Well, good and bad. Timur is in top 8 with shardless BUG, make that top 4?Quote:
Originally Posted by Arianrhod
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Well, good and bad. Timur is in top 8 with shardless BUG, make that top 4?Quote:
Originally Posted by Arianrhod
Even with Thrun and the Garruk I still think that the list does not have enough finishers and/or value cards. It will be very hard for you to beat UW Jace decks, Shardless and often even Jund. You just lose to these decks if all you do is trade 1 for 1. You need to get some sort of engine going to keep up with the card advantage they produce.Quote:
Originally Posted by SevenInTheQueue
If you want to continue the Burning Wish without Valkut approach I think this has to be fixed. I think that Punishing Fire and Burning Wish are not mutually exclusive and more Planeswalkers could be an option, too.
For the "big game ending sorcery", there is nothing except Scapeshift so you'd have to get creative. Maybe a Natural Order with a 1-off Terastodon could work.
Since he's in red already adding a Kessig Wolf Run might be a possibility. He already runs Primeval to fetch it. And Wolf Running a Thrun is pretty good methinks.
I tried the "Wish for NO for dude" plan in Scapewish about a year or so ago, and it was absolutely atrocious. I don't think that much has changed, and I can't imagine it's any better now than it was then.Quote:
Originally Posted by Tao
Left my notes at home accidentally because I'm running on 4 hours of sleep -- I'll pick them up over lunch and then write my summary this afternoon.
Also, sidenote: via that top 64, I will now have 14 SCG points, which means that all I need to do is show up to another SCG Open and I'm automatically Q'd for the Invitational in Indy in October.
The fox is about to be let loose in the henhouse.
"How many Shardless BUG decks is that %? OKAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY"
Why don't people run grave titan anymore? That should ruin basically anyone's day still
It's still in Arianrhod's Archangel list is it not? since I copied that list I run it... because I'm lazy.
During testin it's awesome most of the time... sometimes it's kinda meh.
It is for the moment, but I'm probably cutting it. I can't come up with a good reason to run any non-Primeval/non-Sun Titan 6-drop. Angel of Despair is fine out of the board as a hate option for Show and Tell, kind of, but meh. Sigarda wins games much more often than Grave Titan does -- as does Thragtusk (especially if you can get Recurring Thrags). He's still "okay," but he just isn't worth the slot anymore IMO.Quote:
Originally Posted by XdeckX
Kevin, I'm looking forward to ripping all these Shardless decks a new asshole in Indy with you! Get Q'd!
Also, Qweerios, while I don't personally like the look of your new version, I do think Kessin Wolf Run is worth a slot in there. That one card dramatically increases your threat density and gives you a mana sink that it looks like you need.
Oh, you're Q'd as well? Excellent. I'm actually locked at 14 points -- barring an act of god I'm going to be in Philly on the 7-8th, so at absolute worst case I'll get my final point there.Quote:
Originally Posted by HoneyT
We'll definitely need to swap notes on the standard portion. I haven't really started brewing for post-rotation at all (I'm on Jedi atm just for like derpFNM and such) -- waiting for Theros spoilers to see what I've got to work with. My two starting points at the moment are that I either want to do something with Plasm Capture, because I feel that card is grossly underrated, or a junk deck with Shadowborn Demon + Unflinching Courage (and then Xathrid Necro and Voice to feed the demon. maybe some Thunes while we're at it).
Yeah I never got a chance to use my invite from my KC T8. So I'm using it in Indy.Quote:
Originally Posted by Arianrhod
I haven't been playing standard at all lately so I'm also waiting for spoilers before I start brewing heavily. We'll for sure have to meet up and compare notes. I do love me some Shadowborn Demon.
Alright, so Baltimore. Got up at 5:30am, went and picked up the +2, and we're underway. The trip down was pretty uneventful. The day before, I'd worked out my list after scrubbing out of a vintage event after unlocking the achievement of not keeping an opening 7 the entire day. I decided that I wanted to make a few changes:
Maindeck:
-1 Colossus
-1 Scapeshift (back to 2 main)
+2 Garruk, Primal Hunter
Sideboard:
-1 Red Elemental Blast
-1 Slaughter Games
+2 Rakdos's Return
These changes are a little questionable, so let me give some perspective.
Going into the event, I was expecting a heavy Shardless, Jund, Storm metagame, with compliments of Elves, Show and Tell, Miracles, Stoneblade, Deathblade, and a variety of other assorted fair decks. With that in mind, I decided to pull the trigger on Colossus. Colossus was excellent when the metagame was more based around black removal, and when Liliana of the Veil was less prevalent. Now that the meta has shifted to be once again more Liliana/StP-centric, Colossus isn't as good. 1 maindeck slot is generally useless unless I'm adding a Green Sun bullet, so I opted to play around with the traditional second flex spot in the list as well, by trimming back down to 2 maindeck Scapeshifts. More on my thoughts on this in the summary at the end.
As for the sideboard, Red Elemental Blast's stock is way down right now. I actually considered not running any copies, but I decided that I wanted to have at least 2 to board in the event of running into an errant Show and Tell deck. Yes, you -can- board it in vs Shardless, Miracles, Stoneblade, and so on, but you're usually better off not even bothering. To make room for REB, you often need to cut cards that are inherent 2-for-1s, and you don't want to be trying to 1-for-1 any of those decks, because they win that fight. REB is also almost useless against Storm. It can hit cantrips, sure, but that isn't usually good enough. Since I knew I wanted to be boarding some kind of alternative combo hate, I made the decision to trim one Slaughter Games. High Tide is awful right now (although the masters are still doing well with it, obviously), Show and Tell decks are all mono-Leyline of Sanctity, and 2 copies is usually enough to deal with annoyances like RIP/Helm, Natural Order, and other such cards.
Now, what to put in? I decided that the best option would be some kind of massive hand destruction. While this still has the problem of Leyline of Sanctity, I'm more okay with accepting Show and Tell as a loss, and I still have the BW->Reverent Silence plan. Since we don't have access to Mind Twist, Rakdos's Return is about as good as we're gonna get. It can off planeswalkers while Twisting your opponent. I had some minor qualms about experimenting with it because I was concerned that I wouldn't be able to get up the mana for a big Return early enough for it to matter, but, again, more on my thoughts on Return at the end.
IIRC, there were ~280-290 players, so, not too bad. Nothing earthshattering, but a good turnout.
Round 1: Chris Van Meter - Tezzereter
I obviously recognize the name as soon as I see it on the pairings board. The only question running through my head as I go to my seat is whether CVM is back on Tezz, or if he's on Deathblade, or if he's on OmniTell or MUD. In the first event, we're going to have a match. In the second, I auto-win. In the third, he auto-wins. We exchange some pleasantries, and he leads off t1 City of Traitors -> Chalice@1.
This doesn't fully answer my question, but my gut is telling me that he's on Tezz. My opening-hand Explorer is locked out, but that's fine. He confirms Tezz on t2, as he makes a turn 2 Jace and fateseals himself. At this point all he'd seen out of me was a basic mountain, so I'm assuming that he was concerned for the health of his Jace and wanted to bulk him up a bit. We go back and forth a bit, I do some ramp, he makes a Tezzeret and does some digging, Brainstorms with Jace some, etc. I attempt to play Deed on t4-t5, which gets immediately met with a Force pitching Force. Considering that his board was 1 land, some mana rocks, and two planeswalkers, I don't blame him. Unfortunately for him, this leaves him wide open. I Wish for Pulse, Pulse the Chalice, play Explorer, flashback a Therapy on him (which I'd played into the Chalice earlier), and he feels the fury of the mountains.
Game 2 I mull to 5 and he lands a t2 Lodestone Golem followed by a rapid Thopter/Sword assembly. I die summarily without doing much of anything.
Game 3 I mull to 6 and keep the following hand: Explorer, Explorer, Therapy, Deed, Wish, Forest. I should note that my decision to keep this hand was guided by that he boarded out 4 cards between g2 and g3, which I strongly suspected were Chalice of the Voids (since Chalice@1 doesn't do as much when on the draw, and CVM obv. knows this). If I hit a black source, this hand goes stupidly crazy -- he loses his hand, I land a Deed, have a pile of lands, and can threaten Scapeshift.
Naturally, I don't draw a black source. Or any other land, for that matter, except for a solitary Valakut. I eventually go on the Wish -> Pyroclasm plan, but Pyroclasm gets met with a Force. I get him down to 7 with just Veteran Explorer beatdown, though, which was amusing to me.
I made two mistakes this round. The first was that I didn't mull to 5 in g3. I certainly didn't want to mull to 5 again, and the lure of that 6er is very strong, but I'm pretty sure it was a mistake not to pitch it. The second was that on the last turn of my life, I didn't poke his Tezzeret with my Explorers, knocking him off of the ability to fire off a lethal ultimate. It wouldn't have mattered, as I looked post-game and my nearest land was like 5 cards down, and I would've been dead by then.
CVM expressed after the game that he felt I made a third mistake, too, which is that instead of playing the Valakut, I should've held it in my hand and opted to discard the Therapy the next turn. I'm less sure about this -- there are any number of things that I could draw that having the 2nd land would matter for, but I dunno. It may well have been a better line -- although the best line would have been not being in the position in the first place.
I'm pretty annoyed after this round, both because I screwed up twice (potentially three times), against a positive (though challenging) matchup, and after having mulled to 5 once...and should have been twice. Normally this wouldn't bother me quite so bad, but I'd just come off of a day of mulliganing, and I was annoyed by that.
Round 2: Mike with R/W Goblins
I don't have a ton of notes from this, but poor Mike didn't really have much that he could say about me. I let him overcommit g1 and Pyro'd him, then untapped and Scapeshifted. Game two I mulled to 6, and he got me to a whopping 16 before I Scaped him from 20.
Round 3: Tommy with RUG Delver
God writing this is painful (though not as painful as something coming later).
So I start off with an auspicious mull to 4. My 4 is double dual, Top, and Huntmaster. I lead with Top (obviously). He leads off with a Trop+Delver. I spin my Top and don't find anything exciting. His Delver flips off a Daze, and he Wastes me. Two more Dazes, a Force, and another Wasteland later, a Goyf joins the Delver and finishes me off.
Game 2 I mull to 6, and my deck works considerably better. My notes show me dropping to 5, and then him dying at 17. His only pressure for most of the game was a Mongoose, but he had 3 Stifles and a wall of countermagic. That won't stop me by itself though.
Game 3 I mull to 5 (...), and after a lot of back and forth manage to stick a Deed and kill his board, stabilizing at 2 life. Thragtusk is the next card down (via Top). He topdecks a Bolt.
Round 4: Matt with Burn
Arid Mesa -> Mountain -> Suspend Rift Bolt, huh. Sure. I do the thing that I do, he fires off a volley of burn spells, I play some Huntmasters. I win the game at 1 life after he draws a land. /heartpounding
Game two he keeps a 2-lander with Goblin Guide into triple Chain Lightning into double Price. Unfortunately, I had a slower hand that was looking to build into a Thrag, so that's sufficiently effective. WTB Therapy.
Game three I mull to five (SERIOUSLY). I equalize the mulligan, though, by Rakdos Returning him for 3, wiping out his hand and putting him in topdeck mode. He has a pair of Grim Lavamancers, but I have a Deed in my hand. He gets me to 3 before dying to angry mountains.
So sick of mulling to 5. But wait -- we're not done yet!
Round 5: Andrew with Affinity (who top 16'ing, incidentally)
This is quite possibly the most miserable loss ever. I didn't know what Andrew was on, but I knew that I had skin in the game because he had beaten my friend Nick Patnode earlier in the day. He leads off game one with a couple of Memnites and a Signal Pest. A turn or two later there's a Pernicious Deed, and he's crestfallen to learn that it also kills his artifact lands. GG.
Game two I mull to 5. He has double Cranial Plating. You can guess what happens. Of painful note: I ALMOST kept my 7, which was 6 lands + Burning Wish. While it wouldn't have been fast enough on its own, I looked at the top card as I was mulling and saw it was Veteran Explorer, which would've been sped me up to the point where I could've landed a devastating Pyroclasm and been fine. Still a good mull decision IMO, but it's always shitty that it would've worked out alright.
Game three I mull to 5. I wish I was kidding. I also punt REALLY bad here, as I don't Wish for Pyro because I want him to overcommit, which he won't do if he knows that the Pyro is coming. He then proceeds to draw and slam down Ethersworn Canonist of all fucking things, and kills me 1 turn later via a Cranial Plating.
Oh, and except for that first one in game one, I never saw another Deed this match. qq.
I'm still in contention for top 64 -- not really what I wanted, nor where I feel that I should be on the day given my matchups, but meh. I'm in a pretty dark place mentally at this point. I totalled up my mulligans to this point:
hands I've kept of:
7: 6
6: 4 (should've been 3)
5: 4 (should've been 5)
4: 1
Out of 14 games, I mulled 9 of them, and almost half of my games were mulls to 5 or lower.
Round 6: Tim with Jund
Tim's a friend of mine that I've played at a couple of these now -- he's a really friendly Irish guy, and we get along great and always have good games. To be honest, I think that Tim's the reason that I actually ended up top 64ing on the day -- our match really lifted my spirits and let me actually have fun for the first time all day.
Game one he double-Wastes me, but I have a Veteran out that he's unwilling to attack into. Coupled with Top, I'm able to keep making land drops, and although he has a Bob going most of the game, he doesn't hit a Liliana until it's too late, and the mountains go wild.
Game two I actually land Garruk, Primal Hunter after having been boarding him out all day due to the wrong matchups for him. Garruk single-handedly locks the game down. I don't think I needed to do anything else (although I did) -- I could've just let Garruk literally win the game by himself.
Oh, and you know what's even sweeter? I didn't fucking mull this match. Maybe my deck is pulling its head out of its ass finally.
Round 7: Chris with Shardless BUG
My opponent leads off with a Delta->Sea and I panic. Then next turn he plays a Bayou and I just smile viciously.
OM NOM NOM
He draws a bunch of irrelevant cards, is forced to Force a Deed, and then dies to mountains.
Game two was a weird one where I actually just straight up killed him with Primeval Titan. These games used to be more common (the old standard Valakut interaction of fetching mountains with Titan on swing), but somewhere along the way Titan stopped killing people as often. Anyway, he dies summarily without even dealing me one point of damage.
I like Shardless. More people should play it =D
Round 8: Arturo with Meathooks
As Arturo sits down and unfolds his playmat, I notice that he's got a couple of top 8 pins on his mat, including two SCG pins and a couple of PTQs. I mentally put him on Shardless or Blade and settle in for another bye.
So when he leads off Flooded Strand, fetch Tropical Island, play Aether Vial, I'm completely confused. Now, I've played a Cabal Therapy deck for 2.5 years now, religiously. I'm a student of the format and I've played almost everything there is to play at my local at various points. When I don't recognize an opening, something really weird is going on.
I just drop my Explorer and pass back, although I have a Therapy in my hand -- I don't want to fire it off until I see what he Vials in, because that might give me some guidance. My gut was thinking that he was U/W Tempo splashing green for something, but I wanted to be sure.
On his turn, he plays Cavern naming Sliver, drops Crystalline, and Vials in Galerider.
Okayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy.
Well I end up doing some ramp things. I call Predatory Sliver on the Therapy and brick, seeing a hand of Sinew, Vial, and Standstill. I flashback for the Standstill, and pass back. He vials in the Sinew and punches me for 5. I do more rampy things. He draws a Predatory and vials it in before damage, putting me to 5. I don't find a Deed with my Top, and my in-hand Wish does nothing useful. I look mournfully at my board of Wood Elves and Huntmasters that can't chump block because of Galerider, and scoop 'em up.
Game two I lead off with a Vet. He drops a Wasteland and a Vial. I go with a Therapy on Galerider, because I am not putting up with that shit again. He has double Crystal, Phantasmal Image, Sinew, and a Waste. I'm forgetting something of the sequencing here, because he ends up Vialing in a Crystalline and Imaging it before I flashback the Therapy. Maybe I led with Therapy and then had to Zenith the Explorer. That would make sense. Anyway, I take the Sinew on flashback, and then play another Therapy for his 2nd Crystalline. He draws triple Wasteland, but can't do much. I Rakdos him for 3, emptying his hand (hitting a Force, but no blue card). Mountains take over.
Game three he doesn't have a Vial, and I rip his hand to shreds with double Therapy + Explorer, curving into a Rakdos for 2 to empty him out, and then the mountains go super saiyan.
Round 9: Aaren with Reanimator
One last round. If I win, I get top 64 for $50 and two points, and some shred of my dignity back from my abysmal start of the day (you'll notice that I haven't been mulling anymore). Naturally I get paired up against someone that I recognize as having played one of my friends earlier in the day with Reanimator. Fucking wonderful.
He leads with a Flooded Strand and passes. I Cabal Therapy him on my turn, hoping that he's cocky and lets it resolve since Reanimator doesn't typically play Flooded Strands. Instead of Force of Wills my Therapy, Entombs Griseldaddy, and untaps into a Reanimate. Welp.
Game two he has a double Careful Study + dudes hand, and can't find a reanimation spell. I Burning Wish -> Reanimate targeting his Griselbrand. BAHAHAHAHHAHAHAH
Unfortunately, he has a Angel of Despair in his graveyard, and he rips an Animate Dead to ruin my fun. I opt not to draw cards, and untap into a Huntmaster. He ships it back when he realizes that even with me at 14, he loses the race to Huntmaster. We have this kind of awkward draw/land/go phase for a while, until I have enough lands in play to Rakdos him for all of the things. He discards two more creatures and a land. I then Slaughter Games his Reanimates, leaving him with exactly 1 Griselbrand + Show and Tell, 1 Animate Dead, and 1 Exhume left in deck as outs. He doesn't get there before I draw more Huntmasters and swarm him down.
Game three I'm now terrified because he's on the play and ahhhhhhhhhhh. Luckily the shoe is FINALLY on the other foot for once, and he mulls to 5. My opening hand contains Explorer, Bayou, Tower, and both Rakdos Returns. He has some cantrips but no business. I Tower it up and attempt to Return for 3 on turn two, which get Forces pitching Force. I grin savagely, and proceed to Rakdos him for 4 the next turn, which puts him on empty. I then Scapeshift the next turn, and that's all she wrote.
TAKE THAT, FUCKING REANIMATOR.
----------------------------------------------------
So, yeah. Thoughts'n'stuff.
Primal Hunter was ass. Admittedly, I only played against two matchups where I actually wanted him / didn't board him out (Jund and Shardless). I don't even need him vs Shardless. Still, though, he just never felt that great to me, and half the time when I drew him I just wanted something else. Anything else.
Rakdos's Return was the nut high. My concerns about it not being powerful enough were abated, because by the time you have 3RB mana, they'll conveniently have 3 cards left in hand. Funny how that works. The direct damage is never really dead, it's a hell of a way to undo an Ancestral Vision, it can off planeswalkers, and if combo has a slow hand, it's absolutely backbreaking for them. It also have nice synergy with Huntmaster (lol, thanks standard) because sometimes you empty and they just draw a land, which lets you flip Huntmaster on their turn, then back on yours, and so on.
I never missed Chameleon once on the day. I did kind of sort of miss the 3rd Scapeshift, but at the same time, I didn't really seem to need it. I mostly wanted it around to push the kill through a Force of Will when I didn't have a Therapy, and Rakdos's Return serves that function just as well.
I only boarded in the REBs once (against Reanimator, for Show and Tell). I also only boarded in the Slaughter Games against Tezz and Reanimator, and generally found one when I wanted to.
Thoughts for going forward:
I'm going to test putting the 2 Rakdos's Returns maindeck. I didn't board them in every round or anything, but I think that if they were maindeck, I would probably not board them out much, either. The fact that it's online vs both fair decks and combo decks is astonishingly relevant.
I'm also going to test dropping the REBs entirely, and use the 2 REBs slots + the 2 open slots for more dedicated combo hate. I haven't figured out what this will be yet - might be additional discard, or like discard + surgicals, or something. But I'm pretty sure that Scapewish is well-enough positioned against the blue decks right now that REB is actually just a crutch. If you're in a high OmniTell meta then it's a different story, but for your average event, I don't think that they're even worth bothering with right now.
I'm planning on going with a couple of friends that have queued by top 8'ing or winning.Quote:
Originally Posted by Arianrhod
I need 6 more points by then to Q. I got Milwaukee 2 weeks before and a couple of local IQ's (lousy standard).
That was a friend of mine, Zach Schulz. He started out strong and got asked about a deck tech but most of his rounds went to time. I'll try and get him to post his experiences, but he mostly just lurks. His list was roughly based on Tao's he mentioned and then he customized it for cards he really liked.Quote:
Originally Posted by Megadeus
Hope you guys get Q'd, trying to meet as many people as possible at Indy!
@Tao
You think a PF shell w/ Burning Wish for value is a possibility? Where would you make room for both 4x Punishing Fire and 3x-4x Burning Wish, while still keeping a high threat count?
I qualified for an invitational back in March, but I'm looking to go to the Vegas one in December. Anybody planning on heading there?
PS: Anybody have a good (updated) ScapeWish list I could test out?
Edit: Just threw together this as a list
Creatures (13):
4x Veteran Explorer
1x Eternal Witness
1x Deathrite Shaman
1x Scavenging Ooze
1x Thrun, the Last Troll
2x Huntmaster of the Fels
2x Thragtusk
1x Primeval Titan
Instants/Sorceries (17):
4x Green Sun's Zenith
4x Cabal Therapy
3x Burning Wish
2x Abrupt Decay
4x Punishing Fire
Artifacts/Planeswalkers/Enchantments (7):
3x Pernicious Deed
2x Sensei's Divining Top
1x Garruk, Primal Hunter
1x Garruk Relentless / Liliana of the Veil
Lands (23):
4x Verdant Catacombs
1x Wooded Foothills
3x Bayou
1x Taiga
1x Badlands
1x Bloodstained Mire
4x Grove of the Burnwillows
1x Phyrexian Tower
1x Volrath's Stronghold / Kessig Wolf Run
3x Forest
2x Swamp
1x Mountain
@Tao,
Tsunami is pretty much a "big game-ending sorcery" against Miracle. Slaughter Games can also be one give the right matchup. Sweepers are generally game-ending as well for a lot of decks. I don't think you have to avoid interaction with Nic Fit to close a game. In the end, you always have Thrun to lean on while you keep the board clean.
@Qweerios: The list you posted didn't even have a Thrun.
@SevenInTheQueue:
- Not sure if it would be too much with Fire and Wish. Haven't tested it, just theorycrafting. The list looks like a pretty solid start. But I'd play 4 Burning Wish. If you dedicate 8 SB slots to it, it better be good enough to be a 4-off. Also a 3rd Top. Maybe cut the Ooze and a Decay.
- Look at Arian's last post for good updated Scapewish list. He just top64'ed an SCG with it this sunday.
@Wish target:
- Life from the Loam: I think this should be played. Early on it gives you land drops and shuffle effects for the rest of the game, later it gets you back Value lands that they sniped with Wasteland.
@possible Sorcery Win Conditions. I know these are not the best, just random ideas:
- Rude Awakening: could be some sort of bad proxy for Scapeshift.
- Primal Command: Quite flexible. The life gain would be something other cards can't do.
Another less mana intensive option I always want to run in scapewish but it just isnt as good as scapeshift is Haunting Echoes. Its really a finisher for combo and control. Doesn't do a lot if your in a bad board position.Quote:
Originally Posted by Tao
If I was playing a non-scapeshift burning wish list Id run this for my wish board:
1 Thoughtseize
1 Tsunami
1 Haunting Echos/Rude Awakening
1 Maelstrom pulse
1 Pyroclasm
1 Damnation/perish/virtue's ruin
1 Reanimate
1 Slaughter Games
1 Innocent Blood
6 Non-wish cards
I'd be interested in that guy's Deadeye BUG Pod list if someone has it.
+1Quote:
Originally Posted by Tao
Working on itQuote:
Originally Posted by Tao
EDIT: next post