I overheard a conversation last night about this deck having a bad match up against Death and Taxes. Is that true?
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I overheard a conversation last night about this deck having a bad match up against Death and Taxes. Is that true?
We need our mana and D&T is known for taxing it, so it is a problem game one but can be quite favorable post-board, if you have decent answers in the sideboard to replace Force of Wills especially as they usually do not work well in this matchup, at least in my experience.
This is a mana-hungry deck.
Sometimes you can curve perfectly into DRS -> Goyf -> [bombs, etc.] and cast a very timely Toxic Deluge.
Other times, you stumble on mana and they lock you out with a turn 1 Mom/Aether Vial, Thalia/Port/Wasteland, Phyrexian Revokers on your over-costed Plansewalkers while resolving bombs like Mirran Crusader.
So I'd say it is partially draw dependent, and can be further effected by specific card choices (e.g. number of Mirran Crusaders, Gilt-Leaf Liege, etc.). In generally, yes, DnT is favored here. Though amongst Blue-based midrange decks, BUG Cascade probably has slightly better matchup than some other options.
If you see a lot of this in your metagame, you can make the matchup a complete joke by running a few Dread of Night. Otherwise, banking on getting lucky with your Toxic Deluge and Night of Souls Betrayal is not the best bet.
Quick question: choosing between these two, would you rather have Duress or Thoughtseize in your sideboard? I have been keeping a Duress couple but, aside from Burn matchup, life loss does not seem that relevant while the lack of restrictions Thoughtseize provides allows to discard Painter's Servant, Magus of the Moon and alike. Thoughts?
Go with thoughtseize. You should give up the burn match up. Thoughtseize is also better than duress vs the show and tell decks.
I often sideboard all the discard from MB, but in matchups were discard matters I am more inclined to use targeted discard instead of Hymn to Tourach. 1 MB - 2 SB split of Hymns was my first configuration, but after a few tournaments I cut sideboard Hymns for Duress because they cost less mana, thus can be cast on turn one. Mostly, BB cost and inability to be cast on the first turn makes Hymn less favorable versus Combo or Moon decks, in my opinion.
Thoughtseize is the better card (over Duress) for sure. I keep the 3-1 split seize-duress because it gives us another card to sideboard against RUG Delver (and Burn) and that's it really. Not to say that the life-loss from seize is irrelevant, but as stated earlier, being able to hit creatures is important. Regarding Hymn vs Thoughtseize it mostly comes down to the build. With a Meddling Mage sideboard it's nice to be able to see the opponents hand with seize/duress etc.
3-1 Thoughtseize and Duress split seems fairly reasonable. As for the Meddling Mage, as far as I have seen, she usually appears in lists without MB discard and I am not too keen on giving it up. I have tried the white splash and it was not as good as regular alternative in my metagame. As for an open meta, I would feel safer with MB discard as well.
1-off Hymn to Tourach has led to some blowouts game one, but I side it out in ~90% of games which also indicates that any additional sideboard copies would be unused (which actually happened on the first few tournaments I ran a 1-2 MB-SB split).
Have any of you guys tried Mana Maze? I'm looking for a 1 or 2 cmc permanent we can cascade into for combo MUs, more specifically Omnitell and storm. MM is great and I have a playset, but the more I play discard the more I don't like it.
T4'd the Super Sunday Series Legacy Event on GP Kyoto last weekend using the latest Lejay build except for -1 Leyline +1 Nihil Spellbomb. (After scrubbing out in the main event with Deathblade lol)
W Dark Maverick 2-1
W Big Red 2-1
W Belcher 2-1
L Reanimator/Painter Hybrid 1-2
W Infect 2-1
W Bant Miracles 2-1
D Infect 1-1
W Omnitell 2-1
W Esperblade 2-1
I'll quote one of Lejays earlier posts: "I don't want to slow myself down". And that's basically it. For a pretty aggresive deck that wants to ideally go 1-drop into 2-drop into 3-drop or something along those lines, tap-lands are a poor fit. It's also mostly good in our already good matchups like miracles and blade.
Is this deck a control deck or an aggressive deck?
Both ;-)
Also known as "Aggro-Control" or "Midrange".
Just because a deck doesn't fold in a grindy game doesn't make it into a control deck. Is 12-post a control deck? Jund? I personally think that there is more to be lost than gained by putting this deck into a fixed category like control or aggro, it is really a combination and can switch roles depending on match-up and the contents of your hand.
If you want to call this deck a control deck you can absolutely do that.
I personally don't like calling decks that wastelands and beats face with goyfs and bears control, for me a control deck is more a deck like Miracles, Lands and BUG Landstill for example. Nor do I want to call this deck an aggro deck since it has a lot of planeswalkers and removal. Aggro decks are mostly linear archetypes like Zoo, Merfolks etc.
So with those thoughts in my head I prefer to describe the deck as Aggro-Control, not one or the other, but both.