Sounds good Vacrix, please keep decent notes and let us know how it goes... maybe not play by play; but a synopsis including SB would be great.
Thanks
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Sounds good Vacrix, please keep decent notes and let us know how it goes... maybe not play by play; but a synopsis including SB would be great.
Thanks
I just fished about fifty games with that list, with 2 MD Cantor.
I don't know what I was thinking.
Artifacts... pshaw.
Lol what?
Also, Darth Vicious I know you've been playing with Lotus Blooms for some time now in the heavy artifact list that plays Mox Opal, tallmen, and such. How does it compare to Carpet of Flowers in your experience? I'm considering trying it as a pseudo-Carpet in addition to some protection in the board.
It's kind of a wash.
Lotus Blooms take a few turns to enter play, but they add to storm and always give you three mana. Even just one of them resolved will give you enough mana to power thru a counterwall. And they do the same thing regardless what color your opponent is playing. Even if you use the entire 3 mana on a draw4, they tend to be worth it, if you have the time to wait for them to resolve. The only way your opponent can play around Lotus Bloom however, is to counter it. That could be a counterspell, Chalice@0, whatever.
Carpet of Flowers can be played around by your opponent, and is a sitting duck when it comes to enchantment removal. But, it gives you mana every turn after that initial investment of G, and that by itself can also be enough to power out business every turn. The fact that it gives you mana every turn might give it an edge over the Blooms. And also keep in mind that if your opponent is holding Islands back then he has less mana to counterspell you and/or manipulate his deck.
So against slower nonblue decks I would give the nod to Blooms. Against anything blue Carpets get the gold trophy, Blooms get silver.
So... yeah. I gave up on the artifact based list. It loses to so many things it's ridiculous. I even lost a game (EDIT: Match) to lifegain.dec at Indy. Don't ask me for a report. Just learn from my experience and don't run an artifact based list. Even with Ad Nauseams, no matter how tempted you are. There's too many inconsistencies. Not to mention just about any deck out there these days can hate you out of your initial mana with random things like Pernicious Deed, Engineered Explosives, Disenchant...
I am currently seeking a manner in which to turn Pacts into a business spell somehow. As in, a turn 1 business spell, not Eternal Witness. Anyone who has ideas please keep in mind we are running a turn 1-2 storm combo deck that can generate boatloads of black mana.
And... Past in Flames is nuts in this deck.
More thought testing results. This is the board I played:
SB
4 Carpet of Flowers
4 Tombstalker
3 Duress
3 Tomb of Urami
1 Phyrexian Obliterator
Out:
-4 Summoner's Pact
-4 Culling the Weak
-2 Tendrils of Agony
-1 Past in Flames
-1 Slithermuse
-1 Odious Trow
-1 Wild Cantor
-1 Dryad Arbor
The mainboard was the same as I’ve been playing, with 4 Belcher 2 Tendrils. I found Culling the Weak to be rather weak as acceleration post-board. I'd rather have a Bayou than lose Dryad Arbor.
I tested some more today with a different board, against CounterThopters. Its by far one of our hardest matchups. They can land Batterskull and put us out of kill range which means they can land a clock rather quickly too sometimes. They can play thopters and block dudes in the man plan. They can Enlightened Tutor for Engineered Explosives and blow up our perpetual resources. I was extremely happy with this board today though and will probably continue to test it against other control decks given that it was so good against Counterbalance.
I went 2-5 preboard, not happy about that but he was drawing Force pretty much every game, and then locking me out with CB. One time I was coming back and he Etutored for Explosives and blew me out. A few of the games were really close and could have swung either direction. One time I managed to mini-Tendrils him (before CB hit play) down to a low life and then swing in with Dryad Arbor and Odious Trow bringing him down to 6 life. Then he Topped into Moat. I managed to pull enough to do another Tendrils. I need 2 black sources to respond to his Top activation to stop him from countering my acceleration, 2 Culling the Weak, 1 Dark Ritual. He let a Lotus Petal resolve so I thought I had it, but then he responded to Summoner’s Pact with a Top activation and countered it before I could find Wild Cantor to get the kill. Almost got there.
But… postboard I went an impressive 5-1. The game I dropped was seriously lucky on his part. He top decked an explosives for 0 right after I managed to sneak in a Belcher with 4 perpetual resources (2 of which were land). Its worth mentioning that I snuck the Belcher through 2 Forces on D4’s and he had an active Counterbalance with Top. I was waiting on hopefully topdecking the ESG for the win as I had a few left. Sure enough all I managed to get was Carpets and Petals that got countered by his lock. But it was fucking close as shit.
The other games were either blow outs or well played long games. In one game I actually played right through Force without missing a beat. I practically creamed myself when I drew this opening hand:
Tomb of Urami, Dark Ritual, Dark Ritual, Cabal Ritual, Lion’s Eye Diamond, Infernal Tutor, Cruel Bargain
He’s on the play. I draw a 2nd LED. I play out all the mana sources, LEDs last, and then play the D4, he Brainstorms into a Force. I then play the IT into Belcher with activation for lethal. He flashes me Top, CB, and Snare in hand. Holy shit.
There were other games, where I just did something unfair like Tomb, Drit, CB, (FOW), Carpet, LED. He drops Top, I drop another Carpet, Crit, IC, (FoW). He then drops Counterbalance, but I sneak in a LED after he Snares my Land Grant as he’s tapped out and can’t Top. Then I play IT for another Belcher, which he Forces, and IT into another Belcher. He FoW’s 2 of them and then the third one lands. Activate with Carpets, GG.
In all the games that I managed to activate Goblin Charbelcher (despite playing 3 more lands in the post-board, it was a kill on that turn. In one game, even if it wasn’t, I went nuts with D4’s and was sitting on a Tomb with 4 LEDs, and 3 Tombstalkers in hand, and 2 Carpet of Flowers for 3 each. You can’t really beat that.
Tombstalker didn’t manage to get any kills. He had STP eventually every time I played them. Tomb of Urami was never broken for a token, though it was absolutely fantastic as another initial mana source. I drew an extra one once but it wasn’t relevant. I’d still board them in regardless as Bayou/Tomb goes a long way. If you can land a Chrome Mox or 2, or a Carpet, you just play your spells for free. The heavy business of 4 IT, 4 Belcher, 8 D4, 4 Tombstalker, 3 Tomb of Urami, 1 Phyrexian Obliterator… they just can’t deal with it. That’s 24 business spells, three of which also function as land to help you get that crucial initial black. I should mention that Obliterator also didn’t do anything. The only time I casted it he had Swords so I still haven’t gotten to see how good it is. If it can swing the opponent you almost surely win though, unlike Tombstalker, as you can make them sacrifice permanents and then they can’t recover. I’m considering up the count to 2 post-board.
I'm bringing this deck to a tournament tomorrow. There is one card that I don't fully understand, what is the SI trick to playing carpet of flowers.
Can you split the mana between phases, etc.?
Also thanks for all your awesome post Vacrix I read this thread from the beginning when I wanted to start learning a different and unusual deck. I'm very excited about this tournament I'll post a report.
Carpet of Flowers is an excellent way to take advantage of ESG in the post-board. That or spare Land Grant on Chrome Mox, or Bayou. It basically produces 1-3 mana on its own because the opponent has to play lands. If they make no effort to play around it, you should win. Sometimes they do because they underestimate just how much business you play and think they have enough countermagic to stop you. Often they don't. If you can land Tomb/Bayou/Mox post-board, three mana is enough to just threaten a D4 per topdeck practically. You could explode into a win at any time.
You can add mana in your first mainphase, swing with swarm, then play a bunch of spell in the 2nd mainphase, drop a carpet and add mana. I'm pretty sure you can add it whenever you want in the phase, not at the beginning necessarily.
Tomb of Urami is still the best creature postboard. I tried also Tarmogoyf (which was to to slow) and with mixed results Tombstalker.
One of few things that came in my mind were Thrun, the Last Troll as a one-off to enable boarding trix with pact (or not) and Masked Gorgon with should be pretty much the game if you get threshold. But I never tested this, because I have given up the man plan. 3 ToU in the SB should be fine.
I admit I've never tried to actually get Summoner's Pact to work in the post board. I guess if you land Carpet of Flowers than its possible but it seems to risky having dead cards in hand when you know they have an answer to the first spell you play. Thrun is the fucking tech though. I wonder if he's worth it in the post-board. GG might be hard to get though without Carpet.
This might seem like weird tech, but I might try it instead of playing tombstalker I was thinking if you got out malakar blood witch it has a better chance of staying in play since a lot of decks run SOP.
We should try him. Decks with GSZ are using him as a 1-off against (aggro)control, with positive results. I think it could work.
4 Carpet of Flowers
4 Thrun, the Last Troll
3 Duress
2 Tomb of Urami
1 Bayou
1 Pentad Prism ?!!!! incredibly awesome in modern
EDIT: Prism is basicly a DR with suspend. I am buliding right now an Enduring Ideal list in modern and was quite surprised about Prism. As "fast mana" it does it job better than Seethig song or Lotus bloom.
Bloodwitch is a full turn slower and it costs about 3 more than Stalker. Not sure its worth it.
You can only add mana from carpet at the beginning of each main phase. Its use, not just in this deck but in storm decks in general, is to beat tempo decks virtually on its own, and to act as an IMS to enable bombs, as well as to beat taxing counters. In SI, the blue matchup forces the deck to play a game that is longer than the extremely short horizon, and this runs counter to the low IMS count that the deck has -- carpet is a bid to allow the deck a longer game while being the best sb IMS against blue. The deck runs enough bombs, a lot of which dodge snare, such that you run players out of hard countermagic and grind the game out that way. That is fixes coloured mana is cherry on top of an already impressive cake.
It also has fringe benefits in decks like DDFT, where carpet goes into certain exotic piles, can get bounced and replayed to add a crapload of mana, and it is also frequently better against blind counterbalances than say a lotus petal is.
My bad. Didn't read the errata on Carpet as closely as I should have.
I am really interested to know more about the Carpet and other SB cards, feel free to show links to discussion, or just ramble, etc. As Occam's reply has already shown that I lack more knowledge than I thought I did....
Thanks
Thrun... Idk. He might merit some testing, but we already run so much black mana that it's going to be better more often to run a big Demon. There's enough of them out there. GSZ seems iffy. You can test it, but I won't.
Malakir Bloodwitch... while she has protection from the most common removal, and flying, she is only a 3/3 with a useless ability (in this deck). That won't get there as often as some other options. I'd stick with Demons if I were you.
I thought about running Pentad Prism in an artifact based list as a color fixer. The problem is it's almost strictly worse than Manamorphose.
On the topic of Big Black Demons... Let's talk about Griselbrand. Yes, he costs 8 mana. I don't see an issue there, especially post-board with Carpets/Blooms. He seems tailor-made for combo decks of just about every kind. He makes me wish I ordered cards to put together Reanimator instead of Esperblade lol.
Anyway... Thoughts?
Any thoughts on the new D7 spoiled today? 3rr each player discards their hand and draws 7. Miracle 1r. I absolutely adore slithermusr and almost want to put a second one in.
Did some testing with a single grislebrand and the results are promising. Beat out esper blade with him through a couple of forces and 3 counterspells
Reforge the Soul might be really good in this deck although I do see it wanting 2+ Manamorphose for fixers and ensure you can cast the Reforge and reload. Who needs miracle, just build the mana (and the storm count) and go from there.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ereinion
I think this has potential
Honestly I cut manamorphose entirely from my build as anything out of color was easily castable via tutoring with leds or past in flames with leds. The good news is that it is far better than diminishing returns, so more d7 testing for me.Quote:
Originally Posted by SupREME-10
Played in a 26 man event in LA yesterday. I went 2-3. I had to forfeit my first round because I showed up 30 minutes late. Stuck in traffic. Kinda blows but it happens.
I brought the same list I play but altered the sideboard:
SB
4 Carpet of Flowers
4 Duress
2 Xantid Swarm
2 Tomb of Urami
2 Deathmark
1 Empty the Warrens
Round 2 – RUG Tempo
G1: He has a game loss because he left 4 cards out of his list. Lucky me. More luck.. Force is his bottom card while he’s shuffling.
G2: I have a pretty killer hand. Chrome Mox, ESG, Dark Ritual x2, Cruel Bargain, Belcher, Chrome Mox. I topdeck Dark Ritual. I decide to land a mox and start slow playing him. Ironically… I go straight for Belcher even though he played first. Fucking stupid.. He Dazed it. I should have gone right for Bargain and played around Daze. On the following turn I played another Dark Ritual into Bargain, which he let me have. Then I tried for another Belcher and he Forced. A few turns later I try to play yet another Belcher but he FoW’s my Culling the Weak after Pact and I die. Misplayed like a noob in this game. Granted I was just frantically driving to get there for 2.5 hrs straight. Meh…
G3: I get a pretty killer hand again this time post-board. I play Bayou and Duress him see Stifle and Brainstorm and a bunch of other cards I can’t remember (he mulled to 6 though). I took the Stifle and passed the turn. Next turn I played Carpet into Cabal Ritual into D4. I managed to play another D4, dropped another Carpet off ESG, landed Xantid Swarm and some LEDs. On the following, I Duress him and drop Belcher for the kill.
G4 (we played a hypothetical game 3): I got turn 1 Carpet. He had Force but didn’t FoW it. I played Duress off Carpet and got Force. Then I proceeded to D4 into Tomb, LED, Xantid,and Empty the Warrens. I passed the turn though as I didn’t have enough mana to EtW yet. I dropped Xantid. Then I made 6 tokens and passed. He had Delver (unflipped) and Goose. I swung him for 6, and then dropped the Tomb, which he commented that he forgot to Stifle, but Xantid would have prevented it anyway. Tomb + tokens got there.
2-1
Round 3 – Elves
G1: I Belch him, it misfires for 8. Then I Belch him again with Dark Ritual and the kill is had.
G2: I have a pretty dope hand, at least I thought it was. ESG/Cantor into x2 Drit → CB draws me into all business. I’m sitting there with 7 business spells in my hand.. Then he Chords into Teeg and I scope.
G3: I land Belcher turn 1 without activation, but I have 2 Chrome Mox out so I figured I can beat him before he can do anything about it. I keep drawing shit and then eventually draw Pact, but hold on to it as a last ditch effort if I need to Belch because there are still 2 lands in the deck. He Chords into QPM and I have to go for it in response. 7 damage…
1-2
Round 4 – Cephalid Breakfast
G1: I land Belcher turn 1 and he scoops. No Force.
G2: I play turn 1 Bayou, Dark Ritual, Dark Ritual, Duress taking Force, Cruel Bargain into Dark Ritual + Culling the Weak + ESG into Belcher w/ a LED backup for the kill.
G3 (we play another for kicks): I get turn 1 Carpet and then Swarm. Next turn make 10 tokens off IT/LED and pass. They get there.
2-0
Round 5 – Reanimator
G1: He flashes me Animate Dead accidentally so I know what he’s playing. I have turn 1 Chrome Mox, Dark Ritual into CB, he has Force. I try again 2 turns later and he has double Daze for my Dark Ritual, though I could pay 1. Then he get Iona and I scoop.
G2: I can’t remember this game much but I Duress him a few times, and kill him with Tomb.
G3: I think I have a good hand but I should have mulliganed. Land Grant x2, Lotus Petal, Xantid x2, Dark Ritual, Dark Ritual. I figure if I can draw a business spell I should have it. I draw ESG and drop a Swarm with Dryad Arbor. He Entombs at the end of turn for Iona and reanimates. In hindsight, the mulligan was a much better choice.
1-2
I played one more round for kicks against a dude who was also done playing. He was playing Dredge. I beat him 3 times turn 1… so maybe that’s how my first round could have gone? Who knows… I would have gotten paired differently if I was there earlier. I misplayed all over the place. I haven’t played a stressful tournament in a while, especially after driving for so long. Next time I’m going to get there at least 30 minutes early, likely with a crew.
The sideboard was pretty good all day. The Deathmarks were not impressive though. They didn’t help me against anything but then again I didn’t really play them or see them at all despite boarding them in against Elves. Empty the Warrens was always castable either through LED, Petal, or Carpet. I think 12 red sources is enough for it post-board. Its also a good 1’of at the least because it lets you play around stuff that says you can’t target them like Leyline and such. I think I’ll be keeping 1 in my board. The Tombs got there against RUG Tempo, who lack STP, and Reanimator. The Xantids were still good against RUG even though they have Bolt. He still has to draw it after all. 4 Duress was really good. I could play it mid spell chain when I had a lot of mana floating and just keep going without missing a beat. Belcher misfired a lot against Elves. Gotta say I wasn’t too happy about that but all decks shit on themselves sometimes. Sometimes its land drops and you’re getting fucked cause you draw all the wrong cards. In PSI that just becomes apparent REALLY quickly. I’m pretty happy though that I was able to beat two decks playing countermagic though, even if the tournament itself wasn’t a successful endeavor.
EDIT:
As for Reforge the Soul...
We'll have to do extensive testing with it.. but I think it might have an application in the SITES list. Especially post-board when you are in topdeck mode with lands and Carpet of Flowers, I can see this card being pretty killer, especially with Cabal Therapies in the graveyard to play flashback off additional tall men you draw in your new 7.. and the versatility of Burning Wish.