[Deck] bUrg Tempo

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Originally Posted by Einherjer

Care stating this fact to a Miracle Pilot? I wanna see where your "huge tempo victory" is when I consistently wipe your board and Flash Angels in - without having to fear Stifle.... or having to fear Stifle, but none coming... Tell the Living Weapon Trigger to stay at home, cause you could have had Stifle, tell the Combo decks Fetchland to fail in finding a Land, cause basically you could have had a Stifle...

Playing less than 4 Stifles makes this deck obsolete, whereas playing 4 is perfect and the deck is strong.

Greetings

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I am supporting stifle, 100%.

I am saying that, when people play against builds that usually has stifle, but then suddenly don't, and they don't change their way of playing… Yeah, well…
You suddenly got a tempo advantage, from playing ie. 4x spell pierce. When trying to play around stifle, you open up yourself to other spells…

As soon as this becomes the trend, stifle goes up in value again. :)

(I DON'T suggest cutting stifle! Storm/Miracles just gets so much harder to play against).

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Originally Posted by Quasim0ff

I am saying that, when people play against builds that usually has stifle, but then suddenly don't, and they don't change their way of playing… Yeah, well…
You suddenly got a tempo advantage, from playing ie. 4x spell pierce. When trying to play around stifle, you open up yourself to other spells…

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^^^
Exactly this.

No one is debating if Stifle is good or not, Clearly it is because Legacy good. But its value goes up and down.

What the deeper discussion is, if Stifle is an auto 4 or none. I think its false to say MUST play 4 or don't play any at all. I can pay 3 stifles and 3 spell pierce over 4 stifles and 2 spell pierce, and its just silly to say that one is with more stifles is strictly better.

I use the UWR in the example because that's the one Sasan brought up. RUG hasn't been the same since TNN came out so I don't have any recent top 8 lists to show you other that what I have mentioned. 2 RUG builds, one with 2 stifle and one with 4 stifle.

Einherjer already mentionned where Stifle reigns supreme. Note that the psychological value of not having Stilfe but let the opponent think we have Stifles can be used in post-board games like against Maverick, Merfolk etc. where you board out Stifles for value. But otherwise we need 4 Stifles.

I cannot stress it any more but we are a FOUR color deck that happens to be mana screwed from time to time. bUrg is not playable at all without the ability to protect the mana base from opposing Wastelands.

The RUG built with only 2 Stifles has had a good placing at the GP but that does not mean the list was good. The player skill outshined the miserable main deck choices. If you want to play Stifle, play 4, if you don't want, don't play bUrg. You can play RUG without Stifles somehow (it is not advised) if you run 19 lands and additional cantrips - just like Saito did a year ago.

bUrg needs 4 Stifles and at least 3 Deathrite Shamans to be a deck and not a pile of garbage. The rest is somehow debatable. You have already seen that the creature base for example is flexible (that explains the 3 different lists we had featured in the primer during the last couple of days - these are somehow flex slots that are playstyle/taste dependent and do not change the MU percentages dramatically).

I am glad that we have a good and solid discussion going on here with good arguments. Just keep that up.

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Originally Posted by Einherjer

Care stating this fact to a Miracle Pilot? I wanna see where your "huge tempo victory" is when I consistently wipe your board and Flash Angels in - without having to fear Stifle.... or having to fear Stifle, but none coming... Tell the Living Weapon Trigger to stay at home, cause you could have had Stifle, tell the Combo decks Fetchland to fail in finding a Land, cause basically you could have had a Stifle...

Playing less than 4 Stifles makes this deck obsolete, whereas playing 4 is perfect and the deck is strong.

Greetings

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Agreed. The living weapon trigger is one of the most important triggers in this game for us.

It just takes an Inquisition of Kozilek or a Gitaxian Probe to see if you have Stifle or not. Your huge tempo mind trick fails after few turns against good opponents.
Also consider that to bluff Stifle you need to stay U open all the time… can you afford to play with one less land just because you want to bluff something?

4 Stifle is the correct amount in UGR and UGRx tempo decks.Not playing it and just bluffing it all the time is not an option.

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Originally Posted by kiblast

It just takes an Inquisition of Kozilek or a Gitaxian Probe to see if you have Stifle or not. Your huge tempo mind trick fails after few turns against good opponents.
Also consider that to bluff Stifle you need to stay U open all the time… can you afford to play with one less land just because you want to bluff something?

4 Stifle is the correct amount in UGR and UGRx tempo decks.Not playing it and just bluffing it all the time is not an option.

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Agreed but postboard it can be boarded out versus Merfolk, Maverick, Affinity etc...It is not always an untouchable Spell in games 2 and 3. And those decks I mentionned do not play Probes and Discard spells. During the first turns I try to hold open mana anyway for Spell Snares or removal if I don't have early Shaman/Delver. So the mind trick works there perfectly.

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Originally Posted by Sasan

Agreed but postboard it can be boarded out versus Merfolk, Maverick, Affinity etc...It is not always an untouchable Spell in games 2 and 3. And those decks I mentionned do not play Probes and Discard spells. During the first turns I try to hold open mana anyway for Spell Snares or removal if I don't have early Shaman/Delver. So the mind trick works there perfectly.

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Of course post side is sideable out. I'm not 100% sold on siding it out vs Maverick but for sure I would vs affinity.
I'm not saying that the mind trick doesn't work. It works. But I'm saying that its counterproductive to bluff Stifle when you are not playing it (as someone was suggesting before).

I wouldn't dismiss any decks that cut Stifle as being strictly suboptimal, but I don't think I'd ever play a tempo deck without it. It gives too many free wins when your opponent stumbles, and the threat of Stifle forces your opponent to play suboptimally when he doesn't have access to perfect information.

I think UWR Delver can get away without Stifles because Batterskull, Jitte, and True-Name Nemesis are still live cards that allow you to compete in the mid to late game even if your opponent can develop his mana, but I would probably switch decks before cutting them from RUG or bURG. My two cents.

Not that I want to pour any more oil into the fire...I am also a strong proponent of Stifle and could not imagine bUrg without it. However, I would be highly interested in an experiment of thought: With the four slots available from cutting Stifle, what could be added and where would it take the deck?

I could imagine (for example) +1 Nimble Mongoose, +2 Gitaxian Probe, +1 Spell Pierce. I guess we would also have to think about the remainder of the deck then, and not just the four slots in a vacuum. For example, Spell Pierce would be required to answer opposing Stifles, and the 3 Spell Snares become less good and so on. One might also consider adding an Island to the manabase.

Anyone else interested in exploring this line of thought?

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Originally Posted by lurch

Not that I want to pour any more oil into the fire...I am also a strong proponent of Stifle and could not imagine bUrg without it. However, I would be highly interested in an experiment of thought: With the four slots available from cutting Stifle, what could be added and where would it take the deck?

I could imagine (for example) +1 Nimble Mongoose, +2 Gitaxian Probe, +1 Spell Pierce. I guess we would also have to think about the remainder of the deck then, and not just the four slots in a vacuum. For example, Spell Pierce would be required to answer opposing Stifles, and the 3 Spell Snares become less good and so on. One might also consider adding an Island to the manabase.

Anyone else interested in exploring this line of thought?

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No fire to put out, this is good healthy discussion. :)

Everyone should express their ideas, that's how we evolve. (We also need to keep in mind regional variance in each person's meta)

But let me get back to when I brought up the discussion on Stifle. The whole reason why the discussion went in this direction was because I cut Nimble mongoose from my list because bUrg is slow to reach threshold. Compared to RUG, they have 1 more fetchland and 3 gitaxian probes to turn on Threshold by turn 2. Yes it still has shroud, but we can agree as a 1/1 its just not impressive. So in looking for slots that would help boost the threshold plan, i didn't want to go lower than 12 creatures, and i didn't want to play less than 2 pierce and 2 snares, i didn't want less than 4 daze or 4 FOW, I "could" cut down to 1 abrupt decay, but I didn't want to do that either. Since some lists have been having success without stifle, its seems like a reasonable avenue to explore.

I went 4-0 at my last event with gooseless "HeisenbUrg" build running 4 DRS, 4 Delver, 2 Goyf, 2 Truename, so playing without goose isn't as crazy as it sounds, especially considering that we have other options for difficult to kill creatures. I should mention in that event I had rest in peace cast against me 3 times and a few DRS battles so there is no absence of graveyard hate in my meta.

Right now I'm still off the goose plan, which means that I am running stifle. BUT for tomorrow's weekly Legacy, I will cut down to 3 stifle to run 3 spell pierce.

Here's a peak at my list for tomorrow

4 DRS
4 Delver
2 Goyf
2 TNN

4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
4 Force of will
4 daze
3 stifle
3 spell pierce
2 spell snare
2 abrupt decay
4 lighting bolt

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Originally Posted by Sasan

The RUG built with only 2 Stifles has had a good placing at the GP but that does not mean the list was good. The player skill outshined the miserable main deck choices. If you want to play Stifle, play 4, if you don't want, don't play bUrg. You can play RUG without Stifles somehow (it is not advised) if you run 19 lands and additional cantrips - just like Saito did a year ago.

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You really can't say the choices are miserable. Its more important to understand the choices and how they worked rather than to attach a value.

I talked with Glenn (the 13-2 RUG player) on the Wednesday following, he's a regular at my Legacy nights. He is a very very good player and is a Canadian Threshold specialist. He consulted with a number of Canadian pros (David Caplan, Alexander Hayne, Jesse Moulton, Sammy T., Mike Vasovski, Morgan McLaughlin, and Andrew Van Leeuwen.) He was the highest placing Canadian at the event. I talked to him about his list and some of his choices and his reasoning was good and his performance was proof of his choices and skill.

You can read some of is explanations here.

http://manadeprived.com/best-ptq-season/

If you want to try a Stifleless build you are automatically porting the deck in the Mid range area even more. So you need a slightly better manabase, and some tools to fight with other (better) midrange decks.
Consider that (as correctly stated above) UWr can go Stifleless because they are already more midrange- ish than URG or URGx. Between Sfm and Geist ors TNN their late game is actually good.

If I were to cut Stifles, I'd probably run these cards in the 4 empty slots:

1 additional land (Creeping Tar Pit)
1 additional decay
1 additional beater (TNN probably or the 4th Goyf if you are not running it already) or Vendilion Clique which acts both as a beater and disruption piece
1 tool that shines in mid late game, like a Sylvan Library, a Loam or a Jtms.

OR, you could just go UGRx Cascade, crazy deck (like this one I played a while ago )

@Kibalast

Oh yeah and then we cut Dazes and Delver and adding Shardless Agents and Jaces and Play shardless BUG..No really why we should cut stifle??? That's so a bad move. Then it's not Tempo anymore..And should not written on this Treath. ;)

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Originally Posted by Pdingo

@Kibalast

Oh yeah and then we cut Dazes and Delver and adding Shardless Agents and Jaces and Play shardless BUG..No really why we should cut stifle??? That's so a bad move. Then it's not Tempo anymore..And should not written on this Treath. ;)

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Are you kidding me?

Just read the last few posts. People were suggesting cutting Stifles and, while I disagree completely, I was proposing new scenarios they could explore if they want to cut Stifle. I'm not going to cut Stifle and I'm not suggesting it.

Edit.Try to look further than your nose, we were having this conversation about cutting Stifles since the last 10+ posts or so, and me and the others clearly stated our positions. Mine was,and still is, that cutting Stifles is a mistake. But it doesn't mean that we can't have conversation on how the scenario would be if we cut Stifle. Which, again, I'm not suggesting.

Shall we move on?

Alright, lets not get too ahead of ourselves.

I want to open this question up:

Is stifle a meta call?
Is is acceptable to play less than 4 stifles?

If you want to cut Stifle (not advised) I could see a compromise in running 3. Less than 3 just does not seem to work.


I read the article about the RUG player with the 2-Stifle built (thanks for the link) but his explanation does not make any sense: He says that he wants to protect his mana base and therefore played 2 Stifles. 2 is not the right number to handle early Wastelands.


Regarding if Stifle is a meta call I would say the tempo definition is having a Daze/Force/Stifle package with cheap beaters and low land count. So if Stifles were a meta call tempo decks at all would be meta calls. And that is true. Tempo decks have been good for years as the meta has not changed that much for them to become bad. If everyone played midrange decks and if there were no combo players Stifle and tempo decks would die.

I played against Manaless Dredge last night (http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/s...l=1#post765808 - not this exact deck, but similar) and lost 0-2 matches, 2-4 games. I didn't really feel like there was much that I could do to combat Manaless Dredge.

Perhaps the lack of graveyard hate is a meta-decision. Rest in Peace and Deathrite Shaman have held the graveyard decks in check. However, Manaless Ichorid has Street Wraith and Phantasmagorian - basically, Manaless Dredge's gameplan is to draw, discard, dredge. Manaless Dredge always plays last (if you win the roll against them, you choose to play last). I would drop a DRS, Manaless Dredge would draw and discard. I would target the discarded creature with DRS and he would cycle Street Wraith (I did not have Stifle mana open), returning the dredger to his hand and filling his graveyard. Or, he would discard Phantasmagorian and discard 3 or 6 cards (holding priority and activating Phantasmagorian's ability twice), returning Phantasmagorian and overloading his 'yard.

I felt totally helpless in the match up. I realize that Manaless Dredge is about .5% of the meta, but what can we do to make this match-up better?

If you have much dredge in your meta, i would consider a single graft diggers cage in the side

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Originally Posted by Tormod

If you have much dredge in your meta, i would consider a single graft diggers cage in the side

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What does and doesn't GDC stop? Narcomeba trigger, Ichorid trigger, Nether Spirit trigger? It stops Dread Return, GSZ, Natural Order, Reanimate, Exhume, Animate Dead, and Unburial Rites.

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Originally Posted by Tormod

If you have much dredge in your meta, i would consider a single graft diggers cage in the side

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If there was much dredge it would pay off to have more than a single cage as your only hate card-DRS excluded-.
Also, your fucking name is tormod. And you're touting Cage. You should be ashamed of yourself