[Deck] ANT (Ad Nauseam Tendrils)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by practical joke

I think the list can be improved.

I've had rare situations that I had to cantrip into a win, but those were during tests and it happens very rarely.
I. if possible do not sac my second LED when casting ad nauseam, or keep my LED at hand.
It can happen, and I do think this list lacks a proper tutor. Both lim-dul's vault and personal tutor are to slow and grim tutor is costing to much when trying to ill-gotten gains/or find it with ad nauseam. so I chose to be a bit greedy and play only 6cards that would provide me action.

Those you have to protect with everything you have.


Most of the time I flipped IT and/or LED or I used LED and infernal tutor to find ad nauseam and then flipped ill-gotten gains.

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That's where SDT would shine, in helping you to cantrip into the critical cards without blue mana. With your list, I think it would be wiser to sac LED in response to Ad Nauseam for UUU instead of BBB. You're more likely to flip several cantrips which nets you card, and rituals only need a Petal or a Mox to start being cast.
I can see that Preordain instead of (2) SDT speeds the deck and this is quite important nowadays that aggro-control are winning on turn 4, but it's quite sad to lose nice interactions like Brainstorming my Ad Nauseam on top and then using SDT plus LEDs to cast it, or just cast double bomb.
I also fear that such a list would have real difficulties against opposing Tops, but I'll take the risk.

As or the land count, I was already playing my list with 14 lands and it was better. This configuration relies a lot more on Infernal Tutor because it's basically the tutor which enables most of your kills, so it should be optimized. 12 cantrips help in finding the other lands against blue decks, and 3 basics are really strong against tempo decks. Personally I would not play 10 fetchlands because you're exposed excessively to Stifle and lifeloss, as 8 are more than sufficient to still guarantee a turn 3 threshold and you don't always want fetchlands especially when you have 2 good cards with Ponder and you need both,but you also want to Duress the opponent so you should shuffle away the good card because of having a fetchland. This scenario happens.

As for the third Mox, I think it's down to a personal choice. I do not love Mox since it's essentially a dead card. I prefer having an out to randomness in the form of Chain of Vapor maindeck. Not that it will bounce Counterbalance, but there are some decks as of now that play Meddling Mage maindeck to stop, guess what, Survival. They're more likely to name Tendrils than Ad Nauseam or rituals/LED, especially the so-and-so players. I don't like having random autolosses. I know it's marginal, but it could still happen.
Chain also buys a turn bouncing a turn 2 Survival, or may be useful in several situations (just bouncing their clock and forcing them to tap again, for example). It frees a sb slot and can, obviously, create +1/2/3 storm.

I've retuned your list a bit down to my taste and it sounds like this.

// Lands
1 [A] Tropical Island
4 [ON] Polluted Delta
4 [ON] Flooded Strand/Misty rainforest
2 [A] Underground Sea
2 [10E] Island (2)
1 [9E] Swamp (4)

// Spells
1 [FNM] Tendrils of Agony
4 [DIS] Infernal Tutor
1 [US] Ill-Gotten Gains
4 [DDC] Duress
2 [ALA] Ad Nauseam
1 [ON] Chain of Vapor
4 [M11] Preordain
4 [V09] Lotus Petal
4 [LRW] Ponder
4 [FNM] Brainstorm
4 [US] Dark Ritual
4 [TO] Cabal Ritual
4 [MI] Lion's Eye Diamond
3 [LRW] Thoughtseize
2 [GPX] Chrome Mox

// Sideboard
SB: 1 [A] Tropical Island
SB: 2 [ON] Chain of Vapor
SB: 4 [SC] Xantid Swarm
SB: 1 [ROE] Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
SB: 1 [LRW] Shelldock Isle
SB: 2 [5E] Hurkyl's Recall
SB: 3 [6E] Doomsday
SB: 1 [DS] Echoing Truth/Wipe Away


I've changed the sideboard a bit. Hurkyl's Recall because it's still an autowin against those Stax decks that may give this deck a difficult life.
The echoing truth stays there as a third bouncer for Stax matchups as well as another answer against hatebears that replaces Duress , but It could be another discard against Counterbalance as well - say, an Inquisition of Kozilek, which has been surprinsingly good.
Not being able to grab Force is not a justification since it can still take off CB and hatebears as well as Pierce.
4 Doomsdays to me are too much, you can cantrip into one very fastly. Odds that you are going to cast on your first turn protected are pretty low. You should aim to quick Duress them and go for it. It still remains a risky plan, though. A Wipe Away as suggested by Kikoo should be good since you're still not going to pack Ad Nauseam.
Against Counterbalance, how the sideboarding should be?

-2 Ad Nauseam
-2 Cabal Ritual
-1 (2) Lotus Petal

+3 DD
+1 Emrakul
+1 S.ISle
(+1 Wipe Away)

-1 IGG? You should keep that angle of the deck, it may still get you wins.

Akira Asahara's list from MODO. Looks very 'traditional.' If anything, it's something to chit-chat about.

15 Land
4 Polluted Delta
2 Flooded Strand
2 Gemstone Mine
2 Crystal Vein
2 Underground Sea
1 Tundra
1 Swamp
1 Island

45 Spells
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
4 Cabal Ritual
4 Dark Ritual
4 Duress
4 Infernal Tutor
4 Lion's Eye Diamond
4 Lotus Petal
3 Silence
3 Chrome Mox
2 Sensei's Divining Top
2 Ad Nauseam
1 Orim's Chant
1 Tendrils of Agony
1 Ill-Gotten Gains

15 Sideboard
4 Dark Confidant
2 Disfigure
2 Echoing Truth
2 Extirpate
2 Krosan Grip
1 Slaughter Pact
1 Tendrils of Agony
1 Tropical Island

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Piceli89

Against Counterbalance, how the sideboarding should be?

-2 Ad Nauseam
-2 Cabal Ritual
-1 (2) Lotus Petal

+3 DD
+1 Emrakul
+1 S.ISle
(+1 Wipe Away)

-1 IGG? You should keep that angle of the deck, it may still get you wins.

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If you side out Ad Nauseam, the best option may be side out Chrome Mox too, instead of Lotus Petal and/or Cabal Ritual. I usually side out:

-2 Ad Nauseam
-2 Chrome Mox
-1 Ill-gotten Gains

+3 Doomsday
+1 Shelldock
+1 Emrakul

Realize that one of your best start is T1-Land-Duress, T2- Land-(Cabal or Lotus petal)-Doomsday

I won't take out ill-gotten gains, because that is the one card you might need if you still want to combo out for 10 storm. (you have doomsday, but without SDT it's pretty difficult to get that chain going and without meditate it's rough)

You might want to take out 1 protection or 1 tutor.
Your tutors are much less relevant.

I'd take out -2 ad nauseam, -2 chrome mox, -1 swamp, -1 duress/infernal tutor for 4 doomsday, 1 emrakul, 1 shelldock

I was testing the last UB ANT builds(2-3 Chrome Mox) but sometimes it seems too slow to go off or I'm having some troubles after IT + LED -> Adn cause it is dificult to find ToA or cantrip into LED + IT again.Or I just cantrip -> cantrip ->cantrip but can't find the missing part(bussiness or protec or accel).
What is the average turn people go off?
It is more common to go Iggy or Adn plan?

Is personal tutor bad?It seems more easily to get Personal + cantrip than IT + LED after Adn.

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Originally Posted by Shimi

I was testing the last UB ANT builds(2-3 Chrome Mox) but sometimes it seems too slow to go off or I'm having some troubles after IT + LED -> Adn cause it is dificult to find ToA or cantrip into LED + IT again.Or I just cantrip -> cantrip ->cantrip but can't find the missing part(bussiness or protec or accel).
What is the average turn people go off?
It is more common to go Iggy or Adn plan?

Is personal tutor bad?It seems more easily to get Personal + cantrip than IT + LED after Adn.

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Average turn I can go off 3, ammount of protection changes a lot.
It can happen that you can't find anything, but it won't happen a lot.

Personal tutor is hell...It's extremely slow and I mean really slow. You don't want to set up a combo by casting personal tutor..cost you a turn or a cantrip + tutor + more mana to go off that turn. I wasn't happy with it, but the option of using grim tutor wasn't there either ( costs 6 life after ad nauseam..risky business and not useful)
After Ad Nauseam you need to find the following: Infernal tutor + LED or Ill-gotten gains + IT (or one in gy) or Tendrills or a whole lot of mana and a bunch of cantrips....that last part happened to me before once, casted 4 cantrips and then found tendrils.

I rarely have to cantrip for mana, you'll find it one way or another. Also remember that you don't always need protection. I.e I cantripped myself against merfolk the following hand: Cabal ritual, Cabal ritual, infernal tutor, LED, Ad Nauseam. 3 lands in play and treshhold.
He has in play 2 cursecatchers and 3-4 cards on hand.

Sure 3 turns seem slow, but if you don't use your cantrips the right way, you won't get things together, you have to make priority calls on what you need, if you find LED + cabal ritual and you have only a single cabal ritual on hand, you should ship it all and get new cards. Most of the time it's 1-2 accel ( 3 lands in play), 1 protection and 1 action...that should be findable for sure.


You should know what you play against, then make a call. For zoo, you don't need protection, but you do need accel and 1 action. The more the better because you'll probably
I use iggy plan as much as possible, since it's safe. Even if my opponent has Force in his gy I try to calculate the possibility of going either IT chaining into tendrills or iggy-loop.

Hello again, I have some doubts on the sideboard. My current sideboard is:

3 x Doomsday
1 x Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
1 x Shelldock isle
4 x Xantid swarm
1 x Tropical Island
4 x Chain of vapor
1 x Echoing truth

Do you think I should change the bouncers to other combination? My main deck is like Practical Joke's main, removing a Misty Rainforest and putting the third U.Sea. I'm considering removing the echoing truth by the fourth doomsday, but now there are not many CB decks in my metagame. Against what else is the Emrakul's plan useful? People here play a lot of tribal decks, UG and GW Survival and Non-CB bant
decks, like agrobant, New Horizons, Excalibur...

Thanks in advance!!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by losada

Against what else is the Emrakul's plan useful?

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besides counterbalance....nothing really, you can change it to 2x krosan grip (the third gets annoying after ad nauseam)
and some other cards to change the doomsday plan with.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by practical joke

besides counterbalance....nothing really, you can change it to 2x krosan grip (the third gets annoying after ad nauseam)
and some other cards to change the doomsday plan with.

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It's reasonable against other combo decks. The plan shined against Reanimator-style decks, but you don't see those very often anymore.

Also, when siding in Doomsday, you want 4 and you want as many free colored sources as possible. That means Lotus Petal and Chrome Mox. You want to do everything in your power to be able to play Doomsday by turn 2. You won't be able to spend a couple turns cantripping into it if they land Counterbalance and Doomsday is not nearly as effective if they get to spend the same amount of time also cantripping into extra Forces and Spell Pierces if they don't have Counterbalance.

One question

if you have a LIons eye diamond in your oppening hand and you know that your opponent plays 4 chalice of the void, Do you think that its better to put in play artifacts with cc 0 before that your opponent could play the chalice? For example playing lions eye diamond in turn 1 and pass the turn, for playing before infernal tutor and cracking lions eye diamond for searching ad Nauseam

Quote:

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Originally Posted by kiwi

One question

if you have a LIons eye diamond in your oppening hand and you know that your opponent plays 4 chalice of the void, Do you think that its better to put in play artifacts with cc 0 before that your opponent could play the chalice? For example playing lions eye diamond in turn 1 and pass the turn, for playing before infernal tutor and cracking lions eye diamond for searching ad Nauseam

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Definitely, especially if you go for infernal>ad nauseam.

In a vaccum, it depends on how many threats to LED they have and how/when they work. In the vast majority of situations, a deck with Chalice does have more Chalices than, say, disenchant effects. But say I'm facing a known player who I know also has Ratchet Bomb/Powder Keg plus O-Rings, the dynamic changes somewhat. After all, they may just go for Chalice at 1 instead (do they know what we're playing? did they mulligan aggressively?). Note that Stax can also occasionally play a t1 3sphere and assuming we aren't winning t1 (at which point the question is moot), it makes little sense to keep LED in hand t1 just to be forced to play it t2.

How much you need LED is also worth taking into consideration. Say you have enough mana anyway; I'd definitely play LED as it may bait an opponent into dealing with it rather than doing something relevant against my hand (I have a hard time justifying playing O-Ring over any relevant lock piece in that situation, but you never know; and the worst things that could happen is that LED stays in play ...). It's worth noting that everything Stax can do against LED while it's in hand can shut off multiple cards, while everything it can do against a LED in play is limited strictly to LED (except Smokestack).
Even if I had no plan for LED whatsoever, I'd put it into play as Smokestack fodder; playing Stax, I have won more than a few games by following a combination of Chalices and/or 3sphere with Smokestack. Obviously don't do this if LED would allow you to win quickly through a lock.

I have to disagree with how bad is Personal tutor and to explain my agrument accurately I would like to remark what we have lost with Mystical Tutor, in older UB ANT (or UBw/UBg/UBwg ANT) lists Mystical Tutor achieved 3 main goals:

1-Setting the combo faster and smoother.
2-Making ADN more lethal on lower life, since after resolving it you had higher chnaces to find the lethal Tendrils (having Mystical Tutor, Infernal Tutor and Tendrils itslef).
3-Fixing the Sideboard, it allowed us to have asideboard full of silver bullet singletons, wchich is no longer possible.

Now that we don't have it anymore is compulsory to fill the void it left, so what are our options? We can replace them, in a natural way, with other Tutors or extra Cantrips. Let's have a look at the Tutors that we have out there (I will keep strictly on color, this is UB):

-Personal Tutor.
-Lim-Dul's Vault.
-Grim Tutor.
-Cruel Tutor.

The problem with both black tutors is the high cost of lifes, being Grim Tutor better for not being card disadvantage and allowing you to use the card the turn you cast it without extra effort.Though Ad Nauseam is a demanding lover and losing that many lifes (5-6 after resolving....) seems like a bad idea.

Lim' dul's vault, while being instat is just nuts it' s still life dependant and the CMC of 2 means that you will see its effect in the 3rd turn if you use it for the set up process, while if you use it after resolving ADN to find the lacking key it will cost 2-4 lifes and 2 different color mana (this is important since generating black mana won't be an issue, while generating blue mana could be).

Personal Tutor is a sorcery, which is bad, though it has a CMC of 1 which means that you 'll have their fruit in your second turn, though it find slimited cards, it actually finds one of the most importants which is Infernal tutor. But I do agree with you that Personal Tutor is very bad for the set up phase of the combo. Where I thinbk that Personal Tutor really shines is after resolving ADN, at this point it is just as Mystical Tutor: 1 CMC card that fetches for ToA, nad normally after resolving ADN you won't have problems of having an SDT or another cantrip in order to have acces to the card found with Personal Tutor.

Summing up what I mean is that Personal Tutor is a natural Replacement for Mystical Tutor function after ADN resolves (it also helps to fill the gap of the sideboard silverbullets, but more poorly), concerning the set up of the combo as we have no efficient tutors for it, the only solution is to add more cantrips to the list. But what is true is that MT was a HUGE loss for this list and made it no longer a tier 1.

Here I let the list I' m testing for the moment with some success.

Maindeck 60

4 Polluted Delta
1 Flooded Strand
1 Scalding Tarn
1 Misty Rainforest
1 Blodstained Mire
1 Swamp
2 Island
2 Crystal Vein
2 Underground Sea

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

4 Duress
2 Thoughtseize

4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
2 Sensei's Divining Top

4 Infernal Tutor
2 Personal Tutor

2 Ad Nauseam
1 Tendrils of Agony
1 Ill-Gotten Gains

Sideboard 15

4 Dark Confidant
2 Thouhgtseize
2 Wipe Away
2 Hurkyl's Recall
1 Echoing Truth
1 Chain of Vapor
1 Deathmark
1 Slaughter Pact
1 Tendrils of Agony

Greetings,

Iñaki.-

Very nice analysis, Egosum. You have somehow convinced me to try Personal Tutor, because it's really a pain to lose games due to bad Ad Nauseam flips. The only concern of mine is that Personal Tutor does not grab Chant which is the most powerful protection spell, but I'll deal with it and build something.

So I played my first tournament with ANT today. Practicals list with SB more like Ari Laxs. It was a small local tournament but we all have many different top tier decks so the meta is changing every time.

First round I played against Brown Stax. First game he locks me with first turn Trinisphere. Is there any way to win it? Second game he just has Chalice at 1 so I Rebuild and kill him. Third game I start with Rebuild in my hand, he goes first turn Trinisphere, second turn Thorn of Amethyst, third turn Lodestone Golem...I just needed one more land every turn to be able to get from the lock.

Second round Goblins. Yaaaaay, first game he mulligans to 5 and starts. I feel invincible. I have rituals in hand, some lands and cantrips. I go 1st turn Ponder, 2nd Brainstorm, fetch, Preordain. Third turn Im staring at lethal on the board so I have to go for it. I cast Brainstorm, fetch, Preordain and there is nothing, so I put both on bottom and finally draw some business - Infernal. Ufff, so much cantriping! Second game I kill him 3rd turn through Ad Nauseam but it was close due to 8 dmg done by little green men.

Third round against 43 lands. Again I feel I cant lose... how wrong :( He starts land, manabond, Zuran Orb, dump all lands and smiles... Im trying to calculate it but he then gets Loam and starts adding a lot of life each turn. Second game he gets to Zuran Orb on his 2nd turn and finds Loam quickly while I brick on my Ad Nauseam revealing nothing in like 20 cards that can kill him. Never thought that Lands.deck can be a challenge for ANT.

Fourth round I just kill the guy playing Standard UB deck from Worlds.

Overall, some bad luck, maybe bad decisions, but what suprised me...in many games I just cantriped, cantriped, then cantriped some more and cantriped until I got the hand needed for win. Nice surprise was the ability to use Ad Nauseam and kill next turn (some decks are that slow), ability to deal 36 with 1 Tendrils.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by addaro

So I played my first tournament with ANT today. Practicals list with SB more like Ari Laxs. It was a small local but we all have many different decks so the meta is different every tournament.

First round I played against Brown Stax. First game he locks me with first turn Trinisphere. Is there any way to win it? Second game he just has Chalice at 1 so I Rebuild and kill him. Third game I start with Rebuild in my hand, he goes first turn Trinisphere, second turn Thorn of Amethyst, third turn Lodestone Golem...I just needed one more land every turn to be able to get from the lock.

Second round Goblins. Yaaaaay, first game he mulligans to 5 and starts. I feel invincible. I have rituals in hand, some lands and cantrips. I go 1st turn Ponder, 2nd Brainstorm, fetch, Preordain. Third turn Im staring at lethal on the board so I have to go for it. I cast Brainstorm, fetch, Preordain and there is nothing, so I put both on bottom and finally draw some business - Infernal. Ufff, so much cantriping! Second game I kill him 3rd turn through Ad Nauseam but it was close due to 8 dmg done by little green men.

Third round against 43 lands. Again I feel I cant lose... how wrong :( He starts land, manabond, Zuran Orb, dump all lands and smiles... Im trying to calculate it but he then gets Loam and starts adding a lot of life each turn. Second game he gets to Zuran Orb on his 2nd turn and finds Loam quickly while I brick on my Ad Nauseam revealing nothing in like 20 cards that can kill him. Never thought that Lands.deck can be a challenge for ANT.

Fourth round I just kill the guy playing Standard UB deck from Worlds.

Overall, some bad luck, maybe bad decisions, but what suprised me...in many games I just cantriped, cantriped, then cantriped some more and cantriped until I got the hand needed for win. Nice surprise was the ability to use Ad Nauseam and kill next turn (some decks are that slow), ability to deal 36 with 1 Tendrils.

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Winning the die roll is probably the biggest thing against Stax.

If you win, you're basically hoping to Duress or Thoughtseize their lock piece away and win shortly after.

But if Stax is a regular presence in your meta, play Rebuild in the sideboard. The plan is EOT Rebuild. Then win.

Thats how i won the 2nd game against him and was hoping to win the third but got crushed by two additional sphere effects. My question was more like if there is a way how to play through Trinisphere game 1 and then I realized that you have to go mad on Cabal Rituals because you pay 3 and get 5 mana. But thats kind of a god hand...

ANT doesn't offer answers to Stax preboard, unlike TES. Like I said earlier, you either have to hit their lock piece with discard or win before they lock you out of the game.

Depending on your hand/draws and their lock pieces, you can sometimes play around a single lock piece (Chalice, 3Sphere). It requires a bit of luck, and for them to not Geddon/Smokestack you, but it does happen enough to note.

This http://classicquarter.com/decks/deck...ecklistID=3831 during the last week 4:0 on MODO 3 times! I dont understand this build but hey, its succesful.

So how do you feel we have to adapt to new metagame after the ban? I didnt play storm before so Im asking the wiser pilots. Thanks.