[Deck] Death and Taxes

@Cake: I did not mean to impugn your deck. The absurdity of the MWS results were my aim.

The Tempo Threshold matchup for D+T comes down to running them out of cards. If Tempo Threshold can land a turn 1 Mongoose and follow it up with a Tarmo while removing/countering your measures for the next six turns, you are going to lose. In my experience, this scenario is a tiny minority of games.

There are a lot of things that help. Here are some of them.

1. Mana denial: more than any other opponent, Tempo Threshold is the one I see Wastelanding my Rishadan Ports - it speaks to how vulnerable they are. I have 4 of each in my build, so I have a rule: no green on their main phase whenever possible. Typically, they fetch a Tropical, use it once, and lose it to Wasteland or continuous Porting. When Tempo Thresh is searching for land with Brainstorms and Ponders and Wasting my Ports, it is backpedaling on its primary goal. It is very effective to put a tempo opponent in this position.
2. Jotun Grunt is a card which that deck has no single answer for except a counterspell. They have to trick you into exposing it to something like a Mongoose block and a bolt or Fire//Ice x 2 or some such. Late in the game, they usually have a single turn to attack with any Tarmos before you have them beat. It is a tremendous tool.
3. He has to counter your Mystics too. They are card advantage, the equipment they fetch is hard to solve, and he "vials" them in. He has to counter any equipment you topdeck as well.
4. Oh, and he has to counter your Aether Vial.
5. And Mangara also. An untapped Karakas makes him a 2-1 even if they have removal waiting for him to avoid the lock.
6. And Swords to Plowshares too. I also have Oust.
7. Mother of Runes has to be countered or killed on sight or it will be an endless pain that ultimately 2-1's them anyway.
8. Flickerwisp is nothing special in this matchup, but if you have an active Vial, it is still probably going to 2-1 them by doing what it does.

There are a lot of subtle things as well, but you get the point. Tempo Threshold has a hard time playing against D+T because most of the time it winds up playing D+T's game instead of its own. It hates to see so many of our cards, and the whole deck 2-1's them right down to Force of Will. Siding in Krosan Grip and extra Firespouts helps a bit, but it just is not enough most of the time.

ASOK, glad to finally see you on The Source. Welcome. I am sad though, I have been wanting to show you how the deck works on MWS for months now. These dudes have explained it pretty well to ya, I only really had a minor problem with one of fireminds comments. I basically gave up on testing D+T on MWS since most people can't even understand Mangara Cheese on there. An interesting recent option for D+T against Canadian Thresh is Mirran Crusader. Others on the thread may not like and/or use him, I however LOVE him in the red zone. He just does awesome things in combat, IE: 4 Jitte counters, dual sword activations, and pushing past a large portion of the critters on the field. And thanks to the new sword SoWaP he will be the to unstoppable in most situations.

On to the New Phyrexia goodness: Sword of War and Peace. The abilities are not as stellar as I was hoping for, but it appears to have to potential to consistantly deal damage quicker than SoFaI, and gain life as much as SoLaS. I LOVE the combination of Pro White/Red, its something that will help me GREATLY in my meta. I will be testing it in SoLaS's cardslot as soon as possible.

Hey Dan, good to see you too.

Thanks for helping me understand this -- I have to say, the deck does a lot more than I realized. I must have gone up against people who just had no idea what they were doing with the deck because most of those situations I'd never even considered, let alone played against.

I love playing Leonin Arbiter in the Mono White version since I think it has a much better mana denial plan and it allows you to effectively play the arbiter which shuts down so many cards or makes them waste mana on a fetch or stoneforge, or tutor, etc.

The deck does a lot, and I've definitely fallen in love with it the past few months. However, I have to reluctantly say that I would not feel comfortable bringing this to a large tournament right now. It does many awesome things, but it doesn't really do anything "broken". This only becomes an issue when you are up against a deck that does pretty much 100% broken things, like TES, Dredge, or High Tide. Though these matchups are all definitely winnable, they are not in our advantage. I've been playing this deck exclusively for the past 3 months or so, and I don't think I have a single match loss outside of TES, Dredge, High Tide, and one against burn when I didn't expect it at all and had 0 sideboard cards ready.

With the current metagame being so heavily shifted towards combo, I just don't see how anybody would be able to navigate through all the rounds without just being beaten on turn 1 or 2 before any play that D&T can make matters. If the deck survives until turn 3/4 then it can definitely hate out any combo, but there is really no way to get there other than hope and or a lucky critical Wasteland.

So I think that this is going to be what I still rely on for smaller local tournaments, but until the combo menace calms down a bit, I don't think I'll be able to confidently play this in anything over 50 players. Honestly though, I hope one of you proves me to be wrong and wins a SCG Open or the GP with it. You earn a hug from me if so.

Finn just made top 10 in the SCG Orlando Open with the monowhite build. Interestingly he went up to 4 Stoneforge Mystics.

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Originally Posted by mrjumbo03

Finn just made top 10 in the SCG Orlando Open with the monowhite build. Interestingly he went up to 4 Stoneforge Mystics.

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I saw this and was very happy to see it. I think the pendulum has briefly swung back to a place where this deck can excel, with the mid range blue decks holding combo in check. We eat merfolk alive, and have good game against Standstill and Team America. I'm not sure how long the meta will stay this way with so many high profile events, but I love it. Anybody know if he posted a report anywhere, or even just a list of decks he faced?

Gimme a few days for the report. I took some notes. I had to change my entire strategy for Merfolk (faced em 3 times in 8 rds) because of Misstep. I want to see how good that Landstill deck really is that Gerry and Lewis were playing before I come out to say that D+T is good right now. I think I had the only deck in the top 16 that was not blue. It is pretty frightening.

You and the 2 Metalworker decks. Looking forward to your reports!

As to the standstill matchup, I think it depends on the build that we're facing. Decks with Humility and Pernicious Deed and sometimes Engineered Explosives (with Academy Ruins recursion at that) is an impossible matchup. But at least combo, the other bane of our lives, is being pushed back by all the Misstep Hysteria.

Report
http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/s...612#post548612

Finn! I am so proud of you, lol. Way to do you and your boys proud, i'm still sorry i missed it:( Did anyone else place high?

Phill did very well with Zoo, but he got the shaft from his record-keeping goof-up. Then he got anal-raped by Merfolk of all things in the final round to take the wind out of his sails.Both D+T and Zoo were good meta choices at Orlando.

Nice report Finn. Just a quick question to you and all other experienced players.

This has always been one of my favorite decks, but I play exclusively online where port is not available sadly and doesn't look like it's gonna be released any time this year. Since it's so integral to the mana denial plan, how would you change/adapt your deck to lack of port availability?

Just a quick question Finn, why SoLaS over Sword of War and Peace?

i know the question goes to finn, but as i think SoLaS > sword of war and peace, because we allready have a sword for more aggression, namely sword of fire and ice, thus making sword of war and peace less interesting, and sword of light and shadow actually gives card advantage as does fire/ice, .... sword of war and peace does not

i could see sword of war and peace being used over sword of light and shadow if the meta would be zoo-infested, otherwise i would see no reason for running sword of war and peace at all

I think it's time to sleeve up the mindcensor again, with all the KotR, stoneforge, zenith and NO around. I've never liked the card too much because its power is obviously conditional on what the other guy's playing and there are better SB cards. But I'm giving it a second chance, in the flickerwisp slot which I've always found lackluster except with vial.

I don't know, Maelig. Flickerwisp is even better now with Revokers. (You are playing Revokers, aren't you?) I am so accustomed to having my Vials countered that I think of the instant Flickerwisp plays as a bonus, and I still would not leave home without them. In my eyes the deck finally has a solid 60.

Yeah revoker has been amazing, I'm now playing a full playset MD. Still think it's not enough to make wisp better than mindcensor in the current metagame. It helps in the worse MUs (combo, anything packing NO) and contributes to the mana denial plan. But most importantly, it seems everyone and their mother is playing zenith and/or knight (and to a lesser extent stoneforge) nowadays, and mindcensor gives us this little edge we need to beat these decks (which are usually around 50/50). I've also seen quite a few loam decks in my meta lately (probably thanks to the popularity of tempo decks packing MM), which is also a difficult MU where mindcensor helps a lot. I've liked it so far.

I play Arbiter and to a certain extent it does the same thing. Problem with Mindcensor for me, is its 3cc compared to 2 for Arbiter. Regarding the Revokers, I play 3 Main and the 4th one on the side, I decided would much better be a Pithing Needle for the corner case scenarios of needing to needle a land.

Would anyone consider playing Mental Misstep in DnT?

I tested a handful of games against UGr NO (with 4 MMS) and it feels 4-6 in their favor. I lost each time Progenitus came down as the deck is not good at punching through early damage to enable a race by an equipped flyer. Mindcensor should improve the MU and being a flyer, it feels generally better than Arbiter. Is the Flickerwisp VS Mindcensor a metagame choice? Any comments on their shining MUs?