I wholeheartedly agree.Quote:
Originally Posted by Danger
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I wholeheartedly agree.Quote:
Originally Posted by Danger
Hm,haven't benn here for some time,but this list is a good progress.Quote:
Originally Posted by GodzillA
I've dropped the Scrolls for Sensei's Divining Top,because then you can play 2 Confidants without taking lots of damage.And without Confidants,it just improves your cardquality.
That Zilla has put Perish into his board was another good idea,because it's a Sweeper against NQG and R/G SA's Troll Ascetics.
I like Zillas decklist a lot,but i would play Sensei's Divining Top 2 oder 3 times if you got free slots,because holding back one or two Confidants to prevent huge lifeloss sucks.
Just how much would the deck suffer were it to run a couple more fetchlands. Fetchlands can grab basics just as easily. So you lose on average one extra life per game. Big deal. The life gain from Descendant of Kiyomaro (or it's cousin Exalted Angel) easily make up for this and then some.
There're too many games already where you get screwed out of a color because of the heavy number of basics run. The deck puts enough pressure on your opponents mana that often, even if they have a wasteland, they would think twice about sacing it. And once again, fetchlands can grab basics just as easily.
Honestly, I think the price is well worth being able to more consistently get the mana that you need and being able to sub out mana intensive weak cards like cursed scroll that are very slow and limited in dealing with threats and not synergic with stuff like shade anyways for a strong card like Descendant of Kiyomaro.
A list like this perhaps..
6 Swamp
4 Scrubland
4 Bloodstained Mire
4 Polluted Delta
4 Wasteland
1 Tainted Field
Creatures:
4 Dark Confidant
4 Hypnotic Specter
3 Nantuko Shade
3 Descendant of Kiyomaro - Life gain, and an excellent attacker and blocker to boot.
Spells:
4 Duress
4 Hymn to Tourach
4 Sinkhole
4 Dark Ritual
4 Vindicate
3 Gerrard's Verdict
Running more Fetchlands won't prevent the opponents to waste your scrublands and just remove the Descendant from the game with Swords.
And White is just a Splashcolor for this deck. And please,never SPLASH a card with has got the splashcolor 2 times or more in it's manacost,that's not good.
Ah,and btw. : this is still a kind of Suicide Deck,you want to play your disruption an fast as you can,so you won't have 7 cards or more in your hand very often...
edit: Like i said before,i would rather play StoP and Withered Wretch. Swords should be a main-reason to splash white and withered wretch is just good in the current meta.
Yes, but running less fetchlands won't prevent you from grabbing swamps, or prevent your opponent from wasting a scrubland either. If anything, it makes it more likely that you'll be able to recover and grab another scrubland thanks to the extra fetchlands you run.
Better they Swords the Descendant than the Confidant or the Hippie or something else. Swords is swords. If they have swords and you don't make them discard it, you will lose one of your creatures regardless. Running more creatures just makes recovering from Swords easier.
4x more Fetchlands and 2x Descendent (4 Shade/2 Descendent if you want) won't be the end of the deck. It's entirely feasable.
You don't need 7 cards for Descendent to be useful. you just need more cards than your opponent. Considering that the majority of decks are faster than this deck and empty their hand of cards by turn 2/3 anyways, and that those that don't get slaugtered by your Hippe, Hymn and Gerrard's Verdict, and considerign the synergy Descendent has with Confidant (along with Hippe and your other discard) on so many levels, it's a perfect natural fit in this deck.
Look, there's some very simple math involved here. If you want to consistently reach one of your splash colorm by turn 2 you need at least 10 sources for it (including fetches). To reach 2 of a splash color consistently by turn 2, you need at least 16. That means you'd need to add 6 fetches, not 4, in order to consistently produce WW. This isn't taking into account a single well-placed Wasteland, which can effectively keep you off WW until quite late into the game. This also omits the issue that 10 fetchlands combined with 4 Confidants is going to significantly weaken your matchup against... well, everything, really. Descendant is nice and all, but is it really worth making a full color commitment to add 2 cards to the deck? (Note: the last question was rhetorical.) (Secondary Note: the rhetorical answer is no.)
Can I just ask why this deck is considered a DTB? I have only seen it place at one big tournament.
Because it beats Thresh and got over hyped. I think theres a forum made for bitching about that stuff though. So lets bitch there.
Here are the qualifications for a DTB. Deadguy Ale meets all three qualities for our consideration.Quote:
Originally Posted by SillyMetalGAT
Don't agree with the qualifications? Click here or here
Diplomacy added by PR.
Sub-Optimal Deadguy Top-Eights at Kadilak's Dual Land Draft!
I played a Sub-Optimal (=partial budget) version of Godzilla's latest Deadguy list at Kadilak's Dual Land Draft, to a 4-0-2 record in the swiss, and a loss to Solidarity in the quarterfinals of the top 8. I'll try to write a mini-report later if I can figure out the appropriate thread, even though my note-taking is terrible. For now, I'll list the changes that weren't based on budget and availability concerns, and along the way mention a few issues I had with the deck:
-3 Bloodstained Mire
+3 Polluted Delta
Reason: The real reason is that almost all of the cards I played with belong to Lego_Army_Man, and he needed the Mires to loan out Goblins. However, ideally I would run two of each, to minimize interference from Pithing Needle, and because there are no maindeck Cursed Scrolls (card name redundancy requirements are lessened).
SB: -1 Pithing Needle
SB: -1 Sword to Plowshares
SB: +2 Cursed Scroll
Reason: Availability on the Needle, but I also wanted to fit the Cursed Scrolls that Zilla left out into my sideboard. They came in several times during the day, and really shone as a Dystopia enabler (ping that weenie, now you sacrifice that monster).
-1 Swamp
+1 Tomb of Urami
Ok, this is Issue Number One: In testing, even with an optimal list, I didn't like the slow pace at which this deck kills, because it gives the opponent the chance to get back in the game. Dark Confidant fixes that to some degree, but I added one Tomb of Urami to give the deck an added kick every once in a while. The damage never put me in danger, and it worked pretty nicely (or would have if I weren't such a scrub), even as a one-of:
- In my second-round draw, I should have won the game: The third game went to time, and I completely forgot that the Tomb could convert to a 5/5 flying killing machine.
- Later vs Solidarity, a first-turn Hyppie + an EOT third-turn Urami sealed the deal.
Issue Number Two: I had some mana problems with this build, specifically getting 2 Black - it could be matter of mulliganing more intelligently, but if that were true, I would have had a lot more mulligans - and that's not a good sign for a non-combo deck, I think. Maybe one less maindeck Wretch or Swords, in order to add one more Swamp?
Issue Number Three: The hardest match-ups I faced today were Solidarity and Solidarity. The first one my deck pulled it out for me, but the second time, Herbig's deck rolled over mine. Lego_Army_Man keeps telling me I had a good match-up, but I just can't see it - Solidarity forces me to mulligan aggressively at best. Before the tournament, I almost jammed Chalice of the Void into my sideboard for the Solidarity match-up and also considered rule Rule of Law, but, in the end, I gave up and hoped I wouldn't face it. So naturally, I faced it twice, including the only one in the top 8.
Summation:
Opinions on Tomb of Urami?
Extra land?
Solidarity strategy?
Thanks to Godzilla for the list, and Mad Props to Lego_Army_Man for the cards and the playtesting.
1: Lots of people play it, so you have to figure that you will face it when building a deck (Pikula, Thresh, and Goblins are prolly the top 3 most played decks).Quote:
Originally Posted by SillyMetalGAT
2: Everyone says it's not a good deck but it always has the chance to just win off the bat through discard + LD.
3: It top 8'd the Duel for Duals also which I would call a "Big Tournament" by legacy standards.
4: It has game against Goblins, Thresh, and Solidarity.
Could Pox be used in the side vs. Solidarity? I mean them losing 1/3 life/hand/lands seems like it would hurt, maybe it sucks just throwing it out there.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Drathro
This deck should not have problems with Solidarity, but it does. The main reason is that you can't actually kill your opponent in a reasonable amount of time. This deck is pretty slow by its very nature. Its has no swift clock and that is the part that really scares Solidarity. If you give them time to recover and abuse Flash of Insight you will lose. Maybe you could board a creature that would speed up the clock (I know that Pikula boarded Phyrexian Negator, but he wasn't happy with it). Or you could play Sui?
Eldariel reached the same conclusion when he was helping me test my Cloud deck against Pikula for CaNGD. I agree with him and yourself, a tomb should be in the deck.Quote:
Originally Posted by Drathro
Yea, after losing for the billionth time due to the deck being unable to produce any more threats, I recall I wasn't quite as articulate. I rather strongly expressed that the deck has been meddling with other decks of the same gender, since it can't ever seem to spit out actual threats if opponent has any removal whatsoever.
But yea, I'd even go as far as to test 2 Tombs; the risk of drawing multiples might, or might not, be worth of the risk of actually having a decent clock more often. And of course, you can blow up Tomb #1 into a Demon to lay Tomb #2. I think that would do the deck's threatcount a world of good. Seeing that most of the losses I've gotten while playing the deck have been simply because opponent has matched my draws with removal (yes, even after Duresses, Verdicts and Hymns), I think the low threat count is the #1 hinderance for the deck.
The deck's low threatcount is largely a result of the large amount of space devoted to disruption, so I'd personally focus on finding cards like Tomb that act at some other cardslot in the deck (such as Tomb acts as a land), while still being a creature when need be (a strong argument for Cursed Scroll too; not only is it repeatable removal, but it also doubles as a threat, and even reach).
In the interest of threats that also act as disruption, I'm a huge fan of Mesmeric Fiend, and adding him might allow the inclusion of Cabal Therapy. I'm not sure if I'm taking the deck in the wrong direction, but it's worked for me in the past. Also, I've been tempted several times to take out the Nantuko Shades for some equipment like Sword of Fire and Ice so that you could play things like Mesmeric Fiend, and he and the Dark Confidants would become immediate threats. I haven't tested it though, so feel free to discount my ideas :)
well Lego, fiend is better in decks with cabal therapy and SoFI, as you mentioned. Heck, why not use green, BoP is good with therapy/SoFI as well... drop in some troll ascetics for easy beats... add in some moxen for the turn one confidant/turn two troll, maybe a jitte or two...
And we have Macey Rock for 1.5. Not that that's bad, it actually performs pretty well. It's just a different deck... that's all.
Were you the one playing the orders of the ebon hand, and knight of stromgald (sp?)? I honestly thought (after seeing duals and sinkholes in your deck) that they had been a meta choice to help with rifter and gro's STPs. I didn't agree with them, but I thought it was an interesting idea.Quote:
Originally Posted by Drathro
In any case, the Tomb is an interesting idea. It opens you up to a little more nonbasic hate, which, if people are smart, they will start running more of, and makes you put all of your metaphorical eggis in one basket. What am I talking about? If they deal with your 5/5, you have no recourse. All of your lands are destroyed, and this deck tends to have a relatively low hand size (thus dark confident is nuts), and you have to topdeck lands to get back into the game. Sure, you could only do this when your opponent has all of thier lands/hand destroyed, but seriously, that's rare at best. This deck just denies people the rosources they need to keep thier origional tempo.
I do think that this deck could use another threat or two, and a multi-purpous one like tomb would be nice. But, I must play devil's advocate and ask if it wouldn't be better to run another shade or something like that, instead of a vulnerable threat (echoint truth/wasteland...) that is also conditional.
Congrats on finishing in the money! I wish I had:cry:
Well, the thing is, you aren't technically playing it in your deck. That is, none of your cardcounts change, except you get an extra threat. If you can fit an extra Shade, you're losing something. When you add Tomb, you lose nothing. I agree, that an extra threat or two wouldn't hurt, but I would play Tomb regardless. Anyone with half the wit will be trying to manascrew you by going after your white sources anyways, nobody will bother with Tomb, except if you're already colour screwed, so I think the drawbacks are minimal, and you won't be using the Tomb for a creature, except if you're short on threats and would lose anyways, or if you need a faster clock to win, or if you know it's safe through your discard. I'd consider Tomb almost riskfree, and certainly a worthy addition. To make the deck consistent, I'd also try to add that 4th Shade, and probably a third Scroll somehow. I dunno, it's hard to cut anything when the disruption package hits so many things and takes so much room, weakening any part of it would weaken the strategy as a whole.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Eldariel
Then what's the point? You are adding, essentially, a Swamp that cannot be Fetched, can be Wasted, and pings you every time you tap it for mana for the off chance that you can throw away all of your lands for an easily removable token? This seems rather risky.
They've used up their removal when you turn it into a creature, you were going to lose the game anyways, or they have none and you need a faster clock (most combo). You've got plenty of Swamps to fetch, as I said, you don't mind it being wasted since that means they saved a Scrubland and the damage is likely to matter more rarely than the ability to turn it into a Demon-token. Those sitiuations will come up more often than the damage will matter.Quote:
Originally Posted by CorruptedAngel