[Primer] Six Shades of Dressnought aka Vaka-Nought [Archive]

Clark Kant

06-19-2021, 01:38 PM

Dress Down is an incredibly synergistic addition to Stiflenought. Dress Down has significant utility beyond the combo, works beautifully with Uro and also cantrips so that your Dreadnought getting Sworded doesn't set you back. Instead it just gains you 12 life for the cost of two mana while maintaining card parity. And that's the floor for the card. The ceiling is that one single swing with Dreadnought wins the game while your opponent is still searching for a removal spell. Dress Down finally made Dreadnought a competitive legacy level card. This deck initially started development as Vaka Nought but the Dressnought name seems like the better route to go since Vaka Nought was based on an inside joke that few people understand. Here is the original thread this deck originated in... https://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?33547-Vaka-Nought-A-Powerful-Brew-Abusing-Stifle-and-Dress-Down-to-slam-12-12s-and-Titans

The game plan for every Dressnought list is to disrupt your opponent's manabase with Stifle and Wasteland, disrupt their win conditions using Daze, FoW or Dress Down, and win using a Dreadnought and either Uro or Dragon's Rage Channeler (alongside Lazav to abuse the Surveil shenanigans) while they are still rebuilding. Dress Down makes this game plan much more consistent with a much smaller floor should the Dreadnought be destroyed. Stifle should be aimed primarily at fetchlands/wastelands when the matchup allows. Stifling the Dreadnought trigger makes sense against decks that are not playing either white or black, and against decks that are focused on comboing out quickly and thus do not pack maindeck removal. But in the majority of matchups, you should aim your early game Stifles at Wastelands/Fetchlands and dig for a Dress Down when you want to slam a 12/12 Dreadnought. The optimal time to cast Dress Down is during the end step of your opponent's turn. This gives you access to all of your mana on your subsequent turn that you cast any combination of Dreadnought(s) along with a titan like Uro/Kroxa on your subsequent turn.

I would like to share the six lists here that I have had fun playing and winning with and I hope that people here have input on how to turn multiple 4-1s into 5-0s. One approach might be to cut Daze and go for a slower more controllish and less tempo based gameplan, by adding Walkers and Urza’s Sagas. But the tempo strategy has won me a lot of games, so I am hesistant to cut Daze and go the grindier approach. I attempted to take that route for the Sultai build. It could also work in Bant, since Bant Control is already a well defined archeatype and putting up strong results without the aid of the Dressnought combo, so adding Dressnought to the list is going to win games, but it would remain up in the air if the wins are due to the Bant Control shell or due to the addition of the Dressnought package. Stifle pairs so well with Dreadnought that overall, I think Daze + Stifle + Wasteland is the correct route to go with this deck. I would love to see other’s brews and ideas shared here as well...

Simic Dressnought

3 Wasteland
4 Misty Rainforest
3 Prismatic Vista
3 Tropical Island
3 Snow-Covered Island
2 Snow-Covered Forest
1 Urza's Saga

4 Stifle
4 Dress Down
4 Phyrexian Dreadnought
4 Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath
2 Noble Hierarch
2 Sylvan Library
1 Ice-Fang Coatl
1 Brazen Borrower

4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
4 Daze
4 Force of Will
1 Force of Negation
1 Jace, the Mind Sculptor

Sideboard:
1 Relic of Progenitus
1 Pithing Needle
1 Flusterstorm
1 Divert
1 Blue Elemental Blast
1 Sylvan Safekeeper
1 Collector Ouphe
1 Wilt
2 Veil of Summer
2 Carpet of Flowers
3 Endurance

Above is the Simic List list I sent to BoshNRoll when I saw Dress Down spoiled, to play through a league due to my laptop's issues with mtgo and frequent crashes when attempting to record mtgo leagues. In hindsight, this list should have been maindecking either a Soul-Guide Lantern or Pithing Needle, but this oversight didn't stop him from 4-1ing with the list, only losing to Oops All Spells which ironically is a very favorable match-up for Dressnought. His 4-1 video is linked below. Its a fun watch and provides excellent guidance to playing Dressnought correctly...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETm2CazPDq8

PAV67 subsequently 5-0ed with a nearly identical list... https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/mtgo-standings/legacy-league-2021-06-19#pav_-

Bant Dressnought

4 Wasteland
4 Misty Rainforest
4 Flooded Strand
3 Tropical Island
1 Tundra
1 Karakas
1 Snow-Covered Plains
1 Snow-Covered Island
1 Snow-Covered Forest

4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
4 Stifle
4 Dress Down
4 Force of Will
3 Daze

3 Prismatic Ending
1 Swords to Plowshares

4 Phyrexian Dreadnought
3 Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath
2 Sylvan Library
1 Noble Hierarch
1 Ice-Fang Coatl
1 Brazen Borrower
1 Jace, the Mind Sculptor

Sideboard:
3 Endurance
2 Knight of Autumn
2 Carpet of Flowers
1 Serenity
1 Karakas
1 Brazen Borrower
1 Containment Priest
1 Collector Ouphe
1 Mother of Runes
1 Pithing Needle
1 Swords to Plowshares

Prismatic Ending is such as amazing and versatile card. The Simic list above evolved to Bant due to how powerful and versatile Prismatic Ending is, and I have since 4-1ed with a list very close to the above list.

I am currently testing Terminus in the list (adding Portent to set it up) as being able to wrath opposing creature based decks for a single mana is incredibly powerful. Terminus pairs really well with your win conditions since your never have to worry about losing your own threats to Terminus. Everything synergies well. If youre playing an opponent packing StP, Dreadnought gains you 12 life which buys you time to stabilize. If your opponents do not play white based removal, Uro is a nightmare for them to deal with. If you have either a Dreadnought or Uro on the board, your guys are bigger than your opponents and you don't need to use Terminus. But if they manage to kill your Dreadnought/Uro, you simply wrath the board for a single mana which buys you a bunch of time to try again. Your cantrips work well really well at enabling Terminus and digging for threats/answers. I think this is the correct direction for Bant Dressnought to take...

3-4 Phyrexian Dreadnought
3 Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath
2 Jace, the Mind Sculptor

4 Ponder
3 Portent
3 Prismatic Ending
3 Terminus
1 Soul-Guide Lantern

4 Brainstorm
4 Force of Will

3-4 Stifle
4 Dress Down
1 Sylvan Library

1-4 Urza's Saga
17-20 Other Lands

I am still trying to iron out exactly how many Urza's Sagas and Wastelands to run in the list, and which second utility artifact to pair with Urza's Saga (Retrofitter vs Pithing) and if I should opt to run 0 Wasteland, 4 Sagas and cut a Dreadnought or Stifle or two due to Saga being able to tutor them up when needed.

Sultai Dressnought

4 Thoughtseize
4 Ponder
4 Brainstorm
3 Force of Will
2 Abrupt Decay
1 Assassin's Trophy
1 Witherbloom Command
1 Daze
1 Force of Negation
1 Mishra’s Bauble
1 Nihil Spellbomb/Pithing Needle

4 Stifle
4 Dress Down

4 Phyrexian Dreadnought
3 Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath
2 Baleful Strix

1 Bayou
2 Urza's Saga
2 Wasteland
2 Underground Sea
3 Tropical Island
3 Verdant Catacombs
3 Polluted Delta
4 Misty Rainforest

Sideboard:
3 Endurance
2 Carpet of Flowers
2 Plague Engineer
2 Sudden Edict
1 Pithing Needle
1 Collector Ouphe
1 Flusterstorm
1 Blue Elemental Blast
1 Damping Sphere
1 Hullbreacher

Baleful Strix being an artifact synergizes well with Urza’s Saga and Saga works well in this grindier midrange approach alongside utility cards like Needle and Spellbomb. Witherbloom Command has proven to be surprisingly versatile and maindeckable alongside Uro making even the mill mode on the card very useful.

There is a very different direction that the above list can viably take. Swap the Urza's Sagas out with Wastelands, swap out Needle and Spellbomb for Dazes and maybe even swap Baleful Strix for Tarmogoyf or Brazen Borrower or some other utility card, that list would look as below. I opted to take a grinder route built around Urza's Saga but cutting the Sagas for Wastelands, and replacing the maindeck artifacts with Dazes and other cards absolutely has merit and would bring this list closer to the other versions of Dressnought. That list would look as below...

4 Thoughtseize
4 Ponder
4 Brainstorm
3 Daze
3 Force of Will
1 Abrupt Decay
1 Assassin's Trophy
1 Witherbloom Command
1 Force of Negation

4 Stifle
4 Dress Down

4 Phyrexian Dreadnought
3 Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath
1 Endurance/Tarmogoyf
1 Sylvan Library/Baleful Strix
1 Brazen Borrower/Jace

1 Bayou
2 Underground Sea
3 Tropical Island
3 Verdant Catacombs
3 Polluted Delta
4 Misty Rainforest
4 Wasteland

Dimir Dressnought

4 Thoughtseize
4 Ponder
4 Brainstorm
4 Force of Will
2-3 Daze

4 Stifle
3-4 Dress Down
1-2 Mishra’s Bauble
1 Nihil Spellbomb/Pithing Needle
0-1 Retrofitter Foundry
0-3 Hymn to Tourach

4 Phyrexian Dreadnought
2 Baleful Strix
1-2 Lazav, the Multifarious
1-2 Brazen Borrower
0-1 Hunted Horror

1 Snow-Covered Swamp
1 Snow-Covered Island
1 Flooded Strand
2 Wasteland
2-4 Urza's Saga
4 Underground Sea
4 Polluted Delta
4 Misty Rainforest

Possibly the strongest Dimir Dressnought list would pair it with 4 Death's Shadow as Dress Down turns Shadow into a 13/13 the turn that you swing with it. I ultimately opted to leave Death's Shadow out as there is a whole seperate thread devoted to that specific strategy here... https://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?33178-Death-Nought

I've gone back and forth on maximizing to 4 Urza's Saga as a way to tutor up Dreadnought consistently since you do not have Uro as a backup threat, and this approach seems to be working well, significantly more so than playing Hunted Horror to act as additional copies of Dreadnought.

The above list is the least finalized list in the thread and I am strongly considering scrapping development on this list until some new tech comes up, as Dimir Dressnought performs subpar to the other five alternatives for now. It likely needs some additional tweaking as Ive at times even maindecked Hunted Horror due to the deck otherwise becoming too reliant on Dreadnought and thus vulnerable to Surgical Extraction. I am also exploring leaning heavily on the mana denial approach by utilizing Sinkhole to supplement the 4 Stifle and up to 4 Wasteland. Alternatively, Dauthi Voidwalker is an incredibly powerful card and potentially an excellent alternative threat to Dreadnought that serves double duty by hating out other legacy decks. Going this direction might make Dark Ritual a consideration as well but would probably add to much inconsistency to the deck. Dauthi Voidwalker has consistently overperformed but I haven't found room for it maindeck yet.

Grixis Dressnought

4 Thoughtseize
4 Ponder
4 Brainstorm
4 Daze
3 Force of Will
1 Force of Negation
1-3 Mishra’s Bauble
0-1 Nihil Spellbomb/Retrofitter Foundry

4 Stifle
3-4 Dress Down

4 Phyrexian Dreadnought
4 Dragon's Rage Channeler
1-4 Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer
1 Lazav, the Multifarious
0-1 Kroxa, Titan of Death's Hunger

1-4 Urza's Saga
2-3 Wasteland
1-2 Bloodstained Mire
1 Badlands
2-3 Underground Sea
2-3 Volcanic Island
4 Polluted Delta
4 Scalding Tarn

Channeler and Lazav pair so incredibly well together. The additional Surveils that Channeler provides are great at helping dig a large threat into your yard for Lazav to copy, while also helping to dig for a Dress Down if you do not have a Lazav in play.

As for utilizing this powerful interaction, the two directions to take the deck is to either play 4 Urza's Sagas to help nab Dreadnought and drop Kroxa or to play Kroxa due to being able to escape it thanks to Surveil fairly easily. Kroxa is no where near as powerful as Uro which is why I never play more than 1-2 copies and cutting this Titan entirely and possibly replacing it with Gurmag Angler might not be a bad direction for the deck above either.

Temur Dressnought

4 Wasteland
4 Misty Rainforest
4 Scalding Tarn
2 Wooded Foothills
2 Volcanic Island
2 Tropical Island
1 Taiga
1 Snow-Covered Island

4 Stifle
4 Dress Down
4 Phyrexian Dreadnought
3 Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath

4 Dragon's Rage Channeler
2-3 Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer
1-2 Brazen Borrower
1-2 Sylvan Library

4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
3-4 Daze
3-4 Force of Will
1 Force of Negation

Sideboard:
1 Surgical Extraction
1 Blue Elemental Blast
1 Brazen Borrower
1 Sylvan Safekeeper
1 Collector Ouphe
1 Wilt
1 Endurance
2 Veil of Summer
2 Carpet of Flowers
2 Pyroblast
2 Abrade

I opted to take the Temur list in a hyper aggressive direction, similar to Temur Delver. Until they get run over by a Dreadnought, your opponents will think they are playing vs Delver and will heavily focus on countering or killing DRC/Ragavan asap, and will expect Lightning Bolt and will thus value their life total highly when casting Ad Nauseam or utilizing Sylvan Library. In doing so, your smaller threats really function to draw out removal and counterspells that would have otherwise hit your Dreadnought or Uro. Your smaller threats also all generate pseudo card advantage (DRC's surveil trigger helps you dig for your Dress Downs while filling up your yard for Uro, meanwhile Ragavan makes treasure tokens and lets you cast your opponents cantrips to help dig for combo pieces). The small threats also serve to ping at your opponents life total so that a single swing with either a Dreadnought or a Uro wins the game.

Surveil is such an incredibly strong ability and boot strapping it to Channeler made it very abusable. DRC is incredible at helping you dig for combo pieces and filling your yard to escape Uro multiple times if you do not win in the early game itself on the back of a 12/12 trampler. The main weakness with this approach is that the only interaction that you have game one with your opponent's game plan is Daze, Force, Brazen, Stifle, Wasteland and Dress Down (against specific matchups). Postboard, you have quite a bit more interaction with your opponent, but the sideboard should probably gain additional graveyard hate.

Maindecking an Endurance or two is solid in the current meta in the Uro builds. But doing that requires that Ponder be replaced with Abundant Harvest.

Or maindecking Abundant Growth in the Urza's Saga heavy builds or the Dragon's Rage Channeler builds, ala...

0-4 Urza's Saga
16-20 Other Lands

4 Stifle
4 Dress Down
4 Phyrexian Dreadnought
3 Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath

4 Dragon's Rage Channeler
2-4 Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer
2-4 Mishra’s Bauble
1-2 Brazen Borrower
1-2 Sylvan Library
0-4 Abundant Harvest
0-2 Abundant Growth
0-3 Endurance

4 Brainstorm
0-4 Ponder
3 Daze
4 Force of Will

The above is my wildest brew. I only had the chance to play the above list twice (once with 3 Urza’s Saga and 3 Mishra’s Baubles and another time with 3 Abundant Harvest, 1 Abundant Growth and 2 Endurance) and both lists felt very powerful (Saga and Endurance both did a lot of work and I haven’t figured out which is stronger).

Fox

06-19-2021, 01:53 PM

Wrong forum without results. You also have significant problems with making summoning sick Dreadnought-types at sorcery speed, such that opponents will always untap, draw a card, and have a land drop vs your Daze. While I like the enthusiasm, we have 3 threads going between Dreadstill in established and Death- & Vaka-Nought in developmental.

Clark Kant

06-19-2021, 03:52 PM

Saved for updates, results and future league videos.

BoshNRoll's League with the Simic Dressnought/Vaka Nought list I send him May 2021 when Dress Down was spoiled, his 4-1 video is here and its a fun watch...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETm2CazPDq8

PAV67 5-0ed with a nearly identical Simic Dressnought/Vaka-Nought to the list above in the June 20, 2021 deck dump...

4 Stifle
4 Dress Down
2 Sylvan Library

4 Phyrexian Dreadnought
4 Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath

2 Noble Hierarch
2 Sylvan Library
2 Brazen Borrower
1 Ice-Fang Coatl
1 Jace, the Mind Sculptor

4 Ponder
4 Brainstorm
4 Daze
4 Force of Will
1 Force of Negation

4 Misty Rainforest
3 Prismatic Vista
2 Snow-Covered Forest
3 Snow-Covered Island
3 Tropical Island
4 Wasteland

Sideboard
3 Endurance
2 Carpet of Flowers
2 Veil of Summer
1 Wilt
1 Blue Elemental Blast
1 Collector Ouphe
1 Flusterstorm
1 Null Rod
1 Pithing Needle
1 Soul-Guide Lantern
1 Sylvan Safekeeper

The June 27 5-0 dump has two very spicy Dressnought lists...

SFZ 5-0ed with Death Dressnought...

Creature (10)
4 Death's Shadow
2 Murktide Regent
4 Phyrexian Dreadnought

Sorcery (8)
4 Ponder
4 Thoughtseize

Instant (20)
2 Berserk
4 Brainstorm
4 Daze
4 Force of Will
2 Snuff Out
4 Stifle

Enchantment (4)
4 Dress Down

Land (18)
3 Misty Rainforest
1 Overgrown Tomb
3 Polluted Delta
1 Tropical Island
1 Underground Sea
2 Verdant Catacombs
4 Wasteland
3 Watery Grave

Sideboard
2 Abrupt Decay
2 Brazen Borrower
2 Fatal Push
2 Plague Engineer
2 Stubborn Denial
2 Surgical Extraction
2 Sylvan Library
1 Torpor Orb

Taki 5-0ed with Show and Tell Dressnought!

Creature (13)
4 Elvish Reclaimer
4 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
1 Griselbrand
4 Phyrexian Dreadnought

Sorcery (8)
4 Ponder
4 Show and Tell

Instant (8)
4 Brainstorm
4 Force of Will

Artifact (2)
1 Pithing Needle
1 Soul-Guide Lantern

Enchantment (7)
4 Dress Down
2 Omniscience
1 Sylvan Library

Land (22)
1 Island
4 Misty Rainforest
4 Mosswort Bridge
3 Scalding Tarn
1 Snow-Covered Forest
2 Snow-Covered Island
2 Tropical Island
3 Urza's Saga
1 Volcanic Island
1 Wasteland

Sideboard (15)
2 Omniscience
1 Abrade
1 Ancient Grudge
1 Bojuka Bog
3 Carpet of Flowers
2 Endurance
1 Pyroblast
1 Red Elemental Blast
1 The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale
2 Veil of Summer

The list is cool as hell, and very flexible, switching between combo Emrakul or combo Dreadnought to grindy control around Urza’s Saga and Elvish Reclaimer.

Taki seems to agree that Dress Down is superior to Stifle as his list is playing 0 Stifle!

Clark Kant

06-19-2021, 04:02 PM

Saved for sideboard guides and matchup discussion.

Rood

06-19-2021, 06:33 PM

I dont think simic is playable without 4 ice fang for removal. I think Temur or Sultai may be a very good idea to start because they give u alot of removal.

Mr. Safety

06-19-2021, 08:26 PM

Moved to New and Developmental, that's where this belongs. The Vaka Nought thread is now locked.

Clark Kant

06-19-2021, 08:33 PM

Thank you for making the requested changes/edits and locking the old thread so quickly as requested Mr. Safety. Very excited to watch this deck develop and progress.

adrieng

06-20-2021, 05:01 AM

I don't get it why do you play dress down over torpor orb ?

Clark Kant

06-20-2021, 06:33 AM

I don't get it why do you play dress down over torpor orb ?
Its a far better card.

1. It cantrips so its never card disadvantage, even if they kill your Dreadnought, its card parity as the floor.

2. It has flash which means it can be flashed in in the end phase of opponents turn, thus dodging sorcery speed removal
and then used to cast an uro or nought your next turn and then dies on its own so your opponent cant use it to cast their own Uro, while if fills your yard for escape needs or for Lazav or to acheive surveil for Channeler

3. It can be flashed in response to them casting thassas oracle or undecity informer so their triggers never go the stack and you instawin. Orb can be bounced by your opponent before they combo off

4. Its even blue which means it can be pitched to FoW/FoN if you dont need it

adrieng

06-20-2021, 07:00 AM

Torpor orb is way better to my point of view, it is a good card against elf (visionary, craterhoof, reclamation sage) , death and taxes (stoneblade, flickerwisp, apparition), doomsday (oracle) ; etc...

while against those decks dress down is way worse;

torpor orb combos whith ALL your noughts, uro, so ok your card cantrips but here torpor orb is utility for all the stuff not only one and you don't have to wait to have the nought/uro in hand to cast it.

There is absoluty no match torpor orb is the better card

Clark Kant

06-20-2021, 07:38 AM

You are heavily underestimating both cantrip and flash. Take any card and add a cantrip effect to it, and that card becomes infinitely better. Dress Down is absolutely better vs Doomsday. You flash it when they're trying to go off, ideally in response to them casting Thassa's Oracle (but before it resolves) and you win. If you cast Orb and pass the turn, they will add a bounce spell to their 5 card pile and win after bouncing the Orb.

There is absoluty no match torpor orb is the better card

I mostly agree with you there. There is indeed almost no matchup where Torpor Orb is the better card (except Ephermate and Soulherder but neither of those strategies end up seeing legacy play).

adrieng

06-20-2021, 09:18 AM

they can also bounce your stuff (if you don't have 4 mana to recast it) or just add a second thassas oracle to the pile, to win next turn,
what they should do if they don't have fow in hand cause you play stifle.

so yeah we are not here to talk about doomsday ; but in general the cantrip ability is bad 2CC to draw a card if you didn't cast a nought that's bad.

whereas playing torpor orb for future noughts or uros is better here considering you don't have an uro or nought in hand.

what do you do if you don't have uro or nought but just this 1U card in hand you cycle it for 2? or keep it in hand ? if you keep it in hand orb would have been better other way it is just 2 mana to cycle a card.

Anyway i don't think noughts are playable with prismatic stuff swords push abrade in the meta

FTW

06-20-2021, 12:22 PM

Clark Kant

06-20-2021, 07:09 PM

I agree with Clark that Dress Down is much better than Torpor Orb.

The 2nd Torpor Orb is a dead card, while the 2nd Dress Down isn't, so Torpor Orb is terrible in multiples.

Even the 1st Torpor Orb has a lower floor. Dress Down is never card negative, while Torpor Orb can be a dead card without Dreadnought or opposing creatures to disrupt. Torpor Orb can have a higher ceiling vs some decks like Goblins and Esper Vial, where you want to disrupt multiple ETBs across multiple turns and might get to cast more than 1 Nought, but this is very conditional on the matchup (SB?). In general Torpor Orb makes Dreadnought a 2-for-1 (2 cards to make a 12/12) instead of a 2-for-2 (2 cards to make a 12/12 and draw a card), only starting to pay off by the 2nd Dreadnought (3-for-2).

The permanent Torpor Orb effect is also very bad with Ice-Fang Coatl (turns off your own creature), Endurance (lose the GY shuffle), and titans like Uro (lose all the ETB triggers) so it would not work in a deck like this. It's only useful for making multiple Dreadnoughts, which (as you say) is one of the weakest things the deck can do into a format with a lot of ways to 2-for-1 Dreadnoughts.

Dress Down being blue, having flash, and cantripping are pretty important because you can use it either as a Dreadnought enabler or as a disruptive cantrip. The disruptive part is key. You're not just paying 1U to cycle. Here are some things it can do:
-Combat trick to shrink attacking/blocking Tarmogoyf to 0/1
-Remove Progenitus mode from levelled up Hexdrinker
-Respond to flash-Coatl blocker, removing both the cantrip and deathtouch so it can't kill your attacker
-Respond to ETBs like Stoneforge and Recruiters, removing the tutor
-Disrupt Thassa's Oracle decks for a turn (and if they used a Pact effect or have an empty library, passing the turn could lose the game)
-Remove evasion from an attacking DRC/Delver/Sprite Dragon/Murkfiend so it runs into your ground creature
-Cancel an opponent's Uro trigger, either ETB or attacking
-Remove hexproof or indestructible from opposing creature to make it killable
-Time Walk vs Elves (not only does it turn off Hoof & Visionary ETB, but it also shuts down their mana engine)
-Make Elves's spells counterable again (Dress Down in response to spell, shutting off Allosaurus Shepherd, then Force their Natural Order after they sacrifice a creature)
-Kill Urza's Constructs (0/0)
-Turn off creature-based combos like Painter-Stone, Voidwalker-Helm, and Hull-Day
-Turn off Thalia/Sentinel taxes for a turn
-Disable Griselbrand draw and lifelink for a turn
-Remove Annihilator from hasty Emrakul

You can usually find some way to get at least +1 card from the ability, making it an effective 2-for-1 cantrip. Sometimes you can set it up to both disrupt them and drop a Dreadnought postcombat for maximum value. In the video, Bosh uses Dress Down more often as a utility cantrip than as a Dreadnought enabler. The different modes and higher floor mean it's much less likely to be dead in hand.

Very well said. These are precisely the reasons why Dress Down is the strongest card printed for Dreadnought since Stifle and arguably is actually better than Stifle due to never being card negative.

Noughts are very easy to remove in this format.
Noughts are not any easier to kill than Delver, Ragavan or Channeler. Where as Noughts also die to artifact removal, all those other threats dominating legacy can be killed by Lightning Bolt.

A 12/12 trampler dying to removal is a poor reason to underestimate the card, especially in a deck that is designed to protect Nought in a number of ways, using the same tools that Shadow and Delver decks use so successfully to protect their threats. Most legacy threats die to removal. The difference is that Nought clocks soooo much harder than every other cheap threat in legacy and your opponents gets only one single turn to dig for a removal spell to kill Nought, where as players get 5 turns to dig for a removal spell for Delver. Your opponents can't even chump block Nought the way they can a Goyf or Uro. Even TNN is useless vs Nought.

The other fact most people miss is that precisely because Dressnoughts clock so much faster than every other cheap threat in legacy, you can usually ignore your opponents threats and use all of your resources to instead protect your threats, and it works. There is a reason why all the lists above don't bother playing Fatal Push, because there is no point to devoting slots to kill a 3/2 flyer when you will soon be counterattacking with a 6/6 that gains you life each attack, or a 12/12 trampler that can sometimes kill in even just one swing. It doesn't matter whether you win with 18 life or 2 life, those creature removal slots are far better spent digging for or protecting your 12/12 trampler. Dress Down and Stifle already answer many creatures based win conditions (Oracle, Craterhoof etc). Specialized removal (Sudden Edict) exists in the board for the few cards like Marit Lage, Griselbrand and Emrakul that clock faster than Nought, Fatal Push and Ice Fang doesn't kill them either.

Clark Kant

06-20-2021, 10:33 PM

Here is link to PAV67's 5-0 with Simic Dressnought that was posted in today's deck dump...

https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/mtgo-standings/legacy-league-2021-06-19#pav_-

I feel the Bant, Sultai and Temur Dressnought lists have more potential in the long run due to Prismatic Ending, Thoughtseize and Ragavan/Dragon Rage Channeler respectively but it's great to see the deck start to put up the first of many 5-0s.

FTW

06-20-2021, 11:53 PM

Noughts are not any easier to kill than Delver, Ragavan or Channeler. Where as Noughts also die to artifact removal, all those other threats dominating legacy can be killed by Lightning Bolt.

The big difference is when they die it's a 1-for-1 instead of a 2-for-1 (Stifle+Nought), which leaves more resources to protect the threat or otherwise interact with the opponent.

Also Delver, Ragavan and Channeler can be played on turn 1. That's better in a Daze+Wasteland deck, because you would much rather use your mana denial after playing a threat than before.

The 12/12 clock does create pressure to have an answer immediately. But if they do have the answer you fall behind. It also requires an enabler and risks trading down a card (with Stifle), so it needs some help to counteract those disadvantages. The 12/12 looks a lot better with Dress Down than with Stifle.

StifleNought vs StP/Prismatic/Push/REB/Flusterstorm/Spell Pierce: trades 2 cards + 2 mana for 1 card + 1 mana!! Opponent's ahead on both cards and mana! (worst case scenario for a Daze+Wasteland deck)
StifleNought vs Decay/Abrade/Borrower/Edict/Meltdown: trades 2 cards + 2 mana for 1 card + 2 mana. Opponent at least spends as much mana as you, but is ahead on cards, and some of those are uncounterable.
StifleNought vs Coatl: trades 2 cards + 2 mana for 0 cards + 2 mana. Opponent is ahead 2 cards.

If opponent answers Shadow or Delver, you've only invested 1 card + 1 mana so you're trading well. StifleNought can't do the same.

DressNought at least trades 2-for-2 with removal so you aren't behind on cards, though you are probably behind on mana investment (you spend 3 mana & they spend 1-2 to remove it). That means you probably can't afford to be picking up lands (Daze) or trading lands (Wasteland) in the early game because you'll often be the one already more taxed on mana. BoshNRoll picked up on that and got his wins by developing his own mana instead of playing the mana denial effects, even in matchups like 4C Delver and Jund where you would normally want to attack their greedy manabases.

That makes me wonder if this deck would get even better by cutting back on the mana denial plan, with a more controlling plan of DressNought and Uro. DressNought at least prevents you from being blown out on cards, but it's a bigger mana investment and harder to pull off if you're cracking early Dazes and Wastelands. What if you removed Daze and run only 2-3 Stifle?

Edit: What about something like this?

//Creatures: 8
2 Phyrexian Dreadnought
2 Endurance
4 Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath

//Enchantment: 6
4 Dress Down
2 Sylvan Library

//Planeswalker: 2
2 Jace, the Mind Sculptor

//Artifacts: 1
1 Retrofitter Foundry

//Spells: 20
4 Force of Will
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
2 Swords to Plowshares
2 Prismatic Ending
2 Stifle
2 Force of Negation

//Lands: 23
3 Urza's Saga
3 Wasteland
4 Misty Rainforest
3 Prismatic Vista
2 Flooded Strand
2 Tropical Island
1 Tundra
2 Snow-Covered Island
2 Snow-Covered Forest
1 Snow-Covered Plains

//Sideboard: 15
1 Soul-Guide Lantern
1 Pithing Needle
1 Null Rod
1 Endurance
3 Carpet of Flowers
2 Veil of Summer
2 Swords to Plowshares
2 Terminus
1 Flusterstorm
1 Karakas

Edit: Prismatic moved to main

Clark Kant

06-21-2021, 01:02 AM

What about something like this?

//Creatures: 8
2 Phyrexian Dreadnought
2 Endurance
4 Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath

//Enchantment: 6
4 Dress Down
2 Sylvan Library

//Planeswalker: 2
2 Jace, the Mind Sculptor

//Artifacts: 1
1 Retrofitter Foundry

//Spells: 20
4 Force of Will
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
4 Swords to Plowshares
2 Stifle
2 Force of Negation

//Lands: 23
3 Urza's Saga
3 Wasteland
4 Misty Rainforest
3 Prismatic Vista
2 Flooded Strand
2 Tropical Island
1 Tundra
2 Snow-Covered Island
2 Snow-Covered Forest
1 Snow-Covered Plains

//Sideboard: 15
1 Soul-Guide Lantern
1 Pithing Needle
1 Null Rod
1 Endurance
3 Carpet of Flowers
2 Veil of Summer
2 Prismatic Ending
2 Terminus
1 Flusterstorm
1 Karakas

I think there is absolutely potential in playing something closer to Bant Control since that's a proven strategy/shell.

Some feedback...

4 StP and 0 Prismatic Ending is incorrect. Too many decks do not play StPable creatures and you don't care about most creatures between your 12/12 trampler and the Uro that gains you 3 life each swing. Prismatic Ending hits Chalice, Chrome Mox, Vial, Mox Diamond, Library, B2B, Choke, Carpet etc in addition to hitting all the Delver creatures that you would want StP for. I like 3 Prismatic Ending and 1-2 StP depending on your meta.

The high number of Urza's Sagas along with the 1 of Retrofitter Foundry to tutor up with it is a very powerful synergy that works great for affinity, but it's dangerous to invest a ton of mana into constructs in a deck that also plays 4 Dress Down which wraths all constructs. You can play around this nonbo so it might be possible to do both. I am not sure, I would have to try it in the Bant shell to know for sure.

I tried something similar in the Sultai list but I have since realized that I preferred and have thus switched back to the Sultai list below with 3 Daze, 4 Wasteland, 0 Saga and 0 nonDreadnought Artifacts...

Sultai Dressnought

4 Thoughtseize
4 Ponder
4 Brainstorm
3 Daze
3 Force of Will
1 Abrupt Decay
1 Assassin's Trophy
1 Witherbloom Command
1 Force of Negation

4 Stifle
4 Dress Down

4 Phyrexian Dreadnought
3 Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath
1 Endurance/Tarmogoyf
1 Sylvan Library/Baleful Strix
1 Brazen Borrower/Jace

1 Bayou
2 Underground Sea
3 Tropical Island
3 Verdant Catacombs
3 Polluted Delta
4 Misty Rainforest
4 Wasteland

You lose too much speed by cutting 2 Dreadnought and 2 Stifle and relying on Urza's Saga which takes 3 turns and broadcasts your gameplan far too early. Stifle has tons of uses and Dreadnought is your fastest and cheapest win condition so 3 is as low as I would ever go on either card game 1. You could go lower post board vs control as this approach is fine vs control, but doing this will cost you vs combo, aggro and stuff like Turbo Depths and Oops All Spells.

Against removal heavy matchups, Stifle should be aimed primarily at fetchlands/wastelands/oracles. The exceptions are if you have multiple ways in hand to protect your dreadnought while your opponent is low on cards, of if you already Thoughtseized them recently and know they have nothing, or if you're about to lose the game barring a hail mary play. Stifling the Dreadnought trigger also makes sense against decks that are not playing either white or black, and against decks that are focused on comboing out quickly and thus do not pack maindeck removal. But in the majority of matchups, you should aim your early game Stifles at Wastelands/Fetchlands and dig for a Dress Down when you want to slam a 12/12 Dreadnought.

FTW

06-21-2021, 08:50 AM

Good point, swapping some Prismatic Ending main with StP SB may help with things this deck struggles against. StP is useful as instant-speed interaction though, vs Dashed Ragavans, Sneak Attack threats and EOT Marit Lage. Sorcery speed Prismatic Ending can't touch those. But maybe that's narrow enough to not need all the StPs maindeck.

Urza's Saga can also tutor for Dreadnought when you're ready, Foundry when you just need to grind bodies vs control, or Soul-Guide Lantern to cantrip/handle graveyards. This is tech used by Dreadstill in the latest Legacy Challenge-winning deck. Then, instead of having conditional topdecks or potential dead cards in hand (Dreadnought without enabler) you can get Dreadnought when you're ready for it, after you have ways to protect it from the opponent or have disrupted them.

With Saga it costs more turns but costs less mana. Tap Urza's Saga for 1, sacrifice Urza's Saga to make uncounterable Dreadnought, tap an Island and Dress Down. That only requires U from additional sources. If that Saga was a Nought instead, it would cost 2U from additional sources. Saga can also replace itself with Constructs if you're on Stifle instead of Dress Down. If you have no enabler, Saga can still make Constructs and get Foundry. Basically Saga can leave you ahead in mana or in cards, and if you don't have the enabler it can still do things while Dreadnought is sitting around waiting for the enabler. It's more flexible. The only downside is fewer early Stiflenoughts vs decks that can't remove it (combo, burn, etc).

The anti-synergy between Constructs and Dress Down is a problem, so maybe any Saga build needs to go up on Stifle and down on Dress Downs. Uro also prefers Stifle to Dress Down, because of the trick with putting in the 4th land before Stifling the sacrifice (and you get to keep the ETB value).

I do see the appeal of starting maxed out with maindeck Stiflenought in game 1, then boarding some out in matchups that can easily remove it. I guess it's a metagame call. Do you expect more decks that can't interact with it (combo, burn) or more decks that can interact with it? Remember that UR can remove Dreadnought by countering the enabler (REB, Spell Pierce, FoN), bouncing it (Borrower), or artifact kill (Abrade, Meltdown) so you don't just have to think about white and black decks.

Fox

06-22-2021, 06:40 AM

You're missing the key interaction: Urza's last trigger on the stack -> cast Dress Down = you successfully picked a fight you don't actually care about; welcome to real Dreadnought decks.

If they counter Dress Down, you're winning as you search for not- Dreadnought, and go up a card. If they destroy Dress Down they lose a card, you draw a card, and you tutor up not-Dreadnought and go up another card. If they don't counter Dress Down and they don't destroy it, you draw a card and get *the option* to make a 12/12 for free. Here's the thing though: you don't actually care how this whole sequence goes down, and if the deck is built correctly you don't even care of they kill the 12/12. Every decision they opponent had was losing, which is the same premise of Scroll of Fate.

^stop trying to just beat opponents to death, and you can actually use this to your advantage. Right now beating them to death is your only wincon, but it's summoning sick, and you're passing the turn with a "beat you to death" wincon you're trying to defend with a Daze - it doesn't make sense. You just blew all the progress you just made, choosing to be the exact same thing as Hunted Horror + Torpor meme with slightly better tools being used in the same crude way.

FTW

06-22-2021, 08:37 AM

That's a good trick and justifies running the two together a lot more. Especially if you managed to get some value from the 1st Construct (trade or chump block), knowing that you plan to Dress Down that turn.

@Fox: So how do you effectively leverage Dreadnought in Dreadstill then? Is it that it's such a fast clock that you can quickly pivot from caring about the combat step (1-2 turn kill) to not caring at all and winning some other way, because you've invested so few resources into combat, and that allows you to not care which way the fight goes?

Clark Kant

06-22-2021, 09:59 AM

I am currently testing Terminus in the Bant list (adding Portent to set it up) as being able to wrath opposing creature based decks for a single mana is incredibly powerful.

Terminus pairs really well with your win conditions since your never have to worry about losing your own threats to Terminus. If you have a Dreadnought or Uro on the board, your guys are bigger than your opponents and you don't need to bother using Terminus. But if they manage to kill your Dreadnought/Uro, you simply wrath the board for a single mana which buys you a bunch of time to try again. Your cantrips work well really well at enabling Terminus and digging for threats/answers. I think this is the correct direction for Bant Dressnought to take...

3-4 Phyrexian Dreadnought
3 Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath
2 Jace, the Mind Sculptor

4 Ponder
3 Portent
3 Prismatic Ending
3 Terminus

4 Brainstorm
4 Force of Will
1 Force of Negation

3-4 Stifle
4 Dress Down
1 Sylvan Library

21 Lands including some Urza's Saga

I am still trying to iron out how many Urza's Sagas and Wastelands to run in the list, and which utility artifact to pair with Urza's Saga and if I should opt to run 0 Wasteland, 4 Sagas and cut a couple of Dreadnoughts due to Saga being able to tutor them up when needed.

Fox

06-22-2021, 08:31 PM

@Fox: So how do you effectively leverage Dreadnought in Dreadstill then? Is it that it's such a fast clock that you can quickly pivot from caring about the combat step (1-2 turn kill) to not caring at all and winning some other way, because you've invested so few resources into combat, and that allows you to not care which way the fight goes?

All we're counting is damage; we don't care what's dealing it. If they want to blow their spells on stopping a 1-shot Dreadnought, they can't really fight on another axis effectively. They'll either die to Nought b/c they couldn't answer it, or not be able to interact with another dude, or get drowned by Standstill. Like the Saga/Dress Down example, we're making forward progress and that's all that matters; we don't much care what shape that progress comes in.

kombatkiwi

06-23-2021, 04:04 AM

If they counter Dress Down, you're winning as you search for not- Dreadnought, and go up a card.
They lose the counter you lose your dress down
You gain a 1drop artifact and you lose the urzas saga
it's a 2-for-2

If they destroy Dress Down they lose a card, you draw a card, and you tutor up not-Dreadnought and go up another card.
Now you're going up "a" card (you lose dressdown and a land, and you gain a 1drop artifact and draw a card while the opp lost a removal spell)

If they don't counter Dress Down and they don't destroy it, you draw a card and get *the option* to make a 12/12 for free.
You get the option to make a 12/12 by sacrificing a land

I get that the sequence is good but I think you're overselling it a bit and the fact that dressdown kills all the construct tokens seems annoying

Fox

06-23-2021, 07:22 AM

They lose the counter you lose your dress down
You gain a 1drop artifact and you lose the urzas saga
it's a 2-for-2

I get that the sequence is good but I think you're overselling it a bit and the fact that dressdown kills all the construct tokens seems annoying
Losing Saga doesn't really count as losing a card, particularly if it made a construct. If they lose 2 cards countering Dress Down, that's a 2-for-1 and swapping a land for a trinket is not only card neutral, it's card positive [Relic types and Map go up a card, while a card like Silent Gravestone can go up a card while protecting Uro].

You have to read the gamestate to make Dress Down plays. If an opponent isn't dealing with construct #1, make a second and pump them to 3/3s until they do something about it. If you don't think 3/3s will force plays out of them, tutor a Map and see what they think about two more constructs. The opponent does have to commit cards somewhere until Dress Down is ready for its ideal timing window.

If you're behind and this slow construct army stuff won't work [you have to do math over multiple future turns], this is the point where the first Saga would be looking for solving the problem with a Dress Down + Nought (which would only kill a single construct, if the mana was not committed to Dress Down on their EoT).

Don't forget that on their end step you can pick the fight with Dress Down, which is the same timing window you would choose to make the first construct. If it's late-game and you had 4 other lands, fighting the Dress Down on their end step will end pretty poorly [you can make that first construct if they deal with Dress Down].

Dress Down and constructs is not really that much of a nonbo, if you know what you're doing. Part of this is that you probably don't want to be running more than 2x Saga. Particularly at high Dress Down counts, as you don't want to risk Dress Down clogging hand while you're waiting for the ideal window. While it's not a good strategy to try and overload removal with Uro + Nought, Saga + Dress Down does further this plan. Even the crude use of Saga is +1 Dreadnought.

The main point is that the Dreadnought player has all the options, and the opponent is just along for the ride b/c there is no real opportunity to profitably interact with what's happening. It's all the Dreadnought player assessing what is the hardest thing for opponent's deck to deal with. This is where typical legacy decks begin to fail against Dreadnought; there is no clean trade to make, and any trade just changes the path forward rather than slowing us down.

Clark Kant

06-23-2021, 08:44 AM

That was the same reason I added Portent and Terminus to the Bant Dressnought list.

You have all the options. Dreadnought and Uro are both huge. If your opponent wants to race them, they have to overcommit to the board, where as you can Terminus anytime you do not have a threat on the board. You can switch gears from super fast aggro that kills in 1-2 hits to a grindy control deck at the drop of the hat and the opponent must have the correct answers for whatever route you choose to go.

Clark Kant

06-26-2021, 08:39 PM

Shadow Spear is a very neat 1 of to tutor up with Urza’s Saga in some of the lists. Giving the constructs or uro trample and lifelink is so broken.

And removing indestructible from marit lage can be clutch combined with ice fang or baleful or abrupt decay.

Clark Kant

06-27-2021, 07:58 AM

The newest 5-0 dump has two very spicy Dressnought lists...

SFZ 5-0ed with Death Dressnought...

Creature (10)
4 Death's Shadow
2 Murktide Regent
4 Phyrexian Dreadnought

Sorcery (8)
4 Ponder
4 Thoughtseize

Instant (20)
2 Berserk
4 Brainstorm
4 Daze
4 Force of Will
2 Snuff Out
4 Stifle

Enchantment (4)
4 Dress Down

Land (18)
3 Misty Rainforest
1 Overgrown Tomb
3 Polluted Delta
1 Tropical Island
1 Underground Sea
2 Verdant Catacombs
4 Wasteland
3 Watery Grave

Sideboard
2 Abrupt Decay
2 Brazen Borrower
2 Fatal Push
2 Plague Engineer
2 Stubborn Denial
2 Surgical Extraction
2 Sylvan Library
1 Torpor Orb

Taki 5-0ed with Show and Tell Dressnought!

Creature (13)
4 Elvish Reclaimer
4 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
1 Griselbrand
4 Phyrexian Dreadnought

Sorcery (8)
4 Ponder
4 Show and Tell

Instant (8)
4 Brainstorm
4 Force of Will

Artifact (2)
1 Pithing Needle
1 Soul-Guide Lantern

Enchantment (7)
4 Dress Down
2 Omniscience
1 Sylvan Library

Land (22)
1 Island
4 Misty Rainforest
4 Mosswort Bridge
3 Scalding Tarn
1 Snow-Covered Forest
2 Snow-Covered Island
2 Tropical Island
3 Urza's Saga
1 Volcanic Island
1 Wasteland

Sideboard (15)
2 Omniscience
1 Abrade
1 Ancient Grudge
1 Bojuka Bog
3 Carpet of Flowers
2 Endurance
1 Pyroblast
1 Red Elemental Blast
1 The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale
2 Veil of Summer

The list is cool as hell, and very flexible, switching between combo Emrakul or combo Dreadnought to a grindy midrange plan around Urza’s Saga and Elvish Reclaimer.

Taki seems to agree that Dress Down is superior to Stifle as his list is playing 0 Stifle!

Fox

06-27-2021, 09:33 AM

The name of the second deck is Aeon Bridge. The red splash in it seems fairly egregious. Force of Vigor heavily outclasses Abrade and Grudge, and you don't really need to compromise the mana for 2 Pyroblast effects. There are better things to be doing like 1x Cavern on Phyrexian, or going for white. With 3x Saga you don't need Pyroblast to kill PWs when you can tutor up a SB Hex Parasite.

Clark Kant

07-02-2021, 12:57 AM

Maindecking an Endurance or two is solid in the current meta in the Uro builds. But doing that requires that Ponder be replaced with Abundant Harvest.

Or maindecking Abundant Growth in the Urza's Saga heavy builds or the Dragon's Rage Channeler builds, ala...

16-19 RUG Lands +/- Wastelands
1-3 Urza's Saga

3-4 Stifle
4 Dress Down
3-4 Phyrexian Dreadnought
3 Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath

4 Brainstorm
4 Force of Will
2-3 Daze

4 Dragon's Rage Channeler
2-4 Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer
1-2 Brazen Borrower
1-2 Sylvan Library
1-4 Abundant Harvest
1-3 Abundant Growth
1-3 Endurance
1-4 Mishra's Bauble

The above is my newest brew, and the one with the least time I had to test with (so many new cards in MH2 and only so much time for any one person to test via paper legacy per week).

Captain Hammer

07-12-2021, 02:30 PM

0-4 Urza's Saga
16-20 Other Lands

4 Stifle
4 Dress Down
4 Phyrexian Dreadnought
3 Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath

4 Dragon's Rage Channeler
2-4 Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer
2-4 Mishra’s Bauble
1-2 Brazen Borrower
1-2 Sylvan Library
0-4 Abundant Harvest
0-2 Abundant Growth
0-3 Endurance

4 Brainstorm
0-4 Ponder
3 Daze
4 Force of Will

I’m really liking Mishra’s Bauble alongside Urza’s Saga, Dragon's Rage Channeler and Ragavan.

Its basically MH2’s greatest hits that serve as removal fodder to clear the way for Dreadnought.

With how legacy decks are now playing as much removal as Modern, the more cheap must kill threats, the better.

How does this look?

16-17 Temur Lands
3-4 Urza's Saga

4 Stifle
4 Dress Down

4 Dragon's Rage Channeler
4 Phyrexian Dreadnought
3 Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath
3 Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer
1 Brazen Borrower

4 Brainstorm
3 Ponder
3 Mishra’s Bauble

4 Force of Will
3 Daze
1 Abrade/Hull Breach

The sorcery count is hard to keep up with the Channeler and Bauble but Dress Down as an enchantment and Dreadnought as Baubles make Sorcery not as essential.

Mr. Safety

07-12-2021, 02:37 PM

Your mana will be a train wreck if you plan on playing Uro out of the graveyard. Finding double green through opposing Wastelands will be a chore. If you were playing Endurance alongside Uro then you are incentivized to maintain double green mana availability, but otherwise you'll be too busy playing Red and Blue spells to be able to stabilize for Uro. However, regardless of setup, I don't really like Phyrexian Dreadnought right now, at all. Prismatic Ending is becoming incredibly popular, and every deck has ways of dealing with it, and not even stretch to do so.

Captain Hammer

07-12-2021, 02:41 PM

Yes. Thats the reason the deck is playing Dragon Rage Channelers and Ragavan. To present powerful early threats that your opponents are forced to use their Prosmatic Vistas and StPs on.

Clark Kant

07-12-2021, 02:49 PM

I think an Aether Vial or two to grab with Urza’s Saga make all 1 drops uncounterable, and to do the double Dreadnought trick is absolutely warranted.

Yes. Thats the reason the deck is playing Dragon Rage Channelers and Ragavan. To present powerful early threats that your opponents are forced to use their Prosmatic Vistas and StPs on.

I think you meant Prismatic Ending but yes, easy to mix up with Vista.

I love the idea and will try that list out sometime this week in person (I cant get the Ragavans on MTGO to try them out so I will have to play the deck at a local tournament).

Just an fyi but do play some Pyroclasm in the sideboard.

However, regardless of setup, I don't really like Phyrexian Dreadnought right now, at all. Prismatic Ending is becoming incredibly popular, and every deck has ways of dealing with it, and not even stretch to do so.

I agree with you that more decks are playing removal due to how powerful threats have gotten. Both Uro and Dreadnought have gotten weaker, the same way that TNN and Whale did.

A world where a 1 mana 12/12 trampler is too weak seems odd.

Should we just max out on ways to protect Uro and Dreadnought from Removal?

4 Mother of Runes alongside 4 Dreadnought and 4 Uro seems awfully tempting in a Bant shell.

Or should we max out on must kill threats in order to empty our opponents of removal spells?

We could potentially do both simultaneously by playing 4 MoM and 4 Esper Sentinel alongside Daze in Bant Dressnought...

2-4 Urza’s Saga
0-2 Wasteland
4 Misty Rainforest
4 Flooded Strand
2 Tropical Island
2 Tundra
1 Savannah
1 Karakas
1 Snow-Covered Plains
1 Snow-Covered Island

4 Brainstorm
3 Ponder
4 Stifle
4 Dress Down
4 Force of Will
3 Daze
1 Aether Vial
1 Mishra’s Bauble
1 Bonesplitter

3 Prismatic Ending
1 Swords to Plowshares

4 Phyrexian Dreadnought
4 Esper Sentinel
3 Mother of Runes
2 Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath

Bonesplitter is a neat way to powerup Esper Sentinel that can be tutored up with Urza’s Saga

Fox

07-12-2021, 04:26 PM

Clark Kant

07-12-2021, 04:35 PM

To beat removal:
Step 1 assemble Scroll and Teferi.
Step 2 tap Scroll on their EoT.
Step 3 recur it all with Sevinnes and Karn.
Step 4 throw Standstills at them whenever, until they fall over.

Don't play bad white cards, like Mother of Runes and Sentinel, which don't support Dreadnought in the slightest. All engine, all the time - combo in every direction. The answer to removal heavy stuff was solved a long time ago. :wink: The only interesting white creature is Timeless Dragon; again all engine, all the time.

That is a very cool idea. But scroll seems very slow for modern horizons 2 legacy.

Urza’s Saga is a better way to go all engine all the time.

A midrange list with 4 Saga could work well with either Teferi or Scroll and possibly even a Standstill or two.

I am actually really enamored by the idea of combining 4 Saga with 4 Mom, 4 Ending, 4 Dragon’s Rage Channeler, 4 Ragavan 4 Mishra’s Bauble, 1 Aether Vial with 4 Thoughtseize in a rainbow manabase.

4 Gemstone Mine
4 City of Brass
4 Mana Confluence
3 Rainbow Lands (Undiscovered Paradise or Spire or Industry or something similar)
4 Urza’s Saga

3 Mishra’s Bauble
1 Aether Vial

4 Thoughtseize
2-3 Prismatic Ending
0-1 Swords to Plowshares

4 Phyrexian Dreadnought
4 Dragon’s Rage Channeler
3 Mother of Runes
2 Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer
1 Uro, Titan of Nature’s Wrath

3-4 Stifle
3-4 Dress Down
2-4 Force of Will
2-4 Brainstorm/Ponder
0-1 Misdirection
0-1 Reanimate

Basically, turn 1 city of brass type land plus either thoughtseize or a one drop must kill threat to take out removal.

Turn 2 either Urza’s Saga if have no Dreadnought or Dress Down end of turn if have Dreadnought in hand, drop multiple threats turn 3

Is that combination of game ending threats and disruption worth dropping Brainstorm/Ponder/Preordain?

Probably not, but fun to think about. I suppose Channeler means you could well play Brainstorm/Ponder/Preordain without much issue.

Perhaps with all the Thoughtseizes, City of Brass and Dress Down, a Death’s Shadow or two could be worth considering.

Fox

07-12-2021, 05:11 PM

The play pattern of Teferi and making sorcery speed Noughts is not worth doing, particularly if your deck has Daze. Saga isn't really for UW Dreadstill; even in UR the max is 2x.

Methodical and resilient mana progression is what makes Standstill work - and 4x Saga impedes this plan, whereas Timeless Dragon progresses the mana while also letting white hands find blue mana.

Uro is slower than Scroll, and if your list has Daze, it is much easier to Daze an Ending for x=3 than it is to pass the turn, let opponent untap, draw a card, make a land drop, and successfully stop a 1 mana Plow.

If you're going to meme in UW with 4x Saga and Daze, you should be using Monk Class rather than Teferi.

Understand that 4x Saga + 4x Dress Down is not a combo.

Captain Hammer

07-13-2021, 07:10 AM

That list I posted above should be playing 2 Unholy Heat instead of Abrade and Hull Breach.

I cant believe Ive neglected Unholy Heat. Its such a powerful effect for a single red mana.

Mr. Safety

07-13-2021, 09:50 AM

To beat removal:
Step 1 assemble Scroll and Teferi.
Step 2 tap Scroll on their EoT.
Step 3 recur it all with Sevinnes and Karn.
Step 4 throw Standstills at them whenever, until they fall over.

Don't play bad white cards, like Mother of Runes and Sentinel, which don't support Dreadnought in the slightest. All engine, all the time - combo in every direction. The answer to removal heavy stuff was solved a long time ago. :wink: The only interesting white creature is Timeless Dragon; again all engine, all the time.

I don't always agree with Fox, but I 100% agree with him here.

Methodical and resilient mana progression is what makes Standstill work - and 4x Saga impedes this plan, whereas Timeless Dragon progresses the mana while also letting white hands find blue mana.

I feel like this is a pretty important concept as well. I think if you are committed to playing a full set of Saga in this type of deck you would have to play 24 lands, no Wastelands. Timeless Dragon is a hidden gem from MH2 that really makes UWx the best possible Dreadnought deck. I still don't like Dreadnought that much in the current metagame. Decks are playing more removal than ever, so without a higher threat density Dreadnought will be high variance. You'll either get lucky and sneak a Dreadnought in early while the opponent fumbles or you'll play against decks with little/no removal for your wins. I think you'll have a significant amount of losses where opposing decks do their usual thing in a consistent way and it will be better than your plan.

I understand the lightning-rod mentality of playing Ragavan/DRC to take opponent's removal away from Dreadnought. However, their cheaper removal (Bolt/StP/Fatal Push) will still be effective against those early threats because they will probably draw multiple removals while you are all-in, likely, in one Dreadnought. You are just forcing them into a clear play pattern and praying you have the tools to make it work at the time, but without additional cantrips to open the window for a win. Meanwhile they don't have to put together a combo to win the game, they can just find more removal and cheap threats, which they have in abundance. Feels like a variance level I wouldn't be comfortable with. This deck falls prey to the same traps as Death's Shadow, another pet deck of mine. Both are pretty 'meh' right now.

Captain Hammer

07-13-2021, 10:39 AM

That sounds sweet. I would love to see a list.

I really want to play the Dragon and Scroll of Fate and Standstill and Dreadnought and maybe Sharknado together. Is there a list in the Dreadstill thread.

This thread is for Dreadnought in a Xerox shell. I am guessing that controllish landstill style Dreadnought lists go in the Dreadstill thread.

Clark Kant

07-13-2021, 11:12 AM

I understand the lightning-rod mentality of playing Ragavan/DRC to take opponent's removal away from Dreadnought. However, their cheaper removal (Bolt/StP/Fatal Push) will still be effective against those early threats because they will probably draw multiple removals while you are all-in, likely, in one Dreadnought. You are just forcing them into a clear play pattern and praying you have the tools to make it work at the time, but without additional cantrips to open the window for a win. Meanwhile they don't have to put together a combo to win the game, they can just find more removal and cheap threats, which they have in abundance. Feels like a variance level I wouldn't be comfortable with. This deck falls prey to the same traps as Death's Shadow, another pet deck of mine. Both are pretty 'meh' right now.

Like Death’s Shadow, Thoughtseize feels pretty essential in clearing the way for your all in threat.

I think the Death Nought thread you created is a very promising route to take.

8 1cc All in threats (4 Nought, 4 Death’s Shadow)
Either a white splash for Esper Sentinel and Mother or Runes or a red splash to also play Dragon Rage and Ragavan as lightning rods to direct removal away from shadow
Tons of cantrips and Confidants (another lightning rod) to help find your cheap threats
Thoughtseize to help protect your all in threats.
4 Dress Down as the main combo piece
4 Wasteland + 4 Stifle to let you focus on mana disruption to make your Dazes and Esper Sentinels more powerful.

But I do love Berserk and Sylvan Library in Death Nought, and Ignoble Hierarch and 3-4 Aether Vial if we are playing so many 1cc creatures and lands that make colorless mana.

Perhaps if we drop the cantrips and dazes and adopt a rainbow manabase around 4 Mana Confluence, 4 City of Brass, 4 Gemstone Caverns, 1-2 Urborg, 1-2 Yavimaya, 4 Aether Vial 2-4 Ignoble, 4 Wasteland plus possibly a Saga or two as the only colorless mana producers.

That could work.

Clark Kant

07-19-2021, 08:34 PM

I am excited to see how boshnroll fares with the below list, will update with a link when the video gets published but I would love to hear feedback on improving on the below list...

Creatures (13)
4 Dragon's Rage Channeler
3 Phyrexian Dreadnought
3 Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer
3 Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath

Spells (21)
4 Brainstorm
3 Lightning Bolt
3 Ponder
3 Stifle
1 Abrade
3 Daze
4 Force of Will

Artifacts (3)
3 Mishra's Bauble

Enchantments (4)
4 Dress Down

Lands (19)
4 Scalding Tarn
3 Tropical Island
1 Urza's Saga
4 Volcanic Island
3 Wasteland
4 Wooded Foothills

Sideboard (15)
1 Flusterstorm
1 Hydroblast
1 Pithing Needle
2 Pyroblast
2 Surgical Extraction
2 Veil of Summer
1 Collector Ouphe
2 Pyroclasm
1 Return to Nature
1 Torpor Orb
1 Brazen Borrower

Fox

07-20-2021, 03:01 AM

Mishra's Bauble is a key player in bad card syndrome. This syndrome is often preceded by Urza's Saga. What is interesting here is the mismatch of 1x Saga and 3x Bauble, which can't cover up Bauble's flaws with Urza's Saga being a powerful card.

Delirium is not hard to get with Urza's Saga and Dreadnought. You have 1 mana put artifact + creature in yard and 1-card delirium with Saga search up suicide Dreadnought. Get rid of the Bauble stuff.

The Ragavan exploit is 4 Ragavan, 4 Daze, and the other 6-7 FoW effects. This exploit [which is going to get Ragavan banned, and Daze too if wotc realizes this is the underlying problem] is its own other deck. The exploit relies on max copies, more free counters, and removal to keep Ragavan triggering - things Dreadnought tech can't give you. Ragavan will underperform - to the point that it will not effectively split removal away from your only wincon [other attackers].

Uro guarantees Surgical will be boarded in. Manabase flaws are weak to Wasteland Volc -> Surgical it. This simple play would likely win by itself.

You still have the fundamental problem of choosing to lock yourself into sorcery-speed threats while trying to protect those threats with Daze. The nature of the Uro CA engine continues to expose weakness to Surgical and mana denial.

Clark Kant

07-20-2021, 11:29 AM

Fox, do you think the manabase should have replaced some of the duals/wastelands with misty rainforest and/or a basic island?

Fox

07-20-2021, 02:02 PM

The manabase is under too much stress from Uro, which has always been the problem. Dreadnought does not play nicely with a 3rd color of mana, on top of 2c + colorless lands. Straight-UG does not have the pieces it needs to be a pure 2c + colorless deck. The closest you can really get is Reclaimer grabbing Cavern for Plague Engi and/or grabbing Lotus Field for Verdict (all done in the background of using Nissa of the 5/5s effectively).

When you deviate from the 2c plan, you are no longer able to rely on your mana to show up for you. Adding basics is just going to make the color splitting even more unreliable, because at the end of the day you can't trust a dual land to be left alone, and you can't rely on a basic to make the right color of mana when throwing around costs like UUGG and interaction on white. Every time the mana fails you, you lose turns...in a deck that really isn't designed to protect Dreadnoughts. Then you find yourself in a play pattern abyss where you will always need more than the 1 card Ponder can provide...and even when you lose 1-2 draw steps to get the >1 cards you need to go off, it's all just going be traded into a single removal spell.

On of the lessons of cards like Standstill and Dreadnought is that you don't get away with throwing around FIRE design if you can't trust your mana. You're not playing mono-1-card combos like UWG miracles (a midrange deck) or Delver; if things go wrong with the mana, you have more dead cards to draw through than they do. Your Ponder will always be worse than theirs, and it locks you into an inescapable spiral of doing the same thing, just worse. Ponder allows you to cheat on mana [too few land slots and/or too many color reqs], but it is ultimately not a competitive choice when you're just worse xerox.

^This is the simple truth most brews fail to understand as they mindlessly throw quad-laser Ponder into their deck. So, unless you're doing something outrageous (like playing Portent + exploiting Ragavan with the express intent of primarily targeting opponents) or you have inevitability, you need to attack variance hiding in the manabase; meaning you need to be using perfect Fetches [meaning Vista], playing the game on exclusively 2 colors [until turn 3 at the earliest], and not use Ponder crutches to hit land drop #2 [generally meaning play more land slots].

For your most recent list, you aren't able to cheese Ragavan nor do you have inevitability. Adding a basic or changing a Fetch here or there is an intermediate move, not a solution. The answer is the same as always: get your CA on-color, just play Dreadstill.

Clark Kant

07-20-2021, 03:11 PM

The answer is the same as always: get your CA on-color, just play Dreadstill.

Standstill is just not that great as a card imho. As far as 1U enchantments go, Dress Down cantrips and has significant utility beyond enabling Dreadnoughts and Uros.

Fox

07-20-2021, 05:15 PM

Standstill is just not that great as a card imho. As far as 1U enchantments go, Dress Down cantrips and has significant utility beyond enabling Dreadnoughts and Uros.
If you don't build a deck with Standstill correctly, and also don't play it correctly, then it's never going to look good. When people talk about Standstill being a bad topdeck, what they really mean is that they blew their resources relentlessly 1-for-1'ing without ever building towards any multi-turn plan - they played normal legacy. This is part of the reason decks with Standstill lack pilots - it requires a different skillset, it takes lots of time to learn the system, and people give up too easily. Take your post above; from that starting point all the average legacy player would need is one bad league and they'd be highly likely to shut down and say "see Standstill is bad, and I'm never playing it again."
---
Your lists fall into the normal legacy trap as well, where you try to play [insert normal good card] to get [insert immediate payoff]. Unfortunately you are doing this at the cost of successfully supporting Dreadnought; which like Standstill, requires a different playstyle for success. It is particularly problematic for your lists when an opponent killing your Dreadnought directly threatens your primary/only win condition [the combat step]. You become so fixated on this that you add a card like DRC, in an attempt to overwhelm removal, such that you don't see the long term plan of maintaining consistent pressure over time - you're not understanding how advantageous it is for Dreadnought to sit in a GY basically turning on delirium by itself. Instead you have focused on the feels bad nature of losing your big threats and gone off on this crazed Bauble tangent to "make DRC good" when it's already at home in a Dreadnought shell. This is the normal magic stuff I'm talking about; that Bauble crap is the domain of "if this doesn't work I'm screwed b/c my deck can't play from behind" normal Delver nonsense.

Thing is that EoT Dress Down into turn 3 big dude doesn't count for much if the opponent has the kill spell or topdecks a PW like JTMS or Teferi. So you can play 4x Dress Down, but all you're consistently doing is walking into a known problem response opponents are known to employ, for which you have no reliable response (and no inevitability against). There's not really anything else going on in the background when this happens to you; there is no other axis your lists pick fights over which meaningfully threaten opponents.

^this is why you keep drastically changing your decks, and until you stop letting opponents play easy mode removal-based magic (vs sorcery-speed, summoning sick Noughts you can't protect with Daze), you're going to keep running into these problems. There are other ways to win games with Dreadnoughts in a deck. Back away from the combat step, determine the secondary value plan, and hyper-focus the mana around these.

FTW

07-21-2021, 07:14 AM

Standstill is a great card in the right deck with the right support. It has a much higher ceiling but also much lower floor than something like Ponder. It's great in Standstill.dec with a dedicated plan to gain advantage through Standstill. It's not good thrown into a random pile of cards.

Fox, do you think the manabase should have replaced some of the duals/wastelands with misty rainforest and/or a basic island?

The manabase problems happen because Ragavan doesn't mix well with Uro + Saga. Turn 1 R, into UUGG, with colorless self-sacrificing "lands". How is that supposed to not get wrecked by Wasteland+Surgical, Port, Moons, B2B, Choke...

The decks want to do different things.
Notice how Delver cut Uro when it added Ragavan.
The URW RagaStill list winning online has Ragavan and Saga, but no Uro. The colored mana demands in that deck are very simple (single-colored costs with the rare lategame UU). The deck also plays more than 20 lands.
Bant runs Uro but no Ragavan.
Other decks maximize Saga + artifacts without Ragavan or Uro.

You're trying to run all the hottest cards in the format in one deck, at the expense of your mana stability. Everyone else is just picking a lane and maximizing that one strategy while having better mana.

Mishra's Bauble is also terrible and unnecessary:
-3 Bauble
+1 Bolt
+1 colored land
+1 Saga

That should improve the current list, but doesn't address the underlying problem of trying to cram too many different strategies together without having enough slots to support all of them.

Clark Kant

07-24-2021, 06:48 AM

Boshnroll’s excellent video is up. Lots of fun gameplay. Dragon Rage Channeler, Dress Down and Dreadnought put in a ton of work...

https://youtu.be/XLuWavPSU28

I agree with Bosh, the maindeck is pretty much perfect. The sideboard needs some tweaking but otherwise, its a very competitive and well tuned list.

Fox

07-24-2021, 05:55 PM

Watched the VoD by BoshnRoll, with a 3-2 coming off the back of timeout by Emry Cannon with deterministic win on board. Opponents included Zoo (tier 3), high combo representation, low Wasteland use, and no hard matchup [value pile].

Much of the success came off of exploiting the soon-to-be-banned Ragavan. Did not see any novel benefit to having Ragavan and Nought in same deck, as predicted. Drop the Nought and max Ragavan/Daze exploit if that's the plan.

Bauble was not needed for delirium, and we kept seeing the need to interact rather than just drawing a card. With susceptibility to Surgical, a single slot is better filled by Relic; and the other 2 Bauble slots need to be cards with text.

Consistently saw too many Dress Down without proactive plan development. Consistently wanted to make creatures at instant speed [Scroll of Fate]. The ideal split at this time is 3 Stifle, 2 Scroll, 2 Dress Down. Use 5 copies of Nought with 3x actual and 2x Saga.

Speed problem was evident where deck spins its wheels without forward progress as it needs time to assemble Uro mana (in a league where Zoo iirc was only deck with Wasteland). Need to get this CA game started sooner, and with reliable mana.

In watching this VoD pay attention to confused plan of assembling mana while rest of cards often fail to work together. Note also the turn 1 forced Ponder plays which undermine theme of mana denial. Also differentiate between Ragavan carrying [in spite of other cards in deck] and what the rest of the deck was offering. This last point is especially important to watch for.

Clark Kant

07-25-2021, 07:23 PM

Fox

07-26-2021, 01:27 AM

The benefit came from Ragavan and DRC eating removal and forces that would have otherwise hit Dreadnought or Uro, as predicted.

Thats why the list was built the way it was and thats why its effective.

That is the trap, thinking these game plans are linked and complementary. Ragavan wins games by itself (and it's getting banned), and it's all about Daze exploiting. This is why entire decks are dedicated to the cheese.

It's very important to look past how Ragavan was good, and recognize it was good in spite of other aspects of the deck, which were holding it back. Yours is a worse presentation of Ragavan, which does not bode well when up against real Ragavan.

On the flip side the CA in mired in mana uncertainty, where tremendous amounts of resources are being expended to try to get Uro mana online. Here Ragavan is not all-in enough to factor into the mana solution reliably with his Lotus Petals. The Dreadnought stuff is worsening this rift, and the deck was never really assembling it's CA contraption.

You have to dedicate more slots than 3x Bolts, 3x. Daze, and 1x Abrade towards cheese'ig Ragavan.

Clark Kant

07-26-2021, 08:42 AM

FTW

07-26-2021, 10:34 AM

2 Scroll of Fate, 0 Bauble, 0 Uro, 4 basics looks like a significant improvement. Seems like there should be 1 Urza's Saga. The manabase can afford it and it improves both DRC and Nought.

The benefit came from Ragavan and DRC eating removal and forces that would have otherwise hit Dreadnought or Uro, as predicted.

Using Ragavan and DRC to eat removal is like using Supreme Verdict to kill Llanowar Elves. You're needlessly blowing a powerful card to get rid of something when you could trade differently and keep your more powerful card.

Better, just play your turn 1 Ragavan, use spells to eat removal, and win the game. This is what UR Delver and Jeskai RagaSagaStill are doing to dominate the format. (See Legacy Challenge & Showcase results)

You think you duped the opponent by getting them to "waste" their removal so you can play your 12/12, but the thing they killed was already better than the 12/12.

Clark Kant

07-26-2021, 10:49 AM

2 Scroll of Fate, 0 Bauble, 0 Uro, 4 basics looks like a significant improvement. Seems like there should be 1 Urza's Saga. The manabase can afford it and it improves both DRC and Nought.

Using Ragavan and DRC to eat removal is like using Supreme Verdict to kill Llanowar Elves. You're needlessly blowing a powerful card to get rid of something when you could trade differently and keep your more powerful card.

Better, just play your turn 1 Ragavan, use spells to eat removal, and win the game. This is what UR Delver and Jeskai RagaSagaStill are doing to dominate the format. (See Legacy Challenge & Showcase results)

You think you duped the opponent by getting them to "waste" their removal so you can play your 12/12, but the thing they killed was already better than the 12/12.

Lol. Yes Ragavan is overpowered. But saying that you would rather get a hit in with Ragavan than get a hit in with a 12/12 trampler is more than a bit hyperbolic.

FTW

07-26-2021, 11:10 AM

Lol. Yes Ragavan is overpowered. But saying that you would rather get a hit in with Ragavan than get a hit in with a 12/12 trampler is more than a bit hyperbolic.

In a vacuum where players have no draw steps or cards in hand, obviously getting the 12/12 attack is better than getting a 2/1 attack.

But in an interactive magic game where both players have to account for other resources beyond that 1 creature, for a UR shell with FoW + Daze + cantrips + bolts + Wasteland, I would rather get the Ragavan. Ragavan gives you additional mana and cards. The 12/12 requires additional mana and cards to work. When you run a tempo shell like that, you want to trade resources efficiently and maximize Daze+Wasteland. Ragavan lets you do that better than DressNought. Ragavan is a smaller body but makes the rest of the cards in the deck shine better, instead of taxing the rest of the cards to assemble and protect the threat. Proven results already show that.

The 12/12 trampler can be better, but it requires the right support so you can play it while also advancing in resources and interaction. Fox's decks are designed to do that, but in general random UR decks probably function better with Ragavan.

Clark Kant

07-26-2021, 11:37 AM

That wasnt the question.

If I get to choose which card gets Pushed in response to your attack, a Ragavan, or a Dreadnought, I would choose Ragavan pretty much every time.

If we are talking about Swords, the 12 points of life gain from Dreadnought getting StPed has won me several games, so thats not so cut and dry, but only because Dreadnought is better in this scenario as well.

Generally 12/12 trampler >>> 2/1 monkey treasure maker.

Why do you think that 5-0 list above is playing Sprite Dragon instead of Ragavan. Because a fast clock wins tempo games.

Yes Dreadnought only shines in shells that already want to play 4 Dress Down. But in this meta thats not a drawback, Dress Down is an MVP.

FTW

07-26-2021, 06:36 PM

Why do you think that 5-0 list above is playing Sprite Dragon instead of Ragavan. Because a fast clock wins tempo games.

Ragavan wins even more tempo games.

Why do you think the top 2 decks in the current meta (UR Delver & Jeskai RagaSagaStill) both play 4x Ragavan?
https://www.mtggoldfish.com/metagame/legacy#paper

Ragavan decks have taken a lot of Legacy Challenge/tournament Top 8s, much better proven results than any shade of Vaka-Nought has.

Dreadnought+DressDown can be very strong in other shells, like Dreadstill and perhaps your other builds. I'm just talking about these recent URx tempo shells you posted and your claim that Dreadnought is better tempo.

Once you're playing the tempo shell of DRC, Ragavan, Brainstorm, FoW, Daze, Wasteland, Bolt, Ponder... that type of shell does better just pushing T1 monkey than trying to make 12/12s. Just protect Monkey instead of sacrificing it to make way for 12/12s. If the monkey draws removal and you win with the 12/12 after, you probably would have won anyway if Dreadnought+Dress Down were other cards - in those games you're typically way ahead in resources either way, due the tempo disruption or the opponent's deck being bad.

If I get to choose which card gets Pushed in response to your attack, a Ragavan, or a Dreadnought, I would choose Ragavan pretty much every time.
If we are talking about Swords, the 12 points of life gain from Dreadnought getting StPed has won me several games, so thats not so cut and dry, but only because Dreadnought is better in this scenario as well.

Would you rather attack with a 12/12 trample, 2/1 monkey treasure-maker, or a 15/15 flying annihilator 6 with protection from StP/Push/Decay/Prismatic? Obviously the 15/15. Play UR SneakShow.

You're still thinking too narrow, a pseudo-vacuum of just 1 removal spell and no other cards or mana for either player, with both creatures already on the board. What about the other cards both players have access to? What about the development required to get those bodies on the board? That all matters in a tempo game.

The reason URx tempo doesn't play 15/15s is it costs more tempo and resources to deploy the 15/15. The 15/15 is much scarier, but it's not good for a tempo plan with Daze and Wasteland. Tempo would rather have threats that gain positive tempo and cost few resources, even if they're smaller and more fragile. The same applies to comparing 12/12s to 2/1s. Consider the bigger picture, the full game plan.

You can make the 2/1 monkey treasure-maker card-drawer earlier & using fewer resources, and then it gains you more resources by the time you could have made a 12/12. Ragavan is better tempo. The 12/12 takes more mana and resources (2-card combo for 2U, attacking turn 4). What does that mean? When you attack with the 2/1 Monkey, you can Daze their removal spell, use the Treasure mana to Brainstorm into answers/gas, cast an extra threat from the opponent's deck before the 12/12 ever gets to attack, and can generally spend more cards and mana disrupting the opponent's plan. Better tempo. When you attack with the 12/12 and they Push/StP it, you have fewer mana and cards available to interact with what the opponent did, their removal spell is harder to Daze, and it's harder for you to establish subsequent threats (unless you compensate with Dreadstill-type lategame).

Against Tier 1 fair decks in attrition wars, Ragavan leaves you ahead with more tempo and more resources to grind past the opponent.

The 5-0 Cartesian list at least does Dreadnoughts better by running Scroll of Fate and cutting Uro. But it looks like a watered down version of UR Dreadstill that Fox and Rood play. If you like Cartesian's list, at that point I would just look harder at UR Dreadstill and the experts' recommendations for it.

Fox

07-26-2021, 09:01 PM

Cartesian's list has quite a few issues, but at least it has Scroll of Fate.

The actual cost and mana flaws can't be overlooked - 4x Volc is egregious. It's not just a waste of money, it also makes it super easy to get crushed by Delver b/c you're giving them Wasteland targets. The correct number of Volc is 1x. That said, a suboptimal build (UR Stiflenought) probably runs better on 2x Volc...but it's a waste of $800, as it's being used to play without CA. Better to go with 1x Volc and higher land totals, and have plans for the mana [Standstill, Shark'nado, Saga].

The theme of rewarding enemy Delver decks is continued by dropping Stifle, adding Pierce, and only having 4x 1-drop threats. The whole reason to begrudgingly play Daze is that Delver decks exist. Dreadnought's UR construction is all about outmaneouvering Delver at all points:
-Can't Waste us, we can Waste them
-We have best Stifle in the format, and thus have upper hand in mana denial
-We have 8x 1-drop threats (manlands count here), which is usually more than them
-We have better uses for more mana, and are less likely to play into Daze

Sprite Dragon slots are better used on 2x Lavamancer and 2x TNN if not addressing "just make it UR Dreadstill" CA issue.

Clark Kant

07-27-2021, 07:12 AM

Fox

07-27-2021, 08:53 AM

Lets just agree to disagree. I personally think Cartesian's manabase is perfect as is for the way his deck is built.

I dont get the appeal of slow grindy cards like Lavamanacer or Standstill. But if that works for Dreadstill, good. Thats a different deck built for a different playstyle. I quite like Cartesian's 5-0 list and I think his take on the deck is worth exploring.

Why are you advocating for sinking $3200 dollars into letting Delver Waste you out of the game in a 2c deck? That's just for the 4 Volc.

Lavamancer is a much faster card than Uro. I think you've also tried to make this point that somehow Scroll is too slow, still on Uro builds.

When your wincon is entirely the combat step, it's important to use cards that continually nuke Ice-Fang/Strix and deal direct damage through E-Bridge. Reliable damage puts opponents into Bolt range much more effectively than running into deathtouch flying, cantrip walls...while hoping to not get hit by Surgical.

Clark Kant

07-27-2021, 10:27 AM

Why are you advocating for sinking $3200 dollars into letting Delver Waste you out of the game in a 2c deck? That's just for the 4 Volc.

On MTGO, Volcs are $5 each. With covid bringing paper down, lots of people are playing via MTGO.

I really want to try Blood Moon in that 5-0 list. So I could increase the basic island count and cut a Volc.

Perhaps...

Creature (12)
3 Ragavan
4 Dragon's Rage Channeler
4 Phyrexian Dreadnought
1 Grim Lavamancer
1 Sprite Dragon

Sorcery (4)
4 Ponder

Instant (19)
4 Brainstorm
4 Daze
4 Force of Will
3 Lightning Bolt
2 Spell Pierce

Artifact (2)
2 Scroll of Fate

Enchantment (4)
4 Dress Down
2 Blood Moon

Land (19)
4 Island
1 Mountain
4 Polluted Delta
4 Scalding Tarn
3 Volcanic Island
3 Wasteland

Sideboard (15)
2 Abrade
2 Counterbalance
2 Hydroblast
1 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
2 Pyroblast
2 Pyroclasm
2 Surgical Extraction
2 Tormod's Crypt

Is that better? I cut Bolt to test a Lavamancer, cut Sprite Dragon to try Ragavan and cut Spell Pierce to try Blood Moon. I feel like I should have Brazen Borrower as an out to Chalice but not sure what to cut.

FTW

07-27-2021, 11:03 AM

Clark Kant

07-27-2021, 12:56 PM

For a basic-heavy manabase, use Vistas before Deltas. Then you have 8 fetches (Tarn + Vista) that get either color of basic, instead of having Deltas that can only get duals or Island.

//19 Lands:
4 Scalding Tarn
4 Prismatic Vista
1 Polluted Delta
1 Volcanic Island
3 Island
2 Mountain
4 Wasteland

There's easily room for the 4th Wasteland or 1st Saga.

If you really like playing duals, you can cut another land for the 2nd Volc without a meaningful increase in manabase weakness.

As Fox said, you probably want to capitalize on Stifles main (cut Spell Pierce) since you now have a manabase that lets you play aggressive mana denial without risking mana attacks back or hurting your mana development, so you can aggressively use your Stifles + Waste + Daze to oppress opponent's mana. The Uro version couldn't be as aggressive with mana denial because it needed to worry about its own greedy mana development too. Going to UR and basics you can play your mana denial cards more aggressively.

Jace and Counterbalance don't belong in a deck with Wasteland and Daze, so that frees up sideboard space. You could move the Moons there (better SB than main, since they hurt your fetches and Wastelands and you won't need them in all matchups).

I don't know about that mix of creatures... will leave that to others to comment.
Edit: 3 Volc looks good when you're running Ragavan (protect T1 Ragavan with Daze, which basics cannot do), but it may not be correct to run Ragavan + DRC + Dreadnought + Lavamancer all together. UR Dreadstill just plays Dreadnought + DRC + Lavaman. UR Delver just plays Ragavan + DRC (+ Delver).

Those are good suggestions. Thank you. I would cut the Delta for the 2nd Volc but otherwise that manabase definitely looks better.

Adding a Stifle or two to the maindeck is fine, as long as people remember to use it as Sinkhole or to stop an Oracle trigger or something important like that rather than utilizing it to cast Dreadnought. Many pilots consistently misplay the deck by treating Stifle as a bad combo piece rather than as an efficient mana denial piece or combo counter piece, the way that card is actually meant to be used 90% of the time, and then wonder why they lost games they would have otherwise won. ThrabenU for example makes this misplay frequently on video anytime he plays a Dreadnought list.

FTW

07-27-2021, 03:54 PM

Adding a Stifle or two to the maindeck is fine, as long as people remember to use it as Sinkhole or to stop an Oracle trigger or something important like that rather than utilizing it to cast Dreadnought. Many pilots consistently misplay the deck by treating Stifle as a bad combo piece rather than as an efficient mana denial piece or combo counter piece, the way that card is actually meant to be used 90% of the time, and then wonder why they lost games they would have otherwise won. ThrabenU for example makes this misplay frequently on video anytime he plays a Dreadnought list.

It depends on the rest of the deck. When you're playing multiple copies of Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath then the mana demands are greedy and you can't afford to play such aggressive mana denial. Watching the videos, I found players like Bosh and ThrabenU often chose not to use Daze or mana denial when they could. It was not because they were too focused on Stiflenought, but because they recognized they were running a deck that was greedier with mana than the opponent. They couldn't afford to really attack the opponent's mana when it was more important to develop their own (or protect against attacks on their mana).

But now that you've cut down to 2 colors, cut the slow mana-intensive stuff (Uro, Jace), and gone heavy on basics, the mana roles have changed. Instead of having greedier mana than the opponent, you have more stable mana, which means you can start 1-for-1ing cards with their lands (Stifle, Wasteland) and have that actually advance your game plan instead of just stall you both. Players will interpret that Stifle in hand differently now that the overall context of the deck has changed.

Clark Kant

07-27-2021, 05:04 PM

Actually, Ive found that Bosh consistently plays Dreadnought lists well. He does make occasional play mistakes but overall plays the deck the way a player that understands the deck and its internal synergies well plays the deck.

Fox

07-27-2021, 09:22 PM

If we're not fixing the main problem [i.e. not turning this into UWR Ragavan or UR Dreadstill], this is the mana:
4x Tarn
4x Vista
4x Island
2x Volc (waste of $800)
1x Mountain
3x Wasteland

^This manabase above is for a flawed deck, and as a flawed deck it is not allowed to play ideal mana:
4x Tarn
4x Vista
5x Island
2x Mountain
1x Volc
3x Wasteland
2x Saga
1x Spikefield

On the creatures, again if we're not addressing the main problem:
-1 Nought, +1 Karn
-3 Ragavan (does not play nicely with Dreadnought), +1 Lavamancer, +2 TNN
-1 Sprite Dragon, +1 Bolt
-2 Pierce, +2 Stifle
-2 Moon, +1 Stifle (#3), +1 Karn (#2)
-2 Dress Down, +2 FoN
Alternatively you can gamble on 2x Saga and 1x Relic in last 3 slots.

Blood Moon is always incorrect. Alpine Moon is the 2x, and it goes in the SB.

FTW

07-29-2021, 02:01 PM

If we're not fixing the main problem [i.e. not turning this into UWR Ragavan or UR Dreadstill], this is the mana:
4x Tarn
4x Vista
4x Island
2x Volc (waste of $800)
1x Mountain
3x Wasteland

OP indicated the deck is for online only, so monetary argument for duals should be ignored.

Why not the 4th colorless land (Wasteland or Saga)?

Also why 4-1 split of basics instead of 3-2 (assuming not turning to Dreadstill, where of course you would have higher land count for both). Without 2nd Mountain, it's harder to have lines like cast DRC holding up Bolt. Is this just because red cannot fix to blue mana, so 2x Mountain hands (or Mountain + Waste) are unplayable? Ragavan does fix that, by giving red color-fixing.

Fox

07-30-2021, 05:59 AM

Why not the 4th colorless land (Wasteland or Saga)?

Also why 4-1 split of basics instead of 3-2 (assuming not turning to Dreadstill, where of course you would have higher land count for both). Without 2nd Mountain, it's harder to have lines like cast DRC holding up Bolt. Is this just because red cannot fix to blue mana, so 2x Mountain hands (or Mountain + Waste) are unplayable? Ragavan does fix that, by giving red color-fixing.
8 Fetch + 6 blue sources is the deckbuilding rule. Unless you have something like Timeless Dragon or the Astrolabe/E Tutor in the mix allowing 2 off-basics to find the main color, stay away from 2x off-basics unless you've already met the 8+6 rule. You're not really allowed to play >18 lands in Stiflenought without losing to flood, and 18 lands is a little suspect to try and power out constructs reliably (and then there's the whole too many Dress Down issue with this).

Ragavan is a poor choice in Dreadnought decks, b/c you can't afford to sit there with a creature in play doing nothing [Ragavan that can't attack profitably], which also jams up your hand with redundant copies you can't cast. This is too much variance to draw through in a deck with Dreadnoughts, regardless of CA. Decks exploiting Ragavan require more focus on slots for removal and a Karakas, which have to come out of the Dreadnought fraction. Ragavan also has significant problems with stopping a Delver when added to DRC; this is another reason Lavamancer is preferred.

Fox

07-31-2021, 01:03 AM

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1102953542
^This is a link to @anzidmtg playing @Cartesian's list. Anzi played at adept level, but made four large mistakes. One mistake cost him a game (manifesting Daze instead of any a textless Spell Pierce). A second mistake may have lost him the game (there was a game vs UR Delver where opponent was at 16, and Anzi had Sprite Dragon in hand and Nought coming in off the Scroll + Bolt. Instead of going for a chance to present 16 dmg in hand he Bolted a textless 3/3 attacker). A third mistake was unlikely to change the outcome (last game vs UR Delver he pretty much locked himself out by making a Waste the Fetch to play Daze vs Brazen). A fourth mistake which was unpunished due to Bolt in hand (incorrect trample math vs Shadow).

Anzi is a skilled player of normal legacy, and we saw the good normal plays paired with the four misplays above at the "lose the entire game" level. In each of these instances the deck required the pilot to understand what cards mean, comparatively, to navigate a not-normal legacy scenario optimally. Another thing you will see in the VoD is multiple people continuously asking why Ragavan isn't in the list. This too is an example of not knowing how to assess cards and understand what they mean comparatively. A Ragavan in play you can't attack with successfully + 3 Ragavan in hand + 4 Dreadnought in hand does exactly nothing. It really is that simple - no testing required.

Let's go ahead and suppose Anzi played at a master level, making no mistakes. There's not a lot of ceiling to work with, but in the case of this league he would have gotten a 4-1. The most important factor in this final record projection is probably more tied to an opponent's far below average topdeck luck [particularly the Humans deck]. This low ceiling for Dreadnought pilot skill mattering is a recurrent theme in Stiflenought decks.

You can see the problems I've been talking about in the past few posts in action:
-consistently won games b/c Scroll of Fate does *not* make Dreadnoughts at sorcery speed and then pass the turn (particularly vs Teferi and Skyclave).
-Spell Pierce consistently sucked, and should have been Stifle.
-consistenly unable to get under the Delver deck (the list has 4 1-drops vs Dreadstill's 8, again counting manlands).
-manabase and non-Tarn Fetches consistently provided enemy Delver decks effortless angles of attack without adequate compensation.
-consistently could not use creatures to trade enemy Delvers off the table.
-consistently would have been better off with a mix of Lavamancers and TNN in the Sprite Dragon slot.

The highest quality way to win with Dreadnought is Scroll. The highest power possible for UR comes from 2x Dress Down, 2x Saga, 3x Stifle. Having Standstill, rather than Ponder, is what allows you to pick fights on a vastly different axis (CA)...and when you massacre their blue cards with Standstill or just drown them in cards, enemy decks falter and ultimately fall to damage - and it doesn't matter what that damage source is called.

FTW

08-01-2021, 02:41 PM

Another thing you will see in the VoD is multiple people continuously asking why Ragavan isn't in the list. This too is an example of not knowing how to assess cards and understand what they mean comparatively. A Ragavan in play you can't attack with successfully + 3 Ragavan in hand + 4 Dreadnought in hand does exactly nothing. It really is that simple - no testing required.

So what you're saying is that because Dreadnought (unlike fair 1-card threats) presents higher variance draws because it needs to be unlocked by another card, you don't want to pair it with other high variance draws. You're trying to reduce the possible dead hands you can draw into to minimize the deck losing to itself (where no amount of player skill could help). Extra Ragavan + Dreadnought is useless. But DRC's floor still lets you surveil and you can use Dreadnought for +2 delirium, so they are less bad to draw together?

Dreadstill is certainly a better DRC deck than UR Delver, able to bin artifacts and enchantments through its normal game plan, without having to add filler.

This low ceiling for Dreadnought pilot skill mattering is a recurrent theme in Stiflenought decks.

Does UR Dreadstill then aim to increase ceiling for pilot skill over UR Dressnought by being able to fight over CA and have manabase superiority (to allow greed with mana denial attacks)?

-manabase and non-Tarn Fetches consistently provided enemy Delver decks effortless angles of attack without adequate compensation.

I never understood why a UR deck would play 4x Polluted Delta.

The highest power possible for UR comes from 2x Dress Down, 2x Saga, 3x Stifle.

Why did you cut the 4th Stifle? No other good cuts to make room for Dress Down? Risk of drawing too many enablers and not enough Noughts? It must have some impact on ability to pressure turn 1 fetches.

Clark Kant

08-01-2021, 03:21 PM

Dreadnought lists are more skill intensive than delver lists if anything. Mulligan decisions, knowing when to just play land and pass holding up a stifle and knowing when to jam Dreadnought and when youre oppenent is likely to have removal to hold it, bait removal with another threat and play more disruptively makes a huge difference.

BoshNRoll is an excellent player who consistently 3-2s or 4-1s anytime he plays Dreadnought but in every video he lost atleast one match due to misreading the opponent and making a playmistake. anzidmtg played well for someone that never played the deck before and admitted to not knowing how some of the cards worked but he made plenty of play mistakes, not because he is a bad player but because he was unfamiliar with the list and its a very skill intensive deck.

Both Dress Down and Scroll of Fate are incredible cards.

In any 4 Phyrexian Dreadnought list, I would want to play 4 Dress Down and 0-2 Scroll of Fate before playing a playset of Stifle.

In Uro builds, I would consider 4 Dress Down and 2-3 Scroll of Fate alongside some Stifles.

I agree that DRC is better than Ragavan and any red list should play 4 DRC before playing even a single Ragavan.

Fox

08-01-2021, 07:02 PM

So what you're saying is that because Dreadnought (unlike fair 1-card threats) presents higher variance draws because it needs to be unlocked by another card, you don't want to pair it with other high variance draws. You're trying to reduce the possible dead hands you can draw into to minimize the deck losing to itself (where no amount of player skill could help). Extra Ragavan + Dreadnought is useless. But DRC's floor still lets you surveil and you can use Dreadnought for +2 delirium, so they are less bad to draw together?
There is also turn 1 DRC -> turn 2 Standstill, milling towards a land topdeck. Unlike Delver, DRC is good at all points of the game. Previously Delver was consistently problematic b/c it was increasingly a garbage card at 4x copies in Dreadstill; too hard to flip, and playing 2-3 copies meant you rarely had it in opening hands. The fact that Saga find Nought is 2-card delerium, freeing up DRC to aggromill Lavamancer food is just icing on the cake. More icing to be had by having part of the manabase [Spikefield] being able to mill lands away from reaching the hand; lots of anti-flood insurance going on.

There's nothing to disrupt here, DRC just combos off in every direction - and the count to 20 macroscopic-combo is not affected by not having a DRC in play or having it removed. It represents relentless progress/resource trading and ruthless efficiency without dependence. This pattern of piece A + A + A + so many As is the key to success in a Dreadnought deck, whereas Stiflenought decks continue gift opponents piece A + B trades [2-for-1s].

Dreadstill is certainly a better DRC deck than UR Delver, able to bin artifacts and enchantments through its normal game plan, without having to add filler.
Correct, Delver decks fail to use DRC effectively. Lucky for them gross misuse of an ideal Dreadstill card leaves them with a threat that is still good.

Does UR Dreadstill then aim to increase ceiling for pilot skill over UR Dressnought by being able to fight over CA and have manabase superiority (to allow greed with mana denial attacks)?
This comes back to piece A + A + A construction. A Dreadstill pilot does not care which piece kills the opponent, we identify the opponent's greatest weakness and attack it. While we're doing this we generate progress on other fronts the opponent can't fight on. A normal pattern is detonating opponent mana [Stifle/Wasteland/Daze] -> making them protect lifetotal -> making them fight Standstill -> keeping them locked in this spiral with FoW -> take away their ability to play on our turn & trade removal for nonland cards [Scroll] -> take them to Bolt range and decimate any blue cards they still have in hand with Bolt.

Contrast this to Stiflenought-types: I will make a sorcery speed Nought, pass the turn, and my opponent will kill it, or worse, they will bounce/kill it while developing a PW -> then I will have to do this over and over again in the futile hope that they will run out of kill spells...Also please don't have Ensnaring Bridge-type cards opponent.

From the not-combo opponent's side vs Stiflenought-types: don't be a moron - Fetch around Stifle, make land drops, and don't trade into Daze. Wait for them to make a big dude and kill it, and you literally can't die. This is all the opponent has to do. With minimal effort such an opponent will completely remove the Stiflenought player's skill from situations where skill/decisions can be made and matter. Contrast this to the same non-combo opponent sitting there making land drops and passing vs a deck with Standstill - this sort of thing tends to backfire badly. Even if that opponent waits to crack the Standstill when Dreadstill has a full grip, they're likely to get their face melted by Bolt and advance our gameplan [we'll probably also have delirium granted by this opposing play pattern as well].

I never understood why a UR deck would play 4x Polluted Delta.
It takes hundreds of hours on decks with cards like Standstill to realize if the crappy Fetch was just a Vista, your winrate goes up by 5-10% for absolutely free. The confounder in realizing this with a deck like Stiflenought is that you will routinely get locked-out of any decisions that matter/have no inevitability, so it's harder to separate that source of losing from "if I *just* had my mana/didn't play into Wasteland, nothing my opponent's decklist does could realistically could get them a win." Too much cross-contamination of unavoidable vs avoidable losses confounds many decks in legacy, and prevents root cause analysis of how it was ultimately their mana base which is to blame. On of the best decks to play to clearly link dual lands in opening hand with causing auto-losses [b/c it's a nonbasic] is UW Landstill - this crap was infuriating before Vista, and that was on just 2x Tundra. As much as people want to think Vial is the natural enemy of Standstill decks, the truth is that our own duals (and the crappy Fetches that made you tutor them b/c Vista didn't exist yet) are the real enemy, and we have to play against our manabase in every match.

Why did you cut the 4th Stifle? No other good cuts to make room for Dress Down? Risk of drawing too many enablers and not enough Noughts? It must have some impact on ability to pressure turn 1 fetches.
You have no idea how much I wish they actually fixed the format and banned fast Fetchlands & reprinting duals [leaving legacy with things like Evolving Wilds, Mirage Fetches, Fabled Passage, Land Grant]. I would drop Stifle so unbelievably fast for Vision Charm. If you think Scroll of Fate is obnoxious, just wait till it can be protected by phasing. :laugh: Until they do fix the format [which they won't], Stifle is only selected b/c it can hit Fetchlands - and that's all very unfortunate b/c milling Doomsday for 4 with Vision Charm & turning Islands into not-Islands in response to High Tide is the sport of kings.
Every other Dreadnought enabler is thus weighed against Stifle, and I look at how a different enabler attacks the opponent when I assess it. The second copy of Dress Down is more likely to inflict critical damage/pick a fight vs an opposing strategy than a 4th copy of Stifle. Like DRC, Dress Down picks completely non-committal fights while advancing my plans. Play too many Dress Down and you interfere with your own ability to play the Saga construct subgame; play too few Dress Down and you can't reliably terrorize opponents and sinkhole their Force effects by casting Dress Down with Saga's age 3 trigger on stack.

In terms of crippling opponents, I am at 5x slots of anti-Thassa+Cavern. Lavamancer/Bolt-range is granted vs Goyf, KotR, Reclaimer, enemy DRC, Hexdrinker, etc by Dress Down. Deathtouch is stripped, constructs are wiped, Grisel draw 7s are sundered from main phases, and the list goes on and on. The main point though is that I am the one in control of correctly identifying the most damaging use vs my opponent's strategy; I can attack, defend, or attack while defending...and the opponent gets to sit there helplessly while I make the relevant decisions.

Fox

08-01-2021, 07:57 PM

BoshNRoll is an excellent player who consistently 3-2s or 4-1s anytime he plays Dreadnought but in every video he lost atleast one match due to misreading the opponent and making a playmistake. anzidmtg played well for someone that never played the deck before and admitted to not knowing how some of the cards worked but he made plenty of play mistakes, not because he is a bad player but because he was unfamiliar with the list and its a very skill intensive deck.[
75% of Anzi's major misplays were tactics. BoshnRoll very rarely makes tactical mistakes. Both of them however make strategic misplays, and both struggle to see the big picture. To BoshnRolls credit you can see his spider senses tingling at the end of his VoDs when he is talking over the decklist broadly. He is right that something is off, but he can't quite put his finger on bashing people to death with sorcery speed, summoning sick dudes + passing turn with Daze in the deck being the core.

His analysis is still just as corrupted by Ponder & normal legacy play patterns as Anzi's however. The rules of legacy change for 2c decks with cards like Dreadnought and Standstill which use a vastly different consistency engine of having mana we can always trust - even if it's colorless. Ponder is for mana quality (colors) & skimping on land quantity, whereas Dreadnought & Standstill are designed to operate on land quantity above all else. For us color quality is solved at the point of deck construction, such that we don't need to cobble it together every game with Ponder.

These are competing systems, and when you cross-contaminate the quantity model with Ponder, you end up with a worse deck than the pure quality model. You end up playing the same type of magic, just worse - the cost of those Ponder slots is loss of ability to interact on an axis Ponder decks can't react to effectively. The only time you should come close to breaking the Ponder rule is demonstrated well by the history of UW Landstill: 4x Portent for 3x Terminus [pre-Wrenn tactic] -> 2x Ponder for 2x Verdict [done to absorb 3cmc Teferi and Shark'nado]. Note that in the slot-saving Verdict model, that 1WWU is greedy AF on the colors; this is one of the two indications for appropriate Ponder use. This Verdict/Ponder slot-saving hybrid is now outdated with the printing of Timeless Dragon, and Ponders are again unacceptable. Interestingly, the Timeless Dragon inclusion allows UW back to UWR without loss of mana security, which justifies playing Ending and Spikefield in the main.

@Clark Kant: Your lists are following the FIRE payoff, rather than the realities of the mana quantity model. The more you run to Ponder, the more naked your Noughts become. Highly suspect mana held together by Ponder, done to cast as much FIRE as possible, is normal legacy. This is what the overwhelming majority of legacy decks do, and how they are built. Dreadnought is built by a different set of rules. The thing about FIRE cards is that no matter how stupid the cards are, they have to cast them. Thus begins the all-out attack on the fatal flaw they can't escape...raze their mana, punish FIRE-casting with Standstill, and teach them the meaning of efficiency: 1 mana for a 12/12.

In any 4 Phyrexian Dreadnought list, I would want to play 4 Dress Down and 0-2 Scroll of Fate before playing a playset of Stifle.
You will not play a 4x Dreadnought deck and hand out free wins to Surgical Extraction. Take that 4th copy out and add a Karn. There are bigger problems in the list if it came to this, but this is the second most important quick fix to salvage the decklist. The most important is still to drive down dual use and add 4x Vista.

FTW

08-03-2021, 06:31 PM

There is also turn 1 DRC -> turn 2 Standstill, milling towards a land topdeck. Unlike Delver, DRC is good at all points of the game. Previously Delver was consistently problematic b/c it was increasingly a garbage card at 4x copies in Dreadstill; too hard to flip, and playing 2-3 copies meant you rarely had it in opening hands. The fact that Saga find Nought is 2-card delerium, freeing up DRC to aggromill Lavamancer food is just icing on the cake. More icing to be had by having part of the manabase [Spikefield] being able to mill lands away from reaching the hand; lots of anti-flood insurance going on.

Interesting. DRC combos with Standstill (surveil into land to help hit more land drops than opponent), but combos with spells to prevent flood when you need gas. DRC combos with Lavamancer (GY fuel). DRC combos with Saga and Dreadnought (cheap Delirium enablers). It works well with most of the deck so it's a consistently a good draw, while Delver or Ragavan would be bad draws more often. Even if it dies, the free Bolts (attacks) help the deck, the milled cards help other DRCs and Lavamans, and at worst you're trading 1 mana + 1 card with the opponent's card(s) for efficiency in the mana denial plan.

I now see why Lavamancer is preferred. It's another payoff for the Delirium fuel (that lets you selectively keep Delirium). It kills faster threats like Delver and Ragavan, as well as hatebears like Thalia and Ouphe. It kills some big things with Dress Down. It counts to 20 better than a 2/x aggro attacker would. You can even kill X/4s for "free" through combat with 2/2 manifested land -> exiling land & other card from GY. It does quite a lot for 1 mana + 1 card, and it combos with much of the deck.

Extreme mana efficiency seems integral to your gameplan. This is interesting, and quite different from how Landstill plays out. You also play towards that mana quantity and lategame inevitability, but the early mana-efficiency is pushed more.

Correct, Delver decks fail to use DRC effectively. Lucky for them gross misuse of an ideal Dreadstill card leaves them with a threat that is still good.

I don't even know if this is true, rather than just a product of small netdeck metas. After 4 Delver + 4 Ragavan + 3 Murkfiend, the deck has enough efficient threats that arguably the next creatures should be Brazen Bois before DRCs. Some winning builds have already shifted to this (finally). DRC walks into the same cards UR already loses to, while Borrower shores up those exact weaknesses. Running 0 Bauble is also tech.

From the not-combo opponent's side vs Stiflenought-types: don't be a moron - Fetch around Stifle, make land drops, and don't trade into Daze. Wait for them to make a big dude and kill it, and you literally can't die. This is all the opponent has to do.

This is a lot to ask of newer Legacy opponents on MTGO, skewing results you see in YouTube/Twitch videos. I'd guess most players who entered Legacy during Delver's dominance and missed the older days (where Stifle saw more play in Canadian Thresh, Team America, Nought, etc) don't realize they can just pass 6 turns and play lands and win the game while the opponent skips multiple draw steps.

It takes hundreds of hours on decks with cards like Standstill to realize if the crappy Fetch was just a Vista, your winrate goes up by 5-10% for absolutely free.
One of the best decks to play to clearly link dual lands in opening hand with causing auto-losses [b/c it's a nonbasic] is UW Landstill - this crap was infuriating before Vista, and that was on just 2x Tundra.

Interesting. I played a lot of old UW & UWr Landstill, and played other UWx shells (where you basically always fetch basics and only get a dual if you need to sequence colored costs that cannot be paid any other way). Maybe that's why that manabase bothers me so much.

Even if you don't see the immediate payoff in win%, there's no reason to play 4 Delta in any UR, UW, or UG deck. Maybe 1 Delta as a 9th fetch. But then the 10th fetch is Flooded Strand or Misty Rainforest, not 2nd Delta (avoid needless losses to Surgical and Spyglass when any old blue fetch would do). You'd need even more fetches before considering the 2nd Delta, let alone the 4th...

Perhaps one exception to this is Ragavan decks, where you really want turn 1 Volcanic to represent Ragavan + Daze. If they Waste Volcanic instead of playing land + blocker/removal, that seems losing for them anyway, so you can get a bit greedy even bluffing Daze.

You have no idea how much I wish they actually fixed the format and banned fast Fetchlands & reprinting duals [leaving legacy with things like Evolving Wilds, Mirage Fetches, Fabled Passage, Land Grant]. I would drop Stifle so unbelievably fast for Vision Charm. If you think Scroll of Fate is obnoxious, just wait till it can be protected by phasing. :laugh: Until they do fix the format [which they won't], Stifle is only selected b/c it can hit Fetchlands

Haha, I remember playing Vision Charm in some old Dreadnought deck (>10 years ago when there was no other 2nd enabler) and watching opponents RTFC at the uses for the seemingly-innocuous modes. Good tech.

Given that this is the format though, are 3 Stifles worse than 4?

That T1 Stifle on their fetch makes every subsequent Daze, Wasteland and Stifle drawn much better (at least that logic applied to older Stifle decks like Canadian Thresh). Once opponent is playing from manascrew, you can keep pressuring mana. But if you don't have that early Stifle and they hit smooth mana, each Stifle (and Daze) drawn later has less value as you lose the ability to make them stumble on mana. Cutting down to 2-3 Stifle seems to make each Stifle worse, while running 4 seems to make each better. Seems like a classic 4-of or 0-of card. For late game floods, you already have the plan to convert Stifles into Dreadnought fuel or 2/2s. You can also Stifle a variety of relevant triggers and activations to avoid opponent getting free cards, pitch to Force, or filter past with Brainstorm and surveil.

If you commit to picking a wider range of (non-mana) fights via Dress Downs over aggressively pressuring mana with Stifle, is that a reason to cut down on other mana denial slots? (fewer Daze?)

Fox

08-03-2021, 09:15 PM

Daze is a bad card, but you have to run it b/c Delver exists and runs it too. Not really interested in keeping Stifle at 4x to prop up a card that is bad vs like 3 out of 4 decks.

Much more important to drag Goyf down to ping range or strip deathtouch cantripper trades with that 4th slot as Dress Down. When an EoT Standstill is cracked and I have >7 cards, I prefer to turn off their dudes for their next turn in exchange for discarding. It's fine to dump into play off SnT. Not that it really matters with Scroll, but Saga trigger + Dress Down beats Chalice where Stifle would fail. In general Dress Down is more likely to pick a favorable fight than Stifle [less commitment].

More importantly, we don't need to protect 3x dual lands that would otherwise singlehandedly lose the game when in an opening hand. Since Saga finally freed up another slot for basic, the deck is down to 1x Volc. It's been very hard for the mana to betray, so Stifle insurance can be taken down a bit.

FTW

08-04-2021, 12:19 AM

If you're only playing Daze for Delver and not playing aggressive mana denial in many matchups, do you really need 4 Daze? Why not play fewer?

Clark Kant

08-04-2021, 01:33 AM

Fox

08-04-2021, 06:43 AM

Gotta hard disagree on Thoughtseize being the best reason for black. While it is great vs combo, it is pretty horrific vs Uro and Delver. It is however, better than Daze in a list making sorcery speed dudes and passing. EoT Dress Down -> Thoughtseize then Nought offers some protection where Daze offered nothing.

The best black spells are Cling to Dust, Drown, and in the value department Kaya. The thing black used to offer was castable wraths vs Port/Thalia-types [Toxic Deluge/Dead of Winter are hard to Port off one color pip and only 3cmc]; the advantage here has gone back to white which simply nukes Vial with Prismatic Ending to depower Port. This allows them to cast their more expensive, more color-requiring Wraths. Verdict has always been the most trustworthy wrath, and Ending fixed the whole getting there on the mana.

Whether or not you can trust a card is among the more important things to evaluate in legacy:
-While I trust Seize to protect nakes Noughts more than Daze, I also trust it to be worse vs two tier 1 decks.
-I trust Stifle b/c it can be used regardless of what the opponent is up to.
-I trust Abrupt Decay and Fatal Push to clog up the hand and never be able to help make a Nought.
-I do not trust worse mana than Delver (8x Fetch, 5x U source); particularly when this is the color responsible for mana fixing [Ponder/Brainstorm].
-I do not trust Grist to not flip over Nought or Uro vs Surgical as it uptick.
-I do not trust Dress Down to be castable whenever I want in a deck with 4x Saga.
-I do trust Trophy to kill Karakas, and I trust that this is way more important than Decay's uncounterability as this is an Uro deck without Wasteland.

-Lazav is one of the least trustworthy cards, playing into both Surgical and Karakas.
-While Scroll is highly trustworthy, 4x Saga + 2x trinkets eats a little too much into slots...and this is a deck that is only giving 1x slot to Library with enemy Plow at an all time high.

On cutting Stifle, you're not allowed to in a deck like this @Clark Kant. That is quad laser Saga with heavy slot commitment to doing the slow construct thing - this is not a deck that can afford to abandon making constructs by slamming Dress Down to tutor up a Nought. There will be large chunks of the game where Dress Down will be far more dangerous to this deck's own boardstate; if there is a card to trim here it's actually Dress Down.
---
@FTW I would rather have a card like Soul-Guide or Phyrexian Furnace in the main for Saga over a 4th Daze...but they need to either ban Daze or ban Ragavan before this change. This meta is about one thing sadly: beating Ragavan/Daze. Hopefully wotc wakes up and does something in weeks rather than months.

FTW

08-08-2021, 11:55 PM

The 8/1 legacy challenge list was quite nice looking and looks pretty close to the Sultai Dressnought list in the OP.

Planeswalker (1)
1 Grist, the Hunger Tide

Creature (8)
4 Phyrexian Dreadnought
4 Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath

Sorcery (7)
4 Ponder
3 Thoughtseize

Instant (17)
2 Abrupt Decay
1 Assassin's Trophy
4 Brainstorm
2 Fatal Push
4 Force of Will
4 Stifle

Artifact (2)
1 Nihil Spellbomb
1 Retrofitter Foundry

Enchantment (5)
4 Dress Down
1 Sylvan Library

Land (20)
2 Bayou
1 Forest
1 Island
4 Misty Rainforest
4 Polluted Delta
2 Tropical Island
2 Underground Sea
4 Urza's Saga

Sideboard (15)
2 Brazen Borrower
2 Darkblast
3 Endurance
1 Flusterstorm
3 Force of Vigor
1 Narset, Parter of Veils
1 Pithing Needle
1 Plague Engineer
1 Torpor Orb

If you want to stick with Sultai, you can improve on this. It did OK but barely made top 32. It probably mopped up bad decks then struggled to beat tier 1 decks.

-1 Grist (doesn't fit with the game plan & risks milling the combo piece you needed)
-2 Urza's Saga (too many colorless lands are bad in 3-color deck with UUGG, also risks making Dress Downs bad)

+1 Fatal Push (need answers to T1 Ragavan)
+1 Island (need stable mana)
+1 Swamp (need stable mana)

After those changes, you can get away with
-1 Bayou
+1 Forest

That gives you 2 Island, 2 Forest, 1 Swamp. Now you can make Uro's UUGG with basics, which is a big deal. Cutting 2nd Bayou doesn't cost you black sources due to the +1 Swamp (replaced colorless land). There is some marginal impact on ability to fetch black via 2nd Bayou after the 1st is Wasted, but that is small compared to the stability you gain running more basics overall.

Fox is worried about Thoughtseize due to life loss (UR Delver will punish you for Shocking yourself). However you have 4x Uro to gain back life, so you can manage the life loss as long as you give yourself stable mana to cast Uro. Improving the manabase makes Uro better, which then deals with the life loss problem. You could also replace TS with Inquisition of Kozilek or Duress. Most times you would discard a removal spell or combo piece so the target would cost 0-3 cmc anyway. Inquisition does not hit FoW, but if they 2-for-1 themselves on your creature that's much better than eating Fatal Push, Decay, or Swords. Duress may be better because I can't see many creatures you care about discarding. That slot is to fight combo pieces or answers.

You could also consider swapping some Decays for Assassin's Trophy. Trophy kills Karakas and enemy Sagas. It also answers things like Karn and Jace and Omniscience (which you cannot hit with Inquisition, so you can use your removal spell to cover the vulnerability of your discard spell).

After that I would try to find room for the 2nd Sylvan Library. Seems very good with Uro lifegain and Stiflenought.

Edit: Deck would look something like this

//Lands: 20
4 Misty Rainforest
4 Polluted Delta
2 Tropical Island
2 Underground Sea
1 Bayou
2 Island
2 Forest
1 Swamp
2 Urza's Saga

//Creatures: 8
4 Phyrexian Dreadnought
4 Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath

//Spells: 24
4 Force of Will
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
3 Stifle
3 Duress
3 Fatal Push
3 Assassin's Trophy

//Enchantments: 6
4 Dress Down
2 Sylvan Library

//Artifacts: 2
1 Retrofitter Foundry
1 Nihil Spellbomb

//Sideboard: 15
3 Endurance
1 Cling to Dust
1 Darkblast
1 Plague Engineer
1 Toxic Deluge
1 Pithing Needle
1 Flusterstorm
1 Drown in the Loch
2 Abrupt Decay
2 Veil of Summer

+1 slot

I don't see the point of Borrower in Sultai when you can just remove permanents for GB. Force of Vigor also seems bad with such a low green count, when you can already blow up enchantments and artifacts with Trophy and Decay (the green cards you would be pitching). To deal with artifact-heavy decks the last slot could be Null Rod or Collector Ouphe maybe (since those do not affect Dreadnought or Saga Constructs).

Fox

08-09-2021, 06:43 AM

I'm not really worried about life loss so much as Thoughtseize being terrible vs Ragavan, and especially bad vs Uro. As bad as Thoughtseize is vs Bolt, it is quite good against Stifle variants...ofc none of that matters when you take a Stifle, but had to cast it off a dual land and get Wasteland'd out of the game.

Really important to reiterate that 4x Saga + 4x Dress Down does not work like you want it to. If making constructs, every Dress Down in your hand is a -1 card penalty. You cut Dress Down before Stifle.

The card that should be in every GB deck is Pernicious Deed. Although you can't really fire it off during the construct plan, you can at least develop it to the board.

Trim the cute stuff [Saga to 2x and Retrofitter/Spellbound out]. Run 2x Scroll. Run 2x Deed. Exile exile exile, immediate slashing Ponder slots to move in 2x Cling to Dust; 3c is sketchy af (and colorless lands makes this 3+1c), but at least this allows each color to help find the others. Fatal Push out, maxing out Trophy is better, and excess slots go to Bloodchief's Thirst (b/c Push is an auto-loss to Bant midrange). You're dead to Ragavan anyways, so just wait for the ban. Your best bet there was casting Reclaimer and blocking.

FTW

08-09-2021, 01:32 PM

I'm not really worried about life loss so much as Thoughtseize being terrible vs Ragavan, and especially bad vs Uro.

That's traditional mode of turn 1 Seize to 1-for-1 with a spell and +1 their graveyard size, at the expense of 1 mana and a turn's tempo. Yeah, that's bad vs both those decks. But if you go EOT Dress Down -> untap -> discard their answer -> Dreadnought, it seems significantly better.

vs Bant discarding StP/Prismatic to clear the way for a wincon really doesn't seem like a bad play even if they are playing towards lategame Uro fuel. Removing that white card at the right time is worth much more (tempo over late game development) when you are Loses-to-Plains.dec.

Really important to reiterate that 4x Saga + 4x Dress Down does not work like you want it to. If making constructs, every Dress Down in your hand is a -1 card penalty. You cut Dress Down before Stifle.

Why not cut Sagas instead? 4 Saga in 3-color seems suicidal unless you're doing Ark4n's Ragavan thing. Dress Down makes more sense in the deck.

Exile exile exile, immediate slashing Ponder slots to move in 2x Cling to Dust; 3c is sketchy af (and colorless lands makes this 3+1c), but at least this allows each color to help find the others.

I know you hate Ponder in general, but you also build 2 color decks. For the 3 + 1c manabase with no relevant turn 1 plays, Ponder does a lot to fix mana. 8 fetch + 6 blue + 4 Ponder at least has similar mana stability to 3-color Delver (nonblue lands are taking the colorless/spell slots), while cutting Ponder makes it worse mana than Delver. Cling doesn't color fix when you start on Swamp. Abundant Harvest can fix from Forest.

Fatal Push out, maxing out Trophy is better, and excess slots go to Bloodchief's Thirst (b/c Push is an auto-loss to Bant midrange). You're dead to Ragavan anyways, so just wait for the ban. Your best bet there was casting Reclaimer and blocking.

Is Thirst just for Jace and Narset? Trophy kills those. Push kills Endurance for 1 mana instead of 4 (crack fetch, cycle Dress Down, cycle Uro, stage III Saga, sacrifice Thopter... Revolt is easy-mode here).

Push's instant speed is very relevant vs things like Dashed Ragavan, flash deathtouch Coatl blockers, flash Hullbreacher tricks, Vial decks, Scroll tricks, manlands, and other things. Push fails vs walkers and big things, but you've already got Trophy for that.

Fox

08-10-2021, 05:38 AM

A lot of the issue is opening play problems. The cards say lands 1 and 2 need to find blue and black. You run into issues when something like Thoughtseize is in an opening hand with Forest, so you Fetch the Usea and promptly get hit by Wasteland. This kind of sequence is highly avoidable by proper deck construction...but the problem is Uro's effect on the manabase, the basic Forests tell the deck to play black as the tertiary color [the color you never open with, and don't seek out until 3rd land drop].

If you're using a green cantrip, Abundant Growth is more reliable than Abundant Harvest. It also doesn't tell the opponent exactly what you're playing, and how they can best play against you.

On Endurance, I feel like you let it resolve and let them block b/c you have 6/6 and 12/12. With a deck like this you know you're already losing to Bant midrange and Push isn't going to make this situation better. Much more likely to get cards out of opponents by sending random black card after a PW rather than a cantripping ETB scummer. In the same way, you're more likely to force action out of an opponent by exiling a card from their yard (like Uro, or even as a gain 3 vs Delver) rather than casting Ponder. Same thing again with choosing Trophy over Decay - more likely to incite a trade (also you randomly pick up win % vs local enchantments opponents try to put on lands, i.e. Abundant Growth and Enchantress).

What should be more and more apparent here is that if we change all these cards to things that pick meaningful fights, it really doesn't matter what they are called since they all do the same thing. What use is Ponder's selection vs just digging by drawing raw drawing here? Go the step further and turn off profitable interaction [enemy Wasteland] and again Ponder becomes less necessary. Continue the trend and add 4x Vista. Stop taking unnecessary risks and you don't need Ponder to cover these bets (in a deck with worse access to blue than Delver).

The 4-4-2 split is going to work better with the mana base (4x Bstorm, 4x Harvest, 2x Cling). Also it gives you raw CA options with Cling.

FTW

08-10-2021, 10:03 AM

The opening play is probably a cantrip (Ponder off Island) or hold up uncracked fetch for possible interaction (Stifle, Push). Arguably with 2 Forest in the deck you may want a mix of green and blue cantrips. Abundant Growth could fix some mana issues.

You can dodge some early black demand if you use the 3-of Thoughtseize/Duress as a "Daze" effect (clear way for Dreadnought on turn 3) instead of turn 1 disruption. That will be the more effective mode vs fair decks anyway, since you are not winning by 1-for-1ing their hand. If the opponent is on combo then you can T1 discard off USea and not worry about Wasteland, but the rest of the time you don't need to.

Fetching Swamp -> Island -> Forest isn't the worst thing in the world either. That still lets you do most things the deck wants to do on curve. It won't escape Uro on turn 4, but you can build towards that by the 5th land.

Re Fatal Push on Endurance: yeah that's not a relevant fight to pick. The point is it's not a dead card. Push still has targets against Bant. Killing flash Coatl to protect your attacker is even more relevant. Of course postboard you board out Push vs Bant, but it still does things in game 1. Why play Push if it's being boarded out? Decks other than Bant. Ragavan isn't banned yet. Lackey into Muxus is a thing. You need some 1-mana removal. Instant speed is relevant vs other decks. Spending 1 vs 4 mana to kill a 3-4 cmc creature is relevant vs some decks.

What use is Ponder's selection? Color-fixing and tempo (you dig deeper to get the card you want sooner). Raw drawing is slower and more suited to control lategames. But this deck isn't going to win control lategames. It's not on the Standstill plan. Its only hope is to out-tempo the opponent in the mid-game with a quick protected Dreadnought/Uro kill. Ponder helps set that up, while slower card advantage engines don't.

The 4-4-2 split is going to work better with the mana base (4x Bstorm, 4x Harvest, 2x Cling). Also it gives you raw CA options with Cling.

Cling doesn't help set up those mid-game tempo wins. It's much slower to get CA online and only profits in the phase of the game where this deck isn't going to win anyway. Even worse, Cling doesn't provide CA. If you escape it for +1 card, you get -1 escape for Uro (-1 card). Cling gets better postboard when you know you need GY hate (Uro, Reanimator, Loam, etc) or opponent brings in Surgicals vs your Uro, but preboard it's competing for resources with Uro.

What about a 4-3-3 split of 4x Brainstorm 3x Ponder 3x Harvest?

Fox

08-10-2021, 10:12 AM

The thing about Cling to Dust is that it just kills a large swath of combo by itself. These are mtgo leagues where the only limit on amount of magic is speed of games, which heavily skews leagues towards combo. Know your audience and farm it.

Fox

08-11-2021, 01:18 AM

Another league by BoshnRoll is up, this one on a poorly constructed BUG list. Too many lands for too little late game, and playing really bad Shardless (Goyf full of Strix). Huge liabilities vs Surgical and the classic wtf is Null Rod doing in a list with Scroll of Fate...play Karn and stop losing to Surgical at the same time. The deck farms 2 wins off DDFT which is somewhere around 80% odds to win (even through really bad sorcery speed 2 drop threats), and goes on to lose to three decks which are somewhere between tier 2-2.5 (UW Omni, Food Chain Muxus, and BW Dead Guy Ale).

Bosh is usually pretty good about making correct game actions, but in this league he never quite gets how to use Scroll. Casting Goyf when he could dump it into play uncounterably at instant speed [baiting a Liliana of the Fail +1], failing to Daze to protect Scroll from Thoughtseize, boarding out Scroll vs SnT, and boarding out Scroll vs Cratermaker....such that Cratermaker would always get a clean shot at Dreadnought (whereas waste your Cratermaker on Scroll, response Dreadnought is infinitely better). Lots of misunderstanding the concepts of getting above 6 perms vs annihilator, confusing spot removal, and overwhelming removal going on.

I think a lot of this was tilt with the misconstructed mana base (like 3x Misty in a deck with UG basics levels of misbuilt), and in response he seemed to tunnel on playing crappy Shardless...which doesn't really work with mono 2-drops while chucking Wastelands and Daze time walking lands. Just a really bad situation where Daze/Wasteland is very good vs the deck, and it's own Daze/Wasteland is kinda self-defeating (too much delaying with no late game inevitability).

Tilt seemed to increase when he realized he was trying to play crappy Shardless style without 4 Ponder. The list was really bad, but salvage mode means ripping out Goyf and Lazav as the first 6 cuts every postboard game. Misbuilt as it was, ramping up power on 3cmc while playing more on 1cmc and extending Stifle/Wasteland/Daze's subgame was the only reasonable decision. Also way too many lands to be boarding out Scroll vs not-DDFT; this was the only way to repurpose those lands.

Whoever made that donation deck needs to realize that Goyf + Nought is some Firespouts + EE is the premier removal spell in legacy era nonsense [like 2007 +/- 4 years]. The only thing that ever made Shardless slightly playable was Hymn, and more importantly Shardless trigger couldn't be hit by Counterbalance as it dug for Decay target Counterbalance.

Poorly built deck, but a great example of what happens when you play legacy normally with a not-normal deck. It's a worthwhile exercise in whether or not you can see what cards mean in the overall context of a match.

Tobitzki

08-11-2021, 06:26 AM

The main lesson here is make sure there's a playset of Ponder in your blue Legacy deck.

FTW

08-11-2021, 06:39 AM

Just watched the vid. For reference, this is the deck. (at least there isn't actual Shardless Agent cascade into Dreadnought)

//Creatures: 16
4 Phyrexian Dreadnought
4 Baleful Strix
4 Tarmogoyf
2 Lazav, the Multifarious
2 Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath

//Enablers: 8
4 Stifle
1 Dress Down
3 Scroll of Fate

//Other Spells: 15
3 Force of Will
4 Brainstorm
1 Ponder
1 Fatal Push
4 Daze
2 Abrupt Decay

//Lands: 21
4 Polluted Delta
3 Misty Rainforest
3 Verdant Catacombs
3 Tropical Island
2 Underground Sea
1 Forest
1 Island
4 Wasteland

//Sideboard: 15
1 Force of Will
1 Liliana of the Veil
2 Thoughtseize
2 Plague Engineer
1 Toxic Deluge
1 Liliana's Triumph
2 Surgical Extraction
1 Dress Down
1 Hydroblast
1 Abrupt Decay
1 Null Rod
1 Pithing Needle

Ok, I see what you mean about just cramming in "value" cards from FIRE design / shoving Dreadnought into a Shardless shell. I wouldn't even call this Shardless, because Shardless was built on incremental card advantage (cascade, Hymn to Tourach, Ancestral Vision) and this doesn't even have that other than random Strixes. At least Shardless could attempt to bury the opponent in 2-for-1 value.

Unfortunately that also comes at the expense of interaction. With 3 FoW, 0 Thoughtseize, 2 Decay, 0 Trophy, 1 Push this has very little maindeck interaction with the opponent's deck beyond Daze (which you can't force them to play into). You can play all the Strixes and Goyfs, but can't disrupt much if their deck doesn't lose to Stifle on Thassa. No wonder it struggled vs Tier 2 combo decks and creature swarms.

Also, the card Goblin Lackey (and Ragavan, and some other creatures) exist to punish players for trying to play fair decks with 1x 1cmc removal or 3x removal total. That's why I wouldn't cut Push from the other build either.

Scroll is probably unintuitive to learn. Most players probably see it as a linear Dreadnought enabler. They may not think about all the other instant speed tricks.

Edit: I'm surprised he cut Dreadnoughts so often against unfair decks, keeping in Strix and Lazav. The 1/xs make terrible clocks while at least Dreadnought can close out a game quickly. In the BW match vs Voidwalker shutting off Uro and Lazav, he Brainstorms into Stifle... and gets rid of Nought and Uro. Stifle was kept for disruption reasons, but then he had no board presence beyond 1/xs, after getting rid of the 2 clocks in hand. The deck probably could have performed better in that league, but he was sequencing and boarding into a configuration such that the deck couldn't really win games aside from Goyf beatdown or opponent decking themselves. A lot of turning 1/1s sideways.

Fox

08-11-2021, 08:29 AM

The main lesson here is make sure there's a playset of Ponder in your blue Legacy deck.
And that's not the lesson. This deck had a dearth of 1 cmc plays, crammed itself chock-full of 2 drops, and tried to play Daze. This doesn't end well, especially if you get hit by Wasteland [which he dodged in 4 of 5 matches].

Let's March these turns out with more Ponders and we'll even say opponents have zero Wastelands: turn 1 Ponder, turn 2 Strix...wtf is going on here? Why is Stifle in sorcery speed tapout and jam? Gonna keep the opponent off their 3 or 4th mana are you?

Now assume Wasteland is there: gonna keep predictably throwing duals around and tapping out of Stifle to protect them? Gonna move to more Thoughtseize openers [which by definition have to come off a dual]?

Getting Wasted to oblivion or not, Ponder is not progress. There are fundamental issues that need to be fixed. When actual Shardless plays Ponder and 21x lands +/- 1 land [to say nothing of DRS], they're just kill spells and discard to build towards what used to count as inevitability (Jace, Lilly). That many lands and Ponder without a plan to hang in the late game is a deck build error.

Just adding 4x Ponder just locks in the deck identity and play patterns as inescapable crappy Shardless. Not sure what exactly the plan is when Ice-Fang outclasses Strix...and Goyf not only loses to Uro/Ice-Fang/sometimes Endurance, but is also a straight-up a worse smaller Goyf than Murktide. The main value of Ponder would be to learn just how outclassed you are consistently???
---
@FTW a lot of the reason Shardless became irrelevant is b/c nothing the deck did was good enough without Counterbalance choking the life out of the format. Cascade into Hymn is just crappy Snap-Hymn...and Hymn loses to FIRE on board. The sin of all Shardless players is thinking drawing 3 cards off Ancestral could override drawing into a strategy that was hopelessly obsolete. Without Counterbalance in the format, all that Shardless consists of is Goyf [outclassed], anti-Goyf Strix [outclassed], and Uro [anti-Hymn which completely outclassed Hymn].

Shardless is hardly alone in thinking what their deck did mattered enough to ignore the need to address what is going on in legacy. This mindset is all over R&D and "brews" which never had a good enough path to gain ownership of relevant decisions in a game - and right now Prismatic Ending is really exposing this.

Even UWR Ragavan is not immune to the simple fact that if the [soon to be banned] Ragavan/Daze gambit doesn't pay off...suddenly they actually need stop pretending that what their deck does matters, back off of Saga and bad mana, and stop rewarding Bant midrange for maindecking the nuclear option vs Thassa [Dress Down without any offensive application except Uro vs Leyline or RiP]. Nothing looks worse than a 4x Saga into wipe your board on your turn, draw a card, Ending target Retrofitter (all immune to Daze at 3 mana).

Tobitzki

08-11-2021, 10:06 AM

Just adding 4x Ponder

I'm not saying this is the only change needed to turn this into a flawless deck. I actually agree with many of your points here (bad mana, bad Lazav, bad use of Scroll, etc.). But you seem to confuse Ponder for some kind of Abundant Harvest, and I don't think I should need to explain xerox theory from scratch here. The league consistently showed that you're unnecessarily handicapping yourself into relying on mulligans and topdecks when you cut Ponder from a deck. You might be able to come up with a very peculiar combination of deckbuilding decisions that add up to justify running jank like Spikefield Hazard over what's long established as the 3rd best spell in the format, but your heuristics don't apply willy nilly to every deck running Dreadnought.

For the record, I thought that Cartesian's UR version came closest to a cohesive Tempo Dreadnought build in 2021 (give or take a couple adjustments like Stifle over Pierce).

FTW

08-11-2021, 04:40 PM

It's well established that Ponder both reduces variance and increases velocity in tempo decks. Xerox theory is not new.

Fox is probably right that it falls short in Standstill decks, because those are much closer to pure control than tempo, even when they run 1-mana 12/12s. Ponder does not give late game card advantage or build towards late game inevitability. Ponder gives limited control over decisions to find precise answers or assemble precise pieces. These are things control players want to do. Also Standstill rewards you for higher land counts, which is the antithesis of Xerox theory (using cantrips to reduce land counts to have statistically better random topdecks). Once you're on Standstill + more lands, Ponder doesn't help. You can't fully exploit Xerox theory with that higher land count. Ponder lets you dig frantically but doesn't give many opportunities to use decisions to outplay the opponent or build inevitability. It's variance reduction over decision-opening, where you're still at the mercy of the topdeck cards except you get to see a little bit deeper (better odds). So I'll concede that Ponder is probably wrong for Standstill decks. Fox and others have the experience with Dreadstill and are probably right about this.

But this isn't a Standstill deck. Its cards overlap with Dreadstill, but it uses them differently in a tempo plan. It has to, because it can't hope to build towards the same lategame inevitability. It lacks those tools, but it has some tools to tempo them out in the mid-game.

Is this just a worse tempo deck than Delver, a worse Dreadnought deck than Dreadstill, and a worse Uro deck than Bant? Probably, at least in terms of win%s. But tempo Dressnought is what the OP and these streamers want to play, and it's still good enough to win games. Even if it's a "worse version". So we might as well assume that archetype is a given and then stick to discussing how to make the most of it as a Tier 2 deck.

On a tempo plan with unstable multi-color mana, Ponder helps. To me the bigger mistakes are Strixes, Lazav, and Goyf. Strix and Lazav did nothing in most of those games. 1/xs don't advance the tempo plan. Remove the clog at 2-mana. The other version from the Legacy Challenge looked better, with more focus and more interaction.

Fox

08-15-2021, 05:54 PM

but your heuristics don't apply willy nilly to every deck running Dreadnought.

For the record, I thought that Cartesian's UR version came closest to a cohesive Tempo Dreadnought build in 2021 (give or take a couple adjustments like Stifle over Pierce).

Unfortunately for those "brewing" with Dreadnought, my heuristics do apply. I have thousands more hours on the archetype, and I need only look at your list to instinctively know how it plays and is played against. Rood has even more hours on Dreadnought than I do, we routinely discuss the archetype, and come to the same conclusions. We have two very differing styles, yet we always agree on Ponder's unplayability with Dreadnought.

Cartesian's list you're talking about has fewer one drop threats than UR Dreadstill, it is less likely to deny mana, Daze opponents, and not be Dazed. UR Dreadstill is a better tempo deck than Stiflenought, and it is more cohesive. In addition to being a superior tempo Dreadnought deck, it plays superior aggro and control roles. The only thing Stiflenought decks can do is combo harder...which doesn't count for much vs removal. If heroic cards like Dig Through Time or Underworld Breach aren't choking removal-based magic completely out of the format, the Stiflenought stuff isn't going to work. In simplest of terms: if Lotus Petal -> turbo-Bob isn't well positioned, Stiflenought isn't well positioned.

Here is a video showcasing the lack of relevance of Stiflenought: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQR0oftZm70

In this game you will see Cartesian's new "brew" with bloated cmcs + Daze. He is using Thing in the Ice, which was thoroughly tested and discussed extensively in the Dreadstill forum 5 years ago by myself. The glaring flaws of mass-TITI are already well established, have not changed, and are not worth testing further based on current card pool. Maybe seeing everything I talk about in action will help solidify these concepts.

If you are trying to genuinely compete with Dreadnought, there are very harsh heuristics you must abide by. Does that mean you won't ever get a 5-0 in a combo-boosted online environment when flagrantly ignoring the heuristics? No, you can still get lucky. It's just not solvent in the long term; it will skew towards not paying for itself [winrates under 50%]. Dreadstill is as old as the legacy format; Dreadnought decks do not maintain competitiveness by Ponder-derping out 12/12s.

FTW

08-17-2021, 03:46 PM

Thanks for posting these Fox.

Although you've got thousands of hours of games in, it's hard for viewers to draw conclusions based on only one match (a Loss, due to misplays). Cards can underperform in some situations and overperform in others. It should help when you post the 5-0 league too.

After the Cursed Scroll punt in game 2, why did you still wait to Scroll the Borrower at EOT instead of before combat damage? It wasn't guaranteed to hit (50% chance due to the punt), but when it did you took 3 damage for no reason. That avoidable 3 damage caused you to end up in Bolt range, which then cornered you into that very slow sequence with Mastery of the Unseen just to gain life and play around Bolt. If you didn't take that 3 extra damage, you could have ignored Bolt and just gone for the faster kill. Below 10 life Vs UR, bolting yourself for no reason seems bad.

Then, once the clock was below 2:00 and you knew the server was lagging all match, why keep spamming 1/1 Mainfests instead of shifting to 7/7 Hall beatdown? (after you had enough to gain to 4 life) Was there a strategic reason for that? Something you were playing around by not dumping your mana and turn into the manland? If there was, can you explain the line? Because I don't see what Cartesian's deck could have done to punish you for spending resources on Hall beatdown. Unholy Heat + Bolt for 8 mana?? I get the logic behind lifegain to insulate against Bolt topdecks, but -7ing them to 0 also prevents Bolt topdecks.

Looking at that match, I wonder if Dreadstill sees so little play online partly because of the clock. Paper Magic treats 1-0 and 1-1-1 timeouts favorably, even if your durdly deck used up much more of the clock (e.g. CounterTop). MTGO makes them match losses. That's a significant impact on win % for decks that may go to time, especially with newer pilots. I remember from the old Landstill days that Standstill matches vs fair decks can be notoriously slow and grindy. But all you had to do was win game 1 and not lose game 2. Online you have to actually complete 2 wins on your own clock. When you add that Leagues fire continuously, the whole ecosystem drives players to decks that can complete 2 wins quickly over decks that risk running down the clock.

It's clear why Daze is bad in his deck, especially vs a deck like UW Dreadstill can "land go" towards a winning state (not all decks can do this as effectively).

I can see why Ponder is bad in Dreadstill and Landstill, which are not built around Xerox theory.

It's not yet clear (from that video, at least) that Ponder is bad in Stiflenought against most matchups.

I can see why Ponder would be bad lategame vs fair control. Ponder can't dig for both pieces at once (unless you would have lucked into them anyway). Digging for only Dreadnought doesn't accomplish anything if you don't have Scroll, and vice versa. If you find one piece, do you keep it without knowing if you'll see an enabler later, or do you keep something castable instead? I saw those issues come up in Bosh N Roll's videos vs Bant. He often had to Ponder digging for help, then kept non-Dreadnought cards because he needed something of immediate value instead of gambling on A+B. He regularly had to bury Dreadnoughts, only to find Stifle the next turn. But you can't plan for that. Keeping Dreadnought and then not lucksacking the Stifle would lose the game. Cartesian would have the same issues vs your UW Dreadstill. Ponder won't help him in the lategame and you can pull ahead to win the pseudo-mirror. He also should not need Ponder to mana-fix in UR.

But what about other matchups? Does Ponder add value to the early game or mid game development of Stiflenought vs other decks? Can't tell from your game, even if it's bad vs Dreadstill. And what about these Dressnought-Uro piles? Ponder helps the 3c mana. Ponder helps develop Uro (escape fuel, hit 3 lands and colors on curve). Ponder gives them an early play that they otherwise lack. Ponder doesn't provide card advantage like Standstill does, but Uro and Sylvan fill that role, and Ponder supports that engine. Does Ponder still have the same fails there?

Fox

08-17-2021, 05:25 PM

On the missed Cursed Scroll play, it was a communication issue vs muscle memory saving time by fast clicking. In terms of missing the optimal timing window, we were discussing the face-down implications and the plan for next turn. While we could have gone for the pre-combat salvage line to shock Brazen, it was probably better to advertise interaction in hand paying for Daze [iirc Scroll activation would have left us at 1 mana only].

In terms of why Mastery vs Storm Giants attack, the emphasis was on seeing and pursuing the deterministic lockout. There was time pressure and multi-turn math vs possible Bolt topdecks being run. Neither of us saw the Storm Giants play until after we fixed the life total issue. While it may have won the game, it could just as easily lose to topdeck Pyroblast. Plays like these, which allow opponents top find a relevant, uncompensated trade are not something the deck engages in; at a baseline this play isn't consciously considered. Note that if Mastery hits a creature off the top of deck, we likely have mana to flip that same turn (rather than using the Karn wish Nought through Scroll once FoW is online sequence). In short Mastery is the lower risk, higher reward play.

In Dreadstill and Landstill, we don't expose manlands to removal unless we absolutely have to. We take this to an extreme no other legacy decks do. So for Hall of Storm Giants, you don't really start considering animation until an opponent dips to 4 mana and below.

The clock isn't really an issue in paper when it comes to getting in 3 games. The mtgo UI is a lot slower than paper, but there is still time for 3 games. These leagues we play are geared towards shortcutting the learning curve this deck has, and getting Piproberts up to master level without investing hundreds upon hundreds of hours. A good amount of time is invested in discussing key plays in real time, which if made incorrectly lose the entire game.

In terms of Ponder in a Stifle deck; not really a card I'd want to cast until my 3rd land drop [problematic when Ponder decks can't reliably do this without casting Ponder]. No interest in tapping down for Ponder and killing my Stifle on the opponent's Daze. When this happens I have modified exactly none of my opponent's available play patterns to my benefit.

We will be making another video soon that shows the "combo" of Kroxa + Dress Down and how this is not a real legacy play. This is also true of Uro and Dress Down - horrible play unless opponent discarded a RiP or Leyline to the battlefield. Again a Stiflenought kills itself with Ponder.

FTW

08-17-2021, 09:02 PM

Ah. I didn't realize you were discussing during the game too, not just during the recap. It must be hard to hit all timing windows while discussing strategy during real-time games with a ticking clock. The odd misplay is understandable while guiding someone through the deck.

While we could have gone for the pre-combat salvage line to shock Brazen, it was probably better to advertise interaction in hand paying for Daze [iirc Scroll activation would have left us at 1 mana only]/

Interesting to hear the rationale. Would you still take this line if he hadn't missed the window?

Vs some other decks I see the merits, especially if there's some game-changing business spell they care about protecting.

Vs UR lategame with opponent's hand size at ~1 card, I don't see it. Allowing (and clicking quickly through) Petty Theft on Humility advertised lack of interaction. They also know you can't have Force up (2 cards in hand, 1 known to be white). The edge you get by bluffing other interaction through Daze seems very minor. On the other hand giving UR a free 3 damage at this stage of the game is even better than giving them +2 cards.

Cartesian's deck was already forced into a endgame where all it could do was make vanilla 1/1s or Bolt your dome. If he had Daze, it was probably the 1/1 Manifest attacking you and not still in hand vs 7+ lands. Giving him a free Bolt is better than anything he would likely draw or protect with Daze... In general, it seems like a bad idea to give the Bolt player free Bolts at that stage of the game. That's all the UR player wants to draw anyway.

Maybe I'm missing some deeper Dreadstill strategy here where you want to bluff them out of resolving some dangerous card that could tilt the matchup. But as a UR player I'd be happy to see an opponent take extra damage for that.

While it may have won the game, it could just as easily lose to topdeck Pyroblast.... Note that if Mastery hits a creature off the top of deck, we likely have mana to flip that same turn

Interesting line. But statistically unlikely. You're hoping for a rare topdeck, while playing around a line that depends on an opponent's rare topdeck. The odds favor the reverse happening. (no creature for you & no Pyroblast for them)

In short Mastery is the lower risk, higher reward play.
In Dreadstill and Landstill, we don't expose manlands to removal unless we absolutely have to. We take this to an extreme no other legacy decks do. So for Hall of Storm Giants, you don't really start considering animation until an opponent dips to 4 mana and below.

Ok, interesting. In a vacuum I see where you're coming from. You're playing towards lategame inevitability and want to avoid exposing the few wincons or giving opponent free outs if you have a safer way to get there. But on MTGO the clock is part of the game, not just a technical inconvenience. Stalling at 1-0 is a match loss, even with win on board.

That's why I asked "once the clock was below 2:00". Initially, I see your line of wanting to salvage life and develop board state safely. But as that clock ticks down, is there a point where you reevaluate course? Does the clock factor into your decision process with Dreadstill? Your Mastery line avoids losing but is also very slow to win. On MTGO, not winning = losing (fundamentally different from Paper), making Mastery a very high risk play. It's gambling the 1/1s will get there in time (easy for the opponent to stall a few costing you turns & time) vs forcing the opponent to find the unanswered Pyroblast in a topdeck war. At some time, I would be tempted to bail on the Manifest strategy and switch to faster 7/7 beatdown to beat the clock. You're the expert here... but are there not time factors that cause you to shift gears?

Of course in Paper this is a different story. You can take the slow Mastery line and ride 1-0 to a match win, without risking losses to Pyroblast or Bolts. MTGO is a slightly different game.

In terms of Ponder in a Stifle deck; not really a card I'd want to cast until my 3rd land drop [problematic when Ponder decks can't reliably do this without casting Ponder]. No interest in tapping down for Ponder and killing my Stifle on the opponent's Daze. When this happens I have modified exactly none of my opponent's available play patterns to my benefit.

Ok, that makes sense. You don't tap down sorcery speed on turn 1 to fix development when you can profit by forcing them to respect Stifle just by doing nothing, as long as you can rely on your land drops. For UR Tempo Stiflenought I see what you mean.

But the Uro version can't really exploit early mana denial either way. That is not a deck that can afford to waste early land drops on Daze or Wasteland, so even if you do Stifle a fetch you can't really back that up with further manabase pressure while developing your own plan. In that case, does tapping down for Ponder hurt? Arguably that means this Uro + DressNought thing should be on 0 Daze + 3 Wasteland + 3 Stifle (cut back a bit on mana denial). Then 2-4 Dress Down + 2 Scroll + 1-2 Saga.

Kroxa is a bad card. I'd be interested in seeing the Uro version evaluated. It's getting enough 5-0s, YouTube brew play and Legacy Challenge showing that it appears to have the makings of a decent Tier 2 deck, with some card choices adjusted. VakaNought OP has been strongly in favor of it for a while. If you strongly disagree, that seems like the one to debunk first (before worse ones like Kroxa).

Fox

08-18-2021, 07:19 AM

Interesting to hear the rationale. Would you still take this line if he hadn't missed the window?
With Petty Theft trapped on stack targeting Humility, Cursed Scroll would have been activated b/c there is no way for the face-down manifest to trick the 2 dmg. Missing the window makes it fairly pointless to invest 3 mana to shock a 12/12 or 7/8. Also missing the window meant Cursed Scroll only had a 50% chance of assigning 2 dmg.

Vs UR lategame with opponent's hand size at ~1 card, I don't see it. Allowing (and clicking quickly through) Petty Theft on Humility advertised lack of interaction. They also know you can't have Force up (2 cards in hand, 1 known to be white). The edge you get by bluffing other interaction through Daze seems very minor. On the other hand giving UR a free 3 damage at this stage of the game is even better than giving them +2 cards.

Cartesian's deck was already forced into a endgame where all it could do was make vanilla 1/1s or Bolt your dome. If he had Daze, it was probably the 1/1 Manifest attacking you and not still in hand vs 7+ lands. Giving him a free Bolt is better than anything he would likely draw or protect with Daze... In general, it seems like a bad idea to give the Bolt player free Bolts at that stage of the game. That's all the UR player wants to draw anyway.

Interesting line. But statistically unlikely. You're hoping for a rare topdeck, while playing around a line that depends on an opponent's rare topdeck. The odds favor the reverse happening. (no creature for you & no Pyroblast for them)
The thing is we had interaction w/ Cursed Scroll, but once the Humility window was missed there's nothing stopping that face-down 2/2 from being a Thing in the Ice and the card in their hand from being Stifle. Activate Scroll with Humility in hand and that flips the 0/4 to 7/8 and you lose in combat. The only card we care about in combat is the manifest. If their card in hand is Bolt, maybe we lose...but then again if it's Bolt, the opponent is less likely to go all-in by flipping a manifest into 4 mana open mana [important if that was a face-down 12/12]. If the card is Pyroblast, animating Storm Giant is incorrect. If it is any other card in their list, it has no text.

It isn't about rare topdecks, so much as knowing everything their deck could do and invalidating all of it. After we survive that Humility vs Brazen punt and re-establish Humility, the next goal is to keep Daze, Stifle, creatures, lands, other countermagic, and Pyroblast all dead. The only thing we have to care about is running Lightning Bolts or a specific sequence of Bolt in hand draws Pyroblast [or vice versa] into 2nd Bolt. All other combinations of cards they could have would lose. When an opponent's deck is full of dead cards and you play around the remaining perfect running topdecks, the opponent's skill [the last source of variance] is removed from the game. This is the heart of the problem with Stiflenought w/ Ponder; it is so easy to delete the opposing player as a variable in the game. Delver decks suffer from this problem too, collapse the ceiling and all you're playing against is the floor.

Ok, interesting. In a vacuum I see where you're coming from. You're playing towards lategame inevitability and want to avoid exposing the few wincons or giving opponent free outs if you have a safer way to get there. But on MTGO the clock is part of the game, not just a technical inconvenience. Stalling at 1-0 is a match loss, even with win on board.
These games are about teaching the system, which is more important than a timeout here or there. The emphasis is more on identifying opponent's deck, knowing how it breaks, and pursuing a complete deck kill. After a successful midgame, an opponent should be able to stack their deck and still lose. Playing aggro lines, like animating Storm Giant there, are not lines that should actively be sought out until the deck is played at a master level. Aggro plays correlate very highly with game losses. I imagine there will be a good deal of comedy on twitch if the list is published in the next 5-0 dump; always fun to watch netdeckers fail.

Ok, that makes sense. You don't tap down sorcery speed on turn 1 to fix development when you can profit by forcing them to respect Stifle just by doing nothing, as long as you can rely on your land drops. For UR Tempo Stiflenought I see what you mean.

But the Uro version can't really exploit early mana denial either way. That is not a deck that can afford to waste early land drops on Daze or Wasteland, so even if you do Stifle a fetch you can't really back that up with further manabase pressure while developing your own plan. In that case, does tapping down for Ponder hurt? Arguably that means this Uro + DressNought thing should be on 0 Daze + 3 Wasteland + 3 Stifle (cut back a bit on mana denial). Then 2-4 Dress Down + 2 Scroll + 1-2 Saga.

Kroxa is a bad card. I'd be interested in seeing the Uro version evaluated. It's getting enough 5-0s, YouTube brew play and Legacy Challenge showing that it appears to have the makings of a decent Tier 2 deck, with some card choices adjusted. VakaNought OP has been strongly in favor of it for a while. If you strongly disagree, that seems like the one to debunk first (before worse ones like Kroxa).
This is why Stifle is suspect in a 3c deck. Condense the colors, advance the mana reliably, and then have a plan for the mana (Uro by itself is not that plan...unless your plan is to lose to Surgical). If there is a UG deck, it only has 2x Uro, a handful of GSZ + Reclaimer, higher land counts + Karn and Nissa of the 5/5s + things to Stifle [Dreadnought and Lotus Field]. The problem ofc is removal, but Ice-Fang is okay-ish and Reclaimer can tutor lands. If you want to bolster the tutoring add 1x Saga + 1x Map. Verdict is easy to pitch or cast off a Lotus Field, or maybe you want to have 1x Cavern on Phyrexian for Plague Engi [this one seems way worse]. Either way, not playing >2 Dress Down; I already know how this story ends.

On Kroxa, yes it's horrid...but it's actually the same card as Uro when you "cheat" it into play with Dress Down and get Plow'd. The legacy community keeps telling itself Dress Down is so good and keeps citing this ability to get their 2-for-1 payoff killed in a 1-for-1 trade. If this nonsense didn't spike the price of cards that belong only to Dreadnought, it would merely be comical to see in decks like Bant midrange. The mental gymnastics they do running Torpor Orb analogues is fascinating, and they won't even admit that the only reason they're doing it is that they're scared to death of Thassa enough to sinkhole 2-3 slots of their 75. Always with the "it cleans up Saga tokens" excuse, and I'm just sitting here shaking my head. I feel like I told all of you that Saga is not a trustworthy 4x card, and is only meant for 2x play in Dreadstill as it adds a basic where the third Factory used to reside. Kinda mind-boggling how the legacy community wants to play with our toys, but not actually use them correctly, as they are unwilling to run 12/12s.

FTW

08-20-2021, 10:20 AM

With Petty Theft trapped on stack targeting Humility, Cursed Scroll would have been activated b/c there is no way for the face-down manifest to trick the 2 dmg. Missing the window makes it fairly pointless to invest 3 mana to shock a 12/12 or 7/8. Also missing the window meant Cursed Scroll only had a 50% chance of assigning 2 dmg.

The thing is we had interaction w/ Cursed Scroll, but once the Humility window was missed there's nothing stopping that face-down 2/2 from being a Thing in the Ice and the card in their hand from being Stifle. Activate Scroll with Humility in hand and that flips the 0/4 to 7/8 and you lose in combat. The only card we care about in combat is the manifest. If their card in hand is Bolt, maybe we lose...but then again if it's Bolt, the opponent is less likely to go all-in by flipping a manifest into 4 mana open mana [important if that was a face-down 12/12]. If the card is Pyroblast, animating Storm Giant is incorrect. If it is any other card in their list, it has no text.

Obviously the ideal play was to shock the Manifest with Theft on the stack, killing it with 100% and preventing any lethal flips.

Once that was missed though, what about the timing window to Scroll before damage vs EOT? If he had the 7/8 or 12/12, you had no answer. But if it was a dud (Daze, fetch, etc) then shooting the 3/1 Borrower before damage (+3 life at 50% chance) improves that line by reducing Cartesian's outs in a Bolt + 1/1 endgame.

It sounds like you were focused on trying to salvage the line where the Manifest could be lethal. Perhaps this is part of Dreadstill strategy, trying to invalidate the opponent's deck. A 7/8 or 12/12 there is the biggest threat and you wanted to address it. You could no longer stop it directly, but maybe you could bluff the opponent out of it by leaving 4 mana open.

The thing is, I question if this is an effective bluff. In the UR seat, I don't think it matters whether you had 4 mana open, 1 mana open, or 10 mana open. If Cartesian has lethal there, he probably jams and gambles you don't have an answer. Slowrolling around interaction doesn't help. The game gets worse for him the longer it goes. He's the aggro, you're the control. You replay Humility next turn, making that Manifest useless, and eventually Scroll away all his bodies. This is his best window. It doesn't get better for him. Actually, in his shoes, I would definitely manifest a dead card to bluff a 12/12 hoping the opponent alters their play around it while I'm just trying to push damage and count to 20. So then it comes down to whether you bother with an ineffective bluff vs a play that could actually matter in other lines.

This brings me to a deeper strategy question beyond this game. When Dreadstill makes a mistake or misclick, how do you adapt? Do you still try to play to invalidate everything, even when you no longer can, or do you just gamble they don't have it and try to win the other lines? My instincts are to take the gamble, but perhaps that is just tempo player thinking and not how controlling Dreadstill thinks about the game. Just a question.

On Kroxa, yes it's horrid...but it's actually the same card as Uro when you "cheat" it into play with Dress Down and get Plow'd. The legacy community keeps telling itself Dress Down is so good and keeps citing this ability to get their 2-for-1 payoff killed in a 1-for-1 trade. If this nonsense didn't spike the price of cards that belong only to Dreadnought, it would merely be comical to see in decks like Bant midrange. The mental gymnastics they do running Torpor Orb analogues is fascinating, and they won't even admit that the only reason they're doing it is that they're scared to death of Thassa enough to sinkhole 2-3 slots of their 75. Always with the "it cleans up Saga tokens" excuse, and I'm just sitting here shaking my head. I feel like I told all of you that Saga is not a trustworthy 4x card, and is only meant for 2x play in Dreadstill as it adds a basic where the third Factory used to reside. Kinda mind-boggling how the legacy community wants to play with our toys, but not actually use them correctly, as they are unwilling to run 12/12s.

When running Uro + Dress Down in the same deck, you don't have to actually sequence Dress Down -> Uro just because both cards are in the list. Uro doesn't require an enabler. Most of the time you can just use Uro normally (or Stifle the sacrifice off the extra land drop). Dress Down can be saved for Dreadnought or cycled as a disruptive cantrip (vs Thassa, Constructs, Coatls, SFM, Goblins, etc). Bosh n Roll was good at doing this in his videos. But then if opponent does have grave hate, you do have the option to Dress Down -> Uro around it.

Like you said, blind jamming Dress Down -> Uro is a terrible play walking into removal. But it's not a forced line. It's just a thing you can do if you need to.

Kroxa is different. The payoff is worse. Kroxa is not worth playing on its own, so then the deck is forced into bad "combo Kroxa" lines that walk into Swords.

Captain Hammer

10-23-2021, 08:23 PM

Fundamentally, this is a combo deck. A 12/12 that kills in two turns if it’s protected for 2 turns. It should be built just like infect or Death's Shadow.

The goal should be to protect the combo with either Thoughtseize or Mother of Runes and the blue free counterspells.

4 Thoughtseize/MoM
3 Daze
4 FoW
1 FoN
4 Stifle or in combination with Scroll of Fate
4 Dress Down
4 Dreadnought
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder or Expressive Iteration if splashing red
18 Lands

Is the core.

That leaves 10 flex slots.

I am a fan of the red splash for 4 Ragavan (until its banned), 4 Dragon's Rage Channeler as they are the best cards in legacy at the moment and will draw removal. Plus Ragavan protected for a couple of turns puts you very far ahead.

The 2 remaining slots could go to just about anything. Options include...
Murktide Regent (costs atleast 2 mana and needs 3-4 turns to kill the opponent)
Wasteland
Urza's Saga
Assault Probe
Misdirection
Boros Charm if playing Mother of Runes instead of Thoughtseize
Lightning Bolt

This deck will shine whenever Ragavan gets banned and lowers the power of the format a bit, and decreases removal a bit as well.

Fox

10-23-2021, 10:30 PM

Captain Hammer

10-28-2021, 04:03 AM

The printing of Prismatic Ending would indicate that this is a singularly poor time to go all-in on a sorcery speed, summoning sick creature - particularly if your protection is Daze.

It would however be the correct read to recognize that the card Standstill is quite good at punishing small-minded removal mages. If you want to win with Dreadnought, you play Dreadstill.

How do you figure standstill is any good currently? The flash in threats like Endurance, Ice Fang, Hullbreacher etc and the prevalence of Urza’s Saga make this a singularly poor time to go all-in on Standstill.

Dreadnought is still a not well known and underplayed deck but the rare few occasions that I run into it on MTGO, its always one of the Dressnought lists.

Im having good results with Sultai Dressnought on MTGO having replaced the Urza’s Sagas and Urza’s Saga targets from the list in the OP with Dark Confidants, Endurance, Strix and Borrowers to good effect. Thoughtseize is a must play in Dressnought for the reasons outlined above and Confidant, Endurance and Strix and Uro are all great at drawing removal or taking over the game if not removed. Im pretty regularly running into mirror matchups on MTGO these days.

My list is…

4 Thoughtseize
3 Force of Will
2 Daze
1 Force of Negation

4 Stifle
4 Dress Down

4 Uro, Titan of Nature’s Wrath
3 Phyrexian Dreadnought
3 Dark Confidant
1 Endurance
1 Brazen Borrower
1 Baleful Strix

4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
1 Fatal Push
1 Abrupt Decay
1 Witherbloom Command

4 Wasteland
4 Misty Rainforest
4 Polluted Delta
3 Tropical Island
2 Underground Sea
1 Island

Sideboard
2 Veil of Summer
2 Plague Engineer
2 Surgical Extraction
1 Dauthi Voidwalker
1 Collector Ouphe
1 Endurance
1 Carpet of Flowers
1 Blue Elemental Blast
1 Flusterstorm
1 Fatal Push
1 Force of Vigor
1 Witherbloom Command

FTW

10-28-2021, 05:30 PM

What's your record like on MTGO?

Stiflenought is very prone to 2-for-1s by 1-mana removals like Swords to Plowshares and Fatal Push, where the opponent spent both fewer cards and less mana. Daze fails at defending against that (because their removal costs less). It does not help that any deck splashing white is now running 7x 1-mana removals (Prismatic Ending). It also doesn't help that the most popular 2-card fatty is a 20/20 flying indestructible that can both ambush Dreadnought and just race over the top. Overall, a big chunk of fair decks have an easier time answering Dreadnought than you do making one, so trying to get there with sorcery-speed 12/12s is an uphill battle.

Fox is convinced this is futile and the correct way to play Dreadnought is in a non-linear plan picking efficient fights on multiple fronts towards a favorable endgame instead of just jamming fast 12/12s into answers. Standstill builds towards that endgame in multiple ways. UW Dreadstill has Teferi, Time Raveler to protect against flash tricks. It also has multiple ways to generate new threats under Standstill (and keeps getting new tools to abuse!). Standstill is a difficult card to play well and relies on coherent deck construction. Fox can explain that whole strategy much better.

Is that the ONLY competitive way to play Dreadnought? Fox thinks so, and he does have a ton of Dreadnought and Standstill experience to back that up. Many others have tried Dressnought. It solves the 2-for-1 issue while Dress Down has general utility against many decks. DressNought's seen a lot of YouTube & Twitch play inspiring players to try it in Leagues (meme factor), but I haven't seen that translate to much showing in tournaments/Challenges. It seems good at using fatties to out-tempo bad brews, but can it crack "the winner's meta"? And the VakaNought OP, who once posted all over Reddit and TheSource that this was the next greatest thing, has gone quiet. Did it not win as much as he'd hoped? Are there just not enough players playing it?

One thing in your favor is UR struggles to interact with Dreadnought. As long as the metagame has much larger share of UR than Bant and URW Sagavan then 12/12s have a better chance of getting there.

For Sultai Dressnought, there's been some discussion above about a few points:

1) Daze is suboptimal when you're making 3-mana threats (Uro, Dressnought). You don't really want to pick up lands before you've made a threat, and by the time you've made a threat they can pay for Daze. There might be the odd "gotcha" where they just don't expect an Uro deck to have Daze and play into it, but it's also dead many times. 4th FoW seems much much better than 1st Daze.

2) Card draw is important. Converting life to cards works well with Uro. Sylvan Library seems strong here. Bob's interesting. He draws out removal, making Dreadnought more likely to get there. But the curve also has some painful flips...

3) Playing only CMC-conditioned removal seems risky. There are a lot of things Decay can't hit (Murktide, Karn, that 5/5 equipment, Saga, Field of the Dead, Jace). Assassin's Trophy seems good, even if it works against the mana denial plan. Sudden Edict is also a card.

A 2nd Endurance seems good too.

Fox

10-28-2021, 07:16 PM

How do you figure standstill is any good currently? The flash in threats like Endurance, Ice Fang, Hullbreacher etc and the prevalence of Urza’s Saga make this a singularly poor time to go all-in on Standstill.

Dreadnought is still a not well known and underplayed deck but the rare few occasions that I run into it on MTGO, its always one of the Dressnought lists.

...Thoughtseize is a must play...
The usual suspects in legacy have roughly 20 slots of land, 10 slots of cantrips, around 8 slots of counters, 8 slots of Ending/Plow. They have very little room to surprise Standstill with a wincon. Ragavan is getting banned, and they will pretty much all run to Saga or Uro. Both are soft to hate, and the more widely used they are, the more the Standstill deck benefits from packing hate.

Flash threats are of little concern, particularly out of opponents who routinely tap themselves out of said threats with sorceries.

Here's what happens when you run into a real Dreadnought deck: https://youtu.be/D-RcXkxAVJo. The only chance Stiflenought ever has is lucking out creating a meaningful fight over mana. If that fight doesn't materialize, they just lose b/c Daze is in their deck.

Thoughtseize is real bad in a fair/fairish deck. It is a lifeloss engine card is Shadow...which is a deck that only works in an environment with a falsely elevated amount of combo [legacy leagues].

Captain Hammer

10-29-2021, 07:19 AM

For all the talk about Dreadstill, I couldnt find any Dreadstill lists put up any finishes on mtgtop8 in the past year. Where as a few Dressnought lists have already put up high finishes including some 5-0s even in the past few months.

Thoughtseize is an incredible card. Losing 2 life is literally nothing when your game plan is swinging in with a 12/12 trampler and fear of life loss is a bad reason for a combo deck to avoid the best disruptive card in the format.

Im in the large group of players who are not paying money on mtgo till wizards addresses Ragavan, just curious how many challenges have to fail to fire till they get the message, but if I did play a league on mtgo, this is what I would be playing...

4 Thoughtseize
4 Force of Will
1 Force of Negation
1 Daze

4 Stifle
4 Dress Down

4 Uro, Titan of Nature’s Wrath
3 Phyrexian Dreadnought
3 Dark Confidant
1 Endurance
1 Brazen Borrower
1 Baleful Strix

4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
1 Fatal Push
1 Abrupt Decay
1 Witherbloom Command

4 Wasteland
4 Misty Rainforest
4 Polluted Delta
3 Tropical Island
2 Underground Sea
1 Island

Sideboard
2 Veil of Summer
2 Plague Engineer
2 Surgical Extraction
1 Dauthi Voidwalker
1 Collector Ouphe
1 Endurance
1 Carpet of Flowers
1 Blue Elemental Blast
1 Flusterstorm
1 Fatal Push
1 Force of Vigor
1 Witherbloom Command

Fox

10-29-2021, 08:32 AM

Stiflenought is a simpler/more linear/easier-to-stop and [because of that simplicity/modern-style construction] worse deck. More people play Stiflenought as a meme, and they do so in combo-bloated online leagues [these are the easy matchups], hence why we see more results. More spaghetti you throw at a wall, the more that sticks. This Stiflenought stuff is just tourism, rather than a viable deck which promotes deck specialists.

Here are some finishes for you, including a top8 showcase. In both cases I was coaching the pilots during the events. https://mtgtop8.com/event?e=26429&d=402664&f=LE and https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/4244384#online

Note that the showcase was done on legacy hard mode; Oko, Astro, and DHA were legal. To be fair though, both Lurrus and DHA are total jokes vs Standstill.

FTW

10-29-2021, 04:00 PM

Stiflenought is a simpler/more linear/easier-to-stop and [because of that simplicity/modern-style construction] worse deck. More people play Stiflenought as a meme, and they do so in combo-bloated online leagues [these are the easy matchups], hence why we see more results. More spaghetti you throw at a wall, the more that sticks. This Stiflenought stuff is just tourism, rather than a viable deck which promotes deck specialists.

Here are some finishes for you, including a top8 showcase. In both cases I was coaching the pilots during the events.

Why are there so few Dreadstill pilots out there, aside from you and Rood? Have others given up on the deck due to years of metagame changes? Is there just a lack of competent pilots due to skill threshold? Lack of trendiness not appealing to the netdeckers?

Is this just a phenomenon of most of the old competitive Standstill players (10 years ago, when Standstill was clearly Tier 1) getting old and not playing as much competitive Magic, without enough of a new guard to take over the deck?

Captain Hammer

10-30-2021, 12:35 PM

Im actually of the belief that Ragavan is what's keeping Lurrus banned in legacy and that Lurrus gets unbanned soon after Ragavan gets banned. The day that happens, something similar to the below list imho will be the best deck in the format.

4 Death's Shadow
3 Phyrexian Dreadnought
2 Dragon’s Rage Channeler
1 Dark Confidant

4 Stifle
4 Dress Down

4 Thoughtseize
4 Force of Will
1 Daze
1 Unholy Heat
1 Lightning Bolt
1 Temur’s Battle Rage
1 Expressive Iteration
1 Snuff Out

4 Mishra’s Bauble
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder

4 Polluted Delta
4 Scalding Tarn
2 Bloodstained Mire
2 Watery Grave
1 Underground Sea
1 Blood Crypt
1 Steam Vents
1 Wasteland

Sideboard
1 Lurrus of the Dream Den

My theory is that every fast blue deck absolutely should play atleast 1 Daze and 1 Wasteland minimum, as you will always find a use for the first copy, and doing so forces your opponent to play around a card that you often won't have in your hand.

Fox

10-30-2021, 04:01 PM

@Captain Hammer: I've talked extensively about the problems with Ponder in Standstill shells, with self 2-for-1 strategies, and with Stifle shells; and as bad as Ponder is in these shells, Bauble is far worse. I have also talked extensively about the problems just Shadow decks have in that thread. These issues cannot be ignored outside of overly-represented combo, which exists only in legacy leagues. The numbers in your list don't make sense; 1 Wasteland, 1 Confidant, Battle Rage? Also why is it 3c? Why are you using Ponder to tap out of Stifle, and otherwise make your Stifles vulnerable to enemy Daze? You have to get away from the combat step if you want to win with Dreadnought; too easy to counter otherwise.

On Shadow and Dreadnought: Vito, Thorn of the Dusk Rose is not playable...and the only reason to ever consider Nought and Shadow is a playable Vito passive + Orzhov Charm and Arguel's Blood Fast // Temple of Aclazotz. Notice how it's all synergy all the time, and the wincon is not just combat, it's a secret Diamond Valley cannon. This is the level of synergy you need to achieve to compete with Dreadnought b/c we do not win by playing normal legacy.

@FTW I think the main issue is that you can't play legacy like normal with the card Standstill +/- the Dreadnoughts. It's a different consistency engine with a different playstyle needed to win. While there is a learning curve, the mistake I see over and over again is adding Ponder...and this is a construction error these decks can't recover from. It's the failure to recognize that adding Ponder immediately flipped a substantial amount of matchups to horrendous. The progression once someone loses slots to add Ponder goes something like this:
-Standstill loses ownership of relevant decisions in the mid-late game.
-this leads to overloading on 1-for-1 removal
-spot removal comes at the cost of losing wraths and increased losses to combo (particularly vs DDFT, SnT, Storm, and Post)
-eventually they give up and sabotage their own mana base with too many duals, begin picking up lands with Daze, and losing more land drops to Saga [and ofc by this time they have no answer to enemy Thespian Stage copy their own Saga]
-they move on to another deck.

I think it's very difficult for normal legacy players to go from the model of scrambling to fix greedy colors with Ponder & spam 1-card combos, to instead play by a model of overall mana progression with additive synergy/pressure as each mana level is reached.

FTW

11-01-2021, 01:44 PM

@FTW I think the main issue is that you can't play legacy like normal with the card Standstill +/- the Dreadnoughts. It's a different consistency engine with a different playstyle needed to win. While there is a learning curve, the mistake I see over and over again is adding Ponder...and this is a construction error these decks can't recover from. It's the failure to recognize that adding Ponder immediately flipped a substantial amount of matchups to horrendous. The progression once someone loses slots to add Ponder goes something like this:
-Standstill loses ownership of relevant decisions in the mid-late game.

The progression I've seen more often is from that step to people thinking Standstill underperformed and cutting Standstill.

A good example is UWR "Ragastill". Many builds eventually cut Standstill. But it was never really a Standstill deck, aside from Urza's Saga. I don't think they realize their deck needs a much higher % of non-spell actions than the opponent's to really profit.

I played Landstill in Legacy around 2007-2010ish. Back then it was one of the DTBs so most players either knew how to play it or play around it. I'm not surprised the newer era of Delver and Uro players misplay the deck, but I wonder what happened to all those Standstill players.

Fox

11-04-2021, 06:37 AM

We lost all of our pilots when Counterbalance and SDT were allowed to go to 4x slots each, thanks to slot-saving allowed by 1 mana wrath and Entreat.

After wotc banned the wrong card (SDT), legacy was thrown into it's worst era where everyone had to suffer through years of idiocy defined by Counterbalance vs Hymn/Snapcaster - pick either deck here, and that's where the ex-Standstill pilots went. Both Counterbalance and Hymn spam lose to FIRE, and anyone who played these was forced to chase FIRE and is now on Uro or Ragavan. It is easier/lower-skill to play 1-card combos, and that's why Standstill hasn't recovered its playerbase.

On the UWR Ragavan decks, it all comes from my UR Dreadstill list given to Ark4n with instructions about how adding Ragavan means you can't really play Standstill or Dreadnought. Ark4n got rid of the good manabase (using Ponder to cover it up), went all-in on Saga (easy to counter), and all of this was further covered by Prismatic Ending (which benefits from Ragavan exploiting).

On Ragavan and the card Standstill, this is not a combo. You're just playing yourself into Karakas while playing yourself out of the ability to cast the cards you're stealing. The latter part was also true of Dreadhorde - the card is trash played with Standstill.

Most of legacy can't execute a meaningful gameplan vs Prismatic Ending, and we'll continue to see the ex-Standstill players stay on Uro in Bant colors after the RagaBan. Playing this this greedily with colors forces Ponder use; ensuring no return to Standstill's consistency engine for our lost pilots.

The thing that's so funny about all this is that there a few cards as good as Standstill to be casting against 4x Plow & 4x Ending users...but those who add Standstill will play too few "big effects" like wraths [they will just mimic 4x Plow & 4x Ending] and they will add Ponder...making their deck a crappier version of Ponder + greedy 1-card combos [aka Uro midrange].

You see the same thing in this thread. Ponder + Dreadnought is poor deckbuilding, but you give them Dress Down and they seem to be super enthusiasiastic to pointlessly jam into quad-laser Plow/Ending...

FTW

11-04-2021, 09:24 AM

On the UWR Ragavan decks, it all comes from my UR Dreadstill list given to Ark4n with instructions about how adding Ragavan means you can't really play Standstill or Dreadnought. Ark4n got rid of the good manabase (using Ponder to cover it up), went all-in on Saga (easy to counter), and all of this was further covered by Prismatic Ending (which benefits from Ragavan exploiting).

I mean... UWR Ragavan is a Tier 1 deck until the ban. Those changes work from the sheer power level of those MH2 cards. They just don't work with Standstill. So of course they cut Standstills and it becomes another UWx Xerox pile, except with Ragavan and Saga instead of Uro and Endurance.

The thing that's so funny about all this is that there a few cards as good as Standstill to be casting against 4x Plow & 4x Ending users...but those who add Standstill will play too few "big effects" like wraths [they will just mimic 4x Plow & 4x Ending] and they will add Ponder...making their deck a crappier version of Ponder + greedy 1-card combos [aka Uro midrange].

I saw that in a few videos. They jam Standstill, but then can't cast free cards with Ragavan, can't do much under Standstill, end up discarding to hand size around the same time as opponent (should not happen if built better), both players are on 7 cards, then opponent cracks Standstill before discard phase and they just got a "draw 3 discard 3" with a hand overloaded with 1-for-1s, leaving them roughly at parity with opponent instead of far ahead. A typical Standstill deck would be far ahead by then. Or if they didn't play Standstill, they could have cashed that Ponder earlier for velocity and have the same 1-for-1 answers but with better tempo.

I guess that creates a decision fork where you must either choose Xerox pile or Standstill, and anything in between is a mess.

Captain Hammer

11-05-2021, 05:31 AM

CARTESIAN 5-0ed with a very fresh take on the deck

Creature (12)
4 Dragon's Rage Channeler
4 Phyrexian Dreadnought
4 Sprite Dragon

Sorcery (4)
4 Ponder

Instant (19)
4 Brainstorm
4 Daze
4 Force of Will
4 Lightning Bolt
3 Spell Pierce

Artifact (2)
2 Scroll of Fate

Enchantment (4)
4 Dress Down

Land (19)
3 Island
1 Mountain
4 Polluted Delta
4 Scalding Tarn
4 Volcanic Island
3 Wasteland

Sideboard (15)
2 Abrade
2 Counterbalance
2 Hydroblast
1 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
2 Pyroblast
2 Pyroclasm
2 Surgical Extraction
2 Tormod's Crypt

Very spicy brew. Its cool that its playing Sprite Dragon instead of Ragavan. I suppose Sprite Dragon presents a faster clock.

I also find the lack of Stifle and the use of Scroll of Fate instead very cool. Cool list CARTESIAN.

I think the red builds have been the most successful. I also saw the video where BoshNRoll went 4-1 with the below list…

Creatures (13)
4 Dragon's Rage Channeler
3 Phyrexian Dreadnought
3 Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer
3 Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath

Spells (21)
4 Brainstorm
3 Lightning Bolt
3 Ponder
3 Stifle
1 Abrade
3 Daze
4 Force of Will

Artifacts (3)
3 Mishra's Bauble

Enchantments (4)
4 Dress Down

Lands (19)
4 Scalding Tarn
3 Tropical Island
1 Urza's Saga
4 Volcanic Island
3 Wasteland
4 Wooded Foothills

Sideboard (15)
1 Flusterstorm
1 Hydroblast
1 Pithing Needle
2 Pyroblast
2 Surgical Extraction
2 Veil of Summer
1 Collector Ouphe
2 Pyroclasm
1 Return to Nature
1 Torpor Orb
1 Brazen Borrower

And it fared really well.

I would probably replace a lightning bolt or two with Unholy Heat and cut some Dazes or Ponders or the Abrade to make room for the 4th Ragavan and an Expressive Iteration or two, and maybe an Endurance and maybe even a basic Island by cutting some number of Dazes, Ponders and Abrades.

Its sad that the best version of the deck (the red splash for Ragavan and Dragon’s Rage with Bauble to help enable Delirium and Uro and Urza’s Saga) never got much development or improvement, or even saw any play once it 5-0ed a couple of times.

Captain Hammer

11-24-2021, 02:30 AM

Sundial of the Infinite seems very abusable in Uro Dressnought lists with Endurance.

I’m assuming you can end the turn after letting the card draw trigger of Uro resolve but before the sacrifice trigger resolves in the same way you can use Sundial to prevent Dreadnought from being sacced or prevent an evoked creature from getting sacced after allowing its ETB trigger to resolve.

So Dreadnought, Uro and Endurance/Fury/Solitude all have a very useful interaction with both Dress Down and Sundial.

Sundial also prevents your opponents from casting any spells during your turn.

Can you think of other ways to abuse Sundial that give it extra utility in Temur, Sultai or Bant Dressnought shells?

Another option is to play Sundial and Torpor Orb and/or Stifle alongside Uro and Urza’s Saga since Saga tutors up Dreadnought when you have Orb or Sundial in play, and you can cut Dress Down due to its dissynergy with your own construct tokens.

Fox

11-24-2021, 08:43 AM

Already been there, done that. Just search for "AstroNought" on these forums. The tldr is that Dreadhorde is banned [Bolt is worse], Oko is banned [meta is wider], and Astrolabe is banned [invalidating most of the reason to play Dreadnought with Painter].

The issue with Sundial and Torpor Orb is that they are useless in multiples. Contrast this with Scroll of Fate [deploys redundant copies as 2/2s] and Dress Down which cycles at worst.

There is little point in evoke spamming pitch-elementals into Dress Down; you get both triggers or you get none.

When discussing UG, the issue will always be removal and wraths. Among the best things you can do in these colors is Stifle a Lotus Field, or dump it in off Uro making +2 escape fuel, be able to tutor Lotus Field with Reclaimer (so you only need to use 2 slots on Field), and use Lotus to power out Nissa of the 5/5s...and chuck 5/5 hexproofs at the opponent's face. While it isn't great, you can technically run 2x Verdict b/c of Lotus and otherwise pitch to 6x Force effects. The spot removal angle is covered by Ice-Fang.

Contrast this style of synergy independence of sequence/everything works together versus Sundial/Torpor where thing A must be done before thing B, and piece A + piece A does nothing.

FTW

11-24-2021, 01:37 PM

I don't see the appeal of Dress Down+Endurance. You 3-for-2 yourself just to make a flash 3/4 creature for 1U. If you paid 1GG you would get that same creature with reach, without card disadvantage, and with the graveyard shuffle trigger. The Dress Down "combo" saves you just 1 mana, at the cost of a green card and the ETB trigger. How often is that worth it? Just play Endurance as normal. Most of the time you want its ability or the ambush body with Reach. A 2-mana vanilla 3/4 (badgoyf) is not worth card disadvantage.

The interaction with Sundial of the Infinite seems good. The downside is Sundial is bad in multiples. 1 copy in the 75 is good, but then do you run more? Maybe you run something like 2 Scroll of Fate + 1 Sundial?

Fox

11-24-2021, 01:45 PM

The interaction with Sundial of the Infinite seems good. The downside is Sundial is bad in multiples. 1 copy in the 75 is good, but then do you run more? Maybe you run something like 2 Scroll of Fate + 1 Sundial?

No point to running a random artifact enabler in the main when it could just be a Karn. In terms of keeping opponents from playing on your turn, they already printed Teferi 3cmc...and all of this is already stock in UW Dreadstill. Also Teferi passive + Scroll is overpowered.

FTW

11-24-2021, 07:28 PM

Another option is to play Sundial and Torpor Orb and/or Stifle alongside Uro and Urza’s Saga since Saga tutors up Dreadnought when you have Orb or Sundial in play, and you can cut Dress Down due to its dissynergy with your own construct tokens.

This deck is a good example of why multiple Sundial and Torpor Orb looks bad. So much draw variance and so many dead cards.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pgxAyWLEhCo&t=7s

Captain Hammer

11-26-2021, 11:27 PM

jacetmsst recently 5-0ed with the Bant Dressnought list very similar to the one in the OP…

https://www.mtggoldfish.com/archetype/legacy-stiflenought#paper

4 Phyrexian Dreadnought
4 Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath

4 Stifle
4 Dress Down

4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder

4 Daze
4 Force of Will

4 Swords to Plowshares
3 Prismatic Ending
1 Sylvan Library

4 Wasteland
4 Flooded Strand
4 Misty Rainforest
3 Tropical Island
2 Tundra
1 Snow-Covered Forest
1 Snow-Covered Island
1 Snow-Covered Plains

Very focused, fast and consistent. If any of the mtgo grinders pick up this list, I wouldnt be surprised to see this deck put up a lot of results.

Clark Kant

12-02-2021, 08:21 AM

Sorry I've been MIA. Dealing with a personal thing unrelated to magic and haven’t had much time I can put towards magic.

The above list looks great except that 20 lands is way too many. This deck floods too easy. And Torpor Orbs has gotten even more amazing post MH2. There is no reason not to maindeck atleast 1 Torpor Orb in the current meta.

I would cut the 2nd Tundra and replace it with a Torpor Orb ala..

4 Phyrexian Dreadnought
4 Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath

4 Stifle
4 Dress Down

4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder

4 Daze
4 Force of Will

4 Swords to Plowshares
3 Prismatic Ending
1 Sylvan Library
1 Torpor Orb

4 Wasteland
4 Flooded Strand
4 Misty Rainforest
2 Tropical Island
1 Tundra
1 Snow-Covered Forest
1 Snow-Covered Island
1 Snow-Covered Plains
1 Prismatic Vista

Sideboard:
2 Endurance
2 Veil of Summer
2 Collector Ouphe
2 Torpor Orb
1 Engineered Explosives
1 Carpet of Flowers
1 Flusterstorm
1 Ethersworn Canonist
1 Meddling Mage
1 Serenity
1 Force of Negation

Fox

12-02-2021, 08:57 AM

Guess you've never seen opponents brutalized by Scroll. It looks pretty terrible to dump 3 mana into Ending at sorcery speed to kill a Scroll of Fate just to have Scroll tapped in response, dropping in a 12/12 they just lost their kill spell and 3 mana for.

You already know your opponent's line - break it.

Clark Kant

12-02-2021, 09:01 AM

Scroll of Fate is indeed an amazing card.

If I had one more open slot, then most likely either Scroll of Fate, Life from the Loam or Flusterstorm would get that slot. Also would consider Karakas, Teferi3, Brazen Borrower, Ice Fang or Endurance but I am opting to play 19 lands and have the curve mostly top out at 2cc cards.

However between the 9 fetchlands and 4 wastelands, I am strongly considering replacing the 1 of Sylvan Library with a 1 of Life from the Loam.

The sideboard above is by no means final. Other sideboard cards to consider depending on your specific meta include…
Karakas
Life from the Loam
Gut Shot
Hydroblast
Run Afoul
Ice Fang Coatl
Mystical Dispute

I am currently considering cutting the Engineered Explosives and a Veil of Summer for two of the cards above. Veil is mostly there against combo decks like Doomsday which this deck already steam rolls.

FTW

12-11-2021, 10:31 AM

If you replace Sylvan with Life from the Loam then Scroll of Fate gets even more busted. For that build, should have 2 Scrolls main before any copies of Torpor Orb. Move Orb to SB for the matches where it works as hate too.

The only risk with Loam is opponent will already bring in GY hate for Uro. Loam walks into the same hate. Better to have Loam maindeck and then board it out, instead of Loam in SB.

Captain Hammer

01-13-2022, 12:02 PM

Have really been loving adding Dressnought to UR Delver…

4 Stifle
4 Dress Down
4 Wasteland
3 Dreadnought
4 Ragavan
4 DRC
4 Murktide
2 Bauble
4 Brainstorm
4 Expressive
4 FoW
3 Daze
2 Spikefield
14 Fetch/Blue Lands

Feels bad adding a 12/12 trampler to an already broken deck.

Fox

01-13-2022, 12:14 PM

If you have a Ragavan in play that can't attack, you could also have a *full* hand of 3 other Ragavan and Dreadnoughts. These cards are not played together for this reason. Can't create decks with full hands that can't do anything - this source of variance is eliminated by responsible deckbuilding.

It's similar to how DHA was never played with Standstill, b/c the mechanics don't play well together.

Captain Hammer

01-13-2022, 12:25 PM

I suppose they could be played as 3 ofs. DRC helps us with filtering draws too. Its similar to Brainstorm but in Red (comparable to Spyro in Modern) that allows us to avoid dead cards.

Fox

01-13-2022, 02:25 PM

I suppose they could be played as 3 ofs. DRC helps us with filtering draws too. Its similar to Brainstorm but in Red (comparable to Spyro in Modern) that allows us to avoid dead cards.

Yes DRC is an ideal card for UR Dreadstill, where we play 2x Saga and have option for 1-card delirium (enchant land finds artifact creature). You also get to go DRC into Standstill -> trigger to mill towards land drop #3...and unlike Delver, it is better with enchantments and does not suffer from diminishing returns if played at 2 and 3 copies (it's good all game).

What your deck has is the Lotus Petal exploit which breaks 1 land per turn rule: Ragavan. It is this rule break that allows Expressive Iteration to find value [put land in exile and have land drop open] a full turn sooner than it should. This rule break is the key to the whole Daze and Wasteland without going down on mana exploit as well. Given that the best combo deck in legacy is Volc -> Ragavan -> Daze, why are you only on 3 Daze...and what exactly is Dreadnought doing here? Where is any interaction, particularly non-combat - where is Bolt? At some point you have to be able to not autolose to E-Bridge.

Why are you playing normal legacy with improperly supported 12/12s? Why are you presenting them at sorcery speed into the Prismatic Ending & Plow meta? While it's fun to randomly dumpster DDFT simply by following Dreadnought's gameplan, it's not like UR Delver isn't already one of DDFT's worst matchups.

FTW

01-15-2022, 03:07 PM

Why Bauble? Bauble is such a bad card. UR Delver runs it only to increase the number of card types available for Delirium. If you have Phyrexian Dreadnought and Dress Down, you already have self-sacrificing Artifacts and Enchantments.

Captain Hammer

01-25-2022, 12:15 PM

Fox

01-25-2022, 04:39 PM

Yeah, youre right. Ragavan was just too damn good not to splash for, but with it gone, red is no longer a must play. Bauble and DRC arent good enough.

Post Ragavan ban, I think the optimal Dressnought threat base is…
4 Dreadnought
3 Uro
Maybe 2-3 Murktide

Each of those threats need different tools to answer effectively.

Playing 10+ threats each capable of singlehandedly winning the game if left unchecked for a single turn or two seems really solid paired with free counters and the disruption that Dress Down, Stifle and Wasteland provide.

Uro and Dreadnought already synergize so well together so I see those as staples and the natural threats to build any list around.

That Ragavan ban saved you from a horrible deckbuidling error of Nought with Ragavan. That anti-combo is up there with DHA with Standstill.

You do not have adequate GY to play Murktide and Uro in the same deck. This theory doesn't need to be tested to understand.

Your way forward is:
1- playing worse Uro midrange, with bad matchup vs actual Uro midrange
2- playing UR with DRC that you definitely are not dropping and Murktide...even though Dreadstill is the better call.

FTW

01-26-2022, 09:16 AM

DRC still seems great. Why cut? You don't automatically need Bauble with DRC. Delver runs them together to get card type Artifact. Your deck already has card types Artifact and Enchantment, so DRC does not need Bauble.

Uro + Murktide is a nonbo. Blue decks usually pick between one of the two, not both.

Clark Kant

03-25-2022, 02:39 PM

This deck has been a lot better since the Ragavan ban.

Stifle has gotten so much better without that stupid monkey running around.

I'm having the best luck with the below list...

3 Phyrexian Dreadnought
4 Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath
4 Ponder
3 Prismatic Ending
3 Daze
4 Force of Will
3 Swords to Plowshares
4 Stifle
4 Flooded Strand
4 Dress Down
4 Misty Rainforest
1 Snow-Covered Forest
1 Snow-Covered Island
3 Tropical Island
1 Tundra
4 Wasteland
4 Brainstorm
4 Esper Sentinel
1 Eiganjo, Seat of the Empire
1 Boseiju, Who Endures

Sideboard:
1 Collector Ouphe
1 Counterbalance
2 Meddling Mage
1 Narset, Parter of Veils
1 Swords to Plowshares
1 Soul-Guide Lantern
3 Torpor Orb
2 Veil of Summer
2 Flusterstorm
1 Blue Elemental Blast

I'm not sure about the channel lands (brand new additions) and the sideboard is always changing but the rest of the list is locked in. Esper Sentinel has been great at drawing removal clearing the way for the beaters.

Fox

03-25-2022, 04:42 PM

Clark Kant

03-27-2022, 01:30 AM

You are not allowed to play 1cmc interaction on the least secure color. You're going to murder yourself on enemy Wasteland by pathologically fetching out white duals, especially in the early game. Huge color identity crisis, and all 8 Fetchlandust be pointed at a basic Plains, full stop.

You are literally trying to resolve 10 white spells off a single Tundra and a nonbasic white channel land.

Fair point. Havent run into that yet but I can see how my recent cut of the basic plains to try Eiganjo might be a mistake.

Usually its this deck thats wasting opponents manabases, many legacy decks dont even bother with basic lands.

FourDogsinaHorseSuit

04-03-2022, 08:40 AM

Is this the Dreadnought mega thread?
I tried this last week and went 3-1, I'm a little hindered by card availability, so shocks over duals and neither of the two murktides I wanted

4 phyrexian Dreadnought
3 uro
4 endurance
2 wavesifter

4 stifle
4 brainstorm
4 ponder
3 daze
4 force of will
2 force of negation
1 lazotep plating

4 dress down

1 pithing needle
1 chromatic star

4 breeding pool
3 wasteland
4 urzas saga
4 blue fetches
4 islands

//Side
4 leyline of the Void
4 leyline of sanctity
2 gilded Drake
2 shark typhoon
1 pithing needle
1 brittle effigy
1 commandeer

Fox

04-06-2022, 05:51 PM

PirateKing

04-07-2022, 10:30 AM

https://youtu.be/pEHb1dVe98w

Another video to reinforce this concept of StifleNought's problems, and how much of the blame falls on Ponder and "protecting" sorcery speed deployments with Daze. We also see why Dreadnought is played exclusively/near exclusively on 2c.

I kind of get what your arguments are through tangential means, but watching the video of a cherry picked replay of a match with a opponent making numerous suboptimal plays doesn't really back up the piling on of evidence against the Grixis list your tone conveys. At the end even when asked if it's so trash, why did it top8 and get second place in short order and you just seem to shrug it off as getting lucky. You go on to concede, okay sure maybe it has a good matchup against UR Delver; then failing to acknowledge that 3/8 of the top8 were UR Delver. The recent showcase was 5/8 UR Delver.

If the argument is framed which is the better match versus each other, UW or UBR Stiflenaught, that seems a different discussion of which is better versus the meta.

I don't wholly disagree with all of your points made, but the record so far doesn't support the absolutist hypothesis you present.

FTW

04-07-2022, 05:09 PM

If the argument is framed which is the better match versus each other, UW or UBR Stiflenaught, that seems a different discussion of which is better versus the meta.

Strong point here. Fox's videos show why Stiflenought is inferior to Dreadstill in the pseudo-mirror, how Dreadstill will eventually win on mana and cards, but they don't convincingly settle which is better against the meta. Beating UR Delver is big. Fox may be right - that Dreadstill is better overall and favored in this meta - but the videos don't show it.

2nd place Challenge List: https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/mtgo-standings/legacy-challenge-2022-04-03#ajdadd_nd_place
Top 8 is 3 UR Delvers, Infect, Depths, Elves, and Red Prison. The rest of the event has a lot of combo and Delver. Are those good matches for Stiflenought? Few Swords to Plowshares decks.

Fox

04-07-2022, 06:17 PM

I kind of get what your arguments are through tangential means, but watching the video of a cherry picked replay of a match with a opponent making numerous suboptimal plays doesn't really back up the piling on of evidence against the Grixis list your tone conveys. At the end even when asked if it's so trash, why did it top8 and get second place in short order and you just seem to shrug it off as getting lucky. You go on to concede, okay sure maybe it has a good matchup against UR Delver; then failing to acknowledge that 3/8 of the top8 were UR Delver. The recent showcase was 5/8 UR Delver.

If the argument is framed which is the better match versus each other, UW or UBR Stiflenaught, that seems a different discussion of which is better versus the meta.

I don't wholly disagree with all of your points made, but the record so far doesn't support the absolutist hypothesis you present.

The match is not cherry picked, it is however an exceedingly rare mirror. On the channel you can find the other two matches where StifleNought gets dismantled. It's a predictable matchup where they can only win by my deck having mana issues, which is unlikely to happen by the odds. Consider also that the StifleNought manabase is dual land infested, making them much more likely to lose the Waste/Stifle subgame.

The generic approach to playing against StifleNought is simple b/c the only real risk is dying via combat from summoning sick dudes. About the only decks in legacy that can't hang with StifleNought are Post combo, GY & spell combo, daze-using combo, incompetent Depths-users (aggro 20/20 into lose the game to interaction followed by predictable death to own mana), and Delver. There are some super high variance coin flips vs Elves and Chalice. Horrid matchups vs DnT, Uro midrange, UWR, Grixis, and basically anything fair (having Ending/Plow or comparable removal focus). StifleNought carries with it a very poor matchup vs the majority of meta deck archetypes. The one thing StifleNought has going for it is that positive Delver matchup while the rest of the inbred online legacy scene apparently can't figure out how to not die to MurkGoyf. StifleNought is a deck with a low ceiling, lacking the tools to turn skill into win %...the only way you do well with it is luck, particularly in pairings. You have to entirely avoid Plow/Ending or get even luckier and hit Plow/Ending in a match where they manage to somehow die to the mana denial.

In terms of this specific opponent's play, they demonstrated a clear lack of understanding of both strategy and tactics. Their performance gets a snapshot rating of incompetent [lowest] for this match. Doesn't much matter though, they were still going to lose b/c the only wincon they could pursue is combat damage. If I sit back and hit land drops, the odds dictate they aren't likely to win. The gameplan has to be more complex than "I hope I only roll combo and Delver" to compete in this format.

Edit: @FTW it's pretty hard to lose to UR Delver on Dreadstill. We don't have a lot of players for stats but Rood is running 12-1 last I checked and Pip is 3-1. We were running around 75-80%% winrate vs Oko/DRC Delver, and were still winning over 50% vs Ragavan Delver. Delver is the classic easy matchup for Dreadstill, with the exception of legalized cheating with Probe/Therapy by Grixis Delver. So you have easily beats Delver + no card I'd rather cast into Plow/Ending than Standstill. Dreadstill is superior to StifleNought in cost, construction, position, longevity, and in the mirror. The only thing StifleNought has going for it is linear play patterns [low skill requirement] and being a reasonable response to overwhelming combo + absent removal eras (DTT Omni, Valki Cannon, Breach).

PirateKing

04-07-2022, 07:44 PM

FTW

04-07-2022, 08:21 PM

About the only decks in legacy that can't hang with StifleNought are Post combo, GY & spell combo, daze-using combo, incompetent Depths-users (aggro 20/20 into lose the game to interaction followed by predictable death to own mana), and Delver. There are some super high variance coin flips vs Elves and Chalice. Horrid matchups vs DnT, Uro midrange, UWR, Grixis, and basically anything fair (having Ending/Plow or comparable removal focus). StifleNought carries with it a very poor matchup vs the majority of meta deck archetypes. The one thing StifleNought has going for it is that positive Delver matchup while the rest of the inbred online legacy scene apparently can't figure out how to not die to MurkGoyf. StifleNought is a deck with a low ceiling, lacking the tools to turn skill into win %...the only way you do well with it is luck, particularly in pairings. You have to entirely avoid Plow/Ending or get even luckier and hit Plow/Ending in a match where they manage to somehow die to the mana denial.

Well that really explains the 2nd place finish. The field was full of UR Delver and combo, with very little fair midrange and fair removal. Fast Stiflenought seems favorable against combo, while there were very few decks able to punish the 2-for-1. It is a linear plan that could fall apart easily... but no one there is metagaming against Stiflenought, they're focused on bigger fish.

The Grixis player probably also benefited from opponents misjudging the deck. The opening play patterns don't make it obvious you're facing Stiflenought. Piproberts missed it in G1. It could be Delver, combo, Grixis Phoenix, or a 4c Iteration deck. That could lead a Depths player to walk into mana denial (because TurboLage is very strong against other fair blue) or not save answers for Dreadnought.

Fox

04-08-2022, 03:47 PM

My question to you was, is there a more than dismissive explantation you can give for the running high finishes of the Grixis list? While no doubt variance plays a role in all finishes, it doesn't support the results singularly.

There is a card in Delver decks whose true name is Expressive Shiteration. This card is garbage against enemy Wasteland/Stifle/Daze. Add Shame Island (Sanctuary) on top of that bad card, and add that Shame Island keeps basic Mountain out of Delver lists. It's pretty easy to see how effortless it is for the Grixis StifleNought to farm Delver.

So why is there so much of this meme UR Delver deck to farm is the real question. Like I'm willing to give the format a pass when when they say something like "I can't beat Thassa trigger ever" even though it's a hilariously easy win for Dreadnought decks...but when we're talking about a slightly power crept Tarmogoyf (Murktide), I have a lot less respect for people saying "UR Delver is overpowered." Just zero sympathy over here. Figure it out, it's just a Goyf...but like sure, I'm down to ban the problem: Daze.

The Delver spam in this challenge just isn't representative. You can't build like StifleNought like this and not get called on it by removal spammers. The reason I'm dismissive is that almost all I see in non-league legacy is removal-based. StifleNought is like $4k in duals to end up with a knowably uncompetitive endpoint as you get farmed by Plow/Ending-types without any hope of a different outcome.
---
@FTW on metagaming vs bigger fish it can't be that hard to figure out how to play Plow & Ending to massacre Delver.

On opponent's getting tricked, every single land played in legacy should be weighed against enemy Stifle, turbo Moon, and Wasteland. If people are playing legacy correctly, they shouldn't be getting "got" by StifleNought and their Daze.

The problem with farming incompetence is that it doesn't represent real win % share. Just watch the approach in the replays where Pip and I are just sitting back playing lands. It's not particularly hard to emulate that strategy.

FourDogsinaHorseSuit

04-08-2022, 04:35 PM

Wait hold up, there were 9 STP decks in that top 32 and only 8 delver decks.

Fox

04-08-2022, 05:31 PM

Wait hold up, there were 9 STP decks in that top 32 and only 8 delver decks.

Not sure how many were in the Saturday event, but assuming it was a low round event cutting to top 8, it matters that there is so few plow in the win and in range (#9-16). Only 2 Plow decks in range of pairing in the last round of Swiss. UWR Delver doesnt count b/c it's too easy to punish by ruining their mana, and they were on yolo-solo Plow (no Ending).

The main point though is that you know the only wincon is making a sorcery speed dude with summoning sickness and passing the turn (such that Daze can't protect the dude). This is a horrifically bad scenario where luck is the only way you're winning vs Plow/Ending spammers. Skill doesn't matter when you're playing that hard into known resistance.

FourDogsinaHorseSuit

04-08-2022, 09:36 PM

Not sure how many were in the Saturday event, but assuming it was a low round event cutting to top 8, it matters that there is so few plow in the win and in range (#9-16). Only 2 Plow decks in range of pairing in the last round of Swiss. UWR Delver doesnt count b/c it's too easy to punish by ruining their mana, and they were on yolo-solo Plow (no Ending).

The main point though is that you know the only wincon is making a sorcery speed dude with summoning sickness and passing the turn (such that Daze can't protect the dude). This is a horrifically bad scenario where luck is the only way you're winning vs Plow/Ending spammers. Skill doesn't matter when you're playing that hard into known resistance.

Only two? Are we looking at the same results. There were 3 decks in that range (with 1 in the top 8, and the other five past the cutoff)
To be fair, one of those swords decks WAS a delver deck.
https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/mtgo-standings/legacy-challenge-2022-04-03#ajdadd_nd_place
But also they're on scroll of fate.

Fox

04-08-2022, 10:13 PM

You can see the round progression in the top 8, showing StifleNought dodging the Plow deck. Only matches it faced there were UR Delver -> Infect -> UR Delver.

As far as Depths goes, while they have Plow and an amount of Ending, they are trying to make a Marit Lage (effectively a StifleNought) vs actual Dreadnought. It's pretty easy to blow them out, and on the defensive side they're quite low on removals (this one played 4x Plow, 1x Ending, 0x Boseju). Their creature suite is also a joke vs Bolt + Dress Down [Reclaimer and KotR are x/2s]. It's like playing against Maverick, except way easier to beat.

Fox

04-20-2022, 03:11 AM

I'm comfortable conceding the point that the UW Dreadnaught list beats the Grixis Dreadnaught list. One plays Plows and the other plays Bolts. In a room full of 12/12s it's not really a contest. But I've yet to be in that room. I'm not entirely confidant such a room exists. As you said, it's a rare mirror.

https://youtu.be/giT-ahFDKSM&t=38m00s
About 38 minutes in. This is Rood's style (Daze) of UW Dreadstill in a meme setup (Saga/Retro/Mutavault/Stubborn Denial). Again, not close. StifleNought can't Ponder its way out of the fact that it cannot protect its sorcery speed threats with Daze.

Now unlike my build which is just going to shut down a StifleNought deck by every metric (damage, mana denial, and mill), Rood's style (even in a meme setup) is going to do everything StifleNought deck can, just better. Note also that Rood was playing fast and loose with Fetching, while the opponent routinely took themselves off Stifle (when generating trades over mana denial is StifleNought's only possible wincon).

The next match is worse StifleNought (Death's Shadow). The same issues that plague StifleNought are seen here as well.

Edit: fixed link, I think. let me know if it's broken.

FourDogsinaHorseSuit

04-20-2022, 11:00 AM

The first 58 seconds of that are all Dragon Ball Z. Timecode your links.

Fox

04-20-2022, 12:03 PM

The first 58 seconds of that are all Dragon Ball Z. Timecode your links.

I was on mobile, so not sure how to do that. As above, go to 38min mark.

FourDogsinaHorseSuit

04-20-2022, 01:46 PM

I was on mobile, so not sure how to do that. As above, go to 38min mark.

append &t=XmYs to any youtube link to make it start anywhere you wish.

FTW

04-20-2022, 04:12 PM

https://youtu.be/giT-ahFDKSM
About 38 minutes in. This is Rood's style (Daze) of UW Dreadstill in a meme setup (Saga/Retro/Mutavault/Stubborn Denial). Again, not close. StifleNought can't Ponder its way out of the fact that it cannot protect its sorcery speed threats with Daze.

The Saga/Retro/Muta meme works surprisingly well. He gets even more abuse out of running Saga with Standstill.

Expressive Iteration looks really bad in UR Stiflenought, especially vs Dreadstill. I kept wondering what the other player was doing with 5+ cards in hand without Forcing anything and how Rood wasn't losing. Opponent must have been stuck on multiple dead draws like Iterations, Dreadnoughts, Daze.

Vision Charm is cute for dodging sorcery speed interaction on Dreadnought, but why isn't Rood on Stifle? Stifle seems good with the Daze+Force Spike plan and the 0 Ponder plan.

Fox

04-20-2022, 05:53 PM

The Saga/Retro/Muta meme works surprisingly well. He gets even more abuse out of running Saga with Standstill.

Expressive Iteration looks really bad in UR Stiflenought, especially vs Dreadstill. I kept wondering what the other player was doing with 5+ cards in hand without Forcing anything and how Rood wasn't losing. Opponent must have been stuck on multiple dead draws like Iterations, Dreadnoughts, Daze.

Vision Charm is cute for dodging sorcery speed interaction on Dreadnought, but why isn't Rood on Stifle? Stifle seems good with the Daze+Force Spike plan and the 0 Ponder plan.

The thing that's funny is that Delver players haven't quite realized that having quad-laser Iteration is a bad idea; it just devours hand space while waiting for turn 5-6 (on average) to roll around where they have 2 mana on board and an open land drop...yet somehow the StifleNought group figured out this ain't no 4-of. More hilarious still, Delver is doubling down on that bad idea with Mystic Sanctuary. This is just the absolute perfect deckbuilding call if you want to get consistently destroyed by enemy Stifle, Daze, and Wasteland lol.

What you're seeing @FTW is what StifleNought is. You just play lands and you kill spell their dudes after untapping. It's not like they have something else going on. Given enough time however, yes you need to have lifegain or face direct life total pressure from Bolt and Kroxa despite insta-killing every threat they deploy. Just don't let them pick fights with mana denial and you basically can't lose. This is why it's so shocking that the legacy format online is allowing something this one-dimensional walk into top 8s. Like these StifleNought decks have to be hitting so much back to back Delver. DDFT is another basically unlosable matchup...but StifleNought should be well below 25% winrate vs anything removal-based.

On Vision Charm vs Stifle: Rood's deckbuilding style is way different than what I do. You're gonna see a lot more Daze and a lot more extreme choices (huge maindeck and SB slot commitments to narrower effects). The build in the video is a troll build where it's like "surely the legacy format hasn't gotten so crippled by their fear of Murktide and Kappa that they can't actually beat MutaThopter meme'ing, right? Surely the legacy format isn't going to let me get away with murdering enemy Saga with Vision Charm and trolling DDFT and High Tide with the other modes, right? Surely the legacy format isn't going to let me get away with playing the lost land drops of 4x Daze and 4x Saga with 8x slots of colorless lands, right?"

The Retro/Muta/Saga stuff is there for the joke value. The punchline is the last round where UR Delver gets rolled - and let's be clear, it took Rood meme'ing with Doomskar, instead of Verdict, for Delver to avoid getting 0-2'd. VoDs like this go out to everyone in legacy complaining about UR Delver; because uhh...we're over here on DreadStill blatantly worsening our deck for the lulz when we get bored, and we are genuinely struggling to lose to Delver.

Rood has been trialing Vision Charm and StubbyD within his Daze builds for competitive viability however. I have doubts about how viable this is outside of combo-boosted leagues during a Delver-rich pushover era. Outside of that environment I disfavor deckbuilding myself into a loss to Chalice (especially when Emry will come down and just recur the Chalice I had to Force), and I'm not thrilled about no 2/2 split of Scroll/Dress Down versus Plow/Ending: the Gathering. Daze has a polarizing influence on deckbuilding, and I don't play Daze with Tundra, so I'd imagine Rood is seeing more win % from Vision Charm, otherwise it would be Stifle. Vision Charm is as powerful as it is polarized; if wotc attempted a real fix to legacy by banning Fetchlands and reprinting Duals, I'd be overjoyed to drop Stifle for Vision Charm in a fraction of a millisecond. Vision Charm's ceiling is somewhere between very high and infinite (in the sense that it can only keep getting better over time, e.g. it one-shots Saga, it insta-RiPs DDFT and Tide, it can combine with Ashiok to attack the library, etc...), but Stifle's floor as a Sinkhole you can goldfish with generally has more reliability. Stifle also has it's own brand of fun, like hitting Yorion's single return to play trigger and "how about we don't bring that Kaldra bullcrap back into play off Flickerwisp's EoT trigger."

Seven_six

04-26-2022, 01:26 PM

Soooo what is the "ideal" list right now then?

Clark Kant

04-28-2022, 10:20 AM

There is no one ideal list as Bant/Sultai/Temur Dressnought lists as well as Grixis Deathnought lists are all consistently 5-0ing. It's personal preference based on whether you prefer green for Uro or black for Thoughtseize and Death's Shadow.

I personally love how clean the Bant shell is...

4 Dress Down
4 Ponder
4 Prismatic Ending
4 Force of Will
4 Swords to Plowshares
4 Stifle
4 Brainstorm
4 Daze
4 Phyrexian Dreadnought
4 Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath
1 [IA] Snow-Covered Island
1 [IA] Snow-Covered Plains
1 [IA] Snow-Covered Forest
2 [A] Tundra
3 [A] Tropical Island
4 [ZEN] Misty Rainforest
4 [TE] Wasteland
4 [ON] Flooded Strand

FTW

04-29-2022, 02:21 PM

This latest Grixis one cuts Iteration for better tempo cards and seems much closer to UR Dreadstill:
https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/mtgo-standings/legacy-challenge-2022-04-24#ajdadd_th_place

//Creatures: 9
4 Phyrexian Dreadnought
2 Kroxa, Titan of Death's Hunger
2 Murktide Regent
1 Brazen Borrower

//Spells: 27
4 Force of Will
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
4 Stifle
4 Lightning Bolt
2 Spell Pierce
1 Fatal Push
1 Sudden Edict
3 Daze

//Enchantments: 4
4 Dress Down

//Artifacts: 1
1 Scroll of Fate

//Lands: 19
4 Wasteland
4 Scalding Tarn
4 Polluted Delta
3 Volcanic Island
2 Underground Sea
1 Badlands
1 Snow-Covered Island

//Sideboard: 15
3 Pyroblast
1 Red Elemental Blast
2 Surgical Extraction
1 Grafdigger's Cage
1 Hurkyl's Recall
1 Meltdown
1 Plague Engineer
2 Torpor Orb
2 Narset, Parter of Veils

Black does not seem to be adding much.

Would this just have more stable mana with:
-2 Kroxa
-1 Fatal Push
-1 Sudden Edict
-1 Plague Engineer
-1 Torpor Orb
-1 land
+4 Dragon's Rage Channeler
+1 Daze
+1 Borrower/Subtlety
+1 Scroll
(assumes player does not want to play Standstill, otherwise just play UR Dreadstill)

Kroxa just does not seem very good.

Fox

04-29-2022, 03:40 PM

Let's also contrast the cost difference between UR Dreadstill's 1x Volc and the cost of 3x Volc + 2x Sea + 1x Badlands (or 2x Tundra and 3x Trop). We should also reinforce the concept that the more you spend on duals in a Dreadnought deck, the harder you lose to Plow/Ending & removal-based decks...which is exactly what you are going to be paired against everywhere outside of online leagues and comically inbred/Delver-flooded online challenges.

That's somewhere around a $3,500 detour to have a basically unwinnable matchup vs DnT and UWx. The matchup vs Chalice and fair jank (maverick, dead guy, etc) and Elves will also be rather highly unfavored. Too many must-dodge matchups just so you can "meta-game" against Delver and combo. Deckbuilding towards this many unsalvageable matchups just isn't competitive.
---
On Brazen Borrower: this card is quickly going the way of Crucible; there is a better way to get the effect. Just as anyone who wants Crucible main should immediately SB it and add maindeck Karn, so too should anyone who wants Brazen's bounce just cut Brazen and change it to Otawara. The main issue is that Daze is a fairly worthless card vs any deck not called Delver, and picking up Islands (+low land count thanks to Ponder) is highly antagonistic to playing the better card.

As @FTW brings up: Why is the DRC, the best red 1-drop, missing...why are we not following DRC with Standstill (trigger to DRC-mill to next land drop)...where are our higher land counts, which favor Otawara and Shark'nado...and where is our 1-card delirium from 2x Saga tutor suicide-Nought...and where are the Lavamancers to protect from Surgical, provide non-combat damage, use DRC's yard fuel, and mill lands from GY to exile for better draw 7 after we respond to a MindTwister with either kill or Otawara the Narset, all through Teferi passive?

On Ponder: why are we trying to cheat on land totals, thus locking one's self on counter Chalice on 1 or lose (this loss of FoW ensures loss to Emry recur Chalice and inability to ever regain FoW dominance vs 8cast)? Why are you stuffing a deck with 11-12 slots of Daze/Ponder/Bstorm, when all of these are horrifically bad vs your absolute worst matchups (again that's UWr and DnT)? Why are we tapping out of Stifle, and otherwise tapping our Stifle into enemy Daze?

On Daze: why are you trying to protect a sorcery-speed, summoning sick threat with Daze vs opponents who get to untap, draw, and make a land drop? Why are you running a spell that is basically worthless in every matchup that isn't Delver or combo?
---
These StifleNought decks all exhibit cascading failures of deckbuidling theory; each based on the flawed notion that one can conventionally play normal legacy staples while doing something atypical [Dreadnought]. When decks are built like this, they are just Delver with higher variance. Play UGR, or UBR, or UR...it doesn't matter if the fundamental issues aren't addressed. Cutting the CA (even bad CA like Iteration) is regressive. If you were already getting ruined by removal, it's going to get worse by removing CA and locking yourself into the all-in directly into the removal.

On 3x Daze rather than 4x, it's a baby step towards playing the right card with these slots. If you can't play 8-4-2 magic [8x 1cmc, 4x 2cmc, 2x 3+cmc threat], or something very close, then you really shouldn't be playing Daze. Only exception to that is decks with heavy combo commitment (SnT, DDFT, UBx Reaimator).

FourDogsinaHorseSuit

05-01-2022, 10:01 AM

You keep posting these absolute deck-building heuristics but they're dated and wrong.
And then you see lists proving other.
Like here:

even bad CA like Iteration
Come on.

FTW

05-02-2022, 06:44 PM

You keep posting these absolute deck-building heuristics but they're dated and wrong.
And then you see lists proving other.
Like here:

Come on.

Fox's heuristics tend to be right for Standstill and Dreadnought decks. Although they may not generalize to all of Legacy, Fox usually ends up being right about the Dreadnought and Standstill mechanics he's specialized in.

4 Expressive Iteration was amazing in UR with Ragavan's help to cheat on mana. Without Ragavan it's gotten worse in tempo, since it forces tapping down at sorcery speed and needing to wait until you have a land drop or 3+ lands. That play does not fit well in a tempo game plan. You already see Delver cutting back on copies and 4c moving away from being Exit.dec.

It's even worse in tempo Dreadnought, due to anti-synergy with the Stifle+Wasteland+Daze plan. For example, the Legacy Challenge Grixis list I linked cut all copies of ExIt from the earlier builds. Where are the lists proving Fox is wrong about Iteration?

Fox

05-02-2022, 08:57 PM

You keep posting these absolute deck-building heuristics but they're dated and wrong.
And then you see lists proving other.
Like here:

Come on.

I think you're missing how Iteration works. The Delver deck cannot cast this card until turn 3 +1 turn for each time they activate their own Wasteland, alt-cast Daze, or they themselves get strip mined by an opponent.

Now ask yourself how sandbagging the land drop to play Iteration into the turn 5-6 Daze is going to end. So if you're ever confused as to how StifleNought is farming Delver, that's the mechanism - and it's so much easier to farm when Delver doubles down on a really bad idea with Shame Island (Sanctuary).

Attacking a glorified Divination overcommit is pretty trivial for Wasteland/Daze/Stifle...but it's the inbred overrepresentation of Delver that is almost certainly behind letting StifleNought into a few top8s with serial good matchups. On the league side where reimbursement is tied to how fast a league can be played, it is pretty trivial for decks like Infect/Shadow/StifleNought to farm all-in combo decks playing the speedrun subgame.

While we might be tempted to call farming Delver and combo "clever metagaming," it turns out to not really be so clever if you can't ever beat Plow/Ending, DnT, Grixis, and anything else removal-based. Here we have the worst possible mixture: overpriced + underperforming, particularly in paper...which is otherwise where we would our new players from.
---
Now you are in a Dreadnought thread where every card is not a 1-card combo, and with zero games with Expressive Iteration I can definitively tell you that randomly flipping over piece A but not B (or vice-versa) in the top 3 isn't exactly productive. It's even more pointless if you're flipping over multiples of A or multiples of B. It's also pointless to tap yourself out of Stifle with sorceries in a deck that is trying to protect summoning sick sorcery speed threats with Daze...

^No matter how bad all of that is, it's better than having 0x sources of CA and trying to 2-for-1 yourself, all while never having a turn 1 threat Daze actually could protect...but yes, Iteration is still a particularly crappy CA source for A then B strategies...and when they surgical your Dreadnoughts and you've got basically nothing to enable, that CA is gonna look even worse.
---
Now on UR Delver, a deck with mono-1-card combos, it is perplexing that they would ever play 4x of a card they should want literally nowhere near an opening hand, since it's a turn 5-6 card. They want it in the top 12, sure....so like just like play 3x? Seems pretty simple to understand how that card in the opening hand = not pressuring opponents = Daze becoming a pretty easy liability for opponents to target...and like all the opposing strategy has to do is design their deck to not die to a modestly power-crept, easier to kill Goyf named Murktide.

FourDogsinaHorseSuit

05-03-2022, 12:20 PM

Fox's heuristics tend to be right for Standstill and Dreadnought decks. Although they may not generalize to all of Legacy, Fox usually ends up being right about the Dreadnought and Standstill mechanics he's specialized in.

Standstill, sure.
Dreadnought. No.

4 Expressive Iteration was amazing in UR with Ragavan's help to cheat on mana. Without Ragavan it's gotten worse in tempo, since it forces tapping down at sorcery speed and needing to wait until you have a land drop or 3+ lands. That play does not fit well in a tempo game plan. You already see Delver cutting back on copies and 4c moving away from being Exit.dec.

It's even worse in tempo Dreadnought, due to anti-synergy with the Stifle+Wasteland+Daze plan. For example, the Legacy Challenge Grixis list I linked cut all copies of ExIt from the earlier builds. Where are the lists proving Fox is wrong about Iteration?
They're out there!
https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/mtgo-standings/legacy-league-2022-04-16

2 Kroxa, Titan of Death's Hunger (SLD) 225
2 Murktide Regent (MH2) 337
4 Phyrexian Dreadnought (NON) 0
2 Expressive Iteration (STX) 379
4 Ponder (NCC) 229
4 Brainstorm (AFC) 79
4 Daze (NON) 0
1 Fatal Push (KLR) 84
4 Force of Will (NON) 0
4 Lightning Bolt (STA) 42
1 Red Elemental Blast (NON) 0
4 Stifle (HA5) 8
1 Scroll of Fate (C19) 58
4 Dress Down (MH2) 334
1 Badlands (NON) 0
4 Polluted Delta (ZNE) 2
4 Scalding Tarn (MH2) 439
1 Snow-Covered Island (KHM) 279
2 Underground Sea (NON) 0
3 Volcanic Island (NON) 0
4 Wasteland (ZNE) 30

3 Red Elemental Blast (NON) 0
1 Abrade (AKR) 136
1 Blue Elemental Blast (NON) 0
1 End the Festivities (VOW) 155
1 Grafdigger's Cage (M20) 227
1 Hidetsugu Consumes All (NEO) 361
1 Hurkyl's Recall (NON) 0
2 Narset, Parter of Veils (WAR) 61
1 Plague Engineer (MH1) 100
2 Surgical Extraction (NON) 0
1 Torpor Orb (NON) 0

Fox

05-03-2022, 03:46 PM

I'm afraid I know exactly what I'm talking about on Dreadnought. These StifleNought lists are almost exclusively *not just* A & B decks, they are predominantly A followed by B immediately.

So when you tap down 2 mana for Iteration, you likely lack the mana to also do thing A then B in that same turn cycle - that is a problem b/c Iteration can't keep both cards beyond that turn. Now you're passing the turn without progress while the opponent gets even more land drops to ignore Daze, in a deck without 1-drops to maintain pressure while spinning your wheels.

At some point you need to understand that Iteration in StifleNought is pretty reliant on flipping over a Wasteland (1-card combo) and that Wasteland having text - so like vs a Delver opponent....but when you are up against removal-based strats, particularly ones with basics, you're not making meaningful progress by casting Iteration. You're very much all-in on the removal-based player fighting over a card that doesn't matter at all: Iteration.

If you'd like to see this in action, go back and rewatch the matchups on @Piproberts yourube. It's not particularly challenging to change the names of the cards in Dreadstill to things like more Endings, a different PW name, Snapcaster Mage, REB - the stuff in more normal removal-based blue midrange piles. If you don't let the StifleNought player generate trades over mana denial, don't let them Daze, and don't counter do-nothings like Iteration, then it's pretty hard to ever lose.

FourDogsinaHorseSuit

05-03-2022, 04:54 PM

I'm afraid I know exactly what I'm talking about on Dreadnought.

and with zero games with Expressive Iteration
https://c.tenor.com/zAJgVsraM6UAAAAd/thonk-thinking.gif

I can't believe I'm somehow in the position of having to say "maybe play with one of the best two drop selection spells ever printed" to you.

FourDogsinaHorseSuit

05-03-2022, 04:55 PM

Anyways: Ledger Shredder from SCN is the truth and I suggest y'all give it a whirl. And bonus, it's not red so you can stuff it into the UG builds.

Fox

05-04-2022, 12:39 AM

I can't believe I'm somehow in the position of having to say "maybe play with one of the best two drop selection spells ever printed" to you.

There is a difference between flipping over the top 3 cards of a deck and seeing three 1-card combos, and flipping over the top 3 and seeing a bunch of Stifles and Dress Downs with nothing to enable. Now lets follow our "best two drop selection spell" as we do not get to pull both of the things to hand. We've already blown 2 mana at sorcery speed, now we need to blow 2 more to spam a Dress Down (nothing to enable, nor the mana left to do it) so that we can keep the Stifle in hand instead of shipping it to exile. Now the opponent gets to untap, draw a card, and make a land drop - and now you have to draw through a deck with Stifle and Daze...and you took the turn off to go nowhere. Now you go into every following turn even less likely to generate a favorable trade with Daze or Stifle...but who knows, maybe that Dress Down off Iteration found a 12/12, so let's Stifle that one into play (after the Iteration turn) and pass - nothing could possibly go wrong; they definitely won't have a 1 mana Daze-proof answer for it...

Normal legacy is built on playing 1-card combos, so if you can get 1 card to become 2 you've made progress...but in a StifleNought deck, you have a much higher threshold for that Iteration to generate progress. It is highly unlikely that you will flip over a 12/12 + the enabler...and it is also highly unlikely that even if you did flip those over, that you would also have the mana to do the thing on that turn before losing either piece A or piece B to exile forever. You'd actually be rather all-in on your opponent offering you a beneficial trade of a flipped Wasteland vs their nonbasic; because any time you don't get that, the Daze and Stifle stuff plods on towards irrelevance...and you have to draw through that chaff. This is all at the same time as the game plan is investing 2 cards to make a 12/12...so where exactly is the card quantity coming from for FoW? This is a strategic problem, largely created by not getting on board at 1cmc.

There are oh so many cards you cannot take with you through an Iteration if you are playing StifleNought. That's why it's crappy CA. There's a ton of cards you can't just fire off simply b/c you flipped them with the "best two drop selection spell." Add those 8 slots of Stifle and Dreadnought to the 4 of Daze and 4 of FoW and 4 of Dress Down and the remaining lands. This is so many combinations of slots lurking on the top of the deck just waiting to keep Iteration from even just generating CA [completely ignoring the strategic problems].

FourDogsinaHorseSuit

05-04-2022, 07:44 AM

Cards you can Just Fire Off in the posted list:
2 Kroxa, Titan of Death's Hunger (SLD) 225
2 Murktide Regent (MH2) 337
2 Expressive Iteration (STX) 379
4 Ponder (NCC) 229
4 Brainstorm (AFC) 79
4 Lightning Bolt (STA) 42
1 Scroll of Fate (C19) 58
4 Dress Down (MH2) 334
1 Badlands (NON) 0
4 Polluted Delta (ZNE) 2
4 Scalding Tarn (MH2) 439
1 Snow-Covered Island (KHM) 279
2 Underground Sea (NON) 0
3 Volcanic Island (NON) 0
4 Wasteland (ZNE) 30

So 31? (since you can't cast it and flip it)

FTW

05-04-2022, 10:31 AM

They're out there!
https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/mtgo-standings/legacy-league-2022-04-16

That's an older version. The Challenge list I posted was based on it and cut the Iterations.

It's a tough spot because Dreadnought needs card draw but Iteration is such bad tempo when you're playing Stifle + Wasteland + Daze (Iteration is basically a dead card till turn 5ish). Running only 2 Iteration compromises between those two risks, but it's awkward.

Unlike Fox, I've actually played Expressive Iteration a lot in UR Delver and some brews. To get the "draw 2" you need one of the following:
1) Haven't played a land yet this turn
2) Cast Iteration with 1-2 other lands open and a lot of proactive 1 cmc plays in the deck
If you can't do one of those, it becomes a really bad Ponder (UR - Sorcery - Put 1 of top 3 cards in hand, get rid of the rest)

With Ragavan you could do #1 on turn 2, which made Iteration amazing. T1 Ragavan, Force their play, attack with Ragavan for Treasure, cast Iteration, recover lost blue card from FoW and play land from top 3. It snowballed almost as much as Ragavan + Daze. That meant Iteration was good early and good late. It gave the deck velocity without clogging up hands.

In theory you can do #1 on turn 3 without Ragavan. Don't play a 3rd land, tap out for Iteration, play 3rd land from exile. That's fine on paper. But in practice it's harder to do in a tempo deck. If you pick up a land for Daze, that slows down Iteration 1 turn. If you use a Wasteland, that slows down Iteration 1 turn. If you want to play around opponent's Daze on Iteration, that slows down Iteration 1 turn. If you need to hold up 1 Volc for instant interaction (REB, Stifle, Brainstorm), that slows down Iteration 1 turn. Tempo Stiflenought wants to use disruption like Daze, Wasteland and Stifle in the early turns... so it becomes hard to actually play that land from exile until later in the game.

What about #2? UR Ragavan had 10 1cmc creatures + 8 cantrips + 4 bolts as proactive plays on 1 mana. If you cast Iteration on 3 lands, you could cast one of those from exile and maintain tempo. Grixis Stiflenought has no 1 mana threats (Dreadnought doesn't count), so it only has the cantrips and Bolts as 1 mana plays, and they're not as proactive as putting a creature on the battlefield. Tapping out for Iteration into Ponder is much less proactive than Iteration into DRC/Delver. (Although honestly I don't understand why Stiflenought is not running 4x DRC when Dreadnought & Dress Down make Delirium much easier)

With Iteration on 4 lands you could also cast Dress Down (probably wasted), Kroxa, or Murktide. That allows more proactive plays. But it takes at least 4 lands in a deck that is losing land drops to Daze and Wasteland.

Basically in a deck with Stifle + Wasteland + Daze, you are not tapping out for turn 3 Iteration. You have to wait until much later. It's a dead card early game and only a draw 2 late game. Iteration is amazing in the right deck, but everything Stiflenought is trying to do works against what Iteration wants to do.

FTW

05-04-2022, 10:51 AM

2 Kroxa, Titan of Death's Hunger (SLD) 225
2 Murktide Regent (MH2) 337
2 Expressive Iteration (STX) 379
4 Dress Down (MH2) 334

Needs minimum 4 lands (2 for Iteration + 2 to cast the card).

Murktide is very proactive. But EI -> EI/Dress Down is tapping 4 lands to durdle.

1 Scroll of Fate (C19) 58

Needs minimum 5 lands. Makes opponent's Daze topdeck not dead.

1 Badlands (NON) 0
4 Polluted Delta (ZNE) 2
4 Scalding Tarn (MH2) 439
1 Snow-Covered Island (KHM) 279
2 Underground Sea (NON) 0
3 Volcanic Island (NON) 0
4 Wasteland (ZNE) 30

Needs a land drop. In theory that's possible on turn 3, but if you use Wasteland or Daze that sets you back a land. If you get Wastelanded because of the black splash (instead of playing fewer duals in UR), that sets you back a land. If you want to play around enemy Daze or hold up Stifle on their fetch, that sets you back a land too. To make those land plays possible, you have to hold back Iteration longer to have the land drop.

The only cheap convenient nonland plays from exile are Ponder, Brainstorm and Bolt (12). That's much worse than the decks that did well with Iteration. Those cards don't do much proactive with the board state.

Basically in this deck Iteration is dead early game and only works late game. "Works" means it chains into more cantrips or lands (not very aggressive) or the 4 2cmc threats, but it struggles to enable another Dreadnought. UR Delver got much more value out of Iteration.

Captain Hammer

05-26-2022, 08:22 AM

Slip Out the Back is amazing with Dreadnought, and a great way to protect its threats or remove blockers. Exactly what this deck needed.

Recent 5-0 lists are playing it as a 2 of, which seems like a good place to start.

Fox

05-26-2022, 10:32 AM

FourDogsinaHorseSuit

05-26-2022, 11:28 AM

FourDogsinaHorseSuit

05-26-2022, 12:54 PM

I think I can use sailor's bane and uro together.
And if I go insane: uro, Dreadnought, shredder and coco

FTW

05-27-2022, 02:13 AM

Here's the deck: https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/mtgo-standings/legacy-challenge-2022-05-22#ajdadd_th_place

//Creatures: 9
4 Phyrexian Dreadnought
2 Kroxa, Titan of Death's Hunger
2 Murktide Regent
1 Brazen Borrower

//Spells: 28
4 Force of Will
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Stifle
2 Slip Out the Back
1 Stubborn Denial
3 Expressive Iteration
1 Force of Negation
1 Snuff Out

//Enchantment: 4
4 Dress Down

//Lands: 19
4 Wasteland
4 Scalding Tarn
4 Polluted Delta
4 Volcanic Island
2 Underground Sea
1 Snow-Covered Island

//Sideboard: 15
3 Pyroblast
1 Red Elemental Blast
1 Meltdown
1 Hurkyl's Recall
1 Grafdigger's Cage
2 Surgical Extraction
2 Torpor Orb
2 Narset, Parter of Veils
1 Scroll of Fate
1 Plague Engineer

So few Islands. Top 16 had 2 Blood Moon decks and 5 Wasteland decks. Winning deck was Blood Moon. Why play so many duals just to force Kroxa? Then they're playing Slip Out the Back instead of the more flexible Vision Charm because of Kroxa too. So much commitment to the 2-of Kroxa. Why? Kroxa is a mediocre threat. It dodges much Uro hate, but it still doesn't come close. Murktide is already a big 2 mana threat.

Purple Blood

05-27-2022, 03:40 AM

Kroxa plays well with some of the cards enabling Dreadnought so I assume its just there for redundancy. For my tastes the black splash is not worth it but then again he's putting up some nice results.

Reading through the last page here it's surprising to see so many people hating on EI. Early game you exile a land and take the better of the two options. Then late game you put the lands back. Its obviously better in other decks but its still good and the only time it sucks is if you play it early and don't hit a land. Worst case it's an Anticipate.

FTW

05-27-2022, 01:32 PM

Kroxa plays well with some of the cards enabling Dreadnought so I assume its just there for redundancy.

Hunted Phantasm and Hunted Horror do too. Doesn't mean they're automatically worth playing or warping the mana. The question should be if Kroxa is a good enough threat, not if it works with enablers. Why bend over backwards for Kroxa when you already have Murktide at 2-mana? If the deck wants more threat density, Dragon's Rage Channeler?

Edit: Uro is much stronger.

Reading through the last page here it's surprising to see so many people hating on EI. Early game you exile a land and take the better of the two options. ...the only time it sucks is if you play it early and don't hit a land.

"Early game" = turn 3 at the earliest, probably turn 5 in a Stifle+Waste+Daze deck with weak mana?? That counts as "early"?
Before that it's a dead card in hand. It sucks even more as a dead card. That's the real worst case scenario. When you don't even have the land drops to try EI and/or can't afford to tap out at sorcery speed without interacting with the board state, so it sits dead in hand.

Even lategame there aren't many proactive threats they can play off EI (with DRC in the deck, that number goes up). Even if you get lucky and EI reveals Dreadnought + enabler, unless you have 4+ lands you can't play it and must lose 1 of the pieces. If EI only reveals 1 of 2 pieces, you can't play from exile, so you have to decide whether it's worth putting in hand over some other card like Brainstorm/Force without knowing if you find the other piece. So they aren't playing EI -> threat. It's usually EI -> cantrip/land. EI's great in 1-drop Delver but awkward for A+B combo.

FourDogsinaHorseSuit

05-27-2022, 02:10 PM

Uro, imo, is worth the hoops and I think Sailor's bane is too because it leaves the cards in the yard for either Uro or this guy, who I am instantly high on:
https://mythicspoiler.com/clb/cards/ambitiousdragonborn.jpg
Dreadnought in play? That's a 12/12.
Dreadnought dead? Still a 12/12!
Please don't exile my creature.

Purple Blood

05-28-2022, 04:04 AM

Hunted Phantasm and Hunted Horror do too. Doesn't mean they're automatically worth playing or warping the mana. The question should be if Kroxa is a good enough threat, not if it works with enablers. Why bend over backwards for Kroxa when you already have Murktide at 2-mana? If the deck wants more threat density, Dragon's Rage Channeler?

Edit: Uro is much stronger.

Agreed. Hence the very next sentence I wrote: "For my tastes the black splash is not worth it but then again he's putting up some nice results." i.e. I don't like adding colors to my deck unless there's truly a good reason to do so.

That being said, I wouldn't compare Kroxa to the cards to you mentioned because Kroxa has useful abilities.

"Early game" = turn 3 at the earliest, probably turn 5 in a Stifle+Waste+Daze deck with weak mana?? That counts as "early"?
Before that it's a dead card in hand. It sucks even more as a dead card. That's the real worst case scenario. When you don't even have the land drops to try EI and/or can't afford to tap out at sorcery speed without interacting with the board state, so it sits dead in hand.

Even lategame there aren't many proactive threats they can play off EI (with DRC in the deck, that number goes up). Even if you get lucky and EI reveals Dreadnought + enabler, unless you have 4+ lands you can't play it and must lose 1 of the pieces. If EI only reveals 1 of 2 pieces, you can't play from exile, so you have to decide whether it's worth putting in hand over some other card like Brainstorm/Force without knowing if you find the other piece. So they aren't playing EI -> threat. It's usually EI -> cantrip/land. EI's great in 1-drop Delver but awkward for A+B combo.

Yes. EI can be a dead card in a Wasteland format. In those cases, pitch it to Force.

Yes. EI requires decision-making. Make good decisions.

A few copies is not a bad idea. It's card advantage and selection. Just as you say there are bad situations, in some situations its the best top deck because it instantly draws you into your combo. Let's be a little more objective here.

FTW

05-28-2022, 10:52 AM

Yes. EI can be a dead card in a Wasteland format. In those cases, pitch it to Force.
Just as you say there are bad situations, in some situations its the best top deck. Let's be a little more objective here.

Yes, EI is good sometimes. Card advantage helps. I replied to "the only time it sucks". That wasn't the worst case scenario. You misrepresented the floor, so I focused on the negatives.

The real downside is it's dead early. You have to wait till a certain phase of the game before it's viable as draw 2. Deck construction choices for Grixis Stiflenought delay that even longer. No amount of in-game good decisions can compensate.

When you talk about the good sides, do you mean in UR Delver or in Grixis Stiflenought? EI is much better when you can cast a cheap threat from exile (Delver/DRC/Ragavan/Murktide) and put an interaction spell or cantrip in hand. That way you're impacting the board state for tapping out and gaining 2 relevant cards. EI is much better in Delver. EI -> cantrip + land (the more likely outcome here) is less impressive.

Yes. EI requires decision-making. Make good decisions.

The problem is that EI limits the range of decisions/skill you can apply compared to other draw spells. Especially in a deck like this with statistically fewer lines that are good tempo to play off EI.

because it instantly draws you into your combo

EI doesn't work well with A+B combos. Unless you have enough mana left to cast both pieces that turn, you can't keep both cards.
e.g. topdeck EI into Dreadnought + Dress Down. Unless you have 5 lands (land revealed by EI doesn't count), you didn't draw into the combo. You must lose 1 piece. No good decisions can fix that. You put either A or B in hand and then hope to topdeck into the other, or you keep the 3rd card and lose both A and B. That's all EI allows. EI restricts your decisions compared to other lategame draw spells.

EI gets better if you add more proactive cheap plays (more threats to play from exile), clean up the manabase (easier to keep 3+ lands) and don't play Daze (easier to keep 3+ lands).

Rough example (assuming URx Stiflenought still):

//Creatures: 12
4 Dragon's Rage Channeler
4 Phyrexian Dreadnought
3 Murktide Regent
1 Brazen Borrower

//Spells: 24
4 Force of Will
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Stifle
3 Expressive Iteration
1 Force of Negation

//Enchantments: 3
3 Dress Down

//Lands: 21
2 Urza's Saga
4 Wasteland
4 Scalding Tarn
4 Prismatic Vista
2 Volcanic Island
3 Island
2 Mountain

//Sideboard: 15
3 Pyroblast
1 Red Elemental Blast
1 Alpine Moon
1 Meltdown
1 Engineered Explosives
1 Pithing Needle
1 Soul-Guide Lantern
2 Surgical Extraction
2 End the Festivities
2 Narset, Parter of Veils

Something like that has more resilient mana, more cheap proactive threats it can play off EI, no Daze to set you back land drops. Saga makes it easier to set up the Dreadnought combo (e.g. EI -> Saga + Dress Down/Stifle) while also helping Delirium, adding threats, and tutoring for hate pieces.

Fox

05-28-2022, 04:18 PM

@FTW probably can't drop Daze in UR until it is banned, even though it's the worst card in the deck. When there is no Daze, you need to use the mana progression casting PWs and Scroll of Fate. Again though the question is why we're playing Ponder instead of Standstill, and if Standstill why are we playing MurkGoyf over Grim Lavamancer. On the Volcs, you need 1x, could play 2x, but will lose an inordinate amount of games to 3x.

3x Nought
4x DRC
2x Lavamancer (swap a DRC to Lavamancer if your meta is Elves and DnT)

4x FoW
4x Bstorm
4x Bolt
3x Stifle
2x FoN
1x Spikefield

4x Standstill
2x Dress Down
2x Scroll of Fate
2x Shark'nado
1x Phyrexian Furnace

2x Karn (could also be Chandra ToD)

4x Tarn
4x Vista
3x Island
2x Mountain
1x Volc
1x Otawara
3x Wasteland
2x Saga

Consider 1 more cut for the 21st land.

SB:
PoP x2
Blast x3
Keg x1
Relic x1
EE x1
Torpor x1
Staticaster x1
Ashiok x2
Alpine Moon x2
Liquimetal x1

In general do not play End the Festivities b/c Powder Keg hits Elves and 8cast and a huge amount of other decks. Likewise EE is better against Elves (and a ton of other decks) while doing most of the same stuff as Meltdown. Null Rod is 1-sided and maindeck (Karn), also it kills Chalice.

With mana development if you shouldn't be rewarding opponents for playing Blast and Bolt and Ending; cut the pointless Narset and board super Chandra if those are your targets. Blood Moon is unplayable, as is B2B - the only decks these are good against are all flooded with Boseju...also Alpine Moon is 1-sided and comes down on turn 1 (before Standstill).

Surgical is excessive, so unless your paper meta is flooded with yolo-combo it is better to have repeatable value yard hate. Better vs Delver and everything fair. Pithing Needle just dies to Ending or gets countered by Chalice on 1; not sure what this is for.

Main issue with UR, much like UG is that it doesn't have a Verdict or Toxic or Dead of Winter. UG is better at forcing out a 1x Lotus Field to play 2x SB Verdict (Lotus Field as only white source), but in UR we're better off with a super Chandra downtick, if that's what you're trying to cover.

FTW

05-28-2022, 06:29 PM

Good points Fox.

I started from the premise they want to play Stiflenought, not Dreadstill. Then making minor tweaks to the shell so EI is less underwhelming as a draw engine.

Otherwise yes, Standstill is a more reliable draw engine for assembling Dreadnought so just play UR Dreadstill. Daze is also easier to play with a draw engine that requires 2 lands instead of one that needs 3-5.

Is tempo UR Dreadstill possible (i.e. with Daze)? What would it look like? 4th Stifle and Wasteland and more burn instead of the high mana stuff? Does Rood have a current list?

Fox

05-28-2022, 07:20 PM

Rood does more of the UWR stuff recently. He's doing the Tundra/Daze stuff so it operates more like StifleNought with the card Standstill (combat only wincon).

You can still play Daze in UR Dreadstill, but you lose the good cards: PW and FoN. Otherwise same list, some different SB in the Karn wish area.

Purple Blood

05-28-2022, 09:13 PM

FTW, per usual everything you said is right on the money. EI is definitely better in Delver but I still think its a worthwhile card to use here; just maybe not a full set.

The list you gave is interested and I always like when you can play tempo with combo together e.g. Murk in Doomsday. Many times I find having those two strategies in the same deck makes your opponent play suboptimally i.e. they get overly focused on preventing one strategy and lose to the other.

FTW

05-30-2022, 01:25 AM

FTW, per usual everything you said is right on the money. EI is definitely better in Delver but I still think its a worthwhile card to use here; just maybe not a full set.

Agreed. Some card draw is good. And EI gets better when you diversify with cheap standalone threats (DRC).

The list you gave is interested and I always like when you can play tempo with combo together e.g. Murk in Doomsday. Many times I find having those two strategies in the same deck makes your opponent play suboptimally i.e. they get overly focused on preventing one strategy and lose to the other.

Murk in Doomsday are completely different wincons. Plan A is Thassa. Plan B is combat damage. While it confuses opponent's hate, advancing one plan doesn't help the other. It's like having regular damage + infect damage in the same deck. You can trick opponent but they're 2 unrelated plans.

Here Dreadnought + Murktide/DRC are still the same wincon: 20 damage. It doesn't matter where that damage comes from. Whether you make a combo fatty or play Murktide or cast burn spells, all damage sources advance your plan. 2 Dreadnought hits. Or 1 Dreadnought hit + 8 from Murktide. Or 1 Dreadnought hit + Bolts. Or a couple Murktide hits. Or Murktide + DRC + bolts. You just need 20 damage combined. Doesn't matter how. Some A+B decks must resolve the combo to win. Some creature decks need their big creatures to stay alive long enough for lethal damage. But UR doesn't care what the damage source is. 2-card 12/12, 1-card 8/8, burn... All of it adds to 20 damage. It can win without ever making A+B and with 0 creatures left (topdeck Bolt).

So the idea here is you don't need to commit too much to the Dreadnought combo. In some matches the 2-card 12/12 is very strong. In others it's weak. Instead of doubling down on more 2-card fatties (Kroxa, Slip, Torpor, Hunted Horror) and losing to the same hate, you can mix in fair threats. The fair threats play better with EI too.

Fox has a good point though:
Expressive Iteration UR - pick 2 from 3 cards, with some limits
Standstill 1U - draw 3 of 3 cards

Card draw is good. But why not Standstill?

//Creatures: 10
4 Dragon's Rage Channeler
4 Phyrexian Dreadnought
2 Grim Lavamancer

//Spells: 22
4 Force of Will
4 Brainstorm
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Stifle
4 Daze
2 Force of Negation

//Enchantments: 7
4 Standstill
3 Dress Down

//Artifacts: 1
1 Retrofitter Foundry

//Lands: 20
2 Urza's Saga
3 Wasteland
4 Scalding Tarn
4 Prismatic Vista
2 Volcanic Island
3 Island
2 Mountain

//Sideboard: 15
2 Pyroblast
1 Red Elemental Blast
1 Powder Keg
1 Pithing Needle
1 Soul-Guide Lantern
2 Alpine Moon
2 Price of Progress

...

9 early threats to curve into Standstill (DRC, Lavaman, Saga, Retro). 10 free counters to protect. Stifle + Daze + Waste (+ Needle) mana denial.

@Fox: Saga -> Needle uncounterably disrupts many things without giving opponent a relevant interaction window. Depths, Boseiju, 8-cast engines, Vial, Painter, fringe combos. If they respond to Saga trigger to avoid Needle, you don't need to get Needle. If they don't respond, you can blow them out with Needle. You can even "value Needle" to LD their uncracked fetch.

Fox

05-30-2022, 01:44 AM

Retrofitter is a really bad card vs Ending and Delver and combo. Whatever you're finding from maindeck better draw a card or instantly turn on delirium by sacrificing itself. If you had a Saga under Standstill, then the Retro is winmore...and all to just get 1-shot by Ending. Note that Furnace helps colorless and red to draw towards blue while also building delirium.

When it comes to the Saga stuff, there is a large drop-off after Map and/or cantrip yard hate (Furnace, Soul Guide, Relic, Nihil). The next best thing would be Currency Converter. A case can also be made for Cursed Scroll b/c this deck counts to 20. Any Needle stuff can stay in the SB for Karn to wish, or bring in vs linear strategies.

FTW

05-30-2022, 02:01 AM

Fox

05-30-2022, 03:35 AM

Without Retrofitter, don't the Saga tokens risk being unimpressive 2/2s? In Landstill I had ways to chain multiple Sagas, but here without Retrofitter you're accepting just making bears. Low ceiling. Are you saying it's better to just accept the bears as incidental value instead of committing harder to the Construct plan and risking a blow out?

In a Daze build there's no Karn to wish for targets, so isn't Needle (tutorable with Saga) at least better than other options?

Would you still play cards like EE and Torpor when they're not tutorable?

I'm fine with them being 3/3s (Furnace is 3rd artifact). I am not a fan of losing a land drop, tapping 6 lands to make 2x constructs, and then tutor a Retro I can't activate (or even if I could, I get a whole 1/1 that will never accomplish anything). The way this story ends is they Dress Down your dudes and Ending your Retro, and you're the fool with Daze in your deck vs an opponent you just gave 4 turns of land drops to. You need to be able to attack a resource and go up a card vs the obvious Ending (which they are forced to use on Furnace b/c the yard damage is overwhelming if left unchecked).

Needle has the same issues described above; you're just killing yourself with Daze. If you do this to yourself with flawed deck construction, it really isn't worth playing a game at all if opponent has Island, Plains, and Ending in their deck. Save time and walk away...knowing that such deck construction creates a catastrophic weakness versus around 20-25% of the meta (Grixis, Counterbalance, MindTwister, Uro).

Torpor is sometimes there, sometimes not in UR. UR's wrath problem is pretty awful, so I'd have at least one SB slot of Keg or EE. Two slots of space in EE + Keg is also fine as it hits so much of the meta.

FTW

05-30-2022, 11:28 PM

I'm fine with them being 3/3s (Furnace is 3rd artifact).

2/2 is likely. Assuming Retrofitter doesn't survive, another Saga target wouldn't either (or they kill a Construct). Good point that Phyrexian Furnace is better than Soul-Guide Lantern at forcing a profitable trade, at the expense of being worse tempo for GY interaction.

I am not a fan of losing a land drop, tapping 6 lands to make 2x constructs, and then tutor a Retro I can't activate (or even if I could, I get a whole 1/1 that will never accomplish anything). The way this story ends is they Dress Down your dudes and Ending your Retro

What else are the lands doing under Standstill? If they remove Retro, you draw 3 and maybe make a 1/1 (7 power on board instead of 4). Unlikely you fall behind.

Retro forces them to play into Standstill sooner. Otherwise tap for 1/1 -> 9 power on board (4/4+4/4+1/1) -> Next turn 12 power on board (5/5 + 5/5 + 1/1 + 1/1). That gives opponent little time to topdeck out and 3 things to stop (2 constructs + Retro), so it is very unlikely they stabilize through Standstill. With Furnace it caps at 6 power on board. Slower clock means opponent has more time to draw out of it, more time to build mana vs Daze+Waste, and fewer permanents to answer through Standstill (Furnace is not an imminent problem). Are you saying that's "win-more" in those matches while the downside is higher?

If no Standstill out, Dreadnought is the primary target anyway. Or SB hate.

Without Standstill you aren't tapping out for Constructs->Retro if you had anything else to do with your mana. But what else do you need mana for on the tempo plan (low curve, Daze, no mana progression)? Above curve ends at 2 lol. Saga+Retro converts excess mana into value.

For the 25% of matchups where it's catastrophically bad, nothing forces you to tutor for the Retro or keep it main postboard. Get Furnace/Soul-Guide instead?

Fox

05-31-2022, 12:14 AM

It's pretty rare that you will need to do more than make two assembly worker-sized dudes under a Standstill to force opponents into making bad decisions. If you've assembled Standstill + Saga, the Retrofitter tutor on top of it is just excessive; you're not gaining win % b/c you topped it all off with Retro. It's similar to playing Karn in a deck without Sol Lands and wishing for a Lattice that shouldn't be in your SB; you don't get bonus points for overkilling already-dead opponents...but you definitely lose points for allowing someone escape Daze range while getting everything from Saga 1-for-1'd [Dress Down into Ending]. If that's what you're doing, you may as well cut Saga and go back to Factory. While it is cool that constructs can be larger than an assembly worker, it's not something you should be going all-in on.

Even if you don't want to do the Furnace-type or Map, you can't look at Retrofitter and be like "this is better than Currency Converter." Currency turns all discards into 2/2s [effectively making it a non-Wasteland'able Field of the Dead]. Otherwise you can loot and fix your hand as the game drags on. Retrofitter is a horrid card here; you're not playing 8x thopter like Ninjas, nor are you meme'ing with Ancient Tomb stuff. Retro dies and does nothing or dies and makes a 1/1; anything more than that is pretty magical christmasland'y.

FTW

05-31-2022, 07:16 AM

If you've assembled Standstill + Saga, the Retrofitter tutor on top of it is just excessive; you're not gaining win % b/c you topped it all off with Retro. While it is cool that constructs can be larger than an assembly worker, it's not something you should be going all-in on.

Fair point. With Landstill I had a couple games where Standstill + slow clock gave combo too many draw steps to draw into outs before being forced to crack Standstill (Map into 2nd Saga is slower). I thought that problem would be amplified in a Daze deck because taking longer turns off your own outs (draw 3 into Daze, if you miss Force). You've got far, far more reps though, so maybe that doesn't come up often enough.

but you definitely lose points for allowing someone escape Daze range while getting everything from Saga 1-for-1'd [Dress Down into Ending].

The point was to have a line that doesn't let them escape Daze range by threatening a faster clock, forcing interaction sooner. If they get more turns to draw cards and play more lands, Standstill -> Daze fails. This isn't UW. Standstill draws into Bolt and Daze, not StP and Verdict. The interaction you can draw gets worse if they have more time.

T1 Retro T2 Standstill also gives +1 threat to sneak under Standstill, forcing interaction, even if Retro by itself is slow. Furnace doesn't double as another threat, so slightly lower odds of curving threat into Standstill.

You're only "allowing them" to escape Daze range if you take turns off for Saga when you could have used that mana on other things, then the Saga gambit fails (opponent finds a way to trade positively, e.g. Dress Down + Ending or Meltdown). But if you have nothing else to use the mana on, they still escape Daze if you got Furnace or didn't make Constructs. Doing less doesn't make them play into Daze. Don't you fall behind to Dress Down either way? What other meaningful decision do you have?

Retro dies and does nothing or dies and makes a 1/1; anything more than that is pretty magical christmasland'y.

If they have the Ending/Shatter and don't have to use it on Retro, Dreadnought dies instead. In that scenario, what do you do instead to stay ahead of Ending? You can get Furnace to avoid bad trades, but then you don't have a threat and they aren't forced to trade negatively with Furnace. They can save removal for your next threat.

Even if you don't want to do the Furnace-type or Map, you can't look at Retrofitter and be like "this is better than Currency Converter."

Tbh I haven't looked at Currency Converter, new card. Card looks good. It's slower to speed up the Saga clock (2/2s are non-artifact, 2 taps to make 1 Treasure) but overall it does make better threats and value. Looks like most Saga decks are running it over Retro, or just cutting Retro period.

Fox

05-31-2022, 02:24 PM

They're going to re-cast the removal either by SCM or Day's/Endurance re-shuffle or just Sevinne's back a Teferi and bounce. You have to double-kill the removal spells from decks like these, and while it's fine to duress the removal spell from hand with a dude, you can't be using a second dude to vindicate the removal from GY to exile. The way you beat these decks is being able mill their GY to exile with permanents that don't get seen by Plow.

It's incredibly annoying and tedious work to take these midrange decks [people mistakenly call control] and reduce them to hellbent, mill their deck, and also mill their GY to exile.

Now ofc UR has a harder time doing this than UW, but the compensation is being able to burn them out...but we have a problem where 2nd construct is made, Retro is tutored, and then no life total damage is done b/c of Dress Down before damage step, and then they Ending the Retro. Zero progress was made, and you can't afford that. You didn't clear the way for Dreadnought at all, that Ending in GY is still the one that's going to get you.

Again it's real effing tedious, but you're going to have to either: draw a card off their Ending or Map for Saga #2. It's all great and wonderful if the thing you tutored didn't instantly die before you ever untapped with it, b/c that would represent advantage under the next Standstill whether it's eating yard, making dudes, or finding Saga again...but that thing you grabbed is going to die 9 times out of 10, so it needs to participate in the rebuild effort - and this is where Retro is an abject failure of a magic card.

Here's how this needs to go down:
-if no 4th mana (or land 4 in hand) do not make 2nd dude [dies to same Dress Down], ensure mana for Map or Furnace-type or Currency Converter.
-if 4th mana you get to make 2nd dude and protect Furnace-type
-if 5th mana you get to make 2nd dude and protect Map or Currency.
-if less than 5 mana get killed by your own Retro.
-if 5 or more mana get killed b/c a 1/1 servo off a dead Retro still loses.

You can't afford to not get closer to the next Standstill or have fodder for Scroll of Fate when magical christmasland doesn't happen. I get the temptation though; on the surface T1 Retro into Standstill seems great, and unchallenged Retro with gobs of mana seems great, and getting uber-big constructs off Saga seems great, and gobs of mana and thopter block spams vs Murktide seems great...but that's just never going to reliably happen. You're are going to lose horribly more often than not b/c the fail case Retro is awful. The card is a trap.

FTW

06-01-2022, 02:28 AM

The way you beat these decks is being able mill their GY to exile with permanents that don't get seen by Plow.

It's incredibly annoying and tedious work to take these midrange decks [people mistakenly call control] and reduce them to hellbent, mill their deck, and also mill their GY to exile.

I can see that plan working for UW Dreadstill or Landstill, but is it viable for UR?

Slow-attacking their graveyard with Furnace does take away their tools eventually, but delaying the game that long (Turn 20+) gets worse and worse for UR. Furnace takes time. You gain small advantages from Furnace picking away, but then you get punished in the draw step (Daze, mana denial, mana flood) while the UWx midrange deck pulls ahead with its superior lategame. By the time Furnace has protected you from extra removals, opponent pulled ahead in other ways. Overall how does UR come out on top with this plan? Is there a meaningful gain in win%, or is this just a loss either way?

Even if you successfully exile-mill their graveyard to prevent recursion, they have as many removals as we have threats, so they may remove everything anyway. Delaying till Turn 20+ just draws them into that removal, by the time you've dodged Snap-Plow.

Isn't it much easier for UR to Surgical Extraction the 1st Plow/Ending? Then you just need to spend 1 body to Duress them (instead of 4) and you can exile from graveyard immediately without waiting many turns to hit the right cards. Surgical also breathes some life into the mana denial plan (Stifle+Surgical a 4x fetch), which is otherwise dead unless they built really badly.

1-of Soul-Guide Lantern or Relic of Progenitus off Saga will clear their graveyard much more quickly without costing so many turns, while Furnace forces a longer game.

Edit: Or what about running a back-up threat that is Protection from White or Hexproof? Since white removal is the worst matchup, instead of trying to slowly grind them out of all white removal, why not play a threat that ignores it? Kroxa fails here, but something else could do the job.

but we have a problem where 2nd construct is made, Retro is tutored, and then no life total damage is done b/c of Dress Down before damage step

With 1 mana open we can postcombat Dreadnought off their Dress Down, so the 2nd construct could be favorable to make if Dreadnought's in hand.

Again it's real effing tedious, but you're going to have to either: draw a card off their Ending or Map for Saga #2. It's all great and wonderful if the thing you tutored didn't instantly die before you ever untapped with it, b/c that would represent advantage under the next Standstill whether it's eating yard, making dudes, or finding Saga again...but that thing you grabbed is going to die 9 times out of 10, so it needs to participate in the rebuild effort

Furnace just doesn't seem like enough of a rebuild to matter. Especially for UR, which has to be the aggressor in the matchup. Map into Saga #2 at least keeps the pressure on. Currency Converter would too.

Fox

06-01-2022, 05:37 PM

It is easier to do postboard with a 2nd Furnace-type and Ashioks. The main thing is turning Saga into a card they can't tolerate, and must bleed hand size to handle (and by handle I mean discard a card while I draw a card). Either endpoint is a losing proposition for them on this axis; the bigger problem with UR is that Daze is a worthless card in the matchup which also costs me the ability to ship a spell straight to exile (FoN) to help the Furnace-type control GY and it costs me Karn and the ability to destroy their 1x basic Mountain and completely strip red...at which point they auto-lose to Scroll of Fate, having access to only 2 colors.

The way it plays out with Daze present is early dude vs Plow while Stifle/Waste/Daze vs spells, the game usually progresses to Standstill & draw 3 goes after their PW plays, and I switch out of playing Plow targets and only put down Ending targets. In comes a Furnace-type and looks for a floor of killing 2x Ending (-1 Ending from hand targeting Furnace, -1 previously-cast Ending from GY). As long as Day's and Echo are not banned, the game settles to a race to Otawara target Narset vs Day's on stack (note that Lavamancer is doing his part to make sure lands don't make it back into my deck). Damage is being towards life total throughout this process, with the goal being to deplete all remaining Plows and SCMs with lands and Dazes played as 2/2 manifest in late game; combine with Bolt targeting life total to duress remaining blue cards. Avoid spending blue to kill non-blue as much as possible. It's pretty scrappy and tedious, and UW Dreadstill or UBw Landstill have way better tools, but at the end of the day all UWR decks have no access to playable, quality lifegain; it's just a long drawn-out process of counting to 20 against them.

The main issue is that Daze is a trash magic card, except vs aggressive combos and Delver...and you'd rather have FoN and Karn vs combo. It's tiring to be forced to run it b/c of Delver's race to the bottom. That said, the Delver matchup is a pushover. The matchup vs UWR is at best "fine" b/c we had to run Daze; we certainly will beat UWR more than Delver can (Delver has to pathologically jam futile threats into known interaction, so they're all-in UWR not figuring out that all they have to do is break EI/Shame Island/Daze loop). The bigger issue is that UWR is playing banned effects [MindTwister] which randomly happens to dumpster Uro, a card which otherwise makes their color set completely unplayable (once Day's is banned with Echo, they must all turn to 3-4c Uro midrange to compete. This solves the matchup annoyance).

We can talk about things like Surgical and Soul-Guide/Relic, but it's kind of pointless b/c we're talking about what we can do to react to a format warped by the presence of banned effects. Once wotc wakes up and bans legacy's worst offenders, Furnace will already be pointed at Murktide [Goyf] and Uro [FIRE] while Hymn/CB/MindTwister [total hand destruction] disappears again. The mechanics of what we want are repeatable yard reduction, option to cantrip, and leaving our GY alone [DRC, Lavamancer]; that's where Soul-Guide and Relic don't fit in as well as Furnace. The better option is to just play UBw Landstill or UW Dreadstill while the format is on life support thanks to Day's, Echo, and Daze. These color combinations play more non-dudes on 3 and have built-in basic Mountain killing for total red stripping from UWR as another way to punish mono-cropping on Ending. Both also play the Otawara subgame vs Day's and Ashioks + yard hate pieces for total library and GY kills. UBw has Cling, Drown, and direct PW kill spells, while UW has very easy yolo-Karn wish Liquimetal lines thanks to March now targeting coated basics or PWs.

What we're seeing in legacy is Oko was enough of a 1-card combo to stamp MindTwister out of the format (people tried if for like 3 weeks, and stopped when they realized they're still just going to die to elk beats), some Uro things, Ragavan arriving and continuing to suppress MindTwister and force Uro play (lifegain), and now the last FIRE card's not being able to suppress MindTwister having lost the Ragavan shields Delver was giving them. As for Delver, it's scrubbing out b/c Goyf is trash vs UWR, even when it's called MurkGoyf. For all the StifleNought players, welcome to legacy where you no longer get to roll just Delver in challenges; back to leagues to find enough over-represented combo matchups in a row. On the spectrum of winrates vs UWR total hand destruction, subset MindTwister: UBw Landstill ~ UW Dreadstill > UWr Standstill ~ UR Dreadstill > UR Delver >>> StifleNought.

FTW

06-02-2022, 02:23 PM

We can talk about things like Surgical and Soul-Guide/Relic, but it's kind of pointless b/c we're talking about what we can do to react to a format warped by the presence of banned effects. Once wotc wakes up and bans legacy's worst offenders, Furnace will already be pointed at Murktide [Goyf] and Uro [FIRE] while Hymn/CB/MindTwister [total hand destruction] disappears again.

It's very relevant since this is the format. Overpowered/banned FIRE effects are a feature, not a bug. They won't ban this one until they've printed the next 3. The ban is then a lame attempt to "fix" the format to appease players, at face value. But really it's a mechanism to force Eternal players to dump money into the next necessary FIRE chase-Mythic, without getting compensation for the money spent on the last one (banned). This is highly profitable for them short-term and unlikely to change. They don't care about Eternal players unless they can bait us into spending more money. Eternal was historically their least profitable market (and most profitable for secondary market), so shareholders dictate they make printings and bannings in a way to reverse that. Fairness of the game is secondary.

The mechanics of what we want are repeatable yard reduction, option to cantrip, and leaving our GY alone [DRC, Lavamancer]; that's where Soul-Guide and Relic don't fit in as well as Furnace.

That fits better with the Daze-less UR control plan. Furnace leaves our yard alone and is repeatable but also takes forever to hit the right cards (e.g. cannot exile multiple StP in response to Day's/Echo/Endurance on the stack). It's a very slow grind that prolongs the game. The tempo cost is real for a low-curve Daze deck. Against GY combos Furnace also struggles if they have more than 1 relevant target to hit.

Is Soul-Guide not good enough? You can just hold it to respond to their Day's/Echo/Endurance/Snapcaster. While it's not "repeatable", it still exiles everything before opponent can use it. The Relic/Furnace effect is better vs Murktide and DRC, though that's a different matchup.

What about Unlicensed Hearse? Manifests, Constructs and Currency Converter tokens turn into X/X haste. You can even crew with Dreadnought before the sacrifice trigger. That seems good for a UR tempo plan, while Furnace forces a long drawn out control game for a deck without enough control tools.

What we're seeing in legacy is Oko was enough of a 1-card combo to stamp MindTwister out of the format (people tried if for like 3 weeks, and stopped when they realized they're still just going to die to elk beats), some Uro things, Ragavan arriving and continuing to suppress MindTwister and force Uro play (lifegain), and now the last FIRE card's not being able to suppress MindTwister having lost the Ragavan shields Delver was giving them. As for Delver, it's scrubbing out b/c Goyf is trash vs UWR, even when it's called MurkGoyf. For all the StifleNought players, welcome to legacy where you no longer get to roll just Delver in challenges; back to leagues to find enough over-represented combo matchups in a row. On the spectrum of winrates vs UWR total hand destruction, subset MindTwister: UBw Landstill ~ UW Dreadstill > UWr Standstill ~ UR Dreadstill > UR Delver >>> StifleNought.

What about Stiflenought playing MindTwister as its draw engine?

Fox

06-03-2022, 10:19 AM

It's very relevant since this is the format. Overpowered/banned FIRE effects are a feature, not a bug. They won't ban this one until they've printed the next 3. The ban is then a lame attempt to "fix" the format to appease players, at face value. But really it's a mechanism to force Eternal players to dump money into the next necessary FIRE chase-Mythic, without getting compensation for the money spent on the last one (banned). This is highly profitable for them short-term and unlikely to change. They don't care about Eternal players unless they can bait us into spending more money. Eternal was historically their least profitable market (and most profitable for secondary market), so shareholders dictate they make printings and bannings in a way to reverse that. Fairness of the game is secondary.

For the most part FIRE design is fine; stupid, but fine. The defining characteristic of FIRE is that it invalidates at least Goyf or total hand destruction, and most often it invalidates both at the same time. As far as Standstill decks are concerned, FIRE has minimal effect on viability or our card selections. We note a healthier format with FIRE pushing out Counterbalance and Hymn, and although MindTwister flavor of total hand destruction is beyond idiotic, it's either much slower (UWR) or all-in (Echo cannon). The decks most affected by FIRE are those which have no strategy beyond playing the most power-crept 1-card combos; as such, they don't have any defense other than buying the new FIRE card and changing colors to cast it. As far as fairness goes, there's no point in having rules that player 2 gets to keep or mulligan an opening hand if they're just going to get LED/Echo'd out of it before ever getting a turn to use the hand they chose. So especially with Echo there is a game structure problem, whereas with UWR we're all sitting here looking at Timetwister and Mind Twist on the banlist and going "wtf wotc?"

Your financial point holds up better with Wrenn, Oko, and Ragavan. All cards that were exceptionally easy to identify as needing to be banned (though Wrenn did mask the Oko problem while it was legal). The counterpoint would be that Breach, Valki, and Lurrus all got banned [for Valki, effectively banned] largely before paper profits.

That fits better with the Daze-less UR control plan. Furnace leaves our yard alone and is repeatable but also takes forever to hit the right cards (e.g. cannot exile multiple StP in response to Day's/Echo/Endurance on the stack). It's a very slow grind that prolongs the game. The tempo cost is real for a low-curve Daze deck. Against GY combos Furnace also struggles if they have more than 1 relevant target to hit.

Is Soul-Guide not good enough? You can just hold it to respond to their Day's/Echo/Endurance/Snapcaster. While it's not "repeatable", it still exiles everything before opponent can use it. The Relic/Furnace effect is better vs Murktide and DRC, though that's a different matchup.

What about Unlicensed Hearse? Manifests, Constructs and Currency Converter tokens turn into X/X haste. You can even crew with Dreadnought before the sacrifice trigger. That seems good for a UR tempo plan, while Furnace forces a long drawn out control game for a deck without enough control tools.

I wouldn't say the tempo plan suffers any more than say casting Ponder hurts Delver's tempo plan. Where Ponder sets up the next turn, Furnace is more likely to generate a trade (potentially forcing an opponent to turn on Daze). The floor with Furnace-types is always cantripping. Always remember that a 0 or 1cmc non-dude artifact that draws a card without going to the GY/exile is a 100% banned card (see also SDT, Astro); these types of cards have a deceptively high power level at baseline. They don't need to do everything, because just by resolving with a mana up you will always accomplish the goal of restricting the opponent's lines of play. Relic is better at keeping our DRC alive (strip own delirium to avoid attack into obvious Endurance or Ice-Fang), but it wipes our own GY, ends up in exile (relevant for Karn), and gives opponent the option to exile lands rather than instant/sorceries (Murktide, SCM). Furnace is more aggressive as it goes to GY for DRC/Lavamancer and it removes choice from the opponent, but in exchange you lose the nuclear GY option. Soul-Guide I generally dislike b/c it just doesn't ever stop Murktide or Goyf, it merely delays these without drawing a card...which means your opponent has an easier path to rebuilding GY. It is rare that Soul-Guide's ETB was enough to not need to nuke the yard, and also rare that the GY nuke mode was :0: rather than :1:.

Hearse is not a great card when we're targeting Uro and Murktide. This is one of those cards where it's the best thing Ancient Tomb has access to. The closest this would get to my deck is a SB slot for Karn wish. It's actually rather fascinating to see UBW mages choosing to play Hearse over the vastly superior card: Kaya 3cmc.

With the Furnace, I'm looking for a prison element that constricts play rather than just pillow forts. Furnace achieves this while advancing my other plans (especially DRC), where Relic and Soul-Guide can't quite deliver on the same level. In the future I'm waiting for :1: casting cost, tap to exile target card in a GY, pay :0: or :1: without tapping to wipe all of target player's GY & draw a card.

What about Stiflenought playing MindTwister as its draw engine?
Not competitive, just lower winrate than Narset x4 downticking to find 1x Day's or LED/Echo. You would also be disfavored in the MindTwister mirror; you're just playing harder into their Plow/Ending or Chalice.
^This is the kind of nonsense Blade players do, telling themselves adding SDT/CB or Hymn or Oko or Uro or Ragavan or DHA, diluted by their bad cards (SFM/equip), is progress.

Clark Kant

06-03-2022, 06:53 PM

How does Slip Out the Back interact with Uro/Kroxa/Hunted Horror?

Because both Dress Down and Stifle interact beautifully with those cards.

Fox

06-03-2022, 07:29 PM

How does Slip Out the Back interact with Uro/Kroxa/Hunted Horror?

Because both Dress Down and Stifle interact beautifully with those cards.

ETB still happens (good for Kroxa/Uro, horrible for Hunted).

Clark Kant

06-03-2022, 09:41 PM

ETB still happens (good for Kroxa/Uro, horrible for Hunted).

So does Uro still stick around the way it does after a dress down or stifle?

Or is it only useful to protect Uro from exile effects like StP?

Fox

06-04-2022, 04:26 AM

So does Uro still stick around the way it does after a dress down or stifle?
Correct.

Clark Kant

06-04-2022, 06:55 AM

It both enables the combo and also protects your threats from all forms of removal with additional utility vs blockers and vs decks like Doomsday, its an automatic 4 of.

Simic Dressnought 2.0

4 Misty Rainforest
4 Prismatic Vista
3 Snow-Covered Island
2 Snow-Covered Forest
2 Tropical Island
3-4 Wasteland
1-3 Urza's Saga

4 Phyrexian Dreadnought
4 Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath
4 Dress Down
4 Stifle
4 Slip Out the Back
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
4 Daze
4 Force of Will
1 Mishra's Bauble
3-4 Flex Slots (Ice-Fang Coatl? Urza’s Saga tutor package? Murktide Regent? Sylvan Library? Brazen Borrower? Force of Negation? Tarmogoyf?)

I expect to see the above list in the next 5-0 deck dump.

FourDogsinaHorseSuit

06-04-2022, 09:50 AM

How does Slip Out the Back interact with Uro/Kroxa/Hunted Horror?

Because both Dress Down and Stifle interact beautifully with those cards.
Phased out means you can't sacrifice them. So good with the Titans because you still get the etb triggers.
For the same reason bad with the hunted cycle.

FourDogsinaHorseSuit

06-04-2022, 09:53 AM

It both enables the combo and also protects your threats from all forms of removal with additional utility vs blockers and vs decks like Doomsday, its an automatic 4 of.

The deck builds itself…

4 Phyrexian Dreadnought
4 Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath
4 Dress Down
4 Stifle
4 Slip Out the Back
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
4 Daze
4 Force of Will
1 Mishra's Bauble
3-4 Flex Slots (Ice-Fang Coatl? Urza’s Saga tutor package? Murktide? Sylvan Library? Brazen Borrower? Force of Negation? Tarmogoyf?)
19-20 Lands (including 1-3 Urza’s Saga and 3-4 Wasteland together)
Yes this is what I'm trying to build, but I don't think you need slip out the back.
I instead went with endurance, ledger shredder, and soon: sailor's bane. I might try one or two Ambitious dragonborn but it's looking too pricey at 4.
I like bane over murktide because it plays better with uro and has ward. (Murktide, of course, is cheaper and flies)

Clark Kant

06-04-2022, 10:02 AM

I haven't played with the new cards yet but Endurance is indeed a great option for the flex slot. By moving my Endurances from my sideboard over to the maindeck, I free up 2 valuable slots in the board. Perhaps this...

4 Misty Rainforest
4 Prismatic Vista
3 Snow-Covered Island
2 Snow-Covered Forest
2 Tropical Island
4 Wasteland

4 Phyrexian Dreadnought
4 Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath
4 Dress Down
4 Stifle
4 Slip Out the Back
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
4 Daze
4 Force of Will
2 Ice-Fang Coatl
2 Endurance

Or is it worth it to maindeck 2 Mishra's Baubles in order to play some Urza's Sagas?

Edit: After thinking about it, Sailors Bane seems like it could be amazing as 1-2 of.

FourDogsinaHorseSuit

06-04-2022, 10:56 AM

A petal and a retrofitter foundry.
Maybe even a wavesifter

Fox

06-04-2022, 01:41 PM

Bauble is a bad card, it is either all-in (Ancient Tomb) or the worst card in the deck (Delver, Shadow). If you are adding Saga, the card you are not trying to grab is Bauble, particularly for Murktide or Sailor's Bane. When you're not doing all-in stuff, the point of Bauble is to be a jank card to help with delirium...which you don't need. There is zero reason to run Bauble when Saga tutor suicide Nought is 1-card delirium.

Saga does not help Sailor's Bane get out quicker. With a god hand, a tuned legacy deck can cast it on turn 3...but realistically turn 4 is the best you can hope for (and this would be uncommonly ahead of schedule). You've also got this problem where Uro and Saga are not best friends...and you've got a problem b/c you can't afford to let Dress Down x4 rot in hand, unable to cast it b/c it will wipe your own constructs.

UG are the wrong colors for Sailor's Bane. You will quickly finding yourself chasing down really bad ideas like Saga -> Manifold Key. The way you play Sailor's Bane is 4x DRC and 2-3x Grim Lavamancer. Note how hitting 1-cmc that hard turns on Daze, note how Lavamancer clears the chump blockers away for a 7/7 on the ground, and note how much pressure you can exert on a life total (there's not a lot of time for the opponent to assemble paying for ward 4 and paying for a late game Daze).

Some things you need to answer before you consider things like Saga:
-what are you doing about Narset? This card is prevalent, and you can't go after it with DRC or Lavamancer or Red Blasts.
-what are you doing when you get Surgical'd? That's a lot of enablers (12) that don't do much by themselves.
-why are you rewarding opponents for playing Narset even harder with Ledger Shredder? You know all they have to do it cast 2 spells in your upkeep and you skip your draw step right? Same problems with Leovold, Hullyb, and Labyrinth. This is a lot of the legacy format doing this stuff.
-you at least got on-color and dropped the outlandish cost of the mana base by roughly 2/3, so now it's time to play Otawara.

Things that work with Saga:
1-Relic/Furnace/Soul-Guide/Nihil
2-Expedition Map
3-Currency Converter

Retro, Needle, [not-Nihil] Spellbomb are all obsolete. You can make a case for some of these SB, but Retro especially is a dead card. It is just so much worse than Currency Converter if you don't have thopter tribal synergies. Take that $25 you were going to blow on Retro and buy a playset of Currency Converter and don't look back.

FourDogsinaHorseSuit

06-04-2022, 02:15 PM

Fox

06-04-2022, 03:26 PM

Shadow spear is both a saga target and answers the chump problem.

If your dress-downs are languishing in hand because you have tokens out then you're winning.

E: Have you really liked converter that much? That was another card on my target list but I've had awful luck getting things delivered to my apartment I was waiting until I moved in July.

The way this works out most often is you've got a standoff where your constructs can't really attack and the opponent can't make it past the construct blocks. You can't afford to wipe your dudes, so you just sit there drawing Dress Downs and increasingly irrelevant Dazes...then you lose b/c you took too many turns off. The next most common thing is taking turns off to make constructs into a hostile Dress Down cast by an opponent who had plenty of time to make land drops to kill Daze. The 2-2 split of Saga vs Dress Down keeps this stuff from occurring too often, and it also keeps Saga infrequent enough to allow you to Daze without losing ability to make constructs reliably (Saga as land #2 or 3 often fails to make both constructs).

Shadowspear is a pretty all-in card & winmore since a StifleNought deck should already be winning if they resolve and protect a dude...if the dude dies, you don't really want to be topdecking Shadowspear any more than you want to be looking at in on the battlefield doing nothing. This is "bad card syndrome" where we start with a card that doesn't really work in the UG shell [Sailor's Bane] -> add some mana issues [Saga] -> add more bad topdecks [Saga targets] -> including Shadowspear to give trample to a Sailor's Bane you can't wield effectively. Compounding failures like this have to be avoided in tier 2 deckbuilding. Need to shift that focus away from what "I can do" [forward-deckbuilding, like modern] to "I need to address the problems presented by other decks, particularly Narset-types" [backwards-deckbuilding, how we make legacy decks].

On Currency Converter, yes it's pretty outrageous. It's so stupid with Shark'nado and Timeless Dragon (but losing land drops on Saga isn't great in UW). Also EoT cracking Standstill to make them discard goes south real quick. It's also important to transmute card types in this format; it's pretty hard to answer Scroll of Fate and face-down Dreadnought, also hard to kill Currency Converter and a 2/2 black rogue token. You play crap like Retro and you're gonna lose everything to Dress Down, and then Ending hits Retro. Postboard Retro walks right into the Meltdown and Seeds you know everyone has...and all this is *if* Saga survives and you didn't topdeck the target.

FTW

06-05-2022, 11:09 PM

As far as fairness goes, there's no point in having rules that player 2 gets to keep or mulligan an opening hand if they're just going to get LED/Echo'd out of it before ever getting a turn to use the hand they chose. So especially with Echo there is a game structure problem

You could make the same point about AllSpells, Belcher, SI, TES, LED Dredge, BR Reanimator, Tin Fins, and other combos that can goldfish turn 1. Many players feel such mechanics make the game determined by the die roll, ending before they get a turn (or having all relevant mulligan decisions stripped of them, e.g. 4x Cabal Therapy/Grief/Unmask -> threat). Wizards has a consistent policy for it. Modern and up ban fast combos. In Legacy and Vintage they're allowed to exist, but we also get Turn 0 interaction and sideboards so Player 2 gets to do something.

whereas with UWR we're all sitting here looking at Timetwister and Mind Twist on the banlist and going "wtf wotc?"

They have no money to make by unbanning old cards like Mind Twist, which supports my financial point. A number of older cards on the Legacy B/R list could be unbanned safely. But those cards would be unhealthy for Standard and Modern so they can't reprint them in new sets. Therefore, an unban of out-of-print low-circulation cards doesn't make them any money, it's only profitable for the secondary market, so there's no reason to disrupt the status quo.

Your financial point holds up better with Wrenn, Oko, and Ragavan. All cards that were exceptionally easy to identify as needing to be banned (though Wrenn did mask the Oko problem while it was legal). The counterpoint would be that Breach, Valki, and Lurrus all got banned [for Valki, effectively banned] largely before paper profits.

If you're talking about paper singles prices, that's the difference between Mythic and Rare. But Breach and Lurrus still had high demand. Prices weren't as high due to higher print frequency, but the demand was still there, so they still sold packs of the new set (where WOTC makes profit) as much as a rare could. Once they had sold enough boosters, they could afford to ban.

Not competitive, just lower winrate than Narset x4 downticking to find 1x Day's or LED/Echo. You would also be disfavored in the MindTwister mirror; you're just playing harder into their Plow/Ending or Chalice.
^This is the kind of nonsense Blade players do, telling themselves adding SDT/CB or Hymn or Oko or Uro or Ragavan or DHA, diluted by their bad cards (SFM/equip), is progress.

What makes Dreadstill vs Landstill any different (not just diluted by bad cards)? As a Landstill but not Dreadstill player, it seems the same to me. You add a fast clock and tempo tools that helps vs combo and Delver, but it's a vulnerable 2-card combo that makes you weaker to Plow/Ending and Chalice. Why would the effect on UWR MindTwister be worse? Why is Landstill not hurt as much by it?

Conversely, why wouldn't some other non-Standstill draw engine complement Dreadnought as well? I think that's the driving question behind this entire Dressnought thread.

Clark Kant

06-05-2022, 11:48 PM

They have no money to make by unbanning old cards like Mind Twist, which supports my financial point. A number of older cards on the Legacy B/R list could be unbanned safely. But those cards would be unhealthy for Standard and Modern so they can't reprint them in new sets. Therefore, an unban of out-of-print low-circulation cards doesn't make them any money, it's only profitable for the secondary market, so there's no reason to disrupt the status quo.

Easy fix. Secret Lair: Legacy Unbanned and pair that release alongside the unbanning of those cards so that the price of those cards never gets a chance to spike due to the unban announcement.

There would still be collectable value for the old bordered originals so no one loses in that scenario.

Back to topic,

I really think

4 Uro
4 Dreadnought
2 Sailor's Bane
4 Dress Down
4 Slip Out the Back
4 Stifle
4 Daze
4 Wasteland

seems like a very very juicy shell for this list.

FTW

06-06-2022, 08:17 AM

I really think

4 Uro
4 Dreadnought
2 Sailor's Bane
4 Dress Down
4 Slip Out the Back
4 Stifle
4 Daze
4 Wasteland

seems like a very very juicy shell for this list.

Sailors' Bane could be good in any other colors, but UG will have the fewest instants and sorceries. Seems better in UR (Bolt, REB, EI) or UW (StP, Ending) but too slow in UG.

Does Slip work with the rules? Yes. But 12 enablers + 4 Dreadnought is overkill. 8-9 enablers should be enough. Remember that Uro doesn't NEED an enabler, he works on his own too. Slip can remove a blocker, but it's not real removal like StP, so most of the time it's card disadvantage.

You could cut Dress Down and replace with Slip (better with Uro). But Dress Down is better at staying even on cards and disrupting opponents.

You could start with this shell

//Lands: 20
4 Wasteland
4 Misty Rainforest
4 Prismatic Vista
2 Tropical Island
3 Snow-Covered Island
2 Snow-Covered Forest
1 Otawara, Soaring City

//Creatures: 8
4 Phyrexian Dreadnought
4 Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath

//Spells: 16
4 Force of Will
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
4 Stifle

//Enchantments: 5
3 Dress Down
2 Sylvan Library

//Artifacts: 1
1 Scroll of Fate

That leaves about 10 flex slots.

What to do with those slots? You could play 4 Slip 4 Daze 2 Sailor's Bane. But that doesn't help the deck's weaknesses. You need answers for:
1) Narset, Parter of Veils (Otawara only)
2) creatures (no removal)
3) Ensnaring Bridge (Otawara only)
4) Surgical Extraction on Dreadnought (not many backup threats, too many dead enablers)
5) Chalice of the Void at 1 (Otawara or go over the top with Uro & Scroll)
6) Marit Lage for bigger 2-card threat (Stifle or Otawara)

In the core, there's not much to deal with those threats (1 Otawara is mandatory or it's even worse). Playing Slip and Daze doesn't help enough with those problems.

Some cards to consider:
Force of Negation
Boseiju, Who Endures
Brazen Borrower
Endurance
Karn, the Great Creator
Stubborn Denial
Subtlety
Run Afoul (in SB)

It's tough. White and red have better answers.

You could play a small Saga package (2 Urza's Saga + 1 Currency Converter + 1 Phyrexian Furnace) but those don't really address the weaknesses either.

Too bad there are no 1 mana green instant fight spells. Ram Through, Titanic Brawl, Wing Puncture, and Prizefight are close but not quite enough. Ram Through at least lets you respond to removal (or countered Stifle) by killing their creature & dealing opponent 8-10 damage, but requires having 1G up all the time. It's easier to protect Dreadnought with Vision Charm or Stubborn Denial so far.

Purple Blood

06-06-2022, 06:32 PM

They have no money to make by unbanning old cards like Mind Twist, which supports my financial point. A number of older cards on the Legacy B/R list could be unbanned safely. But those cards would be unhealthy for Standard and Modern so they can't reprint them in new sets. Therefore, an unban of out-of-print low-circulation cards doesn't make them any money, it's only profitable for the secondary market, so there's no reason to disrupt the status quo.

I share in your cynicism to a degree but I also think they don't unban certain cards (e.g. Earthcraft, Mindtwist, Frantic Search, Mind Twist, Mind's Desire) because they will only serve to further degenerate playstyles that lead to non-games. The cost-benefit analysis is nothing / lose insofar as the unban will either add nothing to the format, or improve/create degenerate decks that they don't even want being good in the first place. Why take a risk on something if the best case scenario is nothing changes?

FourDogsinaHorseSuit

06-06-2022, 08:58 PM

I just can't imagine pinning for mind twist. Even if it was fine, who cares.

FourDogsinaHorseSuit

06-06-2022, 10:33 PM

Easy fix. Secret Lair: Legacy Unbanned and pair that release alongside the unbanning of those cards so that the price of those cards never gets a chance to spike due to the unban announcement.

There would still be collectable value for the old bordered originals so no one loses in that scenario.

Back to topic,

I really think

4 Uro
4 Dreadnought
2 Sailor's Bane
4 Dress Down
4 Slip Out the Back
4 Stifle
4 Daze
4 Wasteland

seems like a very very juicy shell for this list.
I am still not sold on Slip Out the Back

4 Uro
4 Dreadnought
2 Sailor's Bane
4 Endurence
4 Ledger Shredder

4 Dress Down
4 Stifle
4 Force of Will
4 Ponder
4 Brainstorm
4 Consider!?
Repudiate // Replicate?

Consider puts cards int the yard which is what Uro and Bane want, Repudiate is green and tricksy which is what Dreadnought and Endurence want.

FTW

06-07-2022, 01:08 AM

I am still not sold on Slip Out the Back

4 Uro
4 Dreadnought
2 Sailor's Bane
4 Endurence
4 Ledger Shredder

4 Dress Down
4 Stifle
4 Force of Will
4 Ponder
4 Brainstorm
4 Consider!?
Repudiate // Replicate?

Consider puts cards int the yard which is what Uro and Bane want, Repudiate is green and tricksy which is what Dreadnought and Endurence want.

Ledger Shredder's floor is really bad. Think about what happens when you topdeck it. Or when opponent has Narset out and you're forced to draw 0 discard 1 (not a "may" ability). It's an unnecessary risk when the deck already has access to better threats and better draw.

In UG Sylvan Library is an amazing draw engine with Uro, and Sylvan supports Endurance better. Fox will say to just play Standstill, but if you're not on Standstill then Sylvan should be the next choice.

Repudiate is too expensive for Legacy. You could just play Trickbind without losing to Daze and Fluster, but you'll notice Trickbind sees 0 Legacy play because 2-mana Stifle is not good enough. The Replicate mode is win-more and doesn't work on Uro. If you already have 1 Dreadnought, Replicate only works when you're already winning (opponent let you untap with fat creature) and fails badly when you're not (StP in response, Ensnaring Bridge, can't make Dreadnought yet, etc).

See my above post. I made a case for why the remaining slots should help when the main plan doesn't work, not doubling down on more of the same thing or win-more.

Bane's appealing. But you can enable Bane a lot more easily in Red.
e.g.

//Creatures: 10
4 Dragon's Rage Channeler
4 Phyrexian Dreadnought
2 Sailors' Bane

//Spells: 26
4 Force of Will
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
4 Stifle
4 Lightning Bolt
3 Daze
3 Expressive Iteration

//Enchantments: 2
2 Dress Down

//Artifacts: 2
1 Currency Converter
1 Scroll of Fate

//Lands: 20
2 Urza's Saga
3 Wasteland
4 Scalding Tarn
4 Prismatic Vista
2 Volcanic Island
3 Island
1 Mountain
1 Otawara, Soaring City

A deck like that fills up on instants and sorceries much faster without needing to run bad enablers. There are more spells you can cast proactively. DRC and Currency Converter do the role of Consider while also being a threat.

If you cut the Saga stuff, then maybe:
-2 Saga
+1 Wasteland
-1 Currency Converter
-1 other card
+2 Murktide Regent

Reeplcheep

06-07-2022, 11:56 AM

I just can't imagine pinning for mind twist. Even if it was fine, who cares.

Having a hymn that is better in non blue archetypes than blue snap caster shells is good for the format. Curses and Nic Fit would really get a shot in an arm since they can’t afford bad top decks or an early BB cost spell. The play patterns they encourage are both more interesting and different than (generic CA engine) + (7 Fows + 7 blasts +7 unconditional removal) imo. Blue soup pile would usually prefer hymn.

I’m not sure it is playable in pox, but attrition archetypes need all the help they can get against the fire bullshit.

Complaining about mind twist and frantic search when FIRE designs like doomsday thoracle or narset days undoing are legal, more powerful, and more annoying is silly.

Purple Blood

06-07-2022, 12:58 PM

Having a hymn that is better in non blue archetypes than blue snap caster shells is good for the format. Curses and Nic Fit would really get a shot in an arm since they can’t afford bad top decks or an early BB cost spell. The play patterns they encourage are both more interesting and different than (generic CA engine) + (7 Fows + 7 blasts +7 unconditional removal) imo. Blue soup pile would usually prefer hymn.

I’m not sure it is playable in pox, but attrition archetypes need all the help they can get against the fire bullshit.

Complaining about mind twist and frantic search when FIRE designs like doomsday thoracle or narset days undoing are legal, more powerful, and more annoying is silly.

I have a suspicion MH3 will be printing some busted Black and Green cards much the same way MH2 made UR tempo a real archetype in Modern. Maybe they'll print a 2 CMC creature that unearths on attack. What could possibly go wrong?

Reeplcheep

06-07-2022, 01:03 PM

I have a suspicion MH3 will be printing some busted Black and Green cards much the same way MH2 made UR tempo a real archetype in Modern. Maybe they'll print a 2 CMC creature that unearths on attack. What could possibly go wrong?

They were not lacking on insane GB cards

Grist
Grief
Endurance
Tourak, Dread Cantor

Whenever wotc prints delve cards they are out of line. Did you forget MH1 had hogaak?

FourDogsinaHorseSuit

06-07-2022, 01:16 PM

Reeplcheep

06-07-2022, 01:40 PM

Citations needed
Because I don't see format health as the status of [your pet deck].

Format health is generally dependent on archetype, gameplay, and colour diversity.
Discard/Attrition based control is not a viable archetype currently.
Mind twist for 2 or 3 is both different and more interesting to play against than current 3 or 4 drops like 3feri, karn, or uro.
Fair non-blue decks are underrepresented in legacy since blue cards like brainstorm and force of Will are better than half the banlist.
Mind twist would only go in, and improve, fair non-blue attrition/discard decks.
Mind twist will improve 2, 3, & 4.
Ergo -> mind twist will improve format health.

Format health is generally dependent on archetype, gameplay, and colour diversity.
Aggro is underrepresented in legacy since it can’t beat combo.
Franctic Search is both different and more interesting to play against than current combo pieces like doomsday & show and tell.
Fair non-blue decks are underrepresented in legacy since most viable combo decks are inherently good against them.
High Tide is a combo deck that is very good against counters but bad against aggro or hate pieces.
Frantic Search will improve high tide
Frantic Search unban will improve 2, 3, 4
ergo -> frantic search will improve format health.

Purple Blood

06-07-2022, 03:03 PM

They were not lacking on insane GB cards

Grist
Grief
Endurance
Tourak, Dread Cantor

Whenever wotc prints delve cards they are out of line. Did you forget MH1 had hogaak?

I was thinking they are going to beef up The Rock archetype next. Some time of value creatures/spells that will slot in.

Yeah...Delve...why do they keep printing that type of card. I guess I shouldn't complain too much since they seemed to have moved on to super Delve with that turtle.

Purple Blood

06-07-2022, 03:16 PM

I'd imagine Mindtwist, if played at all, would be played by Tomb / Ritual decks. I don't see it making fair non-blue any more playable.

Reeplcheep

06-07-2022, 03:43 PM

I'd imagine Mindtwist, if played at all, would be played by Tomb / Ritual decks. I don't see it making fair non-blue any more playable.

It is going to go in a black big mana shell, since it is a black card that needs ramp. Blue decks inherently need something more efficient due to how xerox works.

I think the disagreement is on what consitutes combo. Any true combo deck would rather play thoughtseize and ad nauseum than this card. The best black big mana shells would be tomb/ritual, cabal therapy/veteran explorer, and maybe utopia sprawl/Serra’s sanctum. I consider curses/karn pox/nic-fit/enchantress fair non-blue but I can see how people would disagree.

FourDogsinaHorseSuit

06-07-2022, 04:46 PM

Format health is generally dependent on archetype, gameplay, and colour diversity.
Discard/Attrition based control is not a viable archetype currently.
Mind twist for 2 or 3 is both different and more interesting to play against than current 3 or 4 drops like 3feri, karn, or uro.
Fair non-blue decks are underrepresented in legacy since blue cards like brainstorm and force of Will are better than half the banlist.
Mind twist would only go in, and improve, fair non-blue attrition/discard decks.
Mind twist will improve 2, 3, & 4.
Ergo -> mind twist will improve format health.

Format health is generally dependent on archetype, gameplay, and colour diversity.
Aggro is underrepresented in legacy since it can’t beat combo.
Franctic Search is both different and more interesting to play against than current combo pieces like doomsday & show and tell.
Fair non-blue decks are underrepresented in legacy since most viable combo decks are inherently good against them.
High Tide is a combo deck that is very good against counters but bad against aggro or hate pieces.
Frantic Search will improve high tide
Frantic Search unban will improve 2, 3, 4
ergo -> frantic search will improve format health.

Nice logical fallacies, nerd.

Reeplcheep

06-07-2022, 06:19 PM

Nice logical fallacies, nerd.
Which ones and where?

FTW

06-07-2022, 06:26 PM

Nice logical fallacies, nerd.

Nice discussion about Dressnought.

The previous B/R talk at least loosely related to Dressnought: Dreadnought needs a way to fight UWR HullDay as long as it's legal. Why is it realistic to expect HullDay to stay legal while Mind Twist and Timetwister stay banned? Is HullDay (aka MindTwister) is viable with Dreadnought? That's why it came up. It had to do with Dreadnought running cards like Phyrexian Furnace and Ashiok to fight those decks. Now this is just about Mind Twist in other decks.

FourDogsinaHorseSuit

06-07-2022, 07:29 PM

Which ones and where?

Argument A, line 1: This is a false premise. The whole context of the discussion is "what makes a format healthy" and you want to just assume that answer as a premise.
Argument A, line 2: This is a false premise. The statement of fact about the state and viability about the two control decks is false.
Argument A, line 3: This is a false premise. First you have combined multiple claims into the line. The first that the action is different. The second that it is more interesting. Interesting being a subjective term can't be asserted without logic defining why and how.
Argument A, line 5: This is a false premise. First you are making two claims here: The first about where mind twist will go. There is no evidence that only non-blue decks would play mind twist. In fact having a color weight of just one B means that nearly every deck can play it. You even, in line 4, explained how. The all power of cantrips. The second claim, that it makes them better, is up for debate, you provide no evidence for this.
Argument A, line 6: Each one of the three individual claims of this line are false: There is no evidence mind twist improves these decks. There is no evidence Mind Twist is interesting. You also have shown no conntection between mind twist and Fair blue decks, so you also can't make any claim about mindtwist's affect on these decks.
Argument A, line 7: Even if the lines were true you never demonstrated that these items improved your own criteria of format health. Even if we were to assume 1, 2, 3, 5, and 6 (and we shouldn't, they are all fallacious) an improvement of decks doesn't translate to diversity. You have already explained that these decks exist and the format doesn't become more diverse when extant decks continue to be extant but with an additional card. That's the meaning of the word diversity.

SO the answer is: Everywhere.

FourDogsinaHorseSuit

06-07-2022, 07:32 PM

Nice discussion about Dressnought.
I can only swoon over Ledger Shredder so many times before the 10th and I can get my hands on Sailor's Bane.

kombatkiwi

06-07-2022, 10:44 PM

Argument A, line 1:

SO the answer is: Everywhere.

Jesus lol I thought my posts were cringe

FourDogsinaHorseSuit

06-07-2022, 11:56 PM

Jesus lol I thought my posts were cringe

Got 'im

Clark Kant

06-08-2022, 01:39 AM

Citations needed
Because I don't see format health as the status of [your pet deck].

Nic Fit is literally the definition of format health. Anytime Nic Fit is viable, Legacy is healthy.

Fox

06-08-2022, 10:37 AM

What makes Dreadstill vs Landstill any different (not just diluted by bad cards)? As a Landstill but not Dreadstill player, it seems the same to me. You add a fast clock and tempo tools that helps vs combo and Delver, but it's a vulnerable 2-card combo that makes you weaker to Plow/Ending and Chalice. Why would the effect on UWR MindTwister be worse? Why is Landstill not hurt as much by it?

Conversely, why wouldn't some other non-Standstill draw engine complement Dreadnought as well? I think that's the driving question behind this entire Dressnought thread.
When it comes to MindTwister stuff it's important to remember that Narset is a pretty bad card by itself. It can't take over the game, it's legendary, and even if we ignore insta-death to Bolt there are significant problems keeping this card alive. You add the Dreadnought package to this you're upping the bad/questionable topdeck variance quite a bit, and that package isn't going to increase the odds of untapping with a Narset b/c the package is primarily offensive (blocker issues). It's easier to protect a Narset with more slots dedicated to Plow/Ending. The fail case of casting a Day's Undoing without Narset-type passive looks especially bad if you're going to play from that position by making 2-for-1 Dreadnoughts into 1-card removal.

^At the end of the day this is MindTwister with a lower winrate, a worse deck. The choice is anti-competitive. Doesn't mean the deck can't win an amount of the time b/c staples still win games; it's just that it will win less while doing the same thing.

In terms of trying to play UWR MindTwister + Nought vs actual MindTwister vs playing Standstill (+/- Nought) vs actual MindTwister, we have turn 2 plays, and these are immune to Plow and Ending. We also have better mana and don't need to play Ponder to assemble it. Asymmetry will win more games vs MindTwister than a watered-down + higher variance version of MindTwister. MindTwister is not pre-boarded against asymmetry.

As far as Landstill vs MindTwister...in the most competitive build (currently UBw) we have 5x targeted PW kill spells pre-board, and Cling to Dust draws through Narset while also making our draw 7 far superior to theirs. UBw also has the best mana-requiring counterspell in the format: Drown. Post-board UBw gives MindTwister few high value targets for red Blasts, and it's very good at eliminating relevant plays from MindTwister's deck and GY. Both pre- and post-board UBw Landstill can attack mana, including basics (Mountain and the Volc x2), which not only strands red cards, but also makes Ending worthless at the same time.

Whether Standstill, Landstill, Dreadstill, or StifleNought we're looking to maximize wins by punishing stationary targets (meta decks), b/c we know how they have to play. When it comes to StifleNought, you basically need a meta run by DTT Omni or Breach choking removal-based/fair strats out of the format to achieve a winrate above a Standstill-using variant. When you don't have this going on, you can't profitably isolate Delver as the target (being the best in the Daze mirror isn't worth much when Daze sucks vs every remaining hard matchup).
---
On the other stuff, @FTW has summed it up correctly. This is a Dreadnought thread, and we were talking about Dreadnought in relation to MindTwister (which is Mind Twist + Timetwister happening at the same time when Day's/Echo are added to a Narset-type passive). This is one of the three things that matters in legacy [total hand destruction; the other two being Goyf and FIRE], and it's really really bad to try and force StifleNought vs UWR MindTwister. That said, both Day's and Echo are getting banned, it's just a matter of time. One look at the banlist seeing Mind Twist and Timetwister tells you all you need to know.

While you can chalk up an amount of losses to "they're exploiting a [soon-to-be] banned card," the bigger picture is that the format is flooded with not-combo...because they are overloading on removal b/c they can't beat Delver. We're also seeing responses to Delver in the form of Sol Land/Chalice and Mox/Loam. It is not unusual to see fair non-blue shift towards Cavern/Vial, particularly in paper due to DnT's cost, as the response to Delver. None of these adaptions are helpful for isolating Delver as the primary target for StifleNought.

FourDogsinaHorseSuit

06-09-2022, 12:17 PM

Sailor's Bane was on the list of cards they just couldn't implement on MTGO, lmao.
Ambitious Dragonborn too but that one was more of a meme. I was actually gonna buy a mythic token and play some but yeesh.

FTW

06-09-2022, 04:52 PM

When it comes to MindTwister stuff it's important to remember that Narset is a pretty bad card by itself. It can't take over the game, it's legendary, and even if we ignore insta-death to Bolt there are significant problems keeping this card alive. You add the Dreadnought package to this you're upping the bad/questionable topdeck variance quite a bit, and that package isn't going to increase the odds of untapping with a Narset b/c the package is primarily offensive (blocker issues). It's easier to protect a Narset with more slots dedicated to Plow/Ending. The fail case of casting a Day's Undoing without Narset-type passive looks especially bad if you're going to play from that position by making 2-for-1 Dreadnoughts into 1-card removal.

Why tap out for sorcery speed Narset when you can play nonlegendary flash-Narset?

UWR doesn't because it's a creature-light deck, so it doesn't want to turn on enemy spot removal. Narset -2 also has a high chance of digging them into something to protect Narset (StP, Ending, FoW, FoN, Blast). Narset's just a better fit for them. Dreadnought can't defend Narset as well, but it's already weak to fair removal so flash-Narset isn't turning on dead removal. It's also easier to defend EOT flash-Narset -> Day's than to try to untap with regular Narset. You could go one step further with Teferi passive, denying them any interaction window.

On its own, Hullbreacher's floor is helping count to 20 or discarding 1 removal spell to help Dreadnought through. But in a deck that wants to hold open mana for instant interactions (Stifle, Dress Down) it can also ambush Brainstorms, ramp you, ambush their Day's, ambush attackers, and generate other value on its own.

Is there a potential deck there?

Whether Standstill, Landstill, Dreadstill, or StifleNought we're looking to maximize wins by punishing stationary targets (meta decks), b/c we know how they have to play. When it comes to StifleNought, you basically need a meta run by DTT Omni or Breach choking removal-based/fair strats out of the format to achieve a winrate above a Standstill-using variant. When you don't have this going on, you can't profitably isolate Delver as the target (being the best in the Daze mirror isn't worth much when Daze sucks vs every remaining hard matchup).

This addresses Stiflenought's relevance, but doesn't answer the question of why Dreadstill isn't a watered-down Landstill by adding the 2-for-1 creature. Unless the meta is full of Delver and combo, aren't you just adding a big weakness to fair removal?

Does adding Dreadnought to Landstill somehow weaken it less than adding Dreadnought to other fair blue draw engines? (UWR MindTwister, Bant Uro, ...)
In a meta full of fair white removal, what does Dreadstill add vs Landstill?

That said, both Day's and Echo are getting banned, it's just a matter of time. One look at the banlist seeing Mind Twist and Timetwister tells you all you need to know.

That assumes the banlist is only based on fairness in the current format. There's a lot of evidence to the contrary.

Fox

06-10-2022, 03:45 AM

Why tap out for sorcery speed Narset when you can play nonlegendary flash-Narset?

UWR doesn't because it's a creature-light deck, so it doesn't want to turn on enemy spot removal. Narset -2 also has a high chance of digging them into something to protect Narset (StP, Ending, FoW, FoN, Blast). Narset's just a better fit for them. Dreadnought can't defend Narset as well, but it's already weak to fair removal so flash-Narset isn't turning on dead removal. It's also easier to defend EOT flash-Narset -> Day's than to try to untap with regular Narset. You could go one step further with Teferi passive, denying them any interaction window.

On its own, Hullbreacher's floor is helping count to 20 or discarding 1 removal spell to help Dreadnought through. But in a deck that wants to hold open mana for instant interactions (Stifle, Dress Down) it can also ambush Brainstorms, ramp you, ambush their Day's, ambush attackers, and generate other value on its own.

Is there a potential deck there?

This addresses Stiflenought's relevance, but doesn't answer the question of why Dreadstill isn't a watered-down Landstill by adding the 2-for-1 creature. Unless the meta is full of Delver and combo, aren't you just adding a big weakness to fair removal?

Does adding Dreadnought to Landstill somehow weaken it less than adding Dreadnought to other fair blue draw engines? (UWR MindTwister, Bant Uro, ...)
In a meta full of fair white removal, what does Dreadstill add vs Landstill?

The problem is that Hullbreacher is a bad card. It can at least attack, which is an okayish backup plan without Bolt...but it doesn't really get you ahead, nor does it really improve in multiples. Narset at least has anti-flood built-in against redundant copies of itself (choose not-Narset off the top 4, find a pitch spell to burn a Narset in hand, or reset Narset once it drops to [1] loyalty). Much more importantly, it allows you to drop the worst card in the deck (Day's) down to a 1x b/c Narset spam will find it while wasting everyone's time with quad laser Plow/Ending. Decks don't win in legacy by casting a Day's Undoing where the opponent gets their 7 too, so they can't really afford to ever cast it unsupported by a passive.

So with Hullbreacher we've got a self-flooding problem on top of it being a very bad idea to either flood out on Day's...or be unable to reliably see 1-2x slots of Day's in a deck where you've spent 4 slots on Hullbreacher. This is a lot of variance to add to a deck, especially if you're adding it on top of a Dreadnought package. Now you've got a deck with two A then B combos which do not share tools. Again these are A then B combos, not just A plus B; you have to do both of these things in a set sequence (i.e. you can't cast Day's and then afterwards cast Hullbreacher). The lack of sharing tools is the same reason that Painter/Grindstone has never worked well Dreadnought (and Painter/Grindstone even has the benefit of being A plus B, where it doesn't matter which one you deploy first).
---
In terms of Dreadstill vs Standstill/Landstill, the question is what you're trying to beat. Dreadstill runs around an 80% winrate against tier 2 (random legacy stuff), and is much better against combo; these strategies routinely have profound weakness to Stifle and Wasteland, while also being ill-equipped to handle or race a 12/12. Dreadstill is fine against Delver, as is Landstill/Standstill. Landstill/Standstill generally has a marginally better matchup vs total hand destruction [Hymn, CB, Probe/Therapy...and plus or minus vs MindTwister types]. Both are generally unaffected by FIRE design. Both are designed to beat the concept of Goyf.

If you wanted the highest winrate with UWr Standstill/Landstill, you immediately shift to UR Dreadstill or UW Dreadstill; UWr has gaping holes in the lifegain and non-Pyroblast'able value engine department. If you want the Standstill/Landstill play experience, the one that wins is UBw Landstill. Standstill/Landstill has better mana and more spot removal whereas Dreadstill is much better at utilizing colorless mana and mana denial. There is also a larger idea of enforcing the rules of a local meta; if you play enough Dreadstill you will farm Thassa, Post, and other undesirable tier 2s out of that room for Landstill/Standstill. Dreadstill/Standstill/Landstill are just different ways to maximize wins with the card Standstill by playing [insert color combination] most optimally.

In the last couple months of paper I was able to attend like 50% of the weekly events, and iirc I went:
3-0 + ID w/ UW Dreadstill
2-2 w/ UW Dreadstill
3-0 + ID w/ UBw Landstill
2-0-2 w/ UBw Landstill
1-1-2 w/ UBw Landstill
3-1 w/ UR Dreadstill

So 14-4-4 (not counting IDs), with all four draws being on UBw Landstill, and all in either highly-favored matchup (if no time for last game, 1/4) or winning/deterministically winning positions (if last game in progress, 3/4). So you also have to consider the play speed of the room when choosing how to play the card Standstill. Most of that is your own play speed, which is going to require 2x paper events per week to develop and maintain (or like barely ever missing a 1x legacy weekly, or other comparable/better access to timed paper play). This more productive than calling slow play on others to preserve clock in events under compREL. As far as the difficulty of strategic and tactical decisions in-game, the non-Dreadstill stuff is way easier. No matter what you choose, overall you should be making more money than entry costs. The question is more about what aspect of your game you want to improve (speed vs decision making) and what type of opposing strats you want to farm/push out of the room longer term.
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All of this feeds into the larger question you're asking about alternate draw engine w/ Dreadnought and Dreadstill vs Landstill/Standstill. The goal is to have a deck that does something better than anyone else. This is where pairing Dreadnought with a conventional CA source surrounded by conventional cards kinda just plays conventional legacy, except worse. You need to play a fundamentally different CA game to be the best at it. We have decades of examples proving that nothing can play conventional legacy better than the absolute diversity killers of Goyf, total hand destruction, and FIRE. Those three are all basically legalized cheating (especially the no-skill, total hand destruction crap), and completely immune to being hated out of tier 1. You can't improve stuff like this by adding a Dreadnought package; they don't need the excess power b/c it comes with increased variance.

Bringing it back to StifleNought, you have no game against non-Delver tier 1 and around 75% of tier 1.5 decks are very bad matchups. Really good matchups vs tier 2, vs Delver, and vs most tier 1.5 combo is all you've got working in your favor. You can't make money playing with this many bad matchups, except for online leagues where good matchups are disproportionately represented. You can't fix this matchup problem by playing conventional legacy, even if that covers a CA angle.

If you're an online player, running leagues with StifleNought just isn't useful/applicable play experience, and it certainly doesn't help you understand the mtgfinance subgame of extracting money from modern and commander price-ruining formats (paper). Leagues are pretty worthless play experience for Standstill/Landstill; you get better at navigating the client and managing the clock, but it gets expensive to pay the yolo-combo tax. Dreadstill vs leagues is pretty easy and you get exposed to more decisions and interactions, but you're not really improving speed so much as fighting an annoying UI. You're also not really winning the finance game by dropping ~$800 to own a deck (leagues take too long to justify ~$40/month rental fee), and the real money is all in paper, beating modern price spikes and spinning it into RL and other random cards commander inflates.

FTW

06-10-2022, 10:16 AM

So with Hullbreacher we've got a self-flooding problem on top of it being a very bad idea to either flood out on Day's...or be unable to reliably see 1-2x slots of Day's in a deck where you've spent 4 slots on Hullbreacher. This is a lot of variance to add to a deck, especially if you're adding it on top of a Dreadnought package. Now you've got a deck with two A then B combos which do not share tools.

You could have 3 Hullbreacher + 1-2 Day's. Hullbreacher is nonlegendary and turns sideways (i.e. does things beyond the passive ability), so it doesn't need to mitigate self-flooding the way legendary Narset does. The floor of a flash 3-power blue creature can't be that low. Pitches to Force, ambushes fair attacker, discards removal spell, Bolts PWs. But yes, it doesn't help dig into Day's, so the draw combo is unreliable. Added variance.

It sounds like the underlying issue is Dreadnought's 2-for-1 A-then-B is already enough variance that it can't tolerate any other source of variance, card disadvantage, or conditional draw. Or conversely, tier 1 engines that already work don't need the added variance of Dreadnought.

3-0 + ID w/ UBw Landstill
2-0-2 w/ UBw Landstill
1-1-2 w/ UBw Landstill

So 14-4-4 (not counting IDs), with all four draws being on UBw Landstill, and all in either highly-favored matchup (if no time for last game, 1/4) or winning/deterministically winning positions (if last game in progress, 3/4).

So despite new cards like Shark Typhoon and Timeless Dragon, Landstill still has the classic problem of struggling to actually finish matches. It was like that in the old days of Factory beatdown (and even older days of Mindslaver lock). I had hoped it improved. The problem's even worse online, where those timeout draws become match losses or you have to invest much more time to gain the same number of trophies, so no wonder there's so little Landstill represented in MTGO data.

All of this feeds into the larger question you're asking about alternate draw engine w/ Dreadnought and Dreadstill vs Landstill/Standstill. The goal is to have a deck that does something better than anyone else. This is where pairing Dreadnought with a conventional CA source surrounded by conventional cards kinda just plays conventional legacy, except worse. You need to play a fundamentally different CA game to be the best at it. We have decades of examples proving that nothing can play conventional legacy better than the absolute diversity killers of Goyf, total hand destruction, and FIRE. Those three are all basically legalized cheating (especially the no-skill, total hand destruction crap), and completely immune to being hated out of tier 1. You can't improve stuff like this by adding a Dreadnought package; they don't need the excess power b/c it comes with increased variance.

Interesting. Most of my experience with UWx Landstill is from a much older period when that "conventional Legacy" didn't exist. FIRE wasn't printed yet. For a period there was no "total hand destruction" or Goyf either. Then there was CB+Top and Goyf, but no Snapcaster or Probe or FIRE yet. The format was much more diverse.

The advantages of playing Landstill back then were perhaps different too. Standstill was the uncontested best draw engine and pure control shell. Then it survived the "legalized cheating" of Goyf and CB+Top because non-spell actions invalidate CB and the deck shuts down big dumb creatures even if they're bigger and dumber. By the time FIRE and more "total hand destruction" took off, CB Miracles took over as the dominant UWx control shell.

I suppose the reasons to play Landstill/Dreadstill today are different than before. Tier 1 is dominated by what you call "conventional Legacy", but Standstill allows an "unconventional" game plan that can still compete by ignoring some of these directions of power creep or making them to play in a game they're not designed for.

Back to the DressNought concept, perhaps pairing Dreadnought with conventional CA and conventional cards won't be strictly worse. Dreadnought's fast clock and the mana denial package could still improve matchups against combo, tier 2 greedy mana, and brews - at the expense of adding weaknesses to fair removal (UWR, Bant, D&T, Grixis). Your point is that conventional CA isn't enough to fix those bad fair matchups. Is Standstill necessarily the only thing that does? Can no other draw 3 fill that role?

it certainly doesn't help you understand the mtgfinance subgame of extracting money from modern and commander price-ruining formats (paper). You're also not really winning the finance game by dropping ~$800 to own a deck (leagues take too long to justify ~$40/month rental fee), and the real money is all in paper, beating modern price spikes and spinning it into RL and other random cards commander inflates.

I assume most long-time paper Legacy players own the staples (Forces, full set of fetches, at least 1x blue duals, Wasteland, Xerox, removal) so the cost of a deck is really the cost of its unique cards. Standstill, Shark Typhoon, Timeless Dragon, Supreme Verdict, Sevinne's, Kaya, and black wraths are not that expensive.

Fox

06-18-2022, 04:12 PM

You could have 3 Hullbreacher + 1-2 Day's. Hullbreacher is nonlegendary and turns sideways (i.e. does things beyond the passive ability), so it doesn't need to mitigate self-flooding the way legendary Narset does. The floor of a flash 3-power blue creature can't be that low. Pitches to Force, ambushes fair attacker, discards removal spell, Bolts PWs. But yes, it doesn't help dig into Day's, so the draw combo is unreliable. Added variance.

It sounds like the underlying issue is Dreadnought's 2-for-1 A-then-B is already enough variance that it can't tolerate any other source of variance, card disadvantage, or conditional draw. Or conversely, tier 1 engines that already work don't need the added variance of Dreadnought.
You start running into problems in the format if you're playing a lot of 3/2 bodies without pretty heavy removal accompanying them. There's 1 mana 3/4s and Goyf/Murktide types on 2 mana, so it can become very difficult to actually punch through. You're more likely to reach a battlefield stall (if you're not just behind in the race), at which point you're the one topdecking Daze. As you say, it's too much variance to sustain (particularly when the pieces of each combo don't help each other).

So despite new cards like Shark Typhoon and Timeless Dragon, Landstill still has the classic problem of struggling to actually finish matches. It was like that in the old days of Factory beatdown (and even older days of Mindslaver lock). I had hoped it improved. The problem's even worse online, where those timeout draws become match losses or you have to invest much more time to gain the same number of trophies, so no wonder there's so little Landstill represented in MTGO data.
The time issues have more to do with maintaining speed in paper, which has been harder to get practice the past few years of covid. Online the time is usually okay (no shuffling), but casting Cling to Dust is like a 20 second investment. The issue with online is that league experience is fairly useless when combo is so overrepresented (so you'll get a lot of fake matchups, where time really isn't an issue...so you don't get any meaningful practice). It should also be noted that the average legacy match take a lot more time b/c the format is flooded with answers which take time to slog through (on top of their cantrips and fetch/shuffles or Saga/whatever). Every paper round it is common that people (not on Standstill) are going to time, so at some point they may need to increase round time by 5-10 minutes to discourage people from not conceding when they are dead.

I suppose the reasons to play Landstill/Dreadstill today are different than before. Tier 1 is dominated by what you call "conventional Legacy", but Standstill allows an "unconventional" game plan that can still compete by ignoring some of these directions of power creep or making them to play in a game they're not designed for.
Precisely. Punish them for swimming in their own conventional card abyss by playing a different style.

Back to the DressNought concept, perhaps pairing Dreadnought with conventional CA and conventional cards won't be strictly worse. Dreadnought's fast clock and the mana denial package could still improve matchups against combo, tier 2 greedy mana, and brews - at the expense of adding weaknesses to fair removal (UWR, Bant, D&T, Grixis). Your point is that conventional CA isn't enough to fix those bad fair matchups. Is Standstill necessarily the only thing that does? Can no other draw 3 fill that role?
You can't dodge the bad matchups, which is the issue. That's too many losses to break even/make money, so like in my above paper set, that cost was $60 buy-in with $110 in prize [$50 profit]...but if I play these StifleNought things, I'm losing money every week. It is really hard to break 2-2 in paper with StifleNought, so even if I play perfectly and have all this experience on Nought, like I know I'm gonna average out between 2-2s and 3-1 (so $60 buy-in, and *maybe* $60 prize on a very good run where exactly half of my results are 3-1).

In terms of different CA, I'm waiting for Life's Legacy as an instant (does not exist yet) or a playable "you gain, they drain" (so the CA is Arguel's Blood Fast which flips into Diamond Valley...but I need a card that is better than Vito). These are the leading candidates for not-Standstill CA; they just don't exist yet.

I assume most long-time paper Legacy players own the staples (Forces, full set of fetches, at least 1x blue duals, Wasteland, Xerox, removal) so the cost of a deck is really the cost of its unique cards. Standstill, Shark Typhoon, Timeless Dragon, Supreme Verdict, Sevinne's, Kaya, and black wraths are not that expensive.
Long-time players is not where we get our new players from.; like sometimes sure...but the long-term Dreadnought pilot is the one who is buying into legacy from 0-1 duals owned. The only comparable budget build is DnT (which builds into basically nothing, so you have to love playing it). Shadow is pointless to build in paper b/c you don't have mtgo league-levels of combo...so it's just a good way to rage-quit a format you tried to enter as you get spammed out by Plow/Ending. Stuff like Oops all Spells will never survive the hate cards they incentivize local metas to run. Contrast this to Dreadnought which teaches blue play patterns and the staples to build into whichever direction you want to go, all the while playing an end-stage legacy deck (like DnT, from the list above). The way we recruit new players is giving them a not-budget deck that only costs around $2000 (if they don't like the play styles or build-out potential of ~$1200 DnT)...and if they have zero duals, there are only slightly less red adjustment b/c of Vista giving 9 slots of access to basic red (8 Fetch, 1 Mountain) which brings us down by about $750, to DnT-range costs.

This is my issue with a lot of the StifleNought stuff, where we've got the combination of not really viable outside of mtgo leagues and outrageous deckbuilding cost in the manabase. This discourages new pilots from finding their way to the Dreadnought archetype...which then decreases new Standstill pilots (as it is much cheaper to wobble from Dreadstill to Landstill/Standstill for minimal cost while moving at a speed of acquiring one dual at a time). The online stuff has lots of tourism potential, but minimal potential to generate a long-term pilot.

Clark Kant

07-04-2022, 02:08 AM

This came in 9th in the latest Legacy challenge. Slip Out the Back seems like the real deal…

Creature (9)
1 Brazen Borrower
2 Kroxa, Titan of Death's Hunger
2 Murktide Regent
4 Phyrexian Dreadnought

Sorcery (7)
3 Expressive Iteration
4 Ponder

Instant (21)
4 Brainstorm
1 Force of Negation
4 Force of Will
4 Lightning Bolt
2 Slip Out the Back
1 Snuff Out
4 Stifle
1 Stubborn Denial

Enchantment (4)
4 Dress Down

Land (19)
4 Polluted Delta
4 Scalding Tarn
1 Snow-Covered Island
2 Underground Sea
4 Volcanic Island
4 Wasteland

Sideboard (15)
1 Abrade
1 Hydroblast
1 Meltdown
2 Narset, Parter of Veils
1 Plague Engineer
3 Pyroblast
1 Red Elemental Blast
1 Scroll of Fate
2 Surgical Extraction
2 Torpor Orb

The one change I would make is to add 4 Leyline of the Void to the sideboard. UR Murktide straight up autoloses to Leyline in my experience, and its the most popular deck in legacy.

Fox

07-04-2022, 08:52 AM

Gotta be careful with the challenges. What decks did they face, how many were in the challenge/how many rounds? A lot of these challenges are short enough to randomly never roll unwinnable matchups. It's much harder to hide in say a 300+ player showcase challenge going for 9 rounds.

Leyline is a bad card. One of the main reasons we don't play stuff like Leyline is that 12/12s and disruption naturally performs well vs GY combo. Why would you ever add a clunker like Leyline to a deck with an overwhelmingly positive matchup vs Delver?

UW Dreadstill got 58th in the showcase. Zero Leyline, zero Slip Out the Back. Only 2/9 rounds were against the biggest joke in legacy: UR Delver. This matchup is easy.

FTW

07-04-2022, 09:01 AM

The one change I would make is to add 4 Leyline of the Void to the sideboard. UR Murktide straight up autoloses to Leyline in my experience, and its the most popular deck in legacy.

4 Leyline means less slots for other matches. Why add cards to improve an already good matchup (UR Delver)? Also, what would the sideboard mapping look like? You already bring in 4 red blasts + Hydroblast. If you bring in 4 Leyline too, what 9+ cards do you board out? Do you remove some of the Dreadnought combo, even though UR has a hard time answering 12/12s?

It makes more sense to save SB space for the bad matchups like UWR Day's Undoing.

Fox

07-04-2022, 09:59 AM

It makes more sense to save SB space for the bad matchups like UWR Day's Undoing.
Definitely need a better plan vs Plow/Ending, but that's not really a fixable problem. After so many months of pointing out that Daze does not protect Dreadnought [outside of a Daze mirror], they at least dropped that...but Ponder still isn't doing them any favors, and Iteration isn't reliable CA when they lack 1-drop proactive plays.

In terms of priorities, it's always a bad idea to specifically target banned cards and the decks they're in. To really go after MindTwister, you'd need like 12/15 of your SB slots to be 6x Blast, 4x Invasive Surgery (if you could get delirium), and 2x Scroll of Fate...but even then, you're talking about a matchup you'll almost always start by losing game 1. It's kinda like playing Gut Shot to beat Ragavan. The focus should be on Plow/Ending, which means 3-4c Uro midrange once Day's and Echo are inevitably banned. When you focus in like this vs MindTwister, you're gonna start missing the obvious stuff like: there are 23x 1-drops and a whole lot of Chalice running around.

^So like in the showcase, 6/9 matches were either MindTwister (2x Day's, 1x Echo) or Chalice (2x red, 1x blue). It's not the banned effects you need to react to, it's the big picture that doesn't change after the bans, which you need to be targeting. The issue ofc is that it's Stiflenought, and if you can only count on 1 in 3 decks you see being favorable (Delver or combo), you have some viability issues. Every move you make vs Plow/Ending, has to also attack Chalice and/or Vial. This ofc spirals out of control when you're getting Blood Moon'd, E-Bridge'd, taxed by Thalia/Port, and Wasted. At some point you just need to realize going all-in on beating people to death with a 12/12 maybe needs something else happening in the deck. Get back down to 2c, play basics, learn that Otawara is a better card than Brazen, and definitely stop playing $2-3k manabases. Spoiler alert, competitive choices lead to Dreadnought + Standstill.

FTW

07-04-2022, 10:23 AM

Fox

07-04-2022, 10:36 AM

"bad matchups like UWR Day's Undoing", not specifically dedicating all your slots to one matchup. Bant Uro, 4c Yorion, and other Plow decks fit too.

It just comes down to smart sideboard building. Your SB cards vs Day's should be applicable for other matchups to make maximal use of the limited 15 slots. That means your UWR slots will be for common strategies Plow/Ending instead of targeting their combo (Invasive Surgery??). Otherwise it's the same problem as overboarding for UR Delver when Delver isn't the only deck.

Hitting the 1x Day's with a Surgery isn't the point. The wincon is removing their 3rd color of mana. You can do this by double-killing red sources (not just destroy, but also exile), or you can remove their ability to use the color. The card you're trying to hit is Ending, which you follow up with: here's a Scroll of Fate you can't deal with anymore, and all my blue cards are colorless, so nice Pyroblasts.

The card also has text vs UR Delver (not that you need it) b/c Surgery will 1-shot their entire Shame Island/Iteration looping.

When it comes to beating the card Day's Undoing, you accomplish that by never putting yourself in a position to fight over it. The best answer is always that Narset is a legendary permanent, so you target it with Otawara and let Day's resolve. Otherwise you just spam red blasts at their PWs.

FTW

07-04-2022, 10:50 AM

The point is no one was talking about specifically targeting banned cards or focusing vs MindTwister. My point was about prioritizing SB space for bad matchups instead of overboarding for Delver (already good). UWR Day's was an example of a bad matchup, not a thing to over-focus on.

The above deck does have Stifle + Waste + Surgical to attack 3rd color of mana. It has Scroll too. It's capable of attempting that plan vs Ending (in UWR or Bant), especially with a 2nd Scroll. That's not enough to swing the matchup to favorable, but it will never be favorable and that's not the goal.

Against Chalice, they at least have Kroxa + Murktide + Scroll + Borrower as wincons that ignore Chalice. They aren't all-in on Dreadnought.

Edit: That's also why Surgery won't work. They cannibalize their graveyard, instead of self-milling with DRC.

Fox

07-04-2022, 11:13 AM

Edit: That's also why Surgery won't work. They cannibalize their graveyard, instead of self-milling with DRC.

Surgery = Invasive Surgery. Not Surgical.

FourDogsinaHorseSuit

07-04-2022, 01:05 PM

All I'm hearing is reasons why sailor's bane is superior to murktide, and that's probably the real issue with mtgo results: sailors' bane never made it online

FTW

07-04-2022, 06:13 PM

Surgery = Invasive Surgery. Not Surgical.

Yes, Invasive Surgery does not work in a deck that cannibalizes its own graveyard (2 Murktide + 2 Kroxa) and lacks DRC self-mill (0 DRC). The Dressnought player wouldn't have Delirium.

With Sailors' Bane instead, the deck would have an easier time supporting Delirium for Invasive Surgery. Sailor's Bane would make the Plow/Ending matchup much better. Instead of trying to strip their removal (via Surgery or exile-mill), play a threat they can't remove. TNN works too, but Bane counts to 20 much faster. That build would need 4 DRC to fuel Sailor's Bane, and then has an added benefit of supporting some SB Surgery if you want it. It could also cut Kroxa and black for cleaner mana. But it would lose harder to Chalice @ 1.

FTW

07-06-2022, 01:12 AM

ThrabenU has been playing around with Dreadnought in other colors.

VakaNought in BW: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TapEmR5vQcA

//Lands: 20
4 Marsh Flats
1 Flooded Strand
1 Polluted Delta
1 Verdant Catacombs
4 Scrubland
1 Underground Sea
2 Swamp
1 Snow-Covered Swamp
1 Plains
1 Karakas
2 Silent Clearing

//Creatures: 24
4 Phyrexian Dreadnought
4 Hunted Horror
4 Dark Confidant
4 Hushbringer
4 Strict Proctor
4 Eater of Days

//Spells: 12
4 Dark Ritual
4 Thoughtseize
4 Hymn to Tourach

//Artifacts: 4
4 Torpor Orb

//Sideboard: 15
3 Swords to Plowshares
3 Prismatic Ending
3 Deafening Silence
2 Plague Engineer
2 Surgical Extraction
2 Opposition Agent

This was predictably bad and too 1-dimensional.

Eater of Days is not even worth cheating out: 4-mana 9/8 vs Murktide Regent and Marit Lage at less mana. The deck has other glaring problems like overloading on redundant Torpor Orbs, no maindeck removal, limited interaction with opponent's strategy, no protection from topdeck removal, and no way to reduce draw variance. The video has a lot of 12/12s dying and then nothing.

After watching that, I thought the meme could be preserved but improved with:
-4 Eater
-4 Proctor
-3 Torpor
-2 Silent Clearing
+4 Mother of Runes (protect Dreadnought and Bob)
+4 Swords to Plowshares (maindeck removal)
+2 Scroll of Fate (better enabler)
+2 Urza's Saga (threat & tutor Dreadnought)
+1 Currency Converter / Relic of Progenitus (other Saga target)

Coincidentally, Phil recently moved in that direction with this mono W build from the 5-0 dump: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CPAeCR5LGfI
Mono W Nought (only made 2-3 in the video)

//Lands: 23
4 Urza's Saga
4 Ancient Tomb
4 Wasteland
3 Rishadan Port
4 Plains
2 Karakas
1 Flagstones of Trokair
1 Ancient Den

//Creatures: 23
4 Mother of Runes
4 Phyrexian Dreadnought
4 Hushbringer
4 Tocatli Honor Guard
4 Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
2 Spirit of the Labyrinth
1 Ethersworn Canonist

//Artifacts: 10
4 Aether Vial
1 Pithing Needle
1 Shadowspear
1 Torpor Orb
3 Scroll of Fate

//Spells: 4
4 Swords to Plowshares

//Sideboard: 15
4 Leyline of the Void
2 Torpor Orb
1 Scroll of Fate
1 Containment Priest
1 Ethersworn Canonist
2 Sanctum Prelate
2 Deafening Silence
2 Cataclysm

Compared to the BW version this upgrades to Scroll of Fates, Mom protection, maindeck StP, Sagas to find Dreadnought, no multiple Torpors, and no Eater. It also goes heavy on mana denial (Waste + Port + Thalia + Vial) to try to out-tempo with Dreadnought. It has the Aether Vial trick with 2 Dreadnoughts, although a 3-for-1 12/12 probably isn't worth it. Vial seems unnecessary card disadvantage if the manabase is cleaned up to have more reliable white.

I'm surprised by all the 1-of enchant/artifacts but no Enlightened Tutor in the 75 to help find them. Without some extra tutor or card draw, the deck lacks threat density. There are a number of situations where Wasteland turns off Saga tutor, then the deck can't do anything unless it topdecks Dreadnought, flooded with 1/x dorks. More threat density and card draw seem good. It's awkward that Recruiter of the Guard/Ranger-Captain of Eos don't work. Karn, the Great Creator is possible with Tomb mana.

Maybe a hybrid of the 2 could work. It won't be as competitive as other Dreadnought decks, but it could have meme value.

//Creatures: 20
4 Mother of Runes
4 Phyrexian Dreadnought
4 Hunted Horror
4 Hushbringer
4 Dark Confidant

//Spells: 14
4 Thoughtseize
4 Swords to Plowshares
3 Prismatic Ending
3 Hymn to Tourach

//Artifacts: 5
1 Currency Converter
1 Torpor Orb
3 Scroll of Fate

//Lands: 21
3 Urza's Saga
4 Marsh Flats
4 Prismatic Vista
2 Scrubland
4 Swamp
2 Plains
1 Castle Locthwain
1 Karakas

This way you shave a lot of the redundancy and dead draws. More room for disruption/protection, more threat density, card draw, and ways to convert redundant cards into value.

Fox

07-06-2022, 06:32 AM

When you're down on 2c, it's best to play March over Ending (even if you run Currency Converter). The issues that list will have with Ensnaring Bridge are pretty concerning. Still have a lot of redundant Torpor Orb effects, and not playing blue has a significant cost. It's fine to meme, but you should really be getting off the Dreadnought-combat train; something else needs to be happening. You also need to pick a more frequent matchup to win than Thassa...so like let's try and focus on helpless decks like Tomb/Chalice, Loam/Mox, and Delver. It's not that difficult to carry over reasonable and maybe-reasonable matchups vs Cavern/Vial and Elves. There's still massive problems vs tier 1 (Uro, MindTwister) and spell-based combo, but if you want to meme do something like this:

4x Vista
4x Marsh Flats
3x Swamp
2x Plains
2x Scrubland
2x Saga
1x Wasteland
1x Volrath's (or Field, splitting basics on snow)
1x Karakas

4x Nought
4x Qarsi High Priest
4x Sultai Emissary
2x Nalia De'Arnise
2x Timeless Dragon (note how we met x+2 rule)
1x Grief
1x Solitude
1x Bloodghast

2x Kaya 3cmc

2x Plow
2x Bloodchief's Thist
2x Damn
2x Cling
2x Entomb
1x Sevinne's
1x E Tutor
1x Darkblast

2x Currency Converter
1x Nihil Spellbomb
1x Expedition Map
1x Scroll of Fate
1x Bridge from Below

SB:
2x Voidwalker
2x Oppo Agent
2x Ashiok, Dream Render
1x Stony Silence
1x Torpor Orb
1x Silent Gravestone
1x Relic of Progenitus
1x Cursed Scroll
1x Ethersworn
1x Powder Keg
1x Mastery of the Unseen
1x Humility

It would be pretty easy to run a single Cavern of Souls or even a Castle Ardenvale if needed. Just note the difference between Qarsi and Mother of Runes: this deck doesn't actually care about removal and unlike Mother, Qarsi makes Noughts rather than flooding you away from making Noughts...and the whole time, it's not like this deck has to actually make a 12/12 to win. The deck has plenty to do on 1 and 2 mana, as a good number of cmc1 plays can utilize the 2nd mana. If needed Dauthi can be moved around to increase 2cmc plays, and ofc it works with Nalia. If you wanted more of the tribal stuff, flip-Lilly, Nullpriest of Oblivion, and Ayli all work, but this seems regressive.

In terms of the matchups you have: the ability to develop mana with basics vs Wasteland, the ability to beat Blood Moon (note how little reliance there is on Saga, and how without Saga the targets aren't garbage like Shadowspear), enough anti-Chalice (Kaya, >1 cmc removals, Saga find Currency to flush 1-drops, Scroll, option for Cavern, and the SB stuff), enough anti-Delver with kill spells and Timeless, and enough kill spells to troll creature-feature decks like Vial and Elves. Kaldra might be a little annoying, but Qarsi does fine vs the exile after trample damage is denied trigger. You get an achievement badge for obliterating all Kaldra's damage -> sacrifice blocking Nought to Qarsi before exile -> put Nought on top with Volrath's -> manifest same Nought.

The biggest problem in BW is that you know Arguel's Bloodfast is CA + life-loss for Shadow + Diamond Valley later, Nought and Shadow are cmc 1, and Orzhov Charm sees cmc1. We're mostly just waiting for playable "life gained = life drained" effect (preferably on a land).

Reeplcheep

07-06-2022, 07:52 AM

Fox

07-06-2022, 08:29 AM

Who is playing ensaring bridge right now? Red prison has dropped it. Killing a 1 drop on t1 is way more important.

Legacy is and will always be a format about completing the checklist. Now this non-blue stuff will always fail the most important part of the checklist b/c they can't target all tier 1-1.5 decks, which is what makes it a meme deck. The second part of the checklist is essential effects like not dying to Goyf (aka MurkGoyf, and this includes a plan vs Daze), yard combo, spell-based combo, SnT, Thassa, Marit Lage, untargetables, go-wide, simple lock pieces (Chalice, E-Bridge), and so on.

You can get away with a lot in legacy leagues b/c it's fake magic (boosted yolo-combo numbers), but you're turbodead if you ever invest in "I get completely dumpstered" by something simple on the checklist like E-Bridge. You don't want to play that anywhere near a local paper meta, which means you've just sinkholed yourself to the tune of $350 per Scrubland away from a competitive outlet.

Let's recall how paper legacy works:
-Burn is cheap, they can't beat SnT, they play 2x Bridge
-Red Tomb/Chalice is fairly affordable, they will Bridge you to farm easy win %.
-it costs $20 for anyone else to target you.

If you were playing online, you can't help but point out how pathetic that league went against UR Delver...a massively overplayed deck, and easily one of Stiflenought and Dreadstill's easiest matchups.

Reeplcheep

07-06-2022, 08:53 AM

When you aren’t playing the xerox suite or a toolbox deck, you have already given up the ability to answer everything. Presumably for efficiency. Thus he should play the more efficient card. The decklist with ending and 1 plateau will be miles better.

A budget conscious red prison player is going to play the better more aggressive versions, rather than quad karn quad Chandra. You don’t have to return every serve to win a game of tennis, just more than your opponents.

FTW

07-06-2022, 02:43 PM

Who is playing ensaring bridge right now? Red prison has dropped it. Killing a 1 drop on t1 is way more important.

Karn, the Great Creator decks. Karn Forge. Blue artifacts. Curses.

That said, my plan was to board in an Underground Sea or a triland to get the 3rd color for Ending. Forgot to post a SB. Or you could even run 1 main.

FTW

07-06-2022, 03:00 PM

The second part of the checklist is essential effects like not dying to Goyf (aka MurkGoyf, and this includes a plan vs Daze), yard combo, spell-based combo, SnT, Thassa, Marit Lage, untargetables, go-wide, simple lock pieces (Chalice, E-Bridge), and so on.

It's not hard to address those with the other 15 cards (SB).

Example:
2 Plague Engineer
2 Sudden Edict
2 Ethersworn Canonist
2 Surgical Extraction
1 Relic of Progenitus
1 Pithing Needle
1 Engineered Explosives
1 Ashiok, Dream Render
1 Kaya, Orzhov Usurper
1 Liliana, the Last Hope
1 Underground Sea

Thassa -> maindeck engine already hates it out
value creatures -> maindeck engine already hates it out
Goyf/Murktide -> 4x StP + 2 Edict + Relic (1 cmc or Split Second get around Daze)
Marit Lage -> 4x StP + 2 Edict + Karakas
untargetables -> 2 Edict or make bigger threat
GY combo -> 2 Surgical + Ashiok + Kaya + Relic
spell-based combo -> 8 Discard + 2 Canonist
go wide -> 2 Plague Engineer + EE + Liliana
Chalice -> maindeck Ending
Bridge -> Ending with 3rd color + EE with 3rd color + Kaya reach

That leaves a big weakness to OmniTell, but it's only 1 deck that sees less play than other combos, and there's still discard to fight it.

The deck will still struggle to be good, but it should at least have the tools to function and do the meme. The problem with the other builds was they were getting blown out before they could even do the thing.

Like Reeplcheep said, a BW version needs to be aggressive and proactive. It doesn't have blue so long-term card quality and card advantage is inferior for a control game. The manifest strategy seems more versatile but also slower and less reliable.

Clark Kant

07-06-2022, 08:49 PM