[deck] Astral Slide, A version that might not suck in Legacy

[morgan_coke]

EDIT:

Most current build:

Creatures
4x Eternal Witness
4x Street Wraith
3x Kitchen Finks
4x Tarmogoyf

Artifacts
3x Mox Diamond

Sorceries
2x Life from the Loam
4x Unearth

Enchantments
3x Astral Slide

Instants
4x Manamorphose
3x Orim's Chant

Lands
4x Tranquil Thicket
4x Secluded Steppe
2x Flagstones of Trokair
2x Windswept Heath
2x Savannah
1x Scrubland
1x Bayou
2x Forest
1x Plains
1x Swamp
2x Nantuko Monastery

Sideboard
3x Pernicious Deed
4x Extirpate
4x Abeyance
4x Gilded Light

I'm still trying to figure out how to fit Lightning Rifts back into the maindeck. Removed them and shriekmaws for 4x Tarmogoyf in latest alteration. On a side note, this version of the deck draws as many cards as threshold.. doesn't SEE as many, but draws as many, if not more. With the board as it is right now, the deck is good vs. sorcery speed combo, ok vs. fast critter, and weak vs. burn and some types of control. Pulling the Abeyance/Gilded package for a mix of Shriekmaws, Krosan Grips, and Renewed Faiths would fix those matchups, but completely wreck the combo one.

Sideboarding:
Thresh: -3 Chant, +3 Deed
Goblins: -3 Wraith, +3 Deed

These are the only two decks I've been doing extensive testing vs. so far.

END EDIT


I've been trying to make a version of Astral Slide that doesn't suck in Legacy for awhile now, and really haven't had much luck at it. Recently while working on the Extended version of the deck I sat back and re-thought where it was going and where it had come from. The deck started out as abusing the Slide/Witness interaction to draw lots of cards and recycle good spells so you could cast them every turn. It evolved into an aggro-control deck that did lots of cute things. Recently I decided to attempt returning the deck to it's core model.

The first thing to decide is what spell is the best to cast every turn? Time Walk, obviously, but working off of what's available in Legacy, I think Orim's Chant probably takes first place, followed by Vindicate. This is the outline of the deck I've been testing. I've only tested vs. Goblins and Threshold. Both matchups tested favorable, but for different reasons.

Creatures
4x Wall of Blossoms
4x Eternal Witness
4x Kitchen Finks

Enchantments
4x Astral Slide
3x Pernicious Deed

Cyclers
4x Edge of Autumn
4x Unearth
4x Secluded Steppe
4x Tranquil Thicket

Instants
4x Orim's Chant

Sorceries
3x Life from the Loam
2x Vindicate

Lands
1x Nantuko Monastery
1x Volrath's Stronghold
2x Windswept Heath
2x Flagstones of Trokair
2x Forest
1x Plains
1x Swamp
2x Scrubland
2x Bayou
1x Savannah

Goblins is a good matchup because you have stupid amounts of stall and Finks is just an absolute beast. Almost impossible to kill, big enough to take down any goblin, and it gains you life. Unearth is also fairly devastating when combined with Witness and Finks. You really just have to survive until you get chantlock, at which point the game is basically over. Most of the games I lost were due to a T1 Lackey + mana denial + lots of goblins.

Threshold was a surprisingly better matchup than I expected it to be because Counterbalance is largely ineffective here, since all of your key spells cost three mana, and thresh decks largely lack spells at that cc.

Sideboarding is something that is still being worked out. The board will need to address a couple of points though, namely graveyard hate, combo hate, and bad matchup hate.

Board cards being looked at right now, in no particular order and grouped by function.

Faerie Macabre
Extirpate
Leyline of the Void
Wheel of Sun and Moon
Tormod's Crypt

Dueling Grounds
Ghostly Prison

Duress
Thoughtseize
Cabal Therapy

Ice Storm
Wasteland
Sinkhole

Abeyance
Gaddock Teeg
Rule of Law
Gilded Light

Renewed Faith
Loxodon Hierarch
Primal Command
Circle of Protection: Red

One thing that I would particularly appreciate feedback on is the use of Edge of Autmn over Sakura Tribe Elder.

Edge of Autumn pros:
Cycles for zero mana
Comboes nicely with Flagstones of Trokair

Sakura-Tribe Elder pros:
Chump blocks
Comboes with Unearth
Removes Bridge from Belows

I really would like to push Slide up to at least a competitive level in Legacy, and appreciate any and all help that you can provide. Thanks.

[Aggro_zombies]

From my adventures with various Slide decks, I can say right off the bat that this one will be godawful slow. The first lists I tested ran Tarmogoyf as their biggest creature, and the problem with those decks was that it was too hard to press any advantage you eked out in the early game. Getting Slide down is nice in theory, but the problem is that most decks out there have ways to stop Slide from hitting play or to answer it once it does. You have no way to preemptively deal with those things aside from Chant, which is terrible. I'd suggest a discard suite with at least 4 Thoughtseize and 4 Cabal Therapy. I'd also suggest better creatures: Tarmogoyf and Doran. Wall of Roots is actually better than Wall of Blossoms in many ways, not the least of which is its ability to skirt nonbasic land hate in a deck mostly focused on green. It also lets you run a mana base that's not all over the place.

The list I've been happiest with is the following:

4 Treefolk Harbinger
4 Wall of Roots
4 Tarmogoyf
4 Kitchen Finks
3 Eternal Witness
1 Doran, the Seige Tower

4 Thoughtsieze
4 Cabal Therapy
4 Swords to Plowshares
3 Life from the Loam
2 Astral Slide

4 Bayou
4 Savannah
1 Murmuring Bosk
2 Forest
4 Windswept Heath
4 Tranquil Thicket
4 Barren Moor

SB:
1 Astral Slide
3 Vexing Shusher
3 Krosan Grip
4 Leyline of the Void
4 Pithing Needle

It's not really an Astral Slide deck per se, but then again, a dedicated Slide deck is about 1.5 turns too slow to be good in this format. This goes in a much more Rock-like direction with Slide as a plan B in matchups where you want to play control (aggro, control). Against Threshold you're usually trying to be more aggressive, so Slides come out there.

I will agree that Slide wins games if it sticks, but it's not really the kind of "Zomg build around meh" card that does well in this format. It's much better as a strategic compliment.

[Valtrix]

I'm not an expert or anything, but this is what I think:

Black: I'd cut all together for mana stability. That, and it just doesn't seem to help you out a ton.

Deed: Seems like a bad choice, because you have enough things to deal with 0-2 costers, and if you go for three or more you start to kill witness, finks, and slide.

Wall of blossoms: Good card, but not good enough in my opinion to run 4. I'd cut to three.

Suggestions:

Street wraith: 2 life is likely not going to matter for what you can slide (Finks negates life). The most important thing is that it lets you cycle for free, which I think is important in here. It lets you do some nice tricks. Probably run as a 3-of.

Renewed faith: Just a good cylcing card, in my opinion. Gain some life. In the end it might not be needed, but it seems better than other things right now.

Eternal dragon: This guy is just so good...why not run him? Get some more land, mana fix, play him later if you need a bigger threat. Yeah, I like him.

Cloudthresher: This guys is a bit tricky to work around, however, you can evoke/slide him for a 7/7, or just recur him to deal two damage a lot. Pretty nice surprise blocker too, don't you think? :D

Rune of protections: I think these basically do what you want, but they can sideboard if you can afford the W cost instead of colorless.

Decree of justice: Just awesome

So, here's something like I'd build:

4*Secluded steppe
4*Tranquil Thicket
4*Savannah
2*Temple Garden
3*Windswept heath
2*Nantuko monastary
1*Plains
1*Forest
1*Horizon Canopy

3*Wall of blossoms
4*Eternal Witness
3*Kitchen Finks
2*Cloudthresher
2*Eternal Dragon

4*Astral Slide

3*Edge of Autumn
3*Streeth Wraith
2*Decree of Justice
3*Renewed faith
3*Gilded light

3*Life from the loam
3*Orim's chant

Something like that I guess? A bit tired to think that list through completely =P Another way to go with this is to splash red for lightning rift. That would probably be more effective actually, since you wouldn't have to rely just on astral slide for good ways to win. Also, it's a turn faster.

[morgan_coke]

A Z,

My previous efforts had focused largely on similar plans to what you're doing, but the deck was just flat out never quite good enough. That's why I went back to the drawing board and came up with the above list.

I thought it would be too slow when I started testing it. It's not. It tests favorably vs. both goblins and threshold pre-board. That's not something a lot of decks can say.

Valtrix,

Black gives you Unearth, which is like the greatest card ever printed for an Astral Slide deck ever. Vindicate and Deed, two of the best spells ever printed in GWB are also amazing. There is a reason there are lots of decks in Legacy that are GWB. Vindicate and Deed are two of the biggest of those reasons.

[Valtrix]

Yeah, but that doesn't mean they're necessary (or good) in every deck. What do you have to deed? I mean, most creatures played in legacy aren't going to do a whole lot against you with your walls/witness/finks recursion. I'm just wondering exactly what you need to deed so much. Vindicate is a lot better, but I didn't even see that on your list. Splashing black for a recurring vindicate seems weak in my opinion, because a more stable mana base would probably work better. Also, unearth is rather pointless for you. You aren't running any cycling creatures, and astral slide should protect your creatures from going to the graveyard in most cases to begin with. I think red is the better splash so you can run lightning rift in addition to slide.

Also, sterling grove might have a place in here, though it might be too slow. elps you run more slides, but can also protect them from enchantment destruction.

[Jak]

Momentary Blink is just better. You don't have to buld the deck around it, it has the suprise factor, and it doesn't take up 20 slots.

[Isamaru]

Does anyone want to work on a Blink-focused version of I Will Survive? I wouldn't object to it...

I do like this Slide variation, though, perhaps blended with Diglett... Finks and Unearth are what interest me. Before, Hierarch meant you could never run Unearth, but now you have an Unearth-able better-Hierarch + Witness...

Long story short, this could be good, but run Cabal Therapy and more creatures... it almost seems like you don't even have enough win conditions.

[spirit of the wretch]

My teammate Marius and I have also been working on a W/G/r Slide.dec lately:
Basically you take Cyclelands, Loam, Swords, Chants, Goyfs, Finks, Witness, Dragons, Decrees and an Enlightened Tutor Toolbox: Blood Moon (yes, as a splash! This card is nuts), Scepter (to combo with Chant), Confinement (another terribly underplayed card, combo with Loam/Dragon).
The list is really pretty solid exept for the combo MU. Has anyone good ideas for SB Slots? We came up with Chalice and Runed Halo.

[morgan_coke]

In W/G/r, you're best odds for combo are to just let them go off and deal with their win conditions. Gilded Light counters Tendrils and Freeze, and Slice and Dice deals with EtW tokens. Teeg is also very strong as they can't go off until he's been neutralized.

[Dark_Cynic87]

As a storm player, I must interject. Your combo matchup will be bad. We tech the crap out of ways to remove Teegs and mages. You won't have a way to stop a tendrils, as we run chants. You need blue to deal with combo. If you run into storm combo, it would be wisest to just board out Slide, as it will be NO use. Side in Trinispheres. This seems odd, but it's one of the few things that *can* shut us down to the point of us losing. Get a goyf or 2 down and dredge the CRAP out of LftL, get them as big as possible, and stomp quickly. I always liked Edge of Autumn over SW, as it did something relevent early game. I'll post more later, but the point of this post will be:

Teeg, Runed Halo, True Believer, all easily dealt with by storm combo. Trinisphere >>>>>>>>>> any of that jank above. That stuff in ADDITION to 3sphere is decent, but 3sphere is by far what you are looking for, and quickly. Run acceleration. Turn 2 at the latest on the Trinisphere. Turn 3 go-offs backed up with chant are 80% with Fetchland Tendrils. I'm not sure TES, but I know they run 4x Chants also, and can go off quite quickly. You will need an answer against EtW for them.

Pce,

--DC

[Cait_Sith]

I've tested a lot of slide over the time and I find that this is not true if the slide deck is built properly.

Honestly, I run a version of Confinement Slide, so for me it is just a matter of time in most cases, but here are some general tips:

Aven Riftwatcher is good, but you need to get it out fast and cycle it a lot to keep your life up.

Abeyance is better than Orim's Chant except for locking purposes. Often trying to lock combo out with Chant is just a bad Abeyance lock.

Renewed Faith works, but not well. Gilded Light is not much better. Having them both is, however, better than nothing.

[morgan_coke]

Cynic,

From your post I get the impression you don't particularly understand how the Gilded Light/Slide strategy works. Orim's Chant from the combo player is responded to with Gilded Light/Abeyance/Chant. This stops the storm player for the turn barring countermagic. Eternal Witness and Astral Slide return the used spell to the slide players' hand and the process repeats itself. The storm combo player has only FOUR copies of Chant, the Slide player has TWELVE copies of Chant/Abeyance/Light to stop them plus recursion of those spells from Witness. With the 12 spell package + teeg, slide owns non blue combo very,very hard. I say this from long experience with the matchup, considerably more than any combo player has in it because lots of people play combo and no one plays slide, thus I have a lot more combo/slide matchup experience.

(just to be perfectly clear: Gilded Light gives you Shroud until end of turn. This not only counters whatever Thoughtseize/Duress/Therapy/Chant was aimed at you, but prevents any more spells that target you from being cast until the next turn, this includes things like Tendrils of Agony and Fireball)

Blue based combo with countermagic, like Solidarity, is an entirely different story. It's an absolutely atrocious matchup for Slide and there honestly isn't much of anything you can do about it due to the nature of the deck.

The version of Slide I'm proposing on this thread is Control/Prison, unfortunately it's prison lock is just crap against blue based combo with countermagic. That's how the deck is designed to play, as controllish vs. aggro early game, then locking them down in a Chant Prison. Basically, its very strong vs. things that try to win with Creatures or Sorcery speed spells, and very weak vs. things that don't use either of those (blue based or instant speed combo, burn, some types of prison). There are some things you can do to make those matchups better, but there is no magic cure for them, the very things that make you strong against deck A also make you weak against deck B.

EDIT: also, I have played Slide builds with 3sphere, it was good, but the deck doesn't have the acceleration to kick it out on turn 1 or 2 when its the most devastating. 3sphere also clashes horrifically badly with Chant/Abeyance lock.

[Mental]

Cynic,

From your post I get the impression you don't particularly understand how the Gilded Light/Slide strategy works. Orim's Chant from the combo player is responded to with Gilded Light/Abeyance/Chant. This stops the storm player for the turn barring countermagic. Eternal Witness and Astral Slide return the used spell to the slide players' hand and the process repeats itself. The storm combo player has only FOUR copies of Chant, the Slide player has TWELVE copies of Chant/Abeyance/Light to stop them plus recursion of those spells from Witness. With the 12 spell package + teeg, slide owns non blue combo very,very hard. I say this from long experience with the matchup, considerably more than any combo player has in it because lots of people play combo and no one plays slide, thus I have a lot more combo/slide matchup experience.

(just to be perfectly clear: Gilded Light gives you Shroud until end of turn. This not only counters whatever Thoughtseize/Duress/Therapy/Chant was aimed at you, but prevents any more spells that target you from being cast until the next turn, this includes things like Tendrils of Agony and Fireball)

Blue based combo with countermagic, like Solidarity, is an entirely different story. It's an absolutely atrocious matchup for Slide and there honestly isn't much of anything you can do about it due to the nature of the deck.

The version of Slide I'm proposing on this thread is Control/Prison, unfortunately it's prison lock is just crap against blue based combo with countermagic. That's how the deck is designed to play, as controllish vs. aggro early game, then locking them down in a Chant Prison. Basically, its very strong vs. things that try to win with Creatures or Sorcery speed spells, and very weak vs. things that don't use either of those (blue based or instant speed combo, burn, some types of prison). There are some things you can do to make those matchups better, but there is no magic cure for them, the very things that make you strong against deck A also make you weak against deck B.

EDIT: also, I have played Slide builds with 3sphere, it was good, but the deck doesn't have the acceleration to kick it out on turn 1 or 2 when its the most devastating. 3sphere also clashes horrifically badly with Chant/Abeyance lock.

Many combo decks now play Extirpate or EtW (which, btw, wins through Gilded Light). I don't think that Gilded Light is very strong against either of those cards.

Not to say I agree with DC - I'd wouldn't be happy to play a deck, even without blue, bringing in 12 "chant" effects against me. It's definitely a good SB strategy, just not THAT good.

[fourleafedmonkey]

I think a card that should somehow find its way into this deck is Hoofprints Of The Stag.
With how many cards you draw and filter with this deck, you could activate that thing quite often.

[Aggro_zombies]

I think a card that should somehow find its way into this deck is Hoofprints Of The Stag.
With how many cards you draw and filter with this deck, you could activate that thing quite often.
It's not that great. The :2::w: on your turn is a bit of a pain, especially when you want to hold cycling cards to use against your opponent's creatures.

[Dark_Cynic87]

...and by siding in 12 "chant" effects, what do you board out? Also, 12 chant effects = 1/5 of your deck. 1 in 5 chance of it in your opening hand. Not horrible, but if storm is on the play, you have 2 draw steps to hit one. 9 cards. almost able to hit 2 (I realize you can draw more than that with cycling lands and etc.). Also, against you, I'm going to board in artifact/Enchantment hate in the form of Serenity and Krosan Grips, 3 and 4 respectively. Can you handle that? In addition, we run 2 extirpates. That's 9 cards that can just rape your 2 main cards: LftL and Slide. Even SB'ing in 3spheres is a difficult thing to pull of against this kind of tech. Oh, and there's a Wipe Away maindeck, and some builds even run a Death Wish mainboard, so that's all accessible game 1 if need be. Massacre hurts you a bit against Eternal Witnesses and such, which is also in the sb. All I'm saying is that, like Mental said, 12 chants is good, but by no means an easy matchup for you. Storm players are shady in nature; we'll chant just to draw out other chants, and then we'll go off.

On hoofprints, that's a lousy idea. Can't really slide out tokens, man...Decree works well because you don't NEED to slide them out. They are quite expendable, but a 4/4 isn't as expendable. Also inferior do Decree is that it doesn't cycle (good against landstill) for sliding out Witness to grab the Decree again, and you can only do it during your turn, while with Decree you can do at the end of their turn and swing in for quite a bit of damage without giving them time to find an answer. Plus, it's lots of little creatures. Not 1 bigg-ish one, which is easily blocked.

And why do people continuously tell me I don't know what I'm talking about? Just because you don't agree with me doesn't mean I'm the biggest simpleton on the planet, or even this site. Jeez. This topic, FT topic, AND Sun Tower...good lord. Eh, who cares.

Pce,

--DC

[Nihil Credo]

Also, 12 chant effects = 1/5 of your deck. 1 in 5 chance of it in your opening hand.

1 - (48/60 * 47/59 * ... * 42/54) = 0,809 actually.

[Willoe]

Huh? Under one out of one hundred, Nihil? I've never been good at calculating these things, so can you explain?

[Nihil Credo]

0,809 out of 1 = 80,9%

[Willoe]

I see :)

Thought you meant 0,809 out of 100 xb

[Dark_Cynic87]

I find it ridiculous that you assume you can make it to turn 4/5. You are making this assumption by saying that you can slide out Eternal Witness with Slide. To do this, you need to hit at least 3 Chants (you can use 1x 2cc "chant" effect turn 4), While making all 4/5 land drops, E. Witness, Slide, finding LftL, AND cylcing lands/SW's. Well, like most other decks, it seems you feel you have a solid matchup vs. Storm. I'll ignore this and just help with construction as I like slide for fun.

is 12 chant effects good against other things to speak of? I can see that they would buy time, I suppose Gilded Light is good against Burn (REALLY good against burn).


Why the 3/3 split on EoA/SW? I'd go 4/2 respectively. Land drops are insanely important for you, and you don't want to have to play a cycling land as it slows you down a whole turn (cipt).

Deed: It's actually not HORRIBLE, but it can be. Unless you slide out Witness before popping it or you have a Slide already in hand, popping it for >3 can be bad. Deed IS good for getting rid of stuff like Humility, which can REALLY screw witness and most (read: all) other creatures you play. Other things it takes care of is Standstill (pre-drop, of course, but they'll probably find an answer for it), Stax varients (REALLY good here), tokens from EtW, DoJ, morph creatures in builds like Dragon Stompy, Vial Goblins and etc.

I think you need mana accel. Every competetive list in this format is quick in at least 1 of 3 ways: Winning/Locking/Controlling. You need speed. Either play Chrome Mox or Mox Diamond. Mentioning Mox Diamond, I have never played less than 24 lands in a Slide build. There's also ESG, if you play Deed. EE might be an acceptable choice, and I tried out Ghostly Prisons, but mostly are win-more as slide takes care of this (I will say that they are better against high amounts of Goblin/Zombie tokens, but then why wouldn't you just run EE as it costs 1 less and no colored mana to do it).

More to think about, I guess.

Pce,

--DC

[morgan_coke]

Cynic,

Um... what the hell are you talking about? Seriously. I don't say that in order to be snarky or as a put down.. I honestly can't figure out what you're referencing or how it's relevant.

I just looked through all the posts here twice and didn't see a single list with Street Wraith in it.

Also, why would I need to Chant you every single turn? The only time Slide Chants/Abeyances/Gildeds is in response to a chant from the combo player or to stop the combo player from going off. Using a chant effect every turn before the lock is set up is just stupid and counterproductive.

Like I said, its pretty obvious from your comments that you don't have play experience in this matchup. That's not surprising because its not a common matchup except from my side of the table.

Rifter and Slide are very different decks. The original Slide lists from ONS block were most similar to the Legacy deck Rifter. This list is more based on the Slide decks I developed in Extended the last few seasons. Their matchups are in order from best to worst: 1) Sorcery speed and non-blue combo. 2) Board control strategies. 3) Blue control strategies. 4) creature based aggro. 5) spell based aggro (burn). 6) instant speed and blue based combo.

On Mox Diamond, I haven't tested it since the new ruling was put into effect, previously having it countered and losing two mana sources early in the game was too much of a potential drawback, now it might not be, I will revisit testing the card.

[Apex]

I still don't understand how you boast that high of a matchup vs storm combo. This does impact the way you construct your deck, since you might actually need to move Gilded Light into the maindeck over stuff like Unearth to shore up your weak point, particularly in a metagame that has combo presence.

Maybe I am uninformed as a storm player, but the strategy against cycling based decks has always been going for Extirpate. I can generally pate all of your protection from your hand (I just need 1 turn's window of opportunity), and it's not like Slide can put that fast of a clock anyway. I bait Chant/Abeyance/Gilded Light with Chant/Abeyance myself, and then Extirpate your Chant/Abeyance/Gilded Light, then I re-evaluate. If you still have hate in your hand when I pated you, then I setup again (and there are many, many ways of setting up Extirpate, from straight up tutors to IGG loops), pate the hate, and then combo from there. Recursion with Witness really doesn't help when they've all been removed from the game. Unless there are some intricasies left in your deck that I'm not aware of, then the above plays are really, really bad for you.

I think you might need to re-evaluate your matchups a bit more, since when tweaking decks, you would obviously try to shore up your weaker matches. Giving an exaggerated matchup on the internet might bring more attention to the deck, but it would hardly serve you well in real tournaments, and that's what I think you would really want, to win more tournaments.

I was always under the impression that cycling based decks was great against aggro and bad against combo, I just don't see how you it works so differently for you. If you have such a good combo matchup, then it is actually relatively easy to improve your creature based matchup, particularly since you suggest burn and fast aggro are bad matchups. Those matchups seems easily shored up by maindeck Aven Riftwatchers/Mass destruction over the Vindicates/Wall of Blossoms.

[Phantom]

And why do people continuously tell me I don't know what I'm talking about?


Also, 12 chant effects = 1/5 of your deck. 1 in 5 chance of it in your opening hand.

The Quote thread is locked! WTF???

[morgan_coke]

Apex,

How many times have you played, as a storm player, against a deck like this? I've done it at least dozens of times, probably hundreds to be honest.

I'm very specific about what kind of storm combo has a good matchup, and what kind doesn't. TES style WITHOUT COUNTERS = very good. Solidarity style or with counters = very bad.

I'll be happy to test with anyone who doubts what I'm saying here, but this isn't some kind of random speculation or whatnot, its borne out of an awful lot of testing and experience.

Also Apex, while the strategy you describe is generally the best one for the storm combo deck to utilize, Slide, while slow, isn't quite THAT slow where you have enough time to pull off a couple of find threat to force hate/find extirpate the multiple times you'll need to to win.

[Apex]

As a storm player, I have played very little games against your version of Astral Slide, but I have encountered many Rifter decks, and they play the same 12 pieces of hate. Extirpate also shuts off recursion, so I don't get how different you are from Rifter in terms of anti-combo, maybe your other parts plays differently, but from my point of view, your deck is the same as rifter when it comes to my deck, and rifter has some atrocious combo matchups.

Game 1 I have an advantage, since you have 4 Orims Chants while I have 4 Orim's Chant, 1 Extirpate and a bazillion tutors. Game 2 and 3 you board in 8 additional pieces of hate (and maybe a couple of Extirpate), but your threat remains what? Eternal Witness and Kitchen Finks? That doesn't seem like a fast enough clock at all against storm decks. Really, storm decks have the average speed of turn 2-4 with protection backup, isn't that just a little bit too fast for Astral Slide? You need to tap at least 3 mana to play an Astral Slide, and the earliest for you to do that is turn 3. That's well within the killing range of most storm decks.

I really don't see how fast you can push Slide decks past combo, and cycling decks have always been regarded as having poor combo matchups.

And how is it that you have the "best" matchup against non-blue combo while the worst" matchup against blue based ones? Blue based combo runs 8 protection: 4 FoW and 4 Remands, with Brain Freeze as their win con, which is also hated on by the same 12 cards. I don't play TES but Fetchland Tendrils run 4 Orim's Chant, 2-4 Abeyance and 2-3 Extirpate as their protection, with Tendrils as their kill. How are those so different that you have such extreme disparity in matchups?

I'm not here to argue which deck beats which, but only to offer you suggestions from the opposing player's point of view so you can shore up some of your weaker matchups, and storm combo, in my opinion, is a definite weak matchup for cycling decks.

[morgan_coke]

The reason Blue is worse is that to get past FoW/Remand you have to play the spell twice or have two pieces of hate, this requires more mana. Against Chant/Abeyance hate, your counterhate buys you the turn. That's why there is such a difference between them. Also, blue decks can use Remand to move a Brain Freeze to the other side of a Gilded Light, never giving you the chance to replay it at all.

Rifter counts on Rift, Dragon, and sometimes Angel/Decree to effect its kill, Slide relies on Witness/Finks, but also hits your mana with Vindicates and whatnot.

And you're right, Slide definitely loses the first game.

I also agree that the matchups are counterintuitive for cycling decks. When I really looked at the numbers and how things were going it surprised me too, but thats where the results have led me, not where I expected them to go, but nevertheless where they took me.

Also, this is the list I'm currently experimenting with, it diverges a bit from the one on the first page, I'll update post #1 too.

Engine
4x Eternal Witness
3x Astral Slide
2x Life from the Loam

Cyclers
4x Secluded Steppe
4x Tranquil Thicket
4x Edge of Autumn
4x Street Wraith
4x Unearth

Acceleration/Fixing
3x Mox Diamond
4x Manamorphose

Creatures
3x Kitchen Finks
4x Tarmogoyf

Lock
3x Orim's Chant

Fetchlands
2x Flagstones of Trokair
2x Windswept Heath

Mana Lands
2x Savannah
1x Scrubland
2x Forest
2x Plains
1x Swamp


Sideboard
3x Pernicious Deed
4x Abeyance
4x Gilded Light
4x Extirpate