[Primer] Eldrazi Stompy

That was a pretty stacked league run, but still only went 4-1 because variance is a harsh mistress:

R1: Julian Knab on regular Elves 2-0
R2: Colorless Eldrazi 1-2 (G2 & G3 were some of the most unreal draws I've ever seen in my entire Magic career. You could free Demonic Tutor every turn and not draw any better than that guy. :rolleyes: )
R3: Junk Nic Fit 2-0
R4: Jeskai Stoneblade 2-1 (Ziggy Stardust from the Legacy Mediocre League)
R5: Joe Lossett Legendary Miracles 2-1 (G1 I was lucky he didn't set up Terminus as I had a T3 overkill. G2 I had a slow hand after a mull, which didn't matter since he had T3 B2B anyway. G3 I had another ridiculous good start (his rest hand was SDT and 2x STP). Karma for what happened in R2.)

Hi everyone,

sorry for this budget considerations but i need some advices.
I'm trying to get the colorless build in paper (for budget and lack of experience/testing reasons), but so far, I can't afford the playset of Cavern of Soul and the last City of Traitors.

I'd really want to try the eldrazi deck at my LGS, but I was wondering what lands could I get in to fill the CoS/CoT slots ?

My manabase so far is :
4 Ancient Tomb
4 Eye of Ugin
4 Eldrazi Temple
4 Mishra's Factory
1 City of Traitors
1 Crystal Vein
2 Wasteland
2 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth

Need 2/3 others lands to fill the gap. Been thinking about Tower of the Magistrate, a singelton of Scorched Ruins, Sea Gate Wreckage, or just Waste as it help against B2B and Blood Moon, but none of those really convice me.
I know these changes will make the build way less competitive, but that's just the problem when you try to put a foot into Legacy I guess :)

Have you any idea guys ? What would you do in this case ?

Thanks in advance for your help ! Have a nice day

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Originally Posted by ChrisDissent

Hi everyone,

sorry for this budget considerations but i need some advices.
I'm trying to get the colorless build in paper (for budget and lack of experience/testing reasons), but so far, I can't afford the playset of Cavern of Soul and the last City of Traitors.

I'd really want to try the eldrazi deck at my LGS, but I was wondering what lands could I get in to fill the CoS/CoT slots ?

My manabase so far is :
4 Ancient Tomb
4 Eye of Ugin
4 Eldrazi Temple
4 Mishra's Factory
1 City of Traitors
1 Crystal Vein
2 Wasteland
2 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth

Need 2/3 others lands to fill the gap. Been thinking about Tower of the Magistrate, a singelton of Scorched Ruins, Sea Gate Wreckage, or just Waste as it help against B2B and Blood Moon, but none of those really convice me.
I know these changes will make the build way less competitive, but that's just the problem when you try to put a foot into Legacy I guess :)

Have you any idea guys ? What would you do in this case ?

Thanks in advance for your help ! Have a nice day

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perhaps you shouldnt buy the 2th city. riehu and i agree that it is quite a crappy card. i whould play 2 wasteland extra + 1 tower (if you cant afford those: 2 tower of the magistrate and 1 waste to have a better match vs blade and shardless decks.)

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Originally Posted by Noloam_

perhaps you shouldnt buy the 2th city. riehu and i agree that it is quite a crappy card.

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taking in consideration your latest manabase (same as riehu)
4 Ancient Tomb
4 Cavern of Souls
2 City of Traitors
4 Eldrazi Temple
4 Eye of Ugin
3 Mishra's Factory
2 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
2 Wasteland

and removing one city...what would you add? tower? 4th mishra? 3rd wasteland? karakas? crystal vein?
i personally find the 2mishra/2wasteland/1tower ok...and i share my concerns about the 2nd city as well...I am undecided if it should be replaced by 3rd waste or 3rd mishra...

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Originally Posted by the_goat

taking in consideration your latest manabase (same as riehu)
4 Ancient Tomb
4 Cavern of Souls
2 City of Traitors
4 Eldrazi Temple
4 Eye of Ugin
3 Mishra's Factory
2 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
2 Wasteland

and removing one city...what would you add? tower? 4th mishra? 3rd wasteland? karakas? crystal vein?
i personally find the 2mishra/2wasteland/1tower ok...and i share my concerns about the 2nd city as well...I am undecided if it should be replaced by 3rd waste or 3rd mishra...

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I think this could be perhaps flex land slot. I used 3rd Wasteland in my latest build yesterday. But if you are expecting a lot of decks Tower is good against then it should be Tower. Single Wastes in case of lots of hate etc. Karakas for S&T. I'm still not 100% sure what I will use in Prague. Perhaps single Karakas to have some additional outs vs S&T.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by kentheide

I am. And I hope i'll be able to dodge you and all the other Eldrazi players :-)

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Cool, let's hope so! :)

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Originally Posted by the_goat

Me :) I live 4 metro stations far away from tournament

Sent from my LG-H525n using Tapatalk

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Good for you! I'm still hoping I can make it already on Friday at some point to play trials.

Played noloam's build in a local tourney and reminded me a bunch why I feel like Leagues/Small events are such poor use of time if you are just working on optimizing a deck list.

W Pox
W Nic Fit
L Deathblade (g1, TNN + batterskull. G3 Manascrew)
W Miracles

So I didn't play any of the matchups which i think should determine a "correct" gp build.

I have narrowed down what I consider the relevant differences between colored builds (I have tried UR. WR, R, W) and colorless:

Show and Tell (5-9% of metagame) - Displacer makes a huge difference. Probably single biggest matchup that changes.
Shardless Bug & Jund (8%-10%) - Reshaper better than other 3 drops. But its actually close, since displacer gives you more jace answers. The big difference is that having lands which do something (factories/wastelands/Towers) is very valuable.
D&T (8%) - Displacer is just unreal in this matchup since its an actual answer to equipment. They can still kill your mana, but its net favorable.
Delver (10%) - I like being able to side up to 26 lands vs Delver. So colorless feels better since it has more ways to mitigate flood. The actual cards are basically same.
Mirror (8-10%) - This is a big one, because I expect the deck to be way more popular at this GP than it has been previously. And displacers are almost unbeatable in the mirror if they live.

Likely result is that I flip coin at the GP.

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Originally Posted by toor

Mirror (8-10%) - This is a big one, because I expect the deck to be way more popular at this GP than it has been previously. And displacers are almost unbeatable in the mirror if they live.

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i am not sure about this statement...i suppose you remove chalices from maindeck in favour of better mirror oriented cards...if a pithing needle hits the field naming displacer how does WG remove it? 2 worldbreakers are the only card otherwise the raw power of displacer ability is reduced to a simple 3/3 for 3 mana

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Originally Posted by the_goat

i am not sure about this statement...i suppose you remove chalices from maindeck in favour of better mirror oriented cards...if a pithing needle hits the field naming displacer how does WG remove it? 2 worldbreakers are the only card otherwise the raw power of displacer ability is reduced to a simple 3/3 for 3 mana

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Well I would bring ratchet bomb (you are likely to have enough dead cards that trading 1 for 1 with endless one is fine). So I would expect at least a couple of answers.

And if they needle your displacer you are still up a 3/3 (not worth much but worth something).

But the simple fact is 60% of games they wont have needle, and thats a large percent to have an edge in.

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Originally Posted by the_goat

i am not sure about this statement...i suppose you remove chalices from maindeck in favour of better mirror oriented cards...if a pithing needle hits the field naming displacer how does WG remove it? 2 worldbreakers are the only card otherwise the raw power of displacer ability is reduced to a simple 3/3 for 3 mana

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But you still need to play needles or revokers naming displacer for that to work - and even then your Needle/Revoker + Matter Reshaper is still outclassed by a Displacer. The CA from Reshaper at that point is offset by you needing to invest another card (the Needle/Revoker). Then, they still have the possiblity of landing a WorldBreaker (or ratchet bomb). And that's just the WG version. Obligator makes the WR and WRG versions faster than Colorless and allows for huge kill swings by stealing random stuff.

I'm not saying that Colorless isn't a good build, but I think it does lose in the mirror against colored versions.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by toor

Shardless Bug & Jund (8%-10%) - Reshaper better than other 3 drops. But its actually close, since displacer gives you more jace answers. The big difference is that having lands which do something (factories/wastelands/Towers) is very valuable.

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You can still have access to all those lands in the white version, I think, if you are OK with running Ratchet Bombs instead of World Breaker in the side. It's not too hard to cook up a mashup of Barook's manabase and noloam's manabase:

4 Ancient Tomb
1 Brushland
4 Cavern of Souls
2 City of Traitors
4 Eldrazi Temple
3 Eye of Ugin
2 Karakas
3 Mishra's Factory
2 Wasteland
3 Lotus Petal

This is 28 sources, so you'd have to shave one nonland card off of Barook's list, which I've been doing anyway because I am risk averse and think 24 land is probably too few. You have one fewer W/G source than Barook here, which is why I said you probably can't run World Breaker. But with 10 sources of white, 3 Displacer is probably fine, especially since it's typically the last creature you want to cast out of your hand (i.e. you usually aren't trying to slam a turn 1 or turn 2 Displacer since it just eats removal without getting any value). You can squeeze a Tower in the sideboard, which is where I think it belongs anyway.

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Originally Posted by iostream

You can still have access to all those lands in the white version, I think, if you are OK with running Ratchet Bombs instead of World Breaker in the side. It's not too hard to cook up a mashup of Barook's manabase and noloam's manabase:

4 Ancient Tomb
1 Brushland
4 Cavern of Souls
2 City of Traitors
4 Eldrazi Temple
3 Eye of Ugin
2 Karakas
3 Mishra's Factory
2 Wasteland
3 Lotus Petal

This is 28 sources, so you'd have to shave one nonland card off of Barook's list, which I've been doing anyway because I am risk averse and think 24 land is probably too few. You have one fewer G source, which is why I said you probably can't run World Breaker. But with 10 sources of white, 3 Displacer is probably fine, especially since it's typically the last creature you want to cast out of your hand (i.e. you usually aren't trying to slam a turn 1 or turn 2 Displacer since it just eats removal without getting any value). You can squeeze a Tower in the sideboard, which is where I think it belongs anyway.

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World Breaker isn't the problem when you cut Brushland as there are still plenty of green sources for World Breaker. Displacer suffers from less white sources. If you wanted to, you could probably cut a City instead. I see it more as an unbeloved, necessary evil than a sacred cow that can never be cut.

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Originally Posted by Barook

World Breaker isn't the problem when you cut Brushland as there are still plenty of green sources for World Breaker. Displacer suffers from less white sources. If you wanted to, you could probably cut a City instead. I see it more as an unbeloved, necessary evil than a sacred cow that can never be cut.

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For sure you could do that, although lowering our Sol land count to just 12 makes me worry. You really don't want to keep hands that don't have some kind of fast mana in them, so every time you cut some of the fast mana, you are increasing the mulligan rate of the deck.

For reference my mana base for the WR(+g for world breaker in the side) is:

-29 mana sources.
4 Ancient Tomb
4 Eldrazi Temple
4 Corrupted Crossroads
4 Cavern of Souls
3 Eye of Ugin
2 Mishra's Factory
2 City of Traitors
1 Karakas
1 Tower of the magistrate
4 Lotus Petal

And it's been working pretty well - even with the tech of Tower and Karakas MD.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by the_goat

taking in consideration your latest manabase (same as riehu)
4 Ancient Tomb
4 Cavern of Souls
2 City of Traitors
4 Eldrazi Temple
4 Eye of Ugin
3 Mishra's Factory
2 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
2 Wasteland

and removing one city...what would you add? tower? 4th mishra? 3rd wasteland? karakas? crystal vein?
i personally find the 2mishra/2wasteland/1tower ok...and i share my concerns about the 2nd city as well...I am undecided if it should be replaced by 3rd waste or 3rd mishra...

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I whould add another wasteland. The tower plan is not perfect with wasteland in my opinion. If you use wasteland, you have to choose between activating tower and playing a treat. I think i only like the tower in my no wasteland build. I have had good results with both



For the people saying that colorless is bad in the mirror: if your only solland gets wastelanded, you are far from home and displacer is not going to fix it for you then

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Originally Posted by Riehu

I think this could be perhaps flex land slot. I used 3rd Wasteland in my latest build yesterday. But if you are expecting a lot of decks Tower is good against then it should be Tower. Single Wastes in case of lots of hate etc. Karakas for S&T. I'm still not 100% sure what I will use in Prague. Perhaps single Karakas to have some additional outs vs S&T.

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Karakas? I really thought that that hype was over. Ive had situations in which i had eye/urborg/karakas and i was casting no eldrazi's, because of the lack of colorless mana :(

I now ended 4-1 a league :(. I had the one off faerie in my opener vs br reanimate. He opened with thoughtseize into unfair stuff. The faerie had let me down man :(

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Originally Posted by Noloam_

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Karakas? I really thought that that hype was over. Ive had situations in which i had eye/urborg/karakas and i was casting no eldrazi's, because of the lack of colorless mana :(

I am now 3-1 in a league. I had the one off faerie in my opener vs br reanimate. He opened with thoughtseize into unfair stuff. The faerie had let me down man :(

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Yeah haven't tried that in a long time. Perhaps a no go then. Unmask or Thoughtseize are the reasons I don't like faerie anymore as discussed.

Had another league. 3-2 this time.

RUG Delver 1-2 (he went first g1 I played g2 and he won g3) it really depends on who goes first many times
Belcher 0-2 T1 14 goblins and 2nd game T1 Tendrils kill gg
Infect 2-0
UW Eldrazi 2-0 Wasteland MVP (funny that noloam just brought this up)
Jund 2-0

I'm still happy with the build which is this http://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/426187#online though I'd like to find room for 1-2 spatials for SB but don't know how. Maybe by removing 1 all is dust and 1 endbringer but not so sure yet.

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Originally Posted by Riehu

Yeah haven't tried that in a long time. Perhaps a no go then. Unmask or Thoughtseize are the reasons I don't like faerie anymore as discussed.

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yes you might be right :(. perhaps the 1 city is also the perfect build as i stated earlier. i love to hear the long run experiences. but i think my discoball package needs them in the combo matches :(