If you are playing knight right now the depths package is mandatory, otherwise you should be on goyf. I still play knight but I am also using the full land tutor targets.
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If you are playing knight right now the depths package is mandatory, otherwise you should be on goyf. I still play knight but I am also using the full land tutor targets.
Goyf only costs two mana, and in game 1, he's a serious clock that can seal up the game. Game 2, he does, at times, come out against decks you're certain bring in Rest in Peace. At two mana, he's not as much of a liability as a 3-mana guy in two different colours.Quote:
Is Goyf not worse against RiP? Or is your logic that its easier to grow goyf back to a formidable size once RiP has been removed (with Knight never being 0 power even with RiP in play)?
Depends. Dryad Arbor you have fetchlands to tutor for, but it's certainly not AS good. I still keep the one-of Karakas to keep my white count up just above required because of the extra requirement for SFM, and it's got value in a variety of matchups. It's MUCH better with Knight, but meh.Quote:
Without knight, is it even worth it to run utility lands like Karakas? How can we reliably get it? In a list I was brewing, I had Karakas and Bojuka Bog as relevant tutor targets (in addition to wasteland obviously).
As a 1-of, it's been fine. I could up it to 2 by cutting a Goyf, but I just run it as Scooze #2, essentially. The card's fine, but since I've really trimmed how many green creatures I'm playing in lieu of SFM, GSZ obviously gets worse and worse. I think if you're on a Knight heavy build, then you should be running GSZ as a 2-3 of. I just didn't like it at the moment because the creatures you tutor for don't beat TNN.Quote:
I really want to cast GSZ, but how has it been working for you as a 1 of? I want to up the GSZ count and add more green creatures, though this is definitely a bias that is clouding my deck building.
No worries :)Quote:
Thanks for taking the time to answer the questions, as I am new to the Archetype (got sick of casting Delver and Ponder
Agreed. I like SFM because it has an edge in some other matchups and I enjoy the creature combat. Being all in on Knight means Rest in Peace does screw you, and I think you're playing a more reactive game. Sure, you have a Combo, but to do it all in one turn requires two Knight or two turns, which means Wasteland can come into play here. I think the Knight package is fine, I just haven't found a build I REALLY enjoyed playing that had everything I wanted in it. The SFM build that I'm running is really enjoyable to play and does well against the TNN decks. I also think the Knight builds are a bit more susceptible to Miracles, in my opinion.Quote:
If you are playing knight right now the depths package is mandatory, otherwise you should be on goyf. I still play knight but I am also using the full land tutor targets.
-Matt
Can someone post their land base with the Dark Depths - Knight combo?
2 bayou
2 scrubland
2 savannah
1 forest
1 swamp
1 plains
4 verdant catacombs
2 marsh flats
2 windswept heath
1 dark depths
1 thespian stage
1 karakas
1 horizon canopy
2 wasteland
Thats what im working with, I can post the whole list when I get off work if you'd like. Its on pg 298 and is now -1 stoneforge -1 bskull -1 stp -2 lingering souls, +1 abrupt decay +1 thoughtsieze +1 elspeth +1 land +1 pridemage. The board is completely different and I dont remember off hand as its still being smoothed out
I've been playing Rock quite a lot latley and I've playtested a bunch of games against Stoneblade w/ true name nemesis. Tried different lists and feel like I'm finally getting somewhere.
My list and thoughts:
CREATURES (15)
4 Dark Confidant
3 Stoneforge Mystic
4 Tarmogoyf
4 Deathrite Shaman
SORCERIES (9)
3 Lingering Souls
2 Hymn to Tourach
4 Thoughtseize
INSTANTS (7)
4 Abrupt Decay
3 Swords to Plowshares
PLANESWALKERS (3)
3 Liliana of the Veil
ARTIFACTS (4)
2 Sensei’s Divining Top
1 Sword of Fire and Ice
1 Umezawa’s Jitte
LANDS (22)
1 Forest
1 Plains
2 Swamp
4 Wasteland
4 Verdant Catacombs
4 Marsh Flats
1 Savannah
2 Scrubland
3 Bayou
SIDEBOARD (15)
3 Oblivion Ring
1 Engineered Plague
3 Surgical Extraction
3 Duress
2 Pithing Needle
3 Zealous Persecution
As I've mostly been playing against Stoneblade w/ TNN, and some Miracles, I can't speak for all the matchups. These are however two very common decks that I do struggle with and here are some general thoughts about the deck and these matchups:
Loxodon Smiter. This card isn't good enough. I suppose it may be decent against various Delver decks or discard heavy decks, but I still believe there are simply better cards for cmc3. Miracles has too many answers to him, stp, jace, terminus (snapcaster+something). Against stoneblade he will just sit back at home starring at that TNN, or enjoy the ride to exile.
KotR. This card has obviously seen much less play since the printing of Deathrite and maybe RiP. But even if there were no Deathrite, I probably still wouldn't play him. Just as the smiter, he dies to pretty much everything as well as counters. And the best thing he can do is search wastelands, but even that isn't most of the time good enough. In maverick, you have cards like Thalia which makes wastelanding better. And TNN is also a big issue here. I mean, smiter and knight are almost completley dead cards if they have TNN in play, unless you're playing with SoFaI which leads me to
Lingering Souls. This card both survives removal much longer obviously, and these souls are the best when it comes to equipments. They fly, they are many and they couldn't care less about TNN. Against miracles, equipment package+lingering souls are the best we can do (T1 discard t2 hymn t3 lily, which is also pretty neat) I believe. If you're up against an aggro deck, I much rather have lingering souls in my hand than a KotR or Smiter. Oh and they are uncounterable-ish.
Tarmogoyf. This is the man. I absolutly crushed my opponent yesterday. Turn 1 discard, turn 2 tarmo, turn 3 lily making him sac his TNN. Attacking for 6 damage until he died on turn 5. Tarmogoyf having Cmc2 cost is probably what makes him as good as he is. You can't make this play with any other creature card reliably.
SDT vs. Sylvan Library: Here is what I think, and I might be wrong but until i feel otherwise, I'm gonna stick with the SDT (duh):
sdmatt wrote:
"Both are good, but SDT was bad in a deck like this for a few reasons. You're ALWAYS trying to jam answers or threats in this deck. On Turn 1, you're trying to develop mana or disrupt their hand. Turn 2, SFM/Confidant/Goyf. Turn 3, do something else. Top, while very solid in Miracles, is really good since you don't actually have to play a lot of stuff on your turn and you want the manipulation on your opponents turn and at any time. Top doesn't draw you extra cards without losing it, and the mana lost spinning in the early turns is critical time wasted. I learned this the hard way playing against Tempo decks about 18 months ago and I found it bad to try to Top into answers in a deck like this, especially when your answers are rarely X-for-1.
Sylvan Library provides a "set it and forget it" option, saving yourself critical mana in the early turns so you can develop your board while simultaneously allowing you to draw extra cards without losing the Library itself. It's not as good as Top is with Dark Confidant, but it's great. In some matchups, drawing 3 cards is the right call, and most of the time, you're drawing an extra card, no problem, on the first turn you get to Sylvan. It's excellent against Control and Tempo, whereas Top is better against Control."
Lets say you're playing a deck with both SDT and sylvan library.
Turn 1 you're ideally casting a deathrite/discard. If you don't have niether you can throw out the Top. As sylvan casting 2 mana, this is not possible.
Turn 2 if you did cast top and you have a 2 drop in your hand (sfm, bob, tarmo) you're most likely not activating it. But lets say you don't have a turn 2 play, or rather, you don't have a cmc2 card, you can spin top in upkeep + possibly play a cmc 1 card. You don't have this option with sylvan (since again you can't play it turn1 ) If you don't cast a top turn 1, and let's say you drew it (or cast something else) and on turn 2 you have both Sylvan Library and top in hand. Here it's probably better to cast Sylvan if you had to chose between it and Top. But if you had a cmc2 threat, it doesn't matter cus you're playing that then instead.
Turn 3. If you did cast top turn 1, you have the option again to spin it in your upkeep if you're not playing a cmc 3 drop. Here sylvan library saves you one mana and you get to look and possibly draw and extra card if you're playing a cmc3 drop.
That's for the early turns. What I am trying to say here is that SDT doesn't stop you from casting threats any more than library does. Since ideally, you're not casting Sylvan until maybe turn 4 (if you have t1 t2 t3 threats) and on turn 4, you've likely got 3-4 lands and using one mana to spin the top doesn't really affect your gameplan. It also searches your library quicker than Sylvan because lets say in your opponents EoT you can spin top, fetch and spin top again. If you see 3 bad cards with library, you will have to wait another whole turn before you can see new cards if you have fetch or other ways to shuffle your library.
Library is also much weaker against all sort of removal, especially Abrupt Decay. It's also more likely to get countered than SDT (due to having cmc2 cost). Bob + top is sweet too.
Liliana of the Veil: the card is great, it kills TNN and is decent against pretty much all decks that run creatures as well as it interrupts combo decks. Wouldn't run less than 3.
Karakas: Without any way to fetch the land, I don't like to have it my list. More often than not, it just destroys my mana. I can see going -1 Plains +1 Karakas, but not sure about that. And the only deck it's really good against is Reanimater and sometimes Sneak and show.
Hymns can be kozileks, or perhaps cabal therapy. Not completley sold on this card, but at times, it can hit their lands and completley destroy the game
Pithing needle is good against Batterskull and opposing Jitte's. I found out that batterskull is actually a problem for this deck. As well as Jace etc.
Zealous Persecution is pretty insane against elves/TNN/Maverick/D&T for obvious reasons
Thanks, Katt. I like most of your analysis.
A friend of mine and I were brainstorming, since we were going to include Mirran Crusader in the side for the BUg/Shardless/Jund matchups to push it over the 50/50 mark.
But, boarding in creatures always sucks, so he suggested Crusader in the main (with some mana base changes). By trimming a Goyf and a Liliana, you get a beast against anything BGx, and it really does race TNN. Sure, it doesn't deal with TNN directly, but double striking, especially when you have Equipment, is insanity.
I'm not sure if its worth it or not, so we'll see. Just throwing it out there.
Otherwise, I think my board will likely go to something like:
2 Grip
2 Charm
1 ZP
1 Ooze
3 Teeg
2 Needle
1 E Tutor
2 Cage
1 Deed
I noticed I was super light on stuff against Graveyard based decks, and I think they're really well positioned now. I also like E. Tutor in everything. Manually tutoring Equips, but mainly for Cage in those matchups, or Deed/Needle against Miracles is pretty great. We decided Deed was too strong in a few matchups NOT to include. Examples being Miracles, Elves, Affinity, Death and Taxes (have to blow it in the same turn otherwise Revoker, but still). Lingering Souls got cut since they were in the board and I wanted to have more gravehate.
Cage doesn't bone us terribly like Rest in Peace does, and it's a more continuous effect than Nihil Spellbomb.
I love Souls, it's just deciding if Goyf/Liliana, Crusader/Crusader, or Souls/Souls are the better bet. Nice option is that Crusader doesn't get hurt by RIP. I just love my Lilianas though....
-Matt
I think if you're going to in with the sfm package, souls is better than crusader/goyf/lili. It has a pretty big impact in the tnn, jund, and bug matchups. Vs UWR, the souls provides flying chump blockers against delver to stabilize. Vs esper, the souls fly over tnn and can be equipped w/ a batterskull/jitte to actively race it. Vs jund, crusader has a huge "punishing fires me now" sign painted on his head; while souls takes them multiple activations or multiple spells to get rid of (especially with the threat of equipment). Vs bug, its the same as vs uwr--it chumps things delver/stalker/goyf for a good couple of turns until you draw out of your predicament (I think delver/stalker are bigger threats than goyf because you can just stall the ground with your own goyfs).
I won a small weekly at our local store last night(18 people) with a newly changed junk list... I wanted to try a GSZ mini package with dryad arbor, teeg, and scooze and really liked it. I went 4-0 against ANT, Miracles, MUD and Esperblade. MD teeg was very handy for these matchups. Here's my list:
4 Confidant
4 DRS
4 stoneforge
1 gaddock teeg
1 scavenging oooze
3 Lingering souls
3 StP
3 Abrupt decay
3 thoughtseize
3 cabal therapy
2 GSZ
3 lilana
2 silvan library
1 sword of fire and ice
1 jitte
4 verdant catacombs
2 marsh flats
2 windswept heath
4 bayou
2 scrubland
1 savannah
3 wasteland
1 forest
1 plains
1 swamp
1 dryad arbor
sb
2 gaddock teeg
1 ethersworn canonist
3 grafdiggers cage
2 krosan grip
1 sigarda
2 zealous persecution
2 golgari charm
1 life from the loam
1 scavenging ooze
The synergy between GSZ, arbor, cabal therapy, lingering souls and liliana was great... When those cards are working together in one way or another good things can happen. I wanted to lower the curve of the deck so I cut hymn, knight and batterskull and it seemed to work fine. I fetched SOFAI almost every time and it won me a few games, giving me more cards to keep pressure on. Therapy was really good as usual, especially against the blade deck. The deck has a slower clock now, but better early game, and more spells and creatures that can squeak by early and take over slowly as opposed to must kill/counter bombs like Hymn, KotR and Batterskull. People tend not to counter therapy and lingering souls, and they didn't fear an unequipped sword as much as they would a batterskull, even though it can be just as dangerous. SB is kind of random... Grip came in a lot and was very useful, as I gripped a top, LED, and various equipment. One question about A friend and I were wondering about as we were playing for fun... If he removes a counter from Jitte and I grip it in ransom, nothing happens right?
If you grip after he's already activated the ability, his ability is on the stack already. Grip's split second prevents him from putting any more jitte activations onto the stack, but whatever is on there already will resolve after grip kills his jitte.
How come lists aren't packing Batterskull but are packing the SFM package? Because of Bob? Or usually your SFM just gets killed and you just got time walked?
I think it's just because once you get SoFI against most matchups, you're just winning the game.Quote:
Originally Posted by rlesko
-Matt
You raise some good points, flying blockers being the major difference here imo. It is also easier on coloured mana requirements... Hrm. I HAVE seen 'Souls just straight up crush Tempo, and its true that Mirran's main vulnerability, Bolt (& Fires), is a very commonly played card. While he can attack through all the B/G creatures, most of them don't fly, so it's similar to Souls in that regard. But, it can block goyfs / germ tokens all day, easily giving you time to set up the alpha strike.Quote:
Originally Posted by somethingdotdotdot
I think the final consideration to make is actually a meta call; we're expecting lots of BUG, be it Delver, or Shardless, and if this turns out to be true, than Mirran is a great choice. If, however, there was actually a high likelihood of Jund as the BGx deck, then yes, Souls would be better.
Good points on either side, I don't think there is a straight answer outside of knowing / predicting the meta.
Has anyone tried Sin Collector? Is it just too high CMC or is there actually merit to him? Or is he just not suitable to this style of deck?
Suitable, but too much mana. At 2 mana, I'd try him for sure.Quote:
Originally Posted by Megadeus
-Matt
So have you tried Tidehollow Sculler then? Honestly at 2 mana he would be fairly insane imo. But yes I would totally love him at 2Quote:
Originally Posted by sdematt
I like him but not in THIS deck. Plus, he doesn't remove it forever. Sin Collector does. He just hoards them sins. Sculler just...sculls.Quote:
Originally Posted by Megadeus
A friend of mine piloted my Junk deck against Patriot tonight and went 50-55% mainboard and 55-60% postboard. Yay! The 4 Basic lands plan is great, and even better when the opponent is on the Stifle/Waste version of the deck.
-Matt
Agreed that sculler is just not where you want to be I love the card and just cut the two I had from my list for another pridemage and a zenith.
So I chose last minute not to play Junk at SCG Seattle since truly, Miracles can be a stronger deck. As it turns out, Junk would have been a better choice, for sure. I went 3-3-1 drop with Miracles, and I know regarding the matchups that I faced, I would have gone X-1-1. With Miracles, I played against:
Patriot, and lost.
BUG Delver, and lost.
Esperblade, and won.
Lands, and drew.
Empty Seat, and won.
BW, and lost.
Affinity, and won.
Whereas with Junk, I would have gone:
Patriot, and won
BUG Delver, and won
Esperblade, and likely lost (I won with Entreats)
Lands, and won.
Empty Seat, and won.
BW, and won.
Affinity, and won.
Oh well, live and learn. Live and die by the Confidant, I say.
-Matt
Once you go black you never go back.Quote:
Originally Posted by sdematt
That is your oath *slap* and that is so you remember it.
So has anyone still been playing the "Rockblade" variant of the deck?
I was thinking of putting something like this together:
4 DRS
4 SFM
4 Dark Confidant
4 Thoughtseize
3 Hymn to Tourach
3 Lingering Souls
4 Liliana of the Veil
4 STP
3 Abrupt Decay
1 Umezawa's Jitte
1 Batterskull
1 Sylvan Library
24 lands
Or something along those lines. I feel like Junk has better options against various combo decks than Jund does, but I am still on the fence about what to take to SCG LA.