[Deck] ANT (Ad Nauseam Tendrils) Storm Combo

[firstshot]

At the very least this thread should be renamed.

[davelin]

At the very least this thread should be renamed.

Eh, names have a historical significance and recognition just as much if not more than an actual descriptive purpose. Using a sports analogy, the Lakers and Jazz retain their names although their current geographic areas do not have the same connotations as where they originated from.

[bjholmes3]

See: Solidarity

This deck will always be called ANT

[Bryant Cook]

FWIW I agree that the name should probably be switched to something more appropriate as it's misleading and non-accurate.

CRS (Cabal Ritual Storm)
PIFT (Past in Flames Tendrils)

[davelin]

FWIW I agree that the name should probably be switched to something more appropriate as it's misleading and non-accurate.

CRS (Cabal Ritual Storm)
PIFT (Past in Flames Tendrils)

Originally Bryant wanted to call it TIS (The Inferior Storm)

:wink:

[bjholmes3]

Amazing
Natural
Tendrils

[iamajellydonut]

"This deck is tits."

(The Infernal Tendrils Storm)

[UseLess]

I can live with the last suggestion ;). Apart from that, the deck still uses Ad Nauseam and people know it either as ANT or if they're not that familiar with legacy, storm combo will do fine which is also part of the thread name. I fail to see how TES is any better a description of a deck than ANT.

[Jonathan Alexander]

ANT & Grinding Station are the same deck at this point. It's simply Cabal Ritual Storm. TES is different enough to warrant its own thread.

[bjholmes3]

You know, people have been petitioning to change this deck name since I first heard about it in 2013, and probably before that. It ain't happening.

At least people gave up on LDV since then, that was annoying to hear about lol

[Sloshthedark]

you should think about becoming a better player rather than renaming shit everytime a card changes... now there is 8 ball, tds, grinding station, VED, DDFT, SI, TES, ANT for DR based storm "types" someone mercifully deleted vant, pift, pant and i forgot the rest... whats next? CRS (sounds like a news channel), tits (would love if new cool deck), pint (prefer to drink in litres), epic veterant DDDPPT burning storm ball... ant just live with it, changin the old thread was enough insolence for this decade and probably the only chance to change it... if someone doesn't know and can't figure it out from the thread he shouldn't be there probably...

[L10]

Legacy deck names has always been abysmal, so it's fine.

[Sloshthedark]

Legacy deck names has always been abysmal, so it's fine.

I feel the exact opposite
until scg tried to normalize the nomenclature things were just fine, creator names the deck and I'm much more happy to have a Crime city (deck with specific setup) and BURG (a deck with distinct genesys) rather than patriot/jeskai whatever nonsense /Xc delver mixup, after years you can still tell where the deck came from (like Ant or Canadian threshold) renaming it to Pift and RUG delver creates more costs and confusion than seemingly steeper learning curve for a beginner

[aegisd]

renaming it to Pift and RUG delver creates more costs and confusion than seemingly steeper learning curve for a beginner

As a beginner I couldn't agree more. I've known exactly what ANT was for a long time, but I kept seeing posts about "Grinding Station" and took me way too long to figure out that it was it was.

Though partially that was due to Grinding Station not being in any of the decklists, which I assumed it would be. So there's potential that if Ad Nauseam ever gets removed from the 75 entirely, it could be confusing for someone new to the deck.

[L10]

I actually agree with you, Slosh. I don't think our statements are opposites. But I think Legacy deck names are abysmal because a) it does tell you anything upfront (Maverick? Spanish Inquisition?) or b) too generic (Xyz Delver). I'd rather keep the deck name ANT, even if PiFT is probably more accurate. CRS is not as accurate because it can be also mistaken for other storm decks, like SI.

[JamieW89]

I actually agree with you, Slosh. I don't think our statements are opposites. But I think Legacy deck names are abysmal because a) it does tell you anything upfront (Maverick? Spanish Inquisition?) or b) too generic (Xyz Delver). I'd rather keep the deck name ANT, even if PiFT is probably more accurate. CRS is not as accurate because it can be also mistaken for other storm decks, like SI.

I like the silly old decknames with a story. Yes, decknames such as Cheerios, Death & Taxes, Spanish Inquisition, Tin Fins, Full English Breakfast, Maverick, Nic Fit, Team America, Team Italia, and Solidarity don't make a ton of sense, but they somehow fit Legacy culture much better to me than GW (Selesnya..) Midrange.

However, I can also live with descriptive names such as RUG Delver (not Temur? Delver though..) over Canadian Threshold if people insist.

[Lemnear]

I like the silly old decknames with a story. Yes, decknames such as Cheerios, Death & Taxes, Spanish Inquisition, Tin Fins, Full English Breakfast, Maverick, Nic Fit, Team America, Team Italia, and Solidarity don't make a ton of sense, but they somehow fit Legacy culture much better to me than GW (Selesnya..) Midrange.

However, I can also live with descriptive names such as RUG Delver (not Temur? Delver though..) over Canadian Threshold if people insist.

Maybe it's just me, but if someone says "Maverick" i know that he/she is talking about a GWx deck with manadorks, Plows, Hatebears and fat beaters like KotR/SFM/Goyf. "Selesnya Midrange" can be anything from a discard-less TheRock (right the next Problem...) to GW Astral Slide

[iamajellydonut]

Maybe it's just me, but if someone says "Maverick" i know that he/she is talking about a GWx deck with manadorks, Plows, Hatebears and fat beaters like KotR/SFM/Goyf. "Selesnya Midrange" can be anything from a discard-less TheRock (right the next Problem...) to GW Astral Slide

This is exactly my feeling on the topic of "silly names". One of my favorite examples continuing to be "Quick 'n' Toast". Sometimes people do take it a bit far and will use any excuse to get their great and awesome silly name idea slapped on a deck primer, but many other silly names say more about the deck than a legitimate name ever could. Sure, it requires a basic grasp of the format to make sense of, but at least they provide a service to the veterans whereas the nondescriptive "Midrange" is of use to absolutely no one. I'm still waiting for the day when Death and Taxes gets referred to as White Weenies.

Anyway, unless you want to go the SCG route with something bland and shit like just "Storm", I don't see "ANT" going anywhere. It just makes for too good of a colloquial acronym.

[BrettF]

Copy of my quick tournament report for you here:

3 Tendrils of Agony
2 Past in Flames
4 Infernal Tutor
1 Grim Tutor
1 Sensei's Divining Top
4 Preordain
4 Brainstorm
4 Gitaxian Probe
3 Cabal Therapy
3 Duress
4 Cabal Ritual
4 Dark Ritual
4 Lion's Eye Diamond
4 Lotus Petal
4 Misty Rainforest
4 Polluted Delta
2 Underground Sea
1 Volcanic Island
1 Bayou
1 Tropical Island
1 Island
1 Swamp
SB: 1 Ad Nauseam
SB: 2 Extirpate
SB: 2 Chain of Vapor
SB: 4 Abrupt Decay
SB: 2 Krosan Grip
SB: 2 Massacre
SB: 2 Carpet of Flowers

7-0 in matches tonight with this deck. It's cross between Jona and Nevilshutes decklists. Jona says preordains are better than ponder in this build and i think hes right.

R1- Omnitell, 2-1

SB: -2 TOA, -1 PIF, -1 SDT, +1 AdN, +2 Extirpate, +1 CoV

(CoV since he had leylines)



R2- Reanimator, 2-1
SB: -2 TOA, -1 PIF, -1 SDT, +1 AdN, +2 Extirpate, +1 CoV

(CoV for Iona, not sure if worth siding in, help?)



R3- Elves, 2-1

SB: -2 TOA, -1 PIF, +1 AdN, +2 CoV

R4- Jund, 2-0
SB: -2 TOA, +1 AdN, +1 CoV

R5- Shardless BUG, 2-1
SB: -2 TOA, -1 PIF, -2 CR +1 AdN, +2 CoV +2 CoF

(not sure about this boarding, help?)



R6- Twleve Post, 2-0

SB: -2 LED, -1 IT, -1 Grim -2 CR, +2 Extirpate, +2 CoV, +2 CoF

(turns out he had lots of sphere effects, I dodged them in match but i should have sided in the 6 green removal spells here)


R7- Jund, 2-1

SB: -2 TOA, +1 AdN, +1 CoV



Ironically i ended up siding in Ad Nauseam in almost every match this tournament. However, not having Ad Nauseam in G1 was still fine because past in flames is super-powered in game 1 without sideboard hate. I was happy with how the deck preformed, even in my meta which has very little miracles or delver. 



sideboard recap:



SB: 1 Ad Nauseam (allstar in my combo/jund meta i guess)
SB: 2 Extirpate (Not too confident with this card yet, seems okay, I’d cut it for Xantid but then i would have nothing to side in for the storm mirror)
SB: 2 Chain of Vapor
SB: 4 Abrupt Decay
SB: 2 Krosan Grip
SB: 2 Massacre
SB: 2 Carpet of Flowers


[Jonathan Alexander]

R1- Omnitell, 2-1

SB: -2 TOA, -1 PIF, -1 SDT, +1 AdN, +2 Extirpate, +1 CoV

(CoV since he had leylines)



Mostly agree with this, but maybe boarding out Grim instead of Past in Flames is correct.


R2- Reanimator, 2-1
SB: -2 TOA, -1 PIF, -1 SDT, +1 AdN, +2 Extirpate, +1 CoV

(CoV for Iona, not sure if worth siding in, help?)

I actually prefer to keep the second Past in Flames rather than Ad Nauseam against Reanimator. They have lots of disruption but no graveyard hate most of the time. Also makes Grim less bad. Don't really like Chain for Iona, but Top isn't great either. Maybe you should just keep the second Tendrils.


R5- Shardless BUG, 2-1
SB: -2 TOA, -1 PIF, -2 CR +1 AdN, +2 CoV +2 CoF

(not sure about this boarding, help?)

The general idea is correct, but Decay is better than Chain and Cabal Ritual is better than Carpet.




R6- Twleve Post, 2-0

SB: -2 LED, -1 IT, -1 Grim -2 CR, +2 Extirpate, +2 CoV, +2 CoF

(turns out he had lots of sphere effects, I dodged them in match but i should have sided in the 6 green removal spells here)


This is not the kind of matchup where you want to board out your explosive spells, but rather the kind where you want Ad Nauseam. I don't know how many Wastelands they usually play, Chain vs. discard vs. green removal depends on that.


R7- Jund, 2-1

SB: -2 TOA, +1 AdN, +1 CoV


I think it's better to keep to Tendrils than two Past in Flames because they have discard plus Deathrite, and you don't want to lose to getting your Tendrils exiled. You can also board out a discard spell for the second Chain.

[BrettF]

@Jona

The 12 post deck was of the UG variety, no wastes: http://mtgpulse.com/event/21413#302717

[Final Fortune]

I actually agree with you, Slosh. I don't think our statements are opposites. But I think Legacy deck names are abysmal because a) it does tell you anything upfront (Maverick? Spanish Inquisition?) or b) too generic (Xyz Delver). I'd rather keep the deck name ANT, even if PiFT is probably more accurate. CRS is not as accurate because it can be also mistaken for other storm decks, like SI.

Ah, I think the naming conventions have just become uninspiring, I'd rather go back to the period where we named all of the combo decks after breakfast cereals.

[Alix444]

Caleb Scherer is doing some serious work with dark petition, this time with a 1 top, 1 preordain, 2 Dark Petition, 1 ToA, 1 PiF, 1 AN. He also tends to lean on disfigure over dread and massacre. With 2 recalls and a rebuild MUD looks like a bye.

[Sloshthedark]

Caleb Scherer is doing some serious work with dark petition, this time with a 1 top, 1 preordain, 2 Dark Petition, 1 ToA, 1 PiF, 1 AN. He also tends to lean on disfigure over dread and massacre. With 2 recalls and a rebuild MUD looks like a bye.

the guy is incredible, just always there... he seems to play similar setup for some time (an awkward one imo) , I dunno about expecting MUd and ignoring D+T, I'd guess recalls are more for Lands

[Togores]

Lately I have been playing 2 echoing instead of chain of vapour to beat loam with tegg and chalice and also 2 hurkil. Just to beat lands and mud. Metagame is shifting like every event is some of this deck there, so I like to be prepared.

[BrettF]

Anyone like puzzles? This took me way longer than it should have to figure out the win. Decklist is 0xAdn 2xToA 1xEtW 2xPiF. You just played underground sea for the turn.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/COUl0oQU8AAGMfo.jpg:large

[Alix444]

Anyone like puzzles? This took me way longer than it should have to figure out the win. Decklist is 0xAdn 2xToA 1xEtW 2xPiF. You just played underground sea for the turn.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/COUl0oQU8AAGMfo.jpg:large

Are they at 20? I can only seem to deal 18.

Nope nevermind.

[JamieW89]

Anyone like puzzles? This took me way longer than it should have to figure out the win. Decklist is 0xAdn 2xToA 1xEtW 2xPiF. You just played underground sea for the turn.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/COUl0oQU8AAGMfo.jpg:large

Knowing there is a solution makes it somewhat simple as there really aren't many roads to consider. In a real life situation under pressure I wouldn't be surprised if many people would miss it. Giving the player a landdrop for the turn actually makes the puzzle more interesting since you need the trop in the yard to give the CRit thresh at flashback (you can only do 18 no matter if you go IT->IT or just IT->LED in that line since you can't cast duress after IT->IT).

[haganbmj]

Anyone like puzzles? This took me way longer than it should have to figure out the win. Decklist is 0xAdn 2xToA 1xEtW 2xPiF. You just played underground sea for the turn.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/COUl0oQU8AAGMfo.jpg:large

LED, IT (CRit), CRit (w/ Thresh), Flashback PiF, Flashback CRit (w/ Thresh), Flashback IT (LED), LED, Duress, Tendrils

The only way I can see to get to 20 is to Flashback IT for a Probe... then rip a Petal, LED, or another Probe (into one of those) off the top.

[wonderPreaux]

LED, IT (CRit), CRit (w/ Thresh), Flashback PiF, Flashback CRit (w/ Thresh), Flashback IT (LED), LED, Duress, Tendrils

The only way I can see to get to 20 is to Flashback IT for a Probe... then rip a Petal, LED, or another Probe (into one of those) off the top.

You IT for another IT to grab LED, that get you 5 mana for Duress and ToA, 10 Storm:

LED (4)
IT (5)
C. Rit (8)
PiF (3)
C. Rit (6)
IT (4)
IT (2)
LED (5)
Duress (4)
ToA (0)

[bjholmes3]

My opinion on Dark Petition has changed. It's a great card, I definitely recommend everyone try it out.

[davelin]

My opinion on Dark Petition has changed. It's a great card, I definitely recommend everyone try it out.

The first DP seems better than a second PiF for those playing with it.

[wonderPreaux]

The first DP seems better than a second PiF for those playing with it.

I would tend to disagree, I think the 2nd PiF ability to be protection and/or business is probably a big deal. For those playing the "Full House" of ToAs over PiFs, though, I've been trying DP over a 3rd ToA, since Grixis and Miracles can often force the issue of comboing before I can get the natural Storm, so it feels pretty good to have the extra PiF and the extra Tutor.

[haganbmj]

You IT for another IT to grab LED, that get you 5 mana for Duress and ToA, 10 Storm:

LED (4)
IT (5)
C. Rit (8)
PiF (3)
C. Rit (6)
IT (4)
IT (2)
LED (5)
Duress (4)
ToA (0)

Ah I must have miscounted the mana. Thanks for the info.

[bjholmes3]

You know, this exercise reminds me. I'd like to establish a standard storm notation (gimme your SSN!). I think what wonderPreaux did is pretty much what we want, with mana colors clarified if necessary.

Let's get enough people on this so my eyes don't bleed reading storm reports ;)

[davelin]

I believe cockatrice replays are saved on your computer's hard drive and in theory can be shared with others. Long story short, was wondering if any storm experts wouldn't mind reviewing some of my replays and seeing if there are possible improvements. Please PM, thanks!

[Megadeus]

Played the list that has top 8'd a couple IQs with 2 Dark petition and Ad Nauseam main. It has been pretty damn good. I was surprised. I'm 5-3 in the past 2 weeks, but 1 of those losses was to Soldier Stompy (just the absolute misery MU) and one was to Infect tonight where I punted in 2 separate games to lose in 3. So I should at least be 6-2, maybe 7-1 with the deck. It seems very powerful, and despite the added huge 5 drops the deck has still been fine with Ad Nauseam. Maybe it's just my local, but Hurkylls Recall has been boarded in fairly often.

[bjholmes3]

That's Scherer's List (almost like the movie). Dark Petition is way better than I thought too, I am of the opinion that everyone should definitely try that list out. Going down to 14 lands is more of his spicy tech, and if you don't like it...you're out like 10 cents, sorry.

[Dr_D]

That's Scherer's List (almost like the movie). Dark Petition is way better than I thought too, I am of the opinion that everyone should definitely try that list out. Going down to 14 lands is more of his spicy tech, and if you don't like it...you're out like 10 cents, sorry.

It seems that Caleb Scherer could top 8 with a ham sandwich as long as it has tendrils in the 75.

[bjholmes3]

Don't eat sandwiches with tendrils in them kids.

[Darkness]

It seems that Caleb Scherer could top 8 with a ham sandwich as long as it has tendrils in the 75.

I meet Caleb @ SCG: NJ invitational and spoke with him about his results. He seemed very confident with his card choices. He is a Mathamatician that teaches math and told me some of the advanced mathematical methods he teaches can be applied to in STORM. I would seriously note what he is doing and test it. He is not on The Source but is on Facebook. He seemed like a nice guy and really approachable. message him and ask him questions.

[bjholmes3]

I'd be very interested to hear what he has to say about it. I'd very much appreciate him writing an article or something.

I'm super excited guys, finally put the deck together IRL! With ten proxies allowed by my LGS, I've got it finished, complete with the sexy promo art ToA.

[Royce Walter]

I'd be very interested to hear what he has to say about it. I'd very much appreciate him writing an article or something.

I'm super excited guys, finally put the deck together IRL! With ten proxies allowed by my LGS, I've got it finished, complete with the sexy promo art ToA.

vomit.

[bjholmes3]

vomit.

I see you realize what the original art is depicting

[Dr_D]

I meet Caleb @ SCG: NJ invitational and spoke with him about his results. He seemed very confident with his card choices. He is a Mathamatician that teaches math and told me some of the advanced mathematical methods he teaches can be applied to in STORM. I would seriously note what he is doing and test it. He is not on The Source but is on Facebook. He seemed like a nice guy and really approachable. message him and ask him questions.

I realize my post seemed like I was suggesting his list is bad. Just want to clarify, I was only suggesting that he's insane with storm. I have played quite a few games with his list though and I'm pretty sure I don't like it more than the full house version I've been playing. Either way, I always enjoy trying new lists and ideas.

[Togores]

vomit.

What ugly force would make someone play this ugly picture on a tendrills...

[L10]

Personally, I only play with the first non-foil black-bordered English prints with the exception of the alpha and beta duals, and cards that has no black border options. The only time I rather play with FBB are cards I rather explain to my opponent than having them to read the card, like Chains of Mephistopheles or lusionary Mask.

[bjholmes3]

Scherer tops yet again, way to go!

EDIT: Ok, after a lot more testing, Dark Petition is the nuts. It fits our deck philosophy extremely well, and it's definitely here to stay.

[Xenocide]

Scherer tops yet again, way to go!

EDIT: Ok, after a lot more testing, Dark Petition is the nuts. It fits our deck philosophy extremely well, and it's definitely here to stay.

Link please?

[bjholmes3]

http://www.tcdecks.net/results.php?nombre=Caleb%20Scherer

[JamieW89]

Made the semi's today in a 20-25 person tournament with a 2 DP/1 EtW list.

R1: Shardless 2-1 (mulled to 4 g1, won the other two, g3 with some fortune)
R2: Omnitell 2-1 (Got nutdrawn g1. g2 I AdN'd to 5 and stopped missing LED/DP/ToA and brainstormed from LP into DP, which would have been a lethal flip. had an interesting win g3 when he had split decision while I was on 1 HP due to an earlier AdN. I could go PiF, flashback tutor for tutor for duress, flashback pif for tutor for tendrils)
R3: TES 2-0 (Flusterstorm won g2)
R4: MUD ID (Played some games for fun, went 3-1 with some chances in the 4th despite him having Crypt, 3sphere (decay), lodestone (Chained), Revoker (LED), and Thorn (Decayed), but I missed the line.
R5: Grixis Delver ID
QF: TES 2-0 (Was luckier than him, being on the play helped a lot)
SF: MUD 1-2 (g1 t1 chalice, t2 3sphere. g2 I could eot hurkyl's his hate and untap into: LP,CoV,LP,DR,DP->LED,IT->ToA for exactly 16. DP was good. g3 he had chalice@0, chalice@2, 3sphere, thorn, and lodestone.)

[BrettF]

Thanks Jamie. I was wondering what you side out when you bring in ad nauseam and if its different between matchups you want ad nauseam in?

[L10]

R4: MUD ID (Played some games for fun, went 3-1 with some chances in the 4th despite him having Crypt, 3sphere (decay), lodestone (decay), Revoker (LED), and Thorn (Chained), but I missed the line.
Good report. You can't decay a Lodestone though.

[JamieW89]

Thanks Jamie. I was wondering what you side out when you bring in ad nauseam and if its different between matchups you want ad nauseam in?
Depends on the matchup, the logical switch is -1 Empty +1 AdN, but the DP's are also weak with AdN and 1-2 usually go out. In some matchups you do want both Ad Nauseam and an Empty/DP though. AdN simply replaces Empty when I need speed vs combo (e.g. Storm, Omni, Elves) or tokens suck (e.g. Lands). I like running both in some other matchups (e.g. Miracles, some discard-based decks).


Good report. You can't decay a Lodestone though.
Ty, and edited (switched the golem & thorn around, report was a little rushed in general).

[Dr_D]

Made the semi's today in a 20-25 person tournament with a 2 DP/1 EtW list.

R1: Shardless 2-1 (mulled to 4 g1, won the other two, g3 with some fortune)
R2: Omnitell 2-1 (Got nutdrawn g1. g2 I AdN'd to 5 and stopped missing LED/DP/ToA and brainstormed from LP into DP, which would have been a lethal flip. had an interesting win g3 when he had split decision while I was on 1 HP due to an earlier AdN. I could go PiF, flashback tutor for tutor for duress, flashback pif for tutor for tendrils)
R3: TES 2-0 (Flusterstorm won g2)
R4: MUD ID (Played some games for fun, went 3-1 with some chances in the 4th despite him having Crypt, 3sphere (decay), lodestone (Chained), Revoker (LED), and Thorn (Decayed), but I missed the line.
R5: Grixis Delver ID
QF: TES 2-0 (Was luckier than him, being on the play helped a lot)
SF: MUD 1-2 (g1 t1 chalice, t2 3sphere. g2 I could eot hurkyl's his hate and untap into: LP,CoV,LP,DR,DP->LED,IT->ToA for exactly 16. DP was good. g3 he had chalice@0, chalice@2, 3sphere, thorn, and lodestone.)

Are you running 1 EtW/1PiF/1 Tendrils main with the 2 DP and Ad Naus in the side?

[JamieW89]

Are you running 1 EtW/1PiF/1 Tendrils main with the 2 DP and Ad Naus in the side?

Standard 55 with 2 DP, 1 EtW, 1 SDT & 1 Rain of Filth.

Another local tournament today, but due to the one yesterday and the WMCQ today we were only with 8. We played 4 rounds without a top, and I went 4-0.

Round-1 Grixis Delver: 2 - 0
I missplay by preemptively fetching g1 (he had shown Trop,Volc,Shaman) vs Stifle (which he is very unlikely to even play there), when he had no shaman food yet. This allowed him to cast a therapy gaining him the advantage. Eventually I can combo and duress him, he brainstorms in response showing FoW,BS,GP. His other brainstorm didn't find anything so I got there. I don't remember much about game-2 but we got a point where he has fow,fow,daze in hand with some pressure and I have top, and some lands in play with the combo in hand and I found two duress on time.

Round-2 Elves: 2 - 0
Game-1 I win quite easy. Game-2 I have a strange hand on my turn-1 with 3 Infernals, PiF, Led,LP,lands. I opt to tutor for a second led and play them out vs his discard. He then plays turn-2 decay on my led, but I have a fairly quick kill anyways because PiF in hand is broken.

Round-3 iPainter: 2 - 1
Game-1 he has a turn-1 painter with a LP,pyroblast up which buys him time to combo out. Game-2 he has canonist and pyroblast but I get the time to therapy, hurkyl's and win. In the final game he keeps a hand with just Grindstone and double pyroblast which I can beat fairly easy.

Round-4 Grixis Delver: 2 - 0
On turn-1 I have Probe,Probe,LP,DR,LED,IT,BS,PN on the draw in game-1. The first probe shows me that he kept a sketchy hand with Delver (which he had played), FoW, Zombiefish, Waste & 3 Land. My probes draw EtW and ToA so I need brainstorm to hit an IMS, which it does. Game-2 he has a solid advantage with Fluster,Fluster,Clique,Surgical,Null Rod in hand and a Delver + Young Pyro on the battlefield, with me being at 8 and him having one mana. He knows most of my hand consisting of double therapy, tutor and mana, my graveyard has both tendrils and an infernal. I open with therapy which he flusterstorms, then he surgicals tendrils in response to the second therapy. This gives him 7 power on the board. I then make about 40 goblins, clear his hand and pass. He doesn't draw into an answer. He could have certainly won if he didn't play Young Pyro on the previous turn (Null Rod was a lot better, keeping mana for 2nd fluster was better too) or if he surgicals the tutors.

[bjholmes3]

Nice result, stick it to those dirty Delvers

[Togores]

Yesterday I played the final of the monthly legacy league of Madrid. This time was 6 tournaments where for the final you have to qualify, I ended first of the ranking and going to the tourmanet I played the deck in this pic, just -1 rain of filth +1 duress.

1 Ad Nauseam
1 Past in flames
2 Tendrils of Agony
4 Infernal tutor

4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
4 Gitaxian probe
2 Preordain

3 Cabal therapy
4 Duress

4 Dark ritual
4 Cabal ritual
4 Lion's eye diamond
4 Lotus petal

4 Polluted delta
4 Misty rainforest
2 Underground sea
1 Volcanic island
1 Tropical island
1 Bayou
1 Island
1 Swamp

The sb was the folliwing:
3 dread of night
4 decay
2 echoing truth
3 hurkil
1 extirpate
2 xantid



I expexpected not a lot of show and tell decks, so only 2 xantids is ok, also expected a lot of taxes and gwzenith wich was low, at the start I wanted to play 2 extirpate to test them but fearing thalia and co I cutted it for a dread, I sided the extirpate 1 time and it felt great against miracles, the only thing its a bit mana intensive. Three hurkil may be to much but after playing at the gp madrid side event against 3 mud in a row. And a lot of decks playing spheres, chalice, null rod, trinisphere I just wanted to have non green outs. Also lately I have beeb playing echoing truth, obv its worser than chain but there are far too many chalice of the void out there to bounce.

Also second tendrills got sided a lot out, but also helped me win a lot of g1. Its just another bussined like dark petition, second pif, empty or so. And against grixis (wich plays discard in the sb) double tendrills g1 is quite ok plan there.

As nauseam md was really good all day, just its a plan against shaman and so and lets you win fast with a lot of artifact mana hand.


So my rounds where:
R1 daze mentor miracles
G1 t1 top t2 balance i could go of If i force him to tap the sensei to counter cmc1 on my 2 cantrips. He did the right choice, he untaps I loose.
G2 he mull to 5 i win.
G3 I destroy his balance, discard on force, extirpate the other, go for game.

R2 grixis
G1 He keeps a just counters and land hand, dost find pressure and I get to double tendrills him passing all his countermagic.
G2 i have a fast hand. He plays a t1 drs, t2 pyromancer and searches another underground, im thinking im dead to therapy, he plays another shaman I gitaxian and win.

R3 loam
He plays like the usual loam but only 1 tegg 1 green sun zenith. That makes that I usualy have only to get around chalice, with echoing truth its quite easy and I loose one game to double chalice into liliana where I was just neat to win when I played a nauseam at 4 lifes and was hat to find with 1 cantrip an infernal or the tendrills and with 2 more The tendrills. As usualy was the next card.
Then go and win g3.

R4 infect
G1 I therapy his inferct guy and he has no pressure and win
G2 he has and elf but I get rid of permission (he had a lot but no pump spell) and end up wining.

R5 draw with esper blade

R6 draw with bug

Top 8 sylvan plug
G1 I keep a risky 1 lander wich has therapy t1 and goes of t2.
I go for therapy he waselnads me i rip a land and go off
G2 he plays a double leyline and I can win when I draw one card to remove the chalice, he gets to 4 lands and slaughter games me, I concede.
G3 I just go off turn 2 or so.

Top 4 loam pox
G1 its a golfish, duress his crop rotation and pif loop him next turn
G2 a few discards of him and me, he land a nether void and liliana I have echoing, hurkil and 5 lands + led + petal in play. He plays sylvan library and gets to 12.
I ponder and i see the tendrills draw it and keep discartig for liliana, i need to win next turn, echoing the nether void and then just need to rip a cantrip or an artifact for play it hurkil myself tendrills. Draw a led and its over.

Final bug
He plays like a team america, shaman, fow, daze, hymn, dig and some walkers instead of delver. Just the tipical nightmare marchup.
G1 i mull to 5, he himns, has double fow and loose.
G2 i try go of, he has fow, try to go of again he draws hymn i brainstorm, try to go of again he has fow again and I loose.
Just bad matchup.

End up 2nd and its quite ok ^^

[alaska]

Sorry if this has been asked before, but I have a budgeting question:

I own every card in the 'stock' lists I've seen posted, EXCEPT Volcanic Island.

How much am I going to regret sleeving this up with a one of shockland instead?

[UseLess]

From my limited experience with the deck I can say that I fetch the Volcanic Island regularly, but only when I'm interested in comboing with PiF or EtW (post board). In case of PiF your life total usually doesn't matter too much and when going for EtW it may or may not (depending on AdN prior to it). You might lose a game or so every now and then, but I doubt it will make that big of an impact on your general play lines.

[Contract Killer]

So I just recently picked up this deck about a month or two ago. I've jammed enough games to feel somewhat comfortable with it, but I'm having trouble understanding it post board. This is where the majority of my games will be played so I definitely want to get better with my post board games. Currently I'm playing somewhat of a combination of Greg's list from SCG INVI Portland and Caleb's list from SCG Cincinnati:
http://mtgtop8.com/event?e=9681&d=255655&f=LE
http://mtgtop8.com/event?e=10443&d=259780&f=LE

Lands 15
4x Polluted Delta
4x Misty Rainforest
2x Underground Sea
1x volcanic island
1x tropical island
1x bayou
1x swamp
1x island

Fast Mana 16
4x Dark Ritual
4x Cabal Ritual
4x Lotus Petal
4x Lion's Eye Diamond

Cantrips 14
4x Ponder
4x Brainstorm
4x Gitaxian Probe
1x Preordain
1x Sensei's Divining Top

Discard 6
3x Cabal Therapy
3x Durress

Action 9
4x Infernal Tutor
2x Past In Flames
1x Dark Petition
1x Ad Nauseam
1x Tendrils of Agony

Sideboard
3x Abrupt Decay
1x Krosan Grip
2x Dread of Night
2x Chain of Vapor
2x Xantid Swarm
2x Surgical Extraction
1x Tendrils of Agony
1x Empty the Warrens
1x Sensei's Divining Top

So I understand some of the general stuff I can cut like the swamp against non wasteland decks or ad nauseam against non combo decks. Some of the cards I don't understand are what pieces of fast mana should I cut? I think from what I've read cutting 1 cabal ritual and 1-2 petals is usually ok. I just lost to miracles tonight and I couldn't really figure out what to board (at the time I had a 4th durress in the board over the 2nd top). I ended up doing this, but I'm pretty sure it was wrong:

- 2 petal, 2 gitaxian probe, cabal ritual, Ad nauseam, swamp, preordain // + 3 decay, 1 krosan grip, 2 xantid swarm, Tendrils of agony, Duress

I got some advice from another local storm player that taking out the 2 probes in that scenario was wrong. He said that boarding into the grinding station style build for the Miracles match up that probe is really helpful. The other point he made was that I shouldn't board in Xantid swarm since they'll probably keep in some terminuses or swords. His opinion was that by not boarding in the swarms you're next leveling them since they'll probably keep some removal in meaning I shouldn't board in any swarms.

I know there's not a clean cut sideboard guide for this deck. I'm more so looking for advice as to what to cut and what to bring in for certain archetypes. Needless to say some of the advice I got above helped, but left me more confused than anything.

[Reagens]

I got some advice from another local storm player that taking out the 2 probes in that scenario was wrong. He said that boarding into the grinding station style build for the Miracles match up that probe is really helpful. The other point he made was that I shouldn't board in Xantid swarm since they'll probably keep in some terminuses or swords. His opinion was that by not boarding in the swarms you're next leveling them since they'll probably keep some removal in meaning I shouldn't board in any swarms.


Grinding station is probably the best configuration vs miracles (although still very hard to actually win).
But if you don't bring in swarms vs them (which I can understand for the reasons your friend mentioned) you should probably not play them at all in your 75 and go for discard/flusterstorm for more protection.

In general for boarding you divide your deck into different categories mana/acceleration/cantrips/disruption/ business
You try to keep those ratio pretty even with the exception of the preordains that get sided out pretty quickly.

[bjholmes3]

Sorry if this has been asked before, but I have a budgeting question:

I own every card in the 'stock' lists I've seen posted, EXCEPT Volcanic Island.

How much am I going to regret sleeving this up with a one of shockland instead?

I actually play with one each Watery Grave and Steam Vents, with a Breeding Pool in the board, and it works fine. Obviously it's not as good, but when there's a choice between shocks and not playing Legacy...

[firstshot]

So I just recently picked up this deck about a month or two ago. I've jammed enough games to feel somewhat comfortable with it, but I'm having trouble understanding it post board. This is where the majority of my games will be played so I definitely want to get better with my post board games. Currently I'm playing somewhat of a combination of Greg's list from SCG INVI Portland and Caleb's list from SCG Cincinnati:
http://mtgtop8.com/event?e=9681&d=255655&f=LE
http://mtgtop8.com/event?e=10443&d=259780&f=LE

Lands 15
4x Polluted Delta
4x Misty Rainforest
2x Underground Sea
1x volcanic island
1x tropical island
1x bayou
1x swamp
1x island

Fast Mana 16
4x Dark Ritual
4x Cabal Ritual
4x Lotus Petal
4x Lion's Eye Diamond

Cantrips 14
4x Ponder
4x Brainstorm
4x Gitaxian Probe
1x Preordain
1x Sensei's Divining Top

Discard 6
3x Cabal Therapy
3x Durress

Action 9
4x Infernal Tutor
2x Past In Flames
1x Dark Petition
1x Ad Nauseam
1x Tendrils of Agony

Sideboard
3x Abrupt Decay
1x Krosan Grip
2x Dread of Night
2x Chain of Vapor
2x Xantid Swarm
2x Surgical Extraction
1x Tendrils of Agony
1x Empty the Warrens
1x Sensei's Divining Top

So I understand some of the general stuff I can cut like the swamp against non wasteland decks or ad nauseam against non combo decks. Some of the cards I don't understand are what pieces of fast mana should I cut? I think from what I've read cutting 1 cabal ritual and 1-2 petals is usually ok. I just lost to miracles tonight and I couldn't really figure out what to board (at the time I had a 4th durress in the board over the 2nd top). I ended up doing this, but I'm pretty sure it was wrong:

- 2 petal, 2 gitaxian probe, cabal ritual, Ad nauseam, swamp, preordain // + 3 decay, 1 krosan grip, 2 xantid swarm, Tendrils of agony, Duress

I got some advice from another local storm player that taking out the 2 probes in that scenario was wrong. He said that boarding into the grinding station style build for the Miracles match up that probe is really helpful. The other point he made was that I shouldn't board in Xantid swarm since they'll probably keep in some terminuses or swords. His opinion was that by not boarding in the swarms you're next leveling them since they'll probably keep some removal in meaning I shouldn't board in any swarms.

I know there's not a clean cut sideboard guide for this deck. I'm more so looking for advice as to what to cut and what to bring in for certain archetypes. Needless to say some of the advice I got above helped, but left me more confused than anything.

Never board out gitaxian probe. Even versus burn they stay.

[Alix444]

Why does vintage ANT play Steel Sabotage, but the legacy lists never do? Because Trinisphere is restricted in vintage? Or is it because there are more pesky enchantments in legacy that we would rather play decay/grip?

[davelin]

Why does vintage ANT play Steel Sabotage, but the legacy lists never do? Because Trinisphere is restricted in vintage? Or is it because there are more pesky enchantments in legacy that we would rather play decay/grip?

Workshops is a thing in Vintage while MUD isn't as much in Legacy. Also Vintage storm is better suited to use counters to protect the combo.

[bjholmes3]

Also consider that any given vintage deck can run 5-10 very relevant artifacts, combined with the fact that vintage storm is so jam packed with high powered effects that it has room to spare, kinda like how you go from 0 interaction in Modern storm to 7 ish pieces in Legacy.

[Contract Killer]

Never board out gitaxian probe. Even versus burn they stay.

Yeah that was based off of my experience with RUG Delver. I hadn't really processed that in this deck probes do serve another purpose other than just providing information. I was used to in RUG Delver it being an easy card to cut except vs combo when you do really want information. I was thinking "hahaha I know what I need to name with therapy I don't need this card right now I can shave a few". Oh how wrong I was.


Grinding station is probably the best configuration vs miracles (although still very hard to actually win).
But if you don't bring in swarms vs them (which I can understand for the reasons your friend mentioned) you should probably not play them at all in your 75 and go for discard/flusterstorm for more protection.

In general for boarding you divide your deck into different categories mana/acceleration/cantrips/disruption/ business
You try to keep those ratio pretty even with the exception of the preordains that get sided out pretty quickly.

So should I have Swarms in my board then? Aside from miracles and the obvious Omnitell match ups when should I board it in? Is it a card I want vs delver decks to help fight through possible soft protection like Spell Pierce or redundant Spell Snares + Force?

As for those ratios what are acceptable numbers to shave down to? From what I've read the easy cuts are:
Preordains and top depending on the match up
Basic swamp as the worst land vs non wasteland match ups
Ad Nauseam vs Delver decks and Miracles (Are there any other match ups this should hit the bench for?)
Cabal Ritual is the first piece of fast mana that should be cut right? It's technically the worst, but I'm also not sure if that changes with running the Dark Petition and maybe I should shave a Petal first instead?

[Dark Ritual]

So I just recently picked up this deck about a month or two ago. I've jammed enough games to feel somewhat comfortable with it, but I'm having trouble understanding it post board. This is where the majority of my games will be played so I definitely want to get better with my post board games. Currently I'm playing somewhat of a combination of Greg's list from SCG INVI Portland and Caleb's list from SCG Cincinnati:
http://mtgtop8.com/event?e=9681&d=255655&f=LE
http://mtgtop8.com/event?e=10443&d=259780&f=LE

Lands 15
4x Polluted Delta
4x Misty Rainforest
2x Underground Sea
1x volcanic island
1x tropical island
1x bayou
1x swamp
1x island

Fast Mana 16
4x Dark Ritual
4x Cabal Ritual
4x Lotus Petal
4x Lion's Eye Diamond

Cantrips 14
4x Ponder
4x Brainstorm
4x Gitaxian Probe
1x Preordain
1x Sensei's Divining Top

Discard 6
3x Cabal Therapy
3x Durress

Action 9
4x Infernal Tutor
2x Past In Flames
1x Dark Petition
1x Ad Nauseam
1x Tendrils of Agony

Sideboard
3x Abrupt Decay
1x Krosan Grip
2x Dread of Night
2x Chain of Vapor
2x Xantid Swarm
2x Surgical Extraction
1x Tendrils of Agony
1x Empty the Warrens
1x Sensei's Divining Top

So I understand some of the general stuff I can cut like the swamp against non wasteland decks or ad nauseam against non combo decks. Some of the cards I don't understand are what pieces of fast mana should I cut? I think from what I've read cutting 1 cabal ritual and 1-2 petals is usually ok. I just lost to miracles tonight and I couldn't really figure out what to board (at the time I had a 4th durress in the board over the 2nd top). I ended up doing this, but I'm pretty sure it was wrong:

- 2 petal, 2 gitaxian probe, cabal ritual, Ad nauseam, swamp, preordain // + 3 decay, 1 krosan grip, 2 xantid swarm, Tendrils of agony, Duress

I got some advice from another local storm player that taking out the 2 probes in that scenario was wrong. He said that boarding into the grinding station style build for the Miracles match up that probe is really helpful. The other point he made was that I shouldn't board in Xantid swarm since they'll probably keep in some terminuses or swords. His opinion was that by not boarding in the swarms you're next leveling them since they'll probably keep some removal in meaning I shouldn't board in any swarms.

I know there's not a clean cut sideboard guide for this deck. I'm more so looking for advice as to what to cut and what to bring in for certain archetypes. Needless to say some of the advice I got above helped, but left me more confused than anything.

Against them with this list and that sideboard I wouldn't board swarm because I'm so used to having the bees eat removal sure if they don't have removal it's fantastic naturally but I never count on that unless you have a hunch that they boarded it all out due to inexperience or something.

-1 Preordain
-2 Petal
-1 Cabal Ritual
-1 Swamp
-1 Lion's Eye Diamond

+1 Top
+1 Tendrils
+3 Decay
+1 K Grip

Sure cutting LED seems just horribly wrong but you'll likely have all the mana you need when you go off. Sure it lowers the percentage of going turn 1 duress turn 2 DR DR LED IT kill you before you can assemble countertop but it's much better to play towards a raw tendrils plan. If you think they take out all terminuses I'd cut ad nauseam for empty.

[Reagens]

So should I have Swarms in my board then? Aside from miracles and the obvious Omnitell match ups when should I board it in? Is it a card I want vs delver decks to help fight through possible soft protection like Spell Pierce or redundant Spell Snares + Force?

As for those ratios what are acceptable numbers to shave down to? From what I've read the easy cuts are:
Preordains and top depending on the match up
Basic swamp as the worst land vs non wasteland match ups
Ad Nauseam vs Delver decks and Miracles (Are there any other match ups this should hit the bench for?)
Cabal Ritual is the first piece of fast mana that should be cut right? It's technically the worst, but I'm also not sure if that changes with running the Dark Petition and maybe I should shave a Petal first instead?

Swarms are very good vs delver decks because they have no permanent hate.
Swarms are very dodgy vs Omnitell because they do nothing to stop them from comboing off and nigh useless vs miracles because they have a lot of permanent hate (4 counterbalance, combination of canonist/meddling mage/clique) and are likely to keep in 2 or more swords to plowshares.

Basic swamp gets sided out for a dual if it's in your board vs non wasteland matchups. Be aware that some versions might side in blood moon.

Ad nauseam is something I rarely side out (even vs delver) but I wouldn't vs miracles anyway. The best way to win is either combo fast before their hate hits us (thus ad nauseam) or
have a nice empty for a token or 12.

Cabal is technically the worst but keep in mind that once you cut 2 or more you'll have more difficulty getting enough mana.

[Bryant Cook]

Swarms are very good vs delver decks because they have no permanent hate.
Swarms are very dodgy vs Omnitell because they do nothing to stop them from comboing off and nigh useless vs miracles because they have a lot of permanent hate (4 counterbalance, combination of canonist/meddling mage/clique) and are likely to keep in 2 or more swords to plowshares.

Basic swamp gets sided out for a dual if it's in your board vs non wasteland matchups. Be aware that some versions might side in blood moon.

Ad nauseam is something I rarely side out (even vs delver) but I wouldn't vs miracles anyway. The best way to win is either combo fast before their hate hits us (thus ad nauseam) or
have a nice empty for a token or 12.

Cabal is technically the worst but keep in mind that once you cut 2 or more you'll have more difficulty getting enough mana.

This seems like awful advice. Abrupt Decay or Lightning Bolt still answer the bug.

[JamieW89]

This seems like awful advice. Abrupt Decay or Lightning Bolt still answer the bug.

Yeah, I don't like them vs Delver in general either. However, Grixis delver is boarding out their bolts against me (too much to board in I guess), so when I have them I board them there. But even then, their other angles of attack (mainly cabal therapy) weaken its use.

It's a card that shines versus decks that only interact on the stack (which are basicly nonexistent by now, everyone has multiple angles). It's also a great card versus Griselbrand since it defeats their future stack interaction that we usually can't beat. Furthermore it's good against SDT, which can hide counters on top. Miracles can often answer the card though (inter alia by using any StP they kept, otherwise a dead card), and it doesn't do much with permanent hate in the mixture. If you want to fight SDT specifcally I'd prefer the harder-to-answer Krosan Grip or Pithing Needle. It was also very good when people ran white leylines in the board of decks with counters (e.g. the older omniclash lists).

I've gone from 2 swarms to 0 lately, and I'm not missing them that much. I'd bring them back if I start seeing more SnT/Griselbrand/Leyline+Counters (I do actually like them versus omnitell).

[Reagens]

This seems like awful advice. Abrupt Decay or Lightning Bolt still answer the bug.

perhaps they will have lightning bolt in their 60 but they need to have it at the right time. Abrupt decay seems ludicrous unless they have no sb whatsoever vs us.
IF you resolve it and IF it connects they have no further interaction with the exception of a deathrite activation. I think that's worth the investment of 2 slots. Perhaps you misunderstood my definition of permanent hate. They have no canonist/thalia/meddling mage that interacts with our game plan, only counters and possibly discard. For me having 2 bugs to turn those interactions off is worth it provided delver is an important part of the meta (which it was in Lille for example).
For now I would probably cut them as well since I see more important things to be answered.

[Degausser]

perhaps they will have lightning bolt in their 60 but they need to have it at the right time.

Sure, but can't the same be said for any source of relevant interaction in any given matchup?

Additionally, most delver decks do play permanent based hate as it pertains to this matchup. A quick search of legacy events from this past weekend via SCG yields:

Null Rod
Grafdigger's Cage
Nihil Spellomb

Couple this with the fact that most of these lists play surgical extraction, vendilion clique, deathrite shaman, and hand disruption as meaningful ways to interact before the bug triggers, Xantid isn't exactly suited to take over the game on its own anymore. Also, fetching a non-basic green source against an archetype that typically plays 4 wasteland doesn't exactly seem like a winning proposition either. These are just reasons I typically don't board in Xantid Swarm against delver.

[Reagens]

Sure, but can't the same be said for any source of relevant interaction in any given matchup?

Additionally, most delver decks do play permanent based hate as it pertains to this matchup. A quick search of legacy events from this past weekend via SCG yields:

Null Rod
Grafdigger's Cage
Nihil Spellomb

Couple this with the fact that most of these lists play surgical extraction, vendilion clique, deathrite shaman, and hand disruption as meaningful ways to interact before the bug triggers, Xantid isn't exactly suited to take over the game on its own anymore. Also, fetching a non-basic green source against an archetype that typically plays 4 wasteland doesn't exactly seem like a winning proposition either. These are just reasons I typically don't board in Xantid Swarm against delver.

If you read my posts properly I did not advocate xantid as being a powerhouse that's a must include in our deck. I merely stated that in the delver match-up it is at it's best as they are almost solely dependant on countermagic for interaction. Saying the surgical is a meaningful way to interact before the bug triggers seems a rather odd statement as well. It's much more debilitating mid-combo so xantid does offer protection vs extraction. Same for clique. They must play it before the trigger or can't play it anymore. That's a big difference with them just waiting for the right moment to cast it and pick a card from your hand instead of just having to pick from a full grip. And for both your opponent needs to be lucky to hit something relevant.
Gy hatred does not bother me as much as say canonist/meddling mage. Gy hatred can be played around. Canonist for example must be answered before you combo. That's a big difference.

What I wanted to make clear as well in my reply to ContractKiller is that there is no 'right' or 'wrong' decklist/sideboard. You make choices on what limited information is available and go from there. There is something to be said for having Xantid Swarm in your sideboard under certain circumstances. I tried to explain when they are useful and when they are not.

And finally Xantid Swarm has always been in the deck to fight blue decks who are very likely to have wasteland. It has always been worth it even when you take into account that the land gets wasted. If you turn off even one daze with the xantid swarm you got your investment back (and possibly an extra card in the gy).

[nevilshute]

If you read my posts properly I did not advocate xantid as being a powerhouse that's a must include in our deck. I merely stated that in the delver match-up it is at it's best as they are almost solely dependant on countermagic for interaction. Saying the surgical is a meaningful way to interact before the bug triggers seems a rather odd statement as well. It's much more debilitating mid-combo so xantid does offer protection vs extraction. Same for clique. They must play it before the trigger or can't play it anymore. That's a big difference with them just waiting for the right moment to cast it and pick a card from your hand instead of just having to pick from a full grip. And for both your opponent needs to be lucky to hit something relevant.
Gy hatred does not bother me as much as say canonist/meddling mage. Gy hatred can be played around. Canonist for example must be answered before you combo. That's a big difference.

What I wanted to make clear as well in my reply to ContractKiller is that there is no 'right' or 'wrong' decklist/sideboard. You make choices on what limited information is available and go from there. There is something to be said for having Xantid Swarm in your sideboard under certain circumstances. I tried to explain when they are useful and when they are not.

And finally Xantid Swarm has always been in the deck to fight blue decks who are very likely to have wasteland. It has always been worth it even when you take into account that the land gets wasted. If you turn off even one daze with the xantid swarm you got your investment back (and possibly an extra card in the gy).

I respectfully disagree completely with the first bolded part. Xantid Swarm is, in my humble opinion, clearly best against blue decks with no removal, this usually works out to be island-centric combo decks (i.e. show and tell for the most part). Regarding the second bolded part, I'm not going to pretend I know the reasons why the first storm players put in Xantid Swarm - which I'm guessing is what you're alluding to - but I am again completely in disagreeance with you here insofar as "blue decks who are very likely to have wasteland" means delver decks primarily.

Allow me to elaborate. Against show and tell decks they will rarely have an answer to a resolved bee and their interaction is almost always exclusively in the form of counter magic. We are faster and just-as-to-more consistent as/than them which means the bee can make this extremely lopsided.

Now I'm not saying that the bee is never good against something like Delver, but if you ever end up trading it for a Lightning Bolt it is boardering on disastrous for you. You'd prefer not to trade one-for-one with a delver deck and CERTAINLY not for an otherwise okay-to-weak card for them in Lightning Bolt. I agree that it CAN be an absolute beating for them. If they don't have removal and was counting on sitting back behind a delver with a fist full of Flusterstorms and Spell Pierces. But any red delver deck should be keeping in some number of bolts so you can't be sure. Against BG-Delver decks you can argue against them having any Abrupt Decays after board but fact is, a non-trivial amount of them do have a couple. But even more importantly, against any deck (delver or otherwise) running discard along side counterspells your Xantid Swarm risks being irrelevant. If you resolve a bee and then get thoughseized-into-hymned then its feel bad.

[Reagens]

I respectfully disagree completely with the first bolded part. Xantid Swarm is, in my humble opinion, clearly best against blue decks with no removal, this usually works out to be island-centric combo decks (i.e. show and tell for the most part). Regarding the second bolded part, I'm not going to pretend I know the reasons why the first storm players put in Xantid Swarm - which I'm guessing is what you're alluding to - but I am again completely in disagreeance with you here insofar as "blue decks who are very likely to have wasteland" means delver decks primarily.

Allow me to elaborate. Against show and tell decks they will rarely have an answer to a resolved bee and their interaction is almost always exclusively in the form of counter magic. We are faster and just-as-to-more consistent as/than them which means the bee can make this extremely lopsided.

Now I'm not saying that the bee is never good against something like Delver, but if you ever end up trading it for a Lightning Bolt it is boardering on disastrous for you. You'd prefer not to trade one-for-one with a delver deck and CERTAINLY not for an otherwise okay-to-weak card for them in Lightning Bolt. I agree that it CAN be an absolute beating for them. If they don't have removal and was counting on sitting back behind a delver with a fist full of Flusterstorms and Spell Pierces. But any red delver deck should be keeping in some number of bolts so you can't be sure. Against BG-Delver decks you can argue against them having any Abrupt Decays after board but fact is, a non-trivial amount of them do have a couple. But even more importantly, against any deck (delver or otherwise) running discard along side counterspells your Xantid Swarm risks being irrelevant. If you resolve a bee and then get thoughseized-into-hymned then its feel bad.

Show and tell slower then we are? Perhaps by half a turn and that's not counting disruption. And which of those decks is the most consistent? I can't say. Both run a healthy amount of cantrips and both have strengths and weaknesses.

And gettting thoughtseized into hymn is always bad irrelevant of having a swarm or not. Most delver decks do not however play hymn because it strains their already weak manabase.

Your statement about lightning bolt is true in the sense they have answered a potentially disastrous card for them but I can't see it being disastrous to us. In the end we traded 1 for 1. They can not have deathrite shaman/bolt/wasteland/thoughtseize/hymn/colored land every time (and being able to cast it in the space of 3 turns). And if they do, well gj to them. I am fully aware that xantid swarm can be answered but that does not necessarily make it a bad card in the match-up. If vs delver I board I side it in in the place of discard because I feel it hits more (all their counters as opposed to just one). Also the swarm can not be spell pierced/flusterstormed (as opposed to discard) and it does not tie up mana in my combo turn. I can accept that you find those advantages not enough to play the card but at least acknowledge that playing Xantid is a viable choice besides whatever your preferred strategy is.

[Contract Killer]

Completely unrelated to the current discussion of whether or not Xantid Swarm is good bad or otherwise, but this article is really good:
http://www.starcitygames.com/article/29060_Stormboarding.html
I'm surprised this isn't posted in the primer at the beginning. There's a few of Carsten's articles listed in the primer, but this one in particular really helps with sideboarding.

[Lemnear]

Xantids Swarm has a lot of merrits atm which start that the typical no-removal-blue-decks like S&T don't drop Griselbrand/Emrakul and give you a turn to attack with Xantid to combo off safely, but kill you immediately with Omnisciemce in play.

You are also missing the forest for the trees by pointing at occasional Lightning Bolts only if you opt to board Xantids against URx Delver variants. You have to fetch a Tropical Island first which adds nothing for your combo turn and makes targeting Wastelands an easy task to cut you off mana/colors.

[nevilshute]

Show and tell slower then we are? Perhaps by half a turn and that's not counting disruption. And which of those decks is the most consistent? I can't say. Both run a healthy amount of cantrips and both have strengths and weaknesses.

And gettting thoughtseized into hymn is always bad irrelevant of having a swarm or not. Most delver decks do not however play hymn because it strains their already weak manabase.

Your statement about lightning bolt is true in the sense they have answered a potentially disastrous card for them but I can't see it being disastrous to us. In the end we traded 1 for 1. They can not have deathrite shaman/bolt/wasteland/thoughtseize/hymn/colored land every time (and being able to cast it in the space of 3 turns). And if they do, well gj to them. I am fully aware that xantid swarm can be answered but that does not necessarily make it a bad card in the match-up. If vs delver I board I side it in in the place of discard because I feel it hits more (all their counters as opposed to just one). Also the swarm can not be spell pierced/flusterstormed (as opposed to discard) and it does not tie up mana in my combo turn. I can accept that you find those advantages not enough to play the card but at least acknowledge that playing Xantid is a viable choice besides whatever your preferred strategy is.

A) yes I think we are faster than Omnitell. I haven't tested it properly but that seems to be the consensus when talking to experienced Omni pilots. That ANT goldfishes a half-to-a-full turn faster than Omni. And you mention their disruption, well what about our disruption?

I will say, that when Sneak and Show is the show and tell deck of choice that deck is probably as fast as ANT, but then Swarm is also better there because it can come in off Show and Tell we ofte get to untap and attack for the win.

B) And the reason I think it's a disaster for us to play a Xantid Swarm and have it bolted is because our deck needs to contain a balance of disruption, mana, cantrips and business. If you want to side in extra disruption, IE. Xantid Swarm, then either it's because you think it's better than your main deck disruption, discard, and thus you replace 1-3 discard spells with 1-3 Xantid Swarm. Or else you decide that you don't need as much business, mana or cantrips. This latter move, making your deck disruption heavy at the cost of either business, cantrip or mana shouldn't be done a lot of the time. There are matchups where it can be adviseable to cut some business or a few cantrips maybe, but we are getting into dangerous territory fast. And those matchups aren't delver imo as ANT is built with those kinds of decks in mind. So you are looking at cutting a discard spell for a Xantid Swarm. So, if your Xantid Swarm gets lightning bolted, you have essentially used a discard spell to remove a lightning bolt = disaster (okay that is obviously a hyperbolic way of putting it, but can we agree that casting duress to remove a lightning bolt from your delver opponent is not usually where you want to be?).

Allow me to finish by saying that I in no way think it is strictly wrong to ever board in swarm against something like Delver. First of all some Delver pilots just autopilot sideboard out their removal. If you think that's going to be the case then by all means punish them. Even if that's not the case I wouldn't say that I couldn't ever see myself boarding swarms vs Delver, but merely that it is a high risk / high reward kind of play because of the abovementioned detriment if it catches a lightning bolt. Whereas vs. show and tell combo where there is practically no risk or downside to bringing it in.


You are also missing the forest for the trees by pointing at occasional Lightning Bolts only if you opt to board Xantids against URx Delver variants. You have to fetch a Tropical Island first which adds nothing for your combo turn and makes targeting Wastelands an easy task to cut you off mana/colors.

That is also a good point.

[bjholmes3]

Completely unrelated to the current discussion of whether or not Xantid Swarm is good bad or otherwise, but this article is really good:
http://www.starcitygames.com/article/29060_Stormboarding.html
I'm surprised this isn't posted in the primer at the beginning. There's a few of Carsten's articles listed in the primer, but this one in particular really helps with sideboarding.

Thanks, I haven't scoured the web for articles since I first wrote up the other. Further additions are welcome!

[Degausser]

If you read my posts properly I did not advocate xantid as being a powerhouse that's a must include in our deck. I merely stated that in the delver match-up it is at it's best as they are almost solely dependant on countermagic for interaction. Saying the surgical is a meaningful way to interact before the bug triggers seems a rather odd statement as well. It's much more debilitating mid-combo so xantid does offer protection vs extraction. Same for clique. They must play it before the trigger or can't play it anymore. That's a big difference with them just waiting for the right moment to cast it and pick a card from your hand instead of just having to pick from a full grip. And for both your opponent needs to be lucky to hit something relevant.
Gy hatred does not bother me as much as say canonist/meddling mage. Gy hatred can be played around. Canonist for example must be answered before you combo. That's a big difference.

What I wanted to make clear as well in my reply to ContractKiller is that there is no 'right' or 'wrong' decklist/sideboard. You make choices on what limited information is available and go from there. There is something to be said for having Xantid Swarm in your sideboard under certain circumstances. I tried to explain when they are useful and when they are not.

And finally Xantid Swarm has always been in the deck to fight blue decks who are very likely to have wasteland. It has always been worth it even when you take into account that the land gets wasted. If you turn off even one daze with the xantid swarm you got your investment back (and possibly an extra card in the gy).

I'm not sure where you think I stated you as advocating Xantid as a powerhouse must include. I was simply disagreeing with your statement that swarm is good against delver decks. Reading properly is apparently a new shortcoming of mine.

My points of contention with your quoted post:

1.)Surgical is a fine way to interact before swarm triggers given that most delver decks are running discard to hit relevant targets. I'm not arguing that it loses flexibility with swarm in play.
2.) Playing clique in the draw step is more than a defensible play regardless of having xantid in play or not. Most storm pilots are capable of casting tutors and holding priority to cast rituals to mitigate the effectiveness of clique in main phases.
3.) As far as hate-permanents are concerned, you're missing the point. I never argued that thallia, canonist, and meddling mage are less problematic that null rod, spellbomb, or cage. I was disputing your statement that delver doesn't play hate-permanents, which is definitely a fallacy.
4.) I was going to comment again on fetching non-basic green sources against wasteland decks, but Lemnear already did a good job at covering that point.

[davelin]

If you read my posts properly I did not advocate xantid as being a powerhouse that's a must include in our deck. I merely stated that in the delver match-up it is at it's best as they are almost solely dependant on countermagic for interaction. Saying the surgical is a meaningful way to interact before the bug triggers seems a rather odd statement as well. It's much more debilitating mid-combo so xantid does offer protection vs extraction. Same for clique. They must play it before the trigger or can't play it anymore. That's a big difference with them just waiting for the right moment to cast it and pick a card from your hand instead of just having to pick from a full grip. And for both your opponent needs to be lucky to hit something relevant.
Gy hatred does not bother me as much as say canonist/meddling mage. Gy hatred can be played around. Canonist for example must be answered before you combo. That's a big difference.

What I wanted to make clear as well in my reply to ContractKiller is that there is no 'right' or 'wrong' decklist/sideboard. You make choices on what limited information is available and go from there. There is something to be said for having Xantid Swarm in your sideboard under certain circumstances. I tried to explain when they are useful and when they are not.

And finally Xantid Swarm has always been in the deck to fight blue decks who are very likely to have wasteland. It has always been worth it even when you take into account that the land gets wasted. If you turn off even one daze with the xantid swarm you got your investment back (and possibly an extra card in the gy).

Trading a card for Daze seems like terrible value for ANT.

[sawatarix]

Trading a card for Daze seems like terrible value for ANT.

Trading cards in general is terrible for storm unless we loose the game otherwise.
The only trades we want are our discard spells,ritual or cantrips with any hard counter spells.
This is pretty fundamental when playing this deck.

[Sloshthedark]

And finally Xantid Swarm has always been in the deck to fight blue decks who are very likely to have wasteland. It has always been worth it even when you take into account that the land gets wasted. If you turn off even one daze with the xantid swarm you got your investment back (and possibly an extra card in the gy).

although this is not true, most juts follow the herd and wouldn't try that just because "it's not supposed to be used this way" which mindset actually made it playable in certain MUs especially Canadian Threshold and Dark threshold (confidant based, no discard), currently it's no good against tempo (not because of Bolt or Waste but permanent/discard hate)... for me Xantid swarm is not worth playing for about a year, and clearly unplayable in timeframe ~after TC ban


Trading cards in general is terrible for storm unless we loose the game otherwise.
The only trades we want are our discard spells,ritual or cantrips with any hard counter spells.
This is pretty fundamental when playing this deck.

you always want to trade resources if it's favorable enough for you, Daze and Wasteland are good examples of opportunities that can sometimes punish your opponent in early game if you have the right information/opponent and play accordingly

[bjholmes3]

RIP DTT muahahahahaha

[ScottW]

RIP DTT muahahahahaha

What kind of news is this for ANT? I just started playing this deck and not sure if DTT was better than the uptick in discard / Deathrite we'll likely see. Thoughts?

[Sloshthedark]

What kind of news is this for ANT? I just started playing this deck and not sure if DTT was better than the uptick in discard / Deathrite we'll likely see. Thoughts?

Fine, less Omnitell paranoia in Miracles, less Gy hate, i kind of regret losing Dtt Omnitell - I havent lost a match, well, ever, in a tournament... More S+T, Bug and Miracles unfortunatte yet acceptable, I wonder where does this place Grixis now...

[Jandrosaurus]

Fine, less Omnitell paranoia in Miracles, less Gy hate, i kind of regret losing Dtt Omnitell - I havent lost a match, well, ever, in a tournament... More S+T, Bug and Miracles unfortunatte yet acceptable, I wonder where does this place Grixis now...

I think there will actually be more GY hate now that people aren't trying to fuel their own DTTs.

[Togores]

That means->

More miracles
More elves
More hymn to tourach
More sneak atack ->This means less canonist and more containment. Wich is a bad card against us and good againat reanimator wich is a bad deck for us.

No more omni
No more md hate

Xantid gets better
Less 1 off null rod finding -> top gets better

Lets see

[Sloshthedark]

I think there will actually be more GY hate now that people aren't trying to fuel their own DTTs.

gy hate for what?

[jim111589]

Rug, reanimator, bgx shells, lands

Sent from my SM-G900V using Tapatalk

[Tav]

haven't caught myself up on this topic in quite some time, was hoping that maybe I'd find some decent discussion and progress


nah just siding in xantids vs lightning bolts and wondering if shocks are a fine mana base....

never change, source <3

[bjholmes3]

At least people stopped advocating LDV *shudder*

[Le Chuck]

Hi guys, now that DTT is gone for good, there will be a sensible increase of BUG based deck on the field, so I would like to ask, how do you guys generally approach the game? And what's your sideboard plan?
I know that is a tricky question, most of the times it depends on the kind of bug that we are facing, shardless, tourachless, with stifle ecc,

[bjholmes3]

Swarm and Top are valuable against BUG, I'd expect at least 1 Top main to be more common again.

[Le Chuck]

Usually how many decay do you plan to board in? and how do you interact with Deathrite Shaman? do you consider them a threat that has to be removed or do you always try to bypass them when it's possible?

[Jonathan Alexander]

People, don't board Swarm vs. discard.

[CabalTherapy]

Hi guys, now that DTT is gone for good, there will be a sensible increase of BUG based deck on the field, so I would like to ask, how do you guys generally approach the game? And what's your sideboard plan?
I know that is a tricky question, most of the times it depends on the kind of bug that we are facing, shardless, tourachless, with stifle ecc,

Flusterstorm.


People, don't board Swarm vs. discard.

This should be quoted in the primer.

[JamieW89]

Hi guys, now that DTT is gone for good, there will be a sensible increase of BUG based deck on the field, so I would like to ask, how do you guys generally approach the game? And what's your sideboard plan?
I know that is a tricky question, most of the times it depends on the kind of bug that we are facing, shardless, tourachless, with stifle ecc,

Tops are good, I think Empty is good vs BUG Delver. Ad Nauseam is a really strong card versus shardless though.
If you're expecting a ton of Hymns you could try Divert also, it never really amazed me but I've ran it before.

What do you guys think about DoN vs Massacre in the new meta? I assume there will be more blade and UWR Delver (and even 4c Shardless with hatebears) and you don't need to run 3-4, but DoN is stronger than it used to be versus DnT because of Vryn.

I would probably start with a sideboard like:
4 Abrupt Decay
1 Krosan Grip
1 Sensei's Divining Top (1 main)
2 Flusterstorm
1 Carpet of Flowers (2nd if a ton of RUG, probably not needed)
2 Xantid Swarm (3 if Sneak/Rean become really popular)
1 Chain of Vapor (Question is if we need a 2nd)
2 Massacre
1 Empty the Warrens (EtW main fits better with DP's, but I think AdN main might be stronger in the meta and fits in better with playing 2 green duals)

I sort of want to squeeze in a Hurkyl's Recall (replacing the SB top I guess?) since there is quite a lot of hatedecks such as Lands, 4c Loam and MUD right now, but those numbers might dwindle a bit.

[Togores]

Lately I have been playing echoing truth instead of chain of vapor.
Ita quite good vs chalice decks because you can bounce theyr chalices and also a tegg or canonist if they have it.

Also im right now with this problems:
Before dig ban I played 2 preordains, 2 tendrills, nauseam and no tops.

Now Im not sure if I want a top md and for what to replace it.

Now my sb is:
4 decay
3 xantid
2 echoing
2 dread of night
2 flusterstorm
2 carpets

I hope chalice decks to die but I have other 5 cards I would like to fit in my sb:
1 grip
2 hurkil
1 top
3rs dread.

Im also thinkin on whats better now. Obviusly dread is better because vrym pegasus but it still dosnt kill revoker, ot slows them down and we can kill canonist / revoker with decay or so.
Also masaacre makes your ad nauseam worser but its better against blade, shardless (with mages), patriot and so.

Im in real strugle what to play in this 2 spots...

[bjholmes3]

I've actually been using Disfigure, with the added benefit of killing those filthy shamans.

[Togores]

Disfigure is ok but dosnt get rid of mother of runes in any way.
Also just kills 1 guy. Its ok vs deathrite but I board decay for that kind of decks. Just because null rod and gravedigger cage is also a thing. Even if I dont like too much to fetch for green.

[Le Chuck]

Perhaps now that bug based deck and miracles will be more present on the field, pithing needle could be a valid option in our sideboard? i have to admit that i don't like it much, but, if it does the job..
someone has some feedback about needles? feelings?

[Sloshthedark]

Perhaps now that bug based deck and miracles will be more present on the field, pithing needle could be a valid option in our sideboard? i have to admit that i don't like it much, but, if it does the job..
someone has some feedback about needles? feelings?

not sure about my SB atm but I used to like 3x PN quite a lot a year ago, great vs S+T and Miracles, decent vs. Deathrite

[sunlith42]

I'm fairly new to playing storm. In my local LGS there are 2 players that play discard decks, monoblack with hymns, and BG with cabal therapy and veteran explorer. My question is what can i sideboard to improve these match-ups which have been going terribly for me?

I have the 2 flusterstorm in my SB, I was thinking 2 additional spell pierce and maybe 2 misdirection.
Main deck is fairly stock,
SB:
3 abrupt decay
2 pithing needle
2 flusterstorm
2 carpet of flowers
2 xantid swarm
2 surgical extraction
1 massacre
1 chain of vapor

[davelin]

I'm fairly new to playing storm. In my local LGS there are 2 players that play discard decks, monoblack with hymns, and BG with cabal therapy and veteran explorer. My question is what can i sideboard to improve these match-ups which have been going terribly for me?

I have the 2 flusterstorm in my SB, I was thinking 2 additional spell pierce and maybe 2 misdirection.
Main deck is fairly stock,
SB:
3 abrupt decay
2 pithing needle
2 flusterstorm
2 carpet of flowers
2 xantid swarm
2 surgical extraction
1 massacre
1 chain of vapor

Top is good for discard decks, a second PiF as well. However you dont want to over SB here, you should combo them out quickly versus their interaction.

[ScottW]

Does ANT just concede to reanimator? Is the deck not present enough to consider?

[Ronald Deuce]

Hello! I've been following the thread for a little while, but this'll be my first post here. I'm considering running ANT, but I've got a few questions and notes from my testing. Note that I have NOT played this deck yet (Sunday will be its trial by fire), but I have been goldfishing and testing to try to get an understanding of the deck's workings. So if I ask any stupid questions, by all means point out what I've missed. Here's the list I'm running right now:

Lands:
4x Polluted Delta
3x Scalding Tarn
2x Underground Sea
1x Volcanic Island
1x Badlands
1x Bloodstained Mire
1x Island
1x Swamp

Engine and tutors:
4x Infernal Tutor
1x Ad Nauseam
1x Dark Petition
1x Past in Flames
1x Tendrils of Agony
1x Empty the Warrens

Cantrips:
4x Brainstorm
4x Ponder
4x Gitaxian Probe
2x Preordain

Discard:
4x Cabal Therapy
3x Duress

Accelerants:
4x Lion's Eye Diamond
4x Dark Ritual
4x Cabal Ritual
4x Lotus Petal

Sideboard is under construction, but here's what I've been kicking around to date:
3x Abrupt Decay
2x Chain of Vapor
2x Carpet of Flowers
2x Xantid Swarm or Surgical Extraction
1x Massacre
1x Pyroclasm or Drown in Sorrow
1x Dark Petition
1x Tropical Island
1x Krosan Grip
1x Duress

Here's what I've discovered so far:

-Having fewer than thirteen cantrips or more than seven pieces of discard in the main makes it very hard to combo without waiting around for several turns or mulliganing more than is comfortable. I keep finding that I'm a ritual away from the combo, but I run out of cantrips and keep drawing extra Duresses. (N.B.: I'd consider Sensei's Divining Top to be a cantrip for the purpose of this discussion.) It seems like a natural assumption that we'll be playing slightly slower games when the Preordains come out, but I'm wondering whether people have found siding them out to be counterproductive.

-Dark Petition absolutely should replace Grim Tutor one hundred percent of the time. Grim goes really poorly with Ad Nauseam, it's often mana-intensive enough to set us back a turn, and for those of us who are concerned (I'm trying to move some cards to buy the Duals for this deck) it's about a hundred times more monetarily expensive. Sure, the initial life-loss of drawing Petition is higher than it is with Grim, but if you expect to cast the tutor you've drawn, Grim both costs one extra life in total and one additional mana. Spell mastery is extremely easy to achieve in this deck, but one question I've been turning in my mind is whether we'd want to side out Petition against opponents who run graveyard hate. It doesn't have problems with Grafdigger's Cage and its ilk, but without spell mastery Petition becomes the worst card in the deck. I'd not recommend running two Petitions in the main with Ad Nauseam, but I'm keeping a second copy in the sideboard pending further discussion.

-I'm keeping a singleton Ad Nauseam in my mainboard. I keep encountering situations in which it'd be the best tutor target because I haven't got a critical mass of rituals in the yard for Past in Flames to get me where I need to be (don't get me wrong; I know there are matchups in which AdN absolutely must go). Empty the Warrens can do the job sometimes, but I've had enough experience in Legacy and Modern to know that a barrel'o'goblins isn't nearly as effective as draining 20 life. Especially when there's a Batterskull lurking.

Here are my questions:

-Has anyone else run into problems when they've cut Ad Nauseam from the maindeck? It seems like some of the newer posts advocate running double-Dark Petition instead, but I keep finding that it's tough to cast Petition and leave enough mana open to continue the combo pretty often. If there's a line of play that I'm missing because I'm new to the deck, I'd love to hear it.

-Do targeted removal cards like Disfigure work well for people who've been using them? I'm worried about decks like Maverick that can blank spot removal or decks that just barf out a ton of elves/gobbos/Thaliaddocks quickly. What's the current thinking on Dread of Night?

-Getting to Threshold for my Cabal Rituals is often a very close shave. If Deathrite Shamans are on the field, and they often are in my meta, is it a viable strategy to ride them out for a turn to dump more fetches/cantrips? Delver of Secrets appears to be the strongest attacker in the format, and I've been encountering the two in concert pretty regularly.

-Has anyone considered sideboarding Mindbreak Trap? What about Daze? I've been playing and posting about All Spells for a while now, and though I know it's by no means a top-tier deck, I've been able to beat significantly stronger decks (Maverick, Elves) with it pretty regularly simply because they don't have any answers to fast combo in the main or the sideboard. Belcher, TES, and the aforementioned all seem capable of powering through one or two discard effects without too much trouble. Aside from a couple of copies of Surgical Extraction, which we aren't likely to draw in an opener game 2 or game 3, we don't seem to have a lot of answers for lightspeed combos.

Any feedback would be welcome, and I hope I'm not retreading old ground too much (this is a LONG thread).

[Jonathan Alexander]

Does ANT just concede to reanimator? Is the deck not present enough to consider?

Pretty much. The matchup is not great, but Xantid Swarm does work. You can also sometimes kill them if you naturally draw Tendrils and they get a little too greedy with Griselbrand. That being said, nobody plays Reanimator. I think I faced it about twice in the last two years.

[phazonmutant]

Does ANT just concede to reanimator? Is the deck not present enough to consider?


Pretty much. The matchup is not great, but Xantid Swarm does work. You can also sometimes kill them if you naturally draw Tendrils and they get a little too greedy with Griselbrand. That being said, nobody plays Reanimator. I think I faced it about twice in the last two years.

In theory it's not a great matchup, but I've played it probably 5 times in the past 8 months or so and I believe won all but one. Its difficulty has to be overstated. It can be a blowout, but I build my sideboard to address tough or draw-dependent matchups with the thought that skill and the deck's inherent power level can get me through the others. To wit, I've been playing 2 Flusterstorms and 2 Surgicals for the majority of that time, and as a result I have a very good record in the mirror, a decent record against Show and Tell, and a good record against Reanimator. That combination of cards allows ANT to play control better than the other combo decks while still being quick.

[Tvox]

Does ANT just concede to reanimator? Is the deck not present enough to consider?
Me and the more social part of my meta had a playtesting night at a local pub the week before GP Lille at which I faced reanimator in seven consecutive games as we tried to figure the matchup.

Going into the match both of us knew what the other person was playing, him classic reanimator (I think) and me pretty classical ANT. We didn't board until after game 3 I think, and I only won one of those games, in the others he managed to get a quick Iona.

Postboard games (I didn't know what to side in so I left it all untouched) he had slowed down quite a bit, going the controlling route. This in turn let me dominate him in most games, giving us a final score of 4-3 in my favour if I recall correctly.

None of us were familiar with the matchup at that time so take all this with a grain of salt.

[Contract Killer]

Well I just got completely shut out at a weekly :frown:. I don't think I exactly made a bunch of play msitakes, but more so my opponents had some pretty good draws. This is my list and I'm curious what your thoughts are on some of the specific blow outs that happened and my sideboard choices:

Lands 15
4x Polluted Delta
4x Misty Rainforest
2x Underground Sea
1x Volcanic Island
1x Tropical Island
1x Bayou
1x Island
1x Swamp

Fast Mana 16
4x Lion's Eye Diamond
4x Lotus Petal
4x Dark Ritual
4x Cabal Ritual

Cantrips 14
4x Brainstorm
4x Ponder
4x Gitaxian Probe
1x Preordain
1x Sensei's Divining Top

Disruption 6
3x Cabal Therapy
3x Duress

Engine Pieces 9
4x Infernal Tutor
1x Dark Petition
2x Past In Flames
1x Ad Nauseam
1x Tendrils of Agony

Sideboard 15
2x Dread of Night
2x Carpet of Flowers
1x Sensei's Divining Top
4x Abrupt Decay
1x Tendrils of Agony
2x chain of vapor
2x Xantid Swarm
1x Surgical Extraction

Round 1 Burn
Game 1 He was on a mull to 5 and I crushed him not much else to talk about.

Sideboard: -ad nauseam, 3 duress, sensei's divining top, preordain // +4 Abrupt Decay, 2 Chain of vapor
All I want in this match up is removal for an Eidolon of the great revel right? I mean that's the only card we actually care about except for other permanent based hate like grafdigger's cage or null rod both of which are answered by the same things we bring in for eidolon of the great revel. Another storm pilot said he thinks I over boarded, but it seems right, or did I lose to much consistency by shaving 2 cantrips? This is also one of the few non wasteland match ups where I want swamp to help dodge price of progress right?

Game 2 Mainly boiled down to one decision tree. I'm at 16 it's turn 3 and he attacks with a goblin guide revealing an abrupt decay on top of my library. I already have an abrupt decay in hand and decide to preserve my life total by using the abrupt decay in my hand to kill his goblin guide. This does require me to fetch shuffling away the abrupt decay that was revealed. He then dropped Eidolon of the great revel and well I died shortly thereafter. Was it bad for me to abrupt decay his Goblin Guide like that? It seemed fine I mean if he had an Eidolon of the great revel he would have jammed it turn 2 so I put him on not having it. Afterwards he did say he ripped it that turn so should I just chalk it up to bad luck?
Game 3 This game went pretty fast with him having double goblin guide but stuck on 1 mountain. Now I did rip a land off the first goblin guide and then when the second one dropped I Brainstormed 2 lands to the top. I repeated the same thing next turn. Turn 4 I went for it with him presenting close to lethal with me at 8 and inevitably it didn't matter what I did. My hand was something like:

Chain of vapor, Dark ritual, cabal ritual, Infernal Tutor, Dark Petition, Past In flames, Abrupt Decay with 4 lands in play

I used the Chain of vapor to bounce his Tormod's Crypt. Then as I started to go off he played Faerie Macabre to eat my two rituals in my bin which left me stranded after I played Past in flames. It was something along those lines but I kept going through the lines and couldn't seem to find some way to get there. Every iteration I ran of the game ended in some scenario of him eating my rituals or cutting me off of tutors before past in flames resolved. It was a really interesting game and I completely walked right into the faerie macabre which wasn't on my radar. I definitely don't think I'm supposed to play around it. I also don't think there was any way even with perfect information to execute a line that won. Every time I looked at the lines even taking into account his faerie macabre it shut down my past in flames lines and I couldn't get high enough mana or storm count to tutor chain. I also feel like the tormod's crypt lured me into the chain of vapor line which seemed promising but just corners me because he eats my rituals and then I have no mana :rolleyes:

Now that aside did I play my 2 brainstorms incorrectly there? I mean at that point essentially I'm just turning it into ancestral recall if I'm putting back 2 lands that I'm drawing off of goblin guides right? I did that once and the first one turned into essentially a put 1 back brainstorm. I mean there's no actual value in waiting until my turn in that situation is there? Either way I'm drawing 3 fresh cards just one way ends with +2 cards and the other is just a regular brainstorm.

Round 2 4 Color Delver
Game 1 he got there off of a pyromancer with some cantrips + daze + bolt for a lot of damage early on before I could assemble my combo.

Sideboard - Dark Petition, 2 lotus petal, Sensei's Divining Top // + 2 Xantid Swarm, 2 Carpet of flowers
This seemed like a reasonable sideboard for this match up. Sensei's Divining Top is too slow to have against delver and Dark Petition seems horrendous when they have daze and spell pierce. Shaving the two lotus petals for carpets seems like a straight upgrade in this match up and this is where I want it right to help fight of soft permission and establish my mana?

Game 2 Was really close and ended with my Infernal tutors getting surgical extractioned in response to Past in flames. Which I tried to make the best out of a bad situation and flash backed 3 cantrips + ad nauseam (it was used as counter bait turn 2 I think). Inevitably I didn't draw the natural Tendrils of Agony, but besides that Past in flames still felt as strong as ever.

[BeardTron]

In my opinion you shouldn't care about Goblin Guide unless you're at a really low life total. Abrupt Decay is largely for Eidolon if you're boarding that in for this match up. I don't know all the cards that were in your hand in this instance but at 16 life I don't think the Guide is relevant enough to warrant using your Decay.

Sure, the guy ripped Eidolon from the top but he runs four so those were decent odds he'd find one.

[Alix444]

If I know burn can be at my LGS I'm definitely packing EtW in my 75. Decaying goblin guide is pretty bad, but if you were really far from going off the problem was probably that you shouldn't have kept the hand you did. In game 3, if I haven't seen anything weird like mindbreak traps in game 2, I would put the ad nauseam, preodrain and top back in. We get to go off on T2 or T3 if we have a cabal therapy. I would still Ad Nauseam on T1 or T2 from 15-17. Ad Nauseam sucks from low life but that's not what it's there for.

[Jonathan Alexander]

Tendrils of Agony is a very good card, you know.

[MGK]

Hi there - Brandon Osborne here -my first post on the forum (posted on the Storm FB page before) but have been following it for quite a while and been running ANT with a decent amount of success over the past 6 months. Something I've found myself do before, and something I have to consciously remind myself not to do, is over sideboard. Bringing in 4 Abrupt decay in the burn matchup seems like overkill to me, and it takes you off your game plan to a point where I feel it advantages your opponent. I would likely bring in 1-2 decay, 2 chain, and keep at least 2 of the duress main.

In the BURg delver matchup, I would anticipate having to grind a little bit more - I would want to keep the Divining Top in, and likely board out the preordain, as well as pull 2 cabal rituals instead of the petals (if you are keeping Ad Nauseaum in). Likely cut a PIF as well, and maybe run a Decay or two, just to give you some play if they bring in Null Rod or to knock out a DRS. Empty is definitely very useful in the matchup as well.

It seems like BURg will likely take a big hit from a metagame perspective now that Dig is gone.

I'm intrigued by the conversation regarding pithing needle as a board option, and will likely try to run some number for DRS decks over the next few weeks - seems decent.

-Brandon

[Ronald Deuce]

If I know burn can be at my LGS I'm definitely packing EtW in my 75... I would still Ad Nauseam on T1 or T2 from 15-17. Ad Nauseam sucks from low life but that's not what it's there for.

I'm not sure EtW would be a better call than just using Tendrils. I get that an Eidolon can make it extremely difficult to reach storm 10, but is storming, say, six and waiting a turn for an attack step really a better play than trying to junk the Eidolon and power through? Also, why would you leave EtW OUT of your list (burn or no)?

I disagree regarding AdN. If you can't find what you need (which is not uncommon), you're virtually certain to get burned out. I'd rather side in an extra Petition.

[Alix444]

I'm not sure EtW would be a better call than just using Tendrils. I get that an Eidolon can make it extremely difficult to reach storm 10, but is storming, say, six and waiting a turn for an attack step really a better play than trying to junk the Eidolon and power through? Also, why would you leave EtW OUT of your list (burn or no)?

I disagree regarding AdN. If you can't find what you need (which is not uncommon), you're virtually certain to get burned out. I'd rather side in an extra Petition.

I play empty, but I was just advising that even if you don't play it in your 75 normally but know burn will be there I would recommend adding it. I would add it for lots of other reasons but in relation to burn empty is really good. Even on the draw they really can't beat 10 or 12 goblins, and they really can't T3 you very often.

I'm keeping ad nauseam in because I want to be able to win before eidolon comes down.

To clarify if I had empty and ad nauseam in my 75 I wouldn't bring both in, I would just bring in empty. If I didn't have empty I would bring in ad nauseam.

[Ronald Deuce]

I'm keeping ad nauseam in because I want to be able to win before eidolon comes down.

To clarify if I had empty and ad nauseam in my 75 I wouldn't bring both in, I would just bring in empty. If I didn't have empty I would bring in ad nauseam.

Got it! That makes a lot of sense.

[Ronald Deuce]

Well, had a disappointing day at the LGS today. Was supposed to be a Legacy tournament, but only three people showed up (including me). A guy who works there joined us to mess around; lost 0-2 to Maverick, 1-2 to Merfolk, but won 2-0 against BUG Delver. Not a great First Blood day. (I guess "First Blood" technically was Thursday night, when I stormed for 42 life in 2hg, but that doesn't really count.)

Was a bit of a weird day all around. I got manascrewed for the first four games, so not sure how representative my performance was. Maverick was an absolute beast, though.

R1: Maverick
G1: I Probe to see two Thalias and Gaddock Teeg. He brings out Knight of the Reliquary and I'm toast.
G2: Mulliganed to five before I hit a land. I don't think I found a second. I Probe to see three Thalias and Gaddock Teeg. Yep.
Not a whole lot to say about this one. Abrupt Decay is great, but it's hard to find four of them. Especially when you (I) only own three and you don't have a Tropical Island in play.

R2: Merfolk
G1: Close game. I Ad Nauseam'd to 1 to find a kill. Don't try this at home, kids; he had a couple of Cursecatchers on the board and forgot that they do what they do.
G2: Don't remember this game that well, but I think I was sitting on a Volcanic Island with no other lands and a handful of (black) Rituals, LEDs, and a Tutor or two. I think I only found two lands this game, including a Swamp that I (stupidly) Pondered away turn 1 or 2.
G3: Died off of Ad Nauseam while facing down two or three Merfolk Lords. I would've boarded it out but it saved me in game 1. Been kicking myself because I was one mana away from a natural Empty the Warrens for 12-14 and decided to play for the Tendrils. Not sure it would've made a difference, but you never know.
I wasn't actually that worried about Cursecatcher. I think I could find enough rituals to pay it off the first game (even if he had noticed that he'd had free Force Spikes on the table), and the second game, I just didn't get any mana. I've got to be less ballsy with AdN, I think. Been playing too much All Spells.

R3: BUG Delver
G1: Finally started finding lands. He landed a Deathrite and a Delver, but he made a bad Ponder and shut himself out of flipping the Delver. Had to fight through some countermagic (Daze and Force, I think) but he Dazed a Therapy when I had the bucks to pay it off (EDIT: This might've actually been round 2. I definitely saw some disruption, but only one or two pieces that didn't stop my combo).
G2: He had a fast start with double Tarmogoyf and a Deathrite Shaman, but there wasn't much in the graveyard. I lucked out; he'd played out most of his hand, so I Therapied naming Force. He thought for a minute, then decided to let it resolve. He was holding a land and two copies of Force. I comboed next turn.

Not sure how much of what happened was directly a product of manascrew, but I know that G2 vs Merfolk, I made a stupid decision that cost me the match. I think the reason I shuffled away the Swamp was that I didn't see anything else I needed in the three, so I've got a bad feeling I was screwed either way (draw the Swamp and have no combo, or shuffle the Swamp and draw a bunch of rituals). I definitely need more practice.

Maverick was just a monstrously cringeworthy matchup. Thalia's incredibad, but I think Gaddock Teeg's the deck's real silver bullet. A live Mother of Runes shuts down everything we can throw at Mav that isn't tailor-made to fight Gaddock (our wincons cost 4, Massacre costs 4, Drown in Sorrow and Infest cost 3 and are too slow, and Pyroclasm gets blanked by Mom). Newbie's question: what's the predominant solution to Gaddock? [cards]Disfigure et al. can't deal with multiple threats, and both games, my opponent had multiple threats. I might've just had a horribly unlucky day, but I wouldn't be surprised if similar problems occurred in the future.

Regarding land-screw, I'm not really sure what to do. I'm running eight fetches and fourteen lands total. I keep getting screwed when I run fourteen (even with an equal number of cantrips), but whenever I experiment with fifteen, I feel like I get flooded every time.

I like this deck a lot, but I'm not sure whether I'm just a terrible player or whether luck frowned on me today. I may have used up all my good luck when I pulled a Delta at the BFZ draft Friday. I'd appreciate any feedback (aside from "practice more"), but I need to practice more, so fair enough if nobody's got anything to say.

[Fatal]

I think you need to increase Dread of Night in your sb, It's best answer vs MoR and Thalia, with double one on table you also kill Gaddock. Other option is Karakas as 1 mana solution to protected hatebear.

[JamieW89]

I got manascrewed for the first four games, so not sure how representative my performance was.
(...)
G2: Don't remember this game that well, but I think I was sitting on a Volcanic Island with no other lands and a handful of (black) Rituals, LEDs, and a Tutor or two. I think I only found two lands this game, including a Swamp that I (stupidly) Pondered away turn 1 or 2.
(...)
Not sure how much of what happened was directly a product of manascrew, but I know that G2 vs Merfolk, I made a stupid decision that cost me the match. I think the reason I shuffled away the Swamp was that I didn't see anything else I needed in the three, so I've got a bad feeling I was screwed either way (draw the Swamp and have no combo, or shuffle the Swamp and draw a bunch of rituals). I definitely need more practice.

Cantrips are hard in general, but it might have also been the mulligan decision. It sounds like your opener was Volcanic, Ponder, Fast Mana. You need to find a business spell and a black source (and a discard spell it seems), and they can waste your only land. I don't really like the hand all that much.


G3: Died off of Ad Nauseam while facing down two or three Merfolk Lords. I would've boarded it out but it saved me in game 1. Been kicking myself because I was one mana away from a natural Empty the Warrens for 12-14 and decided to play for the Tendrils. Not sure it would've made a difference, but you never know.
I really like EtW a lot better than Ad Nauseam in that matchup in general.


I lucked out; he'd played out most of his hand, so I Therapied naming Force. He thought for a minute, then decided to let it resolve. He was holding a land and two copies of Force. I comboed next turn.
Just for clarification, you don't have to name a card until the therapy resolves.


Maverick was just a monstrously cringeworthy matchup. Thalia's incredibad, but I think Gaddock Teeg's the deck's real silver bullet. A live Mother of Runes shuts down everything we can throw at Mav that isn't tailor-made to fight Gaddock (our wincons cost 4, Massacre costs 4, Drown in Sorrow and Infest cost 3 and are too slow, and Pyroclasm gets blanked by Mom). Newbie's question: what's the predominant solution to Gaddock? [cards]Disfigure et al. can't deal with multiple threats, and both games, my opponent had multiple threats. I might've just had a horribly unlucky day, but I wouldn't be surprised if similar problems occurred in the future.
Usual boards consist of some generic removal(Decay/Chain/Disfigure/SPact/Clasm etc) and some more specialized anti white hate in either Dread of Night (much stronger in thalia matchups) or Massacre (also fine vs some UWx decks, but less strong in this matchup), boarding around 7 removal in total (so usually not all decays). If you're seeing a lot of white hate decks I'd definately consider a playset of Dread of Night in the board. A single Karakas isn't too bad either since it hits Teeg/Thalia (for 0 mana). If you're just running into Maverick/DnT every now and then, and also play versus decks like UWR with hatebears in the board and Esper Deathblade, I'd just go with a few Massacres.


Regarding land-screw, I'm not really sure what to do. I'm running eight fetches and fourteen lands total. I keep getting screwed when I run fourteen (even with an equal number of cantrips), but whenever I experiment with fifteen, I feel like I get flooded every time.
I like 15 much more than 14, unless you play in a meta with very few wastelands.

[Ronald Deuce]

Cantrips are hard in general, but it might have also been the mulligan decision. It sounds like your opener was Volcanic, Ponder, Fast Mana. You need to find a business spell and a black source (and a discard spell it seems), and they can waste your only land. I don't really like the hand all that much.

Yeah, you're probably right. In one game (I don't remember which) I started with 2-3 cantrips and only blue(/red?)-producing lands, so I thought I had enough to dig for a black source. No dice...



I really like EtW a lot better than Ad Nauseam in that matchup in general.

Oh, I agree; I just worried because I was stuck on one land with a couple of 1-costed spells (and Empty). Figured if I gave it a little while, I'd find the gas, but it didn't pan out. I need to practice with the cantrips.


Just for clarification, you don't have to name a card until the therapy resolves.

For sure. Funnily enough, that question came up during the game! I've played MtG for probably 17 years, but I'm out of practice in part because I haven't played in many tournaments until recently. I tend to shortcut to Force against certain players/decks, though, because it's probably their best weapon against decks like this one, and I've started to notice who's running Force and how often they're doing so. I kept finding that Daze wasn't particularly effective unless the opponent hit our first ritual with it (which someone did, I think in round 3). Spell Pierce was a bigger problem yesterday, and the Merfolk player shut me down with a fast one in game 2(?).

What you said bears repeating in the primer and reiterating here, though; Therapy and Duress target PLAYERS, not CARDS, so we're not obligated to name a card until resolution.



Usual boards consist of some generic removal(Decay/Chain/Disfigure/SPact/Clasm etc) and some more specialized anti white hate in either Dread of Night (much stronger in thalia matchups) or Massacre (also fine vs some UWx decks, but less strong in this matchup), boarding around 7 removal in total (so usually not all decays). If you're seeing a lot of white hate decks I'd definately consider a playset of Dread of Night in the board. A single Karakas isn't too bad either since it hits Teeg/Thalia (for 0 mana). If you're just running into Maverick/DnT every now and then, and also play versus decks like UWR with hatebears in the board and Esper Deathblade, I'd just go with a few Massacres.

I've not tested Dread yet, but I've been kicking around the idea a bit. Feels like a one-card answer to D&T, which is nice, but from what I've seen, it seems a lot less effective against Biggro decks like Mav and it's ineffective against non-white creatures. The difficulty is in finding two pieces of removal for one Gaddock because even if Dread wipes Mom and Thalia, it still leaves Knight, Gaddock, Scavenging Ooze, Canonist, Stoneforge, and (perhaps crucially) Qasali Pridemage. I'm most worried that I'll only find one when I need something more, but I'll give it a spin.



I like 15 much more than 14, unless you play in a meta with very few wastelands.

I think you're probably right. As I think about it, if I'd drawn a ton of lands (likely incl. fetches) I would've had better options. Thinking of adding maindeck Tropical or a regular Island instead of one Preordain or Duress. How's a 2-Duress, 4-Therapy build been working for people? Too little disruption, or just right?

[Sandro95]

deleted post, was given incorrect decklist.

[JamieW89]

In one game (I don't remember which) I started with 2-3 cantrips and only blue(/red?)-producing lands, so I thought I had enough to dig for a black source. No dice...
With 3 cantrips that's fine, I really like those hands. With 2 it depends (does probe count?), can usually keep 'em too.




I kept finding that Daze wasn't particularly effective unless the opponent hit our first ritual with it (which someone did, I think in round 3). Spell Pierce was a bigger problem yesterday, and the Merfolk player shut me down with a fast one in game 2(?).
Yeah, this deck is very effective in dealing with soft countermagic, stuff like Spell Snare hits us much more than Pierce/Daze do.


What you said bears repeating in the primer and reiterating here, though; Therapy and Duress target PLAYERS, not CARDS, so we're not obligated to name a card until resolution.
In the same vein, Therapy targets a player whereas Duress targets an opponent. This is actually relevant every now and then when you desperately need to achieve hellbent, and has won me games (and lost one where I only had duress and needed to hit myself but couldn't).



The difficulty is in finding two pieces of removal for one Gaddock because even if Dread wipes Mom and Thalia, it still leaves Knight, Gaddock, Scavenging Ooze, Canonist, Stoneforge, and (perhaps crucially) Qasali Pridemage. I'm most worried that I'll only find one when I need something more, but I'll give it a spin.
Keep in mind that you can infernal for a second copy in that matchup, which is pretty backbreaking.


How's a 2-Duress, 4-Therapy build been working for people? Too little disruption, or just right?
I've been happy with 6 discard in the TC and DTT eras, but haven't played the new(old) meta yet. I think I used to run 7 back then, but I don't think the 7th is essential.

[Tvox]

How's a 2-Duress, 4-Therapy build been working for people? Too little disruption, or just right?

I put my faith in the probe and currently love this setup. I've never had to work that hard against counterspells with board pressure though, the testing pool is currently too small. I've had some games against miracles where it ultimately comes down to him having the lock or me winning.


deleted post, was given incorrect decklist.
Eyo Sandro, didn't know you read this thread

/Oliver

[frafen]

4 Polluted Delta
3 Scalding Tarn
2 Underground Sea
1 Badlands
1 Island
1 Swamp
1 Bloodstained Mire
1 Volcanic Island

4 Gitaxian Probe
4 Ponder
4 Brainstorm
4 Dark Ritual
4 Cabal Ritual
4 Cabal Therapy
4 Infernal Tutor
3 Duress
2 Preordain
2 Past in Flames
1 Tendrils of Agony
1 Ad Nauseam

4 Lion's Eye Diamond
4 Lotus Petal
1 Sensei's Divining Top

SIDEBOARD

3 Cryptic Command
4 Abrupt Decay
2 Disfigure
1 Rebuild
1 Empty the Warrens
2 Carpet of Flowers
1 Tropical Island
1 Slaughter Pact

This list was in the top8 of the Ovino main event. I don't get the sideboard, why are there 3 Cryptic Commands? :confused:

[Tvox]

[CARDS]4 Polluted Delta
3 Scalding Tarn
2 Underground Sea
1 Badlands

[...]

3 Cryptic Command

[...]

I don't get the sideboard, why are there 3 Cryptic Commands? :confused:
Maybe it should be chain of vapor but was lost in translation? Playing even a single cryptic in this deck would be a feat.

[frafen]

Maybe it should be chain of vapor but was lost in translation? Playing even a single cryptic in this deck would be a feat.
I don't think that it's a translation error because on mtgtop8 they even called the deck "Cryptic Storm".

[Sandro95]

4 Polluted Delta
3 Scalding Tarn
2 Underground Sea
1 Badlands
1 Island
1 Swamp
1 Bloodstained Mire
1 Volcanic Island

4 Gitaxian Probe
4 Ponder
4 Brainstorm
4 Dark Ritual
4 Cabal Ritual
4 Cabal Therapy
4 Infernal Tutor
3 Duress
2 Preordain
2 Past in Flames
1 Tendrils of Agony
1 Ad Nauseam

4 Lion's Eye Diamond
4 Lotus Petal
1 Sensei's Divining Top

SIDEBOARD

3 Cryptic Command
4 Abrupt Decay
2 Disfigure
1 Rebuild
1 Empty the Warrens
2 Carpet of Flowers
1 Tropical Island
1 Slaughter Pact

This list was in the top8 of the Ovino main event. I don't get the sideboard, why are there 3 Cryptic Commands? :confused:

I thought so earlier too (hence my last post). Looking at Ovino's website however, it seems that Cryptic Command is actually supposed to be Dark Confidant. Look at Guido Citino's list.

Ovino Legacy Top 8 2015 (http://www.ovinotournament.com/legacy-main-event-3-ottobre-2015/)

[frafen]

I thought so earlier too (hence my last post). Looking at Ovino's website however, it seems that Cryptic Command is actually supposed to be Dark Confidant. Look at Guido Citino's list.

Ovino Legacy Top 8 2015 (http://www.ovinotournament.com/legacy-main-event-3-ottobre-2015/)
Oh I see, now it makes sense (too bad I was hoping for some crazy tech :tongue: ).

[index]

hey guys, which is our best card vs miracles?

[davelin]

hey guys, which is our best card vs miracles?

Traditionally decay.

[Alix444]

hey guys, which is our best card vs miracles?

I'm going with Tendrils. :P

[Bryant Cook]

Caleb Scherer​'s first article for theepicstorm.com:

http://www.theepicstorm.com/from-ant-to-tes/

[CabalTherapy]

Caleb Scherer​'s first article for theepicstorm.com:

http://www.theepicstorm.com/from-ant-to-tes/

Congratulations.
No reason to spam this here.

[ScottW]

I don't mind the post. It's helpful to get the insight and it's "storm." The 2 decks seem to improve with discussions that examine the components and their function. I have to admit that the article is rather short and on the surface though.

[Alix444]

Especially since the topic is aimed at ANT players.

[IlCannone]

Agreeing with CabalTherapy.

The fact that the reason for switching to TES (DTT) is now obsolete, makes this "article" even more senseless.
Nothing gained reading this.

[Windmill]

Hey guys, I have two questions.

One, does this deck just fold to MUD or Stompy decks with Trinisphere or Chalice?

Why this deck over TES? I was interested in playing Storm and everyone locally says to play TES since it is faster. But, that deck isn't a DTB. Why is this one the current DTB? Thanks!

[Kayds]

@Windmill

If you are prepared for MUD decks and have 2-3 Hurkyl's Recall or Rebuild in your ANT deck, you'll be fine. If you don't you might just need to mulligan more aggressively for duress or fast kills. Chain of Vapor and Abrupt Decay are okay here but they each have their weakness. Chain can't get through chalice on one and Decay needs you to perfectly fetch your wastelandable green source on endstep and then untap and go off. Often by the time you can decay something they have multiple hate pieces in play.

The big difference in the two decks is the lines of play the decks are built to use better:
-turn 1-2 Ad Nauseam kills - TES
-turn 1-2 Empty the warrens kills - TES
-turn 3-4 Past in flames kills - ANT
-turn 3-4 Natural count to ten kills - ANT

ANT usually executes its combo with perfect information in the midgame allowing it to abuse threshold and TES often plays the odds in the early game to avoid seeing hate cards or getting a low life total.

Find out how you like to win the game and you'll know which deck to play.

[CabalTherapy]

Why this deck over TES? I was interested in playing Storm and everyone locally says to play TES since it is faster. But, that deck isn't a DTB. Why is this one the current DTB? Thanks!

There are certainly some points which make ANT the superior storm deck. Apart from what has been said already, the most important thing is that TES doesn't play Past in Flames main. Undoubtedly, it is
the best engine card available in Legacy and not playing it main is a crime. In addition, TES's manabase is abysmally bad. Three colours, one basic, 13 lands provide a struggle through every Tempo MU (but of course, TES wins always
on turn 1 or 2. sure thing..., no lands needed at all). Also ANT is more streamlined which is good because you have your 3 ways of winning and most of the time killing lines won't be that difficult to notice. On the other hand, speaking from my play experience with this pile of TES, you will have to figure out how to win from the start, cantrip aggressively and sometimes fold to a Wasteland, a stranded hand or too much preasure.

You have to ask yourself if you want to drive a full-pimp monstertruck or a shaky dirt buggy.

[Holden1669]

Caleb Scherer​'s first article for theepicstorm.com:

http://www.theepicstorm.com/from-ant-to-tes/

Excellent trolling, I love it.

Also, honestly, it is completely appropriate to post this here and while its not ground breaking it is more valuable than the majority of posts in this thread. I appreciated the point of view of TES from an ANT pilot's perspective.

[Windmill]

Haha :) thank you guys. Glad to here this deck doesn't fold to MUD after sideboard (I don't mind sideboard in for it in my local meta) and I am glad to hear it has multiple lines of play to get around graveyard hate. Will try to find some good primers so I can learn the deck.

[Togores]

Hello again.
Sorry for the delay but I had to write the vintage report for our team page because I won the vintage tournament at the ovino.
So the legacy part had to wait.

I decided to play a md nauseam list with 2 tendrills. At the end the double tendrills was not good enought but that happens when you have no time to test after a ban list.

1 Ad Nauseam
1 Past in flames
2 Tendrils of Agony
4 Infernal tutor

4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
4 Gitaxian probe
2 Preordain

3 Cabal therapy
4 Duress

4 Dark ritual
4 Cabal ritual
4 Lion's eye diamond
4 Lotus petal

4 Polluted delta
4 Misty rainforest
2 Underground sea
1 Volcanic island
1 Tropical island
1 Bayou
1 Island
1 Swamp

SIDEBOARD:

4 Abrupt decay
3 Xantid swarm
2 Flusterstorm
1 Krosan grip
2 Massacre
1 Sensei divining top
2 Echoing truth


Round 1 death blade
G1 I resolve a nauseam and kill him showing that I play 2 tendrills md.
G2 vendilion + counters get me.
G3 Was one of the COOL games. He starts on discarting my tutor and surgicaling it. After some more things, a masacre on his guys he is at 13 life. I end up needing to go of. And draw with a gitaxian the tendrills. He has a negate up and i end up casting a tendrills for 7 storm. Just to kill him. He didnt want to play the negate on a copy and concedes. Nice game (:

Round 2 infect
G1 I natural tendrills him and win passing his daze, pierce and forcing thru a stifle. Forcing to use his mana before.
G2 double invigorate is cool
G3 He had gitaxian me turn 1. And I drew flusterstorm. Got his 2 invigorates with my flusterstorm turn 3 because he didnt liked to pass priority against my lone island.

Round 3 Ant
G1 he mulls and a discard from him and one fron me makes him unable to win in the next turns. So I win
G2 I pif him after getting 3 cabal rituals of a therapy.

Round 4 miracles
G1 his hand is top, balance, fow. He forces my duress on his balance and I never recover.
G2 I grind his balances and tops with decays and end up winning.
G3 were i time out and I can win if he dosnt have another snapcaster of fow (hardcaststed) on top of his library where if he has it I loose. So I select to get a draw and dont risk to loose because ods is that he has a counter is hight. At the end he had double fow on top.

Round 5 junk most awesome game.
G1 he plays a discard on my drainstorm instead of infernal. And plays a lili. This allows me to discard the tendrills and get hellbent to go of.
G2 this is a real awesome game.
He has:
25 life
2 confidant
rest in peace
Deathrite shaman with batterskull.

My hand is:
2 cabal ritual (no *****)
1 dark ritual
2 lotus petal
4 lands or so.
3 life!!!!!!
I rip ad nauseam and I die next turn, so I have to got for it even its like no chance I win. But, why not.
So storm 6
Cast my things. Reveal:
Delta
Brainstorm (2 life)
Dark ritual (1 life)
I do some math and get to the conclusion that im short and have to risk it.
Land
LED (1 life).
I do more math.
Cast brainstorm of petal and find:
Infernal
Tendrills
Pif.
I have just 7 mana in pool casting the ritual and cracking the led.
So i infernal for tendrills and storm for 11. Thats 22 life.
Pasa turn.
My opponent reveals for his confidant:
Hymn
Bam 1 life.
Im on the edge of my seat.
Second confidant inquisition
Bam GG
I feel like the luckiest guy in the room. This all with like 15 guys looking.
Was just fun.

The next 2 rounds was a loss against miracles. Where the 1st was if she dosnt have a fow as 3rd cars of his sensei (the unknown) I win. Obviusly there was a fow there. And g1 she won because she had no card in hand, no mana, and a top. I went of and she had a daze I didnt expected.

The other miracle round was like he has to find blue card and fow with his brainstorm. Because he has land and no more mana in hand. He finds it and I loose.

Then bug delver also beats me, because I was never able to force his stifle when I had a natural storm. Even beeing low on lands and cracking a fetch that make me shuffle with a brainstorm.

So this ended here. Now I think I would play more krossan grip, the card just seemed really fine and I want more. Also would cut the tendrills and play the top main.


So guys, until next storm day!

[Shaman]

Hi guys, considering the slight shift in the metagame I want to ask all of you if going back to 2/3 burning wishes maindeck could have some merits. I see a comeback of surgical effects and burning wish (on paper) seems to be a solution to threat density against discard, to surgical extraction on tendrils/infernal, to hatebears maindeck (having access to removals and board-sweapers like massacre).
What do you think?

[davelin]

Hi guys, considering the slight shift in the metagame I want to ask all of you if going back to 2/3 burning wishes maindeck could have some merits. I see a comeback of surgical effects and burning wish (on paper) seems to be a solution to threat density against discard, to surgical extraction on tendrils/infernal, to hatebears maindeck (having access to removals and board-sweapers like massacre).
What do you think?

I think if you want to play Burning Wish storm, playing TES seems to be a more natural solution than going back to a TNT hybrid of sorts.

[Sloshthedark]

Hi guys, considering the slight shift in the metagame I want to ask all of you if going back to 2/3 burning wishes maindeck could have some merits. I see a comeback of surgical effects and burning wish (on paper) seems to be a solution to threat density against discard, to surgical extraction on tendrils/infernal, to hatebears maindeck (having access to removals and board-sweapers like massacre).
What do you think?

Am I missing something? I thought increased hatebear count was induced by Omnitell omnipresence to the point Miracles also played it, even Surgical Extraction which was rarely played there before, I understand dangerous reminiscence of previous metagame (like the subconscious believe that "bears" work if it worked before) but why would the count increase? W hatebear count shoud be the same like year before (+Wingmare isn't an argument), I don't really understand SE as a GY hate of of choice other than being good against Ant

[Dr_D]

Hi guys, considering the slight shift in the metagame I want to ask all of you if going back to 2/3 burning wishes maindeck could have some merits. I see a comeback of surgical effects and burning wish (on paper) seems to be a solution to threat density against discard, to surgical extraction on tendrils/infernal, to hatebears maindeck (having access to removals and board-sweapers like massacre).
What do you think?

Still running my list from page 159, with recall/rebuild instead of chains.

[Lemnear]

There are certainly some points which make ANT the superior storm deck. Apart from what has been said already, the most important thing is that TES doesn't play Past in Flames main. Undoubtedly, it is
the best engine card available in Legacy and not playing it main is a crime. In addition, TES's manabase is abysmally bad. Three colours, one basic, 13 lands provide a struggle through every Tempo MU (but of course, TES wins always
on turn 1 or 2. sure thing..., no lands needed at all). Also ANT is more streamlined which is good because you have your 3 ways of winning and most of the time killing lines won't be that difficult to notice. On the other hand, speaking from my play experience with this pile of TES, you will have to figure out how to win from the start, cantrip aggressively and sometimes fold to a Wasteland, a stranded hand or too much preasure.

You have to ask yourself if you want to drive a full-pimp monstertruck or a shaky dirt buggy.

PIF isn't the best engine, if your metagame forces you to combo before Counterbalance/Thalia/Thorn/Chalice/Canonist/MeddlingMage/etc. comes down and this is essentially the root of the whole neverending discussion.

Its no wonder, people struggle hard with the manabase, if shitty advice like "you will have to cantrip aggressively" against Daze/Wasteland is given, which is bollocks, as you needlessly expose yourself to wasteland. "Land, go" is a perfect reasonable early game for all storm variants which feels off to plenty of players, but is preety solid against tempo variants or wasteland decks like Lands.dec, UR Delver, etc.

[CabalTherapy]

PIF isn't the best engine, if your metagame forces you to combo before Counterbalance/Thalia/Thorn/Chalice/Canonist/MeddlingMage/etc. comes down and this is essentially the root of the whole neverending discussion.

Its no wonder, people struggle hard with the manabase, if shitty advice like "you will have to cantrip aggressively" against Daze/Wasteland is given, which is bollocks, as you needlessly expose yourself to wasteland. "Land, go" is a perfect reasonable early game for all storm variants which feels off to plenty of players, but is preety solid against tempo variants or wasteland decks like Lands.dec, UR Delver, etc.

Certainly, land > go is a nice play against some decks but then it is nice to have a deck that works with two basics and has more powerful spells for the next turns.

Basics > 3c landbase
Cabal Ritual > Rite of Flame, Chrome Mox
Past in Flames > Burning Wish

[Lemnear]

Certainly, land > go is a nice play against some decks but then it is nice to have a deck that works with two basics and has more powerful spells for the next turns.

Basics > 3c landbase
Cabal Ritual > Rite of Flame, Chrome Mox
Past in Flames > Burning Wish

Yeah, IF you plan to GENERALLY play more than 3 own turns per game. Unfortunately that bears known problems by itself at times and certain metagames. If overwhelming the opponent with sheer speed isn't relevant in a certain metagame, but beating manadenial however is, ANT is the deck to pick Vice versa and that was Calebs point with the article.

[ScottW]

Rather amusing that the guy who just wrote the TES article just won the SCG event with ANT. Unconventional list as usual, however.

[Dr_D]

Rather amusing that the guy who just wrote the TES article just won the SCG event with ANT. Unconventional list as usual, however.

I wish he was on the source, I really want to know what he uses the 3 sided EtWs for and what he cuts etc. Anyone have any insight?

[Togores]

Its based on an old idea, just may be was never tested enought.
Its not good that a new idea wins so fast. Its bad for players. But its just great for him^^

[Tom T]

I wish he was on the source, I really want to know what he uses the 3 sided EtWs for and what he cuts etc. Anyone have any insight?

I think he mainly used it for the Miracles matchup. He took that idea from Sawatarix who got top8 with it the same day or the day before.

[Izor]

He's been having some impressive results over the past few weeks/months with his ANT list. I still don't really get the maindeck AN plus 2 Petitions, but it seems to work for him. I'm assuming he's running the AN only as an emergency win con against discard heavy/gy hate heavy decks when his two primary ways of winning aren't available and he is forced to either try his luck with AN or just scoop.

[L10]

@Izor, From Facebook

Q: Hi Caleb! With two Dark Petition... ¿Is Ad Nauseam very bad?

A: It's a bit worse for sure but ad naus is usually a back up plan so I think it's completely worth it to have a more consistent deck over all with 6 tutors.

[BeardTron]

He also mentioned he was boarding in the Warrens in the D&T matchup as well.

[Sloshthedark]

He also mentioned he was boarding in the Warrens in the D&T matchup as well.

is it surprising?

[ScottW]

At what point do you board in all 4 Abrupt Decay? What comes out??

[Tom T]

At what point do you board in all 4 Abrupt Decay? What comes out??

Against Miracles and MUD. What comes out is a matter of preference and the list you're playing.

My list is standard 55 + AN + 7th Discard + SDT + 2 preordain. Boarding:

Miracles: -2 Preordain, -4 Ponder, +4 Decay, +1 EtW, +1 SDT. Depending if I see postboard removal or not I might -X Therapy, +X Xantid Swarm.
MUD: -3 Cabal therapy, -4 Duress, +4 Abrupt Decay, +1 EtW, +2 Hurkyl's Recall. Depending on play/draw I will keep discard in and board out preordains.

~Tom

[TheKingslayer]

In his testing, Caleb has revealed that Dark Petition does hurt the Ad Nauseum line, but there is an advantage in that you are no longer leaning so heavily on Ad Nausing into an LED. In this manner, it is less clunky, but it is somewhat situation. The Deck is more consistent, and the five-mana tutor with a packed Dark Ritual is actually much less clunky than Grim Tutor. That one mana and 3 life really, really matters. Try goldfishing it. Dark Petition is the real deal, ya'll.

[Degausser]

Rather amusing that the guy who just wrote the TES article just won the SCG event with ANT. Unconventional list as usual, however.

In all fairness, TES also made top 8. Caleb played against Infect, infect, and Shardless in the QF, SF, and Finals respectively which are favorable matchups. Both storm variants had a strong showing this weekend.

[Tom T]

In his testing, Caleb has revealed that Dark Petition does hurt the Ad Nauseum line, but there is an advantage in that you are no longer leaning so heavily on Ad Nausing into an LED. In this manner, it is less clunky, but it is somewhat situation. The Deck is more consistent, and the five-mana tutor with a packed Dark Ritual is actually much less clunky than Grim Tutor. That one mana and 3 life really, really matters. Try goldfishing it. Dark Petition is the real deal, ya'll.

In my limited testing I had some problems against Deathrite Shaman and Daze/Spell Pierce with the Dark Petition. Postboard it's pretty risky against decks that pack graveyard hate. Also, you can use Grim Tutor or the Preordain that it replaces to find other things than a win-con more effectively. Next to that I found I often had an LED-line that wasn't possible with DP but would be with Grim Tutor. Ad Nauseam becomes rather awkward if you already have a tutor revealed and do find LED. DP is better if you crack your LED in response to AN though.

Maybe I didn't test enough, but those were my conclusions to dismiss it. I like Sensei's Divining Top more at the moment.

~Tom

[Ghiwo]

Hello guys,
I would like to ask for a little piece of information, quick and simple but really important to improve my game.

I used to pretty much always play ponder on turn 1, then I learned from better players than me (Jona's article, Slosh, Jamie) that playing it on turn 2 is better, as you see one more card.
So I play every Ponder turn 2 now.
I would like to ask: is there any situation where you play Ponder turn 1? When? What makes the difference in choosing turn 1 or 2?
Thanks a lot!

Inviato dal mio GT-S7275R utilizzando Tapatalk

[Countertoplol]

Hello guys,
I would like to ask for a little piece of information, quick and simple but really important to improve my game.

I used to pretty much always play ponder on turn 1, then I learned from better players than me (Jona's article, Slosh, Jamie) that playing it on turn 2 is better, as you see one more card.
So I play every Ponder turn 2 now.
I would like to ask: is there any situation where you play Ponder turn 1? When? What makes the difference in choosing turn 1 or 2?
Thanks a lot!

Inviato dal mio GT-S7275R utilizzando Tapatalk

Are you trying to kill on turn 2? If so, your ponder isn't doing as much good being held until turn 2. Are you playing for a longer game? Then it may be best to hold it to turn 2. There's no 100% answer to your question, it's incredibly situational, I'd suggest you keep playing the deck and learn for yourself how to sequence cantrips.

[Izor]

It's certainly not correct to never Ponder on turn 1 by default, it always depends. One of the most common scenarios where you should Ponder turn 1 is when you're currently missing 2 mana to go off on turn 1. Saving your Ponder for turn 2 may be bad here because the mana you spend to play it may be the one mana you needed to go off on turn 2.

Example: Hand: Land, Land, Ponder, Cabal Ritual, Infernal Tutor, LED, blank

With this hand you're able to go off on turn 2 if your turn 1 Ponder finds you another piece of fast mana. However, if you save the Ponder for turn 2 and you then find a Petal or another Cabal Ritual with it, you won't be able to go off because you've already used one of your mana for the turn.

There are more scenarios of course. As a rule of thumb I'd say the more likely you are to be forced to win as fast as possible, the more likely it is that Pondering on turn 1 is the correct play, especially if your hand only missed one piece to go off and you expect to need all your available mana on turn 2.

Likewise, it can sometimes even be the correct play to Brainstorm on turn 1.

[Sloshthedark]

In my limited testing I had some problems against Deathrite Shaman and Daze/Spell Pierce with the Dark Petition. Postboard it's pretty risky against decks that pack graveyard hate. Also, you can use Grim Tutor or the Preordain that it replaces to find other things than a win-con more effectively. Next to that I found I often had an LED-line that wasn't possible with DP but would be with Grim Tutor. Ad Nauseam becomes rather awkward if you already have a tutor revealed and do find LED. DP is better if you crack your LED in response to AN though.

Maybe I didn't test enough, but those were my conclusions to dismiss it. I like Sensei's Divining Top more at the moment.

~Tom

ain't surprising, just reading the card this comes up, my skepticism goes that far I haven't even tried that card outside of vintage (would take toom much time and goldfish isnt a real factor for this card i think) and limit myself to asking whether Grim Tutor being DP would be better when this comes up... conclusion - not worth it in real conditions imo (my reality overflows with softcounters) if you play against non U and Miracles a lot it might be better than preordain once in a while


Hello guys,
I would like to ask for a little piece of information, quick and simple but really important to improve my game.

I used to pretty much always play ponder on turn 1, then I learned from better players than me (Jona's article, Slosh, Jamie) that playing it on turn 2 is better, as you see one more card.
So I play every Ponder turn 2 now.
I would like to ask: is there any situation where you play Ponder turn 1? When? What makes the difference in choosing turn 1 or 2?
Thanks a lot!

Inviato dal mio GT-S7275R utilizzando Tapatalk

don't underestimate yourself, imo there is no definitive rule on anything, always depends on your hand, list, MU, experience and your judgement which line brings you better odds to succeed, sometimes the only your playstyle makes the difference

the worst attitude is playing stuff mindlessly, as long as you know what you're doing and know what you look for at what cost you're on the right track, so the answer as always - play a lot and think about what you're doing

to answer the questions specificaly - yes, often, hard to tell, you just "know" by the state of your hand if you've seen a lot of them, examples - hand can kill T1 / the hand looks like classic something you know = needs a 1-2 of type of a card for something (hell, yeah =D)/ I get a significant advantage seeing more if opp has to play pressure in order to win in the MU or I know his hand and have to or lead him to play accordingly to my plans / need to find specific card for T2 - like discard vs. Burn or D+T/ threshold is involved for the flow of the deck...

[Tav]

I understand much of this is the storm hive mind and player's looking to copy people who have recently had success like Caleb (who has certainly been killing it with his list), but I am unsure of why people are so hot on Ad Nauseam in the main again. Earlier in the year people were agreeing that the card was just bad (which is still true) and that a higher number of business spells can be just as good if not better. The problem at the time was that speed was still necessary in some matchups, and making ourselves a half turn to a full turn slower was a bad idea when opponents were casting Emrakul's and taking extra turns...

With the Dig ban though, the format is assuredly becoming much slower and miracles will most likely be on top again, so why are people giving up on Ad Nauseam in the side? If there was ever a time to essentially preboard yourself against miracles, now is certainly that time.

[Dr_D]

I understand much of this is the storm hive mind and player's looking to copy people who have recently had success like Caleb (who has certainly been killing it with his list), but I am unsure of why people are so hot on Ad Nauseam in the main again. Earlier in the year people were agreeing that the card was just bad (which is still true) and that a higher number of business spells can be just as good if not better. The problem at the time was that speed was still necessary in some matchups, and making ourselves a half turn to a full turn slower was a bad idea when opponents were casting Emrakul's and taking extra turns...

With the Dig ban though, the format is assuredly becoming much slower and miracles will most likely be on top again, so why are people giving up on Ad Nauseam in the side? If there was ever a time to essentially preboard yourself against miracles, now is certainly that time.

I'm still on full house. Even with ad nauseam in the side, I don't consider the deck to be that much slower thanks to maindeck empty as a low storm count option.

[Tom T]

I understand much of this is the storm hive mind and player's looking to copy people who have recently had success like Caleb (who has certainly been killing it with his list), but I am unsure of why people are so hot on Ad Nauseam in the main again. Earlier in the year people were agreeing that the card was just bad (which is still true) and that a higher number of business spells can be just as good if not better. The problem at the time was that speed was still necessary in some matchups, and making ourselves a half turn to a full turn slower was a bad idea when opponents were casting Emrakul's and taking extra turns...

With the Dig ban though, the format is assuredly becoming much slower and miracles will most likely be on top again, so why are people giving up on Ad Nauseam in the side? If there was ever a time to essentially preboard yourself against miracles, now is certainly that time.

Next to Miracles, people expect a lot of discard and deathrite shaman in the near future, and Ad Nauseam is awesome against that. DRS makes second PiF slightly worse.

[emidln]

I understand much of this is the storm hive mind and player's looking to copy people who have recently had success like Caleb (who has certainly been killing it with his list), but I am unsure of why people are so hot on Ad Nauseam in the main again. Earlier in the year people were agreeing that the card was just bad (which is still true) and that a higher number of business spells can be just as good if not better. The problem at the time was that speed was still necessary in some matchups, and making ourselves a half turn to a full turn slower was a bad idea when opponents were casting Emrakul's and taking extra turns...

With the Dig ban though, the format is assuredly becoming much slower and miracles will most likely be on top again, so why are people giving up on Ad Nauseam in the side? If there was ever a time to essentially preboard yourself against miracles, now is certainly that time.

Not everyone was convinced that cutting Ad Nauseam was correct to begin with. I personally am unconvinced that Ad Nauseam is even bad against Miracles. When I've tested ANT vs Miracles, I've won a large number of games due to casting Ad Nauseam on their upkeep.

[phazonmutant]

Not everyone was convinced that cutting Ad Nauseam was correct to begin with. I personally am unconvinced that Ad Nauseam is even bad against Miracles. When I've tested ANT vs Miracles, I've won a large number of games due to casting Ad Nauseam on their upkeep.

I'm not sure where you got the impression Ad Naus is bad against Miracles. That's one of the matchups where it's great, even if you have a bunch of 4-drops in your deck.


Next to Miracles, people expect a lot of discard and deathrite shaman in the near future, and Ad Nauseam is awesome against that. DRS makes second PiF slightly worse.

Agreed that Ad Naus is usually good in those matchups. Discard decks do tend to have a problem with Empty though. I think it's still reasonable to leave Ad Naus in the sideboard, but of course that's a meta call.

[Izor]

resurgence of Death and Taxes, resurgence of discad spells, resurgence of Deathrite Shaman. Three very good reasons to play Ad Nauseam main.

I'm expecting Deathblade to make a comeback in my local metagame, and to be honest that matchup has been almost unwinnable without Ad Nauseam for me.The full sets of DRS and Thoughtseize, 3 Meddling Mages plus additional graveyard hate in the board. Throw in a Lilly or two. I'm barely keeping my percentage at around 50% against that deck and 90% of my wins against it come from an early AN.

Sitting on a full grip and going off one turn before you die is still the most reliable way to win against many red-based blue decks, but the main reason why Lightning Bolt became so much better than Thoughtseize in Legacy is now gone. I think it's worth pre-boarding AN against the field right now, so to speak. Even before the Dig ban AN was boarded in most of the time anyway, which is one of the reasons why I never dropped it to begin with. I have yet to hear about any matchup apart from UR(x) Delver or UWR Stoneblade where I'd actively not want AN to be in my deck. Against discard we want it, against any deck that often forces us to win asap we want it, even against Miracles most people boarded it in from what I've heard. I've quickly realized that this is already my entire local metagame.

For what it's worth, note how Caleb Scherer still had AN in his deck even though his version has to be the one that's worst at playing the card.

[aegisd]

Hey all! Fairly new to Legacy and decided on taking ANT to the GP in November. 3-1'd an event tonight running Caleb's 75 from the recent SCG, with -1 EtW, -1 Disfigure in the side for +1 Tendrils, +1 Flusterstorm. Though the difference is there just since I already had those cards on hand, not because of any particular metagame call.

R1: Miracles (2-0)

G1: T1 duress sees SDT, CB, Jace, 4 lands. Take CB. Next turen, messed up real bad going for ad naus then forgetting I need to be hellbent for IT, just have to say go. Eventually recover after my opponent fails to find a FoW and I manage to dark petition into PiF for the kill.

+3 AD, +2 Carpet, +1 Trop, +2 EtW +1 Fluster +1 Tendrils, +1 Therapy. -4 Ponder, -4 Petal -2 Preordain I think was my SB. I saw Mentor G1, but decide against putting in DoN.

G2: T2 Meddling mage is on Ad Nauseum, which I did have in hand. I had AD but save it and take a few hits from the mage. CB comes down T4, which I decay on the end step. I think I end up with a PiF kill here too from Dark Petition.

R2: Omnitell (1-2)

G1: I keep a cantrip heavy hand and don't manage to find the cards before SnT/Omni/Cunning Wish.

+2 Carpet, +1 Trop, +1 Therapy, -1 Top, -1 Island, -2 Preordain.

G2: He keeps 7, I lead with a T1 therapy. I think for a while and name SnT here, which did hit but not sure if it was the right name over bs/ponder. I draw into another therapy and take the ponder (last cantrip), and get a duress for his cunning wish the turn I go off (which would have grabbed fluster).

G3: Forget how the opening of the game went. But eventually I hit a stage of the game where I had carpet in play, 2 lands, 2 LED, 1 Dark Petition, 1 CR, IT in hand. I also know opponent has impulse, CW, Omni, fluster, pierce, and has 1/3 lands out. I go to make the play of DP to draw out a counter, but then I realize my carpet only adds 2 since one of his lands is a fetch. In the end I decide not to go for it since I get 2-1'd by counter. He impulses on his turn and passes with 1 mana again. I make the play on the next turn, he uses pierce. I pass, he goes off.

I realize later I could have won by going CR->DP, letting him pierce it. Play the 2 LED's. Then next turn I'm hellbent with IT, 2 LED's and a carpet for 5, which can easily find Ad Naus through the fluster, find a discard, and win. Inexperience didn't let me see the line here.

R3: Miracles (1-2)

G1: I whiff really bad again. He resolves a CB, and he flips a karakas to my probe. I play out 2 LED's thinking it's good, before he catches himself and triggers CB. Clique ends up clocking me out.

Same as previous round. Didn't see a mentor this time though.

G2: I start with T1 SDT, he does the same, I have T2 carpet, and he has T2 CB. I have an AD in hand so I'm in no rush. Spin a few times and decay on the end of his T4. He uses top to draw, and Venser's the CB back to his hand. I know I have a second AD hanging out on my library. Take a few hits from venser, and AD again when the CB comes back down. By this time though I have a heavily loaded hand and a decent number of lands in play. He has 2 cards left in hand. I start with rituals and throw Ad Nauseum as bait. He snaps a FoW to counter it. I proceed to then natural tendrils him for 14, with life totals at (28 : 3). I could have sacced 2 LED's to flashback PiF for the kill that turn, but I slow down and stop myself after realizing I pretty much lose if that last card is a counterspell. I pass. He plays mentor, attacks, passes. I add red with Carpet and PiF. Last card was a land, I win easily.

G2: First game where I really see the true power of grinding station in this MU. I think I keep a hand of 2 probes, Tendrils, AD, and 3 lands. Figure it's good enough for this MU. T3 Clique comes down. I decide to AD it since I don't think I survive the clock there. He puts my Tendrils to the bottom. Eventually he lands a CB so a lot of draw-land-go turns go by with nothing happening while I dig for an answer. I eventually end up with Tendrils and EtW in hand with a few other spells. He plays a clique on my draw step and puts the tendrils back again. On my turn I probe him to reveal land off the CB trigger, and I think a FoW, BS, CB. I lead with DR, he BS's. I make a misplay here and don't DR in response. Luckily, BS finds nothing, he fetches, find cannonist. Rituals resolve. I forget the exact spells, but eventually I play IT with an EtW in hand. Either IT can go find a second EtW, or he forces and adds to storm count. He forces, I make 16 goblins. he plays the ethersworn. I swing him down to 3 and he has 1 turn to find terminus. He doesn't.

R4: BUG Delver (2-1)

G1: He's down to a mull to 5. I probe seeing BS, Ponder, 2 lands, dismember. I have an opportunity to go off T1 with petal, petal, rit, Ad naus. I decide to wait a turn for another land drop. He doesn't find anything next turn and I ad naus to 1 after flipping dark petition. Luckily I had enough business to go off easily.

I prepare for rug delver here since I haven't seen any black. so +2 Carpet, +2 EtW, -1 SDT, -1 AdNaus, -2 preordain.

G2: I take a mull. T1 DRS, T2 goyf. I get hymed and he has a hand of FoW, daze, surgical. I get beaten pretty easily

Now I have him on Shardless, so AdNaus goes back in, -1 ponder.

G3: At some point I probe to see DRS (which I thought was IoK for some reason...) 2 BS, ponder, daze, land. I play out LED's and go for ad naus with 1 floating. I think the reveals here were CR, Duress, BS, probe, EtW, BS, petal, PiF, which puts me down to 3. I take a look and decide I can't go off with 1 mana floating so I go once more for petal. I still can't identify whether or not this is enough so I just stop before I kill myself. As I'm adding it up, I realize I won't have any red floating for EtW if he dazes the CR, and realize I probably should have gone one more. I probe down to 1 to hope to find more fast mana. No luck. I crack a petal and BS, but don't find a ritual. The BS here was probably a mistake. I use the remaining B to duress away the daze and hope to go off next turn. He plays a grafdiggers, shutting off PiF, and then BS and pass.

I know he has a DRS, so I have to find a way to kill him soon or else I die in 2 turns. I lead with BS, and find myself the dark petition and a 3rd land. I have 1 petal in play, Lead with CR, into DP for another CR, DP again. I think hard on this one and end up getting therapy. I figure if he lands a DRS and survives the goblins somehow, I will straight up lose. I therapy, manage to hit 2, play another petal, crack one for U for probe, find LED, play it, then make 18 goblins with him on 17 life. He doesn't find an answer next turn.



I've been reading a lot of the posts here and I see a lot of the experienced pilots talking about how you don't always need to try to go off ASAP, and I think that lesson really hit home today. I've played both ANT and TES and always thought of both as a "How do I resolve Ad Naus the quickest" kind of deck, mostly because I'm scared the opponent will just build up a hand of answers and I can never go off. It was nice to see that in a lot of matchups, especially miracles, it's okay to just play the game at a slower pace, which if you're just goldfishing the deck, isn't something you pick up.

I liked having Ad Naus main in most matchups, even those where I brought in EtW. It's a very irreplaceable effect, and having the option is always good. I think I'll be keeping it main.

I wanted some feedback on the sideboarding, since I'm still doing it fairly arbitrarily at this point. Disfigure probably is a good card to have for DRS, since a resolved DRS is fairly problematic. Also, I'm interested in hearing about the hand where I had the T1 kill. My choice to wait a turn for a land drop was honestly completely arbitrary. I guess it's the risk of them finding FoW in the top 4 cards, or not finding an initial mana source with ad naus. Since I'd already burnt two petals to play Ad Naus, I felt it was better that I wait a turn.

[Tav]

I'm not sure where you got the impression Ad Naus is bad against Miracles. That's one of the matchups where it's great, even if you have a bunch of 4-drops in your deck.



Agreed that Ad Naus is usually good in those matchups. Discard decks do tend to have a problem with Empty though. I think it's still reasonable to leave Ad Naus in the sideboard, but of course that's a meta call.

It's not that I think ad nauseam is bad specifically against miracles (I think it is more just a bad card in general) but that I would much rather be playing a deck with multiple pifs/tendrils plus empty gives you a better game 1 against them. Both are fine options though, and a rise in BUG is good reasoning for switching the deck back to a more traditional style.

I guess that just poses the question of whether the few percentage points you gain g1 against miracles by playing a more grinding station-esque deck is worth the few points you would lose against bug, or if you would rather have it the other way around with ad nauseam main.

[JamieW89]

4-0-2'd the legacy Side event at MKM series today. Lost in SF, a bit unlucky vs Shardless, but was quite lucky in the QF before. Otherwise Id have played the finals vs Julian.

R1: ANT 2-0
R2: 4c Delver 2-0
R3: Maverick 2-0
R4: 4c Delver 2-1
R5: ID
R6: ID
QF: Miracles 2-1
SF: Shardless 1-2

[Togores]

Congrats, how you won qf g3 with the natural empty you drew?

[JamieW89]

I had EtW, therapy and mana prepared when he found cannonist. A couple turns later I find Decay and make tokens, he flusterstorms, I pay for 3 copies with LED. He then Terminusses them away. Later on I infernal for PiF, and soon make 10 more goblins, which he cant answer.

Edit: sadly failed in the main event after a decent start:
R1: Grixis Delver 2-0
R2: 4c Loam 2-0
R3: Shardless 1-2 (Drs,Goyf w/ 2 Fow g1, no Tutor ever in g3)
R4: Chalice Merfolk 2-0
R5: Grixis Delver 2-1
R6: ANT 2-0
R7: Welder Mud 0-2 (t1 chalice,t2 3sphere, no Tutor g2)
R8: Julian on Elves 1-2 (die roll and needed 1 cantrip top much to find IT g1, 2much hate g3)

[Sloshthedark]

I had EtW, therapy and mana prepared when he found cannonist. A couple turns later I find Decay and make tokens, he flusterstorms, I pay for 3 copies with LED. He then Terminusses them away. Later on I infernal for PiF, and soon make 10 more goblins, which he cant answer.

Edit: sadly failed in the main event after a decent start:
R1: Grixis Delver 2-0
R2: 4c Loam 2-0
R3: Shardless 1-2 (Drs,Goyf w/ 2 Fow g1, no Tutor ever in g3)
R4: Chalice Merfolk 2-0
R5: Grixis Delver 2-1
R6: ANT 2-0
R7: Welder Mud 0-2 (t1 chalice,t2 3sphere, no Tutor g2)
R8: Julian on Elves 1-2 (die roll and needed 1 cantrip top much to find IT g1, 2much hate g3)


6-2 = 16th, playing the exact same list as in Lille

2-1 R Goblins
2-0 Shardless
1-2 Shardless (topdecked Wasteland killed me)
2-1 Mentor Miracles
2-0 UWR control/miracles?
0-2 4c Deathblade (made some mistakes)
2-1 Shardless
2-1 4c Deathblade

[Ronald Deuce]

I had a funky idea when I was thinking about the problems I've faced with Maverick and D&T. (NOTE: I don't have any copies of Massacre or more than one copy of Dread of Night.)

Has anyone experimented lately with Sudden Shock? Looks like a terrible card that I was considering sideboarding (partly as a joke) to fight Gaddock Teeg, which is possibly the biggest screw-you we're going to face. I realized that not only does S-Shock beat Gaddock, even with an active Mother of Runes, it doubles as a potentially reasonable storm-count booster. If we've got two Tutors in some combination in hand (or in the graveyard with a Past in Flames primed), just having it in the deck is like adding two spells to our storm count for Tendrils of Agony. If there aren't any creatures worth targeting, it's an uncounterable spell that can deal two damage, meaning that it pumps Tendrils by one spell and reduces the opponent's life by two, which effectively counts as casting two full spells before Tendrils.

What's everyone think? Has this been considered before?

[Tom T]

I had a funky idea when I was thinking about the problems I've faced with Maverick and D&T. (NOTE: I don't have any copies of Massacre or more than one copy of Dread of Night.)

Has anyone experimented lately with Sudden Shock? Looks like a terrible card that I was considering sideboarding (partly as a joke) to fight Gaddock Teeg, which is possibly the biggest screw-you we're going to face. I realized that not only does S-Shock beat Gaddock, even with an active Mother of Runes, it doubles as a potentially reasonable storm-count booster. If we've got two Tutors in some combination in hand (or in the graveyard with a Past in Flames primed), just having it in the deck is like adding two spells to our storm count for Tendrils of Agony. If there aren't any creatures worth targeting, it's an uncounterable spell that can deal two damage, meaning that it pumps Tendrils by one spell and reduces the opponent's life by two, which effectively counts as casting two full spells before Tendrils.

What's everyone think? Has this been considered before?

Jonathan played Sudden Shock in grinding station a couple of years ago. At the time he seemed very positive about the card. I think it's too narrow but if you're going to test it you can also try Pyrite Spellbomb.

[wonderPreaux]

Jonathan played Sudden Shock in grinding station a couple of years ago. At the time he seemed very positive about the card. I think it's too narrow but if you're going to test it you can also try Pyrite Spellbomb.

The whole point of sudden shock is to beat mother of runes and karakas/vial stuff, pyrite would be a pretty inefficient substitute overall because it inefficiently pressures karakas/vial

[Togores]

And its a blowout against infect !


The only problem is that 3 mana with thalia on table is hard.

[Tom T]

The whole point of sudden shock is to beat mother of runes and karakas/vial stuff, pyrite would be a pretty inefficient substitute overall because it inefficiently pressures karakas/vial

Pro's Spellbomb:
- Mother of Runes is not a problem for the Spellbomb does colorless damage.
- Spellbomb cycles
- Spellbomb costs 1+R instead of 1R
- Spellbomb beats hatebears out of a discard deck
- Spellbomb can be played through Cannonist
- Costs 1 to get out of your hand

Pro's Sudden Shock:
- Can have flashback
- Beats karakas bounce
- Surprises more

Then again, Spellbomb/SuddenShock most likely isn't worth the space.

[Jonathan Alexander]

I actually played Sudden Shock main for a while. The card is insane if all you play against is Stoneblade, Maverick and Delver. Obviously it's not as great against Delver as it is against the other two, but it's certainly not terrible, often buying you two or more extra turns. However, I think it's very narrow in that it's pretty bad in lots of situations - D&T was brought up, where Dread of Night is simply miles better. When it's good, it's insane though. If you face a lot of Maverick and blue decks with hate bears, by all means run Sudden Shock; you will not be disappointed. If you don't face these decks much though, Abrupt Decay and Dread of Night are more effective at the job that needs to be done right now.

[CabalTherapy]

Had some tough games at mkm Prague going 5-3.
I don't remember the exact order but I won against:
Infect 2:0
Canadian 2:0
Miracles 2:1
Miracles 2:0
DnT 2:1

and lost to:
0:2 Aggro Loam
0:2 Team America
1:2 Shardless Bug

[Ronald Deuce]

Thanks for the feedback, everybody!

Agreed that Dread of Night is just super versus white. The thing that directed me toward S-Shock was the fact that it's a single card that can dodge Mom and eat a bear, but it also has some flexibility (as long as we're floating red) when we aim for a kill. I'm only running a singleton in the board for the time being, and I'm hoping to get at least two more real, non-proxied Dreads and a Massacre because the meta's pretty bear-heavy. I'm experimenting with multiple Empty the Warrens because, though I performed pretty poorly last weekend, I thought Empty did some good work and can speed us along. I'm thinking of switching out a Carpet and a Chain for more Dreads when I can find them, but I'm keeping them in for now to test them.

My (under construction) sideboard looks like this right now:
3x Empty the Warrens
3x Abrupt Decay
2x Carpet of Flowers
2x Chain of Vapor
1x Dread of Night
1x Hurkyl's Recall
1x Tropical Island
1x Sudden Shock
1x Massacre

[VanHendrix]

Had some tough games at mkm Prague going 5-3.
I don't remember the exact order but I won against:
Infect 2:0
Canadian 2:0
Miracles 2:1
Miracles 2:0
DnT 2:1

and lost to:
0:2 Aggro Loam
0:2 Team America
1:2 Shardless Bug


Hey everyone!

I'm new to ANT, played it at first time last saturday on a local 5 rounds tournment(doing 2-3). I previoulsy played Dredge, Blade and Omnitell, and sice the Dig ban i'm really into trying something new.

Your results seems very impressive to me, once i lost to Miracles(1-2) and Death And Taxes(0-2). I also lost to MUD.
Can you give me some tips on those match ups? Ad Nauseum seems very good against Miracles, but i'm not quite sure about its effectiviness against DnT. Is it possible for ANT to win over a Thalia in G1?

Thanks!

[BeardTron]

So the ANT list that Top 8'd the MKM series ran a Desolation Twin in the main. http://www.magiccardmarket.eu/MKMSeries/main.php?tag=20&idt=3&idev=20

I'm very confused...

I can't imagine storming to ten and then casting this thing. What's the point?
Is it just there to put something in off Show and Tell??

Or is this a typo on his decklist?

EDIT: ya, it's a typo. Meant to be Dark Petition.

[CabalTherapy]

Hey everyone!

I'm new to ANT, played it at first time last saturday on a local 5 rounds tournment(doing 2-3). I previoulsy played Dredge, Blade and Omnitell, and sice the Dig ban i'm really into trying something new.

Your results seems very impressive to me, once i lost to Miracles(1-2) and Death And Taxes(0-2). I also lost to MUD.
Can you give me some tips on those match ups? Ad Nauseum seems very good against Miracles, but i'm not quite sure about its effectiviness against DnT. Is it possible for ANT to win over a Thalia in G1?

Thanks!

Welcome!
Well, they are not that impressive to be honest but I can try to recall the Miracles matches and the DnT one for you.
Against the first Miracles dude:
I played Duress on my second turn being on the play because I suspect him being on Miracles in order to popentially grab CB: he has two in hand. I discard one and make Petal> 2nd Duress for the 2nd CB. (my first land was Volcanic)
I then go for Ponder into Dark Ritual, Dark Ritual, Ad Nauseam, he responds with Brainstorm and says: ok > win. In the second match, he goes for Clique beatdown with Snapcaster. I went for Extirpate on Flusterstorm but failed to create enough storm to kill him in time. I think he was on 16 and I had Tendrils for 12 ready. The third game was rather quick as I brainstormed into the win on my third turn. CT > he responds with BS > "Force of Will" > he reveals the classic nothing and I have the easy PiF-loop.
Against the other Miracles dude: I storm on my second turn without protection for Ad Nauseam, he flips with Top but luckily it isn't FoW > win. The second game is hard because he has like 2 Flusterstorm, 2 FoW, 2 Snappies, 1 RiP and Mentor in hand on turn 3/4 but I have more lands and a Top. I try to sculp a good hand and decay his Mentor in order to buy time. At some point, I can discard some cards and trade a Flusterstorm with Ad Nauseam. I think he goes for Extraction on CT down to 14 life and then I have exactly Tendrils for 14 with 0 mana left via some Rituals, 2x Duress and Infernal.
I bring in: 3 Decay, 2 Grip, 1 Extirpate, 1 Top, 2 Xantids and board some configuration of discard spells, Preordains, Petals, one Cabal, and LEDs out.
Against the DnT dude:
Basically, I goldfish him on turn 3 suspecting he is on NicFit (we played the day before and he played the Fit). I bring in: 3 DoN and 2 Chains and board out 3 Duress, 1 PiF and I think it was 1 Preordain. He wins the match with 2 Revoker which survive my DoN, Canonist and some other dudes. I have a solid hand in game 3 and go for the kill on turn 3 I think (pretty safe Ad Nauseam again) with him having no hatebear.

Against Thalia in game one: Play your LED and Petals out, hope for a big graveyard and the you can certainly win against Thalia. Cabal Ritual is the mvp here. Nonetheless, it's not that easy as it sounds.


So the ANT list that Top 8'd the MKM series ran a Desolation Twin in the main. http://www.magiccardmarket.eu/MKMSeries/main.php?tag=20&idt=3&idev=20

I'm very confused...

I can't imagine storming to ten and then casting this thing. What's the point?
Is it just there to put something in off Show and Tell??

Or is this a typo on his decklist?

Well, how can one really think for a second that it could be Desolation Twin? C'mon.
It's Dark Petition. Not that difficult to guess, right?

[raid]

So the ANT list that Top 8'd the MKM series ran a Desolation Twin in the main. http://www.magiccardmarket.eu/MKMSeries/main.php?tag=20&idt=3&idev=20

I'm very confused...

I can't imagine storming to ten and then casting this thing. What's the point?
Is it just there to put something in off Show and Tell??

Or is this a typo on his decklist?


It was indeed Dark Petition.

Had a really fortunate tourney after a rather disappointing Trial the day before.

Rd.1 Imperial Painter 2:1

Rd.2 Stoneblade 2:0

Rd.3 Miracles 0:2

Rd.4 Deathblade 2:0

Rd.5 Shardless BUG 2:1

Rd.6 Redanimator 2:0

Rd.7 Deathblade 2:0

Rd.8 Aggro Loam 2:1

Quarterfinal Mentormiracles 2:1

My first bigger tourney, was a hell of a blast all weekend long :)

[BeardTron]

@raid

When were you boarding in Ad Nauseam?

Any changes you'd make to the 75?

[raid]

@raid

When were you boarding in Ad Nauseam?

Any changes you'd make to the 75?

Usually only against fast combo and decks with a rather slow clock and good graveyardhate. I made the sideboard under the impressions of the trial were i didnt see that much Sneak and Show but quiet a lot hatebears, so depending on the expected meta you have to think about making room for xantid swarms again.

[Sloshthedark]

It was indeed Dark Petition.

Had a really fortunate tourney after a rather disappointing Trial the day before.

Rd.1 Imperial Painter 2:1

Rd.2 Stoneblade 2:0

Rd.3 Miracles 0:2

Rd.4 Deathblade 2:0

Rd.5 Shardless BUG 2:1

Rd.6 Redanimator 2:0

Rd.7 Deathblade 2:0

Rd.8 Aggro Loam 2:1

Quarterfinal Mentormiracles 2:1

My first bigger tourney, was a hell of a blast all weekend long :)

Oh, you were Raid? I had no idea, I guess we met on sunday waiting for the legacy sideevent... Congrats on the result!

[CabalTherapy]

Oh, you were Raid? I had no idea, I guess we met on sunday waiting for the legacy sideevent... Congrats on the result!

Haha. I wanted to write some similar.
Raid, I was the other storm guy talking to you and your friend Boris in between rounds.

[OlegtheSuper]

In facebook Kai poster this link some days ago. And i have a question. Please somebody explain me why there are 4 preordains in Grinding Station(second place) and in any other storm build there are 4 ponders?

http://www.bigmagic.net/bmo05/legacy/03.html

[L10]

I can't speak for Kai but Ponder is generally more useful in ANT because we are trying to find something specific, the key card so we can start the combo. Ponder allows us to see four cards deep. Grinding Station has a lot more business cards, and cares more about trying to improve the quality of our draws. Preordain also goes well with Brainstorm because we can put two junks away with Brainstorm, cast Preordain to put them on the bottom of our library, and cantrip.

[Sloshthedark]

In facebook Kai poster this link some days ago. And i have a question. Please somebody explain me why there are 4 preordains in Grinding Station(second place) and in any other storm build there are 4 ponders?

http://www.bigmagic.net/bmo05/legacy/03.html

because he/the designer of the deck thinks it's better... which isn't (to be respectful it isn't most of the time)... this all goes in a vein of T1 ponder is not a good play and patient style of play while valid argument, unless you're a briliant mathematician (certainly scenarios and small % advantages can pop up) , the lower value of fetchlands, lower digging power and combo associations make it strictly worse as a deck building approach imo


I can't speak for Kai but Ponder is generally more useful in ANT because we are trying to find something specific, the key card so we can start the combo. Ponder allows us to see four cards deep. Grinding Station has a lot more business cards, and cares more about trying to improve the quality of our draws. Preordain also goes well with Brainstorm because we can put two junks away with Brainstorm, cast Preordain to put them on the bottom of our library, and cantrip.


the last sentence totaly invalidates what you wrote

[L10]

Yeah, I can see that. Fair enough.

[iamajellydonut]

http://www.bigmagic.net/bmo05/legacy/03.html

Did anyone else use Google Translate on the page? "Full Force from the Nest Hole" rates pretty high in my book.

[Entreat_the_Beedrills]

Hello! New poster and learning ANT player here. Can anyone help me understand why people run an extra copy of tendrils in the board? Thanks. : )

[Jonathan Alexander]

Preordain is better than Ponder in situations where you draw additional cards afterwars, can't shuffle and are not looking just for one specific card. That sounds more narrow than it actually is. It means Preordain is a better turn one play most of the time, because a turn one Ponder is really only good if you are looking for exactly one card. (There are, in fact, scenarios where Preordain has better digging power if followed by additional draws, but these are very, very narrow.) If you are looking just for card quality/volume of spells that can be cast, for example when you are building up a natural Storm kill, Preordain is better by virtue of allowing you to ditch useless cards (additional 2+ CMC spells, uncastable cantrips, useless lands, you get the drift).

I originally played Preordain over Ponder way back in 2011 when there was a lot of Canadian Threshold, because Preordain just plays infinitely better against Stifle - Ponder quickly becomes just "Shuffle your library. Draw a card." against these. The amount of Threshold has gone done quite a bit, so Ponder was played over Preordain again until very recently. With Dig Through Time in the format, we were forced to play much more aggressively, so the amount of cantrips that were cast on the first turn of the game has gone up dramatically. I'm currently still playing Preordain over Ponder because the metagame hasn't panned out quite yet. These days, it mostly depends on the amount of Miracles that is being played and also how these lists end up looking in regards to relevant cards after sideboarding. If they don't have much, a minimally worse game one might be acceptable.

[raid]

@Sloshthedark and CabalTherapy

Thx, yeah wasnt really aware that so many the source players would be there...

[Ronald Deuce]

Did anyone else use Google Translate on the page? "Full Force from the Nest Hole" rates pretty high in my book.

That and "Month of Large Magician". Might not be English As She Is Spoke, but the whole page is pretty fantastic.

And for any CinemaSnob fans, I find "Night of Horror" to be a truly glorious transliteration of Dread of Night.

I thought I was being clever by calling Volcanic Island "BLOOD OCEAN"...

[Ronald Deuce]

Hello! New poster and learning ANT player here. Can anyone help me understand why people run an extra copy of tendrils in the board? Thanks. : )

I'm also pretty new to the deck, but from what I gather it's so that, against counter-heavy, slow decks like Miracles, we can afford to increase our threat density and storm for, say, twelve life and wait to storm again for the rest because there's not really much of a clock on us. Also, we've got additional outs against counterspells.

I'm kicking around the idea of boarding a second Tendrils, but I feel like Empty the Warrens might be a better call because it can help us push through against fast decks and slow ones. Goblins on the board can deal damage every turn, but Tendrils can only drain once (not counting flashback).

[OlegtheSuper]

@Jonathan Alexander, correct me if i wrong. I read you and have a strange feeling like top is the best cantrip.

[DarkJester]

It was indeed Dark Petition.

Had a really fortunate tourney after a rather disappointing Trial the day before.

Rd.1 Imperial Painter 2:1

Rd.2 Stoneblade 2:0

Rd.3 Miracles 0:2

Rd.4 Deathblade 2:0

Rd.5 Shardless BUG 2:1

Rd.6 Redanimator 2:0

Rd.7 Deathblade 2:0

Rd.8 Aggro Loam 2:1

Quarterfinal Mentormiracles 2:1

My first bigger tourney, was a hell of a blast all weekend long :)

First, Congratz to your finish, watched your oncamera match against Loam and was pretty excited when I read that you smashed MentorBlabla in the quarterfinals.

Now my question: You played Grim and Petition both as 1-offs in your maindeck. A decision I am still unsure about. Did one of the two cards overperformed compared to the other. In which situations did they shine, in which not?

Greetinx.

[Jonathan Alexander]

@Jonathan Alexander, correct me if i wrong. I read you and have a strange feeling like top is the best cantrip.

Top is very powerful, but it's also very slow, which is the exact opposite of Preordain. I used to think Top was good against the discard decks, but I have come to the conclusion that the 3 Empty plan is better against those that also have countermagic (Grixis, Team America). They also tend to have Null Rod, which is already quite strong against us; I don't like playing into that.
I don't like it against Canadian because I don't want to play spells outside of my combo turn, but it's very good against Miracles. I also don't like it much in the combo mirrors; I don't think it does enough there without Flusterstorms.
That being said, Flusterstorm has mostly replaced Spell Pierce (took only four years...) so Top is much more likely to resolve when you cast it against the blue decks.
If you expect a lot of Miracles, I think it's reasonable to have some copies in your 75, but that's currently the only matchup where I think Top is actually better than Preordain.

[raid]

First, Congratz to your finish, watched your oncamera match against Loam and was pretty excited when I read that you smashed MentorBlabla in the quarterfinals.

Now my question: You played Grim and Petition both as 1-offs in your maindeck. A decision I am still unsure about. Did one of the two cards overperformed compared to the other. In which situations did they shine, in which not?

Greetinx.

Thx, yes i can understand if someone finds that odd and it can be discussed which tutor is better. In the tourney itself i actually had a situation, where Dark Petition wouldnt have done it, because of the cmc5, but Grim did get me the win. Overall i guees its a question of your boardingplans and which kind of disruption you´re expecting.

[Ronald Deuce]

Thx, yes i can understand if someone finds that odd and it can be discussed which tutor is better. In the tourney itself i actually had a situation, where Dark Petition wouldnt have done it, because of the cmc5, but Grim did get me the win. Overall i guees its a question of your boardingplans and which kind of disruption you´re expecting.

As a new player, I'm interested: what was the situation in which the Tutor was better than the Petition? I've seen a couple of situations in which comboing with more than one LED and few/no rituals necessitated the use of a ≤3cmc spell, but those have been rare. Not to say it can't be a real thing, but I'm wondering how much this has come up for other players experimenting with both Grim Tutor and Dark Petition.

I mentioned before that I think Dark is better with AdN, but I'm curious as to what you think here, as well. I notice the list has AdN in the sideboard.

Also, when you mention sideboarding, what would be your plan if you were only running Dark Petition?

Thanks in advance for the reports/advice/feedback!

[emidln]

As a new player, I'm interested: what was the situation in which the Tutor was better than the Petition? I've seen a couple of situations in which comboing with more than one LED and few/no rituals necessitated the use of a ≤3cmc spell, but those have been rare. Not to say it can't be a real thing, but I'm wondering how much this has come up for other players experimenting with both Grim Tutor and Dark Petition.

I mentioned before that I think Dark is better with AdN, but I'm curious as to what you think here, as well. I notice the list has AdN in the sideboard.

Also, when you mention sideboarding, what would be your plan if you were only running Dark Petition?

Thanks in advance for the reports/advice/feedback!

Grim Tutor is better than Dark Petition if you need to find a bounce spell or discard spell to ensure the combo. It can actually be cast off three lands. If you're in the process of comboing, Dark Petition is almost always better.

[OlegtheSuper]

Jonathan Alexander, am i right that it is you?http://tcdecks.net/deck.php?id=18407&iddeck=139364
Can you explain chrome mox in sb?
In what MU you sb EtW?
Why no flusterstorms? Because no combo? Is it good in control meta?

Regards
Oleg

[rw1347]

Been testing with this sideboard has been doing well. Im curious what do you guys think?

1x Massacre
2x Dread of Night
2x Flusterstorm
2x Xantid Swarm
1x Bayou
1x Empty the Warrens
2x Chain of Vapor
3x Abrupt Decay
1x Carpet of Flowers

Just wanted to get more player insight, and if I'm missing somthing. Thanks!

Edit: Currenty running a 1x Pif and 1x AN main

[Ronald Deuce]

1x Massacre
2x Dread of Night
2x Flusterstorm
2x Xantid Swarm
1x Bayou
1x Empty the Warrens
2x Chain of Vapor
3x Abrupt Decay
1x Carpet of Flowers

Looks pretty solid to me (an amateur), but I've got a couple of questions.

Are you running a Tropical Island in the main? I ask because I'm looking to acquire the duals (I hate to proxy when other people throw down for the actual cards) and I'm not sure whether it'd be better to run Trop or Bayou. More of my fetches find Trop, but I'm wondering how big a deal that really is (in part because of monetary concerns).

Have you found Swarm to do as much good as, say, additional copies of Empty? I goldfished the 3x Empty plan a bit and found the increased consistency to be really cool. I'm thinking of running two in the side and one in the main, or maybe two in the side and an AdN main.

Has 2x Dread been enough for you in playtesting?

Have you tried Hurkyl's Recall before? I've not had to deal with MUD, but I've seen some pretty idiot-proof affinity decks that might really put the hurt on me in the meta, seeing as I'm new to the deck and generally bad at Magic.

What's the appeal of Flusterstorm? It's a really, really good card, but a) does it really help you win a counterwar, and b) would more copies of anti-Gaddock/Thalia/Thorn/3sphere cards be better?

Not trying to dress down your whole plan; I'm genuinely interested in feedback because I don't get to playtest very often.

[Izor]

The above sideboard looks pretty standard, I'd say it's probably a good point to start and fine-tune once you got in some more testing.

The Tropical vs Bayou debate is nowadays mostly resolved due to the fact that most people opt to run one copy of both. It's still possible to run only one of them, but you have to be really careful with when to fetch it up and it may be too optimistic in Wasteland heavy metas. Traditionally, Tropical was run as the only green source, mainly because ANT used to run more cantrips than nowadays (I know some people still like playing Preordains nowadays, but before Grinding Station and DP was a thing almost everyone ran 2-3 Preordains). Running Bayou as your only green source is something more commonly seen in TES, which is a faster paced deck which always wants combo mana after dropping Xantids turn 1 and which basically always has less than 8 cantrips in the deck after boarding anyway. If money is a concern, you can get away playing only a Bayou as your green source, just be very careful with your fetching then. I'm sure this is still a better plan than not having AD available at all. Though outside of TES, it may not be the most optimal choice to have only the Bayou.

Xantids are still good against the decks they were always good against, but right now it seems that those decks are a little less common than they used to be (Omnitell, Reanimator, Merfolk, etc). I think running just two of them is still a good hedge, that's what I'm doing as well at the moment, but if those decks are even less common in your local meta and if you're having trouble with hate permanents, cutting them entirely is an option. Boarding in EtW is great in certain matchups, though I'm personally not sold on a full 3 copies yet, because they do tend to get really clunky at times and because they make your AN worse, which is usually good against a lot of the decks that multiple EtWs are also good against (Miracles, DnT, etc).

I don't run Dread at the moment, because my local DnT players have Gaddocks and Canonists and I lose too often even when I get one Dread in play. Getting two in play consistently is very unlikely, even if you play the full four, so there's that.

Hurkyl is fine if MUD (or Affinity) is big in your meta, otherwise it's often just a less efficient Chain of Vapor or Abrupt Decay.

Flusterstorm is there for two main things: to counter opposing Flusterstorms and to be a potential game breaker in the mirror match and in some other combo matchups. It does obviously help you win the counter war against normal 1-for-1 counters as well. How much you want them and how much you'd rather have more answers to hatebears once again depends on your meta.


As you were mentioning hatebears I'd just like to add Eidolon to that list, because that thing is really hard to beat and you'll face it game 1 already. Yesterday in my LGS I got crushed within 10 minutes by Burn in round 1, as he had a turn 2 Eidolon on the play in G1 and a Mindbreak trap for my unprotected T2 win in G2 (had to go for it, he had Eidolon as well). I still won the remaining rounds and got 3rd overall, but I'll probably up my Chain of Vapor count for next month, because AD is too inefficient against Burn.

[Zombie]

2 Dreads feels like too little to me. I'd pack 3 at the least.

[Ronald Deuce]

The above sideboard looks pretty standard, I'd say it's probably a good point to start and fine-tune once you got in some more testing.

The Tropical vs Bayou debate is nowadays mostly resolved due to the fact that most people opt to run one copy of both. It's still possible to run only one of them, but you have to be really careful with when to fetch it up and it may be too optimistic in Wasteland heavy metas....Xantids are still good against the decks they were always good against, but right now it seems that those decks are a little less common than they used to be (Omnitell, Reanimator, Merfolk, etc). I think running just two of them is still a good hedge, that's what I'm doing as well at the moment, but if those decks are even less common in your local meta and if you're having trouble with hate permanents, cutting them entirely is an option. Boarding in EtW is great in certain matchups, though I'm personally not sold on a full 3 copies yet, because they do tend to get really clunky at times and because they make your AN worse, which is usually good against a lot of the decks that multiple EtWs are also good against (Miracles, DnT, etc)....I don't run Dread at the moment, because my local DnT players have Gaddocks and Canonists and I lose too often even when I get one Dread in play. Getting two in play consistently is very unlikely, even if you play the full four, so there's that....Flusterstorm is there for two main things: to counter opposing Flusterstorms and to be a potential game breaker in the mirror match and in some other combo matchups. It does obviously help you win the counter war against normal 1-for-1 counters as well. How much you want them and how much you'd rather have more answers to hatebears once again depends on your meta.


As you were mentioning hatebears I'd just like to add Eidolon to that list, because that thing is really hard to beat and you'll face it game 1 already. Yesterday in my LGS I got crushed within 10 minutes by Burn in round 1, as he had a turn 2 Eidolon on the play in G1 and a Mindbreak trap for my unprotected T2 win in G2 (had to go for it, he had Eidolon as well). I still won the remaining rounds and got 3rd overall, but I'll probably up my Chain of Vapor count for next month, because AD is too inefficient against Burn.

Thanks a lot for the explanation! It's really helpful.

Do you think Bayou is a better choice at this juncture (ten cantrips main), or Trop? My fetches are almost all U/x fetches.

I'm still unsure of the best strategy for dealing with bears. My plan vs. Mav and D&T was to side in S-Shock, Dread and Massacre, but the Eidolon looks like just as big a problem. Have you been using AD and Chain to handle those, or something else? I'm thinking about Pyroclasm and Massacre for now.

A third question regards Xantid and Empty. It feels to me like they'd both be good against the same types of decks (countermagic and few creatures). My plan was just to cut two Petitions and replace them with Empties, but I'm wondering whether that's a good plan or a terrible one. I figured that would synergize a bit better with AdN and wouldn't clog the deck with too many wincons. Does that sound reasonable, or am I missing something crucial? I've been more inclined to switch out high-costed stuff than low-costed stuff for non-removal-based sideboard material, but maybe that's because I haven't had the chance to test very much and/or because I'm bad to the bone (at Magic). One last thing: I don't think Empty is good against D&T. I've gotten Battered pretty hard by that deck before, and I feel like it's walking right into a game loss if they play a Stoneforge.

Again, your feedback is much appreciated! If I'm noobing hard, just say so.

[JamieW89]

@Ronald
If you can only run one green dual I'd probably run something like this:

4 Delta
3 Tarn
1 Catacombs
2 Sea
1 Volc
1 Badlands
1 Trop
1 Island
1 Swamp

Flusterstorm is mainly for combo (including Elves on the play for me), not terrible against Hymn decks either. I don't like it versus a non-combo deck with counters and no discard to win a 'counter war'.

I do like Empty vs DnT, therapies definately help with that plan.

I board chains and decays versus Eidolon, I find they usually have Pillar postboard and no MB traps.

Regarding the posted sideboard:
I ran a similar MD (1 AdN, 1 PiF, 1 DP, 1 SDT, 2 Pre) & SB (-2 DoN, -1 Bayou, +1 Massacre, +1 KGrip, +1 Hurkyl's I believe) in Prague . I was not impressed by swarm due to a lack of Griselbrands, but I don't think I'll cut them yet. I don't think DoN are needed right now and prefer Massacre due to the versatility. Boarding lands isn't great but it's an option I guess (What's the 15th land main; 2nd red dual, 2nd Island, 3rd Sea or 9th fetch? Or just 14?). Looks fine overall though, perhaps switch the Massacre for another DoN, if you want those at all, since they're better in multiples. And it obviously depends on your local meta.

[Izor]

Thanks a lot for the explanation! It's really helpful.

Do you think Bayou is a better choice at this juncture (ten cantrips main), or Trop? My fetches are almost all U/x fetches.

I'm still unsure of the best strategy for dealing with bears. My plan vs. Mav and D&T was to side in S-Shock, Dread and Massacre, but the Eidolon looks like just as big a problem. Have you been using AD and Chain to handle those, or something else? I'm thinking about Pyroclasm and Massacre for now.

A third question regards Xantid and Empty. It feels to me like they'd both be good against the same types of decks (countermagic and few creatures). My plan was just to cut two Petitions and replace them with Empties, but I'm wondering whether that's a good plan or a terrible one. I figured that would synergize a bit better with AdN and wouldn't clog the deck with too many wincons. Does that sound reasonable, or am I missing something crucial? I've been more inclined to switch out high-costed stuff than low-costed stuff for non-removal-based sideboard material, but maybe that's because I haven't had the chance to test very much and/or because I'm bad to the bone (at Magic). One last thing: I don't think Empty is good against D&T. I've gotten Battered pretty hard by that deck before, and I feel like it's walking right into a game loss if they play a Stoneforge.

Again, your feedback is much appreciated! If I'm noobing hard, just say so.

The previous post already sums things up nicely. It does depend on the fetches you have available, but when running only one green source in a 10 U-cantrip build I agree that a mana base with Tropical seems better. If money is the concern, nowadays Trop doesn't even cost much more than Bayou anyway, and if you run the mana base suggested by Jamie, you're saving some money by running Badlands over something like the second green source or a second Volcanic or whatever.

Eidolon is very annoying, but the only efficient way of dealing with it is Chain of Vapor. If you have only a couple of those (which most people do), you'll probably have to complement them with some Decays in order to draw an out consistently. You'll usually have three different types of cards in your sideboard to deal with hatebears in general: Decays, Chains and specific anti-white stuff like Dread or Massacre. The Chains are catch-alls that you can always board to complement your more powerful anti hate post-board in order to reach a critical mass. For example, against Burn you board AD plus Chains (around 4-5 total). Against DnT you can board Dread/Massacre plus Chains. Unfortunately, against Gaddock Teeg decks you're mostly forced to board AD plus Chain as well, because Teeg dodges so many of the anti-white cards. Be careful against heavy mana denial decks, because AD does get worse against those due to your reliance on very few green sources. Pyroclasm is rare nowadays, but it's still a very strong card against both Eidolon decks and Gaddock Teeg and it's definitely not wrong to run a copy or two if you expect to see those a lot. Remember that it has its problems against DnT, though, because Mother of Runes can save their hate bears from it.

You're right about Xantid, which is generally good in matchups against blue decks that have counters, but no creature removal. These are most notably Merfolk and Griselbrand decks (Show and Tell, Reanimator). Merfolk can give you trouble nowadays, because they tend to run Chalice, and Griselbrand decks are a little less common than they used to, which is why Xantid isn't as strog as it used to be. It's still very good if you do happen to play against Griselbrand, though. EtW is more suited for any matchup where you have to win before your opponent does something that locks you out of the game, like dropping a million hatebears (DnT), assembling Countertop (Miracles) or drop Chalices and Spheres (MUD), and it's particularly good if you like to increase your odds to naturally play fast mana into a Storm spell in order to get through counter spells.

[Narcind]

The previous post already sums things up nicely. It does depend on the fetches you have available, but when running only one green source in a 10 U-cantrip build I agree that a mana base with Tropical seems better. If money is the concern, nowadays Trop doesn't even cost much more than Bayou anyway, and if you run the mana base suggested by Jamie, you're saving some money by running Badlands over something like the second green source or a second Volcanic or whatever.

Eidolon is very annoying, but the only efficient way of dealing with it is Chain of Vapor. If you have only a couple of those (which most people do), you'll probably have to complement them with some Decays in order to draw an out consistently. You'll usually have three different types of cards in your sideboard to deal with hatebears in general: Decays, Chains and specific anti-white stuff like Dread or Massacre. The Chains are catch-alls that you can always board to complement your more powerful anti hate post-board in order to reach a critical mass. For example, against Burn you board AD plus Chains (around 4-5 total). Against DnT you can board Dread/Massacre plus Chains. Unfortunately, against Gaddock Teeg decks you're mostly forced to board AD plus Chain as well, because Teeg dodges so many of the anti-white cards. Be careful against heavy mana denial decks, because AD does get worse against those due to your reliance on very few green sources. Pyroclasm is rare nowadays, but it's still a very strong card against both Eidolon decks and Gaddock Teeg and it's definitely not wrong to run a copy or two if you expect to see those a lot. Remember that it has its problems against DnT, though, because Mother of Runes can save their hate bears from it.

You're right about Xantid, which is generally good in matchups against blue decks that have counters, but no creature removal. These are most notably Merfolk and Griselbrand decks (Show and Tell, Reanimator). Merfolk can give you trouble nowadays, because they tend to run Chalice, and Griselbrand decks are a little less common than they used to, which is why Xantid isn't as strog as it used to be. It's still very good if you do happen to play against Griselbrand, though. EtW is more suited for any matchup where you have to win before your opponent does something that locks you out of the game, like dropping a million hatebears (DnT), assembling Countertop (Miracles) or drop Chalices and Spheres (MUD), and it's particularly good if you like to increase your odds to naturally play fast mana into a Storm spell in order to get through counter spells.

Good post, though I'd like to add that one of empty's best applications is vs delver decks, since they tend to run very few (if any) answers to it

[Ronald Deuce]

ARGH; just wrote a report for today's tourney and it disappeared into the aether. In short, I went 1-2. Low attendance, three rounds.

Round 1: D&T (0-1)
G1: I got screwed by Thalia. I may have had a turn-1 win, but I wasn't sure, so I waited a turn. Bad idea.
G2: Dread of Night saved the day. Followed it up with Massacre and a big Tendrils.
G3: Thalia and Canonist put on the hurt too quickly, and I probably would've had the combo if he hadn't shut me down.
Hatebears are a problem. Thinking I should've sided in 3 Empties, but live and learn. Therapy was really sub-par here (surprise, surprise! I'm new at this).

Round 2: Goblins (1-1)
G1: Got swarmed by a Piledriver and pals.
G2: Managed to Empty the Warrens for 18 goblins, and he couldn't race it.
G3: Turn one Empty for 14 goblins. He couldn't keep up.
This was a pretty funny match, primarily because beating Goblins using goblins in a non-Goblins deck is pretty silly.

Round 3: Maverick (1-2)
G1: Thalia and Gaddock Teeg screwed me. I think I conceded when he landed Gaddock because there wasn't anything I could do. I didn't have any mainboard answers.
G2: Got stuck on zero lands. Wasteland is a really good card. I managed to land a Dread of Night and find a second one off a Ponder, but he Decayed the first one before I could land the second. Not much else to tell; he just charged and I couldn't cast anything. N.B.: he hadn't played a Plains, so Massacre would've been worthless.
Hideous, hideous matchup. I feel like the only answer to Mav is either to board in as many copies of Empty as we can fit into the sideboard, and that still wouldn't have saved me without removal, which just didn't turn up.

I'm going down to 2x Duress and adding a "Tropical Island" because I found Duress to be, by far, my least useful card. The guys I didn't play were running BUG(?) and 12-post, so maybe it would've benefited against them, but I'm not convinced it's anything but our worst card.

[JamieW89]

I'm going down to 2x Duress and adding a "Tropical Island" because I found Duress to be, by far, my least useful card. The guys I didn't play were running BUG(?) and 12-post, so maybe it would've benefited against them, but I'm not convinced it's anything but our worst card.

Obviously Duress is superbad when the meta is 0% Force of Will/Combo. In most realities, however, those decks make up about 80% of the meta, and it's not too bad. Therapy is better, but it's probably also harder to play correctly for a new player.

If you're expecting to always face decks such as Maverick, DnT and Goblins I'd probably just run a fast version of TES.

[thefringthing]

An ANT list with 1 SDT, 1 Dark Petition, 1 Past in Flames (second copy), 1 Preordain as the flex slots took down the SCG Open this weekend.

[Narcind]

An ANT list with 1 SDT, 1 Dark Petition, 1 Past in Flames (second copy), 1 Preordain as the flex slots took down the SCG Open this weekend.

Well, he's 0-1 in the finals as of this post. Though infect is a pretty decent matchup so I wouldn't be surprised if he ends up winning.

[thefringthing]

Well, he's 0-1 in the finals as of this post. Though infect is a pretty decent matchup so I wouldn't be surprised if he ends up winning.Ah, I assumed the match I watched was the finals. I clearly wasn't paying much attention. In any case, I wonder if we're dialing in on a stock list. Something that ANT hasn't really had for quite a while.

[Narcind]

Doubt it. I mean, pretty much every list runs like the same 55 stock cards and then there's room for personal preferences, metagame calls and such.

[Ronald Deuce]

Obviously Duress is superbad when the meta is 0% Force of Will/Combo. In most realities, however, those decks make up about 80% of the meta, and it's not too bad. Therapy is better, but it's probably also harder to play correctly for a new player.

Yeah; I was surprised only one person appeared to be running Force today. A couple of the other guys are pretty steady Force players, too. I'm guessing the low turnout was the reason for the lack of others, and that the guys who showed felt like mixing it up.

To be honest, though, useful as Duress can be against instant-based control (and countertop/MUD/opposing discard), I found that even in matches against Delver/Mentor that I played two sessions ago, I'd have preferred a Therapy to a Duress nearly every time. I've been running a 4-3 split of Therapy to Duress. Sure, an extra piece of disruption is an extra piece of disruption, and my testing is pretty limited, but I'm most worried about land screw and speed versus Mav at this point because this is the second time in a row I've gotten shut out really quickly by Wasteland and the bears. Last time I played, I didn't do too well against the Delvers either, but they didn't have a one-card lock and I chalk up some of my performance to a lack of experience.


If you're expecting to always face decks such as Maverick, DnT and Goblins I'd probably just run a fast version of TES.

That sounds like good advice, though again, I don't think that today's field was typical for my meta (or any other, for that matter). I like crash-testing complicated decks to try to learn how to play better, so I'm hoping to get my hands on some Burning Wishes once I've got my landbase un-proxied just for the sake of testing TES (and of running Belcher in its current incarnation! What can I say? I like to live dangerously). This may be a stupid question, but has anyone tried boarding in, e.g., 1x Empty, 4x Rite of Flame, 4x Burning Wish, and 2x Chrome Mox (leaving an additional Empty and, say, a Massacre and 2x Chain of Vapor in the side for Wishing) instead of the heavily anti-hate sideboard that seems to be favored? I'm running two red sources main already, and looking at TES's sideboard, it seems like it's geared toward winning the grindier games our deck is supposed to handle better.

For the time being I'm going to stick with the board I ran today for the most part, but I'm probably going to cut Hurkyl's Recall (no MUD players around here), main Trop as land #15 (instead of a third Duress), and replace the two board spaces with a third Empty and a second Chain of Vapor. I didn't get manascrewed on draws today (a marked improvement over last time), but the Leonin Arbiter and Wasteland choked me out twice with only 14 lands main, eight of which having been fetches.

[rw1347]

Thanks for the idea on the board, sorry its taken me so long to respond. I ended up playing that board with a Grim Tutor over DP main deck, which has now been changed to DP and the massacre and 1 flusterstorm have been changed to Disfigure.

[Exodus]

Hey guys, is there an unconventional card for sb that can help me to beat miracles? I started thinking I am not gonna win a single match up against that deck, here in Italy Miracles is much more common than US and there are many really good players playing it. I read some pages ago that EtW is considered a really good card against them but I don't agree since Izzet staticaster has become really common and they side it against us. With that card plus the 2-3 StP they keep, also Xantid Swarm is much less effective. And Mentor Miracle is become an even worse match up, since it is faster and we cannot side in the dread of night, we don't have the space for them.
My current sb is:
2 Xantid
1 Carpet
3 Dread of Night
2 Flusterstorm
1 EtW
3 Abrupt Decat
1 Krosan Grip
1 Chain of Vapor
1 Wipe Away

But I really started thinking to come back to Pithing Needle, it's the only card that can slow down Miracles and avoid the "Force/Flusterstorm on top" situations.
What do you think of these cards vs Miracles?
-Defence Grid
-Surgical Extraction
-2 more Ad Nauseam in SB (1 MD) with maybe 1 more carpet?

[JamieW89]

A somewhat uncommon option (these days) is 4 Doomsday, 1 Emrakul, 1 Shelldock Isle (can probably run 1 Needle as well) in the board. It's bad if they're expecting it, but if their creature hate postboard is Staticaster, EE and a couple Plows it seems pretty good. Could even go a little further and add 2 SB tops and an Ideas Unbound to morph into DDFT postboard, but I don't think it's worth the space. I think Slosh ran a DD package in some tournament earlier this year (Ovino? Prague eternal?), and didn't like it too much but I might have missremembered..

As for Xantid Swarm, I haven't been boarding it versus them most of them (maybe 20% or so, have to keep people guessing a bit), since there are so few postboard setups in their range that are really weak to it.

As for your suggestions:
- I don't think Surgical is good vs Miracles, but Extirpate isn't the worst.
- I don't like Defense Grid in ANT without white at all because they often only need one counter and will let your discard resolve with 3 mana open. With chant effects it's a good card though.
- I don't think we need either a second carpet or a second/third AdN in the board for this matchup.

I have an incredible record against miracles this year usually boarding something like 3-4 decay, 1 grip, 1 carpet, 1 top/needle, 1 empty. But variance and opponents not being aware of EtW was definately a key reason for that.

P.S. What's the reasoning for playing Wipe Away over the 4th Decay, 2nd Chain, or 2nd Grip?

[Exodus]

A somewhat uncommon option (these days) is 4 Doomsday, 1 Emrakul, 1 Shelldock Isle (can probably run 1 Needle as well) in the board. It's bad if they're expecting it, but if their creature hate postboard is Staticaster, EE and a couple Plows it seems pretty good. Could even go a little further and add 2 SB tops and an Ideas Unbound to morph into DDFT postboard, but I don't think it's worth the space. I think Slosh ran a DD package in some tournament earlier this year (Ovino? Prague eternal?), and didn't like it too much but I might have missremembered..

As for Xantid Swarm, I haven't been boarding it versus them most of them (maybe 20% or so, have to keep people guessing a bit), since there are so few postboard setups in their range that are really weak to it.

As for your suggestions:
- I don't think Surgical is good vs Miracles, but Extirpate isn't the worst.
- I don't like Defense Grid in ANT without white at all because they often only need one counter and will let your discard resolve with 3 mana open. With chant effects it's a good card though.
- I don't think we need either a second carpet or a second/third AdN in the board for this matchup.

I have an incredible record against miracles this year usually boarding something like 3-4 decay, 1 grip, 1 carpet, 1 top/needle, 1 empty. But variance and opponents not being aware of EtW was definately a key reason for that.

P.S. What's the reasoning for playing Wipe Away over the 4th Decay, 2nd Chain, or 2nd Grip?

Thx for the answer. Btw how many EtW do you use? Have you ever been counter-raced with a Mentor?

For Wipe, there is no real reason tbh, I really like Wipe Away for its versability (since it's like a chain that avoids Calice and counters and can be used in extreme situations of race against PW and creatures) but it's the first slot out when I am gonna change the sideboard. It's really a matter of personal preference to put it over the second grip or the second chain.
Anyway what do you think of Carpet in this match up? I consider it less effective then vs threshold UGR, unless we are planning to pass through AdN (that's why I suggested the second copy with 3 AdN). In my opinion AdN is the strongest card (and plan) vs Miracle. Pif is weak because RIP and because it doesn't close by itself.
Even if with mentor on board they can close in a couple of turns, their race is quite delayed in the game, since they tend to play it at turn 4-5, therefore I think AdN is a good plan IF it can be resolved. That's why I came up with this uncommon solution: 1 AdN MD (or even 2), 2 AdN SB, 2 Boseiju SB and maybe 1 MD. With this set up, all the pressure that Miracles put on us disappears. We are not forced to try to find solutions fast before he goes in control. We can collect manas and hard cast with the help of petals and carpets AdN with Boseiju in his turn and close the next turn, since with 20 cards it will be hard for him to have more contrasts than our solutions.

[Izor]

I usually board 4 Decays and nothing else. Most of my wins against miracles come from Ad Nauseam. I'm often able to win if I have a turn 1 discard spell plus turn 2 win against them. If that doesn't work, I usually go long against them and rely on AD to kill CB. My record is definitely positive against them and any miracles players in my local meta told me they didn't like the matchup, so I'm not too worried.

[Will_L]

http://mtgtop8.com/event?e=10708&f=LE

Check out some of the awesome 1 ofs in this particular Storm list...

Pretty hilarious Plan B

[l33twash0r]

http://mtgtop8.com/event?e=10708&f=LE

Check out some of the awesome 1 ofs in this particular Storm list...

Pretty hilarious Plan B

I think that's just error with Desolation Twin and it should be Dark Petition.

[DarkJester]

http://mtgtop8.com/event?e=10708&f=LE

Check out some of the awesome 1 ofs in this particular Storm list...

Pretty hilarious Plan B

Read page 174^^
I know, it's long ago...

[Ronald Deuce]

Pretty much at my wits' end trying to figure out the best way to deal with Maverick. D&T is a problem occasionally, but not to the same degree because it doesn't run Gaddock Teeg.

My sideboarding plan at this point is as follows:

-3 Duress
-2 Dark Petition
-2 Cabal Therapy
-1 Past in Flames
-1 Tendrils of Agony

+3 Empty the Warrens
+3 Dread of Night
+2 Chain of Vapor
+1 Sudden Shock

Does this look like a reasonable plan? I figure that Mav might not be able to throw down enough blockers to stop a boatload of goblins if we can land Empty on turn 1 or turn 2. It's taking me some time to figure out whether to play or mull hands with this board plan, so if anyone's got some pointers on how it differs from the game-1 plan I'd appreciate the advice. Pretty agonizing to cut back to four tutors, but Petition and AdN are really terrible together in my experience. I'm still on the fence about whether I should run Badlands or a second Island in the main. Badlands would provide a much better out for dumping Empty (and getting a second red source is crucial versus land destruction), but I don't like going down to only two basic lands. Has anyone noticed Wasteland to be a big problem in the Empty plan, or is it usually fast enough to circumvent Waste and the hatebears?

[BrettF]

Hi Ronald

I've been playing with 2 DP and this is my preferred postboard 60 vs DNT. Notably removing ad nauseam as its just not as reliable as etw. Also following up empty with the support spells of therapy, chain, or dread seals the deal if it looks like they might catch up on board otherwise. I would call this "Belcher mode"

2 dark petition
1 pif
1 toa
4 tutor
3 empty
3 cabal therapy
3 dread of night
2 chain of vapor
2 ponder
4 probe
4 brainstorm
15 land
16 fast mana

As for the volcanic, just don't pass the turn with volc in play unless u have your next turns combo all planned out without needing mana from said volc.

[Dr_D]

Hi Ronald

I've been playing with 2 DP and this is my preferred postboard 60 vs DNT. Notably removing ad nauseam as its just not as reliable as etw. Also following up empty with the support spells of therapy, chain, or dread seals the deal if it looks like they might catch up on board otherwise. I would call this "Belcher mode"

2 dark petition
1 pif
1 toa
4 tutor
3 empty
3 cabal therapy
3 dread of night
2 chain of vapor
2 ponder
4 probe
4 brainstorm
15 land
16 fast mana

As for the volcanic, just don't pass the turn with volc in play unless u have your next turns combo all planned out without needing mana from said volc.

I've also been playing a list with 2 DP and ad naus main lately. This is exactly how I've been boarding against DnT.

[Togores]

why?????????????????


he is at one life but he has tendrills.

except the last card in the opp hand is bojuka bog he can still win, he could petition for a cabal ritual, therapy (if its the crop rotation) and then mini tendrills to stay alive.

then continue playing until pif comes and wins.


someon explain please???

[TchillyHo]

Hi,
I'm kinda new to legacy and new to ANT.
I'm learning the deck (goldfish + games on cockatrice) but i'm really lost when it comes to sideboarding.
I've read various primers and articles but I'm still lost because everyone seems to side differently.

Can someone help me with the sideboard plans versus common matchups ?

For reference my list is a stock list with : 2 Pif, 1 Dark Petition, 1 ToA.
My side is :
1 Tropical Island
3 Abrupt Decay
2 Chains of Vapor
2 Dread of Night
1 Disfigure
2 Carpet of flower (or 2 Xantid Swarm ??)
1 Rebuild
1 Empty the Warrens
2 Flusterstorm (or 2 more Empty the Warrens ??)

[DavidVanDerRaven]

Hi guys,

writing the first time here :-)! After years of playing competetive legacy with different combo decks, i finally came to the insight of playing a ,,real" challenging combo deck. (Yes i played a lot of Show and Tell..).


Hi,
Can someone help me with the sideboard plans versus common matchups ?


--> try out this one: http://www.starcitygames.com/article/29060_Stormboarding.html
It's more a basic Introduction to Stormboarding, but it gives an insight of the idea how to board, which is basically more important than the exact 15 you are running.

I have also a question to the experienced Stormplayers out here. I am currently testing this Caleb Scherer list http://mtgtop8.com/event?e=10443&d=259780&f=LE, with a different boardplan: 4x Dread of Night,3x Abrupt Decay 2x Xantid Swarm ,2xChain of Vapor, 2x Carpet of Flowers, 1x Tropical Island, 1x Empty the Warrens.

I have also issues to figure out how to board correctly in some matchups (espacially what to take out) naming: Miracles, DnT (and Maverick).
So here a few specific questions about boarding situations:

- The List i quoted from Caleb obviously boards in the Green Splash against DNT (since 2x Chain and 2x Disfigure cannot be enough am i correct?). Do i need to board in the Splash with 4x Dread of Night and 2x Chain?
My Boarding against DNT would look like this (but please correct me if this is bullshit, since i am unexperienced): IN: 4x Dread of Night, 2x Chain of Vapor, 1x Empty the Warrens, and OUT: 3x Duress and 4x Cabal Therapy (i am very unsure about how many Cabal Therapys to cut. A Preordain could also be cut ofc... Discard appears pretty much mediocre in this mu to me).

- How about the Matchup against Maverick / Miracles? VS Miracles i am very unsure also what to cut.

- And finally to hopefully understand the power of Disfigure in the board... What is it specifically that makes Disfigure good for us, or in some situations "better" than dread of Night (or maybe also in comparism to Abrupt Decay!?). What came to my mind is: instant speed, 1cc, kills x/2 bears naming Teeg, Cannonist and Mage (Which Dread of Night doesn't). Since Cannonist is often protected by Mom this sometimes makes disfigure useless in theory. I am also thinking about 3-1 (Dread of night - Disfigure Split) or maybe even 2-2 but i don't fully understand the whole spectrum for the use of Disfigure.

Please help me :-) (I am also looking for a very detailed Boarding Help for Legacy Storm if someone knows a Link please share!)

have a nice day,
David!

[TchillyHo]

- How about the Matchup against Maverick / Miracles? VS Miracles i am very unsure also what to cut.


I've been watching Paul Cheon stream on twitch for a couple days now.
I think Caleb gave him some side plans. Especially versus miracles it seems that Caleb boards in 3 empty, and the green splash, and boards out 3 LED, preordains, 2 infernal tutors and 1 therapy (and maybe 1 petal ?).
However i didnot see Paul win a lot of postboard games with this strategy ...

You can watch Paul's stream and past broadcasts on twitch (he is HAUMPH).

[Sloshthedark]

A somewhat uncommon option (these days) is 4 Doomsday, 1 Emrakul, 1 Shelldock Isle (can probably run 1 Needle as well) in the board. It's bad if they're expecting it, but if their creature hate postboard is Staticaster, EE and a couple Plows it seems pretty good. Could even go a little further and add 2 SB tops and an Ideas Unbound to morph into DDFT postboard, but I don't think it's worth the space. I think Slosh ran a DD package in some tournament earlier this year (Ovino? Prague eternal?), and didn't like it too much but I might have missremembered..

As for Xantid Swarm, I haven't been boarding it versus them most of them (maybe 20% or so, have to keep people guessing a bit), since there are so few postboard setups in their range that are really weak to it.

As for your suggestions:
- I don't think Surgical is good vs Miracles, but Extirpate isn't the worst.
- I don't like Defense Grid in ANT without white at all because they often only need one counter and will let your discard resolve with 3 mana open. With chant effects it's a good card though.
- I don't think we need either a second carpet or a second/third AdN in the board for this matchup.

I have an incredible record against miracles this year usually boarding something like 3-4 decay, 1 grip, 1 carpet, 1 top/needle, 1 empty. But variance and opponents not being aware of EtW was definately a key reason for that.

P.S. What's the reasoning for playing Wipe Away over the 4th Decay, 2nd Chain, or 2nd Grip?

I did on Prague Eternal, haven't faced any CB deck, S+Telling Emrakul against a Griselbrand was the only thing it achived, every time I have it in paper I face exactly 0 relevant decks, maybe that's kind of a recipe ;) .. anyway the tech swings the postboard games to 80/20 range, the problem is you're lacking too many cards against non-U MUs esp. against Teeg and the SBording is very light

Extirpate is great
Defense grid is awful
I liked your 1 Swarm, 1 Carpet in MKM



I've been watching Paul Cheon stream on twitch for a couple days now.
I think Caleb gave him some side plans. Especially versus miracles it seems that Caleb boards in 3 empty, and the green splash, and boards out 3 LED, preordains, 2 infernal tutors and 1 therapy (and maybe 1 petal ?).
However i didnot see Paul win a lot of postboard games with this strategy ...

You can watch Paul's stream and past broadcasts on twitch (he is HAUMPH).

The thing is he doesn't have much experience and practice and in fact time to find out himself, a lot of people just copy pastes list with no knowledge how the result was achieved or games played out, with popular illusion of Storm is suddenly awesome so many people copypasted Sherers list EtW is not a "surprising" tech anymore (tbh it wasn't stellar when I tested even before the popular list, but the tech might be decent way to SB for tempo if you feel it) and renders G3 awkward... I strongly disagree on boarding out LED and IT - he tries to get small no. of goblins running asap yet in order to do so ignores the IT->LED route which is usualy faster, produces more tokes and keeps plan A intact, he prefers LP for sake of not going all in, which still leaves him with few cards and more time for Opponent to find an answer

to put it short - EtW is good in the MU to have but EtW as THE plan is a poor choice

[ScottW]

I watched Paul Cheon's stream and wouldn't recommend it to anybody. He's basically learning to play it himself and asking the viewers questions about card interactions. I remember him asking what Carpet of Flowers does. The guy is silly and not somebody to watch for the finer points of the deck. Watch some videos by Nevilshute or Togores. This thread has some great resources linked to at the start as already mentioned. I think Jonathan Alexander also has a side board article in his blog.

[Jonathan Alexander]

Feel free to hit me up at the GP today, always happy to discuss Storm.

[aegisd]

I'm still learning the deck myself but here are my thoughts, maybe someone else can give some insight into this


- The List i quoted from Caleb obviously boards in the Green Splash against DNT (since 2x Chain and 2x Disfigure cannot be enough am i correct?). Do i need to board in the Splash with 4x Dread of Night and 2x Chain?
My Boarding against DNT would look like this (but please correct me if this is bullshit, since i am unexperienced): IN: 4x Dread of Night, 2x Chain of Vapor, 1x Empty the Warrens, and OUT: 3x Duress and 4x Cabal Therapy (i am very unsure about how many Cabal Therapys to cut. A Preordain could also be cut ofc... Discard appears pretty much mediocre in this mu to me).Cabal Therapy I think still remains good against D&T. You can name key hate cards on the draw before they can deploy it (Thalia mainly), and it pairs well with the Empty the Warrens that you're bringing in from the side. I think cutting Cantrips might be the better than therapy since there's not a ton of time to sculpt a hand in this matchup.


- And finally to hopefully understand the power of Disfigure in the board... What is it specifically that makes Disfigure good for us, or in some situations "better" than dread of Night (or maybe also in comparism to Abrupt Decay!?).I believe it's mainly there to target Deathrite, but it can also hit things like Stoneforge, Teeg, Meddling Mage, Ethersworn, that a single DoN won't be able to hit. Granted with 4 of them you can pretty easily get to two and kill the other hatebears, but DRS is still going to be a problem, especially in the slower matchups.

[BeardTron]

I've never seen it before, and forgive me if this is a common thing...but I just saw an ANT player resolve Sylvan Library on camera.

Anyone else jam this, too??