Printable View
Hmm, so what did you lose to? Faeries or Dark Belcher? Or was it a 4-way split? Also, were you missing any number of MD Propagandas at any point? Finally, did you feel the red-hate wasted seeing your match-ups?
Congratulations, though. Oh yeah, and it would be awesome to have Kadaj write a new opening post since the deck has come such a long way, with actual semi-optimized lists et al.
Hi, It's my first post in this topic.
The topic is honestly huge, I read back the last dozen of pages... I would try to sum up the situation, because it seems there are 2 viable "ways" both with pro&cons obviously, 2 most "promising" strategies.
Fow, counterspell, 3 finishers, shakles, fact of fiction and about 23 mana sources are staples.
1) fetch + brainstorm + explosives + spell snare + manipulation (impulse)
respectively in place of:
2) island only + ancestral vision + powder keg + chalice of the void + all_board_control (propaganda maindeck)
The choices are tied together, you can't play explosives in monoU, so that all is connected.
The first has better early game with brainstorm+snare and uses singleton basic lands with explosives (can deal with stuff cc3, can topdeck and destroy cc2 the same turn, faster than keg). Brainstorm is good also to reshuffle back dead card like finisher in early game + help in building up lands, searching the third, forth, ecc...
The second version with vision has a weakness if you are stuck at 2/3 lands and you didn't start with ancestral vision turn 1.... because fact or fiction cost 4, and so if the lands don't come up you are in big trubles. This version cannot manipulate, cannot reshuffle back bad cards (not only the finishers but sometimes back to basics also).
I justify the use of ancestral vision ONLY if there is *chalice of the void* maindeck, that is a very big bomb in some match.
The latter has also early game problems BUT can compensate with all the board control pieces maindeck (4 propaganda)
I am testing idraleo version of the deck and I must say it performs very good (23 lands, draw= vision+fact, counters= fow + counter + 3 chalice + 3 cryptic command, board control= 2keg, 4 propaganda 3btb, 3 shakles, winner=3).
For example chalice@2 even if stopped my counterspells (but still I have cryptic command and fow) completely shuts down loam deck he cannot play 80% of the deck (confidant, goyf, wish, loam, assault is useless without loaming), he is on topdeck and you can buy a lot of time (btb, propaganda hits him much) until swing or steal with vedalken shakles.
Chalice can turn very hard match up into winnable match up, so it's a slow card, but quite powerfull. I think versions without chalices have troubles with combo (say belcher or FT), every orim chant is a must counter and is not hit by snare.
I don't know if chalice is *always* strictly better, because sometimes you face decks that are not hit by that (white stacker, dragon stompy, affinity, control decks with deed + explosives, dredge, goblin, maybe aluren) or you miss the "tempo" (stifle+naught, you fow, they fow on turn 2 only because you lose the dice roll, it's quite frustrating).
So I think it's a metagame call.
EDIT: discards dont's scare either version because the former has brainstorm, the latter has huge draw. Also if they duress/seize it's hard for them to decide you have counters + board control, so if they took board control (otherway they lose to a btb or vedalken for example), you still keep the counter, and vice versa.
The T8 were not played out, opponent score was deciding after 7 rounds. I've gone with 5:1 into the last round, defeated Stax and was one of 3 guys having 6 won games - unfortunately with the lowest opp score.Quote:
Originally Posted by Eldariel
MD Propagandas:
would have been really necessary against Ichorid / Dredge - the only card that may save your life preboard. As I didn't play it, I just scooped and went for the other two games where a double Propaganda followed up with a crypt has been game. I didn't have the force G3 to stop his Breakthrough so he killed me before I could lay down Propaganda.
Against Elves, it would have been useful too preboard, but EE @ 1/2 and Shackles have been devasting enough for my opponent anyway. G2 Propaganda was just the "I win with a 200% probability".
BEBs:
The one Hydroblast in the maindeck list is just a Typo - I played exactly 60 cards, never planned to use one maindeck.
I went for 5 BEBs in the SB because there were several Burn / Goblindecks preparing at the tables. They paid out against Dragon Stompy at least.
Just as an update, I'm working on the new opening post but obviously I haven't finished yet. I'm trying to make sure I have a balanced slate of decklists representing the various ways MUC has been built over the past few months.
Anyway, congratulations on your finish Doks. My one question would be if you felt as though Mana Leak carried its weight, as whenever I employed that card I always felt thoroughly underwhelmed, which is actually a major part of the reason I pushed my own versions of MUC in the direction they've gone.
As far as Chalice of the Void goes, it's awful in MUC. That was established a long time ago (30 some odd pages in this stupidly long thread), as it requires garbage like Chrome Mox and Thirst for Knowledge for it to be useful. Also, I urge you to actually test my version before making assumptions. There are almost no early game issues because there's a minimal likelihood that you'll actually have dead cards in your hand. For example, I kept a hand that was something like Shackles, Keg, Keg, Ancestral Vision, Land, Land, Land, against and unknown opponent who turned out to be playing UW Landstill and won handily. Why? Because AV is an absolute bomb against other control and because this deck has very few dead cards against any deck in this format.
For the record, I don't think this is necessarily true. I played a UBG Landstill deck once with three maindeck Chalices and none of the dumb gimmicks to go with it (no Moxen, no Thirsts, though I did have an Academy) and it was pretty awesome. It was effectively the deck's win condition -- where, for other control decks, the plan was "play a fat creature and swing a few times", here it was "drop Chalices at every relevant value where the opponent's deck has spells, then beat them to death with Factories"*. And, of course, you can also drop it earlyish for 0, 1, or 2 against various decks (Storm, Threshold, Slivers) and piss them off greatly thereby, so it's a versatile and useful card all around.Quote:
Originally Posted by Kadaj
Granted, UBG Landstill and MUC are rather different decks, but my point here is that Chalice of the Void can be a perfectly powerful card in its own right, and doesn't require any of the attendant gimmicks to be good.
* Interesting fact: I never once actually killed an opponent with Factories. They conceded first every single time.
The reason I state that it requires Chrome Mox and Thirst for Knowledge to be useful is because MUC is not a deck that can take advantage of Chalice of the Void in any proactive way, and especially not when the first value it can be dropped where it'll be relevant is 1. Without Chrome Mox the earliest you can do that is turn 2, which isn't exactly the best time to be tapping out. I mean, I did test it for quite a while, and it was in vogue for a while as well. The problem is the lack of consistency and power provided by it, and the risks it poses in terms of dead slots and whatnot.
Mind you, I'm not debating that Chalice of the Void is a powerful card on its own, I'm merely stating that it's not viable in this deck without the addition of several cards of questionable value, which makes Chalice much weaker than it could be.
Two Thoughts:
Can Misdirection find any slots in the latest decklists of MUC? I personally like to run 2 maindeck as the 13th and 14th "counters" after FoW/CSpell/SSnare.
Is Accumulated Knowledge even worthwhile without the Inuition engine? I would need test results but theoretically thinking AK has potential as long as you get to see more than one copy of it. Also, AK has good synergy with and would be a good pitch to a FoW/Misdirection/FoF. FoF is definitely a 4 of but could 4 AK's replace 4 Impulses or 4 Ancestral Visions?
AK is a terrible pitch to Fow or MisD, because then it shuts down the AK engine. For sheer card advantage, better to play Think Twice. However, you will find that in this deck, the card advantage is immaterial compared to the selection of Impulse.
Kadaj, are you serious? Playing chalice doesn't mean I *must* play crome mox and thirst!
Please read carefully what I wrote, because I think you just read a couple of lines and passed over it.
I play 4 fow 4 counterspell 3 chalice 3 cryptic command as permissions, 4 ancestral vision 4 fact or fiction as drawer, I have ZERO card @ cc1, so I can blindly set chalice @1, and sometimes also @2 making many decks just scooping (futhermore there is a trick with cryptic command so that I can also safely play chalice @2).
It's impossible for a control deck to counter everything, that's where chalice shines, it's obviously more powerfull than counterbalance
two week ago I have played a shadowmoor draft and I saw a beautyful creature for this deck:
Ghastlord of Fugue.
This creature is, in my opinion, a card especially for decks as MUC.
The cc is 5 and It's a 4/4 unblockable. when it deals combat damage to a player that player reveal his hand and you may remove any card from it!
It doesn't have any kind of removal-protection, unlike Morphling and Rainbow Efreet.Quote:
Originally Posted by Shivanking
Yes, but it has the best form of disruption imaginable.
Even if you just protect it for a single turn and hit with it just once, it will reveal your opponents entire hand, give you intimate knowledge of their game plan and what cards you should save your counters for, and deprive them of the single most threatening card in their whole hand.
Thus just one strike from Ghastlard is typically enough to change you from a losing position to a winning one.
Well, it dies to Swords, it dies to burn, it is a 5-turn clock instead of a 4-turn clock, it can be stolen, bounced, countered, and otherwise be negated. If you were going to play an alternate 5cc creature besides Morphling or Meloku, which I would not recommend, Teferi is clearly better.
Also, if this deck is losing heavily on a board position, it's probably also losing the game, so I don't think our buddy Ghastly is turning much around against a Tarmogoyf that is bigger than he is.
If you want Chalice to be good you pretty much have to be playing Mox and Thirst. I'm sure you will attempt to refute that, so I'll provide my well tested reasoning for that statement.Quote:
Originally Posted by slyfer
The earliest you can play Chalice at 1 is turn 2 without Mox in your deck. Now let's look at the commonly played cards that Chalice at 1 actually stops for the three major decks in Legacy (Goblins, Landstill, Threshold).
Goblins:
Lackey and Aether Vial
I don't know about you, but usually when my opponent is playing Goblins and has a Lackey or Vial in hand it comes down on turn 1. That means your chalice will almost invariably be too late to do anything relevant.
Threshold:
Brainstorm, Ponder, SDT, Mongoose, Thoughtseize/STP/Lightning Bolt
This is where Chalice can actually be solid regardless. However, to accurately evaluate Chalice in this situation you have to look at what it's actually doing. You have paid two mana, and tapped out most likely, to stop your opponent from playing four to five cards. That's assuming they actually let Chalice resolve, which I find unlikely. However, what have you really done?
If they had a SDT it was coming down turn 1, and its equally likely that if they had a Brainstorm or a Ponder it was used on turn 1 as well. If in fact they did get turn 1 SDT through then your Chalice's effects are significantly mitigated because they will be able to just continue cantripping, or even dig for an EE to remove it. Thoughtseize, STP, and Bolt are all stopped cold by Chalice, but none of them are particularly relevant in this matchup anyway. Yes, Chalice at 1 will stop a Mongoose cold in most cases, but you might as well just play a Meddling Mage naming Mongoose in that situation.
Is Chalice potentially a bomb against Thresh? Yes, but only when it comes down turn 1, or when you get really lucky.
Landstill:
STP and Brainstorm
Congratulations, you spent two mana to cut-off access to an already dead card and a cantrip. Great trade that is.
Now, you can say something like "Well no control deck can counter everything!" (which in fact you already did) in attempting to justify Chalice's inclusion, but that's foolish because MUC doesn't have to counter everything. Why do you think all of my versions play so much card-drawing and Board Control? So I have access to a large amount of varied and high effective answers to potential problems an opponent could pose in a match.
I don't think saying that Chalice is unplayable without Chrome Mox and TFK is a fair statement.
I play Chalice in my sideboard. I happily bring it against storm combo, thresh, burn and some other random matchups.
The card is very strong with or without Chrome Mox.
If my meta were composed predominantly of storm combo, thresh and burn, I wouldn't hesistate to play Chalice maindeck without Chrome Mox.
But in many metas, I don't think it warrants maindeck inclusion though.
So you' re assuming that 3shold will get ever SDT on turn 1 and goblin won' t keep an hand without Lakey or Vial on turn1. On the thought your logic is right, but on the percentual the games where Chalice hurts opponent gameplan is even more than those where it is useless.
BTW, Landstill and Thresh are good MU even without Chalice and Goblin is viable and not ever a bad MU; all those mu are good\playble even without Chalice, and Chalice simply let you get more advantage. Landstill without Brainstorms performs bad Forces and can't manage at best theyr hands, and Chalice sets on 1 hurts a lot Thresh at every time of the game.
Last of all, assume that your best 1st turn play is a suspended AV, not island-mox-chalice. A first turn Chalice in this deck is not supported well as it is in another decks because it not a lock piece for us, but a simply way to waste less cards and took our opponent to did some unusual move and turn the game in the direction we want it goes.
No, that's actually not at all what I was asserting. What I was attempting to convey, although apparently not well enough, is that Chalice is a win-more card in the best of circumstances and a terrible card in the worst of circumstances.Quote:
Originally Posted by idraleo
First off, Goblins is not a good matchup for this deck. Period. Chalice is terrible against Goblins anyway, regardless of whether or not you stopped their turn 1 Lackey or Vial. Even in the best of circumstances it's not helping you because Lackey is not problematic after turn 1, and Vial is less effective if played after turn 1 as well. Chalice does nothing against Goblins other than take up space in a matchup where you cannot afford dead cards if you don't want to get steamrolled.
Second, you should be crushing Threshold without wasting slots on Chalice as it is. Chalice isn't improving the percentages here, it's just shifting the way you beat them. At any rate, I wasn't implying that Threshold always has SDT on turn 1, I was using that as an example for why Chalice isn't all that amazing there anyway.
Landstill is not so ridiculously reliant on Brainstorm that cutting them off from it will do anything of note other than be a minor annoyance, and get removed by EE and Pernicious Deed fairly quickly anyway. On that note, the same thing I said about Threshold applies here too. Landstill is a fairly positive matchup, not quite as good as the Threshold one however, and Chalice does not help that in any way.
I'll concede that Storm Combo is definitely a matchup where Chalice helps, but that's not so much because you can set it at one, but because you can set it at zero and make a huge difference. Then again, chances are you'll end up losing to competant storm combo pilot anyway because MUC is so ridiculously slow at actually killing an opponent that the combo player will have way too much time to bounce/remove whatever obstacles you place in their way before you can actually finish them off.
Burn, on the other hand, is not helped by Chalice nearly as much as it is by the 8 anti-red cards in my SB. BEB and Chill make that matchup go from about 35-65ish pre-board to at least the reverse post-board. BEB and Chill also have the infinitely more important purpose of making the Goblins matchup workable, something that Chalice doesn't help in any way shape or form.
Seriously people, there is a reason the chalice based builds were discarded a long time ago. Ask Doks, who used to play the chalice MUC builds a lot if I'm not mistake, as to his reasoning why he eventually put them aside. I'm betting the reasoning is because the other versions are exceedingly more consistent and powerful against the field at large. But that's just me.
Yep, i know too that the most amazing card against goblin is Propaganda and that post side you'll go to 4 BeB, but Chalice too helps us on comboish mu, that is a good percentual of the decks in my enviromnent, it cuts off 12 Burn cards enabling you to take tempo to get your Chills post side, shuts down Loam except by few cards.
And if we doesn' t go on Chalice anymore, what card should replace it that is so amazing against Thresh and Landstill on maindeck? Seriously, don' t say to go on Spell Snare, i' ve played it tons of games then cutted to go on Chalice, the best thing that he can do was did a random counter on Standstill. Seriously, i wanna know what card could be played maindeck that hurts Thresh, Burn, Comboish, Loam as much as Chalice do and helps in the same numbers of MUs.
As a half part vintage player, I like Ophidian very much. Since non-evasion critter and Propaganda don't achieve synergies, I tested Finkel (Shadowmage Infiltrator) in a MUCb shell and was quite pleased:
// Lands
17 Island
4 Polluted Delta
4 Swamp
// Creatures
4 Shadowmage Infiltrator
2 Morphling
1 Rainbow Efreet (Possibly Meloku, although he does not dodge massremoval.)
// Spells
4 Ancestral Vision
4 Counterspell
4 Fact or Fiction
4 Force of Will
3 Powder Keg
3 Vedalken Shackles
3 Back to Basics
3 Propaganda
// Sideboard (pretty much untested)
4 Duress (less dead cards against combo)
4 Extirpate (Loam is pretty sexy against MUC, if Big Blue cannot resolve B2B. Ichoridhate as well.)
4 Chill (Burn, Dragon Stompy, Goblins, TES to a lesser extent.)
3 Engineered Plague (Elves, Goblins, Ichorid to a lesser extent.)
Furthermore, I tried to exhaust Doks' fetchland-build by using Finkel and Hoofprints of the Stag (nice synergy, uh?):
// Lands
12 Island
4 Flooded Strand
4 Polluted Delta
2 Swamp
1 Plains
// Creatures
4 Shadowmage Infiltrator
2 Morphling
// Spell
4 Brainstorm
4 Spell Snare
4 Counterspell
4 Force of Will
3 Engineered Explosives
3 Back to Basics
3 Meditate
3 Fact or Fiction
2 Vedalken Shackles
1 Hoofprints of the Stag
// Sideboard
15 Relentless Rats
I expanded the B splash for Finkels, although they aren't that good without Propaganda. Hoofprints are very powerful with the ton of carddraw (2 active Finkles enable nearly one token per turn). You should not underestimate Meditate, as they are golden in the control mirror and acceptable against aggro.
In this build, yes, it did. I just needed this additional counter several times to survive the early turns, especially against the decks that throw out one bomb after the other the first 4-5 Turns (e. g. MBC -> Phyrexian Arena / Hymn / Tombstalker or Stax -> Ravages of War / Amargeddon / 3Sphere / Crucible / Smokestack).Quote:
Originally Posted by Kadaj
With an active B2B out, Mana Leak does not lose that much of it's strength so it was quite a solid choice this time.
@ the topic of a "CA-Critter":
I think Phid is outdated now with Augury Adept (I am a big fan of its lifegain ability!) out or a little splash for Finkel. I would really like to fit in 3 or even 4 copies of such a card drawing guy, but I feel the draw and search in form of EOT instants much too important and I don't like tapping out on T3 - we probably got to reduce the number of counters then.
Problem I see is that we play kind of "too much draw for too less answers" and a second question is in what kind of build (more permanent based which already runs tons of CC3 boardcontrol pieces or more instantrelying that already devotes at least 8 slots to draw and search and needs to cut other important cards) should we give it a try?
Maybe I could try sth. like this on my build:
-3 Impulse
-1 Mana Leak
-1 Fact or Fiction
+4 Augury Adept
+1 Land (U-Dual for firm EE@3 and possibly at 4)