Hey did anyone think of taking this deck the control/mana severence route? It seems pretty pheasible to me. Asides for coping better with hate, it would likely beat this in the mirror. Kind of like the old spoils vs bug issue.
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Hey did anyone think of taking this deck the control/mana severence route? It seems pretty pheasible to me. Asides for coping better with hate, it would likely beat this in the mirror. Kind of like the old spoils vs bug issue.
It will be a defining deck of the format. Time will tell (and the next banning announcement). As for hate, Belcher won't give up that easily. Oxidize, Living Wish, Duress, and Goblin Welder are all strong maindeck choices. I'm not saying it's a strong defense, but it's enough to sway the game.Quote:
Originally Posted by FyndhornBrownie
In testing, It seems that a well placed chalice from a good aggro, or aggro control deck destroys the 2 land build. This deck is already not terribly consistant. The hate coming from rod and chalice is usually quite enough to buy the time to start beating you, making spoils more and more of a risk. Its just too hard to recover from this, especially when counter backup is involved. It seems to me that this deck is just too unstable. This is just like spoils dragon. Most people claimed BUG dragon was better, so I believe its a good idea to try to make it more stable.
This deck needs to run blue for Brainstorms, which are a staple in T1 versions, and Meditate to make up for the lack of Draw 7's.
1 Tropical Island
1 Bayou
4 Lotus Petal
4 Chrome Mox
4 LED
4 ESG
4 Dark Ritual
4 Land Grant
2 Cabal Ritual
4 Tinder Wall
4 Chromatic Sphere
4 Brainstorm
4 Meditate
4 Goblin Charbelcher
4 Spoils of the Vault
2 Living Wish
3 Goblin Welder
3 Xantid Swarm
I'm not sure how feasible the Welders are, they might be cut along with Wish for Tainted Pact or other draw.
Um. WHAT? Brainstorm isn't used it any version except the 2 land models, which are almost entirely inferior to the 1 land models. You notice how me and Gooba both run 1 land models at this point, because we don't want to deal with the complications.Quote:
This deck needs to run blue for Brainstorms, which are a staple in T1 versions
Brainstorm is also very weak in a deck where not every card is a utter bomb and few shuffle effects.
Running two lands will rarely get in the way of a same-turn kill, and you get to run better cards. Gamble is just not strong enough IMO. Brainstorm lets you use the best cards out of your hand and the top three, which should be sufficient... and Meditate is amazing, basically no drawback.
I don't think brainstorm has any place in a deck where you are likely only searching for one specific card in the deck. I believe gamble is better, because it gets you the card when you need it. Plus, if you had a welder in play, you can weld the belcher in if you got unlucky with the gamble.
@Ray if you want to talk about the Severence version then post in the correct thread. It's called Bob.deq.
I think that the thing that really needs to be found is a good way to protect the combo, a few things I've been looking at are Cabal Therapy, Suppress and Xantid Swarm. I'm not very likely to play Supress because of the high cc but Therapy seems really good. I think that Oxidize is necessary in the board but I don't think it is needed in the main as much as Therapy or Swarm.
When this combos off, if somehow the first activation doesn't kill the opponent (stifle, hitting that one land, or that one other land, etc.) can the deck fire it off again the next turn, or is it pretty much out of steam by then? I have done zero testing, and I was just wondering. It seems that everything except the lands and chrome mox are one time only stuff.
Therein lies your problem.Quote:
I have done zero testing
However, between Welders, permanent mana sources, and the fact that the deck can just y'know, topdeck mana or a tutor to get mana, it usually only saves a turn. Of course, sometimes it completely wrecks the Belcher player. Depends on luck.
EDIT: Note that this is a 1 land build. My testing has shown that you run into land less when Belching with 1 land, although a 2 land build I am currently testing is more consistent (focusing more on three colors instead of two with a splash of red).
I recently did 400 goldfish games with a build I made. I'm still working around with a new build that Glenchuy over on the WotC boards posted. Here are my results for my build:
Turn 1 ......... 41 ...... 10.25%
Turn 2 ......... 151 ..... 37.75%
Turn 3 ......... 149 ..... 37.25%
Turn 4 ......... 36 ...... 9%
Turn 5 ......... 8 ....... 2%
Fizzle/6+ ...... 15 ...... 3.75%
Run into land .. 12 ...... 3%
Used Welder .... 20 ...... 5%
Spoils Death ... 4 ....... 1%
That was with this deck:
Mana (41)
4 Chromatic Sphere
4 Tinder Wall
4 Chrome Mox
4 Lotus Petal
4 Elvish Spirit Guide
4 Lion's Eye Diamond
4 Dark Ritual
4 Cabal Ritua
4 Eladamri's Vineyardl
4 Land Grant
1 Bayou
Kill (4)
4 Goblin Charbelcher
Tutor (6)
4 Spoils of the Vault
2 Plunge into Darkness
Utility (9)
4 Duress
3 Goblin Welder
2 Oxidize
With 2 more Oxidizes in the board, it can cope with Null Rod, but the Rod still gives it fits. CotV is also a pain. I'm testing a new version that runs two lands and has more of a red focus. So far it is much more consistent, but doesn't go off turn 1 as much. More turn 2 and turn 3, and less turn 4+ wins.
Just some of my results.
~MindFlayerMagi
I have a very quick point that I'm not sure we have addressed yet. How bad is the Vineyard in the mirror match? I would guess that it is unplayable!
Yes, I would have to say that Vineyard gets taken out in the mirror in exchange for something along the lines of Artifact Blast. I haven't gotten far enough in testing to even beging building a board tho.
Yeah, Vineyard is very bad. In goldfish, it works very nicely. But that is, well, goldfish. Currently, I'm testing a new build (by Glenchuy):
/NAME: Belcher 1.5 v2.6
// Mana (42)
4 Cabal Ritual
4 Chrome Mox
4 Dark Ritual
4 Elvish Spirit Guide
4 Land Grant
4 Lion's Eye Diamond
4 Lotus Petal
4 Tinder Wall
4 Seething Song
4 Pentad Prism
1 Taiga
1 Bayou
// Win Condition (4)
4 Goblin Charbelcher
// Tutoring (6)
4 Spoils of the Vault
2 Plunge Into Darkness
// Utility (8)
4 Duress
4 Goblin Welder
It's less explosive, but it doesn't use Vineyard. It also fizzles out a lot less. Less turn 1 wins and turn 4+ wins, but much more turn 2 and 3 wins. I hope to be able to do some goldfishing followed by some actual playtesting to see if it works better vs. Null Rod than other versions.
Thoughts?
~MindFlayerMagi
p.s. Been thinking some things. If BBS comes back, like a few people are trying to do, then Carpet of Flowers or Seedtime might work in the board. Nothing like even more brokenness. Any thoughts?
EDIT: Should this thread be named just "Belcher" or "X-Land Belcher" instead of "2 Land Belcher"? Many 1 land builds are also springing up. Just a thought, as many of the decklists here are 1 land builds, and many others are 2 land builds.
The deck needs more ways to protect the combo. I think the best choice is to try to fit in a playset of cabal therapy's. They will be less dead vs aggro than xantid swarms, and they can even hit stuff like rod and chalice of you go first. From what I have seen, the deck will roll over to control without the additional disruption.
Four Duress and Goblin Welder with Oxidize, Xantid (and I'm trying Carpet of Flowers in the board) tends to be all I've needed thus far. (And by all I've needed, I mean all I could fit in w/o totally destroying the reamining consistency of the deck)
Carpet of Flowers actually solves some of the issues I've had with trying to beat control. By giving me non Null Rod disrupted mana sources and giving me more colored mana, it let's me keep up with my opponents resources better.
Edited By Artowis on 1094941292
Has anyone tried Birds MD? I've found they make the turn 2 kill incredibly consistent, and provide a lot of color-fixing. Here's the list I'm working on for reference:
4 Goblin Charbelcher
4 Land Grant
4 Elvish Spirit Guide
4 Lotus Petal
4 Chrome Mox
4 Lion’s Eye Diamond
4 Dark Ritual
4 Brainstorm
4 Chromatic Sphere
4 Tinder Wall
4 Enlightened Tutor
4 Birds of Paradise
3 Cabal Ritual
3 Pentad Prism
2 Living Wish
2 Goblin Welder
1 Taiga
1 Tropical Island
SB:
2 Goblin Welder
2 Cabal Therapy
3 Xantid Swarm
1 Uktabi Orangutan
1 Bone Shredder
1 Pyrexian Negator
1 Gemstone Mine
1 City of Traitors
3 Oxidize
My deck runs a lot more color than most builds, having both Enlightened Tutors and Brainstorm, but with Birds, Pentad Prism, Chromatic Sphere, and Lotus Petal, I rarely have any mana issues. My testing with spoils didn't go very well...I found that against control they would just counter what I found anyway, and against aggro the life I lost would set me back a whole lot further than losing 1 turn to an Enlightened Tutor. The Tutor and Brainstorm seem much more consistent that either Spoils or Gamble.
Also- my meta (Houston) has a lot of aggro decks, and I've found that rather than split the fence vs aggro or control, I'd just SB the cards that I really need against control like the other 2 Welders, Swarms, and Therapys. Even then, in game one if you can bait them with a turn 2 Welder, a lot of times you can force out a Belcher and activate either that turn or the following- Birds make it really easy to find the 3 mana necessary.
Give it a try and let me know what you think
Belcher just got a little more ridiculous:
Desperate Ritual - 1R
Instant - Arcane
Add RRR to your mana pool.
Splice onto Arcane: 1R.
For TMD's discussion, check here: Red Ritual in CHK
Even though they're busting a nut over how powerful it could be in Type 1, it's just as strong in the new 1.5 since we can do many of the same things with all of the unbanned artifact mana.
It's better than seething song... maybe. It opnly produces 1 mana, when song produced 2. It should be interesting in t2. But in belcher, I'm not so sure if it's all that hot.
Anything that produces more mana than it costs is good in this deck (ie Cabal Ritual w/o Threshold, Tinder Wall, etc.). It only gets better if you have multiple Desperate Rituals in your hand and enough mana. Say you have 2 DespRits in your hand and four available mana:
Use 1R to pay for 1st DespRit and 1R more to splice = RRRRRR in pool.
Cast 2nd DespRit that you just Spliced = RRRRRRR.
That's enough for a casting and activation. I never said it was the hottest card ever, but it could be very strong. I'll do some Goldfishing and check it out.