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What sideboard adjustments could I make with the sideboard against a Zoo concentrated metagame? I'm thinking of playing a Jotun Grunt in the Knight slot in the main. What cards should I run in the SB against Zoo?There's an open slot in the SB due to the Grunt being thrown in the main, so what could I run in that slot? Perhaps another Ghostly Prison? What are the other alternatives?
If your meta is that Zoo-infested, I'd go with Perimeter Captain
It has the critical 4 toughness, meaning they can only handle it with Path, double burn, or swing + burn. In any case, you end up with a huge advantage, gaining 8 or more life or gaining massive tempo and card advantage going into your second turn.
If you happen to have two of them, you basically completely shut off your opponent's ability to do anything. If he swings with any creature, you gain 8 life.
Also, even as a 1-of, he walls or greatly reduces damage from multiple creatures. He turns two Nacatls into a sloth-like 1 damage per turn. And even then if you have a Swords, you can turn that play against your opponent and net life from the exchange.
Unfortunately, for its strength, it's extremely narrow. Zoo and Goyf Sligh are raped by this card, but nothing else really cares. It might not even be worth boarding in against Goblins.
Still, it's an option. A Zoo-filled meta can be handled by something like:
2x Enlightened Tutor
1x Ghostly Prison
1x Wheel of Sun and Moon
1x Relic or Crypt
1x Thorn of Amethyst
2x Burrenton Forge-Tender
4x Perimeter Captain
2x Aura of Silence
1x Jotun Grunt
Also, finished the cast against Stuckpixel. Games weren't too fascinating, sloppy play and the one-sided affair kind of ruined things, but since he played them to help me out, I decided to do at least all of the Merfolk matches.
Played alot on MWS today, ending with a hard match-up against some wacky Gwu-abuse-my-lands-and-beat-with-evil-big-beasties.deck.
(Including something like the following I guess:
noble hierarch, goyf, knight of the reliq., stp, elspeth, loam, intuition, crop rotation, tabernacle, wastelands and more utility lands.
Game1 went pretty downhill, game 2 was stabilized at 1 life, pretty narrow but UWtempo was the better deck. Game 3 I went in the following situation, and truely didnt know what to do by then, so screeny + post + discuss might help me (and others?) the next time.
http://img341.imageshack.us/img341/1005/uwtempo.png
He has a wasteland in grave, 2 knights exiled (2x stp), and as you see I'm starting my turn.. What to do?
(more questions about the gamestate --> message please, Ill edit them in the post so it wont be a spam-mess)
I can think of two plans:Quote:
Originally Posted by Moonlight
1) I'd keep one Mother of Runes and the Wayfarer, then plan on activating Wayfarer sometime during your opponent's next turn (postcombat?) to get rid of the Tabernacle. Keep Mom around to chump/activate and save some life.
2) Keep only the Wayfarer. Brainstorm, put back some chaff, then Wayfarer.
I'd sac the wayfarer for a land (probably Tundra). It's not going to do a whole lot more than that. You'll take three a turn for a bit, but he's really overextended on guys and Tabernacle is hurting him as much as it's hurting you, and then once you get a Jitte up you can start to dominate.
You don't want to play more creatures, though, and there's no way you'll get through 26 life by trying any type of offensive play. You have to play defensively through Umezawa's Jitte, stabilize the board, then win much later.
EDIT: I just suggested exactly the opposite of what Jaynel did.
Whatever, you don't want to sac the Moms. Yes, you have more in hand, but you're going to win the long game with your double wall costing him additional mana and preventing him from attacking ftw. If you sac one or both moms, you start taking 6+ damage per turn. If you keep both the Moms up, you'll hopefully be able to Brainstorm into more lands, hold the fort with the two moms and then start Jitte walling up with 12+ life left, forcing him to do something.
By default, you shouldn't put yourself into a losing board position, esp without any Swords to Plowshares.
EDIT: Moonlight: What did you do and how did it work out?
Thanks for the thoughts, I waited a few more turns, and that lost me the match. I should have followed my own plan, but I went to the defence and answer plan...
Learning through failing lol :P
Maybe my opponent is reading this, and wants to share his thoughts about playing against UWTempo.. He was quite skilled so I guess he is visiting the source from time to time..
Im not playing SFM yet btw, cant find a decent patch.. Any suggestions?
MTG Salvation has a text file you can download for this purpose. Download the text file, delete the headings, then install it under Tools --> Analyze/Add/Remove Sets.
Thanks a lot, got WWK in MWS now :)
What I did in the situation:
I drew a wasteland, dropped it and waited 2 turns where we both did nothing special. He dropped another noble, and another one.
Next upkeep I make a major mistake by paying the tabernacle with waste/tundra/plains. Being unable to waste in his turn. My upkeep I wasted the tabernacle, but forgot that I still had to pay the cost (was tired, 1:30am). So ended up tapped out.
In his turn he duble wasted my tundra's through Knight, and I ended up pretty screwed. Should have thought about that!
Stayed in the game for a while, but never got hold of it again. Jitte got owned by a pridemage and Worm Harvest ended the game.
I might have missed something, but it went something like that.
Yeah, considering he's not playing Gaea's Cradle and not playing Maze of Ith. For both conditions, you are wrong. It also plays 4*Qasali, even if it's not clear he will find them.Quote:
Originally Posted by Forbiddian
The deck also plays 3* Elspeth to fly over Moms and sometimes recursive Engineered Explosives.Quote:
Whatever, you don't want to sac the Moms. Yes, you have more in hand, but you're going to win the long game with your double wall costing him additional mana and preventing him from attacking ftw. If you sac one or both moms, you start taking 6+ damage per turn. If you keep both the Moms up, you'll hopefully be able to Brainstorm into more lands, hold the fort with the two moms and then start Jitte walling up with 12+ life left, forcing him to do something.
See there for more information about the deck: http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/s...6138-Bant-Loam
For what it's worth, I'd play it like this : lose 1 Mom to tutor Wasteland and play it. Use Mom to block 1 attacker. Waste Tabernacle at the end of opponent's turn. And try to find STP for Knight as soon as you can. Then, play Jotun Grunt to prevent Life From The Loam and overextend from there with wastelands for Maze and Jitte for WinCon.
This deck is nuts!
I tried it out at MSW since I don't own any Tundras, and I really love it. Wayfarer just destroys Thresh & Counterbalance, and Mom is awesome.
Now I only need some Tundras :tongue:
With the growing popularity of this deck, I think this question is becoming relevant:
How do you play the mirror match? Is Aura of Silence sided in to win the Jitte war?
I'd think you'd bring in aura to combat both vial and jitte. I'm not quite sure what you'd want to pull though. Maybe Forbiddian or pi4meterftw have some insight here.
I just got completely wrecked by a metalworker Stax deck. Like, annihilated. Chalice at 1 is a real beating, and Trinisphere is really bombtastic against a deck with 17 lands. The one game I managed to drop a vial (we played 4 games), it died to powder keg two turns later. Sideboarding didn't really help either... I brought in the two tutors, the auras, and the wheel, but it took so long to get up to three mana that I could never actually play the aura. Even with three lands out, Rishadan Port + Lodestone Golem kept me stumbling. I don't think he ever actually had to drop Smokestack on me, it was just so easy for him to lock me out.
So yeah, matchup from hell. Thoughts?
I don't think this matchup is actually a problem; it's hard for UW to have truly problematic matchups. I think our worst conceivable matchup is bounded below by like 35-40%.Quote:
Originally Posted by Sevryn
Perhaps it's ironic that against stax players, it's often best to lock them out.
As for the mirror match, I typically do no boarding. It's obvious that auras are on top of the list in the sideboard, and that they are the only cards that *might* come in. So let's see if they actually do come in.
All of the creatures and lands are much better than aura, as is jitte, vial, and (possibly) all the countermagic, swords, brainstorm. Perhaps the only justifiable cut is FOW. But I wouldn't actually make that change.
Haven't played vs. Lodestone Golem in Stax. I'm speaking mainly from experience against Dragon Stompy for statistics data, which I played a TON of games against (and about 10 just recently), although I've also played against Stax pre-WWK a lot of games. DS is about a 40% matchup from the draw and about a 70% matchup from the play. I guess: Win the die roll?
Just as an observation: people often bitch about 3sphere or Chalice @ 1, pretty much regardless of their deck, but since I play UW Tempo, I mainly hear people saying that UW Tempo scoops to Chalice/3sphere. Yet I've never seen someone with > 10 games against Chalice decks even think that Chalice is a big factor against a deck with so many outs and so much countermagic.
Maybe players pick up some skill, such as mulliganning a hand with 1 land and 6 1cc spells. Maybe players just come to an understanding that Chalice happens. Maybe a little of both.
Yes, SOMETIMES your opponent will be on the play and SOMETIMES you don't have force of will and SOMETIMES you don't have good two drops and SOMETIMES your opponent will have all the parts (some assembly required) to actually cast turn 1 Chalice @ 1 or turn 1 3sphere (Turn 1 Chalice @ 1 only happens like 30% of the time and 3sphere only happens like 10% of the time. And it's only really life-threatening if you're on the draw). Those times, you'll probably lose (although if you're on the draw, you should mulligan pretty aggressively to dodge hands that can get blown out by Chalice @ 1).
It sucks that it happened to you four times in a row (I guess?), but that's extremely unlucky, and I haven't seen any Chalice deck that I would nearly consider to be a "nightmare" matchup.
Sorry if Stax really got a revamping after WWK. It seems like Lodestone Golem is nice, so maybe Stax is now a problematic matchup, but I'm just lumping your four games of data together with the other people who played one or two games against Chalice decks, boarded/mulliganned incorrectly, got a bit of bad luck and then came here to talk about woe is everyone for the night is upon us. If you do the math, Chal1 and 3sphere don't happen that often, but your testing seemed to indicate that he was nailing you turn 1 with that shit every game.
It was a huge mistake to board in Enlightened Tutor and Wheel of Sun and Moon. Aura I'd board in for Mom/Swords, but like Jeff said even Aura's not incredibly obvious as an include, there's no way that Enlightened "I get owned by 3sphere/chalice and even at my best I make aura cost 1WWW and come down as card disadvantage" Tutor should get brought in.
Anyway, to make you feel better: Just as often as Turn 1 Chalice happens, this happens:
Game 1: You cast a turn 1 Wayfarer. He debates whether or not to play a second land or simply wait for death quietly. He decides to play a land. He loses.
Game 2: You force of will the turn 1 drop that he had to mulligan for. You play Aether Vial. He casts lock elements to stop you from casting spells you weren't going to bother casting anyway. You ramp vial and beat him down. GG.
I'd say they're a lot more afraid of turn 1 Wayfarer than we are of Chalice @ 1, and we have Force of Will to break the symmetry.
I don't bring in Aura. It could never kill a Vial without your opponent gaining the complete wayfarer advantage. It can kill Jitte, but that only helps if you're losing the Jitte aspect (i.e. your opponent has a Jitte and you don't). If you have a Jitte and he doesn't, then his Jitte will still kill your Jitte, so Aura just makes Jitte cost more (but you paid 1WW for the Aura, so nice advantage there, buddy).Quote:
Originally Posted by stuckpixel
And then it's basically worse than every other card in the deck. I mean, what would you cut for it? Then ask yourself if that's smart.
The matchup is like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQ1j8sXtMqI
The player who's reacting has an advantage. UW Tempo is so good on defense and so fast to drop answers that generally you need a huge tempo gap in order to take the lead and keep it. A lead bigger than Theo Bos had.
We played the matchup somewhat recently (pre WWK, but after adding Knights), Jeff went 5-0, absolutely blowing me out no matter what I drew. Then I changed my strategy and went 4-1 (the only loss coming when I got cold feet and reverted to my old playstyle -- which seemed to be the tactically correct decision, but didn't follow the gameplan). Then Jeff changed his strategy and now we just about split (with Jeff taking a bit more because he's a better player in general), but the strategies we use now are very fun and complex. In this matchup, the decks are so good on defense that you can very rarely go on offense the whole time and just glide to victory, even if you have an aggressive hand and your opponent has a slow hand.
I think that makes the mirror match really interesting. There are always a few very interesting tactical and strategic decisions that go into it.
I doubt the mirror will become that prevalent, but if it does, there's always MD SoLS.
I believe there has been a misunderstanding. My last post claimed that I would not bring aura for the mirror. I would mist definitely bring it for stax, as we have 4 swords, and creatures that want to come out. I'd recommend the following change, not because the aura cards are great, because the cards coming out are bad.
-4 mom, -2 swords
+1 grunt
+3 aura
+2 ET
If you some how have gathered that your opponent certainly does not play magus of the tabernacle or exalted angel, or lodestone golem, etc, then you might switch some moms back in for more swords. If you gather your opponent is playing 2 or 3 creatures (at multiple copies each, say lodestone, metalworker, magus) then you keep all 4 swords, board out 4 mom, and don't bring in ET.
That's what I learned the hard way yesterday, getting beaten up by Aggro Loam (and Chalice of the Void with once counter on first and second turn both games) quite thoroughly. It seems absolutely imperative to prepare to stop chalice from happening.Quote:
Originally Posted by Forbiddian
I went 2-2 yesterday, winning against 43 Lands and UB Reanimator (both fully fledged, proven lists) with ease, and losing to Trisomy 21 (due to gross playing mistakes on my side) and Aggro Loam (mainly due to keeping suboptimal hands). One thing I took with me from yesterday: don't be shy to (soft-)counter Loam if it helps stalling your opponent. Jotun Grunt (I'm running 3 mainboard now; I think it really pays off in my meta) will probably come around at some point and fix the problem for you.
Just checking in - went 4-0 (8-1 in games) and took 1st yesterday at my LGS. I did have some favorable pairings though (Type 2 Allies, B/W Pestilence in the first two rounds). I'll try to post a bit more detail later today. The two 'real' legacy decks I faced off against were G/B/W Mid-Range and U/B Reanimator Hulk.
I'll try to post a bit more about these two matchups later today, as my first two were pretty much complete blowouts as you'd expect. Only game dropped was in the last round, when I didn't have the counter for his reanimation spell (was also G1 before board hate came in).
[EDIT]
Bah, just typed out a whole tourney report - got logged out before I finished it. Logged back in.. thought I had it in my clipboard, guess I didn't. I'll write it up again tomorrow. Gotta get some sleep now. =P
[RE-EDIT]
Alright, lets try this tournament report again.
|| Round 1 v Bant Allies (Type 2) ||
I win the roll - playing. I keep a sketchy one lander (one plains - largely because my opp told me he was playing a T2 deck before we started). Thankfully, he kept a one lander as well. We both stall out at 1 for a few turns. He drops a freeblade, which meets my swords. He drops a 2nd freeblade, and then I finally draw into a blue source, and start building up board position. If memory serves, he doesn't play another dude before my serra avenger beats his face in.
Game 2, on the play (no boarding). We both keep our opening 7. I'm able to get an early wayfarer and keep him off green mana. He more or less mana floods, but after triple waste, he can't get more than one green source in play (pretty sure he had a turntimber or two in his hand). I take control of the board and beat down.
1-0 (2-0 games)
|| Round 2 v B/W Pestilence ||
Same fella I played last week. Same deck, with a few new (read: slightly less terrible than last week) additions. He's a nice enough dude, but his deck really isn't up to snuff. I won't bore you with the details - but lets just say jitte destroyed him.
2-0 (4-0 games)
|| Round 3 v G/B/W Aggro ||
I win the roll and play. I drop vial, followed an early wayfarer. He drops g/b/w lands, so I think he's eva early on. I get my wayfarer churning, waste two his lands before my wayfarer meets a putrefy. I vial out a Serra Avenger. It's a very good back and forth game, he ends up going through all four of his copies of putrefy. I've got him down to 3 life at this point, so at his EoT I vial out a Grunt. Next turn swing for the win with mom backup.. except I forgot to pay his upkeep. Ugh. Into the yard he goes, I have mom protect another dork and swing through for 1. He scoops it up next turn - he could have bought another turn by dropping another blocker but I think he realized where the game was headed.
Game two, on the draw. He fetches into basics for his first two turns. I again drop an early wayfarer. His third land is a beta scrubland - which gets wasted pretty quickly. He then proceeds to not draw another land the entire match. By the end of the game, he has four copies of nimble mongoose in play - but no threshold. I have a few dorks and a serra avenger flying over the top. She gets there, as usual.
3-0 (6-0 games)
|| Round 4 v U/B Reanimator Hulk combo ||
I lose the roll - on the draw. He plays some lands - I waste one of them. He tries for an entomb, and foolishly I counter. A few turns later he sticks another entomb, and then follows it up with a sarcomancy - I don't have a counter in hand for it, so he combos out (overly intricate, but it results in a body double + reveillark + mogg fanatic win (w/a sac outlet)
Game two - on the play - I side in two crypts, one relic, one tutor and one grunt. I drop my moms and something else. Early game is spent dancing around wayfarer. I get a few successful wastes out of him. Mid-game I stick a tormod's crypt. He tutors up for a k-grip, but doesn't have the mana to cast it. I stick a second crypt the next turn. I keep the pressure on with a couple dorks, and drop a fathom seer next turn. I start drawing into a bunch of counter magic, and he rolls over to the damage.
Game three - on the draw - same board - Early wayfarer again. He fetches into basics. I turn two Stoneforge Mystic, he has the cabal therapy for my freshly fetched jitte. I still tutor out two wastelands to keep in reserve. Use a little counter magic to stop his brainstorm early. Stick a relic. He decides to sell out a bit - drops a fetch and cracks another already in play, fetches two duals. Uses the mana for something (must not have been that relevant), and I double waste him. Dies to creature damage again.
4-0 (8-1 games)
1st place out of 16 players. Small tourney, but I feel pretty happy with the result.
Another weekly report from me. Played a small friday tourney.
Round1. LEDless Ichorid.
Game1. He mulls to 2 and concedes.
Game1. He mulls to 5, only gets a land on 3rd or 4th turn, where as I kept a solid 7 with grunt, vial and double daze.
Round2. ANT
Game1. He's mana screwed, I apply the beats, he tries to go off wth IGG on 6 life, but I FoW
Game2. I manage to tutor for Canonist and quickly apply the beats and some Wastelands. Daze stops his attempt to bounce the Canonist.
Round3. BGWSA with Stoneforge Mystics
Game1. He starts with forest -> birds, I start with Vial. When I'm forced to FoW his Stoneforge Mystic, because that would just rape me. I topdeck Stoneforge Mystic. Frowntown. Fetch jitte, but he casts survival, which I can't counter, I try to apply some beats with Jotun Grunt and jitte, but he's careful enough to not lose the Squee, and then just overwhelms with card advantage. I topdeck some lands and that's it.
Game2. We play wars of attrition, Swordsing each other creatures, making exchanges, and me countering his stuff. I manage to chain two Fathom Seers, and right when I get some beaters, he topdecks his 2nd Survival, and it just repeats game1. I've gone through 35 cards of my library, no gravehate whatsoever.
Round4. Goblins.
Game1. I start with vial, he starts with wasteland -> vial. I waste his wasteland, and drop Mother of Runes, when stoneforge mystic, jitte and Serra Avenger. He concedes.
Game2. He goes Mountain -> lackey, I cast BFT. He casts goblin edict on me. Bah. I prevent the damage. Next turn I drop vial and Mom. He cycles incenerator on my mom. Lackey connects, bringing Warchief. I then drop Mystic for Jitte. On his turn he gets another Lackey and Warchief, and apparently that's all he has. Next turn I drop jitte, surprise block with Serra Avenger, equip. swing, etc. He chains 2 Ringleaders, but my Jitte just rapes his creatures.