Hmmm... I even used to ask for a dice to determine play/draw to not reveal that I'm carrying dices. Just saying.
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Hmmm... I even used to ask for a dice to determine play/draw to not reveal that I'm carrying dices. Just saying.
Where's the 'like button'.Quote:
Originally Posted by Lemnear
Yeah basically that is how I do it. If I'm playing storm I'm never show casing a single die until it's time to use them.
But, to be fair, that's only one side of the problem. There are things to be said about bringing out your dice even when your opponent knows you're on storm. Like, even if I've already decided to go for it now, I won't start using dice (even just for mana) until I'm (99%)certain I'm going to win. Because it might influence your opponent's decision if he/she sees you getting your dice all set up when you cast your first spell for the turn and it's a Petal. Rarely, but sometimes that one spell that must not get countered is a lotus petal or the first ritual of a turn. If you sit up in your chair, get out all your dice and move to put one up to count storm you are telegraphing very clearly what you plan to do and it might induce them to respond when you need them not to.
With that said, there's even room for some counter-intelligence and double fake-outs here.
If we are down to technical issues with dices, I want to note that they can not only tumble over, take time for adjusting after each spell, but make it TOO easy for your opponent to keep track of mana and find good timing for softcounters.Quote:
Originally Posted by nevilshute
After years of playing with the dices, I now tend to leave them at home and do all the stuff like keeping track of storm and mana with my notepad, even if digging out the dices from your satchel and placing a black dice with a "2" on top right in front of their face, make opponents very nervous and provokes mistakes
I typically keep my dice and goblin tokens in a separate deckbox that I've got in my pocket, and pull it out when I'm going off, and I think that works well enough
Yeah generaly I'm also lazy, get dice stolen and overall I find it cumbersome and distracting operating the dice aparatus... i'm fine with shifting things up and down in the GY and using notepad if interrupted or tutoring...
I remember BDP casually announcing Storm 1 playing LED in Dredge and flipping zombie tokens while playing Ant... Oh I miss the old days :/
When I play i carry in my backpocket my pen, lofepad and my 3 12 sided blue, red, black dices. When I start to play I just take one out and start when I go off I take the other 2. But not until I want. Depending on when I want to represent im counting storm or mana.
Also i have more dirty littl tricks to get an edge. (:
You have to announce the mana you're floating after casting each spell anyway.Quote:
Originally Posted by Lemnear
That being said, I have never used dice playing storm except for Goblin tokens. When going off with Past in Flames, natural Tendrils and Tutor chains, everything is generally easy to track and when going off with Ad Nauseam, I tend to note down the amound of mana I have floating and if I still have a landdrop before I start flipping.
I tend to announce this vocally to my opponent as soon as he has indicated that Ad Nauseam is resolving. Like "okay, I'm at 17, I have not played a land this turn". And just get their recognition on that.Quote:
Originally Posted by Jona
For the dice, I actually never need any dice unless in a tournament.
In tournament my opponent will lend me dice anyway, so they can know what is going on...
I'm just too damn lazy to take out my dice unless I absolutely have to to determine who goes first as I just have a bunch of spindowns. Virtually everyone knows I'm on storm anyways so it doesn't mean anything in terms of gaining an edge unless I'm playing some people I typically don't see.
New vid, ANT deck tech. Probably mostly for newer players of the deck https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-GBhdS1YHr4
Glad to see ANT back in DTB, where it belongs. :-) I'm back and ready to make those adjustments I promised. How's this clunky old primer stand up after a year?
I had to fight through massive hate yesterday at our local Legacy tournament. Our meta has turned to control where 1/3 field is running Miracles and the rest midrange or brews without tempo.
I decided to run Young Pyromancer again since it reminds me of our great time during summer '14 and might catch some Miracles offguard again.
Let's see:
2:1 Esper Control
I am playing this guy at almost every tournament and he usually slams Miracles. But instead he went for hardcore hate Espercontrol with MMage, SMage, Extractions and stuff like Toughtseize, Duress! and a solid bunch of counterspells. During the first game he states to another guy that a wise man boards beforehand in regard to his maindeck hate. I win this match obviously with a natural Tendrils line due to him being at 12. (Isn't it a paradox that he has lost the game due to his own Thoughtseize lifeloss...?) The second match was dominated by an overflow of hate, whereas in the third he finds himself being at 12 againt and me casting Ad Nauseam from 13 or something after baiting his counterspells before = close win is a win is a win.
2:1 Team America
Meffeo runs TA and additionally is a Storm adept. I am on the draw without land but with Petal, LED and Grim in hand +1 Probe and 1 Dark Ritual. He goes for Ponder and I see his hand without interaction. I went for the #yolo mode and managed to get a sick line including 2 BS to find the desired kill on turn 1. During the second game, I made a mistake by using a safe mode Ad Nauseam instead of going for the unprotected kill since he had 2 unknown cards in hand but no interaction. AdN fizzled and my only out, Ponder, didn't show me PiF, which was the only card that could have won the match. The last game was rather unspectacular, as I went for Ad Nauseam after he forced my Therapy pitching FoW.
2:0 Grixis Control
Easy games against not an easy MU. He had discard, counterspells and juicy DTT but no chances against a timely PiF kill in game one and a Insect-protected AdN kill in game two.
1:2 Grixis Control
Unfortunately, I couldn't draw since I was the only player with 9 points and had to play against this guy with 7 points. He is known for hating combo decks, thus I know that it will be difficult to win here. In game 1 I keep a greedy no land hand but with enough stuff to win if I draw one. Turn 3 I drew Bayou into GG for the opponent. The second game allowed for a natural chain after some discarding and removing from both sides where I went for the safe kill using no engine. Game 3 was depressing since he drew all the hate in the world to prevent me from assembling a solid hand. My plan to go for the ToA from hand was destroyed by his Clique (fortunately not during a combo move), and his Therapies and Extraction simply were too much for the deck to function.
I didn't slam Kid Pyrodude even once and he will move to the folder again. My current SB after this tournament looks like this:
2 Pithing Needle
2 City of Solitude
3 Abrupt Decay
3 Chain of Vapor
1 Massacre
1 Flusterstorm
1 Extirpate
2 Xantid Swarm
I want to try out the Pithing Needle plan with City of Solitude and Decay against Miracles which should work to a certain degree.
Nice report and gratz for the result.
Btw, the unknown cards in my hand during G2 were Hymn to Tourach and FoW.
Congrats for the result Cabal Therapy, if you don't mind I would like to ask you some things. First of all, I didn't have the chance to play against this new Grixis deck with Pyromancers, Therapy and counters. As you said it seems really not an easy match-up. How do you sideboard here? Something like bringing Tops in could work? I read you took in the Insects, didn't your opponent have bolts?
Second and last thing, I would like to ask you the proper use of City of Solitude vs. Miracles, since I know you played them for some months. I tried them, but was uncertain about that: under top-balance lock do you slam them on the battlefield since cmc3 is harder for them hoping they don't have fow, or wait for a Decay to get rid of it, so you can cast discard to deal with Fow? I tried both ways, when waiting I found myself weak to Vendilion's triggers and Snapcaster Mage's beats, when yolo-ing it into play it always got Fow-ed :frown: I'm sure I'm missing something in how to play this card, that seems very awesome to me in the paper.
Thanks a lot! :smile:
Thank you. I wanted to share this event due to the unconventional MU in our meta. Concerning the Grixis Control deck, I tried to board as light as possible but to present a kind of hate against their hate. At the moment, I don't play Sensei's Divining Top but I am think that it is definitely a decent card to have here. Yes, you are right, I chose to board 2x Xantid Swarm in order to quickly power through their masses of counterspells and luckily as I tried to read the strategy of my first opponent, he has boarded all Bolts out. It was a high risc to lose a bit on card advantage but it has paid off. I didn't have Cities in my SB during this tournament.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ghiwo
Concerning Miracles, I know your problems since I have experienced them myself a couple of times. Normally, I try to aggressively discard their Balance, Top or catrips early in the game and play City on an empty board. It feels good to dodge Flusterstorm here and make this spell absolutely useless in the opp's hand. But in my opinion, I see the upside of having a real threat for cc3 as more important as the downside of partially slamming it blind and riscing a trade with a counterspell which is no bad at all. Kai calls it the cc3 Duress, but I like a Duress that can lock out the opponent on its own. Just as everything in our deck, timing is the key to play City. Sometimes a match provides only one possible and correct chance for that and sometimes (especially against Miracles) these windows are hard to recognize. I don't directly address you because it is a matter of reading the opponent and their possibilities which is sometimes just a guessing game. Nonetheless, I will play with 2 Cities again which sounds nice to me. I gladly waste two/three slots on this almost pure-Miracles SB card because it already served me well but starts loosing its surprise factor in the local metagame.
I hope this helps.
good report and thanks for share it with us!Quote:
Originally Posted by CabalTherapy
i play miracles (almost all the tim) but i have Ant as second deck, the sideboard itīs pretty close to mine, but i have rebuild too, my local meta is infested with MUD :S
i have to ask, how is your main deck currently? if you want to share it here (or pm ) it would be awesone :) I testing with 1 empty, 2 Pif, 1 tendrils and 2 grim tutors (or -1 for 2nd tendrills) !
i want to have more key spells, but not sure if this is the "right" configuration, because i donīt play Ant as main deck because i get tilted so many times for drawing only mana, or only blanks in specific situations... :/
Sure, there is no need of concealement. My main 60 list hasn't been changing since March/April 2014 (only fetchlands have changed, in 2013 I played TNT to a great extent). Thus, I have played both Prague Eternals with it and a great number of local/semi-local tournaments. I still like this list a lot and additionally I got used to see the same cards over and over again. It maybe sounds strange but I feel like there is a certain conncetion between the own deck and for example a friend's ANT deck, which might also be identical concerning the list but not the cards as such. On a sidenote, I only play green Dragonshields to support this notion.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ancestral
4 Dark Ritual
4 Cabal Ritual
4 Lotus Petal
4 Lion's Eye Diamond
4 Infernal Tutor
1 Grim Tutor
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
4 Gitaxian Probe
2 Preordain
4 Cabal Therapy
3 Duress
1 Tendrils of Agony
1 Past in Flames
1 Ad Nauseam
4 Polluted Delta
2 Scalding Tarn
1 Misty Rainforest
1 Bloodstained Mire
1 Bayou
1 Tropical Island
2 Underground Sea
1 Volcanic Island
1 Swamp
1 Island
I am sorry to hear that people like to play MUD. :laugh:
Quote:
Originally Posted by CabalTherapy
i kind understand that conection you talk about, but still i love this deck ( iīm missing cabal therapy and leds in chinese to have the deck full chinese/japanese ) and still canīt feel the love back ahahahah i play with the deck a lot for fun, but i canīt find enough confidance to take the deck to a big tournament, iīm going to lille and i m certainly i take the deck with me, but i m almost 100% sure that i will play miracles xD
yeah mud is rough as hell :/ i donīt know why people like to play it but i guess here its because its cheap and they have wurmcoils for playing modern :p
MUD is sweet yo. I've only played against the Gruxis control deck once and maybe the guy just wasn't very good with the deck, but it seemed like a fairly easy MU. I'm on the double PiF SB ad nauseam plan though. I just play out my LEDs and then cantrip and discard until I naturally find a PiF and from there it's over