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Definitely, i want to start from scratch with a straight simple UB list and go from there until i find wich of the lists suits me best. I've been reading a lot (including trying to get on par with this thread wich is huge) and watching some videos, and hopefully will start goldfishing soon. There were ust some things i wanted to understand first, so, thanks for the help everyone.
I played the same event as Practical Joke last Sunday, here’s a small report & my list.
// Main deck: 60
1 Snow-Covered Island (Never had problems with only 1 basic)
1 Tundra
1 Scrubland (Way better than the second Tundra during the day)
2 Underground Sea
4 Polluted Delta
4 Flooded Strand
2 Marsh Flats
4 Lion’s Eye Diamond
4 Lotus Petal
4 Dark Ritual
4 Cabal Ritual
2 Chrome Mox
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
4 Preordain
4 Infernal Tutor
2 Ad Nauseam
1 Ill-Gotten Gains
1 Tendrils of Agony
4 Orim’s Chant
3 Silence
// Sideboard: 15
4 Xantid Swarm
1 Tropical Island
3 Chain of Vapor
1 Hurkyl’s Recall
4 Doomsday
1 Emrakul
1 Shelldock Isle
Report:
Prelude:
I get home at 5.15 AM totally drunk, always a good way to prepare for a large tournament.. I play the deck I’ve been testing lately, ANT with white for chants. As I expected loads of combo and no countertop I packed chants over duress. I debated over the DD package side as the surprise it a bit gone by now but I didn’t want to just roll over to CounterTop so I played it anyways. I played a Scrubland over the second Tundra so I can have UBWW open when I only have 2 lands, which was relevant at least once.
I aim to mulligan properly as I tend to keep way too many hands and to combo off the most efficient and least risky way whenever I can.
Three of my teammates call off for lame reasons (tired, hangover etc.) so I head over to the tournament with three others. One is playing 3c TES, one is playing 4c CounterTop and the other plays a weird homebrew which could surprise people. The TES player drops after going 2-3, the CounterTop player gets close to Top-8 with 4-1-2 with both draws being in his favor. The guy playing the homebrew ends up with 1-5 drop, things didn’t go his way that day.
Round-1: Ture with The Rock 2-0 (1-0)
Game-1 I keep a mediocre hand and my lonely cantrip doesn’t find anything. However his hymn doesn’t hit too much and I topdeck infernal like a pro. I can IGG out on turn-3 or so.
Game-2 I kept a much better hand including a Chain of Vapor and Infernal Tutor. He has a turn-2 canonist but that’s no problem and I cantrip a few times. I eventually play out 2 LED’s, bounce them with chain of vapor, bounce the canonist and tutor chain him out.
Round-2: Jasper with Bant Aggro 2-0 (2-0)
Game-1 I put him on combo before the match but he leads with trop into hierarch. My 2 chants are still pretty awesome in this matchup and I can easily win through IGG.
Game-2 I decide to board in the DD plan as he might be playing CounterTop, and it’s not bad against band without wastelands. I resolve a turn-2 doomsday and win. After the match he tells me he plays KoTR, Wastelands and Stifle. Guess I got lucky there lol.
Round-3: Daniel with Affinity 2-1 (3-0)
Game-1 I keep a 7 I shouldn’t have kept and don’t draw too much action. I can chantwalk him 2 or 3 times though and eventually have a desperate Ad Nauseam attempt from 4 which was fairly hopeless.
Game-2 I take beats for a while while sculpting my hand. His clock is slow, so he must have some disruption. He hits me with cabal therapy which slows me down a fair bit but I recover. On 11 life I combo out with chant protection and see multiple Traps and another Therapy in his hand.
Game-3 I can tutor chain after a few turns with chant protection, thanks to his Ancient Tomb doing some of the work for me. He forgets he can trap the chant after a cantrip and petal, but as he only had 1 trap it wouldn’t have mattered.
Round-4 Sander with Spiral Tide 1-2 (3-1)
Game-1 I’m quite happy to sit at table-1 at this stage in the tournament and with all the combo everywhere I’m happy about my chants as well. I expect a storm mirror but get a high tide matchup. I’m too fast for him in the first game and IGG takes it home.
Game-2 I can’t resolve a Swarm or Chant as he seemed to have a lot of protection (he played 4 FoW, 4 Counterspell and Wish for PoN/Trap). Eventually he goes off after turnabouting me in my endstep.
Game-3 I infernal for a 2nd chant ready to go off the next turn but it was one turn late. I chant him twice when he tries to go off but he has the force and wish for pact. I sac LED in response to Time Spiral and chant him again after that resolves but he has another counter. He kills me with brainfreeze which makes me sad I didn’t board in Emrakul (would invalidate Ad Nauseam).
Round-5 Eric with Fatty Boom Booms 2-0 (4-1)
Game-1 I know what he’s playing and he’s been stomping combo so far today. He has a fast clock with StifleNought/Dark Depths as well as quite a few counters and Null Rod/Extirpate side. He has a turn-2 confidant game-1, not much else in the early turns. I have a chant and when he brainstorms and forces I put him on no extra counters. I kill him with Ad Nauseam.
Game-2 He has double Null Rod, a force for my Xantid Swarm and 2 wastelands leaving me on one island. Then he extirpates my Tropical to keep me off swarm (I only play one trop) and brainstorms to stop me from finding answers. Had he played these extirpates better he’d have problably won. I eventually get there after topdecking a fetchland with him only having 1 card in hand. I tutor chain him out.
Round-6 Andy with Burn 2-0 (5-1)
Game-1 I was surprised to see burn come this far, but he’s a decent player. He gets me to 13 before I IGG him out I think, with bolt and fireblast taking me down to 6 before he dies.
Game-2 I have a pretty funny turn-2 kill along the lines of; LED,LED,Petal,Petal,Chain of Vapor(LED,LED,Petal),LED,LED,Petal,Infernal,Infernal, Tendrils. How lucky! Now I expect to draw in and am pretty happy.
Round-7 Christian (GoboLord on TS) with Goblins 1-2 (5-2)
Game-1 We see that we cannot draw in as only a miracle would get me in so we have to play. I offer him a prizesplit for total prizes to split risks (when it’s either $10 or $200 I’d rather be safe.) but he refuses. I combo out through Ill-Gotten Gains on turn-3.
Game-2 I mull to a 6 full of cantrips and find nothing at all. He also kills me turn-3 which is pretty hard to race anyways.
Game-3 I lead off with a cantrip shaping a decent hand if he doesn’t have hate. He plays a chalice at 0 for his first turn along with a lackey. I then draw a LED and preordain into a 2nd one. Lame. I draw tendrils next turns and he removes AdN/AdN/IGG from my deck with Earwig Squad. I can still tendrils him for 18 (he’s on 19) so I just have to hope he traps something irrelevant as I’m on lethal. He does not and I finish shared 9th. Sad end to a good day.
Overall I had pretty good matchups, although I would have like to play the storm mirror. Shame I couldn't draw in and then lost to goblins of all decks, but it happens I guess.
I definately liked the deck and would probably play it again next tournament, although I'll give the red splash for just Bwish a shot sometime.
Hello,
I just played a small tourney after 4 months break. I played Practicals ANT (4 Tutors 2 AD Nauseam) and I just sailed smoothly through an unprepared field (finished spliting finals). The thing I hate most is that I had only one first turn kill and two second turns, in all other games I just kept digging and digging :/ With this list I was just hoping that the next Ponder will hit some good cards, that the next Brainstorm will change my hand and the next Preordain will allow me to win. Nevertheless I want to thank you Practical for this list (and Ari for the original one that served as the starting point). Hope you guys come up with good TNT list fast :)
PS: I was again able to do over 40 dmg with bunch of rituals, Tendrils and then IGG and Tendrils again. Fun stuff.
Please remember at all times that it doesn't matter what turn you win on--it matters whether you do or not.
Allright, let me rephrase that: UB is cool version of ANT but 6 bussiness is too few and 12 cantrips is a lot, I was just cantriping and cantriping looking for bussiness and gave my opponents plenty of time to do the same! Because of that I had to fight through many hatebears and a lot of discard. If some of those cantrips were bussiness I could have won earlier (turn 1 win makes you immune to all their interaction except FoW). But I still understand the strenghts that straight UB with so many cantrips brings. That is why I wanted to thank the deck creators and encourage them to evolve the build with the Burning Wishes (Im nowhere near their player level to develop my own), which I hope will have all the strengths and fewer weakneses.
But nevertheless you are right, winning is important and it doesnt matter at what turn. But you can save yourself a lot of trouble. For example a nearly Standard deck killed me on turn 3 (me on the draw just cantriping) with Kiln Fiend. Affinity did turn 2 Lodestone Golem or discard. Junk did the usual, Thoughtseize, Hymn, then Goyf for short clock.
Allright, let me rephrase that: UB is cool version of ANT but 6 bussiness is too few and 12 cantrips is a lot, I was just cantriping and cantriping looking for bussiness and gave my opponents plenty of time to do the same! Because of that I had to fight through many hatebears and a lot of discard. If some of those cantrips were bussiness I could have won earlier (turn 1 win makes you immune to all their interaction except FoW). But I still understand the strenghts that straight UB with so many cantrips brings. That is why I wanted to thank the deck creators and encourage them to evolve the build with the Burning Wishes (Im nowhere near their player level to develop my own), which I hope will have all the strengths and fewer weakneses.
But nevertheless you are right, winning is important and it doesnt matter at what turn. But you can save yourself a lot of trouble. For example a nearly Standard deck killed me on turn 3 (me on the draw just cantriping) with Kiln Fiend. Affinity did turn 2 Lodestone Golem or discard. Junk did the usual, Thoughtseize, Hymn, then Goyf for short clock.
Great, that is exactly what I wanted to talk about :DQuote:
Originally Posted by addaro
Basicly, I've been playing ANT for about 1 1/2 years now, starting with a ohmygodsostrange UWRB build, knowing nothing about Legacy at all and still being able to go 6-3 at Germanmagic 1 (what a lucksack I am ;D). After the tourney, reading this thread and learning more about Legacy, I started to play UB, first with Mystical Tutor, then with Preordain in the Mystical slot (list will follow).
Now - I really like the list. You can play very passive with all the cantrips and still be able to be the aggressor, letting your opponents make some mistakes while being to hasty, getting the perfect hand within a few turns and basicly saying fuck you to any deck that hopes to disrupt your mana base with Wastelands.
So currently I'm playing this:
2x Swamp
2x Island
3x Underground Sea
4x Polluted Delta
2x Misty Rainforest
2x Flooded Strand
4x Dark Ritual
4x Cabal Ritual
2x Ad Nauseam
4x Brainstorm
4x Lion's Eye Diamond
4x Lotus Petal
2x Chrome Mox
1x Sensei's Divining Top
4x Preordain
4x Ponder
4x Infernal Tutor
3x Duress
3x Thoughtseize
1x Ill-Gotten Gains
1x Tendrils of Agony
Sideboard:
4x Dark Confidant
3x Krosan Grip
1x Slaughter Pact
1x Smother
1x Chain of Vapor
1x Hurkyl's Recall
1x Echoing Truth
1x Rebuild
1x Tendrils of Agony
1x Tropical Island
Sensei's Divining Top is a filler in this list. I wasn't sure if I wanted to play the Top or a Chain, chosing Top to test in a few tournaments and never going back due to having x millions of black mana and no Tendrils in my hand and being able to still get the Tendrils with a bit of shuffling and Top-action (and one time drawing blind with 4 Mana left, smashing Tendrils on the table ;)).
Still, while being a good option and sometimes a real gamechanger (it also did pull a Force or two), I don't like it too much. Same goes for Ill-Gotten Gains. Don't get me wrong, I do think it's a strong card, but it's also dead too often. And I don't like getting four damage in my Nauseam only for some Chrome Mox fodder.
Long story short: Bazaar of Moxen 5 is right around the corner and I'm not sure if I want to try something not tested (at least not by me), or if I should stay at the list that I'm more familiar with.
So, this is what I'm pondering about right now:
2x Swamp
2x Island
1x Underground Sea
1x Tropical Island
1x Volcanic Island
4x Polluted Delta
2x Misty Rainforest
2x Flooded Strand
4x Dark Ritual
4x Cabal Ritual
2x Ad Nauseam
4x Brainstorm
4x Lion's Eye Diamond
4x Lotus Petal
2x Chrome Mox
2x Burning Wish
4x Preordain
4x Ponder
4x Infernal Tutor
3x Duress
3x Thoughtseize
1x Tendrils of Agony
Sideboard:
4x Dark Confidant
2x Krosan Grip
1x Reverent Silence
1x Death Mark
1x Smother
1x Chain of Vapor
1x Hurkyl's Recall
1x Eye of Nowhere
1x Rebuild
1x Tendrils of Agony
1x Ill-Gotten Gains
Maindeck:
- 2x Underground Sea
- 1x Sensei's Divining Top
- 1x Ill-Gotten Gains
+ 1x Tropical Island
+ 1x Volcanic Island
+ 2x Burning Wish
Sideboard:
- 1x Krosan Grip
- 1x Slaughter Pact
- 1x Echoing Truth
- 1x Tropical Island
+ 1x Reverent Silence
+ 1x Death Mark
+ 1x Eye of Nowhere
+ 1x Ill-Gotten Gains
First things first: I'm not sure if I like the Tropical Island maindeck, but it seems necessary to play with Reverent Silence and the little sideboardspace I have. That and the fact that I'm basicly showing my Counterbalancing opponent that he has to calculate green in my sideboard is the only thing I don't like about this. Basicly, Wastelands shouldn't matter that much. I don't want to fetch on green in the first game (well.. I'll do if I have to), same goes for red. On the very positive side, with Burning Wishes main, I should be able to always get a Tendrils after Nauseam. Also, Extirpate is not GG anymore.
Having an out against a Counterbalance G1 is also very positive.
Still, I'm not sure about this. It seems really strong on paper, but I have no tournaments to attend until BoM 5, so I won't be able to gain any live experience with the list.
What are your thoughts? I saw some of you experimenting with this kind of build while reading the last few pages before writing this, but they always had a bigger redsplash - and I didn't want to change too much.
Thank you very much.
Florian
If you want to kill on turn 1/2, play SI.
The current builds of ANT are designed for consistency. You almost always have it on three, usually have the disruption back up (or aggressive disruption to stop faster kills), and if you don't need to kill on three each extra turn things keep improving.
Adding Burning Wish is not going to speed the deck up. Even TES does not hard kill on T1/2 without Ad Naus, a lot of it's T1/2 combos end with 10 Goblins.
If you add more tutors, finding mana becomes just as much of a limiting factor.
In the whole time I've played this deck, I've never lost to T1 combo (Belcher/SI) because they can't beat Duress on 1 + Turn 3/4 kill.
In the whole time I've played this deck, I've never lost to Junk. Sometimes they Hymn and hit your 2 best cards, but more often your cantrips are better at recovering than they are at disrupting. Of the GAMES I've lost or seen others lose to Junk, ~80% are due to Hymn being double Duress or Ad Naus at 13+ missing.
Turn 2 hate bear MD is a problem for this list game 1. If this is an issue play SI and win on 1 or play DD and get Chain kills.
Edit: This post is directed at addaro.
@ Ari, burning wish adds more solutions to new problems (mainboard Teeg for example)
you hardly change the deck, what I've done is simply remove the high mana costs of crap and replace it with wiht
-1 preordain/thoughtseize
-1 tendrills
-1 iggy
+3 wish
easy as that.
The only thing that you change is a much better ad nauseam, a worse ill-gotten gains (but goblins shouldn't be harder at all), solutions to mainboard hate (which I see a damn lot here in the netherlands since like 25%+ is combo)
The manabase remains the same with some different duals (wasteland my ass) since you only need a red mana when combo-ing off, these mostly come from LED anyways. (sometimes from duals, but rarely)
Sideboard is wishboard + xantids + chains, no more doomsday. Since counterbalance is pretty dead it's no biggy, but with 7 protection spells the MU is still doable.
you can still lsoe vs the Rock since combo can always shit on you, but under normal circumstances you should win this.
No, I 100% agree that Wish is a solid choice. My default suggestion to people who can't get Grims for a while has been -1 Island, -1 Infernal, -2 Grim, -1 Preordain, +4 Wish, +1 Volcanic. I've tested with it and prefer the smoother mana on the combo turn of the Grim lists leading to more ability to cantrip/pay for Daze on the combo turn, but I've also lost three game 1's in the past 2 weeks to MD Teegs. I was responding to addaro's desire to speed up the deck by adding it.Quote:
Originally Posted by practical joke
Very true.Quote:
Originally Posted by practical joke
But I would like to point out that you could also play only one Ad Nauseam and still keep the maindeck ToA.
It has been tested in the past and I found out to many games were lost because you have to cast burning wish to search for ToA to win the game.
Then again I also really like a higher density of AdN but in my personal opinion I don't think its worth it.
@ Adarro: that's simply what combo nowadays does, cantrip into the perfect hand.Quote:
Originally Posted by addaro
Funny thing is that I got result quite fast after the banning and Ari's grim tutor list came a little later, however, both of these are only small changes due to the mystical tutor ban and it's not that either of us created a whole new list, we both updated the existing one to our liking.
and then,
@ Ari, we got that cleared out. I see mainboard teegs a lot now, thanks to GSZ it's seeing a lot more play. so playing a red list was unavoidable.
@ dia_Bot: the Red mana should rarely be an issue, though it can happen that you lack it, but that's a very low changes, most of the time one of your lands should be getting the red mana (depends on what you play against.)
The double ad nauseam is nearly a must, the ad nauseam without iggy and tendrills is so strong, the small chance to hit the second ad nauseam hardly matters, even if you hit it, you should be able to continue as well and it's damn strong against attrition wars.
I want the second one, just because it's ridiculously strong, without playing a 2nd ad nauseam (teammates calculations) the avg total of life needed to win is 7, with the second one it'll probably be 8 (cuz most of the time you don't flip it or did something else with it)
Currently the sideboard consists out of:
7 wishboard, (deathmark, pulverize, diminishing, iggy, tendrills, seize, Etw)
5 xantid board (4 swarms 1 trop)
3 chains
deathmark is great but nowadays you probably cannot do without pyroclasm (which is very strong in different situations, I prefer to have 2 more slots for a wishboard available, 1 pyroclasm 1 meta-game slot/yet to discover secret tech)
Been thinking a while about MM against this deck. Figured out it's like a second Force when they have the first one and around as good as Spell Pierce when they don't. So basically marginally obnoxious.
Yea, the card is ridiculous against ANT and TES; it's like Spell Pierce on steroids. Not intentionally trying to be overdramatic or anything, but I really fail to see how Tendrils decks are going to consistently overcome blue decks in the future, if MM sees the expected amount of play.Quote:
Originally Posted by AriLax
i mean... you have to learn how to interact with the card... afterwards it's really no different than playing around other "semi" counters.Quote:
Originally Posted by kikoo
This sorta depends on how MM ends up seeing play, but as long as we aren't facing MM + lots of taxing, (e.g. playing vs NO Bant vs play vs Team America), you could reasonably play Abeyance over Chants.
Looks like going back to old school to beat new tech. Abeyance is actually a neat idea.
One issue with Abeyance is that it doesn't stop Spell Snare, which will probably still be showing up. Maybe just trying to play through it should be enough?Quote:
Originally Posted by emidln
If you're talking about non-blue decks with MM, then I agree, the card doesn't do much. In terms of being Storm hate for a non-blue deck, I think it's a slight upgrade from a random Pyroblast. But if you are talking about blue decks with MM, I think it's a whole different story:Quote:
Originally Posted by leegoo
The problem is that it's basically impossible to play around it. Daze and Spell Pierce don't come close to providing the same kind of safety for blue players, since those cards can be played around by just laying out lands/Petals, and they aren't active on turn 0. MM means every blue deck can now protect its FoWs easily. Beforehand, only blue decks (usually tier 2+ ones) with very slow clocks were able to protect their FoWs (Counterspell, Spellstutter, etc). These decks were easily beatable because you had infinite time to set up the perfect combo turn. Now, however, the aggressive blue decks are able to protect their FoWs in the same manner, except they don't even have to keep UU open to do it. This is a huge problem, and the only thing you can do against it is either play protection that's not 1cmc, or you will have to dedicate more turns than normal to look for extra protection. The 2nd option will probably mean you are close to dying when you have finally punched through your opponent's hand of 2x MM + FoW. At that point, Ad Nauseam is no longer an option.
Abeyance could definitely be a solution (it's also cool that the card just cycles, if your bluff fails to meet a FoW), but it will depend a lot on what countersuites people will start to run, and it probably doesn't fit well in an AdN shell. I definitely expect Ad Nauseam to become a lot worse as an engine because of MM, and I think Doomsday will just be superior after NPH comes out, because DDFT is much more capable of punching through counter-walls, and it has no life dependancy. Just my prediction, anyways :o
Kikoo, I was going to respond, but the fact you are citing getting too low on life to Ad Naus as a reason the card will stop this deck made me realize you have no clue how this works.
DD actually is worse off against the card. Their cantrips are so much more critical.