[CaNGD - Finalist] TEC - The EPIC Control

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Originally Posted by thefreakaccident

I would personally suggest just deleting all those posts and start up the thread again, as the thread seems too caught up in the petty argument which is currently ensuing.

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I tried cleaning up most of the garbage. There was some relevant stuff in there.

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I have taken the time to playtest your MU against landstill (UGWB)...

I found that the MU is in Landstill's favor, as they utilize your best draw spell better than you 100% of the time (unless they are incompetent), and they have less dead cards than you do (you have: wrath, explosives, standstill; They have: nothing)

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Working under the assumption that you're playing with BHWW landstill, or even the Waste-less ones, I'm basically only concerned with a single card - Deed. It's seriously the only card I care about in the slightest, and really only in game 1. As I said in the article, and above, the ability of Landstill to better operate under a Standstill renders mine fairly irrelevant in game 1, and only slightly better in games two and three. It's a known issue, but there are ways to better handle the issue. In general, I'm willing to break the first Standstill, if I either have a mana advantage, or a solid enough hand where I feel like I can push a threat through. It's not simple, and again, Deed wrecks that plan, but it's not exactly an aweful matchup. Jace is still just as good as I said - if he resolves, BHWW has nothing that can deal with him outside attacking with Monasteries. Post board, Decree can wrench that for a while, or just win. It's something I'm willing to work on, but the matchup isn't prevalent enough around me to dedicate that much time to it. I'm generally more concerned with white based Landstill, which is rampant in Syracuse. On the other hand, the principles that work well for one are good for the other as well, like Decree or even Pithing Needle in the board.

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They run more hard countermagic than you, and while your little combo of CB/top is nice, it really doesn't realistically live for longer than a turn or even hit the board for that matter (at least not both parts, specifically the CB).

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I suppose this is true in the perfect world where they open with Spell Snare, Deed, Force, Counterspell, and the mana to play it all. On the other hand, I could just as soon open with Top, Counterbalance, and Double Force backup, with a Shackles in the top three to stop Deed from ever seeing play. It can happen either way - both decks are very good.

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The goblin MU also seems off, as while I haven't gotten a chance to play this MU (I will concede this) CB is aweful against them.

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Generally speaking, I've actually found it better vs. them with this deck than any other one I've played it in, partially because my curve rides a little higher. I actually keep it in post board, believe it or not. They have 8 cards that circumvent it, sure, but you can deal with those eventually, and in the mean time, slow them enough by forcing them to rely on Vial that you have time to find answers to those cards.

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you have 2 3cc cards in your entire deck(4 in the MD, with anywhere from 3 to 7 more in the board), 11 1cc cards, and 16 2cc cards... Your CB will never counter warcheif or matron, it will never touch ringleader (which you have only Fow against), and it will never touch sgc or Kiki-jiki (for those who still run it).

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You didn't mention the 4cc cards or the fact that FoW stops Siege Gang, but that's fine. It's not the best against Goblins, I agree, but neither is Counterspell. Still, with a plethora of removal in the MD, Goyf, recurring defense in Hoofprints, and a TON of help from the board, it hasn't been all that difficult to deal with Goblins in testing.

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This is all I have to put out there; Your other analysis of your other MUs seemed about right overall; well written article, well written primer; just a little bit more testing against a couple decks, that's all. I do not mean to be well mean or anything, I am just here to clarify some things that seemed to be misrepresented previously.

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I'll be sure to test them some more. I appreciate the feedback.

I'll be honest here, Adam:

Your deck looks the strongest and most consistent of all the CaNG d's...at least in my opinion. I've seen it in action and I'm quite impressed. Hats off to a fantastic concoction.

Not going to lie, this deck is really awesome. In the three or four games I played on MWS, I've seen that there are just so many BOMBS that need to be answered in the early game, and from such an incredibly diverse range of threats (Creature, Enchantment, Planeswalker).

The only clunky card to me is Wrath of God; then again, I haven't played against dedicated aggro. It seems like a necessary evil against Goblins (or to dodge enemy Counterbalances to sweep Mongooses and/or Tarmogoyfs).

Very, very well done.

I think Standstill is a terrible choice here. You can't drop a turn two Standstill and ever put any pressure on your opponent to break it. If you were to do so, you would be gambling on the fact that your opponent is going to misguess your deck and assume you play a method of backing the Standstill up.

In fact the only times you can ever afford to drop it is if you have a Goyf out, a Hoofprints out, a Jace out, or you have more cards in your library than your opponent.

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I found the deck awkward and inconsistent at times, granted I don't have a sufficient number of games to be 100% skilled with it, but most of the games I won were due to the power of the individual cards overwhelming the opponent as opposed to a coherent game plan. Balance/Top couldn't deal with 3cc cards at all, Standstill was just awful with out a Tarmogoyf on the board, which made it win more, and Jace was a dud against all forms of aggro.

I'd be tempted to drop Standstill for Thirst for Knowledge or Intuition/Life from the Loam for consistent card advantage and 3cc cards to prevent Intuition/Loam and Pernicious Deed from resolving on the other side of the table. Either of those cards are strong with Hoof Prints of the Stag and should churn thru' the deck at a higher rate.

Counterspell would also help to shore up the counter wall, a lot of random shit slips thru' Force of Will and Counterbalance, and it's infuriating as all hell.

Edit: Since Wrath of God and Tarmogoyf is a nombo, I'd look into Volrath's Stronghold, given the card is ridiculous in control/aggro-control mirrors and has synergy with Counterbalance.

I agree with the general evaluation of Standstill.

If your plan is "achieve board superiority, then drop Standstill to draw 3 cards on the spot", then Threshold and Fish can make a better use of Standstill than this deck (because they have more early threats and more countermagic to protect them). Unless you're counting on your opponent waiting forever to break it, in which case they are either bad or playing a deck that operates better than you under Standstill.

Either Standstill should be put in Thresh/Fish, or this deck should run a better card drawing engine. TfK would be my first choice to test.

To all who are discussing Standstill vs. Thirst, it's been on my list of things to test for a while now. I'm aware of the difficulty in exploiting the card, and it's quite possible that Thirst will be a better use of the slot. I'll be testing it throughout the week, and let you know how it pans out.

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Originally Posted by Nightmare

To all who are discussing Standstill vs. Thirst, it's been on my list of things to test for a while now. I'm aware of the difficulty in exploiting the card, and it's quite possible that Thirst will be a better use of the slot. I'll be testing it throughout the week, and let you know how it pans out.

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I might be totally out on left field on this, but I feel that Standstill is only better if your deck is designed to win the game while sitting under the enchantment.

Some examples of what I exactly mean are the following. Lets say you have decree of justice, can make solider tokens via cycling under standstill. Lets say you play man lands and/or wasteland to control your opponent under standstill. Being able to make tokens without breaking the enchantment is the key on the inclusion of it. The last good example is Hoofprints of the Stag as Adam plays in his deck.

Since most of these cards are not present in the deck, I believe Thirst for Knowledge may be a better alternative, giving the fact that the artifact count is high enough.

Let us know how the testing does. Good Luck.

I feel that if you're going to cut Standstill, which I disagree with, it should be for 2-3x Fact and probably a Skeletal Scrying or two. Cutting standstill hurts the 2cc slot for counterbalance.

EDIT: The deck doesnt play enough artifacts to support Thirst even with academy ruins.

I do think that this deck is good; however, I think I'm going to play the devil's advocate for a bit.

How is this deck significantly different from Landstill? The only significantly different cards I see are Tarmogoyf, Jace and Hoofprints and even then they are not unheard of on the Landstill thread.

How is this deck better than landstill? Some concerns: it runs Goyf, which is bigger but can be countered, as its only win condition (besides Shackle-ing one of their dudes); it runs not nearly as many hard-counters as landstill; you might have to break standstill to play your threats and your threats do not recur - once they're gone, they're gone.

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Originally Posted by Klaan

How is this deck better than landstill? Some concerns: it runs Goyf, which is bigger but can be countered, as its only win condition (besides Shackle-ing one of their dudes); it runs not nearly as many hard-counters as landstill; you might have to break standstill to play your threats and your threats do not recur - once they're gone, they're gone.

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Jace and Hoofprints are still win conditions, as is Shackles as you mention. Landstill runs eight hard counters. You run Force of Will and Counterbalance, which can potentially act as infinate hard counters as well. Also, if Shackles is being used as a win condition against say, Tarmogoyf, you recur it with Academy Ruins.

I like the name of this deck and the idea of control in legacy.
The only thing I have issues with is Jace, but I've never used the card so I don't know how good it really is. I assume the strategy for it is to draw one card over two turns leaving him at one, and then recharge with the howling mine affect. So the card advantage is -1 for Jace, and -1 every time you use his howling mine. which is paid off after the first two activations. So you only really gain card advantage after four turns which is during a howling mine. I think the mill effect is useless compared to drawing cards. Don't get me wrong, I like milling. But only 20 cards that sound that great. I'm sure there's games that have crept up where it's been used but that's just showing off in light that you've given the player five cards in order to do it when you've could have been drawing into a win condition. Perhaps the real issue of card advantage can be argued that atleast your drawing cards much like cantrips.
I like Jace as a card, but he strikes me as one of those 'cool' cards like Arcanis.

Which brings me to my next point: This deck to me lacks a real card drawing engine (despite Jace over a long game ). I think fact or fiction is a good card that wins games, gifts aswell. The biggest draw back is the casting cost, much like wrath of god. I was wondering if you considered adding more mana excel to the deck to play such spells earlier.

In closing I'd like to say this is by far my favorite deck of the submissions so far, and hope you do well.

They deck lacks synergy. It's just powerful cards put together...

It rolls and dies to aggro. I have been play testing it, and it's losing to FALSE CURE!!!


WTF! StP their Kavu, and they still win/Rebuff the Wicked it!

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Originally Posted by APriestOfGix

They deck lacks synergy. It's just powerful cards put together...

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That's how you build decks. You put the best cards of the colors you want to play and just pick 60 of them.

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Originally Posted by zulander

That's how you build decks. You put the best cards of the colors you want to play and just pick 60 of them.

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There are so many decks that do not follow this "rule". For example: Solidarity (Counterbalance? Portent?), TES (Anything really, its got golden lands), Iggy-Pop (Hymn? Counterbalance?), Thresh (Mental Note and Predict straight up suck in any normal deck, I wouldn't consider them as one of the "best cards"), and Goblins (Lightning Bolt?).

The way these decks were built is that the deck designers found cards that fit in with the overall strategy and were synergistic with each other.

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Originally Posted by Klaan

There are so many decks that do not follow this "rule". For example: Solidarity (Counterbalance? Portent?), TES (Anything really, its got golden lands), Iggy-Pop (Hymn? Counterbalance?), Thresh (Mental Note and Predict straight up suck in any normal deck, I wouldn't consider them as one of the "best cards"), and Goblins (Lightning Bolt?).

The way these decks were built is that the deck designers found cards that fit in with the overall strategy and were synergistic with each other.

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Well Mental Note always sucks, but valid point, synergy is important to consider in deck building. However, sometimes a bunch of good cards can come together and make a good deck based on sheer power of the individual cards or unintentional synergies, see PT: Junk decks for instance.

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Originally Posted by zulander

That's how you build decks. You put the best cards of the colors you want to play and just pick 60 of them.

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I would argue that LftL would be bad in both survival and thresh (both of which use grren)....

I would also argue that damnation would be bad in SI...

Such comments are bad for the integrity of these boards and the soul of Legacy as a whole.

Why not run a couple of Tolaria Wests in the manabase, for finding Ruins, EE and potential cards out of the SB? Because it's a U producing land, it gives a lot of utility for essentially 0 deckspace. It also gets around Standstill, so you could use it to tutor for a singleton land win condition, forcing your opponent to break it.

After boarding, Crypt, Tabernacle and manlands can all be brought in as 1-ofs, increasing the amount of answers the deck can run for minimal mainboard and sideboard space.

@ Zulander: Your format of choice wouldn't happen to be Type 2, would it?

@ The "Problem" of Standstill: TfK is bad. Really bad. In all honesty I would play Council of the Soratomi over TfK for what I thought would be obvious reasons. I would instead sugest Accumulated Knowledge or Ancestral Vision (I think that here I should say I haven't played the deck yet, so I don't know if your deck is too slow for 4x Ancestral Vision). I would advocate AK over Vision because I think it would be the better replacement for Standstill since it doesn't alter your mana curve and it doesn't have any attached delay. The first casting is obviously a little under whelming, but the draw is centered in the late-game, where I would presume you would want/ need it most.