[DTB] Sneak Attack

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I'm not sold on Grislebrand over Proggy. I def admit that he is better than Proggy off Sneak Attack. However, I'm not sure about everyone else but 80% of my wins come off Show and Tell. I'd rather show and Tell Proggy than Grislebrand, especially when you need to win w/in 2 turns. You can spend a ton of life drawing the cards and then have no beater on the table to clock the opp. And after he gets a swords It's going to take 1-3 turns to get started again. Meanwhile the cards you drew from him put you at less than 10 life.

I could see him being better off the board for game 2 after the opp. boards out targeted removal.

I do aknowledge his awesomness (as I preordered them and will def try them out) in the right circumstances but Proggy is just more reliable I think and reliability is what makes this deck so good.

I sold all SneakAttack stuff a few months ago and switched over to HiveMind as it was clearly the better deck. I rebought all this stuff today as I tested out a bit with Grislebrand and he is pretty good vs everything that doesnt play Karakas.

But more testing will be needed for sure.

I tested today against my buddy with Stoneblade and won a couple of games. Griselbrand is the nuts...trust me!

After a Force War I had the choice to put the Griselbrand or Emrakul into play after a show and tell. He had 2 lands in play before SnT resolved. So it would be easy for him to play a land and then another one in his turn for Jace, so I took the demon and drawed 7 in his turn to win the counter war over Jace/swords (cant remeber but did not matter).

With Sneak attack + Griselbrand you can also easily beat a Karakas. Just get 2 Emmys

My Counter-Config. is something I am really proud of. I was like lets try this card out and it was pretty good all day. It is: 4 Force of Will, 1 Misdirection, 4 Daze, 2 Flusterstorm!

Whats your thoughts on Flusterstorm? I love it for being a U:Win target Counter-War. And it's fine vs Stormcombo aswell.
Greetings

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Originally Posted by catmint

I tested today against my buddy with Stoneblade and won a couple of games. Griselbrand is the nuts...trust me!

After a Force War I had the choice to put the Griselbrand or Emrakul into play after a show and tell. He had 2 lands in play before SnT resolved. So it would be easy for him to play a land and then another one in his turn for Jace, so I took the demon and drawed 7 in his turn to win the counter war over Jace/swords (cant remeber but did not matter).

With Sneak attack + Griselbrand you can also easily beat a Karakas. Just get 2 Emmys

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You would only need 1 emmy with sneak since they will bounce it before declaration of attacks and you would just play it again and attack.

Gristlebrand is the stonecold nuts. I would even say more than emmy. He is better against combo and control off show and tell. He can draw straight away into a bunch of counters and just bury them. Also against Aggro, they cannot alpha strike into griselbrand because of lifelink. They need to deal 7 + your current life total to you in order to kill which is a stretch. If they pass the turn back to you in order to build up the board, you can use griselbrand to draw a nut hand and go sneak attack next turn into emrakul FTW.

Test griselbrand, he is gg when he hits the board. Even against stuff like karakas. Bounce griselbrand? Sure, I'll draw 14 into the perfect hand and get sneak attack down next turn into lotus petal back up for the bounce.

I don't understand why you would be upset if your Gristlebrand was plowed after you show and tell him. You can always respond and draw 7 and gain 7 life back from the swords. You're still up an incredible amount of cards.

True ivanpei: With all the counterspells maindeck we do not need combo hate in the board. Griselbrand as a 4 of draws in all the counterspells you need.

Can you post your currect approach? Do you still prefer the super fast version or the more grinding one?

I'm leaning more towards the traditional intuition lists because you don't want to risk flooding with either component G1. Cutting Proggy also reduces your blue count. Playing less intuitions is not that great an idea.

However post board, extra through the breach and monsters is the way to go. Cut intuition to play around surgical extraction. Seething song has been pretty hit or miss for me. It's terrible with show and tell, so I'm not sold on it. Through the breach has been good in the board for me, especially against decks like reanimator/show and tell mirror. 4 sneaks is just not enough.

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Originally Posted by The Colonel

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I'm not sold on Grislebrand over Proggy. I def admit that he is better than Proggy off Sneak Attack. However, I'm not sure about everyone else but 80% of my wins come off Show and Tell. I'd rather show and Tell Proggy than Grislebrand, especially when you need to win w/in 2 turns. You can spend a ton of life drawing the cards and then have no beater on the table to clock the opp. And after he gets a swords It's going to take 1-3 turns to get started again. Meanwhile the cards you drew from him put you at less than 10 life.

I could see him being better off the board for game 2 after the opp. boards out targeted removal.

I do aknowledge his awesomness (as I preordered them and will def try them out) in the right circumstances but Proggy is just more reliable I think and reliability is what makes this deck so good.

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I agree 100 %! :)

What do you guys think about the timewalk reprint? Could we play it as a 2-of replacing 2 Ponder? And of course only in a build with at least 2 Jaces.

I'm not sure what the attraction is about jace, at least not md. Out of the board against control, it seems like a fair plan. I seem to see the MD jace as a very expensive brainstorm that soaks some damage. Can someone explain why some builds run jace again?

I don't think the new walk helps this deck much, you can't abuse the extra turn as much as other decks. Also, combo decks tend to have a lot of chaff. You want to be using brainstorm to send the chaff into ur deck instead of setting up an explore.

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Originally Posted by ivanpei

I'm not sure what the attraction is about jace, at least not md. Out of the board against control, it seems like a fair plan. I seem to see the MD jace as a very expensive brainstorm that soaks some damage. Can someone explain why some builds run jace again?

I don't think the new walk helps this deck much, you can't abuse the extra turn as much as other decks. Also, combo decks tend to have a lot of chaff. You want to be using brainstorm to send the chaff into ur deck instead of setting up an explore.

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Jace improves, pretty much like Misdirection, our bad matchups - and gets rid of Jaces that resolved. And he can bounce a sneaked in Emrakul in main phase 2 to be used again in the next turn or bounce creatures like Peacekeeper.

The new Timewalk is strong in my opinion, because we just need 5 mana for Show and Tell and Timewalk which gives us a "hasted" permanent Emrakul (or Progenitus) which is pretty relevant in today's meta, where some decks can race us easily.

Ill post the list I run at the moment in order to give this discussion some material to pin down on.


4 Ancient Tomb
1 City of Traitors
4 Scalding Tarn
2 Misty Rainforest
1 Wooded Foothills
2 Volcanic Island
3 Island
2 Mountain

4 Show and Tell
4 Sneak Attack

4 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
4 Grislebrand

4 Force of Will
1 Misdirection
3 Daze
2 Flusterstorm

4 Lotus Petal

4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder

3 Intuition

Tell me what you think - its just a raw list.

EDIT AFTER TESTING:

-1 Intuition
-1 Mountain
-1 Wooded Foothills

+1 City of Traitors
+1 Island
+1 Volcanic Island


It just some manabase-changes as the first one didnt work too well.

Does anyone have a solid Griselbrand list?

I'm stumped. Even shit you're just testing, I don't care. I want a shell to test.

I think you are right ivanpei. There are some situation where timewalk is awesome, but its probably better to just run a full set of Ponders for it which are important for the "regular game flow".

You would have to ask experienced sneak attack players what the idea behind maindeck jace is or how good it is. I guess it brings the win against control decks which are busy to fight our combo enables in the early turns. However 8 enabler, 8 monsters along with 8 cantrips and 2 intuition brings enough consistency and redundancy, so it's probably better to run more counterspells instead of Jace.

Questions are:
Is it better to run more acceleration: 2 mana lands/lotus petal/Spirit Guide/seething song or more counterspells. You can argue that one can make up the card disadvantage with Griselbrand, but I lean towards more protection.

Sideboard is also really interesting too. Besides the fact that we have no clue how the new meta looks like, Griselbrand changes a lot. He is much better than Progenitus against combo and might open up SB spot. Along the 4-5 GY spots & Pyroblast there is a lot of space for:

Jace: Against Control
Progenitus: Against Control/Maverick
Leyline of Sancity – Against discard + storm hate
Trinisphere: Against combo and control
Pyroclasm or Firespout: Necessary versus sligh/hatebears?
Echoing Truth: Bounce hate/Lingering Souls
Magus of the Moon: Hate for RUG/BUG/Karakas
Pithing needle: Pridemage/Karakas/SD.top
Shattering Spree/Hurkyl’s Recall: Versus … I don’t know what could be so bad.
Boseiju, Who Shlelters all: Versus RUG/Blade Control

I Have been playing with 3 Jace lately. It's good almost all the time and certain plays with it nullify any chance opponent had with Emrakul. Namely an opponents Jace( relevant thing vs Stoneblade) and bouncing KotR post SnT or to Force/Daze. Jace is Jace against everything not only control. With Sol Lands and Petals casting Jace early is frequently possible. Giving the deck an alternate route against Ensnaring Bridge/ various effects isn't too horrible either.

Magus is weaker against RUG/BUG or anything with instant removal/Dismember, Jace/Liliana. Magus has advantages over Spell Pierce and Disenchant.

Boseiju is interesting and gets better with Through The Breach.

Not sure what Sweeper would be best suited. Fallout has the most value against Delver.Clasm is faster against Maverick and Spell Snare hits it. I would stay away from Firespout currently because it will not hit Delver,Clique,Souls and for the 3 cost Fallout is instant speed.

I've been looking at the new cards, and here's what I'm currently testing:

Land (18)
3x Ancient Tomb
2x City of Traitors
1x Flooded Strand
2x Island
1x Misty Rainforest
1x Mountain
1x Polluted Delta
4x Scalding Tarn
3x Volcanic Island

Instant (16)
4x Brainstorm
3x Flusterstorm
4x Force of Will
2x Misdirection
3x Spell Pierce

Sorcery (8)
4x Ponder
4x Show and Tell

Creature (8)
2x Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
3x Griselbrand
3x Progenitus

Enchantment (7)
3x Ancestral Knowledge
4x Sneak Attack

Artifact (3)
3x Lotus Petal

It's pretty much the established list with a few changes; I've swapped Ancestral Knowledge for Intuition and thinned the monsters for Grislebrand. I'm working on the idea that Grislebrand can grab a nut draw much easier with Ancestral Knowledge setting it up. I know Ancestral Knowledge turns on spell snare, but taking Intuition out turns off Surgical/Extirpate, which does hurt us more.

Any thoughts would be appreciated.

dont you feel 18 lands is risky?
Since the combo is not too hard to find but costs 3 or 4(5) mana and we might want to have flusterstorm/pierce up making land drops seems important. I've seen lists from 19-21.

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Originally Posted by ivanpei

I'm leaning more towards the traditional intuition lists because you don't want to risk flooding with either component G1. Cutting Proggy also reduces your blue count. Playing less intuitions is not that great an idea.

However post board, extra through the breach and monsters is the way to go. Cut intuition to play around surgical extraction. Seething song has been pretty hit or miss for me. It's terrible with show and tell, so I'm not sold on it. Through the breach has been good in the board for me, especially against decks like reanimator/show and tell mirror. 4 sneaks is just not enough.

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I'm unimpressed with Through the Breach, besides being a more expensive, less effective Sneak Attack the problem is that it doesn't leave you with a combo piece on the board for Griselbrand to chain into Emakrul.

I'm also not convinced Intuition is worth it, now that we have Griselbrand instead of Progenitus I find myself Intuitioning for Emakrul or Show&Tell a lot less because either creature is good off of either enabler. I think we can probably just play Pre-Ordain and cantrip thru' our whole deck. It also makes land drops and mulliganing much less of an issue where Intuition just kind of sucks balls.

Good point on Through the Breach. Not an option anymore for Griselbrand into Emrakul.

I feel 2 intuition is still good enough to helpf finding the combo pieces, but also to find 3of hate effects as early as turn 2 if we need them (surgical, FoW, Pithing Needle, Magus of the moon).


I have currently 20 lands (4 basics) 8 cantrips. I prefer it over 19 lands and 9 cantrips.