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Mindtwist, really? That'd be awesome.
Nightmare can very effectively abuse Deranged Hermit, but Hermit is starting to fall out of my favor because of his lack of utility.
Also, how bad is it really to just durdle-control and win over time (speaking to white)? From testing with my friend, that seems to be the game plan for BUG Control lists...and its seems to be fairly effective.
I think that right now, anyway, durdling-control only works if you're in blue. Non-blue control feels atrocious...but maybe I haven't got the right list for the meta yet. I have finally made some progress with my white list. I'll try to get in some testing tonight and see what I think.
Also I've been against Hermit since day 1. He's a terrible card for this deck IMO. Hell, I'd rather use Archon of Justice.
I've been having a blast with the white list (which does durdle some times but also requires some heavy thinking about mulligans) running three tops, and the nightmare package. So far it seems incredibly strong and resilient against most top decks and post board has a decent shot to win against combo, which is nice.
It does randomly sit and do nothing for a bit but if you set up properly that's usually not too much of an issue, although I do agree that doing nothing in blue is infinitely more powerful than in GBw.
I'm not saying it isn't both a good deck and an enjoyable one -- I've never had nor likely ever will have a legacy deck that I enjoy to the same extent at this whole archetype -- so much so that I made a version for each color splash! I'm just frustrated that legacy is once again just turning into a cockfight of who can cheat out the biggest bad the quickest...something that this archetype is very ill prepared to fight. That's a normal frustration for me...but it's coupled with the fact that I have 3 byes for GP:Atlanta, and I really don't want to waste that. I missed day 2'ing Indy by one round with only 1 bye, so I know I can do well at Atlanta. I worry too much =)
QFTQuote:
Originally Posted by Arianrhod
Maybe its just time to board in 4 Grislebrands of our own to blow out SnT's - stall enough with discard to put em under pressure (with edicts and the likes we have outs to emrakul, grislebrand is the problem) and drop our own big boy into play when they try to win with it - I mean hell, we've got Fierce Empath to find him, and that's easy to drop on turn 2.
Not gonna lie, I tried Griselbrand in place of Grave Titan...but he cost too much in that one game :laugh:
Sorry to get off of the Griselbrand talk, but what's a good sideboard against RUG Delver/Thresh/Canadian/whatever? Does Carpet of Flowers give enough gas, or would grave hate be more effective?
Arianrhod/Star|Scream: I'm aware that my land amount (especially the white sources) is greedy, but I've playtested a lot against several archetypes without facing any serious problems.
I might add that I'm very selective with sacrificing Explorers – unless I know my opponents run a low amount of basics or are sure I'm the one able to get most advantage due to the extra lands – and using my fetches to maximally abuse SDT in order to find what I need.
However, I guess both of you're right: I should most likely add additional lands to avoid unnecessary problems.
Arianrhod: To be honest I haven't thought about the drawbacks of Inquisition. Probably because I dislike Duress in main and don't own Thoughtseize ;)
The main reason that I included them in the first place for this particular tournament was due to the for me unknown meta, to get the most out of Cabal Therapy.
Regarding Leyline of the Void: No one play Spiral/High Tide around here, so that deck is not a problem. One other reason that I choose Leyline above Surgical/Extirpate was due to the tournament taking place during evening, counting on me being rather tired and thus preferring a nobrainer.
I've never playtested with Duplicant. My plan was to have an answer to Show and Tell into a fatto. Might be too far-fetched, especially as a one-off.
- Graveyard Hate is probably worse than any maindeck card against RUG.Quote:
Originally Posted by Claymore
- I would say the best choice is between Carpet of Flowers and Innocent Blood, depending on your list.
Just got back from a GPT with the list I poster before. Went 2-3 which sucks.
R1 against GB hexdepths. Why on earth is Marit Lage indestructable. This is the one round where Lililana would have been better than Garruk Relentless. 0-2 loss due to him ripping the best cards he could game 1 and me not drawing into business game2. Had aprox 25 cards left and hadnt seen a top nor a GSZ. Either would have probay won me the game.
R2 sneak+show. The one round I actually had a board against although I didnt get a Chains of Mephistopheles. Game1 I lost pretty quick. Game 2 he had double counters for my Rector. I resolved a BSA. He resolves sneak attack and drops both Emrakul and Gisselbrand. He moves to attack being at 10 life. I sac some shit and block his gisselbrand. He then notices his mistake, thinks for a minute and desides to activate his gisselbrand. Ofcourse the last card he rips is his singleton echoing truth. Next turn he rips an emrakul from the top and I die.
R3 dark horizons or whatever that GBW knight of the reliquary deck is called. He beats me game 1 coz I fail to draw business. Game 2 goes to time (would have won that game) and I loose 0-1.
R4 againt pyromancers ascension burn. He has no outs for White leyline.
R5 againt zoo. We all know how that matchup is.
I get to play a fun game of EDH and go home.
Luckily I got some nice trades and some nice goodies for nicfit and edh.
The deck played fine although I did miss the 3rd Stp and the 4th GSZ. Back to the drawing board. The board was fine. I just had janky matchups.
And of the 3 SneakShow decks present 2 made the finals. Nuff said I guess.
Been doing a whole lot of testing recently and I've been trying to (once again) come up with a walker happy version of the deck. Clearly Liliana isn't pulling her weight like she used to - I mean hell, people are looking for spells to drop things in their bin, we don't need to help them with it - but I don't think she's necessarily bad.
The walkers I've been testing aside from her are Elspeth, Sorin, and Big Garruck.
I'm still convinced that the white splash is completely necessary right now, and I've actually jammed a main-deck Humility in the deck to deal properly with the meta-game.
So I'm working on brewing something that is much more controlling than other version (less creatures - bigger bombs - better board state) and would like some help from the community.
Here is what I consider to be the necessary evils:
4 x explorer
4 x Cabal therapy
3 x Inquisition of K
3 x Pernicious Deed (While its losing its flair recently, it still wins me about 50% of my games)
2/3 x Academy Rector - FOR -
-- 1 x Phyrexian Arena
-- 1 x Humility
-- 3 x Deed
-- 3 x Top
-- 3 x Recurring Nightmare
3 x Sensei's Top
2/3 x GSZ - The deck doesn't need the toolbox like it used to for artifact hate so I'm currently testing a build with 2 Zenith's instead of 3, I rarely ever use it to do anything except snag an early explorer or late game to grab an empath/sigarda.
On that note, the creatures:
2/3 x Academy Rector - arguably the only reason to play white
4 x Explorer
1/2 x Ooze (been really underwhelmed with him recently)
1/2 x Thrun (see above comment)
2/3 x Eternal Witness (Simply Broken in this deck)
1 x Fierce Empath
--Bombs--
1 x Sun Titan (even with Moat out you can recur it to bring back hate)
1 x Kokusho
1 x Sigarda
Removal:
Currently I'm running a 2/2 split of swords and innocent bloods and its fine - Maelstrom Pulse has not been holding its weight however its necessary for A. Jace, and B. the return of the wonderful CB (Especially with Entreat tokens)
21 land.
Now the problem I'm having is, I want to start jamming walkers into the deck: Ideally, I'd love to run 1 Liliana, 1 Sorin, 1 Elspeth, and 2 Garruks but I can't find the room with the rector package, etc. etc.
The walkers give you stability over ground stalls until you can find something to help you stabalize, and garruk simply draws you infinite cards or pops out HUGE bodies.
I've played a few games with my old list (-1 GSZ, +1 Humility) Where I've been able to race reanimator players, or win (post board) after grizzzlyman resolves, I think that's pretty impressive.
So, anyone wanna help put together the saucy walker version with me?
Clearly creatures would have to go for the sake of the walkers, but the question is - which ones.
Edit: Possible Deck List - Need Serious Tuning:
1 Sorin, Lord of Innistrad
1 Liliana of the Veil
1 Elspeth
2 Garruk, Primal Hunter
4 Veteran Explorer
1 Scavenging Ooze
1 Kokusho, the Evening Star
1 Sigarda, Host of Herons
1 Fierce Empath
2 Eternal Witness
2 Academy Rector
1 Phyrexian Arena
1 Humility
1 Recurring Nightmare
3 Pernicious Deed
3 Sensei's Divining Top
2 Bayou
1 Scrubland
2 Savannah
4 Verdant Catacombs
3 Windswept Heath
4 Swamp
3 Forest
2 Plains
2 Swords to Plowshares
2 Innocent Blood
2 Green Sun's Zenith
4 Cabal Therapy
3 Inquisition of Kozilek
My first advice would be to play 4 Lingering Souls. Cheaper than any PW and it would take very long for a PW to produce the same amount of token. Good with Humility too. Flying makes the tokens able to block Delver. Also very good against Jace and Countermagic.
Came back with a 4-3 record on our local GP side event... Meta for the side event was rug, reanimator, mav, then some control (junk, bw,uw) and combo , a few nicfit, burn and sneak show( not sure as I didn't see any), maybe just one pure miracle control....took 25th place out of 98
Tourney report..
I brought a more innovative list of Nicfit and was very happy with the results... Just got paired with bad match ups towards the end, hence the result. I didn't bring pen and paper so I am just reporting out of memory...
List:
22 lands including
4 forest
2 swamp
1 plains
3 windswept heath
4 v. catacombs
2 p. tower
3 bayou
2 savanahh
1 scrubland
4 veteran explorer
2 scavenging ooze
1 q.pridemage
2 eternal witness
2 academy rector
1 thrun
1 sigarda
1 sun titan
4 cabal therapy
2 greensun zenith
3 swords to plowshare
3 maelstrom pulse
2 e.e.
3 pernicious deed
2 liliana
3 sensei
1 phyrexian arena
1 faiths fetters
1 batterskull
SB:
2 tormods
2 nihil
2 chokes
1 tsunami
1 humility
2 cranial extraction
4 duress
1 leyline of sanctity
---------------------------------
ROund 1 -vs reanimator 2-0
Game 1, he mulls to 6, and I start beating down with veteran explorer, he eventually gets a griselbrand in play, but doesn't draw counters vs, maelstrom pulse... He gets down another grisel brand but can't draw anymore because he had 3 life left... I know at this point he has a force of will in hand, I play a rector and he doesn't force it... (saving it for removal since I intentionally fixed my lands and showed him that I left 1 white mana available to scare him for swords).. I sac rector, to get faiths fetters, and it was over from then on...
Game 2 , I get to discard first and a nihil in play then put another rector in play, and call in humility... it was over
ROund 2 - RUG (top 8 finisher ) 2-0
Game 1- I win fairly easily..
Game 2- I go down to 4, but get a faiths fetters to enchant his delver... I control the board with liliana and start controling the board. then kill with sigarda
Round 3 - Merfolk (top 8 finisher ) 0-2
Game 1, he has 2x force of will for my mass removal..
Game 2 he has 2 x force of will for my mass removal...
Lol.. with merfolks swarm speed and the free counters, this match is quite really hard to win... I'm not quite sure if I needed to board out veteran explorers for this match up, but I left thim in as blockers. 1 force of will is fine.. but 2 was, bleh... I do still think this is supposed to be a fairly good match up.. but maybe he just had very good hands...
Round 4 - Rug 2-0
Game 1- won it easily
Game 2 - won it easily
Round 5 - Burn (8th place) As I saw him, I cringed in what was going to happen since I already knew he was playing burn 1-2
Game 1- lost
Game 2- won drawing my single leyline of sanctity on my opening hand
Game 3- lost was a close game, I had fetters ready for the next turn to buy me time but he fireblasts and flame rifts my face...
Round 6 RUG- 2-0
Game 1- won easily
Game 2- Down to 4 faiths fetters for the save again , Then sigarda for the win
Round 7 - Belcher 1-2
Round 1, I pulse his empty the warren tokens.. but had a slow clock, he eventually draws enough mana for belcher.
Round 2, Won with sanctity and multiple cranial extraction, for his empty the warrens, belcher and burning wish...
Round 3, I keep a hand with duress and calbal therapy... But he goes turn 1 empty the warrens for 14... No hope for me here..
Finished the entire tourney with 4-3 record...
Was really happy with the deck and wpould probably keep it generally that way and probably remove sun titan for another more useful creature. Pridemage was used to break a sulfuric vortex, but wasn't that useful, however I would still leave him in the deck for random encounters with artifacts and enchantments. Rectors were great, but I think 2 is the right number...
Liliana was great, as she was removal as well as discard.. However, she can be replaced by another walker, who should be able to control and disrupt at least...
there will be metagame changes on the sideboard ofcourse... I never got to use my chokes and tsunami which was a waste of space..
PROPS :Sigarda for flying and winning games.. Rector really is a house specially if your opponents do not know what tricks lie in your deck.. Rector again for being worth it... Ee, for being added removal for those goose and delvers...Phyrexian towers for a great job at killing my rectors and producing 2 mana.. to Arianrhod for sharing some ideas...Faiths fetters for helping against , Rug.. + 4 life at times is all I need...
SLOPS : for the deck theft that happend on the 5th round...
@Claymore -- Carpet is savage against Thresh. I.Blood can be questionable, because if they have one of the hands they sometimes do where they just vomit dudes into play, it can be very subpar. If they have their more usual 1-threat + disruption hand, then you're in good shape...personally I prefer Carpet, though. Daze and Pierce are so popular right now that it's a very nice thing to just completely invalidate them.
@Chikenbok -- I've definitely had the idea for a token build in the past, although I've never done much with it. Souls wouldn't be horrible, neither would Bitterblossom. I'd probably run 2 Deeds (and still Rectors) in a token build....sometimes you just need a reset, and if you have a sufficient density of walkers/souls, you can always regenerate a board presence a hell of a lot faster than your opponent. Anti-synergistic with Bitterblossom, but BB is a powerful enough card that I think it's worth playing regardless. A very good top-end enchantment for you would be True Conviction...Rector that in, and suddenly your tokens are actually terrifying....let alone if you have a Sorin emblem or two, or Elspeth is jumping things. I definitely think that it's worth looking into and testing, although it's going to need some serious R&D.
@Flip -- glad you did well with it. Sucks that you hit some awkward matchups, but beating reanimator is pretty good. Isn't playing against RUG fun? =D
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I took my white list, with some changes, to Mythic Games on Saturday...solid 30-person event. I don't remember all of the changes I made off the top of my head, although I know I shaved Rector, Deed, and Garruk all to 2-ofs, put Ooze, 1x Swords, 1x Blood in, cut Moat and Elspeth, switched Faith's Fetters to O-Ring, and put in 3x Thoughtseize. I played against BUG control (slaughtered him with an unanswered PHyrexian Arena), Storm (TESish with Gitaxian Probe and Cabal Therapy...kind of a fusion of ANT and TES...died hard here), traditional TES (2-0'd on the back of discard and Baneslayer g1, then piles of hatred g2), Canadian Thresh (0-2 scoop...carmate with 77% breakers, I lost in playing due to his sb tech of Gilded Drake...Thresh taking Sun Titan is a problem. But I was scooping him anyway, so whatever), Doug McKay's latest brew (U/B Delver tempo...2-0'd in time. We got into really stupid board states where he'd have multiple Delvers and Tombstalkers, but I'd have Baneslayer(s), Sigarda, and so on, and we just kind of stared at each other until I found removal).
After getting 10th (the only one of my car to miss top8...), I traded in for a few pretty things (including a jap foil Cabal Therapy), and made some more changes to the deck. Currently, I've dropped Garruk entirely. He just isn't that good in the current meta....I think*. Rector and Deed are both back to 3-ofs, and won't be leaving anytime soon. I just didn't find them nearly enough at 2-of...there were a lot of times where I wanted one or the other and I just couldn't find it. I also realized that with the dropping of Garruk, I could safely run Teeg maindeck...it only shuts off Zenith main. But then I come to the same problem as always....Cranial is just better hate in general, and Teeg shuts off Cranial. WTB 3-drop Cranial.
* -- the meta is weird right now. According to the Invitational, Stoneblade is alive again. However, I contribute that more to the fact that the people that played Stoneblade did well in standard, whereas people that played current tier legacy decks did not. The Open is much more interesting...in particular the signs that tribal is rising again....especially Merfolk, which put a whopping three players into the top 23 (that we know of...might be more in top32, but we don't have that complete info). Along with Flip noting that he played vs a Merfolk that top 8'd at his side event, and also a Merfolk deck that top8'd the event I was at on Saturday, it definitely seems like tribal is emerging once again, finally.
-What this means for us: white versions probably should be running both a Moat and a Humility somewhere between main and sideboard...probably both in the board, but I'm not sure. Fish has never been able to beat Moat, and I don't see Phantasmal Image changing things that much. We just need to be careful with how we kill them....probably Kokusho looping is the safest way, unless we have a removal spell in hand that we know will resolve. We can't just be like hurrrrr Baneslayer vs Fish if they're running 4x maindeck Images. Moat is also hyper-effective vs Goblins, which as a deck has even fewer answers than Fish.
-All versions should be running 3 Deeds at minimum, even if you're running Rector.
-Some light spot removal is probably a good idea, as is some kind of lifegain engine. Huntmaster, Baneslayer, Ooze, Fetters, Obstinate Baloth...whatever. This slot simplifies when M13 comes out and every version of the deck gets Thragtusk, which is just batshit crazy with Nightmare.
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I'm currently very torn between my white and blue list. The Blue has undergone many fundamental changes from the list that I posted a few pages back, and it's actually functional now. It can definitely be functioning better, I think, but it does work now, and has been putting up decent results vs the meta. It helps that it gets to sb really good answers to problem matchups...like 4x Force of Wills xD
Honestly, there are two factors that will determine which version I play at Atlanta: what happens Tuesday night for the banned update, and what the meta looks like for Detroit's Legacy Open. If tribal continues to improve, I'll be playing white. If Sneak/Show gets banned, I'll probably be playing white. If nothing changes meta-wise or banned-wise, and Doug and I can make sufficient progress on the blue version, I'll be jamming that. Brainstorm is stupid with the Explorer engine. Also, you haven't lived until you've looped Coiling Oracles and Baleful Strixes with Recurring Nightmare.
Ulvenwald Tracker
What do you guys think about that card? He's an easy GSZ target and he lets you trade your explorers for confidants and much more. I'm going to try him out as 1off!
Instead of Griselbrand, try out Hornet Queen. Dropping a Queen off of Show and Tell can stall the board for a good while.Quote:
Originally Posted by Chikenbok
Does Master of the Wild Hunt/Ulvenwald Tracker have any place? I could see use with increasing Merfolk with repeating removal and applications against RUG
I don't like Tracker in non-Maverick decks. I think he's fine in Maverick because they have ways to protect him/they run 80 other must-kill-on-sight dudes, so the opp is probably out of removal anyway. We don't have either luxury, and while making Baneslayers punch things is amusing and probably good, I think that it'll end up being a corner case at best 90% of the time.
Master is an odd duck. IMO, Master shines in our deck when Esperblade is big -- it mows down Lingerings Souls and Stoneforges like no tomorrow, while also killing Cliques and Delvers. The problem with Master is that he's useless against a meta where things are larger than X/2 or X/1, which most of the time Merfolk are going to be well over that threshold....especially since they're running 4x Image as an ADDITIONAL lord (because they need it, clearly). Poofing images is nice, I suppose, but I still think that he's going to be both too slow and too ineffectual to be worth it. He's also terrible against RUG....he can't fight Mongoose, by the time he'll have come down and be active he'll get bolted on sight or Delver will have already killed you, and the best he can do with Goyf is achieve parity. I don't think Master is worth a slot until Esperblade's time comes around again.
Bumping for Land Tax discussion.
With Tax being unbanned, what happens here? If it finds a home, that would be a second deck in the format besides ourselves that plays a superfluity of basics. Not thinking in so much format-wide results of this, as of how our matchup would be vs such a deck. I suppose that if we Therapy/Deed away Scroll Rack we're in good shape, but if they drop an Armageddon on t3 that we ramp them into, we're going to be hurting big time. Versions that can Kokusho loop would be favored in the matchup (Armageddon notwithstanding), because Kokusho can get around Solitary Confinement. I suppose it's also worth noting that they can always fail to find off of Explorer, and then get free Tax triggers for the rest of ever, even on the draw.
The thing is, though, that I'm not sure how worried we should be about the deck. Tax is annoying, but I feel like the shell built around it is probably going to be questionable.
Also, the good news here is that if Tax does end up being safe (which it's pretty obvious that it will), Mind Twist pretty much -has- to be the next unban. I can't think of anything else on that list right now that is as worthy of being removed as Twist, and that's honestly speaking from empirical thought, not just the fact that I really want to abuse it in this deck. It comes off before Earthcraft, for sure. Part of me wonders if unbanning Tax now suggests Twist coming back the next update....Tax is a good way to fight Twist, afterall.
I'm not all that worried about it, save for Armageddon plans. A turn 1 Tax would have to be played around (no explorer turn 1), likely putting pridemage back into the mainboard. The all powerful Deed can save us past that. Most of these lists will run Path over Swords, and while exile is bad in general, it will still serve our mana accel cause.
Armageddon definitely hurts us one way or another.
I am curious why they didn't put out Mind Twist considering several top decks are combo based (counting SnT as combo), or otherwise blue, and powerful discard goes a long way to hurting those strategies. I guess they didn't want to shake up things too much.
The trick is that if they just look at the data, without any inference, they'll see that the format is dominated by Canadian Thresh/RUG Delver/whatever the hell you want to call it. Land tax seems on the surface like a good way to fight that deck, because it's much like Veteran Explorer. It guarantees that you're making land drops (instead of ramping), and that those lands are immune to wasteland and stifle.
It's only when you apply critical thinking skills that you start to realize that the best way to fight RUG is to injure Sneak/Show/Tell of various flavors, because those decks prey on the decks that prey on RUG. I'm fairly confident that come September, Mind Twist will be unbanned. If, and this is a big if, the trend of the format continues, we'll be in full-blown Sneak/Show/Tell/Hypergenesis/Reanimator land by that point, with RUG having vastly subsided, and decks like ours being either wholly tuned to that meta, or the people that play them just taking a break from the format. S/S/T/H/R/whatever (just call them all collectively Griselbrand and be done with it?) is going the same way as Survival did at this juncture in time. We can delude ourselves (the collective we, not just us players of this deck) that our decks are viable, but they really aren't. This is Griselbrand's format, and just like it took a few months for Survival to really ramp up into the monster that it eventually became, so too here.
That said, while everyone else is deluding themselves, we -STILL- aren't badly positioned, assuming that we just dodge Sneak and Show.
But yeah....like I said, it might be that things will change, and maybe THIS time the answers that exist within the format will actually be employed before it reaches that point. Frankly, I hope that they don't, because if I can't have Survival, Show and Tell's fans should have that card either, out of sheer spite.
RE Tax -- I think that the old lists I saw only ran 1x Armageddon. Sure, they can find it like few other decks can, but 1. it'll only happen once, and 2. it might well happen AFTER we already have a sizable enough board presence to not care.