[Deck] Eight Post

[Kokusho17]

The basis of the deck is to generate as much mana as possible and create lots of lethal threats while controling the board via mindslaver lockdown or oblivion stone. Heres the Deck

DECK UPDATE: current deck

10x Forest
3x Island
4x Cloudpost
4x Vesuva
1x Academy Ruins
1x Dark Depths
1x Urza's Factory

3x Sakura-Tribe Elder
2x Triskelion

4x Remand
3x Sensei's Diving Top
3x Reap and Sow
3x Mindslaver
3x Oblivion Stone
3x Moments Peace
3x Crop Rotation
3x Chalice of the Void
2x Trinisphere
2x Crucible of Worlds
2x Exploration

SB:
3 Trickbind
3 BEB
3 Naturalize
3 Stifle
2 Krosan Grip
1 Academy Ruins

Card Explainations:

LANDS:
Basic Lands: easily searchable
Non-Basic Lands: Cloudpost and Vesuva= Main Mana Generators, Dark Depths= Kill condition, Academy Ruins=Mindslaver Lockdown Peice, Urza's Factory= Alternate Kill condition or blockers

CREATURES
Sakura-Tribe Elder= Land Searcher
Triskelion= Another Kill Condition

SPELLS
Sensei's Diving Top= Fixes Draws
Reap and Sow= Slows down opponent as well as gets you more mana (always try to entwine it if you can other wise choose what you want)
Remand= Best Counterspell to use in this deck because it nets you a card and the other ones where not as good as this during testing
Crop Rotation= Cheap Effiecient Land Searcher
Moments Peace= Staves off early beats from opponent
Oblivion Stone= kills off anything thats in your way
Mindslaver= Your main control peice with Academy Ruins. you must cast and Activate on same turn to unsure total lockdown
Exploration: Faster mana


SIDEBOARD
Trickbind= Basically for Wastelands and the Occasional Storm Deck
Blue Elemental Blast/Hydroblast (your choice)= for any red decks
Naturalize= Staple SB Card
Stifle= Again for Wastelands and the Occasional Storm Deck
Krosan Grip= Staple Sb card with Split Second
Academy Ruins= incase your against heavy mana d

MATCH UPS
Post a message if you want my match up list

OVERALL
This deck is incredibly fun to play with just to see the frustration on your opponents face while they are under mindslaver lock or under the beatings of a 20/20 Indestructable Flyer.:tongue:

I did not create this deck. the first time i saw it was on magicthegathering.com by Ben Bleiweiss on his BOAB article and then i modified it a bit cause i can afford more than $30 for a deck, but any help with it would be greatly appreciated

EDIT:
heres the link to the article
http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=mtgcom/daily/bb93

[Nydaeli]

Looks Extended-legal, for what it's worth.

[BiscuitVader]

With Wasteland in the format, I'm not sure how great this will do.
Maybe switch Blue to Mono-Green, so you can run Life From The Loam.

Dredging will allow you to find your Post's faster, and will even let you run Wasteland, which will help against Threshold, which I see being a hard matchup.


WurmCalling seems bad. StP will let you get a bunch of life, but really... Your out a win condition. Adding in 2 more Trike seems better, as it is good against Goblins and Threshold.

I see you having no chance against Combo...

[edgewalker]

Something tells me crop rotation would be cool since it allows to tutor out any of your posts. You should really just make this mono-green and use the LftL engine.

[Kokusho17]

i dont like life from the loam that much. i have done well against threshold cause i eventually lock them down and they cant counter every stone/peace i play. and i know this deck has a problem with wasteland, look at the sb 6 cards are to counter it.

also i cant go mono green cause i lose my control engine of mindslaver and Academy Ruins which needs one blue mana to activate.

Posts merged. Also, use capitalization please. Proper grammar is required on these boards. Thanks. - Zilla

[Vardaman]

Bleiwiess goes 25-0 against crap decks and writes an article about it? What a choad.

The deck does look like fun but might suffer a bit more than in Extended because of Wasteland. Spell Blast looks cute but I could see why it was cut as a two of. Is it really so bad to run LftL?

I guess the list looks a little tight.

[dahcmai]

I haven't tested the 8-post landbase yet, but if you have the mana this deck could easily survive a Sundering Titan and well, he's beefy.

[Aggro_zombies]

This deck would be interesting in casual but I'm pretty sure it's a steaming pile in a competitive environment. First, I'm leery of any deck trying to generate broken amounts of mana from either the Tron or the 8-Post configuration, just because Goblins is the most prevalent deck in the format, and it runs the full compliment of both Wasteland AND Rishadan Port, neither of which you can deal with. Crucible of Worlds? Anything running Wasteland is going to tank you.

The deck also doesn't seem fast enough to beat Solidarity. Solidarity can reliably goldfish on turn four. How long does it take you to ramp up to critical mana when your critical mana lands come into play tapped and you run no maindeck counters and no useful post-board counters (not to mention other fast disruption)? It seems like you would get owned.

Also, Swords to Plowshares owns Marit Lage like no other. Is there no white in your meta or something?

If you're really serious about this, run counterspells. You will lose to anything faster than you otherwise (ie, every combo deck in the format, Goblins, other fast aggro decks, etc). Run Crucible of Worlds to protect your lands. Actually, just run Tron. Sure, it eats up more slots and makes less mana, but Tron pieces don't come into play tapped, which is huuuuge in this format.

[Tacosnape]

Eight Post, like any deck relying on Cabal Coffers, Gaea's Cradle, or what have you, all fall prey to the fact they can't deal with Wasteland. If you want to try the manabase in Legacy, maindeck Pithing Needle or Stifle.

Also, this list needs serious, serious work. I'm a believer that the Eight Post manabase is fundamentally playable, but lots of work needs to be done to compensate the fact that you're running a vulnerable manabase with lands that come in tapped.

I'd personally be intrigued to see this manabase in, say, a control shell. Possibly with Clockwork Dragon in it, as Clocky comes out with three Posts and can grow enormous quickly.

[Kokusho17]

one of the reasons i posted this thread is cause i need help with the deck.

cards i can see doing without would be wurmcalling(for the needle) so far the rest have been vital to the deck.

id like to point out that through my testing i was able to beat a lot of aggro decks including goblins, combo is the main problem cause as this deck is a slow deck. i cant run uraztron even if i wanted to cause i cant replace the forests for the extra 4 lands ive tried it and having the eightpost engine was shown to be better during testing as i dont need to waste my land searchers on urza pieces instead of getting the right land i need.

[Aggro_zombies]

Okay, combo matchup. Chalice of the Void would help there, as you don't have much in the one-two cc range that's useful against combo. Similarly, Trinisphere would slam the brakes on combo pretty hard, and the drawback is negligible for you once you have your mana engine in play. The only problem with these cards is that you might not be able to reliably cast them in time for it to matter. Exploration or some other way to speed up your mana development (and by that, I mean a way that doesn't cost 1G and a land drop or 3G without entwine) would improve this deck's game against combo. Personally, this could be pretty interesting in a Turboland-type deck, although that deck doesn't seem like it would really need this kind of mana. You may also find that Mox Diamond helps with colored mana fixing, and it works very well with Crucible.

The biggest problem with all of this is the fact that your lands come into play tapped. All the solutions I can think of are creatures and slow/fragile ones at that (although Magus of the Candlabra is hilarious in this deck). If you can find some way to compensate for this fault, you can run the aforementioned anti-combo pieces and do well. The only problem is, whatever way you find will probably detract from the 8-Post basis for the deck, in which case, you might as well just not run it...

[Kokusho17]

@Aggro_zombies
Could you come up with a deck list that would help my matches against combo while it can still deal with aggro as im having troubles on what to cut for the cards you mentioned. Thanks I Advance

[Bane of the Living]

Dude wheres Tooth and Nail? If your gonna get nine mana you might as well win the game.

4 Vesuva
4 Cloudpost
1 Maze of Ith
1 Boseju
14 Forest

4 Root Maze
4 Crop Rotation
3 Eldmari's Vineyard
3 Crucible of Worlds
4 Eternal Witness
4 Tooth and Nail
2 Sundering Titan
1 Kiki Jiki
1 Sky Hussar
4 Moments Peace
2 Mindslaver
4 Sakura Tribe Elder

I donno, looks like other deck that wants to lose to combo. That Legacy Weapon deck looks alot better as 8post.

[Kokusho17]

its not a tooth and nail deck that why there aint to tooth and nail and i win 75% of my games with out it

[Mirrislegend]

This was originally Ben Bleiweiss's attempt at a janky extended deck. But it rolls over and dies to any real extended decks. It's way way way too slow. What makes you think that it can cut it in Legacy, where better disruption and a more powerful (and a bit faster) fundamental turn define everything?

[Drkdstryer]

This was originally Ben Bleiweiss's attempt at a janky extended deck. But it rolls over and dies to any real extended decks. It's way way way too slow. What makes you think that it can cut it in Legacy, where better disruption and a more powerful (and a bit faster) fundamental turn define everything?

Actually incorrect. He built a non-budget version of the deck and it has pretty favorable matchups against a LOT of good extended decks. I don't think it has the matchups he claims (like slightly favorable vs TEPS) but the deck is solid in extended. Giving it Crop Rotation is a big enough jump that I think it could work in Legacy.

[Aggro_zombies]

@Aggro_zombies
Could you come up with a deck list that would help my matches against combo while it can still deal with aggro as im having troubles on what to cut for the cards you mentioned. Thanks I Advance
I messed around with a couple different lists and I have to say that I am now thoroughly convinced of the un-viability of the Cloudpost/Vesuva engine, due to its slowness. The lists I messed around with were an (almost) mono-brown Stax list, a green Stax-esque list with a minor land destruction theme, a blue/green Stax list, a RG deck that won with Demonfire or Kaervek's Torch, and a BG control list. I chose the Stax shell repeatedly for a number of reasons: first, many Stax builds run both Trinisphere and Chalice (usually both, and maindeck too), and second, becuase Stax has a large number of expensive artifacts that would be happy to see a sizable colorless-mana producer. However, the problem with this versus traditional Stax is that traditional Stax can drop Chalice or Trinisphere on turn two thanks to City of Traitors, Moxen, and Ancient Tomb, whereas a deck based on Cloudpost/Vesuva can only pull that off with a significant investment in alternate sources of mana, a la Eladamri's Vineyard or Birds of Paradise. Neither of those are fabulous topdecks in the late game to begin with, and they're even worse when you have Chalice or 3-sphere in play. The result of all of this was that it was far more efficient to cut the Vesuva/Post engine altogether and run the more traditional mana configuration because it opened up slots in the decks for the inclusion of cards that weren't nonland accelerants...in other words, more control elements and victory conditions.

As far as I can tell, there are no other decks in the format that are this mana-hungry without having too many specific color requirements to meet, and I am also at a loss of what to cut out of your build while leaving the 8-post engine in there. All I can say is that Pernicious Deed is far better than Oblivion Stone, and you're better off cutting cute Slavelock tricks from the deck in favor of more control and an actual win condition (Clockwork Dragon or an X-burn spell are the best, imo). I'd drop the Wurmcalling and another card in favor of three Crucible of Worlds to protect you from Wasteland (because Wasteland is a huuuuge tempo loss for you, especially if you're just setting up your engine). As it stands, the earliest you'll be able to drop 3-sphere is turn three, and that's if you play only basic lands on those turns. By turn three, Solidarity can combo off in response to you trying to play 3-sphere with a fair amount of success, especially if they get more than one High Tide or Reset. Chrome Mox could help accelerate you out of that range, but I'll be damned if I know what to cut for it...actually, with 26 lands, you could successfully run Mox Diamond if you're also running Crucible, which has the added benefit of smoothing out color issues. I'd say drop Krosan Tusker for them, but that's almost the only card draw your deck has, so I'm not so sure it would be a good idea. Harmonize from the PC expansion will be useful if you want to go in a more mono-green direction (in which case, you may want to run LD to compliment the land destruction off of Reap and Sow...Plow Under, Creeping Mold, Ice Storm, etc would be good choices).

This deck probably isn't viable outside of a casual environment. That said, if you're really set on making it work, you'll have to do a lot of retooling to make it decent - probably departing from Ben's version of the deck altogether. I'm not sure what you should do then, and I don't have much time to make your deck for you, but I'm sure someone else will come up with something. Try doing searches for various Stax decks posted on these boards to get an idea of a more controlling route your deck can take.

[Kokusho17]

Ok after some serious retooling if come up with this deck list. Its not too much different from the original but ive been testing vigoriously and i have a better win percentage with the new build as it helps a lot against combo and any deck running wasteland.

10x Forest
3x Island
4x Cloudpost
4x Vesuva
1x Academy Ruins
1x Dark Depths
1x Urza's Factory

3x Sakura-Tribe Elder
3x Krosan Tusker
1x Triskelion

4x Remand
3x Sensei's Diving Top
3x Reap and Sow
3x Mindslaver
3x Oblivion Stone
3x Moments Peace
3x Sylvan Scrying
3x Chalice of the Void
2x Trinisphere
2x Crucible of Worlds


SB:
3 Trickbind
3 BEB
3 Naturalize
3 Stifle
2 Krosan Grip
1 Academy Ruins

I havent been able to work on the sideboard as much but here are some cards ive been tinkering with:
Chill
Choke (i realize that it taps my own islands)
Root Maze

[Kokusho17]

thinking back about using crop rotation i was wondering isnt that card banned in legacy or did they just restrict it?

[CleverPetriDish]

Cards don't get restricted in Legacy. Crop Rotation is perfectly legal. Crucible should be LftL IMO. With the importance you are placing on lands, this one will get you plenty of them.

[midnightAce]

@Aggro_zombies

I'm interested in how you worked with the Stack shell. If memory serves, Stax was used in Eternal Garden as well and proved to be quite interesting. Coupled with Exploration, Crucible, the ability to tutor Acadamy Ruines at instant speed with Crop Rotation really made the pieces come together. I'm wondering if the same can be done here.

If you have a list, even a rough one, I would be very interested in working with it.

Exploration obviously help speed up the deck greatly. With 3+3+5 mana, (recure O-Stone, play it, pop it) this deck can essentially lock down creature strategies, (barring counter magic), and with some luck, an early Mindslaver can really wreck combo.

Some disruption peices are consider:

Stax shell: Tangle Wire/Stax/Trinisphere -- The deck has a relatively high curve, and the impact of Trinisphere should be minimum since the deck generates so much mana.

MonoG disrruption shell: Plowunder, Mwonvuli Acid-Moss (Destory target land, search for a Forest card, put into play tapped.) Throw in some Eternal Witness or Regrowth to recure these disruptions.

In that respect, I would like to bring up this card:

Stunted Growth - 3GG
Socery
Target player chooses three cards from his or her hand and puts them on top of his or her library in any order.

This card has been a favourite of mine for a long time. I have tried it in different decks and find it rather meh. With the way this 8 Post deck is setup, with added speed of Exploration and the like, can it be used effectively to stall combo? Or just stall in general?

Thoughts?

[Aggro_zombies]

In that respect, I would like to bring up this card:

Stunted Growth - 3GG
Socery
Target player chooses three cards from his or her hand and puts them on top of his or her library in any order.

This card has been a favourite of mine for a long time. I have tried it in different decks and find it rather meh. With the way this 8 Post deck is setup, with added speed of Exploration and the like, can it be used effectively to stall combo? Or just stall in general?

Thoughts?
Plow Under would probably be better just because it's more synergistic with a Stax-type deck. Coupled with Smokestack and entwined Reap and Sow or maybe Creeping Mold, it would be possible to keep your opponent without lands (and that in turn increases the chance of Smokestack hitting non-land permanents as well, against decks where that's relevant). This...isn't so synergistic. If it wasn't sorcery speed, it'd be really good, though...

[Kokusho17]

Just another deck update. Crop Rotation for Sylvan Srying, awesome synergy with crucible, also i added another Triskelion for a Tusker

10x Forest
3x Island
4x Cloudpost
4x Vesuva
1x Academy Ruins
1x Dark Depths
1x Urza's Factory

3x Sakura-Tribe Elder
2x Krosan Tusker
2x Triskelion

4x Remand
3x Sensei's Diving Top
3x Reap and Sow
3x Mindslaver
3x Oblivion Stone
3x Moments Peace
3x Crop Rotation
3x Chalice of the Void
2x Trinisphere
2x Crucible of Worlds

Note: must find a place to add one or two exploration


SB: <still needs alot of retooling
3 Trickbind
3 BEB
3 Naturalize
3 Stifle
2 Krosan Grip
1 Academy Ruins

[Kokusho17]

Ive been testing my current build and to be honest the deck is sick.

Ive been beating all sorts of decks including Vial Goblins, WU Weenie, Angel Stompy, Faerie Stompy, and bunch more. The deck could be faster with Exploration but i dont know what to drop, If ne one has suggestions feel free to post them.

So far the Trinisphere/Chalice(for 3) Combo has locked down the Weenie and sometimes the Combo game for me to setup my Mindslaver Lock, and with the addition of Crop Rotation i can get things done way faster.

Combo is still an issue but my matches have improved since the recent changes

Wasteland is not so much of pain any more with a Crucible on the field as i just keep pump back my Cloudposts and Vesuvas back.

Im not saying the deck is Tourney worthy but its a lot better than what it was. Thanks for all the Help.

[Kokusho17]

Update

In: 2 Exploration
Out: 2 Krosan Tusker

Reasoning behind this is that Exploration can set up my mana base much faster and with the recent changes the deck has been going through Tusker has felt like a dead card in my hand as i would rather play something else. Exploration just speeds the deck up sooo much i couldnt ignore it any longer

[outsideangel]

So far the Trinisphere/Chalice(for 3) Combo has locked down the Weenie...

This...ah...this doesn't actually work. While Trinisphere changes the effective cost, Chalice only cares about whats in the upper-right corner of the card.

Not that Trinisphere and Chalice @ 3 isn't pretty good against Goblins anyway, since it cuts out their combo-esque finish, making sorcery speed removal a lot more relevant, they are not, in fact, a combo.

[Kokusho17]

So very true, but using both cards essencially slow their progress down significantly buying you time to setup whatever (be it mindslaver..etc.).

[Kokusho17]

Some one plz post something

[solidarity!]

What i found is the lack of draw and shuffle effects so i am trying to fit in fetches

maybe fact or fiction would be a idea.

Or a stroke of genius because you got the cloudpost engine and alot of mana.

[Kokusho17]

I dont want to go heavy on the blue spells as i only run 3 islands, but it would be interesting to run Stroke of Genius and in also might be viable to run Cunning Wish instead of something, and have most of my sideboard be a wish board. Ideas? anyone.

[Kokusho17]

no one has ideas about Cunning Wish?

[Kokusho17]

Please help.

[solidarity!]

Ok ill start at the base how i think this deck must work.
It has to have a explosive start with the lands then has to control the game early like turn 3-4 with 6-7 mana.

Maybe some land accelaration is some good like exploration to have that explosive start and i am looking for other land accelaration too.

[Kokusho17]

sounds good keep me posted

[Kokusho17]

With the help of Solidarity!, we are currently testing different cards. so we may have a new build soon.