[Deck] Fetchland Tendrils

Honestly. I am curious. After all of these posts and all the debates about TES VS DD and all that shit. What to people really want 2 know about DD??? Its tough to play ... ok. But ... and this is a bit BUT, have u read all of the stuff emidln has written ebout the deck and still we debate about pointless shit like protection spells. People play whatever suits their metagame ... thats it, in some Chants are better, sometimes 6-7 duress effects are better, but seriously, what stops people from playing the deck. You have the google stack piles ... and i have no problem posting this but do most people want a hand analysis, showing what competent pilots keep when they play this deck? Really; there is no card discission or nothing, would it be beneficial to shuffle up my bui;d and post 7 random hands and post the shit i would keep and mull? And then after that discuss why? Because I realize this is simply th most diffucult deck to pilot in the current meta but whaty do people need to see in order to play it right?

Lazyness. People play legacy to have fun not work on piles.^^

Note : I had to post to be able to see your post, don't know why.

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Originally Posted by Lejay

Lazyness. People play legacy to have fun not work on piles.^^

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QFT! I know all the piles, think I can play the deck properly, but our big tourneys are usually 3-4 hours drive away and we want to have some beers with friends ... other decks suit this "fun factor" better. You can do whatever, sample hands and stuff, but people will still get scared to do whole tourney with this deck.

Hope my english is clear, that you understand my thoughts.

It's really not hard to see why this deck is underplayed. Without going into whether it is or isn't better than TES, it's disproportionately harder to play, and requires more dedication to learning it inside out than any other combo deck in legacy. Probably more than any other legacy deck, period. The piles aren't the only issue either -- Doomsday is just one of the cards that requires playskill. Top, BS and even discard are all skill intensive, and DDFT requires a more directed setup than other combo decks. With AdN, you can autopilot into a drit, drit, AdN and win. With DDFT, you need to sculpt a hand + board (sdt, rain of filth requirements etc) that wins with a given pile, while being versatile enough to be able to switch piles according to any situation. Memorising piles is tough without an innate understanding of the deck and a lot of practice -- you can memorise the standard piles, but the measure of any DDFT player is how you play through hate, and the various anti-hate piles all add up to a lot of memory work that can prove impossible for someone who isn't dedicated to playing the deck.

It's also a lot harder to provide scenario analyses for this deck than with AdN-centric decks, because the deck is a full turn slower with regards to its combo fundamental turn and has enough cantrips such that typical hands that are kept are unlikely to look the same after 2-3 turns when you finally go off. The hands which are easier to analyse and walk others through on (say, 2 x land, sdt, drit, dd, bs, duress) don't provide enough value because the difficulty entailed by this deck isn't when you get good hands like the above (t2 goldfish, t3 protected kill), but when you get mediocre hands or when you play a pseudo-reactionary game to your opponent. Hands that are cantrip/wish heavy are likely better for attritional games where good pilots are separated from the mediocre ones, but those are harder to walk through. I guess someone could do videos for the deck like what the UWT people did for that deck, but the learning curve is still going to turn a lot of people off. Not to mention that a Team America/tempo centric meta is terrible for traditional DDFT builds. You could adjust to be better against tempo, but it still isn't a good matchup when you're against TA/CT/NLT. New Horizons is the most winnable, but it's under the radar right now.

Long story short, even if it were better than TES (debatable, although DDFT has some very distinct strengths), it's often not going to be worth it for someone to put the effort in to play the deck optimally, when the investments needed to play ANT or TES are much lower without much (if any) tradeoff in the deck's power level and standing in the current meta.

Hmmm, I never really thought it would be laziness cause I just assumed most people take the time to learn a deck but ... yeah, makes sense. No other deck in the format requires you to read articles just to learn how to win. I always considered the stuff you are talking about fun though ... I must be a masochist.

I don't know about everyone else, but the things I have the most difficulty with are the opening hands, so an analysis on opening hands would be amazing. This may come off as stupid, but I've personally been trying for ages to figure this deck out. I started off playing the Pact Version of Spanish Inquisition, and Vacrix's primer was a gigantic help specifically because he explains the basics of the deck very well, including how to evaluate opening hands--however, I'm not used to playing anything safer than a glass cannon, so I don't know how to evaluate the opening hands of decks that don't need to win on turn one. Maybe I just won't ever get it, but I've been trying. I have read literally everything on the Storm Boards, the Source, and even the old psuedo-primer on MTGSalvation. Some of the posts are helpful, but there are a lot of things that are still difficult to understand. For instance, a lot of the documents on DD piles just tell you which cards you get, but nothing about how you use them to win--as a result, there are piles that I'm understanding, but the basic "Pass the turn" pile still confuses me. At the same time, because most of the posts seem to be aimed at people with some experience, I've seen more than a few replies along the lines of "You should just give it up if you need someone to help you with such a simple part of this complex deck," which makes me hesitant to post questions that would give me away as not knowing what the hell I'm doing.

The basic pass the turn requirements are these cards: bs, led x 2, igg, sdt, ToA. You will need to have one of those cards in your hand, except for ToA for this pile to work. ToA in hand is a win as well, but the mechanics are slightly different from the ones I am going through below.

BS
SDT
LED
LED
IGG
ToA/Wish

After you draw on t2, you will have 2 of these cards in your hand, one of which is bs. You bs, and place IGG on top of the library, and then top into IGG, cracking the LEDs while retaining priority. You loop LED x 2 and bs (3 cards in library), and crack to win through ToA or Wish -> ToA.

Say you have SDT in hand:

Draw BS.
Cast BS, draw LED, LED, IGG (1 storm, U expended), placing IGG + another non-combo card from hand in that order on library.
Play 2 x LED (3 storm)
Play SDT (1U expended, 4 storm)
Top into IGG, crack LEDs, cast IGG (BU floating, 5 storm)
Play LEDs (7storm, 2 mana floating)
From here, if you play wish, you cast bs into Wish -> ToA, 10 storm total.
If you don't you cast BS into sdt, cracking LEDs (8storm, 7 mana floating), cast sdt (9 storm, 6 mana floating), rearrange -> top into tendrils (10 storm)

In total, 1U for lethal.

If you have another card besides sdt, remove that card from the pile and shift everything upwards. If you have ToA, you draw bs, bs into sdt + 2 x led while returning toa to the library, crack leds when you cast sdt, rearrange to get IGG, cast IGG with 1 mana floating, bs + leds into sdt -> tendrils.

There are other piles involving Wish being active, but this is the generic pass the turn pile for t2 wins.

Thank you, that's actually a great help.

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Originally Posted by Pulp_Fiction

Honestly. I am curious. After all of these posts and all the debates about TES VS DD and all that shit. What to people really want 2 know about DD??? Its tough to play ... ok. But ... and this is a bit BUT, have u read all of the stuff emidln has written ebout the deck and still we debate about pointless shit like protection spells. People play whatever suits their metagame ... thats it, in some Chants are better, sometimes 6-7 duress effects are better, but seriously, what stops people from playing the deck. You have the google stack piles ... and i have no problem posting this but do most people want a hand analysis, showing what competent pilots keep when they play this deck? Really; there is no card discission or nothing, would it be beneficial to shuffle up my bui;d and post 7 random hands and post the shit i would keep and mull? And then after that discuss why? Because I realize this is simply th most diffucult deck to pilot in the current meta but whaty do people need to see in order to play it right?

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You answered it yourself. It's just the most complicated deck, by a clear margin. I really want to play it, but all the possible piles somewhat scare me (and certainly others as well) to learn it. I mean I play TES now for half a year and I still feel that I have to learn a lot. Just imaging to play a deck with even more decisions (and, therefore, ways to lose to yourself) really holds me back to even try it (although I'm a person that usually enjoys to cudgel one's brains).

As for me, I would certainly welcome a good discussion about starting hands. Even more if it would be in a match-up-related way e.g. why you would keep a certain hand against deck X, but not against Y.

I don't think we should kid ourselves and think that the only reason DDFT doesn't see more play is because it's too hard to play. Imo, DDFT also has its own share of problems that hold it back:

1) Generally an atrocious matchup vs blue tempo
2) Being a full turn slower than most AdN lists is sometimes a big disadvantage, because you give your opponent more time to play out their hate/annoying cards.
3) Being much more exposed to Extirpate and Stifle: Extirpate can be hard to beat when playing against a Hymn+Thoughtseize deck. Multiple Stifles can be tough since they will make your pile cost infinite mana, if you don't play Chant. Cards like these almost force you into playing with (suboptimal?) white cards. AdNaus (almost) never gives a damn about cards like Stifle and Extirpate.
4) Lastly, Doomsday is a card disadvantage, whereas AdN is card advantage. Probably very obvious, but I still think it's one of DD's inherent problems.

Anyway, AdNaus is not without its own problems, and there are times when DDFT is going to be the better deck... but for the most part, I'd say that AdN-fueled decks are still better, even though I think the ban on Mystical Tutor brought them a lot closer in power level.

By the way, check out this guy playing DDFT (video 5 & 6). Pretty entertaining, despite the occasional misplays.

Against tezz affinity, goblins, no show, and forgemaster mud I averaged a turn 2.1 kill en route to a top 8 in a smal 40 person event. If ANT is a turn faster, I'd argue that your numbers for ant are false. I ran the german list. In seven matches I had four game losses with one being my direct fault, two mulls into oblivion, and a counterbalance player who didn't punt when I attempted to go off through his active counterbalance in g1. The ant player who faces the same mud list lost to a chalice that I ignored in g1 and somehow lost to no show.

The only reason the german list isn't adtb is lack of pilots.

No one is saying that DDFT's only weakness is its difficulty. The point is, though, that the deck's difficulty is extremely salient, and is the first and foremost thing to be considered when looking at this deck. The same way Lands and Aluren are looked at firstly for the high values of niche cards like Tabernacle and Recruiter before the actual decks are evaluated. If pilots, or potential pilots never get past the learning phase, the rest of the deck's evaluations are meaningless to them.If you don't learn how to drive, your right to be taken seriously when you discuss a car's performance is forfeit.

@Stifle: No problems agreeing here. Stifle is terrible for DDFT, but you can play through 1 stifle while going off with a decent amount of ease. Where stifle hurts DDFT when it goes off, it hurts TES when it sets up with fetches. The impact isn't as visible, but it certainly isn't negligible either. I'm not sure why DDFT is weak to extirpate, because aside from extirpate being terrible in today's meta without loam or survival to prey on, constructing piles that are extirpate-proof is easy. Additionally, it isn't as though TES isn't weak to tempo decks. Wastelands are a lot better against TES than they are against DDFT, spell snare is frequently a blow out against all-in plays while DDFT is potentially proof to spell snares. Team America's discard is a lot more relevant against TES, and so on. It's honestly hard to argue that TES is more resilient than DDFT, though, and I don't think it's worthwhile to try. TES' advantage lies in its speed and the ability to blow decks out of the water. DDFT's advantages lie in being versatile and relevant after the early game.

@ DD being card disadvantage, the only situation in which DD is actually card disadvantage is when you cast DD without any way to draw into it, because you either 1) draw into a CA spell, 2) accept the CDA because you are putting Emrakul into play, 3) accept the CDA because you are going to either bs or Wish for the win after DD resolves.

Doomsday shouldn't be looked at as a deck that seeks to goldfish quickly, although the 4c German lists talked about above are a lot more aggressive in that regard. Doomsday's advantages over AdN, besides the deck's resilience we spoke of, are that life totals are an independent resource for DD -- only the last 2 life points are of much consequence to the deck, and that DD has the same advantages that IGG has over AdN by being a sure kill without variance, but without the weakness to countermagic or the reliance on chant effects that IGG has.

PS: If it weren't already obvious, I'm not saying DD > TES. I'm saying that DD has distinct strengths and playstyle requirements that could suit certain metas and pilots more than TES. I don't believe for an instance that one is obviously better than the other, assuming both decks are played competently.

@namida: Never feel ashamed to ask questions about the deck, be encouraged, no one will chastise you or talk shit. Feel encouraged to post questions and scenarios. If you are ever goldfishing the list post the list and your hand/situation and we can tell you how to play out the hand.

@occam: Totally agree.

Ok, I am going to goldfish 3 hands with my list posted on the other page and tell what I would keep against what and try to point out the courses you can take. But take into consideration, this is strictly goldfishing going for the fastest kill, I can talk strategy against certain archetypes later but this is just to try and point out you available options, I may miss some but thats because DD has so many options you are able to adapt to the opponent, but I am just going for the fastest kill and I am always on the play.

Hand 1: DD, Island, Dark Ritual, Polluted Delta, Brainstorm, LED, Underground Sea.
I would keep this against basically anything, even Stax and Stompy since I have access to 2 basics. You have 3 options here: Turn 1 Emrakul, turn 3 Meditate stack, and turn 3 IGG stack.

Turn 1 Emrakul just goes like this: Sea - DRit - DD and you build the stack of: Shelldock Isle, Emrakul, Top, LED, Burning Wish OR if you don't need wish you just make: Isle, Emrakul, Duress, Dark Rit, DD or Tendrils. Playing this is self explanatory but with Wish you can kill them a turn earlier by Wishing for Tendrils and hitting them for 6 after swinging for 15.

Turn 3 Meditate stack goes like this: turn 1 Island go. Turn 2, draw a random card, in this case Top but what you draw is highly irrelevant. You play Delta and pass. Now since I drew Top that turn I can flat out win on the spot here and it will be with the same pile but lets assume I drew a land. Turn 3 draw an Underground Sea. Fetch out Badlands. Tap Sea for B and play Dark Rit (1), DD (2) and build a pile of: Meditate, Petal, LED, LED, Burning Wish. Assuming I didn't draw Top which is +1 storm lets just plat it like I drew a land. Play LED (3), tap Island to play Brainstorm (4), maintain priority and blow up LED for UUU. Draw Meditate and cast it (5). Draw Petal, LED, LED, Burning Wish. Play Petal (6), LED (7), LED (8) blow up Petal for R and tap Badlands to play Burning Wish (9), maintain priority and blow up LEDs for BBBBBB and get Tendrils (10).

Turn 3 IGG stack goes like this: turn 1 Island go. Turn 2 draw a random card, play Delta and say go. Turn 3 draw random card, lets say another land, the reason I am doing this is to show you how to combo off with the bare minimum essentials cause it pretty easy when you keep drawing LEDs and Petals and shit. Play Sea, fetch another Sea, play Dark Rit (1), Doomsday (2) and build this pile: Top, LED, LED, IGG, Tendrils. Tap island to play Brainstorm (3), draw Top, LED, LED, and put back the 2 random cards you drew on top. Play Top (4) tapping Sea, play LED (5), LED (6). Blow up both LEDs for UUUBBB. Use a U mana and look with the Top and rearrange the top 3 cards of you library, the third one down is IGG and put that on top. Draw with Top and Play IGG (7) using BBBU so you have U floating. Bring back LED, LED, Brainstorm. Use the U floating to cast LED (8), LED (9), and Brainstorm (10), maintain priority and blow up but LEDs for BBBBBB. Draw Top and play it (11), look at the top 3 ad rearrange them so Tendriuls is on top, activate the Top and draw Tendrils (12).

I have to switch computers but I will be back on in a second.

I have two main reasons I play TES over DDFT.

1) I really really like Ad Nauseam. I have won so many games that I just have no business winning with that card. I used to run a version of PF's DDANT deck, and I really liked that, but I don't think that giving up Ad Nauseam for Doomsday is a good call.

2) I only have 2 Korean Doomsdays. Not much else to say here.

Hand 2: Shelldock, Duress, Thoughtseize, BW, Tendrils, Top, IT. Mull. 6 cards: BW, BW, Petal, Cabal Rit, Duress, Sea …. iffy but I would probably keep this against most decks, especially CB, certainly not Stax though.

Turn 1 Sea, Duress. Turn 2, draw Brainstorm, cast Brainstorm and look at: Top, Cabal Rit, Sea. Put back BW and Cabal Rit. Play the Sea and Top and pass the turn. NOW, you do have the option of a turn 3 Emrakul stack. Against control decks this would be very simple and it plays like this: play Petal, Burning Wish for DD, and pass the turn. Draw Cabal Rit and tap both lands to play CRit, CRit, Doomsday and build this pile:
Duress, Shelldock, Emrakul, Dark Rit, Tendrils/Doomsday depending on their life. Play Top and activate it to draw Duress and Duress them right there if you suspect Stifle or you can just put Shelldock on Top and draw it with your Top and hideaway Emrakul for the turn 3 Shelldock, turn 4 Emrakul, and honestly, this is good against most decks.

Or you can continue on with your hand like this: Burning Wish, Cabal Rit, Petal. Top in play and Cabal Rit, and BW on Top. Turn 3 Draw CRit and look with the Top to see: Burning Wish, Meditate, Top …. This sucks. Put the other Top back on top and play Petal, and Burning Wish for DD and pass the turn. Turn 4 Draw Top and play it and look at the top 3 again seeing: Meditate, land, Burning Wish …. Put the land on top and pass turn. Turn 5 you draw the land and can Tendrils for lethal, given it’s a bit late in the game but … mull to 6 with disruption with the turn 3 Emrakul play .. very versatile. I would most likely gone for the Emrakul play but if you want to Tendrils here this is what you do, fetch a land and play CRit (1), CRit (2), keeping a Sea open, DD (3) and you have 2 Tops in play, B floating from the CRits and a Sea open. You build this pile: LED, Meditate, LED, Dark Rit, Tendrils. Activate one of the Tops to draw LED, play it (4), use the B floating to look at the top 3 and put Meditate on top. Blow up LED for UUU, activate Top to draw Meditate and play it (5) drawing Top, Top, Dark Rit, LED. With tap your last Sea and play Dark Rit (6), Top (7), Top (8), LED (9) blow up LED for BBB and activate Top to draw Tendrils.

I am quite glad something weird like this came up. This hand is an anomaly but … it happens, has either CRit been Rituals I would have won sooner, and if I had LED it would have been a LOT faster. But, you do what you can with what the deck gives you, and I hope describing card selection with Top and BS helps. But really, any acceleration spell would have made things go much faster, oh well, sometimes the deck acts up, but unlike TES, I have never really felt stranded with no way out, there is always an out somewhere you just have to look hard enough to find it. This may seem very slow … and it was, but even when the decks just keeps giving you shit, you will find a way to win.

Hand 3, hopefully this will be easier: Top, Petal, Brainstorm, Bloodstained Mire, Dark Ritual, Polluted Delta, Duress. Yes, much better, these are the hands I like cause this is 100% good against the field. Turn 1, bloodstained Mire fetches Sea and Duress. I want to fetch a Sea here because I HOPE they Wasteland me and set themselves back a turn cause I am on the ball here with mana, unless it is Stax/Stompy in which case you get a swamp. Turn 2 draw Burning Wish. You have a couple options here, you can either Burning Wish for DD right here and play your cantrips next turn for basically a guaranteed turn 4 win or you can cantrip now and hope to find acceleration for the turn 3 win. I would play it like this: fetch Badlands, Burning Wish for DD, and pass the turn. NOW, you have the option of a Doomsday go pile with IGG on turn 3 depending on what you are playing against. By just going Dark Rit, Petal, Burning Wish, Doomsday go you would have the following pile: LED, LED, IGG, Tendrils, Top (there is a lot of different variations of this you can use but I like this one. This is an auto-win against most aggro and you can absolutely do this game 1 everytime. It plays out like the IGG pile I talked about in hand 1. But I will go through the motions anyway: 2 lands in play and Brainstorm and Top in hand. Draw LED, tap Badlands and play Top (1), tap Sea and play Brainstorm (2) drawing LED, IGG, Tendrils, put back Tendrils and IGG on top. Play LED (3), LED (4) and blow them up for UUUBBB. Activate Top to draw IGG and play it (5) with UB floating bringing back LED, LED, Brainstorm. Play LED (6), LED (7), Brainstorm (8) and you will see Top, Tendrils, Top. Draw the first Top and put the second one above Tendrils. Play the Top with the B you have floating (9). Blow up both LEDs for BBBBBB and activate the first top to draw the second. Play the second Top (10), look at the top 2, put Tendrils back on top, then activate your Top to draw Tendrils (11). That is the pass the turn pile.

But if you can’t use IGG continue on. Turn 3 draw Cabal Rit. Play Brainstorm (1) and see: Sea, LED, Petal ……. Yep, that’s the nuts. Put back Sea and Cabal Rit and tap badlands for Dark Ritual (2), Petal (3), Petal (4), LED (5), Top (6), DD (7) and just build another Meditate stack: Meditate, LED, LED, Petal, Burning Wish and Tendrils for 28. Sometimes the deck goes nuts like that, but even without the LED you still win turn 4 with the same pile.

I hope this helps. The problem most people seem to have with the deck is that it is always changing, there is rarely a clear cut game plan, and as you are sculpting your hand you are always searching for what betters you hand, with no real clear cut plan in mind, just something that the opponent doesn’t want to see. The key is to not fixate on 1 simple plan, constantly adjust your plan with each new card you draw, don’t fixate on Meditate, IGG, EtW, or Emrakul, just adapt to what you opponent is doing at the time, weigh your options, and choose the best course of action.

And wow, this took me a lot longer than I thought it would!

Hand 1 kills turn 2 with turn 1 fetch->swamp, rit, dd, go building sdt, led, led, igg, tendrils.

TY sir. If anyome notices something I missed please let me know because that is one of the keys of the deck that are difficult to describe. Because the deck has so many options available it is nuts. I realized but I just became fixated on Emrakul which is a mistake. Now I truly understand why people can't play this deck, there are so many options and everything depends on what cards u draw and so forth .... and thus it continues, if u are a masochist, u play DDFT because u like thinking and a deck that will challenge your mind, clearly people who play CB and Merfolk don't want this challenge :)

I enjoy a good mental challenge when playing casually. But if you are talking about bringing doomsday to a SCG 5k with big money on the line or a Legacy GP I would think twice. Actually I would think trice. I had storm combo built for 2 years before I balled up and brought storm to a tournament. I agree 100% that Doomsday is not a DTB because of difficulty and a lack of pilots. Difficulty is also directly proportional to chances of punting. At the end of a tournament, in a T8, tired and hungry out of your mind, are you still mentally able to build the perfect pile?

Playing under no pressure, casually against buddies is not good training for this deck. The same applies to TES and other non-autopilot decks. When under pressure, punting is no joke and a deck that just dies when you make 1 mistake is not an ideal deck to bring to a tournament. But if you are and ex special forces commando with an IQ of 180, sure go ahead man. Help yourself. :)

I played against 3 Merfolk decks and 2 Reanimator last SCG .... I raped the reanimator and lost to Merfolk playing Chalice .... then i dropped and went to the bars. Shit happens and I would 100% be at this next SCG event but .... Wrestlemania is on the same day and u best believe I will be there cause The Rock and Stone Cold are back ... not an event to miss.

A) Thanks for the work on the opening hands. It really does help.

B) Rock *and* Steve Austin? No way. I haven't watched Wrestling for years, but I know they've been gone forever, man.