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It saddens me that whenever I read a report on SI, the common thing is losing matches due to play mistakes.
When I was testing before, I was afraid of hate bears. I knew I had no outs against a resolved Teeg or Canonist in my 75. You know what I realized? Instead of dealing with them, I just had to kill them before the hate bear lands. That new mindset turned my playstyle on the deck up a notch.
Yes. It's tempting to throw away the deck's strenghts to fight things not worth fighting.
Example: Xantid Swarm seems a very appropriate protective card.
However... if we blow a Petal, we're down 2 cards in our attempt to actually win; that's a free Hymn to Tourach for our opponent. If we imprinted a Land Grant on a Chrome Mox to cast it, that's 3 cards that are neither business nor black mana. Most of our other permanent mana sources are worth countering anyway so the harm is done before we get to play Xantid swarm, let alone attack with it.
We're also weakening our bulk draw and won't get any protection until a turn afterwards.
Assume the opponent has 1 island in play... do we want to play a Xantid Swarm or attempt to go off?
Swarm means they have to use any Force/Daze, which they can also fetch with a Brainstorm, on a card of our choosing or never. At the cost of allowing them to play Counterbalance or hate bears, also fetchable with a Brainstorm.
Free counters turn the game into a battle of attrition, SI handles that reaosonably well. Hateful permanents are usually a much bigger problem.
*
Counters, discard and hate bears are popular, chalices, taxing artifacts, mindbreak traps and leylines are available to everyone. Potential problems come in all card types, colours and function - some make it hard to get started and some keep us from finishing. Finding the ideal anti-hate tool is an exercise in futility and means we're playing someone else's head games when our own are so much stronger.
I don't necessarily want a pure goldfish killer, but I want flexibile tools that can correct an 'oops' as well as help us win in a way that's not too inefficient: Diverse win conditions and Wishes, possibly supported by draw-our-deck mechanics. Flexibility keeps us from being out-cheesed: If Leylines shut us down completely and our opponent counts on that, 4 sideboard cards automatically mean losing odds. All the other 71 need to do is whittle us down before time is over.
It also saddens me to lose to my own play mistakes. But those can be fixed, especially over time. Learn from it and move on.
I decided bounce is the best option for permanent based hate. A mere 6-7 cards or so in the board for permanents. The rest is for blue, and the main is dedicated to going off as fast as possible.
I see so much potential in the SI storm combo arch-type. This deck is much more precise at getting the storm count done to drop the opponent. Compared to other storm decks its price is much better too.
I would like to know, what you're boarding plans are.
(specially what out)
I almost always boarded out the Xantids for Echoing Truth or Nature's Claims/Slaughter Pacts.Quote:
Originally Posted by CabalTherapy
Neither of which I'll be running again anytime soon.
We picked up a few potentially sick cards from the new set:
http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/attac...7&d=1301957368
Might work well in the man plan. Its a negator that for B more will prevent your opponent from chumping him without losing shortly thereafter.
Gitaxian Probe p/U
Sorcery
Look at target player's hand.
Draw a card.
This is a new cycler. Being able to play this on turn 1 can tell us how we want to go about playing our baiting tricks; seems invaluable. We've never had that flexibility before with a card that replaces itself. It would give us more blue sources for slithermuse tricks (Chrome Mox), but then we lose power in Chrome Mox at producing initial B. Makes me think we should be playing this in a build with lands.
The looks of the new set make me want to play a slower version. QSI is looking more enticing than the other builds.. especially when now we can actually see whats going on in the opponents hand at the cost of a little life. Would a Duress be better? Maybe... but this card is yet another 0cc card that actually adds to storm (something Street Wraith couldn't do). Further, Gitaxian Probe synergizes very nicely with Cabal Therapy, which QSI happens to incorporate.
The new free counter (MM) I'm sure you've all seen is certainly going to give us a headache. Everyone and his mom is going to play it, probably maindeck in many cases. SI has been fairly good against free counters because there were not that many but now we have to deal with the combined forces of FoW, Daze, and MM. At 2cc, Defense Grid is looking pretty hot to me.
Yeah mental misstep makes the merfolk MU an even bigger pain; now they can just MM our xantid swarm postboard. Which is fail. That card is a pain in the ass for this deck; if it counters a culling the weak it's such a blowout. Oh well. Maybe we could play the card, especially in QSI since I think it's somewhat decent as a protection spell against opposing MM's or spell snare at least. And against counterbalance it hits their sensei's top so they don't get the combo online too quickly.
I like obliterator in the man plan; didn't think of that till now but he's the sickest creature in black for a long while. And we can easily cast him. He's either an amazing wall or a psuedo unblockable 5/5 and if they block with a goyf they'll likely be sacking 4 permaments or at least 3 lol. Same with nacatl and almost every creature in the format.
Gitaxian probe is interesting. Any build can play it but it's best suited in QSI. I might have to test that card out, at least it makes storm while street wraith is just straight worthless now lol.
I might be back on the manplan soon but probably after obliterator drops; 25 a pop is a bit high for a card that should be worth under 10. People will soon find out it's like abyssal persecutor in standard; starts at 30 and is currently around the $8 mark.
When playing force of will decks, I realize the entire sb goes in. But what do you take out?
When I play SI, and I put the entire sideboard in, I take out:
1 Land Grant
1 Culling the Weak
4 Summoner's Pact
1 Dryad Arbor
1 Eternal Witness
1 Odious Trow
1 Slithermuse
3 Tendrils of Agony
2 Manamorphose
I think I would keep the dryad arbor in and take out a cabal ritual since you want more permanent mana source and the 2 mana on cabal makes it hard to play around daze/spell pierceQuote:
Originally Posted by Namida
The issue is that Dryad Arbor is a pretty poor initial mana source (summoning sickness), and is removed too easily for me to be happy with it as a permanent mana source. It also puts me at four lands for Charbelcher, which isn't good because Charbelcher is the primary win-condition with this deck configuration. There is some merit to the idea though, because I've had a few times where I drew Culling the Weak with Land Grant in my hand, and it would've been pretty good there...but I feel like the number of times I will draw the Arbor or something outnumbers the number of times it would be good.
Sure you can't use it the turn t=you play it but you can use it every turn after that and every removal spell used on the arbor is one less for your xantid swarms and most decks will board out most of their removal anyways. the plan postboard is to gain incremental advantage until you can play a belcher and activate it multiple times making the difference between 3 and 4 lands minimal especially when the one you want to side out is tutorable. Also that lowers your creature count to 4 from an effective 9(not counting spirit guides since the amount of times you actually cast them is so marginal).
Granted I haven't tested postboard more than a few games since I'm still looking for some cards and just proxied it up so I might be wrong but it seems like the utility is exactly what we want.
I'm running this sb:
3x duresss
4x xantid swarm
4x carpet of flowers
2x tomb of urami
2x belcher
but I don't like having the 2 tombs(and spirit guide/ arbor I guess) as my only outs to pithing needle/revoker and I guess leyline of sanctity, do you who have tested this board think it is enough? Or should I add some nature's claims and what would I take out for them?
To give you an idea of what I'm talking about--I've lost games because Dryad Arbor doesn't tap for mana and then gets Wastelanded. I would never want to have Dryad Arbor be the mana I need to win the game...because I lose every time that happens. It gets killed by everything under the sun and your opponent usually knows that killing it will fuck you.
The difference between 3 and 4 lands is huge. It can be the difference between winning now or having to give your opponent an entire turn to find answers. It can be the difference between winning now and letting your opponent kill you with two Tarmogoyfs. It can be the difference between winning now and dying because you couldn't find the third mana you needed to try again.
That is the exact sideboard I use, and I am very familiar with the post-board plan because I've been using that plan for about a year now. While you're capable of grinding out some incremental advantage, the other part of the story is that you still want to put the game away in very short order. The advantage you gain is usually at the expense of your own life total--you'll be playing a bunch of "must-not-resolve" spells, but you'll usually want this to mean that the spell that punches through is the D4 to give you more scary spells. Landstill and High Tide excluded, every Legacy deck with blue in it these days plays creatures that form a quick clock which can destroy you if you take too long dicking around by activating Charbelcher over and over again. And since you don't always have the luxury of having three permanent mana sources for Belcher, you'll run the risk of a misfire with no way to go off again in time.
What if it's in your hand? The aforementioned reasons still make Dryad Arbor really risky as anything but a Culling the Weak target, and I'd rather Culling the Weak be dead in my hand than have Dryad Arbor in my deck weakening my win-condition. In addition, honestly, no one good ever boards out all of their removal against a deck like this because they'd rather have dead cards than just completely lose to an unknown card like Tomb of Urami, and it's pretty much a given that a Storm deck playing green will have Xantid in the board.
I'd add Nature's Claim to the board. I've never ended up paired against any opponents playing Needle/Revoker, but as it is the deck is dead in the water to a T0 Leyline unless you get lucky enough to cast all of your creatures while your opponent kept a shitty hand hoping that the Leyline got you (which it normally should do anyway).
You obviously have more experience than me so I'll take your word for it here.
What would you take out for the claims? I'm having a hard time deciding.
Don't forget that even if they have a leyline out you can still belcher their creatures, which is the only reason I consider our creatures win conditions.
I just did the math for the probability of seeing a land in the first 20 cards based on whether you have 3 or 4 lands in your deck. If you have 4 lands in the deck and have seen 7 cards(basically your opening hand) there is an 87.7% percent chance to flip a land in the top 20 cards. If you have 3 lands there's a 78.9% chance the more cards you see the high the chances are. There is a 8.89% difference between 3 and 4 lands with 7 cards seen and the difference gets smaller the more cards you see. I guess that is a pretty big difference.
This is just me applying my knowledge of calculating poker probabilities to magic so take it with a grain of salt, however I believe these numbers are correct.
EDIT: I've been trying out 2 tendrils 1 slithermuse 1 IGG 2 belcher instead of 3 tendrils 1 slithermuse 2 belcher. I like it because if gives me the choice to go for slithermuse if I have only 4 mana or less than 5 storm when tutoring and it gives me a sure thing choice in other situations(barring disruption of course). Also slithermuse is considerably worse after turn one or if the opponent mulled more than once. I've found that most of the time I draw tendrils I don't have enough storm or if I do I've usually drawn more than one, though I usually just tutor for one when I need it. The times I've drawn IGG and wished it was a tendrils have been almost nonexistant so far but I've only fished it 20-30 times I will report back when I've tested more. In the mean time have any of you tried this before and what were your results?
I didn't mean to throw in your face that I've played the deck longer, or anything like that. I realize that my post may have come off that way, and for that I apologize.
I haven't personally tried IGG in PSI, but I know some people have with good results. The only reason you want the third Tendrils is to increase the odds of drawing it off of a D4 instead of having to look for it with a Tutor, but it shouldn't be a problem.
I am 100% behind getting Nature's Claim into your sideboard. Considering our creatures as a win condition should be like, plan Z. If an opponent has a Leyline out, it's still an uphill battle that you are very likely to lose. Our creatures are very subpar, meaning that you need quite a bit of luck to make them connect enough times to take the W. This means: over the course of the game, you need to have cast creatures....and then you need to pray that the opponent doesn't have removal. Like I said, no one good sides it all out. The second level of the luck you need is that you need your opponent to not play any creatures that outclass yours. They definitely don't side those guys out, and I've already mentioned that our guys suck so basically any creature in Legacy will be bad news for you. You mention Charbelcher as a counter to this issue, but it's still very rough. At that point, you need to have cast creatures, found Belcher, and found multiple permanent mana sources to activate it multiple times. Even then, you need to pray that your deck doesn't screw you and whiff when you're killing creatures, and you need to pray that your opponent doesn't have removal for Charbelcher. Once again, since our creatures are pretty bad on offense, you will be praying that none of the aforementioned bad things happen for 3+ turns from the first creature that comes into play under your control, and that's too much. I've done it once, but God was on my side. The one time I killed an opponent with my creatures, I played T1 Slithermuse that game as a creature because it was my only chance--If I was up a game I would've gone for Charbelcher and hoped to stall the game out for the draw because the stars have to align for you to win through a Leyline with no enchantment removal. It turned out that he didn't draw any removal, he didn't draw any of his Goyfs, and he dredged away his Krosan Grips (so I knew that Charbelcher was actually DOA had I cast it). Basically, that's a lot of hoops to jump through when you could just destroy Leyline and be done with it.
I've never been sure what to take out for Nature's Claim, so I just never did it and prayed I never ran into Leyline. I'll give you my opinion, but this is uncharted territory for me, so take it with a grain of salt. You want Nature's Claim against anyone playing Leyline, but you need to dedicate spots to not losing to blue. The main point I'm getting at is that whatever you cut in your sideboard is something you can't side in against blue decks, so you need to consider what your post-sideboard anti-blue deck will look like in order to make your choices. Thinking about it that way, I'd consider cutting Charbelchers. The reason why is that you're now playing IGG. As far as your anti-blue board goes, keeping IGG in isn't the worst, since it can be used as disruption against Blue decks. You mull them down to three, and you see what they have in hand. This deck is also built in such a way that your three cards will be amazing compared to whatever your opponent ends up with. In addition, if your protection allows you to see that the coast is clear, IGG allows you to try to go for Tendrils since IGG itself counts for four spells, and puts less burden on you to make a long spell chain. The combination of Charbelcher, Tomb of Urami, and a Mini-Tendrils doesn't seem too bad in my mind. I don't know if this is right, but I'd give it a try. And if you keep IGG and one Tendrils in, that's two slots you would've normally sided out. What do you side in normally to take the place of those spells? Probably Charbelcher. Then you only need one more slot to fit three Nature's Claims in, and it's basically a toss-up here. My gut reaction is that I'd probably cut one Xantid Swarm too--you need permanent mana sources so you don't want to cut any of the Carpets or the Tombs, making it a better option to go down to six protection spells. I'm afraid I don't have the time to test that out and see how it would work, though. And honestly, like I said, if that seems like a horrible idea, feel free to disregard it. Like I said, this is all theory in my head.
If this ever becomes a discussion, can I get in on it? ;)Quote:
Originally Posted by Namida
That's not what I meant at all.Quote:
Originally Posted by Namida
I would feel better keeping one belcher in the board so I think I'll start testing with 2 claims and decide whether to up it to 3 based on the results. I do like keeping IGG and tendrils in against blue since it gives me an out to pithing needle, but I also want claims against the needles that most blue players will bring in if they saw belcher.Quote:
I am 100% behind getting Nature's Claim into your sideboard...[snip]
I was just stating that belcher is the only reason we can even consider our creatures win cons, not that it makes it easy to win with creatures.
I really want claim for needle since leyline is barely played while needle is widely played.
regarding this whole sideboard discussion and how to make room for claims:
I played PSI this past weekend. The deck has let me down in 3 different matches, one loss was due to my misplay. Anyway, I would not change a thing about the deck, but a lot about the pilot.
List was pretty basic, with those exceptions:
main
2 ToA
1 IGG
1 Belcher
3 Manamorphose
rest was the usual 4ofs and those creatures
there was only one Belcher main becaue my plan was to avoid killing with belcher g1, so it is not expected in g2. It did work most of the time. I love IGG from playing DDFT and I think that it is really strong in here, too. Iggy-looping is just way to easy to not dedicate this one slot.
side
4 Xantid
3 Carpet
3 Belcher
3 Nature's Claim
2 Deathmark
This way you can easily pack claims into your board. I really don´t like the manplan post-board, since either my opp is still having some sort of removal (since the goof player expects swarms) or having three or four lands weakend my belcher. Both is not what I want to happen...
Three Carpets should be enough, escpecially since we´re not boarding any rituals out (maybe one culling, but who cares?!).
I really like those three claims, because they are quite versatile. I often claim my own chrome moxes to make the spell chain going on and stuff like that. Maybe you wanna give it a try?
Instead of manamorphose I have been runniing 1 wild cantor and 1 skyshroud cutter. I don't think I would ever want to run psi without cantor, cutter on the other hand is hardly ever useful and I'm not sure what to replace it with. I was thinking a 1 of manamorphose but I dunno if it's worth it. Any ideas?
My SB for Pact SI is this:
4 Duress
4 Carpet of Flowers
4 Xantid Swarm
2 Goblin Charbelcher
1 Nature's Claim
The deck becomes a house against anything with blue. However, I lose to anything with permanent-based disruption (e.g. Chalice of the Void, Leyline of Sanctity, Gaddock Teeg, etc.)
That's why I'm rapidly gaining interest in a man-plan transformational sideboard. I'd rather be good against both countermagic and permanent hate, than great against countermagic and flopping like a fish out of water against permanent hate.
Anyone have a good man-plan SB for Pact SI? I'm sure that I want 4 Phylatery Lich and 4 Phyrexian obliterator there, and taking out the Tendrils and Summoner's Pacts, among other things, for them.
I don't know anything about Phylactery Lich, having never tested it, but I don't like that it requires an Artifact to be in play because you will have times where you just can't cast it, and you will have times where your opponent sided in artifact removal for Belcher or something and then he just dies. The most important thing about him that I don't like is that he gets blocked. Even when you change up plans, you're still probably killing yourself quickly with D4s, so you need to try to land a guy that can put the game away in short order no matter what your opponent does. I must concede that I've never tried the man-plan, but if I were going to try it, my auto-picks would be Xantid Swarm, Tomb of Urami, Phyrexian Obliterator, and Tombstalker. Tombstalker and Urami both fly; no one would block the Obliterator if they could help it. Xantid Swarm is to eat removal and/or make sure your big guys resolve. Tomb helps you cast your big guys because they all cost basically four mana, or if you already have four mana, he becomes an uncounterable 5/5 with evasion. The biggest flaw in the plan as I have it right now is that you're not able to cast any of these guys without using a lot of resources, so maybe Phylactery Lich is worth trying out, but if you can land one of these guys and your opponent just doesn't have the removal, you should win, which I repeat isn't the case with a Phylactery Lich that can be chumped with no problem, which can give your opponent enough turns to put the game out of your reach.
Hmmm... Maybe this:
3 Tomb of Urami
4 Phyrexian Obliterator
4 Xantid Swarm
2 Tombstalker
2 Goblin Charbelcher
taking out:
4 Summoner's Pact
2 Tendrils of Agony
4 Culling the Weak
1 Dryad Arbor
1 Wild Cantor
1 Eternal Witness
Having 4 lands in the deck (1 Bayou + 3 Tomb) would make Belcher significantly weaker though. That's a trade-off I would need to test.
HI, with the new card from NPH i tought about a "very fast" list from the old SI BG.
It's based on the classic engine of the spanish with new entries like + 4 Street Wright e 4 Gitixian Probe to lower the frizzle %.
Here the list
// Lands
2 [R] Bayou
//Drawers
4 [NPH] Gitaxian Probe
4 [FUT] Street Wraith
4 [PT] Cruel Bargain
4 [6E] Infernal Contract
//Mana
2 [SHM] Manamorphose
4 [MI] Lion's Eye Diamond
4 [TE] Lotus Petal
4 [TO] Cabal Ritual
4 [US] Dark Ritual
4 [MR] Chrome Mox
4 [AL] Elvish Spirit Guide
//Tutors
4 [DIS] Infernal Tutor
4 [MM] Land Grant
4 [FUT] Summoner's Pact
//Closers
2 [FNM] Tendrils of Agony
// Recycling
2 [NPH] Noxious Revival
2 [US] Ill-Gotten Gains
The last dep. is another attempt to mantain the engine working...
However the deck has no protection at all and with the new entry Mental Misstep it could be dangerous..
What u think about?
Why worry about Misstep? You only have 10 cards with 1cc...
@TheG: I would start by cutting it down from 62 to 60. I don't know how good S. Pact is, if you cut off all of it's targets (except ESG).
The Noxius Revival + Probe/Wraith thingy, however, seems interesting. Although heavy conditional, it does seem powerful. Gaining +2 storm for free (in case of probe) and any card from your graveyard is not worst thing a deck with LED can do.
What about -2 Pacts in this case??Quote:
Originally Posted by NesretepNoj
I'm really a novice when it comes to this deck. The cards are still in the mail, so I've only goldfished it in various simulators.
However, my best answer would be to do the following adjustments: -2 IGG, -4 S. Pact, +1 Tendrils, +2 Belcher, +1 Slithermuse.
My greatest fear about this, is the lack of ritual-effects. The "cycle engine" of course compensates a bit, but I'm not sure it is good enough (my problem with the cycle engine being, that mulliganing becomes difficult, now that you can draw hands like this: D4, I. Tutor, C. Ritual, Probe, S. Wraith).
Ill-Gotten Gains might serve a spot somewhere, and this goes for the original list as well. I've found several situaions, that would straight out win, if I had an IGG. Again, this might be because of my lack of real life experience with the deck.
Street Wraith and Probe are *not* cool. To retread the same arguments:
A) Makes mulligan decisions harder in a deck that already has very difficult mulligans
B) Probe in a deck with no disruption is a waste because there is no way to utilize information
C) The lifeloss to card ratio isn't nearly as good as a D4, and can in fact cut you off from casting D4s, in effect actually lowering your chances to win when you draw multiple cards that only replace themselves at the expense of your life total
Despite Namida's very good points on why Wraith and Probe are *not* cool, I decided to try my hand in a 48 (!) card SI monstrosity. Just for the fun of it.
// Deck file for Magic Workstation (http://www.magicworkstation.com)
// Lands
1 [R] Bayou
// Creatures
4 [AL] Elvish Spirit Guide
4 [PLC] Simian Spirit Guide
4 [FUT] Street Wraith
// Spells
4 [MI] Infernal Contract
2 [SC] Tendrils of Agony
1 [MR] Goblin Charbelcher
4 [SHM] Manamorphose
4 [MM] Land Grant
4 [NPH] Gitaxian Probe
4 [PT] Cruel Bargain
4 [DIS] Infernal Tutor
4 [TE] Lotus Petal
4 [MI] Lion's Eye Diamond
4 [MR] Chrome Mox
4 [TO] Cabal Ritual
4 [US] Dark Ritual
Surprisingly, it works pretty well. I've got a lot of T1 wins coming. No protection MD but blazingly fast, just like Pact SI.
I don't know what will happen out of the board though. SB cards will probably mess the deck up too much... Still figuring out a funky way to go about Games 2 and 3 with this shell.
Quite sad to see no discussions about this deck lately.
Picked it up not a long time ago and learning...however, it's hard to find anyone willing to playtest. So I'm starting to run at least bi-weekly Legacy at my place. Nothing big, 9 people, 3 rounds plus top2 in the evening.
Played PSI list from the first page, -2 manamorphose, +1 Noxious Revival, +1 second 1cc guy (I play both Wild Cantor and Odious Trow). SB consisted of 4 Nature's Claim, 2 Tomb of*Urami, 2 Xantid Swarm, 4 Autumn's Veil, 3 Slaughter Pact.
Round1: Dragonstorm
g1 I try to combo and fizzle, staying at low life. He casts Hunted Dragon, I try to combo again, draw4 fails.
g2 Belcher t3.
g3 Belcher t2.
Round 2: monoG Chalice
g1 I have it in my hands, but after drawing additional cards put LED into play without enough counting. I should have played Infernal Tutor for LED, play both LED's, play a secod tutor cracking both LED, find a tutor and then Tendrils. As it happened, I was one mana short of this play and had to play draw4, which fizzled, and I already played Pact at the beginning of the turn.
g2 I don't remember exactly but I think I won t2 after playing 3 draw4 spells.
g3 Chalice @0, Trinisphere, Thrun, Lodestone Golem. I tried to match him racing with my creatures, but Odious Trow is kinda worse at trolling my opponent that opponents Thrun. Even then, if not for Golem I might have been able to Belch him on the last turn I had before dying.
Round 3: MUC
New to Legacy player playing my deck. He made quite a lot mistakes in earlier rounds, but I do hope he's coming back to play more Legacy :)
g1 he tries to counter my rituals, draw4's, but runs out of counters and I kill him with belcher.
g2 is where I get a decent hand with Xantid. He resolves, however I can't combo off yet and have to start trolling him (beating with Trow and Xantid to resolve Land Grants and other unimportant spells after draw4 fails to find anything useful). However trolling completely fails when he flashes in Vendillion Clique (which was in his SB and I totally forgot about it) to kill Trow. Things get ugly, my attempts to combo are countered, soon comes Morphling and I die.
g3 I make a 5/5 Demon token at his eot T1. He then Repeals about it. He sided Repeals in and didn't took B2B out. Time is called, and at least he didn't manages to kill me with Clique.
Overall I'm pretty happy with how the deck performed - all lost points come from my own mistakes. The only think I plan on changing about MD is taking out Noxious Revival - it's rarely that card is great, mediocre sometimes and just +1 storm most of the times I draw it. Didn't decided on the replacement yet though.
Anybody still playing this? Granted PSI isn't the choice for any big tournament right now, but MM and rise of blue decks isn't enough to give up, isn't it? :)
To be perfectly honest, I would be scared shitless to play PSI now, only because the number of playable Turn Zero answers to the combo has gone up--playing a Pact into that seems like suicide before you've even signed up for the event. If I were going to play SI, I'd fall back on the lists with free guys and Cabal Therapy because looking at your opponent's hand and being able to disrupt it seems like a very important thing to be able to do right now.
Allright with MM out of the way its finally time to dust off PSI again! Let the brewing commence.
Update
//QPSI Ver.1 and 2
2 Misty Rainforest
2 Verdant Catacomb
1 Dryad Arbor
1 Underground sea
4 Summoner's pact
4 Elvish Spirit Guide /3 ESG
1 Wild Cantor
1 Eternal Witness
4 Chrome mox
4 Cruel Bargain
4 Infernal Contract
4 Lion's eye diamond
4 Lotus Petal
4 Dark Ritual
4 Cabal Ritual
3 Culling the weak / 4 CtW
1 Slithermuse
3 Brainstorm
1 Tendrils of Agony
3 Infernal Tutor
1 Sensei's divining top / Odious Trow
4 Pact of Negation / Unmask
//SB
4 Hurklyl's Recall/Rebuild
4 Pact/Unmask
4 Chain of Vapor/Disfigure
1 Ill-Gotten Gains
1 Trow/SDT
1 Culling the weak/Mox diamond
- You can cast Muse easier, thanks to C.mox
- 4 Tutors are too much in S.I.. 3 is the right number.
- The single mox diamond has proven to be playable and does his role better than mox opal
- The fetchland manabase has proven to be better in my eyes. They aren't much slower than Land Grants and the Infernal-problem is really rare.
- Pact/Unmask. I always loved protection in my S.I. builds. Pact is amazing against counters, but I think Unmask is better in Game 1.
- Brainstorm holds this deck together. This deck isn't really slower than a normal PSI version, but it requires a lot more skill/experience. Most of the time a Ancestral Recall and works really good with pact.
- SDT. Is just Brainstorm no 4 because it costs not U, but you should use SDT as a tutor (lolz with pact) when you're flooded.
- 1 Tendrils? Answ.: 3 Brainstorm and a single Witness.
- I love my SB :)
- No Swarms, Veils, because they slow you down...
BB
PS: Past in Flames is bad in SI.
I am actually intrigued at the idea of Past in Flames. I immediately thought of SITES, a deck that hasn't been viable in a LONG time. It still may not but ... I really want to test it out and see if it is any good. Especially with MM gone now, Past seems like it would make B/R SI really good. In the coming weeks I am definitely going to test it out.
That's pretty much what I've been testing. I put a list up on the storm boards.Quote:
Originally Posted by Pulp_Fiction
hi
news about Past in Flame ?
yeah. it sucks in this deck ;)Quote:
Originally Posted by kangaxxpk
serious?! I tested it as a one-off instead of my second copy of ToA and it´s a freaking house. However, I´m still not sure whether it is a win-more card or really useful, as I did not get beyond goldfishing this list. I´ll wait for the current tempohype to pass a little before I´m going to pick it up for an actual tournament... but hell, now we can even grapeshot our opponents, too!Quote:
Originally Posted by 1maarten1
edit:
Decklist for reference
PSI by Team BK
//Win
1 Goblin Charbelcher
1 Tendrils of Agony
//Business
4 Infernal Contract
4 Cruel Bargain
4 Infernal Tutor
1 Ill-Gotten Gains
1 Past in Flames
1 Slithermuse
1 Eternal Witness
1 Odious Trow
//Fastmana
4 Lion's Eye Diamond
4 Dark Ritual
4 Summoner's Pact
4 Elvish Spirit Guide
4 Lotus Petal
4 Chrome Mox
4 Cabal Ritual
4 Culling the Weak
4 Land Grant
3 Manamorphose
//Lands
1 Bayou
1 Dryad Arbor
Sideboard
4 Xantid Swarm
4 Carpet of Flowers
3 Nature’s Claim
2 Slaughter Pact
2 Goblin Charbelcher
Hm I play almost that exact list. But I am afraid of cutting a ToA and going to 2 win-cons. But ill test the single ton out!Quote:
Originally Posted by DerFern