[Goldfish Genocide] Iggy, SI, TES, Belcher.

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Originally Posted by BreathWeapon

Have people tried cutting the 0cc creatures and Culling the Weak and just building a deck with turn 2 to 4 kills with disruption?

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I threw this together and tested it a bunch of times. It seems very good. The disruption doesn't slow down the deck too much (it goldfishes turn 2-3), and from experience it will likely help against any deck that's not pure aggro. Pure aggro decks (i.e. Goblins) shouldn't be a problem anyway.

BW-BC Tendrils

2 Tendrils of Agony
1 Empty the Warrens
3 Infernal Contract
3 Cruel Bargain
3 Infernal Tutor
2 Ill Gotten Gains
4 Street Wraith
4 Brainstorm
4 Hymn to Tourach (Unmask didn't seem very good since I usually want to keep as many cards in my hand as possible)
4 Duress

4 Dark Ritual
4 Cabal Ritual
4 Lion's Eye Diamond
4 Lotus Petal
4 Chrome Mox

4 Polluted Delta
2 Bloodstained Mire
2 Underground Sea
1 Badlands
1 Swamp

Street Wraith is really useful in a combo deck that can use it as a part of it's plan, i.e. Doomsday can use it in order to draw the Brainstorm off of the top of the Doomsday stack or to draw the Doomsday after a Mystical Tutor, but unless there is a specific card I want to cut from a combo deck, I refuse to "Mulligan on the Margins" with this card.

Is there a reason people use one more IGG and two less Tendrils? I find double Tendrils with discard is amazing against control, and extra Tendrils can be discarded to Unmask or Chrome Mox.

Unmask is great, discarding Meddling Mage on the draw is its biggest selling point, but discarding a Force of Will to protect a Dark Ritual into a Draw4 is decent.

I sort of agree with you about Street Wraith. I'm trying it out for a while to see how effective it is, but so far it's only been ok. Plus, the life loss can be significant late in the game.

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Originally Posted by BreathWeapon

Is there a reason people use one more IGG and two less Tendrils? I find double Tendrils with discard is amazing against control, and extra Tendrils can be discarded to Unmask or Chrome Mox.

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Two IGG will guarantee a storm count of 10 if you have Infernal Tutor and 2 LED or Cabal Rit w/ threshold, even if you have no other cards to play. Plus, I've found that a turn 1 IGG on the play, even if you can't win that turn, is usually a really good start. Theoretically, you get to play out most of your hand, then get back 3 cards that will get you there in the next few turns. Meanwhile, your opponent goes from a 7 card hand to a 3 card hand. Quite a change.

As for Tendrils, the potential to Tendrils twice is good in theory, but it probably won't happen often enough to make it worth running 4. Tendrils in your opening hand is essentially a dead card. Being able to pitch it to Unmask or Chrome Mox is paltry consolation prize. Tendrils is something I want to draw into when I'm going off, or tutor for as a final play.

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Originally Posted by BreathWeapon

Unmask is great, discarding Meddling Mage on the draw is its biggest selling point, but discarding a Force of Will to protect a Dark Ritual into a Draw4 is decent.

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Unmask is good, but removing a black card is a heavy cost in a deck that needs as many cards as possible. Meddling Mage shouldn't concern you too much since the emergence of EtW. Especially in SI, where Belcher is also part of the equation, you should always have a win condition available.


I tested your suggested Tendrils build a lot yesterday, going through a few iterations along the way. I finally got to a build that was sort of like a 3 color TES, with Burning Wish and Rite of Flame, but with Duress instead of Xantid Swarm and Draw 4's instead of Plunge. It was ok but not great.

I think for now I'm going to stick with SI. For one, Culling the Weak was greatly missed. It's an unparalleled mana accelerator. Free robots might seem clunky and not worth 8 spots, but in tournament play I've often found them to be very useful. When forced into a long game, you'll need those blockers. Plus, they let you run CtW as well as Cabal Therapy, the best discard in the game.

I find if I start with a Tendrils in hand, all I have to do is sculpt the hand with enough card advantage to either cast the Tendrils for 10 storm or double Tendrils, and I almost never use the Infernal Tutor and Ill Gotten Gains chain in order to win against aggro-control unless the coast was clear, at which point it was a free win either way.

I will use Infernal Tutor just for Tendrils of Agony tho', or small ball multiple Tendrils of Agony against aggro-control or even control.

I'm not certain the concept is Tier 1, but I think there's a lot that could be done with it in a non-SI shell if some one had the time to look for it.

Hi there,

First I want to congratulate Iranon for the very relevant data he produced. This will for sure be very useful comparing different strategies.

For myself, I’ve been playing with SI for a bit, though I never brought it to a tournament (still missing the cruel bargain…. ). It surely is one of the fastest combo deck ever, with the huge drawback of being very vulnerable for games 2 &3 (assuming you won game 1).I would like to make a few comment based on my own experience.

In my opinion, there is no point trying to include more disruption into the maindeck. That would just ruin your entire strategy based on speed and consistency. Even cabal therapy which has awesome synergy with the whole deck (storm, clearing the way, 0cc creature etc…) doesn’t belong in the maindeck,

Therefore, everything will depend on the sideboard. There is, I think, 2 different approach for side boarding with this deck :

The first one consist on diversifying your kill conditions. Belcher & tendril can be neutralized by a bunch of stuff : meddling m, pithing n, true beliver, orim’s chant, rule of law etc…. I think there are 2 really good answers there : empty the warrens & tombstalker. EtW has the major inconvenient of being red, which means you must have a lotus petal or LED to cast it but it rocks. Tombstalker is also really good assuming your opponent doesn’t play STP.

The other approach consist on considering the most important threats to this deck, the cards that just wreck it and can actually make you fold on T1 and siding hate against these worst-case-senario. Apart from counterspells which are a constant concern but can obviously be fought with cabal & duress, the most annoying stuff are chalice of the void, sphere of resistance and trinisphere. One of this 3 cards hitting the table means instant loss and your opponent can get it in play very quickly with all the stompy-like decks around.

So here is a list of cards I think could fit in the sb :

Duress
Cabl therapy
Xantid swarm
Empty the warrens
Tombstalker
Naturalize

Also, I don’t see the point including street wraith…..

Thanks for the appreciation!

The data isn't perfect though, and in some cases downright misleading:

Belcher can and will get first-turn kills on the play; probably around 10% rather than the measly 2% of my test runs. On the other hand, I don't think it kills by turn 4 as consistently as my tests indicated.

The TES results are a consequence of the very strict requriements I placed on Empty the Warrens. If you mulligan two useless hands into one that will get you 8 goblins on the play/10 goblins on the draw, you still have a decent chance of winning. It didn't meet my requirements though, so I had to somehow get a lethal Tendrils out of that or mulligan to 4. Right.
The deck got by far the most 'fails' that might still have won. Belcher was less affected by this because of their larger amount of fast mana - if they had access to ETW, they could usually cast it for a bunch.
In short, the deck is consistent despite my numbers; if anything it lacks raw power.

SI felt about right, Iggy Pop overall performed a bit better than it usually does from my experience.




Re SI: In theory, I would rather rely on speed and consistency than disruption with this deck. The problem is, SI would be an excellent 56-card deck but the last 4 slots are filler. Whether Diabolic Intent and additional free critters, surplus win conditions, a splash or maindecked disruption, you have to run something suboptimal to get to 60 cards.

I doubt Street Wraith will be able to take that spot given that the deck can easily knock itself down to 2 life without help from the opponent. It remains a choice of damnations.

I tested the list I used for goldfishing, one with maindeck Therapies, a blue splash for Meditate and a red splash for Burning Wish and Empty the Warrens (emergency use only). I can think of valid arguments for each. Belcher means an opponent has a smaller time window to lock us out completely with Chalice/Taxing Effects even if we have a slow hand, hence my dislike for the blue splash. The red splash at least gives us a Burning Wish toolbox to adress the hate and is the other version I would consider because it's quite resilent by SI standards. However, you will either lose strategic superiority to Aggro decks (if you run Kobolds) or the consistency of early kills will suffer (if you don't).

For anyone who's interested, I wrote a short primer a while ago about SI on our local site:

http://www.stlmtg.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=23&start=0

I played the deck for the first time at the Legacy World Championship last summer. I played a no-disruption version with 11 robots, 7 draw 4's, 3 IT, 2 DI. Through 8 rounds of Swiss I recorded 8 turn 1 kills, and finished 5-3 in 28th place overall. Since then I've played a few more tournaments with mixed success. Some current thoughts:

1. I like Cabal Therapy. It doesn't make you win any faster, but it makes your tough matchups managable pre-board. I'm actually well over .500 against Threshold in tournament play.

2. Play EtW main. It's the best combo card released in a long time. Maybe even add a third land (Taiga) so that you can always get Red.

3. Street Wraith isn't good in this deck. It was something I tried out, but at the very least the life loss can be extremely relevant in some situations.

4. The Blue version is fine. Brainstorm is always nice to have, and it can certainly help your combo, but Belcher is such a tasty card that I hate to go without it.

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Originally Posted by B.C.

For anyone who's interested, I wrote a short primer a while ago about SI on our local site:

http://www.stlmtg.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=23&start=0

I played the deck for the first time at the Legacy World Championship last summer. I played a no-disruption version with 11 robots, 7 draw 4's, 3 IT, 2 DI. Through 8 rounds of Swiss I recorded 8 turn 1 kills, and finished 5-3 in 28th place overall. Since then I've played a few more tournaments with mixed success. Some current thoughts:

1. I like Cabal Therapy. It doesn't make you win any faster, but it makes your tough matchups managable pre-board. I'm actually well over .500 against Threshold in tournament play.

2. Play EtW main. It's the best combo card released in a long time. Maybe even add a third land (Taiga) so that you can always get Red.

3. Street Wraith isn't good in this deck. It was something I tried out, but at the very least the life loss can be extremely relevant in some situations.

4. The Blue version is fine. Brainstorm is always nice to have, and it can certainly help your combo, but Belcher is such a tasty card that I hate to go without it.

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I've actually been playing the third mana producing land over the 4th fetch in the blue version (for 3 Meditate, 1 Brain Freeze, 0 Brainstorm, SB: CoV, SB: H.Recall) for some time now, but I play 3x black fetch, 2x Sea, 1x Bayou. This is to support Xantid Swarm out of the board as well as not auto-scoop to Trinisphere in game 1. Recently due exclusively to Meditate and the extra lands, I've beaten stuff like active counterbalance (I've tested 22 games so far preboard and I'm 15-7). Untapping with 10 cards in hand + draw per turn due to meditate is almost always a game win. I've also found interesting situations with LED + Infernal Tutor that let me play more aggressively since I can Brain Freeze an opponent out as well. While I miss Belcher, Brain Freeze is a fine addition to the deck, and a interesting turn 1 play, even if it's only for 7-8 storm against control (milling a good portion of their control spells is excellent as long as the deck isn't Threshold).

As for Brainstorm, I've never played more than 2 in the deck, and 2 was at least 1 too many. It is absolutely abysmal to see the second Brainstorm anytime, with brainstorming into Brainstorm being the worst case scenario. I wouldn't recommend playing any more than 1.

emidln, would you consider running 4x Land Grant, 2x Bayou, 1x Trop to support your Blue cards? This would allow you to still have Belcher in the deck.

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Originally Posted by B.C.

emidln, would you consider running 4x Land Grant, 2x Bayou, 1x Trop to support your Blue cards? This would allow you to still have Belcher in the deck.

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I did but I didn't really like it. The problem with Trop is that it doesn't tap for black. I really need to be able to dark rit -> draw4 turn 1 and then have two mana sources for turn 2, one of which is blue. Unless I happen to hit lotus petal or another land grant, I wouldn't have mana up for Meditate (unless I just play it off LED). I suppose it's possible, and Belcher is huge, but the extra information that fetches don't provide has proven critical in several control games.

Even with fetches in the deck, it's possible to run belcher as your 2nd win condition, since it will still avoid all manners of chalices, pyrostatic pillar, mage, rule of law, and other nonsense, but simply be slower. Also, a big use of belcher is to just kill mage and then combo off with Tendrils (possible if you didn't use LED for belcher). We moved to Brain Freeze because it was possible to generate a lot of storm and then IT cracking LED for UUU to cast brain freeze without extra mana. This let us do dangerous things like cast that extra draw4 going down to BB knowing we can always just Brain Freeze our opponent out.

That said, I wonder what happens if we saturate ourself with lands. Think about this. We take a list and add in extra fetches or land grants to it. This would help us out a lot in figuring out what to do with the final 4 slots (cutting it down to 1-2 we'd need) while adding starting mana sources (the most critical part of the deck). I think that B/g could probably get away with adding 1-2 fetches, while the B/u list could probably cut several meditates for Land Grants (becoming almost mono-black except board). As a bonus, the reservations about Brainstorm put aside might allow some to be added to the deck (1-2).

It's certainly worth testing. Maybe it will make me mulligan less.

With the rise of Threshold (being more focused on blue) and the fact that more Stifles/Daze/FoW are in the top decks (Breakfast, Landstill, Thresh) would you say this dramatically changes any of these four decks win%'s.\

I believe that it makes SI much less of a threat, as on the draw, they have much more disruption to worry about and noting to stop it with.

Belcher is hit second hardest, for although they have many win conditions, and Warrens, they still can't stop stifle.

IGGy and TES both still seem like strong choices, as both run some combination of (TES) Chant/Swarm, and (IGGy) Chant/Swarm/Force of Will.

QSI ignores largely ignore Stifle and Daze while maindecking 4 Therapies with a very real possibility of playing it 8 times. Combined with the ability to stall and optimize with Brainstorm, Meditate, and tall men, I would say this makes it a better choice right now.

If you are playing Iggy with Forces then your list is really screwed up. Iggy plays Chant/Abeyance/Swarm/Duress for protection, with a focus on the former two. TES plays Chant/Abeyance/Swarm/REB. I would go for a combo list that plays at least 2 draw4s (which, actually, my Iggy list, TES, and QSI all play) due to their insane setup.

The key here is to not aim for the goldfish kill. Any good SI pilot will tell you that, as will the better combo pilots in general, as long as you're still alive, you're fine. Sculpting a hand to go off turn 2-10 is fine if that's what it takes. I've killed with SI on turn 1 on the play as well as turn 30 on the draw. To DCI Reporter, when I kill my opponent makes no difference.

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Originally Posted by emidln

The key here is to not aim for the goldfish kill. Any good SI pilot will tell you that, as will the better combo pilots in general, as long as you're still alive, you're fine. Sculpting a hand to go off turn 2-10 is fine if that's what it takes. I've killed with SI on turn 1 on the play as well as turn 30 on the draw. To DCI Reporter, when I kill my opponent makes no difference.

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With decks like TES and IGGy, that's really a bad idea. TES especially, as later in the game your backup outlet (EtW), is sorely weak after the first turn or two, when sweeper effects are online, and Mages can hit play.

The same kind of applies for IGGy, but only because the Abeyance just means another counterspell they need to have, which is probably pretty commonplace by turns 6-10ish.

While it doesn't make a difference when you kill the opponent, it will make a huge difference after game 1 when you attempt to go off, knowing whether or not they play with countermagic or disruption. Both can completely nullify your clock or just shut you down if given too much time, especially decks like Landstill and Thresh, which build up nothing but countermagic walls over time.

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Originally Posted by DeathwingZERO

With decks like TES and IGGy, that's really a bad idea. TES especially, as later in the game your backup outlet (EtW), is sorely weak after the first turn or two, when sweeper effects are online, and Mages can hit play.

The same kind of applies for IGGy, but only because the Abeyance just means another counterspell they need to have, which is probably pretty commonplace by turns 6-10ish.

While it doesn't make a difference when you kill the opponent, it will make a huge difference after game 1 when you attempt to go off, knowing whether or not they play with countermagic or disruption. Both can completely nullify your clock or just shut you down if given too much time, especially decks like Landstill and Thresh, which build up nothing but countermagic walls over time.

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The key here is to proper use of baiting. You have a lot more threats than they have counters for. You especially have more threats progressively than they have counters for. This means you need to keep up pressure testing for holes in their defensive wall. When you find one, be it on turn 2 or turn 20, you go for the kill. This is how combo is properly played. Going in blindly loses the game, as does forcing yourself to combo by a particular time. You bait with bombs like Chant, Abeyance, Swarm, Confidant, IGG, Grim Tutors, Burning Wish, ETW and Draw4s. I'd highly recommending using Confidant and ETW for small amounts to test the waters and keep up the pressure.

Iggy can easily double Tendrils past turn 4, even the standard versions. Playing Chant, getting it countered, playing another chant/abeyance and getting it countered to follow up with a tendrils or double tendrils isn't really all that hard. It's rather easy if you wait for your opponent to do something stupid like tap his lands on his main phase so you can guarantee a certain number of counters/stifle effects relative to hand size and his use of force.

I'm not so sure about how TES deals with a prolonged game anymore, but in the past it was relatively good at a long game due to a high threat density.

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Originally Posted by emidln

The key here is to proper use of baiting. You have a lot more threats than they have counters for. You especially have more threats progressively than they have counters for. This means you need to keep up pressure testing for holes in their defensive wall. When you find one, be it on turn 2 or turn 20, you go for the kill. This is how combo is properly played. Going in blindly loses the game, as does forcing yourself to combo by a particular time. You bait with bombs like Chant, Abeyance, Swarm, Confidant, IGG, Grim Tutors, Burning Wish, ETW and Draw4s. I'd highly recommending using Confidant and ETW for small amounts to test the waters and keep up the pressure.

Iggy can easily double Tendrils past turn 4, even the standard versions. Playing Chant, getting it countered, playing another chant/abeyance and getting it countered to follow up with a tendrils or double tendrils isn't really all that hard. It's rather easy if you wait for your opponent to do something stupid like tap his lands on his main phase so you can guarantee a certain number of counters/stifle effects relative to hand size and his use of force.

I'm not so sure about how TES deals with a prolonged game anymore, but in the past it was relatively good at a long game due to a high threat density.

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Personally, against a good control player, the only "bait" you have with IGGy should be 1) Infernal Tutor w/Hellbent, or 2) IGGy, or 3) Abeyance. Anything other than that are actually pretty safe non-counters, as the combo is very hard pressed to pull 10 spells without the IGG chain or eventually a Hellbent IT. Possible, yes, but not easy when in late game, as you can only keep a hand count of 7, thus either ditching cards or playing acceleration just so you don't discard it.

As far as TES was concerned, late game in 2 and 3 typically meant either absolute luck from your opponent just being a bad player (like tapping out on their turn after say turn 3), or scooping when you can't do anything about Chalice @ 1 followed immediately by 2 (unlikely, maybe...but for some reason Fairie Stompy did this to me on much more than 1 occasion, and often by turn 2). If you are unable to Burning Wish, that Shattering Spree in your Sideboard really didn't matter.

Where both are concerned, the addition of Stifle to maindecks of so many variants of Landstill and some Thresh/Countersliver decks in the area, and you've got a very, very bad matchup rate for these two combo decks. I would say in this case that IGGy is better than TES though, as EE, Deed, E. Plagues, Pyroclasms, and quick blockers means that the EtW plan doesn't work nearly as much as hoped, plus Abeyance/Orim's Chant are much better than Xantid Swarm, mainly because they don't need to wait a turn and go through an attack step. In either case, I've found Confidant to be rather subpar, especially in IGGy with so many 3-4cc cards, in addition to cheap and efficient beaters hitting you/blocking the confidant. The clock pressure I found by having him in play just wasn't worth the tempo advantage.

These are mostly just what I've seen from playing in my area though. I haven't even played IGGy post addition of white protection, and TES I never took to a tournament, just playtested it against various control/aggro-control decks. In total, I can think of at least 6 players I'd see regularly with either a UG/x Thresh, UWbg Landstill, or counter-slivers deck. Very, very annoying.

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Originally Posted by DeathwingZERO

Personally, against a good control player, the only "bait" you have with IGGy should be 1) Infernal Tutor w/Hellbent, or 2) IGGy, or 3) Abeyance. Anything other than that are actually pretty safe non-counters, as the combo is very hard pressed to pull 10 spells without the IGG chain or eventually a Hellbent IT. Possible, yes, but not easy when in late game, as you can only keep a hand count of 7, thus either ditching cards or playing acceleration just so you don't discard it.

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(1) This is why I play Grim Tutor. It is always a must counter.
(2) Even with this strategy, you would likely lose to single or double tendrils quite a bit.
(3) Like it or not, petal, dark rit, ETW is a significant play against you because the bait is in that it forces you to spend mana on your main phase to deal with it. This is what I want since then I will either be chiping away at your life total (making Tendrils easier) or you won't be able to play as many counterspells/stifles, which is ideal. Dark Confidant by itself is a significant play for a similar reason.

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Originally Posted by emidln

(1) This is why I play Grim Tutor. It is always a must counter.
(2) Even with this strategy, you would likely lose to single or double tendrils quite a bit.
(3) Like it or not, petal, dark rit, ETW is a significant play against you because the bait is in that it forces you to spend mana on your main phase to deal with it. This is what I want since then I will either be chiping away at your life total (making Tendrils easier) or you won't be able to play as many counterspells/stifles, which is ideal. Dark Confidant by itself is a significant play for a similar reason.

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1) I haven't playtested much of the Grim Tutor action, as I wasn't willing to spend another $300+ to get 3 more for a deckset when I had one.
2) The issue is the fact they have maindeck Stifles. They really could care less what your doing when they either see you attempt to build storm count via acceleration, or not play crucial spells in the first turn or two, if they fear the wrath of a second storm card. Chances are, they will wait until a tutor effect is played, or you are down to the last card or two, which is usually a complete "tell" for them that your attempting the double-storm play.
3) I know that the low storm count of EtW is still an effective stall, but for the most part, their EE or Pyroclasms come online on their turn 1 or 2. If they are on the play, that means you took them down by 6 points while you lost 3 spells from hand to do so. It's much easier for them to sculpt a hand prepared for you than it is you for them. They know what to hold onto, while you only know they have answers. And I can't even name the number of times I've seen Confidant hit the board, and not even see another upkeep. If he did, he never swung for the damage, because a good control player knows that if you get card advantage every turn over them, the life loss will not matter when they've hit you for lethal from a storm count of say, 4.

Again, this is my playtesting scope. I've almost never won a match against U/G/w Thresh, and that was before maindeck Goyf's causing a ruckus (however to be fair, also before maindecked Chant's, which I hope to seriously improve the matchups). As far as Counterslivers and Landstill are concerned, they've both got ways around the EtW plan, via maindeck Stifle or sweeper effects/blockers with higher than 1 toughness chipping away at your small army.

I've been doing a lot of testing with IggyPop lately and its consistency is matched by how consistently it loses to decks running counters and Duress. It's also lousy against any other deck playing MD Leylines of the Void. The most excruciating mirror I've ever seen game 1 is two IggyPop variants both with Leylines out.

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Originally Posted by FoolofaTook

I've been doing a lot of testing with IggyPop lately and its consistency is matched by how consistently it loses to decks running counters and Duress. It's also lousy against any other deck playing MD Leylines of the Void. The most excruciating mirror I've ever seen game 1 is two IggyPop variants both with Leylines out.

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Doesn't IGGy still run a maindeck bounce spell to get to especially because of Leylines going maindecked? Also, I've noted through extensive testings against Deadguy Ale and Red Death, that Duress itself rarely phases me. It's Duress + Hymn or Therapy (with multiples of something in hand), etc....that's a painful one. I do find that most of the time, a single resolved IGG pretty much trumps discard decks, though. All I've ever done there is just race whatever clock they have. Typical U/B controls packing both counter and Duress/Therapy are a bitch, though. Any discard spell is practically never going to "whiff" against this deck, and counters hit whatever you can push past the wall of disruption.

I'd have to say my most painful matchup was against UGw Thresh, where Bardo had drawn an opening hand into 2x Mage, 2x Land, FoW/w backup opener. I didn't even get a chance to do anything, his turn 2 was Mage for "Tendrils", and turn 3 was Mage for "Truth". Since I hadn't realized to put an alternate bounce spell in the Sideboard, it was the first time ever I've scooped to a non-combo deck before my 3rd turn clock.