[Deck] Death and Taxes

[echofish]

@Ecofish: Stoneforge Mystic provides some much needed bite and raw power to the deck, and a completely different angle of attack that complements the mana denial/prison one. There are all kinds of situations where the deck would just crumble without access to her. Even though Thalia is the posterchild of our deck, I consider SFM to be just as vital. We are probably the legacy deck that can make best use of her due to our threat density, it would be borderline insane not to run her considering the power level of the card.

There were some Mystic-less lists going all in on the denial plan with Leonin Arbiter and Ghost Quarter, I suggest you dig up those if you're interested. They might work in a very specific meta, but in a larger field, the more traditional lists is where you want to be. Stoneforge Mystic simply wins games, and, believe it or not, some decks just don't care about Spirit of the Labyrinth and co.

Okay. I will play the devil's advocate here.

95% of all legacy decks tends to draw more then one card each turn. Also 95% of all legacy decks search their library. Stoneforge is useless against combo decks. How many combo decks is there?

[T-101]

Stoneforge for Batterskull can and does help against Storm, and even Dredge.

Gaining 4+ life per turn can put the game out of reach if your opponent is trying either Tendrils or Empty, while providing a relatively quick clock.

There's also the "trick" of returning Batterskull to kill your Germ, which will nuke Bridges. It's not fast, but it IS something in the maindeck that will fight Dredge. When backed up by an early Swords or Thalia, it can get a win in game 1. The lifegain is also relevant, as Dredge will often times have to go for a swarm of Zombies that have to attack you.

It's not like Stoneforge gives you an autowin, but it's a lot more than nothing.

[echofish]

Stoneforge for Batterskull can and does help against Storm, and even Dredge.

Gaining 4+ life per turn can put the game out of reach if your opponent is trying either Tendrils or Empty, while providing a relatively quick clock.

There's also the "trick" of returning Batterskull to kill your Germ, which will nuke Bridges. It's not fast, but it IS something in the maindeck that will fight Dredge. When backed up by an early Swords or Thalia, it can get a win in game 1. The lifegain is also relevant, as Dredge will often times have to go for a swarm of Zombies that have to attack you.

It's not like Stoneforge gives you an autowin, but it's a lot more than nothing.

I don't think the token "enters the graveyard". Also I'm not talking about Dredge, while Mystic is the first thing I take out for Rest in Peace, Containment Priest and Ratchet Bomb.

Against storm, to play Mystic to held your mana up for 2-3 turns? I'll rather play Thalia, Revoker, Ethersworn, Ratchet Bomb or Rest in Peace.

[Bosaapje]

I don't think the token "enters the graveyard". Also I'm not talking about Dredge, while Mystic is the first thing I take out for Rest in Peace, Containment Priest and Ratchet Bomb.

Against storm, to play Mystic to held your mana up for 2-3 turns? I'll rather play Thalia, Revoker, Ethersworn, Ratchet Bomb or Rest in Peace.

The token enters the graveyard and disappears after that. So Bridges are going to be removed.

[T-101]

I don't think the token "enters the graveyard". Also I'm not talking about Dredge, while Mystic is the first thing I take out for Rest in Peace, Containment Priest and Ratchet Bomb.

Against storm, to play Mystic to held your mana up for 2-3 turns? I'll rather play Thalia, Revoker, Ethersworn, Ratchet Bomb or Rest in Peace.

The token does enter the graveyard, where it immediately ceases to exist. This triggers Bridge (and other 'die' effects).

I would also rather have Thalia, or the sideboard cards that you mentioned. In my comment above, I was talking about game 1 scenarios. The point is, I don't see Stoneforge as "useless" in combo matches. Sure, she's not on par with RIP vs. Dredge, or Canonist vs. Storm... nobody is saying that.

[Shovel Knight]

I played at the Mox Boarding House Legacy for Duals tournament this saturday to a 3rd/4th place finish. There were 51 players and this was my list:

Mainboard:

1 Cavern of Souls
1 Horizon Canopy
3 Karakas
10 Plains
4 Rishadan Port
4 Wasteland
4 Aether Vial
1 Aven Mindcensor
1 Batterskull
4 Flickerwisp
2 Mirran Crusader
4 Mother of Runes
3 Phyrexian Revoker
4 Serra Avenger
4 Stoneforge Mystic
1 Sword of Fire and Ice
4 Swords to Plowshares
4 Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
1 Umezawa's Jitte

Sideboard:

2 Cataclysm
2 Containment Priest
2 Council's Judgment
1 Enlightened Tutor
2 Ethersworn Canonist
1 Manriki-Gusari
1 Pithing Needle
1 Ratchet Bomb
2 Rest in Peace
1 Wilt-Leaf Liege

Round 1 vs Sylvan Plug

I was familiar with this deck because I played against it as a uwr pyroblade player when cruise was still legal. This matchup was really easy. Game 1 I landed an early mother, vial, stoneforge and angel. He landed some baloths that I flew over with a SoFaI'd angel. Game 2 he couldn't find mana. I stp'd his only land (go dryad arbor!) and revoker'd his mox diamond. Quick game after that with random white weenie beats.

Round 2 vs Death and taxes

I won the die roll and landed early vials, moms and stoneforges both games. Game 2 he brought in Manriki-Gusari but I was able to port and wasteland him off of mana long enough to make it worthless (I had an active Jitte on an angel). Games felt really easy.

Round 3 vs RG Lands

Game one he couldn't find colored mana and I revoker'd his mox diamond. I managed to get some sort of quick clock going to finish him off before he could stabalize. Game 2(3?) I had turn 1 vial followed by turn two rest in peace followed by stoneforge and angels. He managed to get an early marit lage into play that I was able to take a hit from because I was at 21 life from Grove of the Burnwillows. I was sandbagging a karakas that I used to bounce marit lage. He couldn't recover without his graveyard. This is from memory, but this match may have gone to Game 3.

Round 4 vs Reanimator (he went on to get second and win 4 bayous!)

Game one I think I was able to keep him off of mana with ports, wastelands and thalia long enough to kill him. Game 2 he landed an early tidespout tyrant. This was especially painful because I was staring at 2 containment priests and a flickerwisp in my hand. I was just a turn behind being able to use them. Game 3 I was able to vial in priest in response to reanimate targeting Elesh norn. He lost 7 life from reanimate and I already had a board presence at that point and had been pressuring his life total so I was able to finish him off on my next turn.

round 5-6 Id into top 8

Top 8 round 1 vs burn

two quick games. Game one I had a turn one vial followed by enough threats that my opponent was forced to burn my creatures (which is an awesome position to be in vs burn. Game two he got stuck on 1 land while I had thalia in play (with bvackup karakas and vial on 2!) I brought in a jitte at some point and killed him pretty quickly

Round 2 vs Miracles

Piloted by a guy I play against with some regularity at our lgs and I can't recall ever beating him.

Today was no exception

Game 1 was moderately grindy. I made some creatures. they got sent to the bottom of my library. I made some more. Rinse repeat. Angels killed me. Game 2 was super quick. I had death and taxes god hand and he got stuck on few lands. Game 3 was super grindy. I managed to land a SoFaI and got some good hits in (only one with the sword) but I really just felt outclassed as a player. At one point I had vial on 1 and said "Draw" at the beginning of my turn, forgetting to tick vial up to 2. There were probably myriad other mistakes I made that cost me this game, but that one was the most glaring to me.

I had so much fun playing in that tournament. I've been playing death and taxes for close to a year and a half and saturday really felt like an awesome culmination of learning a lot of hard lessons. I knew the matchups and Sideboarding felt really comfortable all day long. I also drew really well. It was the best I've done in any larger tournament and miles ahead of my largest prize to date. I still attribute all of my wins to luck and all of my losses to skill (I tend to be a somewhat self-effacing magic player)

[T-101]

Nice report. Heads up play with Revoker on Mox. Miracles is very rough for decks that want to win by attacking :/ You can shore it up a little bit with Spirit of the Labyrinths in the 75, but if you don't have Miracles squarely in your sights it can be tricky to beat. Watching Bahra's stream, or looking for some of his posts might give you some pointers on fighting Miracles, if that's a concern of yours.

[Shovel Knight]

Thanks! I will do definitely check that out. Seattle has a ton of miracles players so any tech would be great. The SCG richmond finals video with konig vs lossett is really great too.

[Dragonslayer_90]

Hey guys. So I'm trying out other decks when I get to play legacy. Death and Taxes was pretty high on my list of decks to try so I decided to borrow the cards for it today from a friend. I played the following list with a slight modification:

http://www.tcdecks.net/deck.php?id=15856&iddeck=118068

The modification was I couldn't get 4x Flagstones from anyone so I just replaced them with 4 more basic plains.

Anyways, I went 4-1 tonight overall to place 4th or 5th and got $20 store credit. My Rounds went thusly: R1 - 5C Birthing Pod Brew (2-0), R2 - Budgeted Burn (2-0), R3 - Lands (0-2), R4 - Sneak and Show (2-0), R5 - Mono Red Mogg Catcher (2-0). The deck was fun and had I played a little tighter I would have beaten my lands opponent as well. I am pretty sure I also boarded pretty sloppy in my lands match up in particular. So I have two questions: 1. How should I board with the above list against lands? 2. What do I need to know about the Lands MU besides what Finn talks about in his primer? Any pointers? MU doesn't seem like a blow out all around but if they get their engine going it seems like our deck becomes ineffectual pretty easily.

[Luca Grease]

The plan may vary slightly depending on which version of Lands you are playing, but you definitely want to board in Pithing Needle (Stage), Rest in Peace (stops their Loam Engine + Punishing Fire), and Cataclysm (especially potent in conjunction with RiP). I would also board in Council's Judgement (can take care of Exploration/Manabond or a Marit Lage, if you force them to make it on their mainphase via Port), and Enlightened Tutor since RiP and Needle are so potent, but more established players than I disagree on this last choice. As for what to take out, I'd say a couple of StPs (unless they're running Titania, Protector of Argoth), some amount of Phyrexian Revokers, and possibly part of the SFM package (again, opinions are split on which cards are more efficient).

Your role is firmly aggro with high amounts of disruption, they don't run that many colored mana producing lands and Revoker on Mox + Wasteland/Port can be surprisingly effective. You have plenty of ways to deal with Maze of Ith, Glacial Chasm and Marit Lage, they have inevitability on their side but a fast enough start will often make them fold. Vial is at a premium here. Don't side out Thalia. Your best maindeck creatures are Flickerwisp and Mangara, but pure beaters will pull their weight as well. Moms are also good, protecting from punishing fire and stopping Marit Lage in conjunction with a flier.

[from Cairo]

I haven't seen a dedicated Lands deck with Titania - that definitely might be a thing though.

Usually vs ~40 lands, Punishing Fire, Loam, Moxen, Explorations, and 6ish flex card (Intuition, Manabond, w/e) type builds I bring out all 4 STP and 1 Phyrexian Revoker for 2 Rest In Peace, 2 Cataclysm, and 1 Pithing Needle.

I would like a way to remove Exploration, at times I've had Disenchant SB and I'd bring that in over another Revoker, but I feel Council's Judgment and Ratchet Bomb are pretty slow.

[MrShine]

Hi guys, glad to see people putting up good results lately! I'm getting excited to run this again.

@ Lands - Ratchet Bomb actually seems pretty decent; on 0 you might me able to hit multiple Mox Diamonds, which will really hurt in the early turns; its another out to Exploration as early as T3 when your LD might still be relevant; and if they ARE running Titania, it gets the tokens. Seems better than some other options, at least.

@ Enlightened Tutor - this is something that I feel fairly strongly about - why would you run 2x Tutor, when you could always use the 2nd Tutor slot as another target? I really, really like the 1st to act as an extra copy of whatever you are bringing in, but after that I'd rather use the next slot of another target that could break a matchup; something like Cage or Canonist. It allows me to have a GY hate package of 2-1 Cage-RIP (split however you prefer), while giving added flexibility of having a virtual X+1 copies of Cage where you want only that (Elves) or RIP when you want only that (Lands, RUG). And as someone pointed out, drawing 2x copies of Tutor is just.... ugh, its a bad feeling.

FWIW the reason I like the 2-1 Cage/RIP split is that I've often been screwed out of the game by GY decks before my T2, and having a T1 answer I can mulligan to is much better to me than just hoping they won't be that fast. Moreover, most of our other hate costs 2 so I prefer having the costs split so I can potentially act both T1 and T2 to lock up their plan (eg T1 Cage T2 Canonist/Thalia).


VS Miracles - Watching the Konig vs Lossett match, I thought it was interesting that Konig ran out the SFM before Thalia, even with a Mom out to protect her... [spoilers] yeah, he "gets" Lossett with the Vial activation in resp to Terminus, but they are generally playing it in their draw step and are not often THAT choked on mana, so I see this as taking advantage of an opportunity rather than a line to rely on. Bahra, can you shed some light into your thinking here? I know it's been a while but it seems memorable :P To me, it just seems better to run out Thalia (given that you have Mom) to choke their cantrips asap, especially if you've got Ports coming. The clock is not to be understated, I suppose...

[Bahra]

VS Miracles - Watching the Konig vs Lossett match, I thought it was interesting that Konig ran out the SFM before Thalia, even with a Mom out to protect her... [spoilers] yeah, he "gets" Lossett with the Vial activation in resp to Terminus, but they are generally playing it in their draw step and are not often THAT choked on mana, so I see this as taking advantage of an opportunity rather than a line to rely on. Bahra, can you shed some light into your thinking here? I know it's been a while but it seems memorable :P To me, it just seems better to run out Thalia (given that you have Mom) to choke their cantrips asap, especially if you've got Ports coming. The clock is not to be understated, I suppose...

There was a lot of reasons not to play Thalia in that situation. First of all I didn't have the Mother of Runes active yet, I had to vial that in after I played my 2 drop. Second of all I had to tap my Karakas which meant that I left Thalia vulnerable to spot removal which could easily be prevented from just waiting 1 turn. Third of all he's playing Legend miracles not Ponder miracles which means that there's very few cantrips to affect with Thalia and that Thalia is most effective to just prevent a Jace on turn 4. Add to that, that the Stoneforge Mystic just has way higher impact, that I can protect the early equip from Swords to Plowshares AND that in that specific situation I had the Thalia + Terminus play in mind, and it's just a no brainer to play the Stoneforge Mystic before the Thalia.

[echofish]

http://www.mtgtop8.com/event?e=9124&d=252094&f=LE

Any thoughts?

[Barbed Blightning]

http://www.mtgtop8.com/event?e=9124&d=252094&f=LE

Any thoughts?
It's been mentioned before; Arbiter builds crop up now and again but they rarely find popularity as the central "gimmick" of the deck (Arbiter + GQ) cannot be ensured consistently and that Arbiter himself is an iffy tax. Sometimes you bust your opponent's balls, sometimes they ignore him completely. But with Lands coming back I could see it.

Personally, I like Mangara of Corondor, which is another unpopular choice; as such I don't find myself wanting to test the Arbiter build, but if you like it I think there is some merit to building it.

[Farone]

I started playing recently with the D&T deck. My main question is what is better to start with if you have both in hand, mom or vial?

[Barbed Blightning]

I started playing recently with the D&T deck. My main question is what is better to start with if you have both in hand, mom or vial?
Vial, almost 99% of the time

Unless you suspect a Daze, a resolved Vial is always great on the first turn.

[MrShine]

I started playing recently with the D&T deck. My main question is what is better to start with if you have both in hand, mom or vial?

I've always been of the opinion that, given the choice, T1 Vial is better because a) there's a better chance that it will resolve and b) lets you vial-in the Mom as you go up the curve, thus maximizing mana efficiency. Moreover, there is the chance they'll tap out before their EOT so Mom can come in, dodge their removal and get active right away.

[Farone]

yes that is what I thought. Did some testing yesterday with some friends. Played against omnishow, reanimator and goblins. Played like 2-2 against omni, 2-0 vs reanimator and 2 times 2-1 against the goblin deck. Have a very good feeling about the deck:)

[Barbed Blightning]

yes that is what I thought. Did some testing yesterday with some friends. Played against omnishow, reanimator and goblins. Played like 2-2 against omni, 2-0 vs reanimator and 2 times 2-1 against the goblin deck. Have a very good feeling about the deck:)
Reanimator and Gobs are good matchups for sure, but Omni can be a bit complicated; doing evenly against it is a good sign, for sure.

Would you mind posting a list?

[Farone]

I use this list atm:

9 Plains
4 Rishadan Port
4 Wasteland
3 Karakas
1Cavern of Souls
1 Horizon Canopy
1 Flagstones of Trokair

4 Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
4 Stoneforge Mystic
4 Mother of Runes
4 Flickerwisp
3 Phyrexian Revoker
2 Serra Avenger
2 Mirran Crusader
2 Mangara of Corondor
1 Brimaz, King of Oreskos

4 Swords to Plowshares
4 Aether Vial
1 Umezawa's Jitte
1 Batterskull
1 Sword of Fire and Ice

SB:
1 Ratched Bomb
1 Cataclysm
2 Council's Judgment
2 Rest in Peace
2 Containment Priest
2 Kor Firewalker
2 Ethersworn Canonist
1 Grafdigger's Cage
1 Pithing Needle
1 Armageddon

[Penguinizer]

I finally managed to get out of bed early enough to go to a tournament, and actually did fairly well for once. Here's a miniature short form tourney report.

My decklist: (Fairly generic build, nothing fancy)
7 Plains
4 Wasteland
4 Karakas
3 Rishadan Port
3 Flagstones of Trokair
2 Eiganjo Castle (Note: I only own 7 portal 1 plains, these are filler since I don't want to play mixed land arts.)

Spells:
4 Aether Vial
4 Swords to Plowshares
1 Umezawa's Jitte
1 Sword of Fire and Ice
1 Batterskull

Creatures:
4 Mother of Runes
4 Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
4 Stoneforge Mystic
3 Serra Avenger
2 Spirit of the Labyrinth
2 Phyrexian Revoker
4 Flickerwisp
2 Mangara of Corondor
2 Brimaz, King of Oreskos

SB:
3x Sunlance
3x Burrenton Forge-Tender (Kinda mediocre. I'm going to be swapping it out for 2x Wilt-Leaf Liege and 1x Manriki Gusari)
3x Rest in Peace
2x Council's Jugement
2x Ethersworn Canonist
1x Phyrexian Revoker
1x Spirit of the Labyrinth

So, here's a quick rundown of my games. I didn't make any notes and it was about 10 hours ago so I may have forgotten how things went.
Round 1: GW Humans. Game 1 I open up with Wasteland go, turn 2 Stoneforge Mystic. He goes mom turn 2 mystic. Then I play a Mangara of Corondor and sort of wiggle my eyebrows at his mother of runes as he repeatedly taps it to stop my mangara from exploding it. After that, I just flickerwisped his Batterskull token and won with the Skull and Flickerwisp. Game 2 I can't honestly remember. Game 3, I think it was sort of like the first except I was the one that play Mother of Runes.

Round 2: Sneak and Tell. Overall, Karakas+Phyrexian Revoker on Sneak Attack stop him from doing much game 1. Game 2 he through the breaches me with an Emrakul. Game 3 it's like Game 1 except I also have a Labyrinth Spirit and his Show and Tell Griselbrand meets my Phyrexian Revoker. Then I removed it anyways and just swung to kill.

Round 3: RUG. Stuff happened. There were creatures, there was blocking, there was removal. It was a slow-ish grindy game. I won eventually with evasive creatures and being able to remove/trade for his Mongooses. Goyf I just chumped with random bears or Brimaz tokens. Highlights include triple Stoneforge Mystic to counter his Sulfur Elemental.

Round 4: Infect. He sort of splooged on my face with an Inkmoth Nexus before I could do anything. Game 2 I removed his Inkmoth nexus and swung with brimaz. Game 3, he had answers for double StP, then Become Immense -> Berserk happened and I died.

Round 5: Pox. Game 1, he plays a turn 1 Liliana. Then I sort of miraculously manage topdeck my way to slow grindy win. (Vial, then flickerwisp mainphase 2 to kill his liliana, then a revoker for his cursed scroll). Game 2 was similar to the first.

Overall, for once I didn't punt too badly. Burrenton Forge-Tender didn't work for my SB and I'll be swapping it out for other stuff.

[nevilshute]

How are people feeling about the 3-cmc spot(s)? I see Brimaz in a lot of lists recently. How do people feel about Mirran Crusader vs Brimaz? Bug seems rife in my meta

[Bahra]

How are people feeling about the 3-cmc spot(s)? I see Brimaz in a lot of lists recently. How do people feel about Mirran Crusader vs Brimaz? Bug seems rife in my meta

No reason to play Brimaz currently. Mirran Crusader is much better in a BUG meta.

[Penguinizer]

It's a meta thing. We don't have as much BUG, but have more weird RUG/UR/creature based things. Brimaz can sort of just trade things and facetank other things. Which means it works more for me.

[Stevestamopz]

Reanimator and Gobs are good matchups for sure

I agree with you on reanimator being a good matchup for DnT, but Goblins? Why do you say/think that?

[Barbed Blightning]

I agree with you on reanimator being a good matchup for DnT, but Goblins? Why do you say/think that?
Jitte, SoFI, Batterskull. Each stomp out goblins. We name Vial with Revoker to deny them advantage/speed, or SGC, Gempalm or Sharpshooter to deny them removal (or use Mom) and we have simply better defense with or creatures.

Maybe you'll lose a game to gobs, but so long as you play smart (a factor in every game I suppose) you'll win basically every round.

[Stevestamopz]

Jitte, SoFI, Batterskull. Each stomp out goblins. We name Vial with Revoker to deny them advantage/speed, or SGC, Gempalm or Sharpshooter to deny them removal (or use Mom) and we have simply better defense with or creatures.

Maybe you'll lose a game to gobs, but so long as you play smart (a factor in every game I suppose) you'll win basically every round.

It's interesting to read that from your perspective; I'm primarily a goblins player and I've always found DnT to be a pretty favourable matchup for Goblins due to the card advantage and tutoring for key cards like Tin-Street Hooligan etc.

(Just to point out, I haven't come here to pick a fight, I've been playing DnT for a little bit now (because overall DnT is clearly the better deck in legacy) and it was just interesting to see Goblins raise a mention :tongue: )

[Barbed Blightning]

It's interesting to read that from your perspective; I'm primarily a goblins player and I've always found DnT to be a pretty favourable matchup for Goblins due to the card advantage and tutoring for key cards like Tin-Street Hooligan etc.

(Just to point out, I haven't come here to pick a fight, I've been playing DnT for a little bit now (because overall DnT is clearly the better deck in legacy) and it was just interesting to see Goblins raise a mention :tongue: )
Perhaps you are playing against inexperienced D&T players; they are rather common. However, I've played both sides a lot and D&T has the clear advantage almost every game, even in the face of artifact kill and stuff like Pyrokinesis. D&T just out-values Goblins, especially with Containment Priest, Canonist and extra removal out of the board.

Just my 2¢. Glad to see you've come to reason and joined our side, though. [emoji14]

[Bahra]

I agree that Goblins is very favorable for us.

It's like a 75/25 match up if both players are experienced. And that's being generous to goblins.

[koule]

Hi, do you know about somebody who streams DaT matches? (mtgo...) (or where I can find some archive with such streams) thx

need to observe some skilled players :)

[nicoleptik]

Hi, do you know about somebody who streams DaT matches? (mtgo...) (or where I can find some archive with such streams) thx need to observe some skilled players :) you should definitively watch this awesome match where Thomas Enevoldsen survives 2 emrakul attacks: http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=c-Twz77o0p8

[hill_giant]

you should definitively watch this awesome match where Thomas Enevoldsen survives 2 emrakul attacks after having already been hit with Griselbrand: http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=c-Twz77o0p8

Careful, we wouldn't want to undersell how ridiculous that game was.

[koule]

Careful, we wouldn't want to undersell how ridiculous that game was.

I have already seen many of videos from youtube. I am looking for some material, where somebody plays regulary (daily events etc..)

or if somebody knows about some Blog, or pages with "tips, how to play" like https://enlightenedtutor.wordpress.com/

[hill_giant]

I have already seen many of videos from youtube. I am looking for some material, where somebody plays regulary (daily events etc..)

or if somebody knows about some Blog, or pages with "tips, how to play" like https://enlightenedtutor.wordpress.com/

I think bahra streams with it, or at least used to, which would mean that there'd be replays to watch. I'm not 100% though, since I don't really watch streamers.

[Barook]

We got a new toy, guys:

Anafenza, Kin-Tree Spirit :w::w:
Legendary Creature - Spirit Soldier
Whenever another nontoken creature enters the battlefield under your control, bolster 1.
2/2

Counters -1/-1 effects and has synergy with Karakas and Flickerwisp. I like it.

[Farone]

yes was just thinking the same!! Think it will be neat as a 2 off orso



We got a new toy, guys:

Anafenza, Kin-Tree Spirit :w::w:
Legendary Creature - Spirit Soldier
Whenever another nontoken creature enters the battlefield under your control, bolster 1.
2/2

Counters -1/-1 effects and has synergy with Karakas and Flickerwisp. I like it.

[Barbed Blightning]

We got a new toy, guys:

Anafenza, Kin-Tree Spirit :w::w:
Legendary Creature - Spirit Soldier
Whenever another nontoken creature enters the battlefield under your control, bolster 1.
2/2

Counters -1/-1 effects and has synergy with Karakas and Flickerwisp. I like it.
Sounds neat, board or main? I think it'd be a nice one-of in the 60.

Being able to buff up Thalia or Revoker sounds good to me, even if it's effect is simply "whenever a creature enters the battlefield under your control, put a +1/+1 counter on it."

[Bahra]

Sounds neat, board or main? I think it'd be a nice one-of in the 60.

Being able to buff up Thalia or Revoker sounds good to me, even if it's effect is simply "whenever a creature enters the battlefield under your control, put a +1/+1 counter on it."

It would have to take the spot for a beater, since it doesn't hate on anything really. It only improves our creatures in combat.

[redtwister]

It would have to take the spot for a beater, since it doesn't hate on anything really. It only improves our creatures in combat.

Technically it will also protect one creature against -1/-1 effects if you vial something in and trigger Anafenza, but I consider that pretty weak for something in the main deck.

I agree with the spirit of the point however, that I am not impressed.

[Luca Grease]

hard to say just how good (if any) it will be, but I don't think this is a sideboard card against -1-1 effects. It would be quite clunky and vulnerable at that. If this ends up shining, I suspect it will be in the main deck, probably in place of the Avenger slots...

[Galentyn]

Anafenza seems slow, encourages potentially over extending, requires investment to out beat Mirran Crusader/Serra Avenger and is a medicore top deck. Crusader and Avenger can also beat through most blockers, while Anafenza cannot. It'd be cool to be wrong but I don't think she's playable in DNT.

[owerbart]

hi, want to clarify that i've never actually played this deck, so my opinion isn't worth that much, but is there a reason why Honor of the Pure isn't considered as an answer to Dread of Night?

[Finn]

I can answer that.

I have used Honor of the Pure in the past. It is not terrible. But it is just narrow. It does nothing on its own. It is an answer to hate which is generally not what you want to be doing in anything except a combo deck. If -1 effects are enough to completely destroy a deck that is not combo, you need to start over on the deck.

That said, the replacement answer that many folks use is Wilt-Leaf Liege which is far more broad.


As for the Anafenza, I would be more inclined if bolster let you choose the target. 2/2 moms are not impressive.

[Stevestamopz]

hi, want to clarify that i've never actually played this deck, so my opinion isn't worth that much, but is there a reason why Honor of the Pure isn't considered as an answer to Dread of Night?

Council's judgement, disenchant and oblivion ring all answer cards like Dread of Night whilst also dealing with other problems. Anthem/Honour of the Pure effects are just too narrow and aren't worth wasting sideboard slots.

[cursecatcher]

I am going to try a 1/1 split between this new lady and Serra Avenger. Avenger has been impressing me less and less lately.

As for the comment on wishing you could choose which creature you get to buff, you basically do get this range of choice in DNT since SO many of the creatures have 1 toughness. Say hello to 3/2 thalia's and 4/2 flickerwisps.

Essentially, I like my creatures in DNT to be as tricky as possible, and Serra Avenger just isn't that. It's good at carrying equipment, but so are Flickerwisp, Thalia, and Mirran Crusader. At least Anafenza is another card to reward us for playing Karakas, as well as assist in beating the various small sweeper sideboard cards that so many decks lean on to beat us. I fully admit that I might be overvaluing it, but I think its worth the testing time and I will be looking to trade for a foil copy. :cool:

[from Cairo]

Got excited seeing Legendary Creature - Spirit Soldier. Anafenza, the only spirit without flying~ I keep hoping for that Legendary 2/x flier at 2cc - some of the application against Delver that Serra Avenger has (trading/mom advantage) - the awesome Karakas interactions against attrition matches.

I preordered a few to give them a spin anyway. I'm not too hopeful, but testing will tell.

[Tokugawa]

Got excited seeing Legendary Creature - Spirit Soldier. Anafenza, the only spirit without flying~ I keep hoping for that Legendary 2/x flier at 2cc - some of the application against Delver that Serra Avenger has (trading/mom advantage) - the awesome Karakas interactions against attrition matches.

I preordered a few to give them a spin anyway. I'm not too hopeful, but testing will tell.

Kamigawa block has tons of non-flyer white spirits.:tongue:

[Finn]

Lieutenant Kirtar is a card. I don't think we have ever discussed it at all, but it is not terrible.

[Plague Sliver]

Lieutenant Kirtar is a card. I don't think we have ever discussed it at all, but it is not terrible.

If only the sac ability was free...it might even be playable.

Finn, I love your encyclopedic knowledge of white weenies. Keep it up :cool:

[henweigh]

If WotC would answer our dreams, what "reasonable" card/cards would we like to see printed?

[Barook]

Legendary Flickerwisp with Flash, preferable with 2 toughness.

[Bosque]

Legendary flickerwisp with flash sounds totally awesome. Also some new usable equipment would be nice. The following effects on legs would be real fun, bonus points for legendary, also flying is cool.

Honor of the Pure
Winter Orb
Another tax effect, Flying Glowrider?
Armageddon or Cataclysm ETB
Another mom-like effect (tap to give hexproof or such)
Kismet
SOTL like effect but with flash
Prevents tokens from being created

[Stevestamopz]

Hey all, just took DnT to it's first event tonight!

The event actually failed to fire, - only 1 other person showed up ready to play legacy (legacy in Australia summed up), but there were a few vintage players who grabbed some proxy decks, so I got to play a few games against the mirror, sneak and show and Tinfins (that griselbrand combo deck).

Does anyone have any advice on the TinFins matchup? The TinFins deck is so fast, turn 1 or 2 Griselbrand + Emrakul attacking for 22 is not that uncommon :\ Of the 3 games we played, I won 1, when I went turn 1 karakas -> grafdiggers cage, turn 2 spirit of labyrinth, turn 3 revoker on griselbrand and beat face until my opponent was dead.

Here's the 75 I played tonight. I'm not sure on the numbers yet, so if there are any glaring holes, I would love some feedback. http://www.mtgvault.com/steve2112rush/decks/dnt

[cursecatcher]

In my experience, the Tin Fins matchup is horrific for DNT as they are often just too fast to allow our interaction to matter. If we win the die roll game 1, hopefully we can squeak out games 1 and 3. In this way, this matchup is similar to Belcher for us.

As for your list, I like basically all of your maindeck aside from the Spirit of the Labs. Some people like them, but I got burned by them being ineffectual too many times. I also like trying to side out a lot of x/1's postboard in a lot of matchups to play around hate cards, and Spirit makes it harder to do that. In their place, I like an additional Crusader and Mangara. This might seem like a lot of 3cc creatures, but I think 8 is the upper bound of what you can reasonably afford to run. A lot of the time when I have no creature in hand and plenty of lands in play, I'll tick vial up to 3 in the dark because the payoff on hitting a 3 (flickerwisp usually) would be so advantageous. So having more rather than less 3's makes this sort of angling more reasonable.

[hill_giant]

Legendary flickerwisp with flash sounds totally awesome. Also some new usable equipment would be nice. The following effects on legs would be real fun, bonus points for legendary, also flying is cool.

Honor of the Pure
Winter Orb
Another tax effect, Flying Glowrider?
Armageddon or Cataclysm ETB
Another mom-like effect (tap to give hexproof or such)
Kismet
SOTL like effect but with flash
Prevents tokens from being created

Most of these exist, but they're all 4-drops. I could see something like hokori or loxodon gatekeeper being playable, but they're not likely to print upgrades to these any time soon, since they don't want mana denial to be standard playable ever. I'm also not sure how exciting anti token cards would be.

[Finn]

Filename=dreamcard

Harbinger Peacock
Creature - bird
w
When Harbinger Peacock enters the battlefield, you may discard a white creature card. If you do, search your library for a white creature card, reveal it, and put it in your hand. Then shuffle your library.
1/1

That ought to do it. The requirements virtually guarantee that no other deck can use it, and it does exactly what this deck needs. Also, it is not OP because it is both conditional and does not generate card advantage. It is slightly out of color though. At any rate, I predict that this card would pretty much make DnT the best deck in the format.

So there is the dream.

[Bosque]

If that was Harbinger Spirit it could fit fairly close in white.

@hill_giant, yeah good point I guess I just meant at a playable casting cost.

[BeardTron]

This list made Top 8 today at SCG Dallas. Piloted by Blake Donnan

Creatures (26)

3 Phyrexian Revoker
3 Flickerwisp
2 Mirran Crusader
4 Mother of Runes
4 Stoneforge Mystic
3 Spirit of the Labyrinth
2 Brimaz, King of Oreskos
1 Mangara of Corondor
4 Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
Lands (20)

9 Plains
1 Horizon Canopy
4 Rishadan Port
4 Wasteland
2 Karakas
Spells (14)

4 Aether Vial
1 Batterskull
1 Chrome Mox
1 Sword of Fire and Ice
4 Swords to Plowshares
1 Umezawa's Jitte
2 Armageddon
Sideboard

1 Ethersworn Canonist
2 Rest in Peace
1 Eidolon of Rhetoric
3 Disenchant
2 Enlightened Tutor
2 Path to Exile
2 Armageddon
2 Council's Judgment

20 Lands. Armageddon main. Chrome Mox. 3 Spirit main.
Some interesting choices. Any thoughts?

[MrGlantz]

Dream Card for the deck would probably be something like this.

Cleric W
Creature - human
Players can't pay life or sacrifice creatures to cast spells or activate abilities.
1/1

Won't happen any time soon and it might be too powerful or format warping, but I'd love for it to exist in Legacy.

[Bahra]

This list made Top 8 today at SCG Dallas. Piloted by Blake Donnan

Creatures (26)

3 Phyrexian Revoker
3 Flickerwisp
2 Mirran Crusader
4 Mother of Runes
4 Stoneforge Mystic
3 Spirit of the Labyrinth
2 Brimaz, King of Oreskos
1 Mangara of Corondor
4 Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
Lands (20)

9 Plains
1 Horizon Canopy
4 Rishadan Port
4 Wasteland
2 Karakas
Spells (14)

4 Aether Vial
1 Batterskull
1 Chrome Mox
1 Sword of Fire and Ice
4 Swords to Plowshares
1 Umezawa's Jitte
2 Armageddon
Sideboard

1 Ethersworn Canonist
2 Rest in Peace
1 Eidolon of Rhetoric
3 Disenchant
2 Enlightened Tutor
2 Path to Exile
2 Armageddon
2 Council's Judgment

20 Lands. Armageddon main. Chrome Mox. 3 Spirit main.
Some interesting choices. Any thoughts?

This is just terrible. So many "objectively" wrong decisions in deck building. I'm not even gonna start with it.

[nevilshute]

Not being particularly experienced with the deck the following things still strike me as odd with that build:

- 7 main deck legendary creatures and only 2 Karakas, especially as he decided to include a Mangara.

- The Chrome Mox? I guess it will randomly poop on a storm player by allowing a turn 1 Thalia but way too rarely to merit an inclusion I'd think. I suppose it also has some synergy with Armageddon but I can't really see that being good enough. Would imagine our white cards matter more than mana ramping in many situations. And yeah, I can't imagine a much worse top-deck if the game has gone beyond the first few turns.

- Creature selection in general. This might just be a matter of personal preference, but I don't like going completely eschewing Serra Avenger.

That said, many congratulations on the top-8 finish :smile:

[Barook]

Maindeck Armageddon with 4x Thalia while also cutting down the land count ? How is that supposed to work? Plus, zero Flagstones for Armageddon.

I agree with nevilshute - many of those decisions are questionable to downright terrible. I wonder how he could place in Top 8 with that.

[BeardTron]

He must've had really favorable match ups all day.

While I certainly appreciate thinking outside the box I just don't understand some of these choices. I think I've only ever seen 23 lands in D&T so seeing 20 was quite a shock-- especially w Armageddon and Thalia. One Chrome Mox surely isn't enough to provide balance.

This isn't 'Nam...there are rules. Even the board seems suboptimal--2 Tutors in this board seems weird and 2 Paths seem bad too. I don't like Path in general in this deck--kind of counterintuitive. Would rather run Sunlance.

Kudos to him for doing well, but I can't imagine this build could continue to be consistent.

[Wasteland]

Hi there,
just to keep up the threat my current list (after the 15:0 in Strasbourg i played several smaller tournaments in Nuremberg and ended up 4:2, 4:1, 5:1, 3:2) - last changes were the taking out of the e-Tutor-board since i don't think you Need silver-bullets that much in non treasure-cruise-times. Serra Avenger has been great, in fact better then the mirrans i had earlier in the list.
Still the most important think - thanks a lot to Bahra again - is to Play the ful playset of flickerwisp... If you ever consider to cut one of theese: JUST DON'T! Better take out a revoker or any of the other 2-3ofs...
2 mindcensors are my personal preferance, of course you can cut them and put in mirrans or whatever. But since German Meta = Elves-meta they stay in my maindeck!

"Tod durch Steuern"
//lands
9x plains
4x wasteland
4x rishadan port
3x Karakas
3x flagstones of Trokair

//creatures
4x mother of runes
4x stoneforge mystic
4x Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
4x phyrexian revoker
4x flickerwisp
=> the "holy 20 i would say"
3x serra avenger
2x aven mindcensor
1x Mangara of Corondor (i think 1 is the correct amount, feel free to cut her for a Brimaz or something else in aggro-heavy metagames)

//other
4x swords to plowshares
4x aether vial
1x Umezawa's jitte
1x sword of fire and ice
1x batterskull

//Sideboard
4x ethersworn canonist (i know, most play only 2 of them but since this seams to be just the best sideboard-card against elves, any storm-based deck and even omnishow i personally will never go below 4)
2x containment priest (in regional tournaments i sometimes switch to 3 priest 1 cataclysm if there's a certain amount of elves)
2x cataclysm
2x kor firewalker
1x manriki-gusari
2x rest in peace
2x <flexible slots> here i'm at the moment totally unsure about packing in 2 sunlance (great against delver, deathrites, any early pressure beside the mirror), 2 holy light (nice against elves, nemesis, goblin-Tokens) or 2 council's judgement (best alround-removal, even against Progenitus or Emrakul but often not that easy to cast)

For questions around the deck / build feel free to comment or pm me.

Greetz from Germany

Marius Hausmann

[jake556]

1x Mangara of Corondor (i think 1 is the correct amount, feel free to cut her for a Brimaz or something else in aggro-heavy metagames)

Her! :mad:

[Barbed Blightning]

Her! :mad:
Let the Vorthos slapfight commence!

Also, addressing that awful list, let this be a lesson to all of us: just because a list places does not mean that it is good, or that it is going to revolutionize the deck.

[Bahra]

Hi there,
just to keep up the threat my current list (after the 15:0 in Strasbourg i played several smaller tournaments in Nuremberg and ended up 4:2, 4:1, 5:1, 3:2) - last changes were the taking out of the e-Tutor-board since i don't think you Need silver-bullets that much in non treasure-cruise-times. Serra Avenger has been great, in fact better then the mirrans i had earlier in the list.
Still the most important think - thanks a lot to Bahra again - is to Play the ful playset of flickerwisp... If you ever consider to cut one of theese: JUST DON'T! Better take out a revoker or any of the other 2-3ofs...
2 mindcensors are my personal preferance, of course you can cut them and put in mirrans or whatever. But since German Meta = Elves-meta they stay in my maindeck!

"Tod durch Steuern"
//lands
9x plains
4x wasteland
4x rishadan port
3x Karakas
3x flagstones of Trokair

//creatures
4x mother of runes
4x stoneforge mystic
4x Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
4x phyrexian revoker
4x flickerwisp
=> the "holy 20 i would say"
3x serra avenger
2x aven mindcensor
1x Mangara of Corondor (i think 1 is the correct amount, feel free to cut her for a Brimaz or something else in aggro-heavy metagames)

//other
4x swords to plowshares
4x aether vial
1x Umezawa's jitte
1x sword of fire and ice
1x batterskull

//Sideboard
4x ethersworn canonist (i know, most play only 2 of them but since this seams to be just the best sideboard-card against elves, any storm-based deck and even omnishow i personally will never go below 4)
2x containment priest (in regional tournaments i sometimes switch to 3 priest 1 cataclysm if there's a certain amount of elves)
2x cataclysm
2x kor firewalker
1x manriki-gusari
2x rest in peace
2x <flexible slots> here i'm at the moment totally unsure about packing in 2 sunlance (great against delver, deathrites, any early pressure beside the mirror), 2 holy light (nice against elves, nemesis, goblin-Tokens) or 2 council's judgement (best alround-removal, even against Progenitus or Emrakul but often not that easy to cast)

For questions around the deck / build feel free to comment or pm me.

Greetz from Germany

Marius Hausmann

I might need to try out the 4x Ethersworn Canonist board instead of tutors. Canonist has been great for me always, and I feel like we need more game against storm and improving the horrific match up that is Elves, is pretty nice. I also have been losing to Omnitell a lot lately, so I'm liking 4x Canonists more and more. I think you need to play 2x Gut Shot instead of Sunlance though.

[redtwister]

For dream cards, remember that WotC has ways to introduce new cards into Eternal formats that don't go into Standard, hence Containment Priest and Council's Judgment, so don't lose hope that we could get good things without "warping" Standard, i.e. taking it away from being an overwhelmingly mid-range format.

Here's mine:
"Dream Crusher
1ww
Legendary Enchantment Creature - Angel
Flying
1/3
As Dream Crusher enters the battlefield, choose a player.

That player cannot activate abilities of non-land, non-creature permanents."

So it hits opponents' planeswalkers, artifacts, and enchantments, which is good but not over the top as a 1WW legendary with a 1/3 body. I think it is not more powerful than True-Name Nemesis.

[Plague Sliver]

For questions around the deck / build feel free to comment or pm me.

Greetz from Germany

Marius Hausmann

That's a sweet list, very tightly constructed. Looks like your meta must be all Storm and Elves :) I like the 4x Canonists.

I will challenge the sacred cow here and say that I enjoy running 3x Flickerwisp instead of 4x. They are phenomenal with Vial, but sometimes you don't find Vial and then drawing multiples of Wisps is underwhelming. Once in awhile, the double white is hard to hit as well. So like I said, Vial superstar but not so great otherwise.

By the way, not a critique -- I'm finding it hard NOT to run the full playset of Flagstones in every D&T build. I had a good discussion with a friend about it the other day. Not that we were arguing, he was also a huge proponent of it, but he was trying to convince HIS friend to do it.

Seems like Flagstones is a no-brainer because:
- It thins out the deck
- It allows you to play around Massacre
- Is great with Cataclysm/Armageddon
- Received a boost after they changed the Legend rule

Even when I tested vs. some Blood Moon decks such as Painter, it didn't really matter. Unless you're facing T1 blood moon every round, it seems like an obvious inclusion.

I'm just failing to see the drawback, unless I'm really missing something...

[Wasteland]

Yep you might be right about the 4. Flagstones :-)
First i had non in the MD, then 2, now 3 - i rly might go up to 4 there.

Concerning Flickerwisp...
I rly think you underestimate this guy, even without vial...
Just some examples from the last 5 tournaments:
- I had several games vs. agressive-decks, in which i had Close situations, in which my batterskull had to jump-block an enemy goyf. Just play flickerwisp on the skull in 2. mainphase and have a dual time-walk due to the lifelink of this Equipment.
- On the opposite side i had use for the wisp in just bouncing the enemy-batterskull-token (not to mention the possibility to bounce an enemy dd-token)
- Beneath the fact that 3mana 3:1 flying isnt that bad at all (exspecially against delver, which you can bounce into a non-flipped creature again), the just the flying wins in many matches, when you can connect with an Equipment.
- Another trick (not that spectacular but still good): Play him with 2 plains / 1 wasteland, get wasteland eot back untapped and waste enemy land - you just got 3:1 flying for 2mana
- Beside many other shenanigans you can flicker your own stoneforge to get another Equipment in your Hand...
- Flicker Chalice of the void th get Access to Play StoP again...
- Flicker Mox Diamond (or even Chrome mox) against lands, if he has not that much mana (or completely screw him with rest in peace in game)
- And i had a crazy game against lands with vial on 3 and 3 flickerwisps, in which i killed through 2 maze of ith and glacial chasm (with loam online!) - funny: he has to sac another land, when chasm comes back into play^^

There sure are many other situations which i didn't have in matches, but flickerwisp has always been great and just for the statistics: i won definetly more games with 4 flickerwisps then with only 3 of them.

Greetz,
Marius

[Bosque]

Seems like Flagstones is a no-brainer because:
- It thins out the deck
- It allows you to play around Massacre
- Is great with Cataclysm/Armageddon
- Received a boost after they changed the Legend rule

Even when I tested vs. some Blood Moon decks such as Painter, it didn't really matter. Unless you're facing T1 blood moon every round, it seems like an obvious inclusion.

I'm just failing to see the drawback, unless I'm really missing something...

The drawbacks are pretty much Blood Moon, Back to Basics and Price of Progress. I think the upsides are pretty high, but the downsides do exist.

[hill_giant]

That's a sweet list, very tightly constructed. Looks like your meta must be all Storm and Elves :) I like the 4x Canonists.

I will challenge the sacred cow here and say that I enjoy running 3x Flickerwisp instead of 4x. They are phenomenal with Vial, but sometimes you don't find Vial and then drawing multiples of Wisps is underwhelming. Once in awhile, the double white is hard to hit as well. So like I said, Vial superstar but not so great otherwise.

By the way, not a critique -- I'm finding it hard NOT to run the full playset of Flagstones in every D&T build. I had a good discussion with a friend about it the other day. Not that we were arguing, he was also a huge proponent of it, but he was trying to convince HIS friend to do it.

Seems like Flagstones is a no-brainer because:
- It thins out the deck
- It allows you to play around Massacre
- Is great with Cataclysm/Armageddon
- Received a boost after they changed the Legend rule

Even when I tested vs. some Blood Moon decks such as Painter, it didn't really matter. Unless you're facing T1 blood moon every round, it seems like an obvious inclusion.

I'm just failing to see the drawback, unless I'm really missing something...

Clearly you've never had a flagstones trigger get stifled...

[Barbed Blightning]

That's a sweet list, very tightly constructed. Looks like your meta must be all Storm and Elves :) I like the 4x Canonists.

I will challenge the sacred cow here and say that I enjoy running 3x Flickerwisp instead of 4x. They are phenomenal with Vial, but sometimes you don't find Vial and then drawing multiples of Wisps is underwhelming. Once in awhile, the double white is hard to hit as well. So like I said, Vial superstar but not so great otherwise.

By the way, not a critique -- I'm finding it hard NOT to run the full playset of Flagstones in every D&T build. I had a good discussion with a friend about it the other day. Not that we were arguing, he was also a huge proponent of it, but he was trying to convince HIS friend to do it.

Seems like Flagstones is a no-brainer because:
- It thins out the deck
- It allows you to play around Massacre
- Is great with Cataclysm/Armageddon
- Received a boost after they changed the Legend rule

Even when I tested vs. some Blood Moon decks such as Painter, it didn't really matter. Unless you're facing T1 blood moon every round, it seems like an obvious inclusion.

I'm just failing to see the drawback, unless I'm really missing something...
The Sacred Cow is sacred for a reason (Marius covered it pretty well I think).

I will add this: I have ran into more situations where I find myself wanting (or needing) Wisp more than situations where I dislike having it. So many cards in Legacy crumple to it, Vial or no, and the fact it flies and kills delver is just insane.

Of course, I also do two Mangara (another card I'd rather see than not), do my opinion of Wisp may be skewed... But I really think it is our most versatile tool--and one that opponents always seem to underestimate.

[xavidp]

Hello Guys,

What the best sideboard against Miracles. In my local metagame are a lot of Miracle decks.

Thank you!!

[from Cairo]

Hello Guys,

What the best sideboard against Miracles. In my local metagame are a lot of Miracle decks.

Thank you!!

The best cards out of SBs are: Pithing Needle, Cataclysm, and Gaddock Teeg - the former attacking Top the latter limiting their Miracles. Council's Judgment can be fine too, to remove a Planeswalker or like the occasional Baneslayer Angel.

The Legendary cards in the MD are all premium - you can protect them from sweepers with Karakas. Swords to Plowshares is the weakest card post board.

[Bahra]

Hello Guys,

What the best sideboard against Miracles. In my local metagame are a lot of Miracle decks.

Thank you!!

Cataclysm, Ratchet Bomb and Pithing Needle are all all-stars. Make sure you're main decking Mangara of Corondor as well.

[Bosque]

While not a sideboard card, getting a Vial online against Miracles makes this match substantially easier since you won't have to deal with getting creatures through Counterbalance. If you have a lot of Miracles where you play, running a Cavern of Souls might make sense also. A green splash version of the deck running both Teeg and Mangara is pretty darn good against Miracles, and lets you run Choke in the board as well just for fun.

[Plague Sliver]

There sure are many other situations which i didn't have in matches, but flickerwisp has always been great and just for the statistics: i won definetly more games with 4 flickerwisps then with only 3 of them.

Good reasoning and good scenario list. I'll go back to 4x for a while and see what happens. (likely good things)


Clearly you've never had a flagstones trigger get stifled...

You're right, I haven't. Then again, if they have Wasteland and multiple Stifles, because there are about a million other things they could Stifle in D&T, then I guess they win.


Hello Guys,

What the best sideboard against Miracles. In my local metagame are a lot of Miracle decks.

Thank you!!

It's already pretty good naturally against Miracles. Thalia plus Karakas is nuts. Make sure your first priority is to grab the SOFI for card advantage and pro-blue. Mulligan aggressively for vial. If you're running 4x Revokers main, it helps a lot. A matchup where Mangara shines.

During the Cruise era, Brimaz was also pretty damn good versus Miracles, but he's not such an auto-include anymore.

Out of the board, you have Ratchet Bomb and Cataclysm. Take out the Jitte and StPs.

[neddsaurus]

i have a fairly diverse meta at my lgs. i don't really find myself mulliganing much unless i have 0 lands. i wanted to get some input on whether you guys would keep these hands against an unknown deck.

1) 3x plains, mom, stp, 2 revokers
2) 2 karakas, 2 plains, flagstone, stoneforge, thalia
3) plains, mom, revoker, jitte, mangara, mirran, brimaz
4) 2 wasteland, 2 vial, 2 flickerwisp, sofi
5) plains, flagstone, wasteland, port, mom, stoneforge, revoker
6) plains, flagstone, cavern, port, vial, flickerwisp, mirran
7) plains, karakas, thalia, revoker, serra, mirran, batterskull
8) 2 wasteland, plains, 2 mom, vial, stoneforge

i would likely mulligan: 2 (no waste/port), 3 (f'ed without finding another white source fast), 4 (seems too slow). i might not be happy with all of the other options, but i think they're keepable. how much of an emphasis do you all place on having a 1 drop in the opener?

[Finn]

3 is bad for sure. 6 is a bit soft. The others are all decent to solid. 2 has no turn 1 play but excellent turn 2 and 3 options. Of course if you topdeck another Karakas on one of those turns it starts to look kinda bad bit I keep that for sure. 4 is not slow. It is beautiful! You could turn 1 vial and possibly double Wasteland turn 2 to jump very far ahead.

[Plague Sliver]

i have a fairly diverse meta at my lgs. i don't really find myself mulliganing much unless i have 0 lands. i wanted to get some input on whether you guys would keep these hands against an unknown deck.

1) 3x plains, mom, stp, 2 revokers
2) 2 karakas, 2 plains, flagstone, stoneforge, thalia
3) plains, mom, revoker, jitte, mangara, mirran, brimaz
4) 2 wasteland, 2 vial, 2 flickerwisp, sofi
5) plains, flagstone, wasteland, port, mom, stoneforge, revoker
6) plains, flagstone, cavern, port, vial, flickerwisp, mirran
7) plains, karakas, thalia, revoker, serra, mirran, batterskull
8) 2 wasteland, plains, 2 mom, vial, stoneforge

i would likely mulligan: 2 (no waste/port), 3 (f'ed without finding another white source fast), 4 (seems too slow). i might not be happy with all of the other options, but i think they're keepable. how much of an emphasis do you all place on having a 1 drop in the opener?

I'd keep 3) on the draw, mull otherwise.
I would *maybe* consider mulling 4) and 7) due to a combination of no 1 drop play and having an equipment in hand. In a stoneforge deck the equipment is a bit of a virtual loss. (like Tendrils opener in storm).

When I say "no 1 drop play," I'd include StP in that equation. If I don't have Vial or mom, I'd at least feel better about having a removal answer to something they might play.

[Finn]

Re: equipment in opening 7...
Batterskull in your 7 is very close to a dead card. But if you resolve Mystic on turn 2 and fetch up a Jitte, that Batterskull you started with is all money. Your opponent thinks you are bringing in Jitte. You get a big surprise blocker/attacker. That is the kind of thing that wins games.

[Stevestamopz]

Hey guys, I've been having some real trouble with the philipp schoenegger ponder miracles matchup, especially in game one.

My vial gets forced, they plow all my dudes and terminus everything when I get even a modicum of board presence going. Then they entreat for 3 or 4 and that's game.

I don't really understand what I'm doing wrong... I've played the matchup a zillion times from the goblins side of the table and have an almost 100% win rate, even against experienced miracles pilots who have terminus'd me 4 times in 1 game.

I understand that such a blank statement is pretty hard to give advice on, but what are the things I can do against miracles?
Here's my current list which I've updated through the reading of the posts on this forum. http://www.mtgvault.com/steve2112rush/decks/dnt/

After game 1 I obviously get access to cataclysm/armageddon/pithing needle, but game 1 against miracles (for me at least) is a miserable experience.

[Barook]

I see Cataclysm as a skill crutch in that match-up, but that's just me.

The key in this match-up is to grind them into the dirt. In general, you slowly get a few points of damage here and there, and that adds up quickly.

You can't compare that to the Goblins match-up where you can refill your hand easily and spam them to death.

Force them into 1-on-1 trades as often as possible, especially with Terminus. Don't overextend, normally 1-2 creatures on the board are enough, keep the rest for the time after the sweeper reset. Make the most out of your Flickerwisps. Use your equipment to put pressure on them without playing more creatures.

It took me a while to get a hang of the match-up, since it's pretty skill-intensive for both sides. And even if you're positive against Miracles, it's still a miserable experience. :wink:

[Finn]

I see Cataclysm as a skill crutch in that match-up, but that's just me.

The key in this match-up is to grind them into the dirt. In general, you slowly get a few points of damage here and there, and that adds up quickly.

You can't compare that to the Goblins match-up where you can refill your hand easily and spam them to death.

Force them into 1-on-1 trades as often as possible, especially with Terminus. Don't overextend, normally 1-2 creatures on the board are enough, keep the rest for the time after the sweeper reset. Make the most out of your Flickerwisps. Use your equipment to put pressure on them without playing more creatures.

It took me a while to get a hang of the match-up, since it's pretty skill-intensive for both sides. And even if you're positive against Miracles, it's still a miserable experience. :wink:

All very true. If you are approaching the matchup like a goblins player you are not going to succeed. Let me add an angle to this. The biggest reason D+T took so long to catch on is the same reason opponents new to it can not believe they just lost to it. This also accounts for the difficult learning curve and probably a few other peculiarities about the deck.

It's all about the subtleties.

There is a particular mindset you have to adopt to pilot this deck. You have to get up all in their business and just know that you are fucking with them even though you often can not directly observe the effects your disruption measures are having on your opponent. The land you tapped on upkeep prevented his big turn. Your untapped Vial stopped what really would have been a profitable attack for him due to his fear of the unknown in your hand. Mangara's very presence on the field is delaying him from casting Jace until after he has some sort of way to handle it. He waited a turn to cast Terminus because you always leave your Karakas untapped. A Storm pilot seemed to have waited too long to go off for no reason, but really he could not get his mana right after you Revoked Lion's Eye Diamond.

D+T ain't aggro. You want the game to go long. Amazingly, Terminus is not especially good against D+T if you know how to play against it. Don't overextend. The best D+T players leave observers scratching their heads about the way they are using their resources because they are less interested in getting in more damage and more interested in squeezing extra damage from what they have. That said, most good plays are visible. Just keep in mind that you want to exert control not so much over the opponent, but over the game environment. D+T games are almost never a blowout in your favor. You have to gain incremental advantage from lots of smart plays.



Facing Miracles, it is perfectly fine to end your turn with creatures in hand that you could have cast. Hit him for a few points a turn while keeping his options limited.

[MGB]

Questions about sideboarding:

- I see that most lists play at most 2 Containment Priests. When this card was first spoiled I thought it would be a defacto 4-of in every DnT lists because it seems to cover so much ground vs. Elves, SnT, Dredge, and Reanimator. Why are most lists running only 2 if any at all?
- I see lists (especially on MTGO) playing Ethersworn Canonists (some even 3-4 of!) in the sideboard. This seems like a new development to me - is this primarily to fight Elves and Storm or is there some specific reason maybe on MTGO to be playing this in addition to Thalia?

[Stevestamopz]

I see Cataclysm as a skill crutch in that match-up, but that's just me.

The key in this match-up is to grind them into the dirt. In general, you slowly get a few points of damage here and there, and that adds up quickly.

You can't compare that to the Goblins match-up where you can refill your hand easily and spam them to death.

Force them into 1-on-1 trades as often as possible, especially with Terminus. Don't overextend, normally 1-2 creatures on the board are enough, keep the rest for the time after the sweeper reset. Make the most out of your Flickerwisps. Use your equipment to put pressure on them without playing more creatures.

It took me a while to get a hang of the match-up, since it's pretty skill-intensive for both sides. And even if you're positive against Miracles, it's still a miserable experience. :wink:


All very true. If you are approaching the matchup like a goblins player you are not going to succeed. Let me add an angle to this. The biggest reason D+T took so long to catch on is the same reason opponents new to it can not believe they just lost to it. This also accounts for the difficult learning curve and probably a few other peculiarities about the deck.

It's all about the subtleties.

There is a particular mindset you have to adopt to pilot this deck. You have to get up all in their business and just know that you are fucking with them even though you often can not directly observe the effects your disruption measures are having on your opponent. The land you tapped on upkeep prevented his big turn. Your untapped Vial stopped what really would have been a profitable attack for him due to his fear of the unknown in your hand. Mangara's very presence on the field is delaying him from casting Jace until after he has some sort of way to handle it. He waited a turn to cast Terminus because you always leave your Karakas untapped. A Storm pilot seemed to have waited too long to go off for no reason, but really he could not get his mana right after you Revoked Lion's Eye Diamond.

D+T ain't aggro. You want the game to go long. Amazingly, Terminus is not especially good against D+T if you know how to play against it. Don't overextend. The best D+T players leave observers scratching their heads about the way they are using their resources because they are less interested in getting in more damage and more interested in squeezing extra damage from what they have. That said, most good plays are visible. Just keep in mind that you want to exert control not so much over the opponent, but over the game environment. D+T games are almost never a blowout in your favor. You have to gain incremental advantage from lots of smart plays.



Facing Miracles, it is perfectly fine to end your turn with creatures in hand that you could have cast. Hit him for a few points a turn while keeping his options limited.

These in depth responses have been really helpful, thanks Barook and Finn! There's a lot for me to think about, cheers guys!

And yuh, playing against miracles is a miserable, no doubt about it :laugh:

[Windmill]

Hi guys.

I'm a new Omnitell player. My match-up against yours looks very hard. Do you have any advice? Ethersworn Canonist and Thalia looks like an absolute beating.

[Barook]

Questions about sideboarding:

- I see that most lists play at most 2 Containment Priests. When this card was first spoiled I thought it would be a defacto 4-of in every DnT lists because it seems to cover so much ground vs. Elves, SnT, Dredge, and Reanimator. Why are most lists running only 2 if any at all?
- I see lists (especially on MTGO) playing Ethersworn Canonists (some even 3-4 of!) in the sideboard. This seems like a new development to me - is this primarily to fight Elves and Storm or is there some specific reason maybe on MTGO to be playing this in addition to Thalia?
- SnT & Reanimator are some of D&T's best match-ups. And you don't need any help after sideboarding against Dredge since RiP + E-Tutor tends to destroy them. I just don't see the appeal outside of Elves.
- According to Bahra, he runs it for the Elves match-up. I'm not a fan of cutting E-Tutor for that.

[Finn]

Hi guys.

I'm a new Omnitell player. My match-up against yours looks very hard. Do you have any advice? Ethersworn Canonist and Thalia looks like an absolute beating.

Actually, I do kinda poorly against Omni. It's true that Thalia and Canonist are great against Omni. But little else we have does much of anything. I find myself going for some combination of weaker effects more often just because I don't have the goods in hand. Flickerwisp and Mangara can get you there most of the time. But you have to hardcast Mangara. Spirit of the Lab is of course great, but I am down to 1 or 2 in the board. Karakas doesn't do crap. Revoker neither. It's a bit better with Enlightened Tutor and a single Oblivion Ring. I had a Thorn of Amethyst in my board for this matchup for awhile too.

Hey, Windmill. Don't let Enlightened Tutor resolve. There's some advice.

I dunno. I just feel impotent in this one.

[MGB]

- SnT & Reanimator are some of D&T's best match-ups. And you don't need any help after sideboarding against Dredge since RiP + E-Tutor tends to destroy them. I just don't see the appeal outside of Elves.
- According to Bahra, he runs it for the Elves match-up. I'm not a fan of cutting E-Tutor for that.

So are Reanimator and SnT considered really good matchups solely due to 3 Karakas MD?

[Barook]

So are Reanimator and SnT considered really good matchups solely due to 3 Karakas MD?
Revoker is also pretty important to stop Sneak/Griselbrand. Thalia is kinda good with the mana denial package as well.

[deucegg]

i'll just leave my list here:

Lands (23)
4x Wasteland
4x Rishadan Port
3x Karakas
1x Cavern of Souls
3x Flagstones of Trokair
1x Horizon Canopy
7x Plains

Creatures (26)
4x Mother of Runes
4x Thalia
4x Stoneforge Mystic
4x Phyrexian Revoker
4x Flickerwisp
3x Serra Avenger
2x Aven Mindcensor
1x Mangara of Corondor

Instants (4)
4x StP

Artifacts (7)
4x Vial
1x Batterskull
1x Jitte
1x Sword of Fire and Ice

Sideboard (15)
4x Canonist
2x Containment Priest
2x RiP
2x Cataclysm
2x Gut Shot
1x Pithing Needle
1x Council's Judgement
1x Manriki-Gusari

Thanks @ Wasteland, copied your 4 Canonists and 2 MD Mindcensors. I used to play 2 Mirran Crusader 1 Aven 0 Mangara but really like the new configuration. Dont really think crusader is needed, sure hes strong against any kind of bug decks, but I feel BUG delver as the version thats mostly played atm is favourable enough. 2 Mindcensors give some g1 options vs elves which i really like as well.
I feel like I wanna at least add 1 Spirit of the Lab to my board. As much as I dont like her maindeck - she helps a lot vs most kind of combo decks, and I feel like I want some additional hate against Omnitell. Thoughts?

[Plague Sliver]

Yeah Omnitell is tough. Most of our cards become blanks. The few times I've been successful have been active vial, Canonist on board, with another Canonist in hand. Mother of Runes becomes key here for protecting against Rushing River.

If there is a significant amount of Omni in your meta I'm not above maindecking Canonist or Spirits. It's one of those bad matchups you have to accept (like Elves).

[Windmill]

Actually, I do kinda poorly against Omni. It's true that Thalia and Canonist are great against Omni. But little else we have does much of anything. I find myself going for some combination of weaker effects more often just because I don't have the goods in hand. Flickerwisp and Mangara can get you there most of the time. But you have to hardcast Mangara. Spirit of the Lab is of course great, but I am down to 1 or 2 in the board. Karakas doesn't do crap. Revoker neither. It's a bit better with Enlightened Tutor and a single Oblivion Ring. I had a Thorn of Amethyst in my board for this matchup for awhile too.

Hey, Windmill. Don't let Enlightened Tutor resolve. There's some advice.

I dunno. I just feel impotent in this one.
No that was genuinely really helpful advice :) thank you. Why are you lessening the number of Spirit's in your board? Not good in your local meta, or are you playing in unknown tournament metas?

[Bosque]

With the green splash I've been doing better than even against omnitell. After boarding I've got 2 Gaddock Teeg, 4 Thalia, 2 Canonist, 1 Spirit and 1 Fauna Shaman to search for hate. Mull to a hand that at least has a Thalia, and Wasteland or Port anything that looks like a sol land, try and keep them out of Show and Tell range till you can get a Teeg online.

[Finn]

I know this sounds crazy to an "outsider" (not meant as a pejorative in any way), but Spirit of the Labyrinth is not especially good. Folks assumed that D+T would be riding this power train to the moon, but the D+T testers around here found out pretty early that it was not a perfect fit. Honestly the highs with this card are sky high. Off a Vial, you can get the kind of swing that wins the game in response to many of the common draw abilities. But the lows are the Blade of the Sixth Pride kind. Death and Taxes can't afford many cards like that. This deck operates on very slim margins with not much deck manipulation. So our creatures have to be generically good rather than occasionally great. Think Flickerwisp. (Perhaps ironically, the card that would make Spirit work is Brainstorm.) Having a toughness of 1 does not help either. This deck is cluttered with fragile things like that.

In the recent Treasure Cruise era, I for one found this card to be a requirement for not getting blown out on card advantage. But it left me hanging from time to time too. If they Cruise and you topdeck it the turn after, it is terrible. If you are against Jund it is equally as bad. And so on. With Cruise run aground, it is just one more of probably a dozen powerful cards that are not quite right for prime time.

[deucegg]

I know this sounds crazy to an "outsider" (not meant as a pejorative in any way), but Spirit of the Labyrinth is not especially good. Folks assumed that D+T would be riding this power train to the moon, but the D+T testers around here found out pretty early that it was not a perfect fit. Honestly the highs with this card are sky high. Off a Vial, you can get the kind of swing that wins the game in response to many of the common draw abilities. But the lows are the Blade of the Sixth Pride kind. Death and Taxes can't afford many cards like that. This deck operates on very slim margins with not much deck manipulation. So our creatures have to be generically good rather than occasionally great. Think Flickerwisp. (Perhaps ironically, the card that would make Spirit work is Brainstorm.) Having a toughness of 1 does not help either. This deck is cluttered with fragile things like that.

In the recent Treasure Cruise era, I for one found this card to be a requirement for not getting blown out on card advantage. But it left me hanging from time to time too. If they Cruise and you topdeck it the turn after, it is terrible. If you are against Jund it is equally as bad. And so on. With Cruise run aground, it is just one more of probably a dozen powerful cards that are not quite right for prime time.

Totally agree with you here. Despite that I'd still run at least 1 in my sideboard, I think she does her job well against combo decks that run a lot of cantrips, and Im not bringing her in against fair decks anyway. In Addition to her hate-effect shes a solid beater as well, and her 1 toughness doesnt matter in combomatchups ( except elves maybe) anyway

[Finn]

Totally agree with you here. Despite that I'd still run at least 1 in my sideboard, I think she does her job well against combo decks that run a lot of cantrips, and Im not bringing her in against fair decks anyway. In Addition to her hate-effect shes a solid beater as well, and her 1 toughness doesnt matter in combomatchups ( except elves maybe) anyway

Well, AnT has Dread of Night sometimes. That card will end you if you don't have the right stuff. But I am with you on the singleton in the side. You can fetch it with Enlightened Tutor. And while Canonist is typically the better card to tutor up across the board, it is very handy to be able to fetch a Spirit if you already have the Canonist. So I am with you about keeping one around.

[dcosiem]

I want to claim that no one has done yet or is doing. I'm trying out 4 horizon canopies in my dnt list. It's not to shabby.

[DudeItsCorey]

So during the prerelease I was fortunate enough to pull an Anafenza. After her being a complete house in limited, I playtester her by replacing Brimaz with her. After playtesting her, I am now looking for a second cut. Anafenza is the real deal. Getting a 4/2 Flickerwisp a 3/2 Thalia, even 2/2 Mother of Runes is just so good. Some of the biggest issues are Jitte, Zealous Persecution, Dread of Night, Etc. and Anafenza gets all around that. My meta is flooded with Blade decks so maybe that's why I so happy with her.

[deucegg]

Saw that more and more Bug Delver players tend to put 1-2 Dread of Night in their sideboard in addition to golgari charms. If you actually know your bug delver enemy is playing charms, dread of nights and a singleton null rod, do you bring in councils judgement?

[Luca Grease]

Saw that more and more Bug Delver players tend to put 1-2 Dread of Night in their sideboard in addition to golgari charms. If you actually know your bug delver enemy is playing charms, dread of nights and a singleton null rod, do you bring in councils judgement?

I always bring in Judgements against BUG, even if they don't run Dread of Night (which they really shouldn't in a large meta). It will still take care of any problem card they have, such as TNN, Liliana, Null Rod, Pithing Needle, etc... Even if you have to use it on Tarmogoyf or Delver it's still ok.

[Barook]

So during the prerelease I was fortunate enough to pull an Anafenza. After her being a complete house in limited, I playtester her by replacing Brimaz with her. After playtesting her, I am now looking for a second cut. Anafenza is the real deal. Getting a 4/2 Flickerwisp a 3/2 Thalia, even 2/2 Mother of Runes is just so good. Some of the biggest issues are Jitte, Zealous Persecution, Dread of Night, Etc. and Anafenza gets all around that. My meta is flooded with Blade decks so maybe that's why I so happy with her.
That's interesting to hear. I might pick up 2 copies for testing shortly after the MODO release when her price plumpets.

[cursecatcher]

I am testing a 1/1 split between anafenza and serra avenger. I've been less and less impressed with avenger as time goes on. An efficient beater just isn't enough in this deck. At least anafenza helps protects against a lot of the best sideboard cards against us, and give you another threat against miracles that you can protect with karakas. 2 copies of anafenza might prove to be too much, being legendary and all, but I just dunno yet.

Some other considerations for these slots include (in my mind): maindeck canonist, 1 spirit of the lab, or even leonin arbiter.

Has anyone had much experience with arbiter in legacy? The dissynergy with stoneforge obviously sucks, but perhaps the effect is harmful enough to the average opponent to make it worth it?

[Bosque]

Has anyone had much experience with arbiter in legacy? The dissynergy with stoneforge obviously sucks, but perhaps the effect is harmful enough to the average opponent to make it worth it?

Search the thread, there has been a lot of discussion around the 4 Arbiter, 2 Aven Mindcensor, 4 Ghost Quarter build that has placed at some tournaments. Some of it was fairly recent, some about a year ago I think.

[cursecatcher]

Yeah, I've seen those builds. I just don't feel particularly motivated to warp the deck around trying to make arbiter good. Maybe someday I'll try one of those out, but I don't get as much time to test new Legacy ideas week to week as I'd like.

I'm more wondering if it doesn't need much other help outside the normal DNT pieces to be a solid role-player. I should just test it myself at some weekly events and in test games, and report back though.

For clarity, I am talking about it replacing the 2 Avenger slots. I've been very happy with everything else in the maindeck since the banning. Avenger is just so comically bad in unfair matchups, and is almost never stellar even in the fair matchups.

[nevilshute]

It's interesting to hear about your experiences with Avenger. I'm running 3 avengers and I have to say that I find them to be quite good. I feel like it's often our best bet at an aggro plan when the situation calls for that. It carries equipment like a champ. I also think we need to be concerned about not having enough flyers. Delver of Secrets is a card and we also need a way to over and connect against elves.

[cursecatcher]

I definitely admit that it can be nice to have against Elves, but their good draws are often going to make Avenger not matter at all. It just helps you beat their subpar draws. I also play 2 mirran crusader maindeck, so that's the hero I want holding the Jitte anyway. If you don't play Crusader, Avenger is probably more needed in this matchup.

As for battling Delver decks, trading off an Avenger for their Insect is fine, but not exactly exciting. I'd rather make this play with a Flickerwisp, after getting some other value out of the card.

In general, I think Avenger is a very emotional card. What I mean by this is that we dwell (daydream even) on the times when Avenger is holding Sword of Fire and Ice and you feel invincible. I admit, its an awesome pairing. What we try to quickly forget are the times when your 2 drop for vial is Avenger, and you die immediately to combo (show and tell, storm, natural order, etc).

The local metagame for me in Chicago is more combo heavy and less delver-infested compared to the Opens however. So for those events, Avenger might still be more palatable.

[Tokugawa]

Karakas and revoker usually do nothing against Omnitell. And Teeg don't disturb the normal winning route (show->Omniscience->Wish->Eladamri's call->Emrakul) of Omnitell.

In the DnT vs Omnitell mu, the most important card is Thalia, undoubtedly. With Thalia and port in play, Omnitell cannot do anything dangerous before reach 5 mana.

Also, your heroine received a new version:

http://media-dominaria.cursecdn.com/attachments/138/81/635630588526083522.JPG

[neddsaurus]

Karakas and revoker usually do nothing against Omnitell. And Teeg don't disturb the normal winning route (show->Omniscience->Wish->Eladamri's call->Emrakul) of Omnitell.

In the DnT vs Omnitell mu, the most important card is Thalia, undoubtedly. With Thalia and port in play, Omnitell cannot do anything dangerous before reach 5 mana.

Also, your heroine received a new version:

http://media-dominaria.cursecdn.com/attachments/138/81/635630588526083522.JPG

i'd rather my deck be either all non-foil or foil. i might grab one just for the hell of it tho

[Barook]

I liked some of the sketch (http://steveargyle.tumblr.com/post/114776082263/thalia-guardian-of-thraben-world-magic-cup-promo) ideas better.

[Finn]

I don't think that I have ever cared about the art all that much. But I gotta tell ya, the freckles just do it for me.

[H]

It looks like Kaley Cuoco with freckles, which I guess isn't the worst thing. Some of those sketches would probably have turned out better, but it's not bad.

[Bahra]

So I went to Eternal Clash today and I played a deck list that I've never seen anyone play anything close to, nor have I played anything close to that myself.

The list I played was:

Creatures (26):

4x Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
4x Mother of Runes
4x Flickerwisp
4x Phyrexian Revoker
4x Stoneforge Mystic
4x Magus of the Moon
2x Serra Avenger

Non-creature spells (11):

1x Umezawa's Jitte
1x Batterskull
1x Sword of Fire and Ice
4x Æther vial
4x Swords to Plowshares

Lands (23):

4x Wasteland
4x Rishadan Port
3x Karakas
3x Windswept Heath
2x Marsh Flats
2x Plateau
4x Plains
1x Cavern of Souls

Sideboard:
3x Sudden Demise
3x Ethersworn Canonist
3x Rest in Peace
2x Council's Judgement
1x Cataclysm
1x Ratchet Bomb
1x Pithing Needle
1x Containment Priest

Here's how my tournament went:

Round 1: Death and Taxes 0-2

I played against the guy who lost to Thomas Enevoldsen in the top 8 of GP Strasbourg, he's apparently himself on D&T now but with Leonin Arbiter.

I got crushed but it was just one of those unwinnable matches. He drew 4x Swords to Plowshares in game 1 which lasted about 6 turns and I drew 0 in 2 games.

Round 2: Welder MUD 2-0

My match was the first of all the matches to finish that round. He kept bad hands and got crushed both games by wasteland and Revoker.

Sucks that I only play against basically Blood Moon proof decks so far but oh well.

Round 3: Esper Deathblade 2-1

Blood Moon AND Wasteland/Rishadan Port weak deck? SCORE!

Game 1 I get a game loss for an error in my deck list, something I've never done or gotten before but I had not slept a lot the past 2 days so I was really groggy during the tournament and especially when I wrote the deck list in the train the morning on the tournament.

Game 2 I play a bunch of creatures, they get Swords to Plowshares'd and on turn 4 I vial in a Magus of the Moon vs. his 3 nonbasic lands and that is the game.

Game 3 I play an Æther Vial and double Wasteland + Thalia him to death.

Round 3: ANT 1-2

In game 1 I play Revoker on Lotus Petal and use Magus of the Moon to shut him off black mana completely. Game 2 he kills me on turn 2 and game 3 I draw nothing but 1 revoker and he goes to 2 life on Ad Nauseam and still gets there. Again not much I could do.

Round 4: Affinity 2-0

Jitte taking care of business and working over time

Round 5: Esper Delver 2-0

I Moon him and then I moon him

Round 6: ???

This round is completely blank for me but I can only assume that I mooned someone, but I won this round so I'm 4-2 at the time.

Round 7: 12 Post MUD 2-1

Really good match up but he got an early Metalworker down and played Wurmcoil + Myr Battlesphere on turn 3 or 4. I then fogged the Wurmcoil Engine for 2 turns with Flickerwisp and killed him anyways. Game 2 he drew all his 4 Cloudposts and played turn 3 Lodestone Golem, delaying my turn 3 Magus of the Moon and then he landed turn 4 Ugin which I couldn't do anything about. Game 3 I just played a few threats and ported him to death with my 3 Rishadan Port.

So I ended 5-2 good for 12th place out of 71 players. I think it's ok, and I have no regrets. I would've loved to back to back top 8 this tournament but it wasn't meant to be.

I am super happy with the red splash and I will continue to test it, I am looking for other people to test it as well, and I am looking for feedback definitely.

Already ordered my Foil Magus of the Moons and I am looking at foil fetches and alpha Plateaus now, that's how much I believe in the viability of this splash :smile:

[Barook]

Magus of the Moon + Port/Wasteland seems pretty weird, at the very least.

If you go for the read splash, why not try out Imperial Recruiter? Too slow for what it does?

Sudden Demise looks like a pretty cool sweeper.

[Barbed Blightning]

Magus of the Moon + Port/Wasteland seems pretty weird, at the very least.

If you go for the read splash, why not try out Imperial Recruiter? Too slow for what it does?

Sudden Demise looks like a pretty cool sweeper.

Definitely a +1 on recruiter, he's so dreamy. I would probably cut down on then magus, sfm, revoker and even Thalia counts to run him. Plus you can turn those avengers into toolbox one-ofs in Mirran Crusader and Containment Priest/Canonist/Mindcensor. Not to mention Flickerwisp shenanigans!

Also, demise vs Elves sounds great.

[neddsaurus]

Red death sounds like a cool name

[Barook]

@Bahra: I think you should add another red source to the deck. You seemed to be stuck on your stuff more often than I liked it in yesterday's stream, so I went back and did the basic math since the green splash worked rather well.

Thing is, you need at least 8 red sources to make the maindeck work, and that doesn't even include running Magus + Demise after boarding (which would be around 10 red sources if you ran the full set of 7 red cards). You currently run 7 true red sources (fetches + duals), plus Cavern as so-so red source. Vial is nice and all, but definitely can't be counted as a red mana source since top decking it makes you wait another 3 turns for action.

Thus, I would definitely try out another red mana source to smooth things out. No need to scratch on the bare minimum.

E-Tutor + Blood Moon for the board also comes into mind for the sideboard.

@Barbed Blightning: Recruiter is something that needs to be tested out first, though. I talked to Bahra yesterday when he streamed and he thinks Recruiter is way too slow, and I also have my doubts until serious testing proves otherwise. He's probably great if you can grab a T1 Vial and play him on T3, but otherwise, you just time-walked yourself. I thought about initially running about 2 copies since that seems less excessive in terms of speed and cuts from the MD.

@neddsaurus: Isn't Red Death already a RB deck? I'd prefer something like "Bloody Taxes", as it includes a reference to Blood Moon, too.

[Bahra]

@Bahra: I think you should add another red source to the deck. You seemed to be stuck on your stuff more often than I liked it in yesterday's stream, so I went back and did the basic math since the green splash worked rather well.

Thing is, you need at least 8 red sources to make the maindeck work, and that doesn't even include running Magus + Demise after boarding (which would be around 10 red sources if you ran the full set of 7 red cards). You currently run 7 true red sources (fetches + duals), plus Cavern as so-so red source. Vial is nice and all, but definitely can't be counted as a red mana source since top decking it makes you wait another 3 turns for action.

Thus, I would definitely try out another red mana source to smooth things out. No need to scratch on the bare minimum.


I will try adding another red source to the deck.

After hearing more about I'm warming up to Imperial Recruiter and I will test it to see how it does in the deck.

Thanks for the feedback so far guys.

[Barook]

It just occured to me:

How about Mastery of the Unseen in our 75 for grindy match-ups? It guarantees us with a steady stream of new creatures (with Flash), and the lifegain could be quite something as well. Aside from the high mana investment, one disadvantage I see is that turning your creatures face up don't trigger SFM, Revoker and Flickerwisp, thus requiring a Flicker effect to get full value out of them.

Thoughts?

[kryllex]

Death and Taxes with red splash? Sounds like... Bloody Taxes :cool:

[ScatmanX]

Death and Taxes with red splash? Sounds like... Bloody Taxes :cool:
Taxes and periods.

[redtwister]

So I went to Eternal Clash today and I played a deck list that I've never seen anyone play anything close to, nor have I played anything close to that myself.

The list I played was:

Creatures (26):

4x Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
4x Mother of Runes
4x Flickerwisp
4x Phyrexian Revoker
4x Stoneforge Mystic
4x Magus of the Moon
2x Serra Avenger

Non-creature spells (11):

1x Umezawa's Jitte
1x Batterskull
1x Sword of Fire and Ice
4x Æther vial
4x Swords to Plowshares

Lands (23):

4x Wasteland
4x Rishadan Port
3x Karakas
3x Windswept Heath
2x Marsh Flats
2x Plateau
4x Plains
1x Cavern of Souls

Sideboard:
3x Sudden Demise
3x Ethersworn Canonist
3x Rest in Peace
2x Council's Judgement
1x Cataclysm
1x Ratchet Bomb
1x Pithing Needle
1x Containment Priest

While the formats are different, this is actually a much-discussed idea in the Modern DnT deck, and the mana denial path is largely the same. It is powerful, but it also does in your mana base. You have to have at least a Vial or 1-2 Plains or you can mess yourself up.

Since I run the Green slash, but I don't run 4 G spells (only 3), and I can run Horizon Canopy, I only run 4 fetches and 2 Savannah without hurting my mana too much, and I don't run anything that makes my own duals bad.

I like the basic idea and the build, though. There seem to be a lot of decks that just lost if you resolve Magus.

[Bahra]

I just played a daily with this list: http://i.imgur.com/UN9akI7.png

I tested Imperial Recruiters and they were good.

Round 1: Deadguy Ale 2-0

He drew a lot of discard and Liliana but Imperial Recruiter allowed me to play around Liliana's edict and fetch Stoneforge Mystic that got Jitte and sealed the game. In game 2 he plays Lingering Souls and Liliana again and I again Imperial Recruiter for Stoneforge Mystic for Umezawa's Jitte and then I Sudden Demise away all his Spirits and lock the game with Jitte.

Round 2: UWR Delver 2-1

This picture sums it up:

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

I would've lost terribly without Revoker and Magus of the Moon. I got the Mother of Runes active a little later.

Round 3: UWR Miracles 2-0

Typical miracles match, I grind him out and kill him with Thalia + Karakas game 1.

Game 2 I needle Jace and play Revoker on Sensei's Divining Top. I fetch Sword of Fire and Ice and beat him down until he kills the sword and then regular beats gets him.

In the end I was sitting with 2 Imperial Recruiters in hand (which I COULD cast) but they were really nice to have as quadruple insurance against Terminus (both being 2 threats in one).

Round 4 UWR Stoneblade 2-0

Game 1 he gets TNN + Jitte online but I fog it by playing a Flickerwisp, flickering my Flickerwisp and then flickering his Jitte in my end step. He gets counters on Jitte the following turn but 2 Flickerwisp 1 Thalia and a Mirran Crusader is too much for Jitte and his 1 life.

Game 2 I wasteland him and Port him out of the game while beating down with a Phyrexian Revoker that's naming Umezawa's Jitte (which he has sitting on his board).

So 4-0 against some very competent players, the Deadguy Ale and the UWR Stoneblade player were very good, the UWR Delver player was kind of new and the Miracles player was average.

I ran into 3 bad match ups and crushed which felt really good and would've been very hard without the red splash.

[Finn]

I have tried literally for years to come up with a taxer/punisher deck. I even got my last Recruiter for the job (you may have heard me grousing on the need for a search creature in D+T). I have some versions for you here. None of them work, and I will give you some insight why to help any of you along who wish to pursue it. There *SHOULD* be a deck in here somewhere, but it has bedeviled me for so long.

We really should have a new thread though.

4 Cavern of Souls
4 Plateau
1 Mountain
1 Plains
4 Wasteland
4 Rishadan Port

4 Aether Vial
4 Ankh of Mishra
3 Chrome Mox
1 Umezawa's Jitte
1 Batterskull

4 Lightning Bolt

4 Stoneforge Mystic
4 Eidolon of the Great Revel
4 Imperial Recruiter
4 Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
2 Simian Spirit Guide
2 Knight of the White Orchid
1 Fiend Hunter
1 Magus of the Moon
1 Mother of Runes
1 Zo-Zu the Punisher
1 Avalanche Riders


My initial try. This deck could not be counted on to succeed either as an aggro deck or as a control deck so I often ended up with stupid card combinations that did not have the same game in mind. Recruiter was a bomb though.

I realized at some point that the deck probably needs Mother of Runes because the creatures are acting as hosers. You would think that I would have figured that from the start. The next list went into the direction of...

Spirit of the Labyrinth
Mother of Runes
Winds of Change
Oblation

...that I looked into with a fellow who calls himself Poppeleseed. I was able to live the dream often enough to keep me interested, but it could not deal with the format effectively.

This is his next list that he said also did not work.

4 Ancient Tomb
4 Plateau
2 Mountain
8 Plains
3 Chrome Mox

4 Simian Spirit Guide
4 Stoneforge Mystic
4 Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
4 Magus of the Moon
4 Spirit of the Labyrinth
2 Containment Priest

2 Blood Moon
1 Batterskull
1 Umezawa's Jitte
1 Sword of Fire and Ice
4 Chalice of the Void
4 Oblation
4 Magma Jet



The biggest issue I faced was that my opponents were able to do better than me under the duress of the punisher elements and were not sufficiently taxed under the taxing elements. As a result, I would often be in games where my opponent got out in front and were able to close the deal while I piled on harsh, but ultimately unsuccessful control and damage stuff that were hurting me in addition to my opponent.

Some parting ideas are that Cavern is great with Chalice of the Void because you can still keep the 1-mana dudes. (really fun in a deck with Spirit of the Lab and Arcane Denial too [counter your own creature if you want to]) I think that I would actually try Chalice, Vial, Cavern, and Ankh in my next version. Thalia should still be at the center of any of these plans.

[Bahra]

I can not say for sure of course, but the problem seems to be that your lists are too "all in". At least that is the difference between yours and my list, and I am really liking my results :)

My list is just D&T splashing for Magus of the Moon, Imperial Recruiter and Sudden Demise.

I have no acceleration and I am using Magus of the Moon as just an additional taxing/disrupting effect. As well as it being a surprise factor that will get my opponents when they don't expect it.

So far I have a decent win percentage with the deck and I have beaten match ups that are very bad otherwise. I think there's a lot of potential and it just needs some more work and it could be really good (it seems to already be pretty good :laugh: )

[Finn]

You are correct. Actually, I am sure that there are lots of problems with these and the other countless lists I have tried. To reverse the issue, the lack of a problem with what you are doing stems from the fact that it is based upon a proven winner. What I and my cohorts had been doing was to try to stake out an entirely new strategy. We have yet to discover it. I am sure that it is there, but it has gotten to the point that I feel I am looking for the northwest passage.

[Barook]

Now that Recruiter has turned out to be good, wouldn't you reconsider inclusing a Mangara (I know, the cuts are hard) as tutor target, Bahra?

Yes, it blows when you have Magus out, but in the end, it's the same as if you don't have Karakas available. Getting virtual 3 copies of Mangara for a single slot doesn't sound too shabby, though.

[Barbed Blightning]

Now that Recruiter has turned out to be good, wouldn't you reconsider inclusing a Mangara (I know, the cuts are hard) as tutor target, Bahra?

Yes, it blows when you have Magus out, but in the end, it's the same as if you don't have Karakas available. Getting virtual 3 copies of Mangara for a single slot doesn't sound too shabby, though.
This is my stab at a Red Death list (serious props to whoever suggested that name): http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/29-03-15-red-death/

One-of Mangara, Crusader and Mindcensor as Recruiter targets.

[Barook]

You're probably going to need another red source. I didn't even notice that Bahra cut one of his Karakas copies when suggesting Mangara.

I'm not a fan of Aven Mindcensor. The card by itself is already too slow - making it even slower with Recruiter while taking away the suprise effect seems even worse. I would never cut a SFM for that.

I also wonder if E-Tutor + Blood Moon could be a viable SB strategy. If you run 2 Tutors, you could easily slip in a BM for free wins.

[Bahra]

I also wonder if E-Tutor + Blood Moon could be a viable SB strategy. If you run 2 Tutors, you could easily slip in a BM for free wins.

I don't know, are you gonna bring in Enlightened tutor againt BUG decks? And Blood Moon can get countered or they can float BG in response so I don't think I like it.

[Bahra]

This is my stab at a Red Death list (serious props to whoever suggested that name): http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/29-03-15-red-death/

One-of Mangara, Crusader and Mindcensor as Recruiter targets.

Isn't "Red death" already a BG deck with Confidant and Young Pyromancer or something like that?

[Tylert]

How do you play the deck with the red splash in the end?
Use ports and wastes + thalia until there is 3 counters on vial to vial in a magus of the moon when they are tapped out? (I guess rishadan port helps a lot in tapping out your opponent's lands). and you wait for your opponent to waste its lightning bolts on other targets before playing / vialing in Magus?

How do you feel vs opponents that do not care at all about magus of the moon?
Obviously, vs such opponents it's strictly worse that the cards you ditched for it (Mirran crusader / Brimaz).

I like how you play windsweapt heath and marsh flats. Just trying to hide the fact that you have a red splash :) Did you manage to bluff someone with that?

SUdden demise is for elves only? (seems like a good idea anyway better that mindsencor).

[hartigan]

Isn't "Red death" already a BG deck with Confidant and Young Pyromancer or something like that?

Yes (http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?29230-Rakdos-Tempo-a-k-a-Red-Death-Wins).

There's a non-powered vintage deck that is basically a red Death & Taxes... they call it Red & Taxes (http://mtgtop8.com/event?e=9037&d=251496&f=VI) and I feel like that name is suitable.

[Bahra]

How do you play the deck with the red splash in the end?
Use ports and wastes + thalia until there is 3 counters on vial to vial in a magus of the moon when they are tapped out? (I guess rishadan port helps a lot in tapping out your opponent's lands). and you wait for your opponent to waste its lightning bolts on other targets before playing / vialing in Magus?

How do you feel vs opponents that do not care at all about magus of the moon?
Obviously, vs such opponents it's strictly worse that the cards you ditched for it (Mirran crusader / Brimaz).

I like how you play windsweapt heath and marsh flats. Just trying to hide the fact that you have a red splash :) Did you manage to bluff someone with that?

SUdden demise is for elves only? (seems like a good idea anyway better that mindsencor).

Well people just assume that I have a green splash when I show windswept heath so that is definitely working as intended.

It's tricky to play with Magus of the Moon since you have to shape the game in such a fashion that he's the most effective when he comes down. For example I played against miracles last night and I chose a spot where he though I had flickerwisp and was just vialing it in to take one of his lands (in my own end step) and so he didn't fetch in response, and then I locked down 3 out of his 4 lands and he never came back.

Against lightning bolt decks it's best to have mother of runes protection but of course you can't have that every time, but it still buys you a ton of time or eats a removal spell, either way it's not doing nothing which is the most important thing for our creatures.

Magus of the Moon does something against almost every deck, even against MUD it shuts down Sol Lands. But against the decks where it does nothing you of course just board it out. But that's true for some of the other creatures we play as well, like Phyrexian Revoker that we board out against most fair decks. So I feel like the downside of having Magus of the Moon in the deck is very small.

I went 7-1 yesterday in Legacy daily events with the last list I posted, losing only to burn in very close games. I didn't draw any of the sideboard cards OR stoneforge mystics but I still almost won in 3 games.

[H]

Yes (http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?29230-Rakdos-Tempo-a-k-a-Red-Death-Wins).

There's a non-powered vintage deck that is basically a red Death & Taxes... they call it Red & Taxes (http://mtgtop8.com/event?e=9037&d=251496&f=VI) and I feel like that name is suitable.

Minor nitpick, but the inventor of the deck called it "Simians Mom," which he made a thread about here (http://www.themanadrain.com/index.php?topic=46543.0). Both are pretty silly names though.

[Sereon]

Some of you mentioned a few pages back that omni was an issue, would it be worth incuding a couple of red blasts in the SB? Or is jamming pro-active hate-bears just the better way to go about the match-up?

[Barbed Blightning]

You're probably going to need another red source. I didn't even notice that Bahra cut one of his Karakas copies when suggesting Mangara.

I'm not a fan of Aven Mindcensor. The card by itself is already too slow - making it even slower with Recruiter while taking away the suprise effect seems even worse. I would never cut a SFM for that.

I also wonder if E-Tutor + Blood Moon could be a viable SB strategy. If you run 2 Tutors, you could easily slip in a BM for free wins.

The mindcensor is really more the 5th flier, but I do agree that it is slow and should probably just be a 4th sfm. And, while cavern is another red source, I could see cutting a fetch/basic for another Plateau.

Another Moon in the board could be nice, but I don't know how deep we want to go there. With Magus and Recruiter already I think the extra Moon may be excessive.

[Barbed Blightning]

Yes (http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?29230-Rakdos-Tempo-a-k-a-Red-Death-Wins).

There's a non-powered vintage deck that is basically a red Death & Taxes... they call it Red & Taxes (http://mtgtop8.com/event?e=9037&d=251496&f=VI) and I feel like that name is suitable.
Yet another blue deck. Laaaaame.


I guess we could call it Imperial Taxes? Red and Taxes works, but it just sounds bland. I'm sure basically no one cares about stuff like this, but it bugs me when deck names don't even try to be creative.

[Bahra]

So I am now 10-2 in daily events with 2 Imperial Recruiter and 3 Magus of the Moon. 3 Sudden Demise in the side.

I've lost to RUG Delver (I played horrible) and burn (the usual: His last card has to be fireblast, it is :rolleyes: ).

I've beaten: Deadguy Ale, UWR Delver, UWR Stoneblade, RUG Delver, Grixis Delver, Dark Maverick, Elves and 2x Miracles.

Pretty happy with the deck so far I must say and I will keep playing and testing.

EDIT: I've just been calling it Red Taxes so far, for lack of a better name.

[Raggedjoe]

I'm thinking that running 2 Recruiter and then a few 1-ofs might be best... plus this would let us run guys like Leonin Relic Warder on the SB as a one-of

23 Lands, standard main deck except

Creatures
4x Mother of Runes
4x Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
4x Phyrexian Revoker
4x Stoneforge Mystic
3x Flickerwisp
3x Magus of the Moon
2x Imperial Recruiter
1x Serra Avenger
1x Mangara of Condor

Sideboard:
3x Sudden Demise
3x Ethersworn Canonist
3x Rest in Peace
2x Council's Judgement
1x Cataclysm
1x Containment Priest
1x Mirran Crusader
1x Leonin Relic-Warder

[Tylert]

So I am now 10-2 in daily events with 2 Imperial Recruiter and 3 Magus of the Moon. 3 Sudden Demise in the side.

I've lost to RUG Delver (I played horrible) and burn (the usual: His last card has to be fireblast, it is :rolleyes: ).

I've beaten: Deadguy Ale, UWR Delver, UWR Stoneblade, RUG Delver, Grixis Delver, Dark Maverick, Elves and 2x Miracles.

Pretty happy with the deck so far I must say and I will keep playing and testing.

EDIT: I've just been calling it Red Taxes so far, for lack of a better name.

So what silver bullets do you use main? and side also?

[Bahra]

I'm thinking that running 2 Recruiter and then a few 1-ofs might be best... plus this would let us run guys like Leonin Relic Warder on the SB as a one-of

23 Lands, standard main deck except

Creatures
4x Mother of Runes
4x Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
4x Phyrexian Revoker
4x Stoneforge Mystic
3x Flickerwisp
3x Magus of the Moon
2x Imperial Recruiter
1x Serra Avenger
1x Mangara of Condor

Sideboard:
3x Sudden Demise
3x Ethersworn Canonist
3x Rest in Peace
2x Council's Judgement
1x Cataclysm
1x Containment Priest
1x Mirran Crusader
1x Leonin Relic-Warder

3 Flickerwisp is not really even remotely acceptable in a deck with Imperial Recruiter. Imperial Recruiter makes it even easier to get insane value from Flickerwisp so we especially need the full 4 here.


So what silver bullets do you use main? and side also?

I run Mirran Crusader main and then just the usual. I have Kor Firewalker in the side and would have containment priest if they weren't 35 tickets online and they were better for the meta.

[MGB]

Guys, I'm really intrigued by the red splash for Magus of the Moon and/or Imperial Recruiter... but, in testing, don't you find that turning off your own Rishadan Ports, Wastelands, and Karakas to be problematic at all?

Does Magus give enough free wins to counterbalance the dis-synergy with all of the valuable utility lands?

[hartigan]

Yet another blue deck. Laaaaame.


I guess we could call it Imperial Taxes? Red and Taxes works, but it just sounds bland. I'm sure basically no one cares about stuff like this, but it bugs me when deck names don't even try to be creative.

For some reason I keep thinking of this card:

http://magiccards.info/scans/en/al/199.jpg

It has very little to do with deck but it has to do with Mountains and Plains and is one of the only cards printed that does so.

After all this deck is kind of a "conversion" of D&T.

It's a long-shot but you could call the deck "Conversion".

I'm not sure why I'm thinking so much about this, either way it's cool this is a new archetype that is being tested!

[Bahra]

Guys, I'm really intrigued by the red splash for Magus of the Moon and/or Imperial Recruiter... but, in testing, don't you find that turning off your own Rishadan Ports, Wastelands, and Karakas to be problematic at all?

Does Magus give enough free wins to counterbalance the dis-synergy with all of the valuable utility lands?

Definitely. Remember, you're not gonna draw Magus of the Moon every game, and even if you did, you can port + wasteland until you drop Magus of the Moon and then hopefully you don't need port and waste anymore. I have played about 20 matches with the deck now and it has not been a problem once.

[LeoCop 90]

I am really interested in this evolution of the deck (i would be even more interested if recruiters were a reasonably priced card). it seems that recruiter could offer card advantage, especially in conjunction with flickerwisp, and the possibility to run a toolbox of hatebears. Death and taxes always lacked in these departments so the benefits could be huge.
It is also fun that imperial painter players usually splash white nowadays and recently there are people who started to shift the deck more towards white and a hatebear strategy.

[Finn]

Yes! I have been singing the need for a tutor for a long time.

You guys have my hope in this design rekindled. Here is a new, less audacious design. I am making a new thread for the red version because it is a different deck. Let's take the discussion to http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?29347-White-Red-Whatever&p=875342#post875342.

4 Mother of Runes
4 Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
1 Fiend Hunter
1 Aven Mindcensor
4 Imperial Recruiter
3 Magus of the Moon
3 Simian Spirit Guide
4 Stoneforge Mystic
4 Swords to Plowshares
1 Batterskull
1 Umezawa's Jitte
4 Aether Vial
4 Chalice of the Void
4 Chrome Mox
4 Cavern of Souls
4 Arid Mesa
5 Plains
1 Mountain
4 Plateau

[Wasteland]

Hi there,

as much as i like the idea of having access to moon-effects and even more: recruiters, i'm a bit more skeptical about the list. The reasons are following:
- You do NOT always have the aether vial, and even if, it has to ticker to 3 to put in the magus. Until then, most Players will have 1-2 basics in play (exspecially when the red taxes list is no more that new and no more surprise...)
- As Bahra said, there are quite a lot decks that just don't care about the Magus and where the continously mana-denial via ports does hurt them much more.
- D&T is a controldeck with the best goodstuff white can offer. Already now i regret that i don't have 2 slots more to play another Mangara or crusaders... Taking away 5 Slots (that are ALL cc3 and quite clunky) does not rly help there^^
- You cripple your own manabase... One of the best things about d&t has always been, that you DON'T have fetchlands that can be stifled and with 9+ plains you are quite safe from enemy wastelands. That said i think the MU against any tempo-based deck with delvers (exspecially canadian) gets quite worse with no more avengers to stop delver and just more cc3 Drops...)
- You only have 3 basic plains left in the deck... For sure you will most of the time be able to get 1 of them into play before landing the magus but without an active vial you might quite often become stucked with 1-x flickerwisps in your hand (even though Bahra is clearly right with playing the ful playset of them...)

Still i like the idea and i'm going to test the list following list as well (as i'm a big fan of mindcensor i put this guy in the last flexible slot): http://www.mercadia.de/home/page.php?site=magic/deck2/deck&id=99897

Greetz from Germany,
Marius Hausmann

[Bahra]

Hi there,

as much as i like the idea of having access to moon-effects and even more: recruiters, i'm a bit more skeptical about the list. The reasons are following:
- You do NOT always have the aether vial, and even if, it has to ticker to 3 to put in the magus. Until then, most Players will have 1-2 basics in play (exspecially when the red taxes list is no more that new and no more surprise...)
- As Bahra said, there are quite a lot decks that just don't care about the Magus and where the continously mana-denial via ports does hurt them much more.
- D&T is a controldeck with the best goodstuff white can offer. Already now i regret that i don't have 2 slots more to play another Mangara or crusaders... Taking away 5 Slots (that are ALL cc3 and quite clunky) does not rly help there^^
- You cripple your own manabase... One of the best things about d&t has always been, that you DON'T have fetchlands that can be stifled and with 9+ plains you are quite safe from enemy wastelands. That said i think the MU against any tempo-based deck with delvers (exspecially canadian) gets quite worse with no more avengers to stop delver and just more cc3 Drops...)
- You only have 3 basic plains left in the deck... For sure you will most of the time be able to get 1 of them into play before landing the magus but without an active vial you might quite often become stucked with 1-x flickerwisps in your hand (even though Bahra is clearly right with playing the ful playset of them...)

Still i like the idea and i'm going to test the list following list as well (as i'm a big fan of mindcensor i put this guy in the last flexible slot): http://www.mercadia.de/home/page.php?site=magic/deck2/deck&id=99897

Greetz from Germany,
Marius Hausmann

I'm glad you are testing the deck as well but I have to disagree with a lot of your points.

I have Æther Vial in 40% of my openers and considering that the game always goes long with D&T, I will have Æther Vial in more than half my games :smile:

Most decks don't have more than 2 basics IF they even have basics. and the type of decks with only 2 basics are not likely to fetch them out against D&T if they don't expect Magus of the Moon. I've played against Miracles a bunch of times now and in most games, Magus of the Moon has been super effective. It's just about playing it right.

About the "good stuff" point, Imperial Recruiter + Flickerwisp is about as much value as you can get in D&T. I've also been vial'ing in Imperial Recruiters to get Stoneforge to get Jitte several times. Giving me an extra body to wear and equipment and just giving me a lot of utility, even though it is slow it has not been a problem for me so far.


One of the best things about d&t has always been, that you DON'T have fetchlands that can be stifled and with 9+ plains you are quite safe from enemy wastelands.

I don't think agree with that at all. There's still plenty of juicy stifle targets in the deck, and having played against RUG Delver 3 times in 9 games it has not been an issue. Being safe from wasteland is easy with so many fetches still and besides, we're an Æther Vial deck, we're basically always safe from Wasteland. I admit that it's better to just run 9 plains when facing RUG delver but that's not the point, the point is that your UWR delver, Deathblade and elves match up improve dramatically from the red splash. Match ups that could be very difficult otherwise.

I have once "screwed myself over" with Magus of the Moon by casting it with no basic plains in play, but that still won me the game. You still effectively has as many plains in the deck as before (actually I have more now) so it shouldn't really be a problem.

I think I managed to disagree with everything here :laugh: but I appreciate the skepticism. But I hope that it will be gone after you try out the deck :smile:

[BearsandSquires]

Played the rw version last night to 3-0-1. It felt pretty strong beating shardless, omni tell, and junk. Felt that it could maybe use some tweaking like maybe a flyer that you can get with a recruiter like mind censor or maybe a mangara, but overall was strong.

[Barook]

I went 2-2 today, losing like a bitch to Omnitell, then beating Miracles, then losing my internet due to some kind of outage, expecting to go 1-2 due to that (but luckily, my opponent was 0-2 and gave me a free win), then losing to Storm due to bad hands and being still on tilt from the outage.

From what I've seen so far, the list is good. A good fetchable flyer would be nice, but I'm not a particular fan of Aven Mindcensor because it's slow and clunky. However, the only other flyer that could be even considered due synergy with the deck is Kor Skyfisher, but that seems kinda meh, especially when you're in a pinch. Utility recycling or saving a permanent with Vial would be kinda nifty, though, but I doubt it would be worth a slot.

[BearsandSquires]

Going to be playing again tonight, but unfortunately don't have recruiters this time, so it's time for some sweet zo-zu

[Finn]

I was thinking Kor Skyfisher also. Though if you have it, I might include a single Ghost Quarter. That may be getting a bit cute though.

[Farone]

Playtested a 1-off Anafenza, Kin-Tree Spirit in my deck, I liked it, helped me in a goblin match a lot! Hopefully soon I will be able to test it in more decks

[Wasteland]

Just let away crappy cards like Anafenza or Zo-Zu (we are NOT an aggro-deck, who cares the dmg from Zo-Zu?)...
Anafenza might even be not SO bad, but the problem is: there are so many better options that you don't need / have no place for her...
I had yesterday the opportunity to test a bit more the red build:
My conclusion is: it's completely meta-dependant, which 1 is better... when facing much bug, deathblade / exotic decks like lands or 10post, magus rly shines. In metas with more canadian, other d&t, miracle straight W seems to be better. Against elves, magus is normally to slow (though it still can shut down cradle), but sudden demise shines (if you can clear the board before Progenitus comes down) => still i would there prefer a combination of containment priests / council's judgement and of course 4 canonists vs. glimpse.
It's just s.t. about your playstyle... I personally love to have avenger and overall 9 flyers in my deck instead of clunky weak-bodied 3drops, though imperial recruiter + flickerwisp was insane in more then 1 game. And i have to correct my last post: the manabase is solid enough, even with the red-splash, but i would recommend to cut 1 port for the 4. plains.
Greetz,
Marius

[Barook]

In metas with more canadian, other d&t, miracle straight W seems to be better.
I'll give you Canadian for obvious reasons. D&T might be true, too, but I haven't playtested against it yet.

But I fail to see how it's worse Miracles. You can fetch your colors to your heart's content, Magus jams their fetchlands (which prevents them from ridiculous amounts of card digging) and Recruiter finds you whatever you need while also providing another body for equipment and generating CA. I think that's worth the trade-off with running less flyers, especially the Recruiters.

[Wasteland]

Yep you can shut down shuffling - but in most of the games, the mana-DENIAL-plan (not the mana-transmute-plan via Magus) has been much more effective... + with a Magus in Play, Thalia without Karakas is only half as good as before...

[Barook]

Yep you can shut down shuffling - but in most of the games, the mana-DENIAL-plan (not the mana-transmute-plan via Magus) has been much more effective... + with a Magus in Play, Thalia without Karakas is only half as good as before...
But the mana-denial plan hasn't been altered in the slightest. You only play Magus when you think you really need him in play. Otherwise, business as usual.

[Wasteland]

Thats the plan in THEORIE: But remember, you don't have brainstorms and you have to make the best out of your ressources - there will quite often be the situation, in which you just have to land a magus cause you don't have any other pressure...
What i forgot: Most decks that have basics WILL fetch them against D&T, cause they don't want to be locked out with wastelands. I rly can imagine situations, in which you just WANT to port 1 or even 2 Basic lands and not stabilize their manabase via magus. Now of course you can say again, that you play the magus only when you see great advantage of it, but again: you can't always choose between more options, exspecially when you draw more then 1 magus and the boardssituation isn't that clear...
I rly want not hate the red-splash out, i like the idea very much, but you have to admit: you downgrade the quality of your cards in certain mu's, where magus is only a 3mana grizzly, while an avenger would dominate the board or while a censor would perhaps screw your opponent much more...

[Barook]

I rly want not hate the red-splash out, i like the idea very much, but you have to admit: you downgrade the quality of your cards in certain mu's, where magus is only a 3mana grizzly, while an avenger would dominate the board or while a censor would perhaps screw your opponent much more...
Mindcensor is terrible.

The build is far from set in stone, so people could experiment more. E.g. decrease the number of Magi while increasing the number of Recruiters for more utility.

For example:
MD: 4 Recruiter, 1 Magus
SB: 2 E-Tutor 1 Blood Moon (for match-ups where you really need the effect)

It really depends how much difference that one turn to fetch Magus actually costs you in games. That's a subject to testing. Speed reasons aside, having another source of CA (especially with Flickerwisp) and another tutor effect was something the deck was lacking so far.

[Echelon]

Squee, Goblin Nabob could be used as a tutorable, recurrable platform for equipment and annoying blocker vs. anything that neither flies or has trample.

[Wasteland]

"Mindcensor is terrible."
You ever played the deck?^^ Sry, i rly don't want to troll you, but its by far the best overall hatebear in a meta of elves and storm-combo, which potentially bounces canonist eot but still looses to a censor in rsp on tutor... And in any match that's not Combo he stops fetchlands, blocks delver or just carries the equipment (not to mention exotics like Knight of the reliquary, gamble and so on...)
If you find room for Squee in d&t, you made s.t. wrong... the only big creature-threat for d&t is tnn and there Squee will not block...

[Barook]

"Mindcensor is terrible."
You ever played the deck?^^ Sry, i rly don't want to troll you, but its by far the best overall hatebear in a meta of elves and storm-combo, which potentially bounces canonist eot but still looses to a censor in rsp on tutor... And in any match that's not Combo he stops fetchlands, blocks delver or just carries the equipment (not to mention exotics like Knight of the reliquary, gamble and so on...)
If you find room for Squee in d&t, you made s.t. wrong... the only big creature-threat for d&t is tnn and there Squee will not block...
Mindcensor is generally too slow for what its main purpose is - hosing fetchlands and SFM. Slowness aside, my opponents still found exactly what they needed in their top 4 cards more often than I liked it.

And if your meta is full of Elves, then D&T is a terrible choice.

[Fry]

I also think Mindcensor is terrible, I play the full set of Leonin Arbiter and have since they were released, I love how much they shut down (especially off of vial in resp to a fetch). Yes, they have kept me from using SFM a few times, but they've cause more damage to my opponents than harm to me. I never played with a, E.Tutor board, so that's never been an issue there either.

Obviously when I test out the Red and Taxes idea I am not going to play Arbiter, but I am also not going to add in Mindcensor. I play Mindcensor in a Modern D&T build I created when the format was new (Not to be confused with Hatebears, mono white with Mana Tithe, Arbiters, Mindcensors, Ghost Quarter, Tec. Edge, Managara, Flickerwisp, etc.). So my set of Arbiter is going to be my first cut, and I'll go from there. I've always been a proponent of a full set of Flickerwisp, so I don't need to make a cut for them. I have also not play Serra Avenger in my Legacy version since Mirran Crusader came out, it's just too good, and it gives you another reason to tick the AEther Vials up to 3 counters, which was a small part of why I cut the set of Avengers for 3 Crusader, of which one is sometimes switched with a singleton Brimaz.

I definitely plan on testing out the red in the deck over the coming few weeks. There's a Legacy tournament a little under two hours from where I live that's a monthly and I usually go to that, but there's a Modern at my LGS and no one else wants to Legacy that weekend because of the local, but I may try my Red Mud (decided to call it Ocher) or a Red Taxes build if I test it enough to feel comfortable with it in a 30ish man tourney.

[Bahra]

I have gone 13-3 in daily events with the deck now and I'm very happy with it. But my gf returned and I have exams so I won't be able to work on the deck anymore for a little while. Although if GP Lille was tomorrow I would play the red splash for sure. I hope that you guys will continue to work on it while I can't. But even if not, I will be back working on it before long :smile:.

[Barook]

I'm going to work on the red splash again after the weekend. I plan to test the following changes:

-2 Magus of the Moon, +1 Recruiter +1 Mangara
-1 Land +1 Karakas (to set up the Mangara combo more often)
-1 Serra Avenger +1 Kor Skyfisher (BIG maybe, just to see how it works out in this shell as a tutorable flyer with utility; if it sucks, back to Avenger)

And -1 something in the SB, +1 Blood Moon.

[Gtlstarbursts]

I've been playing the deck for about 6 months. I haven't played in anything bigger than an IQ which i managed to top 8. Here's my current list i'm running


4 Wasteland
4 Rishadan Port
3 Karakas
1 Horizon Canopy
11 Plains

4 Mother of Runes
2 Spirit of the Labyrinth
4 Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
4 Phyrexian Revoker
3 Serra Avenger
4 Stoneforge Mystic
3 Flickerwisp
2 Mirran Crusader

4 Aether Vial
4 Swords to Plowshares
1 Batterskull
1 Umezawa's Jitte
1 Sword of Fire and Ice

Sideboard:

1 Enlightened Tutor
2 Rest in Peace
1 Grafdigger's Cage
2 Containment Priest
1 Manriki Gusari
2 Council's Judgment
1 Cataclysm
2 Ethersworn Canonist
1 Pithing Needle
1 Ratchet Bomb
1 Circle of Protection: Red

That being said, do you guys think mangara is a card that is super well positioned? I've been trying to find room for 1 of them but i can't figure out where to cut. Mangara also makes vial less consistent with added 3 drops. Also has anybody tried out Masterwork of ingenuity in their boards? It seems good in the mirror/stoneblade matchup

[Bahra]

3 Flickerwisp


3 Flickerwisp needs to be 4 Flickerwisps. And Spirit of the Labyrinth is only really good against Grixis which is a good match up anyways. I would play 0 in the 75.

[Gtlstarbursts]

3 Flickerwisp needs to be 4 Flickerwisps. And Spirit of the Labyrinth is only really good against Grixis which is a good match up anyways. I would play 0 in the 75.

Thanks Marc! I've been wondering about spirit. I never get enough of vialing it in in response to brainstorms lol. So cut the other one for a mangara perhaps?

[redtwister]

Props to Bahra on the SCG mention here (http://www.starcitygames.com/article/30594_Daily-Digest-Death-And-Taxes-And-Magi.html) and the Red Death and Taxes (or Boros Death and Taxes or Imperial Taxes or whatever it becomes) onslaught on Modo.

[hill_giant]

Just played a daily event with


3x Magus of the Moon
2x Imperial Recruiter
4x Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
4x Mother of Runes
4x Flickerwisp
3x Phyrexian Revoker
4x Stoneforge Mystic
2x Serra Avenger

1x Umezawa's Jitte
1x Batterskull
1x Sword of Fire and Ice
4x Æther vial
4x Swords to Plowshares

4x Wasteland
4x Rishadan Port
3x Karakas
4x Windswept Heath
2x Flooded Strand
2x Plateau
4x Plains

Sideboard:
3x Sudden Demise
2x Ethersworn Canonist
2x Rest in Peace
2x Council's Judgement
2x Cataclysm
2x Enlightened Tutor
1x Manriki-Gusari
1x Circle of Protection: Red

I didn't drop a game. Only one game out of the 8 was even close. I was running extremely hot, but the deck certainly seems real. I played UWR stoneblade, UR delver with tundra for sb cards, miracles, and esper stoneblade. There were a few games that had the potential to be close, but then magus just ended the game. I only drew recruiter once, and he fetched a sfm that got snap FoWed, and it's hard to complain about a card that eats a force in the midgame and leaves behind value. I just threw the deck together right before the event started and forgot to put a cavern in. I'm not a huge fan of cavern in classic D&T, but I bet it gets a lot better when you add some more humans to the deck and it also becomes fixing.

[Barook]

I wonder how important the scalability of Sudden Demise compares to the instant speed of Electrickery? While Sudden Demise shouldn't hit your white creatures, Elektrickery can hit everything (even stuff like an opposing Mom on T1 if you feel confident about fetching up a Plateau that early), even different-colored creatures at the same time, but fails vs everything with 2+ toughness.

@ hill_giant: Did you instantly slam down those Magi to win the game or do you think it would have been fine fetching them with a Recruiter first and thus playing them a turn later?

Edit: Played a few games with the new configuration suggested earlier by me (3 Recruiters, only 1 Magus, 1 Mangara, Avenger replaced by a Skyfisher).

For those who are testing the red splash, I encourage you to test Skyfisher as well. My first impression so far was pretty positive and I found myself several times fetching for it, since you get an extra activation out of your CiP guys and a decent, flying body. Even with just a Recruiter, it's plain value because you can still fetch another utility creature on the next turn.

[Barbed Blightning]

I wonder how important the scalability of Sudden Demise compares to the instant speed of Electrickery? While Sudden Demise shouldn't hit your white creatures, Elektrickery can hit everything (even stuff like an opposing Mom on T1 if you feel confident about fetching up a Plateau that early), even different-colored creatures at the same time, but fails vs everything with 2+ toughness.

@ hill_giant: Did you instantly slam down those Magi to win the game or do you think it would have been fine fetching them with a Recruiter first and thus playing them a turn later?

Edit: Played a few games with the new configuration suggested earlier by me (3 Recruiters, only 1 Magus, 1 Mangara, Avenger replaced by a Skyfisher).

For those who are testing the red splash, I encourage you to test Skyfisher as well. My first impression so far was pretty positive and I found myself several times fetching for it, since you get an extra activation out of your CiP guys and a decent, flying body. Even with just a Recruiter, it's plain value because you can still fetch another utility creature on the next turn.
The scalability is definitely better, I think. While Elves hates to see either cards, Demise also gives you a nice wipe against the mirror, Merfolk, Goblins, Delver variants and anything with Pyromancer or Monastery Mentor (though in this final case I can see elecktrickery doing work as well). Plus, we can use SoFI to selectively save a white of red dude on our side; the same is true with Mom.

Skyfisher seems really clutch, like a cheaper Stonecloaker. Some things to consider: 1) has a big butt, so we can use her to save a weenie from our Demise if need be while she tanks it, 2) we can use her off a vial to save Mangara from himself, 3) cavern can name Kor, letting you push through an SFM and the Skyfisher, who can then allow you to reset it, 4) like the previous point, Skyfisher can also (like Wisp) basically cost one less if you have not had a land drop the turn you cast her.

Seems pretty flexible to me. Not powerful enough in the mono lists, but in this splash, I think it is worth it.

[hill_giant]

I am going to try electrickery, as I think it's certainly much better in the mirror, while also still being solid against elves. I only drew demise once in 2 dailies (against ur delver), and I used it to kill 2 swiftspears, so it was better than trickery there. I'm not sure how often you actually bring in demise, although it's very powerful when you do.

In the second DE I played, recruiter was outstanding. I had a turn 4 that was tick vials to 2 and 3, cast recruiter for mom, cast mom, block goyf carrying jitte, flicker recruiter to keep counters off jitte, fetch sfm and vial it out on eot for sofi (for those of you not keeping count, that's 2 cards becoming 5 cards, not to mention keeping counters off the jitte, the Bob sofi killed, or the second wisp sofi drew on the following turn). I wound up losing a round to a couple of very strong draws from miracles, but 3-1 is still respectable.

[Barook]

Played the latest DE and lost terribly, partly due to bad luck, partly due to abyssal plays (I really need to get more practice again).

It reminded me rather painfully why I normally don't run Mangara - because it's a slow PoS. I'm most likely going back to the original build with 3 Magus and 2 Recruiter when I enter another DE.

I did like the Skyfisher, though, and would continue to test it in the Avenger slot.

Edit: One thing I'd like to mention, though, is the feeling of always being low on mana. The focus on a slightly increased curved, your lands being more exposed to Wasteland and fetchland-thinning decreasing the number of lands you draw might be a bit much for our 23 land base, but maybe it's just me.

[cursecatcher]

You're starting to sell me on this red splash, Hill Giant. I just dread the prospect of getting Imperial Recruiters (I only play in paper). Please keep posting testing results, everyone trying the red version! If I get the chance to, I will as well.

The other two red cards sounds pretty great though (magus and sudden demise).

[Bahra]

I found time to play another daily (had to get up at 4 am. to play it though :laugh:)

Currently 1-0 beating RUG Delver, got to Sudden Demise away a Tarmogoyf and a Nimble Mongoose #Value

Mostly Rest in Peace and Mother of Runes did work though, drawing 4 in the first game and getting 2 of them FoW'd somehow made it so that my opponent had very few resources to try and win the game with. Second game I boarded out Magus of the Moon and this time Imperial Recruiter did work, fetching up a Mirran Crusader and then dealing a few points of damage before getting caught in a Rough \\ Tumble with a Mother of Runes. Opponent had active Library since turn 2 and the game went approximately 15 turns but I was still at 13 when the game ended.

[Bahra]

I went 3-1

R1-R4:

Crushed RUG Delver
Crushed UW Stoneblade
Got Crushed by RUG Delver nut drawing me in 2 games (in the words of the streamer that beat me) and he played well too
Crushed Elves (!!) picture is after 1 Sudden Demise :laugh:

http://i.imgur.com/TlBQh27.png


Edit: Played another daily that I streamed and 3-1'd losing to some sort of Grixis landstill and beating Elves again, miracles and Grixis Delver. Lost because of bad hands and drawing 3 Æther Vials but only 1 land only to have the Æther Vials Pithing Needled.

Kor Skyfisher was pretty good this daily.

[kombatkiwi]

Great to see the deck putting up results!

I'm not as enthusiastic about recruiter's price tag but I guess replacing them with something else isn't the end of the world. In previous parts of the thread it seems like for a long time the consensus was that any splash wasn't worth it, now with a bit of agreement that it isn't so bad, is it worth considering other colours?

It's hard to find bears that are as disruptive as magus or a sweeper as cheap as sudden demise though. Something like Sin Collector / Tidehollow Sculler and Zealous Persecution / Engineered Plague probably isn't as good as the red splash but maybe some brainstorming could be considered seeing as the thread seems to have lifted the embargo on nonwhite cards.

[Barook]

Have people with the green splash tried out Knight of the Reliquary so far?

The Recruiter thing got me thinking while looking for juicy tutor targets: With 7 fetches and 4 Wastelands, we're almost as effective feeding KotR as Maverick (they run ~8 fetches). It's also a Human, so between a Cavern, 7 fetches for a single Savannah and 4 Aether Vial, we should have plenty of chance getting it into play. What worries me, though, is further destabilizing the manabase (although 1 Savannah for a basic Plains just might be okay).

Teeg and Pridemage would be both interesting options for the 75, but since both aren't Humans, it would stretch the manabase even further. Choke would also be a great sideboard option, but it's a nonbo with Magus.

It might be too greedy, but in theory, 1 Savannah and 1 KotR doesn't sound that bad. How it might play out with the Magus effects and heavy mana denial decks might be a whole different story, though.

[Julian23]

Have people with the green splash tried out Knight of the Reliquary so far?

Suddenly it feels like early 2011 all over again :eek:

[Bahra]

Have people with the green splash tried out Knight of the Reliquary so far?



I really don't think we want to go that route. I don't even think Knight of the Reliquary has much to offer this deck anyways. Sure fetching up Wasteland and Karakas is nice, but it is sooo slow. I would rather have an efficient beater or another taxing body.

[Wasteland]

IF a splash, then rly the red one... Toolbox, additional screw-plan (with mother-protection!) and massremoval in the board offers just the most... Any other splash does not bring the deck further (and i tested black for confis and green for Knights / Teegs myself...)

[razvan]

Played in a LGS weekly and went 4-0.

2-1 vs. Blue/Red Pyromancer (Lam Phan)
2-1 vs. Reanimator (Kevin)
2-0 vs. ANT (Kris)
2-1 vs. ANT (Richard)

This is what I played (more or less, hope I don't forget something)

4 Mother of Runes
4 Stoneforge Mystic
4 Flickerwisp
4 Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
3 Phyrexian Revoker
2 Mangara of Corondor
2 Mirran Crusader
2 Spirit of the Labyrinth
1 Fiend Hunter

4 Swords to Plowshares
4 Aether Vial
1 Batterskull
1 Umezawa's Jitte
1 Sword of Fire and Ice
1 Sensei's Divining Top

10 Plains
3 Karakas
4 Rishadan Port
4 Wasteland
1 Horizon Canopy


SB:

2 Armageddon
2 Ethersworn Canonist
3 Rest in Peace
1 Sunlance
1 Phyrexian Revoker
2 Containment Priest
2 Oblivion Ring
2 Council's Judgment


Some thoughts:

- I wanted to try Sensei's. It was meh, I even lost a game where I thought it was an Aether Vial and kept a hand I should have mulliganed otherwise. It wasn't innovation for innovation's sake either, I really thought it would be good. It was not.

- Flickerwisp, still an amazing card. I won against Kris's ANT by hardcasting it to reset the Batterskull after he Abrupt Decayed the germ. Seriously, the card is absurd.

- 2 Mangara, 2 Spirit, 2 Mirran, Spirit won a game in response to a Brainstorm (might have won regardless). It's not overly exciting, but I don't mind 2. Mirran Crusader does what it does, it's an excellent beater, but might not be necessary. I don't own Brimaz's, and they could be Serra Avengers, I don't think it matters. Brimaz surviving Bolt is important, so maybe should get some. Mangara did nothing because I only saw it vs. Lam and he had enough removal to shoot the moon down. Might be trim-able, but the card can be amazing, and was for me in the past.

- 1 Fiend Hunter. Oooooh yea. Did nothing today except get a Lavamancer, but I like it.

Rest is pretty standard. 22 lands, but might put a 23rd in. I got flooded once, and mulled twice (or 3 times) due to no lands in opener.

SB:

- 3 Rest in Peace. Could be 2 and 1 Grafdigger's Cage.
- 2 Ethersworn Canonist. Standard
- 1 Sunlance. Might be useful if I faced Delvers and Deathrites and Bobs. I don't know.
- 1 Phyrexian Revoker. Meh. I don't think they are that useful.
- 2 Oblivion Ring. Always ran 2. Didn't show up at all.
- 2 Containment Priest. It was in my hand against Reanimator, didn't end up mattering. Might be able to cut a Rest in Peace to put more stuff in sideboard because of them. I really like these guys.
- 2 Council's Judgment. Never leave home without them.
- 2 Armageddon. I mostly wanted to show off Beta Armageddons, but I don't really see where they would be useful.


So for future, I would simply go:

MD:

-1 Mangara
-1 Top

SB:

-2 Armageddon
-1 Revoker
-1 Rest in Peace

I wouldn't mind putting in a Elspeth (4cc one) in the SB, she seems good. The rest might be more Elves or All-in Decks (Belcher, etc) hate. I don't know.

I am very happy with the place the deck is at, and I think the printing of Council's Judgment and Containment Priest (which didn't really exist when I was playing it) makes it so much better. I used to hate losing to UWR Delver (trade, then they get Nemesis), but I think Council's Judgment helps a TON.

[Bahra]

I will stream the daily 45 min. from now with the Imperial Taxes (D&T with a red splash). I am now testing out 1 Fiend Hunter in the main deck instead of the Kor Skyfisher.

Tune in at:

http://www.twitch.tv/bahra_


:smile:

[BearsandSquires]

Saw bahra stream today playing a fiend hunter and no serra avengers and I actually like this a lot. Though originally wanting a flyer that could be tutored I feel like this could be really good, even with serra avenger being a usually strong card.

[hill_giant]

Finally had a game where I drew sudden demise against elves and WOW THAT CARD IS GOOD. I actually needed to 5-for-1 him twice with them to win the game, but it felt really good. Killing 2-toughness creatures was very important. Taking a match off of elves when they actually have strong draws every game feels pretty awesome (g1 he straight up killed me t2 on the play, and game 3 was still close even after my 2 demises killed 10 creatures and I had an active jitte for 4 turns).

[Bahra]

I'm playing the 4th round of a daily event right now and I am 2-1 and I just made the most awesome bluff ever.

I'm playing against dredge, game 2 and I have Rest in Peace in hand and I play Windswept Heath and pass the turn. On his turn he plays a Cabal Therapy and in response I fetch, tap my plains for W and then untap it again and pass priority. He then thinks I have Enlightened Tutor and name that, on turn 2 I slam the Rest in Peace I had.

Who says you can't bluff online?

Edit: I lose anyways obviously he has turn 2 kill the third game. Losing this daily to Grixis Delver and Dredge, beating RUG Delver and 12 Post. First daily I haven't cashed with the deck.

[Megadeus]

Was watching earlier. Deck looks super sweet. Is it just for fun or is it something you would truly consider at a GP?

[Bahra]

Was watching earlier. Deck looks super sweet. Is it just for fun or is it something you would truly consider at a GP?

I am working on it now in preparation for GP Lille. I will play it there if I still think it's better (positioned) than the mono white version, when the time comes.

[Barook]

What do you think is still troublesome for the R/W build that needs to be addressed? Elves seems alright now post-board with Sudden Demise.

Omnitell still seems horrible in the current state, but what else?

And what are your impressions on Fiend Hunter so far?

[Bahra]

What do you think is still troublesome for the R/W build that needs to be addressed? Elves seems alright now post-board with Sudden Demise.

Omnitell still seems horrible in the current state, but what else?

And what are your impressions on Fiend Hunter so far?

I don't think there's any glaring problems with the RW build. But I guess I need more testing. Omnitell is definitely not good but if I go up to 4x Ethersworn Canonist the match up should be positive.

Fiend Hunter was good so far, I think I tutored for him once but I just drew it a lot and it was nice to have a removal spell like that.

[Wasteland]

I think the hardest thing for the WR is pyroclasm or rough/tumble with no creature with more then power 2 (except fiend hunter)

[Finn]

I have liked Thorn of Amethyst in this matchup. They have a hard time getting rid of it.

[Fatal]

You can always run Reverent Mantra http://magiccards.info/mm/en/44.html against pyroclasm effect, works also fine against decay.

[razvan]

I would rather jam Crusade in there than that card.

[Barook]

I wonder if the 3 Magus/2 Recruiter split is the right one instead of 2/3. Magus is great in the right match-ups, but due to being on D&T, most people who have the option already fetch basics before Magus can come online. It's kinda frustrating when they essentially turn into Grey Ogres that ruin your own manabase in these cases.

I went 2-2 in the latest daily:
- Lost R1 to Esper Stoneblade who had everything (including tons of basics),
- stomped BUG Delver R2,
- won against UR Isochron Standstill R3 (where Magus was suprisingly good despite all the burn he runs)
- lost R4 to UWR Stoneblade with 4 StP, 3 Bolts and 4 Snapcaster, making it impossible to stick threats (of course he had the second Bolt for my Magus naturally 14 cards in :rolleyes: ).

Not a single time I had the desire to fetch up a Fiend Hunter, so I do wonder about that slot.

Fiendslayer Paladin as a Recruiter target crossed my mind, since Firewalker's body sucks as a fighter for the MD. The trade-off is true protection vs lifelink when compared to Paladin en-Vec. Might be terrible, but immunity to Bolt and AD while making racing harder could be good, who knows.

Silverblade Paladin would be another potential target, but it only adds raw punching power and thus is probably in the category "win-more".

[CptHaddock]

What would you guys recommend in a sideboard for a really fair meta? Most of it just people casting Knight of the Reliquarys and bashing in with them. I've worked out this. I have 4 remaining slots, and i'm not really sure what to put in there, any suggestions?

1 Grafdigger's Cage
2 Cataclysm
2 Gut Shot
2 Enlightened Tutor
1 Manriki-Gusari
1 Ratchet Bomb
2 Rest in Peace

4x Remaining Slots

[Barook]

What would you guys recommend in a sideboard for a really fair meta? Most of it just people casting Knight of the Reliquarys and bashing in with them. I've worked out this. I have 4 remaining slots, and i'm not really sure what to put in there, any suggestions?

1 Grafdigger's Cage
2 Cataclysm
2 Gut Shot
2 Enlightened Tutor
1 Manriki-Gusari
1 Ratchet Bomb
2 Rest in Peace

4x Remaining Slots
Council's Judgment seems good. Do you really not want any combo hate, like Ethersworn Canonist?

Otherwise, Containment Priest might be an option to stop their GSZ shenanigans. Or Fiend Hunter for more creature removal.

What does your MD look like?

[CptHaddock]

Council's Judgment seems good. Do you really not want any combo hate, like Ethersworn Canonist?

Otherwise, Containment Priest might be an option to stop their GSZ shenanigans. Or Fiend Hunter for more creature removal.

What does your MD look like?

I might run 1-2 Ethersworns in the board. We have a really odd meta, there might be 1 or 2 storm players if we get a really large event but most of the time it's pretty fair. I've almost never seen any show and tell decks either. The most unfair things people might be doing is ramping with post or dark depths comboing people out. Main deck looks something like this. I'm open to suggestions on that aswell.

4 Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
2 Mirran Crusader
4 Phyrexian Revoker
4 Stoneforge Mystic
4 Flickerwisp
1 Mangara of Corondor
3 Serra Avenger
4 Mother of Runes

4 Swords to Plowshares

1 Batterskull
1 Umezawa's Jitte
4 Aether Vial
1 Sword of Fire and Ice

4 Rishadan Port
11 Plains
4 Wasteland
3 Karakas
1 Horizon Canopy

[koten]

For those testing the red splash, does it improve our Jund match-up?

[RingoDeathStarr]

As a painter player, I'd guess it doesn't improve jund because magus is pretty poor against lightning bolt and punishing fire, despite blood moon being great against jund.

[Wasteland]

Played today a 5-round tournament in Nuremberg with the WR-D&T build:

1. Round: UR delver
2 very fast games, in both i have mother + stoneforge into batterskull bzw g2 into SoFI after batterskull got smashed. Boarded out 3 magi and revoker for kor firewalker, council's judgement and sudden demises: Demises shined against a pyromancer and 5 token => 2:0 1:0 in matches

2. Round: UW Vial-blade (homebrew pile, not representative)
g1 i loose against an enemy aether vial wich sneaks in stoneforge for jitte and Nemesis afterwards while i'm stuck on 2mana, my own vial got forced and i only have 2 mothers + Thalia. G2/3 i have own aether vials which bring in better stuff then his, cause he is stuck on 1mana after double wasteland from me and is not able to put his Equipments into play. Boarded out 3 magi für vandal and demises =>2:1 2:0 in matches

3. Round: Sneakshow
G1 i have to mulligan to 6 and i'm "rewarded" with drawing 2 magi -.- I have Karakas but no pressure due to 2 magi in my hand and die to sneak attack - activation some turns later. G2 i have 2 vials, Thalia, port and 2 flickerwisps, which is exactly enough to kill him before he can attack with his Griselbrand. G3 he mulligans to 6, me to 5 and have following hand: 2 revoker 2 wasteland, Thalia, Containment priest. He Forces the 1. revoker, 2. goes on his Lotus petal cause he is low on mana. Boardsituation after round 3: 2 wastelands 1 revoker on Lotus petal on my side, in my Hand Thalia, mother of runes and the containment priest, he has in play 2 islands, the revokered petal and 1 card in hand i do not know. 5 rounds later i havn't drawn a white source or an vial and die to sneak attack into Griselbrand. Boarded out 3 magi, the Jitte für 2 Containment priest and 2 council's judgement. => 1:2 2:1 in matches

4. Round: Reanimate
G1 i play land go, he has fetch island into careful study, discard Griselbrand and useless card. IpPlay Thalia which got dazed, his nxt round play is island go. I play Magus which got dazed too and he plays island ponder. Nxt round i cast Mangara which resolves. He plays exhume, which gets him Griselbrand and me Thalia so i can remove him in my turn with Mangara and play stoneforge into SoFI AND recruiter for fiend hunter (just for sure) which makes the game. G2 he mulls to 5 and i have dual vial with much too much business for him => Boarded out 3 magi, the Jitte and i guess 2 mother of runes für 2 containment priest, 2 rest in peace and 2 council's judgement. => 2:0 3:1 in matches

5. Round: miracle
2 games long i don't have an aether vial and get crushed hard due to drawing only clunky 3drops and not being able to use port effectivly, g2 i loose to my own magus cause i can't bounce my Thalia with Karakas in rsp on his Terminus...

So regarding the whole tournament: Recruiters were nice and sudden demises wer ok too, still not necessary... Concerning magus... I boarded him out in 4 of 5 matches and lost the match hard in which i kept him in... I'm through with the clunky red splash and leave it to you, guys, to have much fun with it^^
Personal i'm back on mono W cause the Cons, which i summed up some pages ago were extremely true (perhaps only for this tournament, but remember: online mtg is not mtg in RL and many decks have much more stabile manabases then you might think...); And even IF you play much against bug / deathblade or whatever, classic D&T has not rly bad matchups against theese decks... BUT: Good luck for any who is willing to play tournaments with WR D&T!

Greetz from Germany,
Marius Hausmann

[Bahra]

I'm through with the clunky red splash


It's really cool that you dismiss the idea after having success with it in all but 1 tournament in which you still had a positive winrate.



remember: online mtg is not mtg in RL and many decks have much more stabile manabases then you might think...


You're right, online mtg is not mtg in real life. Online the competition is much more fierce, the players are vastly better because usually they actually play legacy every single day! The decks are better, the players are better and thus the testing is way better.



And even IF you play much against bug / deathblade or whatever, classic D&T has not rly bad matchups against theese decks... BUT: Good luck for any who is willing to play tournaments with WR D&T!


So now Deathblade is a good match up for us? THE True-Name Nemesis + Umezawa's Jitte deck, with tons of removal, zealous persecution and Council's Judgement in the board? Deathrite Shaman to punish us for Wastelands and Stoneforge's to stop our clock?

Fact is that Magus of the Moon vastly improves the Deathblade and BUG match up (even if BUG was a good match up already, which I do believe it was) while improving other rogue match ups as well as match ups such as 12 post that is now a complete walk over and some builds could have been difficult before.

Fact is that Sudden Demise vastly improves the elves match up that was absolutely horrid before, unless of course you played some build that is super weak to D&T hate and much weaker to BUG decks, but stronger against elves with 3 Aven Mindcensor 4 Ethersworn Canonist and several Containment Priest as well. You can fix all this by playing a stronger main deck and a stronger and more versatile sideboard. All at the cost of being weaker (but still not weak!) to turn 1 Blood Moon, Wasteland, Stifle and fast delver decks that we are already super favored against and should still be a walk over even with cutting a few 2 drops for 3 drops (even though those 2 drops were Serra Avenger that is really a 3-4 drop).

I have played close to 100 matches with the deck now and mantain a +75% winrate against some of the best legacy players in the world, including Julian Knab, Jean-Mary Accart, Rich Shay and various pros/semi pros.

If/when I play this in paper I am sure my winrate is significantly higher and that I have a better chance of spiking tournaments than with mono white.

I intend on working on this build until GP Lille and Prague Eternal and maximizing the potential of it, a potential I am sure is very high. Unless something gets printed that makes we think that my build of mono white D&T needs work and can be better, I believe that the W/r approach is the way to go.

[BearsandSquires]

Played the rw version in a decent tournament today going 4-1-1, losing in the top 8. Beat burn round 1 ( turns out double firewalker is good against them) then lost to infect due to a slight misplaced in 3. Then mooned the crap out of ug cloudpost. Then had a unintentional draw with miracles followed by wins over storm and fish and then a unfournate loss in the mirror in the top 8. Overall continue to really enjoy this version and did lots of work with a fiend hunter this event.

[neddsaurus]

Played the rw version in a decent tournament today going 4-1-1, losing in the top 8. Beat burn round 1 ( turns out double firewalker is good against them) then lost to infect due to a slight misplaced in 3. Then mooned the crap out of ug cloudpost. Then had a unintentional draw with miracles followed by wins over storm and fish and then a unfournate loss in the mirror in the top 8. Overall continue to really enjoy this version and did lots of work with a fiend hunter this event.

how do you like this version vs mono white? and how did you feel vs mirror?

[Wasteland]

Of course the Deathblade-MU is way better with the red-splash but you don't play the whole day against this deck, and i have the feeling that in way more matchups magus screws ourselves MUCH more then the opponent... The argument that then you "just don't drop" it, is relative, since you can't shuffle away it and have to play with the cards your deck gives you... (=> see my match vs. Sneakshow, where magus is more weak then a vanilla morph...)
Against elves you are right and i already admitted that sudden demise is great but 1.) that isn't true for the magus, which is the main reason for the splash and 2.) i'm still 10:4 against elves with mono W (which comes mostly from the judgements, which handle Progenitus)...
I did not just play the tournament but tested more against friends and except for bug (i admit i didn't test against stuff like 10post but there mindcensor shines too), magus was nearly always terrible (maybe the meta is a bit other then in Denmark or as online, as i said before). IF i would play this deck with red again, i would quite sure go for 3 recruiters, only 1 Magus and 1 more flex-slot, quite as Barook suggested some days ago for rly just fetching the moon in mu's where you want it...
By the way: there's a little mistake about your 40% of having aether vial in the starting hand: the percentage of HAVING it in your starting hand is right for sure, but: Count away the hands, which you have to mull away despite having vial cause you have no or only 1 offcoloured land, only 3 drops, no creatures but only Equipments etc. - there for sure additional 5-10% go away... Then count away the matches in which your vial gets countered or destroyed and already you are perhaps about 20-25% of having it ready earlygame (maybe i'm a bit wrong of it, im not a mathematic genius^^)
After all i feel just much more comfortable with mono W and like playing the deck the "fair" way, which for sure is worse in some matchups but overall more consistent.
Greetz,
Marius

[Barook]

IF i would play this deck with red again, i would quite sure go for 3 recruiters, only 1 Magus and 1 more flex-slot, quite as Barook suggested some days ago for rly just fetching the moon in mu's where you want it...
I'm not sure if 1 Magus is enough, but 3 Magus somehow feels like they're too many.

At the very least, I would encourage testing 3 Recruiter with either 2 Magus or 1 Magus/flex spot.

[BearsandSquires]

It definitely felt that in the mirror the mono white version is favored as they have more flyers and the full set of revokers, while magus doesn't do a lot and sudden demise is most times pretty awkward

[Bahra]

It definitely felt that in the mirror the mono white version is favored as they have more flyers and the full set of revokers, while magus doesn't do a lot and sudden demise is most times pretty awkward

Yes admittedly, the RW version falls short in the mirror. But quite frankly, the mirror is the least of my concerns and having access to additional Stoneforge Mystics and Revokers through Imperial Recruiters, is still pretty nice.

[BearsandSquires]

Yeah besides the mirror, this version felt a lot better in the tournament, with magus winning multiple games by itself

[razvan]

For those testing the red splash, does it improve our Jund match-up?
Speaking from the other end... no. Blood Moon is a problem for Jund if Jund walks into it, but with so much red removal that does 2+ damage, Magus is a lot worse. Of course, Mother of Runes + Magus is an issue, but Jund has some outs to that one too. It helps, but not enough.

That being said, I would be excited to try it out in DnT if I had Recruiters. Recruiter doesn't get Flickerwisp (sadly :( ), but randomly jamming something else (literally... everything else in the deck) with double Aether Vials seems pretty damned fun.

[laklota101]

After reading on both the source and mtgsalvation, I tried a naya taxes brew. This forum has been so interested in rw and salvation has delved into wg, so I'm curious to see if there is a possible overlap, playing it as an extended toolbox variant.

http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/20-02-15-death-and-taxes-copy-copy/
here is the tapped out. Here is the list

Creatures
Staples:
3x Flickerwisp
4x Mother of Runes
3x Phyrexian Revoker
4x Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
3x Stoneforge Mystic

Flex Slots:
1x Brimaz, King of Oreskos
1x Mirran Crusader

Toolbox creatures:
1x Aven Mindcensor
2x Magus of the Moon
1x Qasali Pridemage
2x Yisan, the Wanderer Bard

Instant (4)
4x Swords to Plowshares

Land (23)
1x Cavern of Souls
3x Karakas
4x Plains
2x Plateau
4x Rishadan Port
2x Savannah
4x Wasteland
3x Windswept Heath

Artifact (7)
4x Aether Vial
1x Batterskull
1x Sword of Fire and Ice
1x Umezawa's Jitte

Sideboard (15)
1x Cataclysm
1x Choke
1x Circle of Protection: Red
1x Enlightened Tutor
3x Ethersworn Canonist
1x Gaddock Teeg
1x Pithing Needle
2x Rest in Peace
2x Sudden Demise
1x Sylvan Library
1x Wilt-Leaf Liege

I'll test it out later tonight on cockatrice with a friend or two, otherwise it'll be in the next couple days. If anyone tests it before I get a chance please let me know if it consistent enough.

[Bosque]

Yisan, the Wanderer Bard seems like a significant mana investment. I'd be curious to hear how it goes for you, but I feel like Imperial Recruiter or even Fauna Shaman are better creature tutor tools.

[Tylert]

Of course the Deathblade-MU is way better with the red-splash but you don't play the whole day against this deck, and i have the feeling that in way more matchups magus screws ourselves MUCH more then the opponent... The argument that then you "just don't drop" it, is relative, since you can't shuffle away it and have to play with the cards your deck gives you... (=> see my match vs. Sneakshow, where magus is more weak then a vanilla morph...)
Against elves you are right and i already admitted that sudden demise is great but 1.) that isn't true for the magus, which is the main reason for the splash and 2.) i'm still 10:4 against elves with mono W (which comes mostly from the judgements, which handle Progenitus)...
I did not just play the tournament but tested more against friends and except for bug (i admit i didn't test against stuff like 10post but there mindcensor shines too), magus was nearly always terrible (maybe the meta is a bit other then in Denmark or as online, as i said before). IF i would play this deck with red again, i would quite sure go for 3 recruiters, only 1 Magus and 1 more flex-slot, quite as Barook suggested some days ago for rly just fetching the moon in mu's where you want it...
By the way: there's a little mistake about your 40% of having aether vial in the starting hand: the percentage of HAVING it in your starting hand is right for sure, but: Count away the hands, which you have to mull away despite having vial cause you have no or only 1 offcoloured land, only 3 drops, no creatures but only Equipments etc. - there for sure additional 5-10% go away... Then count away the matches in which your vial gets countered or destroyed and already you are perhaps about 20-25% of having it ready earlygame (maybe i'm a bit wrong of it, im not a mathematic genius^^)
After all i feel just much more comfortable with mono W and like playing the deck the "fair" way, which for sure is worse in some matchups but overall more consistent.
Greetz,
Marius

10-4 vs elves... If you are trying to back up your arguments with this win-rate against elves, no one is going to believe the rest of your speech.
Can you please enlighten us how do you win so much with the wono-W version?

[Wasteland]

While g1 is rly bad, some games or just won by aven mindcensor or a fast Jitte paired with 1-2 swords to plowshares. But of course you will probably loose g1.
G2 / 3 it's about having an EARLY canonist - and with early i mean t2... Containment priest helps too a lot but the key in this mu is the canonist (mother-protected in the optimum case). In fact, a hand with 3 lands, mother, canonist and council's judgement will on the play quite sure win against elves, since he's extremely slow under canonist, you have a solution for Progenitus and in concerning single cards, of which only 1 per round comes down, D&T has the more powerful ones...
I for sure don't want to say that the mu is positive, 10:4 is just my personal record against elves at the moment - ask Julian Knab if i'm right...
Greetz,
Marius

[Tylert]

While g1 is rly bad, some games or just won by aven mindcensor or a fast Jitte paired with 1-2 swords to plowshares. But of course you will probably loose g1.
G2 / 3 it's about having an EARLY canonist - and with early i mean t2... Containment priest helps too a lot but the key in this mu is the canonist (mother-protected in the optimum case). In fact, a hand with 3 lands, mother, canonist and council's judgement will on the play quite sure win against elves, since he's extremely slow under canonist, you have a solution for Progenitus and in concerning single cards, of which only 1 per round comes down, D&T has the more powerful ones...
I for sure don't want to say that the mu is positive, 10:4 is just my personal record against elves at the moment - ask Julian Knab if i'm right...
Greetz,
Marius

Ok, my comment was a little bit sarcastic :)
We all know the tools we have are too slow for the matchup. We have to win G1, and be on the play on G3, and land an early canonnist. then even with that, we need the rest of the pieces to win (Stoneforge into Jitte + revoker + aven mindcensor + containement priest) so we can block all angles the deck has to win (Last Time i played elves, I thought I had covered everything with my cannonist + revoker + mindsencor + jitte, but still lost to a bunch of wolves summoned by wren's run packmaster).
10-4 seems way to much positive...

[Wasteland]

Wren's run packmaster?^^ Sry but i take serious only Julian Knabs actual elves list and i'm quite sure he never played that guy... And even if, it still can be sworded / revokered...
And: The tools we have are definetly not too slow... Of course we might loose to t2 combo-glimpse or t2 natural order (on the draw) - but theese cases are quite rare and even being on the draw you can still have StoP t1 to be nearly totally safe till your t2...
You just have to play enough of the hatepieces in the board (and mindcensors maindeck). Seeing most D&T lists durdling around with only 2 canonists (by FAR the best SB card in more then 1 match...) while naming aven mindcensor "a terrible choice" it's clear, that theese guys get almost everytime stomped by elves...
And as i mentioned before, 10:4 is for sure not representative for this matchup but shows, that the white list too can succesful fight elves.

[Whitefaces]

Wren's run packmaster?^^ Sry but i take serious only Julian Knabs actual elves list and i'm quite sure he never played that guy... And even if, it still can be sworded / revokered...

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure it was actually Julian that came up with this piece of tech. The card is no joke, Packmaster can take over a game SO fast.

[Finn]

Marius, if you got 10-4 versus Elves and you are using the same cards/strategies the rest of us are using, this is not so much news an an anomaly. Everything you guys are all saying about the matchup is essentially true. It is just a matter of frequency of events turning out in such and such a way. Elves is not only hard because we are a turn slow - I am certain that this is true, and is so mainly because one piece of hate is not sufficient - but also because the frequency with which our good stuff is available is not especially high. But it is also because you so often have to guess the correct play based upon what angle you guess they are going to take. If you are wrong, it commonly means they go off in your face as soon as they untap.

I cast Canonist. He Natural Orders for lethal happens just as often as I cast Containment Priest and he ends up with eight elves on turn 3 after a double Glimpse or something.

Elves always feels like you are under the gun for these reasons. I have no reason to doubt that you are telling the truth. You would be wise no to think it is typical though.

[BearsandSquires]

Yeah I'm pretty sure it was Julian who first ran pack master and even turn 1 mom turn 2 canonist is most time still not good enough. Match up is just bad.

[LeoCop 90]

I don't remember if julian was the first to suggest packmaster (maybe was lemnear) , but julian definitely run him in the pre-cruise era. Packmaster is mainly there as a zenith target that doesn't require an incredible amount of mana but can win "fair" matchups on its own especially against decay decks. Death and taxes has swords though , but you need to have it immediately because the wolves tokens grow exponentially due to the fact that they feed cradle.

[Echelon]

Lol stop feeding the troll, people.

There are too many assumptions in his posts (because having card A, B AND C to win you the game happens every game, as everybody knows, and if you play a random hatebear Elves! will obviously never be able to answer/just ignore it) and his knowledge of Elves! is far from complete (Progenitus hardly ever sees play in Elves! nowadays and WRP has been around for quite some time now) so I recommend to just ignore the guy.

[laklota101]

DON'T RUN NAYA TAXES! Oh man I playtested against most of the popular decks in the formats for quite some time over the past two days and no matter what tweaks I made there is no hope for this deck as far as I can tell. The nonbo between yisan and magus is already hurtful, and the fact that the mana cost of the deck has been kicked up hurts the wasteland/port package. RW and WG are both good variants on DNT, but mixing them was an utterly failed attempt. If anyone somehow made it work please let me know!

[cursecatcher]

The Red splash continues to intrigue me. The way I see it from a high level perspective, is that it makes you way stronger against things like Shardless BUG and other 3 color strategies, as well as somewhat better against Elves.

The cost is that you are worse in the mirror, worse against miracles (where mangara shines), and in general worse against matchups where magus doesn't do much (omnitell, sneak and show, storm, reanimator, etc). Also, we are opening ourselves up a bit more to mana denial out of other decks by playing fetches and fewer basics.

If you ask me, mono-white DNT's worst tier 1 matchup is Omnitell, not Elves. And the red splash doesn't offer much at all for us against Omni. Elves certainly is an uphill battle, but Omnitell feels borderline unwinnable as so little of our interaction does anything at all to their even average draws. I suppose the Red splash is a metagame call (as is our entire deck), so taking the archetype in different directions makes sense. But from my perspective at the moment, I'm more focused on getting 4 Canonist into the 75 than any Plateaus (canonist helps against elves too!).

[Bahra]

Just played another daily event which I 4-0'd.

I beat R1-R4: Grixis Delver 2-1, Solidarity 2-0, UWR Stoneblade with 4 Basics 2-0, UWR Delver with no basics 2-0.

Highlights: UWR Stoneblade player FoW'ing my (through Cavern of Souls) uncounterable Magus of the Moon even though he had 3 basics out. Managed to beat an active Jitte (he got 6 counters through 3 turns and killed a bunch of my creatures). It was even early and it was not that I was swarming him, I just grinded my way through it by getting a Sword of Fire and Ice equipped (through the already active Jitte) and then slowly getting ahead. I also beat an active Jitte + True-Name Nemesis in game 1, again with Sword of Fire and Ice but it wouldn't have been possible if not for Imperial Recruiter for Fiend Hunter, to clear a germ token and let me gain enough of a tempo advantage to close out the game. Early Magus of the Moon winning the game against Solidarity by shutting off fetches and thereby preventing him from getting more than the 2 islands he had.

The only game I lost in the daily was on a mull to 4 (first game first round of the daily, made me feel like the daily was gonna go bad lol!) where I still almost won but in the end I drew too many lands.

The red splash was absolutely amazing for me this daily, and I'm sure I wouldn't have been able to beat the UWR decks without it. Magus of the Moon was good in all 4 rounds, even against the mono blue deck :laugh:

[Barook]

What's our plan now that Omnitell is going to be popular? It's a rather poor match-up.

[Wilkin]

What's our plan now that Omnitell is going to be popular? It's a rather poor match-up.

Hmm......

If you are the red splash, Red Elemental Blasts come to mind. And for mono-white, Oblivion Ring?

I guess the worry is even if you have the O-Ring for the Show and tell'd Omniscience they could have Cunning Wish. Hopefully Thalia stops that and perhaps Canonist could help there too. I'm in the same boat with my sideboard, wondering what to do.

[Megadeus]

Canonist can buy a turn or two. Could always try out black and taxes ;)

[nevilshute]

I'm also really interested in ways to improve the Omni matchup as mono-W. My sideboard stuff to bring in is: 1x O-ring, 1x disenchant, 3x canonist (maybe 1 councils judgment?). I'm running a one-of Spirit of the Labyrinth in the main too. I don't really feel very good about the matchup but will admit to having not played against it enough to really tell.

[Bahra]

I'm also really interested in ways to improve the Omni matchup as mono-W. My sideboard stuff to bring in is: 1x O-ring, 1x disenchant, 3x canonist (maybe 1 councils judgment?). I'm running a one-of Spirit of the Labyrinth in the main too. I don't really feel very good about the matchup but will admit to having not played against it enough to really tell.

You should always bring in Council's Judgement as Flickerwisp buys a turn and then you get to Council away the Omniscience if you're lucky.

[nevilshute]

You should always bring in Council's Judgement as Flickerwisp buys a turn and then you get to Council away the Omniscience if you're lucky.

Right. Marc, what are your feelings about playing D&T in the coming months (read: GP-Lille) if the trend continues and Omni is everywhere?

[Fatal]

The most important hatebear vs Omni is Canonist but to be effective it require an other card like:
- Oblivion Ring,
- Disenchant,
- Council's Judgement

Best here vs Omni will be Oblivion Ring.

if Canonist on table, they can't answer oblivion ring trigger, or disenchant etc, wtihout her on table they goes crazy in respond to trigger / spell like casting 3 x DTT, then just Cunning for trickbind/counter or even Cunning for direct kill after brainstorming some overcosted spell, then killing by Ants in respond.

similar role to Canoninist have Thalia with taxing each spell - but look if they have more mana open.

If Omni/Elves get more popular we can always playing full set of Canonist.

[Bahra]

Right. Marc, what are your feelings about playing D&T in the coming months (read: GP-Lille) if the trend continues and Omni is everywhere?

Well I will be playing it for sure. I'm gonna go up to 4 Canonists though. That should be enough to tip the match up a lot in our favour.

I will be playing the red splash and I might try out Red Elemental Blast, although I would rather fight omni and other combo decks with problem permanents. I will test Leonin Relic warder soon.

[MGB]

Question: did you guys ever test Jotun Grunt as a 1-of or 2-of in this deck? What's the consensus on this guy?

I've been testing him a little bit here and there and I've found that if you play him in small quantities he can be pretty solid. He shrinks the graveyard for Tarmogoyfs, and he shrinks the graveyard for Dig Through Time. You can't play him as more than a 2-of because his upkeep cost is so demanding, but mid-game and on he can just basically be a 4/4 for 1W that helps make Tarmogoyfs and DTTs less efficient...

[Curby]

Question: did you guys ever test Jotun Grunt

Yup, he was a staple for years: http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/the-game/legacy-type-1-5/legacy-archives/184486-deck-death-and-taxes

[MGB]

Yup, he was a staple for years: http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/the-game/legacy-type-1-5/legacy-archives/184486-deck-death-and-taxes

Ok so, why is he not played anymore? Seems really solid as a 2-of right now with Tarmogoyf and Dig Through Time running rampant...

[Curby]

The reason he was dropped, IIRC, was because his disruption was too slow for dedicated graveyard strategies like Reanimator, compared to newer printings like Wheel of Sun and Moon and Grafdigger's Cage (and more recently Rest in Peace). At the same time, we got better beef in the form of Batterskull and Mirran Crusader (and more recently Brimaz).

What would you/did you take out for him? Has the meta shifted so far into soft reliance on yards that Grunt is once again better than Mirran Crusader in the main? If I'm facing Goyfs I think I'd rather just double strike to the dome with Mirran Crusader and equipment while dodging Abrupt Decay. But I haven't tested it, so that's just a guess. :)

[Bahra]

The reason he was dropped, IIRC, was because his disruption was too slow for dedicated graveyard strategies like Reanimator, compared to newer printings like Wheel of Sun and Moon and Grafdigger's Cage (and more recently Rest in Peace). At the same time, we got better beef in the form of Batterskull and Mirran Crusader (and more recently Brimaz).

What would you/did you take out for him? Has the meta shifted so far into soft reliance on yards that Grunt is once again better than Mirran Crusader in the main? If I'm facing Goyfs I think I'd rather just double strike to the dome with Mirran Crusader and equipment while dodging Abrupt Decay. But I haven't tested it, so that's just a guess. :)

He is not good enough.

[BearsandSquires]

Was maybe thinking of trying relic warder in the board again of the rw version for the omni tell and a hand full of other match ups as he can be tutored by recruiter.

[Bahra]

Was maybe thinking of trying relic warder in the board again of the rw version for the omni tell and a hand full of other match ups as he can be tutored by recruiter.

I think that's a good idea. I'm gonna test it as well, just didn't get around to it yet.

[BearsandSquires]

Since switching over to the rw version, i've been wanting to cut the tutors in the board for maybe some more creatures to get with recruiter, is that fine or does it just depend on how much combo you expect.

[Bahra]

Since switching over to the rw version, i've been wanting to cut the tutors in the board for maybe some more creatures to get with recruiter, is that fine or does it just depend on how much combo you expect.

It seems fine, I have cut tutors a while ago. And gone to 4 Ethersworn Canonist 3 Rest in Peace among other things.

[BearsandSquires]

Four canonist sounds crazy, though I guess its making up for not having the tutors

[Bahra]

Four canonist sounds crazy, though I guess its making up for not having the tutors

4 Canonists is not that crazy without tutors. Especially given how big omnitell is/is going to be in the meta from now on. And it is really our most effective card against them.

[Brentane]

Which Aether Vial suits Death and Taxes more? Darksteel or Modern Masters?

[Bahra]

Which Aether Vial suits Death and Taxes more? Darksteel or Modern Masters?

Well they are quite similar. I like them both but I'm sticking to Foil Darksteel Æther Vial, since my rule for how my deck should look is that it should be original series/art and foil.