[Deck] The Truffle Shuffle

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Why is it that something like Vindicate is seeing play? Is it just for versitility? What do you find yourself killing with it most often? In such a creature heavy format something faster seems like it would be better, as Deed can take care of most other permanents in legacy.

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It sits in your hand from time to time while your less-versatile (cheaper) spot removal takes down opposing creatures. But when this happens you are cruising anyway. I'm not sure if this is what Whit3 Ghost is saying, but it very often takes out Pithing Needle set to Pernicious Deed. It can also (although not nearly as much as in Dirt) remove the third color from Thresh.

Pithing Needle is occasionally useful against the Deed, but not usually for this very reason. In fact, I am willing to bet that most opponents of this deck fish through their sideboards looking for anything at all that is remotely useful. Graveyard hate does a little, but is a wasted effort almost always. Duress without Hymn backup is similarly unsuccessful.

This feels like I am saying the same damned things I did a while ago when so many folks *knew* how bad BWG control was, but this deck will continue to knock out most aggro, disruptible combo, and pretty much all control until the opposing decks learn what IS a good strategy against it. The ways of Blood Moon and Price of Progress are both very good for starters. Either will be an effective single-card sideboard answer. Creatures that fetch stuff ala Ringleader and Trinket Mage are good. Fact or Fiction is very good, but counterspells are not. So someone would need to work that angle better. Winter Orb and Armageddon are both very hard to overcome when played right. Intuition into AK is very good. Most of this stuff is nearly nonexistent in the top decks of the moment. The aggro decks that practice good card advantage like Goblins are the ones that fare best.

And IBA, sorry to read about your unfortunate loss to Nightmare's UGW Thresh. Double early Mongoose is just about all that kills you, but it happens.

Back to basics and recurring wasteland will also cause this deck problems. This deck is very powerful because it uses the best that 4 colors has to offer. Because it uses 4 colors just go at its manabase hardcore and with large 5cc threats they will have a difficult time dropping one. Granted they can fetch basics but that means they have to do so from the onset, and they need to draw into the fetches.

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Originally Posted by jazzykat

Back to basics and recurring wasteland will also cause this deck problems. This deck is very powerful because it uses the best that 4 colors has to offer. Because it uses 4 colors just go at its manabase hardcore and with large 5cc threats they will have a difficult time dropping one. Granted they can fetch basics but that means they have to do so from the onset, and they need to draw into the fetches.

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With the build that bigbear and I ran at the Mana Leak, you will almost never be scared of Wasteland, or for that matter even Back to Basics. You've got 6 fetchlands, 3 Krosan Tusker, 3 Sakura-Tribe Elder, plus Sensei's Divining Top and nine basics. If you don't fear Armageddon, it's easy for you to hit 6 or more basics, and Wasteland is no longer a problem. Even with the 6 basic version, I could relatively consistantly hit 6 basics against Landstill, and Wasteland only served to keep me under 7 mana, which was virtually irrelevant.

I think it's a bit early in the meta stage to start building up the mana base for fighting off hate instead of maximum objective power. STE is a 2x additional 2cc land, making it little more than the E. Dragons it's replacing, sans the ability to finish the game once in a while. I was in love with Gaea's Blessing's performance all day at the Mana Leak Open.

So much so, in fact, that after looking at some of the decks more problematic matchups, I'm tinkering with -1 Plains, +1 Blessing for 3 total main, the 4th in the board, and possibly a couple of Krosan Reclamations in the board as a way of fighting off problematic matchups like Reanimator, LifeFromtheLoam, Iggy Pop and Solidarity.

I mostly play 1.5 on apprentice, but I am curious about how rediculously favorable the match against 43 land is. In theory, it seems like it would be terrible for them.

Any insight?

I've only played a couple of games, but recurring Wasteland can actually be a real pain, in that it can keep you off of Echoes mana. And once in a great while they can actually race. It seem pretty heavily favored over all though, with Blessing doubling as graveyard hate beside Echoes and the untargetable beatsticks.

Yeah, i had a feeling that the matchup would mostly be in favor of this deck.

What is the build that is actually accepted as the "best" build? I have been trying IBA's build on apprentice and blessing has has literally never shown up...I am a lucksack when it comes to tangible cards but the results on apprentice are distressing. The deck looks so good on paper....

The 43 lands matchup actually isn't as good as you would think it to be. If you can get an Echoes to take out wither Mishras or Monastery, then you auto-win, but if not it can be a real pain in the ass. Their creatures only die to Deed and swords (Vindicate too, I guess...), and they can come back from Deed. The problem here being that you have to time your Echoes so as that they have not recurred all of the good lands out of their yard, and you also have to make sure that you actually killed a land without STP to have Echoes hit it.

Wasteland and Port together are no good for this deck, as it can normally keep you off of whatever color will screw them the most (Black 99% of the time).

All in all it is a decent matchup, but not as good as it has been assumed. I have played it several times and have quite a few headaches.

The way I run my build is that I focus all into creature hate. If a combo match up comes in, I use 13 of my 15 sideboards for it.

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Originally Posted by Team-Hero

The way I run my build is that I focus all into creature hate. If a combo match up comes in, I use 13 of my 15 sideboards for it.

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This probably isn't the way to go, because I'm assuming that even with 13 sideboard cards, your matchup is only going to be 50/50 post-board. This means you'll autolose the first match and lose half of the post-board matches. You'll never win a round that way.

Also, at that point, there's no reason not to skirt Wasteland and just play Rabid Wombat. The improved combo matchup is the main reason to play the deck as is; this weakens a lot if Iggy Pop becomes more played than Solidarity, though.

Team-Hero: What does your build look like? I know you said all creature kill, but what else do you play? If you take out all of the discard your game worsens against a lot more than just combo. I'd like to know your theory behind this and what cards you cut.

my build is like this; granted that I am considering changing it back to the original build to be a nice 50/50 hate to both metas instead of just 1.

3 Savannah
3 Scrubland
3 Swamp
4 Windswept Heath
3 Bayou
2 Plains
3 Forest
1 Bloodstained Mire
1 Polluted Delta

2 Krosan Tusker
4 Eternal Witness
2 Gigapede
2 Sakura-Tribe Elder
4 Loxodon Hierarch

3 Smother (Dibating if I should change this to Last Gasp... any thoughts?)
3 Vindicate
1 Infest
3 Hymn to Tourach
3 Pernicious Deed
2 Haunting Echoes
3 Sensei's Divining Top
2 Wrath of God
4 Swords to Plowshares

SB
2 Infest (for Goblins and Elves)
1 Hymn to Tourach
3 Rule of Law
4 Duress
4 Cabal Therapy
1 Cranial Extraction

If you guys count the creature hate with the combo hate in the sideboard, both numbers match up to 13. Perfect enough so you don't have to debate what card you should add or take out to play against High Tide. Ill-Gottens might change though because you might want to have those Deeds in the deck in order to kill off his 0 casting cost stuff, but I much rather have the Rule of Law and the Discard instead of the Deed.

What do you guys think? I know it's a narrow tunnel vision but 60% of the field is creatures and the sideboard provides just enough spice for you to tweak your deck to adapt to the deck your playing against.

On a side note. The LAND deck (Life From the Loam, Manabond... etc) it is very hard to beat with this deck. Your only hope is to nuke the board well, get as much of his 'kill' lands as possible, and Echoes the opponent before he recovers them.

Alright, I tried out the matchup against forty-three land.
To be short about it, it's terrible. Perhaps it is because I just ripped off the list posted on the opening topic post or something but the matchup was just awful.

If I get around to any testing, I will post any innovations. One of the first that has come to mind is cranial extraction. I will need to see if it works in practice but it seems like it would be a strong choice to bring in versus several popular decks like solidarity, iggy and 43 land. I'm sure there are others too...the question to me is wether or not the abillity to when a game after hitting three mana is worth giving up so you can derail a few combo-esque decks.

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Originally Posted by Tallbollocks

Alright, I tried out the matchup against forty-three land. To be short about it, it's terrible. Perhaps it is because I just ripped off the list posted on the opening topic post or something but the matchup was just awful.

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As I understand it, the current list is:

1x Polluted Delta
1x Bloodstained Mire
4x Windswept Heath
3x Bayou
3x Scrubland
2x Savannah
3x Plains
3x Swamp
3x Forest

3x Eternal Witness
2x Krosan Tusker
1x Eternal Dragon
2x Sakura-Tribe Elder
2x Grave-Shall Scarab
2x Gigapede

4x Duress
4x Hymn to Tourach
3x Vindicate
4x Pernicious Deed
3x Wrath of God
3x Swords to Plowshares
2x Haunting Echoes
3x Sensei's Divining Top

SB:
1x Eternal Witness
4x Loxodon Hierarch
3x Cabal Therapy
2x Infest
3x Smother
1x Naturalize
1x Disenchant

That was posted by Bigbear 18 posts back, and it's also the current build I'm trying out.

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Originally Posted by Anarky87

As I understand it, the current list is:

[61 card list]

That was posted by Bigbear 18 posts back, and it's also the current build I'm trying out.

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If you take that list and go -1 Eternal Dragon, +1 Sakura-Tribe Elder, you've got Bigbear's current list. That's the one that I finished Top 16 with at the Mana Leak Open. IBA has a different list, which also got rid of Eternal Dragon, but here for the 4th Vindicate and 2 Gaea's Blessing, and he also finished T16 at the mana leak (although slightly lower than me, not that that means [i]anything[i].) His Sideboard remains the way it used to be, and he also doesn't play 61 cards. So there's a bit of a debate as for which way to go, but you can make your own little tweaks. I really like the maindeck Eternal Witness, but I've never tested Gaea's Blessing.

4 Vindicate is important no matter what version you play.
I have also cut the Tribe-Elders, they just don't do quite enough. The mana base with 9 basics seems to work with or without them.
Blessing seems pretty strong in a lot of matchups also, I have been testing with the Witnesses back in the board, it seems to be fine that way. MD Blessing helps quite a bit more than I thought it would also. I seem to be casting it targeting my opponent a lot. Reanimator and Gro really hate that.

IBA mentioned Condemn and Gerard's Verdict main, 1 of each, and it has also been working out pretty well for me. It allows you to keep Therapy as a 3-of in the board, and still have 12 Discard spells G2.

I want to be able to fit Rule of Law in the board somehow, but first we need to be able to beat Goblins.... somebody figure that one out for me and I'll give you a cookie. If we could get goblins to actually be in our favor then this deck will absolutely dominate the format....seriously.

well, if your meta is completely full of goblins and much less of thresh... you can always run echoing decay instead of smother. you might get lucky and pick more than 1 goblin off the spell. but on a serious level, infest is probably the best card we have right now for anti-goblins... there isn't anything better when it comes to tempo and effectiveness.

if you want something more consistant, the only thing i can recomend is engeniered plague or culling scales. culling scales isn't the hottest card out there but it forces a goblin player to either feed the scales or slow down and stop playing goblins. the only thing that survives culling scales is ringleader, tiki, and ringleader. it's nice that the scales can pick off the vial as well.

In testing, I was extremely happy with the 1x Condemn, as 5 StP's made Goblins a lot more winnable. I would consider replacing the Smother/Infest spot in the board with additional Condemns; while it can't kill Warchief before it attacks, in all other ways it's much better than Smother, including being able to kill Mystic Enforcers and the odd River Boa or Arrogant Wurm.

The verdict on Verdict, however, was very dissapointing, as two of your choice is just so vastly weaker than two at random against combo, especially Solidarity. I also found that I was very often able to put just enough pressure on Solidarity between the Hymns, Duresses, Vindicates and Giga-beats that they could win without my running Blessings but not around them. To this end, I'm currently running the following tweaked build;


4x Windswept Heath
1x Polluted Delta
1x Bloodstained Mire (2x Delta is probably better, since it's much less revealing as a first turn drop, but I only own the one)
4x Bayou
4x Scrubland
3x Savannah
2x Swamp
2x Plains
1x Forest
3x Krosan Tusker
2x Gigapede
2x Grave-Shell Scarab
2x Haunting Echoes
4x Duress
4x Hymn to Tourach
4x Swords to Plowshares
1x Condemn
4x Vindicate
4x Pernicious Deed
3x Wrath of God
3x Sensei's Divining Top
2x Gaea's Blessing

SB:
4x Eternal Witness
4x Leyline of the Void (Not only is it good against Ichorid, Iggy Pop, Reanimator, and Life From the Loam, it's also surprisingly solid against Raffinity, shutting down Modular, Disciple of the Vault, and the occasional Terrarion)
3x Loxodon Hierarch
2x Cabal Therapy
2x Condemn

That build looks really solid. I think the leylines in the board really tie everything together. I can't really think of a matchup that would be too terrible for this, aside from getting your manabase disrupted badly (have you found that to be an issue, with red death/dead guy, or do those decks just die to your removal/hierarch?). It seems like the game against goblins would actually be positive, have you found this to be true or is it just too hard to kill them before they recover from mass removal?

This is tempting to build...especially since I already have 95% of the cards.