Is quinn even a deck without Top?
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Is quinn even a deck without Top?
No, that's why I'm thinking about starting to play Parfait.
Oh I see, then welcome aboard! I'll tell you what I've learned from my time on the deck.
Let's start with the bad news: it has pretty bad game against aggressive and/or disruptive fast decks like delver and can struggle to stabilize in the face of burn. This makes our worst matchup UR delver as it is both.
Burn can have very good openings but we can usually stabilize before they count to 20, especially after sideboard.
Any creature based deck without counterspell is usually easy for us. I'm thinking specifically of stuff like DnT, Maverick, Goblins, etc. Merfolk should be good too but they can have the nut draw so it can swing both ways. Even TNN isn't a big problem if we can draw decently and/or activate our engine. It goes without saying that any dredge deck is also pretty easy (LED and Manaless Dredge, Lands, Loam). Also, if you're playing blood moon, you might also get a free T2 or T3 win once in a while against any greedy deck like Shardless BUG, Eldrazi, 4c pile.
Other slow/control decks are pretty even but we have a chance to go off "early" since we don't attack life points. I haven't had much success there yet but I guess that's my inability to pilot the deck at it's full potential (control is so much harder than what I'm used to).
I found that even if most combos are supposedly bad MU game 1, it's often fine because people don't know what the deck has in store. Theses games are very dependent on the skill of the combo pilot but once again, combo without counterspell is pretty easy to stop (ANT/TES, Belcher, Elves) and Sneak and Show puts your win-con/hate on the table for you. The only combo that I found truly impossible to beat is UB reanimator because there is nothing you can do to come back from Iona on White and it's backed by counterspell and discard which both. I have not faced BR on this deck yet but I would assume that if you made it past the first turn you should be perfectly fine. I personally play a lot of bears so I can often end combo games without giving them the time to set up and buy time with chant.
I see. Is there any kind of "stock list" I could start from? I'm thinking about what cards I need to buy to be able to start playing with Parfait. If I can buy the cards quickly, I won't need to skip many Legacy tournaments before I have a deck again. We have on average two Legacy tournaments per week here and I'd like to play as often as possible.
I've played against BR Reanimator many times as Quinn. It felt like a positive matchup, but far from a bye. I had a ton of hate against that deck but there's always a chance that they go nuts on turn 1 and I can't answer. Also Chancellor is very annoying in that deck. Miracles was one deck I never managed to beat, so I'm glad it's gone.
I guess most matchups won't change radically when going from Quinn to Parfait.
I did some extensive play-testing and ended up at pretty much the same list as our resident Parfait player save a few cards.
This is the list I have as of now but it might change depending on where the meta goes:
1 Humility
4 Swords to Plowshares
16 Plains
4 Orim's Chant
1 Ghostly Prison
4 Enlightened Tutor
4 Land Tax
3 Scroll Rack
3 Mox Diamond
2 Wrath of God
3 Oblivion Ring
1 Solitary Confinement
1 Zuran Orb
2 Helm of Obedience
2 Rest in Peace
1 Blood Moon
2 Mountain
1 Goblin Charbelcher
1 Day of Judgment
1 Trinisphere
1 Pithing Needle
1 Chrome Mox
1 Isochron Scepter
SB: 2 Ethersworn Canonist
SB: 2 Containment Priest
SB: 1 Elspeth, Knight-Errant
SB: 2 Seal of Cleansing
SB: 1 Phyrexian Revoker
SB: 3 Timely Reinforcements
SB: 1 Rest in Peace
SB: 1 Spirit of the Labyrinth
SB: 1 Gideon, Ally of Zendikar
SB: 1 Nevermore
I play 1 of Isochron Scepter main instead of Ivory Tower because it's way too good against all decks non-decay and I felt tower was clunky.
What's Ghostly Prison good against? I didn't play it in Quinn and didn't see others play it either so I'm curious.
Solitary Confinement wasn't played either, but obviously it's much better when you have Land Tax and Scroll Rack. I used to love Ensnaring Bridge in Quinn but I can see why it's nearly useless here.
How much do you get use out of Land Tax typically? I mean there's a lot of decks in Legacy that don't play many lands during the average game.
So last night after breaking down Miracles and going through my binders, this is what I have sleeved up now:
3 Tundra
3 Snow-Covered Island
4 Snow-Covered Plains
4 Flooded Strand
1 Arid Mesa
3 Mox Diamond
2 City of Traitors
4 Land Tax
4 Scroll Rack
3 Rest in Peace
2 Helm of Obedience
3 Enlightened Tutor
4 Swords to Plowshares
4 Terminus
1 Council's Judgment
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
4 Force of Will
1 Counterspell
2 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
Problems are:
1) I only have 15 blue cards, not enough to support Force of Will. On my way home from work I was going to pick up playsets of Supreme Verdict, Energy Field and Standstill, right now I'm thinking a 2/2 split on Terminus and Supreme Verdict; less 1 Swords to Plowshares and Scroll Rack for 2 Energy Field. That would be 1 short of an ideal 20, but I can't see any other cuts.
2) I'll be keeping silver bullet enchantments in the side, things like Moat and Humility, but also maybe splash red for Blood Moon. Would the Mox Diamonds be enough to support this, or should I include a basic Mountain? Or a dual land?
3) I am bad at Magic and worse at deck building.
This deck is a stupid Frankenstein's Monster, I know. When I built the deck before my backup win condition was Elspeth, Knight-Errant which I loved to attack from behind Moat and Humility, but I feel Jace offers a better planeswalker in general while also winning the game without the need for fancy creatures. I think the blue will help stabilize our draws and the early game and help propel us into the mid-late where the expensive cards like Helm can be played safely.
Any advice is greatly appreciated.
good day Icapica and welcome to the BDI parfait, W/x parfait, or whatever you wanna call it forum :laugh:..seems like you've had experience playing with another mono white/enchantment-based/toolbox/prison style deck so i think you will adjust to this deck just fine..
allow me to share my thoughts since i have different opinions, probably because of different play experiences..
on U/R delver, the problem is their counter magic..but also remember that we have cards in the main that hurts them; ghostly prison, trinisphere, etc..not to mention we're also packing maindeck life gain in the form of ivory tower and zuran orb..also, price of progress is utterly useless against us..things get more interesting postboard since we get to board in timely reinforcements or even genju of the fields(if you're running it.) ...chant helps a lot here to help us force things through or to bait out a counterspell..
on burn, ivory tower and zuran orb are your best friends here, just watch out for sulfuric vortex..it usually kills us if you can't draw into(or tutor for) an oblivion ring..resolving a solitary confinement with a land tax and scroll rack in play is GG against them..if burn ever becomes a problem, a copy of story circle in your 75 is also great..
hi Cpt-Qc, i was looking at your list and i noticed you're running chrome mox, are you sure you didn't mean mox opal?
cards like trinisphere, ghostly prison and sometimes path to exile force opponent to play lands..Quote:
Originally Posted by Icapica
we have mox diamond(or to a lesser extent wildfield borderpost) to build up our mana base if the opponent stubbornly won't play land..plus zuran orb to manually trigger land tax..
@icapica prison is good against any deck that wants to swarm first and foremost. It can also slow down decks like reanimator, infect, etc that really want to use their mana for other things. Consider something like DnT, they basically have to play prison deck that isn't attacking or they just play white weenie and we can deal with both halves easily.
Confinement is your best game one answer to everything regardless of your ability to keep it around. Think of it as a white time walk as sometimes that's all it needs to be. Added benefit is some decks like burn just lose to it.
Land tax. Well I don't know if you've seen my BDI list, but it has two things to help land tax work. Trinisphere and zuran orb are really good and help you trigger things, stall, survive, force people to play your game, etc. Together you make people play more land and force yourself to gain 2 life and trigger land tax. Essentially land tax will always be active if you need it to be.
For the rest TL;DR but I'll work on catching up.
As it was said, prison is okay against pretty much any creature deck but is there especially for swarm ones. Think Belcher or ANT making 10 goblins... fetch prison and they cannot win. Otherwise it helps keep the land count of your opponents up to trigger Land Tax.Quote:
Originally Posted by Icapica
@pirateking you do not need 4 scroll racks if you're going to commit to blue. Honestly you don't need more then 3 regardless since multiples usually aren't desirable. The quantity is more reflective of not wanting to have to tutor for a rack. Also you would need to decide how heavy on blue you want to be.
4 tundra is an easy starting point and I would probably supplement land tax with tithe. Brainstorm is the only selection card you need in tandem with jace, which is also a win condition. Again I need to mention how blue you want to be as a factor. Going blue means you don't really need the prison element as much since you have access to hard control elements. Daze becomes amazing and you can actually just try to win turn 4. Focusing more on white you will want that tool box of prison elements to get to the late game where you will just win.
I feel kind of word vomity so I'll leave it at that. Feel free to keep asking questions if I wasn't clear enough or didn't actually provide the help you were after.
this is very good advice..Quote:
Originally Posted by Weapon X
No that's exactly the sentiment that I was getting from my playtesting. I kept tweaking cards between matches, so what sits before me is now:Quote:
Originally Posted by Weapon X
3 Tundra
3 Snow-Covered Island
4 Snow-Covered Plains
1 Snow-Covered Mountain
4 Flooded Strand
3 Mox Diamond
2 City of Traitors
4 Land Tax
3 Scroll Rack
3 Rest in Peace
2 Energy Field
2 Helm of Obedience
3 Enlightened Tutor
3 Swords to Plowshares
2 Terminus
2 Supreme Verdict
1 Council's Judgment
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
4 Force of Will
1 Counterspell
2 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
19 blue cards supports an early Force, and I like sitting behind Energy Field while making land drops before putting down Helm with Force backup. So in that regard I'm happy.
The hardest part right now is 8 basics don't support Land Tax as much as I like. Back when it was monoW it was something like 12~14 basics so taxing for 3 lands was the default. I'd like to add more basics, but that would cut either the Mox Diamond or City of Traitors, and the games they've been in play have all been really advantageous; opening Mox Diamond into Land Tax is always fun, and City helped cover casting Jace.
My board right now includes 1 Blood Moon and 2 Wear//Tear as miracle leftovers, I'd like to keep them as they're still relevant, so Mox Diamond helping cover the rogue mana costs is a big draw. But what I'm seeing is inevitably the Tax/Rack engine runs out of gas after 2 or 3 activations, unless I only grab 1 land at a time, really throttling back the power of the combo.
I will look into maybe dropping Ponder and including 3 Daze and +1 Counterspell next.
My fear is this is too much a mashup of UW Landstill and Parfait, and eventually I'll be forced to devote to one to the point of cutting the other. But I haven't given up yet.
Thanks for the help WeaponX.
Parfait with blue will function as the old/new/old miracles. The engine is there to keep your hand full of answers first and foremost in that case. This plus is that by winning with rip/helm we don't need to set up miracles we can play reactively until we want to win. That's basically how my bdi list runs just on a different angle.
If I get a chance maybe I'll try to find an old UW list I was working on.
That's the dream :\Quote:
Originally Posted by Weapon X
2 tundra
4 strand
4 island
7 plains
2 ancient tomb
4 land tax
2 scroll rack
1 zuran orb
1 jace the mindsculptor
4 brainstorm
3 rest in peace
2 helm of obedience
1 energy field
1 counterspell
1 detention sphere
3 enlightened tutor
3 gitaxian probe
3 daze
4 force of will
1 supreme verdict
4 Mox diamond
3 swords to Plowshares
Sideboard
4 meddling Mage
3 phyrexian revoker
1 elspeth
1 supreme verdict
1 propaganda
1 back to basics
1 pithing needle
1 empyrial plate
1 humility
1 moat
That's the last I have of any record for a UW list. I was brewing a lot at the time so it took a back seat and I never really finished tweaking. There were just some things that seemed mandatory to me that are still present.
The engine should start at 4 tax, 3 rack, 1 zuran orb and be modified from there.
Jace must be present in the main for a win con and as part of the engine.
Some number of daze should be played.
Supreme verdict and detention sphere will be present in the 75.
Energy field will replace solitary confinement if rip/helm is the desired win con.
4 meddling Mage. It's the reason I wanted to play blue.
Control vs prison. I don't want to hose instants I will play.
Hopefully that will help you with your deck building.
It seems like people expect ANT, Elves and some Delver variants to become very strong now that Miracles is gone. How are those matchups? I'm building a typical W/r Parfait and I'm wondering if I can just basically go with some list posted here earlier.
I've played effectively the same list since they unbanned land tax. All those matchups are still fine... creature decks like elves are laughable.
Any sideboarding guide for your list?Quote:
Originally Posted by Weapon X