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Crop Rotation is a much better card of course, and it was my first thought ahead of Sylvan Scrying, but since we're a No-land deck I'm assuming it's not worth pursuing.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ronald Deuce
I've been proven wrong plenty of times before though. :laugh:
^^^^
I guess this really goes back to whether we run a main to accommodate, IE Land Grant x4, and a single Bayou.
I wouldn't recommend doing that. You're essentially giving yourself an additional "must-mulligan" condition if you run any lands in the main. Using, e.g., Barbeau's list, you need to mulligan if, in your hand, a) you don't have Balustrade Spy or Undercity Informer, b) you have more than one Narcomoeba in hand, and/or c) you have more than one of Dread Return, Angel of Glory's Rise, Azami, Lady of Scrolls, or Laboratory Maniac. Even with the Cerberus plan's replacing the Azami plan and the inclusion of 1-2x Bridge from Below, you still have the same number of hoops to jump in order to have a playable hand, only the second and third are much more manageable. I don't think we should be adding another hurdle by turning off the whole deck if we don't have a land/Land Grant. It's asking way too much to go right in a deck that's already got a clunky win-condition. (As an aside, I'll add that I think that win-condition is totally worth it, and that I think this deck is just as viable as Belcher.)Quote:
Originally Posted by slave
I've been monkeying around some more with the Thespian/Depths sideboard, and I'm not sure it's the best plan for this deck. I'm considering testing it with 3x Sylvan Scrying, 2x Crop Rotation, 2x Bayou/Overgrown Tomb when I get the chance. Spoils of the Vault certainly can set up the combo at lightspeed, but the Depths plan is a turn slower than the Belcher plan, so I wouldn't want to put the deck within swarming/burn range.
Has anyone else been testing this plan? I'd really like to hear more opinions. Anybody else noticing the added mana-choke in this plan, or am I just terrible at shuffling? I'm up for testing this at a local, but I've got to switch back to Dredge and take some time off from competing with this deck because I'm swiftly becoming "the guy who's playing All Spells" at my LGS. It's done some great work for me, and it's a blast to play, but I think people are starting to expect this deck pretty readily in my meta.
I just realized I forgot to respond to this. I tried out Seething Song for a bit last year, before I got my hands on LEDs, but I didn't find that it was all that great for one of the same reasons I've been having trouble with land tutors and Living Wish: you need to have a red mana floating when you want to cast Seething Song, and that's hard to accomplish because most of our means of producing mana leaves us with black mana instead. Seething Song competes with Dark Ritual and Cabal Ritual for our any-color sources like Petals and Moxen.Quote:
Originally Posted by slave
I'm not sure why, but I never tested Ancient Stirrings in the Belcher sideboard. I think it definitely has potential, but only searching the top X cards feels pretty risky. I've been siding in only 4x Lion's Eye Diamond, Goblin Charbelcher, and Spoils of the Vault and keeping the graveyard package in the deck. So I've been removing 4x Undercity Informer, 4x Pact of Negation, 2x Balustrade Spy, 2x Bridge from Below. It doesn't help the Belcher plan's consistency as much as including other mana sources or cyclers, but it takes out many of the always-dead cards like Pact and retains the chance for a lightning-fast graveyard kill against Rest in Peace, Relic of Progenitus/Grafdigger's Cage, or a post-turn-0 Leyline.
By all means try out Ancient Stirrings! I'd love to see whether it helps the deck, and I know I've got a quad of them lying around here somewhere.
Yeah I've been having mixed results with it. I've been playing around with a version running Living Wish and Tinder Wall in the main.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ronald Deuce
In Goldfishing it seems okay, but unlike other fast-combo decks like RG Charbelcher, Pact SI etc., we have no plan B like Tendrils/Empty the Warrens etc.
I'm gonna keep playing with it.
Best plan? Dunno, but it's a change of pace anyway.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ronald Deuce
Biggest problem with Belcher is that we often don't get enough mana to both land it AND activate it, and we're left waiting for mana or removal from the opponent.
In other more straight-ahead Belcher decks they have things like Seething Song, Culling the Weak to get to 7 mana.
But here I feel neither of those cards really help all that much without wholesale changes to the list.
RE: Dark Depths : In the testing I've been doing it hasn't been all that.
The kind of decks (that I expect to face) that can nerf our Maindeck plan sometimes also have the ability to handle Marit Lage before we can attack with it.
Even a quick Swords to Plowshares to the face is enough to have us lose a game really.
What I really hate is the taxing variety....
I think Belcher has more potential mana screw than Dark Depths.
Yeah, same reason I'm less than impressed with Seething Song. It's out for me.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ronald Deuce
Ancient Stirrings has been ok for me in testing.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ronald Deuce
Sure it's not fantastic given it won't dig deep, but considering I semi-regularly kill myself with Spoils of the Vault, I'm gonna give it some more time.
Given that by casting it we're usually looking for Charbelcher, or a mana source like Mox/LED/Petal to activate it, it's not a bad choice.
You most certainly are not alone. With that having been said, I feel like Spoils of the Vault is pretty much made for this deck's Belcher plan. There's always a substantial risk of digging yourself to death, but the counterpoint to that is the fact that, if you can't find a Belcher/LED in the top 10-15 cards, you're almost certainly dead anyway. Patrick Chapin said it best: "you can't be scared. You don't show up to a Legacy tournament with no lands in your deck if you're scared!" I guess the big takeaway is that on the Belcher plan, we need to run tutors. The uncertainty in a hand with a tutor and a Belcher/LED is a problem with both Stirrings and Spoils. But digging five cards deep and coming up with nothing is qualitatively identical to digging 35 cards and dying on the spot. We're not likely to have enough reusable mana to dig again after Stirrings, and even if we do, every turn we give our opponent is another turn they're gonna be swinging in with Tarmogoyf, Phyrexian Dreadnought, or boatloads of zombie tokens. Also, as is the case with the Thespian/Depths tutors, green mana's a tough thing to generate in the midst of a set of rituals.Quote:
Originally Posted by slave
As an aside, one thing to keep in mind about hands with a tutor and one or more LEDs is that you can play out mana rituals, play Spoils, and crack the LED(s) with an empty hand to reach the magic seven. The more I test the Belcher sideboard, the more lines of play I'm beginning to see. It's growing on me, but even with a quad of Spoils instead of the 3x I see in tournament-placing lists, I'm still not totally satisfied with that board plan.
The other thing I've been tinkering with was using 4x Recross the Paths, 1x Infernal Contract (again, Meditate would probably be preferable), and smaller numbers of Belcher and LED. It's gotten me thinking about whether there might be other combos we could pull off with Recross the Paths. Has anyone tried Recross with Tendrils of Agony and the eight cyclers to up the Storm count? I remember seeing something similar posited in a thread on landless Belcher (http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/s...-Paths-Belcher).
[EDIT: One thing that appeals to me re: the Tendrils idea is that, if we can land a Tendrils, countermagic doesn't really help our opponents unless they've got a Flusterstorm or a Mindbreak Trap. Food for thought.]
[EDIT again: Tendrils of Agony is looking a lot worse secunda facie. I'm still searching for a 12-15-card sideboard that'll really rock people who are playing a bunch of graveyard hate but that also might help us stand up to heavy control. One thing I forgot to mention about Spoils of the Vault is that it can find Dark Ritual, which Ancient Stirrings can't. That nets one extra mana, so it's a big deal, even if only in relative corner-cases.]
Same-same.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ronald Deuce
I don't think Dark Depths is better than Belcher after a bit of playing with it. The demand of specifically-coloured mana demands a bit of luck.
The main advantage of it, is that it can be very hard to deal with for a lot of matchups, but that's only if we can make it stick in the first place, which may not be straight forward.
So I took my list along last night to the local, went 3-2. A misplay/gamble cost me one of the matches, so it could have been 4-1.
Played UG-INfect, Bant-Stoneforge/Blade, WGr-Enchantress and lost against Death&Taxes via discard/Swords/extraction, Reanimator via Iona on black. I'm really starting to hate D&T....
I went with the side of; 4 spoils, 4 LED, 4 Belcher, 3 Ancient Stirrings.
Fairly Typical mainboard, with 3 Pact, 4 Manamorphose/Wraith/Probe, 2 Bridge/3Narc, Cerberus/Maniac Finish
Bearing in mind I didn't come up against all that much counter/discard, Stirrings was okay, without being great. I feel it's good enough for me to keep it for now, without being something I want. Until I find something better.....
Spoils killed me twice. Both times I ended up going with the mainboard plan and taking a chance they'd side out their gravehate. Both times I combo'd out on T1.:laugh:
More sideboard info:
Lately, I've been testing a few copies of Unmask along with the twelve-card Belcher plan (4 each of Goblin Charbelcher, Lion's Eye Diamond, and Spoils of the Vault). Unmask has been covered somewhat inconclusively earlier in the thread, but I feel like it's worth considering for fighting solid control. I have yet to play it in a tournament, but it looks like we've still got a reasonable shot of pulling the Rogue combo on turn 4-5 if we substitute 2x Gitaxian Probe and maybe a Street Wraith or a Bridge from Below for 2-3x Unmask. (With 2x Unmask, my fifteenth sideboard card has been Carpet of Flowers, another Manamorphose, or Chandler.)
Two immediate problems come to mind. The first is that there's a solid chance that blue control decks will be able to find a Grafdigger's Cage, etc. before turn 4. The second is that I'm having trouble melding 2-3 Unmask with the 12-card Belcher board without ending up with a sizeable number of dead cards. This means that, assuming our 15-card board contains the 12-card Belcher package for dealing with graveyard-hate and a 2-3 card Unmask package to stop control, we can still get zeroed by a control deck (Monastery Mentor, Miracles, Delver, or Show and Tell) that manages to Brainstorm into graveyard hate quickly, even after sideboarding. The reason I'm bringing this up is that in the last tournament I played, I was going against an American Mentor player who managed, in game 2, to draw two copies of Daze, a Lightning Bolt, and a Swords to Plowshares, and in game 3, to start with two Force of Will and pitch-fodder. So having a singleton Pact of Negation or Cabal Therapy did nothing. It's all fine and good if we switch out the Rogues, etc. for Belcher and Pals to stop graveyard hate, but Belcher is at least as vulnerable to control as the Spy/Informer, and six pieces of protection (4x Pact, 3x Therapy; see below) doesn't feel like enough, even if we would be able to go for a turn-1 blowout.
I abandoned the anti-hate sideboard suggestions pretty quickly because of the added mana commitment, but I'm not sure whether waiting around to dump two protection spells is any more viable.
One thing that's surprised me is how little an issue finding black cards to pitch to Unmask has been when using the Rogues. I hadn't tested it until recently under the assumption that finding extra black cards would be a problem, but what made me reconsider Unmask was the fact that I've found myself comboing out on turn 3-4 rather often, even pre-board, with the wishless list I posted earlier.
So pros:
-We'll have up to nine pieces of combo protection if we run 4x Pact, 3x Therapy, 3x Unmask (N.B.: one Therapy is necessary to combo in the Cerberus package, usable only way after control would try to poke a hole in our plan) instead of six [EDITED: I can't math].
-There's synergy between Unmask and Therapy (like that between Probe and Therapy), though I'm not sure how often this would really matter.
Cons:
-We're going much more slowly with the sideboard than with the un-boarded deck.
-The interaction between Belcher and Unmask is still disjointed. An added problem is that removing the graveyard package reduces black pitch-cards for Unmask.
-Very low on cyclers, so deck consistency and mulligans could be degraded, esp. if we're using Belcher.
Anybody got any ideas? I've been snooping for free disruption outside Pact of Negation, and Unmask was pretty much first on the list. Still not too happy with our options, but I feel like the testing may be getting us somewhere.
The two major problems we're facing, again, are heavy control (2+ counters or exilers in hand) and graveyard hate (Leyline of the Void, Grafdigger's Cage, etc.). So the key to optimizing the deck is to find a sideboard that can address one and both of these threats as necessary without making us wait several turns for mana or pitch-cards. Has anyone tried Defense Grid? Something else?
[EDIT: I don't think I explained the mathematics of our combo protection very well above. When I add 4 Pact, 3 Therapy to get a total of 6 protection spells (instead of 7), or 4 Pact, 3 Therapy, and 3 Unmask to get 9 (instead of 10), I'm subtracting one Cabal Therapy because it's a necessary part of the combo that doesn't protect our mana acceleration, the Rogue, the Dread Return, or the Cerberus. So when adding combo protection to the deck, always make sure to subtract (mentally!) one from the total number of disruption cards you're running because one Therapy doesn't stop opponents from breaking the combo. Also, for people new to the deck, be careful not to imprint a singleton Therapy onto a Chrome Mox. You're gonna have a bad time.]
Yeah I love Carpet of Flowers in Belcher lists, but here I'm not so sure given finding our combo isn't all that consistent.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ronald Deuce
I'll give it test-time next I take the deck out to play.
My list was running 3 Pact of Negation (dunno where the 4th one went!).
You could be right keeping a full set of Pact of Negation, Cabal Therapy in the main and siding in Unmask though, having some tools to lessen their likelihood of tearing into our hand is always a good way to go. I like the idea of Unmask, it's fantastic in Dredge, I'm sure it could be just as effective here.
My tactic for siding so far has been to side out all of my combo pieces, with an emphasis on keeping black cards left over in the main for imprinting.
Works with Unmask.:wink:
Still dunno if I wanna run it, but may give it a run.
BTW;
Infernal Contract did make me laugh.
I play Pact SI on occasion, that deck always gives people "What the hell are you doing?" face.
Decided to take this silly deck again last night.Quote:
Originally Posted by slave
Went 2-3 :frown:
Kept running into blue decks, mainly Force/Daze etc. but also faced a lot of discard & artefact hate killing my mana sources.
I beat Dredge & Jund, lost to Omnitell, RUG & Grixis little critters.
I ran standard main, a side of 3x Carpet of Flowers, 4x Goblin Charbelcher, 4x Lion's Eye Diamond, 4x Spoils of the Vault
I thought I'd test out Carpet for the hell of it, considering how much blue we normally face I thought it might be a decent choice.
Well it was pretty flat against most opponents as the times I did have the mana to cast Belcher it just kept getting countered. Hmm....
Argh; tough luck, man. Delver variants, Show and Tell, and (especially) Miracles seem like the worst matchups for this deck, so at least they weren't left-field losses to decks we shouldn't have trouble rushing. I was in the same boat last weekend running Dredge; ran into two BUG Delver players in a row during a three-round tournament. Went 1-2 against both of them, but that didn't save me from coming in close to the bottom of the standings. Deathrite Shaman is a good card.Quote:
Originally Posted by slave
EDIT: Discard is a problem for this deck. More than graveyard hate (which a Belcher sideboard solves almost universally), I'd say targeted discard is the biggest threat this deck faces after countermagic. I've won most of the games I've played against Pox decks and X-rack, but they've been really close and I'm not sure my opponents were using optimal lists. I lost a game against someone playing Waste Not because he managed to cut up my hand and stack zombies. The other matches, as I recall, were all victories with the above caveats. One match was against monoblack Stax/discard; I remember comboing out turn 1 in one game, and in the second, he tapped out for Smokestack with a Phyrexian Furnace on the table (I think he hadn't seen this deck before, so he didn't realize that was a mistake). The other match I remember, the opponent played a few Raven's Crimes and maybe a Duress or two, but that was all the targeted discard he drew in either game, and I didn't see a single copy of Hymn to Tourach. I suspect it was bad luck on his part, but in both matches, if I'd missed a blowout by a single turn, I would've been dead in the water. Has anyone else noticed problems fighting discard? I'd say that, next to the Big Bad Blue Bros, a dedicated discard deck is the next worst thing for us.
Someone mentioned before that a good strategy against Show and Tell is to board into the Belcher plan and use the opponent's S&T to drop an uncounterable Charbelcher and win immediately. Not sure if that would've helped, but it's one major advantage of the Belcher transformation, especially given that any S&T variant worth its weight in wood-pulp runs a quad of Force of Will.
I'm curious to hear what the Grixis deck looked like. Was it all Confidants and Delvers? Something else?
The major strength I've noticed in Carpet of Flowers is that it essentially wipes Daze, even in multiples. An added bonus applies primarily to the Belcher plan, which is that it helps us get to the Magic 7. Helpful as that can be, it still doesn't answer the Big Bads, Force of Will and the severely under-used Mindbreak Trap.Quote:
Originally Posted by slave
Have you done any tournament testing with Unmask? My testing (sadly, only goldfishing) hasn't been conclusive.
One thought that crossed my mind was to run a sideboard consisting of 4x Belcher, 4x LED, and some number of Spoils of the Vault (probably three), Carpet of Flowers (probably two), and a fourth Therapy and Gitaxian Probe. Anybody tried a plan like that lately? I've been running three Therapies, only three Probes and one Manamorphose in the maindeck and filling the extra slots with Pact of Negation.
The Grixis deck was running Delver, Young Pyromancer & Confidants with lots of cheap spells like blue filter, Cabal Therapy, 1-drop discard, Bolt etc.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ronald Deuce
I've not played against this deck before so it was both a lesson and a thumping (whoops!).
Unmask? Yeah, but not with this deck LOL. I might do in future, but at the moment the main is a bit tight for my liking to fit it in. I'm currently playing 4 Therapies.
I've been running 4 Probes, 4 Therapies. I can't bring myself to play less than 4 therapies, it's the dredge player in me....
Manamorphose is important for colour-fixing I think, but for me it's almost always the first card I look to cut when trying out other cards. This isn't a storm deck, so I don't feel this card really deserves it's place.
====
So I took this bugger of a deck out last night to the local (not a pro tourney I should stress, just the local card shop) and we played some.
Went 3-1 (sat out one match helping out one of the disabled boys to grab a taxi)
I beat GWr-Maverick, BUW-Affinity, Burn. Got beaten by Reanimator (Iona & Griselbrand are hard to beat!)
I was pretty happy with the night, but I got lucky on match-ups facing very little counter or discard.
My sideboard of 4 LED, 4 Spoils, 4 Belcher, 3 Carpet wasn't used much. Once I'd learnt the opponents' decks I went with the mainboard plan for most game2's, it wasn't until I hit Reanimator (last game of the night for me) that I decided to side in all 15, hoping they'd play Show. He did, but I still lost....
I think I've run across variants of this before. Did that deck run Force of Will? Main reason I ask is that I'm wondering whether he raced you or just blocked the combo. I've not had trouble winning races with this deck ever, really, but I can imagine decks that might disrupt us just enough to throw a bunch of Elementals at us and win WITHOUT using The Big Bads.Quote:
Originally Posted by slave
I concur. I'd love to run more Manamorphoses, but even when I tested Pact of Negation-less lists (using all twelve cyclers), I found that the two cards that kept turning potential t2 blowouts in hands with, say, three mana and a Rogue, into total crapshoots were Manamorphose and Tinder Wall. I cut the Wall out a long time ago and I haven't had any problems I wouldn't have had anyway (though I can appreciate the argument in its favor). Manamorphose has the same problem, though: it relies on a critical red/green mana, which we often won't be able to generate off an initial mana source and a ritual. For instance, say there's a hand like Lotus Petal, Cabal Ritual, Narcomoeba, Balustrade Spy, Simian Spirit Guide, Manamorphose, and Gitaxian Probe, there's no way to determine whether that's going to get us where we need to be. I'd rather have a Pact of either variety than a Manamorphose in that situation because, if it's a green pact, we go off t1, and if it's a blue pact, we've got some protection and probably can afford to wait a turn or two to draw into more mana. I've cut Manamorphose down to a singleton (N.B. and Probe down to three), and I haven't missed the multiples that much. We've still got Moxen, Petals, and "5x Wild Cantor" to help us push through. Not sure whether I've linked this before, but this was the list that persuaded me to try running Manamorphose as a singleton: http://www.mtgdecks.net/decks/view/74862.Quote:
Originally Posted by slave
I ran four Therapies for a while, and I liked the fact that it gave us better odds of having something to clear the way if we were to draw into sources for five mana. I couldn't tell whether it was helpful overall, though, because I'm drawing very few hands capable of getting to five. I'd love to hear what other people have experienced in this regard, and for now, I'm keeping Therapy number four in the board for lack of anything better to use.
The thing I have really started to love about this deck is that it can crush objectively(?) better decks like Maverick simply because they don't do what a deck needs to do to stop a turn-1 combo (those who claim that this deck is bad, take note. And start sideboarding in Mindbreak Trap.). I've actually not encountered Reanimans with this deck before (small playgroup; again, I live in The Woods). It looks like it could be a problem, though; if they're running Force, we've gotta watch out. Did you encounter any of them from that player, or was it just graveyard monstrosities all the way down?Quote:
Originally Posted by slave
Incidentally, I'm feeling more and more like we've got a solid 12-card board for the deck in the form of the Belcher transformation, but like none of the other cards we could side in would really help the deck beat discard and free counterspells. I think that's going to be the big hurdle in taking this deck forward.
Force fro the Grixis guy? I don't think so, can't remember for sure, mainly discard and burn.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ronald Deuce
Yeah our reanimator fella was running an optimized list with Force, he's one of our regulars who varies his decks with all the big dog card choices.
With the Belcher side, I wouldn't feel confidant with just the 12, I want those 3 last spots to contribute to the plan. Whether that's mana source, tutor or some form of protection. I can't see Pact of Negation NOT being a worthy addition somewhere in the 75.
I'm not a huge fan of the Belcher sb plan actually - this deck has alot of trouble getting to 7 mana (or 8 if you spoils of the vault). I'd rather dedicate myself to the original plan. I play 4 Pact of Negation and 4 Cabal Therapy main. My current SB is:Quote:
Originally Posted by Ronald Deuce
2 Unmask
4 Nature's Claim
4 Leyline of Sanctity
1 Sutured Ghoul
1 Dragon's Breath
1 Dread return
2 flex spots
Pact of Negation gets sided out for answers to permanent based hate (like grafdigger's cage and leyline of the void, tormod's). Most blue decks play surgical extraction so it can stay in for those matchups.
Deathrite+Discard can be a problem as they can either remove dread return, lab maniac or cerebus in response to narcomeoba triggers. Siding in an extra dread return and lab maniac fixes this issue but you have to pass the turn if they exile Cerebus. I opted for the haste Sutured Ghoul kill even though it requires an extra card.
Leyline of Sancity is mainly for storm
When sideboarding it's best to side out stuff that doesn't add mana like:
Gitaxian Probe
Pact of Negation
Street Wraith
Cabal Therapy
Just make sure you have enough black sources for chrome mox.
Yeah I feel the same way. I feel this deck is really aiming at hitting 3-4 mana only, anything beyond that gets iffy. I agree with you 100% here.Quote:
Originally Posted by Blastoderm
But,
I feel relying on the graveyard in game2 or 3 against gravehate can be just as iffy.
Where I play gravehate is still pretty common and given I expect to see LotV, Grafdiggers, RiP etc. they can be pretty hard to beat through, especially if we're on the draw.
Sutured Ghoul isn't where I wanna be
Next time I take this deck out I'm gonna try something new.
What's your current maindeck look like? I'm just wondering because I've been having a lot of issues with consistency when I slot in a fourth Therapy if I'm still hoping to go off quickly. I like the idea, though, so if you've found a way to make it work, I'd love to hear it. Are you aiming for a slightly slower build with more protection in the main?Quote:
Originally Posted by Blastoderm
I guess my previous question may hold the answer, but what have you been putting in the flex spots? Probes or Wraiths? Something else?Quote:
Originally Posted by Blastoderm
This sounds like a workable plan, but I've run into Delver decks running both Grafdigger's and Force (the BUG variants also have Deathrite). This was what I was talking about earlier on when I was saying that we've got to find a plan that thwarts both grave-hate AND countermagic. One or the other might be manageable (we can race control decks that don't open with Force, and Belcher doesn't use the graveyard), but our sideboard plans seem geared toward fighting one strat or the other, not both at the same time.Quote:
Originally Posted by Blastoderm
This is a big problem. One thing I notice is that Dread Return is a weak-point in this combo, because it can still get extracted/Extirpated. It just feels to me like sticking with the graveyard plan leaves us open to a world of sideboard hate that'll knock us out of the game right away. Faerie Macabre is important to mention here; it can pick off a Cerberus and a Ghoul at the same time and we can't counter it. Have you considered boarding in Slaughter Pact instead of extra combo pieces to deal with Deathrite?Quote:
Originally Posted by Blastoderm
Agreed on all counts. One thing: have you noticed Storm to be a big enough problem to include Leyline of Sanctity? Seems to me we can clock them really easily with an orthodox, 9-12-cycler build. Why not try a list like the one you posted, but with an extra Unmask and 3x Slaughter Pact instead of the Leylines?Quote:
Originally Posted by Blastoderm
I'm going to start experimenting with a larger graveyard package and free-castable protection to see what I think. My main caveats are a) we're still vulnerable to Leyline of the Void, Surgical Extraction, Extirpate, Faerie Macabre, and Tormod's Crypt; and b) we're still in a tight spot when facing heavy control. Blastoderm, thanks for the feedback, and Slave, let us know what you come up with.
Nope, I'm still opting for the turn 1 kill. Anything slower opens you up to all kinds of hate but mainly Deathrite Shaman. We are aiming for 4 mana in our opening hand. This allows us to play a bunch of cards that "do nothing" (our win cons + enablers like bridge/narco) as well as protection (pact and therapy). As a comparison, Belcher aims for 4 mana (empty), 6 mana (wish-->empty) and 7 mana (belcher + activation). This is why belcher runs 11 win cons + the rest mana (except gitaxian probe).Quote:
Originally Posted by Ronald Deuce
8 Spies
8 Spirit Guides
3 Narcomoeba
2 Bridge from Below
3 Street Wraith
4 Gitaxian Probe
4 Cabal Therapy
4 Pact of Negation
8 Rituals
4 Summoner's Pact
1 Wild Cantor
4 Chrome Mox
4 Lotus Petal
1 Underworld Cerberus
1 Laboratory Maniac
1 Dread Return
I labelled those as flex spots because I can't remember what I use lol! I'll post a better sideboard later.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ronald Deuce
BUG is the hardest matchup. Discard+Counters+Deathrite. I don't feel like changing my sideboard to a bad version of belcher just for this matchup which is awful no matter what.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ronald Deuce
Side in some unmasks and extra dread return+ghoul/lab. Just accept losses to 1-of sb cards like grafdiggers cage.
Faerie Macabre and Extirpate are quite uncommon. Surgical is the go-to extraction card of choice and can be countered with Pact, discarded with Therapy or Unmasked. Slaughter Pact can't target Deathrite. I'd rather deal with Deathrite by having cards in my library (extra dread return+lab or ghoul) instead of hoping to have the card to deal with it in my opening hand. Not to mention non-mana cards in hand are bad.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ronald Deuce
True. Leyline is a recent addition. I decided to keep that in against discard decks like Jund. ANT has discard (6-7 main) too but it has the bonus of stopping Tendrils.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ronald Deuce
Unmask is card disadvantage. I love the card but I feel more than 2 would be too much with 4 Chrome Mox in the main.
As I said before. You should focus on the most common graveyard hate that people have and how many copies.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ronald Deuce
- Rest in Peace
- Grafdiggers Cage
- Nihil Spellbomb
- Surgical
Rest is peace is pretty slow at 2 mana. You can counter surgical with pact and use discard/nature's claim for the rest of the hate.
After looking at some lists online (tcdecks.net), people are really greedy with not having any graveyard hate sb. Most decks only have 2 copies dedicated to fight graveyard strategies. Just remember that the odds are against them when it comes to having their hate in their opening hand. Is it really worth siding in 4 Nature's Claim to fight a 1 of grafdiggers cage? Or 2 mana hate like Rest in Peace? Is it worth changing your sideboard to a worse version of Belcher for the same reasons?
Worst case if you lose to some weird card like Faerie Macabre, you can always side in some Unmasks game 3.
I've been kicking around something in my head that is rather digressive from the thread's current... thread.
So BfZ has brought us another option for Rogue slots 9-12. I'm not sure how viable it is, but I feel like it's worth bringing up anyway because, well, why not? Trial and error's worked pretty well for humans for quite a while. Besides, as they say, "if you can't set a good example, set an example."
First, some background. Late last year I was monkeying around with Worldly Tutor. I wasn't that impressed with it, because even though it only cost one additional mana to bring out a Rogue, telegraphing a play a turn in advance felt really awful, and I shelved it. Also, splitting up our mana over two turns didn't dovetail at all with rituals; it's easier to produce five or even six mana in one turn than it is to produce one mana in one turn, then four mana in the next. I've made some changes to my maindeck since then (like cutting down on Manamorphose and switching from the Azami/Angel plan to the Cerberus), but in spite of having to mulligan a whole lot, I never went back to test the Tutor again. I tested the Living Wish plan earlier this year, and I felt like it didn't have much consistency without running a full quad along with some shaky mana sources like Chancellor of the Tangle, which was a dead card as often as it wasn't in my testing. Besides, with a full eleven Rogues/wishes, drawing into multiple copies (often three) often left me without any mana. (For what it's worth, I'd noticed a similar problem in Belcher after including Burning Wish.) So I've been looking for a tutor since then that might give us an additional out without requiring a quad in the decklist, without requiring significant changes to the base list to accommodate them (LEDs are pretty finnicky and often useless in the graveyard plan), and without either costing 150% the cost of a Balustrade Spy or making us throw a turn into Cabal Therapy, Thoughtseize, or topdecked countermagic [EDIT: Yes, the Tutor is an instant. That doesn't mean we're not putting ourselves in an awkward situation by showing our opponents both what we're seeking and where it is].
I'm thinking of Bring to Light. If we can generate the colors of mana necessary, it's effectively a one-mana tutor for a Balustrade Spy. Our main plan has been to produce black mana first and foremost, but we also have a fair number of cards that can produce other colors of mana. Chrome Mox and Lotus Petal are our most flexible in this regard, but we've also got the Spirit Guides, Wild Cantor, and Manamorphose. So we're looking at a card that's harder to cast for what we need (we're gonna need to produce four differently colored mana) than, say, Dark Petition or Living Wish, but it's gonna cost us one fewer mana in total (Petition costs a net of six even with Spell Mastery and the Wish costs 2 PLUS the cost of a rogue [EDIT: in other words, we need six mana in total to combo out with either Petition or Wish and either the Spy or the Informer]), and it'll bring the card out right away without our having to wait around and telegraph our next turn (cf. Worldly Tutor). There's still another opening for countermagic, but let's face it: if the opponent doesn't counter BtL with a counter in hand, they're either slowrolling or playing something goofy like Remove Soul.
Pros:
-Cheaper than nearly all the other tutors in the format all-told, faster than Worldly Tutor, and 100% likely to find a Rogue (cf. Commune with Nature)
-We aren't telegraphing our punch a full turn in advance of the combo
-Doesn't require us to use sideboard space as wishboard space
-It's possible we won't need as many cyclers
-Though we're still likely to need black mana to reach the Converge target, we don't actually require an initial mana source that can produce black mana
-The art's pretty cool
Cons:
-Difficult to generate four different colors of mana at once and colorless mana DOES NOT count
-Blue mana in the casting cost is a hurdle that can't be overlooked
-Non-bo with Lion's Eye Diamond, Grim Monolith
-Could require some deckbuilding gymnastics that would reduce the effectiveness of the package overall
I've not tested this plan yet, but for starters I was considering cutting the number of Gitaxian Probes and/or Street Wraiths and going back to more Manamorphoses. So maybe 3x Manamorphose, 2x Gitaxian Probe, 2x Street Wraith, and 1x Bring to Light [EDITed: I'm a moran] instead of 3x Gitaxian Probe, 4x Street Wraith, 1x Manamorphose. I'm not too happy about using so many copies of Manamorphose, but I seem to be of the minority opinion on that.
So has anyone tried this out? It seems like a long shot, but I feel like this deck will become much more consistent if we can find a ninth catalyst for the combo.
[EDIT: While I'm digressing (feeling a bit loopy today), I've been kicking around other ideas for the name of this deck. Let's face it: "Oops! All Spells" doesn't feel goofy enough (like Tin Fins) or serious enough (like Maverick or The Epic Storm). I'm the type to either call decks something facetious or to look for the most ridiculous title I can find. With that, I give you the title I've been using: SANIC. Because we win with a little blue guy who's GOTTA GO FAST!]
"Oops, all spells" is a call-back to the cereal combo deck names of yore.
If you are playing the cerebus version you absolutely have to either MB or SB 1 ingot chewer, or else you just auto lose to chalice at 1.