[Deck] Turbo Depths

[AmokPL]

Does anyone have some good advice how to beat Wipe Away? Sneak and Show is popular in my meta, and I keep running in to this card in PB games. Chalice on 3 is quite a stretch, is there anything better to be considered?

not much can be done apart from discarding it. You might consider Steely Resolve though.

[jdmdave]

Discard it. The Cunning Wish - Wipe Away path is so mana intensive that you rarely DONT see it coming.

[Motto82]

Discard it. The Cunning Wish - Wipe Away path is so mana intensive that you rarely DONT see it coming.

I guess you're confusing OmniTell for Sneak and Show here. The latter doesn't have a Wishboard, they simply board it in.
The Steely Resolve plan is something to keep in mind. If I keep foloding to it I'll probably resort that, seems I have to be a little more wary when I use my discard.
Other than that - surely the best way to approach this matchup is to outrace them, so does that mean we have to mulligan aggresively towards a fast hand? Or would you keep a very disruptive hand too?

[MBSegal]

I went 6-3 at GP Chiba. The deck was good, but I played against two Blood Moon stompy decks and got my teeth kicked in by both. I think those two both top 64'd and it makes sense since their deck was very well positioned given the prominence of Shardless and Eldrazi in Japan. My 3rd loss was against Shardless BUG. I think that match up is deceivingly difficult as Hymn is very good against this deck and you have to respect Wasteland, which opens you to Liliana. You only have so many Needles. On top of that, they have Baleful Strix which is essentially a Time Walk if you do not have Sejiri Steppe. I won game 2 with my sideboard plan, but I got Hymned out of game 3.

I decided early on that I thought Chalice was too narrow of a sideboard card. It felt as if it that the only bad match up it helped improve was the Storm one. After playing a few matches against storm, I realized the times I beat them, the Chalices were irrelevant. Bojuka Bog and Surgical are still somewhat relevant cards in that match up AND you can always just discard into 20/20 them. So once I was off Chalice, I tried Sphere of Resistence and came to the conclusion I did not like it. It just felt like it was just as narrow. I decided to hedge my fair match ups even more and just race the unfair ones.

I went 2-0 vs. Eldrazi, 2-0 vs. Miracles, 1-0 vs. Death and Taxes in this tournament. I have kept some stats from the 4 leagues I played in. I 5-0'd twice, playing against mostly Miracles/Eldrazi. There was no D&T online. I lost to Storm, Lands, and UR Delver each once.

Overall, I would not change my list from the GP. I put a lot of thought into it and like where I ended up. I think my sideboard gives a lot of play vs Edict effects and Surgical Extraction. It also is good against Discard.

4 Vampire Hexmage
4 Elvish Spirit Guide

4 Lotus Petal
4 Pithing Needle
4 Thoughtseize
4 Crop Rotation
2 Inquisition of Kozilek
2 Expedition Map
4 Sylvan Scrying
2 Into the North
1 Sylvan Library
2 Not of this World

4 Verdant Catacombs
4 Dark Depths
4 Thespian's Stage
3 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
3 Bayou
2 Snow-covered Forest
1 Snow-covered Swamp
1 Ghost Quarter
1 Sejiri Steppe

3 Deathrite Shaman
3 Abrupt Decay
2 Tireless Tracker
2 Surgical Extraction
2 Massacre
1 Not of this World
1 Bojuka Bog
1 Karakas

Edit: I only 5-0'd one league. I am currently 4-0 in one on MTGO and remembered wrong

[jdmdave]

Did you see me? I Was around the X-2 tables for most of day 1, then X-3 all of day 2.

[MBSegal]

Nah. I saw nobody else playing the deck. On day 2. Last time I went X-3 at a gp, I didn't even top 32--so I played modern on Sunday

[Claymore]

Interesting sideboard, Shaman and Tracker in particular. I can sorta see Shaman, but I don't know if this deck is that well equipped at utilizing Tracker since we don't cycle through lands as much. What matchups and how have they performed? Assuming Shaman is good against Lands, Miracles (combat Snap).

I think something like Grim Flayer could be useful there (land, instant, sorcery, artifact), or back to the basics with Bob. A turn 1 Flayer could do some work.

[MBSegal]

I boarded in Shaman nearly every round. Good against decks you expect Snapcaster, Surgical, Blood Moon, Life from the Loam or Edict effects. I don't like it Maindeck since a lot of those are not main deck cards or entirely ubiquitous with the decks they appear in.

I found that Tracker was great. I tried Bob, but usually if they can solve your combo, then drawing cards is useless. And Bob himself is very ineffective. Tracker can win a game all on its own.

Grim Flayer is too slow and doesn't replace itself. If you play Loam or Crucible, maybe it's good? Idk.

[jdmdave]

Crucible fucking owned one of my day 2 miracles opponents in the x-2 bracket. ghost quarter stripmining his white sources was something fierce.

Why didn't you play day 2? X-3 gets there.

[MBSegal]

If I went 6-0 on the day I would have only won 250 dollars. The modern open was on Sunday, so I played in that instead so I could test for the invitational and I think my chances of top 8'ing that event were higher than 6-0'ing a legacy tournament.

[DNSolver]

Interesting sideboard plan above. I'm not a fan of Deathrite. I can understand wanting to run Massacre - I would probably run Dread of Night instead. Maindeck bog is a must IMO.

One of the reasons you are having trouble with Shardless BUG is that you're running Into the North and thus have a harder time tutoring Ghost Quarter. One of my friends on Shardless has given up trying to beat me without Diabolic Edicts. Any time we both draw reasonably the matchup shouldn't be too bad.

Interesting that Tracker was so good for you. Against Miracles it is still a one-creature threat, so it still dies to the cards they leave in for Marit Lage (Swords, Terminus, etc.) though being able to play it and hold up some fetches to get clue tokens seems okay. Not convinced though.

@Jdmdave: The problem I have with one-of specific answers like Crucible are that we can't tutor them like RG Lands with Gamble, and we don't have Top/Library to find them. Additionally, Miracles boards in Wear/Tears because they've been around the block with stupid artifacts/enchantments like Null Rod, Pithing Needle, Sylvan Library, etc. and expect these cards in G2, even assuming they didn't see our maindeck Needles in G1. Go read the Miracles thread for a bit - they know that noncreature permanents are good against them.

As for people saying turn 1 Bob / Grim Flayer -> these are still creature threats, and I'm 90% sure that boarding out fast mana against Miracles is correct. So that means turn 2 is what we're looking at. Examples of a reasonable threat that is worth fast mana: Bitterblossom. Not a creature threat, can come down on turn 1 relatively easily, demands a Wear/Tear or continued Terminus against Miracles. We already beat all the Abrupt Decay decks, so we wouldn't bring in Blossom against those. We would bring it in against Miracles, possibly Stoneblade, possibly Death and Taxes.

Now, I made arguments against Crucible being that it dies to Wear/Tear. Here's the difference: if Crucible sits in play long enough to Ghost Quarter all the white sources, we win. If Bitterblossom sits around long enough to kill our opponent, we win. However, assuming that it's interrupted somewhere along the way, say, four or five turns, they still have white sources, and unless we resolve another Crucible, we have accomplished nothing. At least Bitterblossom will create some tokens and pressure Miracles' options for a few turns, and demand a Terminus even if it gets hit by Wear/Tear.

Open to discussion on all these points.

...

tl;dr : Creatures like Bob/Grim Flayer don't solve the Miracles matchup. Bitterblossom is a better choice than Crucible if you're going to sideboard in several noncreature permanents against Miracles.

[MBSegal]

Nah. I am losing to Shardless for many reasons and the last of which is me not being able to find Ghost Quarter quite frankly lol.

Also, I prefer to play broad cards in formats like Legacy. A card like Dread of Night is not a card I want since I am not bringing it in against Miracles with this kind of deck. However, I will board Massacre in against a deck like Goblins, maybe 4color delver and elves as well. At the GP it killed Leonin Relic Warder which was another example of why I like having broader cards.

And against miracles, if they're using a Swords on my Tireless Tracker that is fine. It has generated me a clue and used up one of their Swords. You can also protect it with Sejiri Steppe which came up for me multiple times.

[Djehuti]

Now, I made arguments against Crucible being that it dies to Wear/Tear. Here's the difference: if Crucible sits in play long enough to Ghost Quarter all the white sources, we win. If Bitterblossom sits around long enough to kill our opponent, we win. However, assuming that it's interrupted somewhere along the way, say, four or five turns, they still have white sources, and unless we resolve another Crucible, we have accomplished nothing. At least Bitterblossom will create some tokens and pressure Miracles' options for a few turns, and demand a Terminus even if it gets hit by Wear/Tear.

While I'm on the fence about crucible, I would like to point out that the use of crucible isn't exclusively to recur GQ. Spamming the combo off of crucible has worked well for me before, and being able to keep DD out of the graveyard by replaying it minimizes the window an opponent has to surgically extract it.

[Negator77']

Nah. I am losing to Shardless for many reasons and the last of which is me not being able to find Ghost Quarter quite frankly lol.

What are you losing to? Strix is less of an issue with more copies of tutors that can fetch Steppe, then some # of Decays post board. Wasteland is also less of an issue with more tutors that can grab your own Waste/Ghost Quarter/Stage. Getting hymned out of the game is unlikely to happen too often since you usually get a shot at casting a discard spell in front of it. The match-up has been a favorable one in my experience (~75 matches between online and paper).

[jdmdave]

I'll write a response later today, but tldr. Worm harvest is the card you REALLY want if crushing miracles is your plan. Crucible is also fine, but the ugin/coffers/emrakul plan is too sideboard slot intensive. Creature based solutions are subpar since miracles can use terminus/STP.

[apple713]

I agree with negator about the shardless match. I would even say that we might have a better % than 75. If i lose to shardless its due to shit luck. They likely got all of their potentially useful cards, got lucky on a hymn, and / or i had a slow hand.

As for finding other answers to miracles, i like bitterblossom. On paper it sounds really good. Worm harvest seems ok too but significantly slower. With worm harvest life from the loam would be better.

As for emrakul, id just run the original one. It becomes a 3 card combo which is only 1 more than what we are currently going for. It gives you an alternate win condition if you are worried about surgical. However it is more mana intensive. You would need 8 lands 3 of which were coffers urborg and eye of ugin. I played a version of this deck that was a hybrid of dark depths and cloudpost. Crushed miracles but lost other matches it should because i warped the deck too much. With only 3 cards its not a big issue. Its not a great plan but emrakul shuffles grave after being milled by painter and might buy you some turns. Its also a card you could board in against show and tell decks, and they would never see it coming.

[DNSolver]

Playing a $1k tomorrow with my typical maindeck.

Sideboard:

4 Abrupt Decay
4 Surgical Extraction
4 Chalice of the Void (could replace with Thorns / Spheres, but I think I'll stick to these)
1 Pithing Needle
1 Karakas
1 Urza's Factory (alternative is Emrakul the Promised End + Eye of Ugin, no Cabal Coffers. I don't think that it is necessary / realistic to play the Coffers as well, though it might be necessary?)

If there are posts in the morning I'll review before submitting a decklist.

[ComplexPants]

I'll still advocate for a crucible. But I am beginning to think 4 extractions is correct.


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[DNSolver]

$1k went okay.

R1 Maverick 2-0 both games I have Not of This World and a relatively quick combo. He does nothing turn 1 on the play in G2 and I know he's dead instantly.

R2 Red Aluren 2-0

R3 Mono-Red Sneak Attack 1-2. G1 he plays Chalice and then threatens until I have to play spells into Chalice. Fortunately he forgets his triggers and I win in disbelief. G2 I get turn 1'd by a hasty Worldspine Wurm. G3 I Thoughtseize him and take Sneak Attack, leaving him with Griselbrand and 5 lands. Of course he topdecks Sneak Attack and I die on turn 3, one turn too slow.

R4 Manaless Dredge 2-0

R5 Death and Taxes 1-2 Interesting games, too many lines of play to explain here. G1 he mulled to 5 and died. I could have mulled for a better hand in G3 but it had lands, half the combo, a Ghost Quarter, and a hexmage. My opponent was scared of my deck and thought the matchup seemed bad for him, despite him having 2 Banisher Priest in his hand in G3 that made my plays weird.

R6 UB Faeries (?) 2-0. Submerge didn't do anything because I didn't play a forest.

4-2 overall, deck felt strong. Didn't play against Miracles so I couldn't try the Urza's Factory. If someone wants to play Miracles against me on MTGO sometime message me because I really want to get testing in for that.

[studderingdave]

I just jumped into this deck as a project. Normally a DnT player i wanted to build a second deck. Thanks to all for the great info, im still building the deck up right now.