[Deck] Spanish Inquisition (B/x Storm Combo)

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Originally Posted by Summerrain

I don't understand the usage of Grixis Grimblade at all :eyebrow:. Sorry. Why use this card? You can't fetch it and your other MC card is the trow. Please explain :smile:
Since my last tournament (I went 4:2, but could not make T8 -.-) I play Skyshroud Cutter > Trow. Saving 1 mana is huge in some plays and I never missed the trow for Chrome Mox

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Thanks for the help.
So in regard to Manamorphose - what would you take out for it from my list?

Okay, so Grisix GB is just a thought, not something I know if it works very well as yet.
Grimblade would purely be a target for Chrome Mox.
You know that situation where you're playing a blind D4 with otherwise an empty hand, an LED on the table but no other blue mana, and hoping for a Slithermuse?
Instead of having to crack the LED and taking a punt on the 'muse and calling "blue" when you crack the LED;
I thought having the grimblade would potentially make chrome mox a little more useful, and mean LED sac's would be a little less of a punt.
I realise this isn't the point of having the Trow or Cantor etc. in the deck, so this is just a petty cute idea with no value right?

On another thought, considering the EtW builds that I've read about, are they running a singleton Goblin Bushwhacker as a haste enabler? Should they?

One other thing I'm curious about.
Land Grant.
Do any of you regularly get Dryad Arbor first? I always go for the Bayou unless I need a Culling target to continue.
Is there any other reason to not play pick Bayou first everytime?

Okay, so after a fair bit more goldfishing - I understand why Shyshroud Cutter is like a million times better than Grimblade could ever be.:confused:
Cheers for pointing that out.

And I'm liking Manamorphose a fair bit more too post board when I pop in 3x EtW, Carpets, PiF.
On that, PiF is one I'm still not sure on. There have been times when it's been a house, but I'm finding it's harder to cast the longer the game goes on.
E.g.
Plays against Burn; I'm finding casting two D4's is suicidal, making fuel for Cabal Rit. and PiF much harder.
What do you guys do against Burn if your first turn chain fizzles?

Well, I've gone back to basics, using the stock PSI list (-1 MM, +1 Wild Cantor). I'd begun to feel like the "improvements" I was making were turning the list into a weird Belcher clone, and Belcher just does that better. I'm focusing now on just tightening my play.

The sideboard is a little open though, and I wonder whether Autumn's Veil is better than Duress in an open meta.

Against control, AV and Duress do the same thing - void a counter for one mana. However, AV can void multiple conditional counters, just as Silence can. You can also hold it back and cast it only after countermagic has been used, which keeps your options open longer (an unnecessary Duress might still force you into a more risky spell chain).

Although it takes harder to find green mana to cast, AV also imprints for green, which makes casting your critical Carpets easier to cast. Overall, I'm thinking AV is better than Duress against control, and you don't bring either of them in against aggro.

But what about the combo matchup? If they are on the play, they might be able to slow you down long enough with their own discard effects that they go off first. Duress let's you fight back, while AV would be useless.

And what about combo decks packing chant? This could really wreck us with a Pact trigger pending, and AV again offers no protection, while Duress might actually help.

Advice and insight on Autumn's Veil vs Duress would be appreciated.

Edit: Perhaps even more importantly, I'd like opinions on the deck as a whole - is this a real contender in most metas, or does it only work when there is very little blue about? ANT seems to top 8 in major tournaments all the time, but you never see SI. I know that very few people play it, but that in itself probably says something. Is SI anything more than a pet deck?

I've been very dissatisfied with P.S.I. lately. Against Maverick we need at least a 90 % turn 1 OTD win ratio and I just couldn't get there on ~500 goldfishs.

I'm now trying to fit in cards like
Energy Tap
Infernal Plunge
Sacrifice
Burnt Offering
Songs of the Damned
more Skyshroud Cutters
Allosaurus Rider

in the deck, as Vacrix already mentioned. I have not gotten very far by now, any advice?


On the Duress vs Autumn's Veil topic:
I'd always play 4 Duress. Discarding is just very strong against S&S and Reanimator (which I find to be a very hard match-up). I even went so far and tried to dismiss AV for Thoughtseize. The double lifeloss has not hurt me, but I must say, I have not done enough testing with it. Maybe Unmask is the better choice here. Both cards are very expensive in foil, though :( .

I'm working on a new version that slows down to play protection. Looks pretty cool so far, I'll post it when its goldfishing better.

That would be great. There's a small tournament on 19th of this month and I'm not really sure what I'm gonna play there. Ditching P.S.I. for Goblins would hurt me.
Looking forward to your list.

Night of souls betrayal?
Dread of night?
Massacre?

All hit thalia, qasali and teag

Do not play night of souls' betrayal. Ever. I see zero reason to play that card over dread of night. Massacre in this deck is awkward BECAUSE you need to have the one of bayou in play to make it free. Personally, I'd just stick with slaughter pact for creature removal. It's what I use as a 2 of personally in my current board.

Grixis grimblade isn't green, unlike odious trow. The whole point of trow is that you can pact for it. Grimblade can't be pacted for. I often hate raw drawing pact targets, in fact I've fizzled because I drew a pact target instead of pact itself. When you naturally draw witness, the card is almost always terrible. I've since cut it from my list though for being an incredibly awkward card.

Sorry. Just bouncing ideas. I figure dread is good against maverick and two can lock em out of bears.

What is your current list?

I'm kinda undecided between Belcher and SI, the decks purpose is the same but I don't really know which one fits me better or is just better in the current meta. Which one do you guys feel its the strongest atm? also, Belcher's last decklist were pretty similar, I have no problem in building that deck, but the SI is much harder for me o build: the primer is outdated and I can't find any recent decklists, can someone help me on this please? Cheers!

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Originally Posted by skincoffin

I'm kinda undecided between Belcher and SI, the decks purpose is the same but I don't really know which one fits me better or is just better in the current meta. Which one do you guys feel its the strongest atm? also, Belcher's last decklist were pretty similar, I have no problem in building that deck, but the SI is much harder for me o build: the primer is outdated and I can't find any recent decklists, can someone help me on this please? Cheers!

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I second the fact that the primer is seriously outdated.

I am not pros so I too would really appreciate if someone of higher caliber players in here would revamp it. Not the whole damn thing of course; but maybe a revamp on the lists covered in the primer would be good.

Cheers

I second that! I love playing wacky decks and love it even more if there is a serious ammount of skill involved into playing that deck to a good result. Not really having an up-to-date list of SI is what is stopping me from picking up this deck and taking it to a tournament. Because of the nature of the deck, I want to goldfish it a lot before doing this. So... Is there a good list out there? And if yes, care to share it with us?

Agreed. PSI is the most popular build largely because it's the most up-to-date. If SITES or LGSI were to get some similar love, I'm sure more people would play them.

Sadly, while I can tinker with decks with some success, my deck-building skills are not up to the challenge of completely overhauling and updating something as complex as storm combo, and I rely on far better deck-builders than I to provide the framework.

I am playing this deck since summer 2008 with more or less success. It always made fun to play and build around it.

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I second the fact that the primer is seriously outdated.

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You are right. But SI is too special to make use of every new good cards around. Since the printing of Odious Trow and the inclusion of Slithermuse the deck hasn't made any change. PiF has't changed anything.

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If SITES or LGSI were to get some similar love, I'm sure more people would play them.

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In 2008 some of my friends build this list, I think it's still in the first thread.
//LGSI

2 Bayou
4 Phyrexian Walker
4 Shield Sphere
4 Simian Spirit Guide
4 Chrome Mox
4 Lion's Eye Diamond
4 Lotus Petal
4 Culling the Weak
4 Dark Ritual
4 Cabal Ritual
4 Land Grant

4 Infernal Tutor
4 Infernal Contract
3 Cruel Bargain
2 Ill-Gotten Gains
2 Tendrils of Agony
2 Empty the Warrens
1 Goblin Charbelcher

Sideboard
4 Cabal Therapy
4 Oxidize
4 Tombstalker
3 Tomb of Urami

They had a lot of sucess on mws (against serious decks at that time), but they never completed SI in RL because of cruel bargain... I would make those changes:
- 1 IGG/ + 1 PiF
- X Chrome mox -X SSG/ + Mox Opal
and cut the Stalkers in the SB !!!
Maybe someone can test the list to give some feedback. EtW seems strong right now :)

SITES has potential, but SI becomes with wish even more random than before.
I gave SITES a try, became bored and included pact. This list want to kill on turn 1 or die trying. If someone is curious write me a PM.

// Mana
2 Gemstone mone
2 City of traitors
4 LED
4 petal
4 pact
4 SSG
4 ESG
1 Wild Cantor
4 Manamorphose
4 Dark ritual
4 Rite of flame
4 Burning wish
2 cabal ritual
//Business
1 Crop rotation
1 ancestral knowledge
4 gitaxian probe
2 Infernal Contract
2 Cruel bargain
4 Meditate
3 Brainstorm
//SB
1 Tendrils
1 ETW
1 Grapeshot
1 Toimb of Urami
1 Diminishing Returns
1 Hurkyl's Recall
1 echoing truth
1 chain of vapor
1 Nature's claim
1 Duress
1 Autumns veil
1 Defense Grid
1 Xantid Swarm
1 pact of negation
1 Pyroblast

I gave up on SI. I will sleeve it up again, when wizards will print something broken for SI or ban ANT/Doomsday :D :D :D. The day will come. Until that I will win more tournaments with stasis ;) Sorry for the bad english :(

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Originally Posted by the resurrection

I am playing this deck since summer 2008 with more or less success. It always made fun to play and build around it.

You are right. But SI is too special to make use of every new good cards around. Since the printing of Odious Trow and the inclusion of Slithermuse the deck hasn't made any change. PiF has't changed anything.


In 2008 some of my friends build this list, I think it's still in the first thread.
//LGSI

2 Bayou
4 Phyrexian Walker
4 Shield Sphere
4 Simian Spirit Guide
4 Chrome Mox
4 Lion's Eye Diamond
4 Lotus Petal
4 Culling the Weak
4 Dark Ritual
4 Cabal Ritual
4 Land Grant

4 Infernal Tutor
4 Infernal Contract
3 Cruel Bargain
2 Ill-Gotten Gains
2 Tendrils of Agony
2 Empty the Warrens
1 Goblin Charbelcher

Sideboard
4 Cabal Therapy
4 Oxidize
4 Tombstalker
3 Tomb of Urami

They had a lot of sucess on mws (against serious decks at that time), but they never completed SI in RL because of cruel bargain... I would make those changes:
- 1 IGG/ + 1 PiF
- X Chrome mox -X SSG/ + Mox Opal
and cut the Stalkers in the SB !!!
Maybe someone can test the list to give some feedback. EtW seems strong right now :)

SITES has potential, but SI becomes with wish even more random than before.
I gave SITES a try, became bored and included pact. This list want to kill on turn 1 or die trying. If someone is curious write me a PM.

// Mana
2 Gemstone mone
2 City of traitors
4 LED
4 petal
4 pact
4 SSG
4 ESG
1 Wild Cantor
4 Manamorphose
4 Dark ritual
4 Rite of flame
4 Burning wish
2 cabal ritual
//Business
1 Crop rotation
1 ancestral knowledge
4 gitaxian probe
2 Infernal Contract
2 Cruel bargain
4 Meditate
3 Brainstorm
//SB
1 Tendrils
1 ETW
1 Grapeshot
1 Toimb of Urami
1 Diminishing Returns
1 Hurkyl's Recall
1 echoing truth
1 chain of vapor
1 Nature's claim
1 Duress
1 Autumns veil
1 Defense Grid
1 Xantid Swarm
1 pact of negation
1 Pyroblast

I gave up on SI. I will sleeve it up again, when wizards will print something broken for SI or ban ANT/Doomsday :D :D :D. The day will come. Until that I will win more tournaments with stasis ;) Sorry for the bad english :(

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So what you're saying is that ANT/Doomsday are broken decks and are much better options (as a storm/combo deck) than SI?

I looked through some other threads and found this D7SI list, it was said to be the fastest Spanish !nquisition deck posted. I know it was a tad experimantal; but I will put it up.

Business (19)
1 Tendrils of Agony
1 Slithermuse
4 Infernal Tutor
4 Burning Wish
4 Infernal Contract
3 Cruel Bargain
1 Ill-Gotten Gains
1 Eternal Witness

Mana: (41)
1 Wild Cantor
4 Summoner's Pact
4 Elvish Spirit Guide
4 Lion's Eye Diamond
4 Lotus Petal
2 Tinder Wall
4 Dark Ritual
4 Cabal Ritual
4 Culling the Weak
1 Skyshroud Cutter
3 Chrome Mox
4 Land Grant
1 Bayou
1 Dryad Arbor

SB
4 Xantid Swarm
1 Diminishing Returns
1 Balance of Power
1 Tendrils of Agony
1 Empty the Warrens
1 Cruel Bargain/IGG
1 Grapeshot
4 Carpet of Flowers
1 Duress

I have added Past in Flames in my version of this list but honestly the PiF is not required very often and I think that the more I run the list, the more I want to go back to that original list posted.

I hope it helps, I do like the PSI as well though, and I think that the PSI version should be the one we focus our efforts on to develop into today's meta and the Primer.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by SupREME-10

I looked through some other threads and found this D7SI list

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This is an ancient list, it was originally posted July 4, 2010. You can also find this list--originally created by Direlemming on the Storm Boards--on page 24 of this very thread. The deck was hyped up a lot by Vacrix because Direlemming was getting, in his words, "70% T1 with this list; no fizzles in the last 50 games." I strongly believe that 1) he can probably get a lot more out of this list than 99% of anyone who attempts to play it and 2) variance was very much in his favor during this testing.

I tested this list quite a bit last year and calling it "a tad experimantal [sic]" is being polite. This deck is extremely unstable on top of being difficult to play. There are some interesting ideas in this deck but IMO the biggest problem is that the mana isn't even close to good enough.

I believe that the current builds that have more sane mana requirements and Charbelcher are stronger and more consistent.

Edit: Also,

Quote:

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Originally Posted by SupREME-10

I do like the PSI as well though, and I think that the PSI version should be the one we focus our efforts on to develop into today's meta and the Primer.

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The D7 list is still very much "PSI"--it's running Summoner's Pact.

Since "my" D7 version came up a couple of times now, I would like to offer some clarification and retrospective. While I fully stand behind my results (with the obvious caveat about variance, although the later versions, more or less optimised for goldfishing, were quite stable), the deck is very very hard to play. For shit & giggles I picked it up again before writing this and my results were horrendous. When I posted that result SI was pretty much the only deck I played or worked on, so I was really intimate with it; besides I was playing a lot of poker at the time, so I was pretty versed in estimating probabilities and purging decision trees on the fly. If I were to pick SI for a tournament now (I wouldn't: there are some much more promising derivates being developed on the Storm Boards at the moment), I would pick a list with belcher, no BW or Muse and a red splash for PiF and EtW.

Just adding my agreement to what DireLemming has said. I'm playing a PSI build that is -1 Tendrils, -1 Eternal Witness, -1 Slithermuse, -1 Manamorphose, +1 EtW, +1 Past in Flames, +2 SSG. So far, I'm really liking it.

I've managed to ditch three cards I never wanted to draw plus a kill card, and get an alternate kill, and three cards that I love drawing into. The added ability to make R out of nothing (the SSG) has great synergy with EtW and PiF, and they also make my Infernal Tutors more powerful (we've all had hands that would win if we could just ditch the Slithermuse/Witness to get hellbent, I'm sure).

The one weakness of this build is that I have no good IT target for 4 mana floating, less than 9 storm and a Pact trigger pending. Of course, it's not as if Slithermuse would have given me much better than 50:50 odds, so I don't see that as too much of a loss. I can still wish for Cruel Bargain, and D4 with one mana floating.

Alright. Small tournament. 14 or so people. 4 rounds
The list is basic psi.

Round 1
Mono black no pox.
Nice guy. Asks me what I'm playing and I say storm. He says ok. That's cool.
We roll and I win. I'm on the play.
Game 1:
I rip an amazing 7. Declare that I'm going to keep and he says 'hopefully this game will be full of interaction and we won'tiss any lands drops to which I simply smerk and ask him if he's ready.
I go balls to the wall, chain in tendrils for 20 off a single d4.
Game 2:
Him and I joke back and forth about his comment and what deck I'm playing.
He says he gonna play and we cut.
I rip 7 cards that is 1 card short of good. At 6 I get all mana. At 5, I just keep: it, esg, esg, culling the weak and tendrils.
Game goes as expected. 2 inquition and a thoughtseize later we are reshuffling
Game 3: (spoiler: most painful match ever)
I'm on the play and we cut. I draw all mana, then to 6, all business.
I opt to pile shuffle real quick and pull 5 off the top that are decent: esg, it, lions, d4, Dr
I keep and pass. He plays swamp, inquisition my it and then surgixals it.
I stay cool and continue playing. He turn two hymns me for belcher(last draw) and lions eye.
I continue playing cool hand Luke. He then turn threes liliana followed by turn four hymn and jitte.
We get to the point where lillies is at 8 and I scoop bc he can kill my hand forever and a single nighthawk of his four will do.the job fast w jitte.
0-1 (1-2)
Round 2
Played this guy last week. I know he's on lands.
I turn 1 him last week game 1 and again game 3
Today went a little different.
Game 1:
I'm on the draw. I keep a saucy hand and draw into a d4 that allows me to go off and do exactsies tendrils.
Game 2: I mull and mull and mull. First 7, crap. Next 6, crap. 5, shitty.
I play a few turns, draw into oblivion and scoop.
Game 3: goes the same way. Shitty mull after shitty mull.
0-2 (2-4)
Round 3
High tide
This match can be summed up by it, saccing led and him forcing the tutor.
Utterly butthurt.
0-3 (2-6)
Last round I got the bye. Pathetically.

I found a few problems with my play. I was mulling pretty aggressive bc I am so used to working in only turn 1 and 2 wins.
I also found mb empty to be lackluster. Pact triggers can be a bitch so I took it out for a second morphose.
Also, sideboard issues. I hated, HATED, the defense grids. They didn't do anything that and I wanted something for annoying art/ench so my board for the win a box this afternoon is:
4 carpet
4 duress
2 natures claim
2 empty
1 thoughtseize
1 past in flames
1 taiga