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I'd rather have a counter that Wishable + castable; the late game bombs to grab are already Spell Burst and Capsize and either 1-of FoF or Stroke of Genius. Maybe Cryptic Command, which is also versatile but slightly cheaper.
Also, Stifle needs to go there, I don't know how I missed that. So I'm thinking;
- Capsize
- Spell Burst
- Some big draw
- Echoing Truth
- Commandeer
- Stifle
- Force Spike
- Brain Freeze
(8th target means cutting Crypt or B2B to a 3-of. Or I could cut Force Spike)
For big draw I'm tempted to say I would run Opportunity. Largely because I've been looking for an opportunity to play that card somewhere for approximately over nine-thousand years.
I'm thinking:
X4 B2B
X3 Tormod's Crypt
X1 Stifle
X1 Opportunity
X1 Commandeer
X1 Echoing Truth
X1 Brain Freeze
X1 Spell Burst
X1 Capsize
X1 Force Spike
For the board, which leaves us something like this for a maindeck:
X24 Islands
X4 Nevinrryal's Disk
X4 Vedalken Shackles
X4 Force of Will
X4 Counterspell
X3 Force Spike
X3 Spell Snare
X4 Fact or Fiction
X4 Think Twice
X3 Cunning Wish
X1 Call The Skybreaker
X1 Guile
X1 Morphling (Consider my concession to myself, you can run whatever you prefer here)
The one thing I don't like is the 24 lands, but I can also see how with Think Twice and plenty of counterspells that the 25th might not be necessary. I still hate the fact that this deck really wants to run 24.5 lands; Ah the laws of MtG deck construction, how you haunt me so.
At any rate, it seems like an interesting list in a variety of ways, and I look forward to testing it, especially against Thresh and Dreadstill. Any further suggestions would be welcome; I'm essentially treating this list as a community 'project' as it were, so all input would be nice.
@4eak
My major bone was that you seemed to be implying that perm-based MUC's landstill matchup is weak. Since this was clearly an error on my part, a large degree of my confusion is gone. At any rate, the only reason I used the word odd was becuase I hadn't thought to use Mishra's Factory myself at any point when I was building draw/go, nor had I seen it used in the past. They might not seem odd to you, but without any precedent with which to have considered them, it seemed odd to me.
This is basically the list I'm testing, with -1 maindeck FoF for the fourth in the Wish card-draw slot, - Guile/Morphling, and +1 CtS and +2 Jace. I'm not sure if that's better or not, I'm just trying out Jace to provide earlyish card draw and to supplement Wish-Brain Freeze as an alternate win. Although that might end up being too clunky; some testing is necessary here.
In particular, let me know how you find Force Spike. Every time I run it, it is less than optimal. I rarely see it in my opening hand; when I do, my opponent passes the turn and I am usually playing against a control deck. It feels that I always draw it late game, so I'd rather just see Mana Leak.Quote:
Originally Posted by Kadaj
What I don't like:
I still don't see what's the problem with Morphling. I only suggested CtS as a possible alternative second win condition for the control matchup. I would still play 2 Morphling as the main win condition. I especially see no, absolutely no, reason to play Guile over Morphling.
Another problem with your list is that it just loses against any kind of graveyard recursion. IBA, your list has no plan against Academy Ruins/ Explosives and Genesis or Stronghold also seem to be a problem.
I am strictly against Cunning Wish. Cunning Wish gives the deck some more lategame power but the price paid for it is too high. The deck gets even slower with it which will be a problem when paired against Goyf Sligh, Gobs or Aggro Loam. The next problem is that you have to remove important SB slots for the Wish targets. Propagandas are essential in G2 to stand a chance against Goblins or Ichorid, Blue Blasts are the same for the Goyf Sligh/ Burn / Goblin matchup. No boarding against Goblins? No Boarding against Goyf Sligh? Just 3 Crypt against Ichorid? To me it looks like you accept to just sign the 0-2 slip if you get paired against them.
What I like:
24 Island
4 Shackles
4 Disk
4 Counterspell
4 FoW
3 Spell Snare
3 Force Spike
2 Morphling
3-4 Think Twice
These 52 cards I like. This base was extremely solid in testing and while experimenting with the deck I will not touch any of these numbers. I never felt like I wanted less of any of these cards and they feel right. The last 8 slots should include a)some Bounce (C Command, Repeal or Capsize), b) a 3rd Win Condition (CtS, Tezzeret) and c) another draw spell.
Currently I try this configuration:
1 Tezzeret
2-3 Relic of Progenitus
3 Thirst for Knowledge
2 Repeal
Relic fits really nicely into the deck. You can't play CtS with it anymore but it serves multiple functions: Discard to TfK, Recursion Control, Cycling, Keeping Goyfs and Geese really small and beating with Tezzeret.
My SB looks like this:
4 Propaganda
4 B2B
2 Jace
3 Blue Blast
2 Tormod's Crypt
Force Spike was great for me. MUC needs something to do on Turn 1, especially when on the draw or when on the play against Vial. And from time time you can even cast it in the control mirror in a counter war.Quote:
Originally Posted by Jason
The problem I always have with Morphling is when playing a control deck, they are going to keep in Wrath of God for 2x Morphling and the control deck is also going to attempt to counter Morphling. Now I have to waste a counter to force through Superman, only to have it Wrath'ed away. That counter could have been used for good (like countering Humility). With Guile, shenanigans like that cannot happen. Guile doesn't go away to Wrath of God or Pernicious Deed; you also don't have to worry about Guile being countered because it will be back later. That is only a problem when you are on the defensive and attempting to cast Morphling as a last ditch effort. If your last hope is countered, you probably lose the game either way - Guile or Morphling.Quote:
Originally Posted by Tao
By splitting the wins 1 Morphling / 1 Guile, you have now forced your opponent to make a decision as to what is more important to be able to kill and stay dead: Morphling with Wrath of God or Guile with Swords to Plowshares. Granted the Call the Skybreaker token dies to both, but that one keeps coming back regardless.
I'm basically saying the only reason Guile would be less than good would be if your opponent keeps in Swords to Plowshares. And if your opponent is keeping in Swords to Plowshares for 1 card and not keeping Wrath for Superman, then I think you should be winning this game.
Tao, I'm sure you've answered this before, but why is it that you're so dead set against Fact or Fiction? As far as I'm aware, you're the only person adamantly against it who regularly posted in this thread, and I'd like to know why. For me, the card is completely irreplaceable. For you, it seems like you go to great pains not to play it. I understand that 4 mana isn't cheap, but I've never once had trouble playing the card, and if you can't get to 4 mana consistently then you weren't winning anyway. Nothing provides card advantage like Fact, and being able to chain them together makes it completely untouchable in my eyes. I really think if your reason is curve than you should just try it anyway; You'll be surprised how little it's 4cc actually matters.
Repeal at least I can understand given that it gives you some flexibility in actually dealing with troublesome permanents, whereas Relic just sort of handles recursion, something that you should more or less be able to either plow through or ignore. Sure the list has no direct answer to Life from the Loam, but you can more or less just let Loam resolve and deal with the threats they attempt to play, like Seismic Assault or Goyf. Loam itself is often a red-herring in that matchup.
I will readily admit that the board is not designed to prepare for matchups like Goblins or Ichorid, and for the most part Goyf Sligh as well. You probably won't be winning against Goyf Sligh or Ichorid much anyway, even if you do actually SB for them, so I tend to just ignore those matchups. Not enough people play them in my metagame to be relevant (although I have a curse upon me that I inevitably get paired with the one schmuck playing Ichorid at every tournament I attend but don't have a SB aimed at it), so I'd rather have the flexibility of Cunning Wish, at least in that particular list. I usually don't like Wish, but without B2B main I think having readily available answers to a variety of problems is going to be crucial, considering you can't just shut them out of the game on turn 3 in some cases.
I've tested Jace before (albiet in a much different build), and am pretty ambivalent on it. It is pretty damn hard to lose the control mirror if Jace lands. On the other hand, he's pretty awful against Aggro without StP or Deed to back him up. Then again, the combination of 1cc counters and Shackles/Nevvy's Disk might be enough to protect him to a reasonable degree, at which point he is a fantastic draw engine.Quote:
Originally Posted by TheInfamousBearAssassin
Also, I don't quite understand why Rainbow Efreet isn't being played as a wincon anymore. Whenever I tested MUC I found his ability to dodge mass removal more relevant than Morphling's ability to end the game (on average) 2 turns faster. Especially in a list with 4 Disks, Efreet seems preferred. (Yeah, I know, there shouldn't be a situation in which you have a Morphling on the board and have to Disk, but shit happens and sometimes you need a reset button. It's nice to have your wincon live through that.)
I play 1 Morphling, 1 Rainbow Efreet, and 2 Jace Beleren in my permanent-based build. I've been quite happy with this win condition config (although, I have yet to use Jace's mega ability, so I guess I can't count him) in my meta.Quote:
Originally Posted by KillemallCFH
Of course you can beat these decks with a proper SB. With any 2/3 combination of Crypt, Propaganda and FoW you have solid chances to beat Ichorid. With many fast counters plus U Blasts you have a good chance to blow a Disk against Goblins followed by Shackles. And if you can stabilize against Goyf Sligh on ~7 life you should be able to win by countering their drawn burn spells.Quote:
Originally Posted by Kadaj
Against Landstill or TheFear you cannot win G1 without either yard hate or B2B because of Academy Ruins (and Volrath's Stronghold). They can recur Explosives or Witnesses until you are out of cards. It would be no good idea to ignore the 3 most popular aggro decks and then autoloss G1 against the 2 most popular control decks.Quote:
Originally Posted by Kadaj
I juts don't think it is that good in a deck without real bombs. While UW/Landstill can Fact for the game saving Moat Mono U does not run such cards. MonoU wants pure card advantage and imo TfK does that as well and cheaper. But I admit that I am a bit biased against FoF and it very well may be the right choice.Quote:
Originally Posted by Kadaj
So another option for the last 9 cards (with 3 Think Twice) could be 3 Fact, 1 Call the Skybreaker, 2 Repeal and 3 Back to Basics (I see nothing I could cut for the 4th Fact, I think two bounce spells are a minimum to fight Needle and things against which Disk is too slow).
I feel like Force Spike in the Sideboard for a wishboard isn't really useful. Can we maybe try Annul?
Sower: I like 4 Shackles maindeck, 4 Sowers in the side. Your opponent takes out StPs for Grips, you bring in Sowers, they cry. (This said, it could be worth maindecking nonetheless (in addition to Shackles), because oftentimes if you can counter that one Swords, you win the game; so that might be Good Enough.)
Back to Basics: Keep in mind that while a whole lot of decks are multicolor, there are a bunch of multicolor Threshold builds running around which use Back to Basics in the maindeck themselves -- not to mention the UGR variants with Moon effects, and all the other versions which could run these cards but don't.
Cunning Wish: This seems cumbersome to me. Why do we want it again? It's not like you can even get Pulse of the Fields, Extirpate, or Swords to Plowshares with it. It sounds to me like Cryptic Command would do much of what you want while being significantly less slow.
Guile: It's only less vulnerable to counterspells in the sense that if it's your last win condition, you don't need to protect it, unlike most other cards. Otherwise, it's still a 1-1 trade, and you still have to wait to draw it again. And on the other hand, it's 100% vulnerable to Swords to Plowshares. It looks to me like this is strictly inferior to Call the Skybreaker for the intended purpose (and it's not invulnerable to graveyard hate either -- the shuffling is a triggered ability, not a replacement effect). Extirpate on CtS seems like a way too narrow case to justify it (and only applies if CtS is your only other win condition). If you're that worried about Extirpate, I'd just put another win condition or two in the sideboard.
Random idea: sideboard Teferi for the control mirror? Again going for the they're-going-to-board-out-removal-so-why-not-screw-them angle.
As far as I'm concerned fact is just too expensive. Nothing wrong with a resolved FoF really but I feel it's cost is prohibitive especially when you're running Disk as well. Against a lot of decs (read all non control decs) a starting hand with 2 four casting cost spells is just gonna be a mulligan. I might be exagerating here but I think FoFs overall accepptance in the format warrants the conclusion that it's too slow for legacy in comparison to other popular CA engines (Standstill, Intuition, Bob, Loam...).Quote:
Originally Posted by Kadaj
This engine hasn't put me down btw, it's sleek yet powerful, and almost completly non situational, especially shining in the lategame. Kinda like Grow's cantrip suite on steroids:
2 intuition
3 Think Twice
4 AK
And the ability to tutor for bombs with intuition is just gravy.
Ok, sry for posting so much, but the more I think about of Relic of Progenitus in MUC the more I like the idea. Relic is an incredible powerful yard hoser. It's drawback is that it removes your own yard, too. MUC does not care about this drawback because MUC is the only control deck that does not abuse the graveyard. In our Goyf times removing the own yard is even a big advantage.Quote:
Originally Posted by Kadaj
I started to play it as discard for TfK. Then I thought about the advantages of Relic and there were SO many. Here we go:
- AggroLoam: nuts: Terravore, Loam, Goyf
- Threshold: nuts, shrinking all their threats to miniature size
- Ichorid Combo:
- TES / ANT: nullifying IGG while Chanted and Duressed, keeping Cabal Ritual small
- Landstill: removing Academy Ruins engine, removing Mana engine (E. Dragon or Crucible/Fetchland)
- Survival: killing Survival Engine, Witnesses and Therapies, Shrinking Goyfs
- Team America: it is able to delay Tombstalker for several turns, shrinking Goyfs
- TheFear: Removing their engine, shrinking Goyfs
- Shrinking Goyfs in general (Goyfsligh, Dreadstill, Rock, all the matchups above) is so great: they attack for zero and you draw a card.
Plus it cycles in each other matchup for 1 and 1 Mana. So why in the world don't we play 4 of it?
In my testing, Think Twice has been lackluster. While I recognize the spell actually generates card advantage, it does so at the expense of what should normally be a raw digging spell like Brainstorm or Impulse. I understand the card has substance in the mid to late game, but that is only achieved by sacrificing the consistency and strength of early game filtering.
I highly suggest testing Brainstorm and Impulse in Draw/Go again. You need to give substantial justification for not playing these two spells--they are the staple in Draw/go.
If you are hellbent on running a card advantage spell, then please reconsider Think Twice for something like Thirst for Knowledge or even Flash of Insight as both of these spells offer excellent digging power and provide raw card advantage.
Flash of Insight is very interesting in that it can dig VERY deeply, and it costs roughly the same amount of mana as Think Twice. It scales with your mana supply, and it only gets better the longer the game goes.
peace,
4eak
Isn't Impulse kinda bad in MUC? Putting cards you would've like to draw in the near future on the bottom of the library seems too relevant. Yeah, you could offset this with fetchlands, but either way, you can use a better digger in Ponder. Either way, if you want a digger use Brainstorm, but I don't think IMpulse is a staple in Draw-Go style MUC.
Brainstorm is terrible for the obvious reason that you have no way of shuffling it back, and can't do so without opening yourself up to some of the LD effects that make this manabase so resilient.
I've been quite happy with Think Twice. I don't know what to tell you.
Tao, the thing is you keep complaining about problems that are solved by C. Wish while wanting to remove C. Wish. C. Wish grabs your answers to late game threats that are otherwise recursively annoying, mainly in the form of Spell Burst or Capsize.
What do you guys think about splashing a color? I'm currently testing a MUC/w list with a manabase of:Quote:
Originally Posted by TheInfamousBearAssassin
16 Island
4 Flooded Strand
2 Polluted Delta
1 Tundra
1 Plains
With those fetches I'm playing Brainstorm and it's really good, but I'd never play it in a monocolored version. Ever.
This has been working out quite good for me, and Stifle hasn't really mattered since. The splash is mainly for Swords to Plowshares, but I also run a wishboard for the 4th Sword, Dismantling Blow and Enlightened Tutor. This has worked out quite good, but I somehow dislike the wishboard so I'll probably try and play without wishes.
I'm really really pleased with StPs, they are so incredibly good against almost all non-Combo decks. Especially in the Zoo/Gooyfsligh matchup it helps a lot. Stealing their creature to chumpblock, then StP the other is really cool and if you keep counters for burn the matchup becomes quite winable.
I dunno. TMLO had an awful lot of 4x Stifle/4x Wasteland/4x Daze. S'why I don't play Truffle Shuffle anymore. Goyf gives tempo-oriented strategies too much of an edge.
Cunning Wish is yet another card which I have tested (in this case very extensively), and I still have problems with it in MUC.
-The card is absolutely awful in the early and even mid-game. We already have a very strong mid and late game, so why not run cards that actually help us get to the mid and late game in the first place?
-Cunning Wish is very expensive to cast. That raw inefficiency is a problem, even for a deck that gets to untap so often.
-Cunning Wish belongs in a deck that needs silver-bullets. MUC is not a deck that needs silver-bullets because it plays a lot more like a universal control deck.
-If you have need for a spell so much that you'll play Cunning Wish for it, then you really need to work that well into the main deck.
I think Cunning Wish is a very powerful card. But, after a metric ton of testing, it is evident that the card does not merit play in MUC (even Draw/go).
@ Shawon
This is this equivalent of saying that milling 4 cards of your opponent's library countered those cards. Assuming you have redundancy in your deck, you aren't losing anything unique. Consider that sometimes you are actually digging through cards you didn't want to see in the first place as well. In a deck that is looking for a specific answer to an opponent, some cards will be much more valuable than others throughout the game, and thus cantrip and dig effects remain extremely valuable.Quote:
Isn't Impulse kinda bad in MUC? Putting cards you would've like to draw in the near future on the bottom of the library seems too relevant.
Impulse let's you see 4 cards for 2 mana at instant speed. This is very difficult to replace.
It is a staple. Go read on the history of the deck. Kadaj's opening post mentions it a few times too.Quote:
I don't think IMpulse is a staple in Draw-Go style MUC.
@ TheInfamousBearAssassin
Stifle is the only LD effect to be concerned about. Brainstorm will win you 10x the games you will ever lose to a Stifle on fetch.Quote:
Brainstorm is terrible for the obvious reason that you have no way of shuffling it back, and can't do so without opening yourself up to some of the LD effects that make this manabase so resilient.
If MUC played a good portion of non-basics, where waste+stifle actually did more, I could understand a reasonable hesitation to play the enormous 6 fetchlands in MUC.
If you fear a stifle, then play around it. There are a few cases where you cannot, but the odds of that occurring are quite rare. Generally speaking, you either crack the fetch when they tap out (because they know better than to wait you out), or both of you just sit there. I don't see a problem with that. You both basically timewalk, and then MUC starts dropping more lands than his opponent.
-Brainstorm makes it so you mulligan a lot less (which is a form of card advantage in a stage of the game where we really need it)
-It gives you a higher chance to FoW on Turn 1
-Brainstorm is an effective card in the early game even without a shuffle effect as it stabilizes your hand and helps you make land drops at a critical time. Shuffling only becomes necessary in the mid and late game.
-Brainstorm can generate much stronger card advantage than Think Twice at a fraction of the cost, especially mid to late game.
-It remains stronger from T1 to T20 than any other card besides FoW.
Brainstorm is the glue of Legacy decks. Draw/Go is no exception.
If this was any other card, I'd gladly take weaker responses. I can better understand why permanent-MUC would consider not running the card (although, I'm still not convinced). But, Draw/Go is a different animal, and Brainstorm is nothing short of amazing in this deck.
Have you thoroughly tested Brainstorm and Impulse? That would be one thing you could talk about.Quote:
I've been quite happy with Think Twice. I don't know what to tell you.
peace,
4eak