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LDV is insane. requires some more weird thinking but is very very powerful. kind of don;t mind sacrificing speed to give the flexibility of the card. it ends up costing on average the same or less life than grim. about a turn slower than maxing on cantrips due to how many cards you see faster but sets up for more powerful turns. and maindecking top helps with discard and random hail marys.
I like it but not sure on how good it is. in terms of overall for the deck
The article is here: http://www.starcitygames.com/article...ers-Vault.htmlQuote:
Originally Posted by Secretly.A.Bee
Also, are you saying that the deck should play Swan Song strictly for Show and Tell? Are there any other matches you'd actually try to bring it in for?
No, it would similarly be useful against Miracles, countering anything from RiP/E.Field/CB/Blood Moon/Etc. I'm not sure it's other practical uses as I'm not testing it til a bit into next month.
Going reactive/control against one of the most reactive/control decks in the format?Quote:
Originally Posted by Secretly.A.Bee
The countermagic is simply unplayable, but you can try it.Quote:
Originally Posted by Secretly.A.Bee
I'm not sold on even playing Swan Song against Show and Tell in theory due to the whole "It doesn't protect your combo" aspect, but I can see the reasoning for it there because of Leyline making proactive cards less effective. Even if it turns out to be awesome in that matchup though, I could see it still being less than playable in that you wouldn't want to run the card against most other things. I'll admit that I'm not talking from a place that has experience with the card, but I'm not seeing it having any practical uses against any deck that doesn't play cards which turn discard off. All the cards you described from Miracles seem better solved with discard than keeping up blue mana that you could be using to cantrip and subsequently giving your opponent a clock in their basically glacial deck. I'm willing to be wrong about that, but I feel like you want your sideboard cards to be better than your mainboard options in more than one matchup if you want them in your sideboard, and at I think that Swan Song is only as good (if that) to your discard suite most of the time.Quote:
Originally Posted by Secretly.A.Bee
going reactive against one of the most reactive decks isn't a big deal when you aren't having an actual counter-war with them. I feel that if you Silence, they counter in some fashion not enchantment-based (CB), you Swan Song, they counter, I feel that then you are pretty free to combo, or at least discard spell/Xantid and go off next turn uninhibited. Also, at that point, I don't see the 2/2 flyer as a drawback. It's not going to matter, as at most it's gonna swing once. If it does matter and kills you (however unlikely), you were nowhere near a win and didn't matter. It's an 8-10 turn clock. Seriously, I fail to see how that p.o.s. bird is gonna be the deciding factor other than a single flip to ad nauseam, and it's been determined that Ad Nauseam is the worst storm enabler used these days.
Also, this isn't the first time it's been considered. Countermagic has been played before in storm, and it did fine. Albeit, it was Doomsday builds that used it, but I've seen FoW as a 4-of in Emidln's list more than once. I've seen transitional sb's in the form of Thresh while maintaining a Doomsday-fueled combo win-con. Storm is NOT linear, no matter how much you want it to be. It can be, but generally the best pilots think outside the box in the worst circumstances and in doing so pull off the most outstanding plays and inevitably, wins, I've ever seen. Haven't seen many as of late, though. As to it being "unplayable", I say pshaw.
On an irrelevant note, I still miss Mystical Tutor...
-ABC
I suppose what I'm trying to say is that a hypothetical 1 mana hard counter is about as effective at preventing the hate permanents out of Miracles as a 1 mana discard spell would be (an unconditional counter wouldn't lose out to a topdeck, so it's probably a little better). However, even if such a hypothetical card did exist, as a Storm deck, I don't see why you would want such a card facing any deck that you're still able to effectively cast discard spells against. I acknowledge that the Swan Song appears to have potential against Leyline decks because they turn all your discard spells into dead cards, but when your opponent doesn't have hexproof, I fail to see why you would side Swan Song in. I don't think it's bad, but I don't think it's better than keeping other spells in your deck.
All I do is play Doomsday (I've actually only started participating in this thread because I'm trying to gain more experience with other Storm decks), and the only time I've seen Force of Will in the deck was in some odd Tendrils/Laboratory Maniac Hybrids. Your Mystical Tutor comment implies I just wasn't around when people tried it because I started Legacy post-banning, though. I recall Flusterstorm/Divert in the early Gitaxian Probe lists, but that was quickly abandoned too. I'm sort of surprised you'd bring Doomsday up to support your claims here, because I've tried counterspells in Doomsday myself and I feel that playing counterspells is even worse in Doomsday. Blue disruption ends up lending itself to having you go off without having the whole picture and hoping you have more answers than your opponent has disruption, which is much more precarious when you're playing a win-condition that eats your entire deck and gives you almost no ability to recover from being disrupted mid-combo.
Given the above, I would also say that your Silence/Swan Song example doesn't seem better than having Duress/Silence to me because the end result is the same (you take two cards away from your opponent and go off blind); in general though, if I have to play either one of these cards alone, I would rather be playing the card that can both be played anytime and offers me the information of my opponent's hand instead of playing the card that would require me to commit resources and pray my opponent just doesn't have more counters than I do. Note also that you are completely glossing over the very real circumstances where LED is a factor, and Duress on a counterspell gives you the green light but a Swan Song would just do nothing because A) You either won't go off because you don't know what your opponent can do or B) Your opponent holds their counter up and just hits whatever you want to do after you discard your hand.
Is it uncommon for your opponent to have more counters than you have answers? Considering the possibility that your opponent has two counters in hand, Swan Song seems very bad. If you're a cautious player, then you're going to have some number of times when you take yourself out of the game because you won't know if one Swan Song is enough to beat your opponent. If you're a risk-taker, you're going to have some number of times when you're going to get yourself taken out of the game because you went for it with one Swan Song and your opponent had more than one answer. Duress avoids this problem entirely--simply by not playing counters, you don't get into counter wars. Trying to be reactive against the most reactive deck is a losing proposition because Storm decks barely deign to interact with their opponent, so they aren't built to go as long or get as much advantage from doing so. In this way, I would contend that "going reactive" increases the probability of a counter war happening, and the moment when you decide your plan is to have an interactive game of Magic is the moment when things start to fall apart. Of course, all the good decks can interact, but we must remember speed also functions as a level of disruption, and playing counters means that you are consciously giving that up...to play cards that do nothing but make you waste mana if your "Slower than Evolution" Miracles opponent spends their opening turns on something other than trying to windmill slam a hate-enchantment.Quote:
Originally Posted by Secretly.A.Bee
Storm doesn't have to be linear, but I'd say that your business spells being cards like Infernal Tutor and Past in Flames mean LED is the strongest card in your deck and you should give pause when it comes to playing spells that don't interact favorably with having to discard your hand.
I'm not just being obstinate here, I'm not saying the card is unplayable. I'm saying that the card doesn't seem *better* than Duress in enough matchups to make me feel like it'd be worth the sideboard space unless you're telling me that playing Swan Song in my deck will make the Show and Tell matchup into a joke or something. I am asking: in any situation where your opponent is still a legal target, why would you want Swan Song over Duress/Cabal Therapy? If we go by your statement that Swan Song isn't even meant to be protection, you're planning on playing additional disruption, and don't mind taking damage from something like a Bird token anyway, why would you play Swan Song over Thoughtseize? If such a situation exists where Swan Song is better than discard, will that situation come up more than Swan Song having a bad interaction with LED?
I don't expect you to have the answers right now because you said you haven't yet been able to test it, but I think that this is what you need to be thinking about when you do test it. I'm 100% theory here so you certainly have the right to be critical of my opinion, but I feel like in general the card needs a very specific set of circumstances to be good, and those circumstances won't arise more often than the drawbacks of playing this deck will. You can certainly side it in when the "Discard does nothing" matches happen, but I'm not seeing it be good outside of then and I wouldn't put such narrow cards in my sideboard unless they turned a horrible matchup upside-down.
If you had duress instead, you could just cast duress, take their first counter, then cast silence and force them to use their second counter.Quote:
Originally Posted by Secretly.A.Bee
No one is saying it's the 2/2 token that's the issue with Swan Song, the issue is that it's not synergistic with what you're trying to accomplish here. A few thoughts -Quote:
Originally Posted by Secretly.A.Bee
1) Discard is synergistic with Past in Flames (which ANT is built for), Swan Song is not.
2) Discard is synergistic with all of your ritual effects, Swan Song is not.
3) When you're ready to combo off but you have Swan Song in hand, you would always rather have that card be a discard spell rather than a counter. IT with no LED but Swan Song in your hand is a nombo.
Sure it's a combo! You get to counter your own tutor and get a 2/2 flier!Quote:
Originally Posted by davelin
Carsten has an article on SCG on the ANT versus OmniShow matchup.
^ This is the point. Swan Song being bad has nothing to do with the 2/2 that it makes.Quote:
Originally Posted by davelin
By the way, why are we talking about Silencing our opponent?
As davelin noted (thanks!) my latest article addresses the OmniShow vs ANT matchup. Given that it was inspired by the discussion here, I probably should provide a link:
http://www.starcitygames.com/article...ombo-Wars.html
Thanks for the inspiration guys, hope that helps those of you struggling against OmniShow :)
Awesome, thanks for writing this!Quote:
Originally Posted by Mon,Goblin Chief
Thanks for writing these Carsten. Your articles are always excellent!Quote:
Originally Posted by Mon,Goblin Chief
Keep storming :wink:.
Sadly the article does not answer the one big question everyone here seems to be worried about: How to win when Omnitell starts with Leyline.Quote:
Originally Posted by Mon,Goblin Chief
He told me: boarding plan as in the Article, try to resolve a swarm and if they Counter go off and if they dint attack and go off. You have to Race them. You Need 3 more mana to find another Tutor (to flashback and get chain After PIF). You have to Race them.
A couple questions... Why are some people choosing to split the discard 4 Duress and 2 Therapy? Most of the time, I'm wishing that my Duress was a Therapy. FoW is the only counter that can't really be played around and them having multiples makes going off extremely difficult.
Next... Why do people play the full set of Gitaxian Probes before they max out on Preordains? Probe is great and all, but Preordain actively helps us win. I've been running a 4/3 split of Preordain/Probes and haven't looked back.
The last isn't really a question, but lately I've been running a single main deck Burning Wish (along with a dumbed down wishboard including another Tendrils and Past in Flames and a few hate cards). I don't have all the clunkiness of 3 Wish builds, but I still have a little extra flexibility. I don't just scoop if my main deck Tendrils gets exiled or if they have out a Leyline of Sanctity (and I hadn't yet known to board in Chain of Vapors), etc. Mostly I'm just wondering if anyone else has tried or had success with something like this?
Slosh.Quote:
Originally Posted by Dzra
He played 4 IT, 1 GT, 1 BW build for exactly the reasons you've mentioed. I'd try to fit one LDV into the mix.