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Does anyone have any good arguments toward playing 3 or 4 Jace? Also, what's the optimal configuration for Entreat / Terminus? 2/4 or 3/4?
Ideally, I'd like to run 4 Jace, 3 Entreat, 4 Terminus, but I'm not sure how it fits into the overall deck. Thoughts appreciated. :)
Fantastic synergy with miracles is why you want to have 3-4 Jace the Mind Sculptor (I prefer 3 so as not to see one or two too early and it leaves you an open slot for something else), plus he works well in a CounterTop engine. He simply powers up the deck's game plan.Quote:
Originally Posted by JimmyC27
On thoughts:
Jace the Mind Sculptor
I think...the 4th Jace is a matter of preference, and 3 is the least number to keep the deck consistent.
Terminus
4 Terminus would be a good default number, and then maybe -1 MD (+1 SB) when you really need a slot for a card that won't deal with creatures.
Entreat the Angels
As for Entreat the Angels, probably the more you like grind-type control, the less you want to see this. Some are ok with just 1, while some want to see it quite soon for 1-2 angels a pop so they go with 3 copies. Right now...I think 2 is the workable base number.
Just to share, there's a side of me that wants to keep playing with Elspeth Knight Errant and even Gideon Jura, so I put them in at times swapping with Entreat the Angels. Elspeth seems mirror match material, while Gideon is a "cute" way to finish, but he does his job, and can clean up some excess meat that would come after a Terminus. Nothing much really, just wishfully thinking it would be a good idea and if only it didn't mess the 3cc count :laugh:
I switched back to the straight UW with a fairly stock list, featuring 3 Spell Pierce in the mainboard. I did some testing vs SneakAttack. I boarded as followed:
-4 Swords to Plowshares
-4 Terminus
+2 E-Tutor
+1 Humility
+1 O-Ring
+1 Ethersworn Canonist
+1 Pithing Needle
+2 Meddling Mage
I got totally crushed preboard.. but postboard was 50/50. I think we have to accept that it is a bad MU and focus on the real much played decks - not sure which they are at the moment but we will see in a week --> Atlanta.
Greetings
I still don't understand why people see difficulties with the Sneak & Show matchup. I keep crushing it postboard and 50/50+ preboard. Just remember that you have to mull aggressively hoping to see 2 potential answers in the opening, and then it takes them a turn or 2 to set up, so cantrip/top aggressively turns 1 and 2 to sculpt defense just like them. We run more counters than them, perhaps not free, but by the time their trying something we should have mana and they're probably tapping out.
In the early game only counter their actual cards (Sneak/Show) unless they mulled to 5 or less typically. And late game after they made their initial push, Snapback counters for their cantrips and kill them with something.
@Philipp, Terminus still offers some potential value vs S&S, so I wouldn't cut the full set, perhaps 2, but they can deal with any of their scary shit if you top into it on their turn. I would cut Entreats/White 'walkers over them as the card is 100% useless in these games. By the time you can safely cast an Entreat, it means you're winning with a Jace, or they're a turn away from being killed by Clique/SCM/Manland.
Nothing so ridiculous. My point was that, in practice, having four Terminus results in you eventually casting one as an awkward Swords to Plowshares. I'd rather just run the Path.Quote:
Originally Posted by Teknique
While true, sometimes Terminus is only a 1-for-1, the fact that it doesn't target seems awfully relevant against - Nimble Mongoose, Emrakul, Mother of Runes, etc. Point being that if the deck is being set up to accommodate the Miracle mechanic why not run a potential sweeper over a guaranteed 1-for-1?Quote:
Originally Posted by Malakai
I guess there's two achetypes being developed, UW SDT/Miracle control and UW Blade that is also taking advantage of Terminus. If going with 4 Sensei's Divining Top, I think 4 Terminus is on point. If the list is more UW Blade splash Miracles, I could see pointed removal being more desirable.
@sarapfish: I think I'm gonna try the 3 Jace, 1 Elspeth, 4 Terminus, 2 Entreat route. The 1 Elspeth, in a way, offsets that missing 3rd Entreat, improves the mirror match (which I suspect will become more and more common), and plays really well with post-board Humility. I'll let you know how it goes. :)
Yes indeed: the mirror will be a frequent incident in the near future.Quote:
Originally Posted by JimmyC27
Edit: as much as I enjoy being the unfair Terminus guy, I actually don't like how that spell is about to erase swarm aggro for good.
Yeah, it's a bad time for aggro decks when they have bad match ups with both control and combo.Quote:
Originally Posted by klaus
It is true that Terminus severely weakens the archtype but it doesn't completely eliminate it. There are plenty of games against decks like Elves where you just don't see a Terminus. It happens, and you lose. In the end it's still a game of variance and that allows decks like that to remain somewhat relevant, which is good.Quote:
Originally Posted by klaus
This is currently my pet deck and I think 3 Jace/2 Terminus is the right number. Any more and the deck gets insanely clunky. I am also playing 4 MD Tops with 4 CB in the side. The deck is already slow as a turtle and we can't bank on Terminus to bail us out all the time. I'm having alot of problems mainly with Gaddock Teeq. With Maverick essentially having 5 of them (GSZ), it's really hard to pull of an advantageous Terminus. Since Teeq is protected by Mother or Runes, Thalia and Wastelands, GW is by no means a bye. It's actually closer to 50/50.
I find that shifting the CBs to the side and playing Snapcasters instead much better. I also play plenty of quick, nimble answers to survive in the early game. 3 Counterspells, 2 Pierce, 2 Snare, 4 STP and 2 PTE combo very well with my 3 Snapcasters. I don't know how these clunky lists get to far in the SCG Open. Being quick and nimble is the best way to beat disruptive decks like RUG and GW. Also, Reanimator and Show and Tell are a nightmare preboard Post board it's 50/50 or slightly better since I have a lot of hate for them.
SCM used to be my favorite card for a while, but in a deck that doesn't win via combat damage outside of EtA, his body is basically irrelevant. His sole purpose becomes recycling that BS/CS/STP for 3/4 mana - at that point Fact or Fiction seems almost better. The only real benefit I see is being able to ship back your miracles more frequently due to the increased amount of BSs.Quote:
Originally Posted by ivanpei
How is Snare performing for you? I've cut it a while ago and haven't actually looked back. RUG (barring Tarmo whom we have plenty of removal for) and S&T don't feature any CMC2 threats afterall.
If Maveric runs rampant in your meta I can see how you tune your MD towards the archetype - in an open meta though I'm sure Snare and PtE are suboptimal choices.
Maybe your troubles with Maverick stem from not having the full set of Terminus/multiple Entreats? Because among the high tier decks, Maverick is the one I'd like to play against every single round. The matchup is so atrocious for them, I actually had an opponent concede instead of playing the matchup again (he faced a teammate running an identical 75 early in the tournament) - that's something that has never happened to me before, ever.Quote:
Originally Posted by ivanpei
Just being able to consistently Terminus their board on turn 3-4 breaks their back and is very hard for them to avoid, especially because Zenith (to find Teeg) is vulnerable to Pierce during that early stage of the game. Thalia and Wasteland do essentially nothing against that plan.
The only way you should lose the matchup if you don't get insanely unlucky is if they hit Teeg plus Mom while you can't find double Swords/Stp plus Snapcaster (or they stick a Sword of Light and Shadow on their Teeg).
You also give up significant percentage against RUG by only running two ways to actually deal with a Mongoose.
That's ignoring how much running a low number of Terminus actually effects your ability to pull one of in time against anything at all and how much weaker it makes the card.
While Terminus looks a lot like Wrath of God, it plays out very differently. Instead of being a card you carefully set up to spend a full turn wiping the board for massive CA later in the game, it allows you to use a single mana to reset the board very early, blowing the opponent out both mana and tempo-wise on turn three to four.
Because you always want to see it as early as possible (obviously only against those decks where removal is good) you should run as many as you can somehow squeeze into the deck. If you're running it as a lategame one/two-off to clean up once they've exhausted your spotremoval and committed everything they have left to the board, you're probably better off just running straight up Wrath of God.
I agree that the deck should focus on being as quick and nimble as possible (especially the "run a lot of cheap countermagic" part), with the caveat that a deck actually built to set up early Terminus as often as possible is actually at least as "nimble" as what you're using because it can consistently Terminus for one mana by turn 3-4 (either by setting it up or by randomly drawing one of the four).Quote:
I find that shifting the CBs to the side and playing Snapcasters instead much better. I also play plenty of quick, nimble answers to survive in the early game. 3 Counterspells, 2 Pierce, 2 Snare, 4 STP and 2 PTE combo very well with my 3 Snapcasters. I don't know how these clunky lists get to far in the SCG Open. Being quick and nimble is the best way to beat disruptive decks like RUG and GW.
Snapcaster Mage, on the other hand, is not particularly cheap and nimble, given the three mana price tag and all that.
For what it's worth, the best way I've found to beat RUG isn't to use spot removal and snapcaster but to stick a CB (and have as many Termini as possible to solve Mongeese). The easiest way to beat Maverick is to simply play four Terminus (at least until they start to play 3-4 Teeg).
Show and Tell can be tough but I'm not sure what you're doing wrong against Reanimator as I've found that matchup to be fairly positive preboard and incredible postboard (though I admittedly have Counterbalances and more Spell Pierces MD than you do with 4 Extractions, the fourth Pierce and a Flusterstorm in the board).Quote:
Also, Reanimator and Show and Tell are a nightmare preboard Post board it's 50/50 or slightly better since I have a lot of hate for them.
@klaus: My experience with Snapcasters resembles yours (I guess that's a function of running the CBs, though) and the biggest reason I haven't cut them is that you easily run out of hardcounters if you don't have a way to recur them (which is quite relevant in longer games). The 2/1 body has also occasionally been relevant to keep me from timing out against combo-decks.
Spell Snare is just much worse than Spell Pierce at the moment, at least if you run ways to kill Goyfs and SFMs.
With 3CS, 3 Pierce and 4 FOW (and the most ridiculous removal suite in legacy) assembling CB-Top on time is a solvable task. So I actually don't get the "running out of hard counters" part. Could you elaborate?Quote:
Originally Posted by Mon,Goblin Chief
I've been running 3 Terminus/2 Entreat (with 4th Terminus in SB) and have had no problems with seeing Terminus by turn 4 (Top and Brainstorm tend to help that). I honestly don't think 4 maindeck Terminus is 100% auto-correct.
Admittedly, I only run two Counterspell, so you having the extra one already helps significantly.Quote:
Originally Posted by klaus
What I'm getting at it is that there are decks that are hard to CB-lock either because of what their curve looks like (Planeswalker heavy decks, Nic Fit - until you find a 3 - and Show and Tell, mainly) or because they're the mirror (Pierces make early locking very hard and given how important CB is, people should play to blank Pierces as much as possible, leaving me with six actual counters. That means I'm likely to blow some of my hardcounters in almost every counterwar. Later on Jaces and Entreats often get around CB meaning you need even more hard countermagic). There always are spells that simply slip through CB at certain moments, too, which still need to be stopped.
In those matchups, if the game goes long (and it hopefully does, given the nature of the deck), I regularly find myself running low on actually active countermagic given that there are only six hardcounters in my version (2 CS, 4 FoW).
In that stage of the game, Snapcaster is insane because it means you effectively have two more hardcounters (seven mana isn't that hard, surprisingly, and usually you have a CSpell available) that can be recurred with Jace (bouncing your own guys, obviously) and early on it is often better than Counterspell because of the flexibility of turning it into removal.
All that being said, just running more Counterspells might be the right call, given that it actually lowers the curve.
/edit:
Arsenal: I can see moving the fourth to the board if you expect to run into Maverick/other wrathable decks relatively rarely. It weakens the card but the deck still tends to find a three-of by turn 4 reasonably often. Running any less, though, means you definitely can't rely on hitting one early, which kind of defeats the purpose of running Terminus over Wrath in the first place, and makes it so that you're likely to only see one per game. As a result you often need that single Wrath-effect to completely shut them down instead of just being able to tempo blow out them on 3/4 and capitalize on the delay with Jace/Top to either straight up overpower them with Entreat or wrath them again once they've redeployed.
Agree with the Terminus 3/1 split.Quote:
Originally Posted by Arsenal
And 2 EtA also looks like the correct number for decks with SCMs and Cliques.
My list as of now:
2 Vendilion Clique
2 Snapcaster Mage
4 Swords to Plowshares
4 Brainstorm
4 Force of Will
3 Spell Pierce
2 Counterspell
1 Oblivion Ring
4 Sensei's Divining Top
4 Counterbalance
3 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
3 Terminus
2 Entreat the Angels
4 Flooded Strand
4 Scalding Tarn
4 Tundra
4 Island
3 Wasteland
1 Plains
1 Misty Rainforest
1 Karakas
SIDEBOARD:
2 Surgical Extraction
2 Tormod's Crypt
2 Timely Reinforcements
2 Flusterstorm
2 Disenchant
1 Spell Pierce
1 Vedalken Shackles
1 Peacekeeper
1 Terminus
1 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
You can bounce it with Karakas or Sword it. Happen to me (Mav) 4 times :(Quote:
Originally Posted by ivanpei
List looks solid to me, though O. Rings are straight forward MD material, and so are Shackles imo, since they shine even better G1 before your opponents board in their Disenchant effects. I can see how you can't find the space in MD, but have you considered cutting all creatures? I've made a couple of points above in favor of that change. MD O. Rings clearly seem stronger than Cliques imo.Quote:
Originally Posted by Arsenal