FTW: What's the UW list you're currently running? Also have you experimented yet with a Bant list that jams Oko in the MD as well?
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FTW: What's the UW list you're currently running? Also have you experimented yet with a Bant list that jams Oko in the MD as well?
Here's my UW xerox list:
4 Grim Monolith
3 Basalt Monolith
3 Walking Ballista
4 Force of Will
4 Brainstorm
1 Force of Negation
4 Daze
4 Ancient Tomb
4 Flooded Strand
4 Prismatic Vista
2 Scalding Tarn
2 Tundra
3 Snow-Covered Island
2 Snow-Covered Plains
2 Teferi, Time Raveler
4 Karn, the Great Creator
4 Ponder
4 Preordain
2 Zirda, the Dawnwaker
1 Basalt Monolith
1 Mycosynth Lattice
1 Liquimetal Coating
1 Ensnaring Bridge
1 Tormod's Crypt
1 Sorcerous Spyglass
1 Lion's Eye Diamond
1 Walking Ballista
2 Deafening Silence
3 Swords to Plowshares
1 Teferi, Time Raveler
1 Zirda, the Dawnwaker
Given MD Ancient Tomb and given MD Zidra and Teferi do you miss/want Astrolab? Additionally, how do you find MD Zidra? How often is the Companion disrupted/countered?
I tried both a Snowko list (Astrolabe + Oko + Teferi) and one that just ran more redundant combo pieces. I found there wasn't really room for both, and having more redundant combo pieces was leading to faster wins.Quote:
Originally Posted by Cire
UW XerFox
//Spells: 21
4 Ancient Tomb
4 Flooded Strand
4 Prismatic Vista
1 Scalding Tarn
3 Snow-Covered Island
2 Snow-Covered Plains
1 Tundra
1 Volcanic Island
1 Cavern of Souls
//Artifacts: 8
2 Arcum's Astrolabe
4 Grim Monolith
2 Basalt Monolith
//Planeswalkers: 7
3 Teferi, Time Raveler
4 Karn, the Great Creator
//Spells: 20
4 Force of Will
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
4 Preordain
2 Spell Pierce
2 Orim's Chant
//Creatures: 4
4 Walking Ballista
//Sideboard: 14
3 Swords to Plowshares
2 Wear // Tear
1 Echoing Truth
1 Red Elemental Blast
1 Flusterstorm
1 Force of Negation
1 Surgical Extraction
1 Tormod's Crypt
1 Goblin Cannon
1 Basalt Monolith
1 Mycosynth Lattice
//Companion: 1
1 Zirda, the Dawnwaker
Teferi is really good. Not sure if cutting it for Oko would be worth it, and they fight for the same spot on the curve.
I tried testing 2 Isochron Scepter maindeck (with a 3rd Chant). Sometimes it was really good. Once I just bluffed and imprinted Brainstorm. But the combo takes up a lot of mana (3 mana to cast kicked, 4 through Thalia). After one game of Chanting a Delver 13 turns in a row without ever drawing a 4th mana source (I had to pitch my Teferi to FoW to resolve Scepter, then got 2x Bolted to 4), I ended up losing to a 3rd Bolt while never being able to play Magic myself either. I would have won if I just let the Scepter get countered, kept the Chant in hand, and cast Teferi. But by the time I got Scepter through I was too low in life to allow another Delver attack, so I had to keep Chanting him. The low life also turned off Ancient Tomb mana, which made it awkward to both keep activating Scepter and be able to cast a Monolith. Then fetches and FoW got awkward. There's an awkward tension there. That soured me a bit on the Scepter combo. It just takes up a lot of mana while our core combo also takes up a lot of mana, so it's hard to Scepter lock them and then still assemble a win in less than 10 turns, giving them way too much time to interact with Instants. Scepter+Chant is very good with a resolved Teferi... but so is Monolith+Chant! If we have Chant and Teferi, then we can just combo off. Scepter seems like the definition of lose-less.
There are some weird choices like the 1-of Cavern. That slot used to be a 3rd Plains, but the 3rd Plains was only ever relevant for Zirda so it might as well be Cavern. Sometimes you can name Construct instead of Fox.
I had 2x Scalding Tarn and 2x Island before, but just went for the 3rd Island to have a better shot in longer games.
Volcanic Island's red mana can cast Zirda, so it's a functional Tundra that also lets me splash Wear // Tear and REB. Other splashes don't synergize as well with Zirda mana. And yes, colored sources for Zirda matter. Between needing basic Island to cast cantrips and dropping Ancient Tomb to accelerate Monoliths, having enough red/white sources in play is a limiting factor. Extraneous splashes into non-Zirda colors (black or green) hurt the mana stability more.
Astrolabe is good for filtering, e.g. Monolith mana can be used for the 2nd white for Zirda. I've gone back and forth between 2-3. It also helps cast Teferi off Tomb mana.
Another build I tried had 3 Lotus Petal. I've moved away from that. It speeds up the clock a bit, so it's good in some matches, but the card disadvantage hurts in fair matches. I was testing a lot of blue mirrors and got sick of my opponent using Daze to bait my Petals. But in other matches you might need it to race. My deck choices might be biased from overtesting against RUG Delver, UR Delver and Snowko.
The primary wincon of Zirda->Walking Ballista cannot be stopped by Flusterstorm, Force of Negation, Spell Pierce, Spell Snare, Veil of Summer, Dovin's Veto, or Stifle! Once you have a Monolith in play, none of those counters are live to stop the main kill. Only FoW. Other wincons like Magma Mine are vulnerable to more counters. That's relevant. The more answers we turn off, the less hate there is to fight through.
Removal like Bolt, StP, Decay, Push and friends can all be stopped by floating extra mana. It's good practice to try to go off with at least 2 extra mana open or a full shield (Chant/Teferi). The extra mana also nullifies stuff like Daze. Forcing them to hold up double Bolt or Decay all the time really slows down their clock too.
Again, with Zirda+Ballista Deafening Silence, Thalia, Guardian of Thraben, Chalice of the Void, and Trinisphere don't even affect the combo turn. Deafening Silence and Chalice @ 1 do prevent Karn into Magma Mine. Postboard it's probably wise to board out -1 Ballista for +1 answer, also leaving Ballista as a Karn target.
There are cases where getting disrupted mid-combo really hurts, so I like catch-all protection like Teferi and Chant.
Edit: I switched from Magma Mine in the SB to Goblin Cannon so I don't lose to Chalice of the Void@1 or Stifle.
I almost never use Karn to find Monolith, so that slot might be better as Ensnaring Bridge.
Your deck looks really similar.Quote:
Originally Posted by contra
What are your thoughts on Daze? I ran 2 Daze for a while but it usually took me long enough to assemble the combo that Daze became irrelevant. Part of that was me playing around Daze myself or setting up Chant. It also hurt me to lose a land drop in a mana-hungry combo. What matchups was Daze good in?
I have FoN in the SB. Against some decks most of the interaction was happening on my turn. FoN seems better against permanent-based disruption like Karn.
Zirda main looks useful as a backup. How often was that relevant?
Edit: If I was to test Daze in my list I'd probably go
-2 Spell Pierce
-1 Teferi
+3 Daze
Ok I just tested with Daze more and it's growing on me. You just have to be careful about land drops.
-2 Spell Pierce
-1 Teferi
+3 Daze
Legacy Grimfox Combo
3X Grim Monolith
1x Basal Monolith
4x Lotus Petal
3x Lion's Eye Diamond
2x Mox Opal
4x Walking Ballista
3x Emry, Lurker of the Loch
3x Urza, Lord High Artificer
4x Karn, the Great Creator
2x Teferi, Time Raveler
4x Force of Will
4x Brainstorm
4x Ponder
1x Sevinne's Reclamation
4x Ancient Tomb
4x Flooded Strand
1x Prismatic Vista
2x Island
2x Plains
1xTundra
4x Seat of Synod
1x Karakas
SB
1x Basalt Monolith
1x Walking Ballista
1x Lion's Eye Diamond
1x Liquimetal Coating
1x Mycosinth Lattice
1x Ethersworn Canonist
1x Ensnaring Bridge
1x Tormod's Crypt
1x Zirda, the Dawnwaker
2x Swords to Plowshares
2x Flusterstomr
1x Force of Negation
1X Cast Away/Seal of Cleansing
The deck is made moslty by 4 type of cards: mana producer, mana sinks, redundancy/protection and cantrips. Some slots have hybrid behaviour such as Karn and Emry; the reason why i play Led is not only the boost in speed but also the ability to avoid having monolith down one turn before comboing. It also enables a lot of possible turn 2 kills or combo around removal by adding mana to activate monolith twice and is incredibly good with Sevinne,Emry, Urza and Karn (or a combination of those).
Beating the hate is a matter of how we prepare our gameplan: in some cases going fast helps against non blue decks (or mostly zenith based) to find a solution to our combo, another reason to run Lion's. We don't really care about creature removal unless we are planning a line that involves casting Zirda directly off Led (instead of using it to activate untap ability), in which case if your sink is a creature you might be susceptible to removal spell, but that is easily handled by playing around it (also using karn as sink) or using Teferi/Emry as protection. Shatter effects are as well easy to overcome; the combo can be broken by casting decay (for example) with zirda on the stack, but you can use emry,sevinne or chain monoliths in order to add redundancy or directly force or teferi as protection.You can also play mind tricking with both balista and monolith by keeping the second in hand and force the removal on the wrong piece. Normal lock pieces do not stop you (chalice on 2 is a bit annoying but is quite slow and affects only 3 slots), tax effect slow you down but ,with tomb and all the mana producers you have, you can easily overcome it. Probably null rod effects are the thoughest to deal with, and the general advice is that they are a must counter; you could lean on teferi to bounce ouphe and rod, but karn has to be beaten down and ,unless you can cast Urza, is pretty hard ( don't understimate the zirda combat shenanigans tho). Beating counter depends on what are you planning to deal with, you can force through daze pierce and fow by proper sequencing, overflooding with mana and/or using protection/redundancy to beat hardcounters. Discard effects are a bit thougher especially when exiling (Thought Knot Seer), the best thing you can do if you can't use redundancy is to use cantrips properly or land a monolith and hope it sticks until you find a sink. Needle effect are also beatable in several ways; you can use the other piece of the combo (basalt monolith or grim) or the other sink (urza or ballista), bounce it and in some niche scenarios you can animate with karn to ping them or sword the post side. Don forget that also Karn represent a mana producer (led/basalt), a mana sink (balista),several B-plans (mycosinth/liquimetal) and also incidental hate (rod effect/bridge/canonist/tormod).
The deck is full of tricks you can perform and i feel that if piloted correctly can be really really good; other versions prefer astrolabes over led for the teferi engine and grind but i think led is a natural inculsion when playing companions and (aside for force of will maybe) it is synergic with everything we are playing with. There are a lot of tricks i came up with testing the deck and i feel the skill ceiling, i would love to write a primer down for this version but i have no place to write it :confused:
Very interesting. Thanks for sharing.
Urza was discussed a few pages back but I don't think anyone's tried it. The UU seemed limiting, but you can make up for it using LEDs for Zirda. In general Urza + Emry looks strong and adds power to the deck outside the combo. Emry gives you more recursion lines for artifacts too.
What about Lightning Bolt/Swords to Plowshares on Zirda or Abrupt Decay on Zirda or Grim Monolith? They will respond to the first untap activation. To beat that you need to float an extra 2 and untap again. They can also respond a second time with a second spell (Bolt x2, Stifle, etc) and it breaks the combo unless you have even more mana. I had that come up in testing. Basalt Monolith helps beat those lines because it only takes 1 for each untap, enabling easier multiple untaps, but it's slower to deploy.Quote:
Originally Posted by Nossman3
We have lines to play around it. Just pointing out that creature removal is relevant.
Quote:
Originally Posted by FTW
Creature removal is relevant unless you have mana to float with. This is close to how storm beats dazes pierces and flusterstorm, it's obvious that if they play several interaction your most likely to be dead but you can count the mana to understand what he's about to do. Led indeed works as a pseudo protection beccause it allow you to untap basalt three times and grim 1.5 times. This means that if we cast zirda with gim monolith plus double w and float double colorless our led and mana provide protection against double removal,three with another mana float; I am running grim monolith beccause they ramp the turn they come down and you can chain them to reach extra mana enabling powerful plays like turn 2 karn &co. It is Worth to mention that also karakas can be used as a pseudo protection with led,since you can crack led in response to removal and bounce zirda to recast it paying 1 + Led. You have sevinne that might let you cast zirda form yard (easily twice with led), teferi for protection and Urza is both a sink and a mana producer beside being a solid plan B that doesnt fall under Decay/Bolt and gets value as soon it hits the field. As i said, there are a lot of different lines but the thing i wanted to mention as "you dont care about removal" was that a single removal is naturally beaten by the mana produced (daze against storm is the best example), not that you should'nt play around it. Also, remember that ,since the more mana you get the more likely you're about to beat most removal spells so your op has to do the first step to victory or you could reach a critical mass of interaction+mana.
EDIT: if you think you need more protection for the combo itself you might run sideboard voltaic key to take off karn but honestly i don't feel is necessary, it slows you down an extra turn, tho could be interesting for quick mycosinth and liquimetal porting interaction.
I just don't think that the Emry list runs enough protection? The combo is vulnerable to almost any type of instant speed disruption which requires at least one protection spell going off or landing T3feri the turn before. Given that decks that run such disruption (UW decks) run enough that you will face at least 2 such disruption cards by turn 3 seems like you want way more that just 8 protection pieces?
Edit - also speaking of Sevinne's Reclamation, reminds me of Intuition for LED/Breach/Sevinne's Reclamation. Obviously we can't make a similar pile for this deck but anyway to make a pile work with Gifts Ungiven? Trying to build around it.
Assume you have 3U:
EOT opponents turn Gifts Ungiven for:
1 Grim Monolith
1 Karn
1 Argivian Find
1 Walking Ballista
Opponent gives you Karn and Argivian Find
Assume you have 2(w/r)(w/r)W mana on your turn
Your turn Argivian Find --> Grim Monolith --> Zidra + Win.
Testing the below Snow-Ko list to see if Gifts could free up space. Yes it does mean the deck is much slower, but wondering if it can't just be a control deck with an odd fast combo.
//Spells: 20
4 Ancient Tomb
4 Flooded Strand
4 Prismatic Vista
2 Snow-Covered Island
2 Snow-Covered Plains
1 Snow-Covered Forest
1 Scalding Tarn
1 Tundra
1 Volcanic Island
1 Tropical Island
//Artifacts: 7
4 Grim Monolith
3 Arcum's Astrolabe
//Planeswalkers: 8
3 Teferi, Time Raveler
3 Oko, Thief of Crowns
2 Karn, the Great Creator
//Spells: 26
4 Force of Will
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
3 Gifts Ungiven
3 Swords to Plowshares
3 Preordain
1 Orim's Chant
1 Veil of Summer
1 Argivian Find
//Creatures: 1
1 Walking Ballista
//Companion: 1
1 Zirda, the Dawnwaker
Lots of draw power in the above so even without the redundancy and the EOT gifts you get the combo pretty frequently in goldfishing. At this point wondering if Oko and MD Swords for it to playact as a control deck makes any sense.
The Gifts line is interesting.
Not having to run Basalt Monolith and so many Karns and Ballistas seems amazing. The average draw quality improves a lot. The redundant copies seemed like necessary evils (without them I would spend forever cantripping into nothing only to die to 2 1/1s), but you can also draw into 4 Monoliths and durdle around awkwardly. Those games are hard to win.
Could you replace Argivian Find with Sevinne's Reclamation? For 2W it puts Grim Monolith in play, so it doesn't cost any more mana on the combo turn, and it opens up more lines outside the combo turn. If you get disrupted (e.g. double Bolt), Sevinne can be flashed back to return Zirda and something else.
Is there an Intuition pile that works with Sevinne's Reclamation?
e.g. If you have 1 of the following 4 cards, does Intuition for the other 3 win the game?
Sevinne's Reclamation
Lion's Eye Diamond
Grim Monolith
Magma Mine
LED could be useful to cast Zirda too.
Yep, you definitely can replace find with reclamation. Not sure about intuition as Gifts essentially is a one card combo, while intuition will only act like a search piece for your two card combo and does not really let you reduce the amount of combo cards you run.
Yeah, the main advantage of Intuition is 3cc is easier to push through Daze/Wasteland/Pierce and Thalia/Wasteland/Port.Quote:
Originally Posted by Cire
It can also be used to directly tutor for 3x Monolith, 3x Teferi, 3x Oko or 3x Wincon (2 Karn + 1 Ballista).
Edit: Oh I like this new build. Oko is too good not to play.
LED/Sevinne plays well with Teferi and Oko.
Playtest for a bit between Intuition/Gifts ungiven and lets see if we can make Snoko-fox work :smile:Quote:
Originally Posted by FTW
I'm testing this right now.
Although it can't find the whole combo at once, it does have some very powerful Intuition lines including finding 3-ofs or singleton piles with Orim's Chant (opponent doesn't know if we're bluffing or not).
//Lands: 20
4 Ancient Tomb
4 Flooded Strand
4 Prismatic Vista
1 Scalding Tarn
1 Tundra
1 Tropical Island
2 Snow-Covered Island
2 Snow-Covered Plains
1 Snow-Covered Forest
//Artifacts: 10
1 Lion's Eye Diamond
1 Magma Mine
3 Arcum's Astrolabe
4 Grim Monolith
1 Walking Ballista
//Planeswalkers: 7
3 Oko, Thief of Crowns
3 Teferi, Time Raveler
1 Karn, the Great Creator
//Spells: 23
4 Force of Will
4 Brainstorm
4 Swords to Plowshares
4 Ponder
2 Preordain
1 Veil of Summer
1 Orim's Chant
1 Sevinne's Reclamation
2 Intuition
//Sideboard: 15
1 Zirda, the Dawnwaker
1 Walking Ballista
1 Mycosynth Lattice
1 Ensnaring Bridge
1 Tormod's Crypt
1 Surgical Extraction
1 Return to Nature
1 Wear // Tear
1 Echoing Truth
1 Force of Negation
1 Spell Pierce
1 Flusterstorm
1 Veil of Summer
1 Orim's Chant
1 Terminus
I like what Sevinne's and Oko add to the deck.
Intuition doesn't find everything at once, but we often don't need it to. It's a grindier plan.
Could probably get away with +1 Intuition/Gifts, -1 Monolith.
Given that this is brand new line for this deck I think we'll need to test Intuition vs. Gifts for a little bit to see what is better. Not only that we could also consider running BOTH ¯\_(ツ)_/¯Quote:
Originally Posted by FTW
Emry works a protection for monolith and balista if you have to cast before craking led, it also loops led for karn sidewish and with karakas digs for combo elements. You need four mana to play around double removal and is pretty easy when runnign 3x emrys and 3x leds; also with emry down you can pass with monolith since you dont really care about op cracking it unless it has removal also for emry and same goes for balista. If you worry about zirda itself you just have to net extra mana and emry does exactly this since she comes down turn one as a pseudo mana dork. Talking about teferi, since you play grim monolith there are some lines to cast it the same turn you combo off monolith mana, bounce it back to net an extra 1 play led than go off; as I said before, your mana works as a protection during the combo, you need to net 1-2 mana extra for each removal you expect op to have, and Grims Petal Led (even in side) and Urza are exactly meant to do that aside from force of wills and sevinnes. I think it is way better to combo an average 2.5 being slightly less protected since you might consider that if your fast enough your opponent might not have enough mana to cast both removals, maybe he cast astrolabe or cantrips to find them; speed is clear competitve value in a lot of scenario and i think playin a control deck with things like orims chant is worse than palying a combo deck with haymakers.Quote:
Originally Posted by Cire
My only problem with Goblin Cannon is Gaddock Teeg which does still see some play. Why not just Staff of Domination instead? You can then draw into Ballista to win.Quote:
Originally Posted by FTW
It's a non-issue in the latest builds because there are fewer than 4 Ballistas main and room for 1 in the SB. But if you do play 4 Ballistas main then you could play Staff over Cannon.Quote:
Originally Posted by Wanderlust
Anyway how are you resolving Karn, the Great Creator through Gaddock Teeg? Cannon is there as a Karn target when Karn is your wincon. I guess Staff does work if you cast Karn earlier and still need a wincon.
Something to note. If you're playing on MTGO instead of paper, a Staff win involves a significant amount of tedious clicking. Each draw takes 6 mana if Zirda's dead, 4 mana with Zirda alive.
The combo is already tedious. With Grim Monolith, each loop only produces 1 mana.
For Ballista X=20, you need 40 mana = 40 loops.
For Karn into Walking Ballista X=20, you need 4 + 40 = 44 mana = 44 loops
For Karn into Goblin Cannon for 20, you need 4 + 4 + 40 = 48 mana = 48 loops
For Karn into Magma Mine for 20, you need 4 + 1 + 80 = 85 mana = 85 loops
For Karn into Staff of Domination to draw 40 cards and cast Ballista X=20, you need to float 207-287 mana = 207-287 loops (~1000 clicks)
You might need to float all the mana upfront (e.g. if there's a Bolt on the stack at Zirda), and you would need to float enough mana to activate Staff at the unreduced cost and draw most of your deck in case your wincon is near the bottom. That's a lot of clicking! In paper it's not a big deal but on MTGO it is.
Now those numbers will vary on factors like the opponent's life and playing around disruption, but it gives a good ballpark of how much more effort some kills take. Magma Mine is twice as much effort as Goblin Cannon, and Staff is several times more. Ballista is the most efficient and also faces the least hate.
Right. Gaddock Teeg could come down after Karn in certain scenarios: for example, maybe you have a hand that doesn't make enough red/white mana to cast Zirda but is otherwise solid. You might need to Karn -2 for Lion's Eye Diamond the turn Karn comes down and then -2 again the next turn for a win condition to kill them under the combo. Granted, if we are looking at corner cases, then Staff of Domination gets partially nerfed by Narset, Parter of Veils and similar effects.Quote:
Originally Posted by FTW
I agree with your assessment that Walking Ballista is the most efficient kill and runs into the least hate. I think it's enough of a wishboard upgrade over the other options that it's almost never right to play 4x Ballista in the main.
Also, thanks for taking the time to explain the amount of clicks this combo would take on MTGO. While I don't use that platform and don't plan to warp my deckbuilding to accommodate its idiosyncrasies, I'm sure others who need to do so will find your work helpful.
Edit: One scenario that just occurred to me is that it might make sense to board out a Magma Mine (at least in lists running mine main) against decks that might think they can pull a fast one on us by naming Ballista with Pithing Needle or Phyrexian Revoker.