So, with the advent of Swan Song, I would recommend to everyone now more than ever to run 4 Cabal Therapy MD. It inadvertently makes the card even more awesome.
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So, with the advent of Swan Song, I would recommend to everyone now more than ever to run 4 Cabal Therapy MD. It inadvertently makes the card even more awesome.
First off, I would like to start by saying I lol'd at this. Secondly, I do believe Swan Song will see play, however I would be surprised to see it in any sort of fair decks, I believe it will probably go into things like Sneak and Show or Omni-tell, possibly High Tide. I think fair decks will still want to play Flusterstorm over Swan Song. Giving you a 2/2 blocker to block their Geists, Bobs, Agents, Delvers, Mongeese, Pyromancer and even chumping a goyf doesn't seem like thats what a deck wants to do to stop combo.Quote:
Originally Posted by bjholmes3
I came to the conclusion that Silence is better than Xantid Swarm because Show and Tell wins on the same turn they cast Show and Tell, so putting the Xantid Swarm into play does absolutely nothing. Beyond that, if I'm playing Silence in the maindeck and still bring in Xantid Swarm now I have way MORE must-counter cards that can help me win than I do with only Xantid Swarm.Quote:
Originally Posted by ThomasDowd
Also, I re-read my post after I couldn't figure out why you thought I cut fetches, and apparently I used the word duals when I meant fetches. I'm still playing 6 fetches in the list.
I just keep running into situations where the S&T person opens on Leyline, and I have 2 Chain of Vapors and 3 Xantid Swarms I have to find. If I find a chain first, I try to bounce but they counter it, and if I find Xantid Swarm I have to hope it resolves. If it doesn't, I'm in serious trouble. I just have so few cards that do anything and I usually keep drawing dead discard spells, so it's pretty rough. I'm at the point now where Im' siding discard out in the matchup because of how irrelevant it is, since they usually mulligan to leyline.
What I'm hearing is that the only reason not to play Silence is that the manabase gets rougher, and while I agree that it's occasionally a little more difficult, and the lack of basics can be an issue, so far I have felt way stronger with things the way they are. Sometimes you get a fetch and have to fetch awkwardly, sometimes you open on City of Brass and everything flows even better than it does normally. I'm going to give it a shot for a week or two at my local shop and see what happens. Maybe I'll be wrong, but what I'm hearing is that there's no reason I wasn't already aware of not to try this, and that the manabase may suck, but I knew that already.
I was wondering what kind of cute reason someone would come up with to make fun of my thoughts.Quote:
Originally Posted by Darkness
See, the way I look at it, Therapy is an incredible asset as things stand. I already am a firm believer that every build without a firm reason not to should be running the full set of Therapies. Now, I'm not yet sure what to think about Swan Song, but I can tell you that it gives us more options. And, if nobody decides to run it, no big deal, your opponents have still got four nice Therapy sessions to attend either way.
I'm not saying who should or shouldn't be running the card, but I am saying that anyone who does will make our resident Cabal Therapist rake in the patients.
Sorry for the misunderstanding, it's hard to express emotion online. I didn't lol as laughing because of how silly the idea was, I lol'd because of how awesome it was for them to swan song you and you get a token to flash it back.Quote:
Originally Posted by bjholmes3
Oh dear, lol, then I'm sorry as well. Silly Internet! Yeah, that thought is just hilarious. Swan Song will be a very poor choice against us methinks.
I have a doubt about lands configuration:
standard land configuration:
//15 lands
8 fetch lands
2 underground sea
1 volcanic island
1 tropical island
3 basic lands
if my only red spell in main deck is past in flames I think that is a bad idea to play badlands in maindeck, and in other hand I dont want to play gemstone mine because I want to play 2 Lum-Dul's Vault t + 2 senseis diving top rather than preordain
what is better to play 2 island, 1 swamp or 2 swamps, 1 island?
Many people have gone to 2 basic lands. Based on lists I've seen and some analysis in one of Carsten's (Mons, Goblin Raider) articles, I would add a third Sea if you were to cut a basic. If you are playing three basics, the consensus for a long time has been that two Islands are correct. The deck is designed to cantrip multiple times a turn for the first 2-4 turns, which requires U. Rituals give you all the B you need.Quote:
Originally Posted by kiwi
Did anyone watch the LSV Storm videos on ChannelFireball? It was interesting to watch a non-Storm pro playing the deck. I definitely dislike the list and the sideboarding decisions (and the sideboard itself), but LSV is the man. I think most "pros" are afraid to play Storm in Legacy because it crushes their image of being a perfect Magic player. Props to LSV.
Again? I recall him streaming some UBR GP list derivate, he has my sympathies but still played subpar/bad, I'll definitely see that at better bandwidth...Quote:
Originally Posted by Patrunkenphat7
It's not the first time that LSV plays storm, moreover he had played a ton of vintage and legacy.Quote:
Originally Posted by Patrunkenphat7
While being ill and not leaving bed too much i also saw the videos. His playing was mediocore and his sideboard decisions plain bad ("I have a good/decent matchup w/o boarding, so I board in a load of cards that won't help much.").Quote:
Originally Posted by Sloshthedark
Still wonder why he never boarded in Chain of Vapor, it's perfectly fine to board that card in if you have no clue on what type your opponent boards in. At best it wins you the match getting rid of a permanent based hate card, at worst it's either another cheap storm engine or buys you a turn.
Or boarding in an Empty the Warresn on the draw against Stoneblade...but, he is the master of brainstorms^^
Hello all, I recently picked up the deck and started testing with it tonight. I played a few games against Maverick w/ black for Deathrite and Thoughtseize main and was wondering how do you board?
I was playing the standard cantrip/gemstone mine list -1 preordain + 1 Lim Duls Vault and my sideboard was
3 Abrupt Decay
1 Tropical Island
1 Cabal Therapy
2 Xantid Swarm
3 Dread of Night
1 Massacre (I don't own a Karakas currently)
2 Chain of Vapor
1 Empty the Warrens
1 Surgical Extraction
I started out by trying to board in Decays, Dread of Night, and Massacre but wasn't really sure what to take out. I ended up losing the majority of post board games to Thalia/Teeg and realized I had no idea how to board in this match.
Also, is the Surgical Extraction worth its slot to try and help with the reanimator/dredge match?
Thanks,
Steve
I think you should probably be playing 2 Disfigure in the SB. I really think everyone should be playing SB Disfigure because of how versatile it is against Esper decks playing Deathrites and Bobs that usually board in Meddling Mages and sometimes Canonists… I board in 3 Abrupt Decay, 2 Disfigure, 1 Karakas, and 1 Inquisition of Kozilek against Maverick decks. I also play 1 Thoughtseize main, so post SB I have 2 discard spells that hit their bears (or discard), and the rest of the cards deal with resolved Thalias, Canonists, and Teegs. With practice, you will probably find that you can't lose the matchup except to very poor draws.Quote:
Originally Posted by personalbackfire
What has been the general approach to mono blue omni tell? swarms and discard? and chains for leyline?
have not touched a card in 6+ months and starting to get back in again.
Pretty interesting question, I asked myself a dozen times. Chant effects would be great I think, especially Postboard. Maybe switching to TES is the right call for a metagame full of Show'n'Crap. If you stick to ANT, then yeah, your plan sounds like the best option you have, but the MU feels horrible.
The matchup against S&T decks, especially a slower one like MonoU, is one of the big reasons for me to play this deck. I don't know anything else that beats them this consistently. You just need to play "control" if you can (aka they don't have a Leyline and you don't have a very early protected kill) and beat Leyline with Swarm/them not also having drawn one of their 5-6 counters in addition to Leyline whenever possible.
I am just able to analyze this MU on paper, cause luckily my meta is not infested with S'n'T, but there it seems gloomy: Preboard, okay, we have Discard, that's quite good against them, this game should be managable, but I don't think it is a favourable MU. Their clock seems nearly as fast as ours and they also win on the turn when they start to combo. Postboard, if they go Leyline Turn Zero your non-swarm Protection is useless so you have to pray for them not having a Counterspell or actually resolve Swarm AND still find a Chain of Vapor to win. If they don't start with Leyline, their hand may be full of Protection or a pretty fast one, both may result in a win for them.Quote:
Originally Posted by Mon,Goblin Chief
Quintessence (from Paper-view): I think you underestimate their clock.
Maybe I'm totally wrong here.
I might just be unlucky, not skillful enough yet or a bit of both, but I have a terrible record against monoblue omnitell. At my LGS I think am 1-5 against it.Quote:
Originally Posted by Mon,Goblin Chief
Game 1 I feel is 50/50 or maybe slightly in our favor if we can get a start with a lot of discard. If they land a leyline in game 2 and/or 3 I feel I need to have a hand with one of my two Swarms and enough business to be able to combo off during my first 3-4 turns. That's a tough ask when I only have 2 swarms in the board plus their deck seems to sculpt as well as ours. It might be because I'm running the version with Burning Wish which might have a tad bit more variance.
Not sure if I should be running a 3rd swarm or what.
So...if Omni is a bad matchup, why isn't the sideboard able to reflect that? I agree that it probably is, but I see nothing that strictly helps out this matchup in sideboards. No one seems to run any blue disruption (Flusterstorm, Swan Song; Flusterstorm is good against it, Swan Song hits Enter the Infinite, Dream Halls, Sneak Attack, Omniscience), which helps. Yeah, they have more CSpells, but in conjunction with Silence and discard as well as being able to know what is in their hand and therefore know what to counter/discard, it should help a bit. Just my two cents.
Heck, Seal of Cleansing is probably an option.
-ABC
You can't really run counter spells in a deck based on lion's eye diamond.Quote:
Originally Posted by Secretly.A.Bee
Why not? You aren't going to use them for protection, you are going to use them for disruption. You have better cards for protection. I listed them above. At the point of combo, you are not going to need to use them, you have other options, discard/silence/chant/swarm. I meant for a sb option to help keep yourself alive until you can in fact combo.
-ABC
If you'll still need discard/silence/chant/swarm/etc. to protect your combo (due to the bad interaction with Lion's Eye Diamond), what are you taking out of your deck to put in cards like Swan Song and Flusterstorm that will function solely as disruption?Quote:
Originally Posted by Secretly.A.Bee
Sideboard however you want. I'm not an expert, I'm just saying that if SnT is a problem, there are solid answers that can be played, imo. They aren't bad (Swan Song answers CB as well), just slightly inconvenient. It's not like you are trying to hold a force of will to stop their counters, you have other things for that. These are answers for a certain matchup, or a certain few matchups. Probably close to sideboarding for whatever you side in AD's for.
-ABC
The only card that is troublesome is Leyline out of SnT decks. If you board in reactive cards, chances are they will have you beat. I'd rather try to bounce the Leyline, then disrupt. Swarm and chain are enough. Also they are a 3 card combo so unless they have it all you will have time.
So...them comboing turn 2 isn't a big deal. Got it. Sign me up for ANT. Clearly, just board in an ETW and swing ftw...
I would rather make them discard their SnT or Omniscience and counter their Dream Halls/Sneak attack and combo off a turn or two later and win. As far as Leyline is concerned, don't you play Chain of Vapor?
-ABC
EDIT: Sarnath'd. Didn't see the Chain post above. Still, I disagree, but I digress. If you don't like it in context, I suppose I will ease up until someone places well with it in tournament play. I think it should be heavily tested, but if it's not obviously broken like AD, I don't see that happening, and it's not obviously broken and takes a bit of finesse to use correctly, and that's the worst, especially for storm players. Finesse not being the storm player's strong suit and all...3 card combo in mono blue with plenty of cantrips and currently trying out teh infamous Intuition. Yeah, you got time :rolleyes:
As others have said, reactive cards like Swan Song in a deck that relies on Infernal Tutor doesn't have much synergy. Boarding in reactive answers makes your deck slower while in a lot of cases you would rather speed up (i.e. using your open U to cantrip instead of waiting for a chance to counter a spell). Swan Song answers cards like Sneak Attack and Dream Halls that say Flusterstorm doesn't answer. However those are essentially 5cc cards, doesn't seem like it offers much value for a deck that should be able to go off earlier than that.Quote:
Originally Posted by Secretly.A.Bee
SnT decks tend to be soft to discard. So combine that with Chain of Vapor (and maybe EtW) and we should be good to go (esp. since we are the faster combo deck).
Yes, they are soft to discard and ergo board in Leyline to blank your discard! So you have to choose between bouncing their Leyline to turn on your discard or play Xantids. There's no discussion about what's more space efficient, isn't it?Quote:
Originally Posted by dune2k
EtW is total garbage in that matchup if the backlash to your Goblins is a hasted Griselbrand/Emrakul, an infinite number of Release the Ants or a Lab Maniac with a Brainstorm on the Stack.
Look, I get that LED has no positive synergy with counter spells. I understand. I am saying that until you crack them (combo turn), counter spells are probably a better option for attacking the SnT strategy than discard, at least post-board. Also, yes, you are the "faster" combo deck. They are the blue combo deck. Have you ever played the Solidarity/Spring Tide/Spiral Tide matchup? You are faster, but they generally win. In fact, Solidarity often mocks you by comboing off after allowing you to ramp up 10 storm for them, and they do it with your lethal tendrils on the stack. I know, it's not that matchup, but honestly they play as many counter spells and Cunning Wishes. You still have swarm/Silence to protect your combo turn, it's not like you need the counterspells, so having to pitch all C-Spells is an unimportant part of this situation.
As far as boarding, after talking to my buddy who plays SnT and reading your posts, take out your discard.
(Version based of Lejay, Championed by Drew Levin):
Instant (14)
4x Brainstorm
3x Cunning Wish
1x Flusterstorm
4x Force of Will
2x Pact of Negation
Land (20)
4x City of Traitors
10x Island
2x Misty Rainforest
4x Scalding Tarn
Sorcery (18)
4x Enter the Infinite
2x Gitaxian Probe
4x Ponder
4x Preordain
4x Show and Tell
Enchantment (7)
3x Dream Halls
4x Omniscience
Creature (1)
1x Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
Sideboard (15)
3x Defense Grid
1x Eladamri's Call
1x Intuition
4x Leyline of Sanctity
1x Pact of Negation
1x Release the Ants
1x Rushing River
1x Sapphire Charm
1x Slaughter Pact
1x Trickbind
I'm trying to make the point that for U, you can counter around 39(!) of their cards in the maindeck, and 11 or so (yes, leyline, w/e) in the sideboard. Now, they aren't all spells you want or need to counter, but it's crazy relevant that it does the job. The 2/2 flyer is a non-issue, I hope we can at least all agree on that.
-ABC
Fine. If you think it's good despite 5+ people in this thread telling you counterspells are bad, then prove us wrong. Take it to a tournament or at the very least get some solid testing in.Quote:
Originally Posted by Secretly.A.Bee
Okay, what list is the most agreed upon? I want this testing to be relevant to you guys, so what list would you prefer I test with? A full 12-cantrip list or is there a list people have agreed upon that has hybridized the 12 cantrip with LDV? Burning Wish(es) or not? I'm going to test soley against SnT (Mono-U Omni) pretty much identical to the one I just posted. I don't know if my buddies list is exactly that but I can assure you it's within 2-3 cards of it, and I don't mean it's missing 3 SnT. The changes would be very minimal.
Also, how many games/matches of seeing it will it take in your opinion to get solid and accurate results enough to 'prove' one way or the other?
-ABC
16-cantrip ANT seems to be the most common, I would try that. Just take any of the SCG grinders' lists. I could see an argument that the LDV version would be better suited to counterspells because LDV and top both work at instant speed anyway. Your choice.Quote:
Originally Posted by Secretly.A.Bee
Do like 6 games postboard with the default configuration (some number of Swarms, Chains, and some discard) so that you have a basis for comparison. Then do 6-10 games postboard with your suggestion. That's enough to get a rough feel for how it'll play out.
That's pretty much how i figured.Quote:
Originally Posted by Mon,Goblin Chief
sweet.
Just need to figure on max cantrip version or LDV version now. I imagine there is about a half turn speed difference?
I would assume you don't want it in 16 cantrip, considering you want to be tapping out to cast your cantrips most turns
I'm seeing people talking about Lim-Dul's Vault versions of the deck, but I haven't seen anyone playing it, nor have I seen any lists for it outside of the one in the Star City article. Is that what everyone is playing/referencing when they're talking about LDV?
I believe the one in the SCG article has 2 Top 2 LDV 0 Preordain 3 Lotus Petal 1 ETW main, and a fetch base.Quote:
Originally Posted by Namida
BBD played the deck a few times in some opens with 2 Preordains over the Top.
Countermagic is really bad in the SB of this deck. Just try it and come back to us.
I think 16 cantrip Storm is a little too slow against the other combo decks in the format, and I can see why some might be having trouble. I think OmniTell is a reasonably fin matchup with 1-2 more tutors and 1-2 more discard with less Preordains. I also think if you just sideboard knowing that Leyline is the most difficult card to deal with, you should be OK. Swarms are very good in this matchup. They will not be turn 2ing with Leyline in the opener that often.
My best/(only real) SnT opponent is out of town until around the 10th, so my testing has to be put on hold. This is I will drop it until I have the opportunity to play him with 2-3 Swan Song in the board. I will be playing 6 on the draw game 2s and 6 on the play game 2s against him for the testing. I will talk about my findings and go from there. However, I am curious as to where exactly on SCG the article about LDV ANT is at. I looked, couldn't find it, but I'm not a premium member, so that could be it.
I'm a fan of LDV. A big one. I like it better than B. Wish by a long shot. B. Wish and Red Accel (namely RoF) is the reason I prefer ANT to TES.
-ABC