15 lands...shit. I thought going 17 is bad.Quote:
Originally Posted by chinitoz30
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15 lands...shit. I thought going 17 is bad.Quote:
Originally Posted by chinitoz30
How do we beat TES? Even with 2 Counters they can just Silence and Pay for your Dazes.
I run
4 Force of Will
2 Daze
3 Spell Pierce
1 Vendillion Clique
and I can board in 4 Surgicals for Game 2. But TES is less graveyard reliant as compared to ANT
Silence is a bitch!
I know, I know... '15 Lands?! U MAD?!??' is also the reaction I had when I read a guy was playing 14 land. Yep, 14! And all non-basic. But then I tried for myself and I tweaked the manabase by removing 1 Volc & adding 2 basics (1 island & 1 mountain, against wasteland & Bloodmoon). As I said, I did quite some playtest with the list and it works like a charm.
Regarding the mulligan, I will answer with another question, because it seems some have eluded my previous post: In average, when your game ends (especially when you win actually), how many lands to you have in play? And therefore, how many lands does your starting hand really need to be playable?
As I said, to me in more than 70% of my victories, 2 lands are enough. 3 are awesome but not mandatory. And if I have 2 in my starting hand, sure it is great. But in the mean time, I can also mulligan until I have just one land and 2 business spells (ideally a creature and a cantrip or a counter).
What about you?
About TES:
Clique is a good card but the only window to use it would then be when your opponent is playing Silence. And this is not necessarily the best play ever.
You can prevent your opponent from developing his strategy by playing Sulfuric Vortex and/or Pyrostatic Pillar. Pillar comes earlier due to its CCM and will prevent your opponent from using Ad Nauseam too much. Vortex could eventually prevent your opponent from regaining life... and that's about it. So obviously not the best play either. I personally prefer Pillar in this situation and make sure it sticks to the board.
Thing is that, apart from any discard, Silence is the only out against us since Xantid Swarm gets bolted fairly easily. :wink: So you got to counter it, no matter what. Even if you only have one counter because it will instill doubt in your opponent's mind. Additionally, I ALWAYS keep a Lightning Bolt in hand to finish off a greedy/unlucky opponent after Ad Nauseam. A T1 Grim Lavamancer can also be a relevant in the same situation because it allows you to play around a Silence and deals the lethal 2 damages (situation extremely rare, I give you that, if your opponent pays a bit of attention to his life points and the board :tongue:).
Alternatively, if your meta is really heavy on TES, you should consider Leyline of Sanctity... :frown:
15 lands with only 2 basics is quite ridiculous. A few reasons why you should not be playing 15 lands:
1) It basically makes Snapcaster a dead card. I notice that your deck plays no Gitaxian Probe, meaning that Snapcaster + anything costs 3 mana or more. Hence you need to hit 3 mana or you may as well be playing Coral Merfolk for all it's worth (in fact, Coral Merfolk might even be better in 15 lands, since it turns off your opponent's Lord of Atlantis)
2) It makes your Price of Progress really awful. Price is one of the best cards in the deck, and having to always 2 yourself with it is not a good place to be. Having the option to play around your own deck and Price your opponent out is a really good out to have.
3) It makes Wasteland completely wreck you. If you ever fetch for a Volcanic and they Waste you, you're basically never hitting your 2nd land again. This turns off a lot of important things in your deck, most importantly the ability to double-bolt your opponent out from 6 (but also Price, Snap, etc).
4) It makes you unable to (or very difficult to) cast 2 spells per turn. This goes hand-in-hand with points 1 and 3, but bears repeating. Having the ability to Bolt someone out from 6, or Snap - Bolt, or Brainstorm - Bolt, or Brainstorm - Price, or whatever, is really important. If you have ever played with (or against) a burn deck, you will know that the bottleneck in that deck is not cards, it's mana. Given infinite mana, Burn would probably be the best deck in the format, but the problem is that it can't cast enough spells fast enough to win the game in a reasonable amount of time. The same applies here. None of the cards in this deck are very good by themselves, but the deck's strength comes from being able to both disrupt the opponent and present threats simultaneously, and that takes mana.
5) Flooding out is mostly a non-issue if you are competent at casting Brainstorm and don't just fire it off willy-nilly. If you found yourself flooding out with 19 land, you were either not mulliganning correctly or you were not casting your Brainstorms properly. In particular, I notice you are playing Thunderous Wrath, which is very counterproductive with Brainstorm and fetchlands in this deck. This is likely the root of your problem with flooding.
Incidentally, regarding your question in the above post, I tend to have roughly 4 lands in play when the game ends. About half the time I'm wishing I only had 3, while about half the time I'm wishing I had a 5th. I think hitting 4 land drops reliably is pretty acceptable. In particular, it allows you to Snap-Price, Snap-Fire//Ice, or allows for Snap-Bolt or Snap-Brainstorm while playing around Daze. It also allows me to cast Daze for free, Brainstorm the land away down to 3, and not feel horrible about doing so.
I might play 17 but I pRobably wouldn't do less than 18 lands. Snap becomes so bad
Well at least there are some answers coming up.
Despite its flaming-for-free tone, there are some interesting points.
As I said, if I intend to play more snapcaster mage, I will indeed raise the number of lands I play.
Gitaxian Probe, really? The only spell that would fit the bill would be surgical extraction. But I guess that was another one for free.
The basics are there against wasteland. I could, if I wanted to raise the number of land, add at least 1 mountain and 1 island, that's true. Just like I used to play before reducing this number.
I rarely have flooding issues. I mean, it happens every now and then, like everybody else, and I am afraid that a 'good' or 'bad' brainstorm doesn't necessarily always help. MtG is a card game which implies a certain Luck/Fail percentage, no matter how you look at it nor how many statistics you are doing prior to draw your card. Even by playing 15 lands, you actually can get flooded. A ridiculously low percentage but it exists nonetheless. But yeah, maybe I just don't now how to brainstorm/ponder. ;)
I stopped playing F//I even though I really like the card. But atm I do not feel the need to play it in my current metagame. On top of this, if I wanted to play it, once again, I would play more lands. Doesn't make sense otherwise, clearly.
So for you, 4 lands on board at the end of the game is the 'average' desired/comfortable number of lands. OK.
Went 3-3 drop at 7 round tournament GPT Strassbourg with Nivmagus build seen in few earlier messages.
First two rounds of extremely painful bad beats. Losing to Rug & Rug Cascade, matchups I rarely lose.
Get myself back up to 3-3, but know 4-3 ain't nearly enough for top8 and drop for highlander with RDW and go 4-1 for prices.
Nothing too exciting to write about but Clout of Dominus on Delver of Secrets carried it's weight against maverick pretty well and Nivmagus Dominated the "mirror" match (Trad. UR Delver) as excepted, shame that I had only g1 of "mirror", since opponent had made sloppy work de-sideboarding and deck-check hit us.
Alright, let's do some simple math here, shall we?Quote:
Originally Posted by Rocco111
First, we take as axiomatic that you want to actually use that second line of text on Snapcaster Mage and aren't playing it intending it to be Flash Coral Merfolk. Assuming that, we take as a fact that Snapcaster actually costs 3, since you are not playing anything at all in your deck that you can play off of 2 lands. Now, how often are you actually going to be able to cast Snapcaster Mage?
Assume we are not cracking fetchlands and that every land in the deck does actually produce mana. Note that if we take fetchlands into account, the calculation I'm about to present is actually even worse for you logically due to there being fewer lands in your deck, on average, so I'm doing you a service here by making this assumption.
There are 15/60 cards in your deck. Therefore roughly every 4th card will be a land. Assuming "average" case, you will hit your 1st land on turn 1, your 2nd on turn 2 (8th card), and your 3rd on turn 5 (12th card). Thus you will not cast Snapcaster Mage until turn 5, in average case, unless you simply want Coral Merfolk. Now, what does that mean in the context of Legacy? I'm assuming that because you know what mtgthesource is, you have some sort of inkling of how Legacy as a format works, and you can derive the conclusion yourself without my assistance.
Now, consider: Would you play Flash Coral Merfolk in Legacy? I wouldn't. Whether or not you want to is up to you.
Um...you'd maindeck Surgical? I don't know what to say to that...I'm specifically referring to the fact that your *maindeck* contains no way to get value off of Snapcaster before turn 5 (average case). How do you plan to rectify that?Quote:
Gitaxian Probe, really? The only spell that would fit the bill would be surgical extraction.
I'd like to see you cast a Goblin Guide into 2 more red spells off that manabase without getting blown out by Wasteland. Remember, you're not hitting your 3rd land drop UNTIL TURN 5. 5 IS A BIG NUMBER. I DON'T KNOW HOW TO STRESS THAT POINT MORE.Quote:
The basics are there against wasteland. I could, if I wanted to raise the number of land, add at least 1 mountain and 1 island, that's true. Just like I used to play before reducing this number.
Of course. How often do you have screwing issues?Quote:
I rarely have flooding issues. I mean, it happens every now and then, like everybody else, and I am afraid that a 'good' or 'bad' brainstorm doesn't necessarily always help.
I don't think you understand how Brainstorm works. Brainstorm is in the deck SPECIFICALLY to mitigate the luck factor of the deck. If you say that you are having luck-based issues despite playing Brainstorm, I think you are misevaluating Brainstorm.Quote:
MtG is a card game which implies a certain Luck/Fail percentage, no matter how you look at it nor how many statistics you are doing prior to draw your card.
Yes, that is how many lands are required for the deck to function properly. It can function on 3, but only if you're not getting any interaction from the opponent. And certainly not when your 3rd land comes down on turn /5/.Quote:
So for you, 4 lands on board at the end of the game is the 'average' desired/comfortable number of lands. OK.
Look, most of the things you are saying so far aren't either new nor making me a service. But I can still appreciate the logical, mathematical approach of your reasoning. It is valuable and I take it as such.
Now, in my low-land build, the use of Snapcaster is, as I stated earlier, rather the last resort than the automatic play. Hence what I said: 'either it is the lethal bolt or counter for victory' (that goes pretty well with your demonstration of the land drop per turn rate, which is fairly good), so I do not feel like rectifying anything. And yes, a first hand Snapcaster has quite some chances to get pitched on FoW. Coral Merfolk or Lord of Atlantis are indeed very good at this job, too.
I obviously agree with you about Brainstorm and was using the same logical way of using arguments you did earlier. Speaking of the use of Brainstorm, there was a very interesting article about it from some time ago. I guess that you are referring to it when you are talking about using BS correctly. I invite everyone to give a shot (including people being featured during the SCGs).
Thing is I am not trying to force people to play with this number of lands. On the other hand, I do not necessarily take it for granted that 20 or 18 or 22 lands ARE THE ONLY WAY. Whether you want to try it or not is up to you.
Played last Sunday at our recent Majors.
Lost to Show and Tell decks but pretty much raped fair decks. Most of the combo matchups boiled down to Game 3 where I have an opening hand of a counterspell but then just ran out before they run out of Combo Pieces. I'm beginning to think that Daze is weak in this deck against control and combo as they can most of the time pay for the Daze when going off.
blindspott, I totally share your experience in that matter. If you don't get a Delver out there, you will just eventually run out of counters or end up with taxing counters that they can pay.
I have somewhat better situation with show & tell itself, since I can bolt/brainstorm/daze before flusterstorm to make it harder to pay for it, but I lose to hardcast sneak attack if I don't get good beating going on.
@syfilisx
Even with an early Delver you somehow still need to draw most of the Counterspells. My opponent had like 2 Show and Tell and a Sneak attack on Game 3 and dropped them Turn 2 and Turn 3. Managed to counter 1 but the 2nd one resolved :( Well if I had the extraction as well that could have swung another way but I didn't.
Our sideboards are very very hard to customize at the moment. This is what I run and I'm not sure what to cut to add Counters.
2 Smash to Smithereens (Stoneblade and Chalice Decks)
2 Sulfuric Vortex (Stoneblade, MBC, BUG Control, Miracles)
2 Lava Spike (Fair Decks and RUG)
1 Fireblast (Fair Decks and RUG)
4 Surgical Extraction (Graveyardhate and Combo)
2 Pyroblast (Combo and Blue Based Decks)
1 Force of Will (Combo)
1 Flusterstorm or Vendillion Clique (Combo Non-Blue)
I find Vendillion Clique supposedly strong but as it happens, If you get a counterwar early on it's useless so I might go back to Flusterstorm. I seriously want to add another Counter in the Sideboard.
This deck is very weak to Show and Tell decks, no question, but I find that against Storm-esque decks I can usually get there off the amount of countermagic in the deck. Daze is the weakest counterspell, but unfortunately WotC only gave us 8 free pieces of countermagic to play with, like it or not. Unfortunately one of the strengths of Show and Tell (and has been a strength of the deck since it first became Tier 1 about 2 years ago) is that you can't effectively deal with the combo pieces with a blanket answer that doesn't otherwise suck balls, unless you go way out of your way to do so. One thing I used to play in Merfolk is Sower of Temptation (on the board, of course) to grab their Emrakul if they go for that plan; a similar plan seems not-horrible here either. Of course, you can go out of your way and do stupid things like Angel of Despair or Confusion in the Ranks, but in my experience that's reaching a bit too far.
Played a tournament today. Used the exact same list as posted on the previous page. Brief report:
Round 1 + 2: Vs. Myself
Seriously, it didn't matter what my opponents were playing, as I drew/fetched approximately 37 land over 4 games (for round 2 I counted 21, and for round 1 it was a similar number). That's not counting the number of land I shuffled away from Ponders and so on. As it happened, my opponents were playing RUG and UR Landstill, respectively, and I almost beat the Landstill Player anyway, although in game 1 I put him on the mirror rather than Landstill and was playing around his Delvers and Goblin Guides for far too long.
0-2 (0-4)
Round 3: Vs. Show and Tell
Game 1 he plays/fetches only basics and Griselbrands me on turn 4 or 5, from 9 life. I had the bolt if he went to Necro, but he chose not to. He attacked, I blocked with a Delver, attempted to bolt (my own guy, to prevent Lifelink), and he had the Force, so I couldn't win.
Out:
3x Grim
1x Price (he played around it in game 1, thought maybe he was playing a nonbasic-light build)
2x Chain (I think; this could be incorrect)
In:
1x Pierce
2x Surgical
1x Fire // Ice
2x Blue Blast
Game 2 he starts on Leyline of Sanctity, and we durdle for a but until he Shows with 2 extra. I Pierce + Daze, and then Surgical the Show. 2 turns later, like a master, he draws Sneak Attack and casts it. I Force and then rip Snap off the top to take that out of his deck too, at which point he scoops. This game he played a lot of nonbasics, figuring I boarded out Price (which I did).
Out:
1x Chain
1x Bolt
(or something like this?)
In:
2x Price
I brought out the point-burn because I saw him sideboarding only 3 cards, so I figured he wasn't bring out the Leylines, and if he started on Leyline again my burn was all dead. I think I boarded more cards than this, but don't remember what else I boarded. He goes for a quick Sneak Attack (on turn 4, off an Ancient Tomb) into a hand of Delver, Snap, Force x2, Blue Blast, Surgical. That did not go well for him, at all.
1-2 (2-5)
Round 4: Vs. Maverick
Maverick is basically a bye. Exactly what you think happened, happened. He played guys, I cast burn spells, a Lavamancer hit, his deck was kolded, and that was that. Of course, I sideboarded 9 (!) cards anyway, but it wasn't really a match. I'll share my sideboard plan anyway, in case anyone's interested:
Out:
4x Daze
2x Pierce
3x Force
In:
4x Submerge
1x Sulfuric Vortex
2x Smash
1x Price
1x Explosives
I wanted to bring in the Fire//Ice as well, but didn't have anything else to cut for it.
2-2 (4-5)
Round 5: Vs. Omni-Tell
Game 1 we durdled for a bit, then he cast Dream Halls (!). I Forced, he Misdirected. He Drem Halls'd into Omniscience into Brainstorm (0 cards) into Ponder into nothing, and then I untapped and killed him from 11.
In:
2x Smash (for Grim Monolith)
2x Surgical
1x Spell Pierce
Out:
3x Grim
2x Price (saw no red cards in game 1, figured he was monoblue)
Game 2 was uneventful. He never hit his 3rd land drop, I drew triple Goblin Guide.
3-2 (6-5)
At this point standings were posted and I realized I couldn't T8 even by winning out, so I dropped.
Notes on the day:
Big note: Show and Tell is not as bad as previously advertised. The matchup is eminently winnable. They just have to not draw the absolute stone nutter-butters, and sometimes they don't. Mulligan aggressively for countermagic if you know they're Show and Tell. My round 3 and round 5 opponents were nice enough to show me their decks ahead of game 1 (the round 3 opponent by shuffling with his deck tilted slightly towards me, and the round 5 opponent by flipping over an Omniscience while shuffling); given that information, making mulligan decisions to favor UR is not difficult.
Maverick is basically a bye with my build of the deck. My opponent missed a Batterskull trigger in game 2, which helped, but I probably had the game won anyway; I had the Submerge for it in hand. The deck is favored against all variants of midrange (Junk, Jund, Maverick, etc), but is particularly favored against Maverick.
Drawing lands sucks. Draw more Brainstorms. Perhaps cutting to 19 land is correct, as this is the second event in a row I've died to mana flood. More data is required.
Chain Lightning is very awkward and is probably my least-favourite card in the deck. Unfortunately the 4-of rule disallows playing the 8 Lightning Bolts I'd like to play and Shock (et al) is uber-bad.
Price of Progress is worth its maindeck slots, although frequently gets boarded out. I think the deck wants either exactly 0 or exactly 3, but nowhere in-between; the 2 in the maindeck is somewhat of a hedge for game 1 until you can decide the actual optimal number.
Goblin Guide is by far and away the best card in the deck. It goes to show that green is the "fatties" color, while red is the color with the 1 mana bear with 2 upside mechanics and no drawback. Every time I cast turn 1 Goblin Guide I feel like a total master. It's by far the most powerful thing the deck can do, and I keep almost any hand with turn 1 Goblin Guide and pretty much any followup play.
I would love to see the buiold that is so good vs Maverick. My buddy who plays Maverick says that he has never lost vs UR delver which I can believe, especially considering that for a time everybody locally was playing the deck when Andrew Schneider won his 2 Opens with it so he got to practice against it a bunch. It just seems like a rough MU for UR.
@Megadeus
The list with 4 Submerge as sideboard is very good against Maverick. I would list Maverick as a good matchup because outside of Life Gain there's not much interaction they can really play. Racing you is hard, they will die 1st before you do.
@Ertai87
Show and Tell opponents are very winnable you're right but they are usually still favored. On paper they have the upper hand as they almost run the same amount of Counter Magic as we do but they have more enablers and must counter spells. You have to be lucky to actually really beat them.
Check my list on the previous page. I haven't lost many matches to midrange decks of any sort. Jitte's rough, as is Engineered Plague, but outside of those 2 cards I think I've won almost every green-based midrange match I've played. As blindspot said, Submerge (and knowing how to play it properly) is very important in those matchups, and if you're playing fewer than 4, that's probably why the matchups aren't going well for you.Quote:
Originally Posted by Megadeus
On paper, you're right. By playing the matchup a bit today, I'd say it really amounts to the following things:Quote:
Originally Posted by blindspotxxx
Beating Show and Tell just by countering their combo pieces is certainly not going to work. That much is obvious; they have too many combo pieces and too much anti-hate. The real trick, I think, is to first present a clock, and then back it up with the aforementioned disruption. They can't go off until turn 3 or 4 (realistically; they could jam it on turn 2 if they either have the nuts or are playing around nothing; we discount the former cause it's unlikely, and we discount the latter because it's not difficult to deal with), by which time we can pretty easily have them between 8 and 11 life. At this point, pretty much any disruption we present ends the game on the spot; if that one combo piece doesn't resolve, they're probably too far away from reloading before we kill them.
Incidentally, and somewhat paradoxically, although I think it makes sense if you think about it, the hand of Force, Daze, Spell Pierce, Bolt, 3 land is not keepable against Show and Tell, while the hand of Delver, Guide, Brainstorm, Snap, 3 land probably is.
I think the matchup really boils down to a lot of luck and not much skill; if you have enough countermagic to stop them from killing you, then you win, otherwise you don't (note that you simply have to draw more than them; that doesn't mean you have to draw a lot, it just means you have to draw enough). Sometimes they draw better than you in terms of hate vs anti-hate and you lose. Sure, that happens. But I don't think it's much worse than 60-40, if even that bad, and postboard you can make it a lot better by increasing your clock or increasing your disruption (or both).
i play ur delver from much time!
i play many many different main deck,
and i think the best way is play main deck like burn deck just with splash blue(delver,snap,barin and ponder)
of course in this way, have absolutely bad matchup against reanimator, and sneak.show,
but have great matchup against tier 1 like jund, team america,canadian!
i play my side just against bad match up, because , against jund, or canadian or team america i don t side in, almost nothing!
I get the idea of playing 15 lands. There's another deck that wants two lands in play but preferably not more than that: ANT. And how many does that deck play? 15 exactly. :wink:
This deck absolutely dies to land floods, because it doesn't play any real bombs like Goyf or so, that would provoke the opponent to 1-for-2 them. We need all the business we can get. So playing as little alnds as possible definitely sounds like a solid plan. I don't know whether 15 lands is the right number - I think it's not - but testing will reveal how low we can go. At least it's an interesting suggestion.
Ant and Tes have a lot of mana producing spells and artifacts.. We don't, 15 lands seems like you have to Mull so oftenQuote:
Originally Posted by Asthereal