[Deck] Belcher

I consider Belcher to be a serious threat, but nobody plays it.

The other 4-0 deck at the Pro Tour side event was a Belcher player. I squeaked by with a bit of luck and he got eliminated by Enchantress of all things to finish in 5th or 6th place (extra round + cut to top 4, so he was out). I consistently see a Belcher or two hanging around the top tables. You can't confuse the lack of a tournament win (or the lack of extremely high-density high placement finishes) with the deck being bad. There just aren't very many people playing Belcher. I think just that guy in the PT and in the other two SCGs events (the ones we have data for), there were only like 6 people playing it and 4 of them finished 17th place or better.

I've never seen a Belcher player win less than half of its matches, and many that put up very impressive finishes.

You invited the ANT comparison, so I'll point this out: ANT has a few tournament wins, but also tons and tons of people play the deck. Saito and Do Anne are just the tip of the iceberg, you don't see the 50 or 100 ANT players who finished out of the money, out of day 2, and even with a sub-50% win ratio.

I piloted Belcher to 3-3 drop at Madrid and really enjoyed my day. I felt I had a chance against almost everyone and always won at least one game in every match. I would have won my last match before I dropped, but I kept a questionable hand and paid for it against discard. I feel that this deck is against a lot of the field, as long as you are willing to bring Xantid Swarm against every single deck in the format due to Mindbreak Trap!

When I said "take something out" I meant side out. Sorry for the confusion. I meant what do you guys take out for the 4 swarms and stuff. Also, I agree with the guys posting all the good placements. The deck in the past 6 months has actually been somewhere in the top 16 of a LOT of the big tournaments. Richmond was a big deal to me. It was 200+ players and it got 9th. Probably on tie breakers.

The good news about the meta is this, yes there are some blue decks, but there also is a TON of zoo. A match which this deck actually CANT lose. The only time it can is in the case of mindbreak trap which if you havenet noticed, no one actually uses. Don't get me wrong they totally should. Especially 43 Land. (Another auto-win for belcher). I'd say the worst match up for this deck is gonna be blue decks that also play removal like swords or lightning bolt. Because if they for some reason leave it in post board then you will probably lose you swarm. Decks like merfolk are a much better match up post board. They have too many "must counters" and all their counters are daze/cursecatcher.

Anyway, keep it coming guys, lemme know what you think.

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Originally Posted by JonBarber

Counting side events is iffy. And most of those events on deckcheck are under 40 people, so my words hold true. Sure it pops up in the 4-8 occasionally, but its significantly better in meta's with lower numbers of people. Compare it to the number of top 8's by ANT, and its clear to see it doesn't put up the same results. It has 4 sb protection spells (5 if you count the duress), which really isn't enough in most developed metas. Your welcome to compete with it, but belcher decks are rarely seen as a serious threat. I play the deck and I love it, but I don't think I'd play it at any major events.

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How is counting side events iffy? Serious players make it out to those too, and the top tables will always be filled with decent to good players. If you're top 8ing those, the deck is doing something right, dodging blue decks or not. You're also discounting the three recent SCG events it has placed in, as well as 18th place at the late 2200+ player GP Madrid.

I'm not saying the deck is the amazing answer to the format either, but I'm saying you're giving it a lot less credit than it deserves. The speed and resilience is actually pretty scary when you're on the other side of the table. And yes, Forbiddian has a point as well: very few people take the deck to major events because everyone always rags on how inconsistent the deck is. In all honesty, this is far from the truth, and these placements are testament. Considering most SCG events have only and will only ever have <5 Belcher players, those are some pretty solid results.

The deck is inconsistent, that is why it is known to be a glass cannon. You tend to take the first match, as people aren't expecting the deck, then lose the second one, and then win the 3rd when you are on the play again. Sadly, my meta has caught onto this and will mulligan aggressively into Mindbreak Trap, making the Swarm more necessary than ever, which turns their removal back on. I don't think I would take this to a major event again, but I did have a blast playing it at Madrid. I just got ver tired of having 35+ mins to kill every round!

Dave

I posted this on the storm boards, figured I should post it here as well. I took this deck to my local tournament and made it to the finals, but lost out in the final match. Here is the list I played followed by a very brief summary:

4x Belcher
3x EtW
4x Burning Wish
4x Blood Moon

4x ESG
4x SSG
4x Tinder Wall
4x Street Wraith

4x Rite of Flame
4x Seething Song
4x Desperate Ritual
4x LED
4x Petal
4x Mox
4x Land Grant
1x Taiga

SB
4x Xantid Swarm
3x Shattering Spree
3x Serum Powder

Wish Targets
1x EtW
1x Telemin Performance
1x Shattering Spree
1x Reverent Silence
1x Pyroclasm

Round 1 - UG Survival Madness w/ Force and Daze with Chill in the board.
G1 - I ask if he has a Force, turn 1 Empty for 14 on the play beats most decks in the format!
G2 - I board in Swarms for Blood Moons and resolve a Swarm on turn 1. He drops Chill on turn 2 which is just sickening, as my has has Rite, Desperate and Seething Song. No matter though, a turn before I die I draw my last initial mana source and Belch him out with Xantid protection!

Round 2 - Zoo
G1 - Turn 1 Belcher, turn 2 activate.
G2 - Turn 1 Empty for 12 ... he loses is very short order.

Round 3 - Glimpse Elves
G1 - Turn 1 Belcher Activate with Land Grant in hand!
G2 - Turn 1 Empty for 12 easily gets there.

Round 4 - ID

Round 5 - ID

Round 6 - Reanimator
G1 - Turn 1 Moon but he has 2/3 Petals in his deck ... Iona on red on turn 2.
G2 - Both mull to 6, I Empty for 8 turn 1, run into Force, but my 6 goblins get there!
G3 - I mull to 5 and he mulls to 3! This was sick. I win on turn 3 after I rip Belcher off the top on turn 2 and activate it turn 3!

Round 7 - Uwb CB Weird Stuff
G1 - Turn 1 Moon and I proceed to draw pure fucking shit then get locked out of the game after he draws both his basic islands and casts CB then Jace.
G2 - Turn 1 Swarm, turn 4 Belcher + LED.
G3 - Turn 1 Moon locks him out this time. I Ritual out a SSG and he gets there in 8 turns! Moon was pure devastation in this matchup.

Round 8 - Piece of shit who played out the top 4 at 1:20 A.M. and the finals at 2:15 A.M. on a wednesday night (some of us have work during the weekdays, inconsiderate dick): UWg Probasco CB garbage
G1 - He gets a nuts draw and I mull down to 5 since I am unable to find an IMS or a wincon.
G2 - My opening hand is: 2x ESG, Tinder Wall, Desperate Ritual, Rite of Flame, Empty the Warrens, Petal. He keeps his opening 7 so I know he has Force, I play out Petal, Wall, sac wall and decide to cast Desperate Ritual first since if that gets countered I save Rite for another day, it resolves, I play Rite, he Forces, double ESG into Empty for 12, GG.
G3 - I mull to 5 or 6, he keeps his opening 7 yet again, and it seems he just has an answer for everything I do. The CB shit normally doesn't run this good, but his deck was just loving him. I EtW on turn 2 for 8. They get in a swing before he plays Trinket Mage fetching EE. He then plays: CB on turn 4, Top + Goyf on turn 5, another Goyf on turn 6. Sad times :( I leave the store at 2:45 A.M. ..... we now have a new store policy to avoid this in the future, but come on, this is fucking ridiculous. I don't give a shit that I lost, its the principal, this is probably the most selfish act I have ever seen in Magic, even one of the store owners (the one who was there at the time) was advising a split because he ... has to work in the morning, but he couldn't force a split so we can leave. Even after the owner said "lets wrap this up", he asked the owner if we could pick up the finals next wednesday and the owner just scoffed and walked away, as we began to play out the finals.

I have to say, Blood Moon was .... AWESOME! The matchups where it was worthless it is still better than Manamorphose in every way. Moon adds the same amount of mana that Manamorphose does and gives you 15 bombs instead of 11. Extra storm that Manamorphose adds does not make up for how amazing this card is when you have to mulligan and open up that sick had with 2x rituals and the Burning Wish you can't possibly cast but see a Moon. This list is just stupid fast and is certainly the most consistent Belcher list I have ever tested. The board was great. Serum Powder is there for the matchups you have to mull really hard for a Belcher kill, or is just better than Moon, Wraith, or Seething Song (always sided out 3 in the blue matchups and brought in Powder).

I tried siding in the 4th EtW in the CB matchups so I can keep a hand without Swarm and Powder gives me the ability to mulliigan aggressively into it. I am not sure if this is the correct play but, it seemed to work out pretty well. I have has such bad experience with BW in the past against CB because it forces you to go all-in. I really want to replace Telemin Performance with some kind of sorcery that makes a flying token of some kind so that card isn't totally worthless. I just really like EtW for playing into Force and defying that card and not making me keep marginal hands with Swarm in them.

Telemin Performance was not played but I didn't play against a single combo deck or Garden. I still really like Telemin Performance, especially against Reanimator, that would be cool as hell and most likely better than Goblin tokens that attack once and meet Blazing Archon a turn later; your chances of hitting an Iona are quite good! Thoughts, comments?

The Bloodmoon strategy is really cool, I tried using Bloodmoon/Magus of the Moon in the past in the G/r builds and they just randomly boned the opponent when I had an otherwise unkeepable hand. I also managed to Living Wish into a Magus of the Moon quite often and make opponent's just drop their jaw to that awesome bit of tech.

Also, I think Balance of Power (yeah, look it up) is a seriously underrated SB card for Belcher considering it's clearly superior to Diminishing Returns on T1 and you easily have the mana for it compared to TES considering Manamorphose and all. It's a significant improvement to the deck's non Empty the Warrens win rates for sure. Go go random crap from Portal :)

Not certain what you'd use for flying token generator Sorceries other than Decree of Justice, but I've tried it before and the CC was too much.

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Originally Posted by yankeedave

The deck is inconsistent,

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I don't think so, the deck can actually go off fairly consistently.

The main reson why noone plays this: There is no skill involved. You mulligan until you have something keepable and then hope the opponent doesn't have anything to stop you.

Of course sometimes this will pay off, but especially players who are better than most of their opponents would rather decide the match with playskill than with praying.

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Originally Posted by BreathWeapon

The Bloodmoon strategy is really cool, I tried using Bloodmoon/Magus of the Moon in the past in the G/r builds and they just randomly boned the opponent when I had an otherwise unkeepable hand. I also managed to Living Wish into a Magus of the Moon quite often and make opponent's just drop their jaw to that awesome bit of tech.

Also, I think Balance of Power (yeah, look it up) is a seriously underrated SB card for Belcher considering it's clearly superior to Diminishing Returns on T1 and you easily have the mana for it compared to TES considering Manamorphose and all. It's a significant improvement to the deck's non Empty the Warrens win rates for sure. Go go random crap from Portal :)

Not certain what you'd use for flying token generator Sorceries other than Decree of Justice, but I've tried it before and the CC was too much.

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Blood Moon is a lot better than Magus IMOP. Firespout can't answer it! Living Wish is interesting, it seems a worthy replacement to Street Wraith since he serves no other purpose than adding randomness and making the deck 56 cards. But there are numerous hands where you open up all acceleration + Street Wraith, were that a Living Wish you could wish for Magus or Deus t1, or in the blue matchups you could get Swarm.

What do you think would be worthy Living Wish targets in a Rg build? Off the top of my head I think:

Magus of the Moon is an auto-include.

Deus of Calamity would be absolutely fucking devastating turn 1 against almost anything, and it seems superior to Demigod of Revenge in that it doesn't give them a chance to recover, it just Stone Rains them until they are dead.

Ingot Chewer seems excellent as it makes Living Wish another out to CotV or Trinisphere or Needle.

I think 1 more would be excellent so I could cut Telemin Performance and have 4x BW targets, 4x LW targets, and 4x Swarm and 3x Serum Powder in the board. I loved this thing, it helped out a TON in some problem matchups.

What other creature could you wish for that would be devastating? Eternal Witness seems meh, Blurred Mongoose and Scragnoth are funny as hell but probably not very effective. How many good targets can you think of BreathWeapon?

Don't you have too many "Non-add-mana" cards?. 4 LW, 4 BW, 3 Empty the Warrens and 4 Goblin charbelcher.
This could let you many hands with 2 of them and not enough mana to explode at T1.

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Originally Posted by Gocho

Don't you have too many "Non-add-mana" cards?. 4 LW, 4 BW, 3 Empty the Warrens and 4 Goblin charbelcher.
This could let you many hands with 2 of them and not enough mana to explode at T1.

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You forgot 4x Blood Moon as well. And no, I have not cut a single bit of acceleration for any of these cards. Manamorphose is shit so thats a dead spot, and Street Wraith is filler, so not missing out on anything there.

And I know the response to this "well just think of SW as acceleration", which is quite wrong, about 67% of the time SW will be what you think it is and the other you will draw additional wincons which adds, IMOP, excessive variance. I like Street Wraith in the deck but ... he is quite worthless, if they ever printed another green/red ritual he would be out of the deck so fast.

But I am not advocating that anyone play my lists, just testing things out and trying a new approach to Belcher. Now that Stax and Dragon Stompy have died out in my meta, it seems a great time to bring the turn-1-wonder back! I don't think Living Wish is pushing things too far at all, jesus, it adds threat density and 2/3 of the entire deck is acceleration! But I will see how it works out. LW may be pure shit, you just never know.

I would not play Manamorphose AND Street Wraith (or Blood Moon AND Living Wish in the slots), but I agree that LW would worth the test.

What about Vexing Susher in the Wish target free slot?

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Originally Posted by Pulp_Fiction

You forgot 4x Blood Moon as well. And no, I have not cut a single bit of acceleration for any of these cards. Manamorphose is shit so thats a dead spot, and Street Wraith is filler, so not missing out on anything there.

And I know the response to this "well just think of SW as acceleration", which is quite wrong, about 67% of the time SW will be what you think it is and the other you will draw additional wincons which adds, IMOP, excessive variance. I like Street Wraith in the deck but ... he is quite worthless, if they ever printed another green/red ritual he would be out of the deck so fast.

But I am not advocating that anyone play my lists, just testing things out and trying a new approach to Belcher. Now that Stax and Dragon Stompy have died out in my meta, it seems a great time to bring the turn-1-wonder back! I don't think Living Wish is pushing things too far at all, jesus, it adds threat density and 2/3 of the entire deck is acceleration! But I will see how it works out. LW may be pure shit, you just never know.

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What your doing is messing up the ratio of accel to non accel cards in the deck though. Street wraiths and manamorphoses essentially remove 8 cards from the deck. That gives you a 11:41 ratio of accel vs. win cons. Thats roughly a 1-4 average meaning you should have roughly one win con in a hand of 7. If you remove streeth wraiths and manamorphoses for other shit, your now looking at a 19:41 ratio, which then almost becomes a 1-3 instead of 1-4. This will make the average hand have 2 win cons it, meaning less acceleration. On the surface the draw cards seem useless, but they play a very important role in the deck.

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Originally Posted by JonBarber

What your doing is messing up the ratio of accel to non accel cards in the deck though. Street wraiths and manamorphoses essentially remove 8 cards from the deck. That gives you a 11:41 ratio of accel vs. win cons. Thats roughly a 1-4 average meaning you should have roughly one win con in a hand of 7. If you remove streeth wraiths and manamorphoses for other shit, your now looking at a 19:41 ratio, which then almost becomes a 1-3 instead of 1-4. This will make the average hand have 2 win cons it, meaning less acceleration. On the surface the draw cards seem useless, but they play a very important role in the deck.

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I am not advocating playing what I do, just trying a new approach. And I promise you, I have played a lot of storm combo, I understand the numbers. It would be nice to not lose to a single Duress though. Manamorphose is garbage, I would not run this card ever, Street Wraith .. ehh, it gets boarded out most of the time that Moons are worthwhile, threat density is important, but I understand your arguments.

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Originally Posted by BreathWeapon

Balance of Power

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Slithermuse is strictly better, although it's not fetchable with Burning Wish. It's another possible Living Wish-target though, for those who are considering that route.

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Originally Posted by NiRVeS

Slithermuse is strictly better, although it's not fetchable with Burning Wish. It's another possible Living Wish-target though, for those who are considering that route.

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Forgot about him, Slithermuse is interesting, its a lot like another Serum Powder, especially against a deck like Enchantress or Lands where you mull into a hand of all acceleration and LW, you open 7 cards and have great chances of hitting a win con with the decks threat density. I am not sure how necessary it is but its certainly interesting.

I have been giving a lot of thought to Tomb or Urami and Gargoyle Castle. I like Castle better since it does not require an LED to cast.

Karakas is also an awesome answer to Reanimator, but between all the Moon effects and pure speed, playing defense with probably the most explosive deck in the format seems bad.

I see people using Ingot Chewer over Shattering Spree. What are the pros and cons for both cards? I am trying to figure out which one I want to use.

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Originally Posted by j-flo

I see people using Ingot Chewer over Shattering Spree. What are the pros and cons for both cards? I am trying to figure out which one I want to use.

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You see people playing him in belcher? Well its pretty obvious what the difference is: shattering spree is a sorcery, ingot is a creature. Therefore burning wish can get shattering spree. Also, shattering spree can take out multiple targets. There shouldn't really be any question there as to whats better..

Yes, they are using ingot chewer in the sideboard. Multiple belcher decks on deck check and the deck that top sixteened at the most recent star city games open were all using 4 chewer in their board. There has to be a reason behind this right?

Takes out Chalice@1 for R less, can somewhat fight through countertop by aiming for the Top and using artifact mana to combo out that turn. That, and targeting multiple artifacts is rarely relevant (although bein able to take out Needle against an opponent holding counters is nice). Overall I'd say SS is better since it is more versatile versus blue decks, which are Belchers only truly bad MU.