[DTB] Sneak Attack

Cage is bad. IMO when it comes to gravehate hate. It's either leyline or surgical. Surgical in snapcaster based decks and leyline in combo decks. Why? Because of opponents discard/countermagic. Leyline dodges both discard and Force of Will which makes it such a powerful card. It sucks to draw into it late, but it's just so much better than grafdiggers cage. If the dredge player goes crazy on the play and flips a bunch of therapies, grafdiggers cannot help you.

I'd play:
4 leyline of the void
4 leyline of sanctity
3 blood moon
3 echoing truth
1 reb

Oh and blood moon is simply better because it hoses rug Delver. Bolt/fire/ice can still deal with magus, and they regularly keep them in from my experience.

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Originally Posted by ivanpei

Cage is bad. IMO when it comes to gravehate hate. It's either leyline or surgical. Surgical in snapcaster based decks and leyline in combo decks. Why? Because of opponents discard/countermagic. Leyline dodges both discard and Force of Will which makes it such a powerful card. It sucks to draw into it late, but it's just so much better than grafdiggers cage. If the dredge player goes crazy on the play and flips a bunch of therapies, grafdiggers cannot help you.

I'd play:
4 leyline of the void
4 leyline of sanctity
3 blood moon
3 echoing truth
1 reb

Oh and blood moon is simply better because it hoses rug Delver. Bolt/fire/ice can still deal with magus, and they regularly keep them in from my experience.

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I like your sideboard, maybe because its 1-1 mine. And I agree on your argumentation on Blood Moon, well because I stated the same on last page :)

I have to admin I am a little worried about a new deck, which seems to be evolving right now. Its this UW Terminator Controldeck featuring Terminus, Jace TMS, Ensnaring Birdge and so on.

This decks seem to be a tough fight - atleast harder than Stoneblade. But in this MU Grislebrand seems to shine as he can draw us the bounce + counter we need. What do you gus think of this MU? Ill start testing during the end of the week.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Philipp802

I like your sideboard, maybe because its 1-1 mine. And I agree on your argumentation on Blood Moon, well because I stated the same on last page :)

I have to admin I am a little worried about a new deck, which seems to be evolving right now. Its this UW Terminator Controldeck featuring Terminus, Jace TMS, Ensnaring Birdge and so on.

This decks seem to be a tough fight - atleast harder than Stoneblade. But in this MU Grislebrand seems to shine as he can draw us the bounce + counter we need. What do you gus think of this MU? Ill start testing during the end of the week.

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I play 1-2 Chaos Warp maindeck, and 3 Echoing Truth in the board. Combined with Griselbrand's draw 7, and the 8 cantrips + Intuitions main, I think I'll be able to find it bounce for Ensnaring Bridge/Jace.

I tested Griselbrand extensively today. He is...

FKIN AWESOME!!!

That's all I have to say, I think you know the reasons.

Let's see how this SCG Open goes, I will probably post the updated Matchup analysis after that.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by JPAnghelescu

I tested Griselbrand extensively today. He is...

FKIN AWESOME!!!

That's all I have to say, I think you know the reasons.

Let's see how this SCG Open goes, I will probably post the updated Matchup analysis after that.

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I concur! I won a 4 round tournament with a top 4 afterwards with 6-0 in matches with this deck today, the Griselbrands really went the extra mile compared to Progenitus. I also went with 2 Jace in the main rather than 2 Chaos Warp, not because I mislike the Warp but really because I wanted to try out Jace in the deck. I really did felt he pulled his weight as well, not only when he hit the board but also to suck up counterspells from S&T and Sneak Attack.

S&T into Sneak Attack was also a popular play.

The decks I faced were:

Swiss:
UW Stoneblade 2-1
BUG Control 2-1
UB Merfolk 2-1
BUG Control 2-1
Top 4:
RUG Tempo 2-0
BUG Control 2-0

Yeah, the deck is really awesome. I've cut the intuitions. They're just not pulling their weight. It's very easy to assemble the combo now since emrakul/griselbrand are interchangeable. I cast intuitions once for every 3 times I see it. Usually its force food or sits awkwardly in hand. I've since gone -3 intuition for + 1 pierce and + 2 preordain. Having 10 cantrip rocks. The deck is hyper consistent, reasonably fast and can pack 10 md counters! I've been testing against Stoneblade alot and I have a positive matchup against it.

At the moment, this feels like the best combo deck in the format, and I'm a storm/reanimator/dredge player as well. Dredge and reanimator gets hated out easily by gravehate. And storm can't even beat mav's md thalias/gsz-teeq. Rip storm.

Anyone tested against temporal RUG? That decks seems like the DTB right now so just wanna know if we can beat it. Seems like a hard mu. Blood moon shines here though.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by ivanpei

Yeah, the deck is really awesome. I've cut the intuitions. They're just not pulling their weight. It's very easy to assemble the combo now since emrakul/griselbrand are interchangeable. I cast intuitions once for every 3 times I see it. Usually its force food or sits awkwardly in hand. I've since gone -3 intuition for + 1 pierce and + 2 preordain. Having 10 cantrip rocks. The deck is hyper consistent, reasonably fast and can pack 10 md counters! I've been testing against Stoneblade alot and I have a positive matchup against it.

At the moment, this feels like the best combo deck in the format, and I'm a storm/reanimator/dredge player as well. Dredge and reanimator gets hated out easily by gravehate. And storm can't even beat mav's md thalias/gsz-teeq. Rip storm.

Anyone tested against temporal RUG? That decks seems like the DTB right now so just wanna know if we can beat it. Seems like a hard mu. Blood moon shines here though.

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Can I get an updated list from you Ivan?

Here's my list, smooth and simple:

4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
2 Preordain
4 Force
3 Daze
3 Spell Pierce
4 Sneak
4 Show
4 Emmy
4 Griselbrand
4 Lotus Petal

4 Scalding
4 Blue Fetch
3 Island
1 Mountain
3 Volc
3 Tomb
2 City

SB as above.

I played A LOT against my buddy with his counter-top thopter + ensnaring bridge/humility MD.

My findings:
Preboard the matchups is even to slightly favourable for us. We combo off very consistently with counterbackup and they can rarely counter twice. What helps them is that Show&Tell can be a blowout if they have the hate piece already in hand.

Postboard I tested 2 different routes:
1) Boarding out the show&tell and 3 Monsters adding 2-3 Chaos Warp, 3-4 Red-blast and 2 Jace and becoming sort of a "combo-control" deck myself.
This was slightly unfavourable but ok until he added a pithing needle to the board.

2) Just boarding out 1 Show & tell and 1 Emrakul and the usual daze/lotus petal versus Jace and Chaos Warp (or echoing truth)
Slightly favourable for him, but Griselbrand gave him haedache. Drawing into bounce/counters,... was awesome,

Overall the matchup is acceptable and certainly better than for reanimator or storm combo since they are hurt much more by counter top and have less [effective] protection.

Does nobody of you miss red-blasts in the board? I mean its one of the good things about beeing a UR combo deck right?

I don’t understand the obsession with ensnaring bridge, humility and all the likes. I hardly ever see these cards in a real tournament. In the top 32 of starcitygames, for example, I cannot find a single ensnaring bridge (or peacekeeper or whatever obscure card that hoses sneak show). The same thing holds true for the decks to beat at the source.

If that UW terminus deck turns out to be good or if people adapt to sneak show, then maybe I want to water down the combo with cards like chaos orb or jace, but for the moment it just seems bad to me.

I also kind of like cards like grafdiggers cage and extraction instead of leyline. You have something like 10 cantrips, so I want to not be too dependant on my opening hand to fight graveyard decks.

Anyway, I wrote a tournament report for this site.

Agree on Leyline CERTAINLY NOT beeing the best GY hate option.

1) you don't want to mull a good combo/counter hand including 1-2 cantrips/intuition to find the hate.

2) If you run Intuition you can run 3 surgical extraction for 3 mana & 2 life instant speed hate.

3) You can run 1-2 extractions in some matchups as additional combo hate i.e: painter/DDFT

Gravediggers cage is pretty strong! I run 2 Cage and 3 Surgical Extraction.
Surgical is surely better in snapcaster decks, but since we are also a combo deck hating once should be enough

So.... Norm made 20th out of 250 at the SCG Open Providence with 4 Griselbrand 4 Emrakul - Congratulations!

http://sales.starcitygames.com//deck...p?DeckID=45977

The only Show and Tell deck in the Top 32.

It would be great to get a tournament report :wink:

Quote:

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Originally Posted by ivanpei

Yeah, the deck is really awesome. I've cut the intuitions. They're just not pulling their weight. It's very easy to assemble the combo now since emrakul/griselbrand are interchangeable. I cast intuitions once for every 3 times I see it. Usually its force food or sits awkwardly in hand. I've since gone -3 intuition for + 1 pierce and + 2 preordain. Having 10 cantrip rocks. The deck is hyper consistent, reasonably fast and can pack 10 md counters! I've been testing against Stoneblade alot and I have a positive matchup against it.

At the moment, this feels like the best combo deck in the format, and I'm a storm/reanimator/dredge player as well. Dredge and reanimator gets hated out easily by gravehate. And storm can't even beat mav's md thalias/gsz-teeq. Rip storm.

Anyone tested against temporal RUG? That decks seems like the DTB right now so just wanna know if we can beat it. Seems like a hard mu. Blood moon shines here though.

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+1, I cut the Intuitions as soon as Griselbrand was printed for Pre-Ordains, and I feel 4xPre-Ordains is correct because the deck really doesn't mind casting 2 cantrips on your second turn unless you've already assembled the combo. I'm not a fan of Daze and Spell Pierce, the deck doesn't need to stop the opponent's threats as much as protect its own - which is why I just play Force of Will, Flusterstorm and REB/Pyro in the SB.

Thank you for all the input concerning the UW Terminus-MU!

There is another point I would like to discuss, or more like 2:

1) Counter-Suite

We´ve been using a lot of different set-ups, and even though Ive been testing both I cannot understand what people find on Daze? Yeah the point I am referring to is, to be honest, a pro/con Daze! Why would we like to play Daze? Dazing a Thoughtseize is no great play, dazing a GSZ isnt that cool either... Dazing a Force in our Combo-Turn is pretty strong on the other hand.

This is what I consider the best protection-suite:

4 Force of Will
2 Misdirection
2 Spell Pierce
2 Flusterstorm

We have 6 FoW for the Comboturn, 2 of them can lead to blow-outs when playing vs a Discard.dec. Misdirecting a Hymn is still one of the strongest and most humiliating plays we can do. In Addition to my 6 FoW ( I was used to play 8 --> HiveMind 4 Pact 4 Force ) I play 4 CC1-Counterspells, split apart in two parts. Spell Pierce hits all the relevant proactive spells we do not like: Liliana, Jace, Ensnaring Bridge, Hymn and so on and so on. Flusterstorm on the other hand is great in winning counterwars, and leading to occasional blowouts versus some decks - Stormcombo. Plus Flusterstorm also counters Discard spells quite well. Whats your opinion on this Counter-Suite or the perfect suite at all?

2) The second point I would like to discuss has already been mentioned above. Its the cantrip-Intuition-debate. At the moment I am playing 4 Brainstorm 4 Ponder and 2 Intuition but I am rather disappointed by the Intuitions. If you want to play them early with Petal they result in a tempo-loss, and if you play them later on it might already be too late... I like the idea of cutting both of them in order to squeeze in 2 Preordain, to be honest. What do you others think of this topic?

And Gratz to Norman for bringing our first win home! This will be the first, and many others shall follow, until we reign Legacy! Every player and every deck shall be afraid of the name of Griselbrand and Emrakul combined --> SneakAttack! Hey just a thought, how about a cool name for this deck? SneakAttack sounds so... cardlike...just like Sneak Attack...oh well

Greetings

Hey guys,

I played this Saturday at Untouchables Sports Cards and Games*"Legacy for a Mox" event, here in Ontario, and took down the event winning a Mox Ruby. This is only my second event with this archetype, and both have been great showings with a top 8, and a win.

I ran my revised list as follows;

Artifacts
4 Lotus Petal

Enchantments
4 Sneak Attack

Instants
4 Brainstorm
4 Force of Will
3 Daze
3 Misdirection
2 Spell Pierce
2 Intuition

Creatures
4 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
3 Griselbrand

Sorceries
4 Ponder
4 Show and Tell

Basic Lands
2 Island
1 Mountain

Lands
4 Polluted Delta
4 Scalding Tarn
3 Volcanic Island
3 Ancient Tomb
2 City of Traitors

Sideboard:
4 Leyline of Sanctity
3 Blood Moon
3 Grafdiggers Cage
3 Red Elemental Blast
2 Echoing Truth


Here is a very condescended report from my notes;

Round 1 vs Goblins:

Game 1: My opponent sticks a Lackey on the play, cheats in a Wachief turn 2, and goes for double Piledriver, I FoW one. He drops two more Piledrivers and a Prospector turn 3 and beats me down for the win.

Game 2: I turn 2 Show/Emrakul, and have the FoW for his Warren Weirding.

SB: Nothing.

Game 3: I stick a turn 3 Sneak Attack, untap, Griselbrand in off Sneak, draw 7 into Petal/Emrakul

SB: Nothing

1-0

Round 2 vs RUG Delver:

Game 1: My opponent opens on a Delver, followed by*turn 2 Delver and Mongoose.*He then*Wasteland's my Ancient Tomb to keep me off mana I need to resolve*my combo. Beats ensue, and he wins.

Game 2: I turn 2 Show/Emrakul, and he scoops.

SB: -3 Daze, -2 Petal, -1 Misdirection, +3 REB, +3 Blood Moon

Game 3: He wins the counter war as I go*all in on a turn 2 Show/Emrakul, and we play draw go for awhile. Eventually it comes down to him swinging with two delvers, I respond by trying to REB both, he FoW one of the REB's, and brings me to six life. I untap and go for a Sneak Attack*with Emrakul in hand, he Brainstorms, and double Bolt's me...

SB: -3 Daze, -2 Petal, -1 Misdirection, +3 REB, +3 Blood Moon

1-1

Round 3 vs Re-animator:

Game 1: He goes all in on a turn 2 Animate Dead off his Turn 1 Entomb for Iona, I have FoW for his spell, and a Misdirection for his FoW. I draw for two turns and win off a Sneak/Emrakul

Game 2: Turn 1 I open on double Cage off a Tomb, and FoW his animation attempts the following turns. Eventually I turn 5 Sneak, turn 6 Griselbrand into Emrakul.

SB: -3 Daze, +3 Grafdiggers Cage,

2-1

Round 4 vs Esper Stone Blade

Game 1: I play an uncontested turn three Show/Emrakul, and win.

Game 2: I turn 1 Show/Emrakul, with counter back up, and he scoops.

SB: -3 Daze, -2 Misdirection, -1 Petal, +3 REB, +3 Blood Moon

3-1

Round 5 vs RUG Delver:

Game 1: I mulligan to 4 on the draw, and actually hit a*good hand all things considered; City of Traitors, Lotus Petal, Show and Tell, Griselbrand. I*go all in turn one, but he has FoW.*I lose to his Goyf/Geese beat down.

Game 2: I keep a very counter heavy hand*with a*BS and Ponder.*I ponder turn 1, and setup for a turn 2 Blood Moon. I go for the Blood Moon, and he defends with*double FoW and wrecks*his hand. Over the next three turns I BS and setup my hand for a Show/Emrakul and get there.

SB: -3 Daze, -1 Misdirection, -2 Petal, +3 REB, +3 Blood Moon

Game 3: He mulligan's to 5, and cant win the counter war over a Sneak Attack/Griselbrand on turn 4.

SB: -3 Daze, -1 Misdirection, -2 Petal, +3 REB, +3 Blood Moon

4-1


Top 8 vs B/W

Game 1: He opens with Thoughtseize taking my Sneak Attack. I draw for turn*and hit Brainstorm and pass. He goes for another Thoughtseize, I BS in response seeing 2x Griselbrand and a Show, I hide the combo.*I untap and ride a Show/Griselbrand to victory, not before drawing 14 cards....sick.

Game 2: I have a crazy hand, with petal and a*fetch, but need to draw one mana source. I miss*my second land drop and he*immediately starts attacking my Petal with Disenchant and Vindicate, I hold him off with counters, and draw*another petal to get a Show/Emrakul online, and get there.

SB: -1 Misdirection, -3 Daze, +4 Leyine of Sanctity

5-1

Top 4 vs RUG Delver

Game 1: Turn 2 Emrakul with FoW back up...ya.

Game 2: Turn 2 Emrakul with FoW back up.....ya. Fun match :/

SB: -3 Daze, -1 Misdirection, -2 Petal, +3 REB, +3 Blood Moon

6-1

Finals vs U/R Landstill

Game 1: Not only do I hate this match up, but its against a friend, the creator of the archetype, and Eternal master Rich M. I keep an insanely greedy counter heavy hand with one land and a Ponder. I pay for this greed, and never really get anything going. I lose to manland beat down.

Game 2: This game was great, best of the day. I went for early Sneak/Show, but lost the counter wars. We play draw go for a good 5-6 turns as I re-sculpt my hand. I go for a EOT Intuition which draws a counter from his hand, I then untap and go*for Show and Tell, which*meets counter, I then go for Blood Moon which sticks and wrecks him leaving him with a sole island. The next turn I'm able to dig into a Show and get Emrakul online.

SB: -3 Daze, -3 Petal, +3 Blood Moon, +3 REB

Game 3: He keeps a mana light hand, missing two land drops, but I cant find a creature to combo off with. Eventually the board state is such that I can hard cast a FoW, play Sneak Attack and have a live FoW, REB and Spell Pierce in hand. I go for Sneak Attack, and a flurry of counters ensue. When the dust settles I have a Sneak Attack. The following turn I sneak a Griselbrand, and find Emrakul after drawing 7, and he joins the party to end the match.

SB: -3 Daze, -3 Petal, +3 Blood Moon, +3 REB

7-1


The next event I play, I may make the following changes; Main -1 Misdirection, +1 Spell Pierce, or, -3 Daze, +1 Spell Pierce, +1 Griselbrand, +1 Intuition. Side -3 Cage, +3 Surgical Extraction.


Thoughts regarding this archetype post AVR;

For the main, people cutting Intuition are playing a strictly worse, less solid version of this archetype. I'm at two currently, but want that number at three, I think 4 is to much.*Intuition is a great tutor and a really strong play, simply cutting it, and stuffing in more counters and bad cantrip's is terrible, IMO.

The whole GY hate debate; Cage is linear, I wish they were Extractions all day long for the flexibility. Leyline of the Void is so bad as an option, utter dead weight.

Griselbrand..........wow, wow, wow, <3 *That's all I can say.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by JPAnghelescu

So.... Norm made 20th out of 250 at the SCG Open Providence with 4 Griselbrand 4 Emrakul - Congratulations!

http://sales.starcitygames.com//deck...p?DeckID=45977

The only Show and Tell deck in the Top 32.

It would be great to get a tournament report :wink:

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Thanks, I'll be writing my report today. I had a lot of interesting matches, it was a blast.

Intuition is terrible, it only made sense when Progentius and Sneak Attack were a weak pairing, but now that all of the creatures and enablers are interchangeable you don't need to waste your time and mana on finding Show&Tell specifically.

Pre-Ordain is on par with Ponder, and if you're playing ~3 Pre-Ordain your entire deck becomes much more consistent in terms of keepable hands and the speed at which you can dig for an Ancient Tomb in order to ramp into an enabler.

You really don't want to have to have an Ancient Tomb on the board in order to cast your set up spells, think about how much having to play Ancient Tomb in order to cast Intuition exposes you to Wasteland.

Feels like the Intutition is pretty polarising. I don't think it's on the "terrible" vs. "nuts" kind of spectrum, but more in the middle.

My personal opinion is that 8 cantrips are enough and the extra consistency for the combo after a counter war and/or tutoring up 3of hate + bating counterspells is good enough to be a 2 of. Having 10+ cantrips to make the mana development a safer game also has some merit. But since I play a conservative 20 land, 4 basics configuration it is not as important as the upside of intuition.

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Originally Posted by Final Fortune

Intuition is terrible, it only made sense when Progentius and Sneak Attack were a weak pairing, but now that all of the creatures and enablers are interchangeable you don't need to waste your time and mana on finding Show&Tell specifically.

Pre-Ordain is on par with Ponder, and if you're playing ~3 Pre-Ordain your entire deck becomes much more consistent in terms of keepable hands and the speed at which you can dig for an Ancient Tomb in order to ramp into an enabler.

You really don't want to have to have an Ancient Tomb on the board in order to cast your set up spells, think about how much having to play Ancient Tomb in order to cast Intuition exposes you to Wasteland.

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I couldn't disagree more, part of the reason this deck is so incredible is it's ability to win games out of nowhere when it had no business doing so. I've had Griselbrand(Sneaked) activations draw me into Intuition to find Emrakul, The Aeons Torn and win on the spot where I wasn't actually able to activate twice.

Intuition makes more hands keepable than Preordain, it turns an otherwise clunky deck into a much more streamlined monster, improves your sideboard cards, and creates winning situations that cantrips couldn't. I've literally used Intuition to find Force of Will, Misdirection, Sneak Attack, Show and Tell, both creatures, even Lotus Petals to win next turn.

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Originally Posted by Norm

I couldn't disagree more, part of the reason this deck is so incredible is it's ability to win games out of nowhere when it had no business doing so. I've had Griselbrand(Sneaked) activations draw me into Intuition to find Emrakul, The Aeons Torn and win on the spot where I wasn't actually able to activate twice.

Intuition makes more hands keepable than Preordain, it turns an otherwise clunky deck into a much more streamlined monster, improves your sideboard cards, and creates winning situations that cantrips couldn't. I've literally used Intuition to find Force of Will, Misdirection, Sneak Attack, Show and Tell, both creatures, even Lotus Petals to win next turn.

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I concur, and as I said its a strong play, otherwise your outright winning.