If you were wishy-washy about picking up recruiters, you may want to move now. I just top 8ed the open with imperial taxes, so they may or may not spike. These things are hard to predict.
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If you were wishy-washy about picking up recruiters, you may want to move now. I just top 8ed the open with imperial taxes, so they may or may not spike. These things are hard to predict.
Congratulations to your finish and good luck in the top 8!Quote:
Originally Posted by hill_giant
What creature configuration did you run?
Too bad they choose to show the SCG player :( we got infect vs shardless bug instead of WR D&T vs Reliquary retreat... which is really less common...Quote:
Originally Posted by hill_giant
SCG... why u do dis. That matchup would have been sweet to watch. But no, we had to watch 2 brainstorm decks.Quote:
Originally Posted by Tylert
Kek! Congrats dude!Quote:
Originally Posted by hill_giant
In g1 I thought retreat cost 4, so I thought I had him locked from casting it with mirran sofi for exactly lethal on the way back. It turns out it costs 3 and I died. G2 I drew a million lands and he killed my sharpshooter and cliqued sfm and just had steady clique double hierarch beats while I drew nothing. If sharpshooter had been demise I would have won easily.
Congrats Hill Giant! It's a bummer that the interesting decks got paired against each other in the t8. Hope you can do a tournament report.
They just put his list online:
http://sales.starcitygames.com//deck...p?DeckID=94120
Did you happen to see the other Imperial Taxes player in d2? Looks like you guys actually made up 2/3 of the d2 D+T players. Not hard to believe with Shardless everywhere.
http://www.starcitygames.com/events/...breakdown.html
Sorry to hear that.Quote:
Originally Posted by hill_giant
Looking forward to an analysis of the deck over the course of the tournament - which cards performed well, which ones not so well and what you would change.
@hill_giant
Congrats!!!
Looking at your deck, four questions (mostly sideboard):
1. How was Goblin Sharpshooter overall vs. a 3rd Sudden Demise?
2. How was Cataclysm? Was it largely for Miracles or did you use it against other decks?
3. How was the 1-of Vryn Wingmare over a 2nd Mirran Crusader or a tech card, like say a Mangara of Corondor?
4. When did you use the 1-of Containment Priest?
A general question for Imperial taxes players:
How do you deal with 3 color decks or other decks that Magus otherwise hoses like Lands, that run R spells? As much as Magus of the Moon hoses them, it also dies to Bolt and Punishing Fire and Forked Bolt.
Everytime I won with Magus was because of either MoR or SOFAI.Quote:
Originally Posted by redtwister
They cannot have it all.
Against lands, timing is key. At GP Lille, I have beaten Lands twice with Magus. Twice with MoR and Twice with SOFAI after they tapped out.
As a matter of fact, if you stick a MoR, Magus can go a very long way...
Mom + Magus or Revoker/RIP + Magus (for DRS decks) is always the ideal, and basically a 2 card game over combo against the 3c decks. But I actually don't mind playing Magus without protection against RUG Delver or Grixis Delver - they only have so many bolt effects, and need to be aggressively using them on Mom, Thalia, SfM anyway. If they can draw into a bolt 5 turns later they've probably already lost so much tempo that it barely matters. I'm okay playing 'make them have it' against decks where we're winning the long game anyway.
Punishing fire decks are a different story. Jund plays a ton of removal but it might be worth to go for it when they're tapped out and make them have not-abrupt-decay, or hope they get greedy and tap out w/ their fire in the yard. (Easier to do if they don't know you're playing red.) After a certain point, if you don't have a Mom online you probably won't have one online so playing towards that isn't great. Jund is still an ugly matchup but a lot of my wins have come from Magus.
Lands, on the other hand, I think is a great matchup if you play carefully. They have to structure their entire game around you not sticking or vialing in a surprise Magus - while also playing around Rest in Peace post-board. This doesn't give them much room to do anything else. So yeah, I agree with Ralf, timing is key here. They're going to have Punishing Fire and they know what they want to hit - play a disruptive/aggressive game w/ Magus as your trump card. My friend started playing Molten Vortex to try and deal with my deck and it's actually pretty good, but not unbeatable either (Recruiter for Revoker/Leonin).
I currently run 1 E-Tutor to save SB slots. Question is: What about a single Blood Moon in the board to complement the MD Magi?
Especially in matches where you also side in RiP, it gives you even more flexibility. It requires them to have another angle of removal aside from creature removal to deal with.
Sword of War and Peace is a house, btw. In the right matches, it is just an extremely fast kill, especially the matches where we want a fast kill. I don't like it main, but I love it in the side. I nearly won two matches at Eternal Extravaganza 3 that I would otherwise simply have lost, and I won another two matches because swinging with a 4/3 or 5/5 that is going to actually do another 5-7 to your opponent for a total or 9-12, while gaining you a little life means 10-15 point life swings. Put it on Mirran Crusader and it is generally GG.
In fact, one game I lost with it equipped to a Revoker as completely my fault and the other game, my Miracles opponent had to Top, fetch, Top, fetch, Top to get lucky and find Wear // Tear, otherwise he was just dead. Without it, I had no chance. It just makes the Miracles match better because you can largely ignore their creatures or force them Terminus on their own Monastery Mentor.
Hi guys, I follow this PRIMER to about 2 years since I started playing legacy, but never felt I had something to acresentar to you so far.
Sorry for my english, I live in Brazil.
I am running the GW version a 2 months and I like it a lot, but after seeing a lot of people talking about the RW version, I stopped to think of a NAYA version (WGR):
Version GW base lands
3 Plains
4 Rishadan Port
2 Savannah
1 Cavern
4 Wasteland
6 Fetch
3 Karakas
Version NAYA base lands
3 Plains
3 Rishadan Port
2 Savannah
2 Plateou
4 Wasteland
6 Fetch
3 Karakas
I still think the Mono White version too strong, however be is to use SPLASH, why not three colors in 75, using no more than two colors on 60?
In my head green SPLASH deck fixes a problem with Gadock, improving the match against elf, and other boring matches as Storm and Miracles.
Already the Splash Red improvement most matches since Legacy is full of dual lands.
What did think about my thoughts?
I will test this list here three days. What did you find?
Creatures (26)
3 Phyrexian Revoker
3 Flickerwisp
4 Mother of Runes
3 Serra Avenger
4 Stoneforge Mystic
1 Vryn Wingmare
4 Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
* 3 Magnus of the Moon
1 Silverblade Paladin (i love this card)
Lands (23)
3 Plains
4 Rishadan Port
2 Savannah
2 Plateau
4 Wasteland
6 Fetch c/ branco
2 Karakas
Spells (11)
4 Aether Vial
1 Sword of Fire and Ice
4 Swords to Plowshares
1 Umezawa's Jitte
1 Batterskull
Sideboard
* 3 Gaddock Teeg
3 Rest in Peace
1 Eidolon
1 Liege
* 1 Qasali
1 Priest
* 1 Krosan Grip
1 Councill
* 1 Sharpshooter
* 2 Sudden Demisse
Figured I might as well write up a report. Some details may be off because this is from memory 2 days later. I'll probably wind up making myself sound like I'm terrible at magic because mistakes and things going badly are way more memorable than correct sequencing and things going well.
List: http://sales.starcitygames.com//deck...p?DeckID=94120
R1: Lands
Game 1 I win the die roll and land an early thalia and revoke his diamond. He casts an early loam for nothing to start dredging and then I waste/port him too low to ever cast it through thalia.
Game 2 he mulls to 5 and explorations some stuff onto the board, but he doesn't have loam to pull ahead and I just flickerwisp my way to victory. No red cards or sideboard cards show up in either game, but it doesn't matter.
1-0
R2: Enchantress
Game 1 I get a little choked on mana because I need to port him aggressively to keep his wild growth effects under control. Thalia slows him down, and I string together some damage and get a sofi down. He hides behind elephant grass, and I get a little excited when I topdeck a land that lets me tap out to make a lethal attack through his grass and steal a game that seemed to have slipped away a few turns earlier, but I forgot that enchantress is actually a creature that can block. Whoops. He uses his turn of me not porting his sanctum to crack sterling grove for DOOMWAKE GIANT, cast it, and trigger it enough times to clear my board. I keep playing stuff, but it keeps dying to doomwake. I try to slow him down enough that he decks, as he's running low on cards and enchantress triggers aren't optional, so he'll have to draw cards if he wants to kill my stuff with doomwake. He's experienced enough to not have gone overboard putting enchantresses into play earlier in the game and to use gsz and fail to find to keep his tiny library from emptying, and he closes with a quarantine field.
Game 2 I land an early mom-protected canonist and he scoops immediately to save time for game 3.
In game 3, he plays turn 2 stony silence to brick my vial and gets an early giant, and by the time my third land for judgment shows up, it's too late.
I talked to him for a while after the match, and he said that he had been struggling mightily against D&T, so he added giant to give himself some blowout potential, which paid off. I didn't draw any STPs in game 1, but giant wasn't outside of sterling grove protection for more than a turn or 2 anyway.
1-1
R3: Cloudpost Mud
Game 1 would probably have been a "Best of SCGLive" video if it had been on camera. He wins the roll and leads off with cloudpost. I immediately waste it. He has a second one, and I sadly don't have the second waste in time. He plays glimmerpost into metalworker, and I draw a second wasteland a turn late to stop cloudpost, but I fire it off immediately to keep it from getting worse. He misses his land drop, but he taps metalworker revealing 3 lodestone golem and platinum angel to cast ugin and kill my mom. I draw an STP one turn too late to stop the ugin, but I can at least stop him from dropping 10 more power on his next turn. I pass and he ugins my face to tick it up to 11. I flickerwisp it to prevent the ultimate, so he ticks up to kill my wisp. I find a vial and play it. He ugins my face and threatens ultimate again, and I'm forced to flickerwisp it again to hold it off (vial not high enough yet). He kills this wisp too, and I'm forced to pass without playing a creature again. He ticks ugin up to 11 for the third time this game, and my life total is starting to become a concern. I vial out a thalia in his end step and she grabs a jitte and punches ugin in the face to once again keep him under 10 loyalty. Throughout this whole process, my opponent still hasn't played any more lands and is discarding giant monsters to hand size. He finally finds some lands as my creatures plus jitte are starting to drop ugin to lower loyalty. He lands a lodestone golem, which dies to jitte counters, and then magus shows up to ruin his day. Sword shows up, which along with jitte creates a very short clock and he dies.
Game 2 I keep a double STP hand, and he has a sol land into double monolith draw to ramp out a fast creature (hellkite I think), which dies. Revoker and magus stop his mana from going too nuts. After the game, he shows me the blightsteel that he was about to cast, but I still had the backup STP.
2-1
R4: Shardless BUG
I don't remember much from game 1 other than my opponent being ridiculously salty after I landed a magus. Apparently he had already played against painter AND dragon stompy already, so he was pretty sick of playing against that card (admittedly, 3 out of 4 rounds is pretty absurd).
Game 2, he has the early decays for vial and mom. I play another vial and a sofi to start to apply some pressure. He maelstrom pulses the equipment. He starts to accumulate some miscellaneous durdles (as shardless does) and I vial out another mom and use it to protect sfm and land batterskull. I play a rip to shut off his deathrite and goyf, so he drops a pernicious deed. I leave up enough mana to bounce batterskull if he goes for 5, so he just clears my creatures/rip and plays shardless hitting goyf. I flickerwisp the batterskull. He attacks with both guys, and after pausing to try to figure out what the hell he's doing, I block the 2/3 goyf with batterskull. He decays his own agent before damage to pump goyf big enough to eat my germ. Uh...OK, I guess. I assume that he must have another removal spell, but I equip the batterskull to wisp, which eats a decay. I roll my eyes and confirm that that was in fact the fourth one, and he apologizes because "I know that's really hard for your deck to beat." My top card is recruiter for magus, and magus picks up battterskull to keep himself out of disfigure range. I consider responding with a variation on his earlier apology, but he's pretty mad already, so I restrain myself and just beat down. He can't believe that he lost after popping a deed.
3-1
R5: RUG Delver
He wins the roll and comes out swinging with double delver. He counters an STP, bolts a blocker out of the way and just gets there before I can start gaining life.
Game 2 I mulligan to 6 and see STP and 5 lands, including waste and port. I'm not excited about going to 5, and guaranteeing no mana issues along with an STP to buy time and a scry to try to find action seems better than the alternative, although I'm not certain if that was correct. I scry a vial to the bottom, and he has a very creature-heavy draw. I plow an early delver and struggle to find action. I draw a jitte, but the only creature I draw just dies. He eventually plays 2 mongooses and 2 goyfs, and I play a mom as a last-ditch chump blocker to try to buy another turn and gain some life off of jitte. He ponders into threshold, finds Rough//Tumble, and comes across for exactly lethal. I flip over my next card, and it was the RIP that I was digging for.
3-2, blech.
R6: RUG Delver
I don't really remember g1, but I won. G2 I mull to 6 on the draw and keep a 1-lander with vial. I scry a spell the bottom, he dazes the vial, and I don't draw another land. Game 3, I come out a little slow and he pulls ahead. I stabilize at 4 life with an uncracked fetch, but although I could use the mana, I have no interest in scooping to the bolt that he is very obviously holding. Stoneforge mystic grabs batterskull, batterskull does its thing, and I pull back ahead and win.
4-2
R7: Infect
I lead off with a karakas, and he sighs and makes a comment about how he had been thinking/hoping that he might be able to dodge D&T at this tournament, since no one seemed to be playing it. He has a hierarch, and I cavern out a thalia. The only infect creatures that he has are nexi, which are very clunky against thalia. He connects for a little poison and fetches all 4 trops instead of his forest even though he's seen a fetch. I draw magus and he snap forces it. I point at my cavern, he confirms that magus is a human, and we move to game 2.
G2 he plays turn 1 elf, I play a vial, and he attacks for 9 on turn 2. Thalia holds his elf back. He follows up with a necropede, and we crash some creatures into each other, which is OK with me. I get a jitte online and he doesn't have an answer.
5-2
R8: Merfolk
Merfolk matches are more or less all the same. Game 1 I land an early sword, revoke our vials, and bury him in card advantage. Game 2, I mulligan into a one land double vial hand, he needles them, and I fail to draw any more lands. Game 3 I land an early sword and bury him in card advantage.
6-2
R9: RUG Delver yet again
We have a brief discussion about how mental fatigue is setting in while we're waiting for the round to start. I know it is for me, as St. Louis was a 360 mile drive from Madison after work the day before, and 9 rounds is a long day. Game 1 he wins the die roll and leads off with turn 1 delver. He flips delver with ponder and then inexplicably casts brainstorm. As he's resolving it, which takes quite a while, I think about why he would do that and decide that he would only brainstorm instead of ponder if he already had a fetch, so he's going to play a fetch and shuffle here. He passes back and I play a 2-drop. He dazes it, and only then do I notice that he missed his second land drop, so I could have wasted him and ended the game on the spot. I guess that discussion on mental fatigue was pretty accurate. The misplay costs me the game, as he just jams a second delver that's guaranteed to flip, and although I cut him off after that, I don't draw a second answer to either of them until the turn before I'm dead (he forced my first STP).
Game 2 he mulls all the way down to 3 and puts up quite a strong fight for that few cards, even killing my first equipment, but eventually he falls to batterskull.
Game 3 he mulligans to 5 and doesn't have the turn 1 delver, so I win. Better lucky than good.
After my very underwhelming 3-2 start, I'm very glad to make it out of day 1 at 7-2. I'd been hoping for 8-1, since my 8-1 start at my last SCG open had still not been good enough, but at least I still have a match to give on day 2. My friends haven't had the best days, and only 2 have managed to make day 2 at 6-3 (one of them was playing lands and went 6-0 against "not omni-tell," but had some unbelievably awful luck with the pairings given how few people are still playing that deck). We have a nice dinner and head back to the hotel. Our hotel keys don't open the side door, and we walk around to the front. I fail to notice a curb and step half-on half-off it, roll my ankle, and take a nasty fall into the parking lot and tear up my knees pretty bad. I get it all cleaned up and try to get some sleep, but every time I shift in my sleep, I move into a painful position and wake up. I start getting stressed about how I need to sleep in order to play well for day 2, which doesn't help. I probably wind up with about 3-4 hours of sleep in bits and pieces.
We get to the venue the next morning and I start mainlining caffeine to stay awake.
7-2
R10: Shardless BUG
When I play at big legacy tournaments, I search for my opponent's name in the SCG legacy deck database as I'm walking over to the table to see if I can figure out what they normally play in case it affects mulligan decisions. My opponent for this round was 7-1-1, and everyone with that record or better had their lists posted after day 1, which seems awful while the tournament's still going and anyone with a smartphone can get their opponent's full 75 before the match. I didn't actually notice that I could see his list from this tournament because I wasn't even thinking about that, but I saw "shardless sultai" next to an october 2015 date under his name, so I felt good about him being on it. Game 1 I mulligan into a hand with mom and magus. My scry sees a second magus, and after some thought I keep it, since the first one might get countered or discarded and it's a great card in the matchup. I lead off with plains mom, who resolves and doesn't die. I just port him on 2, and he thoughtseizes me. I reveal a hand of fetch magus magus and he just stares at it in silence for a full minute. I awkwardly pick up one of the magi and put it in the graveyard and ask if he's done. I cast it and he scoops.
Game 2 I also have an early magus, and it turns out that he's not running any basics.
8-2
R11: Shardless BUG
These matches kinda blur together, but he has the 2 appropriate basics. I win this match 2-0, but I don't really remember the details. I do remember that in game 1, I kept a hand of vial sfm wisp wisp 3 lands, played the vial, drew a third wisp, and got thoughtseized. He laughed about triple flickerwisp and took sfm. Naturally, I draw the 4th wisp the next turn. I wind up getting hit with a hymn when my 4-card hand is all flickerwisps. I go through the charade of rolling dice so that he doesn't know what I have. A few turns later, the last wisp turns into a gigantic blowout because he didn't play around me having the 4th one.
9-2
R12: Miracles
I watched the end of this guy's last match, so I know what he's on. He remembers me from twitch coverage somehow (I haven't been on in ages, so that seemed odd to me), so he knows too. Game 1 I don't have wasteland or port, and he kills thalia, so his mana isn't disrupted at all. He finds an early entreat for 3 and just beats down.
Game 2 was incredibly frustrating. He forces my turn 1 vial and I play another. I tick it to 1 and cast mom. He eot brainstorms and puts terminus on top to kill her. Obviously I have a second one in hand, so I'm not sure why that happened. Then on turn 4, he casts mentor and then EE for 1 to threaten mom/vial, missing his mentor trigger. I STP mentor (I left one in), tick vial to 3 and tap it. He removes the counter from EE before I even say what's coming down. The next turn, I vial out magus so that he can't shuffle off of cantrips and attack him down to 11. He picks up the top card of his deck, announces "IT'S A MIRACLE!" and entreats for 3 (he did not know that it was there). If it had been a turn later, he'd have been down to 6 and vulnerable to mom pushing wisp past his angels, but it was not to be.
9-3, and I'm out of losses to give.
R13: Punishing Jund
He had seen my magi, so he was prepared to fetch basics. However, he was too aggressive with it in game 1 and wound up on grove forest swamp after I killed his DRS, which did not allow him to maximize the punishing fire in his hand. He was grinding very slow value with it, but I was able to vial out sfm on a turn when he couldn't punish it because of his lack of red, and he did not have an answer for batterskull. My red cards won me the game and I didn't even draw them.
Game 2 is kind of a blur. The one thing that I remember is the effective last turn of the game. He minused liliana to zero and I sfmed down skull and sacced the germ. He cast bloodbraid and cascaded into maelstrom pulse. He tanked on it for a long time, decided that although I obviously had it, he couldn't possible beat flickerwisp, so he pointed it at batterskull. I had it and pulled away.
10-3
R14: Tin Fins
I win the roll and keep vial double thalia with some lands including wasteland and port. He thoughtseizes one of them and petal therapies the other. I just port him on turns 2 and 3 as I draw lands (including a karakas that he hasn't seen). When I port him on 2, he responds with entomb, and on 3, he responds with fetch sea lim-dul's vault. He misses his land drop and I waste the sea. When he goes off with dark rit shallow grave, I flickerwisp griselbrand in response to the first activation. He manages to find a children to not die, but he can't combo. Griselbrand comes back at end step and on my turn, I play karakas and bounce it. Attacking with wisp leaves him below 14, so when he fires again, he can only draw 7 before his attack. After he attacks, I vial out another flickerwisp (waiting until combat in case he's able to put another griselbrand into play), which stops him from gaining life, so he can't combo and is dead on board.
Game 2, he mulls to 5 and doesn't kill me turn 2, so I land thalia and canonist. After those, I play magus to turn my plateau into a mountain because I can't imagine losing the game if he doesn't cast massacre and the bears take it.
11-3
R15: Sneak and Show
We talked for a while while we were waiting for the round to start. Apparently, he started the tournament 1-3 and battled all the way back to a win-and-in. Turn 1 he thinks for a while and fires off petal petal tomb sneak attack with nothing else (presumably to play around thalia and/or wasteland, since he's holding volc). I play turn 2 revoker and he throws his hands up in frustration. Wasteland and thalia hit hard, and if he ever draws a show, it's not castable (which is good, since I don't have a karakas).
Game 2, I play turn 1 mom turn 2 thalia. On his turn 3, he plays a cantrip and passes with a fetch up. I just pass on 3 and he cracks his fetch eot, so I respond with containment priest while it's safe behind thalia. My bears beat down for a while and I just port him. I get him to 10, and he responds to an upkeep port activation by wiping away containment priest while I'm tapped out. He has to use ancient tomb and all but one land, so he falls to 8. He sneak attacks his griselbrand out and drops to 1 to draw 7. He can't fetch, and he's already got 3 tapped volcs in play, so there really aren't that many live draws to put emrakul into play, and he misses and attacks with griselbrand to gain some life and turn on his fetch. He fetches his last volc on his turn and discards down to 7, and passes. I port his volc on my turn to keep the priest safe behind thalia protection. He pyroclasms on the next turn, and I obviously save priest. He doesn't have a third way to get rid of it, and priest goes the distance and I'm in the top 8!
We do the normal top 8 coverage stuff and they have me record a deck tech before we start playing, since I have the most unusual deck that didn't already have a deck tech. I haven't seen it yet, but it's pretty much what you'd expect, I think.
Quarterfinals: Retreat to Coralhelm
Game 1, he has some early mana dorks and lands a fast Sigarda, which is pretty hard for me to interact with (I guess hit's hard for anyone to interact with). I try to contain his mana as much as I can, but I don't draw any red cards. He played an early library and drew an extra card. He plays jace, which I'm too far behind to kill. I sfm for sofi and put it down, and he plays kotr. I send wingmare at his face (instead of jace) to take him from 14 to 12 so that I can vial out the crusader I just drew in his end step, equip the sword, and steal the game out from under him. I thought that retreat cost 4, which meant that I could port him below enough mana to cast it through wingmare (so I didn't equip sofi to mare to get one last chance to draw an out to the combo. Even if I had, it wasn't there). He does have the retreat and combo kills me. I make him react to midcombat vial activations, but he doesn't make a mistake.
I look at his list during sideboarding, and I see 9 effective mana dorks and 2 cliques, so sharpshooter seems strong, as do the demises. I don't really have that much to bring out, since most of the cards in the main are great. Cataclysm seems reasonable, but council's judgment seems better, and I don't have that much to take out.
Game 2, we both have awkward draws. He plays 3 mana dorks in the first 2 turns (bop and 2 hierarch) and I play sharpshooter. He can't STP it fast enough, and he cliques me as I draw a stoneforge that would have jitte'd his whole team. Clique just attacks for 5 a few times and neither of us draws anything of relevance. Sharpshooter was the only red card I drew in either game, and it would have ended the game if it had been a demise.
While it's frustrating to lose to 3-color nonred with only 1 basic, it's hard to be too disappointed with a top 8 finish at a tournament that large. Obviously I was aiming higher, but you can't win them all.
1. I never played against elves or d&t (or goblins or anything like that), so neither of them was great. I don't think that I'll be playing the sharpshooter in Seattle, as it's just a little too clunky.Quote:
Originally Posted by redtwister
2. Cataclysm doesn't come in as often in the red version, so it's not as good. I want something like that against miracles, though, since that deck is popular and strong. I can win without it, but it's really nice to have.
3. Every time I try to jam Mangara back into the deck, I draw it once and immediately cut it. Wingmare is very good, and it did good work in several games. I might play a second one if I had room, but I don't think that any other creature is worth cutting for it.
4. Priest won a game against sns by itself. People definitely overestimate how good d&t is in that matchup. We're obviously favored, but they actually have a sideboard against us, and I feel like that's not a matchup where I get an advantage from skill, since it's just a matter of whether or not I draw the correct hate cards for his combo cards (with mono white d&t, I actually had a worse win % against sneak and show than the meta as a whole). I brought it in against tin fins as well, although it didn't come up. I was expecting reanimator, sneak and show. and elves to be very popular. I was wrong about reanimator, which is already great for us, but I think priest is worth having anyway, since more elves hate is always good, and it's a tutorable knockout sideboard card in multiple matchups.
Overall, I felt like my sideboard didn't play as strong as it often does, but it wasn't because the cards were bad, it was because in a lot of matchups, I just looked at my maindeck and thought "all of these cards are awesome in this matchup, I don't want to cut anything." RiP was an all star, obviously, and canonist is incredible in several matchups.
To your last question, it's just about disrupting them however you can. Against a deck like RUG delver, you're not really going to lock them with magus, so you just want to put it down at a time when it's awkward for him to point a bolt at it. The longer you wait, the more cantrips they get to cast and dig for more bolts. Against punishing fire, vial it out while the fire is on the stack and they can't possibly use it on magus unless you gain life off of batterskull or something. If they have another one, then they have it. Obviously you want to give magus pro red however you can if you have the opportunity, but if you can't, just make them have it.
Fantastic write up, sorry the Sharpshooter tech/jank didn't work out for you :frown:
Congrats again!
@hillgiant
Congrats on top 8'ing!
I had some quick questions for you
1. How do you deal with TNN? I have been using holy light. Have you ever used that?
2. How do you like the 3:2 ratio or magus to recruiter vs 3:2 of recruiter to magus? I go back and forth between them, the one in favor of magus is quicker but the recruiter gives you more of a toolbox
3. How many flex spots do you consider this deck having? 2-3? I want to get more wingmares in the list too because the Thalia plus 2 wingmares shuts people out sometimes when you don't get the magus out.
4. Have you ever experimented with sword of war and peace or prophetic flamespeaker?
Congrats again and great write-up.
This has been my experience too - the maindeck is so tight that unless you're playing against a 'Magus is bad' deck, there are rarely obvious cuts and unless you're playing against a naturally bad matchup like Elves or Jund, the burden is on them to have a very strong anti-D+T sb g2/g3. RIP and Canonist are basically an extension of the deck and RIP feels even more important in R/W because shutting off DRS is even more important.Quote:
Originally Posted by hill_giant
I have always made room for a Leonin Relic-Warder, previously the reason was Omni but it comes in often enough against t2 decks that I think you should consider it. It would have been great in your matches vs Enchantress, MUD, Merfolk and also eats random SB cards in other matchups. I think having one in the 75 is even more important without Mangara to take care of problem non-creatures.
I see that you left some Maguses in vs Miracles - have you found them worthwhile in g2/g3s? Even though I have occasionally won a g1 vs Miracles off a Magus, I have always considered that a natural 'board Magus out' game because good Miracles pilots have a basic Island + basic Plains in play very quickly - even more assuredly if they know we're playing Magus - and I want my Ports/Karakas live. Magus does shut off their primary shuffle effect, which is not nothing.
It's unfortunate you got paired with the Retreat deck in the t8, as half of the other decks woulda been good matchups (2 Shardless, RUG Delver, Miracles). I think that any version of that Retreat deck is probably a pretty favorable matchup but one that can nevertheless steal games from anyone - and it benefited from a lot of players not knowing what they were facing. I was initially concerned that was the case w/ R/W D+T and I think you still do get some edge in large tournaments from the surprise factor - and it won't be there forever. But at this point most people I play locally know what I'm up to and there's still a limit to what they can do because so many legacy decks are dependent on greedy mana. And as you mentioned in your Jund matchup, getting people to aggressively fetch non-basics serves as its own form of taxation - sometimes you're winning the game off a permanent you don't even have in play.
Did Council's Judgment do any work for you?
I haven't used holy light because it feels a little too narrow. If it killed 2-toughness elves, I'd like it a lot more, but maybe I'm underestimating it. I've killed them with ratchet bombs and such, but sofi and judgment have been good enough for me. There aren't enough TNNs lately to be too concerned.Quote:
Originally Posted by James718
3 recruiter might be right, as that card is phenomenal. Magus is time-sensitive enough that I've been running 3. It's kinda hard to see a difference between 32 and 23 in actual testing of a non blue deck.
I really like where the maindeck is right now, although my sideboard is probably not perfect. I'm not even sure what cards I consider flex slots other than maybe the wingmare itself. If Seattle were tomorrow, I'd register the same 60.
No. Flamespeaker is a powerful card, but it's double red, and I'm not interested in being able to reliably cast it. SoWaP is interesting to me, but I haven't tried it. I would think that if you want a white sword, sols seems to protect from more removal and generate more value. I honestly sometimes consider just adding another sofi to the board for matchups where the first one dies because sofi is so good in so many matchups.
Judgment is a nice catch-all in matchups where you want another removal spell. I killed a knight with it in top 8, and a few walkers and creatures over the course of the day. I played against zero sfm, but I like it in those kinds of matchups.Quote:
Originally Posted by iatee
Turn 3 magus on the play against miracles will cut them off of white more often than you think. I also think that it's really good to cut off their shuffles, as card selection is the real strength of miracles. I don't necessarily want them all, but I like it on the play at least.
I played relic warder during omni, but I've been using judgment as that catch all card. The fact that they get their stuff back from relic warder has felt worse than the body in my experience.