Printable View
Basically it went like this: we exchanged Duresses and Therapies, than stared at each other while I drawn DRit than BW. I DRit+BW for Praetor's Grasp and played it. Seen how he plays double ToA, I took AdN and played it a (few) turn/s later. I think I won.Quote:
Originally Posted by Tombstalker
I found out this morning deathrite shaman is a threat in elves. I was pretty tired when I was playing, but it showed me that wirewood symbiots and quirion rangers can make the deathrite shaman shut down the past in flames. I should have used ad nauseam, but I had not eaten and I was having a hard time thinking. I'm glad I saw this though.
I have issued Warnings to multiple people for the slapfights of the last few pages. More will follow if I see more of this bullshit flaming.
Don't post if you cannot discuss like an adult, especially not in the DTBF. Quick tip: "this idea is pretty retarded" is fine, "you must be pretty retarded" is not.
It's good, no doubt, but pretty smalltime compared to Teeg, Ruric and Thorns. And going for AdN is probably even worse than going for PiF in this deck because ANT has to go deep quite often and that's when the DRS machinegun turns scary.Quote:
Originally Posted by jtos84
I'll throw my 2 cents on this topic since it may have gotten lost in the shuffle. ANT seems better in metas dominated by tempo strategies (RUG delver) because of its more stable manabase, although it has more Stifle-targets than TES (not sure if that is so much a thing anymore). TES I would say it better against metas dominated by combo since it's a faster combo deck than ANT and packs Silences which some other combo decks have a hard time against.Quote:
Originally Posted by jtos84
That's correct with the addition that TES really shines in a midrange-metagame. Deathblade, Maverick, JUND, Shardless BUG and such are all easy pray for TESQuote:
Originally Posted by davelin
I'm sure those decks are easier with TES than ANT, but those are all still good matchups for ANT, possible exception being Maverick, as it is a pretty big deal for TES to be able to win more easilly before the hate bears come online.Quote:
Originally Posted by Lemnear
New member here; hi everyone!
So, I've been playing 16-cantrips ANT for a little while online, and I've decided that I'm ready to build the deck IRL and go competitive. My goal is to place in a major within the next six months. The problem is, of course, that I don't have 1500 dollars just floating around to build the deck, lol. I've budgeted about 50 dollars a week, so I could really use some help building a budget ANT progressing into full-blown ANT after several months.
The main things I need help with are this: after I buy the cheap stuff (everything but lands and LED, really), what do I invest in next? My thoughts are Fetches, then LEDs, then duals. And, in the meantime, what do I need to make the deck usable? My thoughts on this are to build a temporary Sac Land Tendrils build, but I don't think that transitions as smoothly into ANT as I'd like.
I'm a good pilot, but not a very good deckbuilder, especially not for budget, so I could really use as much input as possible. Thanks so much!
I think you have the order right. I imagine storm could even function ok without duals maybe 1 shock land our two although I haven't tried it. Honestly I would do whatever it takes too get the fetches and LEDs at once since the deck really needs these to function.
I remember reading a question a fan asked Slash once, he asked what would you recommend if I can't afford a Les Paul? Slash replied buy a used Les Paul.
Are there any friends that may help you with lands, fetches and LEDs? :wink:Quote:
Originally Posted by bjholmes3
Btw, if you build SacLand Tendrils, you'll spend mere dollars on crappy cards (sac lands, draw-2s, Chromatics, etc.) so it shouldn't hurt that you'll throw the cards after a while. Also, you may keep some cards for TES (BW, RoF), or - if your only concern are money right now - you may even build TES, as it's a bit cheaper, unless I'm wrong.
The reason I want to get fetches first is that it empowers the cantrips, and it makes my T1-3 plays more effective. The downside is that I don't have LED to empower tutor or PiF. Maybe I'll get 1-2 LED, then fetches, then the rest. I'm so poor, lol.
By the way, there's something else I want cleared up. See, I bought a Delver deck for Standard back when that was a thing and back when I was new and cared about Standard, all with about 1 month left in the format. Unfortunately, family stuff happened, and I never got to play the deck once officially. Bummer, but a blessing in disguise, because that made me lose interest in Standard. So, I built a KarnTron for Modern, since I had half of it anyways from when I was a collector, not a serious player, but my metagame didn't fare too well for it, so I built a UR Storm after testing online for a while and I LOVED it. I knew that I'd play storm combo for the rest of my MTG days. However, literally 1 week (7 days exactly) after I got the last pieces of the deck in the mail, Seething Song got banned, wrecked my build, and shot UR Storm down to Tier 1.5 at the absolute best.
Where I'm getting at is this: I really love ANT, and I want to invest completely in a solid build, BUT, I don't want to get screwed again or I might pull a Francis plays Magic and quit the game for good, lol. So, is there any substantial suspicion whatsoever that this deck will get banhammered or rendered obsolete (aka lose it's Tier 1 status) any time soon?
That's correct. You need less fetchlands and Duals aside from the Wishes that got quite a pricetagQuote:
Originally Posted by Bed Decks Palyer
Still, 2 Misty, 1 Tarn, 4 Wish vs. 4 Delta, 3 Tarn (or Verdant or whatever is more optimal), Badlands is a preetttyy easy choice if budget is an issue.Quote:
Originally Posted by Lemnear
if your goal is to win dont bother competing until you have an optimal build. From my experience its easier to acquire the expensive cards first and work your way down. That way, after you get your seas, it's all downhill from there and you'll feel like the process is getting easier rather than harder.
Also, I'd recommend not listening to people's opinons on your deck construction. Build it the way you are comfortable with and make changes based on your experience. If you read this thread you'll find that burning wish sucks in storm... even though the burning wish version won one of the biggest legacy tournaments ever. Just take this thread (and this whole forum) with a grain of salt, there are a lot of big egos around.
Hm, that's good advice. I just want to play in the meantime. Very tough choice, but I think I'll just stick to Modern until I get the deck finished, and I'll focus on the big stuff first. Good thing about that is I will never be sad about having duals, LEDs, and fetches, and I'll never play the deck weaker than its best.
Best way I can see of doing it: Get LEDs - the Infernal Tutor plan really doesn't work well without them - build TES without the Fetches&Duals (play 2 Citys and crappy gold lands/Darkslick Shores instead). Not the greatest way to intentionally harmstring yourself, but probably close enough to the real deal to not lose infinite games outright. From there on out work your way towards duals/fetches one at a time and keep upgrading until you have exactly what you want. Towards the end you could even convert Wishes and Chrome Moxes back into cash to finish out ANT if you're convinced at that point that you won't want to run optimized TES back at some point.Quote:
Originally Posted by bjholmes3
As for anything getting banned, if all the good players suddenly start to play storm, something bad might happen - WotC is trigger happy when it comes to Storm - but I think the likelihood is quite low. As for the deck falling out of tier 1, the only way that would happen is if they suddenly printed three other Thalias with different names or something to make Counterbalance utterly unbeatable. Or maybe if they unbanned Mental Misstep. None of these seem likely in the slightest.
Hey can anyone help me round out my sideboard? I'm playing 16 cantrip in an unknown (but probably very fair) Meta
3x Abrupt Decay
1x Tropical Island
1x Empty The Warrens
2x Chain of Vapor
2x Xantid Swarm
2x Massacre
Star Scream- looks pretty standard although I'd lose the massacres for cheaper better sweepers. Pack some grave hate since dredge and reanimator are faster than us, mix of extirpate, SE, crypt. Then a mix of these will do well:
Dread of night for white weenies like mav, DnT, DGA
Karakas for thalia, teeg, griselbrand etc
Engineered explosives similar to above plus tokens and dodges cotv @ 1
Pithing needles for griselbrands, moms, tons of uses
Hurkyls recall maybe vs MUD, tezz.dec
Echoing truth for multiple leylines, tokens, dodges cotv too
More discard
2nd PiF
SDT
On my phone lost my first better post hope this helped a little
Welcome to ANT, so to speak :) In terms of vital parts if the deck being ban-worthy I wouldn't be particularly concerned. Wotc's stance on legacy seems to be "the format is healthy as is" and there seems to be other cards far more likely to be considered for a ban. Show and Tell & Griselbrand for instance. I guess one caveat is that there are no guarantees but I really, really wouldn't worry. Storm combo is by no means dominating the tournament scene and probably never will. Not due to a lack in power level, but more due to people not feeling comfortable picking up the deck, either due to the perceived high complexity of playing the deck or due to a general distaste for hardcore combo.Quote:
Originally Posted by bjholmes3
If you read back over Ari Lax's articles (back when he wrote about interesting formats :rolleyes:), he always described LED as a card that's just waiting to get banned, but in the meantime it's too powerful and fun not to play with. I have to agree. Banning LED doesn't seem imminent, but I wouldn't be surprised if it happens eventually. I'd be more worried about Show and Tell in the near term.Quote:
Originally Posted by bjholmes3
As far as being obsolete, it's really a meta thing. If the meta is filled with Counterbalance or Chalice decks, storm is probably not Tier 1. Storm also had a lot of difficulty in the Thresh vs. Maverick vs. Stoneblade meta that we had last year, although exceptional players with a good build can of course do well, as shown by Timo at Ghent.
Your build can affect those matchups though. I feel reasonable about the Miracles matchup with TES, but I've heard the ANT vs. Miracles matchup is not good for ANT from pilots on both sides. I think Chalices may be easier with ANT because you have more lands and discard.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Star|Scream
I think Dread of Night is a better anti hate bear card than Massacre. Massacre can't be cast with Teeg out, and him, Thalia and Canonist are the 3 most important hate bears against us. The only problem I see with Dread of Night is you need two to kill Gaddock Teeg or Ethersworn Canonist, which could be annoying. One Dread of Night kills Thalia, Mother of Runes and tons of other stuff though.
If you don't like of Dread of Night and want to kill Gaddock Teeg with one card I would reccomend Infest. It is definitely expensive as a 4 mana sorcery but it's everything you want in a board wipe I think. I usually switch between Infest and Virtue's Ruin in my SB
Also if you expect a lot of Deathblade, Shardless BUG or RUG (all fair decks) then you might want to consider Carpet of Flowers for your SB.
Why Dread of Night over Disfigure? Discard? One-Time Use? I don't know about Infest, I used to try to play it when teeg first came out and it was always so lack-luster and hated the high cc. Rushing River is better in my opinion simply because its better against more things. It can handle a Teeg AND a Thalia at the same time just as Infest, but bounces a Counterbalance/Rest in Peace too. Storm has very few slots available, and the best way to win is to have well-rounded answers that can deal with one situation as well as 3 others. Just my opinion, and I know how my opinions seem to be received on this thread and apparently the website as a whole, but I still feel as though they still hold meaning.
-ABC
mom + thalia is why I play it. Teeg is an annoyance once the other two are dealt with since he can be bounced/killed during the combo turn. Plus 2 dread is very hard for decks that run those creatures to come back from, even shutting off QPM for maverick.Quote:
Why Dread of Night over Disfigure?
A combination of Dread of Night and Disfigure is solid. Right now I am dropping a Dread of Night for a Karakas because it is still good against Thalia with a Mom board, and it deals with Teeg which is just as common in Mav. I also think the additional hate against Reanimator for their Iona is quite good. The M14 changes make it less of a liability to hold it up for EOT action.
Running Disfigure in general is important because in addition to Maverick-style decks, Deathblade generally brings in Meddling Mages, and the Disfigures hit Meddling Mages and Deathrite Shaman (which is a very good target). I wouldn't leave home without a couple Disfigure in my board.
I also think that not enough people are playing Needles. It's very good against Shardless and Jund. Hitting Spellbombs, Deathrites, and Lilianas with Needle is one of the best things you can be doing against them.
I already thought about Needle, but then I decided I want to play Inquistion of K., because it hits the annoying cards and builds thresh. Otoh, IoK does little against cards that are already deployed (maybe not Lili, but DRS, Spellbombs, etc. are fast) and they will not bring artifact hate against us, so the Needle might survive.
How many Needles you play?
My SB looks like this:Quote:
Originally Posted by Bed Decks Palyer
1 Tropical Island
4 Xantid Swarm
1 Echoing Truth
3 Abrupt Decay
2 Disfigure
1 Karakas
2 Pithing Needle
1 Inquisition of Kozilek
The Swarms/Truth are pretty specific hate for the Show and Tell matchups playing Leylines post-SB. I run Past in Flames/Empty main with no Ad Nauseam (my list is 15th place at the Somerset Open on the SCG site), and the only change I have made since then is to swap out the Dread of Night for a Karakas. The Inquisition does a few things for me. It's good against decks like Jund as well as hatebear/permanent hate decks, but it also swaps out my singleton maindeck Thoughtseize against RUG Delver. The 2 Pithing Needles are the best cards in a couple matchups, and I really like them.
Judging from your sideboard you not seem to have any troubles with discard heavy matchups. I'm playing 2 SDT's in my sideboard for those matchups and swapping them with Ignorant Bliss sometimes. I often find myself having troubles against Hymn to Tourach than against Liliana. What do you do against those matchups?Quote:
Originally Posted by Patrunkenphat7
Regarding Disfigure, i prefer Dread of Night because they answer Thalia preemtively. It's especially good against D'n'T, where they can bounce their own Thalia with their Karakas in response to spot removal.
Ok, no need to heaten up previous discussion however funny read that was, just to shortly react... I have no need to zealously defend no basics, gemstone or DRS paradigma(s), although GM is obvious (tested, no animals harmed, just idiots) and DRS is sole reason one would have general problem with hymn or Liliana, reading post above // obv. TES doens't give a shit about DRS...The basics, it's something from gaming xp in my metagame, not general rule to follow and I don't use it all the time, but 2 basic islands, what can you say, gives me the creeps same as Prosacks haircut online... Btw. before you frivolently consider embarasing cards like disfigure without warning let my introduce you to my oldschool favourite - Lightning bolt - Killing players and inferior creatures since 1993...
Against Discard heavy decks, you sandbag a Past in Flames and win. That's the strategy.Quote:
Originally Posted by JanoschEausH
Martin, I love you.Quote:
Originally Posted by Sloshthedark
So, looks like I may find soem time to try ANT on Mon, and I'm really interested how the Needle sb will work. But... I'm still undecided, and maybe I'll keep the IoK instead.
There isn't a lot of SB "hate" for discard because your PiF engine is designed to be effective against those decks. The Inquisition is swapped in for a Cabal Therapy against non-blue discard decks. Ignorant Bliss doesn't actually do anything 95% of the time, and I continue to be surprised that people run that card. It never stops their turn 1 targeted discard (unless you are on the play and blow a Lotus Petal for it). It only stops their Hymn if you are on the play AND leave up a whopping two mana, one of which is a red source that you will have to fetch for. The card is just super awkward.Quote:
Originally Posted by JanoschEausH
Play SDT its king against discard and with cards like LDV they are even better.
I mean SDT is mediocre against discard. You need a combination of several cards to win with this deck, and floating a card on top is both inefficient and just mediocre in general. It obviously plays very well with LDV though, and I would probably fit it in somewhere if I played that card. Right now I simply prefer to have more tutors (Grim Tutor) for the consistent Past in Flames kill.Quote:
Originally Posted by Tombstalker
Fair enough, I have never committed to purchasing grims so I've only experienced BW and LDV.
It's not just about floating cards on top, it's also about developing your mana. Once you have 4+ lands and a couple of mana rocks out, you no longer need a combination of cards to go off but a single tutor or engine card.Quote:
Originally Posted by Patrunkenphat7
on opposite, those are the exact conditions in which DRS eats you alive: Without a hand, in topdeck-modeQuote:
Originally Posted by DireLemming
Actually when you have 4+ lands and a couple "mana rocks" (does this mean Lotus Petals?), the only card that is relevant by itself is a natural Ad Nauseam unless you have a bunch of rituals, maybe some Probes, and a tutor in your GY for a natural Past in Flames. You could Infernal for an Ad Nauseam and cast it with no mana floating with 5 land and 2 "mana rocks" in play, but that is pretty poor. There aren't many decks in the format that you can still Ad Nauseam against on turn 6+.Quote:
Originally Posted by DireLemming
SDT is a fine card with LDV, but it is mediocre in non-LDV situations.
SDT is a great card better than the alternative preordain IMO. Opponents hate seeing it and I do too when across from me. Synergy with LDV is obvious but it's also very welcome when discard takes your cantrips or for digging you out of bad situations in general. It's also good at drawing out FoW on turn 1 occasionally, something no other cantrip will do. I played it in the past with burning wish and thought it too slow but dropping wish for vault has made me really grow to appreciate it. It can also make hands keepable that wouldn't otherwise be with only a single cantrip instead. It can even build its own storm if you have the mana. Very versatile but often at the expense of speed .
I definitely dislike Preordain, but Top is 2 mana to Ponder that doesn't have a shuffle option without a fetch. Obviously it's more complicated than that because it gets insane the more mana you have, but if you are playing this deck efficiently you shouldn't be putting 3+ mana into one card unless you are winning or tutoring for exactly what you need. I see how this is sweet with Vault though. I think there are enough good card options in Storm to not need significantly worse cantrips past the Bstorms, Ponders, and Probes. Like if you aren't skimping on discard and tutors there's probably not space.Quote:
Originally Posted by Tombstalker
I am actually skimping on discard (6) and tutors too I guess since I'm absolutely done with wish and don't own grims so I run IT and 2 LDV. I must admit though that card is seriously underrated. The more I play it the better it is, just takes a little getting used to. It's like a UB ad naus EoT and I love how it can bait out counter magic if needed or just win plus any cantrip in hand basically turns it into a grim tutor. Can't believe I dismissed this card at one time with limited testing.
On SDT again, are you saying you would choose more discard over 2 tops? 7 felt fine before SDT + LDV when I dropped to 6 comfortably. 8 always felt like overkill. That said heavy disruption like jund and thresh is a pain at times.