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Originally Posted by Acclimation
Great report and was awesome to meet you plus jam amazing food and drinks down our gullets. I'm beyond sad that I missed tallboy pentagram but...next time? Clearly you're the only one of us that made the right decision in not losing faith in the onion burst
Getting there on turns 1-3 is always good, no matter the meta. I also only own this one deck (and Belcher, but I'm not going to play that in a big event), so it was an easy choice.Quote:
Originally Posted by KaiSchafroth
And Tallboy Pentagram Magic is such a wonderful format, and it is truly fitting that Dubious Challenge be the rare in the pack. And that Omnitell list is too sweet, merchant scroll is so rad.
Hello everyone
I'm looking into the new sideboard options everyone is talking about, the Mentors plan looks really effective
I was running the Doomsday transformation but it's been too long since I practiced it, and never had great results with it.
Acclimation, do you think the Bob package would have been better at the GP?
What about Thing in the ice instead of the SFM package ?
It's not castable off a DR, but for 1U we have a blocker that transform quickly into a nice 7/8 and bounce the board
It can be detrimental if we already have a monks army, but I think it could be useful in multiple cases
So maybe something like:
4 Monastery Mentor
3 Thing in the ice
4 Swords to Plowshares
2 Surgical Extraction
2 Serenity
re: Bob
I've talked about it with .dk, and I personally don't like it (slow, doesn't impact the board), I think he said he liked it, but I'm too lazy to go back a few pages to when people were discussing it to find out. I don't think it would have been better than SFM at the GP though.
Thing probably isn't a bad choice, but it's probably a tad slow, especially if you topdeck one later in the game. The bounce is very good, and the body is great, so it is probably a very playable option. Go play with it and let us know if it's any good.
On paper Thing looks playable, but the reality is if you board in both Mentors and Things together you may end up with both on the board. The wipe is just too much of a nonbo in my experience; either you hold the Mentor until the Thing flips and fall behind on board/life or you deploy both together and the flip destroys a lot of your value. The trigger being non-optional makes it a nonbo.
So foolishly I switched to Delver/Mentor for my Louisville sideboard plan (playing Reanimator) without testing. Delver just doesn't get the job done without more support. I won many of my games 1's and got opponents to mulligan for sideboard hate, but I'd open with Delver and still get crushed.
Mentor did real work for me, and many of my postboard games with him were close. Maybe a Stoneforge package is the best man-plan.
I've tried Bob in the past and didn't like at all, as Aclimation says it's slow and doesn't impact the board. Mentor is exactly what the deck wants, hard to interact with and closes the game quickly. SfM, while not as fast, is also hard to interact with (assuming they don't know the plan after G1) and quite flexible. The equipment works well with the Monk tokens too fwiw.
I think the biggest problem with Bob is that it is difficult to leave in a Griselbrand to reanimate while running Bob. Harkens back to the days of sugmerging a tombstalker in response to a Bob trigger... ;) But really, I think that's his biggest drawback. On the plus side - he can make you a lot more aggressive with Mentor - usually you'll end up drawing a ton of cards off of him. I don't look at Bob so much as a threat on his own, but just there to fuel Mentor. He'll probably get a couple points in, but that's incidental. I think he makes the transformation much more aggressive.
On the flip side - Stoneforge, as noted, can be much more flexible. Batterskull is a great threat in it's own right and usually difficult for your opponent to deal with. This transformation is much more flexible, and allows you to keep in a Griselbrand to reanimate - which also turns out fuels Mentor quite well. I've found this transformation to be a bit slower than the Bob transformation - I'm more apt to side out Dark Rituals when doing this as well.
The other question is how much room you're left with in your board - SFM will take up essentially 5 slots with 3 SFM, Batterskull, and Jitte (or if you feel like running another equipment instead... SoFI maybe, but doubt it's better). Bob will take up 4 or 5, I think depending on how you run it. 3/4 Bob and a Cavern of Souls usually. So it's possible that you could run the Bob transformation and fit in 1 or 2 more reactive cards in your sideboard, depending on how you end up building it.
I'm not sure I could definitively say which is better, however I've had better success with Bob as it's usually a faster plan giving them less time to reshape their hand to deal with your transformation.
Thing in the Ice - I've wanted to try it - but it seems worse to me than either Bob or Stoneforge alongside Mentor. Both of those are card advantage directly, where Thing in the Ice can take a bit. Also a bit of a non-bo if you decide you want a Mentor out to be aggressive, and you're sitting there about to flip over a Thing in the Ice when you want to make tokens.
/edit: Just for reference, I play the transformations exactly how I play the main deck: extremely aggressive. I've never been afraid to stick 2 or 3 Bob's on the board and just draw a shit ton of cards. It's a bit harder to do that with SFM.
Bob is definitely not a bad plan (and what do you mean, you don't leave a Griselbrand in?! #nofear), but most of the decks where you need the help of a sideboard plan, Bob just can't attack. Like Deathrite Delver decks, you don't really like the life loss against their aggressive starts, and he has trouble attacking in. Also Jitte can be a random blowout against things like Infect where you don't want to bring in the entire man plan.
Bob is a powerful wizard though, I can see metas where he's better.
Thanks a lot for your inputs !
Thing in the ice is indeed a really bad idea after thinking more about it...
I will try the sideboard options in cockatrice and see what suits my play style
When in doubt, the reactive plan is always my go-to.
Our main plan is pretty good and we do it quickly, so sometimes we just need to fight through one piece of hate.
As good as Master Loo and his army of squishfaces are, the 5 other slots we use to supplement it aren't so hot... Maybe we just run 3-4 Recruiter of the Guard so we can just go all in on Mentor?
Maybe Show and Tell is decent enough now?
Doesn't matter the format - getting to Serenity an opp's board of hate will always feel good.Quote:
Originally Posted by Acclimation
I'll reserve commentary/thoughts until I try or hear from others but I may test something like:Quote:
Originally Posted by Acclimation
4x Mentor
3x RotG
3x Stp
3x Cavern
2x Serenity
1x Fluster
I think you need something else alongside Recruiter. It's a cool card to grab another copy of Mentor, but I don't know that without some kind of card draw (or another legitimate threat) that we have enough gas to consistently win with Mentor. What about this?Quote:
Originally Posted by KaiSchafroth
4 Mentor
3 Recruiter
2 Bob
3 StP
2 Serenity
1 whatever (CoV, Flusterstorm, Surgical, Cavern)
I was thinking a copy of Stoneforge instead of 1 Bob and equipment as well, but I think board space may be too tight to still fit some reactive elements in there. I suppose you could do this:
4 Mentor
3 Recruiter
1 Bob
1 SFM
1 Batterskull
2 StP
2 Serenity
1 whatever
Not sure how I feel about only running 1 equipment, but maybe Jitte could take the whatever slot. It's at least castable off of lands, so not terrible to draw like Batterskull. This overall seems a bit dilute to me though.
True, if we're trying to just mentor them out we do need some more 'umph' to really get there/execute. erg....screw it, I'm just playing Doomsday again :laugh:Quote:
Originally Posted by .dk
+2 Painful TruthsQuote:
Originally Posted by KaiSchafroth
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Doomsday triggers Mentor...Quote:
Originally Posted by KaiSchafroth
All aboard the bad ideas express!
If you're playing Recruiter of the Guard, you could play something like Devout Witness or Leonin-Relic Warder as a target over one of the reactive cards? Downsides, Relic-Warder is very tough on the mana, Witness requires being around for a turn (unless you Shallow Grave it, could get pretty cute with this). But something to keep in mind.
Okay, so we have Doomsday+ Mentor... We can do a simple Emrakul kill w/ Shelldock, jam Mentor, or jam Mentor and make some sort of pile that allows us to loop it and make loads of tokens.Quote:
Originally Posted by .dk
IU
LEDx2
Emrakul
Brainstorm?
Draw into IU, Play both LED, crack them, discard emrakul, reshuffle. If you draw IU or Brainstorm, you can go at it again, Draw Emrakul and be sad for a turn?
Or
Top
Top
3 literally anything else?
Loop top until you are tapped out?
TopQuote:
Originally Posted by Acclimation
Top
Lotus Petal
Helm of Awakening
Grapeshot
Why bother stopping when you're tapped out?
Ok, time to gloatpost, because this shit is bonkers.
3-0 at Legacy FNM tonight, 6-2 in games.
I had the Turn 1 combo (Rit, Entomb, Shallow Grave) in 5 of the games I won, and only whiffed once on winning that turn, the other time was a t2 due to not having a ritual.
Played against D&T, Nic Fit w/ Sneak Attack, and the BUG control list from the GP (2-1, 2-0, 2-1)
Against D&T, I t1 reanimate, and get Tendrils for 20 on game 1. Game 2 I whiff on drawing Entomb and slowly lose. Game 3 I don't get Ritual, power out Griselbrand and draw 21. I probe and see Thalia, Revoker, Containment Priest, Karakas, and he has Vial. I discard to 7 keeping Swords, Massacre, and combo stuff, planning to go Emrakul. He plays Karakas and passes, and in response to my Shallow Grave on Emrakul, he flashes in Containment Priest. I swords it and get there.
Against Nic Fit we both mull to 5 (on draw), I keep petal, entomb, ritual, brainstorm, ldv. I scry and see Shallow Grave on top. Game 2 I get there on turn 1 easy peasy.
Against BUG I get there t1 on game 1. Game 2 I keep a sketch 5 and it goes bad. Game 3 I board into Mentor+SFM, and leave in 1 Griselbrand, 1 Entomb, 1 Shallow, and proceed to draw Rit, Entomb, Shallow in my opener. He didn't mull into Force or hate, and I slam the combo, draw into Mentor+loads of tokens, and he scoops when his top card is land.
Clearly upgrading cards into foreign versions upped my t1 rate.
Yesssss! I love reading reports of this deck - makes me want to sacrifice children all day!Quote:
Originally Posted by Acclimation
Speaking of which... you get russian kids yet?