[Deck] Fetchland Tendrils

4 Sw+4 gp+2 dtt+4 petals+ 7 discards build is surprising idea.
Maybe it deserves a testing

The sad part is no more double dd pile etc

"I don't think it's fair to ignore the games he lost for being too slow."

So to be more fair, let's have a look at all the losses.

In the first game, the 2 losses were due to mistakes, no lack of speed while being against the fastest aggro-tempo strategy in legacy.

Second game, the only loss is against a T1 win. Please note that the doomsday player wins T2 if he draws a DR. With SW instead of SDT, he cannot (only 18 life drained without the top recasted).

Third game, the loss is due to an extirpate effect (or the lack of a protection card).

Game four, the loss is due to a lack of a protection card.

But this is again a very small sample. On theory, there is another argument against the SW>SDT replacement: the lifeloss. Winning with DD with just SDT in play and probe in hand happens often. With SW instead, you need to be at at least 10 lifes or you kill yourself, vs 6 lifes with SDT. So you compensate your theoretically improved speed by a greater need for speed.

But again, the card selection that SDT brings is unmatched, as well as the number of piles the card enable.
I believe that if it was allowed, most DD players would play more than 4 SDT.

Wow, I did not expect so much feedback; this is great! Many points were made, specifically about the manabase and choice of protection, that require discussing multiple concepts. As background, I enjoyed the most success playing The Epic Storm before trying to play Doomsday (I estimate that my non-optimal play is responsible for at least 1 in 4 match losses, 100% when trying to win with Laboratory Maniac). If the analysis below doesn't address a question or raises more, let me know! And as a disclaimer, I do not consider myself to be an expert at piloting this deck, so some of the following my be totally off due to my inexperience.


Mana requirements on the combo turn

Assembling the correct mana combination on the combo turn is the forefront question when constructing the manabase.

Assuming a Doomsday in hand, the most common configurations of wins and their requirements are (where Top implies a Sensei's Divining Top in play, add 1 if in hand):

Doomsday + Top: BBBUU1 + Protection
Doomsday + Cantrip: Cantrip + BBBUU + Protection
Doomsday + Top + Cantrip: Cantrip + BBB + Protection
Doomsday + Cantrip + Cantrip: Cantrip + Cantrip + BBBR + Protection

Having a Dark Ritual reduces the cost by BB and having an LED reduces the cost by either BBB (for sequences with Top in play and Cantripping into a Doomsday), or more commonly, by UUU.

Winning on the same turn by casting Burning Wish into Doomsday adds R1 to the mana requirement, but is usually supplemented by having a Top and an LED in play, leading to initial mana requirements of UUR2 or BR1 (with Dark Ritual).

Conclusion - fast starts (with a Dark Ritual) require initial mana producing most commonly BU or BUU in addition to the mana requirements of any protection spell.


Mana Requirements Building up to the Combo Turn

The most common plays building up to the combo turn are:
-playing a Sensei's Divining Top and activating it, which is optimized only by the number of fetchlands
-cantripping, which requires blue mana and is optimized by fetchlands
-Hand-checking, either through discard or probe
-disruption, either through discard or silence-walking the opponent

The above two sections suggest that fetching 1-2 blue-producing lands is the most important and at most 1 black-producing land (if discarding before the combo turn is important), hence why most of the dual lands are blue and the inclusion of 2 islands.


Silence vs. Discard

Blue Decks

Prior to the combo turn, discard is superior as it guarantees a 1 for 1 exchange for a counterspell. Casting Silence as bait is risky, but has a higher upside. Discard can also proactively stop a counterbalance or hate-bear (Duress is limited), and Silence is only capable of delaying a turn at the cost of card-disadvantage.

On the combo turn, however, I would argue that Silence is vastly superior as it forces the opponent to use resources (mana, pitch cards) to react, creating more bottlenecks for the opponent's interaction. For example, if the opponent has 1 untapped blue mana and a hand full of flusterstorms and spell pierces, 1 Silence wins that turn, whereas multiple discard spells are needed. This is especially important now that the occurrence of Counterspell and Snapcaster Mage (discard is especially bad here) seem to be on the rise. Silence is also far superior against Force of Will as it forces the 2 for 1 exchange. Finally, Silence stops any number of situational counterspells like Spell Snare, Red Elemental Blast, or Stifle.

Discard

Discard is generally stronger against opposing discard, except in the case the turn just before the combo turn where a silence on the opponent's upkeep can potentially stop multiple discard spells (at the cost of a Lotus Petal or exposing a land to Wasteland).

Non-blue Hate-Bears

Cabal Therapy against an opponent relying on a single hate-bear is the best case scenario for discard, which cannot stop a topdeck or multiple, different cards.

Exposing a land to Wasteland or using a Lotus Petal to 'time walk' the opponent is fine, as in non-blue matchups saving the Silence for the combo turn is unnecessary (barring Mindbreak Trap). I would argue that Silence has a slight edge in these matchups.

Artifact Destruction, Burn, and Extirpate

Silence is unquestionably superior here as it stops any number of these effects.

Disruption

In most cases discard is superior to Silence in disrupting the opponent's offensive strategy. The most obvious case where Silence is better is against storm, where hiding a Silence with a Top is very strong.

Time Spiral

Though rare, casting Silence into Burning Wish for Time Spiral is a line I have used, and Silence makes this much more effective against blue decks.


Conclusion - For Doomsday, having access to 1 Silence on the combo turn to clean up whatever discard wasn't able to take care of is optimal. I am in favor of a 3-4 split between Silence and discard (not sure which way). The on-color mana from choosing to play discard on the combo turn is less advantageous than in other decks due to the heavy black mana requirement of Doomsday itself. Having extra black mana is not common, and so, producing the additional white mana is not significantly more difficult than having to produce the additional black mana.



Manabase

White-producing Lands

In a majority of games, only one Silence will be cast, either on the combo turn against counterspell decks or on the upkeep of non-blue decks. In either case, having this land also producing blue is ideal as it enables cantripping during setup and casting silence on the combo turn or casting silence during setup and cantripping/casting Ideas Unbound during the combo turn.

In my experience, it is rare to encounter a game where fetching more than one white-producing land is required and the biggest weakness is naturally drawing the Tundra and having it be exposed to Wasteland. However, with the increased number of Lotus Petals, this is alleviated to some degree; see the next section.

Lotus Petal Count

Assuming that we are optimizing the deck for a turn 3 win, the ideal number of lands to see are 2 prior to the combo turn with a third land or lotus petal on the combo turn (Lotus Petal is usually stronger as it adds to the storm count). Any additional lands are a surplus and 'virtual' card disadvantage.

In more detail, we want to see at least one land in the opening 7, two by turn 2 (assuming that we see 10 cards by this turn, accounting for some instances where a cantrip is not cast), and a third land/petal by turn 3 (assuming 13 cards seen). With these rough assumptions, I find a peak at 14 lands leading to seeing 3 lands by turn 3. Given that we want to reduce 0-land opening hands and hands without Top or 1 non-blue land, I think the ideal number is 15-17 lands (a more rigorous analysis is required on this).

Roughly 30% of the time we will find 0 ritual effects (assuming 5 being played) in 13 cards, in which case, Lotus Petals are key in generating the 4-6 initial mana by turn 3-4 required to cast Doomsday + Cantrip + Ideas Unbound.

Finally, Lotus Petals help in alleviating the 3 different colors required to cast Silence + Doomsday + Cantrips and allow comboing with only basic islands in play.


Speed of the Deck

In this previous tournament report I believe the speed was much slower than my usual experiences with the deck. The deck can usually combo between turns 2-4, with occasional turn 1 wins (most commonly with Dark Ritual, LED, Doomsday, Probe). With protection, most wins occur between turns 3-4, and as with all storm decks, the combo turn is somewhat bimodal with turn 5+ wins not being uncommon due to the opponent having multiple counterspells or discard.

The inclusion of Dig Through Time necessarily slows down the speed of the deck since it is very rare to cast this on turn 2 or in addition to comboing on turn 3. The main reason to include this card is against control, where it can act as an additional protection spell by either drawing out a counterspell or finding protection/business. It may be better to keep these as sideboard cards or a 1-1 split between the mainboard and sideboard. Also, Dig Through Time is not supposed to be the focal point of the list; rather it is a supplement to help navigate through disruption-heavy matches.

Thanks for this very interesting an well-argumented post.

There is just two things I would disagree with:

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by DireNTropy

Mana requirements on the combo turn

Conclusion - fast starts (with a Dark Ritual) require initial mana producing most commonly BU or BUU in addition to the mana requirements of any protection spell.

---

I think in more than 95% of the cases I play IU with mana from LED, either because I had a LED earlier via SDT/Cantrips or because I have a cantrip+SDT/double cantrip pile.
With only 1 cantrip and no LED, it is often not that easy anyway to build 10 storms.

Half the protection cost B, and the cantrips you usually use to dig into your pile are often mostly GP and SDT that does not require U (because you often cast PN & BS prior to find combo & protection).

So it has always seemed to me that the principal mana requirement is Black, especially because if you do not have DR, you need BBB.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by DireNTropy

Mana Requirements Building up to the Combo Turn

The above two sections suggest that fetching 1-2 blue-producing lands is the most important and at most 1 black-producing land (if discarding before the combo turn is important), hence why most of the dual lands are blue and the inclusion of 2 islands.

---

To my mind we especially need 1 island, because the best cantripping sequence is T1 PN, T2 BS fetch. I can see the second one being good, but I'm not sure it is absolutely needed. Keep in mind that I never played with DTT, which increase your need for U.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by DireNTropy

Non-blue Hate-Bears

Cabal Therapy against an opponent relying on a single hate-bear is the best case scenario for discard, which cannot stop a topdeck or multiple, different cards.

Exposing a land to Wasteland or using a Lotus Petal to 'time walk' the opponent is fine, as in non-blue matchups saving the Silence for the combo turn is unnecessary (barring Mindbreak Trap). I would argue that Silence has a slight edge in these matchups.

---

I disagree here. Hatebears are mostly in D&T, and Cabal => Thalia is quite good, while fetching non basic to chant-walk them off playing it T2 is not often a very good option.
You have burn too, which play eidolon, and I prefer to play cabal => eidolon (which is probably THE card which make their hand keeepable, worth to mull for), while you will not usually want to chantwalk them T2.


Lotus Petal Count

Assuming that we are optimizing the deck for a turn 3 win, the ideal number of lands to see are 2 prior to the combo turn with a third land or lotus petal on the combo turn (Lotus Petal is usually stronger as it adds to the storm count). Any additional lands are a surplus and 'virtual' card disadvantage.
[/QUOTE]

I do not assume that I want to kill T3. If there is no real threat, why not improve your hand throught SDT? We have a great card selection tool which makes our hands getting much better with the time, I want to take full profit of it against U.decks. More lands is very good then, especially fetchlands.


In more detail, we want to see at least one land in the opening 7, two by turn 2 (assuming that we see 10 cards by this turn, accounting for some instances where a cantrip is not cast), and a third land/petal by turn 3 (assuming 13 cards seen). With these rough assumptions, I find a peak at 14 lands leading to seeing 3 lands by turn 3. Given that we want to reduce 0-land opening hands and hands without Top or 1 non-blue land, I think the ideal number is 15-17 lands (a more rigorous analysis is required on this).
[/QUOTE]

So as you play 15, it is a bit on the low side.

When you have seen 13 cards, you have 36% of chances to have seen less than 3 lands assuming a 14/60 ratio:
- 1 => 10.5 %
- 2 => 23.5%
- 3 => 28.7%
- 4 => 21.3%
- 5+ => 13.9%

So the peak is indeed for 3 lands on 13 cards, but the problem is that with 4 lands you still have 3 lands T3 (and a virtual CdA of 1), but whith 2 lands you are a bit more screwed. Additionnaly, you assume to have seen 13 cards T3, so you played some PN/BS => you can have easily get rid of the additional lands if you do not need them.

Thanks for this very interesting an well-argumented post.

There is just two things I would disagree with:

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by DireNTropy

Mana requirements on the combo turn

Conclusion - fast starts (with a Dark Ritual) require initial mana producing most commonly BU or BUU in addition to the mana requirements of any protection spell.

---

I think in more than 95% of the cases I play IU with mana from LED, either because I had a LED earlier via SDT/Cantrips or because I have a cantrip+SDT/double cantrip pile.
With only 1 cantrip and no LED, it is often not that easy anyway to build 10 storms.

Half the protection cost B, and the cantrips you usually use to dig into your pile are often mostly GP and SDT that does not require U (because you often cast PN & BS prior to find combo & protection).

So it has always seemed to me that the principal mana requirement is Black, especially because if you do not have DR, you need BBB.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by DireNTropy

Mana Requirements Building up to the Combo Turn

The above two sections suggest that fetching 1-2 blue-producing lands is the most important and at most 1 black-producing land (if discarding before the combo turn is important), hence why most of the dual lands are blue and the inclusion of 2 islands.

---

To my mind we especially need 1 island, because the best cantripping sequence is T1 PN, T2 BS fetch. I can see the second one being good, but I'm not sure it is absolutely needed. Keep in mind that I never played with DTT, which increase your need for U.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by DireNTropy

Non-blue Hate-Bears

Cabal Therapy against an opponent relying on a single hate-bear is the best case scenario for discard, which cannot stop a topdeck or multiple, different cards.

Exposing a land to Wasteland or using a Lotus Petal to 'time walk' the opponent is fine, as in non-blue matchups saving the Silence for the combo turn is unnecessary (barring Mindbreak Trap). I would argue that Silence has a slight edge in these matchups.

---

I disagree here. Hatebears are mostly in D&T, and Cabal => Thalia is quite good, while fetching non basic to chant-walk them off playing it T2 is not often a very good option.
You have burn too, which play eidolon, and I prefer to play cabal => eidolon (which is probably THE card which make their hand keeepable, worth to mull for), while you will not usually want to chantwalk them T2.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by DireNTropy

Lotus Petal Count

Assuming that we are optimizing the deck for a turn 3 win, the ideal number of lands to see are 2 prior to the combo turn with a third land or lotus petal on the combo turn (Lotus Petal is usually stronger as it adds to the storm count). Any additional lands are a surplus and 'virtual' card disadvantage.

---

I do not assume that I want to kill T3. If there is no real threat, why not improve your hand throught SDT? We have a great card selection tool which makes our hands getting much better with the time, I want to take full profit of it against U.decks. More lands is very good then, especially fetchlands.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by DireNTropy

In more detail, we want to see at least one land in the opening 7, two by turn 2 (assuming that we see 10 cards by this turn, accounting for some instances where a cantrip is not cast), and a third land/petal by turn 3 (assuming 13 cards seen). With these rough assumptions, I find a peak at 14 lands leading to seeing 3 lands by turn 3. Given that we want to reduce 0-land opening hands and hands without Top or 1 non-blue land, I think the ideal number is 15-17 lands (a more rigorous analysis is required on this).

---

So as you play 15, it is a bit on the low side.

When you have seen 13 cards, you have 36% of chances to have seen less than 3 lands assuming a 14/60 ratio:
- 1 => 10.5 %
- 2 => 23.5%
- 3 => 28.7%
- 4 => 21.3%
- 5+ => 13.9%

So the peak is indeed for 3 lands on 13 cards, but the problem is that with 4 lands you still have 3 lands T3 (and a virtual CdA of 1), but whith 2 lands you are a bit more screwed. Additionnaly, you assume to have seen 13 cards T3, so you played some PN/BS => you can have easily get rid of the additional lands if you do not need them.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Lemnear

I'm not 100% convinced it's that easy given that SDT costs at least two mana to do anything in this deck and doesn't feed DTT which was the focus of the previous question. I'm not talking about the cards in a vacuum, but with a sole focus on assembling the combo asap.

Given that Miracles players toy with DTT for months and still did not found a way how the card should meaningful work with SDT together, I'm willing to think about a radical path to make DTT work as aggressice combo support, not only because I consider it a perfect (on-color) card to create CA and dig for Doomsday, but also due to the fact that increased speed and Doomsday being a "life-independant" engine, would make Wraith bearable

P.S. I'm known for slaying holy cows ;)

---

Cows are holy based on faith. SDT is factually faster. I've explained this several times (most recently in the link below), but the gist is that this spell is a very common mode for SDT:

Stored Draw for Next Turn
1
Artifact
Tap, Sacrifice: Draw a Card

This post mentions the parameters for a successful Doomsday kill: http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/s...l=1#post748941

Box C there is a big deal if you're trying to kill early since you need to both maximize your draws AND minimize the mana needed beyond BBB. SDT is excellent at this. Its two other features (going to the top of your deck and thus increasing storm by 1) and its spin to rearrange are also features that contribute a lot (particularly against a live opponent).



If you're going to play Street Wraith (I'm not disagreeing with this fundamentally, I mentioned on Storm Boards that a 4 DTT 4 Street Wraith Doomsday deck might be superior to the Burning Wish version, particularly if you are killing with Lab Man most often), it should be in addition to SDT.

Quote:

---

I think in more than 95% of the cases I play IU with mana from LED, either because I had a LED earlier via SDT/Cantrips or because I have a cantrip+SDT/double cantrip pile.
With only 1 cantrip and no LED, it is often not that easy anyway to build 10 storms.

---

You misunderstood what you're quoting. BU or BUU means B for Ritual, U for cantrip (because they have LED) and B for Ritual, U for cantrip, U for cantrip (because they're lacking LED or they have Probe into IU). You only seemed to acknowledge the BUU for Probe into IU case.

Quote:

---

I believe that if it was allowed, most DD players would play more than 4 SDT.

---

I'm not 100% certain that 8 would be correct, but if I was told I could either play 4 or 8, but not another number, I would prefer to be playing 8. My win percentage when I stick an SDT is unreal.

Brandon do you have a list of your DTT SW build ?

I'm interested as well by a DTT - SW list.
I searched into stormboards without finding it.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by emidln

If you're going to play Street Wraith (I'm not disagreeing with this fundamentally, I mentioned on Storm Boards that a 4 DTT 4 Street Wraith Doomsday deck might be superior to the Burning Wish version, particularly if you are killing with Lab Man most often), it should be in addition to SDT.

---

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by P-E

Brandon do you have a list of your DTT SW build ?

---

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by dte

I'm interested as well by a DTT - SW list.
I searched into stormboards without finding it.

---

I don't think you could actually play such a list. 4 DtT + 4 SW is a lot of cards, there's only 1 flex slot where people run a 4th wish/DtT/Meditate, where do you find the space? Even if you cut the Wish board, you would add in the Tendrils and Doomsday in your board, that opens 1 slot, 2 total. Let's say you just cut the Tendrils then and use Lab-Man only (you now have to spend more for a kill if you want to use Chromatic Sphere, you also pretty much can't cut Sphere, in all likelihood), that's 3 slots free, 4 if you then commit to not having the Lotus Petal either and just go for LED/Lab-Man kills (this has the side effect of making you slightly slower as well, because Petal does also play the role of accelerator in addition to having utility in piles.). So, after paring down your actual kill condition and maneuvers, there are 4 slots open.

What do you cut from there? Cutting protection seems bad, as you no longer have Wishes to back your discard, and you want to be crippling the opponent with discard so you have time/fuel to hit your Digs. That leaves lands, cantrips, and accelerants as possible cuts. With only 2 colors, and thus less need for duals, you can make the case to cut a land, but having a lot of fetches for your Top and Dig is important, so you probably only open 1 slot here, 5 total.

Cutting Rain, Ritual, or LED seems dubious at best. The former 5 are obviously good for making Doomsday actually playable, the latter synergizes well with Top, Wraith and, arguably, DtT. I think the most defensible cut would be a single LED, as it's value is diminished in a storm-less list. 6 slots open. From there, I can't really see wanting to cut any of the other card selection or drawing effects. So it ends there with 6 slots. Since it sounds miserable to open with multiple DtT, and Street Wraith is a worse Probe and the most combo-dependent for utility, I suppose a 3:3 split is the most realistic outcome here.

4 Doomsday
3 Dig Through Time
1 Ideas Unbound
1 Laboratory Maniac

3 Street Wraith
4 Gitaxian Probe
4 Ponder
4 Brainstorm
4 Sensei's Divining Top
1 Chromatic Sphere

3 Cabal Therapy
4 Duress

4 Dark Ritual
3 Lion's Eye Diamond
1 Rain of Filth

4 Polluted Delta
4 Flooded Strand
1 Scalding Tarn
1 Swamp
2 Island
4 Underground Sea

For a 4:4 DtT/Wraith list, it's probably only 2 cards off from this, barring some massive structural change. I don't really know if you'd call this list stronger, than the Wish version, though. *shrug* but hey, this was just my stream-of-thought/deductive reasoning, for all I know there's a great version of it out there.

I doubt you have to maintain such a density of disruption with so much draw for free/cheap. The same is possibly true for mana-acceleration

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Lemnear

I doubt you have to maintain such a density of disruption with so much draw for free/cheap. The same is possibly true for mana-acceleration

---

In theory, you could cut Rain of Filth because it doesn't synergize with Lab Man's PtT piles, and using the extra slot for a Wraith would increase the LED/Wraith interactions to get you the 3 mana. Alternatively, you could cut LED for Wraith, in the sense that they're both somewhat synergy-driven cards and the marginal value of the nth copy probably does drop sharply (though, idk which one's value drops more rapidly), but I'm unsure about cutting discard. You'd want to strip opposing combo/CB w/e while you try and fuel/resolve Digs, at least that's my impression of it. I understand that Dig finding discard does make a lower amount of discard viable in the sense of protecting the combo, though. You could drop to 6 discard/2 LED for 4 Wraith 4 DtT, but thats definitely a less conservative cut and I don't know how clunky 4 Dig could get.

So I posted this on the Storm Boards too, but I played in a GPT for Kyoto yesterday.

There were 16 players. The whole room basically scouted itself after Round 1, so I can give you the breakdown of all of the Archetypes:

Dragon Stompy
Chalice Green
12 Post
Burn
UR Delver
RUG Delver
Enchantress
Infect
2 Omniscience
2 Dredge
2 Storm
1 Doomsday (me)

This is extremely out of the ordinary; combo isn’t popular here at all (especially Storm), but it was half the field today.

Here’s what I ended up playing:

3 Underground Sea
2 Volcanic Island
2 Island
1 Swamp
4 Polluted Delta
4 Flooded Strand
1 Misty Rainforest

4 Lion's Eye Diamond
1 Lotus Petal
1 Chromatic Sphere
4 Sensei's Divining Top
4 Brainstorm
4 Gitaxian Probe
4 Ponder
4 Dark Ritual
1 Rain of Filth
3 Cabal Therapy
4 Duress
1 Ideas Unbound
4 Burning Wish
1 Laboratory Maniac
3 Doomsday

Sideboard
2 Tropical Island
1 Void Snare
1 Cabal Therapy
2 Xantid Swarm
4 Abrupt Decay
1 Cruel Bargain
1 Doomsday
1 Massacre
1 Tendrils of Agony
1 Empty the Warrens

The list is pretty stock as far as I know. Anyway, onto the matches.

Round 1 - 12 Post
Game 1, I Probe my opponent on Turn 1, see that he has nothing but lands, Expedition Map, and Emrakul, so he dies on turn 2.

Game 2, I play Xantid Swarm on Turn 1, and it resolves. Turn 2 before I attack, my opponent plays Crop Rotation to get a Cloudpost so he has two posts in play. I Probe and see that my opponent has Hydroblast and Trinisphere. However, the Probe finds the Dark Ritual I needed to kill my opponent on Turn 2 again. He frowns and shows me that he sided in 11 cards against me.

Round 2 - UW Omniscience
Game 1, I don’t know what my opponent is playing, so I keep a hand that has Doomsday, and mana. I only need to draw a cantrip to win. My opponent won the die roll, and I died on his second turn.

Game 2, I shred my opponent’s hand with Therapy on double Probe on turn one, and Xantid Swarm meets Force of Will pitching Force of Will, so he's pretty low on cards. The game reaches a point where I can cast Doomsday for a pass the turn pile and the only card my opponent has in his hand is a Meddling Mage. I decide to go for it and hope that my deck being weird would prevent my opponent from making a good call. He saw Ideas Unbound earlier in the game from a Probe, so on his turn he names that. He gets me down to one life with Meddling Mage attacking, but even without casting Ideas Unbound I’m able to just cast the Maniac and win.

Game 3, I make a play that costs me the game. At one point I cast Burning Wish for Cabal Therapy for my next turn. My opponent has a Top in play, and he uses it to hide Show and Tell and Emrakul. My opponent had basically nothing in hand, but I didn't have enough mana to win before Emrakul destroyed all my permanents. Burning Wish would have cantripped into my pile if I hadn't cast it earlier.

Round 3 – Burn
Game 1, is a close game where I win at 1 life. I know my opponent’s hand has Price of Progress, a Searing Blaze, and his topdeck. I’m dead when I cast Doomsday if he topdecked a burn spell and casts it along with the Price. I have four lands in play (one Dual), Probe and another Dual in hand, and Top in play. The pile I build is Ideas Unbound, Duress, Rain of Filth, LED, Burning Wish. My opponent doesn’t automatically kill me in response to Ideas Unbound like he should have, so I cast Duress to force him to use Price—-in response, he casts Fireblast to put me down to one life, and then casts Price to which I respond with Rain of Filth and sacrifice my Dual. I play my second Dual to cast the Probe in my hand to win the game.

Game 2, my opening hand has Dark Ritual, LED, Doomsday. I figure that if my opponent taps out on Turn 2 but doesn’t play Eidolon and I draw any cantrip, I win on my second turn. It was probably too risky, but...you’ll see what happened. My opponent plays Turn 1 Goblin Guide, and reveals a Ponder on my side. Turn 2 he plays a second Goblin Guide and a Lava Spike, so he’s dead. After the game he shows me that he had an Eidolon and just didn’t cast it! So yeah, people here don’t know shit about combo. My opponent also sided in Relic of Progenitus against me and left his Pyroblasts in the board. I literally stole both my games from this guy.

Round 4 - Infect
Game 1, he mulligans to five. He has no disruption other than a Spell Pierce that does nothing when I go off because I had topdecked a Dark Ritual for the turn. This is the only time Chromatic Sphere did anything all day, but it being a saved draw definitely saved me from dying because I was at 9 Poison the turn I went off.

Game 2, my opponent goes down to 5 life with Sylvan Library, and only has Noble Hierarchs for pressure. I teach him a lesson by killing him with a Natural Tendrils. I have Top in play, and I cast LED, LED, Doomsday to bait out his Spell Pierce, and flip my Top for the Burning Wish I had been floating on top to get Tendrils.

Round 5 - RUG Delver
I get paired down. I ask my opponent to concede to me because he has no chance of being in the Single Elimination rounds, but he declines because he’s friends with the other players who have a shot of making it. Can't be too upset about that.

Game 1, my opponent mulligans to 6, has no resistance, and dies on turn 2.

Game 2, I grind through all of my opponent’s Stifles and counterspells, but the coast is only finally clear of disruption when I’m at 6 life and my opponent has a Lightning Bolt in hand. Also of note is that my opponent both has Spell Snare and Grafdigger's Cage in his deck. I side out all of my two mana cards except Ideas Unbound and Grafdigger's Cage doesn't do anything against my deck. On my last turn, instead of casting Doomsday in some futile hope that my opponent is braindead enough to not cast a Bolt when I'm at 3 life, I cast Ideas Unbound to let it get countered by the Snare my opponent has had in hand all game, and make a big display of acting like I lost the game to the Spell Snare and Grafdigger’s Cage (none of the guys out here have poker faces so whining like this isn't as weird as it looks at first glance).

Game 3, I play Empty for 6 Goblins, and it takes my opponent’s life down pretty low before he plays a Tarmogoyf as a blocker. I finish the game by casting Ideas Unbound with LED mana floating to find my Tendrils of Agony. Also of note is that my opponent cast Surgical Extraction on Lotus Petal in response to Ideas Unbound, so he was not happy at all to see that I only play one *and* it cut me straight to my Tendrils.

So we cut to Top 4, which is UR Delver, the Omniscience player I faced before, me, and Storm.

Semifinals - UW Omniscience
Game 1, I lose to a fucked up hand on my opponent’s part. He’s the higher seed so he goes first and plays Island. I play Duress on my turn and see double Show and Tell, double Omniscience, Dig Through Time, City of Traitors. I lose my cool for a moment, but get my shit together and I take the Dig. My opponent puts Omniscience in play, and I put a land in play. He apparently has no action, so I Brainstorm at the end of the turn, and my hand is Dark Ritual, Doomsday, Ponder, Ponder, Land. On my turn, if I can find an LED I still win the game, but I don’t find one and I die to my opponent drawing Dig Through Time two turns later.

Game 2, I make my opponent discard most of his cards. At one point, my opponent’s hand is only Force of Will and lands. He draws for the turn, and on my turn I have Top in play, Dark Ritual, LED, LED, Doomsday with a Burning Wish on top. I cast Doomsday, and he thinks for a very long time about whether this Doomsday should resolve, but ultimately lets it happen. I decide that I can’t risk that he drew a blue card but wants to get me dead by breaking up my Doomsday pile. The pile I make is Duress, Cruel Bargain, Probe, Burning Wish, Laboratory Maniac. I pass the turn. He draws and passes his turn. I draw Duress, and I cast it. He Forces it. I crack my LEDs for Blue and Black (I actually made a mistake and said “Red and Black” in Japanese because that’s my habit at the end of Doomsday turns, but being the only non-Japanese person there meant my opponent understood when I showed him my next card), then I flip Top for Cruel Bargain, drawing Top, Probe, Wish, and Maniac. I cast Top, then I cast Maniac, and I cast Probe to win the game.

Game 3, my opponent opens on Leyline of Sanctity. His first play is City of Traitors, so his hand obviously has Show and Tell and something to put in if he just finds an Island. I need to find a Xantid Swarm before he finds his land, but that doesn’t happen so I lose.

All in all, I’m happy about how things turned out. My only losses were to Omniscience, which is the combo deck to beat in Japan, but the games were all really close and what I ended up losing to were cards that aren’t all that common for the deck (Sensei’s Top and Leyline).

Nice read Namida, grats on some good results.

How often would you estimate that you need to win through Lab Man? And also, when you do, how often are able to fit in the sphere? Could you walk us through a set up and execution of a lab man kill through sphere? In particular if you don't already have the sphere out or in hand but need to incorporate it in your DD pile.

The default pile for a Laboratory Maniac win with Chromatic Sphere is Ideas Unbound, LED, Gitaxian Probe, Chromatic Sphere, Laboratory Maniac. It costs 2UU after you cast Doomsday, and you can either use a cantrip to draw into this pile or you can pass the turn. You draw Ideas Unbound, cast it to draw LED, Probe, and Sphere. Cast Sphere and LED, then cast Probe and break the LED for mana to cast the Maniac off of LED mana. From there you just pay one mana to use Chromatic Sphere and since it's a mana ability it doesn't use the stack and can't be responded to.

Are you asking when exactly I opt for Laboratory Maniac? I don't know that I can put a useful figure on the number of times that I use Laboratory Maniac because I think it depends mainly on the decks that you're running into. For example, I only used Maniac against the Omniscience player at this event, but that's because I got paired against a bunch of decks where my life total would have been in jeopardy if I passed the turn. If I had been paired up against any of the Chalice players, or Enchantress, etc., I imagine I would have used Maniac a whole lot more. In the last GPT I went to, I played against Dragon Stompy, Pox, Jund, and MUD so I used Laboratory Maniac a whole lot during that event. In the same vein, I don't usually use Chromatic Sphere because my opponents usually don't play cards that it blanks. That's entirely because those sorts of decks don't usually show up in my metagame (in my last example, only Jund has removal and I've yet to have it matter). To be honest, only after like a year and a half did I finally get to use Chromatic Sphere to win the game against a Miracles player last week (and trying to explain the interaction in Japanese was quite the experience).

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Namida

Round 2 - UW Omniscience

---

Are there any decklists? I would like to see this list. If there's a possibility to see it pls tell where to find it :smile:

Tin Fins with the transformational Doomsday board is alot of fun. Just being able to Dark Ritual Doomsday is super powerful. But with the banning of Tresure Cruise,Stifle and Wasteland have made its way back into the meta.

Im aware how important Burning wish is for generating storm. So I think keeping 1 would be fine for that.

With that said,could a UB,4 DD,Tendrils list be valuable?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Curtis Dittmar

Tin Fins with the transformational Doomsday board is alot of fun. Just being able to Dark Ritual Doomsday is super powerful. But with the banning of Tresure Cruise,Stifle and Wasteland have made its way back into the meta.

Im aware how important Burning wish is for generating storm. So I think keeping 1 would be fine for that.

With that said,could a UB,4 DD,Tendrils list be valuable?

---

It's probably doable, but I'm not sure that what you lose from being able to cast Burning Wish is on the same level as what you gain from not playing red mana. What would your UB list look like?

What about playing DTT in something that looks like Menendian's Version?
There are a greater number of flexible slots, no LEDs etc

This is the Tin Fins list after the transformation.

4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
4 Git Probe
4 Top
2 LDV

4 Doomsday
1 IU
1 Pithing Needle
1 CoV (i play a Burning Wish instead)
1 Tendrils (I leave the Childron of Korlis)

4 Cabal Therapy
2 Thoutseize

1 Emrakul


4 Dark Ritual
3 Lion's Eye Diamond
4 Lotus Petal
1 Chrome Mox

1 Shelldock Isle
3 Underground Sea
1 Scrubland
1 Tundra
1 Swamp
8 Fetch

I realize the power behind the stock DD list. But sometimes it just feels klunky. Iv always felt Ponder and Top are klunky together,id just like to play Top,Probe,Brainstorm. Burning Wish also can feel klunky (pre combo). I often went back and forth between 4 and 3 in the stock list.

As far as a list,i dont really know yet. I just know drawing Doomsday naturally feels better than wishing for it, the land i always want to have in play is Underground Sea and Ponder feels like it should be a card/s that makes the deck more aggressive.

What do you/anybody interested think?

Cantrips are so important for this deck that I've never gone below 15 in my maindeck since Gitaxian Probe was printed (granted, the card I cut was a Ponder, but I wouldn't ever think of just getting rid of all of them). Being able to draw into your piles is really important for being able to win without passing the turn; I also think that Ponder and Top play rather well together because Ponder can shuffle your deck for Top.

Naturally drawing Doomsday is better than Wishing for it most of the time, but playing 4 Doomsday feels worse to me than virtually playing 7 Doomsday because being able to find business is very important. Burning Wish being able to let you use LED mana to cast Doomsday also comes up all the time--when I was trying to play a more aggressive list, turn two Burning Wish breaking LED for Doomsday was how I tried to push my wins, and Top + Wish has allowed me to win most of the games I have played where my opponent had resolved a Blood Moon. If you're really committed to not playing blue, I suppose you can play Lim-Dul's Vault, but it really is a poor replacement. The issue is that Lim-Dul's Vault and Doomsday are both card disadvantage--the deck used to play LDV when it played Infernal Tutors and it was closer to ANT; however, that's because Vaulting for Infernal Tutor when you have just mana is a win when you untap, while Vaulting for Doomsday when you have just mana is a pass the turn pile and you basically double time walk yourself (you should win after that, but giving your opponent two turns to find a way to break that up after you've basically locked yourself into your plan is definitely not ideal).

The deck is pretty customizable so you can easily make the deck more aggressive if you want to. That being said, I spent some time trying to make the current version of the deck faster, and found that the deck doesn't really need to be more aggressive. Doomsday consistently wins by turn three, and it can frequently win on turn two with some turn one potential. That's not including the fact that if you base your list off of the post-sideboard deck, you're playing Emrakul in your deck so you can Dark Ritual into Doomsday on turn one if you really want to. Then again, I feel like the reason the deck isn't pressured into needing to win quickly is because you can Burning Wish for answers, but if you're working on not playing red I suppose that's not an option. The most aggressive version of the deck that I have seen was the old list back in the day that played Infernal Tutor and Ill-Gotten Gains because you could just turn one IGG Loop someone or you could set up turn one pass the turn piles with Tendrils if you had an IGG in your deck...but IGG is a poor draw (Past in Flames doesn't play well with Doomsday), Infernal Tutor is poor at enabling Doomsday, and you should already be crushing the opponents who you can safely slam a turn one Doomsday against.

If I were going to make any changes to what you're using as a base, I would go up to 16 land (with more basics), cut the Chrome Mox, cut a Lotus Petal or two, and add Rain of Filth and/or Cabal Ritual (since hitting BBB for Doomsday is really important and you want to be able to do that even when you have Island in play). I don't know that Pithing Needle needs a maindeck spot because the only cards I think you really care a lot about are Wasteland and Karakas for Emrakul, but I'm not even sure how good the Emrakul plan is these days. In fact, a lot of people are advocating playing Laboratory Maniac as the secondary win condition, so I would consider looking into that, too.