[Deck] Astral Slide vs. Legacy, take 78

Yeah, i'll fix the first post back to the old list, sorry, the new post m11/post bannings list is still completely up in the air. Teegs really iffy maindeck, but he basically came into it because I made up a list of all the potential matchups by strategy and he actually graded out as a positive against every matchup but vial decks and red aggro. I'm looking at alternatives for Finks and Knight of the Reliquary because between them, Witness, Slide, and Deed I just had way, way too much going on at the 3cc slot. It was really clogging up my play sequences and generally meant I had to wait until I hit six mana to start casting two spells/doing two things a turn, which is really just too late right now.

I ended up ditching Sorin for Liliana, way easier to cast, and the tutoring is just insanely good. Right now I'm looking at some potential two drops, whether those end up being Tarmogoyfs, Serra Avengers, Qasali Pridemages, or going back to being three drops I don't know yet. The list is pretty much in a state of flux right now and the first post is a bit off in several places, I'll try to get it updated into something useful as soon as I have good answers to provide.

One thing I have been enjoying tremendously in the sideboard lately is Preacher. Vedalken Shackles on legs is harsh times.

EDIT: restored the previous, tested chant list, and yeah, Gideon has been pretty hit or miss, not sure if he'll stay or not. Also been testing Elspeth, she's just a great in this deck as I remembered.

Honestly, its kind of funny, I pulled Tarmogoyfs from the list for Knights, and Hierarchs for Finks, and now I'm cutting those for clustering the curve and looking at replacing them with Goyfs and 'Walkers.

I had tested Elspeth knight errant and she was very strong in some game with Knight , did you have a new list with goyf' and walkers ?

Updated the first post except for the last two sections, how to play the deck, and matchups. Those are both horrible out of date, read at your own peril.

At this point I'm firmly convinced that Slide needs to run a minimum of 2 walkers, and probably more. Given the current state of the format, you're just not going to have reliable access to your graveyard in games two and three, and walkers are a great solution to this problem, they are also easier to protect in slide than in most other decks.

Tarmogoyf is a card I've gone back and forth on a dozen times. Right this second, I'm out on him, because right now the format is well suited to dealing with big dumb creatures. And graveyard hate, especially Relics, are everywhere, making "clever" creatures like Pridemage a better deal and often bigger anyways. Seriously though, if you can't deal with not having regular access to a graveyard in games 2 and 3, this is not a good time to play the deck.

Some great Slide cards that can operate freely of the yard, maindeckable variety:

Any Planeswalker.
Qasali Pridemage.
Trygon Predator.
Akroma's Vengeance.
Lightning Rift.
Hide/Seek.
Rhox War Monk.

Ok, its not a big list, but you need to get these guys or some other similar ones into your maindeck, or you'll end up having a couple really bad post board experiences.

Also, Lightning Rift. Kills Planeswalkers. Which is getting more and more relevant. Something to keep in mind.

I have always loved this deck but I always find the cards to be out of reach.

Now that I have most of the cards in this set, I think I can start tinkering with this deck again. I'll probably build the G/W version as budget would still be a concern.

My question now is: why isnt Knight of the Reliquary on the G/W list?

KotR is missing solely due to space issues, feel free to mod or add as you like. But Elspeth is generally better. Flies and harder to kill. If you want to increase the threat density, you can cut a Crop Rotation, a Flagstone, and a Pridemage for 3x KotR.

Your first, revised list ( Two Colour Slide ) has only 56 cards by my count.

Can you comment on how Intuition is working out for you, or the blue suite in general? You've mentioned in your primer before that blue doesn't really have much in the way of cycling cards, but there are some nice tutor packages in that setup you've got for Five Colour Slide. Also, how is Miscalculation? I've always loved the card, and before I got into competitive Legacy it was in almost every deck I had for casual.

Have you considered including a singleton Vendillion Clique? It's something I always wanted to try with a blue splash. It's colour intensive and seems a bit unnecessary for filtering your cards, but it's still got an undeniably nice ETB.

I would also like to take the time to mention the possibility of Academy Ruins / EE recursion in place of Firespout / Rift for Slide builds that focus more on blue splash if you are running Intuition as well. Thoughts? I am sure you've toyed with it, and it doesn't seem all that much slower than Volrath's. This is speaking more on Slide in general than on your second build, which I really really like.

You're right, I left off the Edge of Autumns, sorry about that. Fixed.

Intuitin is an amazing tutor in this deck. Huge fan. Best blue card.

Vendiliion Clique is something I just haven't gotten around to trying yet. Has a lot of useful abilities, and interacts well with both Slide and Karakas. Sitting in the already crowded 3cc slot is the biggest strike against it. Well, that and requiring UU. Note: Unearth makes it cost B.

Ruins/e.e. is just as good in slide as it is in everything else. Which is to say really good.

Miscalculation is mostly a pre-boarded combo card. It's great versus storm, and extremely mediocre vs. everything else. I mean, yeah, given that Legacy is a format where Daze is almost a hard counter, Miscalculation will counter a lot of stuff, but.. this deck isn't a counter deck and starts hating on you if you try to play it like one.

Temporal Spring is another blue card I've been meaning to try out but haven't gotten around to yet. I don't know if it'll be similar to Plow Under or not, but it does seem at least worth investigating. If you're leaning towards a more bant-ish build.

I love Astral Slide decks, and recently was inspired by the Naya Midrange * Big Zoo/New Horizons thread to incorporate Noble Hierarch into Astral Slide. The deck is often criticized for being too slow and for rolling over to combo decks. However, between Noble Hierarch's first turn mana accel, exalted ability, and counterspell support with blue mana, I thought it may be JUST the card this deck needs. Additionally, it allows us to play fewer mana lands to be replaced with manlands, tech lands, and cycle lands. Wasteland becomes far more valuable with 4 of these guys in the deck as well. I'm inexperienced in Legacy tournaments, but I was wondering what the community would think about this build. Somehow, it turns out much like a reverse midrange deck by putting pressure on in the early game with Noble Hierarch and Qasali Pridemage, and draws quickly into Astral slide, and planeswalkers to stabilize the damage race and steal the game. I was aiming for a fair amount of tech to keep it balanced in most fields, as well as being less dependent on the graveyard for games 2-3 (meaning no Goyf, KotR, and most likely siding out Life from the Loam and Eternal Witness), meaning their sided-in GY hate won't be the power boost for their deck they were hoping for.

Creatures:
4x Noble Hierarch
4x Eternal Witness
3x Qasali Pridemage
1x Peacekeeper

Planeswalkers:
2x Elspeth, Knight-Errant
1x Jace, the Mind Sculptor

Spells:
2x Crop Rotation
3x Edge of Autumn
3x Life from the Loam
3x Swords to Plowshares
4x Miscalculation

Enchantments:
4x Astral Slide

Lands:
4x Savannah
4x Tropical Island
3x Tundra
1x Forest
1x Plains
1x Island
3x Tranquil Thicket
2x Secluded Steppe
2x Lonely Sandbar
2x Wasteland
2x Flagstones of Trokair
1x Nantuko Monastery

60 cards

Sideboard:
3x Peacekeeper
2x Krosan Grip
2x Gilded Drake
4x Leyline of Sanctity
4x Tormod's Crypt

The sideboard should be fairly straightforward. This Bant Astral Slide is capable of early planeswalkers, letting Qasali Pridemage swing for 7 flying on Turn 3 and onwards, as well as balancing some Astral Slide shenanigans for board control once it gets a little out-of-hand. Add a dash of utility counter magic for defense, and viola! The strength that this build has over others is that it is far less dependent on the graveyard for games 2 & 3, better combo matches, and though it lacks the massive life gain Slide is capable of, it still has plenty of tricks to withstand (and keep up with) aggro.

I'm sure you all could improve the manabase, have it mulligan less, and just flat-out make it better... but I had this idea and didn't think that it had been touched on too much (correct me if I'm wrong).

In light of the many cool new cards spoiled in NPH, I decided to go ahead and update the deck again. This is the starting skeleton.

Disruption
4x Mental Misstep
2x Orim's Chant
2x Wasteland

Acceleration
3x Mox Diamond (can just as easily be Noble Hierarch or BoP)
3x Edge of Autumn
3x Ancient Tomb

Recursion
4x Eternal Witness
4x Unearth
3x Life from the Loam

Removal
3x Wrath of God
3x Qasali Pridemage (can also be Deed or EE or Vindicate/Pulse, but the cat seems most maindeckable)

Cycling
4x Tranquil Thicket
4x Secluded Steppe
3x Astral Slide

Lifegain
3x Inquisitor Exarch (can be loxodons or riftwatcher or finks or whatever really, Exarch just seems most versatile/valuable)

Colored Mana
2x Plains
2x Forest
1x Swamp
2x Savannah
1x Bayou
1x Scrubland
2x Windswept Heath
1x Verdant Catacombs

Total numbers:
25 lands
10 creatures
3 enchantments
3 artifacts
6 instants
13 sorceries

Sideboard
4x Ethersworn Canonist (generic hatebear slot, can also be teegs or leylines)
4x Obstinate Baloth (could also be renewed faith, but that lacks a lot of the utility of the baloth, and it's punch vs. zoo/tribal)
3x Surgical Extraction (generic gy hate slot, can also be ravenous trap or rapid decay or something)
2x Tormod's Crypt (another generic gy hate slot, yixlid jailer and loaming shaman are other options)
2x Krosan Grip (mostly for CB or other equally annoying stuff, could be Beast Within or EE or Deed too)

Loses badly to dredge (no gy hate md, slow clock, wrong kinds of removal), even after boarding, but has some game vs. everything else. Baloths in the board might look odd at first, but they're good vs. discard, burn, and aggro, which combine to form a pretty significant part of the meta, and can really push those matchups over the top for you. Plus they let you board in more clock/dudes for matchups where that's relevant, which stuff like Leyline of Sanctity wouldn't. Elspeth and a 26th land are the two things I would most like to add to the maindeck.

In the end the basic theory is to beat aggro with mass removal, lifegain and duders, combo with chants and counters and hatebears, and control with recursion and card advantage. Not foolproof, but a reasonably solid plan vs. all main archetypes at least, which isn't a bad place to start.

Seriously though, Mental Misstep is just huge for this deck, because even with 9 acceleration pieces, its still somewhat slow developing, and any time you can zap their first turn for no mana, that's really, really, really gamechanging huge.

Morgan

Has anyone mentioned or tried out Imperial Recruiter, even proxy, in this list? You'd have the two best CIP creatures in the game for the mana cost and it'd give you more flexibility to tutor for different creatures... er, versatility, that's the word I'm thinking. >.>

4x Recruiter
4x Witness
1x Cannonist
1x Spirit Guide
1x Duplicant
1x Pridemage
1x Hanna, Ship's Navigator
1x Magara
1x Mulldrifter
1x Shriekmaw
1x Mirror Entity (finisher?)
1x KoTR
1x Kiki Jiki
1x
...

Just some ideas, but it'd create lots of card advantage. Are there any good creatures with cycling to fetch?

MJ,

You're getting into some Wirewood Herald/green dude that tutored for a six mana guy from onslaught whose name I can't remmeber territory there. That stuff just isn't fast enough for Legacy, takes up way too many slots in the deck, and leaves you with a bunch of overcosted tiny guys that aren't actually relevant.

Recruiter works in Aluren because they're a combo deck and most of the time they don't actually pay any mana for him, plus he wins the game on the spot. None of those things are benefits slide would get from him.

There are no good creatures with cycling, there are two marginal ones in Eternal Dragon and the black 3/3 cycling unearth dude. Street Wraith also sort of qualifies. Kind of.

I agree with it slowing it down. But you're kinda comparing Treasure Mage to Trinket Mage. Recruiter works well with Slide's ability and lets you run toolbox creatures to deal with situation and works with Pridemage ^^ It was worth a shot, you know better than me. I was also wondering what you think about the new Blade Splicer creature in New Phyrexia. Dropping 3/3 Golems with first strike into play looks like a really cool ability!

Green Sun's Zenith is a better creature toolbox card if you want to run one than imperial recruiter. I'd lean strongly towards the Splicer's being crap, but it is two dudes for 3 mana and does have an ETB effect. So... maybe I guess.

I'm thinking of rebuilding this deck, as I always liked it (WGu version mostly) and I think Blade Splicer is a very nice addition to
the card pool!

2W is cheap, 1/1+3/3 is nice, and having many golems is sexy!

*cough*Fluctuator*cough*

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Mr. Safety

*cough*Fluctuator*cough*

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I've been playing this archetype for some time and think I can answer this one...

Fluctuator was great back when Lightning Rift was all the craze for cycling decks. However, since green came into the scene with Eternal Witness and Life from the Loam, playing red in a Slide deck was pretty much abandoned from what I've seen. Additionally, the W/G build tries to accomplish many things, as you can see from Morgan's multiple builds. The deck list is cramped enough already, meaning Slide players have to play 2-ofs and 3-ofs of cards that could easily be a full playset. Fluctuator just simply isn't as powerful as the other options and can't be squeezed into modern builds, especially when duplicates are absolutely worthless.

Fluctuator works better as a 1-of than anything else. But then you'd have to change your entire cycle suite to "Cycle 2" cards, rather than the current "Cycle W" or "Cycle G." This significantly hinders the deck, and you wont even be gaining the benefits of Fluctuator most of the time.

If you want to play Astral Slide, Lightning Rift, & Fluctuator in your casual play group, go for it. It'll function very nicely and win a good number of games. But as far as Legacy is concerned it just doesn't bring enough to the table.

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Now to respond to Morgan's NPH list with Mental Misstep and Inquisitor Exarch...

I like the build. It looks solid, but it doesn't appear to have gained any power from the previous lists; it just plays slightly differently. I'm wondering if playing a Slide build with Chalice of the Void is a better option now that we have Mental Misstep for further early-game disruption. The problem of course is once a Chalice is out for 1, the MM's become dead, but you'll have a better shot at stopping the Turn 1 play between the 8 cards and acceleration whether you're on the draw or not. Morgan mentions Chalice in the intro post and even comments about the deck requiring acceleration and dropping Swords and Unearths. A deck with MM and Chalice can more easily do that and include the mana accel in Morgan's NPH build posted above. I'd drop the Inquisitor Exarch for Aven Riftwatcher to take advantage of a Chalice @ 2.

everything daugarten says above is absolutely correct. This is what I'm running right now, has had good results in limited testing so far. tutorable teeg g1 is huge vs. combo. same with teeg, bojuka bog, and loaming shaman vs. dredge g1. Overall there are a lot of things i like about this deck. 8 pieces of acceleration, 18 cyclers (15 at 1 or 0 mana), multiple walkers and tutors, ability to abuse the gy without over-relying on it. large amounts of lifegain and ways to win outside of the combat phase. lotta good stuff going on here.


Enchantments
3x Astral Slide
2x Lightning Rift

Creatures
4x Eternal Witness
2x Obstinate Baloth
1x Knight of the Reliquary
1x Qasali Pridemage
1x Gaddock Teeg
1x Loaming Shaman
1x Dryad Arbor

Sorceries
3x Edge of Autumn
3x Unearth
2x Wrath of God
3x Green Sun's Zenith
3x Life from the Loam

Instants
4x Spark Spray

Planeswalkers
1x Ajani Vengeant
1x Elspeth, Knight Errant

Lands
2x Ancient Tomb
1x Karakas
1x Bojuka Bog
4x Secluded Steppe
4x Tranquil Thicket
2x Forest
1x Plains
1x Mountain
1x Savannah
1x Bayou
1x Taiga
1x Plateau
2x Windswept Heath
2x Wooded Foothills

Sideboard
2x Orim's Chant
2x Red Elemental Blast
3x Ethersworn Canonist
2x Hide/Seek
1x Tormod's Crypt
2x Ravenous Trap
2x Obstinate Baloth
1x Wrath of God

I think the sideboard gravehate should probably all be replaced by three surgical extractions when they become available, so what's there now is just kind of placeholder. There is also md gravehate in loaming shaman and bojuka bog, both of which are tutorable. I'd love to fit in a pair of orim's chants MD, but I'm not sure what to cut for them yet. probably the third LftL and the fourth spark spray make the most sense if I decide to go that route, but the second baloth is also an option, as is either redjani or elspeth. Or one of the zenith tutor targets like loaming shaman. Lotta options really.

Hide/Seek and Wog all hit prog/emrak decks, and karakas helps out too. Hide/Seek also does nice work against ANT decks if they're only running one copy of Tendrils or IGG/Ad Naus. It's also a gain six vs. burn if you take fireblasts. WoG also has good utility vs. the various Swarm + giant dudes decks that are common now.

REB is there because the meta is flooded with blue. Has limited value vs. ANT combo since it can hit BS/Ponder and slow them down, also counters bounce when they try to get teeg/canonist out of there with a chain or truth. REB is goldstar city vs. fish and high tide. Really should probably be three of them, but not sure what else to remove from the board.

Baloth hits discard, burn, zoo, goblins, etc. Solid vs. most of the field, spectacular vs. parts of it.

Canonist and chant both hit combo, and some random decks like elfs and enchantress as well. Good backups to md teegs.

In the MD, spark spray kills a large number of relevant creatures quickly and efficiently, which is very useful. It also cycles for R, which again, is useful since you've got thicket and steppe cycling for G and W respectively. The deck might look like a bit of a 4c mess, but really it's Naya rgw with a tiny splash for unearth. even the boarded black cards are freecastable.

As always, thoughts are appreciated. Thanks.

I haven't read this thread before, and didn't make it past the last couple pages, but why doesn't this deck play Mangara of Corondor? I think that's where I would start building this deck.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by B.C.

I haven't read this thread before, and didn't make it past the last couple pages, but why doesn't this deck play Mangara of Corondor? I think that's where I would start building this deck.

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Now, am I under the impression that you would activate the ability and then slide him out and the ability resolves to the best of it's ability?

If that doesn't function like that then that card is rather useless to the deck.

The Mangara - Slide interaction is the same as Mangara - Karakas. It works, although I wouldn't put Mangara in the deck, he's basically a slower and clunkier Vindicate without Slide, and even with Slide right there he's still slow.