Printable View
Bitterblossom seems like and interesting card. Feels like it would be great against path, but pretty weak against terminus. If you could land it turn 1 that could be back breaking for them.
What about winter orb? I mean, we don't need a lot of mana, have fast mana sources and it would make playing top a lot more mana intensive for them.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Someone was asking for a sideboard guide. This is the best I got right now:
Miracles:
Still up in the air. Postboard games are likely going to revolve completely around a card NOT in the maindeck. Not sure whether that card is a land or nonland yet. However, fast mana (Lotus Petals especially) comes out to make room for cards with text.
Death and Taxes:
The only other hard matchup. So far I like keeping discard, if only to see what to put Needle on.
+1 Needle, +4 Abrupt Decay
-3 Expedition Map (can be Revoker'd), -2 Sylvan Scrying (can be hard to cast through Thalia)
Grixis Delver:
Easy matchup. Wastelands matter, as do Dazes. Crop Rotation is the best Force target, and if it gets countered you are down a land drop, which slows down your combo and makes you more susceptible to Daze / Pierce / Flusterstorm. However, you should have an easy time winning 2/3 games.
+1 Needle, +4 Decay, +4 Chalice of the Void
-3 Not of This World, -1 Bojuka Bog, -4 Crop Rotation, -1 Duress
UR Delver:
No Wastelands, but play around Price of Progress.
+4 Chalice of the Void, +4 Decay
-3 Needle, -1 Bojuka Bog, -3 Not of This World, -1 Duress/Crop Rotation/Sylvan Scrying/Ghost Quarter
Storm:
A race. The only keepable hands are turn 2 token, lots of discard, or a hate card with other stuff to do. G1 Needles should name fetchlands because LED is a mana ability. Rotate for Bog counts as a hate card most of the time.
-3 Needle, -4 Sylvan Scrying, -1 Ghost Quarter, -1 Sejiri Steppe
+4 Chalice of the Void, +4 Surgical Extraction, +1 Ancient Tomb (if running this)
Burn:
Easy matchup and a race. Snap block with Marit Lage when possible, play out all your cards early to get around Eidolon.
-3 Needle, -3 Not of This World, -1 Bojuka Bog, -1 Sejiri Steppe
+4 Chalice of the Void, +4 Abrupt Decay
Reanimator:
Our sideboard happens to line up excellently against this stuff. This plan holds for UB or for my own BR.
-1 Ghost Quarter, -3 Not of This World, -4 Sylvan Scrying, -2 Expedition Map (gets hit by Chalice)
+4 Chalice of the Void, +4 Surgical Extraction, +1 Ancient Tomb, +1 Karakas
Sneak and Show / Omnishow:
We have to hope their hand has lots of cantrips, so we are on the Chalice plan against these guys too. They can have Blood Moon, but discard is better than Decays. Maybe bring in Decays on the draw, but even then you have to be lucky to beat their Blood Moon before they hit you with a Demon.
-3 Not of This World, -1 Bojuka Bog, -4 Sylvan Scrying, -3 ???
+4 Chalice of the Void, +1 Needle, +4 Surgical Extraction, +1 Karakas, +1 Ancient Tomb
Eldrazi:
Wasteland, Karakas, Endbringer. Those are the cards that cause the most problems. Other than those, Thought-Knot Seer and Reality Smashers are good clocks. Key interaction: after First Strike, sacrifice Hexmage to kill Endless One.
-1 Bojuka Bog, -3 Expedition Map, -1 Sejiri Steppe
+1 Needle, +4 Abrupt Decay (+1 Karakas if white w/ Thalias)
Infect:
A race matchup where we can actually interact with each other in the combat step. Namely, with blocking. Blocking is the best thing to be doing in this matchup. Needle on Inkmoth Nexus / Pendelhaven / Karakas is important enough. Play around Submerge if you can.
-1 Bojuka Bog, -1 Sejiri Steppe, -3 Not of This World (next cuts would probably be Duresses)
+1 Needle, +4 Abrupt Decay (could consider Chalice...?)
Dredge / Manaless Dredge / Oops All Spells:
A bye. Key interaction: Vampire Hexmage removes Bridges. Discard is actually fine because you can take acceleration cards. Narcomoebas can block.
All possible cuts: 3 Not of This World, 3 Needle, 1 Ghost Quarter, Spirit Guides?)
+4 Surgical Extraction (+4 Chalice +1 Ancient Tomb for Oops)
Elves:
A bye.
-3 Not of This World, -1 Pithing Needle
+4 Chalice of the Void
Lands:
Ew. Disgusting matchup. A million things to name with Needle at various stages of the game. You can steal games with Bojuka Bog / Surgical hitting their Loam(s). You will not win the long game.
-4 Duress, -1 Thoughtseize
+1 Needle, +4 Surgical Extraction
Well, in some initial testing, winter orb does seem to slow other decks down a decent amount, but does very little to hurt our deck, especially if you leave fast mana in. I have a good friend who is a miracles player, I will test it out versus when I get a chance. I have two in the board for which I took out 1 surgical and 1 abrupt.
If you're considering winter orb root maze may be worth adding to your testing.
I hadn't thought of root maze, but my decision to go with winter orb was to slow down sensei's top. Since really, we don't use a lot of mana until we go off, untapping slowly doesn't affect us too much. The orb also has some fringe benefit against decks like Nic FitQuote:
Originally Posted by uncletiggy
I have been thinking about miracles more. After testing a bit with a friend I started thinking less about what I am putting in and more what are they taking out.
My test partner plays the legends version and he said against me he took out most counterbalance, and all of his terminus's.
It started making me wonder if there is a way to next level miracles. Decay is really only included to deal with counter balance, blood moon and back to basics. Would surgical extraction be a better card against them over decay? Especially if we keep our discard in.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Terminus is their best card so they can feel free to take it out... You should win >50% of games if they are doing that - then you just need to answer Karakas if they have it and then deal with some Swords to Plowshares, which is roughly what we do with Stoneblade decks.Quote:
Originally Posted by ComplexPants
A better sideboard plan for them would be -1/2 Jace, -1 Counterbalance, -1 cantrip/land, +2 Blood Moon / Back to Basics effects, +2 Wear/Tear / Engineered Explosives effects. I don't know how he's bringing in so many cards...
Terminus is kind of a weak card against us. Sure it gets by NoTW, but they need to have top to draw it on our turn to have any effect against Marit Lage. With 4 needles post board, that is kind of hard for them, especially if they don't find EE or Wear. I find it sort of comes down to "do you have a force?, because I will likely have a needle."
He brought in Back to Basics, Fluster storm, Wear//Tear and pithing needle. Not sure if this is right or not, but he does have MD Venser, Karakas, and Path to deal with Marit. Jace is ok, the free brain storm every turn is really good against us as we don't have many ways to remove it. Jace can also force our hand as to when to activate DD by bouncing Hexmage. And flusterstorm is quite good as we a lot of tutors that we want to play early. Not sure it was optimal SB, but made it very hard for me.
Every time I play vs Miracles, Pre and Post, they always keep their Terminus's in. And I get hit every single time.Quote:
Originally Posted by ComplexPants
Hmmm....I might just be crazy then. It has been know to happen. They flip it with top? Doesn't needle help prevent that?
Yes, Needle can help against Top plus flipping Terminus... but we don't have needle every game and they can have counters and/or Wear/Tear at times even when we do. There are also sequences where they set up instant speed Terminus without Top using Ponder on their turn + instant speed draw spell on your turn or using Brainstorm plus another instant speed draw spell(another BS, predict, etc). As the game and their mana develops, a simple BS + Snapcaster/BS can even get there. Those sequences can be set up over one or two turns with Ponder or Brainstorm depending on when they think you are going to go for it.Quote:
Originally Posted by ComplexPants
I have seen people board some # of Terminus out via the deck info Surgical Extraction provides in SB games, but it is fairly rare.
Looks like you have already heard some good arguments, but just to add on a little bit more:
Jace can be dealt with by Needle or by Vampire Hexmage. Also, it costs a lot of mana for a sorcery speed card. If they try to bounce your Hexmage, you can kill their Jace instead of making Marit Lage if you want.
Flusterstorm isnt very effective against us, but I could see bringing it in to counter a land search or Not of This World.
A common way to play with Terminus is to use it to clear a Hexmage we put on the board as pressure. If we respond to it by making Lage, Lage gets removed. So it's better than Swords to Plowshares in that case because it will definitely 1 for 1 our creature.
I feel well educated. Thanks guys.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Hello all. New ML disciple.
Has anyone playing Turbo version tried Blooming Marshes yet? Also saw a guy's list with rather unusual sb card: Gloom. I guess it is a way to make miracling a Terminus a lot harder :cool:
I think Gloom combined with Winter Orb might be a good sideboard tech against Miracles and Death and Taxes. I think I will even try it in a more control build with CotV and Mox Diamonds main.
[card]Gloom[/card] is actually really cool tech. No only does it hit terminus, but it makes StP much much worse. Which is one of the few outs against our deck.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Karakas still exists, with their manabase, they should be able to handle it, and they can still counter Gloom.
But I will try to test it. (maybe in conjunction with Winter Orb)
They can handle it, but with fast mana it is a turn 1 or 2 play, which forces them to have a force ready. And while it doesn't get rid of all of their answers, venser in some builds, it makes them have to struggle a lot more.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Went 5-0 in last local with lattest list.
I beat merfolk 2-1 deathandtaxes 2-1 nicfit 2-0 UrBurndelver 2-0 and elf 2-0.
Everything was fine the deathAndtaxes matchup felt close but finally I get there involving maze copy.
@apple : my lattest list has 4 blooming marsh maindeck instead of mana confluence and 2 golgari charm side instead of pyroclasme -1 scrying +1 third decay main thanks to update that
Congratulations on the result Adrieng.
After my holiday I finally had a chance to take the deck for a second spin (still fairly new to it) and this time I did much better :) In fact, I won a local Invational Qualifier - so I am one of the happy 18 in my country to take a seat at the Invitational end of this year :)
I've beat Maverick, Infect, Shardless BUG and Death and Taxes. Turns out Gloom is indeed quite a good card :)
I have to admit I warped my sideboard much to the expected field and wouldn't recommend running it in a wider field - but it nerfed the matches I had prepared for. BUG and Infect were walkovers.