[Deck] ANT (Ad Nauseam Tendrils)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by nickrit2000

If a blue deck has a top/counterbalance/goyf openning hand, then the chances of you winning the game is very slim regardless of the deck setup. That would be there nuts hand which doesn't happen that often.

I don't understand why people talk about if they have this ('the nuts'), instead of talking about more the average hand then the best hand.

I believe the black/blue tendrils deck without LED gives you the best chance of beating blue on a consistent basis. I've proven this through playtesting and I offer it to you guys as some advice.

Many players will play the 3 or more color version with LED and Chant most likely. I just like consistency, especially now since it seems like every blue deck has wasteland in it.

I agree my version is slower than the others, but I will trade consistency over speed any day of the week.

The goal is the win the game, not to win as quickly as possible.

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Ad Nauseam is anything but consistant. The cards you draw are never the same, and casting it doesn't scream I win. You can be at 8 life, flip your second ad nauseam and get bolted for the loss. If you want consistancy, go D-Day.

In a deck that has virtually no blockers, no real removal for creatures and relies on a card that loses you between 90 to 95 percent of your life total and is in fact more valuable the more life you have, the goal is indeed to win as quickly as possible. To say it isn't is nonsense. If you don't want to win as quick as possible, grab your doomsday and only pay half your life, but ad nauseam gets strictly worse the further into mid-game you get, while Doomsday and IGG only get better (obviously depending on the situation. for instance, don't D-Day when Playing against Brain Freeze.dec and certainly don't IGG when they have Force, Force, Stifle in their yard).

Pce,

--DC

EDIT:::

Here's my 60, my sideboard changes on a whim, don't even ask about it:

1 Tendrils
1 IGG
1 AdN
1 D-Day
1 Meditate
3 IT
4 Mystical
4 Duress
4 Pyroblast
1 Wipe Away
1 Chant
4 Petal
4 LED
4 Dark Rit
2 Cabal Rit
4 Brainstorm
4 SDT
4 Delta
3 Strand
1 Mire
1 Swamp
2 Island
1 USea
1 Tundra
1 Volcanic
1 Trop
1 Badlands

Whoops...

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Dark_Cynic87

Ad Nauseam is anything but consistant. The cards you draw are never the same, and casting it doesn't scream I win. You can be at 8 life, flip your second ad nauseam and get bolted for the loss. If you want consistancy, go D-Day.

In a deck that has virtually no blockers, no real removal for creatures and relies on a card that loses you between 90 to 95 percent of your life total and is in fact more valuable the more life you have, the goal is indeed to win as quickly as possible. To say it isn't is nonsense. If you don't want to win as quick as possible, grab your doomsday and only pay half your life, but ad nauseam gets strictly worse the further into mid-game you get, while Doomsday and IGG only get better (obviously depending on the situation. for instance, don't D-Day when Playing against Brain Freeze.dec and certainly don't IGG when they have Force, Force, Stifle in their yard).

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Ad Nauseam doesn't nearly lose you 90% of your life. An average AdN will cost you about 10 life. If you're sitting above 10 life, the vast majority of the time you'll be able to win off a single AdN, assuming you have mana floating.

However, I do agree that you need multiple backup plans with this deck. Ill-Gotten Gains is good, but far from enough - Doomsday is highly effective for this purpose.

The kicker with DDFT is that the skill level required to pilot it properly in the face of "bad" match ups goes way over the heads of, dare I say, most of the guys that are playing straight resolve AdN, shift into autopilot and win builds.

From what I have gathered talking to Emidln and testing the deck, DDFT has a very malleable combo strategy in that doomsday offers a great deal of flexibility in the face of hate. From the times that I have had the balls to try to pilot the deck and do it justice, I have felt as though I was playing control before in that I would use my life total as a timer basically for waiting for my opponent to make a mistake and go off with a hand that basically got stronger with every turn that ticked by.

I have seen a build that completely hrybridizes the strategy and has a semi-transformational sideboard that allows it to turn into a 100% AdN or Doomsday deck depending on the match as well as packing additional protection pieces etc and I can say with certainty that the build in question is probably the deck that I would least want to see across from me for a few reasons:

-I will have to guess after the first game as to whether I need to try to force them to combo early and fizz out OR if I am going to have to try to focus on getting as much disruption down as possible to fight the doomsday set up. Unfortunately, the DD set up can also pull fairly fast wins out of its ass too.

-Anyone with the chrome-plated balls to bring DDFT to an event is probably a very devious fucker of a combo player that understands the ins and outs of his deck and scenarios.


I'd rather see a straightforward race against a run of the mill AdN deck than a match of guesses in the case of a DDFT hybrid list any day.

I would like to play DDFT one day, but before i start learning the piles i want to know whats the difference betwen ANT and DDFT (with AN i supose), what about their matchups vs canadian, counterbalance or burn? An actual DDFT with ad nauseam is also welcome :D.

Kisses.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Dark_Cynic87

1 Tendrils
1 IGG
1 AdN
1 D-Day
1 Meditate
3 IT
4 Mystical
4 Duress
4 Pyroblast
1 Wipe Away
1 Chant
4 Petal
4 LED
4 Dark Rit
2 Cabal Rit
4 Brainstorm
4 SDT
4 Delta
3 Strand
1 Mire
1 Swamp
2 Island
1 USea
1 Tundra
1 Volcanic
1 Trop
1 Badlands

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Sideboard:

2x Doomsday
1x IGG
2x Orim's Chant
1x Plains
1x Scrubland
2x Krosan Grip
2x Rushing River
1x Rebuild
1x Extirpate
1x Grapeshot
1x Helm


There. Transformational sideboard for my list. All you have to do is drop out Ad Nauseam, you can drop out 1 to 2 IT's, a Cabal Rit, Lotus Petals if you want. I sideboard in the Scrub and Basic in place of 2x Petals and leave one in, dropping the third for a Grip or River. You drop out mostly your Tutors and accel along with AdN because you only ever really want to transform it into DDFT if you are up against control--Thresh, Team America, Landstill, etc.

Against Burn, which I have playtested extensively, IGG is the wisest way to go, and try to do it by turn 2, turn 3 at the latest. DO NOT AdN against them, and definitely do not Doomsday. The reason is that D-Day goes of turn 3, but mostly turn 4 for my build, and by then, with doomsday cutitng your life in half, it's a lightning bolt or Fireblast away from you losing, and they normally have it in hand if it's a good list. Emidln or someone just as competent should speak for Canadian and CB as I have much less experience in those matchups.

Pce,

--DC

DDFT has a much better blue match-up than straight up ANT. That's because you only have to resolve Doomsday, and everything else falls from there. With ANT, resolving Ad Nauseam still isn't a sure way to win. Also, DDFT only needs less slots for the combo itself (2-4 Doomsday, 4 Dark Ritual, 4 Lion's Eye Diamond, 1 Lotus Petal, 1 Ill-Gotten Gains, 4 Brainstorm, 4 Sensei's Divining Top, and 1 Tendrils of Agony), which lets you flesh out the rest of the deck with more lands than ANT, tutors/draw, and/or more protection. My personal DDFT build (which was greatly influenced by emidln's lists) runs 4 Duress, 4 Pyroblast, 4 Orim's Chant, 1 Wipe Away, and 1 Krosan Grip as protection, but can still win on Turn 2-3 if needed.

Straight ANT is still a contender of course - but I don't feel comfortable playing combo without Doomsday anymore. If only more players would take the effort to learn playing the card...

Doomsday is a great engine, but it really takes a lot of time to feel comfortable with it. I remember playing my first tourney after just a few test games, I failed so miserably, loosing to Aggro Loam and other decks that should be an autowin. Reading emidln's primer on MTGS (though a bit outdated) really helps here.
So for me there's no reason to run straight ANT, since DDay hybrid is fast enough to beat aggro consistently, and has a better matchup against almost all control decks.

I'm currently running something like this list and so far it has really been a blast to play. (just my manabase is a bit sucky :p)

Doomsday is must for storm that wants to succeed nowadays. And yes, more D-Days in the sideboard (board out AdN) is an excellent plan vs. counterbalance, especially as you only need to resolve D-Day (and Meditate)

You can go off with brainstorm and a top too.

Ok, someone has to ask it: Why exactly is Doomsday considered a very demanding (yet rewarding) card? No offense, I never really played this deck to make actual statements about this but what are you referring to? Adjusting your DD-pile to the deck you're facing? Or is it more about creating a gamestate which opens a short window to succesfully cast DD? I'm puzzled..

Search button for precise answers.

Off of the top of my head, it isn't just making piles, but the nature of the deck as far as knowing which protection pieces to use, timing and what you need to do to win when hate resolves etc etc.

There are huge posts on the deck all over the internet, many of which are made by Emidln. Look them up.

When you can combo off with what piles against what pieces of hate given your life total, protection, and anticipated disruption.

It's the anticipated disruption and hate bit that makes it more difficult than memorizing piles and basic addition.

While I don't think Doomsday is required it is still helpful. But regardless, you still take the good with the bad. I personally don't like the idea of Sensei's Diving Top in the place of Ponder, it slows the deck up by about a turn (from my experience); also, leaving the deck vulnerable to Pithing Needle is another downfall. While I like Doomsday I really don't think it is "necessary" in the current meta, it can help yes, and it adds a whole new level of versatility to the deck. I don't think it is necessary but playing a hybrid ANT DD list is certainly not a bad choice.

The deck is not vulnerable to Pithing Needle. You can, without much difficulty at all, use Brainstorm to break into your D-Day stack. I'd be more worried about them naming a fetch with their Needle than your SDT.

Pce,

--DC

EDIT: Not to mention you run bounce and either K. Grips or Ancient Grudges and Shattering Spree. Needle is irrelevant.

Doomsday isn't any harder than any other portion of the storm combo deck. It's just another set of choices. The choices with Doomsday are just all compacted togethter ahead of time. If you normally think out your lines of play accounting for an opponent's interaction this isn't really any different for you. I've found that is very different from how most people play storm though, which is why it's perceived as really difficult.

Navigating any storm combo deck through hate is an extreme exercise in resource management and statistics, so much so that Doomsday won't change much. More games will be won or lost on punting Brainstorms, Ponders, Sensei's Divining Top activations, fetchland activations, generally just playing the wrong land, playing protection incorrectly, and impatience than Doomsday piles. The general reason to not take a Doomsday hybrid into an event isn't any particular bad matchups, it's because most people can't handle the pressure of a couple hundred near perfect nonlinear plays to get the same set of Ws and Ls that just flopping a Goyf sideways while saying "RAWR FIVE DAMAGE!" gets you most of the time anyway.

Doomsday, and storm in general, really shines in the hands of a person who really knows their deck and the format. That the deck falls flat on its face at the slightest hint of a mistake and that most people can't identify the correct Brainstorm/Ponder/SDT choices to begin with means very few actually learn from their mistakes because they never realize they made them. Fucking up the order of 5 cards with Doomsday or getting greedy and losing to an Ad Nauseam flip is easy to diagnose. Drawing that Sensei's Divining Top with Ponder instead of the land against a Thoughtseize/Duress deck probably never even registers to you as you think "wow my opponent just had the cards to beat mine" instead of "I'm a fuckup and need to think of all the bad things that are likely to happen to me next time". I wish I could instruct people on how to do this, but I've tried writing about it several times without success (I'm either too poor a writer or have too poor of an understanding to explain it myself).

BTW, Pithing Needle is a problem. That's why I talk about siding against it so much. If you don't know that it's likely to come in and thus board against it, you're going to get wrecked by it. Sure, you can play around it, but it's not easy and becomes really draw dependent. You can also play straight through active CB/Top with Doomsday and a SDT in play (ask some of my opponents) but it's hard and draw dependent. (The problem is that in a hybrid you don't have a any (or a full set) of Ponders so you end up using Brainstorm to setup instead of wanting to use Doomsday for it. Ad Nauseam and Infernal Tutor help tremendously here, but it still hurts.) This is why we bring in KGrip and red blasts. Pithing Needle is why I board in Ancient Grudge against decks that have no relevant artifacts game one.

I'll keep that in mind, but thus far I've lost once because of a needle. Guess I'm just lucky...

Pce,

--DC

Considering how so many of us are splashing green for K-Grips out of the board, someone came up with the idea of throwing goyfs in the board. Y'know, board out Ad Nauseam, Chrome Mox, LED, bring in 3 K-Grips and 4 Goyfs, keep in D-Day and Iggy for combo potential.

You might search a few pages back where B.C. tried that in his UBG list. I don't remember his results with that experiment, but I think the creatures were Goyf + Tombstalker.

We originally tried that with Counterbalance Tendrils quite a while ago, where it was a transformational sideboard from Storm to UGbw Thresh with Dark Confidants (and then Tombstalker) and Goyfs in the board. The CB thing flopped, though, so we tossed the whole idea. It may work, but I see Tombstalker being the killer and Goyfs just being walls.

Pce,

--DC