[Deck] Deathblade

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Originally Posted by Seraphix

Appalling as the Czech Pile matchup is, I don't think taking out SFM/Equips is correct. As bad as the Equips are vs K-Command, they are good in the matchup if you can keep them in play for a few turns. Without Equips we have fewer threats and fewer sources of card advantage, which isn't helpful in a grind, unless you have something like 3x Lingering Souls in the sideboard to replace them with - but if you have to SB out your grindiest cards against a grindy deck, it brings the merits of playing the SFM package at all into serious question. For now, I'm going to stick to Equips in the matchup and just try to slog through it the best I can. You just have to engineer situations like "surprise" casting and equipping Sword/Jitte while they don't have K-Command mana up, putting in Batterskull off SFM with 3 mana available to bounce it, or trying to leverage a tempo loss by leaving SFM activation up while bullying them with other things. There's an argument to keeping FoW in to protect them from K-Command, but I haven't tried this yet. Hydroblast is another decent SB card that can fill a similar role in this matchup. Even Nahiri, the Lithomancer is worth considering since she can resurrect your Equips.

About ZP in the matchup, I actually like it since it counters their -x/-x effects and cleans up whatever random Snapcasters/Strixes they have in play.

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I'm usually on the greedier version of deathblade (bant) but I 100% agree about the SFM package in this MU, it's often one of the ways that you can grind the 4c Control deck out with any blade deck. If you really need the slots I can see shaving a Jitte and a SFM but I like having Jitte as it basically makes all your guys into potential threats. I don't really think that the contemporary wisdom of boarding out your forces in fair matchups really applies to the 4c Control match, their haymakers almost end the game on the spot. I

Average night, 7 players and wound up with a bye, so I only got to play two rounds.


Match 1: BUG Delver(1-2 Loss)
Game 1:
Game 1 he lands a T3 leovold, and I more or less automatically assume he’s on Czech pile. I plow the leovold and draw absolutely nuts. I get all 3 TNNs and a lingering souls to overrun him. It’s not much of a game.

Game 2:
Sideboard:
-4 FoW
+2 Fatal Push
+1 Pithing Needle(he runs Liliana)
+1 Engineered Explosives

Game 2 I keep a hand with ponder, brainstorm, DRS, 2x SFM, STP, and one land. I lead off with a ponder, see no lands and shuffle. My next turn I draw blank, deploy DRS and pass. He plays hymn and takes both SFM, which completely demolishes my game plan. My next turn I brainstorm and still see no lands. I spend the next 4 turns stuck on one land with no deployable threats. Ugh.

Game 3:
I can’t really remember much of this game, but he gets another great hymn to go off. On T4 or something, I think I’ve got the game wrapped up. I deploy SFM, fetch batterskull with about 6 cards in hand. He hymns me and of course finds the batterskull. The game pretty much falls apart from there and he takes Game 3.

I half blame myself for these losses. Flusterstorm/invasive surgery were cards that I really should have included. But at the same time, damn he got two perfect hymns off.


Match 2: BYE(2-0)
My loss kicks me directly in the bye braket. Spent the time watching my opponents play their games out. Was nice to catch a breather. Based on game outcomes I knew my 3rd match was going to play be either aggro loam or storm.


Match 3: Storm (2-0 Win)
Game 1:
I keep DRS, SFM, thoughtseize, brutality, cantrips, and lands. I know he’s playing storm, so this feels like a pretty reasonable keep. My opponent mulligans down to 5, which is great news for me. I deploy DRS and follow up with thoughtseize/brutality taking away key cards from an already depleted hand. SFM hits the board, but the batterskull gets stripped by a therapy. The game kinda stalls out from here. I can’t find more threats and begin to flood out, he mulled to 5 and had 2 cards taken away so he takes about 3-4 turns to start rebuilding his hand. In this time SFM/DRS get him down really low, and at some point I deploy a jace. He actually does manage to kinda go off with empty the warrens, dumping 10 goblins into play. But by the time he goes off he’s already at 4 life facing an active DRS, and I’m pretty much untouched. DRS drains him for lethal.

Game 2:
-2 Lingering Souls
-3 TNN
-4 STP
+1 Engineered Explosives
+1 Engineered Plague
+1 Invasive Surgery
+2 Flusterstorm
+2 Surgical Extraction
+2 Zealous Persecution

I feel pretty confident going into G2. I know my deck is absolutely stacked to the rafters with hate. My opponent later explained that storm can deal with counterspells or targeted discard, but it really has a hard time dealing with both. Brutality really shines here, post sideboard I have 6 discard spells and a metric ton of countermagic.
My opening hand is alright. FoW, pierce, leovold, brainstorm, and 4 lands. I decide to keep it. I draw another force and then get duressed. I debate brainstorm, but I decide I can lose a FoW and still be in decent shape. He duresses again, and I brainstorm to hide my last FoW and jace on top. I reveal a hand with leovold and no other blue cards, and I think he takes either thoughtseize or SFM and then passes. Leovold hits the board and he brainstorms in response. He takes his next turn to sculpt his hand and passes. My turn 4 I take a risk and deploy jace and brainstorm. I draw the FoW I’ve been juggling and another blue card thankfully. This more or less forces my opponent to go off, leovold+jace are one hell of a clock. He knows I’ve been juggling a FoW on top of my library, but he’s not sure I if I have the blue card to go with it. He decides to make me have it and attempts to go off. I do have it, and I FoW his infernal tutor more or less ending the game on the spot.

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Originally Posted by Neo900

Maybe I will do something like this in the future but by now I have just Instagram where I try to show off as much as I can about my performing, playing and mtg lifestyle.

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Well no offense, but I'm looking for top tier strategies from an experienced player rather than pictures of dead animals, foil cards and selfies ;)

Do let us know if you decide to stream!

Played last week, but got busy didn’t write a report up. At this point I’ve forgotten the matchups so that write-up is lost to time. Roughly I lost to hymn to tourach in a BUG delver deck. I beat an elves deck, and I lost again to the same UWr stoneblade pilot. UWr feels like a longer range version of our deck, and I feel like my deck consistently falls apart in the late game vs UWr.

This week I went 2-1 with a bye due to an odd number of players.

Match 1:
BYE

Match 2: (Esper Deathblade 2-1 Win)
Bit of an odd matchup, I’ve been in stoneblade mirrors, but never an actual mirror match before. The pilot was inexperienced, apparently he sold out of modern and outright bought all of esper deathblade the day before. As a result he played rather clumsily sometimes, but I was no better when I first started legacy.

Game 1:
I end up losing this match after getting choked on white mana. I keep a hand with swamp, underground sea, lingering souls, stp, brainstorm, and some other stuff. The game goes fine for the first two or three turns, and at some point he deploys SFM. I cast brainstorm digging for white, but find only bricks, I can’t kill the SFM and most of the cards in my hand are white at this point. I end up losing to a batterskull staring at a bunch of uncastable cards in hand.

Game 2:
-4 FoW
-2 Spell Pierce
-1 Thoughtseize
+2 Fatal Push
+2 Zealous Persecution
+1 Engineered Explosives
+1 Disenchant
+1 SoFi

Game 2 I end up keeping a hand of Jace, brutality, thoughtseize, STP, Fatal Push and some lands. My opponent makes the mistake of going for the SFM turn 2. In this grindy matchup there isn’t really a rush to deploy SFM. I try to kill it with fatal push, he FoW’s it. At this point I cast collective brutality and escalate it. He’s tapped out so he can only FoW which is fine, at this point my plan is to get all the countermagic out of his hand then resolve a jace. He reveals his hand, I take a brainstorm, leaving him with no countermagic. Jace resolves the next turn and brainstorms to victory.

Game 3:
My opponent loses to his manabase. He suffers the same fate as me in game 1, and gets stuck on 2 underground seas when all he needed was white mana. He can’t really cast anything and eventually TNN ganks him.

Match 3:(Grixis Delver 1-2 Loss)

Game 1:
I’m still frustrated by the serious misplay I made here, it cost me the game and eventually the match. In the early game we trade resources and on T6 we both have one card in hand. I have 4 lands and 2 fetchlands in play with JTMS in hand. He has wasteland in play and spell pierce in hand. At this point I’m convinced I’ve won, I can just run jace out and brainstorm to victory. I cast jace off the four lands in play. He wastelands my fetchland in response, in response I crack both fetches, and in response he casts spell pierce. Now I can’t pay the spell pierce tax, my mana is stuck under the stack. JTMS gets countered and I lose not long thereafter. In retrospect, cracking fetchlands before casting JTMS would’ve seen me through to a win. I’m still pissed I made this mistake, it probably cost me the match.

Game 2:
-4 FoW
-2 Spell Pierce
+2 Fatal Push
+2 Zealous Persecution
+1 Engineered Plague
+1 Engineered Explosives

I keep a hand of fatal push, collective brutality, engineered plague, and some other stuff. We both do nothing until about T2 when he resolves a grim lavamancer. I cast brutality targeting the lavamancer, which he spell pierces. I then try to push the lavamancer, but he dazes it. He seems really bent on protecting that card. My next turn I cast engineered plague naming wizards, which has the benefit of killing the lavamancer and any delvers he plays. He scoops the next turn when I resolve a SFM. It turns out he had pondered into 3 delver of secrets and had just planned to run them out one at a time until I couldn’t deal with them. Plague blanked that plan.

Game 3:
His deck plays 4 wasteland and 4 stifle, and I get too greedy. I keep a hand of DRS, polluted delta, wasteland, brainstorm, TNN, and leovold. Already having taken a mulligan I decide to go all in on the DRS->TNN/Leovold plan. It doesn’t work out. My delta fetches an underground sea and DRS gets played. He wastelands the underground sea, and his active DRS turns off my DRS. From there I get pinned under stifles and wastelands and don’t really get to do anything.

Hanni Alnimer will be fighting for the Eternal Weekend Legacy title today with this wild list:

Lands and Mana Sources:
2 Island
1 Plains
1 Swamp
4 Flooded Strand
4 Polluted Delta
1 Marsh Flats
1 Tropical Island
2 Tundra
1 Underground Sea
1 Scrubland

Artifacts:
1 Batterskull
1 Umezawa’s Jitte

Creatures:
4 Deathrite Shaman
4 Monastery Mentor
4 Stoneforge Mystic

Instants and Sorceries:
4 Brainstorm
4 Cabal Therapy
4 Force of Will
4 Gitaxian Probe
4 Ponder
2 Spell Pierce
4 Swords to Plowshares

Planeswalkers:
2 Jace, the Mind Sculptor

Sideboard:
1 Back to Basics
1 Council’s Judgment
1 Disenchant
2 Engineered Explosives
1 Flusterstorm
3 Meddling Mage
1 Pithing Needle
1 Sword of Fire and Ice
2 Surgical Extraction
1 Toxic Deluge
1 Zealous Persecution

Quote:

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Originally Posted by whocansay

Hanni Alnimer will be fighting for the Eternal Weekend Legacy title today with this wild list:

Lands and Mana Sources:
2 Island
1 Plains
1 Swamp
4 Flooded Strand
4 Polluted Delta
1 Marsh Flats
1 Tropical Island
2 Tundra
1 Underground Sea
1 Scrubland

Artifacts:
1 Batterskull
1 Umezawa’s Jitte

Creatures:
4 Deathrite Shaman
4 Monastery Mentor
4 Stoneforge Mystic

Instants and Sorceries:
4 Brainstorm
4 Cabal Therapy
4 Force of Will
4 Gitaxian Probe
4 Ponder
2 Spell Pierce
4 Swords to Plowshares

Planeswalkers:
2 Jace, the Mind Sculptor

Sideboard:
1 Back to Basics
1 Council’s Judgment
1 Disenchant
2 Engineered Explosives
1 Flusterstorm
3 Meddling Mage
1 Pithing Needle
1 Sword of Fire and Ice
2 Surgical Extraction
1 Toxic Deluge
1 Zealous Persecution

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In case any of you Deathblade players do not frequent the threads in the New and Developmental Decks section, I've been posting in the Esper Mentor thread instead of in here for the last couple of weeks. The identity of my list is sort of like a cross between the two, so I figured I'd post in here as well for anyone that was interested.

Played again at a store I’ve only done once before, went pretty well, piloting to a 2-0-1 finish. I haven’t posted my list in a while, it’s become pretty stable at this point. I do want to add either a snapcaster, unearth, or painful truths to the list somewhere. Not sure where to make the cuts though.
Lands-21

4 Polluted Delta
4 Flooded Strand
1 Marsh Flats
3 Underground Sea
2 Tundra
1 Tropical Island
2 Wasteland
2 Island
1 Plains
1 Swamp


Creatures-12

4 Deathrite Shaman
3 True-Name Nemesis
3 Stoneforge Mystic
1 Snapcaster Mage
1 Leovold, Emissary of Trest


Spells: 24

4 Force of Will
2 Spell Pierce
2 Lingering Souls
3 Collective Brutality
3 Thoughtseize
4 Brainstorm
2 Ponder
4 Swords to Plowshares


Artifacts: 2

1 Batterskull
1 Umezawa’s Jitte


Planeswalkers: 2

2 Jace, the Mind Sculptor


Sideboard:

1 Disenchant
1 Containment Priest
2 Flusterstorm
1 Engineered Explosives
1 Engineered Plague
2 Zealous Persecution
1 Pithing Needle
1 Sword of Fire and Ice
1 Invasive Surgery
2 Surgical Extraction
2 Fatal Push


Match 1: Eldrazi(2-0 Win)
Should be noted that my opponent’s deck wasn’t ideal by legacy standards. He only had 2 chalices and no city of traitors, so this matchup was probably significantly easier than it should have been. I realized pretty quickly that he didn’t have city since he was playing crystal vein as a substitute. I played under the assumption he had 4 chalices though.
Game 1:
I manage to stick an early TNN and beat down for the win essentially. I have enough killspells/counters to hold him at bay, a wasteland in there somewhere also slows him down significantly.

Game 2:
-2 Spell Pierce
-3 Thoughtseize
+2 Fatal Push
+1 Disenchant
+1 Engineered Explosives
+1 Engineered Plague

Keep a hand of deathrite, wasteland, 2x fetches, 2x TNN, and FoW. Snapkeep. I wasteland his eye of ugin, and deploy a T2 TNN, the turn after another TNN drops. I get him to 9 life before I have to hold my TNNs back on defense due to his eldrazi. I brainstorm, find a lingering souls, and cast both halves of it to get 4 blockers, 1 TNN gets in there putting him to 6. He can’t kill me and I get lethal next turn.

Match 2: Dredge(2-1 Win)
Game 1:
I know my opponent won his previous matchup in about 10 minutes, so he’s on something busted. I peg him on BR reanimator. I keep a hand of thoughtseize, some lands, brainstorm, ponder. I thoughtseize, realize he’s on dredge and he has two discard outlets and dredger in hand. I take one of them, and he goes off with the other.
In retrospect, the keep was a mistake. I knew he was playing something broken, but I still kept a hand with only thoughtseize. Brainstorm/ponder never had a chance to fix my hand.

Game 2:
-3 TNN
-2 Lingering Souls
-1 Collective Brutality
-1 Jitte
+2 Surgical Extraction
+2 Flusterstorm
+1 Containment Priest
+1 Engineered Explosives
+1 SoFi

The only thing that saves me this game is my opponent mulligans to 6. I keep a hand with thoughtseize, FoW, Jace, spell pierce, and some lands. I play underground sea and pass, I pierce his careful study, the next turn I thoughtseize, but I draw blank. He just draws and passes. I draw SFM, and fetch SoFi to start drawing cards. This happens over about 2 turns, but I just can’t find anything useful. In the meantime, he actually dredges twice, but somehow blanks twice. Had he dredged successfully I would have been dead. At 10 life, he discards a grave troll to hand size. I hit him again with SoFi putting him to 5, but I still can’t find anything to get rid of the troll. I snapcaster mage/brainstorm trying to find a way out but I blank. Since I can’t dig my way out of the hole I try to go wide, deploying a 2nd SFM and a leovold. I mistakenly believe leovold will shut down his additional dredge triggers. Long story short it doesn’t, dredge replaces the draw effect so leovold doesn’t shut down extra dredges. My opponent kinda goes off, putting 2 zombies in play. Next turn I deploy brutality and escalate it, draining him and killing a zombie blocker. I swing for lethal. I got supremely lucky this game when he blanked off two dredge triggers.

Game 3:
I mulligan down to deathrite, thoughtseize, spell pierce, batterskull, and 2 lands. Scry reveals a surgical extraction on top. About as good as 6 cards can get. My opponent mulligans to 5, which is probably the only reason I won this game. My opponent plays a land and putrid imp and passes, I draw my extraction. Now that he has a discard outlet in putrid imp, I play DRS to try and control the yard. He casts firestorm on his turn, killing DRS and discarding his hand, revealing he has no dredgers. We now enter the awkward phase of the game.
I draw two lands in a row, so I’m blank. He finds cephalid coliseum and begins discarding via putrid imp to get the coliseum’s threshold trigger to go off. When he gets to 6 cards in yard I’m forced to deploy my extraction taking out two ichords, cutting his yard down to 4 cards. The next turn I find STP and get the imp off the board. After that, I draw 3 more lands in a row, and my opponent is drawing equally badly. Eventually I deploy batterskull just to get some sort of clock on the table. Next, my opponent starts ticking down his gemstone mines just to get them in the yard for threshold. If he gets threshold or draws any draw/discard spell it’s probably GG, he has two coliseums at this point so he’ll draw 6 cards if threshold gets reached. I’ve got nothing but lands in hand. So that’s my life at this point, my hardcast batterskull is racing against gemstone mines. Batterskull essentially gets it done in the end, outracing the last gemstone mine by one turn. I’m amazed he couldn’t draw something to get out of it.

Game 3: DnT(ID)
We played this one out for fun after we ID. DnT has always been a miserable matchup for me, and I lost in two games after getting pinned under mana restrictions. I talked with the guy afterwards for sideboarding advice, and he gave me the following which I’ll be trying in the future:

-2 Spell Pierce
-2 FoW
-1 Jace
-1 Collective Brutality
-3 Thoughtseize
+2 Fatal Push
+2 Zealous Persecution
+1 Engineered Plague
+1 Engineered Explosives
+1 Pithing Needle
+1 Containment Priest
+1 Disenchant

Thoughts on basics currently?

Good versus Pop.

Medium versus wasteland (they waste your colored sources, but you got one use out of them)

Good versus ghost quarter

Medium versus blood moon. (is a single island and swamp going to win me a game?)

I solidly think wasteland is better than basics, but I'm trying to see if you can do solidly 4 color while also running basics. I'm trying to play a few leovolds and a library. Normally the Czech pile deck needs to pick basics or wasteland not both.

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Originally Posted by Molz7

Thoughts on basics currently?

Good versus Pop.

Medium versus wasteland (they waste your colored sources, but you got one use out of them)

Good versus ghost quarter

Medium versus blood moon. (is a single island and swamp going to win me a game?)

I solidly think wasteland is better than basics, but I'm trying to see if you can do solidly 4 color while also running basics. I'm trying to play a few leovolds and a library. Normally the Czech pile deck needs to pick basics or wasteland not both.

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Hmm that’s a good question. So im assuming you’re going for a full 4C stoneblade build, as opposed to the more 3.5C builds I like. So can you fit some basics in there? I’d say probably not, but here’s my longwinded explanation:

First off, I’m just about positive to even think about a 4C deck seriously you’re going to need to run 4 DRS. I’m just don’t think you can get around it.


Beyond that, I think that doing a full 4C deck with basics and only leaning on DRS is really greedy. Everyone knows DRS is a problem so it’s likely that DRS ends up dying pretty quickly. If your DRS ends up dying you could be in pretty big trouble, your ramp and mana fixing are gone. And considering there are only 4 in the deck, there are a lot of games where you’ll only have access to 1 DRS, the one that just ate shit. It’s why in esper deathblade builds green is only a light splash color.

That being said, based on what you’re saying, it sounds like you should play bant deathlade. Bant deathblade runs 3-4 noble hierarchs in addition to 4 DRS. In this case, they have all the mana dorks in the world and at least one of them is likely to stick. Because of this, the deck doesn’t need basics. Since your mana is so creature oriented you almost stop caring about wastelands/blood moons/price of progress anyway. The deck is fundamentally built around deploying a T2 leovold or TNN and riding it to victory. The tradeoff being that bant deathblade trades in its long range cards for things like daze and noble hierarch. That being said, if you really wanted to run basics, you could probably yank the 2-3 wastelands bant deathblade runs and replace them with basics. Again though, this seems unnecessary given the number of mana dorks you have.

So my answer to you at least in terms of stoneblade is no, you probably shouldn’t run a 4C list with basics. UW, UWR, and UWB stoneblade just don’t have the manabase to support a 4th color without basics. Bant deathblade only gets away with it by sheer number of mana dorks, and by the time you’re running that many mana dorks you’re already evading most nonbasic hate anyway so why bother with the basics? If you really are stuck to playing basics though maybe you end up running bant deathblade with a singleton forest which would allow you deploy both DRS and hierarch.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Molz7

Thoughts on basics currently?

Good versus Pop.

Medium versus wasteland (they waste your colored sources, but you got one use out of them)

Good versus ghost quarter

Medium versus blood moon. (is a single island and swamp going to win me a game?)

I solidly think wasteland is better than basics, but I'm trying to see if you can do solidly 4 color while also running basics. I'm trying to play a few leovolds and a library. Normally the Czech pile deck needs to pick basics or wasteland not both.

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If you're going greedy on color source requirements, like UB for Baleful Strix, WW for Council's Judgment, UGB for Leovold... you cannot afford to run basics. You will hurt yourself more than you would by just playing duals. If you already have 1-2 duals out, you're already vulnerable to Wasteland anyway so basics won't help you.

Basics are great for minimizing the effect of an opposing Back to Basics or Price of Progress, sure. But if your deck construction is color source greedy, you're going to lose to your own manabase more often than opposing hate if you try to run basics.

Running Wasteland is even worse, and really doesn't make much sense for a deck like this. Utility lands can be problematic, but there are usually other ways of dealing with them that are much cleaner... Pithing Needle, Surgical Extraction, etc. Unlike Czech Pile, this deck has Swords to Plowshares to deal with Marit Lage.

Honestly, I think the best configuration is to not be color source greedy, and to run a healthy number of basics, like I did at EW. The light colored requirements + lots of basics was instrumental in improving my Delver matchups.

EDIT: My reply above was in reference to traditional Deathblade, not the 4c version with Hierarch's. That deck is completely different. I do believe that deck is fantastic, but it's a tempo/aggro deck, not a control deck like traditional Deathblade is. That deck operates fine despite being 4c and running Wasteland because of the 8 mana dorks. Even still, that deck can run into mana issues, and has to mulligan more often than a less greedy deck would.

Super greedy 4C Deathblade wins the DC Open! Thoughts?

https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/810325#paper

Makes me eat my words from my previous post about manabases, lol.

True-Name Nemesis is a super powerful card. When people aren't prepared for it, it definitely crushes fair decks.

I am a little curious about how much Delver he played against, though. I've found that matchup to be difficult without a stable manabase (basics + light colored requirements), or the 8 mana dork plan that Bant Deathblade uses.

Right, same here.. I couldn't help but look at that manabase and wonder how the hell he managed to make it through all the Grixis Delver matches. Well, he must be doing something right.

Pretty streamlined list in any case. 4 Mystics, 4 Thoughtseizes, 4 Nemeses.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by whocansay

Super greedy 4C Deathblade wins the DC Open! Thoughts?

https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/810325#paper

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Just off the cuff.

This smells list seems like bant and esper deathblade had a child. Mana ramp into 4 TNN/3 leovold(1 in SB) seems like the classic bant deathblade play. But it trades in noble hierarch/dazes in for more midrange cards swinging it partially into the esper camp.

The manabase is super greedy, I kinda wonder what the lone island is doing there tbh. I’d honestly just consider shifting it over to another green source like a trop.

4 TNN seems like a bit much, I personally diversify a bit and run TNNs with lingering souls. 2 leovolds seems super sweet, I’ve wanted to run 2, but I remain doubtful my manabase can support it.

1 JTMS seems kinda thin, he really does end a lot of games on the spot if you manage to untap with him. He really is such a powerhouse I can’t personally justify running less than 2.

I think the omission of spell pierce is pretty big here. His only way to counter a spell is a 2-1 which I think is a problem.

4 thoughtseize I’ve found to be excessive since it can be a dead draw late game, but it’s probably fine.

His SB is pretty greedy as well. Two council’s judgment is a lot, the WW casting cost can be restrictive. And a 3rd leovold off 2 green sources?? Geez, I think even bant deathblade only runs two leovold.

Overall, the deck is very powerful assuming your mana doesn’t come under too much pressure. If you watch game 2 of the finals you can see his manabase getting punished severely, but he kept drawing the nuts. Getting double wasteland off blue, then casting council’s judgement off his remaining lands was pretty luck of him IMO. Glad to see deathblade up there again though!

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Originally Posted by Hanni

Makes me eat my words from my previous post about manabases, lol.

True-Name Nemesis is a super powerful card. When people aren't prepared for it, it definitely crushes fair decks.

I am a little curious about how much Delver he played against, though. I've found that matchup to be difficult without a stable manabase (basics + light colored requirements), or the 8 mana dork plan that Bant Deathblade uses.

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So ironically, I'm Jon Goss, the SCG winner!

My question to the forum was the night before the SCG with some last minute manabase thoughts. I'll write up how things felt and a tournament report to explain what I've faced and where key pieces performed well.

Deck was definitely a blast! Very strong and I am fairly confident with many of my design decisions that I can explain in a future post. I've been playing this type of deck and this specific style for years to great success.


About the single island:

As I explained earlier, basics are versus Bloodmoon, POP, wasteland, and Ghost Quarter.

Versus bloodmoon, only 2 basics wont do anything. You'll need 3-4 to really matter. Thats too tight of a manabase and losing the ability to cast many spells because you drew a hand of swamp plains as only lands is poor. I beat the only bloodmoon I faced in the tournament by using a TNN in play and equipping it.

Versus POP any basic is great. Normally I want to get 2 sources of colored mana and a single basic maybe 2. Getting to 3 mana to play key 3 drops and 4th land being a wasteland to waste yourself in response to a POP is my general line of play.

Ghost quarter - Just having basics (or at least one they've seen) in your deck makes ghost quarter significantly worse. I had a lands opponent who saw basic island game 1 and 2, and when he had a land light ghost quarter draw he didn't want to just throw away 2 lands.

Versus wasteland - basics are bad. basics help you get to a number of mana sources in play, but not necessarily the right ones. If you lead on deathright then you can lead with underground sea. It is commonly a bad play to waste someone when they have a DRS in play. However, if you have a land light hand and need to lead on ponder or multiple cantrips then not getting wastelanded is very important. Hence the island. You also always want more blue mana in my list, so island is never bad, while swamp is often terrible. I faced MANY wastelands during the event.

Running wasteland myself - This gives you many free wins. I've beatten many people by the insane tempo advantage by wastelanding their eye of ugin (semi finals), or their only source of mana when they lead on ponder. This also gives you outs to maze of ith, tabernacle, grove punishing fire, glacial chasm lock, and dark depths combo. I treat wasteland as a spell not as a land, hence why I run 21 lands while many Czech pile decks run 20.

reckon, as you said, last 2-0 he always drew every card he needed but don't we forget it was more than 15 rounds... we cannot lapidate his list just because doesn't fit with the standard...

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Molz7

So ironically, I'm Jon Goss, the SCG winner!

My question to the forum was the night before the SCG with some last minute manabase thoughts. I'll write up how things felt and a tournament report to explain what I've faced and where key pieces performed well.

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Wohoo looking forward to your tournament report :). The small ones i write about my weeklies are far less meaningful than your will be! Also kinda cool knowing whatever you picked up here may have helped you in your success!

Regarding your comments about wasteland, i suppose i'll have to try some greedier lists. I see what your saying about basics vs wastelands and partially find myself agreeing with it. I do have quite a lot of POP floating around in my meta though, so that's partially why i've not been pressured out of basics yet. Could also be i'm just flat out wrong.

Did you face any DnT in the tournament? Its been a deck i'm really struggled against in the past.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by cheinp

reckon, as you said, last 2-0 he always drew every card he needed but don't we forget it was more than 15 rounds... we cannot lapidate his list just because doesn't fit with the standard...

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Fair enough, i can see how it came off that way. But putting it plainly, he took down a major tournament, he's doing something right. As someone who plays basics in their list though, that game is an example of why i like having basics.

As I said in a previous post, I won SCG DC! Deathblade was my weapon of choice and it performed very well.

I played tightly most of the event with a few mishaps in the last match, but I did also get lucky to win on occasion. You need to get lucky sometimes to come out on top after 18 rounds of magic.

My decklist can be found here: http://sales.starcitygames.com//deck...?DeckID=116973

Matchups throughout the 18 rounds were actually primarily fair decks.


Matchups:
Day 1-
Grixis Control
Death and Taxes - with Magus of the moon
Maverick
Czech Pile - Loss
Tin Fins reanimator combo
Grixis Delver
Grixis Delver
Esper Mentor
RUG Delver

Day 2-
4 Color Loam - Loss - opponent I rematched in the finals.
Shardless BUG
Death and Taxes
Grixis Delver
Temur Delver - Loss
4 Color Loam - Todd Stephens

Top 8-
Grixis Delver
Eldrazi
4 Color Loam


I posted above how wasteland and the single island were very important. I would definitely play 2 wastelands, but I could argue the island should be another fetch. I was happy as it was though.

The way I play this deck is truly as a midrange deck.

Why this over Bant Blade? - They are too susceptible to bad top decks (daze/noble) and bad. Thought seize/Strix help buy you time to get to land drops and play your 3's rather than jamming them into opponent's dazes on 2.
Why this over a more controlling Esper Deathblade? - We don't grind as well as the loam/shardless/4color decks really. We are the aggressor and playing difficult to remove threats is how you win. I beat the finals match on tempo, not on grinding.

Versus the aggressive delver decks/maverick/death and taxes decks, I am the control deck. I thought to seize threats, focusing on removing their threats with removal before playing my own, and focus on building a stronger manabase in play versus waste/port/stifle. This only requires ESPER mana to do. Sideboard I have 3 zealous because it helps with the influx of True Name nemesis in delver, is very strong versus Young pyro, and Death and Taxes. I mainly played 3 because it is extremely good versus the 4 TNN 4 Noble hierarch Bant Blade version. This is the same reason I don't like lingering souls. It lets their delluges, night of souls betrayal, golgari charm, zealous be great against all of your main threats. You get green mana later with a leovold to end the game versus delver. (board out leovolds versus D&T so green isn't very important as it would be if I ran decay).

Versus the controllier decks - 4 color loam, Czech pile, Shardless bug, Lands etc. These decks just want the game to go longer to strip you of resources and out grind. They have few strong answers to either Leovold or True Name. I use thought seize to punch a hole through their strong sideboard cards. I've beaten many lilly's, toxic delluges, zealous persecutions, chokes, magus of the moon, chalice of the void etc. Thought seize and force of will (on occasion still in post board) are the great equalizer. We do need to end the game quickly to win.

Some thoughts on specific card choices -
1 JTMS - Jace is bad versus grixis delver with TNN, young pyro, bolt and mana denial being their focus. I side it out versus them.
1 Snap - I really wanted a 5th removal spell in the main, and snap is that (plus pitches to FOW)
4 TNN - This card is really unfair. They occasionally can beat one with a sideboard card, but rarely the second.
3 Ponder - I originally played 2 and an extra land, but the 3rd ponder was phenominal. You do board them out versus chalice decks, but very happy with 3 and could see trying to play 4.
2 Council Judgement in the board - No decay/disenchant. Need to have removal for problem permenants because legacy has some very strange decks. This is also good versus decks that don't punish your mana. I was very lucky to draw one of these in the finals after my opponent waste landed me out of blue mana but left me with 2 white.
1 Savanah 1 Trop - The manabase is very complicated. Knowing what to fetch when is the most difficult part of playing this deck, but if you can solve the puzzle and adjust to wastelands then you have the most powerful spells at your disposal! The only time my fetches to duals was ackward was having delta and not being able to fetch savanah after trop got wasted in the final game.
2 Strix - This card does basically everything you want it to. Versus delver you just want to answer their threats and eventually in the late game your cards are just better pound for pound. Strix is both a removal spell and digging you for more lands.

On specific matchups that were interesting -
Loss to Czech Pile - I won game one by playing a SFM and leaving up 3 to 5 mana versus his obvious K command. I attached for 4 and he couldn't really handle the germ until he had to tripple block with 2 DRS and a snap to trade for the germ. By now I found a force for the kCommand. Key play to remember when rebuying batterskull is activate SFM and holding priority return batterskull. This way if they have a bolt for the SFM you still get the skull back into play. I ended up losing this match as my only loss day 1 because of ponder that missed on lands, and a brainstorm that locked my with sea, scrubland, wasteland in play. I had 2 TNN, 2 Leo, 1 Skull, 1 JTMS in hand. Any land wins the game easily in any of those 8 cards (ponder, shuffle, drawstep, brainstorm), but no extra land results in a loss.

Win versus reanimator - I aggressively mulled playable but non interactive hands to 4 on the play (5 had no lands), he mulled to 5. I keep Scrubland, savanah, thought seize, SFM. Take his reanimate spell and SFM for SoFI, he therapys me. I literally attack 11 times with my 1/2 stoneforge as my main threat. I eventually find a DRS/surgical/force and finally blue mana to have protection.

Loss to 4 color Loam in the swiss - I kept a 1 land, DRS, TNN, Leo, SFM, Brainstorm, Brainstorm hand on the draw. Any second land makes this hand insane, but my opponent plays a chalice on 1 turn 2 on the play and I do not draw a second land until turn 5. Still make a game of it with SFM though. Ironically in the finals match my opening hand is almost the same thing, but this time with a Force of Will instead of the TNN. I keep it knowing what he's playing but luckily hit a land this time.

Loss to Temur Delver - my opponent played a winter orb that I didn't think would bother me much as I only had 2 lands. I kept untapping duals and he would draw a wasteland just before I could play a spell. Was always 1 mana off turning the corner with a threat with 5 lands in play. He drew a goose and my 2 plows were not enough.

Win versus Esper Mentor - My opponent was run over game one by SFM/Skull, Thought seize and force providing backup. He landed a mentor and I plowed it. I dislike having my main win condition easily removed. TNN would have likely won him the game instead of mentor. Game 2 he ponders on a tundra and shuffles, this is the universal sign for 'I don't have lands'. So wastelanding him results in a free win.



As you can tell I'm playing the most powerful spells with a complicated and greedy manabase. I played versus 13 decks running 4 wastelands as a primary focus of their deck. Fetching more duals is better than just a few basics and getting cut off colors. This is also the reason I want powerful sticky threats on their own like TNN and Leovold, so that after they resolve I get waste landed, but thats okay. mentor/snapcaster as 3 drops want me to continue having mana when I untap.

Hopefully this helped enlighten the group on some different thoughts! True Name Nemesis is extremely powerful as the meta shifts towards more fair decks (as you can see the delver decks moving to TNN as well).

Happy to answer any questions!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by First_Revenge

Wohoo looking forward to your tournament report :). The small ones i write about my weeklies are far less meaningful than your will be! Also kinda cool knowing whatever you picked up here may have helped you in your success!

Regarding your comments about wasteland, i suppose i'll have to try some greedier lists. I see what your saying about basics vs wastelands and partially find myself agreeing with it. I do have quite a lot of POP floating around in my meta though, so that's partially why i've not been pressured out of basics yet. Could also be i'm just flat out wrong.

Did you face any DnT in the tournament? Its been a deck i'm really struggled against in the past.




Fair enough, i can see how it came off that way. But putting it plainly, he took down a major tournament, he's doing something right. As someone who plays basics in their list though, that game is an example of why i like having basics.

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The last match was the first time I was really on camera even though I sat at the backup match 3 times ( 5 minutes verus Todd Stephens doesn't really count). This match I obviously got very lucky. You need to get lucky to win a tournament. Playskill and preparation are no where near enough. When I drew the council's judgement in game 2 as a huge out to solidly win the match I knew, and verbally said to my opponent 'I'm very lucky it seems'. Same when I drew the TNN after punting game 1 by not equipping strix with Jitte. The line went through my head and I just absolutely blanked. I was at 40 life, so likely I'd be fine, but still don't give them outs.

Imagine I draw the council's judgement (or any other card not in my deck) and I look down to basic island and swamp because he wasted me off of my non basics. Likely not winning that game.

I know you didn't play against it, but did you have any specific plans that deal with new miracles?

Terminus seems really good against your deck, since it deals with both TNN and leovold. It's one of the reasons i run lingering souls.