I'm kind of upset that I heard to day that BUG is the only reason to play Deathrite Shaman and Abrupt Decay in legacy....WE found them FIRST! I hate blue and their stupid cantrips...
Printable View
I'm kind of upset that I heard to day that BUG is the only reason to play Deathrite Shaman and Abrupt Decay in legacy....WE found them FIRST! I hate blue and their stupid cantrips...
Automatic 4-of is greatly overused, but Abrupt Decay is VERY good, for sure. I always like seeing it, that's for certain.
I haven't gotten an email back form the Eternal Central Editor yet, so it might still be a couple of days :mad: boo.
-Matt
Another reason I stopped reading Eternal Central, they update so rarely. A reason, I think, that they sell their articles.Quote:
Originally Posted by sdematt
Ideally, I'm going to be an at least once a month article, but hopefully, I'll attempt to release on Carsten Kotter's off weeks so we actually have good Legacy articles once a week.Quote:
Originally Posted by ZeinVoncy
-Matt
I have upped my Garruk count to 1 main 2 side since the rise of miracles but the new BUG variants are annoying at the moment. anyone have ideas for the psuedo mirror?
In the Junk mirror (which you never want to play), whoever has more removal or draw power wins. I would side side out discard if you need to (I sided in Hymns, and it was a big mistake unless you can actually go Tempo).
Bring in Deeds to take out Shamans and Goyfs, and possibly bring in Teeg to turn off their Garruk and GSZ. Otherwise, luck and playskill.
-Matt
Hey all, just took down Mythic Games in Elmira, NY, with a 1st place finish. Played five rounds, squeaking into 8th place after the swiss and pummeled my way through Top 8.
List is pretty similar to what I ran at Baltimore, but has some minor changes:
Main
4 Deathrite Shaman
4 Tarmogoyf
4 Dark Confidant
4 Knight of the Reliquary
4 Abrupt Decay
4 Swords to Plowshares
4 Thoughtseize
2 Inquisition of Kozilek
1 Vindicate
3 Liliana of the Veil
3 Sensei's Diving Top
4 Verdant Catacomb
2 Marshflats
2 Windswept Heath
3 Bayou
2 Scrubland
1 Savannah
1 Snow-Covered Swamp
1 Snow-Covered Forest
4 Wasteland
1 Maze of Ith
1 Karakas
1 Bojuka Bog
SB
2 Choke
2 Pernicious Deed
2 Engineered Plague
2 Golgari Charm
2 Gaddock Teeg
2 Extirpate
1 Thalia
1 Duress
1 Garruk Relentless
Matches (never took notes, so this will be brief)
Round 1: D&T, 2-1
Played against my buddy Zane. His first time against Junk, and I barely pulled the third game off, but Mr. Goyf was pretty big. Engineered Plague is pretty ok against them.
Round 2: Fish, 1-2
Triple Decay and Knight + Goyf steal me game one against Chad. He crushes me game two and game three I kept a stupidly greedy hand.
Round 3: Maverick, 1-1-1
All I remember is waiting five minutes once for him to decide to pass a turn. I managed to play Lilly and alpha strike, after hovering at 3 life for 6 turns, kept alive by Deathrite. I didn't call him out on slow play, since game one took us to 7 minutes to go. He gets me jilted by his poor play and indecisiveness, and I keep a bad hand game two. Game three went to turns.
Round 4: BGw NicFit (Academy Rector/Yosei), 2-1
Played against my buddy Steve. Another super fun round, but Liliana totally backhands NicFit.
Round 5: MiracleBlade, 2-1
Kind of hazy, but I remember topdecking a Lilly game two, at 3 life with a 5/6 goyf in play. He was at five, had a 4/4 token and JTMS. She makes him sacrifice, I breakthrough for lethal. Game three I seized his batterskull, extirpated his STP and played Gaddock Teeg. He had no other removal, nor a wincon under 4 cmc. :cool:
TOP 8
Semifinals: Chris, with RUG Delver, 2-0
Quick games. I didn't realize we had such a positive matchup against this deck. He gets me to 9 with mongeese, and I play Goyf and knight, agressively wasting him. Game two, I keep Bob, Inquisition and 4 lands because I was afraid to mull. I topdeck into Goyf and Lilly. I love that loyalty counters are added as a cost, thus negating the Lightning bolt in his hand.
Quarterfinals: Michael (a.k.a., Hollywood) with Manaless Ichorid, 2-1
Not much to say. Drew into bojuka bog like a pimp games one and two, had it in my opening seven game three like a pro. Extirpated Ichorid game three with an active Shaman to earn the concession, somehow got there game two in a similar fashion. Deathrite is the shit.
Finals: Chad, with Fish, 2-1
So we meet again! I won't get caught with my pants down this time. Game two he managed to beat me down fast, but the combination of Deathrite pings and Goyf beats exhaust all of his creatures game three.
We split the prize at the quarterfinal level, which I'm cool with. Loving the deck so far, I would change very little about it. I only wish I could fit in a basic plains, but alas there is no room.
In the sideboard, however, I want to cut Deeds for something else. Suggestions? I'm leaning towards Hymns currently.
Keep Junking!
So what's the opinion on Vindicate vs Maelstrom pulse? I see different people running different cards.
As to beating other midranged decks has anyone tried Phyrexian Arena? I ran it maindeck for a while and had to cut it after combo started popping up a ton, but there wasn't a card I wanted more against Jund, BUG, Rock ect. Once you start drawing twice the number of cards as them you basically will win eventually. Especially with Liliana's in your deck.
I also like Lingering Souls a lot in some matchups. The person who won SCG Baltimore with Esperblade won basically every match off of that card, and it was absolutely brutal against the BUG meta. It also combos very well with Liliana.
I guess what i'm trying to say is if you want to evolve to beat the mirror/midranged decks you can swap some stuff around to strengthen that matchup. Look for Dread of Night to start popping into peoples sideboard though because I have been seeing a lot of Spirits.
PS: My current List. It isn't perfect probably but it seems to be pretty well rounded and effective. http://deckstats.net/deck-1718964-55...7e44ec07f.html
Congrats on the finish! Way to represent, champ.
If Lingering Souls comes back as a way to muck Terminus, then the smart Miracles players will just start running Engineered Plagues, since that's what I would be doing.
E. Plagues, come to think of it, actually seemed well positioned both for us and as a Miracles player. It mucks Goblins and Merfolk, your somewhat meh matchups, and kills the Soul tokens forever against Esperblade. For us, it's the same deal. Deed does more work against Maverick, but E. Plague could also be VERY good.
If we were to run (using my board as an example):
3 Hymn
2 Gaddock Teeg
1 Virtue's Ruin
2 Pernicious Deed
3 Surgical Extraction
2 Engineered Plague
1 Garruk Relentless
1 Ulvenwald Tracker
This could obviously be modified depending on your meta, but Deeds (which could be EE or whatever) and E. Plagues against our Tribal matchups, along with Swords and Decay, is pretty bad for them. E. Plague against Elves mucks MOST of their board, and we can keep them off Lords. E. Plagues is pretty good against Goblins, and again, we can do the same thing of keeping Lords. Against Merfolk, A Plague negates a single Lord, which is better than nothing. Deed can do CMC <3 cleanup.
Against Esperblade, we could bring in the Plagues for the Souls tokens, or name Wizard/Soldier (meaning Snapcaster and Clique are worse) as an incidental piece of awesome, since Deeds don't really come in for this match.
The rest of the matchups where Plague would be good are more situational. I guess we could compare this with our other possible cards like Zealous Persecution and Golgari Charm. I do like the mode options on Charm, but the non-continuity of its effects make it worse at any one of those modes. Golgari will still muck some Spirit tokens, but will not keep them away forever, but Charm does have fringe benefits against Supreme Verdict out of Esperblade and against Omnitell.
Charm and E. Plague however seems like a freaking rape train against Tribal/tokens, but it might be a bit of overkill. Remember Deed also has nice benefits against MUD, Affinity, and random garbage people show up with at tournaments.
-Matt
But who really plays MUD, Affinity in a tournament. You would probably run into one of these decks every 50 games.Quote:
Originally Posted by sdematt
It still has relevancy against the field. If you go to any major tournament you'll still run into random decks. I went through SCG Seattle facing a different deck in every round, whether or not the deck was "well-positioned" or not.Quote:
Originally Posted by Avatar of Shadow
-Matt
That's fair. I mean, Deed on zero kills many decks (or at least slows them). Is E.E. an acceptable replacement? I was thinking of adding a Bog/Ooze and an E.E. in place of the two deeds in my SB.
New to Rock/Junk Decks
This is my stab at a list and side...still don't know exactly how to side
4 Verdant Catacombs
2 Marsh Flats
3 Bayou
2 Scrubland
1 Savannah
1 Forest
1 Swamp
1 Karakas
1 Bojuka Bog
4 Wasteland
1 Maze of Ith
2 Windswept Heath
4 Deathrite Shaman
4 Tarmogoyf
4 Dark Confidant
4 Knight of the Reliquary
3 Sensei's Divining Top
4 Abrupt Decay
1 Maelstrom Pulse
4 Thoughtseize
2 Inquisition of Kozilek
3 Liliana of the Veil
4 Swords to Plowshares
Side Board:
3 Hymn
3 Gaddock Teeg
2 Pernicious Deed
3 Extripate
2 Engineered Plague
1 Garruk Relentless
1 Bojuka Bog
I really like teeg against miracles
Teeg flat-out wins games against Miracles. I'm also considering going up to 3, but we'll see. I think if you're not running GSZ, you should be running 3 of them in the board.Quote:
Originally Posted by lambert101
As for EE replacing Deed, it depends what you're replacing it for. Tokens? Then EE is fine. Semi-general sweep? Probably not bad as well.
I'm also considering Virtue's Ruin to possibly be overkill, since it's really only coming in against Maverick and Death and Taxes, and adding in the extra Teeg would not be bad. I'm curious to see if there will be any major metagame shifts before Denver.
-Matt
I basically want E.E. for token sweep. I also like how I can adjust it so that I can kill all of Merfolk's Lords, while keeping my Deathrites untouched.
I think Golgari Charm + E Plague is good enough against D&T. The deck is super soft to -1/-1 effects, and white has very few ways of dealing with them.
It may seem out of the blue what I'm going to say, but we reached in a consensus in that discussion a few pages ago - a "default" junk build. Now we're running pretty much the same cards aside a few sb and meta choices.
Just a few remarks: agains bug, I like lingering souls (running 2 on side, probably going to 3 depending on the meta) because it overrides 3 bug's control attempts (liliana, jace and decay) - of course after they bring deed and use shaman to exile ls it gets harder, but it still helps us a lot
I haven't been playing much magic recently (been about 2-3 months since my last game and I don't think I'll get many in before Denver) so take my comments with a grain of salt.Quote:
Originally Posted by godofallu
Pulse was good at doing what Vindicate did (excluding lands). As the deck started to cut down on the Goyf count, and the chances of running into your other permanents was low (outside of Bant, Goyf was the only shared creature). It was more rare to destroy a land than an opportunity to 2;1 your opponent (had it been a Pulse). Pulse was a "makes sense" alternative/upgrade at the time.
I think that with the printing of Abrupt Decay, (and its success from people not wanting to adapt) it may be a good idea to think about the switch back (especially lists with multiple Goyf). A little extra potential LD in the deck wouldn't be a bad thing, rare as it may be.
More of our permanents are being used all over the place (Maverick: Knight, Library, Goyf, Ooze | BUG - Goyf, Shaman, Liliana, Library) which would require more touch (Abrupt Decay) than power (Pulse) to deal with at true profit. Also, players are starting to show that they're getting smarter - I've been watching, just not playing. Anywho, like a said, "a grain of salt" - by playing/fetching basics at correct times. That previous lack of format "rules" knowledge being gone means that we do need things to answer basic questions (which those questions are sometimes X-number of basic lands). It's rare, but I feel that now it's been becoming less rare than the 2;1 pulse.
tl;dr - Chance to echo is starting to get lower than the chance to hit your own as well. Switching back to Vindicate is starting to look better.
Koby/rukus/jocob kory is awesome. He has locked top 8 and brought the casters cupcakes... this has nothing to do with the rock, just good magic.
People are talking about Deathrite Shaman like it is new?
Generally, people are slow.
@ Pulse vs. Vindicate:
The only issue I'm having is Entreat the Angels and Storm tokens aren't by any virtue rare in my meta. I like the out of, well, having an out to multiple creatures/tokens, but I agree that now there is an increasing possibility of mucking our own stuff. Matchups where this MAY occur:
BUG (Goyf mainly, unlikely we'll use Pulse on a Deathrite)
Junk Mirror (could be anything)
Maverick (Knight)
Other than that, there wouldn't be much collateral damage. I'll start doing some BUG Testing, as well as trying the non-GSZ version of the deck to see what I think. I'm pretty set on playing this at Denver.
@ Damion
Are you going to Denver?
-Matt
Yesterday i played with Matt's list (more or less) and reached 2-0-2, which was enough for 3rd place (we had some time and place constraints so we finished off sooner than expected).
I played against:
Maverick 2-1
RUG 1-1
UG Eldrazi Post 1-1
Reveilark combo 2-0
All in all it was pretty fun. The amount of draws was pretty high cause we had 50 min rounds and the additional 5 minutes would have helped in a lot of games.
What's the game plan against Eldrazis? I had to resort to beatdown, but i had only the lesser critters available (shaman, garruk tokens) and he gained somewhere around 30 life during one game. Postboard i guess you can Wasteland and Extract Cloudposts, but the matchup still feels atrocious to say the least.