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Past in Flames. You have to actually select the copy of Past in Flames in the graveyard when using Surgical. It is a legal play to leave it there (same goes for copies in the library). Togores' opponent simply failed to do that.Quote:
Originally Posted by rlesko
Oh ok. Thanks for clearing that up.Quote:
Originally Posted by Jonathan Alexander
Link to SCG article on ANT:
http://www.starcitygames.com/article...acy-Storm.html
Quote:
Originally Posted by ScottW
Do not read that article, it will do more harm than good. Literally everything he says about Storm (and, quite frankly, Legacy) is wrong.
I agree 100%. It seems like he clearly doesn't know what he is talking about.Quote:
Originally Posted by Jonathan Alexander
So, at this point, every time I go to a GP I end up losing to BUG decks in any shape or form. What do you guys sideboard in vs Shardless, Bug Delver etc? I won't provide a sideboard, I'm interested in your plan, to see several plans against the decks. It'd be nice if you guys could add some information about how you feel the matchup plays out. There's extremely few BUG decks in my local meta and it's the one deck I'm not able to practice against very often.
Yes, thought it was an interesting piece of misinformation.Quote:
Originally Posted by Jonathan Alexander
Closed it as soon as I saw the authorQuote:
Originally Posted by Jonathan Alexander
Well, the first thing he says is that he never plays Legacy, he then goes on to say how he's terrible with Storm. Then he writes an article about how the deck should change without explaining a single one of his choices. I don't get how this can ever get published.Quote:
Originally Posted by CabalTherapy
This was actually me in the past. Nobody ever plays Team America in my area but literally all but one of my losses in the two European Grand Prix I played Storm in came to blue Deathrite decks.Quote:
Originally Posted by Stoyrm
Against Shradless, I board into Ad Nauseam Tendrils in case I don't have Ad Nauseam maindeck. If I don't have my two copies of Dark Petition, I'm boarding two copies of Abrupt Decay. If I'm on 2 Petition / 1 Ad Nauseam, I don't sideboard at all. I don't like Empty against them because their deck is all creatures that block tokens profitably and they basically have to board removal.
Against Team America and Grixis Delver, I try to be as close to this after boarding as possible:
4 Lion's Eye Diamond
4 Lotus Petal
4 Brainstorm
4 Cabal Ritual
4 Dark Ritual
2 Island
1 Swamp
1 Badlands
4 Polluted Delta
4 Scalding Tarn
2 Underground Sea
1 Volcanic Island
4 Duress
3 Empty the Warrens
4 Gitaxian Probe
4 Infernal Tutor
1 Past in Flames
4 Ponder
2 Preordain
1 Tendrils of Agony
2 Thoughtseize
You guys' reaction to Meriam's article made me think of a Simpsons episode where a group of Itchy and Scratchy fans are invited to Q&A the creators:
Remember that this article is aimed at your avarage standard/modern player with an interest in or curiousity about Legacy. Not deeply enfranchised Legacy pledges.Quote:
In episode 2F09, when Itchy plays Scratchy's skeleton like a xylophone, he strikes the same rib in succession, yet he produces two clearly different tones. I mean, what are we to believe, that this is a magic xylophone, or something? Ha ha, boy, I really hope somebody got fired for that blunder.
I think some of his analyses are off: his evaluation of Rain of Filth as a ritual that will help you combo off faster during the early game seems off, as Rain needs three lands to mirror Dark Ritual in output and four lands to exceed. He's talking about how it can often "add two or three mana" and at the same time talks about how it can help us combo on turns two and three. Anyway, not a biggie. I also think he's focusing too much on how to beat Eldrazi, like moving up to 16 lands to have a better shot at winning through a sphere-effect... forget it. Just forget it.
All in all, whatever. But the cattiness of enfranchised (storm) players gets to me at times :smile:
Agreed that the article has a different audience but here it is subject to a different analysis and the responses here seem aimed at readers of this forum with positive intentions.
I was surprised at his list of "core" storm cards.
Amazing how much crap he says. 16 lands and so... I bet he was about to cut Gitaxian for just more discard, because it does the "same".
I don't want him to tell me something new, I want him to not give wrong information to players who have no choice but to believe him. I didn't say reading his article was a waste of time, I said it would actively do harm.Quote:
Originally Posted by nevilshute
And I really don't like to be that guy, but this article is very bad in both content and structure.
I'm so hyped to read it, once I saw the "Defense grid>Xantid swarm" comment I prefered an earlier departure from home > choking on breakfast ...
EDIT: unimpressed and unaffected
To be honest, the list from the article is just about the worst configuration possible against Eldrazi. I also kinda stopped reading after the 16 land thing.
Against BUG decks I generally try to win as fast as possible, often via Ad Nauseam. An active DRS with discard plus counter backup is practically unbeatable in a long game. Even thoug technically not a BUG deck, my friend who I often test against plays Deathblade, which is similar in that it attacks Storm from literally every possible angle (graveyard hate, counters, discard, good clock that makes EtW obsolete, plus Meddling Mage and similar nonsense). Busting out a fast AN after hopefully clearing the way with some discard as been the most reliable way to win that matchup for me.
Lists without Ad Nauseam in the main deck are massively disadvantaged in those DRS+discard+counters matchups imo, and the frequency of those decks in my local meta is the main reason why I'm not playing Grinding Station/Sloshstorm/whatever at the moment.
I'll start by saying I'm a RUG player. I want to ask you guys, how effective is Tormod's Crypt vs you? I'm trying some different builds to get delirium for invasive surgery.
So we all seem to agree that the article linked above doesn't really give any answers for the Eldrazi matchup (or much else). What, then, is the best strategy for the matchup? I'm not looking for a panacea (there doesn't seem to be one); it just seems like the predominant trains of thought in the thread are a) hope your opponent doesn't play Eldrazi or b) use your existing board to try to push through their hate (or c] both).
I'm not going to pretend to be an expert, and I haven't got a ton of experience in the matchup generally (there are now a whole two people who play Eldrazi in my metagame), but there's got to be a better approach. Pessimistically, I'm on the side of choice a, but I feel like we're doing ourselves a disservice not to try to test more things in the matchup. We're devoting 4-6 slots to Miracles, and that's a pretty big chunk of our 'board, but this matchup seems even worse, and I don't see many advocates of a broader plan for fighting the Menace.
The best argument to be made against extensive sideboarding is that, simply, Chalices and Thorns are so devastating against the way our entire deck works that there's nothing to be done without entirely restructuring our deck. But nearly the same is true for CounterTop, yet people have found a (marginally effective) workaround that's become the standard for Storm sideboards. Chalk it up to my lack of experience, but I've still got dead slots in my sideboard.
Another problem is that the staple AnT sideboard cards don't really do much against Eldrazi. The best choice, as Ross pointed out, is Abrupt Decay, but that's pretty poor against multiple threats, esp. multiple copies of Thorn of Amethyst. Echoing Truth is also a contender, but it doesn't help us if the opponent lands multiple threats with different names (or a single Chalice on 2).
I've been running Hurkyl's Recall by default because of the bang-for-buck ratio, but in games in which either it doesn't show up or the opponent lands one Thorn too many, it's a dead card. Rebuild is too expensive, and our 1-cmc cards are also dead if they aren't live on T1 (e.g., discards).
Multiple copies of Empty the Warrens seems to be the other predominant strategy, but that's got a host of problems on its own. It's only better than our usual plan (or a singleton Empty) if we can land it on T1, and running multiple copies leads to saturation rather than quicker solutions in my experience. (As an aside, I've found that playing Empty from our hand is significantly less effective than tutoring for it—to a greater degree than one would expect—producing typically 6-8 Goblins rather than the 10-14 a tutored Empty usually yields. Maybe I'm just doing it wrong.)
Ross is taking a lot of flak for suggesting 16 lands, but he's onto something: 14 lands postboard is too few because we really, really need to hit land drops in case our opponent casts Thorn. That's why I'm boarding in the Tropical, even if I don't intend to run more than one Decay postboard in this matchup. I still think 15 lands is too many for most matchups (and results I've seen for both high-level and league play seem to confirm this by a slight margin), but in this case, it feels like a better setup, especially if we can't make the Magic happen on our first turn.
I've seen suggestions and lists that favor running either quad(?) Young Pyromancer or >1 copies of Chrome Mox. Pyro doesn't feel like a great fit (Smasher can trample over a bunch of tokens), but I won't rule it out yet. Has anyone tried two or more copies of Chrome Mox lately? For people running 15 lands main, anybody tried a Mox Diamond? A few contributors have said that they've managed to break even (or come close) against Eldrazi. What have you all been doing to achieve these results? How much is your performance dependent on the Eldrazi player's decision to (or not to) mull to Chalice/Thorn?
Rlesko, I don't think you need Surgery against us. You've got a toolbox of choices that's already big enough to handle our deck if you 'board in the right things and mulligan well. But to answer your question, Crypt (like RiP, Leyline, et al.) relies on your keeping us under the gun. It doesn't help if we land Ad Nauseam or Empty the Warrens quickly, and both cards are excellent for us in the matchup. So if you're able to keep pressure on a Storm player (knocking out AdN and making Empty riskier than it normally is), I guess Crypt works, but I can't imagine it's an optimal choice. You're only really bringing down Past in Flames, and though you're making Cabal Ritual worse (and making Dark Petition nearly useless), those aren't crucial cards for us either if we're quick to hit Ad Nauseam or Empty, or if we're able to make you break Crypt at an inopportune time (I'll leave determining what those times are to you! :D ). I board out Petition to board in Empty most of the time, and if we're on the Goes-Fast plan, making Cabal Rituals only ("only") net us one mana doesn't do a whole lot of good.
I hope that helps, Frienemy!
Trying to beat eldrazi is nonsense. I hace tried with a lot of aproaches but they have:
A good counter
A good clock
A really good permanent disruption
A hated card named Thought not seer
A soft mana denial plan (but good with the permnent hate)
Sometimes anti graveyard and anti goblin cards
And the card you have to play for it are usualy only good for this.
Miracles is played double as much as eldrazi and its still a better matchup. And the card for it are not as specifip.
Grips are also good vs cloudpost and so
Decay is a cath all
More tendrills is good in a lot of matchups
Extirpate also useful against combo
Pyro also useful in a lot of matchups
And this can be aplied to almost every miracles card.
I want the carda of my sb to be useful against a lot of decks. Not just one. And not one than im not gonna beat anyway.
you need lucky to win Eldrazi, doesn't exist a solution.
In my point of view the best way is play 2 Dark Petitions in main deck, to be more faster in turn 1 or 2.
Hurkil's Recall is a very good card vs lands. Isn't a waste slot. Play 2 seems good.
To become obsessive with the eldrazi matchup is a bad idea.
I hope you don't leave AdN in against Rug Delver postboard. It becomes very bad quickly because usually you won't to have some time to deal with their hand while Delver/Goose/(Goyf, Clique) go for the beatdown. ToA from hand is the best medicine.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ronald Deuce
The Eldazi matchup will stay really bad for Storm no matter what we do, but imo it helps to be aware of what counts in the matchup, and it's important to look at play/draw and pre-/postboard separately.
Pre-board:
In general we can't really afford to play any real answers to Thorn/Chalice pre board, because they do nothing for our main gameplan and hurt all of our other matchups. The closest we can get is playing maindeck copies of Burning Wish with Pulverize or Meltdown in the sideboard. I've tested that configuration and every now and then you do end up winning a game 1 because of it, but it's still not very reliable, because one TKS or Wail will usually break it up. I have won against turn 1 Chalice @ 0 + Chalice @ 1 with that tech, so it is certainly something that can work if they kept a threat-light hand. Sometimes when you're lucky you can also randomly win through one lock piece (like with Cabal Ritual heavy hands against a single Chalice@1 or Thorn), but a lot has to go right for you there. If a game is shaping up to come down to this, I sometimes start throwing spells into their Chalice just to get to threshold, then win with Cabal Rituals+Tutors+PiF as soon as I can.
Pre-board otp:
I feel like the best way to improve our matchup preboard otp is playing more discard, and starting with 4 Duress over Therapy. If we play something like 4 Duress/3 CT we have at least as many discard effects as they have lock pieces, and I felt like my otp win percentage was slightly over 50% with that config. Playing lists that have ways of winning asap can also help, because your own turn 1 otp is the only turn in the game where you can guarantee they won't do anything bad to you.
Pre-board otd:
Let's face it, if they have a good hand here, you're dead no matter what you do. The only thing you can do is build your deck in a way that enables as many fast wins as possible (maindeck EtW/Ad Nauseam) and pray they don't do anything turn 1. The Burning Wish tech mentioned above can sometimes help, but as I said it's unreliable and I wouldn't recommend it unless you're an advocate of maindeck Wish anyway. Same goes for winning through a singleton hate piece with Cabal Rituals. Keep your SDT/Preordain count as low as possible, because those are literally the worst cards in your deck against Eldrazi.
Post-board:
The main changes here will be that they now always have 4 Thorns (which means that CT loses even more value, because blind-naming Chalice may not be the right thing to do by default) and that they won't draw any dead Dismembers against you any more. Their deck is literally perfect against you. 25 Lands, 8-10 lock pieces and 25-27 things that kill you. In order to win through resolved lock pieces, apart from baing lucky and winning through them, there are a lot of options and I've seen people come up with very different plans. To name a few:
- Abrupt Decays/KGrips: Every Storm player has access to those and if you have no other specific plans for the matchup, all you can do is board them in and hope for the best. If you do rely on green cards against them you should obviously have 2 green lands in your 75 because of Wasteland.
- Chain of Vapor: Some people run those to complement the Decays and they also work here, but I generally don't like bounce very much in this matchup unless it bounces everything at once. There's not much to be gained from bouncing one hate piece if they have another one out, I'd rather just actually kill them one by one.
- Hurkyl's Recall: It's easy to cast in terms of colors, it can be used EOT and it gets rid of everything at once, so it's definitely a good choice. 2 Recall + 2-3 Decays is better than just 4 Decays, so if you have the room, why not run it. I haven't seen anyone play the full 4 Recalls yet, because noone really has that much room in the board, but if so, you might even get away without relying on Green, which is certainly great.
- Ingot Chewer: Every option from now on would start with 'if you have room for it', so I'll just stop mentioning it every time. Chewer 1-for-1s Chalice and Thorn for just 1 mana and it doesn't require Green either, but in turn you should definitely have 2 red lands in your list. The problem with this is that you'd most likely want the full playset, because unlike Hurkyl's you can't get rid of more than one piece at a time. And if you play only a few Chewers and are forced to board a split of Chewer/Decay, you're running into trouble with your colors.
- Meltdown/Pulverize: Like Chewer these require at least 2 red lands, which makes your color situation sort of awkward if you board Decays alongside them. Their advantage over Chewer is obviously that they can X-for 1 them, but they also come at a higher cost. They're also Sorceries, which means that you can Wish for them if you're doing that kind of thing, but also that Warping Wail stops them.
- Serenity: We're down to the more creative and obscure options now. This gets rid of all their hate pieces at once, it only costs 2 mana and Wail doesn't hit it. I haven't tested it myself yet, but in theory I think that this may be one of the most underrated options we have against Eldrazi. The problem is of course that it basically forces you to drop Decay, because 5 colors is just too ambitious, and once you lose those, you'll struggle more against Miracles and against creature-based hate pieces. I do plan on doing some testing on how much Serenity improves the Eldrazi matchup post-board, but it would have to be a whole lot in order to warrant giving up Decay.
- Teferi's Realm: If this cost 2U instead of 1UU, I may have tried it out already. Even though it's blue, it's cost is very prohibitive, and the fact that it costs 3 mana total might already rule it out. However, if you do manage to land it, the effect is incredibly strong. It gets rid of all their hate artifacts at once, it does so without any mana investment on the turn you want to go off, and it can also cut them off of Wail sometimes. It also works better than Serenity against Miracles, because it's harder to counter with CB and it permanently removes all their CBs during your turn, no matter how many they draw. Therefore I think it would most likely be a replacement for Decay, which would also mean you could drop green. In theory it's also decent against Death and Taxes and other decks that have creature-based hate. It would go with 2 basic Islands most likely. It's probably just too expensive and too gimmick to be actually good, but I really want to test it anyway.
EDIT: I've also seen people go really deep and play a singleton Moat or Ensnaring Bridge to tutor for turn 1, because it's usually a safer win than just going for EtW (and Bridge costs less). Preferable alongside a card that prevents you from ever decking, because your strategy here may be actually decking the Eldrazi deck.
Post-board otp:
Discard is still pretty strong here, so I'd keep all of them in. I start with boarding in an EtW (multiple is an option, but I never felt like I gained much by it and I don't want to waste 3 sb slots on them) and whatever answers to a resolved Calice/Thorn I decided to put in my sideboard. I don't usually max out on the latter, I'd rather try to use discard to clear the way and only have 2-3 actual answers to resolved things in my deck in case something goes wrong. Depending on how many cards I'm boarding in, I start by cutting down on cantrips. All SDT/Preordains first, but I won't hesitate to board out all 4 Ponders as well if I need to make that much room.
Post-board otd:
This is where discard loses a ton of value, because if they just drop their piece turn 1 all of your discard spells become pretty bad. I still wouldn't board out too many of them, because you may still need to clear that Wail out of their hand at some point (and because they're still just good if they happen to pass the turn on turn 1), but I'm happy to go down to 3-5. Ponders gain a little in value again, because they're decent when they lead on Thorn and you're looking for your answer to it, so I'll board a couple of them back in. EtW and all other ways to win as fast as possible stay in of course. As opposed to otp, I'll also boad in the rest of my answers to resolved lock pieces here (4-5 in total), because it's much more likely that they'll resolve them when they're otp.
Anybody have a link to the Grinding Station thread?
http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/s...inding-Station
(Still outdated though.)
(Also just realised I was playing six Storm spells and three Past in Flames maindeck. That shit was crazy.)
Term is official now: http://www.tcdecks.net/deck.php?id=20447&iddeck=155962Quote:
Originally Posted by Izor
Great!
How does this deck sideboards exaaclty vs miracles? Like in an outs?
:really:, lolQuote:
Originally Posted by CabalTherapy
differently than I do, I'm cutting LP, all you guys cut LED and ITQuote:
Originally Posted by Togores
I would like more -/+ list XD
seems like you cut petals while, I cut 2-2 OIT amnd led and Jona cuts all leds and IT.
I only do that with Grinding Station. When I'm on 2 Petition, I cut all Petals and Mox for Badlands and 4 discard.
Hi, need some help on playing storm in MTGO.
i cant seem to cast infernal tutor with LED.
When i hold ctrl while casting infernal tutor, it doesn't allow me to crack LED
When i hold ctrl and crack LED, my hand is instantly discarded.
whats the order of casting?
They recently changed the casting of spells slightly so that you have to click on your mana to indicate what you're paying (even if you only have access to one color). I basically just hold down ctrl, click on the infernal tutor in my hand, then click on the mana symbols I'm using to cast it with, all the while keeping ctrl pressed. The tutor will then go onto the stack and you will still have priority.Quote:
Originally Posted by KZhang
Thanks for responding.Quote:
Originally Posted by nevilshute
My challenge is when you cast infernal tutor, the available mana sources will be highlighted. What happens in my case is that the lotus petals will be highlighted, but not the LEDs.
Currently, do you crack the LEDs first? or cast the infernal tutors first?
Tutor first always. Crack LED when Tutor goes onto the stack, only then.Quote:
Originally Posted by KZhang
When you cast your infernal tutor, is your LED highlighted? or is it faded out?Quote:
Originally Posted by nevilshute
can you simply crack the LED when they ask you the pay for the mana cost?
Are you trying to pay for the tutor with mana from the LED? Because that won't work :wink:Quote:
Originally Posted by KZhang
I had a enjoyable game against Burg Delver today where he had Thoughtseize for my Tendrils and extracted it on turn1. I won with 16 Goblins on turn 3.
It was a nice match, meffeo. (I know you'll read this. :tongue:)
I only lost to Eldrazi today. He had 2x Chalice (0,1) turn 1 on the play and turn 2 TKS. In the second game: Leyline, turn 1 Chalice 1 followed up with TKS on turn 2 and Thorn on turn 3. Shit happens but I couldn't do anything.
oh. it doesn't? i always thought it did!Quote:
Originally Posted by nevilshute
Not sure whether it's quoted in the primer, but this is super-important: you can't use the mana from Lion's Eye Diamond to cast or use the abilities of cards that are in your hand when you sacrifice the Diamond. If you cast Infernal Tutor, for example, you can sacrifice Lion's Eye when the Tutor is on the stack so that you gain the 3 mana before the Tutor resolves, leaving you with three mana of a color of your choosing and the card you tutored to find in your hand. You can't cast anything else from your hand during that time because discarding your hand is part of the cost of Lion's Eye Diamond's ability. [EDIT: So if you sacrifice the LED with Infernal Tutor in your hand, you have to discard the Tutor and you don't get to use it after you've broken the LED. NEVER do that.] If (for whatever reason) you had a Lightning Bolt in your hand and a Mountain untapped when you cast Infernal Tutor, you could respond to the Tutor by casting Lightning Bolt, dealing three damage before the tutor resolves. Add an active LED to the mix: you can cast Bolt with Tutor on the stack before sacrificing the Diamond, but not afterward, because you have to discard Bolt to use the LED's mana ability.Quote:
Originally Posted by KZhang
I hope that helps; it's one of the most confusing and important aspects of playing this deck. One other thing to note: Infernal Tutor automatically goes Hellbent if you sacrifice LED with the Tutor on the stack.
This is starting to feel very much like my experience with Dredge. Only instead of opponents' sideboarding until they hit Leyline of the Void or double-Surgical, they just naturally draw mainboard cards that make it impossible for us to play things.Quote:
Originally Posted by CabalTherapy
Not happy about that, but I appreciate everyone's input re: the matchup versus Eldrazi. I'm gonna keep pushing forward, and I'll let you know if my fortunes start to turn for the better. Audentis fortuna iuvat!
Nevilshute, my curiosity's really getting to me: what was the opponent playing in the matchup with the G1 Island, Delta? What did you sideboard, and was it correct?
Right, sorry I had forgotten about that. Well I had the same thoughts as many of you "probably combo". Boarded in 2x fluster, 1x top, brought out 1x empty, 1x chrome mox, 1x something I'm blanking on and managed to beat my storm opponent :wink:Quote:
Originally Posted by Ronald Deuce
Where can i find a more detailed sideboarding guide? i've looked through the first post, but there isnt enough information from there.Quote:
Originally Posted by nevilshute
Thanks!