Well, the list isn't mine, but the person that arrived second in a tournament of more than 350 people needs some credit probably..
I wanted some comments..
I will try a list with 3 Jace 2.0, 3/2 Thopter/Sword split and Firespout MD..
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Well, the list isn't mine, but the person that arrived second in a tournament of more than 350 people needs some credit probably..
I wanted some comments..
I will try a list with 3 Jace 2.0, 3/2 Thopter/Sword split and Firespout MD..
Instead of standstills why dont we just play dark confidant then you can cut the factorys for a better mana base
We have 0 creatures in this deck. If you want to add 4 Dark Confidants they will just be dead.Quote:
Originally Posted by obituary 95
I was looking for some different way to draw cards, but unfortunately didn't find any..
Kyle dorgan played this deck in its early stages with 4 dark confidant to some pretty good success.
i have been trying confidants again , and in my testing it has been really good. you dont really care if they stp bob becuse they have to keep in stp after board and they probably have to take out more useful cards
I will give it a try.. But I'll have to change my SB then.. And my MD also because I'm currently testing with Firespout MD..
Anyone else tried 'spout main?
@Landstill list: Very interesting list. His list looks loaded. The way I see it, he seemed to aim for versatility. I'm not really sure how he actually plays it out but I believe the standstills and man lands are there to allow you to change gears. With deck being very passive at times, the man lands are there to push the tempo more? He's got results so his deck is legit. Personally I'm not a big fan standstill in decks that are not built to support them. They're awesome in merfolk and landstill, but it doesn't seem right in counter-top thopter. Our deck aims to be aggressive, establish position with counter-top drop bombs like moat, and hopefully find the win before we stall the game too much. In my experience, I'm not really sure if it's just the way I play it or because of the fact that I don't have Jaces yet, but it does have a tendency to stall the game for a long time before winning via combo. I'm pretty sure Jace TMS fixes this problem but I won't be playing with him for some time because of budget constraints.
Edit: I just recently tweaked my list. I tried Bob. He was good but I prefer having firespouts more. From my experience, an early unanswered rush from aggro decks really gives this deck fits. Bob doesn't help against that, while Firespout helps me recover and "come back" in the game to certain extent. I've also tried the landstill list. It did fairly well, especially the factories. But as expected, the list became too cluttered, standstill was relatively useful, but with the low counter count in the deck, standstills often draws you into more spells (Usually excess counter-top pieces, the combo, bombs), that more often than not, won't help you counter the troublesome spell being cast. Standstill often gets you in deep water especially against the more dedicated landstill lists. It was actually good, I much rather prefer running the full counterbalance soft-lock. The deck really suffers without it. And its overkill to play standstill while having an active counter-top soft lock.
@pippo84: I have been playing with firespout main and it has been marginally useful so far. 2 is a very iffy number because you often get them when its too late or when you don't need them or when you don't have access to splashed mana sources, I'll try to find space for a 3rd one for testing but I don't think I'll keep that since I tested against a few match-ups where spout is dead i.e landstill, reliquary rock, new horizons, storm @__@ I rarely get to spout with humility online too. Come think about it I rarely even fetch humility because I usually expend a lot of resources to establish the soft-lock, because I strongly believe this deck really suffers without the soft-lock. I rarely try or even have the resources to fetch humility. For pros out there, am I playing the deck wrong by playing this way?
Edit: I've dumped shackles. It was good, but it often was too slow to make a difference, although it has this tendency to break stalemates against decks that run creatures, I often wanted something like moat that could potentially weather an early rush from my opponents. I decided to replace him with Ensnaring Bridge, and it did very well. Won me a lot more matches. I originally took out Tezzeret for the 4th top, but with the departure of Vedaliken Shackles and without my playset of Jace TMS, I decided to cut the 3rd Thopter Foundry for the Tezerret for the time being, as my 2nd win condition. It's not optimal, but its good enough for the time being. So after some extensive testing, I arrived at my current list which is:
4 Brainstorm
4 Enlightened Tutor
4 Force of Will
3 Counterspell
4 Swords to plowshares
2 Firespout
4 Counterbalance
1 Humility
1 Oblivion Ring
1 Engineered Explosives
4 Sensei's Divining Top (I'm still in the process of testing the 4th top, It seems like its needed, but I'm still pondering if this deck needs the 4th top more or the 3rd Thopter Foundry)
1 Sword of the Meek
2 Thopter Foundry (Originally 1 Jace, but only 1 Jace seemed sub-optimal, so the slot went to the 4th top for the time being. I'm still testing this slot to see if the 3rd Foundry or 4th Top works better. What do you guys think?)
1 Ensnaring Bridge(Originally Vedalken Shackles, but I have settled with Ensnaring Bridge from now because it keeps you alive and in the game better than shackles. It seems bad to run it along with humility but in any case, you don't play them together anyway. Humiliy is for Zoo primarily, while Ensnaring Bridge is for primarilly Merfolk, Zoo and it works better against Goblins than Humility does to)
1 Pithing Needle
2 Academy Ruins (I've always wanted one in play 80% of the time, makes up for having only 1 EE, and 2 foundries)
4 Flooded Strand
5 Island
2 Plains
1 Seat of the Synod
1 Breeding Pool
2 Hallowed Fountain
3 Scalding Tarn
1 Steam Vents
1 Mountain
1 Tezzeret the Seeker (I don't have Jace, he's proved his slot at least for me, fetched missing combo pieces and lock pieces and I've also won quite a number of games through his ultimate)
I've noticed that most succesful Thopter lists play Crucible of Worlds to abuse the shuffle effect of fetchlands to look into their decks and find combo pieces faster. I've been testing it and it has been very strong since having the ability to look into more cards in your deck than the opponent has been this decks principle source of card advantage. But it seems in the final form of my deck (the one with 2 Jaces) I may very well be giving up the spouts and possibly go up to 61 cards to support the CoW. To those that play Crucible or have experience in playing Crucible, how good is it in the deck? Is it optimal? And is it worth to go to 61 cards for it? Is it worth cutting the spouts altogether? I'm very iffy in doing since my meta has alot of zoo, merfolk, bant, survival and gobs, and firespout has been good in delaying the game enough for me to have a chance it winning.
Thanks for you inputs!
So, Grand Architect...
Tap a Thopter, make a Thopter. Tap a Thopter, make a Thopter. Tap a Thopter, make a Thopter. Tap a Thopter, make a Thopter.
Seems good.
I've tried to post this idea before you... but thopters are 2/2 under Architect, so they don't trigger the sword ability.
Shit! I completely missed that! I hate Magic.
Has anyone tested out Fabricate at all? It costs more than Enlightened Tutor and is a sorcery and only grab artifacts, but it puts said card into your hand and can be pitched to Force of Will.
I've tested it. It's reaaaaaly slow... 3 mana tutor is really slow. You rarely have any lands left to cast what you've fetched and/or to use on counterbalance. Having what you tutored for in hand isn't important because, more often than not, whatever it is that you tutored for get stuck in your hand till you untap next turn, leaving you vulnerable to discard, and more importantly leaving you with very little lands to keep counter-top active. Not being an instant sucks, it's less versatile and slow. And not being able to fetch enchantments sucks even more, you lose even more versatility. Enlightened Tutor is strictly superior.
On a side note, I've extensively tested Crucible of World in my deck in exchange for 1 firespout, leaving me at 1 random firespout in the deck. It wasn't bad. Being able to see up to 7 cards each turn is amazing. Being to look at a higher volume of cards in your deck than your opponent is one this decks primary sources of card advantage. This has a pseudo-tutoring effect that really speeds the deck up. I also included a singleton wasteland as an additional lock mechanism. Crucible is never bad. Never a dead draw. It's one more way of messing with your opponents. The fact that it is part of one of the mechanisms that give this deck card advantage is enough reason to play it. I've never had trouble finding my singeton firespout too because of the sheer volume of cards that I was able to see. I'll start testing on aggro archetypes to see if not having the 2nd firespout MD will be a detriment to the deck. The thing that I've noticed with Crucible is besides enabling the wasteland lock and allowing you to potentially see a lot more cards than your opponent, it doesn't really do anything else. It certainly doesn't help you against bad match-ups like Merfolk and Survival. It's because of this reason that I'm going to test Crucible more extensively. I'll also be testing cutting Tezzeret for the Crucible but I doubt I'll stick to it. Tezzeret is really good in this deck, It's won me a lot of games, and I couldn't imagine not having it in my 60 especially without having Jace, TMS.
In connection with the "it doesn't help us against our worst match-ups of Merfolk and Survival" topic, what does help us against these match-ups? These two decks have been dominating our metagame that they need serious sb considerations. And having a bad match-up against these decks doesn't help either. I was thinking of playing 3 needles (1 MD), 2 relic of progenitus, 1 tormod's crypt, and 1 wheel of sun and moon, and 2 ensnaring bridge (1 MD) against them. I'm not really sure if this enough against Madness, especially the graveyard hate. Against Merfolk, I'll probably replace the gy hate with 2/3 Propaganda. I haven't tested against these decks so I don't know what works well against them. The counter-top thread suggests peacekeeper but sadly I don't have those. For those that still play this deck, what generally do you sb in against Merfolk and Survival?
Thanks for your inputs guys!
Another Janky suggestion, but what about Muddle the Mixture? Gets you any piece of the combo you want or counterbalance. It can't get a lot of other things though, but I thought it would be an interesting suggestion if we wanted more cards that can find the combo pieces that also did other things.
Muddle the Mixture is interesting. It obviously doesn't replace counterspell because at UU it's a very very narrow counterspell. The transmute ability could have potential, but costing 3 mana at sorcery speed is very slow, it requires you to have at least 5 mana to transmute and play what you tutored for, leaving you with little to no mana to operate counter-top to protect the combo, yourself or to keep your opponent off resolving relevant spells. And given that the deck has 4 tops, 4 brainstorms, 7-8 fetches, 1 crucible of worlds, 2-3 jaces and 4 enlightened tutors, you get to look at and have access to more cards a turn/the whole game than your opponent that it's as if you were tutoring for cards. Muddle is a slow card and the deck doesn't really need anything more to slow it down, it needs things that either speed you up or let you live long enough. Honestly the core of the deck is generally going to stay as it is until a bomb gets printed (i.e. Jace TMS), the only work that needs to be done on the deck are generally finding the right tutor targets for a specific metagame and finding the right sb cards against the decks worst match-ups as of the moment, merfolk and survival variants.Quote:
Originally Posted by DragoFireheart
How does this deck handle the new U/G Madness deck that has been stomping the Meta with Vengevine, Survival of the Fittest, Wild Mongrel and Basking Rootwalla?
From the playtesting that I've done, mine is 65-35ish.
The only difference from my build to the regular build is I don't run Jace. Rather, I run 2x Elspeth, Knight-Errant and 2x Humilty with no Jace 2.0. Mine also has a playset of Swords to Plowshares.
Survival of the Fittest is a must-counter, Pithing Needle and Humility also help especially with Qasali Pridemage and Eternal Witness shenanigans.
Its still a pretty miserable matchup. You are wayy too slow, and they have kgrips/pridemages for you postboard. No counterbalance decks have a very good matchup vs it, hence why its fallen out of popularity.Quote:
Originally Posted by (nameless one)
But we run a lot of anti-aggro mesaures. Thopter Sword can gain life and chump the Veggies regardless of Wonder. We can run things like Ensnaring Bridge main that will help protect us and still be good in other matchups. I personally don't think this deck is anything worse than 50/50 due to the silver bullets we can run. Even post board if they want to run Pridemage and Grip, we can run so much crap that they'll just waste time blowing up our stuff, buying us time to get something online to stop them.Quote:
Originally Posted by JonBarber
One question: I plan to tinker this deck for a random/unknown meta. What would be the best picks for the non-core stuff?
It's true that this deck arguably has the most insurmountable defenses against aggro in the format, but the thing is, these defenses take a lot of time of set-up i.e. Being able to cast Ensnaring Bridge with a very low hand-size. Another thing is being able to effectively protect our defensive measures. This deck's primary means of protecting itself is via counter-top. Counter-top itself takes a significant amount of time to set-up and protect especially considering that Madness practically doesn't care about the counter-top lock itself. Having to tutor for answers is also very slow considering that Madness could kill you by turn 4 or 5. Post-board we can board in more defenses and counters to at least have a shot at delaying the game enough that we can effectively set-up our defenses. And even then, they could just grip Bridge and Kill is right then and there. This is probably a tad less than 40% pre and post-board. This is already a very generous estimate, it could possibly become lower or a bit higher once I get more testing against this match-up. I'll be trying a number of cards that could possibly help in the Madness match-up.Quote:
Originally Posted by DragoFireheart
I'd probably pack a main deck needle and crypt/wheel of sun and moon in a big tournament given the high chances of going up against Survival.Quote:
Originally Posted by DragoFireheart