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You're right, it's hard to discount his list out-of-hand given how much success he and now Grant have had with it.Quote:
Originally Posted by Megadeus
The argument that extra cantrips are a crutch makes sense. It definitely makes evaluating openers easier.
Also it helps in the discard MU's. They discard and you can just cantrip like hell to find another key spell you lost. Im aboard the train of it doesn't seem great, but there is no discounting the success. Maybe Ive played TES too much, but just watching Prozak stream his deck, it just seems like abominably slow.
Hey I'd like to point out I did better with BW at Indy than Prosak himself did with his list. http://www.twitch.tv/scglive/b/376043351 and this is an example of why I like Grim Tutor in the board. Start the video at 11:10. They only gave me one game on video all day.
No offense to you. Just saying that prozak has had a top 8 and a couple of top 16's. And then this guy just won the whole thing yesterday. Ill definitely watch your link when I get back. Im truly curious as to why this list has been so good recently despite all of the hate that people give it on here
I mean, to be pretty frank about it, the vast majority of people that post on this site have absolutely no idea what they're talking about. Most people suggest things without having the faintest idea of how it affects the deck or have any knowledge of the deck or have ever even tried what they're proposing before saying it.Quote:
Originally Posted by Megadeus
There's only a handful of people's posts I bother reading and fewer people's posts that I take with anything more than a grain of salt.
I feel like Prosaks list is ok, but it is very luck dependent and even slower than BW ANT. It does actually have a decent game against discard due to being able to float cards on the top of the library just like top, but is has to get so much luckier when it comes to drawing the tutor.
I used to play a TnT version of storm with Wishes about two years ago and often found myself drawing too many tutor effects when I needed more rituals or spells to cast (4 Burning Wish, 3 Infernal Tutor main - 1 Infernal Tutor side). This is generally the downfall of the Burning wish variants and one of the many reasons why Prosak only runs Infernal Tutors.
I know Prosak personally and a few weeks ago we switched legacy decks for a local. I ended up going 2-2 with his version of the deck mostly having to mulligan a few more times than expected and also being super rusty with ANT after playing DDFT for the past 5 months. I felt like his version has a lot of play though. The cantrips allow you to proactively dig through your deck looking for anything you need whether it be a discard effect, rituals, or a tutor fairly well. The low count in tutors was a concern when piloting the deck as it can get a bit clunky when having to search for them.
I'm going to try to build a version of the deck that is a mixture of the current Burning Wish variant and Prosak's list (Maybe just having 2 Wishes to bump up the tutors to 6). However, I think the manabase will be a bit strained as Abrupt Decay seems like it will need to be included for the SCG: Invitational as players are going to be gearing up to beat combo. What I assume that I will find in testing is that Prosak's list is just going to be more consistent while being able to fight off the most amount of hate (Abrupt Decay, ample amounts of discard) by sacrificing some of the speed Wish variants have.
I think the list is perfectly fine, ANT really doesn't need to win before it needs to win vs the majority of the field, beating Counterbalance to the board in 2013 is no where near as important as it was in 2012 and ANT has always been a deck that has preferred to hit its land drops, build Threshold and then kill the opponent at its convenience.Quote:
Originally Posted by phazonmuant
The deck is just resilient and to a certain extent more difficult/rewarding to play because you're making more micro decisions with cantrips than just trying to win with Grim Tutor.
You're right, why bother winning when you could instead demonstrate your mastery of cantrips? :tongue:Quote:
Originally Posted by Final Fortune
luck dependant? With what? 16 cantrips and 7 fetchlands? Are you sure that you tested his list to say that, or even, played a 2012 ant list before? Because that just doesn't sound right, if you ask me.Quote:
Originally Posted by End3r000
There is a very old article that Adrian sullivan wrote, way back when, that partially explain why a brainstorm and a fetchland can help you find a singleton in your deck, in average, pretty quickly. (it's a long article, where half of it talks about a completely unlrelated deck, but there is some information in there anyways).
Here :
http://www.starcitygames.com/php/new...p?Article=6444
Now, I am asking you to find a 4 -of, with 16 cantrips (4 of which come complete, with a shuffle effect and all) and another 7 fetchlands... Doesn't seem that luck dependant to me...
The biggest problems with that math are: (a) you often have to play through discard, so sometimes you have to find 2 out of 4 if a tutor gets discarded. Brainstorm helps to hide, but shit happens. (b) You're assembling a 3 or 4 card combo (tutor, lands, disruption, fast mana), although there is a large number of potential combinations for those non-tutor 2-3 cards you have to find. Ponder and Preordain don't really help you find the other missing pieces if you're furiously digging for Tutor, so you have to take into account the probability of finding all those cards together.Quote:
Originally Posted by ThediscoPower
I'm not just making this shit up, I've played ANT with 4 Infernal Tutors in GP Indianapolis. There were other problems with my list and play skill that prevented me back from doing well, but I learned a lot from that event. One of the biggest lessons was that you can't always deploy 16 cantrips fast enough to find the tutor + disruption before you die. You can only (optimistically) play about 3 or 4 cantrips by turn 4 if you're disrupting them and fetching to minimize Wasteland damage, and sometimes that's just not enough to find Infernal Tutor (often +LED).
Maxing cantrips is great at one thing - getting Thresh. Playing more business is good at just having it earlier through your opponent's disruption.
Finding a 4 of with 16 cantrips...you're right, that's so impossible hence why Grant won the entire tournament with his 'inconsistent' 16 cantrip list that Prosak championed. Cantrips are what drive ANT. They make cabal ritual infinitely better, chaining cantrips together into a natural tendrils is not out of the question in such a list either. Is it better than wish ANT? I'd say yes, because wish is clunky as fuck and doesn't actually solve any problems usually unless you're going to durdle around a lot finding grim tutor to combo off next turn typically as wish -> grim -> any business spell is 10 mana/close to infinite short of a ritual overload draw or the nuts.Quote:
Originally Posted by End3r000
Wish is good in TES because it runs more chrome mox than we do and they have rite of flame as well. CRit isn't exactly good with burning wish either, since wish exiles itself and is offcolor in terms of ANT's ritual package. If you really want to play wish to its full potential, run it in DDFT or TES. I've played storm combo since mystical was banned, and late last year I was running burning wish ANT and decided it wasn't good enough due to how clunky wish is. I like grim tutor a lot more, as that's usually what wish got from my sideboard anyways. If you want to run demonic collusion with 3 life loss tacked on, be my guest. I'd much rather run demonic tutor at the cost of an additional black mana and a measly 3 life loss. Although even that seems inferior to just running 16 cantrips to always find either the lone past in flames or 4 infernal tutors. I count past in flames as a business spell with 4 cantrips in the yard to find what you need typically as well as probe being amazing with it. Finding the lone ad nauseam isn't too hard either. So that's what, 6 business spells? Seems like I should find one of said spells or more with 16 cantrips, but maybe that's just me.
One of the worst things in combo is not running enough cantrips/library manipulation. There's nothing worse than just playing land, go because you're out of cantrips, you still don't have what you need, and are getting beaten to death by a batterskull. Running 16 cantrips minimizes that risk quite a bit of bricking off forever while the opponent attacks your life total to zero.
Wish also makes your sideboard a lot shittier. Oh, so we have 8 slots for real sideboard cards because of all these wish targets we run? Sounds terrible. Stretches the manabase too, which is something I really don't like in ANT. We want to have lands in play, as winning without lands while we have a wish sitting in our hand is actually just the nutlow.
Ummm, finding what you need together with cantrips such as ponder and preordain isn't typically what you do. There's a thing called a draw step, ever heard of it? So you brainstorm and then shuffle. You play preordain, bottom one card and presumably find another piece if not bottom both. You get to draw two random cards off the top after bottoming 2 cards you don't want. You have pretty good odds of not bricking. I'm not advocating keeping 5 cantrip 2 land hands, as you then have to assemble mana, tutor, and potentially LED with just those 5. However, in the hands of an experienced storm pilot, 16 cantrip ANT is an extremely powerful deck.
You're right definitely is extremely powerful! It feels buttery smooth and can be very consistent. I'm just advocating that there is a very real cost to inf cantrips - you slow way down. Given time, ANT will always assemble the pieces, but it may not always have the time before the opponent's disruption and clock get online.Quote:
Originally Posted by Dark Ritual
Completely agree. ANT seems to need the sideboard space much more because it wants the game to go to a point to where both player's sideboard cards have time to come online (turn 3ish?), and Wish takes up a ton of room. The most important Wish target in TES that ANT can't really play is Diminishing Returns (although Time Spiral is a consideration) because of Silence, and that can make a huge difference. Every time I try Burning Wish in ANT I'm disappointed by it.Quote:
Originally Posted by Dark Ritual
I think we're really arguing for the same thing, but perhaps I'm coming across as antagonistic to the Prosack list. It's a fine list that's done well. I just personally find it hard to believe that it's optimal.
This all depends on the time you have. You usually are not aiming to kill them on turn 3 every game either, even if most people think it is the case. You go off when you are either 1- about to die 2- when it is confirmed that the coast is clear. As such, you can take quite a lot of time to go off. Also, sometimes you will even be able to play your cantrips and go off on the same turn (simply because PiF makes the math much easier, nowadays). So as such, even if discard spells are a pain, a deck like AnT is just resilient enough to not care that much if they lose a piece.Quote:
Originally Posted by phazonmuant
Althrough I was responding to the guy saying that you have to be lucky to find your tutor, between muligans and your cantrips, and having played that deck like hell, this isn't as pronounced as you make it out to be. You don't need many lands (2 is enough), fast mana is a third of your deck (so it should be what you have en masse in your hand), not that much disruption is usually neededfor a early take off (you can usually punch through 1 piece of enemy countermagic anyways, given that you play correctly, and the fact that noone stares at you with 7 counters in hand ever). 1 piece will do it early. If you they are too loaded, your happy to sculpt your hand and grind them anyways. And finally, if you end up having to search too many of those type of cards at the same time, then you probably should have mulliganed, I believe.Quote:
Originally Posted by phazonmuant
The problem is, 3-4 cantrip is supposed to be enough to find what you need, with the possibility to play a longer game with them with the extra cantrips. What I am trying to say here, is that in average, you will find what you need to go off by turn 3, given that you kept an average hand. And this is what makes it that this deck even works right now (or ever worked). The goal isn't to jam your 16 cantrips in here either (which isn't what I am saying), but is to have enough of them to find what is missing in your opener. However, you will have situations where you won't find your missing piece(s), ever. There, you either kept a bad hand, or you discovered a reality of combo decks, that sometimes, you just draw the bad half of it. This isn't supposed to happen often, but you will lose sometimes to that. Shit happensQuote:
Originally Posted by phazonmuant
Finally, what I will add is that before, list weren't that much different than this one. You played 12 cantrips, 4 tutors (with grim being a preference call. That one animated long and heated debates, online and irl), 7 discard spells. Oh, and IGG was there, instead of PiF. The thing that shocks me is when I read something like ''well, you have to get lucky to find your tutor'', or '' not enough buisiness''. When the old AnT lists aren't adapted to our meta anymore (they are 1-2 years old, after all), the mecanics of the deck stay the same. The math stays the same. How is it that Ari Lax, back then, could find his pieces with 12 cantrips , and today, when Prosak tries to find his pieces with 16 cantrips, people seem to think that he was lucky to even find one tutor at all? I could be missing something (i which case, forget my rent), but it really doesn't seem right.
Ari played 2 Grim Tutor in his deck, and I believe the reason for that was because 4 Tutors was thought to be not enough. If nothing, I do recall Ari going around at the time and making a point of telling people the only way you should play this deck is with Grim Tutor.Quote:
Originally Posted by ThediscoPower
lol.Quote:
Originally Posted by Dzra
I played this deck at MTGDeals to a top 8 finish yesterday:
4 Cabal Therapy
3 Duress
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
4 Gitaxian Probe
4 Infernal Tutor
3 Burning Wish
1 Ad Nauseam
1 Past in Flames
1 Tendrils of Agony
1 Chrome Mox
4 Lotus Petal
4 Lion’s Eye Diamond
4 Dark Ritual
4 Cabal Ritual
4 Polluted Delta
2 Scalding Tarn
2 Underground Sea
1 Volcanic Island
1 Badlands
1 Swamp
1 Island
2 Gemstone Mine
Sideboard:
1 Grim Tutor
1 Past in Flames
1 Ill-Gotten Gains
1 Tendrils of Agony
1 Empty the Warrens
3 Abrupt Decay
3 Chain of Vapor
2 Carpet of Flowers
1 Sylvan Library
1 Tropical Island
I don't remember everything but my matches went something like this:
Round 1 vs BUG
I find out later his version of the deck has Forces in the sideboard. G1 I durdle for a while trying to build my hand, I have wish and I'm forced to go off for just 10 goblins. Eventually he stabilizes at 3 after getting out a couple goyfs a couple deathrites and a lili. I punt when I cabal rit -> IT -> ad nauseam at 12 life instead of just going for the tendrils :/ I punt wayyy too many G1s. Anyway G2 I keep a somewhat shaky 6 that looks alright until it gets shredded and he gets a lili out to seal the deal. off to the next round.
Goblins I toast with fast hands and have time to get food.
A match I have no memory of.
UW miracles piloted by Joe Losset- G1 I don't remember, I go off on my first or second turn, I'm not sure if he interacts. G2 I have a good hand, I start cantripping and he lands a counterbalance on t2. I chain CB, he flips a land and chain goes thru. Next turn I probe him and his hand is NUTS, double force, double CB and more stuff thats good against me. I don't remember what happens but it goes a long time and he gets to trade each of his cards for more than one of my cards. I might have played better, I'm not sure.. I wish I remembered this one better. G3 I probe him see plains, senseis top force and some blue cards. On his turn he plays out top off his plains. My next turn I therapy his force and go off. I'm surprised he doesn't flip top to dig for force when I'm all in on wish. I make an army of goblins and get there.
Mono black pox with trinispheres. Ugghh. I don't remember exactly what happens but he gets liliana out and is beating me down with a very angry land. He's pretty smug but my cantrips are good to me and I get to cast ad nauseam to steal the game. G2 I go off t2 by stacking ad nauseam on top of my deck and popping both LEDs with probe on the stack, my first time making that play and it felt good. This guy... he was pretty speechless, more about him later.
Round 6, I have to fight it out since my opponent can't draw in, he's on junk. Good for me he does nothing both games while I cast tons of spells and win.
Quarter finals. In retrospect I wish I ate dinner before this round, I was fatigued but I didn't realize it until after. That pox player from earlier snuck into 8th place, hungry for revenge. Since I'm top seed I go first, and win on my first turn. G2 I mulligan into a decent hand that gets bad after he shreds it. I believe he plays a land and passes the turn, I believe I cantrip on my turn. He hymns me on his turn. I probe him and see liliana trinisphere and i believe a second hymn. I believe I have therapy chain of vapor and LED and a land. I take his liliana, I guess I should have taken the trinisphere. I think I had a plan but I forgot to set my LED and things go from horrible to even more horrible. I lose to that angry land after a billion super annoying turns. G3 is a heartbreak for me. I have the nuts- double dark ritual, double LED, infernal tutor, gemstone mine, and probe. I probe him and he has mindbreak trap inquisition smallpox and one land, I believe its urborg, besides that its 3 drops I'm not too worried about. I draw brainstorm. Cast brainstorm, hide the tutor on top, cast LED he traps it I cast the next LED and pass the turn. He inquisitions one of the rituals into my graveyard. On my turn I ritual IT pop LED and ad nauseam with no mana floating after hitting my land drop (a fetch), I'm at 17 life points. It starts nice with a dark rit and a cabal rit. It gets worse when I hit 3 cabal therapies, 2 chain of vapors, some cantrips, tendrils and a bunch of land. No petals, no tutors. I'm at 4 and I feel like garbage. I sulk, look at my cards, and I'm not sure what to do. PiF is still in my deck, and the other night I lost a game hitting PiF immediately when I risked it at 4. Anyway I go for it without any confidence and hit chain of vapor #3, great.. Now my judgment is clouded with emotion and I keep going and hit burning wish. I'm at one life, I can't do anything and my heart sinks to the floor. He shows me the swamp he had drawn on his previous draw step and my tournament is over. I'm new to this deck and I was tired/hungry but that's really no excuse. Even if I didn't win I didn't have to hand it to him on a silver platter. Anyway after I beat myself up mentally for a bit I had a great meal with a friend and forgot all about magic for a little while.
Overall it was a great day, and I learned a ton, I saw lots of good people, and the judge did a really good job. I love this deck. It's really a blast to play. I like my sideboard, I mulled both times I saw sylvan library, but I don't think it was library's fault I had to ship the hands. I really wanted it vs that pox deck. I like burning wish, but the prozak version looks good too.
Still was a debated point actually. Most people thought that you could upgrade the deck with more tutor effects, but people were divided with grim tutor. And then, the format got faster and TES became the better choice. However, even if Ari was playing with 2 grim tutors (you are right on that, it was a bad exemple on my part), most list I saw still were playing 4 tutors 12 cantrips just fine, with grim tutor being a preference call (or a budget call). As such, I believe my point stands, in the sense that I don't believe anyone should be suprised to find their combo pieces with 16 cantrips maindeck.Quote:
Originally Posted by Namida
Now that I start to think about it, I do remember Ari writting an old article for starcity saying just that, however, later, this is what he wrote:
"While I haven't played this list enough since the addition of Past in Flames to know a lot of the intricacies that have changed, I can comment on a few random things.
- http://www.starcitygames.com/article...r-Edition.htmlQuote:
Four Infernal Tutor is definitely pushing the low end of threat density for the deck. Even with the effective 56-card deck size, you have dropped from 11.7% of your deck being game enders to 9%. The two Grim Tutors I previously played is definitely too many of that card with the additional four cantrips, but one would be enough to make up most of the difference. Burning Wish is also reasonable, but only playing one or two of that card when it eats sideboard slots just feels bad."
Ari seems to think that 16 cantrips mean that you could go to 5 tutors, when Prosak thinks that you don't need more than infernal tutor (with reasons in one of his 2 starcity articles, don't remember which). Now, with my experience playing AnT in the past and looking at his results, I believe I can back Prosak on this one. I just haven't lost enough games to not finding a tutor in time, and the format is slow enough again to relax a few turns again.
Late addition : Looking at old lists again, there even are a bunch of lists (in 2011) that did well in europe with pretty much Adam's maindeck configuration, 16 cantrips 4 infernal tutors...So it seems like it's not even like it's such a new idea...
I'm using a pretty similar decklist to yours (although I'm not much a fan of Chain of Vapor if you splash G). What are you boarding out that you can afford to leave in Probes? I definitely wouldn't recommend SBing out my discard since especially on the play you are able to hit his disruption first.Quote:
Originally Posted by walker
After you see Mindbreak Trap with Probe, your first priority is probably to get rid of it with some sort of discard. You are fairly lucky that he wasted it on your LED rather than waiting for a tutor.Quote:
Originally Posted by walker
Failing to find discard, the right call was probably to just leave Brainstorm mana up and roll out one LED a turn until you had 3 land to cast Infernal Tutor, crack both your LEDs, and then cast Ad Nauseam as your second spell for turn. It is important that you have access to the 2 additional mana. If you only had one then he could Mindbreak your first Ritual and you'd fizzle. Since you have two mana, you will fire off a Ritual and have plenty of mana to strip his hand of Mindbreak and anything else with the discard you find off Ad Naus.
If you couldn't find the 3rd land (or Petal) to give you 2 mana post-Ad Nauseam, you could have fired with one mana floating, stop your Ad Nauseam at a healthy place, and use your floating mana to discard Mindbreak Trap, pass the turn, untap, and try to kill him from fresh. It's hard to say exactly without seeing all of your draws, but hopefully this helps.
With so little pressure from him, there's not much reason to cast an Ad Nauseam that would leave you with zero mana floating and no more land drops. At that point, you are either banking on hitting one of four Lotus Petals + one of two remaining Dark Rituals or hitting both remaining LEDs + Past in Flames or else you are fizzling and passing regardless.
guys, what do you think about prozak's list (maindeck) -1 preordain +1 grim tutor?
Hurts Ad Nauseam a lot. I like Prozak's main deck. The deck has to search for one thing, Infernal Tutor and it wins. It's jam full of lands and protection is consequential. It's fine the way it is.Quote:
Originally Posted by SaberTooth
I just don't understand why he plays massacre in the SB. It sucks against Gaddock Teeg, which is probably the most common hate bear.