[Deck] Fetchland Tendrils

@Pulp_Fiction:
Thx a lot for the detailed description of those sample hands, I appreciate it. In fact, I built the basic DDFT list, as suggested by EmidIn from the previous page, and goldfished an hour yesterday. After understanding at least the basic piles, I grasped a little the power of the deck. SDT felt really awesome, it was exactly what I was missing in TES. I feel that this deck might actually be better positioned in the present meta, because the tempo decks, especially TA, are causing me a lot of trouble with TES.

Why I don't play Doomsday, and why I just might do it this wednesday:

I am not a terribly sharp Magic player. In fact, i'm lousy. To win, I need decks that win by themselves or are forgiving to misplays and errors (let's say, AnT and NO Prog as examples of decks that I do well with). With a deck like this, I sometimes loose when goldfishing. I can barely play through hate with AnT, and with this deck I sometimes mess up even when uninterrupted. No matter how powerful and fun this deck is, I will probably fail hard with it, and I can tell that this is a very frustrating deck to loose with.

With that said, the deck looks really fun. I have all the cards for the "beginners" list posted a few pages back and I have been goldfishing it enough to being able put together most basic piles without looking at notes, and hopefully having enough grasp of the anatomy of piles to construct one mentally if I have to. I also have been spoiled by easy and forgiving decks, which really has hurt my Vintage-playing a lot (I am surprised at how sloppy i'm playing nowadays, I blame it all on that 10/10 protection-dude). I have to tighten up my game, and playing a powerful but punishing deck might be just what I need.

But i'll probably chicken out, and run Merfolk or something. We'll see.

@Pulp Fiction:

I would have played hand 3 differently. Duress t1 is often a suboptimal usage of protection, especially when you have top in hand.

Turn 1: Fetch, top
Turn 2: Fetch, BW, Doomsday. I would almost never go for a pass-the-turn pile here unless it was g1 against a deck that has no anti-combo cards whatsoever, because you'd only ever go for pass the turn piles t1 otp against aggro or when you know that a control deck has no countermagic currently but has a Jace that he can play in a turn or two, or a visions that resolves in a turn or two. Having a hand that can already win pretty easily and going for a dangerous pass the turn pile detracts from the deck's advantages. Right now, you have no idea what you will draw t3, but your board and hand will resemble something like:

Board: Two lands, top
Hand: DD, BS, Drit, Petal, Duress. With this hand/board, you'd never go for the pass-the-turn pile because this is highly likely to be a protected t3 pile, t4 latest if you expect multiple taxing effects. In fact, it may not even matter what card you actually draw.

Turn3: Draw crit. Not going to draw the whole pile out as I'm rushing for time, but you would go petal, duress (before going off, when it is most relevant), drit, crit, DD, leaving yourself with 5 storm, 1 land untapped + petal, with BS in hand. You pile LED/Meditate/Drit/Drit/Toa for lethal. You can even ignore the crit that you drew as you can always play it out the same way, without crit, and pile LED/LED/Med/Drit/ToA for the win.

I almost never use pass the turn piles as they basically end up snatching defeat from the jaws of victory at times. Good to have, but I rarely use them. Also, this is a pretty good illustration of why DDFT is tough to play. It isn't the actual pile. A lot of those are academic. Creating a hand/board that opens access to piles is the hardest part about the deck.

I don't think I misinterpreted board position as I was rushing -- going to feel pretty sheepish if that's the case.

I've seen a few lists and matches, but I can't find out why people don't play the untap effect (CoF) in the SI-Emrakul pile.
Is it just the dead card/SB space issue?
Are you more likely to use it as a pass-the-turn pile or get protection instead?

I've seen good results without CoF, but I can imagine there are some fair scenarios where you just loose because you need to pass the turn.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by blaat

I've seen a few lists and matches, but I can't find out why people don't play the untap effect (CoF) in the SI-Emrakul pile.
Is it just the dead card/SB space issue?
Are you more likely to use it as a pass-the-turn pile or get protection instead?

I've seen good results without CoF, but I can imagine there are some fair scenarios where you just loose because you need to pass the turn.

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Cloud of Faeries can definitely be good sometimes, but I think the issue is that it can be countered. Against counterbalance decks, you can't reliably cast it (and they're usually so slow that you don't want to.) In the matchups that don't use permission, you COULD use it to cast emrakul, but why do that when you can win with Tendrils of Agony?

Cloud of Faeries is a lot better in a Doomsday deck with show and tell and no Tendrils plan.

In my experience (however limited) CoF (and I'm not defending it's spot in the 75) is at it's best just being a body. Sometimes you can smash with Emrakul and just die on the return swing if they have enough permanents to keep a guy around.

I wouldnt say "at best its just a body", at best its the time walk you need to steal the game from your opponent, at worst its cycle with no real significance to the game; often its just a tempo play that gives you your flying spaghetti monster and allows you to dodge edict effects. I am a huge fan of CoF. Ive tried other cards in its spot, specifically twiddle and snap but they end up being even more situational than CoF.

All right, I've got a lot of questions.

This opening hand business is still the hardest part of the deck for me. When it comes to keeping your hand, the general question one would ask is "Can this hand do something?" In decks like SI or Belcher, "doing something" is "winning the Game/drawing a billion cards to win the game next turn," and in other decks, it's "establishing board presence/disrupting the opponent, before establishing board presence." In this deck, how would you define what "doing something" is? I ask this because many of the hands I look at when goldfishing are perplexing to me--For instance, I don't know how acceptable it is to keep a hand that is mainly cantrips, because cantrips could be exactly what you need, or absolutely nothing that you wanted.

To seek some advice, I took the Deck with the Chants in it and I pulled up ten sample opening hands. Which hands would you keep against an unknown opponent, and why? Would you alter your choices if you knew what you were playing against in the first Game?

Hand 1) Bayou, Underground Sea, IGG, Top, Ponder, Orim’s Chant, Cabal Ritual
-Would you keep this hand? If you would keep that hand, would you keep this hand with one less land in it?

Hand 2) Ponder, Brainstorm, LED, Duress, Scrubland, Flooded Strand, Polluted Delta

Hand 3) Doomsday, Brainstorm, Underground Sea, Ponder, LED, Dark Ritual, Cabal Ritual

Hand 4) Doomsday, Brainstorm x2, Ponder x2, Lotus Petal, Misty Rainforest

Hand 5) LED, Top, Infernal Tutor, Orim’s Chant, Tropical Island, Flooded Strand, Bayou

Hand 6) Brainstorm, Misty Rainforest x2, Infernal Tutor, Flooded Strand, Orim’s Chant, Tundra

Hand 7) Cabal Ritual, Bayou, Infernal Tutor, Rain of Filth, Ponder, Underground Sea, Polluted Delta

Hand 8) Meditate, Dark Ritual, Flooded Strand, Top, Doomsday, Rain of Filth, Infernal Tutor

Hand 9) IGG, Top, Flooded Strand, Duress, Brainstorm, Infernal Tutor, Rain of Filth, Duress

Hand 10) Ponder x2, Flooded Strand x2, Polluted Delta, Top, Dark Ritual

I also have a few more questions.
-In hands with multiple cards like Brainstorm, Ponder, and Top, what order do you play them in?
-Do you aim to go off protected in every game?
-Do you normally want Ill-Gotten Gains, Tendrils, or Meditate in your hand? Do you usually try to shuffle them away with Brainstorm/Top when you see them?
-Are there any tips for using Lim-Dul’s Vault? I realize that you can manipulate the piles if your library isn’t in a multiple of five, but how does that work? For instance…say I want a Ritual and Doomsday in my hand to win the game next turn, and I’ve got Lim-Dul’s Vault and Brainstorm in my hand at the end of my opponent’s turn, with the mana to cast both. How often would you say I'll be able to LDV for the two cards I'm looking for? How would I stack the piles if I had 52 cards in my deck? 51?

Any and all help is appreciated.

Have you viewed those movies from MattiasNL? (posted the page back, but here)
He walks through every hand and explains why to keep or mull.

It's two times a movie length, but if you want to learn, just watch it.

It also reminds me that on MTGO, you can have your pile-sheet in front of you to make it a bit easier if that is your main concern.
If it weren't for the insane LED prices, I would try the deck in some daily.

(p.s. I'll let someone else reply on your opening hands, i'm still learning :) )

I can't believe I missed those videos, man. I'm watching them now.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Namida

Hand 1) Bayou, Underground Sea, IGG, Top, Ponder, Orim’s Chant, Cabal Ritual
-Would you keep this hand? If you would keep that hand, would you keep this hand with one less land in it?

Hand 2) Ponder, Brainstorm, LED, Duress, Scrubland, Flooded Strand, Polluted Delta

Hand 3) Doomsday, Brainstorm, Underground Sea, Ponder, LED, Dark Ritual, Cabal Ritual

Hand 4) Doomsday, Brainstorm x2, Ponder x2, Lotus Petal, Misty Rainforest

Hand 5) LED, Top, Infernal Tutor, Orim’s Chant, Tropical Island, Flooded Strand, Bayou

Hand 6) Brainstorm, Misty Rainforest x2, Infernal Tutor, Flooded Strand, Orim’s Chant, Tundra

Hand 7) Cabal Ritual, Bayou, Infernal Tutor, Rain of Filth, Ponder, Underground Sea, Polluted Delta

Hand 8) Meditate, Dark Ritual, Flooded Strand, Top, Doomsday, Rain of Filth, Infernal Tutor

Hand 9) IGG, Top, Flooded Strand, Duress, Brainstorm, Infernal Tutor, Rain of Filth, Duress

Hand 10) Ponder x2, Flooded Strand x2, Polluted Delta, Top, Dark Ritual

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I'm going to take a stab at the hands. Keep in mind that I have a lot less experience than a lot of the players here.

Hand 1) Mediocre, but I'd keep it grudgingly. It has land, top, another cantrip, and even a little bit of accel. If it had one less land it is a mulligan for sure.

Hand 2) Keep. Land, two cantrips, LED, and protection is solid.

Hand 3) This is a greedy hand, but I'm a greedy player so I'd keep it. Turn 1 Ponder into a second land, then win turn 2 if you get one. I'd certainly think hard about keeping this vs. Wasteland and Port.dec though.

Hand 4) Keep. Only one land, but you already have DD and have plenty of cantrips to find more land and acceleration. Just don't walk your one fetchland into stifle.

Hand 5) Keep. Top, plenty of lands, LED + Tutor, even protection. This hand is pretty awesome assuming you can find a bit more accel.

Hand 6) I would probably keep this against a slower opponent, but ship it vs. fast aggro, Emrakul.dec, etc. It would be a good keep vs. tempo.dec as you have so many lands, there just isn't enough going on here.

Hand 7) Rain of Filth annoys me in the opener, but the rest of the hand is decent so might as well keep it.

Hand 8) This is really awkward. I hate throwing away a hand with Ritual/DD, but I'll probably ship this one unless I know my opponent isn't going to disrupt me early. In that case, you can top into land and then use a pass the turn pile or something.

Hand 9) Mulligan. One-landers with Rain of Filth AND Igg make me unhappy.

Hand 10) Keep. Lands, top, cantrips, a ritual? Awesome. Just find DD and you're golden.

Hand 1 and Hand 6 are really awkward and I'm not sure my choices are correct there.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Namida

All right, I've got a lot of questions.

This opening hand business is still the hardest part of the deck for me. When it comes to keeping your hand, the general question one would ask is "Can this hand do something?" In decks like SI or Belcher, "doing something" is "winning the Game/drawing a billion cards to win the game next turn," and in other decks, it's "establishing board presence/disrupting the opponent, before establishing board presence." In this deck, how would you define what "doing something" is? I ask this because many of the hands I look at when goldfishing are perplexing to me--For instance, I don't know how acceptable it is to keep a hand that is mainly cantrips, because cantrips could be exactly what you need, or absolutely nothing that you wanted.

To seek some advice, I took the Deck with the Chants in it and I pulled up ten sample opening hands. Which hands would you keep against an unknown opponent, and why? Would you alter your choices if you knew what you were playing against in the first Game?

Hand 1) Bayou, Underground Sea, IGG, Top, Ponder, Orim’s Chant, Cabal Ritual
-Would you keep this hand? If you would keep that hand, would you keep this hand with one less land in it?

Hand 2) Ponder, Brainstorm, LED, Duress, Scrubland, Flooded Strand, Polluted Delta

Hand 3) Doomsday, Brainstorm, Underground Sea, Ponder, LED, Dark Ritual, Cabal Ritual

Hand 4) Doomsday, Brainstorm x2, Ponder x2, Lotus Petal, Misty Rainforest

Hand 5) LED, Top, Infernal Tutor, Orim’s Chant, Tropical Island, Flooded Strand, Bayou

Hand 6) Brainstorm, Misty Rainforest x2, Infernal Tutor, Flooded Strand, Orim’s Chant, Tundra

Hand 7) Cabal Ritual, Bayou, Infernal Tutor, Rain of Filth, Ponder, Underground Sea, Polluted Delta

Hand 8) Meditate, Dark Ritual, Flooded Strand, Top, Doomsday, Rain of Filth, Infernal Tutor

Hand 9) IGG, Top, Flooded Strand, Duress, Brainstorm, Infernal Tutor, Rain of Filth, Duress

Hand 10) Ponder x2, Flooded Strand x2, Polluted Delta, Top, Dark Ritual

I also have a few more questions.
-In hands with multiple cards like Brainstorm, Ponder, and Top, what order do you play them in?
-Do you aim to go off protected in every game?
-Do you normally want Ill-Gotten Gains, Tendrils, or Meditate in your hand? Do you usually try to shuffle them away with Brainstorm/Top when you see them?
-Are there any tips for using Lim-Dul’s Vault? I realize that you can manipulate the piles if your library isn’t in a multiple of five, but how does that work? For instance…say I want a Ritual and Doomsday in my hand to win the game next turn, and I’ve got Lim-Dul’s Vault and Brainstorm in my hand at the end of my opponent’s turn, with the mana to cast both. How often would you say I'll be able to LDV for the two cards I'm looking for? How would I stack the piles if I had 52 cards in my deck? 51?

Any and all help is appreciated.

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Hand 1: In this meta I porbably mull because waste is so prevalent and you can probably get a better 6
Hand 2: Easy keep, its got accel and cantrips with fetches.
Hand 3: Easy keep, its a turn 2 win with any land/petal
Hand 4: Keep. One land is eh but you can fetch an island and cantrip for more.
Hand 5: Keep. Has protection land and business.
Hand 6: Id keep but it is a bit land heavy so if you know the other deck is something fast Id mull
Hand 7: Keep and pray ponder finds an LED/cantrip
Hand 8: I would keep but I imagine a lot of people would mull. However an LED just lets that hand win on the spot
Hand 9: Mull. One land and 2 dead cards is sucky
Hand 10: Keep. It has cantrip and while business light, cantrips and getches are good

For hands with multiple Brainstorm, Top, Ponder it depends on the hand. In general I try and get Top down early but if the hand makes it obvious that you are going IGG then cantrips are best first. Also, I try and use Ponder first since brainstorm is really useful for some piles.
I aim to go protected only against blue. Otherwise it's not necessary
Normally you dont want to see IGG, Tendrils, Meditate but there are times where meditate in hand is the nuts
Idk must about LDV, I just use it as a Mystical Tutor replacement.

I mostly agree with admiral and jeff on the hands. 9 is a clear mull, a couple of the others are mediocre but keepable (1 and 6 in particular), the rest are solid. 3 is particularly awesome.

As far as the different cantrips go, I prefer to drop top as soon as I can unless I'm playing against very fast aggro (where IGG is just so much better). After that, I usually brainstorm if I can shuffle afterwards and ponder otherwise, although there are exceptions. In general, if you try to squeeze every last card out of your cantrips whenever you have the time, you'll do well. I think an even more interesting question is "top on upkeep or not?" I think it highly depends on what you'll be doing on your turn and what draws would be bad/ok/excellent. Either way, very contextual.

In control matches, meditate is pretty much the nuts (just play it end of turn and watch them squirm). Tendrils is also quite good in the control matches, since you can start fights over mana/protection/doomsday and then just play the tendrils naturally. The two actually combine very well, since the meditate generally draws you into enough gas to tendrils for 20. IGG is my least favorite to draw, but it still has its uses. Against aggro, it lets you use your infernal tutor to get more mana before the IGG loop, so it only really hurts if you have something like two lands, two LED. Against control, the mindtwist is pretty valuable if you don't have any duresses, but after they've used any counters it gets pretty bad.

For LDV, I'm just going to quote Emidln off of storm boards. If you have the time, the whole DDFT thread (and the Doomsday Piles thread while you're at it) are definitely worth reading, but here's the part you're looking for:

Quote:

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Originally Posted by emidln

Looping through the deck depends on how much life you have as well as how many cards are left in your deck. This might help you navigate the decision tree:

Let the C be the number of cards left in your deck as you cast LDV.

Read C%5 as C modulo 5

C%5 = 0 (i.e. 50, 45, etc)
C%5 = 1 (i.e. 51, 46, 41 etc)
C%5 = 2 (i.e. 52, 47, 42 etc)
C%5 = 3 (i.e. 53, 48, 43 etc)
C%5 = 4 (i.e. 54, 49, 44 etc)

At aC%5 value of 0:

You can loop around, but this does no good as the cards will never change. Your set of 5 cards will remain static until C%5 is not 0.

At a C%5 value of 1:

If you loop around a deck with a C%5 value of 1, when you are creating piles you need to consider that once you have "looped" (i.e. started to see the cards in the beginning of the deck again) the new piles will be composed of 1 card put on bottom of the previous 5 and 4 cards put on top of this set of 5.

At a C%5 value of 2:

If you loop around a deck with a C%5 value of 2, the new piles will be composed of the bottom 2 cards from the previous iteration and the top 3 cards from this iteration.

At a C%5 value of 3:

If you loop around a deck with a C%5 value of 3, the new piles will be composed of the bottom 3 cards from the previous iteration and the top 2 cards from this iteration.

At a C%5 value of 4

If you loop around a deck with a C%5 value of 4, the new piles will be composed of the bottom 4 cards from the previous iteration and the top 1 card from this iteration.

Generalized:

Due to this, you need to keep track of a lot of things when LDV is resolving:

(a) What cards will win you the game based on your current situation (hand, in play, graveayrd, opponent, etc)
(b) How many cards are in your deck
(c) What iteration (I call this the i value) that you are on in your deck (past a certain i value, you can no longer loop around because you'll run out of life)
(d) What number of cards are relevant in the last iteration (i.e. C%5 value of 1 would mean that the bottom card of the previous iteration is relevant) and what those cards are

Based on this information, you decide if the cards in the current iteration can (1) win the game game by themselves, (2) if not, will they win the game with the cards from (d), and (3) if still not, are any of these cards desirable to have in the amount dictated by (d) if I should draw appropriate in the next iteration provided that I have enough life to loop around to get them.

Further, based in this process you need to keep track of how many cards you play that will win the game in your situation as well as how many you have previously seen and what iteration they are in if you should need to settle for something that isn't perfect.


Example:

Suppose that your deck looks like this:

[Top]
Brainstorm
Lotus Petal
Dark Ritual
Doomsday
Ill-Gotten Gains
...
Lion'e Eye Diamond
[/Bottom]

And that you have 51 cards in your deck as LDV resolves. If you anticipate wanting Brainstorm, Lotus Petal, Dark Ritual, and Doomsday, but not Ill-Gotten Gains, you might put the cards on bottom in the following order: Brainstorm, then Lotus Petal, then Dark Ritual, then Doomsday, then Ill-Gotten Gains. When you begin to "loop around" you'll have the bottom card of the deck from when you started, plus the first four cards of your initial 5. In our case, this would be:

Lion's Eye Diamond
Brainstorm
Lotus Petal
Dark Ritual
Doomsday

If you were needing a Lion's Eye Diamond in addition to the other 4 cards, you could stop here, set aside those 5, shuffle your library and then reorder these 5 however you want.

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8 is an easy keep against aggro. You sdt then draw blind and activate it before your turn 3. You see 4 cards for a lot of things that just kill your opponent (including any land).

I realize these hands are not from the Burning Wish version but I'm going to pretend like I have Emrakul just for fun since I really don't like the german versions at all. And Rain of Filth is Cabal Ritual as well as Chants are discard.

Hand 1) Bayou, Underground Sea, IGG, Top, Ponder, Orim’s Chant, Cabal Ritual
-Would you keep this hand? If you would keep that hand, would you keep this hand with one less land in it?

Keep, at worst it is a turn 3 Emrakul or pass the turn stack. Most likely a turn 4 Meditate stack. I would keep it with one less land but that land would have to be the Sea so I can lead with Ponder.

Hand 2) Ponder, Brainstorm, LED, Duress, Scrubland, Flooded Strand, Polluted Delta

Keep, not bad, I would lead w Duress, then Ponder on the second turn. Most likely a turn 3-4 kill.

Hand 3) Doomsday, Brainstorm, Underground Sea, Ponder, LED, Dark Ritual, Cabal Ritual

HA, love it, with 17 lands and 4 Petals in the deck this is tough to lose, lead with Ponder into the turn 2 win.

Hand 4) Doomsday, Brainstorm x2, Ponder x2, Lotus Petal, Misty Rainforest

I'd keep, basically a turn 2 DD, Shelldock.

Hand 5) LED, Top, Infernal Tutor, Orim’s Chant, Tropical Island, Flooded Strand, Bayou

Awesome hand, guarnteed turn 2 Emrakul stack, or possibly a turn 2-3 win based on the amount of acceleration you draw wither VIA IGG loop or a Meditate stack.

Hand 6) Brainstorm, Misty Rainforest x2, Infernal Tutor, Flooded Strand, Orim’s Chant, Tundra

Terrible, I would mull this immediately.

Hand 7) Cabal Ritual, Bayou, Infernal Tutor, Rain of Filth, Ponder, Underground Sea, Polluted Delta

I really despise Rain of Filth. Used to run it in older DD lists and never liked it, always found CR to be way better in nearly every case. I would mull this whether that card is RoF or CR.

Hand 8) Meditate, Dark Ritual, Flooded Strand, Top, Doomsday, Rain of Filth, Infernal Tutor

Keep. Turn 1 Emrakul or a potential turn 2-4 Meditate stack.

Hand 9) IGG, Top, Flooded Strand, Duress, Brainstorm, Infernal Tutor, Rain of Filth, Duress

I would keep the hand if Rain was CR since I at least have some way of casting DD early on and not having to bastardize my Emrakul stack with lands. I would not keep this against goblins, Zoo, or Merfolk but CB absolutely.

Hand 10) Ponder x2, Flooded Strand x2, Polluted Delta, Top, Dark Ritual

Absolutely, love hands like this. Lead w Ponder (unless playing against something with discard) and try to find all the accel you can. Most likely a turn 3-4 kill.

I built this deck (german version) last weekend for a local tournament after some Frustrations with ANT (mostly stemming from the fact that I was turning ANT into DDFT to win certain matchups anyways) and was blown away.

I had 0 piles memorized, or experience building them, other than the meditate/petal/led/led/tendrils pile that I had had some exposure to when playing ANT post board.

Still, although I punted 3 games overall, and killed a lot of people through tutor chains when I could have built DD piles... managed to go 3-1 (Loss to Bant... Clique in particular in game3, beat Affinity, Dreadstill and Team America) then a Junk deck in t4 (after literally casting doomsday, stacking my deck and conceding...lol...) and splitting with goblins in the finals.

This week I've spent a lot of time Goldfishing and reading as much of the Storm Boards and here as possible. Love the deck. It seems extremely resilient compared to ANT, and I love that the deck has plenty of stuff to "do" (hated drawing a hand of cantrips and never doing anything)

Anyways, going to try to play it again this weekend in a GPT, hopefully I'll be a little better pilot this time.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by leegoo

I built this deck (german version) last weekend for a local tournament after some Frustrations with ANT (mostly stemming from the fact that I was turning ANT into DDFT to win certain matchups anyways) and was blown away.

I had 0 piles memorized, or experience building them, other than the meditate/petal/led/led/tendrils pile that I had had some exposure to when playing ANT post board.

Still, although I punted 3 games overall, and killed a lot of people through tutor chains when I could have built DD piles... managed to go 3-1 (Loss to Bant... Clique in particular in game3, beat Affinity, Dreadstill and Team America) then a Junk deck in t4 (after literally casting doomsday, stacking my deck and conceding...lol...) and splitting with goblins in the finals.

This week I've spent a lot of time Goldfishing and reading as much of the Storm Boards and here as possible. Love the deck. It seems extremely resilient compared to ANT, and I love that the deck has plenty of stuff to "do" (hated drawing a hand of cantrips and never doing anything)

Anyways, going to try to play it again this weekend in a GPT, hopefully I'll be a little better pilot this time.

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Really? You like the deck?

I tried it, and it just performed worse than TES for me (Granted I tend to think TES is the best Storm deck). The mana base is also really awkward against Wasteland+Stifle.

I did think the manabase was a bit cold vs. stifle/waste (it did come up in the goblins match - we played for the points and I lost having the kill in hand, but having my sea wasted and never drawing another fetch or black source... unlucky for sure but it got me thinking). I've since switched to a manabase of

4 Polluted Delta
3 Misty Rainforest
2 Verdant Catacombs
1 Swamp
1 Island
1 Bayou
1 Tropical
1 Tundra
2 Underground Sea
1 Scrubland

A subtle difference, but cutting 1x fetch for a basic swamp has been pretty good, giving you some solid ground to stand on vs. wastelands. It's also possible you could cut the tropical or bayou main for the swamp as you only need either post board, and carpet still makes green if you cast it first.

I think your assessment of TES is pretty close to being spot on as far as power levels go. LaxStorm (if that's what we're calling it now) was fine when you wanted to smash randoms while laughing at wastelands, but it's inability to "answer" anything in the main was pretty disturbing. Also, most control decks could float a FoW on top of their library and just beat you.

I've got TES built as well and feel fine with the deck vs. the field, but I haven't played DDFT enough yet to decide if it's strictly worse or not. Having access to pass the turn piles, crazy large storm count, and still having tutor chain kills has a lot of appeal (as does life total being largely irrelevant) I also think (but again, not sure) the Tempo deck matchup is probably a bit better, especially post board.

Guys I've read through 90% of the thread here, it's always been a deck on my to-play list but I haven't got about to doing so. I was just wondering why hasn't the older list of NLS created by emdlin been re-explored again?

Recap: NLS is a DDFT build that is slightly faster and uses Burning Wish to grab either EtW/Tendrils/IGG/Doomsday (3 MD, 1 SB).

I've been thinking that DDFT has some naturally strong matchups against control/countertop thanks to its ability to cantrip and grab a hand of quality spells. It is fundamentally slower than other combo decks but it sacrifices speed for resiliency. THe NLS build in the past that I particularly liked was the ability to grab 1 Helm of Awakening MD to setup infinite storm with DD->double Top piles and win without worrying on storm count into a lethal Tendrils. But more importantly, it was able to win through grapeshot when hate bears are around.

Given that GSZ is in the format and noticing that Bant/Zoo/GWb decks are all starting to play Teeg + Canonist MD with Zenith, which proves to problematic for a slower combo deck that can potentially be out-raced by these decks' fast clocks, do you think 1 MD Helm is worthwhile to explore in NLS? Is NLS viable in today's meta? I just haven't seen any discussions recently about the older list, especially in lieu on GSZ being actually a problematic card to worry about on top of the other regular decks the deck fears. Grapeshot will be able to get past Canonist and Teeg, or even Meddling Mage if they named Tendrils (they'll probably name Doomsday though).

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Originally Posted by lorddotm

Really? You like the deck?

I tried it, and it just performed worse than TES for me (Granted I tend to think TES is the best Storm deck). The mana base is also really awkward against Wasteland+Stifle.

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If you think TES is the best storm deck, then you propably should stick to playing it. Whenever I read a post from you in a Fetchland Tendrils/DDFT thread you have to point out how awesome TES is and that DDFT sucks. I mean if that's your opinion it's fine, but a) you never provide any arguments, why TES should be superior to DDFT and b) you don't have to scream it out loud whenever you get the chance to do so. Your attitude is kinda like "Oh someone wrote something in the Fetchland Tendrils Thread. Better tell them that TES is the way better deck."

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Originally Posted by leegoo

I did think the manabase was a bit cold vs. stifle/waste (it did come up in the goblins match - we played for the points and I lost having the kill in hand, but having my sea wasted and never drawing another fetch or black source... unlucky for sure but it got me thinking). I've since switched to a manabase of

4 Polluted Delta
3 Misty Rainforest
2 Verdant Catacombs
1 Swamp
1 Island
1 Bayou
1 Tropical
1 Tundra
2 Underground Sea
1 Scrubland

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I don't recommend doing this. Basic Swamp and nonblue fetchlands are horrible in this build. If you feel that Tempo.dec might beat you, get yourself a test partner, who plays that deck until your eyes pop out or something. There is no need to include either nonblue fetchlands or a Basic Swamp. You never want to open one of those two, because all you need to set up for a kill is the Basic Island and you got 11 outs on that one with the normal manabase. I still don't really like playing Bayou/Scrubland main, but those are needed to fix your colours from time to time. Nonblue fetchlands and Basic Swamp aren't needed. Oh and btw you aren't a fast combo deck against Canadian/Team America. You are the control player and he is the beatdown deck. You got plenty of time to kill em, because people still haven't realized that turn 1 Nimble Mongoose is actually decent against DDFT.