[Deck] The Truffle Shuffle

Not to say that Echoes is the bee's knees agianst reanimator, but I'd think that match, if Echoes was involved, would look something like this:

T1
OP: Careful Study tossing fat
You: stuff

T2
OP: Exhume
You: Removal

T3
OP: Putrid Imp -> discard -> Reanimate
You: Kill it.

repeat for a while, Echoes comes in and takes all their set up tools and reanimation. Sounds like a plan? It does to me.

Glittering Wish: is there any reason not to play a Mystic Enforcer in the side? The only thing it dies to it combat damage and Swords to Plowshares (and Oblivion ring, but that's a rather irrelevant point).

Moment's Peace would greatly improve the Ichorid matchup. And possibly a lot of others. I've been wanting to run it for a while, but I'm not sure what the strongest cut is.

I'm not the hugest fan of any pure fat card in the SB. Space is fairly tight. I'd rather just wish for Hierarch and have the double utility against burn.

i've been playing the deck for quite a long time now (with MD wish), and i must say that wish doesn't look that good anymore to me.
I've switch to 3 eternal witness, has it give us a body (though weak one) and still provide card advantage / utility.
Also, what should we consider to have againt intuition control .deck ?
Haunting echoes doesn't really help here. Should we switch echoes to extirpate ?
Also, latest list IBA ?

Holo.

I'm having some trouble in the Aggro Loam matchup. Should I put extirpates in the SB? Recurring wasteland means I have trouble getting to the 5 mana for echoes/gigapede, and 1x scarab isn't going to do me a ton. I've been experimenting with Wheel of Sun and Moon to wish for, but everyone and their brother runs EE or deed, and not being able to deed for 2 or more severely limits the board control options.

aggro loam ---> haunting echoes.
moreover, you should extirpate their wasteland, you must extirpate their engine : life from the loam.
I personally now run extirpate rather than echoes (though i run one in the sideboard), but it is only because i run 3 witness with a recurring nightmare in my list (wich is now more or less an hydrib between The Rock and The Truffle Shuffle).
Also, if you run wish, you can still wish for Wheel of sun and moon.

Holo.

If the problem is Wastelands and Devastating Dreams, Sacred Ground might be more useful as a sideboard card. It would also work against Armageddon-type decks and Crucible-Wasteland and what not.

Not savage synergy with Deed, granted...

Well, there's always Second Sunrise?

So, for a while I wondered, with the huge leap forward into Tier 1 status that I think the Painters-Grindstone combo takes Mighty Quinn on, if there was a point to this deck anymore, or if it had been eclipsed in function.

I've been back like two and a half months now, however, and it has. I've noticed something.

Everyone and their mother is begging to lose to Deed.

Seriously. I don't think I've seen a metagame that was this heavy on the board elements since 1.5. There's several factors at work behind this, with the rise of Top-Balance and Something-Stompy being the most obvious.

But Disk, Deed, Akroma's Vengeance, et. al, are poised to tear the metagame apart.

In addition to this, I've had another revelation;

Discard is useless in this deck.

Well, not useless. But one of it's most important functions, getting through counters, is gone. The most dangerous counters now are Chalice of the Void and Counterbalance. Neither of these is impressed by Thoughtseize or Hymn. Those counters that do get hit by discard are clearly the less threatening of the lot; in fact, the most commonly played are either very situational and card parity (Spell Snare, Daze) or simply card disadvantage (FoW).

However, this converges harmoniously with the other effect; in short, instead of running cards that kill boards and cards that let the board clearers get through, we can now just run more board clearing, since the two effects tend towards becoming the same.

So, with these facts in mind, I've retinkered the deck to be closer to the model I first experimented with a year and some change ago, abandoning discard to focus on board clearing.

// Lands
4 [A] Bayou
2 [B] Savannah
2 [SHM] Swamp (2)
1 [9E] Plains (3)
1 [SH] Volrath's Stronghold
4 [MR] Forest (3)
2 [ON] Polluted Delta
3 [B] Scrubland
4 [ON] Windswept Heath

// Creatures
2 [ON] Gigapede
3 [FNM] Krosan Tusker
4 [FD] Eternal Witness
2 [RAV] Grave-Shell Scarab

// Spells
3 [AP] Vindicate
3 [PLC] Damnation
4 [AP] Pernicious Deed
4 [IA] Swords to Plowshares
4 [CHK] Sensei's Divining Top
1 [OD] Haunting Echoes
3 [DIS] Crime/Punishment
3 [OD] Moment's Peace
1 [REW] Condemn

// Sideboard
SB: 4 [GP] Leyline of the Void
SB: 4 [RAV] Loxodon Hierarch
SB: 4 [PS] Orim's Chant
SB: 3 [SH] Sacred Ground

The SB is imperfect, but this does seem to fit the niche of "smashing decks that over-commit". I especially like the addition of Moment's Peace, which heavily encourages over-commitment.

I like it. It is close to what I ran a bit ago. No discard, just removal and board clearers. How is the one Condemn?

It really wishes it was StP, but there's legality issues, I'm afraid. It could also be Chainer's Edict, I suppose, but I like having more answers to Lackey.

Why no EE? It seems like a fair complement to Damnation, Deed, and Punishment... or is it just too much?

I think that crime punishment is better in his decklist, occasionally he just pop up a dude from the grave, plus does not suffer stifle/trickbind/needle/grip

You have plenty of ways to kill artifacts and enchantments, you don't have a land destruction plan, you'd welcome extra win conditions, and you run Volrath's Stronghold. All that points me in the direction of Shriekmaws in at least some of the slots currently held by Vindicate.

How does it ever make a chance against combo? I do think some discard is needed.

The plan against combo is to force the trickier/more difficult Tendrils and/or Belcher kill g1, and then hoping that fails. EtW tokens will almost certainly die before they can do lethal. Still, g1 is bad. But discard wouldn't help that much, and it's just not as good in other matchups anymore. And combo's not superprevalent anyway. Chant and Leyline are for combo g2.

Also, a lot of the non-storm combo does rely on permanents anyway. See: Painter decks, for instance.

Interesting list IBA.
the loose of the discard make or matchup againt combo a nightmare g1, but it strenghten the matchup against aggro-control a la Threshold, stax, swarm aggro, affinity and enchantress.
With the right sideboard, you can wrench combo (thought i'm not sure 4 leyline and 4 orim's chant will be enought). But to do this you have to board in like 8 / 10 revelant card against them (here, i would play chalice / gaddock teeg / orim or discard).

Another point i would like to discuss with all of you Sourcers is this :

Does this deck need some kind of draw ?

In my version, i play two : skeletal scrying or harmonize (depending on the version i play).
Is this a waste of space ?
Do you feel the need to get some real way to make CA ?
If you feel that yes, wich card would be the best to achieve this goal ?

Holo.

Eternal Witness and Top are CA (sort of) that's not really cuttable in my opinion. The other card-draw spell here is Krosan Tusker, which I'm deeply emotionally attached to, but which I suppose could be some other card draw. It has a lot of synergy with the deck, though, and is particularly good at ramping you up to Damnation. And other card draw can't really double as a kill condition, which has been pretty relevant at times. Harmonize might work in that slot, I just haven't tested it as much.

As far as combo, I'm not sure about discard. It really depends what type of combo we're going after, but a lot of them empty their hands, or try to, early on for instance. Chalice I'm not a huge fan of because Deed is often still good in this matchup and the synergy is terrible. For the same reason I'm not thinking P. Needle would be great. Maybe just going back to discard is the best option; Could always cut Hiearch and run 4 Duress, 4 Thoughtseize in that and the Chant slots.

I also play top / witness in my version. Also, i really like tusker. I used to play others card like Sakura tribe or veteran explorer in the mana stabilizer slot, but piggy allow us a 2 for 1, plus a shuffle effect. The only bad thing is that it cost 3 to cycle.

Also, i've never try the deck without card draw and with witness/tusker (the first time i've introduce card draw, i was using sakura tribe), thus it may be ok do skip card draw and focus on top / witness / tusker.

and about discard, even if it can be appealing to skip it, i really think that at least 4 discard effect is necesary. Just to be able to see the opening hand of your opponent can be great. moreover, it allow to force some spell into play.

Also, i really think that extirpate is superior than haunting echoes. While it is a win condition by itself, echoes take time to settle, and it is really slow in certain matchup (ichorid, aggro-loam). Plus, with witness you can recur them easilly.
And please, test a one of recurring nightmare. It is really amazing late game, you'll love it !

Holo.

Nice deck list Jack.

I can see why you did not incorporate krosan grip in the board mainly because after seeing what sweepers you have in the main krosan grip does seem redundant in here.

This deck still has a nice draw engine with krosan tusker, fetchlands, eternal witness, and also SDTop. It doesn't seem like you will have any problems finding what you need in alot of matchups.

Also moment's peace is the nuts against ichorid and along with eternal witness/volrath's stronghold seems like you can time walk goblins out of the game especailly in supplement with board sweepers.

Moment's Peace has been pretty hit or miss, although I'm not sure if I'd think about cutting it at the moment. Some matchups and some situation's it's amazing in, mostly where it stalls out until a board clearer, or pressures an opponent to over-commit, but often it's just a card-disadvantage bandaid on a hemmoraging wound.

That being said, where it's powerful, it's very powerful.

I've been very happy with Punishment over EE, it's much better at attacking Counterbalance, Chalice, etc., and the alternate kill condition option has won a few games.

Right now I'm pondering the benefits of fitting in a second Echoes, given the rising prevalence of graveyard based decks, including Ichorid and especially LftL, the latter being where Echoes is pretty much my only hope.

If I ran two Echoes main, I'd consider not running SB graveyard hate further, which would clear up more room for anti-combo pieces like Thoughtseize or Cabal Therapy.

just to let you all know, i am testing a variant with 4 Leyline MD, 1 helm of obedience and 1 liliana vess. Till now it have been amazing. Having acces to a combo finish really help.
Moreover, MD Leyline wrench several strategy, such as loam, ichorid and survival (just to name a few).

Holo.