Re: [Deck] Death and Taxes
Post-DTT I run:
3 Karakas
2 Plains
2 Cavern
4 Waste
4 Port
6 Fetch
2 Plateau
w/ a Mangara to get extra use out of the last Karakas and because SnS/Reanimator are appearing again.
W/ 8 sources so you have a 65% shot at a red source t1, 75% by t3, which is the blowout point vs Elves. If you play one more fetch you're at 79% by t3. This base will cost you in some games over the long-term, but gives you lots of free wins vs blue decks. Overall I think the upside of what Cavern brings vs. 3c counterspell decks is more important than the 4 percentage points you gain on that red source but as w/ the 3/2 Magus/Recruiter splits, the question is where you want to put your percentages.
Re: [Deck] Death and Taxes
Parallax Wave is great against all those tokens and just bonkers with your own stuff. Oh, and it has bitterly powerful synergy with a well-timed Flickerwisp against lots of decks. A Miracle killer? I don't think so. It seems to me that we want a single creature with a power of 2 or less for that job. And I can't find any that stick it to Miracles so hard that I would call it a killer.
Re: [Deck] Death and Taxes
Parallax Wave does seem insanely fun w/ Flickerwisps, SFM and especially Recruiters. What else could that come in against? Is it too slow for real creature decks?
I think the problem is that the Miracles doesn't really have any super exploitable weaknesses, which is why it's 'the best deck in legacy' even though it's not unbeatable. Fairly ungreedy mana, gets to cast instant speed Wrath of God for 1 while still having strong combo matchups, throws in a few different ways to close out the game. Before Mentor, you could exploit the fact that all of their win cons were 4+ non-creature spells and Teeg was the Miracles killer, but not anymore.
12-post beats it by having the best long game and forcing it to be an aggro deck. So maybe there's another 'inevitability' card that stays on the battlefield? What about Luminarch Ascension?
Re: [Deck] Death and Taxes
Teeg is still very good against them, but he costs GW, so there's that.
Parallax Wave costs 5 under Thalia. Sounds like interesting tech to power out with Noble Taxes, but for everything else, it seems too expensive.
As a result of the discussion about Imperial Taxes, I'm going to test the following list:
2 Cavern of Souls
3 Karakas
2 Plains
2 Plateau
4 Flooded Strand
2 Arid Mesa
4 Wasteland
4 Rishadan Port
4 Mother of Runes
4 Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
4 Stoneforge Mystic
2 Phyrexian Revoker
2 Serra Avenger
4 Flickerwisp
3 Imperial Recruiter
2 Magus of the Moon
1 Mirran Crusader
4 AEther Vial
4 Swords to Plowshares
1 Umezawa's Jitte
1 Sword of Fire and Ice
1 Batterskull
Sideboard:
3 Ethersworn Canonist
3 Rest in Peace
3 Sudden Demise
1 Magus of the Moon
1 Leonin Relic-Warder
2 Council's Judgment
1 Containment Priest
1 Sword of War and Peace
Some slots are currently up to debate for me, like 3rd Recruiter vs 2nd Crusader, 3rd Magus in the board, freeing up a SB slot with a single E-Tutor or the usefulness of SoWaP, but overall, the list looks pretty well-rounded now to me.
Re: [Deck] Death and Taxes
@hill_giant
Thanks for the awesome report and the very interesting answers to my questions. Food for thought!
Re: [Deck] Death and Taxes
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Barook
As a result of the discussion about Imperial Taxes, I'm going to test the following
Some slots are currently up to debate for me, like 3rd Recruiter vs 2nd Crusader, 3rd Magus in the board, freeing up a SB slot with a single E-Tutor or the usefulness of SoWaP, but overall, the list looks pretty well-rounded now to me.
I would cut the Serra avenger for Vryn Wingmares or at least have one.
Re: [Deck] Death and Taxes
Quote:
Originally Posted by
James718
I would cut the Serra avenger for Vryn Wingmares or at least have one.
I actually cut Vryn Wingmare for Serra Avenger since it failed to impress me. I wanted to go back to more actual beaters who also don't die to -1/-1 effects. It also makes the curve lower. So far, Wingmare failed to impress me as a tutor target.
Re: [Deck] Death and Taxes
Definitely agree with going back to more serra avengers over wingmares in a post DTT meta.
Re: [Deck] Death and Taxes
If you want a good recruitable target against grindy decks like miracle, just go for a 1of "Eight-and-half Tails". He protects your stuff from being decayed in the shardless matchup (with vial on 2 at instant-speed) and is able to slowroll miracles as long as they don't have an overwhelming amount of angels or mentor tokens and you can keep open a Karakas. You just need to have enough mana to abuse him but in the last tournaments i played he rly did a great job multiple times. (not to mention the brokeness in the mirror^^).
My actual WR-list:
//Maindeck "Erdbeerkäse"
3x plateau
3x plains
4x arid mesa
2x marsh flats
4x wasteland
4x rishadan port
3x Karakas
4x mother of runes
4x Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
4x stoneforge mystic
3x phyrexian revoker
4x flickerwisp
3x imperial recruiter
1x Eight-and-a-half Tails
1x fiend hunter
1x ethersworn canonist
1x magus of the moon (s.o. can of course switch the 1of canonist with the 2. magus, i just like the diversity and the fact, that the overall casting cost of the deck gets a bit lower)
4x swords to plowshares
1x Umezawa's Jitte
1x sword of fire and ice
1x batterskull
4x aether vial
//Sideboard
3x ethersworn canonist
1x containment priest
1x kor firewalker
1x magus of the moon
1x leonin relic-warder
3x rest in peace (had earlier 1 relic 2 rip but with aggroloam rising and TA playing null rod i think just the 3. rip is the better choice...)
1x pithing needle
1x manriki-gusari
3x sudden demise
Greetz from Germany,
Marius Hausmann
Re: [Deck] Death and Taxes
I was going to deride the 8.5 tails idea, but I want to stress that with recruiters, there really is a lot of reward for having a wider variety of critters as singletons.
Re: [Deck] Death and Taxes
@Wasteland: Interesting approach - but with the current rising of Shardless BUG, I would probably to run at least 2 Magus MD. Also no Crusader?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Dutch253
A 3rd Karakas might be a good idea if you own it. I would also try to run Containment Priest over Kor Firewalker. Look for inspiration in the thread.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Finn
I was going to deride the 8.5 tails idea, but I want to stress that with recruiters, there really is a lot of reward for having a wider variety of critters as singletons.
I'm not keen about paying :2::w: to give protection (even when it can protect non-creature permanents), but the basic idea is pretty cool.
Toolboxes are nice, but can also gimp you in terms of speed and leaves you with dead cards in certain match-ups.
Has Silverblade Paladin been tested as Recruiter target? Turning a 3 power-flyer into a double striker sounds good - or dropping it into play with a Vial after blockers are declared to power up an equipped creature.
While looking for creatures which could abuse the white ability of 8.5 Tails, I found Celestial Crusader instead. Pumps our white team, is uncounterable, AD-proof and has flying. Downside is that it costs 4 mana to actually cast and that it also pumps other white creatures.
Re: [Deck] Death and Taxes
One other downside of 8.5 tails as a Recruiter target is that it's 2 mana - you're very often vialing in Recruiter so you want that bomb-y Recruiter target to work with your vial on 3 so you can ensure it gets into play. Or you're hardcasting Recruiter t3 with a vial on 2 - but in those cases you generally want an emergency hatebear-for-the-situation or SFM, and a 8.5 tails with no mana open is not so great.
Another idea I just had was Mirror Entity. Recruitable, works with Vial pretty well actually, Cavern too. The questions are:
a. What decks would it generally be good against? and
b. Do generally we have enough creatures and mana?
Re: [Deck] Death and Taxes
Quote:
Originally Posted by
iatee
One other downside of 8.5 tails as a Recruiter target is that it's 2 mana - you're very often vialing in Recruiter so you want that bomb-y Recruiter target to work with your vial on 3 so you can ensure it gets into play. Or you're hardcasting Recruiter t3 with a vial on 2 - but in those cases you generally want an emergency hatebear-for-the-situation or SFM, and a 8.5 tails with no mana open is not so great.
Another idea I just had was Mirror Entity. Recruitable, works with Vial pretty well actually, Cavern too. The questions are:
a. What decks would it generally be good against? and
b. Do generally we have enough creatures and mana?
I think only testing can determine if Mirror Entity would be good. We don't have any effects like e.g. Slivers that permanently pump our to benefit from increased base stats. I'm skeptical.
Re: [Deck] Death and Taxes
Mirror Entity seems like too much of a mana sink. I tried it in Modern, and that deck typically has a lot more mana up, and even there it was difficult. Eight-and-a-Half-Tails is also too big of a mana sink for too little value. That said, tutorable singletons in Imperial are playable, the problem is, what are the cards we want to see that we don't already know about that we can reasonably cast?
Silverblade Paladin and Celestial Crusader are both pretty cool ideas, but what do you take out for them? If I am running Paladin, don't I just want Mirran Crusader because Pro-BG? Is Celestial good enough at cmc 4? Would you rather run it over Restoration Angel even with it's fetch-able power?
Warden of the Beyond? Unlike Modern, it seems like that would be a 4/4 a lot of the time. But even then, it is just a vigilant 4/4 for 3, sort of a bad Loxodon Smiter, but 2w.
My fantasy card is actually Boros Reckoner because I think it would allow for some shenanigans and it essentially is a wall that is also a removal spell when it blocks. It can block way above its weight class, often be a 2-for-1, but talk about a casting cost. I can imagine playing many games with it sitting in my hand, mocking my greed.
Re: [Deck] Death and Taxes
Quote:
Originally Posted by
redtwister
Mirror Entity seems like too much of a mana sink. I tried it in Modern, and that deck typically has a lot more mana up, and even there it was difficult.
Eight-and-a-Half-Tails is also too big of a mana sink for too little value. That said, tutorable singletons in Imperial are playable, the problem is, what are the cards we want to see that we don't already know about that we can reasonably cast?
Silverblade Paladin and
Celestial Crusader are both pretty cool ideas, but what do you take out for them? If I am running Paladin, don't I just want
Mirran Crusader because Pro-BG? Is Celestial good enough at cmc 4? Would you rather run it over
Restoration Angel even with it's fetch-able power?
Warden of the Beyond? Unlike Modern, it seems like that would be a 4/4 a lot of the time. But even then, it is just a vigilant 4/4 for 3, sort of a bad
Loxodon Smiter, but 2w.
My fantasy card is actually
Boros Reckoner because I think it would allow for some shenanigans and it essentially is a wall that is also a removal spell when it blocks. It can block way above its weight class, often be a 2-for-1, but talk about a casting cost. I can imagine playing many games with it sitting in my hand, mocking my greed.
Silverblade Paladin is probably the thing that has the best chance of testing. It would probably fight with Mirran Crusader for a slot, but that's tough competition in a meta where Shardless BUG is on the rise.
Warden of the Beyond is too vanilla.
Boros Reckoner isn't tutorable and has a horrible manacost to boot. If we went for untutorable stuff, then Alesha, Who Smiles at Death would raise an eyebrow, but I can't see it fitting into our strategy either.
Re: [Deck] Death and Taxes
Yeah I think Reckoner is a little too 'fair' to justify being super hard to cast. Even if it were tutorable would it be better than SFM + Batterskull when you're dealing with a fair creature board?
Silverblade has upside - can vial it in before damage as a combat trick - and Thalia->Silverblade actually kills them on t5 if they have nothing. But I agree with Barook - now's not the time to be dropping Crusader. Maybe you could fit both in?
Re: [Deck] Death and Taxes
How do you guys board against Infect with Imperial Taxes? I want to bring in my Canonists, Sudden Demise and my 3rd Magus of the Moon, but I have trouble to decide what to board out.
Re: [Deck] Death and Taxes
Batterskull is the easy side-out, but yeah everything else seems 'good' vs infect while the match-up remains bad. Whatever the cuts are they are probably some combination of 3 drops.
Overall I am not sure that 3 Maguses is amazing it in the matchup, even though it obviously can win the game when things go right. Or maybe we only want them on the play. Nearly half their games will be t1 Hierarch and unlike DRS we can't really afford to use a STP on it since our removal is so taxed.
So we often need a Revoker + a Magus to lock them out - and by that time we have that they may have already set up their board and we just have a 2/1 and a 2/2 in play, which is not great vs even just Glistener Elf + exalted. Or if they have a forest (which they're even more likely to get vs WR) and a Blighted Agent, then even locking them off blue might not be enough. Shutting off Inkmoth isn't that amazing since we already had Port/Wasteland.
It's hard to say though, because I've also had some games I've won vs infect w/ Magus.
Re: [Deck] Death and Taxes
Magus is absolutely vital in this matchup. I have nothing else to really add up, last time I played against Infect I lucksacked hard drawing my 1 of Cavern of Souls to slam Magus on turn 3 which literally won me the game on the spot.
