Pithing Needle helps against Sneak Attack, and REB helps against Show n Tell. Those answers aren't very robust or solid - it's probably a very poor matchup.
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Pithing Needle helps against Sneak Attack, and REB helps against Show n Tell. Those answers aren't very robust or solid - it's probably a very poor matchup.
How many SB slots are worth devoting to artifact hate though? Right now I have 3x Grip and 1 Pulverize to wish for. Maybe Pyroblast/REB are worth a shot? I've just not been able to burn out painter fast enough running Lavamancer, Seismic, and PFires. I could run Bolt over Lavamancer, but it feels like this is the only match it helps. I may just drop PFires, just threw it in because I like the inevitability vs. control, and a few people in this thread were raving about it.Quote:
Originally Posted by Admiral_Arzar
We had a small 7-man at the local Legacy event (tons of people had to work or are away for the summer on internships).
I took 3rd place with this list. I played some games against UW Stoneforge Landstill before the tournament, and was unfavoured both pre and post board, but I also drew like crap.
I won against Dredge, lost to Merfolk (narrowly, I drew like crap) and beat Elves.
My list:
4 Forgotten Cave
3 Tranquil Thicket
2 Taiga
1 Badlands
2 Bayou
4 Wooded Foothills
2 Bloodstained Mire
4 Wasteland
1 Volrath's Stronghold
2 Mountain
1 Forest
4 Mox Diamond
4 Life from the Loam
3 Seismic Assault
2 Terminate
2 Dismember
2 Go for the Throat
2 Maelstrom Pulse
2 Sylvan Library
4 Tarmogoyf
4 Dark Confidant
4 Countryside Crusher
1 Eternal Witness
1 Terravore
BOARD
2 Pernicious Deed
2 Pyroblast
2 Thrun, the Last Troll
3 Extirpate
2 Perish
3 Krosan Grip
1 Ancient Grudge
-----
I also played against Painter Combo, and he had 3+ Counterspells for my removal at all times. Them's the breaks. I was thinking of adding in 2 Fires and 2 Groves, but I'm not sure if 2 Groves are enough.
-Matt
I've been liking 2 Groves in testing online. It's really more of a backup plan against decks that can counter Assault. I actually thought about cutting it to 1, since like Stronghold it's only meant to be abused in the late game, and you'll find it eventually with dredging.
Also, why 2 Bayou/1 Badlands instead of the other way around? Assault is usually the only thing I have issues casting.
Well at worst punishing fire is 1R: Kill target X/1 or X/2 or win target goyf war. Grove of the burnwillows + punishing fire is best in builds packing KotR because it can tutor for the grove and punishing fire can just get dredged into.
Interesting list Matt. Maybe splash white solely for KotR and vindicate instead of pulse? I dunno. KotR is just so awesome so much of the time. Also opens you up to swords but maybe that stretches the manabase then again Micah Greenbaum ran 4 color loam to great results in Baltimore.
I like the idea of 4x Punishing Fire 0x Seismic. They really accomplish the same thing by having a late game win condition and removal for creatures that need to die.
The differences IMO:
Fires can be dredged over to no loss.
Fires is easier to cast.
Fires is hard to deal with (can't even be Extirpated).
Fires can be cast earlier to stop Bob, Noble, etc...
Fires is slower and more mana intensive.
Fires cannot reach as big or as many. Not reaching to 3 is a pretty big deal.
I'm not so concerned with Fires being slower. If it's a late game, inevitability kill, it doesn't matter if it takes a little longer to pull off. Not being able to hit x/3 efficiently is bad though. Maybe that means that Fires needs to be played along side other, more versatile removal like Pulse, Vindicate, DD and/or Firespout to handle the big dudes and the swarms.
One of my main reasons to dislike Seismic is the RRR. The other is that I hate dredging over it. It makes me want to play bad cards like E. Witness and I really don't want to do that. The fact that Seismic can be dealt with is also another concern.
The thing is, Seismic Assault wins the game now. I raced Dredge with a Seismic Assault online. I landed Assault, and raced Tokens + Narcomoebas + Ichorids. I had a 9/9 Terravore and a Bob keep me alive until I hit Assault, at which point I killed him in a turn and a bit. Grove/Fires is pretty saucy, but Assault is freakin' brutal in terms of doing 6+ damage a turn. I definitely agree that RRR is also brutal, as I'm usually wanting 2 green and 2 red up.
I know Mitch took 1st at Baltimore, but his manabase looks SO shaky. I tried a 4C list a while back, and found it was tough balancing white for removal, green for your Loams, and reds for Assault/Crusher. But, I can always try it again.
-Matt
Corpt, if you don't like getting your good cards dredged away, I guess you could always just run bad cards. My point is that you might not really get the point of dredging LftL. Sure, you 'lose' three cards, but you get one. No more, but neither any less than you would've drawn anyway. And this way it's the card you actually want. You can't run only self-retracable cards just because you don't like to see useless cards in your graveyard. Then you'd be playing Ichorid-dredge. With that deck you want to dredge as much as you can, but with LftL you need to consider it every turn. What do I want to draw? How likely is it that I will? Is a LftL better/more reliable? This concideration is to me still one of the toughest and most important of a regular game.
About the rest of the deck; I haven't played MTG for about a year, but recently kinda picked it up again. I always used to play RGb Aggro Loam and have been playing pretty much the same 75 as, say, two years ago. I've never been that fond of the white splash for KotR. Besides the fact that I never really got convinced of Knight (in fact, I still prefer Terravore), I partly dislike it because I don't beleave in a 4c manabase. My own 26-lands 3c manabase with duals/fetch instead of basics is about as vulnerable to colorscrew as I can bare. Also it's because I feel that playing white implies running StP over Chalice of the Void and I'm still convinced that a CotV build is the way to go. We can never run enough good 1-drops to outpower the tier 1 decks' ones (most notably Brainstorm) and we run Moxen anyway, so Chalice fits perfectly.
Another card many people seem to have cut is Burning Wish. Even though the M10 ruleschange made it slightly worse (It's a little less effective against Extirpate, which doesn't see play, and you can't play your flashbacked Chainer's Edict for a third time. Big deal.), I never experienced the conistency in testing without Wish that I felt when playing with it. Also, I realise the card is pretty mana-ntensive, but as long as you run 0-2 cmc targets only, that really shouldn't be a problem.
This is my list. As said, it has been roughly the same for some time and I really feel that it's pretty much optimal.
4 Mox
4 CotV
2 Terminate
2 DDreams
3 LftL
4 Burning Wish
2 Seismic Assault
4 Confidant
4 Goyf
2 Terravore
3 Crusher
1 Volrath's Stronghold
1 Barbarian Ring
3 Tranquil Thicket
3 Forgotten Cave
4 Wasteland
7 Verdant Catacombs/Bloodstained Mire/Wooded Foothills
1 Bayou
2 Badlands
4 Taiga
1 LftL
1 DDreams
1 Chainer's Edict
1 Shattering Spree
1 Reverent Silence
1 Maelstrom Pulse
3 Thorn of Ametyst
3 Krosan Grip
3 Kitchen Finks
-Volrath's Stronghold might get cut. It's been a long-time basic, but I feel it only improves good matchups (control) and gets you colorscewed too often.
-Many people like to run a full playset of Crushers, but I really tried to limit the curve as much as possible. I tried 4 Crushers and 1 Vore, but I missed Vore's raw power and got screwed too often because of Crusher's antisynergy with DDreams and SAssault.
-I realise that Maelstrom Pulse is expensive, but I feel I need to have an answer to Planeswalkers besides burning or attacking them.
-I guess the Finks could be Firespouts, but I've been boarding the Ouphes in against so much more than just fast aggro. I love swapping them with Vores against decks that I expect to have a lot of SB graveyard hate. It leaves you with a deck that isn't even all that vulnerable to GY removal.
-I used to run a Firespout as a wishtarget, but even in that role it hardly ever got me anywhere and I never picked it so it got axed for Shattering Spree, wich is way more usefull.
Comments are always welcome, obviously.
Why can't it be extirpated? Punishing Fire's return is a triggered ability, they can respond to it with extirpate. You'd have to have two groves out to be tricky where you can tap the 2nd in response to have them gain one life and trigger in-response to extirpate, but at that point they would know better and can just wait until you tap the 2nd one.Quote:
Originally Posted by CorpT
Witness isn't as bad as you make it seem, but it pushes the deck in a more control-oriented direction. You have to build to it if you want it to be effective.Quote:
Originally Posted by CorpT
Hitting the opponent with Fires and then getting it back requires 1RR, of which one R is guaranteed from Grove. Hitting the opponent with more than one Fires requires an additional 1RR for each extra Fires, of which none of the red mana are guaranteed unless you have multiple Groves. This is contrast to Assault, which is RRR up front and requires no additional red mana afterwards (although you do need at least one green mana per time you cast Loam).
Between the two of them, I kind of prefer Assault. Extirpate is mostly a non-issue. Actually, how prevalent is graveyard hate right now?
Well, when I show up to a tournament, I get hated out at times. But, there's also two (2! ffs) 43 Land players, so Extirpate for me is a bit common. I usually end up siding out 1-2 Lftl against the 4 Extirpate plan, and I still get there. Big creatures still seem to get there.
As for the 2 Bayou 1 Badlands split, more often you'll need Green for Loam and Black for removal in times of desperation. Green allows you to play real threats (Confidant, Tarmogoyf, Sylvan Library) or much needed removal or Loam.
-Matt
After playing a dozen or so games online, I think I may drop Grove/Fires for EE and a Buried Ruin. PFire has been decent in game 1, but once they board in hate, it just turns into a shitty Shock. I think EE/Ruin, while more mana intensive, has the potential to be much more flexible, and EE is a lot more useful as a single-use under a Leyline.
Ok, it can be Extirpated. If you're playing correctly, it shouldn't be. The Extirpate is just an example anyway. Extirpate is probably the best GY hate card to play against Loam and even it is underpowered compared to Fires. Extirpate* Loam and Assault starts to look pretty bad. Extirpate Loam and Fires doesn't care.Quote:
Originally Posted by PanderAlexander
*Insert any GY hate here.
Remember, you can also split these up over turns. You can leave a Fires in the yard if you need to.Quote:
Originally Posted by Aggro_zombies
GY hate may be low, but Enchantment hate is still seeing reasonable amounts of play.
Look at it this way: why are you playing Assault? Typically, the answer is that it is a late game threat that can be used with Loam to fairly quickly finish someone. It isn't particularly useful at dealing with early creatures and typically isn't used to deal with big creatures because it's probably better just to go to the dome. It can sort of deal with swarms, but only with Loam and a good amount of mana. If you're looking for big creature kill and/or swarm kill, there are better cards in the deck already to handle that. That leaves us with late-game finisher. And Assault is great at that. (I do think that you're underestimating the amount of mana that Assault takes though. 1G only does 6 a turn and you lose a draw step. If you really want to end it fast, you'll need a lot more mana than that to cycle lands and get back Loam)
What does Fires do that Assault does? It ends the game, albeit slower. No question here. Fires is much slower than Assault.
But, what does Fires do that Assault does not? It gets those early creatures that can be a hassle to deal with. It kills Bob. It kills Noble. It kills SFM. It wins Goyf wars. All of those nuisance creatures you don't really want to waste a Pulse/Vindicate on but still need to be dealt with. All of that for 1R, not RRR or 1RR. You can just leave the Fires in the yard until you get a Grove or need to get it back.
What about answers to them:
Assault:
Krosan Grip
Pithing Needle
Extirpate/Surgical Extraction, etc... (on Loam)
Qasali Pridemage
Fires:
?
Really, there are very few good answers to Fires.
*shrug* I just think it's worth exploring. I've played a lot of Assault and when it is rolling, it is very good. But I've also been disappointed in Assault.
You ever get
Seismic Assault
+
Dark Confidant
out?
Its sort of like a throat punch. Also, turn 2 seismic is the only way you can ever expect to win against Time Spiral. Turn 2 seismic with loam is the only way you're ever beating storm. Seismic assault is insane. and yeah, its brittle against some hate but thats why you can just board it out for your sideboard techs that are ringers for whatever match it is you're facing. Against swarming dudes? Board seismic out for Pernicious deed and head their graveyard hate off at the pass. Against blue control? Board them out for Pyroblasts.
I tried playing fires instead of bolt and found that its dog shit. My percentage against merfolk instantly went down by about twenty percent.
Woah, you board out Assault for Deed? You don't rawdog BOTH?
-Matt
Extirpate/Surgical Extraction do get rid of Fires. It's just as vulnerable to targeted GY hate as Loam is.
Then you're not playing Fires right.Quote:
Originally Posted by rukcus
There is always an opportunity to Extirpate them in response to the life gain trigger.
With two, though, it's nearly impossible.
-Matt
against some matchups, i do just board out 2 cycling lands and a mox for deed. But it all depends.Quote:
Originally Posted by sdematt