I took the double ritual route, my opponent drew a berserk and I lost. Would also have happened if I took the fluster. But wanted to know other players thoughts.Quote:
Originally Posted by Jesture
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I took the double ritual route, my opponent drew a berserk and I lost. Would also have happened if I took the fluster. But wanted to know other players thoughts.Quote:
Originally Posted by Jesture
Agreed. But if someone else has already played 200 games with them and is able to say "Yeah, it sucks he just got lucky" or "It's very good and here's what I'm siding when I bring those in", I'd like to have that data available when I sit down to test.Quote:
Originally Posted by Sloshthedark
I'm actually sitting down this week with the best BUG Delver player I know and we're gonna grind a bunch of storm postboard plans, so I'm trying to figure out which different things are worth testing, and exactly what the configuration is. There's more to it than just a list. About 2 years ago I spent 6-7 hours running postboard games against miracles and I swear to god my miracles matchup has never been the same. Just a single long dedicated sideboard testing session helped me learn so much about the matchup that I hadn't picked up in years of playing against it intermittently at tournaments.
Off the top of my head, I've seen people play Dark Confidant, Xantid Swarm, Empty the Warrens, Defense Grid, City of Solitude, Flusterstorm, Sensei's Divining Top, and now apparently Night's Whisper and Leovold for that matchup. There are so many different ways to mix and match those cards and infinite different configurations of cards you could cut from the main for them that even if I dedicate hours of testing to trying different sideboard approaches that I'll never get close to trying every option.
So yeah. Totally willing to test and try for myself, but I'd rather build on the shoulders of giants than start from the bottom up :)
EDIT: You mention that you have lots of data and thoughts on Culling Scales and City of Solitude: Care to share? Anything in particular I should be looking at when testing them?
First time poster here. I'd been following on mtgsalvation and wondering why the thread there is so dead.
So I'm going to a small tournament this weekend, and have been wondering about sideboard options. From what I've heard, the meta is quite fair, with lots of stompy and aggro decks. I looked at the top 8 from the previous tournament at this location, and there was 1 eldrazi, 2 death and taxes, 1 MUD, so I'm preparing to have to play through Chalice, Thorn and Thalia. There were also 2 BUG delver lists in the top 8, and delver is so much of the meta atm that being prepared for it is important too. Also miracles obviously.
So basically, what are people's views on how best to handle eldrazi and BUG delver?
On Death and Taxes, I've come to like 3 dread of night and 3 abrupt decay, boarding out duresses, preordains, some therapies and maybe rain of filth (I'm running a pretty standard ANT list, not grinding station). Against miracles I'm not sure whether to go with the doomsday+emrakul+shelldock isle plan or 4 abrupt decay + 3 confidant + empty. I quite like this as I actually think the doomsday+emrakul plan is okay against reanimator as well, and can potentially race them
I've tried to figure out a way of making the doomsday sb plan more applicable to other matchups (like delver and eldrazi), but it's complicated by the fact that they run wasteland. Most doomsday piles I've thought about are either too mana intensive, or fold to chalice on 1, which defeats the purpose of them against decks like eldrazi or MUD. Regardless, I'm still thinking of running 2 Hurkyl's Recall in the sideboard given the presence of eldrazi and MUD. Here are 2 sideboards I came up with so far
Option 1
3 Dark Confidant
2 Xantid Swarm
3 Dread of Night
4 Abrupt Decay
1 Empty the Warrens
2 Hurkyl's Recall
Option 2
4 Doomsday
1 Shelldock Isle
1 Emrakul, The Aeons Torn
3 Abrupt Decay
3 Dread of Night
2 Hurkyl's Recall
1 Empty the Warrens
Help very welcome and needed!
Boarding SI plan vs wasteland decks is nonsense, also be aware that doomsday's worst MU is taxes, so im not sure transforming into it is going to help.
If you want to play around cotv@0 is not that hard, you need to just have 1R extra during the combo, if you want to beat cotv@1 you need to play fringe cards such as edge of autumn most likely.
Don't even think about going into doomsday unless you play at least 3 tops, the deck can't work at all without it.
To my surprise I have no problem with TA resultwise, although the game doesnt feel great I was over 75% winrate against it most of the time, lost latest ones - ended up withQuote:
Originally Posted by Jeff
Team America M21 W13 L8 W%61,90% G1P 76,9% G1D 62,5% G2P 33,3% G2D 64,7% G1 71,4% G2/3 51,7%
paper stats are 60%+ as well, I attribute that to the rather soft Malimujo build which has only 4xFoW+4x Daze as counters G1 and to some extent plays a better Shardless impression
I won quite a lot of games on the back of EtW G1 ... for G2/3 I have only 2-3 AD as addition to the plan, tried AdN but do not like it much
the problem with testing with a friend at least for me is we know each other they know my "special" list have reads on me and I'm aware of their weaknesses, most of them have their special card choices and preferences as well which doesn't make such testing representative for general use...
Culling scales
- confirmed playable and legitimate cardchoice imo... Aggroloam, Moon hate decks, Stoneforge decks overall, D+T is tricky for both sides... ppl don't know how to play against it in general, shines in overload of hate situations you'd never win otherwise, 2x SDT advisible
City of Solitude
- did not like the card at first, only Miracles and slower control non-discard decks playable imo (tried it vs. Leovold decks, not great), needs careful timing - the symmetrical fx hurts sometimes, but preys on unpreparedness of Miracles boarding plan atm, their MU dramatically improved due to SE imo... obv sold korean ones week before starting to play it =/
A, there is no easy answer - there just isn't a simple solition, TA is multi angle deck, Eldrazi is too hard to beat to care if their hand is strong, beatable without special care if not, I SB very lighty to have AD and EtW in both cases, I don't even bother with Ad Nauseam (my list doesnt support it well)Quote:
Originally Posted by Kerotan1989
B, I'd not play DD sb even against Miracles, everyone plays 2xSE, keeping 1-2 Terminus is a common practice... it's playable against S+T and few other decks, but playable doesn't mean great and you actually lower your W% in comparison to not SBing at all, while it might work time to time, for example with Eldrazi you need to have the combo T1/T2 which is roughly 70% assuming you need T1 discard or them not having relevant T1 play it's much lower and you need to dodge 40+% of them having a Wasteland... you might as well just board in AD & hope while not wasting 5 SB slots
So what exactly is your sideboard plan that's generating these numbers? I'd be pretty happy with a win rate like that, but I've tried boarding in Empty the Warrens and it's not making it suddenly a 61% matchup. You're not the only person to tell me that you're not having the trouble I'm having, so I'm wondering if I'm cutting the wrong things. It sounds like you have maindeck Empty, no Ad Nauseam, and you're siding in just decay? Are you decaying Deathrite to keep Past in Flames alive, saving it for Leovold, or just playing it by ear each game? If they have a T1 delver and you don't have the combo yet, do you kill Delver just to buy time or are you assuming you'll find the answer and saving decay for something that might actually disrupt you?Quote:
Originally Posted by Sloshthedark
When I test with friends we use stock lists for them. I'm testing with Dan Signorini, who is the world's biggest fan of Stifle and always has some goofy sideboard choices he's trying out this week, but since we're sitting down specifically to test the BUG matchup against average players, he's going to be playing an average BUG list. Over a several hour period we'll probably try several configurations, with and without Hymn, with and without Stifle, etc. Obviously the fact that he knows how I play will matter, and the fact that he's a much better magic player than I am will matter, but I still think it's more valuable than joining a bunch of leagues and hoping to play against BUG while I try different sideboards.Quote:
Originally Posted by Sloshthedark
The other big advantage to me of dedicated sessions like this is I can go into it with a 30 card sideboard. I'm interested in what cards I need for this exact matchup in order to make it positive for me, not what my 15 card board would look like in the end. I typically try lots of goofy things that I have no idea how they'd fit in the board if they worked, but if I find something that dramatically improves the matchup, I'll figure out how to make it fit later. There's no point in expending energy trying to figure out how to fit Leovolds in the board until I've established that Leovold is actually any good.
https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/589215#paperQuote:
Originally Posted by Jeff
+Badlands +AD -CR -PiF that's all, variations I tried were +AdN instead of +AD or simply +Badlands -CR both on play, I add a Karakas if I know about Leovold
AD is there to buy time, I AD Deathrite over Delver all day, it's their best card, so I wait for Delver to flip and let the 1st attack usually ... if they have a "bad" creature heavy hand you'll be sad sometimes with AD, but deals decently with their "good" hands
you have a great testing partner, if you have time and dedication to test it out properly it's all good then, I'd not ever expect a 60% winrate against good player with a good list, but against the standard Mtgo list it's definitely doable, I'm 3-2 against Malimujo (actually 4-1 - giving him 1 match by a misclick on IT and the other loss was a close EtW race) I definitely feel worse playing against random Grixis (I just hate that deck personaly) than him.. On the other hand I'm losing to local BURG lists I should not lose to theoretically but it's the people who play the deck and them knowing how to play against my deck
as I said before I don't think there is a great or universal recipe for the TA MU, in general I think the biggest step is G1 EtW, you can try SB Confidant or Thing in the ice (if there is no Liliana) but they have too many configurations which some can be really hatefull - like Leovold or Nihil Spellbomb, Confidant builds etc...
Whew! I've got some catching up to do.
Kerotan1989, Eldrazi's generally hideous for us. I'd resigned myself to bringing in 2x Hurkyl's Recall, 1–2x Decay, a fifteenth land, and an Empty the Warrens against Eldrazi, but it still felt like a terribad matchup. Hurkyl's is definitely our best card for the matchup, but I don't think it's necessarily worth the sideboard space (it's pretty cool against Lands, too, for what it's worth). Depends on whether you think you've got other stuff you'd rather play in other matchups; I feel like I've got a couple of slots to spare, so I haven't taken out the Hurks even though nobody's running Eldrazi here at the moment.
I've never felt like any of the delvers was an inordinately bad matchup, but that could be for a number of reasons. The matches always felt like either they'd draw a middle-of-the-road hand and I'd storm 'em out, or like they'd get one of those postboard blue-control hands with, like, 5x Flusterstorm, 2x Brainstorm, Force. Not really any good way to beat that. One thing I noticed about those decks is that they're pretty much built to beat the cards that would otherwise be good against them (e.g., Xantid Swarm, which is awesome at stopping countermagic, but still gets countered and leaves us a card down). Maybe try extra discards; otherwise, I'd just go with an unadulterated mainboard, or maybe I'd add an Empty the Warrens.
Togores, I probably would've taken the Flusterstorm and prayed the opponent would stack up their Invigorates. No realistic way to get there off of a single Dark Ritual that I could think of, but I feel like we'd be sitting pretty if we managed to bait out all their pump spells at the same time.
As for bluffing something, I feel like the opponent is still best served to just jam their stuff and try to kill us. I don't think I'd try to bait them into doing anything, because they could call our bluff just as easily as they could kill us without our having bluffed something. Why wouldn't we just wait to Push their dude until combat? If they'd drawn countermagic, it wouldn't have mattered whether we'd bluffed anyway.
Sloshthedark, I'm not sure I understand the reasoning behind Probing to force their hand. Wouldn't that just put us in a really bad spot if we were to draw something we couldn't cast for free? Tutor's a super card, and I feel like we wouldn't want to leave it in the 'yard and start filling our hand before firing it off.
Thanks for the quick replies friends.
Also, what are people's views on Carpet of Flowers in a Delver heavy meta? I see a lot of people have moved away from the card.
I love carpet of flowers but I can't justify playing it if I'm afraid to bring it in vs Team America, and I can't convince myself to bring it in vs Team America because Leovold shits all over it.Quote:
Originally Posted by Kerotan1989
Carpet has the same problem that Xantid Swarm does: ostensibly, it's best against countermagic-heavy decks, but it's vulnerable to countermagic. I don't see any reason to bring it in if we're not going to get to use it.Quote:
Originally Posted by Kerotan1989
Think of it this way: if your opponent's got, say, 5 cards in hand, 3 unknown, and you know one of their cards is Force, would you rather have Carpet or Cabal Therapy?
Sure, you probably wouldn't want to board out Therapy for the matchup anyway (and I'm not necessarily advocating for 7–8 discards), but would you rather bring in another Therapy or a Carpet of Flowers?
unplayable against DRS imo, not a fan otherwiseQuote:
Originally Posted by Kerotan1989
Some number of decays and empty the warrens should be good for delver.
You cant do this, the ruling dont let you do so. Because if the oppoenent dont says he holds priority its a shortcut that says that he plays one and lets it resolve then plays the second.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ronald Deuce
Ewww, yuck. Good to know.Quote:
Originally Posted by Togores
I think the Carpet vs Cabal Therapy question is a false comparison though. In the matchup that relies on Daze, Spell Pierce, Flusterstorm, and Wasteland, Carpet of Flowers comes in to replace mana. Even if you had an extra Therapy in the board, you wouldn't side it in over a Cabal Ritual for the matchup, but you definitely bring in Carpet over Cabal Ritual. So the question you have to ask yourself is if you have 5 cards in hand, 3 unknown, and you know one of their cards is Force, would you rather have Carpet or Cabal Ritual? And at that point I'd probably rather have Carpet, because if any of their remaining cards are Dazes or Spell Pierces they may have to Force the carpet to keep those relevant, and even if they don't it can often shut them off completely. Or it might make it easier to resolve Cabal Therapies or Duresses that you draw, becuase they can't Daze/Pierce those when you have Carpet mana floating.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ronald Deuce
I've always been very happy to replace rituals with Carpets in blue mana denial matchups, but the existence of Leovold makes me change that calculation. Which sucks.
I was more thinking in terms of sideboard space than mainboard space, but you're right. I still don't know that I'd bring in Carpet, but I'll get to that in a minute.Quote:
Originally Posted by Jeff
When I tested Carpet, I found that it was a huge counter-magnet. Same with Swarm. Maybe that was just tough breaks, or maybe I just haven't tested enough, but I don't think I ever resolved a Carpet of Flowers.Quote:
Originally Posted by Jeff
That might actually speak in the card's favor. Carpet into Force could set us up for a same-turn combo, but that feels really risky to me. I can probably count on one hand the number of times I've pulled off a natural Tendrils on the fly against blue decks with ≥3 unknown cards in hand. As for replacing Cabal Ritual with the Carpet, I'm glad people have found it to be successful, but I haven't shared that experience.
Thanks again for the replies.
Just a general question: I see that a lot of storm sideboards on here and on mtg top 8 don't really run much reanimator hate, even though they're faster than ANT and it's generally considered a very tough matchup. Do you think this is a meta call people have made, or do people think it's such a bad matchup that it's not even worth siding for? Or is it because the 6 or 7 hand disruption spells ANT runs are quite good against them already?
My impression is that the matchup is generally very bad (either U/B or R/B), but that people often use Flusterstorm and the discards. I still haven't gotten around to picking up Flusters, hence my general ignorance of the nuances of the card.Quote:
Originally Posted by Kerotan1989
Another Storm 'What's the Play?' for you brainiacs to ponder on :wink:
I hope you enjoy it!
https://thelibraryatpendrellvale.com...torming-again/
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