Counter balance Tendrills(Keep Your Hands off my Chicken)

[overlord95]

Well, this is my attempt at making a viable combo deck that plays the DC/Top/Balance combo in it. I think I did a decent job.

DECK LIST:
// Lands
4 [OD] Island (2)
4 [ON] Polluted Delta
4 [ON] Flooded Strand
2 [u] Underground Sea
1 [MM] Swamp (4)

// Creatures
4 [RAV] Dark Confidant

// Spells
3 [OV] Meditate
4 [CS] Counterbalance
3 [OD] Predict
3 [SC] Tendrils of Agony
4 [AL] Force of Will
4 [TO] Cabal Ritual
4 [IA] Brainstorm
4 [R] Dark Ritual
4 [TE] Lotus Petal
4 [MR] Chrome Mox
4 [CHK] Sensei's Divining Top

// Sideboard
SB: 2 [DS] Echoing Truth
SB: 1 [PS] Rushing River
SB: 1 [ON] Chain of Vapor
SB: 4 [u] Blue Elemental Blast
SB: 3 [IA] Hydroblast
SB: 4 [7E] Duress

Quick deck explanations:
Basically you play out things like Bob, Top, Counterbalance, and what not on the first few turns of the game. This normally puts people on edge, especially if you have a Mox to speed things up a bit. Those 3 cards by themselves are powerhouses. So you do all that and hopefully lock down the game, if not you stall for a while or just draw cards with Top, DC, and Predict. This should build up a nice land count and spell count in your hand. So then you just kinda win the game out of nowhere. Going off with this deck is rather easy. There aren’t any complicated procedures or really complicated math to know, just when you have a Meditate and some decent mana start playing spells, it’ll all come together. Remember if you just have a shit load of mana and 2 Tops you can just draw them together over and over for storm.


A few match up analysis:
Ironically Goblins is your worst matchup, but it’s still not that bad, especially after boarding in your Blasts. Game one can be rough but you can still go off pretty fast with a good hand. Games two and three you board out your Predicts and Counterbalances for Blasts and just go to town. Hold them off until you think you can go off.

Your best matchups are Aggro/Control and Control. You just have to many things for them to worry about, and if they don’t worry about it all, they get over come with card advantage and you just win.

Solidarity can be a tricky match-up, but it’s been on the decline these days so no worries.

Against other fast combo, side in your Duresses and Echoing Truth (EtW tokens) and just play the control deck until you can go off.

That’s just a basic runthrough, but the deck is pretty self explainatory. Thoughts? Comments

[thefreakaccident]

looks pretty darn solid!

looks similar to the flash build that won the GP (except this is not illegal, tehehe)

I think the deck could be pretty strong eventually. I am not quite sure as to how you could/would make it any better than it already is though.

you could run helm, but that has been said and done in the past without any good reults backing it.

I will have to proxy this one up for sure! and perhapes give some in depth ideas/thoughts for the deck.

[MattH]

I don't think you can cram in enough blue cards to make FOW happen. I would drop them for probably Duress, and drop the Meditates for Mystical Tutor or possibly LDV.

[thefreakaccident]

the problem then would be obtaining the storm count necessary to become lethal... this is one of the things I would try to remedy.

I think that the fows are necessary evils though, he needs some sort of MD disruption that does not make the combo 'clunky'.

[Shadow]

I would suggest cutting Force for Therapy. It gives you protection, and when you go off you can sac your Bobs for even more disruption/storm.

All in all though the deck looks amazing. :)

EDIT: Without the need for blue cards, wouldn't Night's Whisper be better than Predict?

[thefreakaccident]

yeah actually nigh't whisper would be quite good in this deck.. I know this is a janky idea, but could you put skeletal srying in the deck.. you could EOT draw like 6 cards and then easily rape your opponent on your turn! I think it is at least test worthy. And if you are going off, you could just up storm count for 1 mana... not that bad.

[Shadow]

That eat's your synergy with the fact that you build up a GY for Cabal Ritual. Also, that seems to be what Meditate is for. In a lot of matchups you can easily EOT Meditate and give them the extra turn because it won't matter at all.

[TheCramp]

you could run helm, but that has been said and done in the past without any good reults backing it.


There is also Cloud Key now. Which could do the same thing, without benafiting your oponent. There is also some precedent for 3 mana artifacts being relevent in Legacy. Crucibul is what I'm thinking of. It dosn't have an imediet effect on the board, but racks up advantage over time. Cloud key could ddo the same. even with a key and a top you can do some cool digging//fixing. If you were to then go more artifact heavy you scould run thirst for knowledge, which is sweet. (as long as your apying three for things...)

[Shadow]

OK, so for obvious reasons I'm completely obsessed with this deck. <3 Bobs and Tendrils.

Here is the list that I have been testing.

// Lands
1 [MM] Swamp (4)
2 [OD] Island (2)
3 [U] Underground Sea
4 [ON] Polluted Delta
4 [ON] Flooded Strand

// Creatures
4 [RAV] Dark Confidant

// Spells
4 [JU] Cabal Therapy
3 [7E] Duress
4 [OV] Meditate
4 [IA] Brainstorm
4 [R] Dark Ritual
4 [TE] Lotus Petal
4 [MR] Chrome Mox
4 [TO] Cabal Ritual
4 [CHK] Sensei's Divining Top
4 [CS] Counterbalance
3 [SC] Tendrils of Agony

// Sideboard
SB: 1 [ON] Chain of Vapor
SB: 4 [U] Blue Elemental Blast
SB: 3 [IA] Hydroblast
SB: 1 [PS] Rushing River
SB: 4 [TSB] Tormod's Crypt
SB: 2 [DS] Echoing Truth

Now I'm not sure without some more testing which is better, counters or discard, but from first glance I think discard might be the way to go. Tearing apart peoples hand is much easier to do than counter shit. Also, the discard spells are cheaper than Force and Predict, if that matters for Bob.

All in all, the deck performs decent. Not amazing, but decent. It itself loses to a lot of the disruption decks out there unless it gets an early Counterbalance out.

I upped the Meditate count just to make sure you find one soon enough. I found myself not being able to race in certain match-ups because I just couldn't go off, the extra Meditate should help with that. Mystical Tutor might have a place in this deck, but I'm not sure what to cut for it.

[Mr. Nipples]

I found myself not being able to race in certain match-ups because I just couldn't go off, the extra Meditate should help with that.
Well, that's the thing. This deck isn't built to race. Overlord95 said himself that the objective in the early turns is to lay down some combination of Bob, Counterbalance, and Top allowing you to take a more controlling route. That makes me think that the Forces would be better than the discard in this type of deck seeing as how your goal isn't to go off as quickly as possible (and seeing as how it answers cards that are both bad for you and aren't always answered by discard such as Lackey and turn 1 Chalice). Also, Lim-Duls Vault seems very interesting in a deck running Brainstorm, Predict, Meditate, and Top. It seems like a card that deserves some testing.

[Shadow]

-1 Therapy
-1 Meditate
-1 Tendrils
+3 Lim-dul's Vault

That is the list I've been running for a while now, and it has been working out great.

Changes to the board:
-4 Blasts
+4 Plagues