Oh! Yeah! ;)Quote:
Originally Posted by Navsi
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Oh! Yeah! ;)Quote:
Originally Posted by Navsi
I ran the sneak list for a 60ish man event Thursday and then again this morning. not too hot Thursday but I went 3-0 then split finals this morning. I basically made changes to better mimic Arianhod's (?) lIst. Deck felt smooth today and I beat stoneblade, miracles, and eldrazi. I ran with dragon stompy for the main eternal weekend event. I might post some thoughts later, typing this at airport. I feel that a competent pilot can go very far with this sneak list.Quote:
Originally Posted by Brael
I would be super interested in seeing your write up.Quote:
Originally Posted by square_two
Alright, let's begin:
4 Veteran Explorer
2 Deathrite Shaman
1 Sakura-Tribe Elder
1 Eternal Witness
1 Fierce Empath
1 Meren of Clan Nel Toth
1 Thragtusk
1 Sidisi, Undead Vizier
1 Primeval Titan
1 Inferno Titan
1 Woodland Bellower
1 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
4 Cabal Therapy
4 Green Sun's Zenith
3 Punishing Fire
2 Abrupt Decay
4 Sneak Attack
3 Pernicious Deed
3 Sensei's Divining Top
3 Grove of the Burnwillows
1 Phyrexian Tower
1 Volrath's Stronghold
3 Bayou
1 Taiga
1 Badlands
3 Forest
2 Mountain
1 Swamp
4 Verdant Catacombs
2 Wooded Foothills
sb::
2 Surgical Extraction
1 Reclamation Sage
2 Thoughtseize
2 Pyroclasm
2 Slaughter Games
1 Nissa, Vital Force
1 Gaze of Granite
2 Carpet of Flowers
2 To the Slaughter
I ran this list first in a 5-round legacy trial on Friday afternoon, after being miserable in vintage (where I played Jeskai Nahiri -- the deck was fun but I was horrendously underprepared after audibling decks like 5 times in 2 days).
Trial:
Round 1: Stu on The Mighty Quinn
My opponent leads with Plains, Top, go, which pleases me. I Therapy him@jace and see Humility, Wrath of God, Orim's Chant, Tithe, and Flooded Strand. I flashback on the Humility, and then we hit the grinder. After something like 35-40 minutes in game one, he's managed to stop my Emrakul (or titans, or anything, really) approximately 6 times, through a combination of StP, Orim's Chant, and Terminus. He finally finds Rip/Helm and kills me.
Game two I blind Therapy naming Top on the play and hit 3, before ramping into a Nissa. Nissa pluses a land which gets StP'd, but then ults the following turn. I have an active Sneak in play with a single R and Sidisi in hand, and he has several cards in hand with untapped mana. My line is to Sidisi for Wooded Foothills, play+crack to draw 2. Next turn I Zenith@6 for Primeval, drawing 2 more and tutoring for 2 fetches. This continues for a couple of turns until I bury him so far under cards that he can't recover.
Even for as quick as game 2 was, we didn't have time for game 3. We got maybe 4-5 turns in apiece, but it wasn't nearly enough time for the match to be decided. It looked like I was favored going forward, but neither of us was willing to concede, so we drew in turns. This unfortunately killed any chance either of us had of getting a bye, which was only awarded to 5-0s.
Round 2: Ross on Miracles
I don't remember much of these games, sadly. I know that g1 my Therapy showed me Venser, Snare, Ponder, and Strand. I managed to resolve a Sneak Attack, snuck Primeval for two towers, and then just basically ground him out from there.
Game two is basically the same, except I have a turn 2 Carpet of Flowers which my opponent really, really wants to Counterbalance but flips a land. I use it in my second mainphase to play Fierce Empath, putting Primeval in hand. This threatens a turn 3 cast Primeval Titan. That doesn't come together, but Primeval does come down a couple turns later, and the game swiftly ends from there.
Round 3: Mike with Jund
These are two of the easiest games I've played in months. He doesn't do anything to meaningfully interact with me either game and dies to spaghetti quickly in both. Game two he double Hymned me and it just didn't matter.
Round 4: David with Eldrazi
Game 1: Despite his turn 2 Thought-Knot Seer and turn 3 Smasher, I kill him on my turn 4.
Game 2: A pair of Deathrites and a bunch of removal and big things completely shuts down his offensive. I absorb a lot of damage and use Deathrite to regain, while trading off and killing a couple things here and there. I eventually assemble the Sneak Attack + Eternal Witness + Meren loop and he concedes to value. Best play was Sneaking E.Wit to get back Thrag to Sneak Thrag to block TKS and trade with a Smasher out of nowhere. To The Slaughter also picked off another Smasher earlier.
Round 5: Travis with Eldrazi
His build of Eldrazi is much bigger than has Oblivion Sowers, built to crush the mirror. I crush him game 1 with Big Momma. Game two he murders me with a timely Warping Wail and then exiles my Emrakul and my Empath with an O.Sower. Two O.Sowers (and an active Eye of Ugin) later, I die.
Game three I topdeck Emrakul after a fast Sneak Attack/Vet/Tower and kill him on turn 3.
This puts me at 4-0-1 and good for a box and a half of Kaladesh.
The deck felt great, so I ran it back the next day with no changes.
Legacy Main Event:
Round 1: Josh with Death and Taxes
Game one I kill literally everything, and then I win. Karakas does not beat Sneak Attack.
Game two I take a billion damage from his Mishra's Factory with an onboard Deed, but elect to keep taking hits while stifling his development (I had Rec Sage in hand for Revoker iirc). He stalls the game out a bit but I eventually end step Sneak Bellower into untap Sneak Emrakul and win.
Sideboard: -1 Sneak Attack, -1 Meren, -1 Sidisi, -1 Veteran; +1 Rec Sage, +1 Gaze of Granite, +2 Pyroclasm
Round 2: Rick with Eldrazi
Game one he dies: his Thought-Knot Seer takes my Inferno Titan (which I could cast the following turn) instead of the Emrakul in my hand. I topdeck Sneak and kill him.
Game two is a series of highly unfortunate draws. I Therapy him and see 2 Reshaper, Cavern, Karakas, and Endless One, so I elect to leave a Vet in play. He rips Warping Wail and exiles it, followed by a series of basically perfect topdecks. I have one or two draws that could save me, but I don't get them and we're off to game 3.
Game three I have Vet on turn 1, vs his Eye of Ugin triple Endless One hand. I Deed him at 0, then set up Meren with Deathrite and close the game out.
Sideboarding: -3 Punishing Fire, -1 Top; +Rec Sage, +Gaze, +2 To the Slaughter
Round 3: Tom with Grixis Delver
This match was very unfortunate variance. He has "Delver hands" both games 1 and 3, although I did get game 2 off of him pretty convincingly. Both games 1 and 3 follow roughly the same pattern: he has 2x Delver + Deathrite, he counters my Punishing Fire while I have Vets in play and can't find a Cabal Therapy to save my goddamn life, and then I get Bolted off. Game 1 his last two cards were Force+blue to stop me from sweeping him, Game 3 he Git Probed to hit the Therapy he needed off the top to take away my 2x Decays. Frustrating, but it happens.
Sideboarding: -1 Top, -Sidisi, -Meren, -2 Deathrite Shaman; +2 Pyroclasm, +2 Carpet of Flowers, +Gaze
Round 4: Ryan with Death and Taxes
Currently 0-4 on die rolls.
Game one I land a Sneak Attack after 2x Vet + 2x Therapy+flashbacks, and he dies the next turn through Karakas.
Game two is a bit grindier, but Cabal Therapy again does a decent job of keeping him under control by taking away his Stoneforge targets and his Recruiters. I sweep him a couple times and get Punishing Fire set up, and eventually Bellower into Inferno Titan ends the game.
Sideboarding: the same as before.
Round 5: Jiyao on Grixis Delver
This is where the wheels fall off, sadly. Game one I kill all of his things and then him in a reasonably grindy but good paced game.
Game two my Carpet of Flowers gets hit by a surprise Krosan Grip, which locks me off of casting my Inferno Titan to stay alive the following turn. The game was close, but he edged me out.
Game three is the issue. We're tight on time, and he keeps an explosive hand that doesn't have a land, but has a Gitaxian Probe and is on the draw, which I kind of disagree with but is a defensible decision. Anyway, he doesn't get there...but my hand is also slow and controlling, so I can't really punish him very well. He eventually starts recovering, while I get a Sneak Attack out, but only have 1 red source. I play this wrong in a couple of ways:
My Top showed me Emrakul in my top 3, but I also had access to Bellower in my hand. I /could/ have popped Top to draw Emrakul and Sneak, but I didn't want to do this for two reasons:
-) He had a Surgical in hand, and I figured he was a competent enough player that he would've Surgicaled something random in response to the Top draw
-) If it DID go through, and I did get to Emrakul him, it would've done a bunch of damage but not been lethal, and he was running off of 1 land already for most of the game (although he was up to 3 now) -- AND I would've h ad to have shuffled away my Top.
I decided the long game favored me, so I Snuck Bellower and Empathed the Emrakul into my hand. This is, I believe, the correct decision. The error occurs here: I flashback Cabal Therapy (correct), saccing my Bellower (incorrect). I made this decision as a value play: I wanted the 1/1 to be around for future turns. This was a very subtle mistake, though, because I actually wanted the Empath in my graveyard so that it would shuffle back in with the Emrakul after either the Emrakul hit, or if he (as happened) cantripped three times into land+cabal therapy and made me discard it. Not having the Empath back in my deck definitely cost me this win, and is completely my fault.
Now, that being said, it took some impressive bullshit for this to occur. He had to cantrip into Therapy + land, and then even after he bought himself the time, he needed me, with 8+ lands in play (including all 3 groves), Sneak + Top in play, to NOT find Emrakul, Sidisi, Witness, or any of the three Punishing Fires still in the deck. After multiple shuffles every turn with an active Top, however, I didn't find what I needed, and we drew. I had a Bellower in play beating down and would have likely won in another two turns, but, we didn't have that kind of time.
This draw put me to 3-1-1 -- not the worst record in the world, but the draw should have been avoidable and should have been a win, but I suck.
I sideboarded slightly different -- I decided it was more correct to leave Sidisi in and board out Primeval Titan.
Round 6: Tyler with Miracles
He is on the legendary Miracles build. Game one I mull and then stumble on green mana. I draw out of it in a couple turns, and resolve a Sneak Attack through CB/Top after he Forced my Zenith@2. Bellower->Empath->Primeval->2T sets up into Inferno Titan, which ends the game after he tries to StP/Terminus it and 2T prevents it.
Game two I have to fight through Karakas+Venser...kinda weird but I never felt like I was particularly in danger of losing, and I end the game fairly quickly after that point.
Sideboarding: -4 Vet, -4 Therapy, -Meren, -1 ???, -Sidisi, +2 Carpet, +2 To the Slaughter, +2 Surgical, +2 Slaughter Games, +Gaze, +Rec Sage, +Nissa
Round 7: Dan with Elves
Game one, he wins the die roll, and kills me the turn before I kill him.
Game two, I assemble a fast Emrakul after a Deed@1 sweeps him, and kill him.
Game three, his last card after a sweeper is Natural Order, and he has a fetch in play. He makes a Progenitus and I can't find Emrakul in two turns, so I die.
Sideboarding: -Primeval, -1 Top, -Thragtusk, -Sidisi, -Meren; +2 Pyroclasm, +2 Thoughtseize, +Gaze
Round 8: Elliot on Aggro Loam
He concedes as soon as the match slip shows up, because he wants to go get food with his friends.
Round 9: Ed with Elves
Sigh.
I kill him game 1 with Emrakul having never seen a Natural Order, but I did see Wren's Run Packmaster. This leads me to think that he's on Chaos Elves, which is a matchup that I am much more comfortable with.
Game two he topdecks Natural Order vs Sneak/Top with 7 lands in play.
Game three I have Punishing Fire, but he has Cradle with Ooze and I can't keep it around. He topdecks Natural Order the turn before I land Inferno Titan, and I die.
Round 10: Pat with Miracles
I concede the match because he has 1 more match point than I do. It's highly unlikely that either of us were going to prize even on a win (and he in fact did not), but it was still the correct and honorable thing to do since he had a fractional better chance just off the math. Being Miracles, I am however confidant that I would have won fairly easily had we played, and would have ended 6-3-1.
Summary:
Deck's great.
Elves suck.
Bellower was amazing all weekend.
Miracles feels like a bye.
My rust definitely caused some issues throughout the day. Games were occasionally slightly harder than they needed to be because of my own problems. I haven't played in an event since August...I've only been able to do some light kitchen table testing with my roommate. I still don't think that Elves is even that bad of a matchup, but topdeck Natural Order always, always, always seems to happen to me, and it's very frustrating to hit that twice in the same tournament, especially because had I hit basically anything other than 2x Elves, I think I would have been in fine shape. The Grixis draw is still a bit frustrating because that one I could've definitely prevented.
Generally speaking, though, I remain confidant in this deck. It took a mountain of nonsense (some of which is, admittedly, largely self-imposed because I haven't been playing magic) for me to /not/ prize. I would happily run the list back for Baltimore or any other legacy events in the future.
Specifically because I've gotten a bunch of questions about Primeval Titan, the card is primarily in the deck for Miracles. It beats Miracles, hands down, and it's not exactly bad against most anything except for very fast decks. I mean, if you guys want to cut it, then fine -- but know that there is a reason the card is in the deck, and it's staying in mine for the foreseeable future.
So yeah. Not a bad weekend by any stretch. Combined record of matches actually played (not counting last round): 9-3-2
For the both first event I've played the deck in with more than 50 people and also the first event I've played in 2 months, that's pretty damn good, especially with two of the losses coming from topdeck Natural Order. I'm not really sure what else I can say to convince people at this point.
Extra special mention / props to Square Two, who found me and hung out with me on and off throughout the weekend. I'm glad to hear that he did well in his Sunday side event -- he was watching me and picking my brain a lot on Friday and Saturday, and it seems like that helped him convert a strong finish of his own. I look forward to reading about it!
I am sure you have been asked this before, but I wanted to confirm before I proxy up this list to give it a spin. 61 card MD is intentional, right?Quote:
Originally Posted by Arianrhod
Thanks for the write-up! I've been poking around for a sneak-fit list and really like this one.
@Arianhod:
Thanks so much for posting your report. I hadn't even considered using To the Slaughter. Congrats on the finish regardless, it's great seeing the deck so reasonably well. Do you think Elves is a worry we need to prepare for?
I will keep you all appraised of how the classic goes. I'm super excited to play this list now in an actual event.
I ran Arianrhod's list (-1 To the Slaughter, +1 Carpet of Flowers in the side) on Sunday morning for a 60-person 4-round event. Prize tickets based on match points. Really glad to have watched him play on Saturday and pick his brain. This deck has a lot of tricks to it, and I was mainly wanting to just play it more and try to speed up my decisions. Probably don't nearly the same detail as him on this small report but here goes.
Match 1 was against Stoneblade and the biggest help was that the poor guy didn't draw a single of his Brainstorms all match :cry: He was able to Thoughtseize and then Snap Thoughtseize me, but I Therapied away his two Forces in hand and then I proceeded to draw much better than him, quickly finding an answer to his Stoneforge + Batterskull. Inferno Titan comes down followed by Woodland Bellower, and he can't take the damage. Game 2 I manage to Deed away his double Stoneforge + Sword of Feast and Famine board and leave him stranded with a Batterskull in hand but only 4 lands. Bellower again provides card advantage and I'm able to assemble Sneak Attack with double activation to get in Emrakul in spite of a flashed in Clique.
Match 2 is Miracles and I keep a land-heavy hand. I'm able to get Sneak Attack in play with Sidisi in hand. Next turn sneak Sidisi, grab Emrakul, sneak Emrakul, answered with Terminus. Next turn in upkeep I Volrath Sidisi and do the same play which he concedes to. Game 2 I have a quick Carpet of Flowers + Top, and the guy is afraid to play out his island in hand which would feed me mana. I snipe a Mentor with a Thoughtseize, and slowly develop lands and a board while he refuses to play out his island in hand. He eventually puts down Rest in Peace + Peacekeeper + Energy Field but I find answers to all of those and eventually he simply can't deal with my recursive Bellower/Volrath/Phyrexian Tower board and then tutoring Inferno Titan. Think the guy really overboarded with easily answerable stuff (although I'm not sure if I should have been fearing a Helm kill) and misplayed by not playing out his hands to give him more room to interact.
I can't remember if it is the Stoneblade or the Miracles player who did not realize that they could Swords Sidisi in response to the exploit trigger...but there was a case in one of those games where the opp punted by not doing so. It's something to be aware of if you only have Sidisi in play for the trigger.
Match 3 is Eldrazi and they have a fast Chalice + spaghetti but I GSZ for Veteran, build up a board, Deed their Reshaper and Chalices, then topdeck Meren and take over the game. Game 2 the opponent mulls and I decide to risk a Veteran + double Therapy hand with not much else. They mull to 4, then turn 1 Chalice, turn 2 Thought-Knot Seer which locks me out of the game. Poor keep on my part...did not realize just how aggressively they would mull to a turn 1 Chalice. Game 3 the opp mulls heavily again, but I have turn 1 Vet to their turn 1 Chalice and throw away a Therapy to start getting basics. I land an Inferno Titan while they only have Thought-Knot on the field with nothing much to do.
I split with the Soldier Stompy opp for match 4, although I probably should have played it out, seems like a decent matchup thanks to Pyroclasm and Deeds.
I know I need more experience against Storm to feel comfortable, but I'm not as afraid of Miracles now as I used to be. The sideboard felt great and most decisions of what to take out as well as bring in made sense. Didn't get to cast To the Slaughter or resolve Nissa though. Personally I like 3 Carpets...if you can get out 2 against Miracles then you can quickly get to the point of hard casting Emrakul. Agreed with Arianrhod that Primeval Titan is great, alongside Phrexian Tower and Volrath's Stronghold. I'm loving the Stronghold especially.
My plan for the next couple of weeks is to test more online with this list and see how it goes. Feels like higher % of both Storm and Miracles online which should be a good gauntlet for the deck. List is difficult to pilot well and I'm slowly learning how to manage it.
What match-up do you bring in To the Slaughter? The decks you bring it in to usally don't run planeswalkers (Show and Tell, Renimator ect)Quote:
Originally Posted by volrathxp
Nice report @Arianhod! I tought first 4 Sneak Attacks was one too many but it seems Sneak attack is a good wincon.
Glad to hear that you think Mircales are a good match-up. It's usally other way around.
To The Slaughter is an instant speed answer for Marit Lage, Emrakul and Griselbrand in Jund, which is a useful thing to have. The planeswalker tagging isn't super relevant but it's just better upside than any of the other options which fulfill the same role. Being usable against miracles and occasionally getting a 2 for 1 against Shardless is imo better than costing 2 mana (Edict) or gaining life (Tribute to Hunger) which are the only other options that reliably do the same thing.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ganfar
After reading the report and that miracles is a somewhat winnable match up with this version of the deck, I decided to trade some stuff into acquiring the deck online.
I have some questions though:
-Does Meren steadily belong in the maindeck or is she cuttable? I have not been playing her in my junk decks and I haven't missed her. But maybe she is essential to sneak fit? I don't know and that's why I'm asking
-How do you beat eldrazi apart from a fast sneak attack hand?
-What do you usually GSZ for and against what deck? I have tried a single match so far and I have to admit I was a bit clueless of what I was doing. Prime time is usually the first target (after the early game)?
-What nice tricks are there available with these creatures and 2T and/or SA?
The deck is very fun and in the first match I have ever played with Jund Fit I have beaten 4C delver, and I have to say: this deck is the grindiest grindfest of a deck I have ever played in my life, but I'm sure a fast SA for the win is a somewhat frequent thing?
- Meren is great against grindy nonwhite decks but pretty bad against Swords and Combo. I don't play her much because my meta is full of SnT / Reanimator / Lands / Miracles. She's fine but not core.Quote:
Originally Posted by rubblekill
- Slamming Bellower or Thragtusk into multiple other fatties is usually good. They don't play any card advantage so trading off for their guys usually puts you ahead eventually unless you get screwed by Chalice.
- Depends on the hand. If you've got Sneak, Zenithing Empath into Bellower threatens a kill (if you play 2 Empath, which I recommend). If you're grinding a game out, Inferno Titan or equivalent is a fine line. Empath - Bellower - Empath - Inferno Titan is strong if you aren't facing down a clock. Against Aggro or tempo decks Thragtusk is naturally amazing and buys tons of time.
- Primeval Titan is good for Miracles but otherwise he's a bit on the slow side, being only a single body. Your lands give you inevitability but they don't speed your clock up.
As far as tricks go, the only thing I've personally done that's particularly interesting is I once played against a Painter player - he milled me out and tried to respond to Emrakul's trigger with Surgical Extraction, so I Sneaked an Eternal Witness, returned Emrakul to hand, keeping me protected from Grindstone while also making Emrakul next turn.
Thanks a lot for the quick post. I'll try a second empath.Quote:
Originally Posted by Navsi
Since miracles has a staggering 19% share in the online metagame I think I'll keep Prime Time.
I'd like to play a Kessig along with it but with a Grove manabase I don't think it is affordable
E: I'm not convinced on the Eldrazi part of your post though :P Playing junk eldrazi is a quite easy match up in my opinion, but in Jund decays and shocks seem bad while we slowly try to ramp and they cheat 4/4 and 5/5 at the same time; and no PtE.
Game 1 they don't have Warping Wail, so make Veteran Explorer and they can't deal with him without you getting close to stabilizing if you have any relevant cards in hand.Quote:
Originally Posted by rubblekill
Game 2/3 you've sided out Fires and maybe Decays for more relevant removal / interaction anyway.
I don't have many Eldrazi players near me though, so my opponents might just be bad / inexperienced against Sneak-Fit which isn't exactly holding a large share of the meta game.
Arian and I talked about this over the weekend but based on his result, we aren't sure if the Grixis match up is good. It appears tremendously harder for this deck than other flavors were and that may be due to Cabal Therapy. It definitely messed things up. Anyone who gets a chance to test should try to get some games against Grixis. Pretty important to know the state of the match up.
For what it's worth, I've run into the same issue. When I tested Sneak Fit it was Grixis Delver that I played against, and I went something like 1-8 against it (2 preboard, 7 postboard games). Also, while not Sneak Fit, the build I've been playing has been wrecked by Cabal Therapy a couple times. The best name against me is Sensei's Divining Top, and a few of my opponents have caught on to that. What I noticed with Grixis is that with their filtering they can pretty easily put together the Probe/Therapy combo which is extra hard to deal with.Quote:
Originally Posted by Zirath
I've been thinking about ways to deal with this. One idea that's been bouncing around in my head is a UG/x build using Perilous Research as the sac engine alongside Chalice on 1, and even some Cavern of Souls to cast our own guys through Chalice. The idea is still more conceptual than having a list though. I haven't even figured out the third color yet.
Another thing I've considered (and actually tried) is using my Cabal Therapy to name Cabal Therapy but I've had mixed results there. I do think Grixis would see better results against us though if they used Thoughtseize over Therapy. We're actually weak to discard. My league match this week is against Grixis Delver so I'll get a bit more practice at it probably between that and 2/8 or more of the Thursday night Legacy field being Grixis Delver though that will be with my build rather than Sneak.
Also, is anyone going to be at the Classic in Columbus? Still trying to figure out if I can make it, but I really want to give SE Fit a spin in a real tournament. I don't think anyone has done so yet and given what SCG posted today about future events, it doesn't look like I'll have all that many chances.
Awesome reports. Congrats on the results!
Sorry for asking, but what's SE Fit? I've seen it mentioned here a while back.
It's basically a build which is a lot heavier on card selection and consistency tools, in an effort to mitigate the issues we get from not having Brainstorm. There was some maths done about 50-100 pages back which was trying to work out optimal number of lands/threats/ramp/removal/draw/filtering/etc but the end result was pretty much the same as what we already were using so it didn't actually result in a deck particularly different from other Nic Fit lists.Quote:
Originally Posted by Hodgkins
SE is short for Systems Engineering. It was an effort we did a while back. The aim was to create a requirements based Junk Fit list. The result was quite lean but had no room for the juicy stuff we like to play in this deck. As a result, people simply didn't want to play it.Quote:
Originally Posted by Hodgkins
@Navsi: The list had more ramp any of us was comfortable playing, amongst other things.
It was a very nice exercise in card evaluation though.
Elves is something I am personally terrified of, as a pilot. If I had $5 for every time that Elves topdecks Natural Order with no cards in hand/limited board state and kills me the turn before I was going to kill them, across multiple versions of the deck and multiple years of playing, I would probably have a second Black Lotus. I think that on an average Elves draw, Sneak is actually favored or at the very least, it's a coin flip. Both decks typically kill uninterrupted on turn 3/4 or so. Elves is a little more likely to kill on turn 2, and they're a little more comboriffic than we are, but we have piles of interaction and can usually slow them down. I think I'm 2-2 vs Elves total with Sneak now...beat it twice at Mythics, then lost to it twice. When they don't rip N.O., it seems like a fine matchup. The problem is that we have no way of stopping them from casting N.O., and we never will. It's why Elves is typically good vs nonblue nonstorm decks.Quote:
Originally Posted by volrathxp
To the Slaughter is for Miracles, Eldrazi, and Lands -- it can also come in vs some other decks that are a bit more fringe. I don't know if I would bring it in vs Reanimator. Probably, but I wouldn't be happy about it. Don't forget, To the Slaughter is basically a split card that reads:Quote:
Originally Posted by Ganfar
When you resolve To the Slaughter, choose a mode:
-) Target player sacrifices a creature
-) Target player sacrifices a planeswalker
If Delirium (rarely happens), do both.
Vs Miracles (or Shardless, I suppose), you want it because you can engineer a board state wherein they have to sacrfice their Jace/Lily/etc. Vs Eldrazi, you want to hit Smasher with it ideally, although TKS is fine too. Vs Lands, Merit Lage is obviously the pick.
I've come to the opinion that Meren isn't a staple of the list. I personally do still love having her a lot, but she's not as core as I once thought she was. She's at her best atm vs Eldrazi, where she's just flat broken, but she's also very situationally good. A lot of using Meren comes down to engineering the correct board state to allow her to take over the game, which usually involves both realizing and executing a need to begin setup often as much as 4 turns before you're actually going to put Meren out.Quote:
Originally Posted by rubblekill
As for Eldrazi, again, Meren is really good, especially if you can find Thragtusk to go with her to keep Smasher under control. Otherwise, you have the ability to sweep them with Deed and watch as they flood out, or just put out a Titan and watch them be completely unable to answer it. Sneak+Momma is definitely how you win...Meren, Thrag, Deed, and Titans are how you don't lose.
Primeval is a good target, as is Bellower. If you're set up for Meren you can start that chugging. Generally speaking, the GSZ decision tree goes like this:
Is it early game?
-If yes, grab Explorer or Deathrite, depending on opponent and number of fetches/wastelands. If vs Miracles or Stoneblade, or if Deathrite is unlikely to live and you need the ramp, grab Sakura.
-If no, next
Is it middle game?
-If yes, and you have a Sneak Attack, grab Fierce Empath for
-If vs Miracles, Primeval Titan, else
-If vs anything else, Emrakul
-If yes, and you don't have a Sneak Attack,
-Evaluate for Meren
-Evaluate for Eternal Witness
-Thragtusk is the generic go-to in absence of better options, unless you're going to have another land to wait for late game /or/ you're going to have time to wait
-If no, then next
Is it late game?
-If yes, and you have a Sneak Attack, grab Bellower for Empath for Emrakul or Inferno
-If yes, and you don't have a Sneak Attack, grab Bellower for Empath for Primeval or Inferno.
If no, then next
Is it ultra late game?
If yes, then Empath for Emrakul, and cast Emrakul.
It's still debatable if we need a second Empath. A second Empath basically opens up the line of Empathing for Bellower for Empath 2 for Emrakul/Titans. That being said, I never once had this come up or be relevant on the weekend. The only time it was sort of relevant and I sort of wished I had a second Empath was the draw vs Grixis, and that was entirely my own fault and avoidable.
As far as nice tricks...I can't really tell you anything too specific there that I haven't already reported in my posts. Just play the deck and keep your mind open and your options flexible. There's a lot of sweet stuff you can do, especially with Sneak -- it opens up a lot of truly disgusting timing breaks. Sneaking Rec Sage in response to a tapped Top/draw is one of my favorites. Just try to evaluate the board and what cards you have open. Sometimes it's correct to Sneak Thrag, sometimes it's correct to just play him. Etc. Everything is situational and changes on a by-turn basis.
Discard is definitely something of a problem, I think, although Cabal Therapy is specifically a bigger problem than Thoughtseize is. I haven't been bringing in Surgical vs Grixis because I couldn't find two more cards I wanted to cut, but I think that's increasingly incorrect -- even if I end up having to cut something I really don't want to, I think the Surgicals are just that important vs Delver, for the information as well as hitting their Bolts and Therapies.Quote:
Originally Posted by Brael
This is the first day in testing or play that I actually had any kind of an issue with Grixis, though, and others have reported beating it with little difficulty, so I think that it was probably just more of a case that the first Grixis guy drew really well and I drew really poorly (which happens sometimes), and that the second is, as I've said, basically my fault. I could've taken a different line and been perfectly fine vs 2nd Grixis, or, even on the line I chose, I could've, you know, NOT screwed up with the Empath sacrifice. I can be salty about not finding a way to kill him over 8 turns of Topping and shuffling all I want, but at the end of the day, the decisions I made prior to that point put me in the spot to receive the bad variance, so I chalk that one up to me.