Originally Posted by
Adan
So what? OmniHalls basically plays 8 Show and Tell effects (4 Show and Tell and 4 Dream Halls). Combined with 3 Force and 3 Pacts PLUS access to additional Forces and Pacts from the SB, this gives OmniHall a massive threat density. A few counters more or less are not going to help.
Actually you have do see the difference: OmniHalls plays 4 good Show and Tells and 4 very very bad Dream Halls. You have 4 broken combopieces and 4 bad ones, which need at least 2 other cards to win + extra lands for being pierceproof or without them + extra protection, for being not. Against an opponent with just 2 Spell Pierces, you will need at a min 1 Dream Halls 1 Enter the Infinite 1 random blue card 3 Islands 2 Sol Lands + 1 Counterprotection (which could be force so 1 card more), or more business like a second Halls, which is giving your opponent an extra turn, so that he could draw a third disruption. He just needs 2 Pierces + 2 Lands and the rest of his board/deck could be bullshit like stoneforge mystic or such slow clocks, it would be enough if he has an additional disruption and is experienced enough to use it correctly. Yes, this is only an argument against the Dream Halls kill, which is I think the point which makes this deck so weak. Your "Sneak Attack" is just clunkier and needs more cards in hand than each other combo in the whole format, the universe or at the dark side of the moon would need.
Combined with 3 Force and 3 Pacts PLUS access to additional Forces and Pacts from the SB, this gives OmniHall a massive threat density.
No it does not, Force is a bad but flexible protection spell, which needs another card in hand and Pact has to be placed carefully, which probably could give your opponents some extraturns if you do the safer play, most times thats the correct one. If you don't use it carefully, you will die too often on it. I have to critisize Pact of Negation at this point: It increases the "clunkiness" of this deck totally. As a protection spell, in the comboturn, its the best and cheapest one you will find, but outside your comboturn, it gets worse and is strictly worse than protection spells like Duress, Thoughtseize, Force of Will and Flusterstorm for example. You have no chance to react on disruption before your comboturn with PoN, its very good against Tempodecks and its awesome in the combo turn, but it is at all not a good protection spell. Also, its dead against nonblue decks, where FoW isn't. Pact is just infinitely bad like Dream Halls.
So If your combopieces were stolen before you had the time to combo out, pact/force are not increasing the thread density of this deck, they are just making it worse because they somteimes have to either decrease your cards in hand terrible if they want to do anything or just are dead.
A few counters more or less are not going to help.
Omnihalls needs like an average of 3-4 cards in hand +3-5 lands to go off WITHOUT protection against taxing counters/discard or hardcounters. You need so many cards in your hand, that you will just die on a normal clock + 2-3 counters/disruption spells/hatepieces. I mean, you die if your opponent is prepared at least a bit, thats awful.
This is STUPID, sorry, but there is no other spell or card other than Defense Grid in this matchup that Spell Snares and Ancient Grudges can ever hit. But go on to dilute your deck with useless junk, it will certainly help you to win. NOT.
Oh yeah, I better play my 2 Dismembers and Forked bolt instead of the Spell Snares, they won't be useless junk. If you have the slots for situative but game breaking spells (because defense grid is the ONLY thing a good rug pilot cares about against this deck, sometimes omnis hand is partly dead the wohle game, because they have not the time to sculpt a good one against a turn 2 delver + a turn 3 mongoose which gets threshold on turn 4 for example) then just bring them in. Spell Snare is not as useless as Dismember. I'm also sure lejay didn't test against a good rug pilot, because even the guys I know which are playing a bit better (e.g. a guy nicknamed pokpok) are just not that good at legacy too. I don't want to sound in an arrogant wise, but yes maybe I do. I think i playtest more than they do or ever will do and just am a bit more experienced with the format so that I just immediately see if things are getting wrong ;) .
Again, you are diluting your deck. That tactic might work IF you can maintain a decent clock at the same time. And thanks to Firemind's Foresight, Chains are not a big deal.
It may be not diluting if you play multifunctional cards like Golgari Charm for example, which are very good in a bunch of other matchups too. And no, you dont need a decent clock at the same time, this deck just loses against itself (and thats sad, because it plays 12 cantrips and show and tell) because it is playing so many dead cards precombo. As I said, its enough to just disrupt it punctually and then draw into a clock or another punctual disruption to get more time. Without a protected turn 2 Show kill, this deck is sometimes really helpless deceasing on a stupid clock of 1-2 creatures without any disruption (because it has inconsistent ways of protecting like leyline of sanctitiy). Also a turn 2 resolved Chains (which will happen more often than you think, because there are no pierces, just crappy 3-4 fow) tears OmniHalls a bit in halves, if they don't already have th whole combo in their hand.
O-Ring effects are not the problem, it's the mana denial/the taxing effects in general.
Yes, if you would have read my sentence carefully, it would be obvious, that you don't have to quote captain obvious here. The combination is important: If they get 1 Sphere-Permanent online, even Show on omni, + WIsh on Trickbind on Ring + EtI costs like 7 mana altogether. It's obvious, that O-Ring effects are not the main plan against this deck, it was against the other omni variants, I know that this one is like shrouded against this kind of hate but in combination with taxing effects, an Ring-effect effectively costs 2 mana, which could kill you.
This boils down to SneakShow. Still, you would need to have all your mana untapped and enough life. Griselbrand is also stone dead to Trickbind.
Oh yeah, 1 Wish = 7 cards, thats right, but is that enough? Your opponent most likely will have more than 16 life so that in another draw 7 + the cards he already had in his hand, he will be able to counter your Enter and then go crazy. No, Griselbrand is not stone dead to trickbind, one trickbind trades 7, which is great, but won't win you the game against two untapped islands and 2 flusterstorms. Also, your opponent has to be totally retarded, if he is tapping out in this mirror for things like Show and Tell, or if he is cantripping that risky, that he has NOT all his mana untapped. Only Sneak Attack is it worth to start a counter war for, or Show into Sneak, and even this should only have been started if the Sneakshow player surely wins this (which is going to happen often, because the faster combodeck will combo out earlier, and if you have dead cards like pacts in this situation, you just die because of your clunkiness).
I played against Enchantress with OmniHalls and got locked away by Choke for 15 turns or something. I eventually had 3 Mana to resolve Show and Tell and he put Emrakul into play. Guess what happened? I won nevertheless.
Enchantress is totally irrelevant, totally dead caused from bgx decks (deathrite can ping through sol. confinement ant decay is like a swiss army knife against this deck). It is also not a good example for what good Chokedeck is. A good Chokedeck makes turn 1 Thoughtseize, turn 3 Choke or turn 1 Deathrite turn 2 Choke, or plays turn 2 Thalia, it gets forced, and then plays Choke on turn 3. Omnitell sometimes has its nutsdraws to win on turn 3, but most time it has to answer a turn 3 Choke (because it doesnt run Spell Pierces, ONLY 3 FoW and crappy pacts) or has to be that careful with its blue mana, that it will lose some turns on choke. Again, Enchantress is the worst possible example you could bring up for arguing against a choke "lock" because it is a totally dead/bad deck and has neither a fast clock. A deathrite deck will kill you on like turn 5-7 after resolving the choke. If your empirical values against choke are restricted to this, I would not be that insolent and generalising in evaluating my competence, if I were you.
And as I mentioned before, you are again diluting your deck.
As I mentioned before, there are so many dead cards against omnitell, that you will find a way (if you have a well thought out sb and sb plan, where all slots are fitting like a puzzle) to board these cards without having too many dead cards if your opponent has no leyline. Diluting is sometimes the same thing we call "tuning" our decks for defferent metas.
This proves that you have never seen OmniHalls in action, have done ANY playtesting at all or have any experience with or against OmniHalls.
This proves me, that you are just a bit angry, that i critisize this deck so hard, because you think its a good deck (and yeah its really ok) and could not believe that it has many disadvantages against other combo/legacydecks. I also saw Jean-Mary Accart playing this deck in strasbourg (where i went 11th better than him so :P ) where he won some crazy games with this deck and defeated one of the few players about I think who is really good in round 8 or 9 d1 and yeah, this deck does some broken things, and its comboturn is not that hateable as of any other combodeck (where pact is now getting good, because its the best protection spell if you are in your own turn) I already played it at some tournaments and I felt broken with it, but the clunkiness, and not having the ability to commercialize all your spells precombo too (like eti, omni, halls on turn 3, wish on turn 2 most times, and pacts withou the combo) really illuminated me and told me that this is probably NOT THE NEW HULK FLASH and NOT AT LEAST SKRATCHING the strength and the domination of it.
