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I haven't had time to read all your responses, but I just want to point out I was playing Entomb in the Punishing Fires version of the deck.
Entomb was pretty solid. It allowed me to go for Ring, Grove, Fires, Stronghold, Loam, Worm Harvest etc. Now with Revival being playable, a 1-2 of Entomb might not be terrible, especially now that MM is out of the format.
-Matt
Its okay Hanni, I have an entire thread for BGW loam that has been shunned by the entire magic community. As I look at your list could you add snapcaster mage as a pseudo eternal witness and traverse that route. With all of the cards you dredge you have to be able to find what you need in your graveyard.
Also, intuition => snapcaster, riptide lab, loam seems pretty legit with a stocked graveyard.(4 bolts+4 Fires=20 damage)
With brainstorm and bolt as your only targets right now you would have to add more gas to make it work... something like ponder instead of burning wish and fire/ice or stifle to help with mana screwing your opponent, something like a more controlling RUG tempo. If you added cantrips you could hide the cards you don't want to see in a matchup until you need to intuition for them.
Crusher ensures that you always draw gas and recurring burn with snapcaster can help hold the board until you get a finisher online...aka seismic/crusher.
You would lose multiples of your tutor-able bombs like EE and burning wish specifically but you would always be able to intuition for your one of's and engine to plow through the late game.
Something like:
24 land including
4 cycle lands
1 wasteland
1 riptide lab
1 academy ruins
4 goyf
4 crusher
4 snapcaster
3 intuition
4 brainstorm
4 ponder
1 loam
1 ee
4 bolt
4 fire/ice
3 seismic assault
It seems like a tempo list that has a back up plan...and a lot of burn!
To keep the brainstorming alive....why isn't punishing fires in your list(not my list)? Seems like an auto include as intuition finds the whole combo and that seems to be your plan here. More burn would be able to keep the plains-walkers/weenies down.
P.S. Matt: What has the revival been doing for you that Eternal Witness has not? I have gone up to two witnesses in my list due to its sheer ridiculousness in the format right now....especially with Volrath's Stronghold.
P.S.S. Why don't people play Nantuko Monastery in their lists anymore? Is a recurring 4/4 first striker not good enough anymore?
Revival is an instant-speed, "Don't grease me with Surgical" whereas Witness is more of a value-creature. I just like having the ability to instant-speed put a Seismic on top at EOT, then cast it, whereas Witness has to be done over two turns and cost 3+ mana, whereas this doesn't cost any.
-Matt
My argument with witness is that it is used against all of the tempo decks that are floating around the format right now. Where revival is card disadvantage, dependent on not seeing any hate, witness is card advantage and is seldom hated on. Witness for a plow or discard is golden in certain matches where you are trying to build card advantage for a win.
I'm fine trading Noxious revival for Seismic Assault. Know what's not cool? Witness for Assault, pass, get it discarded. I understand you get a 2/1, but honestly, I'm more worried about the hate, since Snapcaster + Surgical is heavily played.
-Matt
Intuition is also legitimate, Hanni. I don't "like" Brainstorm here. I think if I were going to run Intuition, I'd run it in place of Bobs and that's it (and run Harvest, obviously). Worm Harvest is as much the tits as Hanni is saying. I'm playing it in BUG and it's the bee's knees. But, I'm not sure I want to give up Black for it (since I love me some Black). Also playing Black yourself means you don't have to have GGG to cast it (since most of the time you're on RRRGG if you're lucky).
I'd almost be willing to run it as a 2-of tutor for Worm Harvest and more Loams and not drop Black. That way, you still get to play the everything, and if you get it, awesome, and if not, whatever. The only thing holding me back is the fact that if I'm running RUG Loam, I'd rather play BUG Loam. Don't get me wrong Hanni, I know you've tested RUG Loam and I'm sure it's great, but I really can't squeeze Brainstorm into this deck and like it. I know the synergy, I just can't do it. Maybe it's just old habits dying hard, but I've played Loam this way for a while with great results.
Hanni, what you shouldn't do is stop posting. I'd love for you to update us with testing and results, and maybe we;d all get more out of it instead of posting lists and arguing about it.
TL:DR If you want people to notice, do testing and let us know how it went, since we're all interested.
-Matt
I guess you can use it in response to a surgical extraction but if they have the snapcaster for the second surgical then you lose the assault to the shuffle effect anyways. Loam is harder to hit with surgical but singular graveyard removal has never hit loam very hard. Extirpate on your loam is bad but I would prefer that to a relic/crypt on the board because the rest of my graveyard is intact.
The card advantage issue seems to be relevant against a deck that builds 2 for 1's until it has an overwhelming advantage over the opponent.
Witness at least needs to be answered as well, as a 2/1 trades with snapcaster and mystic, more so if you brought back another creature(god forbid the other mystic) and they now have to waste a plow effect on the witness, and not a real beater, to prevent witness recursion from winning the game. Also Jace has little effect on witness beat-down.
Against decks with discard isn't loam heavily favored in the first place? With a solid loam enforced manabase and draw engine discard seems to be very ineffective and fighting 1 for 1's(targeted discard) and 2 for 1's(hymn) with a witness seems better than giving up a card to draw a binned card. Considering black decks will certainly have surgical/extirpates the shuffle effect is almost guaranteed to mess up your revival when you decide to play it.
I love the regrowth effect in the deck, I just see no reason to run noxious revival instead of the more synergistic eternal witness(which always seems to get cut from the deck anyways).
Eternal witness is the ultimate durdle card in legacy at least. You cast witness one turn, the next turn you cast seismic, and the turn after that you finally get to dredge loam to abuse seismic. While with noxious revival you can play out your cards normally and EoT put seismic on top to start abusing it with loam. And noxious actually makes extraction look silly. Also, 0 mana instant speed cards are typically sweet. All in all, noxious revival is a sweet card in loam.
Thanks :)Quote:
Originally Posted by Antonius
Well, I have made some changes to that list:
-2 Punishing Fires
-2 Grove of the Burnwillows
-1 Tarmogoyf
+1 Badlands
+1 Forgotten Cave
+2 Scavenging Ooze
+1 Liliana of the Veil
Liliana is simply amazing. Getting to BB is a bit of a trick, but with the 4th Badlands it's not too bad. The reliance on Mox Diamond is slightly increased, but that's the deck. I can always pitch future Moxes to her +1 anyway, when it comes up. Between your burn and removal and blockers, rarely have I played her and had her get attacked to death.
As for consistency, I never have rarely not had the mana, if ever, but this is only 5 tournaments, so the sample size isn't large enough yet. 6 fetches was plenty enough.
You are correct in staying that Goyf is not the greatest, since a lot of the deck is combo killing with Seismic Assault, and I find myself using him mostly on the defensive until he gets big enough. I still am not sure it should be gone.
I could give Crusher another try. He rarely dies to bolt if played properly anyway, but I like the 1G cost on Goyf.
There is such a thing as too much burn though. 4 Bolt and 2 Fire might be too little, but 4/4 sometimes (theoretically) seems too much. I could see myself adding one and cutting the 3rd goyf.
I am glad there are so many decisions though. Makes for a very interesting deck.
Oh, and as for Maelstrom Pulse, it's a lot of paranoia on my end. The Putrefy's are better 99% of the time, but you know, there is always that one little devil on the shoulder that says it's nice to have a card that kills everything.
Do you think complete lack of EE is a problem?
Have you considered a one-of Twilight Mire for fixing? You can't fetch it, but it seems fine with Loam, and you have a lot of black and green costs.
Since Misstep is out and CMC1 rules the school again, is anyone back to putting a set of Chalices in the board, or is it still not worth it?
Hey guys here's a list I have been testing. Let me know what you think.
Total: 60
Creature 14
4x Crusher
4x bob
4x gofy
2x grim lavamancer
Instant 4
4x lightning bolt
Enchantment 3
3x assault
Sorcery 4
4x loam
Artifact 6
4x mox
2x explosives
Planeswalker: 3
3x Liliana of the veil
Land 26
3 badlands
3 taiga
1 Forest
1 Mountain
2 Bloodstained Mire
2 Verdant Catacombs
4 Wooded Foothills
4 Forgotten Cave
2 Tranquil thicket
4 Wasteland
I do not know what I think about grim lavamancer. I love liliana. Everything else in the deck is pretty basic.
Trade 2 Grim Lavamancers for 1/1 or 2 of Maelstrom Pulse/Putrefy.
Hanni, there are everal problems with a blue build in my opinion.
You are running Life from the Loam as a one-of, and are relying on Intuition (or Burning Wish) resolving to make it work. Not only that, you can only get Life online on turn 3 or 4, instead of turns 1 or 2. This is a huge problem.
Furthermore, Intuition is a card that people will aggressively counter. Life from the Loam is inevitability, and each time non-tempo decks counter it, they are simply falling behind (although Spell Snare is a great Time Walk), since at some point they will not draw a counter, and theoretically they have no pressure.
Burning Wish might or might not be countered, but if people are aware of your deck, they will counter it if Life from the Loam would be bad for their current board state.
Another problem with Intuition and Burning Wish is that they are incredibly slow. I alluded to it before, but against decks like Delver, you cannot waste a turn achieving status quo. If they get you down to single digits before you stabilize, they can finish you off with Burn and Snapcasters, for which you generally have no way to prevent. This deck is a problem, as the finals of Charlotte showed us: it can race High Tide straight-up.
Now, you do bring up a good point about Bob: Bob is not very good in the Delver match-up. However, on turn 1, with a Mox Diamond, he achieves a lot: worst case, it slows them down from a first turn Delver, and eats up a Bolt. Best case, it survives, and it launches you into the 2nd turn with 3 mana on the table and 6 cards in hand, and a card that WILL take the game down on it's own.
I disagree however with you saying that a 2/1 with no equipment is bad. This deck (well, most versions) are very good at clearing the board. Bolts, Fires, Pulse, EE, Putrefy, Liliana, Seismic Assault... very little should be alive, unless they are f-ing Hexproof, which are a nightmare.
Bobs do attack a significant ammount of times in this deck. I am venturing to say that it's the deck that uses the 2/1 body more than any other. Hell, it's good because it can get in front of an unequipped Geist of Saint Traft.
Brainstorm is another story. I do not necessarily think this deck needs it, but the card is so good, it might work. If you say it works for you, great. You certainly are able to see a lot more cards, given the fetching and the dredging.
Came here to ask the same question. I'm torn right now because turn 1 chalice is just soooo goooodQuote:
Originally Posted by Richard Cheese
I think having access to one-drops of your own is too important to pass up.Quote:
Originally Posted by bradstone
MMS was so good precisely because you could counter an opponent's 1cc cards and then cast your own. Grim Lavamancer and Lightning Bolt might not look like much on their faces, but having them in your deck makes you more competitive without Mox Diamond and helps maximize mana efficiency. This deck is already kind of clunky because of its high concentration of two- and three-drop cards and being close to 50% mana (depending on whether you count cycling lands and Wastelands as mana or "spells"). I would not want to exacerbate that by running what is effectively another two-drop that warps my card choices and has really variable mileage in the format right now.
I mean, any deck with GSZ beats it by GSZ for Pridemage (3 mana). Blue decks beat it with virtually every counter they run - Force, Pierce, Snare, and Daze all counter a turn one or two Chalice at one. Plus, the longer you wait, the more inconsequential Chalice becomes; Chalice at one on turn one on the play may or may not be a total blowout, but turn two Chalice at two on the draw is significantly less impressive (and also the more likely scenario since you don't need Mox Diamond to resolve).
What does Chalice at one counter right now that's really backbreaking, anyway? It hurts burn/Delver but they have Smash to Smithereens for it and you really need to have one as soon as possible for it to matter (otherwise you're in 2+ cc burn range). It stops Brainstorm, Spell Snare/Pierce, and Plow out of Stoneblade but they have a lot of counters for it G1 and can board into removal in games two and three. It stops Mother, Plow, and Hierarch out of Maverick but the cards you care most about there are at higher CMCs. It does a number on RUG but only if you get it out quickly enough - otherwise they have too many answers, and let's be honest, your Chalice is going to look pretty silly on turn two when they flip their Delver.
I still don't think Chalice is good enough.
BTW, we need a banner, and I has one:
http://i18.photobucket.com/albums/b1...runch/Loam.jpg
http://i18.photobucket.com/albums/b1...runch/Loam.jpg
I think it'd look hot. Aggro, any chance you'd like to put this on the primer page?
-Matt
Sure. I still need to update that, thanks for reminding me.
I guess that will be my weekend project this weekend.
EDIT: I plan to add the following to the OP:
- Arguments for and against Chalice
- Arguments against adding blue
- Arguments for and against Naya / four-color builds
...at the expense, unfortunately, of the matchups section. If someone wants to ship me percentages and tips I can add those, but I'd prefer not to theorycraft the entire matchups section and I don't have the time to thoroughly test this deck against the Tier I decks.
Ran the Scg List from vegas at a lQ, placed 17th, out of 49 people, will have report up tommorow
Congrats!Quote:
Originally Posted by FlyingSkull13
I'm updating the OP now, although I'm pausing for tonight to gather my thoughts. Feel free to post corrections to anything I said in the first post (the second and third ones are still old).