[Deck] Czech Pile

Please share your opinions on different cards with us. We all very likely have an opinion on them anyways and it's a good way to get people talking.
You e.g. complain about vague answers but that's exactly what you get when you ask vague questions!
Besides people tend to get tunnelvisioned when e.g. a certain pro says something and everybody repeats it over and over, making it sound true though it isn't. I e.g. remember very well when everybody in the grixis thread echoed Noah Walker （who is still a great player）in stating that cabal therapies are good against shardless bug. He ended up correcting himself eventually, but it just proved that people sometimes automatically allign success with perfection.
Im case you don't know: Bob Huang made the grixis list you're playing to combat czech pile, claiming to be of not successfulll then at least content about the results.

Now let's e.g. hear your opinion on FoWs, Dazes and spell pierces in this matchup postboard. I think that's a good starting point since it would give away a lot of sideboard slots were we to cut one of these completely. You already gave the reason to keep in FoW, but try to think a bit further. We all know that Daze is dead in the very late stages of the game, but what about the turns where it's impactful?

Try to answer questions like “am I generally able to daze impactfull spells?” or “do I think FoW is save to play postboard or do pyroblast and flusterstorm provide too much blow-out potential?”.Also “is spell perce generally worth it considering the opponent can play around it by playing creatures when low on untapped mana?”

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Originally Posted by Agrippa91

Please share your opinions on different cards with us. We all very likely have an opinion on them anyways and it's a good way to get people talking.
You e.g. complain about vague answers but that's exactly what you get when you ask vague questions!
Besides people tend to get tunnelvisioned when e.g. a certain pro says something and everybody repeats it over and over, making it sound true though it isn't. I e.g. remember very well when everybody in the grixis thread echoed Noah Walker （who is still a great player）in stating that cabal therapies are good against shardless bug. He ended up correcting himself eventually, but it just proved that people sometimes automatically allign success with perfection.
Im case you don't know: Bob Huang made the grixis list you're playing to combat czech pile, claiming to be of not successfulll then at least content about the results.

Now let's e.g. hear your opinion on FoWs, Dazes and spell pierces in this matchup postboard. I think that's a good starting point since it would give away a lot of sideboard slots were we to cut one of these completely. You already gave the reason to keep in FoW, but try to think a bit further. We all know that Daze is dead in the very late stages of the game, but what about the turns where it's impactful?

Try to answer questions like “am I generally able to daze impactfull spells?” or “do I think FoW is save to play postboard or do pyroblast and flusterstorm provide too much blow-out potential?”.Also “is spell perce generally worth it considering the opponent can play around it by playing creatures when low on untapped mana?”

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Ok you know what, just forget I even asked. Apparently my questions and concerns about the matchup aren't intelligent or in depth enough for you.

Thanks for your time Czech pile thread.

I don't have much insight for the Delver side of the match up. As Czech in this match up, I'm looking to answer the first threat, make land drops and get to the mid-late game where (if castable) our topdecks are more powerful. My guess would be that as Delver you want to doing everything you can to interact in those early turns of the game - killing DRS and/or keeping us off splash sources. As the game gets long and grindy it gets out of reach.

Postboard, I'm trimming Force of Will, Thoughtseize, and Jace. I'm bringing in more removal and cards that play to the board REB/Pyro, Liliana the Last Hope and Toxic Deluge. I like Hymn better than Thoughtseize in this MU - getting a 2 for 1 and the cards that are hardest for us to interact with are slower for Delver to deploy - Gurmag/TNN.

I don't claim to be super well versed in either deck, but my perspective is that Delver is trying to win entirely through combat with a somewhat limited number of threats. I'm looking to keep hands with several land and removal spells, the other elements of the Czech deck can show up as the game goes on. Hands with a bunch of 2-3cc spells or that are very light on land/reliant on DRS are less appealing.

Hey guys,

With a recent upswing of Miracles on Magic Online, I'm playing this matchup a lot more. And also losing a lot more. Other than the strategy of completely changing my maindeck and dropping Force of Wills and playing a maindeck Pyro or two, how are you guys going about winning this matchup? It feels like one of the few decks that I'm also consistently losing to post board.

https://www.mtggoldfish.com/player/Swagohod

Lists are pretty similar, but this is what I normally play.

If you want to stay in the 4c archetype while improving your Miracles matchup, I'd recommend shifting from the midrange value skeleton you're working with back towards the control skeleton the deck started out with. Hymn is a great tempo play against Miracles, but if you allow the game to drag on they'll bury you in card advantage from Predict and Azcanta. Kolaghan's Command is similar because it's expensive and you can't reliably use the Raise Dead mode because of Plow and Terminus. If you return to the Divining Top-era lists, you can set up with your own counters and card draw (Counterspell, Spell Snare, Night's Whisper/Search for Azcanta) and force them to play a control mirror where you both have must answer threats, but you're more threat dense, which is how 4c historically beat Miracles (before they went back to a heavy nonbasic hate+Entreat strategy to even the matchup up). What you're playing now is a controlling midrange deck, which is historically the worst thing to do against a control deck.

Well, looks like I drove somebody away, sry about that guys. I just had hoped for a bit deeper questions worth discussing instead of the general questions you can already find on every 3rd page of the grixis primer.
Back to the pile vs （grixis）delver matchup, I'll just post some opinions from the grixis side here, would be cool if you'd post whether you agree or disagree:

As Grixis I'll leave in all my dazes. Approx. half of your cards are 241s that basically replace themselves, all you need is infinite mana it seems. I therefore also think pile should play into it by playing its less important spells when tapping out. If you instead choose to play around it by always leaving open a mana you'll likely lose unless you have a drs or 4+ lands already.
Often times you'll also be forced to play a pyroblast or fluster to defend your spells in which case I can just daze the spell you try to resolve.
On the Grixis side I don't want to daze anythinf that doesn't afgect the board, especially cantrips.
The ultimate “value-daze” is when I get to take back a land that I don't actually need anymore（I feel very confident operating on 3 lands or even 2 in case of an active shaman）. This means that I get to fetch away the land with a future brainstorm, effectively making daze a 0-mana counter that cantrips.

I'll cut all my FoWs postboard regardless of your build. First of all the potential to just lose to one of your 1-mana counters is huge. Then I also don't think most of your 241s don't have 2 sides I actually care about. Take e.g. the random.cards you get off leovold or strix or the card I chose to discard off K-command. the body of snapcaster is something I also find neglegible since it doesn't really trade with any of our threats except pyromamcer who generates value anyways every turn he goes unanswered（though I'll be careful not to run into chump＋bolt）.
The only 241 that really puts me behind is a eesolved K-command that kills one of my creatures and brings back a creature. That's why I have 2 spell pierces in addition to bringing in flusterstorms. A lily that eats my only creature is also quite terrifying.

I wouldn't leave in FoWs if I were you because of said 1-mana counters plus pyroblasts that come in against strix, snapcaster and leovold already. Though it's probably more “correct” from your side to leave in FoWs because you have enough card-advantage to even things out while you get more interactions in the early turns. I'd probably leave them in against the stifle build because you otherwise can get locked out of the gane fairly easily when I draw right.

Hymns are fine against grixis: They lose value later, but that should be fine because that's where you want the game to go.
Early on they're only really good when the rest of your hand has lots of cheap removal （no, snapcaster doesn't count）, otherwise doing nothing tht affects the bord on t2 or t3 can seriously put you behind. Every card that affects the board directly nd costs 1 or 2 mana is just better than that, I'd use hymns merely as “filler” once you have brought in all the cards you want.

Bitterblossom seems to be a trump card against pile, I'd rate it even higher than sylvan library if you play delver. Its main advantage is dodging removal besides decay which is hard for you to cast against a deck that has wastelands, a desire to kill drs on sight and potentially stifle.

Speaking of which: My opinion is not shared by everybody but I think that stifle is a very good card against pile since it shifts the focus away from “I play creatures, you play removal that sometimes even 241s”. You're instead forced to play this subgame of “do I habe enough lands?”. There've been numerous times where I've won against opponents that lost with a handful of removal spells they were unable to cast. Irl I had someone show me then how he boarded out FoW while leaving flusterstorm in the sb （bug control in this case）.
That's just a big, big advantage of playing a proactive deck: As the defensive you see your starting hand and （unless you have the nuts）can't say “this hand is definitely good”. Grixis already has a very diverse threat base that can't all be answered by a single card besides deluge and terminus. Adding the mana-denial plan only adds to this diversity, making it more likely you have answers that don't fit my questions.
You simply don't know whether my hand is full pf threats or full of wastelands, stifles, and a bolt for your shaman.
And even in the lategame stifle is fine by countering snapcaster and sometimes flusterstorm or planeswalker triggers while negating brainstorm shuffles （again by countering the fetches, make sure to stack the lands you want to shuffle away correctly, e.g. by puttimg another fetch on top just in case）.

I'm only reasonably content with new lili from the grixos sb: sje's a bit expensive and doesn't do much besides getting burned after she minuses unless there's a strix or snapcaster out that she can kill.
Speaking of killing these: I'll often times only kill strixes when I have a creature that wants to attack so you don't have a chance to get it back again so quick.

Has any of you guys played against Winter Orb? That card seems... weird when you think that K-commamd kills it, but it seems great otherwise. Any stories you want to share?

@CookedChestnuts: A good adaption imo would be shaving the 3rd k-command for another decay（search, counterbalance）. K-commamd is often times quote bad against miracles since most modes besides rarely matter（they rarely put your creatires into your gy.）
I strongly disagree that dropping a FoW or two would make that matchup any better. FoW is quite strong against the few （hatd to interact）cards that miracles actually cares about like mentor, jace and search.
A telltale sign of how strong the card is against miracles is the fact that it's a card people keep in when playing the miracle mirror despite the tons of pyroblasts and flusterstorms floating around in this matchup.
Acordimg to the new MiraclesPrimer by WhiteFaces that's still true even after the sdt-ban, especially now that people play cb again.

From the delver side of things- I think the gameplan changes entirely if you're on stifle or not

If you play stifle, you most definitely keep daze. With wastelands AND stifles you can reliably keep Czech Pile under 4 mana which means daze / pierce are still super live.

If you don't play stifle, only 4 wastelands are not reliable enough to keep dazes and pierces live IMO.

I always like keeping some number of FoW in when I play delver (I play RUG tho not Grixis) no matter what. I value the ability to win counterwars over key spells and the tempo swings that force provides can be enough to win the game.

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Originally Posted by rlesko

From the delver side of things- I think the gameplan changes entirely if you're on stifle or not

If you play stifle, you most definitely keep daze. With wastelands AND stifles you can reliably keep Czech Pile under 4 mana which means daze / pierce are still super live.

If you don't play stifle, only 4 wastelands are not reliable enough to keep dazes and pierces live IMO.

I always like keeping some number of FoW in when I play delver (I play RUG tho not Grixis) no matter what. I value the ability to win counterwars over key spells and the tempo swings that force provides can be enough to win the game.

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which delver deck without stifle have you played? Are you playing the goyf build in RUG or the one that can go pseudo-shroud postboard?

I was trying to address your questions on the grixis delver match up, which may or may not run stifle. I've only played that deck a few times and I hated it. I have much more experience with RUG.

I've never played RUG delver without stifle. I've played the hooting mandrills version and the goyf version, and I'm partial towards playing Goyfs main and TNN in the sideboard.

Grixis delver to me is a weird cross between a delver and midrange deck. The dazes feel much weaker than in RUG. It seems the way grixis tries to beat you guys is to go more midrange than tempo. Seems like a losing proposition to me, but IDK

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Originally Posted by rlesko

I was trying to address your questions on the grixis delver match up, which may or may not run stifle. I've only played that deck a few times and I hated it. I have much more experience with RUG.

I've never played RUG delver without stifle. I've played the hooting mandrills version and the goyf version, and I'm partial towards playing Goyfs main and TNN in the sideboard.

Grixis delver to me is a weird cross between a delver and midrange deck. The dazes feel much weaker than in RUG. It seems the way grixis tries to beat you guys is to go more midrange than tempo. Seems like a losing proposition to me, but IDK

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But, but, ... it has deathrite shaman!

On a more serious note: How bad, good or decent do you think that the goyfs are? After all you're not able to board into a pseudo-shroud version with only 4 mongeese and 2 TNNs, do you still keep in the delvers (I think I would).

Deathrite? Card sucks... :tongue:

I think the goyfs are great TBH. I've been out of the legacy meta lately, but a couple months ago the most common removal suite for CP was like...1 push, 1 decay, and a bunch of other stuff that goyf wouldn't die to. Then some edicts in the SB - so I wasn't even bringing in true names. And I was keeping Delvers in.

Goyf was always great because by the time I played him I already countered a baleful strix and / or planeswalker so hes crashing in for 5+ power.

I seem to be on my own with these opinions, most RUG players would rather just play a monkey instead :shrug: I have played that version but its way too cute for me. And my goyfs are foil so I'm not dropping them for a $0.25 replacement :laugh:

This White variant is kind of interesting. Is the upside on SFM and StP worth trading out Kommand? I do think having access to Gideon could be really good.

Isn't that just Deathblade? I agree that the white Lingering Souls variant is interesting though.

Gideon with just 3 White sources in the entire deck? I guess it's just for control mirrors in that case. Still, it's a sb-card with lost potential since that planeswalker does a fairly good job at being a nonblastable Jace vs. red aggressive decks.

Esper Pile

Creatures: 12
1 Gurmag Angler
2 Leovold, Emissary of Trest
2 Snapcaster Mage
3 Baleful Strix
4 Deathrite Shaman

Planeswalkers: 3
1 Gideon, Ally of Zendikar
2 Jace, the Mind Sculptor

Spells: 23
3 Lingering Souls
4 Ponder
4 Brainstorm
1 Fatal Push
4 Swords to Plowshares
2 Thoughtseize
1 Counterspell
4 Force of Will

Lands: 21
1 Island
1 Swamp
1 Scrubland
1 Tropical Island
1 Bayou
3 Tundra
3 Underground Sea
1 Misty Rainforest
1 Windswept Heath
4 Flooded Strand
4 Polluted Delta

Sideboard: 15
2 Flusterstorm
2 Surgical Extraction
2 Hydroblast
1 Umezawa’s Jitte
2 Disenchant
1 Diabolic Edict
1 Zealous Persecution
2 Containment Priest
2 Ethersworn Canonist


This is my Esper variant right now, but haven't had a lot of reps with it.

Does the whole power from Czech Pile is based on K.Command which can be recycled with Snapcasters?
Czech Pile is DTB thanks to this card: it fits perfectly against meta filled by artifacts like equips, vials, chalices etc. Why we thinking on step back to death blade?

Are miracles are such a problem? Bump Liliana count and Hymn trimming removal, or replace some removal for more direct dmg to fight walkers better, we can also put deadbore.

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Originally Posted by Fatal

Does the whole power from Czech Pile is based on K.Command which can be recycled with Snapcasters?
Czech Pile is DTB thanks to this card: it fits perfectly against meta filled by artifacts like equips, vials, chalices etc. Why we thinking on step back to death blade?

Are miracles are such a problem? Bump Liliana count and Hymn trimming removal, or replace some removal for more direct dmg to fight walkers better, we can also put deadbore.

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If there's more Miracles and other Pile decks I def want to be on Lingering Souls and Gideon. SFM in Pile seems worse than Mentor or Deathblade.

The white splash is definitely interesting because Swords to Plowshares is the card the deck misses the most.

I personnaly tried this version a little ( http://www.magic-ville.com/fr/decks/...php?ref=556068 ) but the Plains and Karakas were definitely too much of a stretch for the manabase especially against Delver when one plays Baleful Strix, Leovold and Abrupt Decay.

Karakas is extremely powerful with Tasigur and Leovold (almost game in the mirror and great against a lot of decks).

Thought on Baleful Strix vs. Sneak and Show (and variants)? Seems decent to me but nothing super impressive. I get that it blocks both Emrakul (if survives the annihilator trigger) and Griselbrand, but it seems slow and not super impactful. Does boarding out 1-3 seem reasonable? Curious on others' perspectives.

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Originally Posted by PhilLesh

Thought on Baleful Strix vs. Sneak and Show (and variants)? Seems decent to me but nothing super impressive. I get that it blocks both Emrakul (if survives the annihilator trigger) and Griselbrand, but it seems slow and not super impactful. Does boarding out 1-3 seem reasonable? Curious on others' perspectives.

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I'm new to the deck, but I've been watching Joe Lossett stream his take on Pile, and he was boarding out all his copies of Strix for more spell interaction against Sneak and Show variants. I don't know if this was something he was just experimenting with or something he concluded was correct from experience/theory, but it's worth testing out.

On that note, Joe Lossett went 7-1 on day 1 at GP Santa Clara with his Zenith Pile list (can be found in his twitch videos) which runs 1 of GSZ and Meren. Meren being impervious to blast and being able to return creatures during your turn with no mana investment makes it an interesting choice as a Kess-like threats for the grindy matchups. Has anyone else tried anything like this before? Any thoughts on his specific list?