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i used to run one and took it out when i lost a couple of games where my opponent was at 2 or less life and i had 1 mana or 2 mana while a thassa was in play. in hindsight, the ice is usually about as relevant as the extra mana causes problems. im pretty bitter about those losses though.Quote:
Originally Posted by FoolofaTook
I'm currently playing 3 Hooting Mandrills instead of 4 Goose and it's working great. It can't be decayed or bolted and tramples over True-Name and Mother. I have no problem casting it and it usually comes into play on turn 3. I have Sylvan Library in sideboard to bring in against decks with plows, but considering maindecking it. Anyone else tried this insane ape?
Ya but he still dies to some other popular removal, and even though T1 Goose is not very impressive at times it is still much better Mandrills in hands like man/goose, bolt, goyf, daze, wasteland, tarn, ponder for instance, and finally a very minor point is the obvious slight non-bo with goyf.
Really cool to see you dip into the Canadian Thresh pool. I don't play the deck much, but watching competent pilots play RUG is a joy. I also assume you're in a super combo-heavy meta, where this deck shines.Quote:
Originally Posted by Einherjer
I would second what others have said about running Forked Bolt instead of Dismember. Life loss is still relevant, and even in Goyf vs. Goyf situations the Bolt can do wonders.
Rough // Tumble is really really good as a one-sided Pyroclasm, glad to see you're running it.
These are all the great flexibilities that Fire//Ice offers, but the reason you said at the end is exactly the reason why I find it bad. Turn one threats that the opponent plays ie Deathrite, Delver, Mother and to some extent Glistener Elf are all threats that are too high risk to let untap. It's not that it's a bad card I just find it too slow and mana intensive when looking at what we're having to go up against:Quote:
Originally Posted by FoolofaTook
Deathrite - If the opponent untaps with this our daze and stifle plan becomes significantly worse in addition it helps them ramp into really good threats that we can't let resolve. If they're brazen enough to jam something like a turn 2 Liliana or TNN and we don't have either force, daze, or if they have their own then it's pretty much game over. I would say this one threat alone makes forked bolt more relevant as a card since it answers it turn 1.
Delver - If they get to flip delver for starters it's 3dmg that we could have avoided. Secondly, if they untap then our daze again becomes worse in terms of being able to back up our removal and make sure their delver hits the bin. It also leaves them more outs with having pierce .
Mother - This one's fairly obvious.
Glistener Elf - Corner case combo deck, but still if their glistener elf tables then we're in a very bad position because they have what Force, daze, pierce and vines to protect it with now.
Fire//Ice more or less offers you better mid to late game answer for larger threats. As the game progresses and the board state starts to fall out of our favor Ice can help tap down their attacker at the last second when they think they're going to win the race. In addition it not only can add a turn to their clock it also does what we want forked bolt for if worst comes to worst which is to have our goyf beat there's. All this considered it boils down to do you want more flexibility in the later stages of the game or excel in the early stages which is what we're already poised to do.
This is corner case, but it's definitely one of the major upsides.Quote:
Originally Posted by poxy14
I find Spell snare too good to not play at least as a 2 of. Elves and D&T are some of our worst match ups and unless you expect a lot of them then I wouldn't hedge against them. Snare hits more or less 2/3s of the meta and just about each deck there's some high threat level card it impacts:Quote:
Originally Posted by FoolofaTook
Goyf
Thalia
Stoneforge Mystic
Jitte
Snapcaster Mage
Young Pyromancer
Baleful Strix
Eidolon and Price
Counterbalance
Infernal Tutor
All those cards are either in most tempo/aggro, Miracles, midrange stoneblade lists and it's a hard counter against one of the best combo decks. I mean a card that impacts that much of the meta is very versatile on that fact alone especially seeing as each card it hits is an important cog in the opponents deck.
That being said I do like the idea of having 8 removal spells 4 of which being "mini sweepers". When I was running 8 bolt rug it was nice to know no turn 1 threat usually lived past that first turn and this embraces that consistency. I would suggest trying 2 snare / 2 forked bolt / 2 fire//Ice. It keeps the minimum amount of added 1 mana answers for early threats and combines it with more versatility as the game goes on. In addition except for miracles during the early turns and some delver mirrors spell pierce has been less then amazing for me. Most Storm decks seem to be able to play around it with perfect information and stoneblade decks tend to never have high impact spells that run into it.
I would also like to make a PSA Aether Vial in more or less stock RUG Delver is bad lols. I want it to be good, but it's not. It's just too cute/slow. It had it's moments making some threat heavy hands very lethal, but for the most part it just seemed clunky at best. I was hoping it would make snapcaster a part of the family it desperately longs to be in, but it didn't lols. I will say this it did allow for some very tilting responses of vialing in snapcaster and doing something degenerate like flashing back a forked bolt killing two glistener elves.
Although it has already been one month I enjoyed testing and slamming Canadian again @ a local tournament. After Controldecks, Canadian has and will always be a special love for me.
I think Canadian really needs Spell Snare today, as it's such an amazing Tempo Card, doing all the things I don't need to say and helping handling threats 1:1. It is the best card to hold otD against most decks imo.
The second thing I want to adress shortly is Sylvan Library. I think Canadian hast to be the aggressive deck against most MUs to be competitive. This means a card that can refuel is needed enourmously. There have been so many iterations, from Dig, over Vial, to Snapcaster and Loam. For me the good old library is by far the strongest and most underplayed Card of those.
Ofc the maindeck inclusion means no Probe, and Dismember for me. There the SB should help out.
For reference, this is what I was playing (SB could be adjusted to the expected meta)
4 Delver of Secrets
4 Nimble Mongoose
3 Tarmogoyf
2 Sylvan Library
3 Spell Snare
4 Brainstorm
4 Daze
4 Force of Will
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Stifle
1 Forked Bolt
1 Counterspell
4 Ponder
4 Flooded Strand
4 Scalding Tarn
3 Tropical Island
3 Volcanic Island
4 Wasteland
Sideboard:
2 Spell Pierce
2 Pyroblast
2 Grafdigger's Cage
2 Rough // Tumble
1 Flusterstorm
1 Vendilion Clique
1 Ancient Grudge
1 Sulfuric Vortex
1 Null Rod
2 Submerge
A maindeck construction along those lines, seems to be one of the strongest possibilities to play this deck atm.
Would be glad to discuss some of the points I've made.
Greetings
I agree with your take on snare, but elves is NOT one of our worst matchups. I would call it a favorable matchup.Quote:
Originally Posted by Contract Killer
I'd say it's probably pretty even, tilting on one side or another depending on build (Oozes/WRP, amount of burn), and a pretty fragile matchup (who has more broken lands) where small edges spiral out of control very fast.Quote:
Originally Posted by sea
Just plain wrong.Quote:
Originally Posted by sea
No it's definitely up there in one of our worst match ups. The only decks that are arguably worse for us are Lands (I would say this one is almost unwinnable), D&T (on par with elves if not worse), Shardless BUG (winnable, but still a very hard MU).Quote:
Originally Posted by sea
I mean on the draw our dazes may as well be completely dead and same with stifle. Even more so then other MUs where daze and stifle lose value here they're completely dead. Stifle does absolutely nothing unless your otp and hit a fetch turn 1 or 2 and otd we're usually busy bolting their turn 1 dork or cantripping for a bolt. Both Goyf and Goose may as well be nonexistent seeing as they have 8 ways to block bounce and the ground just gets stalled.
The only ways elves becomes a positive MU in my opinion is if we're OTP and have a solid delver hand with daze for their turn 1 threat followed by a bolt for their second threat turn 2. I just played the MU last night and punted game 1 really hard.
I wasn't paying attention to graveyard count swing in with goose, goyf and delver (he's at 5) he blocks goyf and then blocks goose with DRS and proceeds to use two additional untap effects to shrink my graveyard from 9 to 6 and then DRS ate goose. I had drawn Waste and his cradle was tapped so when I swung in I thought him not having the information that cradle would get destroyed might change how he chump blocked ie throwing some guys under the bus then tap cradle next turn and gain 6 or something. I just didn't think about the fact that waste would be another card in the bin and he had 3 ways to eat cards from my bin. He went to 2 but was able to combo off next turn so I don't think it really would have mattered. He had 1 nettle sentinel and proceeded to glimpse into another plus a heritage druid with 2 bounce effects so the chances of him bricking were very low.
Game 2 if I remember right I only had a goose and he had DRS + 2 nettle senitnels and just went on the beat down plan followed by a craterhoof off of NO which got stifled but still a 5/5 haste trumps a goose lol.
I mean in terms of polar opposite decks elves would be exactly that when compared to RUG delver. We want to use mana denial with cheap counters and trade cards 1 for 1. They on the other hand have absurd amounts of mana and lots of card advantage between GSZ, Visionary and DRS + untap effects. Boarding gets a bit better with Rough, Submerge (not that good here IMO), cage and maybe something like Envelop or at least replacing pierces with flusterstorms if you don't have anything better to side in after the previous cards state.
There's also the depressing fact that elves is the better deck for being OTP. If we lose game 1 even if we win game 2 with them OTP game 3 is still very hard because they add in Decays to deal with our best threat against them and they just don't care about goyf or goose.
I would definitely agree that the best CA tool for RUG is Sylvan, but I'm still not sure if it's good enough for MD. The main issue is it doesn't do anything the turn it hits the table and tapping out (more or less most of the time) for something that doesn't do anything and can just get decayed seems really bad tempo. I've tried shaving the 4th goyf for a sylvan and it works, but in the match ups where we want goyf ie other goyf decks or burn it's really depressing drawing that when they have their goyf on the table lols. All the more reason that if I did play it I think I would keep it as a 1 of since we never want to draw 2 and we have enough cantrips to find it if we really want to.Quote:
Originally Posted by zerzab11
Counterspell isn't horrible I've heard arguments for it as a singleton and you'll definitely get people. Getting to 2 mana is pretty easy and most of the time people will try to play around daze or pierce and then run into snare, force or in this case counterspell. I would actually think this might be better than the 2nd pierce in a split of 2 snare, 2 pierce, 2 forked bolt.
Yeah I really like stifle also for the fact that many people play really bad against RUG imo or at least too cautiously trying to play around everything. This also leads to them holding their 2 drops for turn 3 in preparation to play around daze and then they run into snare and not only is the threat countered, but they played sub optimally the previous turn playing out another 1 drop or durdling with a cantrip.
If I was going to pull 2 spells for 2 Wooded Foothills what would be the best candidates?
I've had terrible mulligan luck in 3 of the last 4 competitions I have taken CT too. It's always not enough land in the opening hand despite pile shuffling, riffle shuffling, etc. Two weeks ago I went 4 rounds in which I saw a total of 2 lands in my opening hand of the round, leading to a 2-1-1 result that was very depressing. Last night in 4 rounds I had a complete mull loss in game 1 of a round, with no lands in 25 cards (7, 6, 5, 4, 3) and a mull to 5 in game 2 of that round in which I never saw the second land. I also had a round in which I mulled 6, keeping a 1 lander with a Tropical Island, Ponder and Brainstorm and never saw red mana and then a mull 5 in which I got mana but was overpowered due to the mull, leading to a 2-2 result on the evening and more agita.
This may just be random but it is becoming a PITA to deal with. I spent a solid 5 minutes of the mull loss round randomizing in every way possible and still couldn't buy enough land for my life.
So I want to try 20 lands next week. What are the logical pulls for the extra lands? I want at least 7 ways to kill DRS, Insectile Aberration and SFM and I also want at least 9 counters.
I would advise against running two copies of Sylvan Library, especially in the main deck. I love the card, but drawing two when you only need one is just way too bad. Seeing as you only want it against decks with Swords to Plowshares and Show And Tell combo, it will also never get handled once it lands, so it's often easy to maneuver the game to a point where you can resolve it. Given how limited its use is, I also feel like it's not a card you want to have main deck right now. Way back when, you could play it maindeck because of how absurd it was against Maverick, Miracles and Esper Blade. Apart from Miracles, these decks are barely played anymore and the format has become much more aggressive.
If your local metagame calls for it, by all means, run it maindeck, but I don't think you ever want more than one.
Regarding Counterspell, in my experience it has always been awesome in just about every matchup. The main argument people bring up against it is that it costs two mana, which I never got, especially when people used to run Snapcaster Mages and Vendilion Cliques in this deck. This is only really relevant in counterwars.
There are only few decks that don't care about their spells being countered, and honestly, even countering a late-game removal spell on a Delver often wins games. Having hardcounters is just very good in even remotely grindy matchups.
Edit:Do yourself a favour and don't do this. The deck has ben running on 14+4 lands since 2007 for a reason. If you feel you're not drawing enough lands after your opening hands, try cutting fetches for additional duals. If you want to run a deck with more lands, try out NLT, if that still exists.Quote:
Originally Posted by FoolofaTook
NLT will not work in my meta or any other solid Legacy meta at this point. Delver of Secrets is what makes the list competitive at this point. Without it RUG is just too slow to cope with the wide range of fast lists and and it gets out aggro-controlled by the Stoneblade lists with or without TNN.Quote:
Originally Posted by Jona
Given the randomness of a 14 colored land manabase with no acceleration it's surprising that this list still places well, particularly given the re-emergence of Wasteland in the meta. I'm just trying to find an alternative that lets me play the game 90% of the time and lately this list has been more like 75%.
Dude your sample size is incredibly small, the probability that you experience that in the short run isn't that unlikely despite it not being the overall result in the long run. If you wanna run more lands then go ahead, but I have actually done the math and would love to show you if you are interested.Quote:
Originally Posted by FoolofaTook
Recently played in a 30 man weekly event at my LGS. There is usually a healthy meta in the room with a good amount of combo and fair decks. This week there was a lot of BUG delver in the room. I have always had an issue playing against bug delver, they tend to go over top of me and can also beat the stifle wasteland game with their DRS.
I'm looking for advice on how to attack the matchup. I tend to lean on my nimble mongeese and play the resource battle. I've also thought about sideboarding divert to redirect abrupt decay and blow them out.
(A bonus question: How do I to also tackle the enchantress matchup? There are two players that have been showing up who play enchantress)
The way to beat Enchantress is to counter everything they try to do early on. They have no targets for your burn so it's a good thing to side out for the extra counters in your sideboard. If you don't have extra counters in your sideboard you have to hope you get lucky on the draw. Dropping a delver or a mongoose and then dazing their first Utopia Sprawl or Wild Growth really helps. Once they get the ramp going you're in trouble because they will then stack enchantments in a way that you can't respond well to them. If they're actually playing more than a few non-basics you can try the mana denial plan, especially if they're foolish enough to fetch a non-basic and then drop an enchant on it to ramp.Quote:
Originally Posted by skyout
My experience against the list is that a seasoned Enchantress player will drop or fetch basic forests and put the ramp pieces on those. If they manage to do this they will make Daze and Spell Pierce fairly irrelevant in a hurry and Force of Will isn't enough to stop the card drawing engines from coming online at that point. Argothian Enchantress has shroud so unless you can Spell Snare or Force her you're in trouble.
BUG Delver just isn't a great matchup for you. Sometimes you can go underneath them, but Decay and DRS both line up well against what you're trying to do. You're in a better place if they're playing the Stifle version because otherwise Liliana is a beating, as is Hymn. Divert is good against BUG decks in general.Quote:
Originally Posted by skyout
You need to stop the draw engine most of all, but Fool is right in that stopping the ramp is part of that. If they get to 5 mana and won't die in your next combat, they've basically won unless their board is otherwise empty. Counter Elephant Grass if you have a fast clock, but otherwise let them tie up their mana keeping it around. If you both 'get' the matchup, I'd say it's close or that Enchantress has a slight edge. Bring in Rough/Tumble, Sulfuric Vortex, and Grip.Quote:
(A bonus question: How do I to also tackle the enchantress matchup? There are two players that have been showing up who play enchantress)
If Enchantress is on the play it can be a very unfavorable matchup because they get to play their first ramp piece before you play. Then turn 2 they can drop their 2nd land and their 2nd ramp piece is immune to Daze, Spell Pierce and Spell Snare making a 5 mana turn 3 a real possibility.Quote:
Originally Posted by btm10
If we're on the play and can't counter the first ramp piece it just pushes the inevitability back by a turn. So I will always Force the first ramp piece if I have no other way to interact with it whether I'm on the play or on the draw.
I'd most soundly advise against forcing their first ramp piece. While Dazing (with threat) and Piercing (if playing vs unknown or whatever) is def. good I have found the most important spells not to be the ramp spells. What you really want to focus on, and this holds true for most blue decks when confronted with Enchantress, is their namesake effects: Enchantress' Presence and Argothian Enchantress. If you are able to cut them off from their draw-spells all their ramp will eventually just produce one fast big spell that you can FoW in any way given.
Greetings
What I've found is that once the Enchantress player gets to 5 mana they are going to build their hand and then sequence their plays in a way that you just can't adequately control the situation.Quote:
Originally Posted by Einherjer
You're primarily a Miracles player and so you will approach the matchup very differently than most lists since you have Counterbalance to potentially offset their inevitability. If you let them get their ramp going while playing RUG Canadian you're going to run into the problem that all RUG Tempo lists have, which is once the opponent has gotten past your primary disruption and developed a stable mana position their spells are just much better than yours.
This is correct. Any sensible Enchantress player is going to play around Daze when casting key spells and will probably play around Pierce with Presence if you let them, so your Forces and any Snares have to be fully committed to stopping Argothian, Presence, and GSZ.Quote:
Originally Posted by Einherjer
The only real argument for Forcing the first ramp piece on the draw is if you have something like Mongoose, Daze, Goyf, 2 fetches, Force + Blue card AND are confident that that hand is all you need to get there AND you're on the draw. Unless this is game 2 or 3 and you're very familiar with the opponent and the list I wouldn't bank on that line being good. If they get a single Argothian into play and aren't up against the wall already, they're like going to bury you in CA and slow your offense down to a crawl with Elephant Grass. Many lists now are also running Swords out of the board.Quote:
Originally Posted by FoolofaTook
As for Ein mostly playing Miracles - I'm sure he'll agree that CounterTop is just ok against Enchantress. If it comes down quickly and you have 2s and 3s on top to hit their enchantresses and tutors they didn't have Guile or ramp, it's good, but otherwise it doesn't shift the inevitability or anything. Most Enchantress lists still run Emrakul and can ramp into him fairly quickly, often just by playing pseudo draw-go and spamming do-nothing enchantments. Miracles' best shot is usually to go for a quick Entreat and stop them from being able to set up Confinement lock before they're dead.
Anyway, this is turning into a discussion about Enchantress rather than RUG, though I'd be happy to continue this discussion in another thread.
Just focus their draw engine.
this wasnt very constructive.Quote:
Originally Posted by Tormod
i assume youre playing the matchup wrong. if you know which elves/insects to target, and you have a proper sideboard, elves really is a pretty easy match unless they get the nuts or you get no removal. almost all of your creatures are better and come out about the same time, we have wasteland for their cradle and counterspells for their combo, every creature in their deck (aside from the combo ones) die to our removal, and forked bolt is often a 2 for 1.
I have played against elves a hundred times against good pilots, ones who average 7-3 at SCG opens, and Elves is NOT an easy matchup. Saying we have removal for their creatures doesn't mean it is easy by any stretch of the imagination. The fact of the matter is that unless we have immense pressure early on (usually double delver) most RUG lists have 5 pieces of removal, maybe six if your list runs 2 forked bolts. On average you will be able to find 2 pieces of removal in the first 3-4 turns, which is often just not enough. Good elves pilots will blank all of our counters except force and wasting cradle doesn't come up as often as you think, by the time they have used cradle (which really breaks through our soft permission) they have an overwhelming board position.
After board the matchup is a bit more manageable, but oftentimes It is usually draw into rough/tumble and get them to over commit or its bust.
Just report it and move on. I did just that.Quote:
Originally Posted by sea
FWIW There are certainly a lot of things RUG can do to disrupt elves, but I'd prefer to be the elves pilot. It gets trickier with multiple forked bolts, submerges, rough/tumbles, cages but that's more having a heavyhanded sideboard approach
From my experience with RUG, it isn't really a question of removal or counters, as there is no way that you are going to be able to remove each and every single elf with these 4-7 removal spells. Yes, Wasteland answers Cradle and Force of Will somewhat neuters Natural Order but I think we are moving towards magical christmas land here, assuming we have everything while Elves plays their basic plan without any good draws or strategic nuances.
The focus shouldn't be at your amount of Bolts or your quality of countermagic. It should be on the creature you have in your opening hand. This MU changes drastically when you have a Delver of Secrets or any other of your green monstrosities. When you have Delver of Secrets, suddenly your Bolts matter, suddenly it's a good move to Wasteland Cradle and suddenly FoW is actually enough to stop their big spell. Suddenly the MU is somewhat positive.
But if you don't have Delver you are forced into trying to control the elvish menace, and this doesn't work. Not without turn-around spells like Rough//Tumble or anything in this category. If you are stuck with Mongooses(yes, not Mongeese) and Goyfs you are facing a seriously negative MU, as you have no buisness in outgrinding their deck.
That's my experience, let me know what you think.
@the guy who said that I'm primarily a Miracles player: Yes, this is true. But I've been trying to work on RUG for a (short) time now and plan on doing so in the future as well, because I want to innovate here as well, as I believe to be like 100% finished with Miracles, concerning the 75 and how to play it. So I want to learn something new and landed at RUG. Please let me know whenever you strongly disagree with something I say, because I just want to learn. If I get time I'll also stream my learning/getting-pounded-by-Poxx process somewhen soon. :)
Greetings
This is what I appreciate from the Source :smile: It would be great to see you stream and get a fresh perspective on how to pilot this deck!Quote:
Originally Posted by Einherjer
this is a fallacy. it may be tempting, but you cant try to remove ALL of their threats. your creatures are better than theirs, so you really only need to kill the engine cards and deathrite shaman. if you confine your removal to wirewood symbiote, deathrite, and the elves that can produce large amounts of green (which you can actually ignore a lot of the time if you have some counter back up), youve basically neutered their deck down to bad beatdown with a clunky combo. some games, a forked bolt and lightning bolt will give you enough time to steal a win with delver (which they basically cant do anything about game 1) or control the board the board with goyf, which will probably require a 3 for 1 for them to deal with.Quote:
Originally Posted by Einherjer
i agree, there area lot of games you dont draw enough removal, or even any removal, and elves gets out of hand. there are also, however, a lot of games that can be won in the manner i described above. in my, what i consider reasonably robust, experience, winnable games come more than the unwinnable ones.
i agree with most of this. our creatures are very important because we are trying to turn the game into a fast midrange (RUG) vs. a mediocre aggro (elves) match. goose is pretty poor at this. goyf can be huge against elves, though. if the game gets slowed down, his presence on the board will move the game in your favor with each additional turn.Quote:
Originally Posted by Einherjer
haha, yes!Quote:
Mongooses(yes, not Mongeese)
ive had success with the ELVES matchup with my current 7burn built (4bolts/1fice/1tarfire/1forked) and our sideboard offers alot of help still with roughs, submerges, grafs..
i also believe that an early DELVER is key here, as goose and goyf, though big, will have minimal effect vs an army.. brainstorms and ponders are key in sculpting our hands, glimpse shld be countered, always bear in mind that dreaded 4mana spell too, so reserve FOWs here.
My plan versus elves is just to try to keep the board as clean as possible, and kill them asap. Hands with delver are almost an auto keep in game 1. If playing the probe build, I can be conservative on what I counter; otherwise, I just counter and kill anything on sight.
Cheers
In regards to the elves match up I agree with most of what's being said here. The match up drastically relies on if you have Delver. Our green threats are much worse against them because they have 8 different ways to chum block them. Good elf pilots sequence which creatures to play out and bait out removal so that they can establish the "best friend" team and block our ground threats forever. In addition to this when they have a "mini" combo like that going if you draw forked bolt you just have to accept that forked bolt won't be a two for one since you aim one at wirewood and the other creature will get bounced. All that aside as for boarding I actually like taking goose out here. He is horribly slow and if they're on the play and Deathrite tables they can have something like 2 or more activations with it each turn making goose very bad.
Now one specific card that I don't think many people have on their radar or board for that matter is Envelop which I find very good especially in the elves match up. Blue counter 12 of their combo/win spells yes please. In addition how do you guys board against elves? I've essentially boiled it down to daze, stifle, some number of geese and pierce are all horrible cards. Daze is an auto out OTD and pierce is horrible so that's -6 and we want to probably take out stifles if we have better stuff in board. Pierce is more or less just upgraded to flusterstorm there's no reason to not do this unless you think they'll bring in meekstone which I think is a real small margin to hinge against. This is -12 cards and hopefully we can board something like 2 rough, 2 submerege, 2 envelop, 2 flusterstorm, 1 Vendilion Clique (slow but still better than goose), 2 grafdigger's cage, 1 _____. Am I wrong for boarding out stifle otd? Daze is obviously bad and even though stifle is one of the easier ways to win by limiting the actual amount of forests they have since they actually only run 14 real lands similar to us, but I still think stifle is horrible OTD. At best stifle otd gives us an out to craterhoof but even then a 5/5 pretty much beats us lols. I'm curious what you're guys thoughts are on this take of boarding against Elves instead of trying to tempo them out (especially otd otp it's a different scenario and actually possible) and just maxing out on as much removal as possible. This is also similar to how I board against infect just trying to max out on removal.
If anyone is curious on my reasoning for Envelop outside of the elves match up it's because it hits a key card in each of the following decks:
Miracles
ANT
SnT variants (only hits show and tell, but that's still their best combo piece dream halls or sneak and show are much easier to deal with)
Elves
This is a very good approach I think. We need to stop them from getting to critical mass and keeping as many threats off the board as possible.Quote:
Originally Posted by cheerios
+1, these are the cards i side out vs elves, daze are just worse vs them, even stifles.. by the time we stifle craterhoof, we still are dealing with an army next turn..Quote:
Originally Posted by Contract Killer
- 4 dazes / - 3 stifles / - 1 mongoose
+ 2 rough / + 1 grafdiggers, + 1 needle (wirewood or drs), + 1 vendilion clique, + 2 submerges + 1 dismember
some number of pierces stay, as fow fodder and counters early attempts of glimpse.. they also might put in cabal therapies games 2 or three..
My personal experience with the Elves! matchup has not been so great. The ability for the deck to just overwhelm you quickly makes it hard to contain. Even if you Bolt the T1 DRS they still can produce an obscene amount of mana by T3 and beyond. Not to mention a machine gunning DRS or Scooze backed up by Cradle and annihilate our graveyard. I have had games where these two together have emptied by graveyard of 9+ cards in one turn. Goyf can do a good job stone walling ground threats, but eventually they just go around the dumb beater somehow. It's worth mentioning that Ruric Thar is played in a lot Elves! lists and is a total beating. He blocks all of our creatures and makes it really painful to play half of our deck. Just like how Symbiote causes us to make unfavorable trades, Ruric does the same thing.
I do like to try and keep Stifle in post board though. I have had games where I just stop them from playing Forests. It's also another way to prevent Dryad Arbor from getting into play (stopping the fetch for it). I do agree that a 5/5 behemoth is still a problem, but it's better then an 9/9, 5/5, 5/5, 5/5 with trample swinging though :tongue:
Largely, I try to cut the Elves player off mana with Stifle, Wasteland, and Bolts. I will often turn bolts towards Arbors on T1. Mongoose isn't great in this matchup, but he is a creature. Cutting a Stifle or two is correct in my mind though.
Like has been mentioned my strategy attempts to contain the Elves! player as much as possible and Delver is the best way to end the game quickly.
I know this has topic has probably been beaten to death and there are usually a pro and against camp...but....what are peoples opinion on Gitaxian Probe in this deck over say more burn or the spell snare / more pierce packages?
I have felt a few times that spell snare and pierce have been awkward draws, or I only need a single card for threshold.
Unless you are in meta where you know everyone and what they usually play, you would have to be a crazy person to not run Gitaxian Probe. The card is like a Force of Will that doesn't have any card disadvantage in that FoW is often a security measure that let's be sure we will be able to execute our game plan by countering whatever our opponent would be doing to ruin our game plan for zero mana and an additional card. Probe does basically the same thing by informing us what our opponent is on and letting play around it. It won't actually answer problem but it informs you how to use your available answers/threats to deal with your opponents game plan.Quote:
Originally Posted by skyout
Probe may also have your opening confused for that of storm or another combo deck. The old probe, play a fetch, and pass holding up stifle can blow out a lot of opponents not entirely in the loop.
Personally I think both are correct depending on how you want to play the deck. Probe versions vs non probe versions run very differently IMO.Quote:
Originally Posted by skyout
See I personally think that probeless versions are better even if you don't know what they are on. I've had a lot of times where probe essentially showed me a hand I couldn't beat and then I cantrip which shows weakness trying to play to my outs and find force or something and then they just jam and it's over. Probe really only helps on deciding to hold up stifle turn 1 which I find to be very sub par in comparison to either playing out a threat or cantripping for a threat. It's definitely not force of will and one of the disadvantages is you run less actual gas in the deck and when the opponent plays around daze our only counters become force and maybe a pierce or 2.Quote:
Originally Posted by BKclassic
Essentially from what I've learned after playing many games with both versions is probe versions can have very potent stifle openers and allow you to play perfectly. This does though require you to play very tight and accept the fact that sometimes they top deck something that makes known information irrelevant or they just have a hand we can't beat. The other problem is we don't have as many answers to stuff so it requires more calculations as to what is absolutely necessary to deal with vs saving counter/bolt for something worse (usually we just have to jam and hope they don't draw another drs or something).
Now running a split of something like 2/2/2 forked bolt, snare, pierce plays differently because you have a lot more outs to everything. On top of that I've found that this build slightly better IMO since more people play badly against it. Here's the people play badly against the core of our deck alone fore example: they try to play around daze and then we have force or we have daze + stifle and they just give us more tempo. Running both snare and pierce increases this the best way I've found to describe it phenomena as well. I find more people going into the tank trying to figure out what's in my hand and what they can play around and they usually misjudge what they can afford to play around if I have a clock out.
I think that both have their advantages and disadvantages, but I think something like 2 forked, 2 snare, 2 pierce offers more advantageous plays. You get to play overall more outs to everything and the opponents tend to play worse stepping around daze/pierce (soft permission) and then run into snare/force (hard permission) or vice versa. I also don't like how if you ponder/brainstorm into probe you effectively see less cards and having it any other time than our opener is very sub par for why we want to run it.
Anyone who thinks you're on storm because they see probe tarn/delta pass is a very bad magic player lol. Storm almost always fires off what 1 of their 10 cantrips turn 1 or 1 of their 7 or 8 disruption spells (not actually sure how many of these they run). Again if they're smart and think something fishy is up and don't play the fetch you saw in their hand this loses us tempo unless we have like bolt for their turn 1 threat. I just don't think holding up stifle is that advantageous unless it's a known fact that they only have fetches. This could also be me losing out on free wins seeing as I've been playing the deck for 3 years straight (lack of money/motivation to buy a new deck) and everyone knows what I'm on. That aside I think stifle is better when they're forced into it by like a turn 1 delver followed by a turn 2 waste holding up something like daze/force + stifle. Then they have to run into it and we actually gain tempo because we have a clock on the table. Stifling a fetch without a clock is similar to wasteland without a clock it's just negative tempo.Quote:
Originally Posted by aex
THIS. I actively play RUG Delver for about 2 months and this is one of the truths about piloting this deck correctly and could be more extra mentioned in the primer. Like a "bad Brainstorm" a "bad Tempo play" is also worth to mention. I'm still catching myself too often making this kind of mistakes.Quote:
Originally Posted by Contract Killer