[Primer] Eldrazi Stompy

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Originally Posted by MGB

The reason you call any deck a "Shops" deck is because, um, Mishra's Workshop is the most important card in that deck. No deck should have "Shops" in the title unless it is specifically running that land, imho.

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I always thought the deck is called "Eldrazi Shops" because of Eye of Ugin, like Workshop, can (effectively) produce an obscene amount of mana, and like Worship the mana is restricted as to what can (effectively) cast. Also it's symbolic of the fact that (like it or not) this deck is a long awaited upgrade of the traditional Legacy Stomy shell.

Do you object to the Sage era Bubbling Muck decks having been called "Dark Tide"? Pox doesn't run Pox anymore. I think during ISD/RTR Standard there were graveyard decks being called " Dredge". Nothing out of the ordinary here.

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Originally Posted by Admiral_Arzar

Pretty sure I could never contribute again to a thread that...

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But you could still post in it. :tongue:

I asked Dice_Box to change the name, so we can return to a useful discussion.

Anyone have opinions about Brian DeMars' take on the splash? http://www.channelfireball.com/artic...white-eldrazi/

I kind of like that he's keeping it nice and light, although I remain unconvinced that Displacer is worth screwing up the mana for.

Help me beat your deck. What are cards you eldrazi pilots don't like to face? What about specifically in the BGx decks?

@ iostream: I've posted my thoughts on the list in the comment section, so I'll just copy&paste it to not type out the same line of thought twice:

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I'm a big proponent of the white splash and been working on it (Wg version) for a while now. I'm glad that you realized the power of Displacer and run it as a 4-of, while other people still screw around with 3 copies max.

If you ran a full playset of Brushland in place of Adarkar Wastes, you could support 2x World Breaker in the Endbringer slot, since Breaker is arguably stronger than Bringer and can solve problematic cards. Between 4 Cavern and 4 Brushland, there should be enough green mana for it.

Aside from Displacer, RiP and Containment Priest are also very powerful SB bombs (I run 3 each in the SB). I have to admit that putting Priests main is a ballsy move, but I also know how the combo with Displacer simply wins games in certain match-ups.

7 white sources and 4 Cavern might be fine for Displacer, but 7 real white sources are not enough to cast Priest and RiP reliably. Too often, you will be stranded with your white bombs stranded in hand due to lack of white mana. Been there, done that. My latest list is on 11 (12) white sources to make it work:
http://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/387406#online

One problem I see with the deck is its weakness in the mirror. You run neither Wasteland or Dismember. Endbringer and the Displacer/Priest combo are nice and all, but also very slow - too slow in most cases without further support.

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Originally Posted by Barook

@ iostream: I've posted my thoughts on the list in the comment section, so I'll just copy&paste it to not type out the same line of thought twice:

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Do you feel like the Displacer shores up the bad matchups in a big way? In particular, how impactful is the Displacer in the following three matchups: Lands, 4c Loam, and fair Stoneforge Mystic decks like D+T or Maverick? I think the colorless version's biggest weaknesses are against these decks. All other tier 1-2 matchups seem sufficiently good/fixable with the colorless tools that I don't think it's worth splashing to improve them.

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Originally Posted by iostream

Do you feel like the Displacer shores up the bad matchups in a big way? In particular, how impactful is the Displacer in the following three matchups: Lands, 4c Loam, and fair Stoneforge Mystic decks like D+T or Maverick? I think the colorless version's biggest weaknesses are against these decks. All other tier 1-2 matchups seem sufficiently good/fixable with the colorless tools that I don't think it's worth splashing to improve them.

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• Lands: MVP, since it can stop Marit Lage at instant speed, while Karakas has a good chance to get destroyed by Wasteland or tapped down by Port. Be aware Lands is still a bad match-up, even with Karakas and Displacer, just less shitty. Ports + Wasteland recursion are still bad news for the deck.
• 4c Loam: Can't comment on that due to lack of experience in the match, but I assume from my experience with Maverick that the Containment Priest/Displacer combo should also be relevant here IF you can stick both parts. Note that 4c Loam is much more removal-heavy than Maverick, so take that with a grain of salt.
• Unless they can slap equipment on something like TNN: Displacer makes Stoneforge your bitch. Each activation unequips their stuff and it kills Batterskull tokens. I mentioned it already in the old thread, but Displacer is a MUST KILL/REVOKER IT ASAP card for D&T.
  Also:
• Infect also gets greatly improved by Displacer as it can single-handedly domiante the board and win the game
• Displacer significantly improves the Sneak & Show match-up
• It's also good vs Reanimator, but it depends a lot on what they're going to reanimate. Karakas is the stronger card out of both here, but they're still a strong package for them to deal with.

I'm very adamant about Displacer for good reason.

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Originally Posted by rlesko

Help me beat your deck. What are cards you eldrazi pilots don't like to face? What about specifically in the BGx decks?

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Pernicious Deed seems pretty reasonable. You'll often have 4+ mana to pop it, especially if DRS sticks and Eldrazi doesn't aggressively Wasteland you.

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Originally Posted by Barook

[/list][*]4c Loam: Can't comment on that due to lack of experience in the match, but I assume from my experience with Maverick that the Containment Priest/Displacer combo should also be relevant here IF you can stick both parts. Note that 4c Loam is much more removal-heavy than Maverick, so take that with a grain of salt.

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Loam isn't that huge of a GSZ deck compared to Maverick. Containment Priest is a w/e card to bring in against us, and turns on Pfires.

Played Eldrazi tonight at the local shop and ended up going 3-0-1 (ID on last round, since I was paired down and we were both ready to hit the road).

I'll post my list and then talk a bit about the matchups I faced, overall was very pleased with the deck however my SB needs a ton of work. I still like the idea of a white or possibly G/W splash like Barook has been playing, to be honest I found Wasteland to be one of the most uninspiring cards today.


4 Eldrazi Mimic
2 Endbringer
4 Endless One
4 Matter Reshaper
4 Reality Smasher
4 Thought-Knot Seer

4 Ancient Tomb
4 Cavern of Souls
3 City of Traitors
4 Eldrazi Temple
2 Mishra's Factory
4 Wasteland
3 Eye of Ugin

4 Chalice of the Void
2 Thorn of Amethyst
2 Trinisphere
1 Dismember
3 Warping Wail
2 Umezawa's Jitte

Sideboard:
1 Pithing Needle
2 Ratchet Bomb
2 Winter Orb
3 Faerie Macabre
2 Dismember
1 All is Dust
2 Mindbreak Trap
2 Phyrexian Revoker


Beat Thopter 2-0, Storm 2-1 and Infect 2-1.

A few general comments...

Thought Jitte was amazing and probably the MVP of the night.
As I mentioned above, Wasteland was meh. Not ready to cut it but felt it was very underwhelming, though it did win me one game against storm. If I were to playtest the G/W version, I'd cut the wastelands before any other lands.
Never drew a Mishra's factory the entire night but would have loved to have seen one on a number of occasions.
Felt like I wanted more Sol lands but the only additional one I'd consider trying is Crystal Vein. Definitely wouldn't go to 4 Cities, a few games it was awkward and I needed to wasteland myself in order to keep playing lands.
I found the 2/2 Trinisphere and Thorns split to be quite good and I'll continue with that for the time being.
Was less than impressed with Warping Wail. Don't really like keeping 2 mana open, especially when you can't cheat it with a Temple. Found it awkward most of the night and didn't do much with it outside killing an infect creature which was nice. Really wish it was tribal Eldrazi though, it'd be so much better...
Was lucky one game to pull an Ensnaring Bridge from my opponents hand with a thought-knot seer - I still don't have a good answer for that as All In Dust doesn't do anything.
Felt like I would have really benefited from having spirit guides of some sort. Especially useful since I like to try and push out cards like Chalice first turn on the draw and sometimes Daze bites me :) More so than that though, I could get Chalice out first turn off an Eldrazi Temple or get a Trinisphere out first turn with sol land -- definitely something I'll playtest in the future.

Love some advice on the sideboard and/or general comments about the deck itself. Next time I playtest I'll be going down on Warping Wail and may consider moving Endbringers to the side. Unsure what I'm going to replace them with yet, a lot of possibilities but I think more low cc threats would be my general approach -- perhaps trying the Revokers main or maybe I can find room for 3 guides. A few times, even with being conservative I found I was running low on creatures and more spells are counterproductive to the prison pieces you want out.

Here's what I'm thinking of playing:

Mana-25
4 Ancient Tomb
3 City of Traitors
3 Eye of Ugin
4 Eldrazi Temple
4 Wasteland
4 Cavern of Souls
3 Mishra's Factory

Creatures-22
4 Eldrazi Mimic
4 Endless One
4 Matter Reshaper
4 Thought-Knot Seer
4 Reality Smasher
2 Endbringer

Lock-8
4 Chalice of the Void
4 Thorn of Amethyst

Removal-5
3 Warping Wail
2 Ratchet Bomb

SB-15
2 Winter Orb
1 Umezawa's Jitte
1 Crucible of Worlds
4 Tormod's Crypt
1 All is Dust
2 Phyrexian Revoker
2 Trinisphere
1 Ratchet Bomb
1 Null Rod

I like the MD quite a bit, might change up the removal with other stuff but I don't really like Dismember paired with Ancient Tomb. The SB is kinda random because I have no experience with the deck. Crucible seems awesome though with how vulnerable Eldrazi's manabase is to disruption.

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Originally Posted by rlesko

Help me beat your deck. What are cards you eldrazi pilots don't like to face? What about specifically in the BGx decks?

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Fast removal that doesn't fold to Chalice, big creatures, and cards good in creature combat. Off the top of my head, that'd be stuff like Snuff Out, Toxic Deluge (though life is of course a very relevant resource against a deck with 5/5 Haste creatures), Tarmogoyf, Gurmag Angler, even Tombstalker can be good. Umezawa's Jitte, given a sufficient creature base, is always solid in creature match-ups particularly if you can accelerate it out. As you should probably be running Abrupt Decays, Chalices are far less of a problem but the tempo loss is a very real issue. Much depends on your third color, too. Having an easy way to destroy Chalice makes e.g. Swords to Plowshares from white much better (also Knight of the Reliquary is fairly good vs. Eldrazi), or Blood Moon from red (Moon alone doesn't win, but Moon + lots of removal/big dudes is pretty good). Price of Progress would be nice in a more beatdown version but it certainly doesn't play nice with cards like Toxic Deluge and Snuff Out if you're running nonbasics yourself so you'll have to be a bit careful.

Of course, Ensnaring Bridge (and its ilk, but especially the cheap, colorless one) is the #1 card Eldrazi have huge trouble dealing with and BG decks probably do have some pingers like Deathrite Shaman and perhaps Punishing Fire/Grove so you'll have to consider if it's feasible for you to run the Bridge. Also, we'll have to remember that thanks to Thoughtknot Seer, it's not entirely a given that any specific hate card will make it into play, so just relying on one card isn't a reliable means to beat the tentacles.

I've been testing all kinds of colored versions of Eldrazi Stompy in the past two weeks or so. Sometimes I get back to colorless version as it has seemed to perform the best until my recent BW version which I managed to 5-0 yesterday's league and get other good results as well (some of the losses I should / could have won as I noticed the mistakes I did). My goal has been to find a version that has a better chance vs Blood Moon, True Name Nemesis (in different decks), Shardless BUG and different kind of equipment strategies while still trying to have the speed and disruptive power of the colorless version.

I started doing better with colorless versions when I did not try to go too big or wide but keep the colorless shell, at least most of it. This means either Matter Reshaper or Eldrazi Displacer as 3 drop. Also the creature count should be 22+ I believe.

Thoughts about the build below:

- mana seems to be semi ok, need to test more and remember to name Elemental for Cavern at times to play Shriekmaw and to make it uncounterable
- Displacer Shriekmaw is a good combination (yet slow at times) and also uncounterable removal for tarmo knight of the relinquary etc
- Leyline of the Void has been good and at times great, same goes for toxic deluge
- haven't had chance to use disenchant on blood moon or moat yet, destroyed equipment though
- still not sure about the right number of warping wails main, perhaps going down to 2 replacing it with some other utility


4 Eldrazi Mimic
4 Thought-Knot Seer
4 Reality Smasher
4 Endless One
1 Endbringer
4 Eldrazi Displacer
2 Shriekmaw


4 Chalice of the Void
2 Trinisphere
2 Lotus Petal

3 Warping Wail
2 Dismember

4 Eldrazi Temple
3 Eye of Ugin
4 Ancient Tomb
4 Cavern of Souls
3 City of Traitors
4 Caves of Koilos
1 Karakas
1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth


4 Leyline of the Void
2 Disenchant
2 Toxic Deluge
2 Umezawa's Jitte
2 Pithing Needle
2 Thorn of Amethyst
1 Karakas

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Originally Posted by Dice_Box

Show of hands for who wants this, because I am really tempted to make it happen.

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Yes, please :wink:

Second league run with my current list, 4-1'ed. Matches were:

R1: Lost to Mirror (Riehu's build posted above)
R2: Win vs Miracles
R3: Win vs ANT
R4: Win vs Sneak & Show (I love this match-up)
R5: Win vs Mirror with white splash for Displacer (and SB O-Ring; had a nice talk with him since he appearently knows me from this thread; I had some ridiculous draws, like T1 TKS on the draw)

Stoneblade SB never came up this run. Since it does very little in the mirror (which has high relevance in the current online meta, ~13% of placing decks), I do wonder if there are better options that have uses in the mirror and help in other match-ups as well. Some cheap removal for enemy fatties would certainly help.

I'm thinking about:
- 3 Sword of X & Y
- 2 SFM

+ 3 StP/PtE
+ 2 Endbringer (O-Sower is good as well for the mirror, but pretty useless otherwise)

Also maybe cutting the 4th Dismember for a 2nd Jitte SB if I go with the white removal plan. Since we're aggro, is PtE really better with potentially giving a basic in various match-ups than the lifegain from StP? I'd love a discussion about that and the awkwardness of said spells as removal in matches were CotV @1 is relevant.

Mox came up as a bit awkward from time to time. I consider replacing my second copy with another Petal, going with a 1 Mox/4 Petal split.

A couple questions for the splashing people:

1) Has there been any consideration given to things like Tarnished Citadel or Tendo Ice Bridge as additional copies of Brushland or Caves of Koilos in these versions that run a bunch of non-Eldrazi spells off the splash color (i.e. in builds where Corrupted Crossroads looks bad)? The size of these splashes seem so small that it should be possible to get away with something like that even though there is a downside.

2) Is Lotus Petal "basically as good" as the Spirit Guides? Is it easy to sequence them in a way so that they don't get countered when they are of maximum value?

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Originally Posted by iostream

A couple questions for the splashing people:

1) Has there been any consideration given to things like Tarnished Citadel or Tendo Ice Bridge as additional copies of Brushland or Caves of Koilos in these versions that run a bunch of non-Eldrazi spells off the splash color (i.e. in builds where Corrupted Crossroads looks bad)? The size of these splashes seem so small that it should be possible to get away with something like that even though there is a downside.

2) Is Lotus Petal "basically as good" as the Spirit Guides? Is it easy to sequence them in a way so that they don't get countered when they are of maximum value?

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I experimented with number 1 initially (when I was trying to run 2-3 splash colors), but I think that we play so little of any particular splash color (and only 1-2, if that) that there are always better options.

Can't help with 2. I'm a Mox advocate :tongue:

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Originally Posted by rlesko

Help me beat your deck. What are cards you eldrazi pilots don't like to face? What about specifically in the BGx decks?

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Ensnaring Bridge
Blood Moon
Painter's Servant
Magus of the Moon
Wasteland
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Deed
Toxic Deluge
Goyf
The Delve Creatures
Turn 1 - Thought Seize/Cabal

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Originally Posted by iostream

A couple questions for the splashing people:

1) Has there been any consideration given to things like Tarnished Citadel or Tendo Ice Bridge as additional copies of Brushland or Caves of Koilos in these versions that run a bunch of non-Eldrazi spells off the splash color (i.e. in builds where Corrupted Crossroads looks bad)? The size of these splashes seem so small that it should be possible to get away with something like that even though there is a downside.

2) Is Lotus Petal "basically as good" as the Spirit Guides? Is it easy to sequence them in a way so that they don't get countered when they are of maximum value?

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My 2 cents.

1) Tarnished doesn't sound too good as we're taking a lot of damage already. We most of the lands to generate mana advantage. In addition Cavern of Souls is very important as well so there is not too much space to have extra lands without losing some of the speed (which I think is essential with current builds).

2) I've noticed that for other than green or red fixing we really need lotus petal for mana fixing and to some extent speed. It has a double role for sure. I've played like 20 matches with Petals and no one has yet countered those. For sure it has to do with sequencing as well.

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Originally Posted by Riehu

My 2 cents.

1) Tarnished doesn't sound too good as we're taking a lot of damage already. We most of the lands to generate mana advantage. In addition Cavern of Souls is very important as well so there is not too much space to have extra lands without losing some of the speed (which I think is essential with current builds).

2) I've noticed that for other than green or red fixing we really need lotus petal for mana fixing and to some extent speed. It has a double role for sure. I've played like 20 matches with Petals and no one has yet countered those. For sure it has to do with sequencing as well.

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Thanks for the speedy reply.

1) I definitely agree, the suggestion was to run something like 1 Tarnished Citadel or 1 Tendo Ice Bridge. It seems like 4 Cavern, 4 Tomb, 4 on-color painlands, 4 Temple, 3 Eye, 3 City, are stock. That's 22 lands, which leaves room for 3 more lands. With Karakas and Urborg being as useful as they are, I'd like 1 of each of those in the deck (regardless of whether it's WG or WB), which leaves room for just 1 of the lands I suggested.

2) Definitely not suggesting cutting the fast mana - even in the colorless version, I like running 2 Spirit Guides. I was just worried that you get into situations where the Petal has to resolve in order for you to play out your hand, and your opponent can figure it out. Another worry, by the way, is the Daze decks - hopefully the utility of countering Daze out of nowhere doesn't matter too much.

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Originally Posted by iostream

A couple questions for the splashing people:

1) Has there been any consideration given to things like Tarnished Citadel or Tendo Ice Bridge as additional copies of Brushland or Caves of Koilos in these versions that run a bunch of non-Eldrazi spells off the splash color (i.e. in builds where Corrupted Crossroads looks bad)? The size of these splashes seem so small that it should be possible to get away with something like that even though there is a downside.

2) Is Lotus Petal "basically as good" as the Spirit Guides? Is it easy to sequence them in a way so that they don't get countered when they are of maximum value?

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1) Tarnished Citadel is too painful to be any good in this deck. I could see Tendo Ice Bridge working.
2) Spirit Guides are strictly better as an accelerant (can't be countered, no anti-synergy with Thorn, suprise Daze mana). I would only run Lotus Petal if you need colored mana other than :r: or :g: (like in my case, for :w:). Lotus Petal does what it's supposed to do as an accelerant. I prefer being able to run powerful white bombs over Colorless with the option to cast Gray Ogres.