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It bothers me a bit that Vendetta does not kill DRS, and if you bring it in against RUG Delver the lifeloss might be pretty bad. Disfigure is not very good either though but I think it's overall a bit better.Quote:
Originally Posted by Vandalize
I run 0 discard main and 3 seize, 1 duress SB. Targeted discard is nice together with meddling mage.
If you want another blue card for FoW but are unsure about DTT, then maybe the 4th FoW is better?
If you're dipping into White for Meddling Mage in the SB, you might also want to run a couple copies of Containment Priest. She solves quite a few problems this deck has as a form of cascade-able anti-combo permanent.
Personally I think Lejay's list is close to optimal. There are probably a few slots that can be swapped around for your local meta. I think if Miracles comes back in a big way, this is the deck configuration to run.
I have not really played since the invitational in Seattle. Been suuuuuper busy.
I went X-0 until the finals of a IQ with this build. Lost to elves in the finals because I got greedy and wanted to put him on a 1 turn clock.
http://www.tcdecks.net/deck.php?id=15483&iddeck=115114
Cant wait to add the hymns back in because of TC banning. I will also be running a 1 of Dig in the spot for testing. The sideboard i ran should be ignored, made for my local meta.
I played 3 Lily/3 thoughtseize/2hymn Pre khans. I might go to 2/2/2 with duressx1 and thoughtseizex2 out the board if combo starts being big in my area/opens.
The Dig Through Time is WAY harder to cast with its double blue cc,and most of the time I am chasing for a goyf/jace to finish them after locking the board up. I Like it so far but can see cutting it.
I still don't like 4 Ancestral (drawing multiple early always felt bad for me when I had zero fetchlands/ways to get rid of them and they are crushing me with threats.)
Glad to see this deck is hot again.
This thing?Quote:
Originally Posted by wcm8
http://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/247720#online
Yes. That's the one. Basically he drops all discard from the main deck, in an effort to make the main 60 as good against 'fair' decks as possible. And then the sideboard is designed to address combo.Quote:
Originally Posted by edahl
I run that deck as well and it's very good, definitely the correct way to build this deck.Quote:
Originally Posted by wcm8
Took down the local last night with good ol shardless. Love Love the deck. I'm a BUG Delver (Team America) player by trade but I switched to this after TCruise showed up and I ain't going back.
Round 1 Miracles
BUG Delver always felt miserable against Miracles but Shardless feels much better. Game one I ride a loner goyf against his lifetotal for a while till he ends up at 2. He should have been at one but I missed a point when I didn't crack my fetch. He finally terminuses but by then I have a fistful of dudes that i just deploy one at a time. I played Tasigur as a one of and he is great but he can never be more than a one of because of that one stupid card --Karakas. But he did get me back a force with his ability which allowed me to protect my final win con. Game 2 I get the nuts of deathrite into Double hymn to tourach. He slumps in his chair and I grind his face into the dust.
Round 2: Tezzerator
I noticed people saying this one is difficult to beat. All I can say is Abrupt decay is king. Kills all their win cons and problematic permanents. Thoughtseize is also excellent since you just take whatever spell in their hand you can't deal with any other way. Pretty much just walkers and Lodestone golem. I swept him 2-0 on the back of Thoughtseize and decay. Night of Souls betrayal is also good cuz it shuts off foundry. Board in discard but not Hymn cuz Hymn has the tendency to hit irrelevant cards like signets and extra chalices. You want your discard to be precise and nab those tezzerets. Watch out for ensnaring bridge. Make sure you save a decay for it (or a lili ultimate). I also found that chalice on one isnt as bad as it sounds. Sure it shuts off deathrite, Brainstorm, and thoughtseize but your other cards are usually more important. Don't decay it unless you have to. Trinishpere is a must kill/counter. I find this similar to the other types of prison decks; basically a yatzee deck where if they don't have relevance in their opener they are pretty dead. As an added bonus, they don't play blood moon. Take one piece with a thoughtseize and it sets them back a long way.
Round 3: Esper Deathblade
This was a grind fest as you can imagine. He gets stuck on lands game one one and I get going with a lili and some decays and he scoops quickly. Game 2 we trade back and forth for a while but he eventually lands double true-name. We trade life totals for a turn and I do some math and realize i can win if I deploy enough threats. I drop a goyf and a Deathrite and swing in for a chunk while he's tapped out, thinking that he will hold back now that I have a lethal swing. He smirks and shows me the zealous persecution in his hand that adds up to lethal true names. Bah! Game three is quite epic. I struggle with lands for bit and I am behind the whole game. He lands batterskull and jitte and kills my tasigur and strix. He gets me to two and drops true name. Jitte has 3 counters. Not good. I cast dig through time hoping for a miracle. Boom! Night of Soul's Betrayal and Seal of Primordium! The game changes so fast it unbelievable. Jace joins the party and fate seals away any outs and I drop an army of goyfs. Night of souls betrayal is a nasty beating for that deck as they basically have to win with Jace and/or zero power stoneforges and deathrites.
Love me this deck. Seal of Primordium is a pretty decent spell against batterskull decks and MUD stuff. I like it as a one off. I am also on the white splash with 2 Mages and 2 containment priests. Priest is super good against matchups that can be annoying. Elves fold over and dies, show and tell can't win, and reanimator has to kill it or get to eight mana to cast griselbrand. Night of Soul's Betrayal is still good even without young pyromancer shenanigans. Tasigur is definitely good but terrible vs Karakas. You have been warned.
Yeah looks good! Like the idea, might build this one.Quote:
Originally Posted by wcm8
I'm the guy that finished 19th. Honestly, a lot of my maindeck decisions were just netdecked from a list from the Philly Open. 10 minutes before the tournament started, the guy whose list I copied walked up and told me to play a Tasigur, and I was looking for a good reason to board a Force, so I did. It was really mediocre. Not terrible, but there are other cards that are better. If you have the time to pay 4 mana to do something that doesn't impact the board, you're probably winning anyway (see: The Mind Sculptor, Jace). So while it may feel good, it's kind of win more. But when you can't activate it, it's a Goyf you can't cast until turn 4 (blegh). I'll either play a Baleful Strix, Force, or Planeswalker next time, depending on what meta I'm expecting.Quote:
Originally Posted by TheHeff
1. Dig is certainly good, and I don't regret playing it, but I'm not sure if this is the deck for it. The graveyard does not fill up that quickly since you're playing permanents instead of Ponders. And since the deck does not want to leave up mana for things like Counterspell, it's usually cast at sorcery speed and when you have nothing else to cast. I'll be playing 4 Visions from here on out, but I'll keep 1 Dig since it is really powerful and my impression could be wrong.
2. The lategame of this deck is pretty much unmatched for a fair blue deck. Thus, I really don't feel like the deck needs 5-ish big bombs like planeswalkers to win those matchups. Also, I've lost too many games to just not having enough lands and time to cast 3-4 mana spells. However I did board a Jace since I needed one more card to board in when I didn't want the Forces.
3. I'd love to jam 4 Strix in the deck, but there really isn't enough room. Again, you smash all of the fair blue decks, so I don't really care about making the deck better against them. If you want to make the Delver matchup better, add a land. The main way you can lose to them is if you can't cast your spells. I actually boarded in the Scrubland when I played against Stifle/Wasteland Delver (and still lost due to mana screw :rolleyes:).
4. The white splash was AMAZING. I would not have done well without it. The deck can't clock combo decks quick enough after you disrupt them, so having a permanent (that attacks too!) to deal with their combo is ideal. Meddling Mage almost single handedly beat ANT for me. No one is going to bring Chain of Vapor/Abrupt Decay in against Shardless, so my opponent was just cold to Pikula.
Hmm why does it have a leyline of the void over say another grafdiggers cage?Quote:
Originally Posted by edahl
1. I think that 1 Delve-spell is about enough in this deck, more than that and we start to get really clunky and become affected by RiP, which is not a good place to be.Quote:
Originally Posted by Dirk Mantooth
2. Miracles have a slight favour endgame against us as entreat just wins. So I recommend 2 MD jace for that matchup to be fair. You can always pitch Jace to FoW (more on that later).
3. Yeah strix is nice but I find it too defensive, this is a usually aggressive midrange deck (depends on the matchup of course). Strix is also bad with deluge, and deluge is more important.
4. It's super good.
On another note, the amount of people not playing 4 Visions and 4 FoW MD is uncomfortably high. If you are to play with such suboptimal cards like Shardless Agent, maximizing your good cascades is really important, as we would not play agent if visions didn't exist. Related to that is force of will. Playing 4 Visions MD means that the deck is a very good home for FoW because:
a. We draw tons of cards so we can recoup the card disadvantage easily.
b. We sometimes end up with one or several visions in our hand and FoW turns these dead cards into gas.
c. FoW gives the deck a mana and tempo-efficient way to interact in the early game before our deck is really comfortable to interact otherwise, which is really important against delver, combo or other strategies.
So in regards to the above stated things I would very much recommend playing 4 Visions and 4 FoW maindeck, that way you can free up a slot in your SB as well for a card more impactful than the 4th fow, like the 4th meddling mage for example.
Punishing fire and the occasionnal loam deck.
Makes sense!Quote:
Originally Posted by Lejay
Thanks for the quick reply
How is your infect and elves matchup? Trying to race to a souls betrayal seems kind of slow.
Infect was difficult. Sb stp helped and that match-up alone had me chosing sb needle as the sb flex slot. NoSB is à real thing.Quote:
Originally Posted by Arksz
Elves match-up was one of the best match-ups once i had enough experience with the build.
I haven't played Magic in a while until today, and didn't play shardless in 5 months. So reading through the thread should answer all questions. My list didn't move in between because i haven't tested.
When I play against Miracles, they almost never have the ability to hit enough land drops to make Entreat a big issue. They usually need to use their top/cantrips to find enough spells to avoid death since we can just keep throwing permanents at them that need to be answered. Not to mention, Hymn and Wasteland lower the amount of lands they have directly. I easily beat an Entreat for 3 once with a Decay, Planeswalker minus, and a Goyf that was simply bigger than their 4/4. I honestly feel that the matchup is so lopsided in favor of Shardless, we don't need to make concessions to them.Quote:
Originally Posted by LarsLeif
Awesome to have Lejay in the thread, thanks for stopping in! Thanks to edahl for posting that list, I had forgotten completely the whole argument about building the maindeck strong against fair decks instead of diluting it down to a "catch-all" list that's just ok against fair decks and slightly less horrible against combo G1. A lot of people have been raving about the MM sideboard package so if it's as good as everyone says, I don't mind letting my G1% against combo slide a bit for that configuration. Quick question about manabase (directed at Lejay but if anyone has experience running his list, I'd love your thoughts too!):
Lejay, your list runs the Savannah board instead of the Scrubland in a lot of people's lists. Is that so that you can fetch a USea and have the complete manabase? Also, are both the basic Forest and Swamp necessary? I get that it allows for Abrupt Decay against Blood Moon, but do you ever find it clunky at times? Also, is the lack of Creeping Tar Pit a nod to how strong the MD configuration is against fair decks? And adding 4 Wasteland gives you another avenue to victory by attacking greedy manabases? Also, how on earth did you come up with the fetch configuration for that list? It's impressive :)
My list runs savannah because the fetchbase was optimized to search for forest. That arrangement also explains why I have 4 underground seas. To guarantee your color requirements you can fetch the forest next to an underground sea. Since your green can't be wastelanded you can fetch/play underground seas one after another while they are wastelanded, without being screwed for liliana or jace colors. You don't give your opponent the possibility of a very good choice in wastelanding bilands.Quote:
Originally Posted by TheHeff
Similarly, in post board games where you side in savannah without mana denial possibilities, Usea+Usea+ Savannah means you will be able to cas anything. Turn 2 Sea+Savannah is nice.
Of course that doesn't automatically mean you should fetch a third Usea when you have the forest in play. You may want to cast two green spells in the same turn or gain 2 life + cast a green spell.
All that is true because I don't run baleful strix which would be nonbo both with the forest/savannah and toxic deluge. Hymn and forest have the same issue, but without those two, forest+ swamp advantages clearly overcome potential issues.
Like someone said earlier miracles is a good match-up without adding specific weapons for it. Tar pit has a huge drawback with the CIP effect, your deck wants to curve and smash threats one after the other. Tar pit is good versus miracles but there isn't many more match-ups where I would want to have it. Probably versus deathblade which is 50/50 or slightly favourable. But that alone doesn't make me want CTP into the deck or in SB.
Wasteland is played as a 4-of because the card is very good with DRS, without discard it helps preventing planeswalkers to land, and it is a great help versus Pfire. Your removal suite (Deluge, liliana, decay) also doesn't hit manlands at all. Finally it's the card in legacy that steals the most games, and the win percentage increase on that point alone overweight the drawbacks.
Main Deck -
4x Deathrite Shaman
4x Baleful Strix
4x Shardless Agent
2x True-Name Nemesis
2x Ancestral Vision
3x Thoughtseize
4x Brainstorm
4x Abrupt Decay
2x Thopter Foundry
2x Liliana of the Veil
2x Jace, the Mind Sculptor
4x Force of Will
2x Dig Through Time
1x Sword of the Meek
1x Creeping Tar Pit
1x Swamp
1x Island
1x Forest
4x Polluted Delta
2x Misty Rainforest
2x Verdant Catacombs
2x Bayou
3x Tropical Island
4x Underground
Sideboard -
1x Umezawa's Jitte
3x flusterstorm
3x Chill 6th Edition
2x Leyline of the Void
1x Toxic Deluge
2x Brain Freeze
1x Maelstrom Pulse
2x Golgari Charm
ill be running this list again ofr a legacy monthy and a 40 duals
Quote:
Originally Posted by tons of fun
You really hate burn don't ya...
It is one of the deck's worst matchups...