If you have a Top (especially combined with fetchlands) under their Standstill, you can sculpt a VERY good hand while both of you sit there. Like multiple Chants good.
Printable View
If you have a Top (especially combined with fetchlands) under their Standstill, you can sculpt a VERY good hand while both of you sit there. Like multiple Chants good.
It's just basic control strategy. Unless you already have a significant threat on the table (something like Goyf or Dreadnought), dropping a Standstill against an opponent who is going to sit back and select his or her draws is just terrible. This always ends in the Tendrils player playing a Brainstorm or Mystical Tutor on the opponent's end step to make them draw 3 but discard down to 7, untap, and unload a lot of protection into a win (at this point, you can usually ignore Ad Nauseam and just play accel into IT -> IGG -> IT -> Tendrils.Quote:
Originally Posted by Hopo
1st : chant is better than grace as a MD slot, I won't deny it.Quote:
Originally Posted by Hopo
2nd : when going off, chant is good only against blue decks
3rd : when going off, AG is good against decks that make you lose life quickly. This is more than burn. It's zoo, burn, goblins, ... Aggro decks actually.
4th : how can you say that chant is as good as AG against burn? That removes all the credibility of what you say. Chant is only tempo against burn. AG, is a combo enabler and a burn counterspell (the last one).
Imagine your are turn 3, the burn player has already played a chain lightning and an incinerate on your face and he's untapped, when you chant. In resp he'll play bolt, PoP and fireblast. You're at 3/5. Now your only chance is to combo without AN. Imagine the same with AG, you can't lose anymore.
Why would We even go the ANT route when facing burn? I'd just go for IGG and win without life loss.
Because the IGG route is not as easy to set up. Also because, it's better to have 2 routes against a clock as the burn's one. Because Pyrostatic Pillar beats the IGG route. Etc...
Because it does it's job just fine.Quote:
Originally Posted by Maveric78f
If you are comboing on turn 1 or 2, as you should, your only worry is taking so much life loss from Ad Nauseam that you will be at burn range after that. By chanting before comboing, you disable everything that could kill you after Ad Nauseam. Sure they might have burnt you for 3 or 6 by then, but you can still draw enough or go iggy-style.
Imagine a carrot up Silvio Berlusconi's ass. Ain't that hilarious? But why haven't you comboed out a turn or two earlier already? Of course Angel's Grace is amazing if you just imagine the only possible scenario when it actually matters. You do realize, that you don't have 3 turns of time when you face burn in the first place? You should go for the throat earlier or just face the facts and go Iggy as it neglects your life total anyway. AG is a win-more card with minor actual utility value. If you like it, I don't blame you. People like all kind of shit nowadays.Quote:
Originally Posted by Maveric78f
I am repeating myself: If you face a lot of burn or fast aggro, you might warrant a spot in SB as a tutor target. Otherwise, you don't need it. You will inevitably lose some portion of your games anyway, you don't have to fight it by playing MD cards that make losing impossible. It's just statistics.
Oh. You're right. I don't know why I bother comboing on turn 3 when you combo turn 1/2 under chant's protection. Being rude does not help.
I don't like AG. I just noticed that the deck had a weakness against decks that can hit you very early in the game and I sought a solution. AG is my solution. The thing is that you all look like you did not even identify this weakness. You all are so proud of yourselves, that you think that you can combo on turn 1 or 2 reliably.
And, I never told I would play it MD.
AG is excellent in the situation you described and in burn matchup altogether. I just think that it's the only case I'd ever play it. I'd rather just go with Ill-gotten Gains. You can have more IGGs on sideboard, as they are golden also vs. discard strategies.
I'm gonna have to partially side with you on this one, although I have already discarded AG.Quote:
Originally Posted by Maveric78f
If we could AdN t1 and t2 as consistently as people appear to think, we wouldn't be needing IGG in the first place, especially not in the sideboard. Sometimes we will not win t1 and the opponent will play Teeg/Mage/Chalice/Amethyst/whatever from the side the following turn, slowing us down. It is, in fact, a weakness the deck has.
But my main beef with AG is exactly that it does nothing to accelerate the combo. In short, including AG instead of other options makes the deck slower vs aggro and thus increases the dependency on AG. It would be better off playing additional mana and IGGs from the side to speed up the clock. Or hell, pack Swords or Deathmark. What percentage of your meta is Fireblast decks, anyway?
I don't like IGG either because the deck is not really built to exploit it fully - but it can actually win the game with relatively minor support.
Of course there are situations where I would really need an AG. However, there are also situations in which I'd need Damnation or even Gigadrowse.
I think it's debatable, the problem I have with Top over Ponder is that Top is a permanent and doesn't increase Threshold or replace itself with out cost, but T3 Cabal Rituals aside I can see the appeal of being less reliant on UU and improving the mid/late game.Quote:
Originally Posted by emidln
Maybe it's worth cutting Infernal Tutor and/or Chrome Mox for a more FT style build?
I've been using 2 tops in my maindeck aswell. I only run 2 ponders. They have proven their strengths to me. vs Discard and slow control they are very strong in shaping your perfect combo hand.
Also during comboin'g they go pretty well with mystical tutor.
I have made a few testgames with this deck.
Can anyone tell me why most people play Wipe Away or Rushing River over Chain of Vapor in Mainboard? Chain of Vapor has the same effect and costs two Mana less.
I also have some successful decklists from german tournaments for you (if anyone is interested):
http://www.deckcheck.net/deckverglei...11_20550_20566
@ Frenkill
Mana efficiency is not so much the concern--raw bounce power is really more important. Wipe Away and Rushing River are much more versatile than CoV. Bounce exists in the main not to generate storm, but rather as a tutorable answer to problematic permanents.Quote:
Can anyone tell me why most people play Wipe Away or Rushing River over Chain of Vapor in Mainboard? Chain of Vapor has the same effect and costs two Mana less.
Wipe Away is mostly unanswerable and outside CB's curve. Rushing River can deal with 2 at once (Cov + 3Sphere, etc.).
peace,
4eak
The entire point of bounce is to answer Chalice of the Void and Counterbalance, with a lesser extent to Gaddock Teeg and Meddling Mage. Chain of Vapor gets hit by both Chalice@1 and is inside the Counterbalance curve, making it a horrible maindeck bounce spell. Rushing River hits everything you have problems with and can even hit multiple permanents if it needs to.
I need more sideboard Ideas vs blue based decks.
I play 4 chant and 4 duress main (ubw), but when the opponent 12 or more counters plays it can get difficult.
You have a lot of ways to tutor your disruption (brainstorm/ponder into it, mystical tutor it, copy it with IT). Just fetch until you have 3/4 disruptions in your hand and you have quite a lot of lands/available mana. Then you play your disruption (first duress, then chants). It's highly unprobable that your opponent will have enough countermagic and mana to counterspell 5 spells. If he does, kill him with tendrils.
I forgot but extirpate shines also in these MUs where you know you'll have plenty of time.
Yesterday, I played the mirror match. After game 1 where I've won the duress battle and I comboed properly, we SBed. My SB: -1 IGG, -1 bounce, -1sensei's divining top, +3 extirpate.
On game 2, I can go off once more before him, but I AN-reveal only crap and I can't neither have UU to fetch my tendril nor discard my hand to play infernal tutor. Finally, I went the route, dark ritual, duress on tendrils, extirpate on tendrils, I check that there is no kill anymore in his deck, he'll have to deck me. I had no problem to combo 8-10 turns later. The idea, is to start with chant if he answers with chant, stop the combo and extirpate it on his turn. Wait to draw enough (8 playable spells including 1 IT). Then chain 2 times IT and your opponent will lose 20. You can also take advantage of ponder/brainstorm to raise the storm.
As a conclusion, in the mirror MU, extirpating tendrils is as much a victory as comboing. Keeping that in mind, in order to take advantage from it, sb them in, at worst it wrecks their mystical fetch, at best it's a kill. To protect yourself, don't play more than 1 copy of tendrils, brainstorm it back to library as soon as you can, and you may want to play 1 copy of an alternate kill in SB (EtW, whatever).
Obviously the best would be to play counterbalance, and it's quite an effective SB card in many MUs actually, but I'm not sure it's the best solution.
I've been bringing in 4 Pact of Negation. So far in testing it has been quite enough.Quote:
Originally Posted by i_need_the_extra_turns
I bring in Meddling Mages and an Extirpate along with Helm of Awakening and Grapeshot. Since I play a package of 4 Infernal Tutor/1 Doomsday/1 Ad Nauseam, I'm able to MM Tendrils and/or Ad Nauseam and still combo as normal. For chant superiority, I've been using the same strategy the first time I designed this deck (Extirpate + playing defensively with Chant). I've had a lot of success.
If the other deck played only 1 copy like it should, the fact that Tendrils was even in his hand for you to Duress away is extremely lucky. Yes, Extirpating Tendrils is strong, but its probably not making it into his hand for you to Duress away very often, making it an improbable strategy at best. Boarding in Extirpate to take their win condition seems like a bad idea, especially because Extirpate is a bad card.Quote:
Originally Posted by Maveric78f
Extirpate is an amazing card for storm combo. See my arguments in the Extirpate thread, which I'll note that nobody refuted. It's not boarded in to take Extirpate. That's an opportunistic use that theoretically could happen, but not the primary purpose. The goal is Extirpate is to win the Orim's Chant war of attrition.Quote:
Originally Posted by troopatroop
Fair enough. I just wanted to point out the unlikelihood, and how that shouldn't be the main thought behind it's inclusion.Quote:
Originally Posted by emidln
And to mess up the mystical.
I totally agree. One of the things I noticed playing early version of Fetchland Tendrils and more recent builds with 4x Doomsday is that many times an opponent could completely wreck me with Duress + Tormod's Crypt/Extirpate/Leyline if they realized that I only played one win condition. This doesn't register to most opponents and they will likely take a far more threatening card like Doomsday, Ad Nauseam, Ill-Gotten Gains, or Brainstorm. In any event, it's a pretty big gamble because all of my storm combo decks, from the original builds of FT to more modern DDFT to the hybrid DD/AdN deck that I've been testing have multiple win conditions available postboard. Ad Nauseam and Doomsday both open up alternate paths to victory like Brain Freeze/Grapeshot to go with the always possible Empty the Warrens. In this way, it's really a risk to choose a win condition with Duress over protection, acceleration, or a tutor/bomb.Quote:
Originally Posted by troopatroop
Agreed about the idea that Extirpate on Tendrils is not so probable in the mirror. I won't say anything about how good Extirpate itself is though (that's dangerous waters around here lol).Quote:
Originally Posted by troopatroop
If you want to remove their Tendrils in the mirror, maveric, try using Extract instead. Most ANT decklists only run 1 Tendrils anyway.
You know Earlier in this thread i mentioned extract, and isnt it kinda fail. Like your backwards language that decks just have to start sbing that shiz to get us.... man i hate that card. If people dont see how good it is against us then ... and it would also be a decent card in the mirror
You are right about extract. However, it's not tutorable in most decks. And it's too narrow to be played in more than 1 in SB. Even in ANT SB, I think that mirrors are too rare to play it as a tutorable *1.
Extirpate is far less narrow. It's very strong against big disruption decks like MUC or standstill. It's strong against ichorid. And you may probably like it in other MUs, where chants are bad (aggro loam for instance).
On the extract topic or even just not finding an answer in general, I like Burning Wish. A singleton in here would be fine, especially with 4x Petals. You wouldn't even *need* to change the manabase, although if you were uncomfortable with not, then you could toss in a Volcanic somewhere.
Pce,
--DC
I've been thinking about the sideboard from Hanni's current list, and I think it can be much improved. The Slaughter Pact, StP, and Crypts aren't very useful, since we can just bounce Meddling Mage and Gaddock Teeg and race Dredge.
Right now, my metagame is mostly Stax/Chalice Aggro, Aggro Loam, Storm Combo, random aggro (many with Wasteland), and a few Thresholds.
Currently, my sideboard is:
1x Plains (Wasteland decks and Dragon Stompy)
4x Serenity (Stax/Chalice Aggro)
3x Repeal (Counterbalance, occasionally aggro)
1x Wipe Away (Counterbalance)
3x Hydroblast (Aggro Loam, Dragon Stompy, Swan Thresh)
3x Echoing Truth (Stax/Chalice Aggro, Storm)
Repeal is a limited card, in that it's pretty much only useful for bouncing Chalice at zero and Counterbalance. It can generate storm by bouncing an LED or petal, but it's inefficient for dealing with creatures and prison pieces. Chalice for one is usually the stronger play against ANT, and Echoing Truth is better equipped to deal with it.
Since the DtB forum is mostly Landstill, Thresh, and Storm, and decks we annihilate, maybe some number of Abeyance would be a good sideboard choice. Added counterspell protection can't hurt, plus they're almost as good as chants versus Storm.
Third place yesterday at 80+ people tournament.
Same list like last one top8. Only SB change with the introduction of red splash against Counterbalance decks.
@Kuma: why do you play 3x Repeal? We discussed it time ago and it's horrible.
It doesn't bounce Teeg and Chalice at 1 and it hasn't split second like Wipe Away against CB.
Well, what should I run over it? More Wipe Away? I can't imagine myself needing it in multiples, and it's not an easy card for us to cast. The main reason I run it is because it replaces itself and doesn't muck up your hand while comboing.
The only major deck that runs Teeg is Survival, and we've already got a great matchup there. Besides, I've got Rushing River, Echoing Truth, and Wipe Away to bounce Teeg if I really have to.
I mostly use Repeal to bounce Counterbalance, Dreadnought, and Meddling Mage. It's a solid card against Thresh and Dreadstill, but I agree it's probably the weakest card in the sideboard. Repeal deals you less damage from Ad Nauseum than your other bounce and is great with Mystical Tutor post Nauseum.
I guess if Repeal is so bad, what's a better card to replace it?
Chain of Vapor, which you can also use to build Storm count.Quote:
Originally Posted by Kuma
Edit: Also why do you need that much bounce? It seems like total overkill.
repeal actually seems really good. It dodges thresholds curve with a CMC of 3 when bouncing counterbalance while also keeping the CMC of the deck lower so it doesn't bolt you like rushing river or wipe away when resolving AN.
It is really good on chalice at zero and the card draw keeps your hand at a healthy size.
It is more narrow than the other bounce but i still think it has a solid role in the sideboard.
It finally got there, now that it's there! Cheers. (and painter went away, mouahaha)
Chain of Vapor doesn't bounce Counterbalance (easily), but can bounce Gaddock Teeg and can bounce MM for two mana less. One of these cards shows up in numerous DtB, the others do not. Repeal replaces itself and works great with Mystical Tutor. Neither Repeal or Chain bounce Chalice at one, but both bounce Chalice at any other number for one blue mana. Repeal draws you a card in the process, Chain doesn't.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ertai's Familiar
The only real advantage Chain of Vapor has is that it can generate more storm than Repeal. But that's not why we run bounce, and it's not like the deck has problems generating storm, especially after an Ad Nauseum.
I don't see the arguement for Chain of Vapor unless your meta has Gaddock Teeg and Meddling Mage, but no Counterbalance.
I almost never side in more than four bounce spells. I have eight, because I like to tailor the bounce to the matchup.
I'd like to run something else over bounce, but all I can come up with is Abeyance, and I'm not thrilled with it. I'd love to hear suggestions about what to run over some of the bounce, but it seems like most people are as puzzled as I am.
Alright, so now that AdN Tendrils is a DTW, do we have a basic list to go off of and serve as somewhat of ground zero?
Also, should all discussion revolving as AdN as an enabler in threads like some of the FT thread be moved here?
Instead of tailor bounce spells why not tailor removal spells (Slaughter pact for creatures and serenity for other permanents). Then you can use the remaining slots to ensure the win against aggro (angel's grace or additionnal copies of IGG if you prefer this route), to ensure the win against control and random graveyard based decks (extirpate), and if you meet a lot of comboes in your meta, you can even include 1*extract.
(in addition to MD 1*wipe away, 4*duress, 4*orim's chant)
4*Serenity
4*Slaughter's Pact
3*Angel's Grace
3*Extirpate
1*Extract
Then, the difficulty is when you play against CB, MM and FoW. But I think it's difficult for all ANT versions...
Hanni's B/u/w list on page one is the basic list.Quote:
Originally Posted by rsaunder
Four Slaughter Pact is overkill. The only creatures we'd ever need to Slaughter Pact are Gaddock Teeg, Meddling Mage, and Ethersworn Cannonist. All three are already answered by bounce, and Slaughter Pact's upkeep cost makes it ineffective at buying time vs. aggro. I don't know about you guys, but I'm not seeing those creatures in great numbers and we already have ways to deal with them.Quote:
Originally Posted by Maveric78f
I could understand running Extract and Extirpate if you expect the mirror match, but, in general, both are subpar cards.
Angel's Grace seems like danger of cute things. Yes, it lets you draw your whole deck if need be, provided you cast it before Ad Nauseum, and can give you an extra turn to IGG vs. aggro, but I haven't had problems drawing enough cards off Ad Nauseum, or beating aggro. Angel's Grace just seems extremely narrow.
After some thought, I think our sideboard looks something like:
4x Serenity
1x Plains
4-6 Bounce
0-1 Hurkyl's Recall/Rebuild
0-2 Abeyance
0-4 Hydroblast
0-1 Slaughter Pact
0-4 Pact of Negation
Right now, there aren't enough cards that scream "Yeah, play me!" for me to be happy with any sideboard.
@ rsaunder
Ground zero means what cards, at the bare minimum, do I expect to see in any ANT deck, right? This archetype is still fairly new, and isn't completely established (even though it deserves DTW status), so we have to be careful when we isolate what exact cards we expect to see in any deck we call ANT.Quote:
do we have a basic list to go off of and serve as somewhat of ground zero
The basic shell of ANT:
Lands: 9
4 Polluted Delta
3 Underground Sea
1 Island
1 Swamp
Mana Acceleration: 17
3 Chrome Mox
4 Lotus Petal
4 Lion's Eye Diamond
4 Dark Ritual
2 Cabal Ritual
Card Quality: 12
4 Brainstorm
4 Mystical Tutor
4 Infernal Tutor
Engine/WinCons: 5
3 Ad Nauseam
1 Tendrils of Agony
1 Ill-Gotten Gains (Although a few may disagree, I'm going to argue this is a shell-staple)
These 43 cards belong in every variant of ANT. You can splash for red and/or white, or whatever, but you still have to run these 43. Obviously, decks will be running more land, usually some sort of protection and bounce, and often higher quantities of cards like CRit, CMox, or AdN. Those additions aren't exactly set in stone though, so I can't point them out as being part of the shell.
The above shell defines ANT. The other 17 cards define the variant you play.
@ Kuma
While B/U/w ANT is probably the most popular among us, I'm still going to call it a variant and not necessarily the standard ground zero. The dust is still settling, and while B/U/w ANT may become the standard list for most metagames (and it probably will), it is evident that other variants are still finding success (even if we believe it is despite their card choices and not in virtue of them).Quote:
Hanni's B/u/w list on page one is the basic list.
What makes a deck an ANT deck is running the above. Further evolution or multiple variants are still likely.
peace,
4eak
A lot of people (including me) play only 4 AN. And I don't see a lot of people playing less than 13 lands, even if I admit that not everybody splashes white. I also think that everybody agrees in playing 4*duress. On the opposite, not everybody plays the 4*LED+4*IT mechanics.
Kuma you're 100% wrong. Extirpate is the SB card I SB in the more often. It wins mirror and control. AG has already been discussed a lot. I understand that you might prefer another out to aggro, but you absolutely need one. And Slaughter Pact, what's the problem with that card? Why would you prefer bounce to removal? Will you enter more than 4 bounces in a single MU? You already said that no. So why would you play 4/6 bounces in SB instead of play 8 dedicated and highly efficient removals? Sorry but I don't get.