So, with the advent of Swan Song, I would recommend to everyone now more than ever to run 4 Cabal Therapy MD. It inadvertently makes the card even more awesome.
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So, with the advent of Swan Song, I would recommend to everyone now more than ever to run 4 Cabal Therapy MD. It inadvertently makes the card even more awesome.
First off, I would like to start by saying I lol'd at this. Secondly, I do believe Swan Song will see play, however I would be surprised to see it in any sort of fair decks, I believe it will probably go into things like Sneak and Show or Omni-tell, possibly High Tide. I think fair decks will still want to play Flusterstorm over Swan Song. Giving you a 2/2 blocker to block their Geists, Bobs, Agents, Delvers, Mongeese, Pyromancer and even chumping a goyf doesn't seem like thats what a deck wants to do to stop combo.
I came to the conclusion that Silence is better than Xantid Swarm because Show and Tell wins on the same turn they cast Show and Tell, so putting the Xantid Swarm into play does absolutely nothing. Beyond that, if I'm playing Silence in the maindeck and still bring in Xantid Swarm now I have way MORE must-counter cards that can help me win than I do with only Xantid Swarm.
Also, I re-read my post after I couldn't figure out why you thought I cut fetches, and apparently I used the word duals when I meant fetches. I'm still playing 6 fetches in the list.
I just keep running into situations where the S&T person opens on Leyline, and I have 2 Chain of Vapors and 3 Xantid Swarms I have to find. If I find a chain first, I try to bounce but they counter it, and if I find Xantid Swarm I have to hope it resolves. If it doesn't, I'm in serious trouble. I just have so few cards that do anything and I usually keep drawing dead discard spells, so it's pretty rough. I'm at the point now where Im' siding discard out in the matchup because of how irrelevant it is, since they usually mulligan to leyline.
What I'm hearing is that the only reason not to play Silence is that the manabase gets rougher, and while I agree that it's occasionally a little more difficult, and the lack of basics can be an issue, so far I have felt way stronger with things the way they are. Sometimes you get a fetch and have to fetch awkwardly, sometimes you open on City of Brass and everything flows even better than it does normally. I'm going to give it a shot for a week or two at my local shop and see what happens. Maybe I'll be wrong, but what I'm hearing is that there's no reason I wasn't already aware of not to try this, and that the manabase may suck, but I knew that already.
I was wondering what kind of cute reason someone would come up with to make fun of my thoughts.
See, the way I look at it, Therapy is an incredible asset as things stand. I already am a firm believer that every build without a firm reason not to should be running the full set of Therapies. Now, I'm not yet sure what to think about Swan Song, but I can tell you that it gives us more options. And, if nobody decides to run it, no big deal, your opponents have still got four nice Therapy sessions to attend either way.
I'm not saying who should or shouldn't be running the card, but I am saying that anyone who does will make our resident Cabal Therapist rake in the patients.
Oh dear, lol, then I'm sorry as well. Silly Internet! Yeah, that thought is just hilarious. Swan Song will be a very poor choice against us methinks.
I have a doubt about lands configuration:
standard land configuration:
//15 lands
8 fetch lands
2 underground sea
1 volcanic island
1 tropical island
3 basic lands
if my only red spell in main deck is past in flames I think that is a bad idea to play badlands in maindeck, and in other hand I dont want to play gemstone mine because I want to play 2 Lum-Dul's Vault t + 2 senseis diving top rather than preordain
what is better to play 2 island, 1 swamp or 2 swamps, 1 island?
Many people have gone to 2 basic lands. Based on lists I've seen and some analysis in one of Carsten's (Mons, Goblin Raider) articles, I would add a third Sea if you were to cut a basic. If you are playing three basics, the consensus for a long time has been that two Islands are correct. The deck is designed to cantrip multiple times a turn for the first 2-4 turns, which requires U. Rituals give you all the B you need.
Did anyone watch the LSV Storm videos on ChannelFireball? It was interesting to watch a non-Storm pro playing the deck. I definitely dislike the list and the sideboarding decisions (and the sideboard itself), but LSV is the man. I think most "pros" are afraid to play Storm in Legacy because it crushes their image of being a perfect Magic player. Props to LSV.
While being ill and not leaving bed too much i also saw the videos. His playing was mediocore and his sideboard decisions plain bad ("I have a good/decent matchup w/o boarding, so I board in a load of cards that won't help much.").
Still wonder why he never boarded in Chain of Vapor, it's perfectly fine to board that card in if you have no clue on what type your opponent boards in. At best it wins you the match getting rid of a permanent based hate card, at worst it's either another cheap storm engine or buys you a turn.
Or boarding in an Empty the Warresn on the draw against Stoneblade...but, he is the master of brainstorms^^
Hello all, I recently picked up the deck and started testing with it tonight. I played a few games against Maverick w/ black for Deathrite and Thoughtseize main and was wondering how do you board?
I was playing the standard cantrip/gemstone mine list -1 preordain + 1 Lim Duls Vault and my sideboard was
3 Abrupt Decay
1 Tropical Island
1 Cabal Therapy
2 Xantid Swarm
3 Dread of Night
1 Massacre (I don't own a Karakas currently)
2 Chain of Vapor
1 Empty the Warrens
1 Surgical Extraction
I started out by trying to board in Decays, Dread of Night, and Massacre but wasn't really sure what to take out. I ended up losing the majority of post board games to Thalia/Teeg and realized I had no idea how to board in this match.
Also, is the Surgical Extraction worth its slot to try and help with the reanimator/dredge match?
Thanks,
Steve
I think you should probably be playing 2 Disfigure in the SB. I really think everyone should be playing SB Disfigure because of how versatile it is against Esper decks playing Deathrites and Bobs that usually board in Meddling Mages and sometimes Canonists… I board in 3 Abrupt Decay, 2 Disfigure, 1 Karakas, and 1 Inquisition of Kozilek against Maverick decks. I also play 1 Thoughtseize main, so post SB I have 2 discard spells that hit their bears (or discard), and the rest of the cards deal with resolved Thalias, Canonists, and Teegs. With practice, you will probably find that you can't lose the matchup except to very poor draws.
What has been the general approach to mono blue omni tell? swarms and discard? and chains for leyline?
have not touched a card in 6+ months and starting to get back in again.
Pretty interesting question, I asked myself a dozen times. Chant effects would be great I think, especially Postboard. Maybe switching to TES is the right call for a metagame full of Show'n'Crap. If you stick to ANT, then yeah, your plan sounds like the best option you have, but the MU feels horrible.
The matchup against S&T decks, especially a slower one like MonoU, is one of the big reasons for me to play this deck. I don't know anything else that beats them this consistently. You just need to play "control" if you can (aka they don't have a Leyline and you don't have a very early protected kill) and beat Leyline with Swarm/them not also having drawn one of their 5-6 counters in addition to Leyline whenever possible.
I am just able to analyze this MU on paper, cause luckily my meta is not infested with S'n'T, but there it seems gloomy: Preboard, okay, we have Discard, that's quite good against them, this game should be managable, but I don't think it is a favourable MU. Their clock seems nearly as fast as ours and they also win on the turn when they start to combo. Postboard, if they go Leyline Turn Zero your non-swarm Protection is useless so you have to pray for them not having a Counterspell or actually resolve Swarm AND still find a Chain of Vapor to win. If they don't start with Leyline, their hand may be full of Protection or a pretty fast one, both may result in a win for them.
Quintessence (from Paper-view): I think you underestimate their clock.
Maybe I'm totally wrong here.
I might just be unlucky, not skillful enough yet or a bit of both, but I have a terrible record against monoblue omnitell. At my LGS I think am 1-5 against it.
Game 1 I feel is 50/50 or maybe slightly in our favor if we can get a start with a lot of discard. If they land a leyline in game 2 and/or 3 I feel I need to have a hand with one of my two Swarms and enough business to be able to combo off during my first 3-4 turns. That's a tough ask when I only have 2 swarms in the board plus their deck seems to sculpt as well as ours. It might be because I'm running the version with Burning Wish which might have a tad bit more variance.
Not sure if I should be running a 3rd swarm or what.