[Deck] CounterTop Thopter

You don't necessarily need to generate card advantage (although Trinket Mage draws you a card!). This is a dirty dirty myth I see propagated all over the place.

Aggro_Zombies: Is 4 4-drops too many at that point? I'm worried about fanning open a hand and having to mulligan because it has 2 lands and two Jaces and a Humility and a Top or something.

4 Top is a myth. Yes, you can tutor for it, but if you want to CB lock them out on turn 3, you pretty much need Top on 1, CB on 2. Tutoring up Top ruins this plan, especially if it's turn 4 from a Trinket Mage. Plus, you don't ever want to have to use E-tutor on a Top, although I've done it.

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Originally Posted by Anusien

Plus, you don't ever want to have to use E-tutor on a Top, although I've done it.

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I always do it when I have CB in play. Generally I wait until my opponent plays a 1CC spell but I even sometimes do it before.

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Originally Posted by Anusien

You don't necessarily need to generate card advantage (although Trinket Mage draws you a card!). This is a dirty dirty myth I see propagated all over the place.

Aggro_Zombies: Is 4 4-drops too many at that point? I'm worried about fanning open a hand and having to mulligan because it has 2 lands and two Jaces and a Humility and a Top or something.

4 Top is a myth. Yes, you can tutor for it, but if you want to CB lock them out on turn 3, you pretty much need Top on 1, CB on 2. Tutoring up Top ruins this plan, especially if it's turn 4 from a Trinket Mage. Plus, you don't ever want to have to use E-tutor on a Top, although I've done it.

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Sure a control deck with empty hands will control the game for ages..
So your plan is stic a cb + top and control the game. If for whatever reason you can't to it you simply lose because you emty your hand as fast as belcher?

I think that Enlightened Tutor is good, but overrated. I would play 4 if you have a singleton sideboard just for consistency. It's card quality, but also cards disadvantage and you have no way to regain it except for virtual CA with CB.
Btw since so many aggro decks are around I really think that having 3 Firespout MD is a good call. Even when Landstill was around the deck packed Wrath of God and Swords to Plowshares.

I think that Enlightened Tutor should be in the deck if you want to put singletons like Moat, Humility and Vedalken Shackles. For EE, Top and Pithing Needle Trinket Mage should be played.

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Originally Posted by Maveric78f

I always do it when I have CB in play. Generally I wait until my opponent plays a 1CC spell but I even sometimes do it before.

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Oh for sure I'll do it, and it'll sometimes be the best play. But I'd much rather just play Top on turn 1 (since it's the best card in the deck and all) and save the Enlightened Tutors to fetch Humility or Sword of the Meek or something.

Card advantage is not totally necessary when most of the decks don't have them. If you can soft-lock with counterbalance, that's REAL card advantage. And you don't need card advantage if you already win with thopter-sword. Anyway, I think that it's good to run something to fight more controlish decks and refill you're hand.

Options:
Court hussar, Compulsive research
TFK
Dark confidant
Jace

I prefere 1-2 tfk, 1-2 Jace but I want to try hussar or compulsive research.

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Originally Posted by Anusien

Aggro_Zombies: Is 4 4-drops too many at that point? I'm worried about fanning open a hand and having to mulligan because it has 2 lands and two Jaces and a Humility and a Top or something.

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I don't think it matters much; you can already open hands with Jace, a Humility, and two lands in them. Top and Brainstorm can help find more lands, but if you want to smooth your draws then the next option is Ponder, which is hardly exciting. I mean, you're playing a control deck in Legacy. Of course you are going to get hands that have some awkward mix of business and responsive elements and then get run over by people who build their decks to not do that.

Jace is card quality, board control, and a win condition in a single card and forces the opponent to split his resources between addressing your combo and addressing Jace. That alone is a reason to try to max out on them, IMO.

What are the Counterspells for, by the way? Supporting your curve? I'd rather have Spell Pierce or Spell Snare in those slots, given how incredibly lackluster Counterspell is even in situations where it's good.

http://sales.starcitygames.com//deck...p?DeckID=33300

Here is the build I designed for my friend Paul who made top 16 in his first large Legacy event. It was enough to make him do a 180 from standard to legacy.

The volcanic and Trop count got switched. He never sided in the 3rd Path and are considering alternatives. We have gone back and fourth between path and firespout in the sb slots.

I was on the fence about Clique at first but have grown to appreciate it's versatility in the deck. We found shackles to be redundant, and Crucible inconsequential. Staying as close to 2 colors as possible in the maindeck gave us a better game against the field then adding Bob or Firespouts main.

Traditional card advantage is unnecessary in most Legacy matchups. Tempo as a loose concept is really much more important. Focus on what matters in each match up - controlling the stack with counter top and the board with Moat/Bridge. That combination buys back any card disadvantage from tutor. You are often in a situation where you have locked up the board and stack with 0-1 cards in hand, a Jace in play, and can almost not loose even without any cards in hand.

i actually have been running wall of omens as of late so that i can have a cantriping wall to give me some type of card advantage.the problem i have with the idea of having no card advantage is that you become less resilient to hate . and because you have no card advantage you make the deck weaker to things that cannot be countered such as krosan grip or vexing shusher. making the deck reliant on the counterbalance combo which after board is easier to disrupt and can be done by a lot of decks. not to mention if you ever fall behind on board advantage you just lose

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Originally Posted by SMR0079

http://sales.starcitygames.com//deck...p?DeckID=33300

Here is the build I designed for my friend Paul who made top 16 in his first large Legacy event. It was enough to make him do a 180 from standard to legacy.

The volcanic and Trop count got switched. He never sided in the 3rd Path and are considering alternatives. We have gone back and fourth between path and firespout in the sb slots.

I was on the fence about Clique at first but have grown to appreciate it's versatility in the deck. We found shackles to be redundant, and Crucible inconsequential. Staying as close to 2 colors as possible in the maindeck gave us a better game against the field then adding Bob or Firespouts main.

Traditional card advantage is unnecessary in most Legacy matchups. Tempo as a loose concept is really much more important. Focus on what matters in each match up - controlling the stack with counter top and the board with Moat/Bridge. That combination buys back any card disadvantage from tutor. You are often in a situation where you have locked up the board and stack with 0-1 cards in hand, a Jace in play, and can almost not loose even without any cards in hand.

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how do you even begin to combat goblins w/o firespout, moat and 4 stp seem like the only outs you have to not die.

Is it viable to not run Enlightened Tutor? I really do not like it and would rather run 4/4 Sword/thopter and run something like TfK or some other card drawing spell.

Predict. It costs 2 for counterbalance, filters away a bad card, is an instant so you can cast it EoT while leaving mana open, and nets you the same card advantage as a TfK.

TFK:
+3 (Cards drawn)
-1 (TFK)
-1 (artifact pitched)
+3 -1 -1 = +1

Predict
+2 (cards drawn)
-1 (predict)
+2 -1 = +1

Predict also lets you see the same number of cards, as it's going to filter away a dead card (not unlike TFK). But it isn't forcing you to run way too many artifacts and it doesn't cost 3 mana.


On a less productive note, how do you guys not ROLL OVER to qasali pridemage? The deck's putting up results, so pridemage can't be completely ruining your day, but if you're stalling against zoo with Countertop or ensnaring bridge/moat, how does a resolved pridemage not wreck you? Do you force that sucker if you see him? Do you try to plow before you land CBtop/Moat/Bridge? What's the general strategy against pridemage?

Running the tutor allows you to find Moat or Bridge which stops aggro. This makes Goblins fairly easy. Zoo is much more difficult post side with grip because they can force you to out a 1 or 2 on top then Grip the Moat/bridge and come over with the alpha strike. I have run Firespout instead of Path for this reason, and we go back and fourth on it. Path is better against Merfolk because they can waste your 2 volcanics, and Daze/cursecatcher the firespout.

On the subject of tutor - if you don't understand how unnecessary drawing extra cards is in most legacy match ups you won't appreciate enlightened tutor. It allows you to run the singletons and combo/lock peice that generate more card advantage then any draw spells will. The alternative is to try TfK/Chrome Mox, and more redundancy, with less dependece on silver bullets like moat. Maxing out on Thopter Sword is a good idea if you choose this strategy. Otherwise, if you want to draw extra cards just play landstill.

Wall of omens is fine - or you good just run more Paths. Once again, you don't have time to sit back and draw cards. Your objective is to balance controling the board while setting up counter top, or control the board while setting up thopter sword. Grip is the only relevant hate card that really disrupts this plan, but it is common and you need to play with it in mind.

Red panda,

I've been wanting to try Predict for some time - thanks for the reminder. Pridemage is a beating, Plow him, counter him, needle him, or find a 2 drop for the lock. It comes down to focusing on what matters in each match up at any given moment, which is a skill that takes time and practice. I know as I'm very much still trying to learn it.

Looking at the lists that made top8 I saw some 3/2 and 2/1 Thopter Foundry/Sword of the Meek split.
What do you suggest and why? I would opt for a 3/2 split because you have more chance to see them. The only reason to run a smaller split in my opinion is for space.
Thoughts?

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Originally Posted by pippo84

Looking at the lists that made top8 I saw some 3/2 and 2/1 Thopter Foundry/Sword of the Meek split.
What do you suggest and why? I would opt for a 3/2 split because you have more chance to see them. The only reason to run a smaller split in my opinion is for space.
Thoughts?

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It's really about space more then any thing else. I prefer to max out on tutors and run a 2/1 split. In our list the only cards I would be comfortable cutting for extra combo pieces is Clique, but then we go down to only 1 three drop.

I'd like someone to try and develop a competitive list that runs tfk and more combo pieces. Here's a rough skeleton for those of you who hate on tutors and Daze ;)

12 Draw: 4 TfK 4Top 4 BS
8 Stack control: 4 FoW 4 CB
9 Win Conditions: 7 Combo, 2 JAce
8 Board Control: 4 StP, 2 Humilty, 2 Explosives
23 Mana: 3 Mox 20 land

SB: Grips, Firespout, Counters, Yard Hate

Deck wants a Baneslayer I think, and maybe more removal.

I never tried the moxen in this deck because they don't convince me. Do you need to be fast? Don't think so. Enlightened tutor is Card disadavantage and same for the moxen. Ok, they work well with T4K, but that's it.

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Originally Posted by pippo84

I never tried the moxen in this deck because they don't convince me. Do you need to be fast? Don't think so. Enlightened tutor is Card disadavantage and same for the moxen. Ok, they work well with T4K, but that's it.

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Cards like Tutor or CMox set you back one card with the expectation that their return will put you much further ahead. It doesn't matter if I'm down one card once I've blanked my opponents spells 1, 2 drops, blanked their attack, or on my way to making thopter tokens. Now if the card you tutor for is countered you could be in trouble.

C Mox may be unnecessary but it allows you to run TfK, which otherwise is slow and clunky. Not to mention speeding up the turn you resolve something like Humility is the difference between life and death.

Seriously though, if you have such a problem with it play Bob, or just switch to Landstill.

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Originally Posted by SMR0079

Cards like Tutor or CMox set you back one card with the expectation that their return will put you much further ahead. It doesn't matter if I'm down one card once I've blanked my opponents spells 1, 2 drops, blanked their attack, or on my way to making thopter tokens. Now if the card you tutor for is countered you could be in trouble.

C Mox may be unnecessary but it allows you to run TfK, which otherwise is slow and clunky. Not to mention speeding up the turn you resolve something like Humility is the difference between life and death.

Seriously though, if you have such a problem with it play Bob, or just switch to Landstill.

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...I was just asking people's opinion on Chrome Mox....

Sorry if I'm trying to see diffeternt opinions and thoughts...................

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Originally Posted by SMR0079

Cards like Tutor or CMox set you back one card with the expectation that their return will put you much further ahead. It doesn't matter if I'm down one card once I've blanked my opponents spells 1, 2 drops, blanked their attack, or on my way to making thopter tokens. Now if the card you tutor for is countered you could be in trouble.

C Mox may be unnecessary but it allows you to run TfK, which otherwise is slow and clunky. Not to mention speeding up the turn you resolve something like Humility is the difference between life and death.

Seriously though, if you have such a problem with it play Bob, or just switch to Landstill.

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Wait, why can't this deck also aim for card drawing? Landstill isn't a good card for shits and giggles.

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Originally Posted by pippo84

...I was just asking people's opinion on Chrome Mox....

Sorry if I'm trying to see diffeternt opinions and thoughts...................

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You have 4 Fow, 3-4 tutors and you have to pitch cards to fow too. Lots of times I wanted to play mox, but cards in hand were more important than speed (vs. blue that's always). With mox you can play TFK but you don't have so many artifacts to discard.

Playing this deck for the first time, and I'm having a hard time against zoo. Surely its not going to be easy, but I feel a quick combo is about all I can do against the quicker versions that see play these days. Thoughts?