[Deck] ANT (Ad Nauseam Tendrils) Storm Combo [Archive] - Page 17

Ronald Deuce

03-09-2016, 02:34 PM

My thought process is:

Vs t1 Chalice or Thorn, Chewer is a t1 response, which means you get a t2/t3 to sculpt your hand / very likely win. Unlocking your 1 mana spells immediately is really big. I think a random 6 card plus Chewer hand vs a random 6 card plus prison card Eldrazi hand probably favors the Storm player.

I kinda expect 4 Chalice / 4 Thorn builds to be the norm. Hitting multiple pieces of hate and the mana to cast them will be relatively rare overall if they're only playing 8. You probably lose to multiple pieces of hate, even with 'the right answers' in your deck, because you don't really get to do anything until you have the answer, so even if you have Rebuild and hit all your mana, you haven't been able to sculpt your hand and need to have just naturally drawn a powerful hand on top of the Rebuild.

Also TKS is as likely to be paired with one of these hate pieces as a 2nd hate piece - TKS takes your answer, but won't get Chewer.

That said, I think the g1 for this match up is probably so unfavored that spending too many SB slots on this matchup might be a losing proposition overall (even with 4 Chewers, you're likely not to have one in hand g2 or g3) and the real answer might just be 'hope to dodge the Eldrazi games until they ban Chalice for warping the legacy meta'.

A few quick things:

—Thought-Knot Seer CAN hit Ingot Chewer.
—You're right that, in a given seven-card hand, hitting more than one Chalice or Thorn isn't very likely. The problem is that they get mulligans, same as we do, and more than one lock-piece is so hard for us to beat that they're pretty likely to go to 5 in order to find them. If they board in Trinisphere, their odds are pretty good.
—I can understand the argument that we need to be careful not to spend too many slots on hate for any one deck, but I don't see why we should treat this deck as anything but a Miracles-level threat, or maybe even a bigger one. If we're bringing in 5-6 cards for Miracles, it stands to reason that we probably want a bigger number of threats than we'd bring in against decks that aren't as big a problem. Even though Eldrazi's a faster deck (making it dangerous to run too many cards that dilute our combo), we really, really need answers to their hate, and relying on one-mana discard won't cut it if they draw any number of Chalices in their opener. Personally, I've got dead space in my sideboard (maybe because my meta's pretty small). A lot of our other sideboard options didn't really do much for us anyway, in my testing, so I've had a few flex spots for a while that I'm now filling with Recall effects. It's worth pointing out, incidentally, that nevilshute's point about AdN is important: we don't want too many high-costed cards, so I'm probably only running 1-2 Rebuilds (alongside 1-2 Hurkyl's) rather than more Rebuilds, even if they're our best out against multiple lock pieces. Losing 3 off Ad Nauseam for something that isn't business kills.

thefringthing

03-09-2016, 04:35 PM

I mean Miracles, Eldrazi, and Death & Taxes are probably our major game one bad matchups. Ignoring other decks for sideboard construction doesn't seem too insane to me. I'm on something like:

1-2 Xantid Swarm
0-1 Sphinx of the Final Word
2 Ingot Chewer
1 Hurkyl's Recall
3-4 Abrupt Decay
0-1 Krosan Grip
3 Dread of Night
1 Empty the Warrens
2 Pithing Needle/graveyard hate/Flusterstorm

assuming Empty isn't the main. I don't think it makes sense to board stuff in for Delver, for instance. That matchup is already pretty good. I agree that Eldrazi needs to be treated like a Miracles-level threat.

iatee

03-09-2016, 04:43 PM

What I meant by "doesn't hit" - Ingot is a turn 1 response. Any good hand with a t2/3/4 response risks losing it to a t2 TKS.

Izor

03-10-2016, 10:58 AM

I don't know how realistic it is to think that we can ever beat turn 1 Chalice into turn 2 TKS on the play in any circumstances.

So far in my testing I've been able to keep a positive win record against them when I'm on the play, and that's all I can ask for. Having a discard spell turn 1 followed by a turn 2 or 3 kill is what I'm aiming for in the matchup. I'm also playing 4 Duress, because you can't afford to get the 50/50 Therapy on Thorn/Chalice wrong on turn 1. Thinking about playing Thoughtseizes main now, because they don't force me to guess turn 1 and they also hit TKS when needed. Potentially EtW main over AN then. Still have some testing to do, but honestly the matchup will probably never be good for us. The metagame seems pretty hostile right now, and in the back of my head I'm a tiny bit worried about the soon-to-be-released Invasive Surgery.

thefringthing

03-10-2016, 11:02 AM

Are you keeping discard in against them, or are you just talking about pre-board?

Izor

03-10-2016, 11:04 AM

Mostly pre-board, and I often go back to discard when I'm back on the play game 3. Discard is horrible on the draw most of the time, but on the play it's often good. Snagging their turn 1 lock piece is better than having to Decay it a turn later.

EDIT: Playing one EtW main might be a good idea right now anyway, I recently watched someone fold twice when TKS took his randomly drawn Tendrils. It's so stupid that this thing also has to exile things on top of being a 4/4 Thoughtseize for 2.

thefringthing

03-10-2016, 12:57 PM

Maindeck Empty is okay to good versus anything without Stoneforge Mystic. I think it makes sense right now.

Patrunkenphat7

03-10-2016, 03:56 PM

in the back of my head I'm a tiny bit worried about the soon-to-be-released Invasive Surgery.

I don't think this is anything to be worried about. It is basically just as playable as Envelop - I don't see the Delirium effect suddenly making Envelop a universally-played card, and even if it does get played more, it's just another counterspell that we need to deal with.

thefringthing

03-10-2016, 10:48 PM

Is Teferi's Realm good yet?

nevilshute

03-11-2016, 12:50 AM

Is Teferi's Realm good yet?

When just considering Chalice it seems decent, even though UU is an issue potentially. But in the face of sphere/thorn effects it seems untenable.

I'm having good experiences running 2/1 Hurkyl's Recall / Echoing Truth vs Eldrazi

nevilshute

03-11-2016, 12:57 AM

I don't think this is anything to be worried about. It is basically just as playable as Envelop - I don't see the Delirium effect suddenly making Envelop a universally-played card, and even if it does get played more, it's just another counterspell that we need to deal with.

I agree. What's more is most current decks that would be interested in running this effect will have an issue getting delirious (:wink:). Getting a land, instant and sorcery into their own yard is almost a given but what about the 4th card type? They will likely have to bank on us discarding a deathrite or Liliana from them.

I mean don't get me wrong, it's obviously a strict upgrade on Envelop (rest in peace foil Envelop, I hardly knew yee), so any deck that wanted Envelop is going to run this instead. But yeah I don't see this doing much against us. A lands player from my LGS is sweating over this though.

OlegtheSuper

03-11-2016, 08:59 AM

I agree. What's more is most current decks that would be interested in running this effect will have an issue getting delirious (:wink:). Getting a land, instant and sorcery into their own yard is almost a given but what about the 4th card type?

Street wrath

Quasim0ff

03-11-2016, 10:41 AM

Street wrath

Street Wraith is super played in legacy, agreed.

Izor

03-11-2016, 11:52 AM

That's true, I guess decks like Miracles can't realistically get to Delirium.. The most likely suspects would probably be decks with Liliana or red based Delver decks, especially Grixis Delver, which can sac their dudes to Therapies and/or zap a redundant creature with a Bolt if needed. Killing your own dudes never sounds appealing, but if you're able to counter+extract something like a Show and Tell, Loam or Infernal Tutor for U, it's totally worth it.

Teferi's realm could actually be sweet against versions of Eldrazi and MUD that mostly rely on Chalice and 3sphere, but against normal sphere effects it's pretty bad.

thefringthing

03-11-2016, 10:16 PM

Geez, cutting four cards that get rid of Counterbalance and three that get rid of Chalice for three Teferi's Realms sure opens up a lot of slots. Probably can't beat a Thorn or a Lodestone Golem ever, though.

gibbousm

03-11-2016, 11:06 PM

Ronald Deuce

03-12-2016, 12:06 AM

So I'm finalizing my sideboard and in testing I've honestly been pretty underwhelmed by Carpet of Flowers. Anyone have a good suggestion on what I can run instead of them? It just seems like I rarely get more than 1 mana off of it.

I haven't run Carpet of Flowers or Xantid Swarm in some time. I'm thinking of bringing back a couple of Swarms because someone's started to play Show and Tell in my metagame, but I'm not sold on making cuts for either card. I haven't noticed an increased problem with counterspells without Xantid Swarm. The same is true for Carpet, but I feel like there's a stronger case for bringing in Carpet in a number of matchups. One of its major advantages is that it can produce a boatload of mana (esp. in multiples) when the opponent has Rest in Peace, a card that makes Cabal Ritual and Dark Petition useless. I've never been in such a situation, but I'm sure it's a real thing. Just seems to me like we've got problems that'll show up more frequently and that are worth more sideboard space, even against the same decks that run RiP.

Not sure that any two suggestions for what to run instead will be the same, but here's what I'm running at the moment:
4x Abrupt Decay
2x Chain of Vapor
2x Disfigure
2x Hurkyl's Recall
1x Dark Petition
1x Krosan Grip
1x Tropical Island
1x Rebuild
1x ????? (usually Massacre, SDT, or a third Duress; lately, probably Rebuild #2)

(N.B.: Maindeck, I'm running 14 lands, I just switched out Preordain #2 with Sensei's Top, and I'm running nine rituals, six discards, and singletons of every piece of business except Grim Tutor [incl. Empty AND AdN].)

Everything green comes in against Miracles (incl. Trop). Everything with cmc 1 (sans Duress) comes in against Maverick and Delver, or anything else with Gaddock Teeg or Ethersworn Canonist. Same goes for Elves, Gobbos, and D&T, but almost definitely with Massacre added. The Rebuild/Recall effects are for Eldrazi (or, I guess, other Chalice decks), and I'd probably run the Tropical to up my land count in the matchup and allow for added Abrupt Decays if necessary. The extra Dark Petition (I had 2 in my main until this week) is for matchups in which we don't want or need Empty, or matchups in which Empty's likely to just get us killed. Examples include Elves, Goblins, Batterskull.dec.

Hope this helps! Anyone have suggestions?

Ronald Deuce

03-12-2016, 12:19 AM

P.S., regarding Teferi's Realm, Invasive Surgery, and Street Wraith:

—Teferi's Realm looks pretty good, but (like Rebuild) it gets totally trashed by Thorn. Also, Realm absolutely can sabotage Empty the Warrens.
—Invasive Surgery certainly looks like it's got a whole lot of potential, but I don't think it's a big threat. Why would a deck with access to Flusterstorm, Daze, Force, and/or Stifle want to run Surgery? How many blue decks do we need to worry about that would run Envelop, and how big a threat are they? Why would a deck typically without blue splice in this one blue card when Mindbreak Trap is available? Don't get me wrong: getting all our Tutors taken is likely to kill us all, but the card feels really narrow and probably not strong enough.
—Street Wraith is pretty definitionally a one-trick pony for us. And we're not the only ones who have this problem. I don't think it's worth our concern, at least at this point.

[EDIT: Note to self: don't type long, incoherent posts when you're really tired. I guess the question regarding Surgery is one of whether it's likely to do more damage to us than any number of other options an opponent can field. It's obviously better than Envelop, but was Envelop really all that great against us to begin with? Strikes me that, though Surgery's pretty much Extraction tacked onto Envelop, there are a lot of other threats that seem easier to throw at us and comparably devastating if the opponent has a clock. And Surgery's just as easy for us to stop as any other countermagic if we find it off of a Probe or a Duress early on.]

ScottW

03-12-2016, 07:04 PM

Did anyone from this thread play in Prague 2016?

Jonathan Alexander

03-12-2016, 07:50 PM

Well, I played in the Legacy Challenge on Magic Online. Results updated into my Storm Spreadsheet (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1SJHWNW0-kGLjJDyJmR7BbOn6yMrcBuF6awtQUqoR3qw/edit?usp=sharing).

Decklist. (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1GKYgnpzvADMZGmFlEmdfdMYL1V19P3HJ6A_dH0fNfXk/pub)

1-2 Shardless
2-1 Merfolk
2-0 UR Delver
2-0 Explorer 12 Post
2-1 Merfolk
0-2 Team America
0-2 Infect

Most of my games were rather uninteresting and you can get all the relevant info from the spreadsheet, but here's a few scenarios:

R1G2 my opponent has two draws to find Force, hits and I lose because they also have Deathrite and I'm all-in on Infernal.
R2G1 my opponent has no Spells after my turn two, but I still lose because I never find any business spells.
R3G1 I have to sweat my opponent's draw step because I misclick when paying for their Daze and don't have any more black mana for the turn.
R4G2 my opponent has 2 Warping Wail, which is certainly an annoying card because it's a counterspell for non-blue that's actually playable (looking at you, Mindbreak Trap).
R5G2 I Duress my opponent and they have Flusterstorm and Arcane Laboratory. They don't have a third land and I don't have another discard spell nor cantrip, so I take Flusterstorm, they draw land, I lose.
R6G1 I never draw a single ritual, but I'm floating Infernal, Petition, Ad Nauseam & Past in Flames through my hand and library without having the mana to cast any of them.
R6G2 I accidentally play a Lotus Petal I don't mean to play before my combo turn and lose because I don't make enough Goblins.
R7G1 my opponent keeps a very questionable hand on the play but draws pump spells in both their draw steps to kill me on turn three.
R7G2 I have Infernal Tutor, Past in Flames and four rituals, but no red mana or discard spell to get rid of the Past in Flames.

Storm is definitely strong, but you're mostly playing the odds right now, which is way less fun than navigating through walls of countermagic.

jdc5011

03-12-2016, 09:57 PM

Hey guys. I've just recently built storm (played maverick for a while but wanted something different). Here is the list I have built:

2 Underground Sea
1 Volcanic Island
4 Polluted Delta
4 Flooded STrand
2 Island
1 Swamp

4 Cabal Ritual
4 Cabal Therapy
3 Duress
4 Dark Ritual
4 Gitaxian Probe
4 Ponder
1 Past in Flames
1 Ad Nauseam
1 Tendrils of Agony
4 Brainstorm
4 Lotus Petal
4 Lion's Eye Diamond
4 Infernal Tutor
3 Preordain
1 Dark Petition

Side
3 Abrupt Decay
1 Xantid Swarm
1 Tropical Island
2 Carpet of Flowers
2 Chain of Vapor
2 Hurkyl's Recall
2 Disfigure
1 Empty the Warrens
1 ????

Thoughts? Went 2-1 at my local shop Thursday (first time I've played it).

Match 1 Burn:
Game 1: Had a pretty good opening for burn. Opponent opted for the swiftspear into bolt on turn 2. I git probe and find eidolon which I promptly therapy on my turn 2. Found what I needed and went off turn 4 facing lethal next turn.
Game 2: sideboard into empty (saw a plateau so I was fearful of leyline). Never saw it and died to what burn does best.
Game 3: Bring back in tendrils (leave out AN). Spent a lot of time doing math and figured out the line to make it work exactly on turn 3 with IT -> PiF.
1 - 0

Match 2 (4C delver):
I know these guys pretty well and I always put him on some sort of delver. Never sure which variant it will be though
Game 1: Got hymned on turn 2 (losing IT and LED). I was planning to go off on my turn. TNN next turn hits me a few times before I find what I need off AN. Although I did go to 4 while he was holding bolt.
Game 2: I had a turn 1 kill (even through FoW) but get turn 1 thoughtseized (taking IT). I naturally draw IT 2 turns later. I git probe seeing FoW + ponder. He plays revoker naming LED (2 in hand). A few turns of draw go later and I decided to try to go off (he has 2 unknown + FoW and ponder I still know about). I cast DR. He decides not to force it. I therapy and he again decides not to force. Of course I name force and turns over another force I didn't know about. Coast is clear and I proceed to go off through PiF.
2 - 0

Match 3 (Aggro Loam)
I know this will be a rough match.
Game 1: Turn 1 therapy naming chalice misses. Turn 2 sees land -> mox into GSZ for teeg. No answers mainboard and I scope it up.
Game 2: We both mull to 6 (no therapy or durress). I look at a hand with empty in it but only a way to make 8 goblins I think. I decided to ponder and pass. He plays turn 1 land + mox + chalice on 1 (should've made the goblins). I attempt to brainstorm next turn to keep him honest. He catches it. I see a canonist on turn 2. Great. Naturally draw Hurkyl's (US got wasted) so I have no blue except for lotus petal. I play petal, and recall off 1 land and petal. but cant get anything going. I die a few turns later to dual knights.
2-1

Overall had a good time. Learned a lot. This is the first time I've ever played a live opponent. Been goldfishing a lot to learn the basics. I'm still looking for help on sideboarding plans. It was kind of hit or miss. Should I always board into empty game 2? My meta has 3-4 regulars who play chalice.dec. Not many miarcles players though. Thanks for the help.

Ronald Deuce

03-13-2016, 01:39 AM

Should I always board into empty game 2? My meta has 3-4 regulars who play chalice.dec. Not many miarcles players though. Thanks for the help.

Empty is really good against decks that don't handle a lot of creatures well. Burn, Pox, Eldrazi, Delver variants, Shardless, Maverick, and sometimes Miracles and other Chalice decks are all good choices for running Empty.

With that having been said, there are three types of decks against which it's really bad: decks with loads of fast creatures, decks with direct counters to loads of fast creatures, and decks that either run Empty themselves or combo out more quickly than Goblins can kill them (N.B.: there's some crossover between these categories).

At first, Empty looks a bit like a panacea because we don't need to build up as much storm or mana to use it as we would need to build for Tendrils. But there's so much hate that just wrecks it (Batterskull, Tabernacle, Pyroclasm, Terminus, Staticaster, Ratchet Bomb, Engineered Explosives) that we should only use it as a curveball kill-con against decks that aren't prepared. It's a very one-dimensional plan of attack, and there's hate for it that can fit in pretty much any deck, from Engineered Plague or Illness in the Ranks in Pox to Golgari Charm in Chalice.dec. We can sac gobbos to Therapy out threats we can assume are looming (against Miracles, name Brainstorm, not Terminus), but that doesn't always work and we don't always draw Therapy with Empty.

The principal difference between Empty the Warrens and Tendrils of Agony is that, though you may win off of a storm of only 5 or 6 with Empty, the card becomes progressively worse and easier to answer as the game goes on; Tendrils gets better and better. If it's turn 3 and you haven't assembled the gobbos, it's probably too late to use them. I think people overstate the odds that Tendrils will get a cleaner kill, but keep in mind that it's often safer to wait a turn to put the Drils to our opponent than it is to pass the turn with a bunch of 1/1s.

Whatever you do, don't ever, ever play Empty against fast combo, Stoneblade, Lands, Jund, or Elves, and you should probably not run it against Goblins or Dredge. You can probably get in under a Terminus against Miracles, but these other decks just outpace the goblins so quickly (or are so packed with board wipes/Batterskull/Goblin Machine Gun) that you're asking to lose if you run the Empty instead of an extra tutor/Past in Flames/Tendrils.

Sloshthedark

03-13-2016, 07:57 AM

Did anyone from this thread play in Prague 2016?

Me, only bad beats stories for the Main event...

Shaman

03-13-2016, 01:24 PM

@Sloshthedark: did you play your usual maindeck? Any change for the future?

CabalTherapy

03-14-2016, 06:31 AM

Did anyone from this thread play in Prague 2016?

Yes, tough luck regarding MUs and draws. Some nice plays, some mediocre but could have been way better...
Only 4x ANT for the main event.

Sloshthedark

03-14-2016, 08:38 AM

@Sloshthedark: did you play your usual maindeck? Any change for the future?

Yes, most likely not in the MD ...failed to register Confidants, both Fr+Sa were very UBx/x heavy, nearly no Miracles but I did not feel confident with the tech and backed off literarily in the last second

R1 lost to Shardless, he had T2 Hymn+Extraction (obv. 1of) both postboard games which left me with basicaly nothing
R3 lost to myself because I'm an idiot and let a Lands (w Entomb and Liliana) guy cast T2 Trinisphere for 3 mana with Sphere in play, I had a AD in hand, also plenty of action, he stayed on 3 lands for a while but I've never drawn a 3rd land to cast anything, G3 I had a decent mana heavy mull 6, cantrips whiffed, so simply playing out 4 lands was enough for him.. = out by R3... I have realized the 3ball mistake only after I was describing my loss to a friend... loss deserved
R4 got a solid 2008 pairing, Angel Stompy... guy had a T1 3drop available all 3 games, I won the roll and discarded 3Ball, Baneslayer, Moat, Propaganda Angel and won with EtW+ToA... G2 - he had T1 3ball, T2 Mindcensor, T3 Mindcensor... G3, T1 Mindcensor and I never hit a land on top 4... and that was it...

Ancestral

03-14-2016, 04:02 PM

this weekend played a 7 round tournament + top8 (only me was playing ANT ) i get 5-1-1 with ID in the last round for top 8 but lost to miracles in quarters (great game btw)

the matchups were:

2-0 vs rogue
0-2 vs Team america
2-1 vs zoo
2-0 vs tin fins
2-0 vs bug delver
2-0 vs miracles
ID
top 8 :
1-2 vs miracles

my list is pretty standart with 1 PIF, 1 Dark petition, 1 ad nauseum, 1 top, 1 preordain, 1 tendrills , 1 rain of filth

i can do a more extended content about the mathchups if i get more time.

The meta was infested with BUG (shardless, team america and delver) , top 8 was : 1 miracles, 1 lands, 1 ANT, 3 bug delver, 2 team america.

4 eldrazi decks show up but non with great results.

CabalTherapy

03-14-2016, 04:23 PM

3 bug delver, 2 team america.

Congratulations.
Pretty diverse matchups.
I guess you mean shardless bug (bug control) because bug delver = TA.

nevilshute

03-15-2016, 06:15 AM

Playing with this list currently:

4x Brainstorm
4x Ponder
4x Gitaxian Probe
1x Preordain
4x Dark Ritual
4x Cabal Ritual
4x Lion's Eye Diamond
4x Lotus Petal
1x Chrome Mox
4x Infernal Tutor
2x Past in Flames
1x Ad Nauseam
1x Empty the Warrens
1x Tendrils of Agony
3x Cabal Therapy
3x Duress
2x Underground Sea
1x Volcanic Island
1x Badlands
1x Tropical Island
1x Island
1x Swamp
4x Polluted Delta
4x Scalding Tarn

4x Abrupt Decay
2x Pithing Needle
1x Tendrils of Agony
3x Dread of Night
3x Hurkyl's Recall
1x Chain of Vapor
1x Xantid Swarm

I've played a few leagues with this setup and am really liking it. Finally found a setup where I'm comfortable with having both Ad Nauseam and Empty the Warrens in the main. Occasionally I miss the 2nd Tendrils in the main, but I'm able to revert fully into a grinding station'esque approach against Miracles after board and am so far doing quite well in that department.

3x Hurkyl's Recall is obviously a concession to Eldrazi. So far I'm 4-4 against Eldrazi... it still feels like an uphill climb, but 3x hurkyl definitely helps and I'm okay with it.

Here are the videos from my lates league. Faced 2x Miracles, stoneblade, omni and sneak:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLHk0w4Md8v4DmAGLc_lQtuyXvhoirLn53

jedi_gof

03-15-2016, 06:48 AM

nevilshute

03-15-2016, 07:07 AM

Nice looking list Martin,

Been working on a similar list to work in AdN in main.

Quick question regarding the manabase though?
Do you think the fetchland config is the optimal?
I mean, I think I would shuffle up the non-delta ones for more access to Swamp T1.
Really missed having better access to turn 1 discard on a manalight hand.

I have found that having a mix helps your odds of landing both basics in MUs where that matters.
Like 2x mire, 2x tarn, 4xdelta or the likes of this, maybe a 3/1 split if you feel the need for Island is great than swamp T1.

Look forward to your vids mate :-)

Regarding the mana base I'm actually extremely happy with this setup as all my fetchlands allow me to fetch up every land except for the swamp. I've tried running mire and it's not without merit right up until you're sitting with a decay in hand vs Miracles with an Underground Sea in play staring at their counterbalance and just need to draw a way to get to Tropical and then draw the mire. Or when you open a hand of 3 cantrips, some business and one land being mire against a wasteland deck.

If you swap trop for bayou then I'd be more willing to consider bloodstained mire. All in all I think we're discussing very marginal differences and it's really hard to gauge what's actually "best". Mire doesn't let you fetch out basic island which is annoying. Tarn/misty doesn't get swamp which can also be a problem. Both setups can get the job done for sure.

Ancestral

03-15-2016, 07:24 AM

Congratulations.
Pretty diverse matchups.
I guess you mean shardless bug (bug control) because bug delver = TA.

Thanks ;)
Well i really mean TA and BUG delver, they play without delvers and without shardless/Vision.
Maybe now its the same na me but i remeber playing against TA before delver exist so i Was Trying to distinguish those 3 BUG v ariants.

Turns out a bit confusing yes but basicly they are 3 bugs variants :)

jedi_gof

03-15-2016, 07:46 AM

Regarding the mana base I'm actually extremely happy with this setup as all my fetchlands allow me to fetch up every land except for the swamp. I've tried running mire and it's not without merit right up until you're sitting with a decay in hand vs Miracles with an Underground Sea in play staring at their counterbalance and just need to draw a way to get to Tropical and then draw the mire. Or when you open a hand of 3 cantrips, some business and one land being mire against a wasteland deck.

If you swap trop for bayou then I'd be more willing to consider bloodstained mire. All in all I think we're discussing very marginal differences and it's really hard to gauge what's actually "best". Mire doesn't let you fetch out basic island which is annoying. Tarn/misty doesn't get swamp which can also be a problem. Both setups can get the job done for sure.

Quick reply, cool man.

Yeah I kinda agree. I just value the option of the swamp too much to have half of my fetches being unable to fecth it. So at least 5 of them for me needs to be able to find the swamp. But as you state, difference is likely marginal but still:-)

I have been playing with a bayou in the board since I picked up the deck again, and it comes in post board often since I have had xantid, decay, carpet in the board, meaning Ive felt it was necessary with 2 green sources.

Cheers
Chris

Ancestral

03-15-2016, 08:12 AM

Artemis90

03-15-2016, 11:26 AM

I really like your list, nevilshute! And I always enjoy watching you videos!

Concerning your new list:

How do you feel about the Chrome Mox ?
my MD is close to yours with AN and Empty , the difference is - 1 PiF - 1 Chrome Mox + 1 Dark Petition + 1 Rain of Filth . I wonder if the Mox as another initial MS is really better than the 5th One-mana-ritual in supporting AN. I would love to run both, maybe I should just cut a land for the mox and go down to 14 lands - after all many people seem to do well with 14 lands right now and I wouldnt even reduce the number of permanent manasources by doing this.

Izor

03-15-2016, 12:40 PM

I've been running 1 Chrome Mox for almost a year now and I haven't looked back. I only run 14 lands, though.

I like that you're onyl running one Island too, so many lists I see nowadays run 2. I never understood that at all, I have seen far more Storm players lose because they naturally drew the Island and lacked black mana than I've seen Storm players actively fetch a second Island. This deck splashes blue for 8-10 cards. Post board it's mostly down to like 6. Double Island plus any other land in the deck is often simply not a functional mana base.

I'm also down to 8 cantrips and currently wouldn't go any higher than that. You're boarding down to just 4 Brainstorms against any Chalice or sphere deck anyway. Every cantrip in your hand against those decks is just a mulligan.

nevilshute

03-15-2016, 02:26 PM

Regarding Chrome Mox: it's obviously there to improve odds on AdN though it hasn't really come up since I decided to reconfigure.

It's definitely a card with a low floor but I don't mind it much. It fills a different role to what Rain of Filth does.

Regarding boarding out cantrips vs chalice/sphere decks: I'm definitely not as orthodox about that as you. If you're running Preordains too if consider bringing some or all of those out but I'm not happy about cutting ponders, might shave, two max. On the draw I'd rather shave discard spells. It obviously also depends on how much stuff you're bringing in :smile:

Izor

03-15-2016, 04:18 PM

Fair enough, it's always interesting to see how different people deal with problems differently.

My personal approach against Chalice/Sphere.dec on the draw is saying alright, if they land a turn 1 Chalice I'm in trouble anyway. All discard and cantrips will be dead. But sometimes they'll give me one turn, mostly because they're lacking a way to produce 2 on turn 1, and if they do, I need to make my turn 1 count. Casting a Ponder doesn't cut it there. I'd rather discard their turn 2 play or just attemt to turn 1 them, which my list isn't too bad at because I'm basically boarding into TES with Decays over Ponders.

That approach has problems of course, for example if they drop a sphere instead of a Chalice turn 1. Under a Sphere catrips are definitely much better than discard. My current meta has more 3-spheres and Chalices than spheres though, so I really haven't missed Ponders post board.

Artemis90

03-15-2016, 04:18 PM

Yeah of course they fill different roles in initial mana source vs ritual - but both are also mana sources that improve odds on turn 2+ AN. Thats why I compared them. While Rain is bad Turn 1 / not that good turn 2 , Mox can also support fast Empty combos. But Rain gets better with every land drop and Mox gets worse in the longer games. Im just trying to figure out which one comes with the stronger overall-improvement for the list.

Concerning Cantrips vs Eldrazi: I would board out my one Preordain and maybe one Ponder but not more. We still need them and as nevilshute said discard is often worse otD.

nevilshute

03-16-2016, 10:10 AM

http://mythicspoiler.com/soi/cards/epiphanyatthedrownyard.html

http://mythicspoiler.com/soi/cards/epiphanyatthedrownyard.html

Epiphany at the Drownyard

:u:X
Instant

Reveal the top X plus one card of your library and seperate them into two piles. An opponent chooses one of those piles. Put that pile into your hand and the rest into your graveyard.

Interesting. Probably too expensive but works well with Past in Flames

Bryant Cook

03-16-2016, 10:15 AM

Probably not good enough for Legacy as it's often worse than Fact or Fiction, that said, I think it could be sweet in Modern Storm.

Ronald Deuce

03-17-2016, 10:45 PM

Interesting. Probably too expensive but works well with Past in Flames

(To preface what I'm about to say, certain weaknesses this card has are pretty apparent, so I'll concede that it has shortcomings for AnT up front. Top-of-my-head snags include Gaddock Teeg, Extraction effects, and the "opponent's choice" phrase. So I'm just Brainstorming here.)

In addition to its synergizing with PiF, I think Epiphany could be a good answer to Chalices. The variable mana cost is sweet. Compare with Breakthrough in Dredge: normally, it's pretty temperamental compared to the other loot effects (in spite of its obvious potence), but when you can set the mana cost, it becomes the most reliable looter to have against Chalice. Casting Epiphany for 2 could get us places our 1-cmc cantrips can't, and the card's an instant.

If we play Epiphany and find something we need, I'm not sure how effectively we'll be able to bluff our opponent into giving us the goods. Hell; I still have trouble with cantrips and mulligans in this deck, and I'll be the first to admit I'm not a seasoned Storm pilot. But what's interesting to me is that this card seems uniquely useful if the cards on top of our deck aren't what we're looking for. If we don't need the cards it reveals, we can set up to either draw all of them or bin all of them to up our Threshold count, in either case clearing jank off the top of our deck. I can imagine casting this during the opponent's end step, putting an LED and a Ritual in one pile with the other pile empty, and letting our opponent junk them.

I think these features make it as attractive as Preordain in certain situations. It's faint praise, but I'm looking for an opportunity to take out our worst cantrip because of how little good it's done me. My immediate thought is to try Epiphany as a 1-2 in the 'board, replacing Preordain or Sensei's Divine Topdecks if we're not likely to get any mileage out of them.

I'm excited to hear more if anyone's playtesting this at the moment. I'd dive in right now, but I don't get the chance to do much but goldfish during the week.

skyout

03-18-2016, 10:34 AM

Darkside

03-18-2016, 11:04 AM

Ronald Deuce

03-18-2016, 11:06 AM

Asthereal

03-18-2016, 11:15 AM

What do people think about that new card from SOI, Behold the Beyond?

http://mythicspoiler.com/soi/cards/beholdthebeyond.html

Seven is obviously tons of mana, but being able to get three pieces would almost always mean an guaranteed win. The only question is that if you have that much mana is there just better things you can do/get?
Dark Petition is already on the steap side, cost-wise. I think CMC7 is just too much for a regular ANT list. In TNT (Wish ANT) the story might be different though. It could be a Wish target, since Wishing for it allows us to use all of our heavy mana accellerators to power it out. It's probably still just worse than Wishing for Dark Petition though.

In a regular ANT list, there indeed are far better things to do with 7 mana. Ad Nauseam with 2 floating would be the most obvious, but even Gifts Ungiven would make more sense. You can cast it at end of turn, setting up for a win in your own, and it also allows for an immidiate win if you manage to produce a ludacris amount of mana. Gifts also doesn't necessarily rule out Ad Nauseam as an option. Behold the Beyond does. No one plays Gifts in ANT though. (Well, someone tried, but that person defended it with fairly weak arguments and also never managed to disprove his critics with tournament results.)

So there we go. Cool card, but I don't expect we will see it in Legacy.

I think it's too expensive, but I have a feeling we're going to be seeing that bad boy in Omniscience decks.
I don't think we will. You can't really expect to cast it before Omniscience lands, and when Omniscience is live, we get to cast Enter the Infinite, Burning Wish for it, or just Cunning Wish for Firemind's Foresight into Brainstorm, Impulse/Lim-Dul's Vault and a new Cunning Wish, the latter of which will find us protection while the first two find us the win. At instant speed. Behold the Beyond will have a hard time beating that.

Alakhai84

03-19-2016, 06:26 PM

Any news from Turin? I've heard that there were 4 Eldrazi in top8! :(

Shaman

03-20-2016, 10:33 AM

I lost the last match of swiss on 5-1-1 against the final winner of the event (grixis delver). I played a Grinding Station list that was the right choice for the meta (defeated Miracle with three tendrils in a row).
Sideboard was also good, with no empty at all since it is so situational.
The worst loss I had was with JM Accart with eldrazi: in both games I discarded Chalice T1 but didn't find any business with all the cantrips I played... with him doing nothing in 5 turns (no lock pieces and only one warping wail in G2). But he is a good player so it is ok.

At the moment the card I feel more uncomfortable about is Deathrite Shaman, that's actually quite silly.

Alakhai84

03-20-2016, 02:13 PM

Shaman

03-20-2016, 04:20 PM

Would you mind sharing your decklist? Which changes from Ovinospring's top8 decklist?

I did not top8 at Ovino! :) I was not even there.

Anyway:
4 dark ritual
4 cabal ritual
1 rain of filth
4 brainstorm
4 ponder
4 probe
4 led
4 petal
2 duress
1 thoughtseize
4 cabal therapy
4 infernal tutor
2 pif
3 tendrils
2 swamp
1 island
3 underground sea
1 volcanic island
4 polluted delta
2 mire
2 scalding tarn

Sideboard:
2 hurkyll's recall
1 chain of vapor
1 echoing truth
3 decay
1 krosan grip
2 surgical extraction
1 ad nauseam
2 massacre
1 island
1 tropical island

Rain of filth, thoughtseize, chain of vapor and island in the sideboard gave me three wins. The reason behind the second island is because I want a solid mana base wasteland proof to grind them.

I felt 2 pifs where somehow "wrong" with all the T1 DRS my opponents played, but I may be wrong about it. I had some issues with double pifs hands.

I want to slide in 1 or 2 tops to get the most from leds. But I don't know what I can leave out.

I plan to remove ad nauseam completely (never played it), and add a second chain of vapor for DNT... where i don't want to side in decays.

OlegtheSuper

03-20-2016, 04:35 PM

I did not top8 at Ovino! :) I was not even there.

Anyway:
4 dark ritual
4 cabal ritual
1 rain of filth
4 brainstorm
4 ponder
4 probe
4 led
4 petal
2 duress
1 thoughtseize
4 cabal therapy
4 infernal tutor
2 pif
3 tendrils
2 swamp
1 island
3 underground sea
1 volcanic island
4 polluted delta
2 mire
2 scalding tarn

Sideboard:
2 hurkyll's recall
1 chain of vapor
1 echoing truth
3 decay
1 krosan grip
2 surgical extraction
1 ad nauseam
2 massacre
1 island
1 tropical island

Rain of filth, thoughtseize, chain of vapor and island in the sideboard gave me three wins. The reason behind the second island is because I want a solid mana base wasteland proof to grind them.

I felt 2 pifs where somehow "wrong" with all the T1 DRS my opponents played, but I may be wrong about it. I had some issues with double pifs hands.

I want to slide in 1 or 2 tops to get the most from leds. But I don't know what I can leave out.

I plan to remove ad nauseam completely (never played it), and add a second chain of vapor for DNT... where i don't want to side in decays.

What are your thoughts about Eldrazi MU? I'm on 6 tutors grinding station with 3 recalls and 1 rebuild, do you think it is too much or right number?

Shaman

03-20-2016, 06:05 PM

I am on the recall wagon. 3 is ok, you want to have them because you cannot rely on discard only. But in my opinion you can side only them, and not other things like dacays. The only MU I want to side them in is Miracle.

Ronald Deuce

03-21-2016, 03:16 PM

I felt 2 pifs where somehow "wrong" with all the T1 DRS my opponents played, but I may be wrong about it. I had some issues with double pifs hands.

I agree that double PiF opens us up to graveyard hate a bit, but I feel like it's a bit less of a problem than you're saying. I agree, though, that drawing double-PiF is really bad. That's one of the reasons I've been running tutors over extra business/engine cards: the extra tutors often aren't appreciably harder to cast, and they give us a lot of flexibility.

If you're not running Ad Nauseam, why not try a copy of Empty instead of the second PiF?

A tangential question: you said that running into your second PiF was a problem relatively often; do you have a similar opinion about multiple copies of Tendrils? If you've tested both multi-Tendrils and 5-6 tutors, what big differences did you notice in how the two variants played?

I want to slide in 1 or 2 tops to get the most from leds. But I don't know what I can leave out.

My impression of the consensus was that multiple Tops slowed the deck down quite a bit. It feels like Top is a card with a great payoff in the slower matchups, but like it could get in the way if we needed to get the show on the road. Anyone else have input? I've been reluctant to maindeck Top, but I'm getting tired of double-Preordain's not doing enough for us.

I plan to remove ad nauseam completely (never played it), and add a second chain of vapor for DNT... where i don't want to side in decays.

I absolutely would run a second Chain. It's just so good in so many matchups that I think we should always have 2 in the 75.

Jonathan Alexander

03-21-2016, 05:10 PM

My impression of the consensus was that multiple Tops slowed the deck down quite a bit. It feels like Top is a card with a great payoff in the slower matchups, but like it could get in the way if we needed to get the show on the road. Anyone else have input? I've been reluctant to maindeck Top, but I'm getting tired of double-Preordain's not doing enough for us.

I played two Tops at GP SeaTac and thought it was terrible. In general, I think the days of Top being good are over. Too many early game matchups, too many decks running Null Rod. Double Preordain is actually pretty good if you don't plan to play super long games. The 2 Preordain 2 Petition is incredibly smooth and consistent. You get to kill early a lot, but it can be hard to beat large amounts of countermagic.

Shaman

03-22-2016, 03:28 PM

I have mixed feelings on top since it slows you down dramatically, while being key to middle to late game advantage. My will to give it another try is for the multiple tendrils build: it happens quite often you have one of them floating in the top 3 and you can switch sensei sacrificing led(s).
Also I suffered draws that gave me nothing with possible wins at hand: with top I would have digged deeper.
But I also know it is based on a very "unsignificantly sized" sample.

On double tendrils hands: they usually give you problem as well, especially if we are talking about starting 7. I felt anyway going for 3 tendrils was just ok considering the meta I played into: I easily won many games with double natural tendrils. Thus I am considering cutting 1 pif as a way to reduce "situationally bad" draws I may have.

I cut empty because I hate playing it, drawing it, and being forced to play it crossing fingers on topdecks. And I don't have many success stories with it also.

cheerios

03-23-2016, 04:24 AM

CabalTherapy

03-23-2016, 09:03 AM

When is it okay to keep Tendrils in the opening hand? I made top 4 after 5 rounds last weekend and lost to Grixis Delver with him having probe+therapy in the first three turns. Is it okay to keep Tendrils in the opener if you feel you can win in turns 2 to 4?

cheers

Certainly. Tendrils in hand helps with PiF loops for example, even if you don't plan to grind them out.

After some tough luck in locals and at Prague Eternal, I was finally able to have a decent result again. Meta was quite nice; no Eldrazi and Chalice decks, only decks one can enjoy playing against. I went with 2 Toa, 2 Pif, 1 Etw, 1 Grim.
Round 1 Infect
He plays G. Elf and passes the turn, I search for the kill in my first two turns and win with Top searching for a discard spell and then with a regular tutor chain for Tendrils. Intersting, I broarded 2 Flusterstorms and Ad Nauseam in ever round.
The next match was similar, although he had Extraction, BS, and Force. I took the BS with Thoughtseize and Therapy > FoW, leaving him with Extraction which was useless in this situation because he was already on 15 and I proceeded to make a tutor chain again.

Round 2 Dredge
A coinflip MU but at least a very enjoyable opponent. We both went down to 6 but he had the first turn kill with Griselbrand and Flame-Kin on the draw. I won the next game with Ad Nauseam from 14 and B floating. Admittedly, the flips were very good. The last game was hard. He discarded my Cabal Ritual and Dark Ritual, leaving me with only PiF in hand and LED in play. I topdecked Infernal, played the third land and won nonetheless. Lucky.

Round 3 Grixis Ctrl
I had a protected turn 2 PiF loop. Nothing special. In the next game, I went all in with him having a BS open: he finds FoW and pitch. Maybe it was a mistake to go off at this point but I felt like it's a good plan. In the third game, we had mediocre hands but he blind hit my two Infernals and only had some creatures in hand. At one point I played Grim Tutor for PiF and passed the turn. He Cliqued me in his turn, taking a Cabal Ritual (I drew Flusterstorm), and played Therapy on my PiF (probably a mistake, he should have cliqued the PiF). I had Infernal in hand, drew LED and won in similar fashion to the previous round.

Round 4 BUG Foodchain
He discarded my tutor early on but I found one in a Ponder. Nevertheless, my hand was very slow and he killed me with the combo > Emrakul. In the next game, I have a fast start with a lot of cantrips which outnumber his discard spells. I played Therapy for his Deathrite in order to protect my graveyard and won with a PiF loop some turns later. The third game was kind of crappy because he took mulligans down to 5, scryed to the bottom, and said go without playing a land. I probed him, he forced the Probe. Thus, I was very curious and played a Thoughtseize turn 1 to see Thoughtseize, Dimir Charm, and Clique. I took the Thoughtseize and won with a loop after discarding his Charm as well.

Togores

03-23-2016, 06:00 PM

I also played in turin. My legacy result was misserable. Played my bom list -1 preordain +2nd top and -1 top in sb and +6th decay/grip
Expected a lot of miracles. But played 5 rounds and never played one.

R1 eldrazi 0-2
Jean mart acart he knows me. Played a t1 chalice on 0.

R2 dredge 2-1
Weird game he decks himself like 40 cards never finding a narco. I cast 4 ponders and 2 brainstorm never finding tutor. Ended up fining it. G3 e gets killed t2.

R3 merfolks 1-2
I have xantid. He mulled to 5. Has nothing but a reliq. I discarted a chalice. But he finds another. He has fow. And start beating. Was not able to hellbent myself of a decay. Because didnt found green after my 1st one was wastelanded. The. Had to chump block and obv drew the green.

R4 grixis 1-2 but he conceded because he had to go. Here I wanted to drop but whatever.

R5 death and taxes.
I have 0 cards vs them because is a non existent deck nowadays.
G1 I discard thalia but he has revoker into pegasus.
G2 discard his hatebear and he has pegasus. I win next turn. He draws canonist.

This event I got destroyed. But whatever. Ended 2nd of the modern, top 4 in old school after dropping from legacy and won the vintage. So 3/4 events I played ending in the top 4 is not bad.

Isaac

03-30-2016, 05:52 AM

Hey guys I don't post on here often but I thought I'd share my current list I am running along with some tournament results from scg indy and also my local legacy tournament that occurred tonight.

at scg indy I went 5/3 which landed me at 29th spot giving me 300 tickets. The matches I came across were as followed.

rd1 reanimater 2/1
rd2 rug delver 1/2
rd3 sneak n show 2/1
rd4 mericles 2/0
rd5 mud 1/2
rd6 dnt 2/0
rd7 infect 2/1
rd8 mericles 1/2

Tonight at are local tournament we had 15 players and I went 3/1 earning me 30$ store credit
rd1 infect 2/1
rd2 burn 0/2
rd3 dnt 2/0
rd4 painter 2/0

Now onto the goods

Lands (14)

2 Island
1 Swamp
3 flooded strand
4 Polluted Delta
1 bloodstained mire
2 Underground Sea
1 Volcanic Island

Spells (46)

4 Lion's Eye Diamond
4 Lotus Petal
1 Ad Nauseam
4 Brainstorm
4 Cabal Ritual
4 Dark Ritual
3 Cabal Therapy
1 Dark Petition
3 Duress
4 Gitaxian Probe
4 Infernal Tutor
1 Past in Flames
4 Ponder
2 Preordain
1 chain of vapor
1 night's whisper
1 Tendrils of Agony

SB:
2 Xantid Swarm
2 Dread of Night
4 Abrupt Decay
1 krosan grip
1 Disfigure
1 Echoing truth
1 Hurkyl's Recall
1 Empty the Warrens
1 Massacre
1 Tropical Island

Main deck chain has been the total nuts. Scg indy proved it's worth without a shadow of doubt in my mind. My dnt opponent had revokerx2 one on petal and one on led. I eot chain the led one and combo my turn. Instance tonight of bouncing a targeted infect dude. I have ran across w's with the nights whisper.

Thanks for reading :)

Burnplayer

03-30-2016, 07:29 AM

If there were to be a Legacy GP tomorrow, you would play Nauseam?

CabalTherapy

03-30-2016, 09:54 AM

Got another decent run at the local shop yesterday; won all rounds 2:1, had almost no breaks in between rounds. Played Sloshstorm with 2 Pif, 2 Toa, 1 Etw, 1 Grim, SB: AdN

Round 1 Team America
First round, first mighty deck to beat. Well, in the first game, he has a rather weakish hand with 2 Ponder, 2 Goyf, 2 Delver, and a land. I therapy his Ponders but he manages to draw into some juice (BS, Force), while I was searching for some business spells. He counters a ritual at some point but I manage to win on the last possible turn with a PiF-loop. He proceeds to win the second game with flipped Delvers and Null Rod shutting down my plan to combo off in 1/2 turns. The deciding game was intersting because he played Hymn but hit mediocre cards, I played CRit > Infernal with LED in play and went for PiF after thinking a bit to play around Extraction but miscounted on the storm count, which forced me to go for LED with the flashback Infernal to chain some cantrips. Luckily the first one hits AdN and I play it from 18 life flipping some good cards and a Tendrils.

Round 2 ANT
Mirror time. I'm on the draw... but still I was lucky because he failed some cantrips and put his cards back in the wrong order. In the second game, we both have Flusterstorms but he had more cards in hand and 3 LEDs. Eventually, there was no way out for me. The round is almost over because both games were very grindy, however, I destroy him in the third game with turn 1 GP> Therapy >2 Infernals and turn 2 GP> Therapy> 2 Dark Rituals followed up by some Duress and cantrips for a Pif-loop turn 4 I think.

Round 3 Infect
He had the turn 2 kill on the draw, while I had a decent hand but no relevant action to stop him. In the next game, I had a turn2 AdN which fizzled but his creatures obviously don't deal real damage and I win easily with a perfect 7 the next turn. The third game was very interesting because he yet again led with G. Elf but I had Trop> Xantid Swarm. It was kind of unlucky because I didn't draw a second land and at some point I was on 9 poison with him being on 20 life... I drew my 8th card (only black cards in hand and a Fluster + Petal in play), and decided not to attack with Xantid and casually play DRit (if he counters with FoW he loses the game because of the missing storm count; ToA, Infernal in hand) > he forces > I fluster and play Infernal copying another Ritual > playing both Rituals > 2 discard spells > CRit for 5B and Toa for 20. GG.

Round 4 Bug Foodchain
The toughest round because he usually packs a lot of hate in his SB. First game was rather easy. He had only one Force I believe and died to a rather slow kill turn 5 or something like that. Apparently, Rituals were hiding somewhere. He wins the next game with some disruption after I am one mana/one storm count short of the kill. He topdecked Duress and had some nice draws leaving me with only mana and no business. The third game was probably the most exhausting one. At some point I had Xantid Swarm (boarded them for the last game on the play) after discarding Golgari Charm and a FoW; he still had Misdirection and 2 Extractions and eventually drew into another FoW later on. I attacked a turn afterwards but he Cliqued me and killed the Swarm, I don't take the risc and play it safely, casting SDT and shipping the turn. He beat me down to 4 and has an active Shaman, still one Surgical, and unknown cards. He forces my eot Brainstorm and I go into my final turn. I play a Cabal Ritual without threshold, cast LED, look at the top > draw a card > he responses by Surgical on my Cabal Ritual > I fluster it > he responses with Clique with topdraw still on the stack > trigger target me > I crack LED for RRR discarding PiF and Infernal > Clique fizzles > I draw D Ritual with top > play it and flashback everything for the win.

nevilshute

03-30-2016, 01:44 PM

Awesome last game Robert! :smile:

Svyelunite

03-30-2016, 03:48 PM

If there were to be a Legacy GP tomorrow, you would play Nauseam?

Not a chance. The deck is great, but there's like 3 CoTV decks for every 10 people. You'd see one like 4-5 times over the course of a 15 round event and probably lose 2-3 of those, not counting any other losses to Delver or Miracles or bad draws or whatever. Obviously things can go right and it can work out, but I feel like you're going in handicapped if you choose to play ANT at a Legacy GP tomorrow. That's just the opinion of this Infect player however. Take it with a grain of cyanide.

Isaac

03-30-2016, 04:05 PM

If there were to be a Legacy GP tomorrow, you would play Nauseam?

I Absolutely plan on playing that 75 list give or take 8 cards at gp Columbus

Ronald Deuce

03-30-2016, 07:25 PM

Main deck chain has been the total nuts.

I've been considering this more and more every time I play the deck.

My dnt opponent had revokerx2 one on petal and one on led. I eot chain the led one and combo my turn.

Just so you know, you could've waited until your turn, tapped out during your main phase, bounced your own LED and Petal (sacrificing two lands), then bounced the Revoker on LED to generate three additional Storm at the cost of one blue.

I have ran across w's with the nights whisper.

What does this mean?

cheerios

03-31-2016, 03:50 AM

I don't think this deck is going anywhere even with all the eldrazi crap

CabalTherapy

03-31-2016, 04:23 AM

If there were to be a Legacy GP tomorrow, you would play Nauseam?

That's a neat example of how a question mark doesn't construct a question on its own.
But, yes certainly.

Awesome last game Robert! :smile:

Thanks. :wink:

Not a chance. The deck is great, but there's like 3 CoTV decks for every 10 people. You'd see one like 4-5 times over the course of a 15 round event and probably lose 2-3 of those, not counting any other losses to Delver or Miracles or bad draws or whatever. Obviously things can go right and it can work out, but I feel like you're going in handicapped if you choose to play ANT at a Legacy GP tomorrow. That's just the opinion of this Infect player however. Take it with a grain of cyanide.

There are answers to all questions. It's about passion and experience, thus I am sure a real die-hard storm player wouldn't switch decks only because there are some kids running around with things they don't understand and in a context they interprete completely wrong. Isn't it not our duty to kick some Ihhdrazi ass?

I don't think this deck is going anywhere even with all the eldrazi crap

True words.

nevilshute

03-31-2016, 04:46 AM

I'm actually very unsure about whether I'll be on Storm for Prague. Feel like I need to play vs Eldrazi more to really decide + get a better idea what the saturation of Eldrazi will actually be like when we get closer to June. As it is, I'm currently something like 4-7 vs Eldrazi and it does feel quite miserable. Pretty much what I expected. Like MUD suddenly went from a ~0.5% of the expected field to ~10% of the expected field... that is pretty disastrous. Having said that, Storm is still good vs much of the rest of the field and it is by far what I've had the most experience playing and so I might just default back to it.

But am definitely considering my options. BUG Food Chain is actually what I'm grinding with atm on mtgo as it has positive matchups vs both miracles and eldrazi. Ironically it's quite weak to Storm :wink:

Sloshthedark

03-31-2016, 05:16 AM

Main deck chain has been the total nuts. Scg indy proved it's worth without a shadow of doubt in my mind. My dnt opponent had revokerx2 one on petal and one on led. I eot chain the led one and combo my turn. Instance tonight of bouncing a targeted infect dude. I have ran across w's with the nights whisper.

I can imagine CoV works at 2 PIF, looks random there, also do not understand the Whisper statement

If there were to be a Legacy GP tomorrow, you would play Nauseam?

Deck - Yes, Card - No ... my opinion is a Lands is the best deck, but I'd stay on Storm

Played Sloshstorm .

haha, thanks! R4G3 obv. awesome, I has been some time I realized playing out a LED early counters Clique with certain hands so I try to stay aware of that, but can't remember if it was fruitful since

I'm actually very unsure about whether I'll be on Storm for Prague. Feel like I need to play vs Eldrazi more to really decide + get a better idea what the saturation of Eldrazi will actually be like when we get closer to June. As it is, I'm currently something like 4-7 vs Eldrazi and it does feel quite miserable. Pretty much what I expected. Like MUD suddenly went from a ~0.5% of the expected field to ~10% of the expected field... that is pretty disastrous. Having said that, Storm is still good vs much of the rest of the field and it is by far what I've had the most experience playing and so I might just default back to it.

But am definitely considering my options. BUG Food Chain is actually what I'm grinding with atm on mtgo as it has positive matchups vs both miracles and eldrazi. Ironically it's quite weak to Storm :wink:

It's 2 months to go, a lot can change, dunno if a 0/4 Flipper makes it, but looks like there is some drop in Thorns already a well as people running Reshaper instead of Revoker, judging from lgs our Eldrazi players do not have great time (other than beating me obv. ;), there isn't much excitement about it, but GP will sure mobilize winning>fun... usualy a large anonymous tournament is where you get more out of Storm than out of any other deck as well as being a good player...

Foodchain, well I really can't imagine me running that, but your range is much wider than mine..

nevilshute

03-31-2016, 05:26 AM

It's 2 months to go, a lot can change, dunno if a 0/4 Flipper makes it, but looks like there is some drop in Thorns already a well as people running Reshaper instead of Revoker, judging from lgs our Eldrazi players do not have great time (other than beating me obv. ;), there isn't much excitement about it, but GP will sure mobilize winning>fun... usualy a large anonymous tournament is where you get more out of Storm than out of any other deck as well as being a good player...

Foodchain, well I really can't imagine me running that, but your range is much wider than mine..

You really think Thing in the Ice will fit in a Storm sideboard? Or were you making a broader statement on how that card might shake up the meta further and so may / may not reduce the amount of Eldrazi?

I agree with your statement on Storm being a strong choice in a large anonymous tournament. It lets you leverage your experience tonnes but also has the occasional fast/free wins which matter a lot to me. I have a really hard time imagining me doing very well for 15 rounds playing Death and Taxes (which is a deck I love and also play quite frequently) because (almost) every win with that deck feels hard earned and you way more often will play longer matches. Very rarely does a round finish in 10 mins with a win for you. Now don't get me wrong, I'm not playing Storm to yolo my way to food between rounds, but it's all pieces of a bigger evaluation:

-Powerful and on par with most of the decks in the format
-Rewards dedication more then perhaps other combo decks in the Show and Tell / Reanimator vein by having a high(er) skill cap
-Will reward you with a non-trivial amount of "free wins" during a tournament
-Rounds will often finish before time
-Casting Dark Rituals and Lion's Eye Dimaonds is about the coolest thing to do in Magic :wink:

Jonathan Alexander

03-31-2016, 07:24 AM

For whatever it's worth, I'm not playing Storm right now. But as Slosh pointed out, Lands is pretty good right now, and if more people switch to that, Storm seems like an easy choice again.

Sloshthedark

03-31-2016, 09:23 AM

You really think Thing in the Ice will fit in a Storm sideboard? Or were you making a broader statement on how that card might shake up the meta further and so may / may not reduce the amount of Eldrazi?

I agree with your statement on Storm being a strong choice in a large anonymous tournament. It lets you leverage your experience tonnes but also has the occasional fast/free wins which matter a lot to me. I have a really hard time imagining me doing very well for 15 rounds playing Death and Taxes (which is a deck I love and also play quite frequently) because (almost) every win with that deck feels hard earned and you way more often will play longer matches. Very rarely does a round finish in 10 mins with a win for you. Now don't get me wrong, I'm not playing Storm to yolo my way to food between rounds, but it's all pieces of a bigger evaluation:

-Powerful and on par with most of the decks in the format
-Rewards dedication more then perhaps other combo decks in the Show and Tell / Reanimator vein by having a high(er) skill cap
-Will reward you with a non-trivial amount of "free wins" during a tournament
-Rounds will often finish before time
-Casting Dark Rituals and Lion's Eye Dimaonds is about the coolest thing to do in Magic :wink:

I was refering to the whole metagame and I will play it but I don't have high hopes for neither... on the other hand I have a guy in the lgs who is pretty good in both playing and trading cards and he has 16+ preordered and tries to sell some Goyfs what I've heard... I have high tolerance for card power and I'm also quite bad at predicting it as I'm usualy highly sceptical... I think they will make some adjustments once Storm is not a key player for them, why have an insanely good MU with a niche deck if you have still good and improve a major one

I also think Eldrazi will diminish in playerbase, not that it will become rare but will be less common... why? once Eldrazi get more bad beats by metagame adjusting, the deck is shallow, there is a reason you've met Stompy decks once a year before 2016 other than inconsistency, localy there were like 5 people building the deck and they usually ended up worse than playing their old decks... once the idea of omnipowerful overlordes is dethroned it's just another deckchoice... no matter what the rant in the BS threads say I believe U decks are played because both of objective power and play experience they provide... I have no idea how Modern players plays into this for a GP though...

-there is also the - no matter what you try to execute the same plan with the same cards every game G1 and it doesn't really matter what you start with as you're very consistent, but other decks are usualy very polarized which hands do and do not interact and you get a lot by concealing your identity... which is less stellar with increasing no. of oops I won permanents present in the meta

For whatever it's worth, I'm not playing Storm right now. But as Slosh pointed out, Lands is pretty good right now, and if more people switch to that, Storm seems like an easy choice again.

I think Lands is/was something Storm was prior last summer, powerful, known but not widely played, currently I think their biggest challenge is to not play the standard list... I think a list with reasonable Storm MU can be build easily, but there is no reason to would the Eldrazi menace push Storm out of the spotlight - there might be a at least one good thing about it

Svyelunite

03-31-2016, 10:17 AM

To anyone I may have offended. I didn't mean to come across as a hater. I love storm, and I think if it's what you've got and you're good at it, definitely play it. I just meant if you were proficient and fortunate enough to play other decks, that Storm is probably a weaker metagame call when lots of folks plan to show up with Chalice decks. You can definitely SB to beat them, but I don't recommend picking an uphill battle if you have the option of going around the hill.

Jonathan Alexander

03-31-2016, 11:18 AM

I think Lands is/was something Storm was prior last summer, powerful, known but not widely played, currently I think their biggest challenge is to not play the standard list... I think a list with reasonable Storm MU can be build easily, but there is no reason to would the Eldrazi menace push Storm out of the spotlight - there might be a at least one good thing about it

With that, I disagree. The key to beating Storm is to be able to win game one a reasonable amount of time, and that requires too many changes to the core of the deck to be as good as it currently is against the other decks in the format. I don't think it would be worth it.

Togores

03-31-2016, 02:33 PM

For whatever it's worth, I'm not playing Storm right now. But as Slosh pointed out, Lands is pretty good right now, and if more people switch to that, Storm seems like an easy choice again.

Even if lands is a good deck. Being so dificult to get is a real upside from it being a deck thats played a lot.

Also I would play storm in a gp. Where no one know you. Also its great because you get free wins and you get leverage of the skill gap.

But eldrazi is really strong. I hope it gets diminished. But I still havent find a feck thats good against it and it seems really really strong and easy to use. That means that bad players get a lot of wins with it. And thats sad. Chalice is just a so broken card. That usualy if you resolve it you win the game. Its really not a fun card to play against. And much less if you play storm.

Also for the future at medium sice event I will be switching decks.

Togores

04-01-2016, 10:31 AM

Lsv played my deck in a CFB video.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=XCKRHsN8C9s

He got 3-2 despite wining weird games and having only good matchups and misspelling my surname.

Missed r2 g2 a kill by a turn where he could get cabal rit ***** by casting infernal resp cabal crack led so he has 7 cards. Could have mattered. Still won next turn against an opoonent on goblins with spirit of laberinth instead of thalia.

Also overvalued a lot the ad nauseam (where its just and ok card)and the top (not siding it out). And undervaulated te probes by a lot siding then out in multiple matchups (blue decks). Gitaxian, along brainstorma and dark ritual is like the only card that I would never side out and play 4x.

Also played intead of the 3rd decay 3rd tendrills and 2nd fluster 3 confidants where they are not so good of a card. (He got vs uwr standtill one bolted, obv (he had seend bolts g1). Still won the game because his opp in 8 draw steps just found a pyroblast as counter the entire game.

Sided like empty, more tendrills in the deck without removingg the ad nauseam (and even sided confidants) so 6 4cmc+ cards...

Idk nice to see my deck there but sad to have to watch it

nevilshute

04-01-2016, 10:49 AM

CabalTherapy

04-02-2016, 08:28 AM

Lsv played my deck in a CFB video.

I only watched match 1 so far. Apart, from rather obvious "mistakes", my favourite part is when boards out one Past in Flames in the mirror. Hilarious move.

Edit: Alright, what happened in match 5? :laugh:
Edit2: Through with watching the rd 5 mirror. Too many memorable plays and I love how his opponent goes for "Infernal Tutor" with CT at the very end....

nevilshute

04-03-2016, 05:07 AM

Lost quarterfinals of a small tournament yesterday to Chaos Elves with Teeg main deck. He was the higher seed so he was on the play which didn't help. Most lists I've found on MTGO don't run Teeg but I see that Julian Knab is running Teeg main and I think there's a high probability that people will copy him. Teeg main deck, imo, shifts the matchup very close to 50/50 if not worse.

ScottW

04-03-2016, 09:25 AM

I lost to that list at a GP side event. I bounced the Teeg and the guy had 2 Surgical Extractions in response to me casting PIF(G3). He also tried to resolve a Green Sun Zenith in game 1 with his Teeg on the battlefield - I was playing it out to see more of his list.

Togores

04-04-2016, 06:42 PM

http://i.imgur.com/uHzG1OQ.png

Ancestral

04-04-2016, 10:40 PM

congratz! did you stream this?

nevilshute

04-05-2016, 12:12 AM

Grats Rodrigo,

What did you face?

OlegtheSuper

04-05-2016, 12:20 AM

Togores, why no hurkyl's recall?

Togores

04-05-2016, 05:56 AM

congratz! did you stream this?

Yesterday not :( because I played in moments between being working. Was sad because the miracles matchups where really cool.

Grats Rodrigo,

What did you face?

What I faced is ln the picture written 😉

Togores, why no hurkyl's recall?

I usualy play 1 hurkil and 1 echoing. But hurkil is a 10€ card on Mtgo that I dont want to pay for. So I use the budget second echoing ^^

cdnza

04-05-2016, 11:33 AM

How do you board with that SB, Rodrigo? Against e.g. Miracles or Delver?

Togores

04-05-2016, 02:43 PM

Delver depending.
Ubx delver usualy is a mix of
-1 preordain -1 top -1 cabal ritual -1 empty -1 nauseam
+1 top +2-3 decay

Miracles is
-2 cabal ritual -2 infernal -2 led -1 preordain -1 empty -1 nauseam
+4 decay +2 grip +1 top +2 tendrills

David L Byer

04-05-2016, 03:09 PM

http://i.imgur.com/uHzG1OQ.png

Congrats to you Rodrigo. I am wondering how would you sideboard against the Chalice of the Void/Sphere decks like Eldrazi and Tezzerator? Also, how did it feel only running 4 Tutor effects? Would you make any changes to this 75? Thank you for your reply in advance :)

Togores

04-05-2016, 04:12 PM

There ususaly I do something like:
-3 therapy
-1 top
-1 preordain

+3 decay
+2 echoing

CabalTherapy

04-05-2016, 06:56 PM

Got yet another 4-0 in our Tuesday Legacy 4-rounder, which put me to 12-0 in the last three tournaments there.
Still on Sloshstorm with 2 Pif, 2 Toa, 1 Etw, 1 Grim, 6 discard, 1 Top, SB: AdN

Sideboard was
3 Abrupt Decay
1 Krosan Grip
2 Xantid Swarm
2 Flusterstorm
1 Extirpate
1 Chain of Vapor
1 Echoing Truth
2 Pyroclasm
1 Bayou
1 Ad Nauseam
Very satisfied with this one, I boarded everything in during that tournament except the Grip; no Miracles or MUD.

Round 1 Dredge
I put him on Jund or some kind of UWx deck because that's what I saw him playing last time I think. He is on the play and takes 2 mulligans but gets there one turn faster than my storm. I didn't know that it would be my only game lost today. In the second game, I disrupt him a bit with discard spells and feel lucky because he doesn't dredge a Dread Return for his Iona, although I had the Extirpate in hand. I search for some Rituals and eventually find one and then a LED with a topdeck Probe, which takes us to game 3. He starts with 5 cards, I keep a mediocre hand but with Flusterstorm and again the one Extirpate. I discard his Breakthrough on turn 2, Fluster his Study on turn 3, Extirpate his two Dredge5 Imps on turn 4 and win on turn 5 with a PiF loop involving Grim Tutor and some Toa already in hand.

Round 2 Team America
Again, my good friend Matteo with his favourite Delverpile. In game 1, I get there easily on turn 2 after seeing his hand and discarding his only counterspell. Game 2 is intersting because at the crucial turn (I am at six, he has lethal Goyfs in play) I don't have a discard spell for his Fow, pitch, FoW, pitch, Surgical but a manage to think of a decent line that rips his hand apart with Ritual > forced, another Ritual > 3rd LED > PiF > sac 1 LED > discard two Infernals > he surgicals them in response > counters PiF > replay Pif and have two Ponders and one Gp to find something; first Ponder reveals Tendrils.

Round 3 Elves
I know he has Gaddock main and I think he played it even before Julian23 made it popular. (Berlin meta was very hostile, a lot dudes on storm, now it changed but still... one never knows) Well, I'm not a Elves expert but I know that I need to discard (Thoughseize) on turn two after my mulligan (LED scry, stays on top), fetch go. He reveals the Gaddock, I take it obviously and pass the turn. I play Ponder on my next one, seeing the kill on top but need two cards. I proceed to discard his mb Crop Rotation and go for the Pif loop next turn. The next game is a complete destruction for him because I let him play his GSZ after taking a glimpse with Duress in order to wipe the board with Pyroclasm. He plays two Elves and searches for Gaddock, who meet Pyroclasm the next turn. Apparently, he draws a Nettle Sentinel and I struggle to find the kill, copying two Rituals with two Infernals and going for the combo on turn 6+. The plan was to resolve Cabal Ritual with threshold against his Crop Rotation. He doesn't react to Cabal Ritual and I chained another 3 Dark Rituals, playing the third Infernal copying Tendrils and playing both Drils for 12 and 14.

Round 4 Grixis Delver
His only interaction is FoW and a fast beatdown with Delver and two Bolts but I get there with a Pif loop. I bring in 2 Xantids because I feel that he will board a lot of stuff that works with the stack (Surgical, more counterspells) and have it in my starting hand alongside the SB Bayou. He plays 3 GPs and Ponder on turn 1 desperately searching for an answer for the Xantid I guess. I play it, it resolves and his only interaction is Deathrite Shaman in the course of the game. At one point he is at 10 life; I attack, Xantid trigger resolves, I play BS into Infernal, play LED, play Clasm, play Ritual, Infernal for Toa and the win.

No Ad Nauseam used today, no Goblins made but a lot of lethal Tendrils were played; as usual.

Alakhai84

04-06-2016, 05:59 AM

Jonathan Alexander

04-06-2016, 07:01 AM

I've been playing the 2 Petition list lately and I think it's a reasonable choice. It's infinitely simpler to play, which can be relevant if you tend to tire in long tournaments. It's slightly better against nonblue and slightly worse against blue (notable here is the fact that I consider both Miracles and Shardless nonblue decks, although Miracles only before sideboarding).
If your opponent has exactly one piece of countermagic (plus maybe a Daze), then both setups (2 Petition vs. 2 Past) have pretty much the same speed, consistently killing on turn three. If they have more than that, the 2 Petition list is worse - setups with multiple Past in Flames and Storm spells are much better at beating countermagic.
It depends on what you expect to face more. Don't go by what the more prominent Storm players do. All of us who have been playing the deck for longer times (like 2+ years) are very stubborn when it comes to our lists and slow to adapt. The issue is that Storm is very complex and it can be hard to trust someone else's results when you have done so much work and they come to completely different conclusions.
Example: When Dig Through Time was legal, Pascal and I thought the OmniShow matchup was our worst matchup ever, most everyone else thought it was pretty good. The first issue was that Pascal and I mostly saw the UB version with a couple maindeck discard spells, whereas others played against mono blue. We were also underprepared and once I played a bit more and made up my mind about the sideboard, playing Xantid Swarms and/or Flusterstorms, I experienced a drastic increase in win percentage, to the point where I had a very good record in the matchup.

TL;DR: Just pick a list and play it. Most choices are fine and the differences are not only slight, but even out across the board.

Sloshthedark

04-06-2016, 07:53 AM

Yesterday not :( because I played in moments between being working. Was sad because the miracles matchups where really cool.

I wish there was an export function for replays in MODO for sharing, you could search it up by number or something... incomming 2022 I guess...

Got yet another 4-0 in our Tuesday Legacy 4-rounder, which put me to 12-0 in the last three tournaments there.

what a savage! you're safe to double draw now ;)

Congrats man!

I've seen that almost nobody here is playing Caleb's list with 6 tutor effects (4 IF and 2 DP), what do you guys think? Is it just better running 2 PiF and 2 Tendrils? I had some problems with all these Deathrite Shaman in play having Pif/Tendrils in hand discarding them with LED...don't know,maybe it's just me :laugh:

hard to say, maybe just don't write about it... 1DP seems to be a frequent choice, I'd say 2Toa/2Pif is still rare... I can only agree with Jona

Togores

04-06-2016, 08:27 AM

I can stream replays but Idk why ppl dont like that usualy...

Sloshthedark

04-06-2016, 08:51 AM

I can stream replays but Idk why ppl dont like that usualy...

I don't mind it, I like interesting/thought provoking content, form doesn't matter, but I'd really appreciate a feature where you could just link a game and let people walk through/review it on their own, like there is in Poker or Chess... just a game export -> online app, so simple...:frown:

Alakhai84

04-06-2016, 09:29 AM

Thanks Jonathan for the answer! I'll do as you suggest! :wink:

I can stream replays but Idk why ppl dont like that usualy... It would be great to see them, just so interesting watching your video I've learned lot of things! Hope you'll stream them! :smile:

Togores

04-06-2016, 10:34 AM

Usualy all my streams can be found on past streams on my channel. Will try to do a short stream with the matches ^^

CabalTherapy

04-06-2016, 11:31 AM

Congrats man!

Thanks!

what a savage! you're safe to double draw now ;)

I'll try to convince my opponent to draw in the first round of the next tournament. :laugh:

Ronald Deuce

04-06-2016, 01:01 PM

Congrats man!

I've seen that almost nobody here is playing Caleb's list with 6 tutor effects (4 IF and 2 DP), what do you guys think? Is it just better running 2 PiF and 2 Tendrils? I had some problems with all these Deathrite Shaman in play having Pif/Tendrils in hand discarding them with LED...don't know,maybe it's just me :laugh:

I played the six-tutor build almost exclusively until the Eldrazi menace showed up. Now I'm on five tutors, 1 Empty, 1 PiF, 1 AdN, 1 Tendrils with a second Petition in my sideboard to replace Empty in matchups like Goblins, Elves, etc.

I'm pretty new to the deck generally, but I don't feel comfortable running fewer than five tutors. Jonathan Alexander is right that six-tutor is simpler to play than the other builds, and I'd add to that by saying that it's also more flexible in most matchups. Also, you've got fewer chances of drawing into multiple copies of your business cards, so there aren't as many awkward hands and you don't rely so much on Brainstorm-fetch plays. This is nice because you can start fetching out lands more quickly, thinning the deck and improving your draws.

It's also correct that you run a greater risk of dying to countermagic on 2x Petition than you would on 2x PiF. PiF is great against countermagic because they'll often not be able to deal with a second combo attempt the turn after we go for it. I think running Petition instead of a second PiF is a reasonable tradeoff because you stop drawing into multiple PiFs and you have better methods for finding other cards you'd want (a tutor for LED or Cabal Ritual can net you mana). You get fewer awkward hands and fewer bad topdecks, but keep in mind that it makes AdN a bit more dangerous and hands with 2x Petition are pretty yucky.

I'm not too happy about Empty in the maindeck because it's really awkward to draw if you've already got some business in your hand, so I might go back to the 2x Petition in the mainboard. Empty has served pretty well, though, because Eldrazi has a big problem dealing with fourteen goblins on turn 2, or even turn 3.

ScottW

04-06-2016, 01:56 PM

Usualy all my streams can be found on past streams on my channel. Will try to do a short stream with the matches ^^

I've watched your streams in archive and always appreciate the content. Sometimes it has been hard to hear you over the music, which by the way is some of the better streaming music I've heard. I simply like hearing your thought process as the match is going. Like why you'd wait on a Duress, etc. (Nothing beats a live match, however, as we get to see the often "pimp" side of Storm.)

Togores

04-06-2016, 03:14 PM

I've watched your streams in archive and always appreciate the content. Sometimes it has been hard to hear you over the music, which by the way is some of the better streaming music I've heard. I simply like hearing your thought process as the match is going. Like why you'd wait on a Duress, etc. (Nothing beats a live match, however, as we get to see the often "pimp" side of Storm.)

Thanks for everything. I will keep doing stuff. And also good you say that about the music, will try to put the sound a bit lower.

Also the music I just search in YT "epic music hour" and let it flow. Think that music without text is the best for streaming. And usualy has energy. Thats what you need to play. :3

OlegtheSuper

04-07-2016, 12:15 AM

Got 4-0 yesterday on Tuesday tournament in LGS with Grinding Station(2 ToA, 1 PiF, 1 EtW, 1 DP, 1 SDT, 6 discard)
2-1 S&T
2-1 Classic ANT
2-0 Zombardment
2-1 UB Reanimator

Side was:
3 Abrupt Decay
1 Krosan grip
1 Burning Wish
1 Ad Nauseam
2 Dread of Night
1 Massacre
1 Echoing Truth
2 Flusterstorm
3 Hurkyl's Recall

taconaut

04-07-2016, 09:02 AM

Congrats Oleg - when do you bring in the Burning Wish?

OlegtheSuper

04-08-2016, 12:10 AM

Congrats Oleg - when do you bring in the Burning Wish?
Thank you!
Vs decks with discard+surgic and vs combodecks to have like 1 more tutor.

taconaut

04-08-2016, 10:32 AM

Do you ever have issues with it not being as compatible with PiF/having to find extra Red mana?

OlegtheSuper

04-08-2016, 10:57 AM

Do you ever have issues with it not being as compatible with PiF/having to find extra Red mana?

No, everything is ok:)

Isaac

04-11-2016, 01:27 AM

Today I played at the nerd rage gaming legacy championship trial in buffalo grove IL.

51 players 6 rounds

rd1 rug delver 2/1
rd2 punishing jund 2/1
rd3 punishing jund 2/0
rd4 infect 1/2
rd5 sns 2/0
rd6 id

top8

quarter finals storm 2/1
semi finals painter 1/2

I only herd about eldrazi in the room but never saw it. A lot of fair decks today and in the end I lost to painter on a game 3 mull to 4 after seeing no lands in any hands or petals. Ran pretty much the same list as I posted before but switched up 1 sb card and put in another empty. As I mentioned before, the night's whisper has been a ok main stay in the deck. For me today it won me game 1 against sneak and show as I tried to find a disruption effect and was out of blue while floating a bunch of black. I cast night's drawled 2 and found what I needed. The card isn't the bee's nee's but for right now I don't see myself playing any other card main deck. Chain also made it's impact in top 8 as my storm mirror match chose that one spell off his duress and that lead to his demise. I also had two win's off empty the warrens. One was turn one empty for 10 and the other was mid game empty for 14. For my spoils 100$$$ cash money and a great time with friends.

the goods

Lands (14)

2 Island
1 Swamp
3 flooded strand
4 Polluted Delta
1 bloodstained mire
2 Underground Sea
1 Volcanic Island

Spells (46)

4 Lion's Eye Diamond
4 Lotus Petal
1 Ad Nauseam
4 Brainstorm
4 Cabal Ritual
4 Dark Ritual
3 Cabal Therapy
1 Dark Petition
3 Duress
4 Gitaxian Probe
4 Infernal Tutor
1 Past in Flames
4 Ponder
2 Preordain
1 chain of vapor
1 night's whisper
1 Tendrils of Agony

SB:
2 Xantid Swarm
2 Dread of Night
3 Abrupt Decay
1 krosan grip
1 Disfigure
1 Echoing truth
1 Hurkyl's Recall
2 Empty the Warrens
1 Massacre
1 Tropical Island

nevilshute

04-11-2016, 02:54 AM

Did another batch of ANT-videos. Reasonably happy with the list.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLHk0w4Md8v4DXDtgmJ0FFYL-0wKJDBkh6

ScottW

04-12-2016, 10:14 AM

Thanks for the videos Nevilshute! I've watched the first few rounds and have enjoyed them as always.

Agrippa91

04-12-2016, 04:04 PM

Hi guys!
Not a storm player here, but I'm thinking about building it at some time in the future since the dual lands overlap really nicely with my Grixis Delver deck and I really think Storm is a super exciting mechanic. So I was just testing it against my deck and came to the following scenario where I'd like input on how you would play it:

It's match 2, so post-sideboard.

I've just started my second turn (opponent had fetchland into deathrite).

I fetched for a basic island on the first turn and pondered (so only 2 cards in the gy).

I haven't played a land yet, the top card of my deck is Tendrils. I know my opponent plays Stifle.

My current hand consists of
- Swamp
- Polluted Delta
- Brainstorm
- Duress
- Dark Ritual
- LED
- Chain of Vapor (though I realize this card is not really getting played anymore? Is is because Eldrazi and Miracles?)

I play a fairly standard list, postboard I have no Preordains, no ad nauseam, only 3 cabal therapy, 3 duress, 2 empty the warrens, 2 chain of vapor.

So what do I do here? Do I play around Daze by just swamp->duress? Do I try to set him back a turn by playing chain of vapor on drs after brainstorming? Do I just brainstorm and hope to get there this turn (doesn't seem right with this many "dead" cards in chain, tendrils and 2 lands)?

Really would like to hear your opinions. I realize this is more of a general question and not a super complicated puzzle, but I'm fairly new to this deck as I said.

My feeling would be that playing fetch and brainstorm seems fine, I'm not under a lot of pressure and I can even go for the win via past in flames thanks to chain of vapor later in the game. Also I'd hold my duress for when I want to go off and just play around daze for the time being...

CabalTherapy

04-12-2016, 06:18 PM

So what do I do here?

Hello,
the problem is that Chain of Vapor is absurdly weak against Grixis Delver. I'd never board it in. If you're afraid of Shaman, then play Decay to kill them or the more powerful Pyroclasm, which basically kills everything, since most of the time 1 Angler gets boarded out, if I'm correct.
In your situation, I guess, my play would be Swamp > go because there's little chance to get storm9 and there's no need to. Keep BS for a potential Therapy. As you realized, one can still win via Pif against Shaman even without removals.

btw, I went once againt (forth time in the row) 4-0 at the Tuesday 4-rounder putting me to 16-0 in that shop... :laugh:
Played Shloshstorm with one Thing in the Ice in the SB for one Clasm. It did nothing.

Round 1 Goblins
He goes Caverns > Lackey and I see his hand in my turn, which is pretty decent; potentially a turn 3 kill. I BS with a Petal, fetch, Ponder with Island and find the tutor for the 2nd turn win after he attacked me with Lackey and put some dudes into play. Game2 was more interesting but I took his Chalice on turn one with a Thougtseize early on. He then proceeded to tax my mana base a bit with Port and played Lackey > SGC, which got answered by a Pyroclasm. He ripped Chalice, I had the Decay and won with a Pif loop from there.

Round 2 Infect
He starts and played Hierarch. I kept a slowish hand with Pif and Toa already there. I played Swamp, Petal > Ponder which found me a Grim Tutor and Dark Ritual. I kept them and he started to count a bit while fetching for a Dryad Arbor. Thus, I suspected him to have a lot of pump spells to win with normal damage via Arbor. On turn 3, I went for a line without probe or a discard spell but he indeed had only pumpspells that would have been lethal on the next turn. I think my line was pretty unspactacular with Dark Ritual, 2 Critauls, Grim into another Critual, PiF with Toa in hand.

Round 3 Jund
Jund guy managed to win against the other ANT palyer the round before. Game 1 took us 1 min after I started and played Ponder drawing Grim and keeping Infernal on top. He thoughtseized my Grim and I've announced that I have Infernal on top, revealed it and he conceded, even though there wasn't a kill (would have to BS first). In game 2, he had too much pressure and I drew only mana. Pretty uneventful loss. For the final match, I countered a Hynm on turn 2 and played AdN on turn 3 against his Surgical which took Infernal in response: my flips were pretty good, nothing too special here as well.

Round 4 ANT
I started the game with a BS because my hand was very close to a kill but drew 3 BS with it > BS lock... He durdled a bit with his cantrips and disard spells and gathered a kill on his turn 3 I think. For the next one, I had a casual turn 1 AdNauseam with Ritual, LED,LED, and Infernal that found the kill rather easily. Again, for the deciding match, he cantriped a bit and had a 3rd turn kill on top of his library but I managed to find a turn 2 with Dark Ritual, 2 Critual into AdNauseam from hand for a nice Tendrils kill. (I drew with him, so he could get a booster pack for his troubles on 7 points; was the only one with 9p before the round)

All in all, to quote the fellow Storm player, "Ad Nauseam overperformed today" winning 3 games for me and 2 for him if I recall correctly. No EtW were played today; I like how the red dudes knew that I wouldn't need them. They sure will come just in time. :wink:

Agrippa91

04-12-2016, 07:23 PM

Hello,
the problem is that Chain of Vapor is absurdly weak against Grixis Delver. I'd never board it in. If you're afraid of Shaman, then play Decay to kill them or the more powerful Pyroclasm, which basically kills everything, since most of the time 1 Angler gets boarded out, if I'm correct.
In your situation, I guess, my play would be Swamp > go because there's little chance to get storm9 and there's no need to. Keep BS for a potential Therapy. As you realized, one can still win via Pif against Shaman even without removals. :

Do you have a list? It seems pretty interesting. Also what are the general cards that get boarded in against Grixis Delver? I thought about Chain of Vapor because it slows down delver significantly, gains tempo against pyromancer and bounces a null rod if the opponent has it.
And yes, Pyromancer is really good against Grixis because most people even board out all 2 anglers (all the other creatures just do way more) besides some bolts.
I don't think I like Decay since green leaves you open to wasteland if you don't want to waste a petal, also it's really expensive. It would get the occasional null rod so I'm not sure, perhaps 1?

Also how is Empty the Warrens considered against DRS-delver-decks? I know that it can be pretty hard against creature decks to get there with goblins, I only remember that people board it in against RUG. On the other side RUG has Rough/Tumble while Grixis normally doesn't play any boardwhipes.

Jonathan Alexander

04-12-2016, 08:41 PM

Also how is Empty the Warrens considered against DRS-delver-decks? I know that it can be pretty hard against creature decks to get there with goblins, I only remember that people board it in against RUG. On the other side RUG has Rough/Tumble while Grixis normally doesn't play any boardwhipes.

Actually think multiple Empty is the best plan against Deathrite + Delver decks. Straight up Grinding Station is already great against Canadian, but Goblins are still worth boarding if you have them. I do board Empty against Canadian with the 2 Petition list.

Sloshthedark

04-13-2016, 07:38 AM

I'd like input on how you would play it:

I like CT's Swamp->go

4-0 at the Tuesday 4-rounder putting me to 16-0 in that shop... :laugh:

:eek: this is getting out of hand.. congrats!

btw. also 4-0 with Therapystorm

2-1 Burn
2-1 W hatebears
2-0 S+T
2-1 Grixis delver

Actually think multiple Empty is the best plan against Deathrite + Delver decks

While I agree that EtW is a good plan, I'm not sure I'd play multiple as a lot of DRS situations are really tight race which small-mid size goblin squad can easily lose

CabalTherapy

04-13-2016, 08:11 AM

Do you have a list? It seems pretty interesting. Also what are the general cards that get boarded in against Grixis Delver? I thought about Chain of Vapor because it slows down delver significantly, gains tempo against pyromancer and bounces a null rod if the opponent has it.
And yes, Pyromancer is really good against Grixis because most people even board out all 2 anglers (all the other creatures just do way more) besides some bolts.
I don't think I like Decay since green leaves you open to wasteland if you don't want to waste a petal, also it's really expensive. It would get the occasional null rod so I'm not sure, perhaps 1?

Slowing down Delver is not bad in general but Chain is too weak hitting only one creature. How about killing all? > Clasm.
Generally, I don't care about Null Rod but Decay isn't expensive because you don't have to worry about taxing counterspells and it hits everything on their side. Running 2 green sources, it's bearable to get one land wasted if you can kill something decent.
I like boarding in Flusterstorms and Pyroclasms and from time to time Xantid Swarms depending on the player.
Nothing special regarding the list. It's Sloshstorm with a lot of flexible SB slots.

I agree with Sloshy on EtW, although haven't tested mulitples. I'd rather go for PiF loops all day long supported by Clasms.

:eek: this is getting out of hand.. congrats!

Therapystorm

Yes, that's true.
Thanks.

Douif

04-13-2016, 02:52 PM

What is the "Shloshstorm" list ?

ScottW

04-13-2016, 02:58 PM

What is the "Shloshstorm" list ?

Page 186

CabalTherapy

04-13-2016, 04:17 PM

What is the "Shloshstorm" list ?

2 Pif, 2 Toa, 1 Etw, 1 Grim, and AdN in the SB for me. I only play one Top, 6 discard spells, and Tropical main for example but the core remains the same.

ConnerSabin

04-13-2016, 08:01 PM

Hey y'all,

I'm a longtime lurker, but first time poster. I was wondering how y'all feel about the current discard split that I've seen floating around on the boards of 3 Duress/3 Cabal Therapy, and whether or not that is altered by the move in the current meta to maindeck ETW. If the direction we're trending in is one of ETW main, and in some builds multiple copies of Empty, doesn't a 4/2 split in favor of Therapy make more sense given the synergy between flashback and goblin tokens/Xantid Swarm? Is this just a call that we should be making based on how much permission we have to fight through game one in the dark vis-a-vis our local meta, or should we attempt to maximize the amount of maindeck synergy that we have? Unsure if it impacts the decision, but my current build is 1DP, 1 ToA, 1 ETW, 1 PiF, 1 SDT, AdN in the board.

ScottW

04-14-2016, 11:48 AM

Regarding Empty and discard: Planning to Empty gives your opponent more ways to interact, which further taxes your discard. When going for Tendrils, you often have a clear choice to select with Cabal Therapy (blind). With Empty, you might try to play around counter magic and want to strip a Golgari Charm, Explosives, etc. Theoretical but possibly a factor.

Jonathan Alexander

04-14-2016, 12:47 PM

Empty actually favours Duress, as does the current meta in general. Cabal Therapy is obviously the more powerful card (it hits multiples, it hits creatures), but Cabal Therapy lives off information. In the past, and in some matchups still, it was/is not only reasonable but beneficial to hold onto your discard spells until later in the game, but currently, you are usually pressured to use them early. It is more important to hit at all than to hit all copies of a single card. Especially against decks like Aggro Loam and Eldrazi, you can't tell which of their hate pieces they have drawn without Gitaxian Probe, so it's better to go with the more reliable option. Empty only amplifies this effect by giving you shorter windows of reasonable combo turns as opposed to additional copies of Tendrils, Past in Flames or even Ad Nauseam.

Unless you're a Jedi Master of course, in which case you should just run Therapy.

ScottW

04-14-2016, 01:04 PM

What do you think of my point Jonathan? Your comment is partially meta dependent. I don't play mtgo and almost exclusively at my lgs.

Jonathan Alexander

04-14-2016, 01:16 PM

I think what you said falls under "it's important to hit". Empty is susceptible to different forms of interaction than the other business spells, which makes it harder to make proper reads and thus more reliable to go with Duress.

(I kinda feel like this sounds condescending, definitely not intended. Should have put more effort into my earlier post, including quoting yours and making clear what I meant.)

ScottW

04-14-2016, 01:24 PM

Not at all. Thanks.

CabalTherapy

04-16-2016, 10:17 AM

Back in the Established Decks forum. :smile:

/back among classic decks like Oozing, Burn, and Pox

Ronald Deuce

04-16-2016, 03:48 PM

Back in the Established Decks forum. :smile:

Fiddlesticks and fudgesicles. Time for damage control?

Revamping my sideboard again after a couple of losses to Eldrazi and Reanimator last weekend. Went 1-2 out of three rounds. I won game 2 against the Eldrazi, which was nice, and makes me feel more that the matchup isn't as hideous as it first appeared if we a) prepare for it and b) win the die-roll. I also 2-0'd Infect, which 0-2'd me last time I played the guy, so maybe I'm not totally Bad at Magic. Reanimator was pretty bad, though.

In light of last week's results, I've been thinking more and more that a second Empty the Warrens and the singleton KGrip are dead space in the sideboard, and that I might need either a second Rebuild or some form of graveyard hate. Or both, for that matter.

The only change I've made to my maindeck in a long time—aside from the continued rotation of an Empty and Dark Petition #2—was to replace Preordain #2 with a Chain of Vapor. It hasn't come up once, so no word on how that's affecting things. I'll get back with more info after the next time I take the deck for a spin.

I feel like Preordain is extremely clunky, and like I can't find a discard when I need it most. That's gotten me thinking that it'd be great if we could go up to eight disruption cards, but I don't have the experience with the deck to determine how much that would hamstring our whole gameplan. Bear in mind that I've only recently brought in the seventh piece of disruption again (the Chain of Vapor). Has anyone tried eight lately?

I'm also considering going to a 3-3 split between Therapy and Duress, but I'm still unsure how important that is or whether it'll yield appreciable benefits. I don't feel like I've noticed a problem with 4x Therapy that more Duresses would solve all that often, primarily because I've been firing successful Therapies that revealed redundant hate (e.g., a Chalice and a Thorn or Surgical and Force and [generic blue card]). Our chances of breaking through against either of those (plus a clock) are slim and none, and if our opponent knows what he/she is doing, Slim will have left town. Hatebears are a real problem that Duress can't answer, which was one of the reasons I decided to maindeck the Chain.

Here's hoping we can get back into the DTBs. Let's face it: this deck is a lot of fun, and I'm not interested in seeing it get blown out.

CabalTherapy

04-17-2016, 03:56 AM

Fiddlesticks and fudgesicles. Time for damage control?

Revamping my sideboard again after a couple of losses to Eldrazi and Reanimator last weekend. Went 1-2 out of three rounds. I won game 2 against the Eldrazi, which was nice, and makes me feel more that the matchup isn't as hideous as it first appeared if we a) prepare for it and b) win the die-roll. I also 2-0'd Infect, which 0-2'd me last time I played the guy, so maybe I'm not totally Bad at Magic. Reanimator was pretty bad, though.

In light of last week's results, I've been thinking more and more that a second Empty the Warrens and the singleton KGrip are dead space in the sideboard, and that I might need either a second Rebuild or some form of graveyard hate. Or both, for that matter.

The only change I've made to my maindeck in a long time—aside from the continued rotation of an Empty and Dark Petition #2—was to replace Preordain #2 with a Chain of Vapor. It hasn't come up once, so no word on how that's affecting things. I'll get back with more info after the next time I take the deck for a spin.

I feel like Preordain is extremely clunky, and like I can't find a discard when I need it most. That's gotten me thinking that it'd be great if we could go up to eight disruption cards, but I don't have the experience with the deck to determine how much that would hamstring our whole gameplan. Bear in mind that I've only recently brought in the seventh piece of disruption again (the Chain of Vapor). Has anyone tried eight lately?

I'm also considering going to a 3-3 split between Therapy and Duress, but I'm still unsure how important that is or whether it'll yield appreciable benefits. I don't feel like I've noticed a problem with 4x Therapy that more Duresses would solve all that often, primarily because I've been firing successful Therapies that revealed redundant hate (e.g., a Chalice and a Thorn or Surgical and Force and [generic blue card]). Our chances of breaking through against either of those (plus a clock) are slim and none, and if our opponent knows what he/she is doing, Slim will have left town. Hatebears are a real problem that Duress can't answer, which was one of the reasons I decided to maindeck the Chain.

Here's hoping we can get back into the DTBs. Let's face it: this deck is a lot of fun, and I'm not interested in seeing it get blown out.

I feel like Chain main is a miserable move. Wasn't it already discussed some pages ago that is has so many obvious downsides and doesn't support the game plan at all. I guess there is a little step left for someone to ask about Izzet Charm and friends. Chances are high that you'll draw it and not need it more often than really searching for it.
I don't see how Preordain is "clunky". It's a cc1 cantrip that is faster than SDT and comparable to Ponder but selects better: you should find you discard spells easily. 6 are enough right now and I see your point on the Therapy vs. Duress problem. I have been playing with a 3-3 for quite a while before replacing one Duress with Thoughtseize, which is the best discard spell. Regarding counterspells, it's important to hit safely and presumably you might win after one hit in the current state of the format. Duress also takes down Eldrazi better than a blind CT.

Ah, and I of course, hope we stay here in this forum. We don't need to be in the DTB section to know that ANT is still the best deck.

Alakhai84

04-17-2016, 11:30 AM

The only change I've made to my maindeck in a long time—aside from the continued rotation of an Empty and Dark Petition #2—was to replace Preordain #2 with a Chain of Vapor. It hasn't come up once, so no word on how that's affecting things. I'll get back with more info after the next time I take the deck for a spin.

I feel like Preordain is extremely clunky, and like I can't find a discard when I need it most. That's gotten me thinking that it'd be great if we could go up to eight disruption cards, but I don't have the experience with the deck to determine how much that would hamstring our whole gameplan. Bear in mind that I've only recently brought in the seventh piece of disruption again (the Chain of Vapor). Has anyone tried eight lately?
So why not cutting Preordain for Abrupt Decay...will solve our worst problem : Counterbalance and Chalice Of The Void.

Just top8'ed a tournament of 47 people, pretty standard decklist : 2 Pif 1 ToA 1 EtW maindeck...lost during swiss Eldrazi, top 8 lost against Eldrazi one more time (4x Decay and 2x Hurkyl's is not enough!!). 4 Eldrazi in top8....LOL! Time to ban Chalice? In vintage is restricted...

Ronald Deuce

04-18-2016, 12:09 PM

I feel like Chain main is a miserable move. Wasn't it already discussed some pages ago that is has so many obvious downsides and doesn't support the game plan at all. . . . Chances are high that you'll draw it and not need it more often than really searching for it.

That's true, but I feel like one has the same problem if one draws Duress/Therapy against a permanent-heavy deck that's already deployed a threat. I've had a whole lot of game 1s in which people run out a Thalia or a Sphere of Resistance while I'm still monkeying around trying to find business, and I don't have an answer. Having something to bounce a hate permanent (or a gamebreaker like Marit Lage) feels like a really important thing, and Chain does some other nasty stuff with mana rocks on the board. This actually came up twice yesterday (worked once; my tutor got countered the second time, which another Duress might've solved). Not sure I'll keep it in (more on that in a minute), but it's a pretty useful trick in a lot of matchups. Obviously not universally good, but I've been yanking the Preordain it replaced in nearly every game 2 for a sideboard card, so I thought I'd replace it with a 1-costed card that comes in a lot of the time and solves much of the problem with game-1 permanent hate (excluding Chalice).

I don't see how Preordain is "clunky". It's a cc1 cantrip that is faster than SDT and comparable to Ponder but selects better: you should find you discard spells easily.

I've been cantripping into a bunch of cantrips quite a bit lately. Oftentimes we either need to deal with a problem that'll zero us within a couple of turns or get the combo going right away; Preordain does neither of these things well. This has led me to believe that we're running too many cantrips, but there's no way I'm cutting a copy of Brainstorm or Ponder from the maindeck. Probe is useful for different reasons, and I don't think that's a card to cut either. The bang-for-buck factor on Preordain is the lowest out of all the cantrips in the deck, and I find that when I draw it after the first two turns, I'd rather have either business (five spells here already), mana (nine rituals and eight artifacts), or disruption.

So when I say it's clunky, I don't mean that it's overcosted or that it's inherently slow; I mean that, of all the cards we use to find business/mana/disruption, it does the least, and I feel like we'd be better served to shore up one of those three components of the deck than to keep 2x Preordain.

I may not be approaching this properly, but again, I've sided out the Preordains for virtually all my G2s and G3s, and rarely has it been useful in G1.

6 are enough right now and I see your point on the Therapy vs. Duress problem. I have been playing with a 3-3 for quite a while before replacing one Duress with Thoughtseize, which is the best discard spell.

I've been kicking around bringing back the third Duress instead of the Chain and going back to seven discards. I'm curious: do you feel like seven pieces of disruption in the maindeck has been a setup that's led to flooding? I used to think that because there were times when it would happen, but I feel like we're in an environment in which there are decks that'll just shut us out of the game immediately if we can't land a discard right away. Chain obviously doesn't solve this problem, but I felt like testing maindeck anti-permanent stuff.

I'm definitely keeping two Chains in the 75, whether split between main and sideboard or both in the side. It's so crushing when it works (which has been often, in my experience) and so versatile against a variety of matchups that I definitely think we need to keep two around. The fact that it builds storm count and removes problem permanents (Canonist, Germ tokens wielding Batterskulls, Reanimate targets) at the same time is superb.

CabalTherapy, thanks a lot for your input. I'm interested to hear what you think about adding discards at the moment/why we shouldn't, and I'll probably put Chain back in the 'board after its underperformance yesterday. Felt too narrow for the matchups I faced, though it would've been great in the matchups I had last week (barring Eldrazi).

So why not cutting Preordain for Abrupt Decay...will solve our worst problem : Counterbalance and Chalice Of The Void.

Just top8'ed a tournament of 47 people, pretty standard decklist : 2 Pif 1 ToA 1 EtW maindeck...lost during swiss Eldrazi, top 8 lost against Eldrazi one more time (4x Decay and 2x Hurkyl's is not enough!!). 4 Eldrazi in top8....LOL! Time to ban Chalice? In vintage is restricted...

First of all, well done!

To answer your question, I'm not a fan of Abrupt Decay in very many matchups at all. Green mana is a real choke that we won't be able to solve in the face of a number of decks, and unless we're in a slower matchup I think it'll really slow us down to have one in our opener.

It might be a necessity against Eldrazi because it can't be countered, but I don't think we should be putting in more than one or two. The Eldrazi player yesterday won game 2 by playing Chalice on 0, Chalice on 1, Chalice on 2, and Rest in Peace over the first three turns.

On an unrelated note, I just saw this list today: http://mtgtop8.com/event?e=12113&d=269470&f=LE

Your thoughts, everyone?

Sloshthedark

04-18-2016, 04:04 PM

http://mythicspoiler.com/soi/cards/piecesofthepuzzle.jpg

btw. how is it going in this department? anyone actually tried to build it?

GoldenCid

04-18-2016, 04:57 PM

That's true, but I feel like one has the same problem if one draws Duress/Therapy against a permanent-heavy deck that's already deployed a threat. I've had a whole lot of game 1s in which people run out a Thalia or a Sphere of Resistance while I'm still monkeying around trying to find business, and I don't have an answer. Having something to bounce a hate permanent (or a gamebreaker like Marit Lage) feels like a really important thing, and Chain does some other nasty stuff with mana rocks on the board. This actually came up twice yesterday (worked once; my tutor got countered the second time, which another Duress might've solved). Not sure I'll keep it in (more on that in a minute), but it's a pretty useful trick in a lot of matchups. Obviously not universally good, but I've been yanking the Preordain it replaced in nearly every game 2 for a sideboard card, so I thought I'd replace it with a 1-costed card that comes in a lot of the time and solves much of the problem with game-1 permanent hate (excluding Chalice).

I've been cantripping into a bunch of cantrips quite a bit lately. Oftentimes we either need to deal with a problem that'll zero us within a couple of turns or get the combo going right away; Preordain does neither of these things well. This has led me to believe that we're running too many cantrips, but there's no way I'm cutting a copy of Brainstorm or Ponder from the maindeck. Probe is useful for different reasons, and I don't think that's a card to cut either. The bang-for-buck factor on Preordain is the lowest out of all the cantrips in the deck, and I find that when I draw it after the first two turns, I'd rather have either business (five spells here already), mana (nine rituals and eight artifacts), or disruption.

So when I say it's clunky, I don't mean that it's overcosted or that it's inherently slow; I mean that, of all the cards we use to find business/mana/disruption, it does the least, and I feel like we'd be better served to shore up one of those three components of the deck than to keep 2x Preordain.

I may not be approaching this properly, but again, I've sided out the Preordains for virtually all my G2s and G3s, and rarely has it been useful in G1.

I've been kicking around bringing back the third Duress instead of the Chain and going back to seven discards. I'm curious: do you feel like seven pieces of disruption in the maindeck has been a setup that's led to flooding? I used to think that because there were times when it would happen, but I feel like we're in an environment in which there are decks that'll just shut us out of the game immediately if we can't land a discard right away. Chain obviously doesn't solve this problem, but I felt like testing maindeck anti-permanent stuff.

I'm definitely keeping two Chains in the 75, whether split between main and sideboard or both in the side. It's so crushing when it works (which has been often, in my experience) and so versatile against a variety of matchups that I definitely think we need to keep two around. The fact that it builds storm count and removes problem permanents (Canonist, Germ tokens wielding Batterskulls, Reanimate targets) at the same time is superb.

CabalTherapy, thanks a lot for your input. I'm interested to hear what you think about adding discards at the moment/why we shouldn't, and I'll probably put Chain back in the 'board after its underperformance yesterday. Felt too narrow for the matchups I faced, though it would've been great in the matchups I had last week (barring Eldrazi).

First of all, well done!

To answer your question, I'm not a fan of Abrupt Decay in very many matchups at all. Green mana is a real choke that we won't be able to solve in the face of a number of decks, and unless we're in a slower matchup I think it'll really slow us down to have one in our opener.

It might be a necessity against Eldrazi because it can't be countered, but I don't think we should be putting in more than one or two. The Eldrazi player yesterday won game 2 by playing Chalice on 0, Chalice on 1, Chalice on 2, and Rest in Peace over the first three turns.

On an unrelated note, I just saw this list today: http://mtgtop8.com/event?e=12113&d=269470&f=LE

Your thoughts, everyone?

Man plan????

Jonathan Alexander

04-18-2016, 05:28 PM

http://mythicspoiler.com/soi/cards/piecesofthepuzzle.jpg

btw. how is it going in this department? anyone actually tried to build it?

I've had some success with it on Magic Online. In Limited.

phazonmutant

04-18-2016, 07:17 PM

Pieces of the Puzzle

btw. how is it going in this department? anyone actually tried to build it?

I'm going to play a list with 4 tonight in a weekly tournament. I'll report back with results. In testing it's been good.

ThomasDowd

04-18-2016, 10:22 PM

I'm going to play a list with 4 tonight in a weekly tournament. I'll report back with results. In testing it's been good.

what did you cut?

phazonmutant

04-19-2016, 05:18 PM

what did you cut?

Well that depends on what list you start with! :wink: How about I just copy my deck?

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

4 Gitaxian Probe
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
4 Pieces of the Puzzle

3 Cabal Therapy
3 Duress

4 Dark Ritual
4 Cabal Ritual
4 Lion's Eye Diamond
2 Lotus Petal

4 Infernal Tutor
2 Past in Flames
1 Empty the Warrens
2 Tendrils of Agony

// Sideboard:
1 Bayou
4 Abrupt Decay
1 Hurkyl's Recall
2 Dread of Night
2 Flusterstorm
2 Sensei's Divining Top
2 Surgical Extraction
1 Xantid Swarm

Overall the deck felt solid, but mayyyybe 4 Pieces of the Puzzle was excessive, but it was a solid card to draw one of. It warranted a Force from RUG Delver, and won the other game it resolved. Solid there. Round 2 I played against Miracles where it also warranted a Force once and was a great top-deck later. Round 3 against Painter, game 1 it would have been an insane draw, game 2 I crushed him before it was relevant, and game 3 he had kind of a nut draw against my somewhat slow draw. Round 4 I played against TinFins and it was garbage.

Overall I'd cut 1-2 for a Petal and a Top. But when I cast it, it was amazing. Would recommend.

Bonus! You can see me play it against RUG here: https://www.twitch.tv/cardkingdom/v/61488050 (game starts around 5 minutes)

Fatal

04-20-2016, 10:20 AM

phazonmutant

04-20-2016, 06:31 PM

So you actually more focused on turn 4 combo out ? Is it sometimes too slow vs for example Elves ? I watched your matches - not great examples:

G1 Free win - opponent keep 5 lander + brainstorm on draw. Turn 1 duress was enough.

G2 He had Zoo hand vs messy hand with Tendrils which you wanted to recast but he topdeck surgical with library (really library... in g2)

G3 opponent side out Spell Snares ==' and keep non lander n/c.

Interesting thing did you tested Chrome Moxes in your build - I like puzzle gives very fast threshold but this 3 cmc is killer. Also not having Ad N is a mistake what if you met other combo where you need to race.

You're right, the match vs RUG was not very representative. I think that the turn 2 Pieces was a good showcase of how it can be used to set up turn 3, but correct this is a Grinding Station build that can go toe-to-toe in the late game.

Chrome Mox is interesting. Maybe it's better than some Petals?

Not having Ad Naus is definitely not a mistake. I've been hating it even in the combo mirror with a full playset of Lotus Petal because it encourages high-variance plays. You'll notice I have 4-5 combo hate cards in the sideboard (Surgical, Fluster, Xantid), and they have always been consistently better for me than Ad Naus. Ad Naus in the board would require adding in Lotus Petals, which I don't think go well with Grinding Station in general.

Jonathan Alexander

04-20-2016, 06:43 PM

"High variance plays" are not necessarily a bad thing, especially in matchups that come down to goldfishing anyway. 80% to win on turn two can be a lot better than 100% to win on turn three. Not having Ad Nauseam definitely hurts in non-Force of Will combo mirrors.

Megadeus

04-20-2016, 06:44 PM

Pieces does restock your hand and helps with gaining the CA lost from Chrommox. Sounds interesting. Is a build with ancient tombs too cute...

.Ix

04-21-2016, 02:30 AM

CabalTherapy

04-21-2016, 07:26 AM

I've been kicking around bringing back the third Duress instead of the Chain and going back to seven discards. I'm curious: do you feel like seven pieces of disruption in the maindeck has been a setup that's led to flooding? I used to think that because there were times when it would happen, but I feel like we're in an environment in which there are decks that'll just shut us out of the game immediately if we can't land a discard right away. Chain obviously doesn't solve this problem, but I felt like testing maindeck anti-permanent stuff.

CabalTherapy, thanks a lot for your input. I'm interested to hear what you think about adding discards at the moment/why we shouldn't, and I'll probably put Chain back in the 'board after its underperformance yesterday. Felt too narrow for the matchups I faced, though it would've been great in the matchups I had last week (barring Eldrazi).

I don't think that there is a higher philosophy to discard spells but I feel like 6 with 2 Pif main are a decent set up. As Jonathan Alexander pointed out some pages ago, format switched to a rather permanent based fight with less counterspells over the course of the last months. There are more non-U MUs and there we generally don't need discard spells but more juice.

Ronald Deuce

04-21-2016, 10:50 AM

I don't think that there is a higher philosophy to discard spells but I feel like 6 with 2 Pif main are a decent set up. As Jonathan Alexander pointed out some pages ago, format switched to a rather permanent based fight with less counterspells over the course of the last months. There are more non-U MUs and there we generally don't need discard spells but more juice.

Thank you for the response!

Do you feel similarly about a six-count in builds running Dark Petition instead of double-PiF? For the time being, I've gone back to six discards, and I'll try a 3-3 split next time I bring the deck out. Seven discards felt like it flooded. Back to two Preordains for the time being:rolleyes:

Some time ago, someone mentioned using Personal Tutor. Is anyone still working with that card? What spot in the deck did it fill?

phazonmutant

04-21-2016, 04:21 PM

As awesome as that sounds, it might be a little too hard on the colors to run Ancient Tomb.

Phazonmutant:

Do you whiff a lot with Pieces? I'm running it in a different combo deck with 35 Instants and Sorceries and I get only 1 card off it quite a few times.

I hit one spell once, but never straight whiffed. I have 39 hits, a few more than you. Running the math: I'm assuming that it takes 3 non-spells to cast Pieces and Pieces itself, so we can exclude those 4 from the deck population to approximate proportions of success to population size in an actual game.
Population (N): 56 (60 - 3 lands - 1 Pieces)
Successes (K): 38 (39 spells - 1 Pieces)
Sample Size (n): 5
Successes in Sample (k): 1
P(X <= k = 1) = 0.03268

For K=34
P(X <= k) = 0.07200

So 39 spells is about a 96.7% chance to hit 2 or more spells, whereas 35 spells is 92.8%.

bjholmes3

04-21-2016, 04:50 PM

It's that time again, I'll be researching, playtesting, and updating the guide in the weeks to come. Best of luck in your matches everyone, and may the storm count be ever in your favor.

Sloshthedark

04-21-2016, 05:25 PM

Played 3 Pieces tonight against Shardless, 4c control brew with Thing in the Ice, Burn and Esper Mentor ... none of these deck play Daze, so theoreticaly all 3 U are perfect MUs for the tech, all my opponents respected the card - I had it discarded or countered EVERY time I (could) cast it (roughly 10 times), if countered I haven't advanced my gameplan at all, felt pretty bad, lost 1 game because I couldn't cast or get rid of it, it forced weird cantripping (3 lands instead of more effective plays), I haven't had the guts to DR into Pieces in the dark if that should be a standard play I'm not interested anyway... overall I felt more manascrewed than usual, I could imagine it as omnipotent topdeck on 5 lands, unfortunately wasn't the case... generally it went as I thought it would, just no Daze got involved, too expensive, too sorcery and U on the top of it

Patrunkenphat7

04-22-2016, 08:44 PM

Eff we got moved to the slums. That's probably good though because people are more likely to be unprepared. This deck is actually one of the best right now IMO.

CabalTherapy

04-23-2016, 02:41 AM

Thank you for the response!

Do you feel similarly about a six-count in builds running Dark Petition instead of double-PiF? For the time being, I've gone back to six discards, and I'll try a 3-3 split next time I bring the deck out. Seven discards felt like it flooded. Back to two Preordains for the time being:rolleyes:

Some time ago, someone mentioned using Personal Tutor. Is anyone still working with that card? What spot in the deck did it fill?

I am afraid, I cannot help here: I never played Dark Petition, thus it's for other people to evaluate.

Jonathan Alexander

04-23-2016, 05:10 AM

Thank you for the response!

Do you feel similarly about a six-count in builds running Dark Petition instead of double-PiF? For the time being, I've gone back to six discards, and I'll try a 3-3 split next time I bring the deck out. Seven discards felt like it flooded. Back to two Preordains for the time being:rolleyes:

Some time ago, someone mentioned using Personal Tutor. Is anyone still working with that card? What spot in the deck did it fill?

If you run Petitions, that's because you don't expect to face much countermagic in the first place. Wouldn't make much sense to run heavy disruption maindeck then. Although I liked my Dark Petition list with four extra sideboard discard spells to go up to ten against Miracles and in combo mirrors.

Ronald Deuce

04-28-2016, 01:55 PM

If you run Petitions, that's because you don't expect to face much countermagic in the first place. Wouldn't make much sense to run heavy disruption maindeck then. Although I liked my Dark Petition list with four extra sideboard discard spells to go up to ten against Miracles and in combo mirrors.

How much of a difference do you think there really is between running Petition and running 2x PiF? I ask because I find that oftentimes it doesn't feel like it matters which card I have in hand; they either don't have enough to stop me, or their hand is totally stacked. I lost to BUG Delver Sunday because in game 3 he was sitting on three untapped lands with a hand of Clique, Force of Will, Flusterstorm, 2x Stifle, and some other irrelevant stuff. Wouldn't have mattered which config I was running; beating four counterspells and a clock feels pretty much impossible for our deck.

Feels like I've started to have a lot of unwinnable matchups in my meta, but that could just be that it's a small enough meta that people will board against my deck rather readily. There's still a whole lot of blue control floating around, as well. Getting a bit discouraged, so I might mix it up and play something else next time.

Jonathan Alexander

04-28-2016, 07:07 PM

Ronald Deuce

04-29-2016, 04:30 PM

With Petition, you tend to run Ad Nauseam. Petition is a much better flip than Past in Flames, because it can be LED or Tutor (or both), depending on what you need/have. I think the biggest difference outside of Ad Nauseam (or at least most noticeable for me) is the lack of extra Storm spells. Not having the second Tendrils can be really annoying.
When I tested 2 Past / 2 Tendrils / 1 Petition, I never noticed a difference between that and clean 2/3.

Are you a proponent of running additional business over Ad Nauseam at this point? I like having the AdN in my maindeck, but I'm starting to sour on playing this deck without more answers to countermagic than I'm finding right now, and AdN doesn't help there. Currently I'm running singletons of AdN, Petition, Empty, PiF, and Tendrils.

Have you tested with singletons AdN, Petition, Tendrils, and 2 PiF? I've been feeling more and more like I've been banking too heavily on hands that look like they could develop into a quick Empty but that never do. I used to run two Petitions maindeck (the other one's in my 'board), but I think the players in my meta have stepped up their blue game. I'm not taking last week's experience to be evidential (that god-hand from BUG Delver; also, there were only three rounds and I had a bye), but I am starting to feel like the increase in resilience of a second PiF would be better than the speed of maindeck Empty or the flexibility of a second Petition.

Here's hoping this weekend doesn't herald any opponents' drawing 2x Stifle, 2x Flusterstorm, Delver, Island, Force...

ScottW

05-01-2016, 11:41 PM

I played in a GPT today and had the pleasure to play 2 PIF, 2 Tendrils, 1 Grim, and 1 Empty because the store let me borrow their Grim Tutor (pretty nice). AN was in my side board.

One of my opponents was on RUG and had a hand of 3 FOW, 2 Stifle, Daze. He Forced my 2 CTs and so his hand was FOW / Stifle, which I baited out with an Empty and then blew him out with a gazillion Tendrils via PIF on the same turn. So much mana! I felt like I was constantly discarding tutors, PIF, and Tendrils with my LEDs. Maybe luck but it was fun.

thefringthing

05-03-2016, 12:28 PM

Some time ago, someone mentioned using Personal Tutor. Is anyone still working with that card? What spot in the deck did it fill?That was me. It's good. I ran it with 0 Dark Petition, 1 Tendrils, 1 PIF, 1 Empty. That said, I think the metagame is pretty horrible right now for storm, and for 1-mana cards.

Ronald Deuce

05-03-2016, 06:49 PM

That was me. It's good. I ran it with 0 Dark Petition, 1 Tendrils, 1 PIF, 1 Empty. That said, I think the metagame is pretty horrible right now for storm, and for 1-mana cards.

Thanks for the feedback!

Agreed on the 1-mana thing (and the meta in general), but I've been looking for an alternative to Dark Petition or Preordain lately. Petition's worked out pretty well for me, but it's a bit difficult to parlay a Petition into a fast Empty, so I've moved Empty back to the 'board for now because I've been liking the fifth tutor. Still really dislike Preordain, but I'm learning to live with a singleton in the absence of something better.

Have you noticed any distinct advantages or disadvantages to running Personal Tutor? Obviously it requires cantrips to fire immediately and it can't find AdN, but I'm wondering how often those problems arise and whether Personal Tutor's advantages (mana cost, primarily) have outweighed the difficulties.

No tournament last Sunday, but I got to practice against Eldrazi, and it went better than expected. Came out close to a tie after 5+ games.

I've been running an unorthodox setup lately: 2 PiF and singletons Tendrils, AdN, Petition, Preordain, Chrome Mox, Rain of Filth. 14 lands (Tropical in the 'board), 3-3 Duress to Therapy. Singletons of Petition and Empty in the sideboard.

I'm not missing the second Petition too much, but I need to play the deck more to see how flexible the list is with only 4-5 tutors. I don't like having more than one piece of business in the 'board, so I may just run without the second Petition. Seems like an upgrade over the second PiF against non-blue decks, though. Of course, so is Empty, but Empty's pretty bad in a lot of matchups where another tutor would help (Elves, Gobbos, anything with Ensnaring Bridge).

I've also been toying with the idea of running a second Tendrils in the board, but I'm still having trouble wrapping my head around how exactly that would help us. Feels like it just reduces flexibility compared with a tutor and reduces resilience compared with PiF. Not trolling; I'd appreciate any observations or pointers people could give me. Could be that I'm just bad at Magic, but I feel like a minimum of five tutors is pretty important for the deck's consistency and flexibility.

I'm not getting a strong feeling for how useful the Mox is. It bailed me out once, but I still get cantrip-flooded and have trouble finding a discard when I need it. The discard problem might be solved by PiF, but I'm not sure yet because I wasn't battling blue. I like Rain a lot, but it seems like a lot of people have been replacing it with the Mox lately for AdN and other fast starts. I also feel like Rain has been extremely helpful for stopping soft-counters and reaching Threshold. Anyone else running both cards?

Thanks in advance for any feedback, everybody!

OlegtheSuper

05-04-2016, 04:15 AM

@Ronald Deuce, how do you SB vs Eldrazi? What wasEldrazi's list? What were the scenarios of games you won and lost?

taconaut

05-04-2016, 08:33 AM

Also interested in the details about the Eldrazi.

I've been running a chrome mox as well, and I share your distaste for preordains, so I know the feeling. I'm currently running one PiF, one ToA in the main, but an extra of each in the board. The second tendrils helps you have more business against decks where you have a little time to set up, and it's nice that sometime you can fire off a tendrils that isn't lethal, but gives you time to work up to a second one. Also, it's nice when you can get a decent amount of mana but not much storm, or grave hate stops you from going the PiF route.

Ronald Deuce

05-04-2016, 12:18 PM

@Ronald Deuce, how do you SB vs Eldrazi? What wasEldrazi's list? What were the scenarios of games you won and lost?

Also interested in the details about the Eldrazi.

For quick reference, here's what I played: standard skeleton with 14 lands; 6 discards; 2 PiF; 1 Preordain, Mox, Rain, AdN, Petition, Tendrils. 4x Decay, 2x Hurkyll's, 1x Rebuild, Trop, Empty, and Petition (among other things) in the sideboard.

Opponent was running a blue-white list, with Drowner of Hope, Skyspawner, 8 lock pieces in the 75 (Chalices and Thorns), and at least 2 Mindbreak Traps in the 'board. It looked like it was less strong against us than colorless lists with 10-12 lock pieces, but like it might be better against more creaturey decks like D&T. Eldrazi Spawn have been wreaking havoc on me when I play Dredge, too, though it's possible to get around that. Didn't see any Wastelands that I can remember.

For G2, I boarded in 2x Hurkyl's, 1x Rebuild, Abrupt Decay, Tropical. Took out 3 Cabal Therapy, 1 Preordain, 1 PiF (I think). Subsequently I also added Empty in exchange for (I think) Rain of Filth. In the future, I might try to side a tad lighter and keep a Therapy or replace Rebuild with another Hurkyl's or a Decay.

I didn't take notes and a couple of the games weren't particularly memorable (either fast lock shut me out or he didn't find the pieces before a combo), but I'll try to remember as much as I can.

I won two games off of Ad Nauseam. If the Eldrazi player doesn't drop a T1 lock-piece or swing out quickly, we can get where we need to be with little trouble using it, and it's a great tutor target if we only have one Ritual to go with our mana rocks. It also can't be countered by Warping Wail, though I've never had trouble with that card because Eldrazi taps out pretty much every turn. AdN loses a great deal of effectiveness with every turn we don't use it, but it's saved me several times against the Eldrazi after taking me down to 1 life, including once yesterday.

I lost my opening game after keeping a strong hand. Had two or three Cabal Rituals, an LED, and a tutor. Trouble was that the opponent dropped two Thorns and no Chalices, so I didn't really have plays after that.

Another game I lost because my opponent had a Mindbreak Trap and I couldn't find a discard. Had an easy combo in hand and went through about four cantrips in the final turn looking for Duress, but he'd built up his board, so he just swung for the fences.

Surprisingly, I didn't see a double-Chalice opening at all that day.

So here's what I've been thinking about the matchup lately:
—AdN is great in this matchup if you can fire it quickly. They don't have instant-speed damage—at least, not without Endbringer, which I didn't see—so we can afford to drop to 1 if absolutely necessary to find a kill.
—Rebuild is a bit of a lemon. It's great against Chalices, but it's really bad against Thorns. I'm probably switching it out.
—Hurkyl's Recall is excellent, but it didn't come up much the other day. I think I drew one in a game in which there was a Thorn on the board, and I just didn't have/draw the lands to cast it. I don't think we should take these out, though; we're gonna have to live with those lock-pieces, and Recall can wipe their hate while getting around Chalice on 1 but without having a base cost of 3. Not sure whether three Recalls would be better than two, but I'd like to try a third one for the time being.
—Running 15 lands is important against Eldrazi, though I don't tend to like it against decks without Wasteland. Opens up Abrupt Decay (not the greatest, but it's something) and makes it easier to work around Thorn, but does these things at the cost of making our topdecks worse.
—I've been hurting for another discard spell in this matchup. T1 Duress on the play is often all we need to stop them from doing anything meaningful against us. I still like the fact that Therapy can take multiples, though. Not sure whether I'd run a fourth Duress or Therapy, especially because at least some of the discards are probably getting sided out for other forms of disruption.
—Empty never came up. Not sure why; I think in one game I had a choice between Empty and AdN and I picked AdN because I didn't have the storm for a big Empty or the opponent already had a solid board. Empty has worked in the past, though, and it's faster than Petition, so I think one is pretty important for this matchup. Not sure how much the Scion-heavy builds will reduce its effectiveness, so pending further discussion I'm not totally on board with running multiples.
—Thorn of Amethyst is really, really bad. I've had significantly fewer problems with Chalice than I've had with Thorn. Getting locked out of 1- or 2-costed cards is abysmal, but it requires more than one Chalice to seal us in. A single Thorn makes everything we do worse, and we're light enough on lands that it's really tough to get around it without breaking our rocks. (It's for this reason that I'm very reluctant to board out any copies of Petal.) There's also the fact that—good as it is against Thalia in D&T/Mav—Chain of Vapor is pretty much dead against Thorn in this matchup because of Chalice. I'm interested to hear what (if anything) you guys think is best against Thorn because it's really, really savage.

Nevilshute, enjoying your latest set of League videos. Keep 'em coming! Sorry about how disappointing the Eldrazi match was, but I found it really helpful to watch. I found your using additional Empties against Eldrazi to be an interesting choice. Have you found running additional Empties to give you better odds than running Recalls, etc.? Couldn't tell whether you were saying in the vid that Hurkyll's was worse or that you just wanted to try multiple Empties. I feel like comparing the odds of having Hurkyll's but not being able to use it/getting it Thought-Knazi'd to the odds of flooding on business is the best measure, but I'm curious as to what you think. Also, I think Ad Nauseam is more useful in this matchup than additional Empties would be, but I don't think I have enough experience to make that call. You could try running Empty in place of Grim Tutor. I feel like we can't really mix Grim and AdN, and AdN has saved me an inordinate number of times against Eldrazi.

I've been running a chrome mox as well, and I share your distaste for preordains, so I know the feeling. I'm currently running one PiF, one ToA in the main, but an extra of each in the board. The second tendrils helps you have more business against decks where you have a little time to set up, and it's nice that sometime you can fire off a tendrils that isn't lethal, but gives you time to work up to a second one. Also, it's nice when you can get a decent amount of mana but not much storm, or grave hate stops you from going the PiF route.

Thanks for the feedback! Sounds similar to what I'd had in mind; maybe it's not making as much sense as it should because I haven't played it out myself. Are you running Rain of Filth?

Pelikanudo

05-04-2016, 04:05 PM

...?

I believe that ingot chewer is the best card vs both chalice and thorn - the problem - is anti ad nauseam, but hey! thats a TES problem... you explode much more the PiF engine...

the_ob3lisk

05-05-2016, 09:21 AM

Any links to videos of ANT defeating Eldrazi?

Went 2-2 at my local last night with both losses to the menace.

taconaut

05-05-2016, 09:45 AM

Thanks for the feedback! Sounds similar to what I'd had in mind; maybe it's not making as much sense as it should because I haven't played it out myself. Are you running Rain of Filth?

I am not running Rain of Filth, though it's possible I'd like it more than the Preordain. I'm not as big on how it plays with PiF, though it does seem sweet for cabal rituals/tutor chains w.r.t. threshold/additional rituals.

Jonathan Alexander

05-05-2016, 11:05 AM

thefringthing

05-05-2016, 12:35 PM

As much as I hate to agree with that Spongebob avatar guy about anything, Ingot Chewer is indeed dope vs Eldrazi and MUD.

nevilshute

05-06-2016, 07:09 AM

I find myself being hot and cold on RoF. It's the most variance heavy ritual which I think annoys me a bit

taconaut

05-06-2016, 09:07 AM

People need to stop bringing up Rain of Filth's interaction with Past in Flames. It's not better or worse than Lion's Eye Diamond, Lotus Petal, Chrome Mox and Sensei's Divining Top, all of which see play as well.

I think it's different in a few ways, though, specifically:

- Lion's Eye Diamond: This has no initial mana investment, and gives you three mana of any color regardless of what your boardstate is. Also, it contributes to the Infernal Tutor interaction, which is comparable to enabling threshold (which Rain of Filth does) though I think it's a stronger interaction overall.

- Lotus Petal: also has zero upfront cost, makes mana of any color, and doesn't get rid of your lands.

- Chrome Mox: I think this is actually the most comparable of the four you mentioned, which is why it also tends to only be a zero- or one-of. However, this can, like the other two artifacts, be played out ahead of time if necessary, and can also contribute to hellbent for IT (though less effectively than LED, obviously, because a land can still clog your hand). Personally, I like Chrome Mox better than Rain of Filth, because it makes my Ad Nauseams better (I know And isn't super popular on this board, but I like it a lot) and it doesn't leave me landless if something goes wrong during the combo.

- Sensei's Divining Top: I think this isn't in the same category as rain of filth, but I agree that this is another personal preference choice. I was running one for a while and have since cut it, but I did have some good games with it as well. Maybe this is what I should play instead of Preordain? That seems to be a reasonable swap.

To me, the biggest differences are the initial mana cost and the all-in nature of the card. That being said, I can totally see it being defensible as a one-of; there are plenty of times I could have used an extra pseudo-Dark Ritual (or potentially better, with 4 or more lands) and I've played it in Doomsday, it's just that in ANT I don't really like binning all my lands unless I really think that turn is the only one that will matter (which sometimes it is).

Jonathan Alexander

05-06-2016, 09:33 AM

I wasn't arguing for Rain in general (although I do think it's very good), I was just pointing out that the lack of interaction with Past in Flames is no reason to dismiss the card. What you have listed now are perfectly fine reasons to not play Rain. It's definitely not as important to the deck as Lion's Eye Diamond is, but it has a very unique and powerful effect that shouldn't be dismissed for non-reasons. It's also not always correct to run Rain, and I currently don't run it either.

Togores

05-07-2016, 07:14 PM

Bom results ~300 players
2 bauseam in top 8
One lost against eldrazi. Who won the finals against belcher.

ULIANA Damien - Ad Nauseam Tendrils - Top 8 Legacy

4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
4 Gitaxian Probe
2 Preordain
1 Past in Flames
4 Lotus Petal
4 Lion's Eye Diamond
1 Tendrils of Agony
1 Ad Nauseam
1 Dark Petition
1 Rain of Filth
4 Dark Ritual
4 Cabal Therapy
3 Duress
4 Infernal Tutor
4 Polluted Delta
4 Misty Rainforest
2 Island
1 Swamp
1 Underground Sea
1 Volcanic Island

Sideboard 15
1 Tropical Island
2 Xantid Swarm
2 Chain of Vapor
2 Disfigure
3 Abrupt Decay
2 Empty the Warrens
1 Rebuild
1 Hurkyl's Recall
1 Massacre

(Cabal rituals missing)

My aprentice who lost to eldrazi

MORAL Carlos - Ad Nauseam Tendrils - Top 8 Legacy

4 Polluted Delta
4 Misty Rainforest
2 Island
2 Undferground Sea
1 Volcanic Island
1 Swamp
1 Bayou
1 Sensei's Divining Top
2 Preordain
4 Ponder
4 Brainstorm
4 Dark Ritual
3 Duress
3 Cabal Therapy
4 Cabal Ritual
4 Infernal Tutor
2 Past in Flames
1 Tendrils of Agony
1 Ad Nauseam
4 Lion's Eye Diamond
4 Lotus Petal
4 Gitaxian Probe

Sideboard 15
4 Abrupt Decay
3 Hurkyl's Recall
1 Tropical Island
1 Tendrils of Agony
2 Massacre
1 Empty the Warrens
1 Cabal Therapy
2 Xantid Swarm

ScottW

05-07-2016, 08:23 PM

What a mixed bag. Two copies in the top 8 and Eldrazi winning 1st is bittersweet. Looking forward to the coverage archive.

What do you mean "apprentice"? Are you helping him learn the deck? Interesting lists; both have 2 Island. Are you running this also, Togores? Did you play? If so, any stories?

Togores

05-07-2016, 09:05 PM

I didnt played.
The prices are like the shitt and getting like this bom points instead if some decent prices is awfull. Also the vintage event was like not worth. All this made me not go. I love to play vintage and there are enought events that I can go to another to play modern + legacy + vintage.

He del moral is a friend of me. He is a pro player who started to play ant like 6 month ago. And I trained him on the right path. He plays 2 islands. Is fine. Bur I just dont like to waste a sb card in a land. Today after the event I spoke to him and he told me his sb was a bit meh. But still did the job ^^

Also having 3 basics is bettee vs eldrazi for casting hurkills immo.

Ronald Deuce

05-08-2016, 09:45 AM

Two Stormers also made top 8 in the latest League (FWIW). Both ran Rain of Filth, double Petition, 3-3 discards, and 14 lands.

quadich

05-08-2016, 09:57 PM

Hi,

I didnt get around to test the deck too much lately but i am looking to sleeve it up for an event next week. However reading through this thread made skeptical whether thats a wise choice. Thus i have a couple of questions hopinh that you can help me (some/most of it was implicitly answered on the previous pages but i am the kind of guy who needs to be hit with a stop sign to actually stop):

1. Did the meta really shift that heavily towards non blue decks?
If so, isnt this actually something to make storm more viable?

2. How bad is the Eldrazi match up post board? I get that its still abyssmal, but i keep wondering whether the permanent hate we bring isnt enough, especially since they cant dig for lock pieces. How often does the Eldrazi deck get hands that just blow us out?
Is said Eldrazi matchup by itself enough to justify not playing the deck?

Also most importantly: which version of storm would be the best choice? In the past i have been playing the grindier builds, since they do so well against miracles.However i get the feeling that if the meta actually is leaning that heavily on hate permanents rather than counterspells that the classical infernal tutor + LED into ad nauseam is alot more viable now. If that was true wouldnt TES be the way to go?

I would really appreciate any help,cause i am somewhat clueless :).

nevilshute

05-09-2016, 12:18 AM

1) there seems to have been a switch but you'd have to do some data mining to really know. Legacy's still primarily blue though would be my guess :smile: Storm is still positioned decently but does now have a tier 1 predator that it didn't a few months ago.

2) Eldrazi is still a terrible matchup postboard so much so that some of us have started to ignore it when building a SB. You need several of the following to happen: win the dice roll, have turn 1-2 kills, have them mulligan into oblivion, have them keep a good hand vs non-combo (g1). Bringing in stuff like 3 Hurkyl's can wreck them but you will often still lose and so it doesn't make enough of a difference. I have found empty the warrens to be strong vs them.

I think there is something to be said for moving away from grinding versions currently. No, I don't think that means TES is then a better choice as I think that deck is inherently too fragile for my taste. But, you know, personal preferences.

OlegtheSuper

05-09-2016, 06:34 AM

1 empty the warrens
2 tendrils of agony
1 dark petition
2 past in flames
4 infernal tutor
4 lotus petal
4 lion's eye diamond
1 sensei's divining top
4 gitaxian probe
4 ponder
4 brainstorm
4 dark ritual
4 cabal ritual
1 thoughtseize
2 duress
3 cabal therapy

1 volcanic island
1 badlands
1 tropical island
2 undergroumd sea
1 island
1 swamp
4 polluted delta
4 scalding tarn

Sideboard
1 chain pf vapor
2 flusterstorm
1 ad nauseam
3 dread of night
3 abrupt decay
2 krosan grip
3 ingot chewer

Won gpt Prague yesterday, got 2 autowins in main event.

2-0 Omnitell
1-2 UB The Thing
2-0 D&T
2-0 Reanimator
2-0 Miracles

Top 4
2-0 UG Infect

Final
2-0 UB The Thing

Chewers for Eldrazi(vintage tech). The reason to play them is when eldrazi gets 2 thorns/spheres it could be hard to cast hurkyl's recall or decay.

Sloshthedark

05-09-2016, 07:11 AM

He del moral is a friend of me. He is a pro player who started to play ant like 6 month ago.

I remember an older guy with glasses who played Ant with beta/guru lands around 2012 with the same/similar name... thought it was him

Jonathan Alexander

05-09-2016, 07:14 AM

OlegtheSuper

05-09-2016, 11:01 AM

Has anyone else tried no green, 10 discard total? I haven't played Storm in a while and I won't be able to until at least next. Also has anyone besides Oleg tried out Chewers? How did you like them? (This question obviously goes to Oleg as well, but multiple perspectives would be nice.)

My test\tournament games vs eldrazi were like you have to deal with every single hate piese as fast as possible to have a possibility to construct your hand. Usualy i sb like +3 recall, +3 decay, +1 chain(was super good). Recall won me games vs eldrazi, but it doesn't compare much with previous plan. You want to use recall in the turn befor win because recall just returns not destroys, and you'll get all thorns on the next turn.
I haven't tested chewers in real games vs eldrazi only in theory.

UseLess

05-09-2016, 04:14 PM

Has anyone else tried no green, 10 discard total?

It sounds interesting, but I'm kinda curious about how you would deal with Miracles then, or more specifically counterbalance. Completely ignoring the card almost makes that matchup an auto-loss whenever they resolve it. Sure, you might be better against Eldrazi, but if you give in vs miracles all that you gain in another matchup, what is the point really?

Jonathan Alexander

05-09-2016, 04:38 PM

Actually, 10 discard was a plan against Miracles, not Eldrazi. I liked it, Kai briefly tried it and concluded it didn't break the matchup. I don't mind being dead to a resolved Counterbalance. The way lists have shifted, it's very hard playing a long game against them anyway.

Ronald Deuce

05-09-2016, 05:18 PM

Went 2-1 yesterday at the local running the same list I ran before. Beat S&T and BRUG Delver, lost to the Menace.

R1: Show and Tell (2-0)
G1: Slow start from both my opponent and me. We kicked at each other's hands for about 4 turns. A Sneak Attacking Emrakul took me down to 1 and wiped my lands. He didn't find anything to keep the pressure on, though, and I topdecked into a combo. I ran a Tutor into a counter, breaking LED and discarding PiF, and he didn't have a second piece of hate to stop the recurred combo.
G2: I think I had to Ad Nauseam down to 1 here, but I got there. He had countermagic here as well, but I think he tried to prevent a loss by countering a ritual instead of waiting to see whether I had backup business like I did in game 1.

Past in Flames was great here, so for the time being it's replacing my second Dark Petition in the mainboard. It really does add a ton of resilience to the combo, though its vulnerability to graveyard hate is really important to keep in mind.

R2: Eldrazi MUD (0-2)
G1: I comboed pretty quickly here, but he Warping Wailed my Tutor and I'd used up everything.
G2: Turn one, 12 Goblins right into a Mindbreak Trap.

Surprisingly, no Chalices or Thorns showed up in this match. I'd been expecting Mindbreak Trap, but I gambled that it was better to go quickly than to wait for a discard because that wouldn't have stopped topdecked prison pieces.

R3: BRUG Delver (2-1)
G1: I think I comboed off of Ad Nauseam when he only had Bolts and a Surgical in hand.
G2: This was another game in which I think the opponent pretty much had an unbeatable hand: 2x Force, 2x Surgical, Spell Pierce, Other Blue Card (Brainstorm?). He didn't have any creatures and was stuck on one dual for colored mana, but when he countered an attempted Duress, I scooped. I think he could've wiped all (or at least 3/5) of my hand disruption by Extracting the Duress, so it was just a matter of time.
G3: This game was a horror show, and I still feel bad about how it went. Opponent had Surgical and Flusterstorm in hand, and I had three LEDs, PiF, Tutor(?), Ad Nauseam, and cantrips. I Brainstormed Ad Nauseam to the top of my deck, then I played out three LEDs, cracking them for each color and cantripping into Ad Nauseam. He didn't respond. I started digging, going down to 1 to look for an out because I knew he would've shut me down next turn. Kind of nasty draws, netting both Empty and Tendrils in the top few cards, but I still had some mana together, so all was not lost. I played out Rituals and cast Tendrils for 16, putting him at 4. He again did not respond. I cast Past in Flames, at which point he Extracted Tendrils. I played mana rituals, then recast Ad Nauseam to try to find a way around his Flusterstorm. I couldn't find anything, so I just played out mana and cast Empty for an irrelevantly huge number of goblins. I passed turn, and he scooped after his draw. It was only then that I realized that he'd been tapped out the entire time.

I'm sold on running 2x PiF now because it'll get us there when the opponent's got disruption. And when I think the opponent has disruption, even when he doesn't :frown:

Still doesn't get us through "six cards that hose storm"-type hands, though. I've been thinking about a singleton Defense Grid for the control matchups.

Five tutors are also pretty necessary unless we run extra Storm spells, I think.

CabalTherapy

05-11-2016, 05:38 AM

Another quick report: Went 4-0 yesterday which puts me to 20-0 in the last five tournaments on Tuesday with ANT. I know this sounds wrong but I have some eternal witnesses.
I played Sloshstorm once again (2 Pif, 2 Toa, 1 Etw, 1 Grim, 6 discard, 1 Top, AdN SB). SB looked like this: 3 AD, 2 Grip, 1 Pyroblast, 1 Toa, 2 Flusterstorm, 2 Pyroclasm, 1 Bayou, 1 AdN, 1 Extirpate, 1 Truth.

Round 1 Omnitell hybrid with Griselbrand and Sneak Attack
Game one was a tough one, I discard him his only cantrip early on but fail to find more juice while he finds BS and plays it in response to my second discard spell: 3rd land, Emrakul, 1 Omni, 1 SnT, 1 FoW... Great. I think for a while and take the Fow nonetheless, altough taking one of the other cards would have been a possibility as well and then force him to counter my combo leaving us both hellbent. I have 2 LED and Infernal with Toa in the grave afterwards and decide to go the yolo-route with Infernal > PiF > Infernal > LED> UUU and BS into nuts. The nuts were a LP, which I used to flashback a Duress. Still having PiF and Toa in the grave I managed to assamble a kill some turns later with Critual and LED. I kept a random hand for the next game but he had his combo quite fast with Griselbrand. In the next game, he plays Leyline and apparently has multiple FoW in hand but no land. I try to go off quickly with AdN, which met a FoW. Some turns later I can Grip the Leyline and Duress him. He showed me 3 Forces and we played some draw-go until he forced me to go off by taking an Intuition with Cunning Wish. I had LED, Ritual, Critual, Infernal, Infernal, BS. I went for both Rituals, Infernal copying BS, BS into Extirpate taking his FoWs and then winning with Tendrils for 20.

Round 2 ANT
Easy game one, where I outplayed him with my cantrips and left him suprised by flashing Infernal as my only card in hand after Probe > 2nd LED after playing it. The next one was very controlish. I kept a decent hand with PIf already there and we both had a Flusterstorm but he a Top and starting to discard my hate cards (Fluster, Extirpate). I was afraid that he had a Fluster on top pushing it with the Top but apparently not. After some turns I had the classic PiF loop without IT but ToA from hand.

Round 3 Maverick
He went down to 5 cards: 2 lands, 1 random, 1 Gaddock, 1 Thalia... I started and found two discard spells for his bears on turn 2. He wasted me twice but I had the better draws and won with a Pif loop. I cannot remember the second one but I lost this one to some bears and Wastelands. The deciding was better. He played Dryad Militant and I went for AdN on my second turn which failed miserably going down to 3 and taking his Thalia. I played some Rituals and Tendrils for 12 on the next turn from my hand while he placed some Revoker (LED) and Ooze onto the battlefield. I found a Pyroclasm for the Militant and Revoker and abused my Top a bit. He went up to 9 and in my last turn I managed to create storm 4 with Tendrils for the kill.

Round 4 Jund
Nothing special here. I mulliganed to 5 but prepared the kill on top of my library. He had one more draw: Hymn... Alright, I recharged some turns later and killed him with Toa for 16 after his Confidant drained his life. In the next one, I lead with Island having BS, 3 Rituals, fetch, Probe in hand. He played a land and passed the turn. I drew AdN and he conceded to it.

meffeo

05-11-2016, 06:24 AM

Sick report

Impressive, or "pam pam".

nevilshute

05-11-2016, 07:01 AM

I would like to discuss our mana base for a moment.

For a very long time my mana base has been kind of locked:

4x delta
4x tarn
2x sea
1x volc
1x badlands
1x trop
1x island
1x swamp

I know that most people aren't playing the Badlands, but I personally really like it. I'm usually running 2x Past in Flames and 1x Empty the Warrens in the main which is 1-2 more red spells than many lists so that's one reason why having a redundant red dual is kind of nice. It's also nice since my green dual is Tropical which means I can fetch out Trop and Badlands and 1) have access to all four colors and 2) be able to cast Abrupt Decay (something you aren't able to if you have Bayou and Volcanic). It also means that the 4 fetches that aren't deltas can be tarns and can then fetch every dual in the deck as well as the island, with only the swamp as unfetchable.

So, lately, I tried out a mana base where the four tarns were instead 3x misty, 1x mire, and the Badlands were a Bayou. I really like having the 2nd green dual but I was missing the Badlands. Is there a way to fit in both without going up to 16 lands? I can't see it. Also, if we're running Bayou then Tarn suddenly seems quite suboptimal. If we run Bayou and replace the tarns with mistys/mire then the mistys can't fetch badlands and mire can't fetch trop...

For the time being I've gone back to the above listed mana base but would like to do some constructive brainstorming. How do you rationalize your mana bases? What do you think is best?

ScottW

05-11-2016, 02:39 PM

@CabalTherapy,

You'd think your local opponents would be aiming to gun you down by now. I also played that list recently and went 3-1 losing to Eldrazi. I won G1 in this match with a quick Empty through Grim Tutor. G2 was a Thoughtseize taking Chalice and another rolled off the top...

Juice11

05-11-2016, 08:48 PM

Went 3-1 with this list. Only loss was to eldrazi of course. That matchup just feels terrible.

MD:

4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
4 Gitaxian Probe

4 Cabal Therapy
2 Duress

4 Infernal Tutor
2 Burning Wish
1 Tendrils of Agony
1 Past in Flames
1 Ad Nauseam

4 Dark Ritual
4 Cabal Ritual
4 Lion's Eye Diamond
4 Lotus Petal
1 Chrome Mox
1 Mox Diamond

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

SB:

4 Abrupt Decay
2 Sylvan Library
1 Massacre
1 Thoughtseize
1 Pyroclasm
1 Hurkyl's Recall
1 Empty the Warrens
1 Tendrils of Agony
1 Past in Flames
1 Grim Tutor
1 Sylvan Library

Probably going to try the moxen in the board for a rain of filth and a top. I do like being able to board into an ad nauseum/empty build for speed. I really would like to have a gameplan vs Eldrazi, but it seems like I should just chalk that matchup as a loss and worry about other decks. I think I will try recall, and the board into TES-like gameplan to see if that works.

Ronald Deuce

05-11-2016, 09:39 PM

I would like to discuss our mana base for a moment.

This is what I've been running lately, and bear in mind that it looks this way partially for budgetary reasons:

4x Polluted Delta
2x Scalding Tarn
1x Flooded Strand
1x Bloodstained Mire
2x Underground Sea
1x Badlands
2x Island
1x Swamp
(sideboard 1x Tropical Island)
(maindeck 1x Chrome Mox)

I'd really like to switch out the Strand and maybe the Mire for Scalding Tarns, but it's rarely become an issue when I've just run those two instead. It puts me at seven fetches for Island and two maindeck basic Islands, and five maindeck fetches for a singleton basic Swamp. I haven't felt skewered at all except in determining whether to keep a hand. This makes me think that as long as we've got at least seven blue fetches (also green fetches if we run Tropical), we should be ok at hitting everything we need.

Badlands is in there exclusively because of my lack of Volcanic Islands. Still looking to acquire one asap, but I've only found that it makes a difference if I have a borderline opening hand and I can't decide whether to keep it.

I don't mean to say that I don't think Badlands is a good card. I do, and I think it becomes more important the more red cards we run. I've recently gone up to two maindeck PiF and two sideboard Empties, so I think running both sounds like a really good idea.

I don't really think we need Bayou that much, if at all. TES needs it more, I think, but I don't think it's a bad idea to run it, especially if we're planning to board in Decays against decks that run Wasteland. (I haven't done that thus far, but it might be useful in matchups I haven't seen in my metagame.) We can fetch it off of Bloodstained Mire, too, which might be important depending on the fetchland setup people run. Tropical's served me fine, but a Bayou in the sideboard could allow me to replace one maindeck Island with the Tropical.

I'm still on the 14-land plan. Nevilshute, I feel like I see you flood on lands somewhat often in your videos, but have you noticed it to be a problem? It doesn't seem to cost you the game very often, but I feel like I see you get a lot of 3-4-land hands, which would be great except for the fact that you topdeck more instead of what you're looking for. Personally, I kept feeling like a fifteenth land was clogging things up and preventing me from hitting engine pieces when I needed them more often than it was smoothing out draws and preventing mana-choking. With that said, I do think there are matchups in which a fifteenth land is pretty useful, especially against Eldrazi. What's your opinion/reasoning behind running 15 main versus 14? Why not use the Mox slot for the fifteenth?

A related question for the floor: how many basic lands have you all been running? Are two sufficient, or have you all found a third to be important?

Izor

05-12-2016, 03:29 PM

@mana base:

I never liked Preordains, no matter how often I tested them, and I think they're especially bad in Chalice matchups and combo mirrors, which are quite common in my local meta. That's why I only play 1 Island. A while ago I did some testing treating all 8 fetches in my deck as Polluted Deltas ad keeping track of how often I searched up which dual with it. Most notably, I fetched basic Swamp more than basic Island by a good margin. I'm only playing 4 Fetches that find the Island any more right now, and I honestly like my configuration right now. Post board I'm usually down to 6-7 blue spells anyway.

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

1 Chrome Mox

SB: 1 Bayou

If I was to run a more standard list with less red spells and more cantrips, I'd probably play the following. But I certainly wouldn't be happy that one of my fetches can't find my green source.

4 Polluted Delta
2 Misty Rainforest
2 Bloodstained Mire
2 Underground Sea
1 Volcanic Island
1 Badlands
1 Swamp
1 Island

SB: 1 Bayou

Togores

05-13-2016, 09:47 AM

gibbousm

05-14-2016, 12:49 AM

So finally got to play ANT for the first time tonight. Went 2-2 which I don't think is too bad considering it was my first time playing the deck.
Learned two things:
1: I need to goldfish more as I took way too long tanking when trying to decide if I can go off or not. It just seemed discourteous to my opponents
2: I have really bad luck when it comes to pairings.

Round 1 vs Miracles
Game 1 I manage to Duress away their first Counterbalance but they find a second copy shortly afterwards. They get an active Jace and show me a 1 and 2 drop that they're going to float the rest of the game.
Game 2 I keep a double Decay hand. And I use both of them. I manage to combo out in a turn where they tap out.
Game 3 I have 1 Decay, they have 3 Counterbalances. They went on Clique beats. I made a bunch of misplays this game. I played my Xantid Swarm knowing they had StP in hand and kept with a Ponder I should have shuffled because I miscounted my mana and thought I was able to Petal for Red. I forgot about their Counterbalance which revealed a land.

0-1

Round 2 vs Tezzerator
Game 1 They play turn 1 Chalice. I go as long as I can to gather information without revealing I'm on Storm. It pays off as they go into game 2 thinking I'm on Delver.
Game 2 I Duress them and see lands, Strixes, Wurmcoil and a Thrist for Knowledge. Take Thirst, go off turn 3 with Ad Nauseam which reveals Empty, PiF, AND Tendrils. I go to 3 life after flipping Tendrils. Count up my mana and Storm. While I can Empty with what I've got I didn't think I could outrace double Strix at 3 Life so I risk flipping the Petition. It pays off as I hit Cabal Rit instead and go off easily.
Game 3 They mulled to 5 and had minimal interaction. They said their opening 7 had a t1 Chalice but nothing else so they mulled. Even if they had kept it I had an opening 6 of Petal, Fetch, Decay to deal with Chalice on 1.

1-1

Round 2 vs Miracles
Game 1 I mulled to 4 and they set up Counterbalance + Top on turn 3. I conceded after they played a second Balance. To withhold info. They were pretty sure I was on Storm but not whether I was on ANT or TES.
Game 2 They had Clique and Snapcaster in play and I was on a 2 turn clock. I decided to go for it and died to Flusterstorm on my Tutor. I had enough excess mana to pay for 2 Spell Pierces which is what I felt I could play around. They force my Duress that turn otherwise I would have known to wait a turn. Even if I had they had a second Flusterstorm on top so it wouldn't have mattered much.

1-2

Round 3 vs Infect
Game 1 I Therapy them turn 1. See mostly mana and infecters. When I go to combo off they have 2 cards in hand, a Glistener Elf and 1 Unknown. They were tapped out so the only card I was worried about was Daze which I was able to easily play around. Turns out it was Daze, and I killed them pretty easily.
Game 2 I was a Tutor short of killing them as they had the nuts in Inkmoth, 2 Invigorates, and Berserk and killed me on their third turn.
Game 3 Turn 2 they tapped out for Sylvan Library so I felt it was the best time to try. They had 4 unknowns in hand. I had an extra Infernal Tutor so I successfully baited out Force with it and then Tutored for Ad Nauseam with the second and comboed out pretty easily. If they had had double FoW it was their game.

2-2

Considering it was my first time with the deck I don't think I did too badly but I definitely need to get more practice comboing off as I just tank way to long. Never became a time issue but something I need to work on anyways.
I had made the last minute decision to cut my 2 Bobs for 2 Surgicals in the SB, because the last Legacy FNM was 3/4 Combo decks. If I had known what decks I'd be up against that night, I would have kept the Bobs.

Ronald Deuce

05-14-2016, 02:48 AM

Considering it was my first time with the deck I don't think I did too badly but I definitely need to get more practice comboing off as I just tank way to long.

Hey, man, could be worse; you could be playing what passes for Storm in modern. Which is to say that you'd be counting twice as high with twice as many variables with cantrips that are (at best) half as good. And no tutors.

There's a reason I stopped playing modern.

I had made the last minute decision to cut my 2 Bobs for 2 Surgicals in the SB, because the last Legacy FNM was 3/4 Combo decks. If I had known what decks I'd be up against that night, I would have kept the Bobs.

What was the rest of your sideboard like? I've never run Dark Confidant, so I'm curious. At this point I don't think Bob will help you against many decks that are a problem, but I'd still like to hear which matchups you thought it would be good and why. What would you side out?

gibbousm

05-14-2016, 09:37 AM

What was the rest of your sideboard like? I've never run Dark Confidant, so I'm curious. At this point I don't think Bob will help you against many decks that are a problem, but I'd still like to hear which matchups you thought it would be good and why. What would you side out?

Sideboard I ran was
3 Decay
2 Xantid Swarm
1 Trop
2 Disfigure
2 Chain of Vapor
2 Surgical Extraction
1 Hurkyl's Recall
1 Echoing Truth (Wanted this to be a second Hurkyl's but couldn't find one in time)
1 Empty the Warrens

I'm running a fairly standard main board. 7 Discard, 1 Rain, 1 Ad Nauseam, 1 PiF, 1 Petition, 1 Tendrils.

Bob is supposed to be good in match ups you expect to get grindy so Miracles and Non-Blue Discard decks. You just want to draw more business. I'd probably cut some of the weaker cards to bring them in, which ones depend on the match up.

CabalTherapy

05-14-2016, 01:04 PM

I did it, guys. I won our local GPT for Prague with Sloshstorm.

Sockosensei

05-15-2016, 09:29 AM

I did it, guys. I won our local GPT for Prague with Sloshstorm.

Nicely done!
Were you able to keep the undefeated streak going? Could you please post the full list?

Togores

05-15-2016, 12:50 PM

I did it, guys. I won our local GPT for Prague with Sloshstorm.

Could it be diferent? It was like impossible to loose for you with your latest results. Will meet you in the area for players with 2 byes (planeswalker points, but also won a trial but conceded on the finals because I already had the byes).

Lets stormkill them all!

Nicely done!
Were you able to keep the undefeated streak going? Could you please post the full list?

The list is like 3 times in the last 10 pages.

Sockosensei

05-15-2016, 06:29 PM

The list is like 3 times in the last 10 pages.I've been following and know the general concept, I just wanted to confirm the finer points, esp manabase.

Congrats again on the result, CabalTherapy.

Stoyrm

05-15-2016, 06:54 PM

I also got to crush my GPT for Prague. My list was:

1 Ad Nauseam
4 Brainstorm
4 Cabal Ritual
4 Dark Ritual

1 Preordain
1 Tendrils of Agony
1 Past in Flames
1 Empty the Warrens
3 Cabal Therapy
3 Duress
4 Gitaxian Probe
4 Infernal Tutor
4 Ponder

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

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

SB
4 Abrupt Decay
1 Echoing Truth
1 Tendrils of Agony
1 Chain of Vapor
2 Flusterstorm
4 Dread of Night
2 Xantid Swarm

I've been playing something similar to this for a long time, usually with the second PIF but went for Empty because there's a bit of delver around, and I wanted to test it in this meta (even though there are no eldrazi decks here). My sideboard has 4 Dread of Night because I know that if I am to win the tournament I'd have to beat a local legacy player with DnT, one whom I have a great deal of respect for, but my sideboard for a bigger meta probably would've been something like -4 Dread, +1 Sensei, +1 Tendrils +2 Krosan Grip (which is what Togores was running earlier).

Empty the Warrens continually impressed throughout the day, both preboard and postboard, and could see it staying, even if the double PIF is insane as well. I just feel it's a necessary evil against Grixis Delver and things like MUD and Eldrazi.

I am getting a bit nervous for GP Prague though, I have not tested against Eldrazi yet, but I know I really like the Echoing Truth and Chain of Vapor, but if I am to find spots for Hurkyl's Recall something has to go.

Right now I'm a bit torn on sideboarding decisions. I've been a fan of every sideboard card so far, but I know that my Dread's probably have to go, they just aren't going to hold up in a big tournament. I could see myself going something like, -4 Dread, +1 Sensei, +1 Tendrils, +2 Hurkyl. I'm not sure which deck I'd be underprepared for then, maybe Miracles with Meddling Mages could be tough, DnT as well (but is a low % of the metagame).

Togores

05-15-2016, 08:12 PM

For a big event you have to build your deck to beat the general field. Not a roge plan.

Almost no miracle players play meddling now. And ig they play a card that is worser than the usual get you. Then thats sad. Also they meed to have meddling on decay and balance. And after that you can still krossan grip it. So its not even a 100% good plan.
The usual miracles sb is something with this cards:
1 staticaster
1 explosives
1-2 surgical
1-2 rip
2-3 fluster
2-3 vendilion
2-3 reb
2 mentor
1-2 wear tear
1-2 council
1 containment
1-2 blood moon
1 entreat

There you select 15 and build a sb.

Even if I dislike empty I think is a necesary evil right now because of grixis and eldrazi. But I do think you dont need 2 fast combo cards. And they overlap themselves in all matchups that are not death and taxes or eldrazi. They both do the same usualy.

Isaac

05-15-2016, 11:24 PM

Played in the star city games legacy classic today and took home 6th.

130 players

rd1 2/1 burn
rd2 2/1 dredge
rd3 2/1 junk
rd4 2/1 goblins
rd5 2/1 lands
rd6 2/0 elves
rd7 id
rd8 id

top8
rd1 0/2 elves

Can review the deck list here http://sales.starcitygames.com//deckdatabase/displaydeck.php?DeckID=102921

Jonathan Alexander

05-16-2016, 05:04 AM

I like how you faced zero copies of Force of Will. Playing Storm is so easy in the US.

CabalTherapy

05-16-2016, 07:11 AM

Nicely done!
Were you able to keep the undefeated streak going? Could you please post the full list?

I lost the first round to DnT but was 1st with 4-1 after the swiss. List should be online in some day on Tc decks.

Could it be diferent? It was like impossible to loose for you with your latest results. Will meet you in the area for players with 2 byes (planeswalker points, but also won a trial but conceded on the finals because I already had the byes).

Lets stormkill them all!

The list is like 3 times in the last 10 pages.

At least kind of impossible on local level. Yeah, looking forward to meeting you soon.

Croatoan

05-16-2016, 01:42 PM

Alright, storm lords of the source, I am fairly new to ANT and have some questions. For reference, this is the list I am currently playing

# Business

1 Ad Nauseam
1 Dark Petition
1 Past in Flames
4 Infernal Tutor
1 Tendrils of Agony

# Rituals

4 Cabal Ritual
4 Dark Ritual
1 Rain of Filth

# Discard

3 Cabal Therapy
3 Duress

# Artifacts

4 Lion's Eye Diamond
4 Lotus Petal

# Cantrips

4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
4 Gitaxian Probe
2 Preordain

# Lands (15 main)

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

Sideboard

3 Abrupt Decay
2 Chain of Vapor
1 Empty the Warrens
2 Hurkyl's Recall
1 Tendrils of Agony
2 Disfigure
2 Xantid Swarm
2 Flusterstorm

I will start with some card questions, any comments on the list are of course welcome:

Past in Flames
Awesome business, but I am not sure what the reasoning behind running more than one is. It felt clunky when I tested it and seems dangerous with Ad Nauseam
Grim Tutor
Is this card played in any serious list? I gave it a try and it seemed really expensive to me (in mana, life and money). I saw some guy a couple of pages back borrowing one from the shop, though, and he seemed happy with it
D-Top
I gave it a try and it seemed very slow (and I rarely drew the one copy). What is the reasoning running it over Preordain? While Pre is not great, to me it seems to fit the game plan better
Tendrils
I play one main and never felt like I needed more but it is a staple in many sideboards. When might I want to play more than one copy? I have it in the side but I have yet to board it
Xantid Swarm
I am not sure this card is good enough. I saw one list running City of Solitude instead but had no time to test it yet. Thoughts?

There are also two match-ups that drive me insane (apart from Eldrazi, I mean :wink:). The first one is Miracles which just seems to be able to lock me out of the game all the time. I need both discard against Force and Abrupt Decay against the super-annoying Counterbalance which also steals game ones like a pro. Really don't know how to reliably beat this one. I thought it was a good matchup at first (at least better than back when I was playing Death & Taxes) but now I am not so sure anymore.

Burn is also suprisingly dangerous, thanks to Eidolon of the Great Revel. They are blazing fast and with Eidolon in play I can't cast anything without taking a lot of damage. And like a resolved counterbalance, I can't handle it in turn 1 (and handling it in game 2 also has me taking damage). I guess I could use some help with this match-up as well.

I really like the feel of the deck, though, and would love to play it more. Any help is really appreciated.

Jonathan Alexander

05-16-2016, 01:54 PM

I will reply to your post in full, but first answer my question: Do you want to get better with the deck long-term or do you want to win more short-term?

ScottW

05-16-2016, 02:38 PM

I will reply to your post in full, but first answer my question: Do you want to get better with the deck long-term or do you want to win more short-term?

I want the long term answer.

@Croatoan,
I'm the guy who was able to borrow a Grim Tutor. I've invested heavily in the deck this past year (buying / trading for FBB duals and such) but never invested in a Grim Tutor because I was exploring a different list for some time. I'm waiting for Eternal Masters to be spoiled before I buy a copy.

Croatoan

05-16-2016, 02:50 PM

I will reply to your post in full, but first answer my question: Do you want to get better with the deck long-term or do you want to win more short-term?

Long-term, I guess, though I am not sure how this can affect the answers to my questions.

I want the long term answer.

@Croatoan,
I'm the guy who was able to borrow a Grim Tutor. I've invested heavily in the deck this past year (buying / trading for FBB duals and such) but never invested in a Grim Tutor because I was exploring a different list for some time. I'm waiting for Eternal Masters to be spoiled before I buy a copy.

Yeah, I get that. So how was your experience with Grim? I thought the combination of three mana and life loss really hurt, especially since it is a sorcery to boot. I would love a good tutor that does not require emptying my hand but Grim has not convinced me in my limited testing. Dark Petition seems better to me at the moment (and does not cost 170€)

Jonathan Alexander

05-16-2016, 03:29 PM

I want the long term answer.

Long-term, I guess, though I am not sure how this can affect the answers to my questions.

Long term answer is to play 2 Past in Flames 3 Tendrils a lot. A lot. It's likely not the best list right now, but it's the one that helps you develop the best habits. It forces you to be able to play without Ad Nauseam (more relevant for real beginners). It forces you to get used to drawing Tendrils, shows you the strengths of drawing Past in Flames and the benefits of having more than one copy of Tendrils.

From there, you can expand your horizons. You can start with either Empty the Warrens or Ad Nauseam, but preferably not both at the same time. You will almost always want at least one of them somewhere in your 75, so if you have the opportunity to play the deck a lot outside of tournaments, try to get a testing partner who's willing to jam countless games in a matchup where you actually want to be on 2/3. Non-black Delver decks and Miracles before sideboarding are matchups where this is true.

The number one benefit you get from learning this way is that you will develop very strong matchup understanding, which is the most important part of playing Storm. You can spend countless hours teching out discard, tutor or removal splits, but what really counts is your business setup. If you play against Elves, for example it's not overly important to figure out if you want Duress, Thoughtseize or Cabal Therapy after sideboarding. But the difference between Empty the Warrens or Ad Nauseam is huge. This might be an obvious example, but against Team America, the decision between Empty and Ad Nauseam is already much harder.

(Short term answer is to play the 2 Petition list because it's the easiest to play on a basic level and the hardest to mess up with strategically.)

As for your questions regarding specific cards, please allow me to link to my primer: The Storm Box (https://theweeklywars.wordpress.com/2015/04/29/the-storm-box/)

(And thank you for making me look that thing up and realise it's a year old already. I hope I can manage to update it before Prague.)

Multiples of Past in Flames and Tendrils are actually good in the same matchups, more or less. They both interact favourably with countermagic, given that you have enough mana. The second Tendrils also opens up double Tendrils kills and Tendrils is a great card to draw against Griselbrands, Dark Confidants and Ancient Tombs. Past in Flames is an engine spell that, in contrast to Ad Nauseam, does not care about your deck configuration. Drawing Past in Flames is also similar to drawing a discard spell because of flashback. A common line is Infernal Tutor, crack Lion's Eye Diamond, discard Past in Flames and either have your opponent counter the tutor or let it resolve and get hit by a discard spell.
Drawing both Past in Flames and Tendrils also opens up some lines not involving tutor effects.

Please let me know if you feel I have left out something between this post and my primer.

Togores

05-16-2016, 03:41 PM

I will start with some card questions, any comments on the list are of course welcome:

Past in Flames
Awesome business, but I am not sure what the reasoning behind running more than one is. It felt clunky when I tested it and seems dangerous with Ad Nauseam
Grim Tutor
Is this card played in any serious list? I gave it a try and it seemed really expensive to me (in mana, life and money). I saw some guy a couple of pages back borrowing one from the shop, though, and he seemed happy with it
D-Top
I gave it a try and it seemed very slow (and I rarely drew the one copy). What is the reasoning running it over Preordain? While Pre is not great, to me it seems to fit the game plan better
Tendrils
I play one main and never felt like I needed more but it is a staple in many sideboards. When might I want to play more than one copy? I have it in the side but I have yet to board it
Xantid Swarm
I am not sure this card is good enough. I saw one list running City of Solitude instead but had no time to test it yet. Thoughts?

There are also two match-ups that drive me insane (apart from Eldrazi, I mean :wink:). The first one is Miracles which just seems to be able to lock me out of the game all the time. I need both discard against Force and Abrupt Decay against the super-annoying Counterbalance which also steals game ones like a pro. Really don't know how to reliably beat this one. I thought it was a good matchup at first (at least better than back when I was playing Death & Taxes) but now I am not so sure anymore.

Burn is also suprisingly dangerous, thanks to Eidolon of the Great Revel. They are blazing fast and with Eidolon in play I can't cast anything without taking a lot of damage. And like a resolved counterbalance, I can't handle it in turn 1 (and handling it in game 2 also has me taking damage). I guess I could use some help with this match-up as well.

I really like the feel of the deck, though, and would love to play it more. Any help is really appreciated.

Also multiple tendrills in sb makes just the miracles and burn matchup a los better. Like with 3 toa in sb I have almost never lost to burn. And also makes my miracles matchup wins over 50%

Stoyrm

05-16-2016, 05:08 PM

The thing with two Past in Flames is that you will draw it more often (duh), which is really great for certain matchups. First it allows you to play through several counterspells, by playing enough mana you can often play through a hard counter because you can most often cast PiF and flashback it, while if you have a tutor they'll get you. Secondly, drawing often allows you to combo faster. You can spend your infernal tutor getting another ritual and then go off that turn instead of maybe having to wait for more mana. It's also very good against deck with a lot of discard. If your graveyard is full of spells and you draw PiF more often it'll allow you to sneak wins where you have zero cards in hand.

For the moment I have an Empty in the main, but if it wasn't the card I'd add would 100% be the second PiF, it was great for me for a good year.

Ronald Deuce

05-16-2016, 08:32 PM

Not sure how much I'll be able to add to the current discussion, but I went 3-0 at the local on Sunday. Beat American Stoneblade, Show and Tell, and Doomsday. Not a whole lot to report, except that this marks the second time I've eked out a win against the guy playing Stoneblade, and last time I managed it I lucked into two turn-1 Empties. Doomsday felt like it was my match to win (with no big-breeches nonsense or offense to the opponent intended); he pointed out, and I agreed, that we're doing pretty much the same thing, only AnT does it faster.

Memorable moments include dumping a handful of Dark Rituals and comboing in response to Surgical Extraction on Dark Ritual, Ad Nauseam FTW down to virtually nothing (I think 3 life in one game and 1 in another) twice, and recovering from a complete hand-stripping from Doomsday.

I was running the standard setup, only with 1 Preordain, Chrome Mox, Rain of Filth, AdN, Petition, Tendrils. 2 Past in Flames, 6 discards on a 3-3 split. Still on 14 lands main and still preferring it to 15, even when I never draw a second land. The more I play with this list, the more I feel like it's probably the best setup I've tried to date. I've not been missing the second Petition much at all, but I only rarely feel like additional copies of Tendrils would do anything better than either a fifth tutor or a second PiF. I haven't missed the second Preordain. Not even a little bit. If I could find a replacement for the singleton, I'd use it in a heartbeat. Speaking of such replacements, anybody run Impulse lately? Gives us a shot at getting around Chalice, for what it's worth...

I've started to feel like Jonathan Alexander's suggestion regarding additional sideboard discard to be a really good idea. I'm not sure I want to cut out so much to make room for a full 10 post-board, but I'm going to start testing with 7-8 discards for the time being (I've still got flex spots). I feel like extra discards and extra PiF are the best ways we can beat five-counterspell hands (except, maybe, for Defense Grid), and this is the third tournament in a row in which my opponent has been able to beat me that way. Last week and this week I still won the round, but I really hate throwing away games to hands like that. It's the same as losing to a guy who mulligans to three to find Leyline when you're playing Dredge, and I don't play Dredge as much as I used to because opponents do that A LOT.

In short, in one game in each of the last three (small) tournaments, I've found myself praying to topdeck a discard spell, and I haven't been able to find it. I've also lost two games because my opponent had hate I didn't expect, but I didn't have a discard or Probe to reveal it to me. Now there were numerous games when I was on 7 discards in which I found a discard instead of something I needed to seal the deal, but having the option in our sideboard seems more useful than not having it when it's needed.

Empty only came down once, versus Doomsday, but I like it because it's so fast and it goes so well with Therapy. I'm keeping two Empties in the 'board for the time being.

I've been considering cutting back my anti-creature cards to just one Disfigure (next to two Chains of Vapor). Maybe it's that the meta's been light on hatebears lately, but there was only one game I really needed one of those cards to save me, and I was pretty screwed already; I think I had a poor draw against two Stoneforge Mystics, a Jitte (maybe? I'd swiped the Skull already), a Canonist, a Meddling Mage on Massacre(?!?), and a handful of blue raspberries (the "PTHTHTPHPTHTHPTHTHPHHHPP—" kind. Yeah; that joke kinda sucked).

Croatoan, one thing jumps out to me about the list you were running: you seem to be a tad light on high-cost business. I can understand the fear that Ad Nauseam will just knife you in the gut when you otherwise have the game under control, but that's not happened to me a single time in months, and I've been winning off of AdN more frequently in the past month or so. Try out a fifth piece of business; I think you'll be pleasantly surprised. And if you're really worried, exchange a land for a Mox. I still feel like 15 lands mainboard is too many.

Still not planning to run Grim Tutor. I'll admit that I have NOT tested it, but I can't imagine how its advantages could outweigh all its problems in a large statistical sample (e.g., numerous players running it over numerous tournaments). Feels to me like best case, you've got one in hand, but you don't need to use it, and worst case, you have to use it. Again, though, in Ad Nauseam-less builds, I think it's probably worth a try.

Dr_D

05-17-2016, 11:02 AM

he pointed out, and I agreed, that we're doing pretty much the same thing, only AnT does it faster.

ANT isn't that much faster than DDFT if the pilot is competent. If both players are proficient, they have a very similar goldfish speed. DDFT and ANT are closer in speed than ANT and TES. If you play the matchup more against good opponents, you'll see it's not nearly as lopsided towards ANT as it seems at first glance.

Ronald Deuce

05-17-2016, 12:19 PM

ANT isn't that much faster than DDFT if the pilot is competent. If both players are proficient, they have a very similar goldfish speed. DDFT and ANT are closer in speed than ANT and TES. If you play the matchup more against good opponents, you'll see it's not nearly as lopsided towards ANT as it seems at first glance.

Oh, don't get me wrong; it's not all that lopsided, and I think I was getting lucky draws, but Doomsday's got a lot of engine pieces that are difficult to use on their own, and it relies a lot more heavily on Sensei's Top. He didn't have bad hands, either; maybe light on one of the components, but he had deck manipulation and/or business in both games, IIRC. The targeted discards also slowed me down, but I think he kept Topping and finding stuff that didn't really work with what he had in hand. It may not be all that common an occurrence (or it may be something that seasoned pilots have less trouble addressing), but I got the impression that if he'd had another turn or two in either game he would've made it.

I also think the speed of AnT depends a good deal on the setup. (I don't mean that one build is inherently faster than the others every time, but that you've got better odds of a T1-T2 with certain business configurations than you have with others.) I've been getting a lot of really fast combos lately on my configuration, and I think the extra Ritual and the extra Petal (Rain and Mox) are largely responsible. The mana density is noticeably higher than it was before, and I think I'm able to grind better than I could on 7 discards-1 PiF, 6 discards-1 Petition-1 Empty, or 6 discards-2 Petition setups.

Jonathan Alexander

05-17-2016, 12:31 PM

The 2 Petition list is a lot faster than 2 Past in Flames 3 Storm spell builds when goldfishing. You have a lot more unprotected turn two kills, but you're only slightly faster against one piece of countermagic and actually slower against multiple counterspells.

Togores

05-17-2016, 01:28 PM

Croatoan

05-17-2016, 01:32 PM

good long post

The Box is very interesting, I remember reading it when I was first looking into Storm. A couple of questions though:

If I play the 2 Pif, 3 Tendrils variant, are all five pieces main or do I leave a few tendrils for the sideboard? And I guess that I won't use Ad Nauseum with this setup but should I include a Petition? You mention in the Box that there is an interaction between Top and Flusterstorm. Maybe I'm stupid but I don't see it at the moment.

Also, I would like to know a bit more about sideboarding against the two matchups I mentioned, the box is pretty general in this regard.

Also multiple tendrills in sb makes just the miracles and burn matchup a los better. Like with 3 toa in sb I have almost never lost to burn. And also makes my miracles matchup wins over 50%

Interesting. What exactly do you board in these matchups?

(...)

Croatoan, one thing jumps out to me about the list you were running: you seem to be a tad light on high-cost business. I can understand the fear that Ad Nauseam will just knife you in the gut when you otherwise have the game under control, but that's not happened to me a single time in months, and I've been winning off of AdN more frequently in the past month or so. Try out a fifth piece of business; I think you'll be pleasantly surprised. And if you're really worried, exchange a land for a Mox. I still feel like 15 lands mainboard is too many.

Still not planning to run Grim Tutor. I'll admit that I have NOT tested it, but I can't imagine how its advantages could outweigh all its problems in a large statistical sample (e.g., numerous players running it over numerous tournaments). Feels to me like best case, you've got one in hand, but you don't need to use it, and worst case, you have to use it. Again, though, in Ad Nauseam-less builds, I think it's probably worth a try.

Hm, good point. I might give it a try. Should I put the land into the sideboard then? If yes, which matchups do you usually side it in? Death and Taxes I guess.

The thing with two Past in Flames is that you will draw it more often (duh), which is really great for certain matchups. First it allows you to play through several counterspells, by playing enough mana you can often play through a hard counter because you can most often cast PiF and flashback it, while if you have a tutor they'll get you. Secondly, drawing often allows you to combo faster. You can spend your infernal tutor getting another ritual and then go off that turn instead of maybe having to wait for more mana. It's also very good against deck with a lot of discard. If your graveyard is full of spells and you draw PiF more often it'll allow you to sneak wins where you have zero cards in hand.

For the moment I have an Empty in the main, but if it wasn't the card I'd add would 100% be the second PiF, it was great for me for a good year.

How is Empty treating you? I tried it, it was good against some matchups but fizzled hard against others.

Thanks guys for the help and I am really looking forward to the Storm Box update

Togores

05-17-2016, 04:03 PM

usualy against miracles my plan is to put on 2 toa, 2 grip, 4 decay, 1 top and just grind them to dead.

and against burn 2 echoing, 3 decay and 2 toa. just mini toa them even with eidolon and then with de 8+ life just toa them for a bit and win.

UseLess

05-17-2016, 04:18 PM

After I read the suggestion here for chrome mox to improve Ad Nauseam I tested it and a single mox has been very good for me during testing and tournaments. I tend to go often for Ad Nauseam and it helps a lot. Also aided a few times in getting hellbent, which is a nice addition. Would never go to two, but hardly ever disappointed when I see my mox.

I actually managed to win the third Source tournament hosted by Jelly with the list posted here: list (http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?30541-Source-Tournament-3-Dual-Jam-2k16/page8). Nothing too fancy, 1 chrome mox, 1 preordain, 1 tendrils, 1 PiF, 1 Empty, 1 AdN, 1 Dark Petition and 14 lands mainboard. Not yet sold on the Dark petition, the 14 lands worked well and so did the rest of the mainboard. The meta was really weird (I played 4 times agains Imperial taxes out of 7 rounds...) so my sideboard wasn't really tested a lot. On another note, I scrubbed out after going 2-3 at the Danish Legacy Masters. Sideboard was -1 Xantid, -1 Tendrils, +1 Hurkyl's, +1 Surgical. The three surgical was a meta choice since last time I faced quite a few reanimator decks. Now no reanimator of course and it was pretty bad. Next time I play the deck I'm having at least 1 tendrils in the SB.

The tournament made me rethink my sideboard and I was thinking against which matches do people bring in Abrupt Decay that also attack our land base? I mainly have the card for Miracles but against them the 2nd Green land isn't really necessary. I'm considering to add a few Ingot Chewers to my sb, but then I'd like an extra red land (either volcanic nr. 2 or a badlands). Haven't put too much thought into it, but it dawned on me that I don't really want the abrupt decays against decks that attack my mana as well, since it is so hard to cast it anyways.

Jonathan Alexander

05-17-2016, 07:04 PM

The Box is very interesting, I remember reading it when I was first looking into Storm. A couple of questions though:

If I play the 2 Pif, 3 Tendrils variant, are all five pieces main or do I leave a few tendrils for the sideboard? And I guess that I won't use Ad Nauseum with this setup but should I include a Petition? You mention in the Box that there is an interaction between Top and Flusterstorm. Maybe I'm stupid but I don't see it at the moment.

Also, I would like to know a bit more about sideboarding against the two matchups I mentioned, the box is pretty general in this regard.

I recommend you play with something similar to my SeaTac list:

4 Lion's Eye Diamond
4 Lotus Petal

4 Brainstorm
3 Cabal Ritual
4 Dark Ritual
1 Rain of Filth

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

4 Cabal Therapy
1 Duress
4 Gitaxian Probe
4 Infernal Tutor
2 Past in Flames
4 Ponder
2 Preordain
3 Tendrils of Agony
1 Thoughtseize

(I played Tops over Preordains, that was a terrible decision.)

Sideboard at the time:
2 Carpet of Flowers
2 Dread of Night
3 Abrupt Decay
1 Ad Nauseam
2 Flusterstorm
2 Krosan Grip
3 Empty the Warrens

Against Burn (and UR Delver) you just bring in some Decays and board out some discard. Beating Eidolon is super simple with 3 Tendrils, I actually had a game at GP SeaTac where my UR Delver opponent had Eidolon turn two on the play and I locked him under the Eidolon with mini-Tendrils.

Against Miracles, I boarded out all Infernals and LEDs and some other card for the green cards and Flusterstorms with the above list, but I wasn't super happy with the matchup against good opponents. Miracles vs. Storm is very good for Storm if the Miracles player doesn't really know how Storm works, but is extremely bad for Storm if they do.

I'm "currently" (haven't taken Storm to a tournament in almost three months) on this:

2 Petition List (http://tcdecks.net/deck.php?id=19661&iddeck=149646)

Plan against Miracles is boarding out Petals and Mox for Badlands and the four discard spells. I alternate between Ad Nauseam and Empty. If I expect Leyline of Sanctity, I bring in a Chain, but you basically can't beat that card with this plan anyway.

One thing I forgot to mention earlier is that I strongly suggest you start playing with 4 Cabal Therapy. Being able to use the card is vital to playing Storm well. Also recommend you play matchups where you don't sideboard or sideboarding doesn't matter much (basically, play against Canadian Threshold or UR Delver). 2/3 is not great currently, but it's the best list to learn playing with.

Croatoan

05-18-2016, 03:14 AM

Wow, lot's of good imput. Thanks everyone, I will give the 2 Past / 3 Tendrils list a go and start testing like crazy :)

Ronald Deuce

05-18-2016, 12:16 PM

Hm, good point. I might give it a try. Should I put the land into the sideboard then? If yes, which matchups do you usually side it in? Death and Taxes I guess.

The tournament made me rethink my sideboard and I was thinking against which matches do people bring in Abrupt Decay that also attack our land base? . . . Haven't put too much thought into it, but it dawned on me that I don't really want the abrupt decays against decks that attack my mana as well, since it is so hard to cast it anyways.

I've been running a Tropical Island in my sideboard. I don't actually bring it in all that often; the two matches I've started bringing it in every time are against Eldrazi and Miracles. In the Miracles matchup, I board out a basic Island and some other stuff for the Trop and four Decays. In the Eldrazi matchup, their Chalices and (especially) Thorns make me feel like we really need to hit land drops if we can't just go off on turn 1-2. This is the only matchup so far in which I've been going to 15 lands, but I don't usually board in more than one Abrupt Decay. Several times I've been unable to cast Rebuild because there's a Thorn on the table and Rebuild ends up costing 4. That's also one reason I've switched out Rebuild for another Empty the Warrens.

I still don't bring in more than one Abrupt Decay unless I'm going against Miracles. Delver decks seem like they're prey to Decay (ugh; the rhymes don't stop), but the combination of Wasteland and monocolored removal that's cheaper (Disfigure, Chain of Vapor) feels like it makes Decay a bad fit. They're not running hatebears anyway, and their creatures usually cost less than (or the same as) Decay, so I'd prefer to stick to cheap hand-destruction and point-kills. I think it's okay to play Decay (NOT AGAIN...) against anybody who isn't running land destruction, but it makes our plan a lot more dependent on finding that green source and I think that for a lot of those matchups (the mirror, Eldrazi, Reanimator, S&T[?]) Decay doesn't do much.

As an aside, I find that it's a lot more important to find a green source when I'm running Decay than it is to find reusable red sources for PiF or Empty pretty much anytime. I'm still not having problems running Badlands instead of Volcanic, but I think we really need to protect the green lands in any matchups in which we're trying to use Decay. So I don't think we want to board in Decay very often because there are plenty of times in which we're banking on holding onto our one reusable green source in the face of land destruction, though we don't have that problem with "combo-turn" spells like Past in Flames or Empty the Warrens. In short, I don't think we want to run Decay all that often, though it's crucial against Miracles.

Death and Taxes is a bit of an odd matchup to me because we've got a silver bullet for it (Massacre) that's significantly less effective in every other matchup. Mav boards into more Gaddocks to shut it out, and other creaturey strategies (Gobbos, Elves, Merfolk, and to some extent Stoneblade) don't play many Plains (if any). As with Eldrazi, I don't think we should be going far—if at all—into a fourth color in the D&T matchup because we've got plenty of hate for their deck already (Cabal Therapy, Chain, Disfigure).

With all that said, the combo of Port, Wasteland, and Thalia make getting off the ground after the first few turns rather difficult if we miss land drops. I think there's a case to be made for boarding up to 15 lands (with no Decays) here, but I haven't played against D&T in some time. Small meta, etc. One other thing: for some time people were running Plateaus, Mesas, and Thalia in Goblins, making it a pretty similar matchup in most respects. Not sure whether that's still a thing, but something to keep in mind.

How is Empty treating you? I tried it, it was good against some matchups but fizzled hard against others.

I really like Empty a lot, but it's definitely a weaker card than Tendrils. While we're on the subject of D&T, that's a good matchup to bring in Empty. They have a lot of trouble racing it if they don't land a quick Batterskull.

Bad matchups for Empty are Stoneblade (Batterskull and a ton of mass removal like Echoing Truth and Engineered Explosives), Jund (even more mass removal in their 'board), Elves (they'll race it), and occasionally decks like Goblins (machinegun-man) and Belcher (they play it faster and often get more goblins).

I've vacillated between running Empty in the main and the sideboard, and I think that for the time being I prefer to have it in the side. It's an atrocious topdeck and it often doesn't come down appreciably faster than Ad Nauseam. With that said, I would always, always, always board out AdN against Burn, and depending on what they've boarded, Empty might be a better card here. I think a second Tendrils would be better than either, and there's a good chance just cutting one business card for spot removal (damnable Eidolons) is better than all of the above. Anybody have input on that matchup?

One other thought occurred to me regarding the discussion of Grim Tutor: if we're hoping to use it for a fast Empty, is it appreciably better than running Burning Wish instead? Obviously it's harder to use in a Tendrils chain, but it feels like Wish synergizes at least as well with Empty without shooting us in the foot when we draw it off of Ad Nauseam.

Last thought: Croatoan, I think the more experienced players on this board are right that you should test with 3 Tendrils, 2 PiF (a build I still don't have the cojones to try). Keep in mind, though, that you're going to want to test at least as much with the build you'll be running in tournaments (if that build differs). The various configurations play differently enough that you'll want to have a lot of practice with the setup you'll be running competitively so you don't make goofy errors like forgetting whether you've got Empty in your deck (I'm guilty) or how many tutors you can chain before running out (I'm even guiltier).

ScottW

05-18-2016, 12:33 PM

http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=29827

Has anyone ever tried this in the sideboard? Is this not castable under a chalice and too Sorcery and U. Let the pie throwing begin.

Jonathan Alexander

05-19-2016, 08:29 AM

So I want to write a sideboarding guide because it's probably the thing new players ask about the most. Which matchups should I cover? Obviously all the decks to beat, the mirror, Show and Tell strategies, Elves... But what else?

Zombie

05-19-2016, 08:45 AM

Elves

Advise people to board in goblins against us >:)

I'd say Blade, Maverick (though D&T prob. covers that already), Dredge (Manaless/LED) and, as said, Lands.

UseLess

05-19-2016, 08:49 AM

I would definitely add RUG (Canadian Threshold) and Lands to the list. Those decks can almost always be relevant in the meta, even if played less. Infect seems also like a pretty decent deck to cover. Finally, something like the Rock/Aggro Loam (non-blue, non-combo decks) would be nice.

Another idea is to lump them into certain hate strategies such as hate bears (Thalia, canonist, Gaddock teeg decks), hate artifacts (Trinisphere, chalice, thorn of amethyst) and non-counterbalance control (e.g. grixis control, blade control, or other counter heavy decks). This would just be a general guide for what to board when you expect certain cards against you, rather than what a specific matchup could do. Either way, I'm looking forward to it :).

Stoyrm

05-19-2016, 10:30 AM

How is Empty treating you? I tried it, it was good against some matchups but fizzled hard against others.

Thanks guys for the help and I am really looking forward to the Storm Box update

I've been a fan of Empty for a long time, but for a while there it was just not necessary. Right now, with decks like Grixis Delver (or any other delver deck), DnT (often with main deck canonist if they know what they are doing), Infect and Eldrazi it's really nice to have. It is an awkward card, but it gives you an out against a lot of decks. I'd love for it to be the second Past in Flames, but I'm with Togores on this right now, you probably should have one in the main.

EDIT:

Tweaked my sideboard atm, looking at MTGTOP8 metagame breakdown, this is probably what I'll sleeve up for Prague.

4 Abrupt Decay
1 Echoing Truth
2 Tendrils of Agony
1 Chain of Vapor
2 Flusterstorm
2 Dread of Night
2 Xantid Swarm
1 Hurkyl's Recall

I believe this should give me a game plan against almost every deck that has a decent % chance of showing up. I would like to find another slot for a Hurkyl and or a Dread of Night extra. So far I've been looking at the Xantid Swarms, but they've served me well against Show and Tell and Reanimator in the past. Flusterstorms seems good against most combo decks, but I've considered cutting them as well. I don't think I'll go to a tournament without Echoing Truth or Chain, they've won me to many games against silly cards like Leylines that people tend to bring in. Echoing Truth is quite similar to Hurkyl's, but I like it against more matchups than just Eldrazi, but I'll probably bring it in anyway. I'm afraid I'll be a bit weaker against Miracles than before, but other than that I think I have a lot of bases covered. Anything you guys would change? Am I spreading myself to thin and hedging against to many matchups maybe?

Ronald Deuce

05-19-2016, 10:52 AM

So I want to write a sideboarding guide because it's probably the thing new players ask about the most.

That would be superb. Not sure whether I still count as a new player, but I'd love to see a comprehensive analysis. The one in the primer is good, but it feels a bit "long in the tooth" in some ways, and it doesn't go into a ton of detail about the best ways to use the cards (e.g., when to hold them, when to fire, what to avoid, what specific cards might shut them down).

If you're interested in tackling misconceptions or if you're curious what newish players are doing (right or wrong) in certain matchups, I'd be happy to give you any input I've got. My understanding of which cards to use and why has changed quite a bit in some ways as I've gotten a feel for the deck.

Might be good to mention which cards (if any) depend on the business setup we're running (e.g., it's difficult to board in multiple Empties, Chewers, or Massacres if we're running Ad Nauseam; Rain of Filth and Chain of Vapor don't go together all that great) and in what ways they depend. Also, which slots are "flex spots" and which ones are rock-solid stalwarts.

Just a thought, but it might be good to address common dilemmas people encounter in the field and how sideboarding can remedy such situations.

It might be worth it to list which cards can really zero us in each matchup (e.g., Gaddock and Canonist in Mav; Fluster, Force, and Countertop in Miracles; Eidolon in Burn) to give newer players or people from smaller metagame environments a heads-up.

Which matchups should I cover? Obviously all the decks to beat, the mirror, Show and Tell strategies, Elves... But what else?

I guess The Menace is part of the DTB list, so that's covered. Not sure whether it's worth it to address other "stompy" matchups or MUD because I gather that The Menace is more successful than the others. I'm interested in reading about the best way to handle a deck like ≥8-Rack because it's not that stellar generally, but its volume of discard and the potential for numerous Extractions postboard made it tough for me last time I played against it. I second the motion for Stoneblade; counterspells for days (Daze?)...

I think UseLess is onto something: a lot of matchups feel like they fall into categories that are each addressed by a set of cards in the sideboard, so arranging the decks by how they beat us or by how we beat them seems logical.

Jonathan Alexander

05-19-2016, 11:34 AM

Thanks for your suggestions, I'll try to keep them in mind!

Another idea is to lump them into certain hate strategies such as hate bears (Thalia, canonist, Gaddock teeg decks), hate artifacts (Trinisphere, chalice, thorn of amethyst) and non-counterbalance control (e.g. grixis control, blade control, or other counter heavy decks). This would just be a general guide for what to board when you expect certain cards against you, rather than what a specific matchup could do. Either way, I'm looking forward to it :).

I think UseLess is onto something: a lot of matchups feel like they fall into categories that are each addressed by a set of cards in the sideboard, so arranging the decks by how they beat us or by how we beat them seems logical.

Yes, I might do that. I'm not entirely sure how space out and structure things though, because there is a lot of information to be conveyed.

That would be superb. Not sure whether I still count as a new player, but I'd love to see a comprehensive analysis. The one in the primer is good, but it feels a bit "long in the tooth" in some ways, and it doesn't go into a ton of detail about the best ways to use the cards (e.g., when to hold them, when to fire, what to avoid, what specific cards might shut them down).

If you're interested in tackling misconceptions or if you're curious what newish players are doing (right or wrong) in certain matchups, I'd be happy to give you any input I've got. My understanding of which cards to use and why has changed quite a bit in some ways as I've gotten a feel for the deck.

I'm not sure if that's what I want to do, but thanks for the offer, will keep in mind.

Might be good to mention which cards (if any) depend on the business setup we're running (e.g., it's difficult to board in multiple Empties, Chewers, or Massacres if we're running Ad Nauseam; Rain of Filth and Chain of Vapor don't go together all that great) and in what ways they depend. Also, which slots are "flex spots" and which ones are rock-solid stalwarts.

Just a thought, but it might be good to address common dilemmas people encounter in the field and how sideboarding can remedy such situations.

I actually think determining your business setup for a matchup should always be the first order of business, so that's definitely happening.

I guess The Menace is part of the DTB list, so that's covered. Not sure whether it's worth it to address other "stompy" matchups or MUD because I gather that The Menace is more successful than the others. I'm interested in reading about the best way to handle a deck like ≥8-Rack because it's not that stellar generally, but its volume of discard and the potential for numerous Extractions postboard made it tough for me last time I played against it. I second the motion for Stoneblade; counterspells for days (Daze?)...

I think Eldrazi covers all Stompy decks because it's pretty much strictly better than any other version. 8-Rack seems a bit too far out there, but Stoneblade seems to be making a comeback, so I'll likely include it, at least long-term.

nevilshute

05-20-2016, 03:07 AM

Scenario time:

You're playing this list:

4x
led
petal
dark rit
inf tutor
probe
brainstorm
ponder

3x
cab rit
cab therapy

2x
duress
past in flames

1x
tendrils
empty
ad nauseam
top
thoughtseize
rain of filth
chrome mox

lands:
4x delta
4x misty
2x sea
1x volc
1x trop
1x bayou
1x island
1x swamp

SB:
4x decay
1x krosan grip
2x tendrils
1x empty
1x top
2x fluster
1x chain
1x echoing truth
2x carpet of flowers

It's round three of a league on mtgo. You're on the play against an unknown opponent. You keep this hand: Bayou, Volc, Delta, Brainstorm, Past in Flames, Tutor, Petal. Your opponent mulligans to 6. You decide to lead on volcanic go, keeping your options open to brainstorm and at least shuffle away one card if your opponent has a play that necessitates this, at the cost of being open to wasteland. Your opponent draws for the turn, plays and island and passes. You draw a misty rainforest for the turn, play out your delta and pass back. Opponent draws for their turn 2, plays a polluted delta and passes back to you. You decide to EoT brainstorm which resolves. You draw petal, infernal tutor, cabal ritual. You put back bayou and misty, untap and draw misty which you play out. Your hand is now 2x infernal tutor, 2x petal, cab rit and past in flames. From here you go for the win and your opponent does nothing and concedes with a lethal number of tendrils on the stack.

Your mission, should you choose to accept, is to tell me how you sideboard for game two. All you have to go by is island, delta.

Togores

05-20-2016, 10:12 AM

thats a real problem for me a lot of times, because I just shoot them t1. depending what I feel, on the dark I like 2 do like -1 preordian -2nd pif for 2 decay.

and against your opponent, he is playing combo, or control, that sure. So may be like +2 fluster +2 decay -1 pif -1 etw and 2 other cards.

Its always hard to sb when u saw nothing... But I would bet your opponent is on miracles or sneak and show.

taconaut

05-20-2016, 12:24 PM

I agree with Togores in the abstract, though I'd also personally try to fit in a chain of vapor as a hedge (this could be 100% wrong). I often bring it in when I am very unsure of what hate they could have, because if it ends up being something like a leyline, or quickly reanimating an iona, or some other weird thing, decay won't get you there, which feels bad. Plus, if they are on a deck that plays Wastelands, it might be riskier to need the green source (this is less of a big deal, I think?).

What did you end up doing, and what did they turn out to be on?

Ronald Deuce

05-20-2016, 03:59 PM

I think Eldrazi covers all Stompy decks because it's pretty much strictly better than any other version. 8-Rack seems a bit too far out there, but Stoneblade seems to be making a comeback, so I'll likely include it, at least long-term.

Sounds good! Depending on the course of the project, it might be worth it to list some decks we probably shouldn't expect to see often but that dump on us when they do show up. I don't think too much analysis is required for those, more just like a heads-up; just a few entries like "•8-Rack, Pox: lots of discard" or something. Might provide good information without taking too much time to put together.

Just remembered another deck: Reanimator? The "play Infernal, opponent pays G-Brand 14 life, we lose" situation is somewhat aggravating. Probably not as aggravating as facing down Tendrils for 20, but still.

Your mission, should you choose to accept, is to tell me how you sideboard for game two. All you have to go by is island, delta.

Strong blue manabase but a lack of countermagic is weird. Almost definitely not TES because of the Island. Immediately I'd rule out Infect, Merfolk, and Faeries (no 1-drops or Vials were seen), Miracles (tons of countermagic), Blade (ditto), Delver (ditto again), and High Tide (...). No Wastelands, either, but that could just be the luck of the draw. My guess would be the mirror or Doomsday, but maybe Shardless, Show and Tell, or Reanimans.

My gut says that AnT or Doomsday is most likely because I have yet to encounter a non-Storm blue deck that doesn't run out anything—no discards, no cantrips, no countermagic, no Top—for two turns on a 6-card hand.

I'd probably board cautiously; no plays from the opponent could just indicate a bad hand/player on some other deck, but I don't think it's all that likely. My Spider Sense is telling me the opponent kept a hand like Island, Delta, C. Ritual, Petal, Business x2.

I'd probably either board nothing or go -1 Empty, -1 Tropical, +1 Tendrils, +1 Flusterstorm. Personally, I'd run a Petition instead of the Tendrils if it were in the list.

Speaking of, the list looks cool! Has the Top performed better than a Preordain? Nice to see I'm not the only one trying Mox+Rain. How are you liking that setup? Any further revelations re: the manabase?

Togores and Taconaut, I feel like I'd come down on the side of Chain for a couple of reasons: it'll hit more targets and the opponent seems to be light on countermagic. (Also, we can cut a land for more spell density/Goes-Fast.) However, that's assuming that permanent-hate is a good thing to bring in at all. If it's the mirror, as I suspect, I'd consider +1 Echoing Truth. Probably not, because Empty's not so good in the mirror, but maybe.

Togores, you mentioned some pages back another matchup in which you would board in Abrupt Decay, but I didn't feel like it seemed all that useful. It seems like I approach the card differently, so I'm interested to hear which matchups you include it and what your reasoning is. How often do you side it in? Do you have difficulty casting it against Wasteland decks? Are you currently running two green lands?

Togores

05-20-2016, 05:15 PM

Two green lands md yes.

Bug delver
Grixis
Shardless
Patriot
Blade
Miracles
Taxes
Gw
Eldrazi
Lands
Cloudpost (not always)

Its just good against any deck running deathrite or permanent hate.

ScottW

05-21-2016, 09:02 PM

The following video link is from MTG Training Grounds and is ANT VS. Eldrazi. Storm gets a beating! I think it showcases the issues with the match-up.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=2gluWEJkFCk

Getting paired against this deck feels miserable. I don't like the game plan of being all in on a turn 1 and having too few ways to combat some lock pieces. Has anybody considered Young Pyromancer? An early Pyromancer would allow you to cast cmc1 spells into a chalice for some value and would stall the board somewhat. Eldrazi takes a lot of damage from their lands so possibly a small Tendrils after finding some Cabal Rituals might do the job. Maybe multiple Tendrils. A few people in this thread used Pyromancer some time ago. What other match-up was this card valuable? Miracles, Delver?

nevilshute

05-22-2016, 01:21 AM

Eldrazi is a terrible matchup for storm. Fundamentally so. Any measures to improve it postboard will only do do marginally and so you really need to question whether it's worth it.

Having said that I think Pyromancer could be decent vs them. It's main draw is almost that it ignores thorn. But I'm not sure it's at a sufficient power lvl to really beat them. I've played Pyromancer quite a bit out the board in the past. It was okay vs miracles but nowadays miracles always keeps in 2x plow and 2x terminus. Not where I want to be trying to resolve dudes.

Against other decks like delver it has been very hit-and-miss for me. Against any deck with bolts it's a no go.

Interestingly, I tested pyro against 4-c loam and there it was great. Sure they have ~2 answers post board, but no top, ponder or brainstorm to find them. They can't keep up most of the time.

Ronald Deuce

05-22-2016, 01:41 AM

The following video link is from MTG Training Grounds and is ANT VS. Eldrazi. Storm gets a beating! I think it showcases the issues with the match-up.

I took a look at the decklist they linked in the description, and it looked rather slow to play and unfocused to me. I think everyone knows my position on 15 lands (main) and Grim Tutor, but why run Grim, Petition, Empty, and double PiF? Why 4x Therapy, singletons Duress and Thoughtseize? Only eight rituals to cover six spells with cmc ≥3? I think Ad Nauseam is pretty important in this matchup (and in many others). The sideboard looked very experimental to me, and I didn't like some of the card choices there, either.

Not sure how much of the problem in the match was the result of these choices, but I feel like the pilot shot himself in the foot a bit with this configuration. Just seems like it turns over rather slowly and with little option for a fast Tendrils. No hate or disrespect intended to the player.

I don't like the game plan of being all in on a turn 1 and having too few ways to combat some lock pieces. Has anybody considered Young Pyromancer? An early Pyromancer would allow you to cast cmc1 spells into a chalice for some value and would stall the board somewhat. . . . A few people in this thread used Pyromancer some time ago. What other match-up was this card valuable? Miracles, Delver?

I think the video actually demonstrates, to an extent, how important the ability to pull out turn-1s is. The Storm player's list didn't feel like it was all that capable of doing so consistently, and I wonder how much of a difference that made.

Again, Pyromancer (like Mentor et al.) is like a slow version of Empty the Warrens. I don't like banking on a T1 either, but paying mana to throw spells into the void for 1/1s when the other player can freecast 2/2 Endless Ones and—worse—Mimics doesn't feel like it'll avail us anything. Multiple Empties should boost our odds of hitting a fast kill substantially, though I haven't tested such a config very much. Suffice it to say that I'm much more comfortable with aiming for T1s than I am with running mans to boost our late game.

I think we may need to start running anti-permanent cards in the main, but I don't know what would work best; Chain and Decay have their own idiosyncracies. Anybody have ideas? I've considered maindecking a singleton Burning Wish both to increase our odds of going crazy and to give us the option of finding answers from the 'board. Has anybody given that a try?

Togores, I appreciate the info! Against decks with Deathrite, why not use Disfigure or Chain instead?

Togores

05-22-2016, 02:39 AM

Because they can fluster or pierce or even force a decay. In matchups I dont want to play a discard before a disfigure. Also because of sb space. And to the last exent. Killing a goyf, null rod or cage can be important. They are a low creature count deck. So you can just kill theys clock and get like 3-5 time walks of it sometimes.

JamieW89

05-22-2016, 05:45 PM

Got my byes for Prague as well :). Played with 1 DP, 1 EtW, 1 Rain of Filth, 6 discard, 15 lands, 1 Preordain, 1 Top main. Most interesting SB choice was the 2nd Tendrils I guess.

Round-1: Dark Maverick: 2-0 1-0
He got a GL for a decklist error and I made tokens in g2. My opener in g2 was funny though, It included 3 Probes, Brainstorm, Empty, but no land. I manage to find a land and a LED from the 2 probes + drawstep and the brainstorm finds the final petal needed to cast the empty.

Round-2: Infect: 0-2 1-1
In game-1 I have a clunky hand with too many tutors. His board is 2x Glistener Elf with me on 5 poison. His hand (which I know) is Berserk, Become Immense, Probe, FoW. He was a few cards short of casting Become Immense. I have a protected kill if I can resolve Dark Ritual, or I can aim to kill the next turn and hope I live (by either passing or discarding fow). I opt to lead on Ritual, because if he does force then I don't die to a Blighted Agent topdeck (he could probe me, force the probe pitching blighted agent, making become immense castable) and it gets a decent shot at a free win. He forces and topdecks the dude, so I live. However, without the ritual I need to draw a card which adds mana (including land) or a good cantrip. I draw the 4th tutor effect and die.
In game-2 he has a slow hand with plenty of disruption (FoW, FoW, Pierce, Fluster, Probe, StP, Land). I claw through most of it, but am 1 turn late in setting up a PiF line through his hand (which by then was that flusterstorm, another pierce and another FoW). It would have gone mana, pif (fluster), infernal saccing LED (fow or I get discard), flashback pif with plenty of mana for pierce. Earlier on I had a window to topdeck discard spell too, because he attacked with something leaving exactly 5 mana open (with FoW+Fluster in hand or so) and I chained his untapped hierarch EoT.

Round-3: Death & Taxes: 2-0 2-1
In game-1 I cantrip on 1, brainstorm and therapy on 2 (miss, he has junk). He topdecks Revoker (correctly names LED, although my start could have looked like a slow grixis start), but it doesn't save him.
In game-2 he dies to tokens, I don't think he boarded in outs.

Round-4: Elves: 2-1 3-1
I get turn-3'd which raced me by one turn despite being on the play. Dark Petition was actively bad (had the artifacts + DP hand) here.
In game-2 I have LED,a ritual, IT,IT, 2 lands or so after probing (and mulling). He has seize, choke and RecSage. I opt to play out the LED, rather than letting him take it. He takes the (cabal I think) ritual and I draw lands in the following turns. However, he decided against playing t3 recsage for my LED (idk what he did, something silly) so he dies to my Ad Nauseam from 16...
In game-3 I have the clunkiest hand ever (PiF, IT, ToA, LP, Lands - kept IT, Cantrip, PiF, LP, 3 Lands I think) while he puts some dudes on the board. He manages to miss damage several times and I topdeck an Ad Nauseam at 13 (not close to winning with PiF yet, IT'd for a 2nd LP before), so I cast that. I hit good, go to 5, and win. Sort of feels deserved because of his terrible play..

Round-5: Miracles: ID (won the game we played for fun) ID 3-1-1 into 4th
The fun game was really interesting, with him having the force to stop me early, getting down CB, but not setting up well (no tops/cantrips) where I had Top. I got a lot of time, and there is a really complex turn where I have both Empty and Tendrils between my hand and top of the deck, but he has quite some counters (and potentially a clique). I end up making lethal-1 goblins, knowing that he has terminus but no 6th land (nor was it on top, Cb revealed something). He draws it the turn after though, and we go draw go for a long time, but the Tendrils eventually gets there.

QF: Miracles (with daze/mentor): 2-0 (4-1-1)
Game-1 is quite easy because he just doesn't get a Counterbalance (despite 2 FoW, 2-3 Daze).
Game-2 is interesting. I am about to win with a very good PiF hand when he finds RiP. After some sculpting I manage to make a good number of goblin tokens and pass. I get to hit once, but in the two turns he looks at a really large number of cards (sequencing his cantrips/top very well imo, actually used all 4 BS/4 PN during those 2 turns too) and finally finds the EE with the exact last card he got to see with 2 mana left (could still top once more for his 1 Terminus). But without pressure I manage to find one of my 2 Tendrils before I'm dead/cliquelocked.

SF: Grixis Delver: 2-1 (5-1-1)
Me and my friend are both playing a semi-final against two teammates (who are also a couple - the guy was the miracles player from r5). I lose the first game when she doesn't draw any countermagic, but a fast clock with a therapy is pretty good.
In the second one she has Daze, Cage, Pierce, Therapy, Delver,something and I have to choose what to discard (she could have dazed..). I go with the therapy hoping she can't flash it back because of the cage, and aim for a tutor chain/tokens. She does cast the cage, and later on therapies me (a new one) for Tutor (miss, otherwise I'd have won by then though). By the time I actually do find tutor I'm on a 2 turn clock (shaman+delver) and goblins won't do it, so I have to pass and hope to win on my turn. She taps very strangely because she intended to flash back some therapies (nope), but I don't think it really mattered.
The final game is quite nice. I have PiF and ToA (boarded in the 2nd) in my opener, and the game goes for a bit. Eventually her hand is "Daze, Pierce, Card that did not flip Delver earlier" and I have a line around her soft counters quite easily. Turns out the last card was a FoW, and I was seriously next leveled. However I get to flip my top in the Tutor I knew was there, and she gets the choice to pierce this (I can pay, but then I won't be able to make goblins/lethal pif. However I will have a PiF flashback kill next turn with the CRit I find) or let me tutor. She allows it, and I make some goblins. They get there.

F: Deathblade: 2-0 (6-1-1)
G1 was a blowout (my very good 7 vs his 6). I open on top, he makes a shaman. He plays SFM on 3 keeping Shaman open instead of holding Clique open but it wouldn't have mattered. He's dead to a tutor chain with a tutor hidden on top.
G2 features an interesting decision on his part, after I once again get a sick hand (on 6 this time). He opens Ponder, keeping. I lead with Probe seeing FoW, Strix, Ponder, SCM, Lands. I then fetch and cast Dark Ritual. Does he force or not? Turns out he had Meddling Mage on top from the ponder and should have probably FoW'd (I wouldn't fow without good cards on top I think). I therapy his fow and make 14 tokens, saccing one to discard ponder. 13 will beat a SFM from the top (he was on 19, playing fetch + mystic passing, I hit for 12 to 6, he puts in batterskull and plows a token but still takes 10 gaining 4 to 0, I believe). He fetches and casts Strix, takes 13, draws and extends the hand.

Goblins were the nuts, as always. Top was very good. Not meeting Eldrazi was nice, and my draws definately very good (way more quick tokens hands than expected) throughout the day. 2nd Tendrils from the board was quite good. Dark Petition wasn't great, and I doubt I'll go back to 2 (do still prefer it over Grim Tutor). Rain of Filth was mainly absent, but was quite solid at least once, and it was never bad.

Ronald Deuce

05-23-2016, 05:10 PM

Eldrazi savaged me yesterday. I didn't do too well all around (1-2), but I think a good portion of that was just my being a bit rusty and making stupid decisions on cantrips and a few mulligans. G1 R1 against a brew I got clobbered by the first really poor Ad Nauseam I've had in a long time. Eh, so it goes.

So in both games against the Menace I had a turn-2 combo lined up, and in both games it wasn't fast enough. I boarded in an Empty, Decay, Trop, 2x Hurkyl's. Game 1 the opponent mulled to five with no answers in hand and topdecked Thorn, Thorn, Chalice (in a row and in that order), and in game 2 I opened with Duress to reveal 2x Thorn. Drew a Therapy about two turns later. Not a single piece of sideboard material showed up except for Empty.

I don't think there's a lot we can do about this matchup all around. I'm starting to think boarding into 1x Empty and 3-4 Hurkyl's is probably our only option. Hurkyl's doesn't go so well with Ad Nauseam, though, and that card's won me most of the few games I've won against the Menace.

Togores

05-23-2016, 08:40 PM

This was a fun moment :D

https://twitter.com/TogoresTcg/status/734906070116765696

cheerios

05-24-2016, 04:48 AM

Sloshthedark

05-24-2016, 05:20 AM

I'm having some trouble facing burn lately. The burn player in my LGS has Mindbreak Trap, Graveyard hate, and Pyrostatic Pillar on top of Eidolon post-board. How would you board against this match up if you have 2 extra Tendrils and 1 empty? I now plan on adding a 2nd echoing truth on my sb. I usually board out the extra cantrips, 2nd PIF, and Ad Nauseam. Any feedback is much appreciated.

Cheers

I'm typically on 4-5 removal, 6-7 discard, 3ToA, 2PiF, EtW ... you need to keep all PIF, makes loop easier with multiple ToA and saves dmg - kills through Pillar FX are real

CabalTherapy

05-24-2016, 05:28 PM

My Tuesday streak broke today. I was at 22-0 but then lost 1:2 to 4c Delver:one bad CT decision, some lucky draws by him. Currently at 23-1. I have to start all over again.

rlesko

05-24-2016, 05:52 PM

This was a fun moment :D

https://twitter.com/TogoresTcg/status/734906070116765696

What exactly happened here? I see you cast Cabal Ritual, in response surgical, what is petal casting?

Jonathan Alexander

05-24-2016, 06:04 PM

What exactly happened here? I see you cast Cabal Ritual, in response surgical, what is petal casting?

Past in Flames. You have to actually select the copy of Past in Flames in the graveyard when using Surgical. It is a legal play to leave it there (same goes for copies in the library). Togores' opponent simply failed to do that.

rlesko

05-24-2016, 06:33 PM

Past in Flames. You have to actually select the copy of Past in Flames in the graveyard when using Surgical. It is a legal play to leave it there (same goes for copies in the library). Togores' opponent simply failed to do that.

Oh ok. Thanks for clearing that up.

ScottW

05-24-2016, 08:37 PM

Link to SCG article on ANT:

http://www.starcitygames.com/article/32976_Updating-Legacy-Storm.html

Jonathan Alexander

05-25-2016, 05:34 AM

Link to SCG article on ANT:

http://www.starcitygames.com/article/32976_Updating-Legacy-Storm.html

Do not read that article, it will do more harm than good. Literally everything he says about Storm (and, quite frankly, Legacy) is wrong.

CabalTherapy

05-25-2016, 05:47 AM

Do not read that article, it will do more harm than good. Literally everything he says about Storm (and, quite frankly, Legacy) is wrong.

I agree 100%. It seems like he clearly doesn't know what he is talking about.

Stoyrm

05-25-2016, 06:36 AM

So, at this point, every time I go to a GP I end up losing to BUG decks in any shape or form. What do you guys sideboard in vs Shardless, Bug Delver etc? I won't provide a sideboard, I'm interested in your plan, to see several plans against the decks. It'd be nice if you guys could add some information about how you feel the matchup plays out. There's extremely few BUG decks in my local meta and it's the one deck I'm not able to practice against very often.

ScottW

05-25-2016, 07:03 AM

Do not read that article, it will do more harm than good. Literally everything he says about Storm (and, quite frankly, Legacy) is wrong.

Yes, thought it was an interesting piece of misinformation.

Jay_Gatz

05-25-2016, 07:22 AM

Do not read that article, it will do more harm than good. Literally everything he says about Storm (and, quite frankly, Legacy) is wrong.

Closed it as soon as I saw the author

Jonathan Alexander

05-25-2016, 07:23 AM

I agree 100%. It seems like he clearly doesn't know what he is talking about.

Well, the first thing he says is that he never plays Legacy, he then goes on to say how he's terrible with Storm. Then he writes an article about how the deck should change without explaining a single one of his choices. I don't get how this can ever get published.

So, at this point, every time I go to a GP I end up losing to BUG decks in any shape or form. What do you guys sideboard in vs Shardless, Bug Delver etc? I won't provide a sideboard, I'm interested in your plan, to see several plans against the decks. It'd be nice if you guys could add some information about how you feel the matchup plays out. There's extremely few BUG decks in my local meta and it's the one deck I'm not able to practice against very often.

This was actually me in the past. Nobody ever plays Team America in my area but literally all but one of my losses in the two European Grand Prix I played Storm in came to blue Deathrite decks.

Against Shradless, I board into Ad Nauseam Tendrils in case I don't have Ad Nauseam maindeck. If I don't have my two copies of Dark Petition, I'm boarding two copies of Abrupt Decay. If I'm on 2 Petition / 1 Ad Nauseam, I don't sideboard at all. I don't like Empty against them because their deck is all creatures that block tokens profitably and they basically have to board removal.

Against Team America and Grixis Delver, I try to be as close to this after boarding as possible:

4 Lion's Eye Diamond
4 Lotus Petal

4 Brainstorm
4 Cabal Ritual
4 Dark Ritual

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

4 Duress
3 Empty the Warrens
4 Gitaxian Probe
4 Infernal Tutor
1 Past in Flames
4 Ponder
2 Preordain
1 Tendrils of Agony
2 Thoughtseize