and is rather good in both. I'm assuming you've already got the geddons?

f|i[p]

05-14-2006, 07:20 AM

yes I already have the geddons... I will test the glowriders against control... thank you.

Eldariel

05-14-2006, 07:50 AM

']yes I already have the geddons... I will test the glowriders against combo... thank you.

Notice that it also postpones the inevitable Wrath by a turn, making it a valuable tool versus control-decks. Of course, resolving a Glowrider vs. counter-based control is also a bomb as their counter-costs are suddenly far less manageable (1-mana 2-card 1-life FoWs anyone? 3-mana Counterspells?).

dontbiteitholmes

05-22-2006, 11:02 PM

How does everyone plan on sideboarding now that Combo may see a comeback?
Also I accidently went into the AngelStax thread for a second thinking it was this one ewww... Time to wash my fucking hands.

MasterBlaster

05-23-2006, 01:03 AM

My Combo-hate sideboard would look something like this:

4 Rule of Law
4 Armageddon
2-3 True Believer

Sadly I don't own Pithing Needles.

But seriously, if combo starts to kick-ass I'll probably throw together a U/W/B Fish deck or U/G/W Gro deck. Or I'll give in and buy the last cards I need to play Nausea.

f|i[p]

05-29-2006, 02:38 AM

Thank you to all that helped me out. I ended up top1 in the tournament... sadly only 24 showed up for the tournament, and when we got to the top 8, we all decided to split the pot, instead of playing for it...

on the top 8 there was

ofcourse me.. angel stompy
blue white vial sliver
solidarity
confinement loam and that red enchantment.. forgot the name..
green stompy

there was a blue green threshold variant.. that uses that annoying 3 to cast 2/3 flying creature that destroys artifacts and enchantments when it deals damage from dissension.

white weenie

iggy pop

they were asking me if it was ok to just split the pot since I had no loss yet and was the top 1.. I didnt really mind seeing solidarity and iggy pop in the top 8, assuming I had a very bad match up against them and since this was my first tourney.. I didnt really mind..only boosters were given away.. ofcourse I got the most boosters since I was top 1. after spliting the pot we tried playing with iggy pop the ******** variant and white weenie.. nothing serious though... I found out that against iggy pop.. after game 1 you its not really such a bad match up after all.. slightly against angel stompy but not as bad as I thought based on this thread... White weenie was just easy to beat...the threshold variant was.. quite difficult, but then again i was in a hurry to leave, I was too hungry.... he countered almost everything and destroyed my artifacts/enchantments with that flying creature...

Thanks again.. I will consult this thread again... My build was not an optimal one sad to say... I used e. tutor for the 4th parallax wave.. and I had no draw engine at all. But it all ended up well I went 4 wins no losses and 1 draw... I was just lucky with the match ups.. I didnt get matched with any combo.. early... Thanks.

MasterBlaster

05-30-2006, 03:06 AM

@Fli[p]- How did your mainboard and sideboard look? Also congrats on your win. I'm glad to hear that Angel Stompy can beat a Tendrils deck(I haven't tested it myself).

f|i[p]

05-30-2006, 06:51 AM

//NAME: Angel Stompy

// Mana
17 Plains
4 Ancient Tomb
1 Chrome Mox

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

// Equipment
3 Umezawa's Jitte
1 Sword of Fire and Ice
1 Sword of Light and Shadow

// Spells
4 Swords to Plowshares
2 Seal of cleansing
3 Parallax Wave
2 Cursed scroll
1 E. Tutor

// Sideboard
SB: 3 Tormod's Crypt
SB: 4 Glowrider
SB: 2 Disenchant
SB: 2 Tempest of Light
SB: 3 Armageddon
SB: 1 True Believer

In all honesty, I replaced white knights with true believers because the day before I got to test the deck with a black control deck that uses infest, edict and tons of discard... I got really annoyed with discard and chainers edict, as I had a very hard time winning, and decided to replace white knights with T. Believer. (although it weakened my aggro match up it did quite well against combo) I think it was the right choice since alot of combo showed up.

If there were things I would replace.. it would be the lions.. Isamaru would have been better, though I couldnt get one in time, so the lions had to do.

Cursed scroll won me a game against black control, but in the rest of my games I kinda boarded it out... it seemed to be too much of a mana investment..3 activation cost seemed to hurt me..

The mox was a stand alone just because I couldnt find another.. but would have definitely played 2 if I had another.

Sword of light and shadow didnt reallY help as much, It would have been better of as Fire and Ice..(but I still can't seem to decide on this, recursion and the pro white is still wonderful) but I think I prefer the Fire and Ice for the draw and ping.

True believers wer good enough.(for the metagame though)

Not even one goblin deck... They said that in the last tournament half of the top 8 was goblins... but well.. there was no show... Perhaps it was too early for some.

E.Tutor just helped for one reason, to help fetch seals of cleansing or p wave. but that was it. Im still not sure about it..

I probably did good against Iggy pop because I had 4 glow riders, 3 true believers, 3 tormods crypt and 3 Armageddons that I put in after game 1. I had mother of runes to protect them too... but what hurt alot is that he ran Massacre in the side board.. I couldnt really put him in a lock.. I had to be faster. But we just played a casual game after the tournament.. But I think it was still in his favor.. though it wasn't an auto loss.

TheAardvark

06-01-2006, 10:37 PM

Well, we had a small tourney here (15 people; summer sucks in a college town) this past Sunday, and I ended up winning with an Angel Stompy build tweaked to the local metagame. For reference, here's the list:

4x Mother Of Runes
4x Samurai Of The Pale Curtain
3x Exalted Angel
3x Isamaru, Hound Of Konda
3x Leonin Shikari
3x Silver Knight
3x Soltari Priest
2x Savannah Lions

4x Swords To Plowshares

3x Parallax Wave
2x Aura Of Silence

2x Sword Of Fire & Ice
2x Sword Of Light & Shadow
2x Umezawa's Jitte

3x Ancient Tomb
18x Plains

SIDEBOARD :
3x Armageddon
3x Sacred Ground
3x Pithing Needle
2x Seal Of Cleansing
2x Worship
1x Aura Of Silence
1x Parallax Wave

Yeah, 61 cards. The main reason for that was that I didn't really want to cut anything to shave it off a card. It was a bit risky with only having 21 mana sources, but it worked out well. First, some explanation on a couple of cards:

Samurai Of The Pale Curtain--I knew at least one person would be playing Salvagers combo, and there are usually a couple of people playing Survival-based decks and random other graveyard reliant strategies, so I tinkered with these and they worked quite well in testing. A 2/2 for WW isn't amazing, but the ability is solid, and the Bushido was useful several times. I like the little guy.

Leonin Shikari--This came about by seeing a Shikari in a binder, and thinking how powerful the ability could be in certain decks. While my deck only has 6 pieces of equipment, they all benefit greatly from my opponent not being able to block correctly, no matter what. A couple of times I got turn 1 Isamaru, turn 2 Shikari, and turn 3 Jitte, with equip mana; it was elementary after that. It was surprisingly useful in most matchups at one point or another. Not sure I'd run it again, but it was definitely worthwhile for me.

Aura Of Silence--This was an experiment, as I thought it had the potential to be better than Seal Of Cleansing. It comes down a turn later, but the effect is undeniably powerful against several decks, and it has the same built-in Disenchant effect. It wasn't amazing, but it did make one of my matchups much better; I think it bears more testing, at least for my meta.

Parallax Wave--The only reason I mention this is because I didn't play 4. Of late, our meta has been slightly more control/aggro control than aggro, so I thought 3 would be sufficient, and it was, although the 4th would have been very good in a couple of matchups.

Sacred Ground--Pikula is very popular here, and I knew Wildfire would be played (since I built it for someone else and another guy was going to play it as well), so this seemed like a good call. Ended up being a non-factor, but I still think it was a decent call.

There's my defense of my janky decisions; accept it or tear it apart, whichever you like. Now, here's what I faced in the tourney:

Round 1--Bye. I 2-0ed him like a pro.
Round 2--Stupid Green. I lost in 3 after my Ancient Tomb was wasted the turn before I drew Parallax Wave FTW. That sucked.
Round 3--10 Land Stompy. He drew Rancor after Rancor, but I drew Plow after Plow plus more creatures. Parallax Wave vs. Rogue Elephant = good times.
Round 4--U/W Aggro Control. I won in 3 games, with both wins being brutal, brutal wins for me. The one I lost was largely due to 3 Wraths on his part.
Round 5--Wildfire. Again, 3 games, but pro-red bashed face before he could Burning Wish for removal.
Round 6--Stupid Green again. I didn't lose this time. I kept a 1 land hand in game 3 because my hand was 3 1cc and 3 2cc gas; I ripped lands 2 turns in a row and just applied beats.

That's a brief recap of how it went. The deck was a good call for the field I ended up seeing, so it was a success. However, please bear in mind that this is a very meta-specific build, so allowances were made.

That is all.

f|i[p]

06-01-2006, 11:46 PM

Samurai-I was actually thinking about running samurai myself, as there was a
salvager combo and iggy pop deck who uses lions eye diamond recursion.. it
seems that alot more combo is starting to use their graveyard..but I
still think that samurai is a metagame choice.

Shikari- Although she may seem useful, I really do not reccomend her. Shes only
useful with equipment on the board, along with extra mana investment.

As for angel stompy in general.

The only problem for me seems to looking for the right draw engine. Mask of memory is a strong choice considering you have an evasive creature on the board. But the rest of your creatures can still be blocked aside from the priest.Ofcourse,when you put an angel down, its usually countered or stp'd. So the best way to make use of the mask is equipping it on the priest. It gives no bos, isamaru's, mnus to Silver knightother of runes or the rest. Most of the time it seems that I'd rather have Sword of fire and ice rather than Mask, Although it costs more to equip and cast. Would you happen to know any other draw engine that mono white angel stompy can have ? Other options.. (this was the time I was testing mask of memory by the way)

Also I was wondering if we would have answers to massacre or e. plague. E. Plage kills 8 of this decks creatures instantly, naming clerics.Disenchant and seals would help, Although it still kills priest and mother when its put on the board.

I miss skullclamp... at times.. but then again it kills priest and mother too...

Sorry if I'm asking too many questions, as I said I am new to the tournament scene.

frogboy

06-02-2006, 12:44 AM

Trust me, you miss Skullclamp. The deck was actually insane when Clamp was legal.

You're probably not going to run into many people boarding in Engineered Plague, although I guess it might concievably happen. The A plan in that scenario would probably be to draw Exalted Angel. Plan B would involve a Sword equipped to one of your men.

Less than four Parallax Wave is probably wrong; it's only bad in the matchups that are terrible no matter what you do.

MasterBlaster

06-02-2006, 01:31 AM

You're probably not going to run into many people boarding in Engineered Plague, although I guess it might concievably happen. The A plan in that scenario would probably be to draw Exalted Angel. Plan B would involve a Sword equipped to one of your men.
I agree. If you fear an Engineered Plague from your opponent you should move your equipment onto your clerics and hope you draw into a Disenchant effect.

f|i[p]

06-02-2006, 02:42 AM

OK.. I got that.... what about the draw engine?

Would you actually be able to run swords of fire and ice over mask of memory?
that woud mean 4 sword of fire and ice.. and 2 jitte..If we could, we would probably have to stick to 4 ancient tombs and 2 city of traitors for acceleration..

then again perhaps theres a better option... The reason I dont like mask of memory is because it doesnt give your creatures + to power or toughness. And the ability is also very conditional...

tivadar

06-02-2006, 08:17 AM

I'm of the same opinion on mask. It's good when it's working, but in most situations, it seems to be a win more for me. However, I'm not sure I'd run 4 sofi over 2/2/2, because it will still be a win more in many situations, and a single pithing could hit you hard. Generally you don't want to see more than 1 or 2 pieces of equipment in a game, certainly not more than 1 of the same equipment.

As for drawing, we are talking about white here. Back in the day when I ran more double lands (remote farm, ancient tomb, and city of traitors) I actually played with decree of justice for uncounterability and card advantage. Of course, this was when landstill was popular as well...

TheAardvark

06-02-2006, 08:45 AM

']Shikari- Although she may seem useful, I really do not reccomend her. Shes only
useful with equipment on the board, along with extra mana investment.

Well, as I said, I am not sure I'd run the Shikari again. It was very helpful, but the issue to me is that it really only affects your aggro/aggro control matchups, which are typically pretty heavily in your favor already. It was an experiemnt, and it worked, but I would replace them if I were to play the deck again. Something like:

-3 Shikari
+1 Isamaru
+1 Exalted Angel
+1 Parallax Wave

That would probably work out better against most of the field. Either way, I liked the Shikari for what it did, but I am aware that it isn't optimal.

Regarding Mask Of Memory, I cut it entirely not too long ago because I felt that, in my local meta, Sword of Light & Shadow would be better. Sure, it's 2 more mana (+1 casting cost, +1 equip), but it can be equipped turn 3, and then it's off to the races. It's obviously inferior to Sword Of Fire & Ice overall, but our local meta typically contains a LOT of mono black or B/W builds, so I felt it was reasonable to swap them in. Of course, look at my brief match descriptions above and you'll see I played against ONE deck with white cards in it and ZERO decks with black cards; go figure. Regardless, in the way our meta typically breaks down, I believe it's a good call. In a wider meta, I'd run a 3/3 split between SoF&I and Umezawa's Jitte, because they can be so backbreaking if they stick for even one turn. Mask Of Memory is good, especially since it's so cheap (you can swing with an equipped Lion/Isamaru on turn 2), but I found it lacking, personally. I think for the +1 net cost, Jitte is going to be more effective. Granted, the 3/3 split leaves you open a little more to Pithing Needle, but I think it's worth the risk.

Just saying.

MasterBlaster

06-02-2006, 02:00 PM

I'm currently just running 3 SOFI and 2 Jitte for my equips. I dropped Mask of Memory a long time ago from my build with no regrets. Angel Stompy just doesn't have enough small evasive creatures to abuse it in my opinion.

f|i[p]

06-03-2006, 05:40 AM

On the last tournament I dropped Mask of memory too. I used 3 jitte, 1 sword of fire and ice and 1 sword of light and shadow. I have to try 2 of each equipment and see how it works.

Also I was wondering if there were any other real threats thats available?
Sometimes I feel that the deck lacks threats.. but perhaps its just me. Its also because I hate being hit by infest and massacre. I was thinking about razor golems,but I have to try it myself I guess. I was just wondering if anyone has tried it.

I'm looking forward to trying different builds.. Just to see for myself why this build is the optimanl choice...

So far ive learned that cursed scroll doesn't really warrant any inclusion, although they do good agains control decks. Thats the only matchup they seem to shine. I never really swarm like white weenie,thus reducing my hand and making scroll more usefull. I usually slow play threats and equip, leaving a few or more cards in hand, making scroll almost useless.

Zilla

06-03-2006, 07:10 AM

Mask of Memory isn't win more. Even when your opponent has blockers, it often forces them to make trades they wouldn't otherwise make in order to prevent you from gaining overwhelming card advantage. For example, a Gro player will often put an unthreshed Mongoose or Werebear in front of a Hound equipped with Mask to prevent you from drawing cards. Without the Mask, they simply let the Hound through because it's putting essentially no pressure on them, and they know they can overwhelm you with creature superiority as soon as they obtain threshold. Mask adds intense pressure in this scenario.

The same is true against important threats in Goblins (Piledriver, Warchief, etc.), Deadguy (Hyppie, Shade, Confidant), and innumerrable other aggressive decks in the format. Mask isn't just for drawing cards; it also facilitates your role as a constant aggressor by turning even minor threats into significant ones, which is, of course, the deck's entire strategy. Obviously this is also true of other equipment like SoFI and Jitte, but these cards hit play later in the game and give your opponent more time to formulate a defense. You want to hit the ground running, and to be putting very real pressure on your opponent as early as turn 2. Mask allows this, where Jitte and SoFI do not.

Furthermore, Mask is phenomenal in non-aggro matchups, where your opponent has little or no blockers, and the draw is vital to your ability to stay in the game.

I think it's possible that varying personal playstyles might make Mask seem like it's win-more, but in reality, if you're playing aggressively (which is typically correct) and you're not afraid to trade your threats, Mask is a very potent tool.

tivadar

06-03-2006, 09:15 AM

To be honest, you're right in some regard. I run a 2-color version and that plays a slower game than does mono-white. On top of this, my creatures tend to be at the higher end of the curve, as I can BS first turn to set up my hand. This makes Sofi or Jitte a better choice. Once you have chrome mox to power out a turn 1 2cc and more 1cc creatures, then Mask makes more sense.

My one issue with it, even when running a quicker version of my deck, is that in just about any game where you don't see Mask in your opening hand, and it comes later, you'd rather have Jitte or Sofi. Sure, in the instances where it's in your opening hand, it's amazing, but I'd rather have the sofi or jitte most of the time.

Zilla

06-03-2006, 05:23 PM

My one issue with it, even when running a quicker version of my deck, is that in just about any game where you don't see Mask in your opening hand, and it comes later, you'd rather have Jitte or Sofi.
That's not necessarily true. Even in the later game, Mask helps to smooth out the deck's mana curve. It has very strong synergy with Parallax Wave, as well as Armageddon. Against Combo and Control, it is often strictly better than Jitte, and in many cases better than SoFI, in terms of digging for answers.

I feel that the versatility of the deck's equipment, both in functionality and in casting cost, is what makes it function so smoothly. Granted, you can run the deck without Masks, and in fact in a purely aggro meta I might endorse it. But against an unknown or mixed field, I think Mask is an important aspect of the deck's strategy.

tivadar

06-05-2006, 10:21 AM

That's not necessarily true. Even in the later game, Mask helps to smooth out the deck's mana curve. It has very strong synergy with Parallax Wave, as well as Armageddon. Against Combo and Control, it is often strictly better than Jitte, and in many cases better than SoFI, in terms of digging for answers.

I feel that the versatility of the deck's equipment, both in functionality and in casting cost, is what makes it function so smoothly. Granted, you can run the deck without Masks, and in fact in a purely aggro meta I might endorse it. But against an unknown or mixed field, I think Mask is an important aspect of the deck's strategy.

Ya know, I'll take back what I said. I re-added mask into my 2-color deck and it fit a lot better this time. I think this is primarily because I removed isamaru in favor of weatherseed faeries (thermal glider for blue). Mask works well with evasive creatures, and I wasn't running soltari priest previously. I thought hounds would make it operate better as they came out quicker. However, if you don't see both early, they are terrible together late in the game. I see how this deck can benefit from mask with the shadow as well as the flyers.

I think I was distracted by the "cool play" and didn't see the larger picture of the late game. Pity I fell to that silly mistake.

Atwa

06-07-2006, 03:27 PM

I found this card in the rumor mill on mtgsalvation.com:

Jotun Grunt 1W Uncommon
Creature - Giant Soldier
Cumulative Upkeep- Put Two cards in a single graveyard on the bottom of their owner's library
4/4

Anybody thinks it has some potential? I don't see it maindecked, but maybe it deserves a SB spot against Treshhold/Dredge-a-Tog/Ichorid.

Against ***** it can kill a werebear and make it a lot harder for them to gain/maintain treshhold. Playing this guy against an Ichorid deck is basicly game.

Edit: not that Ichorid is that much played and it isn't that hard to beat, but you'd surelly be awarded stylepoints for playing with a 2cc 4/4 creature. Reminds me of Flesh Reaver, but without the lifeloss.

Eldariel

06-07-2006, 03:41 PM

VERY hard to keep around for longer than 2 turns, but definately an interesting card, a powerful foil to all the graveyard strategies.

Zilla

06-09-2006, 02:47 AM

Seems rather powerful to me. I agree that it's probably not a good maindeck choice, but in the board, it can be very versatile. In addition to being strong against Tog/Thresh/Ichorid, it's also strong in the Rifter/Wombat matchup in that it can nullify recurring Dragons, which is a real plus. The downside, of course, is that you lose some speed and control when compared with Tormod's Crypt, which is what this would likely be replacing. Against Salvagers, for example, Crypt is exceedingly potent where this card is essentially useless. It's hard to say whether the loss of instant speed grave hate is worth the added aggressive power, but it's certainly a possiblity, particularly because it gives you additional threats in some matchups where you have a metric fuckton of dead cards (see Solidarity).

tivadar

06-09-2006, 08:29 AM

Ya know, it might even be decent against solidarity, which plays a lot of early cantrips. While it's not the best choice as a board card for them, it could still come in in the matchup where a lot of your other cards are dead. Fetchlands anyone? (sorry, couldn't resist). One other thing to mention is that it makes you less susceptable to pithing, null rod, suppression field. I've seen a grow deck or two running null rod, and it really hurts on the ~6 equipment, then crypt from the board. Let's also not forget that this is a HUGE beater, whereas crypt does nothing to stem the bleeding if thresh is already winning.

EDIT: Oops, sorry, didn't see that last line in your post Zilla, same idea.

f|i[p]

06-14-2006, 11:30 PM

I think this card would be great against solidarity, having this card in play while they go off makes brainfreeze useless. Its another must bounce for solidarity and it does add to angel stompy's threat base thus adding much needed speed to Angel stompy.

Assuming the Jotun grunt is in play and solidarity goes off depleting your library, before your draw step you get to return 2,4,8,16 cards to your library(Cumulative Upkeep cost depending on how long the Jotun grunt has stayed in play).If I am correct,that would mean they would have to go off again,bounce the grunt or wait it out(which Im sure they would rather not do), buying you time to go in for the kill. Just like true believer, this could also be protected by mother of runes and could be a speed bump against solidarity. I would guess it would be a matter of when you decide to play the card that would be important.

Then again I may be wrong.

Caboose

06-15-2006, 04:50 AM

Greetings, fellow Parallax Stompy (yeah that's right) players! I am new to Legacy (but not new to Magic, by far), and I decided that this deck was perhaps the most fun to play. I was wondering if you guys could tell me if my list was optimal.

//Creatures - 21
4 Mother of Runes
4 Exalted Angel
4 Silver Knight
4 Soltari Priest
3 Isamaru, Hound of Konda
2 Savannah Lions

//Spells - 10
4 Swords to Plowshares
4 Parallax Wave
2 Disenchant

//Artifacts – 6
2 Umezawa's Jitte
2 Sword of Fire and Ice
2 Mask of Memory

//Mana – 23
16 Plains
4 Ancient Tomb
3 Chrome Mox

//Sideboard:
SB : 4 Glowrider
SB : 4 Tormod's Crypt
SB : 4 Armageddon
SB : 2 Disenchant
SB : 1 *meh, I dunno*

I recently pulled out 3x Tithe for 3x Plains. I believe it plays better now, but I do miss the neat trick of Chrome Mox into Tithe into Plains into Isamaru. :tongue:
Hey, at least I still have morphed Angel on Turn 1, then swinging unmorphed Angel on Turn 2, then playing and equipping SoFaI on Turn 3. So savage!

Anyways, my testing group thinks we have a very good list. Will we see you guys at GenCon? We were hoping to get into the Top 32 at Champs :smile:

Well, I welcome and appreciate any help.

urza_insane

06-15-2006, 05:47 AM

Glad to see new players interested in the format! Welcome to The Source.

Your list looks very good, I'm having trouble finding anything to say about it!

This is mostly personal preferance, but with Tithe out of your build I might drop a Chrome Mox for a Plains. Mox is awesome, but sometimes the card disadvantage can hurt.

The Sideboard looks good, but again if I were to play the deck I would probably drop a Crypt and use your open spot to add 2x Rule of Law. The combo match can be rough, so I tend to load up on SB hate.

Best of luck at champs.

Zilla

06-16-2006, 08:05 PM

I was wondering if you guys could tell me if my list was optimal.
It's one card off from my current list (in the opening post in this thread). I'd call it pretty optimal. My reasoning for the removal of Tithes is explained somewhere in the last 5 or so pages of this thread as well. The only difference bewtween our lists is that I run 1 more Isamaru over the third Chrome Mox.

The way you have it isn't necessarily wrong, though, because mana consistency is very important to the deck, and the 3rd Mox can help in that regard. I'd probably run 4 Hounds and 1 Lions, though. Again, the reasoning behind the 4 Hounds is explained somewhere int he last 5 pages of this thread, if you're interested.

I'll be restarting this thread soon to clean things up a bit.

MasterBlaster

06-17-2006, 02:26 AM

']Then again I may be wrong.
You are wrong. Solidarity would make you draw after the Brainfreeze by using Cunning Wish to grab a Stroke of Genius. I've never seen a Solidarity player wait a turn for an opponent to kill themselves.

f|i[p]

06-17-2006, 11:37 AM

You are wrong. Solidarity would make you draw after the Brainfreeze by using Cunning Wish to grab a Stroke of Genius. I've never seen a Solidarity player wait a turn for an opponent to kill themselves.

Would solidarity really have that much mana after brain freezing? casting cunning wish then stroke of genius after goin off? I've never played against a solidarity player so I really wouldnt know...

TheAardvark

06-17-2006, 03:42 PM

Decklist and stuff.

As 'Zilla said, it looks quite solid. I've gone back to the more traditional build, like yours, with the only difference being:

-2 Mask Of Memory
+1 Umezawa's Jitte
+1 Sword Of Light & Shadow (meta-specific)

I have thought of cutting the Moxes again for maybe 2 more lands and an additional threat (another Lions/Isamaru, or something similar), but have yet to actually, you know, test that.

This is probably my favourite Legacy deck, so I may just stick with it and pilot it at GenCon...and hope to see a lot of aggro. Heh.

We'll see.

Caboose

06-17-2006, 09:47 PM

Those sound like nice changes. But SoLaS doesn't help a lot vs. Solidarity, which is our worst matchup. Best of luck, though!! If we face each other at GenCon, we should just draw. :tongue:

TheAardvark

06-17-2006, 10:42 PM

Those sound like nice changes. But SoLaS doesn't help a lot vs. Solidarity, which is our worst matchup. Best of luck, though!! If we face each other at GenCon, we should just draw. :tongue:

Again, the SoL&S is meta-specific for my area; I generally play it only for local tourneys and such. For actual GC playtesting and such, it will get swapped out for something more generally helpful.

Basically, at this point, the maindeck is pretty well worked out. The sideboard is my biggest concern, especially since 1/2-2/3 of my games are played with the SB. Combo is pretty unpopular here, so I have yet to actually use Glowrider, but it seems pretty solid in theory; it also serves double duty vs. control, since it makes their relevant spells cost more and beats. I am just trying to work out what I should pack in the SB for GenCon, and would appreciate everyone's thoughts in case I play the deck.

tivadar

06-17-2006, 11:56 PM

']Would solidarity really have that much mana after brain freezing? casting cunning wish then stroke of genius after goin off? I've never played against a solidarity player so I really wouldnt know...

Yes, yes they would. After a reset and high tide or two, the deck can do just about anything in terms of casting spells. Typically it's no problem for them to finish off with a draw spell such as words of wisdom. They generally won't stroke you, as words is even better for them.

_erbs_

06-19-2006, 10:18 PM

hi all,
im new to these forum but since i have a angel stompy deck aswell i would like to share it with you, pls feel free to comment or give out suggestions.

Main Deck
Mana
14 Plains
4 Ancient Tomb
2 Chrome Mox
---------------
20

Creatures
4 Mother of Runes
4 Exalted Angel
4 Silver Knight
2 Soltari Priest
2 Soltari Monk
2 Isamaru, Hound of Konda
2 Savannah Lions
---------------
20

Spells
4 Swords to Plowshares
3 Parallax Wave
2 Disenchant
2 Tithe
2 Armageddon
---------------
13

Artifacts
3 Umezawa's Jitte
2 Sword of Fire and Ice
2 Mask of Memory
-----------------
7

Sideboard
SB : 4 True Believer
SB : 3 Tormod's Crypt
SB : 2 Armageddon
SB : 1 Disenchant
SB : 3 Aura of Silence
SB : 2 Orims Chant

* as much as i want to have pithing needle in my SB it costs too much right now i'll wait for it to become type 1 maybe the price would go down, hehehe

so far the deck i've posted & currently playing bec. theres a upcoming legacy tornament at our place is doing fine against different kinds of decks, so far the problems im encountering are :
• insuficient mana, sometimes mana flood or mana screw
• too much ouch due to ancient tomb, sometimes i take 10pts of dmg from it
• sometimes gets over run by mono sui hatered black decks that uses mask as a draw engine.

i've seen that most of the posts on angel stompy have 4 geddons on there SB, but i had alot of success using geddon on my MB even if its there only 2. is main boarding geddon a bad idea ?

thanks in advance

Welcome to The Source. Please be aware that proper capitalization and punctuation are part of the site's rules (http://mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2564). Please make an effort to use them. - Zilla

tivadar

06-19-2006, 10:38 PM

I don't think I'd ever mainboard geddon just because against gobbo and gro, they tend to be bad cards. They're only good against combo and control which don't make as big a showing in the format. I suppose it really depends on your meta.

If Tombs are hurting you too much in the meta, take a look at city of traitors. It works extremely well as your third or fourth land, because after that you don't need any more lands anyways. Your opponent will also be very hesitant to waste it generally.

I REALLY think this deck needs at least 22 lands, possibly 24 with chrome mox. I'd consider either adding 2 more lands or adding 2 tithes if you're looking for thinning as well. AS will ALWAYS have problems with manaflood as they don't run any land thinners. Other decks tend to run fetches to alleviate this problem a bit (especially when combined with brainstorm), and goblins puts non-goblins to the bottom with ringleader. Your only answer to landflood is getting your mask of memory active basically.

Soltari Monk? If your meta is black-heavy, I'd go with silver knight first, because at least it can block. I also am not a fan of 4 mothers, as by themselves they can't attack, I run 2. This may just be me though.

I also don't like the 7 eq plan. Against controlling decks you'll find games when you have too much equipment and no creatures to equip. This can happen even with just 6 equip. Drop a jitte in favor of another card.

P.S. I splash blue, I had a matchup with: Serendib, Force of Will, Brainstorm, Island, Tomb, Tomb, Sofi. I did 7 points of damage to myself in the first 3 turns, but I was swinging with a 3/4 sofi equipped serendib on turn 3 as well, sometimes the damage is worth it.

_erbs_

06-19-2006, 11:49 PM

@tivadar
hmm... i know geddons are mainly used for control & combos decks, which has a ratio of 1:4 in our place, but sometimes a 2nd turn Angel or a 2nd turn creature with jitte & 3rd turn geddon always assures of me a win, even with agro match-ups like elves, gobs, white winnie, etc, they do well..., i know that the [%] of coming up with a 2nd turn angel and 3rd geddon is slim bec im only running 2 geddons on the MB, but i don't know to explain it exatctly, but its just enough when you need it and there when you need to lock the game on your favor. but if making the 2 geddons as a SB and adding more threats much is much significant i can also do that, i've only played angel stompy for about 2-3 weeks or so. i maybe wrong on my concept or on how i play the deck thats why i have the geddons on the MB :laugh:. hoping to hear more suggestions :laugh:

i've tried doing 2 AT and 2 CT or 3 AT / 1 CT but it sucks sometimes when the city goes up i slows you down significantly thats why i opted to go with 4 AT eventhough its hurts sometimes :laugh:

the split between the 2 soltari is basically bec i can't find 2 more soltari priests :laugh: as for mother of runes i find it a wonderful creature in supporting my other creatures and as a blocker. my opponents grimaces especially when there big non-trample creatures like blastoderm or grinning demon can't do anything with MoR

hmm..., about the 7 equips i guess you'r right that 6 is the magic number but, as you can see on my SB i've alot of enchantment & artifact removal bec almost all agro decks here in my place or not even aggro , basically a deck who has creatures runs 3-4 jitte's on there deck, thats why i placed 3 it could act as a threat and a way to destory my oppoents jitte

about the splash blue...its a good idea but i'd still go mono white :laugh:

Thanks for all the suggestions !! :laugh:

Again, please be aware that proper capitalization and punctuation are part of the site's rules (http://mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2564). Please make an effort to use them. - Zilla

Mordenkain

06-21-2006, 08:15 AM

I am looking for a deck to play, and since I don't own much duals and fetch stuff, I thought that a mono colored deck might be the way to go.
Please forgive me, but i read the first few pages and the last few pages, and I didn't find anything about how this deck matchup against gro is?
It is really important for me, since random aggro and Gro rules my local meta. So how is the matchup?

tivadar

06-21-2006, 08:34 AM

Mordenkain

06-21-2006, 08:41 AM

The matchup against gro varies from build to build, but in all it's rather close. On here they might argue it's 55/45 or so, on the gro thread they'll probably argue 45/55. My guess is that it's pretty close to a coin toss actually, with neither side having the real advantage. It comes down to 2 things: Can you get a bigger creature on the board, either through equipment or an angel, without them countering it? Can you get a mother to protect that creature so you can get your card advantage (or can you hope they don't see stp before you kill them)?

I'd try to be more specific, but the fact is that even small perturbations in the deck really affect this matchup. With my blue version I switched from mask of memory to engineered explosives (mongoose and needles) and saw a relatively significant improvement in the matchup (I think I'm now ACTUALLY 55/45, possibly 60/40).

I know this deck owns random aggro and against Gro it seems okay then. Does it help if I say that the most of them are UGR? Also, I have been thinking about this decklist:

// Mana
16 Plains
4 Ancient Tomb
2 Chrome Mox

// Beats
4 Mother of Runes
2 White Knight
4 Isamaru, Hound of Konda
4 Silver Knight
4 Soltari Priest
4 Exalted Angel

// Control & Draw
4 Swords to Plowshares
3 Powder Keg
2 Mask of Memory
2 Umezawa's Jitte
2 Sword of Fire and Ice
3 Parallax Wave

// Sideboard
SB: 4 Tormod's Crypt
SB: 4 Disenchant
SB: 4 Rule of Law
SB: 3 Armageddon

I have four free maindeck slots. I know Lions should be in there, but I don't have any and would like to use something else in that slot. Also I have moved the 2 Disenchants to the SB, because I don't feel that they belong in the MD. Anyways, I was wondering about if putting in 2 or 3 Engineered Explosives would help me out? Or Powder Keg perhaps? Also what is the next alternative to creatures? White Knight?

EDIT: Forgot to post the right decklist. Sry.

tivadar

06-21-2006, 10:14 AM

Mordenkain

06-21-2006, 10:25 AM

Powder Keg, that's one I've not heard before... I've never played wave because I run blue, but everyone says for mono it's the shiz. I'd at the very least run 4x wave, 2x keg. I also wonder if you're not simply better off going with EE over keg. Chalice for 2 really hurts this deck, and keg can't avoid that. EE at least has X as the casting cost so you can use what you'd like. Plus, are you ever planning on using Keg for more than 1?

I wouldn't board 4 crypts, as pithing will give you major card disadvantage if they're running it (which they should be), and crypts by themselves are not win conditions. So, here's a question, how many combo decks are running in your field? Why are you running a board with 4 rule of law and 3 armageddon? Both are terrible against gro, and rule of law is even terrible against control. I've come to love Glowrider over Rule just because it doubles for the UGW gro matchup and works very well against both control and combo.

It's just that I can't really see how good EE is going to be a monocolored deck. I mean, you can pop it for 1 or 0... and thats it. You may be right that a 4-2 configuration of wawe and EE/Keg is the way to go, I'm just not happy for running cards as a 2-of generally. Also in the above list:
-1 Isamaru
+1 White Knight
-1 Keg
+1 Wawe

Howabout that then?

EDIT: And for me not running needle: I would love to, but damn, their expensive. Crypts is because of all the thresh I think. But your right, Rule of Law should be Glowrider. Good call.

tivadar

06-21-2006, 10:40 AM

My main issue with gro is that in the long game, if gro can stabilize, the only thing they fear is your exalted, as they've got bigger creatures that can block. They may also be worried about the soltari. One thing I had toyed around with running was Commander Eesha. He's a bit higher on the curve, but he's unblockable, can block anything minus shadow, and survives a lightning bolt. Against gro, he'd be great, against gobbo, he's at least better than a face down angel. I had actually toyed with running him as a 2 of. Dawn Elemental is nice as well, but a lot harder to accellerate out.

Mordenkain

06-21-2006, 10:46 AM

tivadar

06-21-2006, 11:02 AM

Uhh! Dawn Elemental! :smile: One of my favorites! I would really love to play this baby!

You should also know that, in my meta, none plays goblins. I know, it's pretty weird, but that the way it is. The only real thing that you have to worry about is beating Thres. Other decks normally only shows up as 1-of, if they show up at all. Besides that, it's little kid playing Ravnica theme deck or a deck borrowed by older brother, but they have no idea how to play it.

Also note, that the Thres decks in my meta don't play a big creature. They play the Dire Moose (Mongoose. It's what we call it) and Teddy (Werebear, again...). If playing white they also include Meddling Mage, but nothing like Enforcer or Dragon. It's kinda nice actually. :smile:

If there's no goblins but a lot of gro, I'd suggest bigger creatures on the whole. If they're not running enforcer/dragon (what sort of meta are you in!?) then use more flyers. Take a look at FS, probably add in Thermal Glider if a lot of the gro is red. If a lot of the gro is white, then using eesha is probably a good call.

EDIT: FS is fairy stompy, they play big flying unblockable dudes. They're a little more susceptible to bolt though, as many of their creatures lack pro-red, and only serendib has toughness > 3. They also run chalice, which gro tends to not like.

Mordenkain

06-21-2006, 11:08 AM

Hehe, as I said, my meta is really weird. A lot of n00bs and a couple of good players who thinks big dudes sucks and are in love with their duals, hence they play threshold. So, yeah.

Uhh... whats FS?

But yeah, big flying/unblockable dudes win. Check.

f|i[p]

06-22-2006, 01:20 AM

I think Angel stompy is a good choice for a metagame full of random aggro.

Just to repeat the question tivadar asked, whats with the 4 Rule of Law's?
Glow riders would definitely be better in your metagame, since you don't really know what your facing. Would there be a lot of combo to warrant rule of law's inclution?

Im not so sure about powder keg, it kills your own creatures if you do manage to put them to play. keg for 1 kills isamaru and mother, for 2 it will hurt more..

If thresh is your main concern, perhaps you should put more graveyard hate on the side board.
Worship would also be good against threshold(and any other random aggro).With soltari priest and worship on the board its practically GG for UGR thresh.

I think we have a slightly better match up against UGR than UGW because of the 8 pro red creatures and sword of fire and ice. A resolved priest could go all the way without the fear of being removed via Stp.

Mordenkain

06-22-2006, 06:40 AM

But your right, Rule of Law should be Glowrider. Good call.

...

But your probally right on the powder kegs. I just don't know what to use instead, I want some way to kill mongooses. Anyways, I was thinking with all the Thres, how about playing Samurai of the Pale Curtain instead of White Knight?

Something like this?

// Mana
16 Plains
4 Ancient Tomb
2 Chrome Mox

// Beats
4 Mother of Runes
4 Samurai of the Pale Curtain
4 Isamaru, Hound of Konda
4 Silver Knight
4 Soltari Priest
4 Exalted Angel

// Control & Draw
4 Swords to Plowshares
2 Mask of Memory
2 Umezawa's Jitte
2 Sword of Fire and Ice
4 Parallax Wave

// Sideboard
SB: 4 Tormod's Crypt
SB: 4 Disenchant
SB: 4 Glowrider
SB: 3 Armageddon

TheAardvark

06-22-2006, 08:52 AM

Anyways, I was thinking with all the Thres, how about playing Samurai of the Pale Curtain instead of White Knight?

Just a note: Samurai only RFGs permanents, so aside from fetches, it's most likely not going to remove enough cards to make it relevant. I played it in my local meta last time because I was expecting multiple Salvagaer decks, and maybe 1 Threshold deck. If you want to pack hate specifically for Threshold, Samurai is not really the way to go, because it just won't remove many cards. It could remove their creatures if they should die in combat, but if their creatures are dying in combat, they've already lost.

Mordenkain

06-22-2006, 09:58 AM

Just a note: Samurai only RFGs permanents, so aside from fetches, it's most likely not going to remove enough cards to make it relevant. I played it in my local meta last time because I was expecting multiple Salvagaer decks, and maybe 1 Threshold deck. If you want to pack hate specifically for Threshold, Samurai is not really the way to go, because it just won't remove many cards. It could remove their creatures if they should die in combat, but if their creatures are dying in combat, they've already lost.

Egh, you couldn't be more right. Damn, I didn't see it only removed permanents. Hmm... Any suggestions for 1cc or 2cc creatures that are good vs. threshold then?

tivadar

06-22-2006, 10:01 AM

If you wait until coldsnap, they we get Jotun Grunt, which I think you're going to see as a staple in AS decks so long as threshold is prevalent. If you haven't seen the card:

Jotun Grunt: W1
Cumulative Upkeep: Put 2 cards in any one graveyard on the bottom of that players library.
4/4

It survives a bolt, beats a goose, and at the very least trades with a bear. All the while slowly taking away your opponent's threshold.

EDIT: fixed RFG mistake! Sorry.

TheAardvark

06-22-2006, 10:55 AM

Jotun Grunt: W1
Cumulative Upkeep: Remove 2 cards in any one graveyard from the game.
4/4

I'm pretty sure it puts the cards on the bottom of the library, not RFG.

Just saying.

bigredmeanie

06-22-2006, 11:27 AM

Well, it is just a spoiler either way, so who is to say which one it is. I wouldn't be surprised if it were FRG simply because it's from an 'old' set, and they just removed stuff from the game, see Swords to Plowshares. Putting it on the bottom does make it weaker it's still a threat against Gro, at least until they run out of cards.

DING! 500!!

Mordenkain

06-22-2006, 11:29 AM

If you wait until coldsnap, they we get Jotun Grunt, which I think you're going to see as a staple in AS decks so long as threshold is prevalent. If you haven't seen the card:

Jotun Grunt: W1
Cumulative Upkeep: Remove 2 cards in any one graveyard from the game.
4/4

It survives a bolt, beats a goose, and at the very least trades with a bear. All the while slowly taking away your opponent's threshold.

I can wait. This one looks kickass. But, doesn't it really sucks against anything else than thres, friggorid, reanimator, and other gy based decks. (How about survival?) Perhaps it's more fitted as SB tech?

bigredmeanie

06-22-2006, 12:31 PM

Well, it works against everything mid-late game, when everyone has about 20 cards in their yard. Also don't forget you can target yourself too so it'll stay around long enough to matter.

Probably not more than a 3-of, because before turn 4 there just aren't that many cards in graveyards.

As to it being useful against Survival, I doubt it, because FTK still eats it for lunch.

When you fade something out, does it come back in with counters on it, or do they fall off? because if you could use the last counter on Wave to reset it, that would be pretty tech.

tivadar

06-22-2006, 12:45 PM

Sorry, I meant Grunt as a sideboard option, not for maindeck. Something like 2x crypt, 2x grunt would probably be optimal against thresh. I think you really want the crypts still for iggy, survival, and loam, but the grunts are better against thresh.

EDIT: Maybe we should board Anabi Grunt, ;-)

f|i[p]

06-22-2006, 11:27 PM

You could also try running spectral lynx, although you wouldnt have the mana to regenerate the lynx, it would still be good against thresh, pro green. It would have been better if you had the mana to regenerate it... :)

Maveric78f

06-24-2006, 04:54 AM

My analysis of this grunt is that it's more a card for dredge deck. You start with a dark blast then turn 2, you can play your grunt with absolutely no problem.

I've just played against some random WW with my angel stompy deck ant at turn 10 what to we have in graveyard ? : I have 3 cards (1 fetch + 2 disenchanted equipments) and he's got 4 (1 equipment, 2 tithe and 1 disenchant). grunt is absolutely not playable even in middle game.

After this introduction, I will show you my angel stompy deck and explain you my choices :

// Mana base : a lot of fetches and very few plains. I'm not sure it's very stable though. I finally think that I should play more plains and maybe 21 mana source is not enough ?
3 [MR] Plains (1)
4 [MR] Chrome Mox
3 [ON] Windswept Heath
3 [ON] Flooded Strand
4 [EX] City of Traitors
4 [TE] Ancient Tomb

// Creatures
4 [ON] Exalted Angel : no comment, it's just too strong to be true.
3 [US] Pegasus Charger : only 1 white mana, can be here at turn 1 and can't be blocked by most of the creatures in legacy. The first strike is not simply a bonus : first strike enable that the triggered effects of the equipments to happen before the other creatures hit.
4 [FE] Icatian Javelineers (1) : an excellent one mana shot. It usually gives card advantage. IT can kill itself to trigger the ability of promise of bunrei and give you a lot of creatures.
3 [TE] Soltari Lancer : prefered to the priest because of first strike. If I really nead protection against red, then I'll enter absolute law.
4 [UL] Mother of Runes : protection is good for you even protection against green which is good against threshold.
4 [LE] Windborn Muse : crucial against gob. Moreover it can attack without being blocked. Good synergy with ravages of war (or armageddon)

// Spells
2 [P3] Ravages of War : I prefer it to armageddon. Don't ask me why.
4 [DS] Sword of Fire and Ice : gives protection, gives card advantage, gives blast and give extra boost.
2 [CHK] Ghostly Prison : to slow down the attacks of the aggros decks. It's game breaker against gobs.
2 [DS] Sword of Light and Shadow : good in mirror.
4 [A] Swords to Plowshares : I would have no comment if I did not think to remove them, because my white mana is rare. But it's definitely a very good card and it's my only solution against lackey (with MOR and javeliners)
3 [BOK] Umezawa's Jitte : gives a big advantage against agro decks.

// Sideboard
SB: 3 [SOK] Promise of Bunrei : very good against decks with mass removal
SB: 1 [P3] Ravages of War : more aggressive against rifter
SB: 3 [U] Disenchant : against combo decks or equipements
SB: 2 [CHK] Ghostly Prison : against gob mainly
SB: 2 [DS] Sword of Light and Shadow : in mirror
SB: 4 [US] Absolute Law : against burn and gobs.

Maybe I have too much side against gobs. I did not really test actually.

I post it just to raise the questions of the interest of first strike + evasion which is very good with jitte and sword of Fire and Ice and the interest of the muse which is in itself a game breaker against gobs.

TheAardvark

06-24-2006, 10:42 AM

A few notes/questions on your build:

Do you not have problems getting white mana? 8 colorless producing lands seems to me to be 4 too many. I see that the vast majority of your stuff only has W in the cost, but it still seems pretty risky to me, because Wasteland can affect you more than a traditional AS build. The mana base just seems really unstable to me.

Your mana curve seems a little too top heavy, so to speak. This and the first point are obviously connected, because you eschew 2-drops for 3-drops that can come down on turn 2 (or turn 1, possibly) due to the 2 mana lands (and Chrome Mox). While I do see the potential upside in this sort of approach, I have to disagree with it, particularly since the 2-drops that are usually played in more traditional builds are, IMO, better than the 3-drops you've chosen. Soltari Lancer, for W2, is 2/2 with shadow and first strike only when attacking, which is almost never going to matter since it has shadow in the first place. On the other hand, Soltari Priest, for WW, is 2/1 with shadow and protection from red, an ability that is one of the best to have in the format. Pegasus Charger, for W2, is 2/1 with flying and first strike, which is fine, I suppose. However, Silver Knight, for WW, is 2/2 with first strike and protection from red, which is strictly better, IMO. Perhaps I'm wrong, but I don't think so. Again, I understand that your creature selection is tied to your mana base, but I think that the traditional mana base and creature selection is just better overall.

The inclusion of Ghostly Prison and Windborn Muse makes this into more of an aggro-control deck, which isn't really the deck's MO. These 2 cards basically clog the ground until your flying creatures can take it home, which makes it, IMO, not really Angel Stompy. Windborn Muse is less of a "game breaker" against Goblins than Ghostly Prison as far as preventing the big combat step, because they can just cycle Gempalm and kill the Muse and swing FTW. Also, why remove Parallax Wave? It seems to fit in with the aggro-control style you're going for, and it's a complete bomb against pretty much any aggro deck.

With the whole "aggro-control" thing in mind, you have 9 pieces of equipment in the deck, with 22 creatures. Extensive testing (stated repeatedly throughout the thread previously) has shown that even 7 is often too many, and that 6 seems optimal. With 9 pieces of equipment, you seem to be diluting the deck's threat count, especially since MoR is your only creature with "protection" from any color, so your creatures are pretty easy to kill.

I guess that you're going the ostrich route as far as combo goes, since aside from Ravages Of War you don't really have any kind of anti-combo cards in the maindeck or SB. Just something I noticed.

Those are the major things I wanted to mention. Also, do you have any data on matchups at all with this build? I am particularly interested in the Threshold and Rifter matchups.

Anarky87

06-24-2006, 12:18 PM

I'd say that Angel Stompy already had good first strike and evasion creatures which shined with the existing equipment. Six pieces of equipment is recommended. Windborne Muse won't play that much of a role against Goblins as stated before. They can just cycle Gempalm, or use some Siege-Gang tokens to knock her, then swing.

Also, you've seemed to replace good creatures with subpar ones. Some have first strike, but as also stated before, it doesn't matter because they're shadow and will never interact with any other creatures to begin with. Plus they have no protection outside of MoR and the equipment, meaning they can be handled quite easily. Goblins can drop Fanatic and just ping your Charger before it ever gets going. Not possible if you were playing Priest. I would also cut all your fetch and get some more Plains back in the deck. Cut back on your colorless land count because eight is just way too many. I play 5-6 in my build, sometimes just the Tombs.

Maveric78f

06-25-2006, 02:01 AM

Some have first strike, but as also stated before, it doesn't matter because they're shadow and will never interact with any other creatures to begin with.

I (re)explain the main idea of my deck : we deal with gob thanks to windborn muse and ghostly prison MD, so that protection from red is not so much a big deal.

And the idea of getting first strike with creatures with evasion was to be able to use the triggered effects of equipements before usual combat damages.

I know there are a lot of mis building in my deck (number of equipments) and I think that integrating 4*Trinisphere MD would be a good thing too.

Anarky87

06-25-2006, 02:56 AM

I (re)explain the main idea of my deck : we deal with gob thanks to windborn muse and ghostly prison MD, so that protection from red is not so much a big deal.

And I'm reiterating that WM will not 'deal' with Goblins in any such way. Goblins has more than a few ways to deal with it and Ghostly Prison is really nothing more than a 'speed bump'. Now if you had Ghostly Prison in combination with pro red creatures, I could understand. Let them pay the mana to attack, you block their crap with Pro Red dudes, possibly killing theirs. The deck was already very capable of handling Goblins; I just don't see how completely dropping pro red from the deck, using sub par creatures, and removing pure game winning cards like Parallax Wave betters the matchup.

Also Trinisphere doesn't sound like anything the deck needs. You make their stuff cost most, and at the same time lessen the idea of quick beats on your part. This seems like some AS/MWC spin off.

Zilla

06-25-2006, 04:24 AM

I (re)explain the main idea of my deck : we deal with gob thanks to windborn muse and ghostly prison MD, so that protection from red is not so much a big deal.

And the idea of getting first strike with creatures with evasion was to be able to use the triggered effects of equipements before usual combat damages.

I know there are a lot of mis building in my deck (number of equipments) and I think that integrating 4*Trinisphere MD would be a good thing too.
The changes you've made to the deck apparently aim to improve your already fantastic matchups. You need Windborn Muse to beat Goblins? Silver Knight already does that. Much more effectively. And cheaper.

Pegasus? Soltari Priest's evasion is much more reliable. And it doesn't die to Mogg Fanatic. Ghostly Prison? Parallax Wave, when played properly, does the same thing, while simultaneously protecting your own threats from mass removal.

I could go on, but it doesn't really bear explanation; you've replaced cards which do a certain job with cards that do the same job, but worse. Your manabase is guaranteed to be unstable because you have only 13 white sources, 4 of which are Chrome Moxen. You have 6 fetchlands and only 3 lands to fetch with them. You're running far too much accelleration at the cost of card advantage, which will weaken your already questionable control matchups. You've done nothing to improve the combo matchup, which is really the deck's most significant weakness.

The age old rule of "If It Ain't Broke, Don't Fix It" is heavily applicable in this case. The deck's overall structure does not need nor benefit from the kinds of changes you're making to it. If you really want to improve the deck, find a way to consistently improve the combo and control matchups without impacting the (already phenomenal) aggro matchups.

TheInfamousBearAssassin

06-25-2006, 05:24 AM

AnwarA101

06-25-2006, 01:59 PM

I agree with the inclusion of Windborn Muse. Furthermore, I suggest cutting this crap for a creature base consisting of;

4x Glowrider
4x Silver Knight
4x Windborn Muse
4x Exalted Angel
4x Whipcorder
4x Eternal Dragon
4x Decree of Justice
2x Mobilization
4x Catapult Squad

In place of the other non-OBC cards you're running.

Think about it.

If you want to play Onslaught Block that's fine most of us here would rather play Legacy. What's the point of this post anyway? Cutting cards like Soltari Priest is obviously incorrect. Four Eternal Dragons in Angel Stompy? Come on.

Obfuscate Freely

06-25-2006, 02:20 PM

I (re)explain the main idea of my deck : we deal with gob thanks to windborn muse and ghostly prison MD, so that protection from red is not so much a big deal.
Silver Knight and Parallax Wave are better than Muse and Prison because they beat Goblins while still being good in other matchups.

And the idea of getting first strike with creatures with evasion was to be able to use the triggered effects of equipements before usual combat damages.
Running suboptimal creatures to make equipment better is poor, because active equipments win games without the help. This is the same reason that Leonin Shikari and Auriok Steelshaper aren't played.

I know there are a lot of mis building in my deck (number of equipments) and I think that integrating 4*Trinisphere MD would be a good thing too.
Trinisphere is close to unplayable in Legacy. I realize that you have Armageddon to "combo" with it, but the fact that 3sphere is largely irrelevant against most decks will cost you a lot of games.

If you want to play Onslaught Block that's fine most of us here would rather play Legacy. What's the point of this post anyway? Cutting cards like Soltari Priest is obviously incorrect. Four Eternal Dragons in Angel Stompy? Come on.
Hey, Anwar, did I tell you I have an extra set of Didgeridoos? Because I'd totally sell them to you for cheap.

Zilla

06-25-2006, 03:25 PM

Hey, Anwar, did I tell you I have an extra set of Didgeridoos? Because I'd totally sell them to you for cheap.
Ooooh! OOOH!!! Sell them to me!!

AnwarA101

06-25-2006, 03:49 PM

Hey, Anwar, did I tell you I have an extra set of Didgeridoos? Because I'd totally sell them to you for cheap.

Sorry Zilla. I will be claiming first dibs on those Digeridoos. Thanks for coming through again. I always wanted to play Digeridoo and now the that dream has been realized.

TheInfamousBearAssassin

06-25-2006, 05:31 PM

Edit: No, on second thought, let's get back on topic with serious discussion.

Has anyone considered replacing Sword of Fire and Ice with Sword of the Ages?

Canook

06-26-2006, 01:02 AM

Has anyone considered replacing Sword of Fire and Ice with Sword of the Ages?
I really don't think that Sword of the Ages can do a better job than SoFI can in AS. SoFI is draw/pro blue and red/ and shock and it's cheaper and faster than Sword of the Ages. SotA seems to be out of the question, considering doesn't do anything but damage, and most of the creatures in this deck are small other than the angels of course. So even if you had it, it wouldn't do anything to help out the deck at all, it'd only make it weaker.

Zilla

06-26-2006, 06:30 AM

I really don't think that Sword of the Ages can do a better job than SoFI can in AS. SoFI is draw/pro blue and red/ and shock and it's cheaper and faster than Sword of the Ages. SotA seems to be out of the question, considering doesn't do anything but damage, and most of the creatures in this deck are small other than the angels of course. So even if you had it, it wouldn't do anything to help out the deck at all, it'd only make it weaker.
He's kidding, you ninny.

tivadar

06-26-2006, 08:41 AM

If you want to play Onslaught Block that's fine most of us here would rather play Legacy. What's the point of this post anyway? Cutting cards like Soltari Priest is obviously incorrect. Four Eternal Dragons in Angel Stompy? Come on.

Well, in general, I agree that this build is... rather suboptimal (yay for being PC!). However, I disagree about your statement of "cutting cards like SP is obviously incorrect." In my opinion, he's one of the first to go primarily because he can't block. I think in this case, the creatures he was cut for are terrible. But in builds that drop mox for tomb and city, then running thermal glider over SP may not be a bad decision. Glider has reasonable evasion and can block (including flyers) and still has the built in pro-red. Considering how few flyers are in the format, the evasive abilities are about the same. And in a deck that runs 6 or so double colorless sources, the casting costs are near identical too.

Anyways, point being, we shouldn't not even consider dropping a card. This is a thread for improvement of the deck, and to say a card is beyond consideration, even in the case of things like jitte, sofi, and silver, just doesn't work for me (granted, I doubt I'll ever drop those three...).

AnwarA101

06-26-2006, 11:54 AM

Anyways, point being, we shouldn't not even consider dropping a card. This is a thread for improvement of the deck, and to say a card is beyond consideration, even in the case of things like jitte, sofi, and silver, just doesn't work for me (granted, I doubt I'll ever drop those three...).

You are right. My statement was inaccurate. I meant to say cutting Soltari Priest for the creatures IBA mentioned isn't a step forward. I'm not against changing any part of the deck if that makes the deck more competitive. I completely agree with your sentiment on the issue. I suggested changes to Vial Goblins that might include non-Goblin cards and everyone claimed I was violating the Golden Rule. Following such rules blinding leads to lack of improvement of proven decks.

BoardinCharlie

06-26-2006, 12:34 PM

BlindMage

06-26-2006, 12:49 PM

I don't think Samurai of the Pale Curtain would make much impact. Remember, he doesn't RFG spells, only permanents from play. Against Gro, at best, you delay threshold for a turn or two. Against combo...well, it would be good against Salvager Game, but though it might annoy IGG or Nausea, I doubt it would do anything serious to hinder their game plan.

tivadar

06-26-2006, 12:51 PM

This is just a question that has come up due to testing. I have noticed that mono white AS has a problem with dealing with combo so the board seems to be very heavy with hating it. I have wondered since the 2cc spot seems to be the weaker of the multiple....do you think that adding Samurai of the Pale curtain would be a viable option. It stops quite a few of the upper tier combo decks other than solidarity, by stopping graveyard recursion of things like LED's and such. Also it seems to help the goblin match up...not that it really needed it, also strengthens the Gro matchup. Removing fetchlands and killed creatures. I know that some of these are in the weaker majority to evasion and pro-red. But possibly these minor changes can aid enough to push this deck to a higher tier once again.

What are you taking out to add SotP? If you're replacing a 2cc, then that's either silver knight or soltari priest? I find this deck tends to have too many things it wants to do on turn two rather than not enough. Honestly, I haven't seen enough combo decks making heavy enough use of their graveyard to scare me. If I did, I might consider SotP, but also, why wouldn't I just throw in True Believer instead? Presumably these decks have to target me to win? Though you're probably right about the fact that this isn't the best mainboard inclusion and SotP is probably the largest contender there (glowrider is horrible against gobbo).

EDIT: Should be good against iggy, I can't see why it wouldn't hinder their gameplan given they can't go off without LED.

BlindMage

06-26-2006, 12:58 PM

Alright. But nausea would be fine :P

AnwarA101

06-26-2006, 02:11 PM

EDIT: Should be good against iggy, I can't see why it wouldn't hinder their gameplan given they can't go off without LED.

You are definitely wrong about Iggy not being able to go off without LED. It can definitely win off Dark Ritual and Cabal Ritual without having an LED. Dark Ritual then Cabal Ritual (with Threshold) produces 6 mana which is enough to continue the loop.

tivadar

06-26-2006, 02:36 PM

Fair enough, but it's probably at least a bit harder for them to go off without LED, as then they'll need both Drit and Cabal. So it hinders their gameplan, but doesn't destroy it.(?)

BoardinCharlie

06-26-2006, 02:42 PM

tivadar

06-26-2006, 02:45 PM

I agree with both of your opinions on the card. The only reason I tossed this idea out there is because I find myself liking another blocker on turn two that can survive any gobbo swing other than a piledriver without them using a two for one *with fanatic*. Also, that turn against gro is huge....keep in mind what is one of your best cards against aggro. Pwave...and the reason it is so good is because it buys you a turn to better abuse your equipment...get a morphed angel online...or simply survive to the next turn.

Also anything to hinder a combo players game plan is all that a aggro mono white deck can hope to do pre-board...am I right?

In all honesty, you're probably right. But as I said, what do you want to pull for it? What are you removing? Soltari and Silver are both supposed to be critical in the gobbo matchup (with soltari being the weaker link). I understand your desire to add SotP, but you also have to figure out what you want to take out. For me it's not a big issue. I run 2 color, and mainboard 4 meddling, with a side of 4 glowrider. SotP really isn't necessary in that version, but here it may be somewhat better.

Jolfer

06-26-2006, 02:58 PM

I personally like white knight in the priest slot. It kills any goblin and lives, can teamblock with other knights to take down a goose or bear, can block a shade all day long and is immune to some lesser used black removal (vindicate, vendetta ect..).

_erbs_

06-26-2006, 08:10 PM

hi, just wondering i maybe a noob in asking this question but, why did anyone considered playing 4 crusades ?

i don't know if its just me, but SoFI is kinda slow, i love this equip but sometimes after spending 3 to cast +2 to equip manas to be utilized it still doesn't do any good except for the +2/+2 and pro blue & red, the draw & ping effect just becomes a bonus, and as for protection goes most of our creatures are already pro red.. as far as testing the angel stompy deck for almost a month or 2 i found that SoFI is best equiped in our shadow creatures... to maximize the mana spent and all its abilities

seeing almost all of the posted decks in the angel stompy has 2 SoFI, why not remove the 2 SoFI and another 2 slots for 4 crusade is that a wrong or a noobie move ?

*what do you think guys/ gals about this version of angel stompy ?
Mana
14 plains
4 ancient tomb
2 chrome mox
-----
20

Artifact
3 umezawa's jitte
2 mask of memory
-----
5

Enchantments
3 parallax wave
4 crusade
-----
7

Spells
4 swords to plowshares
2 disenchant
-----
6

Creatures
4 mother of runes
4 icatian javeliner
2 isamaru hound of konda
4 silver knight
2 soltari monks
2 soltari priests
4 exalted angel
-----
22

comments / suggestion are most welcome thanks...

@^
as for the white knight in the soltari slot i guess it has its pros & cons i miss my white knight & white pump knights as our meta is mixed with black sui or sui hatred decks and red decks aswell..., even with our mix meta i still have 4 silver knights, i just hope that those red decks beat them and i don't face them in tornys hehehe, but the shadow creatures for me is a must, sometimes they are the creatures needed to pump the jitte or mask of memory in providing additional creature control & draw

noobslayer

06-26-2006, 09:20 PM

it still doesn't do any good except for the +2/+2 and pro blue & red, the draw & ping effect just becomes a bonus

Um, that's all it should be doing. That and winning you games.

_erbs_

06-26-2006, 09:29 PM

Um, that's all it should be doing. That and winning you games.

so does that statement mean SoFI is much better than crusades ? with less mana spent at 4 whites, 2 crusades also gives you & all your other creatures
+2/+2 w/c i think is much a better offensive threat that a signle creature with +2/+2 (assuming your not facing a white winnie aswell)

noobslayer

06-26-2006, 09:50 PM

The thing is, SoFI is providing actual card advantage more efficiently. Yes, the pump can be useful, but mostly, in my opinion, in multiples. SoFI also provides evasion, and most notably, the ability to turn anyone creature into a game ending the threat. Crusade just doesn't do that.

MasterBlaster

06-26-2006, 09:50 PM

@erbs- SofI is way better than Crusade. SofI deals an extra 4 damage when it connects with the opponent(+2/+2 and the shock). For Crusade to do more damage you need to have 5 creatures in play and hope your opponent isn't playing AS or another white weenie varient. In my opinion SofI is even better than Jitte.

_erbs_

06-26-2006, 10:14 PM

@MasterBlaster
thanks for the comments..., why 5 creatures ? 2 crusades gives you +2/+2

@noobslayer
thanks for the comments!!, yup a single crusade doesn't make yr creatures whamo but with 2 crusade i guess it could be...but as what you said you just need to 2 crds to have a whamo creature cmprd to 3 crds if your using crusade..hmm....

as for evasion/protection most of our creatures have pro reds already & as for pro blue hmm... no comment..,

but isn't the 5 cc mana spent = benefits a single target over 4 white mana = benefits all your creatures not worth considering ??

READ THIS (http://mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2564). Proper punctuation and capitalization are mandatory on these boards. You've been warned twice before, so this is the last one before a one way ticket to Bantown. Thank you in advance for complying with site rules. - Zilla

MasterBlaster

06-26-2006, 10:21 PM

@MasterBlaster
thanks for the comments..., why 5 creatures ? 2 crusades gives you +2/+2

I was only taking into consideration 1 Sword of Fire and Ice versus 1 Crusade.

_erbs_

06-26-2006, 10:25 PM

I was only taking into consideration 1 Sword of Fire and Ice versus 1 Crusade.

Oh...sorry my bad.

@mods
Sorry about the "Proper punctuation and capitalization Rule" , thanks for reminding me. I'll try not to forget it.

tivadar

06-26-2006, 10:44 PM

Phantom

06-26-2006, 10:54 PM

_erbs_

06-26-2006, 11:08 PM

Also, crusade is terrible, use glorious anthem so you only hit your creatures, or just use divine sacrament and fetches to give all your creatures +2/+2. I've tried playing with these, and sacrament was by far my favorite. However, after trying these, jitte and sofi are just better. Wait a turn, do an extra 4 damage and draw a card? Sounds good to me. The other thing to remember is that against control style decks you'll frequently only have a creature or two on the board, making crusade a lot weaker. Control matchups are the crux of this deck moreso than aggro.

EDIT: The one benefit inclusion of global enchantments brings is less susceptibility to pithing and the ability to board null rod/suppression field. Suppression field may actually be worth it in some cases.

Oh..., i total forgot about those 2 enchantments hehe, your correct divine sacrament is the better over crusade or glorious anthem in terms of spending 4~5 manas. And it also makes a 1 creature + divine sacrament [reached ******** ability] whamo same as SoFI's case.

Like as you've said against control you only have 1~2 threats avialable, for sure your opponent would kill the creature equiped with SoFI, by bouncing the SoFI thus making your creature valnuarable to blue threats as by nature almost all our creatures have pro blue.

If you have a divine sacrament in play and with [2] 2/2 creatures in play as compared to [2] 2/2 creatures in play & [1] equipped with SoFI your oppoent would be surely force to block the creautre with SoFI. But the time,mana, & rounds spent casting SoFI is much greater by 1 cc mana.

Hmm..., i still can't decide hehehe, help !!!, there's only 4 days to go before our big legacy event at our place, thats why i've been practicing & tweaking my angel stompy deck.

_erbs_

06-26-2006, 11:20 PM

The three mana to play a sword usually isn't a big deal since you'll usually spend turns 1 and 2 dropping critters. To demonstrate why SoFI is light years better than Crusade, here's an example:

Turn 1: Plains -> Isamaru
Turn 2: Plains -> Soltari Priest
Turn 3: City/Tomb -> Sword (or Crusade)
Turn 4: City/Tomb -> Sword (or Crusade)

So on turn 4 double sword is attacking for 12 and two cards while Crusade is attacking for 8 and no cards. This isn't even calculating the mental advantage. When you drop a sword players sh*t themselves to go find an answer because they know how devestating it can be. This leads to misplays like blocking when they shouldn't and overextending their hand and resources. No one ever did this in response to a crusade.

______________________________________________
Turn 1 : Plains -> Isamaru
Turn 2: Plains -> Soltari Priest
Turn 3: City/Tomb -> Glorious Anthem / Divine Sacrament = 6pts of dmg
Turn 4: City/Tomb -> Glorious Anthem / Divine Sacrament = 10pts of dmg

In turn 3 you'd be dealing 6 pts of dmg while compared to SoFI just casting it & dealing 4 pts of dmg.

In turn 4 you'd be dealing 8 pts of dmg compared to SoFI 1 is beign casted 1 equipping it on a creature dealing just 6 pts of dmg.

In a total of attacks in turn 4 with SoFI = 4 + 6 = 10 pts of dmg, If the ping would be counted it would be 12 pts of dmg + 1 draw.
In a total of attacks in turn 4 with Glorious Anthem / Divine Sacrament = 6 + 8 = 14 pts of dmg.

But thats assuming there where no blockers.

As for pro red protection i have 8 by default. Almost half to me hehehehe.

Caboose

06-27-2006, 12:43 AM

Hey, I was reading up about U/W Angel Stompy, and I felt that Brainstorm, FoW, and all that jazz was completely unnecessary. However, Meddling Mage is really hot, and we could easily put him in an otherwise mono-W build without losing much consistancy at all.
I sure as hell would not pull Silver Knight for him, so it looks like Priest would get the hose. Also, would the Moxen count need changing due to the swap?

Here is what my list would look like with the changes:

//Creatures - 21
4 Mother of Runes
4 Exalted Angel
4 Silver Knight
4 Meddling Mage
3 Isamaru, Hound of Konda
2 Savannah Lions

//Spells - 10
4 Swords to Plowshares
4 Parallax Wave
2 Disenchant

//Artifacts – 6
2 Umezawa's Jitte
2 Sword of Fire and Ice
2 Mask of Memory

//Mana – 23
10 Plains
4 Flooded Strand
3 Tundra
3 Ancient Tomb
3 Chrome Mox

//Sideboard:
4 Glowrider
4 Armageddon
3 Tormod's Crypt
2 Disenchant
2 True Believer

Let me know what you guys think! :)

tivadar

06-27-2006, 01:52 AM

I can agree with you that FoW isn't necessary, and that's a peculiarity of my build, but brainstorm in the blue splash is one of the best card advantage engines in the game if you know how to play it. I always save a fetch for a brainstorm draw and don't play my extra lands. When I hit brainstorm I suddenly change 2 lands into potentially useful cards. That's +2 cards for 1 mana if you give it the right prep. Late in the game against decks like threshold, this is devastating.

Secondly, while you're trying to fit in meddling, splashing blue for just meddling seems rather unnecessary and seems like all it would do is hurt the landbase (forcing you to add fetches and occassionally not having blue when you need it). Serendib is also a beating against a lot of decks. I've had my fair share of games when it was T1 island, T2 traitors, serendib, T3 tomb, equipped serendib swinging (I took 3 damage and lost my land) even with FoW backup. Granted this is an ideal situation, but I've had it happen more than a few times.

All I'm trying to say, is if you're going to add blue, take full advantage of it. Any blue deck NOT running brainstorm is probably a bad idea. And Serendib is a real boost to stompy.

The last thing to mention is I've done a LOT of testing with W/U AS and the build is very solid in its current state. The only decision I'm trying to currently make is weatherseed faeries or serum visions. You can splash a bit of blue in the deck for meddling, but even the small consistency hit you take is probably not worth it.

Oh..., i total forgot about those 2 enchantments hehe, your correct divine sacrament is the better over crusade or glorious anthem in terms of spending 4~5 manas. And it also makes a 1 creature + divine sacrament [reached ******** ability] whamo same as SoFI's case.

Guh, I by no means meant to imply DS and Sofi were even on the same plane of existence. Sofi's main advantage isn't the +2/+2, it's the pro red against gobbo/burn, pro blue against solidarity and other bounce, and against any aggro deck, every time you hit with a sofi'ed creature you're gaining 2 card advantage (1 draw + 1 creature kill). The cards ridiculous, and is probably better than jitte against anything but goblins.

f|i[p]

06-27-2006, 01:58 AM

Hmm..., i still can't decide hehehe, help !!!, there's only 4 days to go before our big legacy event at our place, thats why i've been practicing & tweaking my angel stompy deck.

4 days, till tournament huh, I too am joining a tournament this coming sat and will be bringing angel stompy to it. I have been trying different builds of angel stompy, just to get a hands in experience what it really needs, and why other cards dont fit in, I have tried cursed scrolls, devoted caretakers,not running mask of memory on my list, razor golems and others.And all i can say is that I found out that the list that Lego_Army_Man brought at Kadilak's Dual Land Draft was pretty much optimal and very consistent.

The only difference between my build is that I dont bother with savanah lions, and opted to maindeck 2 true believers and run seal of cleansing rather than disenchants because of my hate for discarders. The side boards are pretty much a metagame choice. The only real thing that gives me a head ache is massacre. And that would be the only reason I would warrant crusades or divine sacrament in my list, although a 4/4 silver knight could easily kill a threshed bear it wouldnt be as optimal as running a Sword of fire and ice. Angel stompy doesn't really mass creatures and attack like the typical white weenie does. Although it also can.

@Caboose

Meddling Mage is really hot<------ yes he is, if you are splashing blue, you might as well take advantage of serendib efreets and blue's draw engine.

_erbs_

06-27-2006, 03:05 AM

@f|i[p]
Goodluck on your upcoming tournament. Have you tried using Icatian Javelineers, before i was running savannah but the additional ping i felt more valuable even if its a one time shoot.

I lowered the Isamaru count to 2 cause i hate it when you get 2of them on your 1st hand or when your in need of extra threats & Isamaru is on the field & you can't play another Isamaru.

Wow 6 cc mana lands... aren't you having any troubles ? come to think of it i'm leaning towards the configuration of 15~16 plains, 4 ancient tombs, & 1~2mox compared to my current config of 14 plains, 4 a.tombs, 2 c.mox, & 1 tithe.

-------------------------------------------------------

As for why the issue on crusades, DS, etc. i was tinking of over-running other control based decks thats why i have 2 disenchant on my MB another 2 on SB and 3 more seal of cleansing for propaganda, nev's, etc.

I don't know if anyone had tried my idea but i feel it would provide a more winning chance than beating them with a single creature armed w/ SoFI.

If anyone had tried out my idea already please say so if you had any success on overwhelming your opponent with the cycle of Decree of Justice + crusades, etc or SoFI is still the right way to go.

Thanks again.

f|i[p]

06-27-2006, 04:47 AM

@erbs ... good luck on yours too...

I have actually been trying out 1 Divine sacrament (because I had one slot left open) the past few days,and although it does work, and gives you a faster clock,it does not save me from wrath or the likes. Also they are dead cards a against the mirror or white weenie.

Although the decree + crusades seems like a viable idea, its more like white weenie strategy. Against control players I always opted to slow play my threats, protect my creatures and equip.I always thought this to be the best option,(If he does get land screwed thats a different story). I always loved seeing a landstill player use wrath of God against a single equiped priest or isamaru. Ofcourse there is always the fact that I could be playing the deck wrong or that I am just a sucky player.

You can also try sword of Light and shadow in the side board against control players.I works wonders against control decks. Even the mirror and some other aggro decks.

I am actually looking at sensei for the 1 open slot I have. I shall test it more.

_erbs_

06-27-2006, 05:02 AM

@f|i[p]
Thanks!!!, Sensei is a nice choice altough it could just boost you for 1 turn, since you don't have fetchlands. If you feel you need additional threats 1decree of justice might help

I've been tinkering around apprentice and tried this land config => 13~14 plains, 4 ancient tomb, & 4 wasteland, have you tried using 4 wasteland since you run 6 cc lands on your deck ?, the only problem i see in having the additional 4 cc mana is most of our threats needs 2 white in the casting cost.

Aren't you having problems with your 6 cc lands ?

f|i[p]

06-27-2006, 05:10 AM

I actually use 16 plains, 4 tombs, 1 city of traitors and 1 chrome mox.

I think wasteland is out of the question.I dont think this deck can afford more colorless mana..

I'll have to test decree of justice.. thanks...

tivadar

06-27-2006, 11:15 AM

I've tested decree: If there's a lot of landstill and WUBS in your meta, then run decree. If not, then don't bother.

Zilla

06-27-2006, 05:23 PM

@f|i[p]I've been tinkering around apprentice and tried this land config => 13~14 plains, 4 ancient tomb, & 4 wasteland
The deck absolutely cannot function without at least 16 white sources. These sources can include Chrome Mox or Tithe, but you should never drop below 16, and ideally 17 or 18 is best. The deck simply can't support Wasteland, short of replacing Ancient Tombs with them, which takes the deck from an aggressive role to a controlling role. This is a bad thing, because the deck doesn't have the tools it needs to play control except against other aggro, where Wasteland is typically irrellevant.

As for Decree of Justice, the very original build of Angel Stompy ran 3 of them. It also ran 4x Tithe, 4x Tomb, and 3x City of Traitors to ramp up to huge amounts of mana quickly. It also ran Skullclamp, which turned Decrees into draw engines. Nowadays, I'd recommend against Decrees in the maindeck. They are, however, quite good against control, so if you see a lot of that in your meta, you might consider them in the sideboard.

_erbs_

06-27-2006, 10:23 PM

@GodzillA
Thanks alot for the tip!, you save me alot of time in testing it hehe. Currently i can't finalize my deck due to the different meta in our up coming big legacy tornament.

Currently decks i've faced in preparations for the BIG event are as follow:

• u/w & u/r landstill
• 3 color landstill
• TONS of black decks - sui, control, etc.
• w/u & u/g fish
• u/g madness
• threshold
• b/g dredge decks
• rifter
• rouge combo decks
• white winnie

I can't see any red decks around..,hmm.. so strange. Here's my sort of final deck build, I don't know if its a big mistake that I took out the 2 Mask of Memory in favor of 2 vial for addtional speed. I've also completly removed shadow creatures in favor of Hand of Honor.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

@Everyone
Hoping for your comments and suggestions thanks !!.

MANA
15 plains
4 ancient tomb
2 chrome mox
--------------
21

ARTIFACTS
2 aether vial
2 sword of fire & ice
3 umezawa's jitte
---------------
7

SPELLS & ENCHANMENTS
2 disenchant
2 parallax wave
2 armageddon
4 swords to plowshares
-----------------
8

CREATURES
4 mother of runes
4 leonine skyhunter
4 silver knight
2 hand of honor
2 isamaru
2 soltari priest
4 exalted angel
-----------------
22

Thanks in advance.

Caboose

06-28-2006, 02:13 PM

_erbs_

06-28-2006, 07:11 PM

How good will AS be at Champs? I had a dream that I missed the event, but showed up at the end and noticed a friend running AS went 2-7!!

So now I'm worried that AS will flop, even though I tested with a friend, and my post board matchup against Solidarity is amazing (8/15 cards are combo hate).

Thoughts?

Hi,
I have an upcoming big legacy tornament , & i'm going to use the deck posted above. I'll post it on how I did during the torny.

Eldariel

06-28-2006, 07:40 PM

Caboose: I can't see how Solidarity could become amazing even with 8 boards-cards since Solidarity has Remands and Forces and Cunning Wish as answers and you're by necessity using time to cast those answers anyways, giving them more time to answer your answers. Also, since game 1 is almost an autoloss, games 2 and 3 need to be insanely in your favour (like 75/25) to consistently win matches. Anyhow, outside that, it should be all good. Remember though, a deck's performance has a strong correlation with the skills of the pilot. Less so in a choice-light aggro-deck like Angel Stompy, but it's still very relevant.

Zilla

06-28-2006, 09:29 PM

@erbs:

If you want my honest opinion, given your description of your metagame, I'm not sure Angel Stompy is the best choice for your expected opposition. Landstill isn't a particularly positive positive matchup, even with maindecked 'geddons and Vials. Same goes for Rifter. It's even more true for storm-based combo, if you see a lot of that.

The deck is really designed to beat the hell out of aggro, with at least a decent chance against control. The only thing you should beat with a fair degree of consistency is the multitudes of black aggro you see running around.

With all that said, here are some recommendations I would give you if you insist on taking this deck to your tournament:

1. Get 4 Parallax Waves in there. They protect your threats from mass removal, which you will be seeing in abundance from Landstill and Rifter. They're vital to your ability to compete here.

2. Between the main and the board, make sure to run a full 4 'geddons. They're golden against Landstill and Wombat. However, I don't recommend running them in the maindeck. As a 2-of, you're not going to see them often enough for them to matter, and they're actually pretty bad against most other decks, except for Solidarity.

3. I strongly recommend running 1 more Plains. In my experience, anything less than 16 is too inconsistent, even when backed by double Chrome Moxen. As a matter of fact, I might even suggest dropping the Chrome Moxen for 2 more basic Plains, bringing you up to 18, with 4 Tombs for accelleration. The reason I suggest this is because the card disadvantage from Chrome Moxen is very relevant in control matchups, and the added speed ishn't particularly necessary because of their relative slowness. They do have solid synergy with Armageddon though, so I suggest testing both configurations thoroughly.

4. I'm not sure I back your choice of Vials. They're decent against Landstill, but as a 2-of, they're not going to come up that consistently, and they impact your threat density, which is important against control decks with a lot of removal. Every time I've tested with Vial, I've been disappointed with them in this deck.

5. The lack of Masks is incorrect, I think. Masks are at their strongest against control and combo, which you've indicated is quite prevalent in your metagame. To beat these archetypes you need card advantage, and Mask is quite good at that, particularly when your opponent doesn't have a lot of blockers. I strongly recommend you get at least 2 in there.

6. 3 Jittes is wrong, I think. If you're going to run 3 of anything, it should be Mask or SoFI. Jitte is golden against aggro, but it's actually not very good against control or combo. I'd run 2 Jittes at most, and I wouldn't run more than 6 pieces of equipment total. I think the 2/2/2 configuration is likely best for your meta. I'd suggest dropping even more Jittes for more Masks or Swords, but Jitte is very strong against black aggro, so it's a tough call.

7. I think that Hand of Honor is probably correct in your meta, because it can trade with Mishra's Factory and is rock solid against black aggro. You might even go so far as running soltari Monk over Soltari Priest here.

8. Get at least 3 Isamarus in there. Trust me on this. You want the most bang for your buck against control, and Isamaru gives it to you. Having multiples in hand is barely relevant, because control will be removing them as fast as you can cast them. Even if they don't you can pitch extras to Chrome Mox or Mask.

9. Run at least 2 Decree of Justice in the SB. They're very important against control, both Landstill and Rifter.

10. Run at least 3-4 Crypt in the board. They're going to be rock solid for your meta, particularly against Madness, Dredge, and Thresh. They may be handy against Rifter's Eternal Dragons.

Honestly, the list in the opening post of this thread is pretty close to optimal, having been tested in literally hundreds of games. The main thing I would suggest changing about it is the sideboard to combat the high amount of control. I suggest testing this list against your gauntlet to see how it treats you:

// Mana
16 Plains
4 Ancient Tomb
2 Chrome Mox/2 Plains*
// Beats
4 Mother of Runes
3 Isamaru, Hound of Konda*
4 White Knight/Silver Knight*
4 Hand of Honor*
3 Soltari Monk/Priest*
4 Exalted Angel
// Control & Draw
4 Swords to Plowshares
2 Disenchant
2 Mask of Memory
2 Umezawa's Jitte
2 Sword of Fire and Ice
4 Parallax Wave
// Sideboard
SB: 3 Tormod's Crypt
SB: 4 Pithing Needle
SB: 1 Disenchant*
SB: 3 Decree of Justice
SB: 4 Armageddon

* Indicates a change from the "official" list.

I'd test that thoroughly. See what you lose to and try to remember why. Make notes about how you're sideboarding for each matchup. Then come back here and tell us what's good and what's bad, and we can try to help you more from there.

Lego

06-28-2006, 09:36 PM

MANA
15 plains
4 ancient tomb
2 chrome mox

ARTIFACTS
2 aether vial
2 sword of fire & ice
3 umezawa's jitte

SPELLS & ENCHANMENTS
2 disenchant
2 parallax wave
2 armageddon
4 swords to plowshares

CREATURES
4 mother of runes
4 leonine skyhunter
4 silver knight
2 hand of honor
2 isamaru
2 soltari priest
4 exalted angel

I wasn't going to tackle this because most of these questions were answered earlier in this thread, but I'll make a quick reply.

I'm not sure how your testing has gone, but I tried -1 Plains in my list, and I didn't like it, even with 2 Chrome Moxen. I know you play Aether Vial, which could account for the reduced Plains count, so I'll address that.

Aether Vial- You said you added this in place of Mask of Memory for more speed. This won't really add more speed. It allows you to play more creatures later on, but you really want a steady flow of creatures, and you want to get them equipped and swinging as soon a possible. The only reason I could see playing this is for counter protection. I'd almost always rather play first turn Isamaru, so I'd switch these out for the hound.

Armageddon- This was discussed in the last couple of pages. It's not good in enough matchups for maindeck. Switch this out for Parallax Wave number 3 and 4 (the best card in the deck.)

Hand of Honor < White Knight (he kills Piledriver)

If you don't see much red, and are seeing a lot of black, try out Soltari Monk or White Knight. I'd put the Monks in for the Skyhunters to start, but test it out.

Lastly, that leaves you with a lot of creatures, so I'd go ahead and drop a couple for some Masks :smile:

All of those changes will leave you with pretty much the list Zilla gave me for the DLD. Just switch in some Pro-Black.

Zilla

06-28-2006, 11:22 PM

Hand of Honor < White Knight (he kills Piledriver)
His description of his metagame included no Goblins and tons of Landstill. In that situation, Hand of Honor > White Knight, because he can trade with a pumped Factory.

_erbs_

06-29-2006, 02:16 AM

@GodzillA
Thanks for inputs and tips !!, it really helped me alot.

Sorry if im kinda slow or i've been too long out in MTG, why is it a bad move to MB geddon? most decks i've seen in legacy are mana / land dependents.

As for the parralax wave there good in other match-ups hands down but, when i see TONS of black knight, knights of the ebon-hand, knights of stromgald & hand of cruelty, they become a dead card, thats why i added the 2 geddons

As for the land count thanks, i can't seem to balance them, sometimes they flood, sometimes non at all maybe the 16plains 4a.tomb 2mox is the right configuration.

As for the mask i knew it was a wrong move to remove them and depend on SoFI for draw hehehe.

As for jitte, almost or in fact all decks here that have creatures have jitte's on there deck, thats why i placed 3 to sometimes act as a counter against it, you commonly see dark ritual cast jitte + a duress or a sacromancy. Then equip & wack 2 counters, say good bye to creatures.

I have mix decisions on hand of honor or pump knights hmm.

As for vials..hmm, they intial are slow but in a full turn of you & your opponent, with the counter hitting 2, you could drop an equipment during your main phase + creature on the end of your opponents turn and equip it during your attack phase. They also are so good with geddon.

Sample:
Turn 1 plains - isamaru
Turn 2 plains - leonine skyhunter
atk isamaru 2 dmg
Turn 3 plains - jitte + 1 open mana
atk isamaru + skyhunter 4 dmg total of 6
Turn 4 equip jitte + 1 open mana
atk isamaru + skyhunter total of 10 dmg + 2 counters on jitte

Turn 5 plains - cast parallax wave, with 2 creatures with 1 equiped with jitte, zero mana available. Atk total of 14 dmg + 4 counters on jitte

Sample:
Turn 1 plains - vial
Turn 2 plains - skyhunter + 1 counter on vial end of turn tap cast isamaru
Turn 3 plains - cast jitte + 1 open mana & 2 counters on vial end of turn
tap cast silver knight
atk s.hunter + isamaru = 4 dmg
Turn 4 equip jitte + 1 open mana + 2 counters on vial
atk isamaru + skyhunter total + s.knight = 10 dmg + 2 counters on jitte,
end of turn tap cast hand of honor
Turn 5 plains - cast parallax wave, with 4 creatures with 1 equiped with jitte, zero mana available, have vial for another creature drop. Atk total of 18 dmg + 4 counters on jitte

Basically thats 1st turn vial vs isamaru scenario. Assuming there where no blockers nor anti creatures beign casted.

Thanks again.

@Lego_Army_Man
As to why i choose the Skyhunters over Soltari Monks is bec. there are decks here that runs jitte or SoFI + Silhana to victory all the way, or decks that have tons of wall of roots or wall of blossoms.

I felt that they almost do the same function as shadow creatures only w/o having protection bec of there flying ability. Plus there 2 jitte counter over 1 to the shadows.

As for vials look above, i still can't decide, especially when im faced with pro black creatures, i need to out drop them in troops.

Thanks again.

f|i[p]

06-29-2006, 03:44 AM

I was actually considering vial as an addition to the deck but I didnt know what cards to drop. I would only consider running vial if I was splashing a color.

You can also run freewind falcon to get both the evation and protection from red.The only drawback is that , its a 1/1 which sucks. I was also considering this, as it can block flyers(goblins too) and has the same protection as the priest. The only real threat that made me want flyers in my deck was trygon predator,well, and silhanna if she ever sees play in my legacy tournament.

I was actually looking for a flyer that could replace the priests slot or another threat other than the normal 2/2 and 2/1 creatures we have. I get annoyed at the fact that black runs massacre, infest and engineered plague naming clerics.(this is because there were a lot of white weenie variants on the last tournament). But I guess thats part of the game.

Caboose

06-29-2006, 03:46 AM

If your meta has a lot of critters with pro-white, why not run lots of Wrath of Gods? Cast Parallax Wave, then next turn, remove your guys and Wrath. Next turn you get all your dudes back, and they have nothing. Works great with Vial, if you decide to run it (I personally would never run Vial in AS).

Good luck, though! :smile:

f|i[p]

06-29-2006, 04:16 AM

If there is a lot of black sui and pro white creatures, you could just run Light of Day. They won't be able to get rid of it unless they run disk or enchantment removal (which black doesnt have).

I would not advice wrath of God, why in the world would you run it, it kills your own creatures,destroys angel stompy's game plan, and comboing wrath with wave is highly unlikely to happen.

tivadar

06-29-2006, 08:41 AM

I actually got a chance to do some testing online against decks I don't see very often (with the WU version, but it's still rather close). We still lose to UW landstill preboard, but that's well known at this point I think. Also, I got beaten rather bad by BGW rock, which is just mean against aggro strategies. Made me almost want to pick up combo, but not quite. The second game against rock I messed up, but still, even if I hadn't it would have been very close.

_erbs_

06-29-2006, 10:26 AM

Speaking of the vial thingy, earlier when i was play testing my deck, just as expected the vial worked wonders with geddon, but what was the most convicing part of all was having a single plain and a chrome mox in play i won vs black. I basically matched his creature production speed with just 2 vials and when i played jitte it was all over.

As for the leonine skyhunters i guess i'll be keeping them over the shadow creatures yes they don't have the protection, but whats the use of having protection when your faced with an artifact like pyrite spellbomb hehehe, they work well vs hypies, walls and others.

Skyhunter + SoFI or Jitte was almost unstopable. And besides the 4 shadow pro red is so easy to kill bec of the toughness of 1 a single pyrite spellbomb or serrated baskelsion dead shadow creatures.

And as for the geddon and parallax wave issue, now im really convinced even if your meta is filled with black decks you still must use a minimum of 3 in your deck.

In the geddon part....,hmm..., nobody had answered my question. I sure do hope they do hehe. In my 2 months or so of testing my AS deck i found geddon very nice on locking the playing field, thats why i have this delema wheather to place them on the SB slot. I do hope ppl here might give me an aswered as why its primary use is at the SB & doesn't fit alot on the MB or just why its only good against control decks. Even with agrro decks, when i use geddon i get the upper hand.

Decks i've played against earlier are: various black decks & FINALLY !!!! a couple of red decks hehehe, in which all of my games won was with the help of geddon. No vial goblins though.

Lego

06-29-2006, 12:27 PM

In the geddon part....,hmm..., nobody had answered my question. I sure do hope they do hehe. In my 2 months or so of testing my AS deck i found geddon very nice on locking the playing field, thats why i have this delema wheather to place them on the SB slot. I do hope ppl here might give me an aswered as why its primary use is at the SB & doesn't fit alot on the MB or just why its only good against control decks. Even with agrro decks, when i use geddon i get the upper hand.

Zilla's post explained this pretty well, if succinctly. Geddon isn't maindeck worthy because it is honestly pretty bad against a lot of decks. If your meta is as control heavy as it looks, it may warrant maindeck play, but like Zilla said, 2 is seldom enough to matter, and I'd rather increase my threat density game one. Decks like Fish and Threshold are going to be able to play through Geddon much easier than you are with land + cantrip, and these are decks that habitually slow-roll their lands anyway. Creatures are never dead, while Geddon sometimes is, and it's best to keep those types of cards in the board.

@Zilla's Post: I posted while Zilla was posting, and then immediately went to bed, so I never read his post. The only reason I posted was because I hadn't seen Zilla post yet. His insights are always better (or at least more clearly explained) than mine, so listen to him :smile:

@Hand of Honor > White Knight: Good point, I didn't even notice Landstill in his meta (silly me and not properly reading posts at 2AM)

Zilla

06-29-2006, 07:00 PM

@Vial:

Goldfishing isn't a good test for the card's viability. More often than not, you want to be slowplaying your threats, not committing all of them to the board. This is the correct way to play against all forms of control, for example. The fact that you can pump out more creatures more quickly is irrellevant, because you don't want to be doing that anyway.

Furthermore, your chances against control will be improved by threat density, not speed. In other words, you will find in most cases that another threat is more effective against control than a Vial will be. The reason for this is that the deck's natural clock is roughly turn 5-6, even with Vial in the equation. What this means is that you will never consistently outrace control's mass removal (Wrath, for example). Making yourself faster against them doesn't work, unless you can speed the deck's clock up by 2 full turns or more. Having a constant stream of threats to replace the ones they remove does work, on the other hand.

This is the reason that Vial works in Goblins, and doesn't work in Angel Stompy: Goblins is fast enough to outrace control. Angel Stompy isn't. You can't hope to win by overwhelming control. You have to play a slower game against them and win the war of attrition by playing a single threat and equipping it to make it into a real clock. When that threat is removed, you play another and force them to remove that too, and so on. Forcing them to make one-for-one trades with your threats is the proper play, and Vial doesn't help in this endeavor. In short, more threats = better.

@Wrath of God:

Not really a good idea when your whole strategy revolves around your creatures. Without a Wave in play, Wrath is going to be dead in hand in most cases. And if you do have a Wave in play, why do you need a Wrath? Wave is one of the most misunderstood cards in the deck. For some reason, people assume that because it's a temporary effect it's not effective as mass removal. This is simply untrue. In most cases, Wave simply buys you the extra time you need to win the game outright.

That it would have run out of counters the turn after you won the game is irrellevant. It pokes holes in your opponents' defenses and allows your creatures through, and more importantly allows the triggered effects of your equipment to occur. By the time your opponent's creatures return to play, you typically have massive card and board advantage thanks to Jitte, Mask, and/or Sword.

@Armageddon:

I guess I kind of brushed over this, so I'll explain it in a bit more detail: I've tested maindecked Armageddon quite a bit. It's sometimes strong, but often is not. In many cases, particularly against aggro and aggro control, a turn 4 Geddon is pretty symmetrical. Your opponent will often have roughly the same amount of threats you do, or they'll be able to recover their manabase more quickly. Against anything other than pure control or combo, it has proven very hit-or-miss in testing. You simply don't have enough other control elements backing it up to make it consistent, and while your threats are very effective, they're not very fast compared with other aggro, which means an early Geddon isn't usually a very powerful play.

_erbs_

06-29-2006, 09:31 PM

@Lego_Army_Man
Thanks for giving some insights, really appriciated it.

@GodzillA
I too slow down my tempo vs control decks with white, but as for u/r landstill I sometimes don't slow down cause the only mass kill i fear of u/r is nevs. I don't fear pyroclasm & slice & dice.

And thats why i was asking if it was a big mistake in removing the mask of memory and just rellying on the SoFI. It was a really an effective style 1~2 threat vs 1 wrath or other mas removal cards. The only problem i get sometimes is the bounce + nevs effect. I guess that would the job of SB hehehe to counter it.

As for vial i know that Creature + MoM is effectuve vs control but against aggro decks like black sui which is TONS in abundance in our meta. Even with the right amount of plains at 16 + 2 moxen , I still get mana screwed like having just 1 plain and 2~3 a.tombs in the early parts of the game.

And parallax wave being a dead card vs most black decks at our place bec. almost all black decks have Hand of Cruelty & other pro white creatures. I don't have wrath of my SB cause they also remove your threats, parallax wave + wrath is a nice combo to pull off but to costly i think.

The only way i see to beat them is to successfully unmorph an Exalted Angel + SofI or Jitte attached to it or atleast be able to drop threats with consistency bec. you'll just be exchanging attacks due to the protection factor. Thats why i was really unsure on the MoM & just to depend on the SoFI for draw. And using geddon as much as possible when i have a vial or 2~3 threats to stop them from pumping out more threats.

A typical black deck at our will just end the game with 2~3 swamps + 1~2 wasteland in play only a single moxen or lotus petal is all they need and there off.

A Typical game vs black decks at our place: play swamp + dark rit = priest of gix, 1 carnopage or sacromany + hymn to tourach or a hand of honor. In just turn 1 you'll have to deal with 2~3 threats and what do you have on your 1st turn an isamaru or MoR hehehe. And when he gets his second swamp now your in big trouble cause pro white creatures would surely come out.

Correct & very insightful on your reply to the geddon topic. Thanks really appriecated it. I use geddon on aggro to stop the coming out of threats, i know that AS is not built as speedy as other agro decks thats why when our threats are almost equal or i get 1 creature advantage i use geddon right away and just hope that i stop there creature production and in turn i get a SoFI or Jitte and attach it to my skyhunter or pro black creatures.

Against vial goblins..... i haven't had any battle against such a deck i know geddon wouldn't work on such a deck due to the vial effect. But like what i've posted yesterday, the only red decks i've played against are sligh's which have various direct dmg it can dish out. Parallax Wave works well on there creatures, beign able to parallax wave a ball lighting is sweet hehehe.

Thanks again for all replies and patience.

Zilla

06-29-2006, 09:52 PM

I too slow down my tempo vs control decks with white, but as for u/r landstill I sometimes don't slow down cause the only mass kill i fear of u/r is nevs.
You shouldn't. Pithing Needle is stupid good against Landstill. It shuts down Disk, as well as Mishra's Factory, Conclave, E. dragon in white, Wasteland, Fetches, Decree, etc. Hell, it shuts down the majority of the deck. I'd run 4 in the board for your meta.

And parallax wave being a dead card vs most black decks at our place bec. almost all black decks have Hand of Cruelty & other pro white creatures. I don't have wrath of my SB cause they also remove your threats, parallax wave + wrath is a nice combo to pull off but to costly i think.
With as much Landstill and Black Aggro is in your emta, I'm kind of surprised you're not just running Burn. It destroys black aggro, and does a number on Landstill. I guess that's a bit off topic... but I'm not sure why you'd want to run a mono-white deck in a meta full of decks with creatures with Pro:White, and Landstill, which isn't a particularly strong matchup for you at all. Incidentally, Zilla Stompy is very strong against Black Aggro too.

A Typical game vs black decks at our place: play swamp + dark rit = priest of gix, 1 carnopage or sacromany + hymn to tourach or a hand of honor. In just turn 1 you'll have to deal with 2~3 threats and what do you have on your 1st turn an isamaru or MoR hehehe.
Their hand will also be empty at the end of this turn, where yours will be nearly full. Angel Stompy should have no problems whatseover dealing with a 2/1 and a 2/2 on the board. A single Knight on the board nullifies this entire plan. Honestly, I'm really surprised you're having the kind of trouble you are; Angel Stompy should do very well against black aggro, even when it's packing Pro:White creatures.

_erbs_

06-29-2006, 11:19 PM

You shouldn't. Pithing Needle is stupid good against Landstill. It shuts down Disk, as well as Mishra's Factory, Conclave, E. dragon in white, Wasteland, Fetches, Decree, etc. Hell, it shuts down the majority of the deck. I'd run 4 in the board for your meta.

Unfortunately i don't have pithing needle hehehe cause it COSTS SO MUCH right now at our area, so my SB looks like this:

4 True Believer
2 Disenchant / 2 on MB
3 Aura of Silence
3 Tormod's Crypt
2 Armageddon / 2 on MB
1 Abeyance or Decree of Justice

Their hand will also be empty at the end of this turn, where yours will be nearly full. Angel Stompy should have no problems whatseover dealing with a 2/1 and a 2/2 on the board. A single Knight on the board nullifies this entire plan. Honestly, I'm really surprised you're having the kind of trouble you are; Angel Stompy should do very well against black aggro, even when it's packing Pro:White creatures.

As i've said there are various black decks, and most of them run a minimum of 8 pro white creatures on there decks. Hand of Cruelty & Black Knights / Pump Knights are the most common.

The parrallax wave and STP instanly becomes dead cards on them that why i was forced to remove the MoM and add another Jitte.

And what really hurts is a 1st turn jitte with a lotus or a moxen + a hand of honor...it almost game over for me...if i don't draw a jitte or disechant.

Thanks again, well today is going to be my last day of deck practice, tomorrow would be the big event, hehehe.

Zilla

06-30-2006, 02:28 AM

4 True Believer
2 Disenchant / 2 on MB
3 Aura of Silence
3 Tormod's Crypt
2 Armageddon / 2 on MB
1 Abeyance or Decree of Justice
True Believer is pretty bad. Glowrider is better as an anti-combo/control option. I guess it's decent against Hymn and what have you, but it seems like they'll die there too often to matter.

As i've said there are various black decks, and most of them run a minimum of 8 pro white creatures on there decks. Hand of Cruelty & Black Knights / Pump Knights are the most common.

The parrallax wave and STP instanly becomes dead cards on them that why i was forced to remove the MoM and add another Jitte.

And what really hurts is a 1st turn jitte with a lotus or a moxen + a hand of honor...it almost game over for me...if i don't draw a jitte or disechant.

Thanks again, well today is going to be my last day of deck practice, tomorrow would be the big event, hehehe.
Okay, seriously dude. I'm gonna ask this again: In a metagame chalk full of Landstill and Pro:White creatures, why on earth are you playing Angel Stompy? It seems like a fantastically poor meta choice. If you want, I'll hook you up with a Burn list that will tear that meta to pieces. I know you like Angel Stompy, and believe me, I like it too... I created it after all. But still, you need to know when it's correct to put down your pet deck and play what's going to win.

frogboy

06-30-2006, 02:36 AM

On that note, Angel Stompy was built as a metagame deck, and it still pretty much is. Playing metagame decks in metagames not suited for the aforementioned decks is an excellent way to lose.

_erbs_

07-01-2006, 09:31 AM

Hi
Sorry if this would be abit off topic or spam, but as i promised i'll post my 1st comeback tornament result. Sadly it was a disapointment, my record was Win 2 Loss 3 Draw 1

Basically I lost in all my black matchups due to Distopia, Masacare & pro white creatures. I have 2 MB disenchant & during all my matchups with black i boreded 2 more disenchant and 2 seal of cleansing

The meta was aggro heavy, the expections where the 3 combo decks & 3 other control decks.

Here where the top 8 decks:
1st Counter Sliver
2nd Solidarity
3rd Landstill Control
4th Solidarity
5th Sligh
6th Iggy -pop
7th Sui Black
8th Sui Black

Caboose

07-01-2006, 02:24 PM

Here where the top 8 decks:
1st Counter Sliver
2nd Solidarity
3rd Landstill Control
4th Solidarity
5th Sligh
6th Iggy -pop
7th Sui Black
8th Sui Black

Whaaaat?!?

Tell me when the next PTQ in your area is, so I can finally get on the Tour :laugh:

TheDarkshineKnight

07-01-2006, 03:51 PM

COUNTERSLIVER?!?

O_o

Dude, your metagame is just wrong.

TheInfamousBearAssassin

07-01-2006, 03:55 PM

A Typical game vs black decks at our place: play swamp + dark rit = priest of gix, 1 carnopage or sacromany + hymn to tourach or a hand of honor.

When they sit down, shuffle their deck.

Problem solved.

f|i[p]

07-01-2006, 10:27 PM

Wow, wonderful now I know where you stay at, played in the same place as you did,( I'm guessing your Erwin) and brought almost the same deck as you did. The only decks I beat was the mirror ( due to the lack of experience my opponent had in playing the deck)and random aggro. The other matches I strictly lost due to wrong decisions and wrong sideboard decisions), well I also had missing parts in the deck as I had to return some cards to their owner resulting in a Bad decklist But I had to do with what I have hence the losses.
Losing is part of the game, thats the best teacher.

The counter sliver is not as bad as you think,he plays it like fish or thresh, though I did not get to play against it. I don't think angel stompy is good for this kind of metagame,although I think it should have made at least Top 8.

The black sui packs alot of white hate,runs a minimum of 8 pro white creatures.And if you do look at the top 8, the only deck this would do good against is sligh or the counter sliver and supposedly black sui. Although we are supposed to do better against sui, they just pack a lot of white hate, and this is probably due to me taking first place at the last tournament here(nobody was prepared to face angel stompy then). But I am sure that this deck could have at least took top 8, I just didnt have the optimum list, I couldnt find the right cards in time.

Having the metagame said I'm sure there are alot of decks that would be better to play. I am trying to ask Jolfer about running the black splash if that would be the right choice against such a meta game. The only things that are sure to be present in the metagame here is solidarity, iggy pop, black sui and sligh.its more like a 60/40 split from aggro to control/combo which this deck has a hard time with.

Some would probably say that I shouldn't run this deck, but having no other deck that is competition worthy, I wouldnt have much choice but to splash a color or start building a different deck. What do you guys think? If a splash would do, what color would it be?

Zilla

07-02-2006, 04:58 AM

Like I said, Angel Stompy isn't the deck for that meta. Decks with 8x Pro: White creatures and Landstill are really bad for it. A simple, straightforward mono-red Burn deck with 4x Price of Progress between the main and the board would destroy that metagame, and it would cost like 20 bucks to build.

_erbs_

07-02-2006, 08:39 PM

@f|i[p]
:laugh: , Oh...i'm guessing your Philip :laugh: , nice seeing you at this thread. Since there where only 3 Angel Stompy during the tornament, I was part of the 3, and i know the 2 of them hehe.

The counter sliver is a sold deck. The only problem it had is againt white winne which was only one during the tornament, that was just his only loss.

Same here was really dispointed that not a single AS went to the top 8 atleast, I know that AS isn't the right deck for our meta, but I never expected that EVERYBODY whould run white hate on their bored. I guess since you where the last champ, everybody was prepared for white this time around.

A funny thing i remembered during the tornament when i was up against a B/U/R control deck he used MASACARE, DISTOPIA & FLASHFIRES, all in one game hehehehe, talk about white hate hehehe. I never ever expected that flashfires would come up. Hehehehe

As for your what you'r thinking, having a second color would automatically mean the removal of ancient tomb or city of trators on your deck, due to the wasteland factor. In turn means a 1st turn morph angel is not a possibility anymore. But having a second color also gives you an advantage or control over things. Then again what would you do when faced with pro white creatures if your removal would be still coming from white hehehe. A splash of black would just maybe improve your match-up vs control & combo cause you'll have duress & cabal theraphy at your disposal. I also have tought of splashing a color on AS but, i decieded not to cause of the slow dwn of the deck.

If ever i do decide on splashing a color or 2 on my deck it wouldn't be AS anymore, maybe in next legacy tornament i might play fish , hehehe.

@GodzillA
There where just 2 sligh decks, one reached 5th place, the other had a lossing record. No goblins where seen.

f|i[p]

07-02-2006, 11:16 PM

Hey, Ive been following the As thread for a more than year now,as I am a big fan of the deck, and yes it is my pet deck. Although until now, I havn't really completed the list as I am also trying to understand the core. What makes the deck tick and what wrecks the deck list(haha it took me a while to learn this though, work takes up most of my time and its been only 3 months that I really got to test it in a competetive way.)

Splashing a color wouldnt really slow the deck down as bad as you think, I wouldnt have to get rid of ancient tombs either, It would still work with the tombs in place.It would help me against control and combo better in return weaken my agrro match up. I would want to switch decks but then again this is the only competetive deck that I have,and would have to make it work. I think it can go as far as top 8 still, I just lost some games due to inexperienced bad decisions.As for the splash we will see how it goes.

I never really try to put down a first turn morphed angel without knowing what deck Im facing. It would be a waste of efforts since you know their going to kill your angel anyway. A first turn mother would be good for me and then a second turn morphed angel.

Like I said, Angel Stompy isn't the deck for that meta. Decks with 8x Pro: White creatures and Landstill are really bad for it. A simple, straightforward mono-red Burn deck with 4x Price of Progress between the main and the board would destroy that metagame, and it would cost like 20 bucks to build.

I'm sure it would, although it's a very boring deck to play.How does solidarity fair agaisnt burn? Just a question although I dont really plan on playing burn.

Zilla

07-04-2006, 04:59 PM

']I'm sure it would, although it's a very boring deck to play.How does solidarity fair agaisnt burn? Just a question although I dont really plan on playing burn.
This is totally off-topic, but, assuming you're running 4 REB and 4 Pillar in the board, the Solidarity matchup is fairly close to 50/50 overall. It depends very heavily on opening hands on both sides, as well as the competence of the Solidarity player.

And yes, I know that Burn is a boring deck to play. But the way I look at it is simple:

1. Angel Stompy is your pet deck.
2. Your metagame is really really bad for Angel Stompy.
3. Your metagame is really really good for Burn.

Thje logical conclusion then, would be to play Burn until people stop playing the decks that are bad for Angel Stompy, then start playing Angel Stompy again. :tongue:

_erbs_

07-04-2006, 09:25 PM

Sorry if im asking at the wrong thread, but i can't find a thread in which they discuss AS in vintage format, is it because it sucks in that particular format ?

I know that THE SOURCE is mainly for legacy format but, maybe someone could help.

Thanks in advance.

Hmm...i wonder if AS could be viable deck for vintage...

Zilla

07-05-2006, 12:26 AM

Angel Stompy never existed in Vintage. I created it for Legacy specifically. It absolutely cannot compete in Vintage. Angel Stompy was designed to destroy creature aggro decks, and those are virtually nonexistent in Vintage, which is ruled by combo and various control. Angel Stompy is like the antithesis of Vintage.

_erbs_

07-07-2006, 08:12 AM

Eldariel

07-11-2006, 10:23 AM

Nvm, I got owned by the 'original' ruling-crap.

Bongo

07-11-2006, 09:31 PM

This may sound crazy, but what about running 2 copies of Sensei's Divining Top?

The thing that bothers me the most is the inconsistency of this deck. Either I'm manaflooded or manascrewed. Games where everything is perfect happen, but I'd like to be less reliant on lucky topdecks.

Top can absorb Tomb mana, is another first turn drop and allows you to dump spare mana into it eot, which happened quite often in my testing.

Combined with Fetches it could smooth out a lot of draws and prevent lategame flooding. This gives Angel Stompy some library manipulation besides Mask of Memory. The problem with Mask was that I often couldn't deal damage when I wanted to, which was mostly in the early turns where I was either searching for mana or threats.

My current list:

Mana 22:
10 Plains
4 Flooded Strand
4 Windswept Heath
4 Ancient Tomb

Creatures 20:
4 Mother of Runes
4 Isamaru, Hound of Konda
4 Silver Knight
4 Soltari Priest
4 Exalted Angel

Spells 10:
4 Swords to Plowshares
4 Parallax Wave
2 Disenchant

Artifact 8:
2 Sensei's Divining Top
2 Mask of Memory
2 Umezawa's Jitte
2 Sword of Fire and Ice

More testing needs to be done to come to a conclusion, but I'm interested what others think about this.

-Bongo

tivadar

07-12-2006, 06:39 AM

This may sound crazy, but what about running 2 copies of Sensei's Divining Top?

...

Combined with Fetches it could smooth out a lot of draws and prevent lategame flooding. This gives Angel Stompy some library manipulation besides Mask of Memory. The problem with Mask was that I often couldn't deal damage when I wanted to, which was mostly in the early turns where I was either searching for mana or threats.

Ok, so if you're running fetches anyways, especially 8, splash blue and use brainstorm rather than top. This gives you access to a huge toolbox of other help as well, meddling mage being the primary thing. You could try and argue that this weakens your manabase, but you're running 8 fetches already, so it really doesn't. Also, multiple BS = Teh Good, multiple tops = Meh Good.

Suggested manabase for light splash based on what you have:
-4 Plains
+4 Tundra
(+1 island if you really want, though it's not really needed)

Unfortunately i don't have pithing needle hehehe cause it COSTS SO MUCH right now at our area, so my SB looks like this:

In my testing, pithing is a great answer to landstill and also serves as a general answer to many other decks. However, an even better answer to landstill is tsabo's web. Fundamentally, it's a turn slower, but oftentimes you can play it T1 with either a mox or a tomb. They almost can't drop standstill once it hits the board (they can under a single pithing), and it nets you the card back. In a meta heavy with landstill, pack webs in your board. Heck, I even chose webs over B2B in the blue splash.