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Sideboard for my above list:
3 tormod's crypt
3 jotun grunt
4 meddling mage
1 crucible of worlds
1 sword of feast and famine
3 engineered explosives
It lets the deck change to a completely different version of UW fish. With mages to target specific cards(including swords to plowshares), grunts to eat graveyards and explosives to control the board. It seems to have something for everything. Crucible if for more long game and the sword is for green decks.
In D+T we have been using Honor of the Pure for Sulfur Elemental and similar hate. It can be used proactively, which is better than an instant. And it has a very good effect on its own. Most of all, it actually makes their Sulfur Elemental really bad, as it would just buff our guys more. So their hate card sits dead in their hand until they can get rid of an enchantment or play two 3 cmc spells on successive turns against a deck that has oodles of nonbasic hate. Perhaps not the perfect fit that it is for D+T, but since you can just tutor for it, why the heck not try one?
Honor the pure....lol, that is awesome. The added bonus is that grunts and angels would be the biggest creatures on the board in most match-ups. It also buffs my super techie kjeldoran outpost!
I played more than a few games with this deck a year or so ago. It operates on no lands, gets benefits from having few lands, and is overall quite the excellent deck in some ways.
With the unbanning of Land Tax, I think it could get a little better.
Obviously, the deck needs to be tuned to work well with it. Going back to running some of the older creatures seems like it would work well, specifically Fathom Seer. Additionally, Snapcaster would allow additional Brainstorms to get rid of excess lands, which may or may not be very strong.
I, at least, am going to start building and testing a version of this with Land Tax. As far as I can tell, this deck has just about the strongest shell to start abusing it, so it's time to see if it works out or not.
I love this deck, and Thalia seems perfect here. Incidentally, landtax looks pretty bad in a deck with 2-3 basics. If you add more basics, you subtract from the fetches and brainstorm effectiveness.
I've considered it for GP Atlanta and it's on the short list. But how in the hell does it beat Maverick? I haven't playtested any but force/daze are bad there, the manadisruption does little, they trump us with knights and oozes, and they have qasali pridemages to hit our jittes. Post board they can bring in Linvala, Gideon, or Garruk Relentless and trump us again. I'm not sure what can be done.
One option is to bring Snapcaster into the mix. He'll up our spot removal quota. Board in Path to exiles or Gutshots and you might stand a chance. I used to be able to beat bant using Revoker on Pridemage, then land a sword. But bant had as many dead cards as us and no GSZ to find the pridemage.
If anyone has a lot of experience with this matchup, or any ideas, I'm open to advice.
I shelved my UW Tempo (with Meddling Mage in the flex spots, which I still believe to be a strong choice if you know how to play) just a few days after Maverick began hitting the Austrian metagame with full force (which was A LOT earlier than in the US), but my secret sauce plan against them was Hibernation. Dunno how well that'd have worked in practise, though.
I'm not sure Hibernation does enough, although resetting an ooze is always helpful, as is taking out the hierarchs. You could go the route of RUG and have 4 submerge in the board. This along with some revokers, paths, or gutshots could sway the matchup to closer to even post board. Stillmoon cavalier could be decent but probably doesn't have the damage output we need to turn the game around when we don't have consistent jitte access. Disenchant maybe?
I think Abolish is better than Disenchant in UW Tempo, as you usually end up piling up land in your hand anyway.
Stillmoon Cavalier is one hell of an underrated card imo, but this is probably not its decks - esp. since your Vial shouldn't be ticked up to 3.
If anyone wants to re build uw tempo they need to start with the Canadian shell and figure out what to replace nimble mongoose with(or play bant tempo like a boss).
The problem with land tax is there is no way to abuse it effectively in anything but miracle.dec right now. And even that is sketch.
Definitely agree with this. The interaction of Land Tax and Daze is just too strong to ignore. I'll be testing a list all week to play in a Super IQ next Sunday. Here's what I have so far:Quote:
Originally Posted by HPB_Eggo
4 Serra Avenger
4 Snapcaster Mage
4 Mother of Runes
2 Stoneforge Mystic
2 Jotun Grunt
2 Umezawa's Jitte
4 Aether Vial
4 Swords to Plowshares
4 Land Tax
4 Brainstorm
4 Daze
4 Spell Pierce
4 Wasteland
4 Flooded Strand
1 Misty Rainforest
4 Tundra
3 Island
2 Plains
How do you plan to abuse land tax with 5 basics? That's 1 and 2/3 activations.Quote:
Originally Posted by 1337erhosen
did anyone see the deck craig wescoe used in the SCG-event yesterday?
it used gilded drake and saving grasp to steel opposing creatures.
what do you think of the idea? it looked kind of cool imo.:cool:
Saving grasp might be a card that we can build around to an interesting fish brew. It is cheap enough, unlike momentary blink, and can abuse some interesting 187 abilities ie drake, snapcaster. Hmm
thats what i thought aswell. especially with a vial on 2 it can get pretty nasty.
wescoe played meddling mage and jötun grunt in addition to snapcaster and drake.
Wherever you start, I still feel anything called U(x) Tempo should start with 4 delver of secrets.
Right now I am sitting at:
Creatures(15)
4 Delver of Secrets
4 Serra Avenger
4 Mother of Runes
3 SFM
Instants (19)
4 Brainstorm
4 Swords to Plowshares
4 Daze
4 Force of Will
4 Spell Pierce
Sorceries(4)
4 Ponder
Artifacts (3)
1 Jitte
1 Batterskull
1 Sword of X+Y
Lands (18)
4 Wasteland
4 Flooded Strand
4 Polluted Delta
3 Tundra
2 Plains
1 Island
Sideboard (15)
4 Meddling Mages
4 Tormod's Crypts
3 Phyrexian Revoker
4 Path to Exile
I really miss all the casual wayfarer garbage you get to pull in the more traditional lists...
Wheres Wescoe's list? And has anyone tried a list with Standstill(s)?
From what I managed to see, Wescoe's list is pretty awesome and contains something like this:
Creatures:
4x Gilded Drake (4)
x Jötun Grunt (2)
x Meddling Mage (3)
x Snapcaster Mage (4)
x Stoneforge Mystic (3)
Lands:
x Island (5)
x Plains (3)
4x Tundra (4)
4x Flooded Strand (4)
x Fetchlands (4)
Other Spells:
4x Aether Vial (4)
4x Swords to Plowshares (4)
4x Saving Grasp (4)
4x Brainstorm (4)
2-4x Gitaxian Probe (2)
2-4x Ponder (4)
1x Umezawa's Jitte (1)
1x Batterskull (1)
Sideboard:
x Enlightned Tutor
1x Swamp
1x Underground Sea
x Perish
x Engineered Plague
x Pithing Needle
Maybe he has also Spell Pierce and 1 more Umezawa's Jitte in the sideboard...The rest I really don't know. Anyone could get his list? :)
The numbers in brackets are the possible numbers...
PS: btw, interesting choice from Wescoe to choose Mirror Entity with the Meddling Mage instead of Glimpse...Any comments on that?
Pretty interesting list. No FoW or Daze though?
You don't understand. The whole point of Land Tax is to turn Brainstorm into Ancestral Recall. You're not actually playing the basics. You just get all 5 out of your deck, play brainstorm, put the basics back, and then search them out again. You only need the activations after you Brainstorm, and by then you have basics to search out again.Quote:
Originally Posted by Star|Scream
You might play out one or two basics, but if you ever draw any other land you're playing that first. You might need more basics if you were planning on playing them out, but you're not because you've got Vial and Wasteland. You just keep them in your hand to abuse with Brainstorm.
The land tax version is forced to be super focused around Brainstorm, and that's why it's playing 4 Snapcaster Mage. What makes it good is that every Brainstorm basically reads: Draw 3 Cards. You play the same strategy as RUG Tempo of playing the least amount of lands to make your topdecks optimal, and in addition your Brainstorms are just better.
This version plays the control deck against aggro and combo and plays aggro against control. You have lots of disruption backed up with the card advantage to win the long game that you force your opponents into.
So your adding 4 dead cards to make yourself brainstorm better? SFM has better things to do than flash back brainstorms all day long. Change the slots to 4 ponders and you will get better results and not need to have less lands in play than an opponent.
Brainstorm becomes an ancestral on its own with the inclusion of fetch-lands, that is why the card is so stupid good.
Land Tax just isn't that good anymore.