Most people know it already, but very few people take Gencon results seriously. U/g threshold won it last year, and madness won it the year before that.
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Most people know it already, but very few people take Gencon results seriously. U/g threshold won it last year, and madness won it the year before that.
I tried that but dredging 6 a turn from an eot discarded troll isn't really a clock. It takes about 5 turns or so to get an offensive going without casting drawspells. And modern Dredge only has Breakthrough, Deep Analysis, Dread Return on Sage, Colliseum or Carefuly Study.
Breakthrough is dead because if you cast it your opponent uses the first crypt in response and the second afterwards leaving you with no graveyard and no hand. Dread Return can only be used if you've already gone halfway off which is where you are trying to get to begin with. Deep Analysis is often sideboarded out first with LED's and even if not then cracking an LED for DA and getting crypt in response to DA is game again. Leaving us with Careful Study which is not even a staple anymore in favor of more disruption and Colliseum which requires you to play atleast one other land and Pimp to fire it off under these circumstances. Most likely you'll only be dredging once per turn, be it by Draw, Discard, Dredge or Pimp. And that is just horribly slow from my experience, especially if you have to do the slowdredging over again a whole second time because of the second Crypt. You're goldfishing on turn 10 or so.
I'm not convinced that Ichorid is doomed in this position, I still hope there is a realistic pathway to victory. I just haven't found it yet and I don't think your suggestion is close enough either.
Actually you're a year behind since Slivers won last year, but the rest is right.
'Right' being that the tournament is not very competitive, nor is it indicative of Legacy in general.
More directly, I suspect from what I saw that Tuck is still running that awful 7 land, 4 Lotus Petal configuration. I don't care if it wins a Pro Tour, it's horrible.
Oh, come on guys. In years past maybe, but I was there and the decks and players were as good as any I've faced. For crying out loud it was an 187-ish man tournament with a top eight of three CounterTop decks, two Canadian Thresh decks, Ichorid, Armageddon Stax, and 42land.dec. If that's not solidly representative of Legacy, I don't know what is. Virtually everyone in that tournament was playing some variation of a DTB, DTW, or Established Deck.
I'm not saying that GenCon should change the way we think about Legacy, but to say those results don't matter is disingenious.
Parcher has got 5 Top8 records with Ichorid:
http://www.deckcheck.net/list.php?creator=Damon+Whitby
Plus one where he is just referred to as "Parcher":
http://www.deckcheck.net/deck.php?id=13212
One more guy on his ignore list I guess. :-P
Turck's list is apparently the one from 2 years ago:
http://www.deckcheck.net/deck.php?id=10336
I stopped to watch the replays from his matches when i saw him dredging Lotus Petals into his GY.
@Adan: Thanks for the vote of confidence Adan, but DeckCheck is missing several Legacy events I've done well in, though most of the were actually not with Ichorid. I'm sure the same could feasibly be said of Mr. Turck since Eternal format coverage is only a recent occourance in most cases.
More to the point;
Hey! Douchebag nut-hugger!
Learn to spell. Then get off your knees and quit juggling balls in your mouth. Then realize that Legacy Champs is about as competitive as the first six rounds at GP Chicago. Yes, it's possible to run into a pro, but you are infinitely more likely to get that guy running Legacy Martyr of Sands Combo.
EDIT: HOLY FUCKING SHITBALLS!!! I forgot about that 2007 list! One Wonder. Two Islands. No way to access them. Three Reverent Silence. One Forest. No way to access it.
Awsome.
If this logic is put another way, wouldn't it say: Having the best score of the field after 6 rounds at GP Chicago isn't good?
If placing first at the Legacy Championships is mediocre, maybe we should aim at mediocrity.
However if we could see the list and test it, maybe it would turn out Earnest was only lucky to do good with it, but that would be another argument altogether.
That's absolutely fair. And I have not a single thing deragatory to say about Ernest's skill with the deck. Only that there is no possible way with Ichorid in Legacy that the theoretical advantages of using Lotus Petal instead of Lands can possibly outweigh the vulnerabilites caused.
And what people need to realize about GenCon, is that out of the 187 players, most aren't even regular Magic players; much less Legacy players. And forget being competitive for the vast majority of them. They just happen to be around for a chance of becoming "World Champion" and join in. I had this arguement last year, but myself, Smelski, and Zohar all asked our opponents in the prelims and main event whether they played regularly. The results were something like 8 to 1 against.
Has anyone tested Duress in the Unmask slot?
I never understood why Unmask was the 2nd discard spell of choice. Has anyone done the maths of having Cabal Therapy + Unmask + another black card in opening hand? Can anyone give me their opinions on the following opening hand-situations?
-If you had Unmask + 1 black dredger -> I'd prefer it to be Duress
-If you had Cabal Therapy + Unmask -> I'd rather blindly Cabal than remove it from the game for an Unmask. Again I'd prefer to Duress 1st turn, Cabal 2nd turn.
-If you had Cabal Therapy + Unmask + 1 black card (only dredger) -> I'd be reluctant to exile my only dredge card.
-If you had Cabal Therapy + Unmask + 1 black card (1 of X dredgers) -> Unmask is great here.
-If you had Cabal Therapy + Unmask + 1 black card (non-dredger) -> The non-dredge Black cards are Pimp, Ichorid, DR & Bridge (and extra copies of Cabal + Unmask). The only ones I'd be keen to remove are Unmask & DR (I run 3). Though if I had those and Troll, again Unmask is good.
This seems like a very small window for Unmask to be good. Add to that this deck mulligans a lot, and they'll be times where you're stuck with Unmask + black card you really need, and again I'd prefer it to be Duress.
Why Duress over Thoughtseize? Well personal preference, but there isn't many creatures we shouldn't be able to outrace. You just want to get rid of hate + countermagic which Duress can do.
Any discussions around this would be great :)
You would definitely want to play Thoughtseize over Duress in case you need a discard outlet.
Another example would be when you can Unmask yourself, and follow it with casting Breakthrough in the same(first) turn without having an LED.
Edit:
If this was your hand...
<Unmask, Pimp, Breakthrough, Coliseum, Troll, DR, Mine>
What would you do?
If we Unmask ourselves to play Breakthrough and they counter it? So maybe you have to instead Unmask (DR) and get rid of their Force of Will and play Pimp. Next turn you can Breakthrough. In this situation wasn't Unmask just an unwieldy Thoughtseize?
Well no not really - because you spent zero mana on the unmask allowing you to cast the pimp that same turn. leaving you with the mana open next turn to be able to either cast breakthrough (which you could have done with thoughtseize due to having 2 land i guess) but also allows the option of using the cephalid colliseum on turn 2.
You could say "what is the opponent has a disrupting shoal and a 4 casting cost card to counter unmask... wouldn't thoughtseize be better there?" but that leads us down a crazy path... you could argue for any card going into any deck setting up the perfect scenario for the card...
Unmask (currently playing 2 in my list) is so good purely because it's free. You can complain all you like about having to discard a card to it but hey... it's still too good in this deck to pass up.
Sorry to cut in here, as I am not a Dredge player. However, I have been reading up on the deck, and although I have never played against it, I am very impressed by it (I like off-beat decks).
Now, I play Solidarity, and I have a couple of Legacy tournaments coming up (my first), and I expect to face Dredge decks. I am considering my sideboard options.
I appreciate that sideboarding against Dredge is not easy. Your sideboard is devoted to making my sideboard useless, so a card or two won't cut it. I need to dedicate at least 6 cards to the matchup, possibly more. What I want is to get the most "bang for my buck", so I don't sacrifice my other matchups.
The easy sideboard would be a mix of Crypts and Relics, but is that really particularly effective? Would I be better off with a set of Leylines, even though I am playing mono blue and could not recast the Leylines after a bounce? Alternatively, I could add a few u/b duals and Extirpates to my sideboard. Or u/w for abeyances and stp (to hold you back until I can combo). What do Ichorid players think my best options are?
-Silent Requiem
Ichorid decks will dump their deck in the grave on their own. So you need a lot less storm to win the game. You could take your chances and just play your own optimal list and try to beat the Ichorid player at speed (I don’t exactly know how many turns solidarity needs to win against a half deck). The sole thing you need to look out for is Cabal Therapy and Unmask (or just getting beaten turn 1 obviously), so you might want to play something like Echoing Truth so they have to waste them on that or lose against it. If you try to combo, do it in the combat fase or after it, if you do it before you might get in trouble.
I don't know if there are any other good blue cards to run that aren't useless against everything else you might encounter.
You might consider Propaganda, which can really slow Ichorid. Extirpate has more utility in other matchups, however. Also, bear in mind that the best targets for Extirpate are not always the same. Sometimes, you might extirpate Bridge From Below; sometimes, you might choose a dredger. Extirpate on Narcomoeba or Ichorid can also be solid, particularly against a nut draw.
I think the best thing you can do, however, is diversify your hate cards, even mixing permanent and non-permanent hate. Almost all of Ichorid's counter-hate is highly specific, like Therapy, Needle, Grudge, or Ray. Diversification erases that problem. For instance, if you have 4 slots, Relic and Crypt will be most effective as a 2/2 split. If you have 6 slots, 2 Crypt, 2 Relic, and 2 nonartifact hate can cover a lot of bases. If you do play Extirpate, however, I would play 4 becuase they are so good in multiples. 1 Relic+1 Crypt as backup would be good.