I ran 3-4 games with the sphinx and found that more than often it would net me one to three cards, feeling each time like I'd rather be dropping a power creature. I don't think I'll revisit it.Quote:
Originally Posted by darkgh0st
Printable View
I ran 3-4 games with the sphinx and found that more than often it would net me one to three cards, feeling each time like I'd rather be dropping a power creature. I don't think I'll revisit it.Quote:
Originally Posted by darkgh0st
http://tcdecks.net/deck.php?id=18619&iddeck=141089Quote:
Originally Posted by sun tzu
The idea behind this list is essentially: blank opponents' creature removal MD, and instead of using Forgemaster, Lodestone, and Metalworker to use creature-based methods of powering your end-game, use more redundant artifact mana acceleration in the form of Thran Dynamo, Basalt Monolith, and Hedron Archive to ramp into Ulamog, Wurmcoil, Ugin, and Karn. It also uses the 4 Portals to act as a draw engine for a more controllish game-plan.Quote:
Creatures [5]
2 Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger
3 Wurmcoil Engine
Planeswalkers [6]
3 Karn Liberated
3 Ugin, the Spirit Dragon
Artifacts [27]
1 Staff of Nin
2 Hedron Archive
2 Voltaic Key
3 Thran Dynamo
3 Trinisphere
4 Basalt Monolith
4 Chalice of the Void
4 Coercive Portal
4 Grim Monolith
Lands [22]
3 Karakas
3 Vesuva
4 Ancient Tomb
4 City of Traitors
4 Cloudpost
4 Glimmerpost
Sideboard [15]
3 Ratchet Bomb
2 All Is Dust
4 Lodestone Golem
2 Spine of Ish Sah
1 Trinisphere
1 Wurmcoil Engine
1 Trading Post
1 Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger
Essentially it trades a little bit of explosiveness for a more resilient game against all the fair decks. Very few decks have good ways to interact with Basalt Monolith and Thran Dynamo MD. And against unfair decks such as Storm and Elves, you lean heavily on Chalice and Trinisphere and then board into the full anti-combo plan for G2 and G3.
Ulamog is such a beast in Legends MUD. Even he is countered, he takes threats you can target, which nets you around 4-for-1. Even when Forced and Stifled, he's still a 3-for-1. And when he does resolve, non-white decks struggle to remove him.
So as of last night I'm on a losing streak. Since 11/19 I've gone 2-2, 2-2, 1-2, and 1-2. I think part of it is mental, and part of it is people adjusting to having MUD regularly in their meta.
However, I'm wondering if I just need to play through it, or if there's some adjustments I should make. This is a big request, but can anyone offer insight into changes I should be making to my list or behavior? Below is my list, and linked is a breakdown of my meta and record since picking up MUD.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets...#gid=0&vpid=A1
Creatures
4 Metalworker
4 Lodestone
4 Forgemaster
2 Wurmcoil
1 Emperion
1 Sundering Titan
1 Blightsteel
2 Ugin
Artifacts
4 Monolith
4 Chalice
3 Trinisphere
2 Greaves
1 Staff of Domination
1 Coercive Portal
1 Staff of Nin
1 Spine
Land
4 Wasteland
4 Tomb
2 City of Traitors
4 Cloudpost
4 Glimmerpost
3 Vesuva
2 Cavern
1 Urborg
Sideboard
1 Platinum Angel
1 Spine of Ish Sah
1 Contagion Engine
1 Coercive Portal
1 Trinisphere
2 Crucible
2 Ratchet Bomb
2 Thorn of Amethyst
2 Pithing Needle
2 Tormod's Crypt
My ideas so far:
- I've considered -1 Forgemaster, +1 Wurmcoil.
- I've thought about going to 2 or 3 maindeck Coercive Portal. As seems to be happening everywhere, my meta feels like it's losing combo and getting grindier.
- Ancient Tomb has been shocking the shit out of me lately. I generally don't love the idea of dropping any, but would a 3/3 split of Tomb and City make sense?
- I feel like I've been drawing a lot of bad openers, and that generally prison hands have been playing best for me. Is there anything I can do to improve my openers or promote prison hands?
- Austin is a good MtG scene, but still, at this point everyone knows what everyone else is on. We have a 1K coming up in 2 weeks that I'm hoping attracts some out-of-towners, so I can regain some element of surprise. Unfortunately, there don't seem to be any other big TX Legacy events in the near future . . .
MUD can have times it feels like you roll your dice but never roll that 6. From personal experience i have my best MUD performances right after i pick it up after a break of playing other decks. It might force me to think at momens and als just yolo at other moment. Somehow, i have always have that same drop of performance your experiencing now. Either play trough it or (as me) play something else for a while. There is also a danger in trying to continuesly adjust and tweak you deck. At some point you might realise your stuck and cant really backtrack the changes that affected this. The best thing to do is to swap back to the list when you hadost succes and continue again from there.Quote:
Originally Posted by Stuart
Edit: i do not really believe that choosing to play coercive or not or 1 wurmcoil for 1 forgemaster affects the performance of the deck. Those are just nuances and "feel-of-play" rather then making the deck actually better. It can cloud you.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Stuart
I am back on MUD for the time being, but I am off Forgemaster and Chalice. Forgemaster just seems terrible in an environment where 4x stifle is increasingly common, and big mana MUD is also not fantastic when the popular delver lists are on 4x Wasteland. Even chalice I have basically just moved on from in the main.
The other deciding factor to move on from big targets is the fact that a 6 mana wurmcoil engine does just as good a job as an 8 mana beater, so why bother overkilling? And the 6 mana wurmcoil is much easier to cast. I have dramatically altered my deck, hopefully I have some results with it and I will post everything, but basically I have brought my curve down significantly.
Ultimately, Forgemaster MUD was a great deck when RB Cruise delver was on the scene and you could reliably build up your mana base. Those days are gone, and people have adapted. I wouldn't even say that they have adapted to our deck, as MUD is such a small percentage of the field that I would never in a million years advise anyone to waste time or SB slots on it, but as long as miracles is a thing people will have splash hate that applies to us.
Stuart, I really like having a 2-1 Greaves and Thousand-Year Elixir split because it allows you to immediately use the Metalworker or Forgemaster abilities without waiting for an equip resolution, and it untaps to reuse Metalworkers, I love the card and have since I took the 3rd Greaves out for it. Also I really like the idea of having at least 3 Cavern of Souls to help resolve the Metalworkers/Forgemasters with Construct, and Emperion/Titan/Blightsteel on Golem. I also play a quite different list than you do that I played in the Jelly Jam
just switched the 3rd Whipflare in the board for a 2nd BridgeQuote:
Originally Posted by Fry
But even with the different lists I still would love to see you put in an Elixir and a 3rd Cavern. I love Staff of Nin, but it can be a little slow to come out, so I've actually cut it from my list quite some time ago, but do think of adding it or Portal to my list somewhere.
That is absolutely insane. Forgemaster and Chalice are probably the two best cards in the deck!Quote:
Originally Posted by Rikter
How many decks actually run stifle MD? RUG Delver and some Grixis Delver decks. That's basically it, and you still have the potential to Chalice @ 1 them out. I think you're overreacting to a few bad beats when you may have gotten Stifled and it felt so bad. Just because maybe 5-10% of the time Forgemaster is bad in that way, it shouldn't discount the roughly 90-95% of times it is amazing in finding you the exact silver bullet or back-breaking finisher that you needed to win that game.
And cutting Chalice is crazy. Chalice of the Void almost single-handedly won SCG NJ and is the basically the one of the few reasons you would want to play a non-blue deck in Legacy to begin with.
One of the big problems in your decklist is your manabase.Quote:
Originally Posted by Stuart
Always play 4 Tomb and 4 City. Yes, having multiple City sucks sometimes but it's the price you need to pay for explosive mana. You absolutely *must* be able to power out Chalice @ 1 as early as possible, and stuff like Monolith as early as possible as well. You simply have to have 4 of each in every successful MUD deck.
I don't like Urborg at all. I understand you're trying to mitigate lifeloss, but the number of times it saves you because it stops you from shocking yourself with Tomb is outweighed by the number of times it's worse than a Darksteel Citadel.
I don't like Wasteland in MUD. Some people want to play Wasteland to further the Trinisphere / Lodestone mana denial plan, but in my experience, this deck just wants to generate as much mana as possible and saccing your lands to kill opponent's lands interferes with that end goal. Wasteland is a little bit counter-productive to this deck's strategy.
I would play 4 City / 4 Tomb / 4 Cloudpost / 4 Glimmerpost / 4 Vesuva and then some combination of Mishra's Factory and/or Cavern of Souls to round out the 24.
Per mtgtop8, wasteland is currently present in half the field. Thats the real backbreaker, more so than stifle. Playing a big mana deck in a wasteland heavy meta is asking for trouble, because a massive share of big mana MUD's value came from being able to reliably hard cast the threats should it be an issue.Quote:
Originally Posted by MGB
Stifle is less of an issue (12% of decks run it), it's easier to play around, but the last 20k had half the final 24 or so on miracles. Stifle is a card I see more and more of when I go to these events, and it only has more value as miracles posts such strong results.
Im just off chalice, it isn't that big a deal to me. Against the non-combo decks I really don't care how much they ponder and brainstorm, because as long as I can resolve wurmcoil engine I am fine. That card is better than just about every single card in their deck, and is also a big part of the reason to get rid of forgemaster: the silver bullet cards are such overkill. I have chalice in the 75, for combo matchups where it matters more, but for the fair decks I see no need to bother with it. If the best you can do is drop a Gurmag angler, I don't really care about locking you out, I just want to focus on resolving my superior cards, and chalice does not help with that. Why spend time locking out a bunch of crap that isn't really a problem anyways, right?
Time will tell, but I think it is a mistake to look at chalice and forgemaster as these un-cuttable cards.
Thanks guys - appreciate your support in these dark times :laugh:
Ultimately I have a feeling this is the most important piece of advice. I need to just give MUD (and myself) some breathing room for a little while.Quote:
Originally Posted by Bobmans
My list hasn't really changed much since I started; I think I dropped a Hellkite for Emperion, a 3rd Cavern for a 2nd City, and a Vesuva for an Urborg. Still, I was doing better then, so maybe I should go back . . .
As MBD suggested, dropping Forgemaster and Chalice is just too tough for me to swallow. That said, I have been running into more instances of people dropping threats (Vial, Delver, etc) turn 1 before I get in a Chalice, so maybe I need more of a gameplan for reacting to those plays.Quote:
Originally Posted by Rikter
And yeah, I might add another Wurmcoil. 6 mana is pretty easy, and Wurmcoil is soooo good in so many situations. I've been approaching my fatties from the toolbox/swiss army knife perspective, and maybe I should instead streamline them.
Cheers Fry! I'm hesitant to add a 3rd Cavern; I was running 3 when I started MUD, but just had too many games of getting flooded with Caverns. However, I do really like the look of Thousand-Year Elixir. I love Staff of Nin, but you're right that it's slow. If I cut 1 Staff of Nin and 1 Spine for 1 Coercive Portal and 1 Elixir, that could go some ways in speeding everything up.Quote:
Originally Posted by Fry
Our manabase is interesting. I'm pretty firmly in the "I Love Wasteland" camp, but I haven't tried playing without it, either.Quote:
Originally Posted by MGB
When I started on MUD I was running 4 Vesuva and have since cut to 3 after getting flooded with Vesuvas one too many times. Given that, I don't think I want to go back up to 4. However, you might be right about City (especially since I've been getting Tombed so hard lately; increasing my sol land options seems smart).
It really helps when you take time away from the deck you always play. I have started Modern recently, with the aim not to play anything close to MUD in the format (Tron). I've had one too many times where I over-react and change my deck completely only to get smacked around by another deck then. Though I have to say, from all the MUD variants I tried, the generic MUD look right now is the most consistent.
I agree. My in-laws are in town for the next week, so I'm kinda on a forced break from MtG anyway. I'm thinking I'll just goldfish solid opening hands for the next 2 weeks so I go into the 1K with a clear head. I'm also building Enchantress, so I'll start off 2016 with a break from MUD. We'll see.Quote:
Originally Posted by darkgh0st
Thanks again for the tips, everyone!
I have the same experience and also started to play Tron recently. Next to that, it broke out a White Stax list for a change. It's always nice to try something else for a change. Also to keep "unpredictable" in the meta :wink:Quote:
Originally Posted by darkgh0st
Nevertheless, MUD is my number 1 deck. Period. I'm for sure starting 2016 with it again.
I'm thinking about retrying my "old" list since it worked pretty well before all this delve shit happened :cool:
3x Goblin Welder
4x Metalworker
4x Kuldotha Forgemaster
4x Stoneforge Mystic
1x Blightsteel Colossus
1x Platinum Angel
3x Wurmcoil Engine
1x Daretti, Scrap Savant
1x Staff of Domination
1x Thousand-year Elixir
1x Spine of Ish Sah
1x Umbral Mantle
1x Umezawa's Jitte
1x Batterskull
1x Lightning Greaves
4x Chalice of the Void
4x Grim Monolith
1x Mox Diamond
2x Mox Opal
4x Ancient Tomb
4x City of Traitors
4x Great Furnace
1x Plateau
4x Ancient Den
4x Cavern of Souls
Sideboard
1x Tormod's Crypt
2x Rest in Peace
4x Phyrexian Revoker
2x Ratchet Bomb
1x Ethersworn Canonist
1x Trading Post
1x Platinum Emperion
1x Sundering Titan
1x Crucible of Worlds
1x Thorn of Amethyst
Wow, 2 colours in a mudlist. How was that working out?Quote:
Originally Posted by Airwave
Wouldnt you achieve something similar with running Godo and stick to 1 color?
It's not that hard actually. You just have to make sure to call "Artificer" on your Cavern of Souls. That way you play 5 Plateaus and next to that 3 moxen... so I'm actually hardly ever color-screwed.Quote:
Originally Posted by Bobmans
The newly spoiled Mystic Gate Expedition gives us more of what the new Kozilek mana cost actually means.
That list sounds like loads of fun, pulling a kill with a goblin, 2 monoliths and an umbral mantle might be the most unexpected mud play so far.Quote:
Originally Posted by Airwave
I never managed to pull that off unfortunately... sounds like a lot of fun.Quote:
Originally Posted by Silverflame
What happened a lot though: Turn 1 Grim Monolith, Metalworker, Turn 2 Stoneforge, search Umbral, equip, hit for 1.000.000.000 damage.... the look on their face is priceless :laugh:
I like this combo better.Quote:
Originally Posted by Airwave
EDIT: How about Thopter Engineer instead of Elixir?