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Can we take a look at your deck list anarky?
Has anyone tried using Cabal Pit at all? Obviously it would only be useful in the builds w/o Grunt. Though it lets your small creatures trade with werebear and gets rids of meddling mages that name your creature removal. I recently put it into my casual mbc deck and have found a lot of success with it.
My creature and spell base were posted on the last page, but to bring it altogether in one place:Quote:
Originally Posted by throst54
//Land//
4 Scrubland
4 Bloodstained Mire
1 Polluted Delta
1 Godless Shrine
3 Wasteland
8 Swamps
//Creatures//
4 Dark Confidant
4 Nantuko Shade
4 Hypnotic Specter
3 Jotun Grunt (Currently giving him a try, was 3 Wretch)
//Other//
4 Duress
4 Hymn to Tourach
4 Vindicate
4 Sinkhole
4 Dark Ritual
2 Swords to Plowshares
2 Umezawa's Jitte
The SB, I think, is mostly irrelevant as I board for what I expect to see. There are a few staple slots, such as the last two StP's, some Disenchants, and Infests. The rest are mostly meta slots (i.e. Perish, Serenity, Virtue's Ruin, Plague). But that's what I played last Wed. to 1st place split.
That build certainly looks like a solid improvement. I have a few questions though.
Since your 4 Confidants die rather easily, and the 3 Jotun Grunt die on their own within 2 turns, don't you some times find yourself with a Jitte on the board but no threats of your own to use it. Or even a Jitte with a single threat which you forcibly lose during combat as a result of having it blocked. I would think 3 Rotting Giants (or even better, the aforementioned Exalted Angel) in place of the Grunts would be more stable if you're looking to abuse Jitte.
I definately see Jitte shoring up this decks weaknesses against decks like Angel Stompy, Fairie Stompy and Zilla Stompy a little bit. But I'm still not convinced that 8 pieces of removal (counting the Jitte and Vindicate), are enough to deal with decks that consistently play threats that are bigger than all of your own threats. How has your matchup against them been.
The manabase can't currently support Exalted Angel with any degree of consistency. Getting WW with 10 total white sources (all of which are non-basic) is going to prove very difficult in practice. You can drop Swamps for white sources, but unless they're duals, you're going to be weakening your Shades. If they are duals, it will mean a) more lifeloss and b) greater weakness to mana disruption. All things considered, I think Angel is the wrong creature for this deck.Quote:
Originally Posted by Clark Kant
I like the concept of the deck with disruption and all but I also ran into the same problem. Dealing with threats bigger than your creatures.
So I actually changed the deck quite a bit and made it more aggro control. I have been using Mask of Memory as a 2 of for more draw WHEN Bob dies.
Basically I replaced some disruption for equipment like Sword of fire and ice and Jitte.
I am still playing with the creature base to maximize the random aggro matchup pre-sb.
But I have had success at local tournaments.
Ya, this has been spoken about a few times now, I'm not sure if Kant has actually tried casting or morphing an Angel with consistency, but I know with our build without serious mana modification (for the worse), and she's really not going to do much with a Jitte the turn she's cast or flipped, so she's already much slower than Grunt.
Thanks, I do what I can.Quote:
Originally Posted by Clark Kant
As of right now, I've only done minimal testing with the deck. So far I've not had any MAJOR problems with Jitte, but no creature. There have been a few times when it sat in play for abit before being picked back up. I'm usually hanging onto 1-2 creatures in my hand with maybe 1-2 on the board. I then let those go as far as they can (Or until they are dealt with), then I deploy the rest. So far the combat incident hasn't been a problem. Sure I've lost my one threat with Jitte's on it in combat, but in that case, I was losing already.Quote:
Originally Posted by Clark Kant
Again, I've only done minimal testing with the deck so far (Picked it up for something else new to play). I've yet to do any real testing against the stompy variants, I assume they would be challenging, and most likely not in your favor. But that's what I'm running the color haters for in my SB. Virtue's Ruin for AS, Persih would hit ZS (Though I've yet to ever see anyone playing this in any tournament around me). FS might be a pretty steep hill to climb, but I can't say anything for sure. I'm going to be heading to a more competitive tournament environment this Wed. and I'm going to play with the changes I've made. I'll post back with what I played against and how I did. I have tested against Affinity alot recently (Deck my friend loves to play) and I've been doing pretty well against that and they were pre-board games.Quote:
Originally Posted by Clark Kant
I'm not saying that my changes are a divine answer to the deck. I just tweaked it for what I thought might help. Feel free to try the changes or dismiss them =)
Already covered in...Quote:
Originally Posted by GodzillA
You can even add a Godless Shrine or two if you wish. The lifeloss is minimal esp considering the lifegain you get from being able to run both 3 Exalted Angel and 2 Jitte. The 3 Angels + 2 Jitte gives you a consistent out against aggro decks that run bigger creatures than you and often manage to beat this deck. Not to mention the synergy of fetchlands with Grunts should you side them in.Quote:
Originally Posted by Clark Kant
I really think a build like Anarky's but with a threat that actually stays in play for more than 2 turns would work extremely well...
//Land//
4 Scrubland
4 Bloodstained Mire
4 Polluted Delta
1 Godless Shrine
4 Swamps
4 Wasteland
//Creatures//
4 Dark Confidant
4 Nantuko Shade
4 Hypnotic Specter
3 Exalted Angel/Rotting Giant/Serra Avenger (Nothing like Vigilance to abuse Jitte)/Something Else (Or some other nice threat that actually stays in play for more than 2 turns)
//Other//
4 Duress
4 Hymn to Tourach
4 Vindicate
4 Sinkhole
4 Dark Ritual
2 Swords to Plowshares
2 Umezawa's Jitte
You need ~18 white sources to get WW with any degree of consistency. In a format with Wasteland and all your white sources wasteable, the number might need to be even higher. Naturally you'll want at least full 8 black fetches if you do decide that route, since you need the consistent white mana for Grunt and the graveyard fuel as well. I'd also consider Gerrard's Verdict back as it does a great job fueling Grunt, can gain life in those tricky positions and is just overall solid.Quote:
Originally Posted by Clark Kant
18 maybe overkill. A lot of decks that ply Angel, like Angel Stax, ww/u A Stompy etc get away with running 14-16 or so white sources.
I think Jotun Grunt is far better than angel in this deck. Based on the tournament I attended this weekend, he is absurdly powerful...he helps all your bad matchups.
The build I ran used mutilate, which I'm not sold on. It did help me win against goblins game one, but I don't think it was really all that better than STP in the main deck (considering enforcer still ruins my day as well). The list I'm running now would be this:
creatures (14):
4x dark confidant
4x hypnotic specter
3x nantuko shade
3x jotun grunt
spells (22):
4x dark rit
4x hymn
4x sinkhole
3x duress
4x vindicate
3x swords to plowshares
artifacts (2):
2x cursed scroll
land (22):
4x wasteland
3x polluted delta
4x scrubland
3x bloodstained mire
1x tainted field
7x swamp
sideboard:
4x diabolic edict (was dystopia, but with grunts edict just seems better. Plus with reanimator's potential comeback, this is more versatile)
4x engineered plague (needed)
1x swords to plowshares (obvious)
2x gerrard's verdict (these are still good, usually go in for stp with the 4th duress in matchups like solidarity and burn)
1x Jotun Grunt (mvp, 4th one goes in against thresh and any other deck that lets me have a field day with the 'yard)
2x darkblast (also needed for goblins, helps make game 2 largely in your favor)
1x duress (the 4th one seems to belong in the board, but I could be wrong)
At the tourney, I my losses were against a threshold deck (due to mana screw on my part, no white source with 2 stp and 2 grunt in hand :frown:) and madness...jitte is bad for me, and my discard helps them sometimes. I still think the madness matchup is not terribly bad, but it's tough. The edicts will help that along hopefully.
My wins were against solidarity, goblins (we drew technically, but game on I was just an idiot. Not even a misplay really, I just decided to let him win by not scrolling him to death for some reason), and red death.
I like my build with grunt, seems really solid. If you guys test angel and find her to be good though, let me know. It seems with a deck like this though that overcommiting to white when it's really just a splash is a bad idea (or maybe it just changes the deck into something different).
WW/u plays 18+, Angel Stompy plays 16-18, but 16 is often found too low by AS-players who fail to draw their second W in due schedule, and Angel Stax is a different matter entirely; it doesn't want to cast Angel until WAY into the game anyways, so it has to find 2 white sources in about 20 cards, rather than in about 10 cards. Don't you think we'd run Silver Knight if we could support the colour requirements? Would certainly make Goblins much better, but there honestly is no room for 18 white sources in the deck.Quote:
Originally Posted by Clark Kant
I know that I would probably never want to drop to 14 white sources if I needed to hit WW by turn two. 16 is bare minimum, and I don't even feel comfortable with that, so for me, I say 17. 18 is probably the most reliable amount to consistently hit the double colors you need. I think AS can afford to go to 16 white sources due to them also playing Chrome Mox, which can act as the second source.
I'm not sure about Angel yet, has anyone actually tested so far? I'm just now getting around to testing a few games against the stompy variants (College does that for ya...), so hopefully I'll have some data to post back here.
Edit: Did 10 games against AS, all preboard (What I had time for). Final record was 3-7 in AS's favor. They usually just swarmed me faster than I could handle. Post board you'll have things like Infest and Virtue's Ruin, so it will most likely improve.
I also like grunt myself but after testing I found him sub par against gobbos and other random aggro matchups.
But the Grunt is a house against Thres and can be good against combo. It was the random aggro matchups that made me make him more of a SB.
Eh? Chrome Mox IS a white source in the deck, and should be counted as such in all relevant calculations.Quote:
Originally Posted by Anarky87
I don't think this deck runs enough white period to rely on a Chrome Mox. Lotus Petal would give the same boost and not cost a card in hand.
Our conversation was regarding Angel Stompy... Obviously, if you have ~12 white cards, chances are your Moxes will produce black. I dunno, Moxes seem kinda nice in this deck, as they go to the Swamp-slots and douple with Dark Rituals to make stuff happen faster, which makes all the difference with cards like Hymn, Sinkhole, Verdict, Specter, etc.Quote:
Originally Posted by laststepdown
So is Tomb of Urami not played anymore? i don't see why you would drop suck a powerful card with minimal drawback for one swamp? Surely it getting wasted or you losing 2-3 life is worth a massive evasive beater?
I don't think that was an issue. I think it was mostly a discussion on why exhalted angel is a bad idea in here. For manabase reasons, your draw engine, and the tempo of the deck, it has been put off.Quote:
Originally Posted by Goblin Snowman
Everything with this deck requires one main thing: Lands.
If we put too much focus on Exalted Angel, we lose an incredible consistency with the deck to be capable of splashing for white, and only needing minimal resources to cast our very few white spells.
This also means our deck requires INCREDIBLE amounts of thinning, seeing 8 fetchlands, making Bob even more likely to hit spells as opposed to lands, which is also a figure to be taken into effect. We could very well lose the game an extra number of times just due to life loss. A small thing over a few rounds, maybe, but a killer for matchups overall in a large tournament.
Putting too much into Tomb of Urami is also bad. If decks packing Needle see it, they can call that. There's only a total of 3 permanents that need an activation cost: Cursed Scroll, Nantuko Shade, and Tomb. Typically most will hit Shade, but if they see the early Tomb and have answers for Shade, this could be a problem.
Also, both of these ideas cause us to lose to any type of land hate. Many aggro decks are already packing the same 4 Wasteland as we do, and much less to destroy on their side than ours would after the modifications. On top of that, running any number above our already high 6 non-basics makes random junk like Back to Basics and Blood Moon incredible tech to swing us completely into a loss.
If we were to plan to use basic Plains, this lessens the threat base of Nantuko Shade as well, meaning he's typically only going to swing for maybe 3-4, rather than packing the heat of something like 6-8.
All in all, I personally think anything running double white, or random "I win" things like Jitte or Tomb are just unnecessary. The deck wants consistency and solid scores, not random luck-sack wins. At the rate that we'd be putting in something that kills off our lands, or worse, turning our manabase into something worse than 4cc, we completely disregard the deck is black with a white splash, not a white core.
Having Shade with a consistent black manabase + Grunt should be perfectly fine to push through wins. If not, then we may need to start looking into what is killing this deck yet again, because it's obviously not killing itself.