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Thread: 'Mississippi River' (All In Creativity Technique Combo)

  1. #121

    Re: 'Mississippi River' (All In Creativity Technique Combo)

    Quote Originally Posted by Rationalist View Post
    Hi Olli.

    Thanks for the clarification.

    Demonstrated CT should actually get around a Warping Wail, though, right? If you demonstrate, he only counters one of the copies so you should still combo off.

    Also, in general, I don't think you need to bring in Mirrorshell Crab to fight FoW. The deck is designed to not need to fight FoW. If you demonstrate, FoW doesn't stop the combo. That's the whole point of the deck.

    Yep he countered one CT, but I couldnīt kill him with rest.

    Yeah thatīs right with the FOW. Another idea was, to counter artifacts like thorn or Trinisphere.

    Crab is a strong card, but maybe I mis-board it at the moment. In the tournament, most of the time the crab came to late or disturbed the combo, but I see that it is necessary in some match ups.

    Cheers

  2. #122
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    Re: 'Mississippi River' (All In Creativity Technique Combo)

    Quote Originally Posted by Eisenkarl View Post
    Yep he countered one CT, but I couldnīt kill him with rest.
    Ah, okay.

    Quote Originally Posted by Eisenkarl View Post
    Yeah thatīs right with the FOW. Another idea was, to counter artifacts like thorn or Trinisphere.
    Oh so you were bringing it in to what you saw as an abundance of answers. Gotchya.

    ...

    ... He was really playing a Trinisphere / FoW deck? (Or, rather, was previously and that's what you put him on) I don't want to be a hypocrite, FTW on this very forum chastised me not that long ago for thinking about doing exactly that, but honestly you don't really see that that often.

    Quote Originally Posted by Eisenkarl View Post
    Crab is a strong card, but maybe I mis-board it at the moment.
    I mean it's all good man. I'm not here to judge you, I'm just trying to squeeze the details out of you so I can see where the deck's shortcomings are for potential improvement.

    Quote Originally Posted by Eisenkarl View Post
    Cheers
    Respect

  3. #123
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    Re: 'Mississippi River' (All In Creativity Technique Combo)

    I saw this finish from a small tournament a few days ago


  4. #124

    Re: 'Mississippi River' (All In Creativity Technique Combo)

    I think there are interesting choices, just to name one this player is skipping spiders and every cmc6 cascader is red.
    And that is a reasonable choice, Spiders are very strong but can't be cascaded at t3 without woodlot, otherwise you need double tinder farm and it's usually t4.
    On the other hand, Spiders also provide you combo options when opponents are determined in keeping you off red.
    So it has upsides and downsides.

    I cannot force myself to like lotus bloom and Imoti though. The most paramount aspect of the deck is that you need to cascade into Technique. By playing 2 cards under cmc6 that aren't technique, you're giving yourself a whopping 33% fail rate on the first cascader, which is absolutely self defeating given you've spent 2 turns doing nothing already.
    Imho no card that costs less than 6 should be in the mainboard except Technique or a new print with a comparable and/or better effect.

  5. #125

    Re: 'Mississippi River' (All In Creativity Technique Combo)

    sorry, double post. To add to the above, I haven't tried Imoti but I suspect it doesn't do much while comboing, or it could even be detrimental. A priori, your cmc6 cascaders will be cascading twice into technique, which means, if you cascade into an early Imoti, you will have less cmc6 cascaders on the stack when "on the way up" the cascade tree, which also means, when you start resolving "on the way down" you'll be less likely to Technique into Wanderer or Emrakul because you'll have more cmc6 cascaders in the deck; although, every Wanderer or Apex will have an extra cascade so you compensate if you get lucky.
    One thing it does, though, non-cascade cards you play in the sideboard, such as the sky turtle, will now cascade into technique, which is good.

  6. #126

    Re: 'Mississippi River' (All In Creativity Technique Combo)

    Hey all~
    Just ran the deck in a 50pax legacy REL event today. Finished 2 Wins 4 Losses.
    I know it isn't the best result, however the deck is absolutely fun and challenging to pilot. It always feels like I'm playing against all odds against the meta decks.

    Played in a weekly casual on Thursday and went 3-0 (against 2 Initiative decks and D&T), so was feeling pretty good for the big event today...but guess it wasn't meant to be~

    This is the list I ran today, and I hope my feedback would help for those that are also running the deck or want to pick it up to experience :

    [Main - 61]
    1 Mountain
    4 Dwarven Ruins
    1 Havenwood Battleground
    4 City of Traitors
    3 Sulfur Vent
    3 Crystal Vein
    4 Ancient Tomb
    4 Hickory Woodlot
    4 Sandstone Needle
    4 Saprazzan Skerry
    4 Gemstone Caverns
    4 Otawara, Soaring City

    3 Aurora Phoenix
    2 Sweet-Gum Recluse
    4 Boarding Party
    2 Let the Galaxy Burn

    4 Creative Technique

    2 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
    4 Maelstrom Wanderer

    [Sideboard]
    3 Pyrokinesis
    3 Throes of Chaos
    2 Tibalt's Trickery
    1 Aeve, Progenitor Ooze
    2 Inevitable Betrayal
    1 Maddening Hex
    3 Mirrorshell Crab

    Round 1 (vs UR Delver) Loss 1 - 2
    Opponent had played me before in weeklies so he had an idea how the deck works and how to play against it.

    [G1] Started on the draw, kept a hand of 1 Boarding Party, 1 Technique, 1 Hickory, 2 Sandstone, 1 Tomb, 1 City
    Got Wastelanded Twice on the first 2 lands, Hickory & Sandstone, while getting punched by Delver and Murktides til i was at 4, managed to jam technique and copy on T5 using the City (had a feeling he had bolt in hand, which he did!). He managed to FoW 1 copy and the rest of the technique went into Wanderer and Emmy for the kill.

    +1 Aeve
    - 1 Boarding Party

    [G2] On the draw, kept a handful of 6 MMQ sol lands, 1 Wanderer. (abit iffy keep, but i wanted to have more lands to handle multiple wastelands)
    Opponent went into the Delver, DRC, 2 Baubles and fast surveil with bolts and chain lightnings. Didnt draw any 6cmc cascader or technique and i was dead by T4 without getting wastelanded.

    [G3] On the play, mulled to 2 cascaders, 3 red sol lands.
    Again got double wastelanded, kept drawing techniques and cascaders, and got dispatched quick and fast with delvers, DRCs and Bolts

    Round 2 (vs Elves) Won 2 - 0
    [G1] Faced a deck check and opponent got a game loss due to a missing sideboard card. So I didnt know what he was on.

    [G2] On the draw, kept Gemstone, 2 cascader, 4 tapped sols. Slow start by opp, but still managed to Natural Order on T4 for Progenitus. (later he showed me he drew the Hoof). Went for my T4 cascade chain into emmy and gang, and secured the game and match.

    Round 3 (vs Breakfast) Loss 0 - 2
    [G1] On the draw, mulled into Spider, Hickory, 2 Saprazzan, Otawara, Tomb.
    Opponent T1 Ponder, T2 Shuko into T3 Teferi, T4 Pondered and passed. While i went T1 hickory, T2 saprazzan, T3 Tomb.

    At the end of his T4, i went Otawara, bounce Teferi. Untapped and main phased Spider. And he responded with Orim's Chant (!) So had to stop the chain and pass back. Opp proceeded to Teferi again, i drew a blank and passed, and next turn opp setup the combo for the win.
    *In retrospect, i should have casted spider in respond to his teferi on his turn and at least gambled that he wouldn't have the mana available for any Orim Chants. Mistake on my part.

    +3 Mirrorshell
    +2 Inevitable Betrayal
    +3 Throes
    +2 Tibalt

    -2 Galaxy
    -3 Phoenix
    -2 Sweet Gum
    -3 Boarding

    Idea was to either combo faster with the Throes, and if it hits the Betrayal, it would take out the Thassa Oracle and eliminate his combo portion.

    [G2] On the play, mulled into a hand with saprazzan, sandstone, dwarven, mirrorshell, technique, betrayal
    T1 saprazzan, T2 dwarven. Opponent went all in with T1 ponder, T2 shuko.
    T3 didnt hit an untapped sol land, so played sandstone and passed turn, keeping mirrorshell for the teferi.
    Opp T3 jammed teferi, which got countered by the crab.
    I untapped and jammed technique with demonstrate, and got double FoW. Opp untapped, brainstormed, and jammed Cehphalid for the combo win again.

    Round 4 (vs Traditional RG Lands) Loss 1 - 2
    [G1] On the draw, kept a T3 cascade combo hand. Opponent played T1 Mox & Thespian stage. At this point i was thinking, this is the absolute nightmare.....and the match played out how i imagined it to be.
    My T1 sol land, passed. Opponent played wasteland, and followed up with Loam. This continued for another 6 turns with me drawing and playing sol lands into his waste-loam lock, until i was dead to Depths.

    +3 Throes
    +2 Tibalt
    -2 Galaxy
    -3 Boarding

    Idea was to at least have the phoenix and spider to chump any flying depths just in case.

    [G2] Managed to avoid their T1 wasteland, and pull off the T2 Throes into Tibalt chain, and opponent scooped.

    [G3] On the draw, kept the T2 Throes hand again. And a repeat of game 1, opponent going T1 exploration into wasteland, T2 Sphere, T3 Library.
    Was frantically trying to draw Otawara to deal with the sphere, and library got my opponent into more wastelands and the depths combo soon after.

    ***Lands is by far the most absolute nightmare matchup I've faced, with recurring wastelands and sphere effects to deal with.

    Round 5 (vs Burn) Loss 1 - 2
    [G1] On the draw (for the 5th time already, i knew it just was just one of those days)
    Kept a T3 technique hand, opponent got me down to 6 after his T3 with T1 goblin guide, T2 swift-spear, T3 another guide + chain lightning.
    My T3 at 6 life, ripped a City on the top instead of the tomb i had in hand. Played City and techniqued chain without demonstrating and hit emmy luckily for the win. He had the fireblast in hand, so it was lucky that i didnt need to use the tomb.

    +3 Throes
    +2 Tibalt
    +1 Maddening Hex
    -2 Sweet Gum
    -3 Phoenix
    -1 Boarding Party

    Idea was to be faster on combo route before getting burned out.

    [G2] Kept a T2 Throes hand, and opponent went T1 Guide into T2 Roiling Vortex....and i just stared at the vortex. And i died in 2 turns after while trying to dig for an Otawara.

    [G3] On the play, mulled to 5 with dwarven ruins, hickory, city, boarding party, otawara. Played T1 hickory and passed.
    **This was definitely a mistake, since i didn't think of ripping a throes next turn. Should have led with dwarven ruins instead.

    Opp mulled to 5 too went T1 Guide. And behold, i did rip the throes from the top, and realised my downfall. So i just played dwarven ruins and passed back.
    Opp went T2 Roiling vortex again. I drew sulfur vents, played and passed the turn.
    Opp jammed Ensnaring bridge to my shock, while i stared at the 1 otawara in hand. And as the roiling vortex gnawed at my life, opponent's Eidolon chewed down at my life total.

    Last Round 6 (vs 8-cast) Won 2 - 1
    [G1] Finally was on the play. Mulled to 6 with T3 technique hand and opponent only had 1 FoW to deal with 1 copy, and the rest chained into a Maelstrom Wanderer with Emmy for the win.

    +3 Throes
    +2 Tibalt
    +1 Maddening Hex
    -2 Sweet Gum
    -4 Boarding Party

    Idea was to combo faster, and leave the phoenix in to fight in the air if it ever got too grindy.

    [G2] Mulled to 5 with T2 Throes into Trickery using dwarven ruins, hitting technique with demonstrate. Opponent flipped into a free FoW, and Forced another from hand. I didnt draw into any red sol lands for the reload and constructs dispatched me soon.

    [G3] Felt opponent had kept a 7 with multiple counters. So i kept a slow hand with 5 MMQ sol lands, and a Maelstrom Wanderer.
    My hunch was right, as i went in T5 with Maelstrom, the 1st cascade went into throes and trickery that got hit with a Metallic rebuke, 2nd cascade went into another throes which found a Maddening Hex. Opponent decided to FoW the Maelstrom, and the Hex managed to stick..
    Opponent's saga went off to find a Aether spellbomb. And i drew a land and retraced Throes into Trickery and chained into another wanderer, a few phoenix and emmy. Opponent had no choice but to bounce back the emmy with spellbomb, and take the hit. I took my extra turn and swung in for lethal.

    [Thoughts]
    Deck was absolutely a blast to play, to explain, and importantly to keep the stack and triggers clear to your opponents and if the judge was staring at the massive pile of stuff happening. The surprise factor does help when opponents don't really know what the deck is trying to do, or if they only mess with the non-red sol lands. However, anyone that has seen or played against the deck would know the inherent gaps and that makes the games a real uphill battle.

    Didn't get a chance to play against the reanimator decks, but from my experience against Sneak Show decks, it feels disadvantageous too with them having a fast combo, with main deck dazes and permission spells to stop the techniques. Post-board, flusterstorms and blue blasts are a problem to deal with too.

  7. #127

    Re: 'Mississippi River' (All In Creativity Technique Combo)

    Hi,

    I will play this list on Saturday:

    Maindeck:
    4 Boarding Party
    4 Maelstrom Wanderer
    3 Aurora Phoenix
    2 Sweet-Gum Recluse
    1 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
    4 Creative Technique
    2 Let the Galaxy Burn
    4 Gemstone Caverns
    4 Sandstone Needle
    4 Saprazzan Skerry
    4 Hickory Woodlot
    4 Ancient Tomb
    4 City of Traitors
    4 Dwarven Ruins
    4 Otawara, Soaring City
    3 Crystal Vein
    3 Sulfur Vent
    1 Havenwood Battleground
    1 Volcanic Island
    Σ 60

    Sideboard:
    4 Throes of Chaos
    4 Pyrokinesis
    3 Mirrorshell Crab
    2 Tibalt's Trickery
    1 Maddening Hex
    1 Aeve, Progenitor Ooze
    Σ 15

    Swapped 1 x Mountain for 1 x Volcanic Island.

    I want to play a second Emrakul, but have no idea what to kick out. Any ideas?

    Regards

  8. #128

    Re: 'Mississippi River' (All In Creativity Technique Combo)

    I couldn't decide too, so I just played the 61st card as the 2nd Emrakul.

  9. #129

    Re: 'Mississippi River' (All In Creativity Technique Combo)

    Quote Originally Posted by Eisenkarl View Post
    Hi,

    I will play this list on Saturday:

    Maindeck:
    4 Boarding Party
    4 Maelstrom Wanderer
    3 Aurora Phoenix
    2 Sweet-Gum Recluse
    1 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
    4 Creative Technique
    2 Let the Galaxy Burn
    4 Gemstone Caverns
    4 Sandstone Needle
    4 Saprazzan Skerry
    4 Hickory Woodlot
    4 Ancient Tomb
    4 City of Traitors
    4 Dwarven Ruins
    4 Otawara, Soaring City
    3 Crystal Vein
    3 Sulfur Vent
    1 Havenwood Battleground
    1 Volcanic Island
    Σ 60

    Sideboard:
    4 Throes of Chaos
    4 Pyrokinesis
    3 Mirrorshell Crab
    2 Tibalt's Trickery
    1 Maddening Hex
    1 Aeve, Progenitor Ooze
    Σ 15

    Swapped 1 x Mountain for 1 x Volcanic Island.

    I want to play a second Emrakul, but have no idea what to kick out. Any ideas?

    Regards
    I think, with 1x Volcanic I will cut 1x Otawara for the second Emrakul, seems ok for me.

  10. #130
    Well, Attempted Rationalism at least.
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    Re: 'Mississippi River' (All In Creativity Technique Combo)

    Quote Originally Posted by Eisenkarl View Post
    I want to play a second Emrakul, but have no idea what to kick out. Any ideas?

    Quote Originally Posted by mfatz View Post
    I couldn't decide too, so I just played the 61st card as the 2nd Emrakul.
    Cutting a Cascader seems plausible if you really want a 2nd Emrakul. Let the Galaxy Burn, while laudibly castable, doesn't have as much utility as it did back during the Maindeck Tier 1 Archon of Emeria time period, and it is a liability vs. Thalia/Thorn effects.

  11. #131

    Re: 'Mississippi River' (All In Creativity Technique Combo)

    I will be playing the deck on stream on the BOB stream: https://www.twitch.tv/bazaarofboxes

    You can watch the match afterwards as well in the vod around 60minutes 2nd match.

    I won 2-1 from 5c zenith

  12. #132

    Re: 'Mississippi River' (All In Creativity Technique Combo)

    Quote Originally Posted by ToasTer86 View Post
    I will be playing the deck on stream on the BOB stream: https://www.twitch.tv/bazaarofboxes

    You can watch the match afterwards as well in the vod around 60minutes 2nd match.

    I won 2-1 from 5c zenith
    The match is textbook demonstration that pitch counterspells are a bad deal against this deck, your opponent saw 2-3 per game and yet wasn't able to stop you.
    In one of the games one can see very well that you decided for waiting an extra turn in order to cast your first cascader without sac'ing a land. That way you maximize card advantage and are able to follow up on the next turn with another combo starter.

  13. #133

    Re: 'Mississippi River' (All In Creativity Technique Combo)

    Quote Originally Posted by Rationalist View Post
    Oh hey, that's me!

    I'm currently 14-1 with it at our weekly legacy nights.
    The one loss was to u/r delver and it as mainly because I kept a really bad hand and then made some really poor sideboard choices.

    Running the deck at a trio teams tomorrow, will report back with how I go.

  14. #134

    Re: 'Mississippi River' (All In Creativity Technique Combo)

    Alright so it was kind of a sucky tournament from my end.

    Round1: Bye.

    Round2: Against breakfast (1-2 loss)
    - G1
    -> Easy win as my opponent had no idea what was happening
    - G2
    -> It was such a dumb game, it took until around turn 10 before I drew my first red mana. My opponent was also stuck on 2 lands for this entire time.
    I had attacked my opponent to 6 life with a single spider, the creative techniques had been countered from the cascade.
    Finally untapped with a dwarven ruin and miscounted my mana so I sacced it as I thought I could cast 2 cascaders this turn.
    I then lost because I didn't draw another red mana source.
    - G3
    -> Lost as my opponent combo'd me on t2. T1 Shako, t2 Illusionist.

    This was technically a win, if I hadn't sac'd the mine, I'd have been able to cast another 3 cascader's and easily win on the following turns.

    Round3: Against Maverick (0-2 loss)
    This was against DougesOnTwitch (the guy that took the picture of me in the above post ;p)

    I just flat out lost. Douges is really good with Maverick and just wasted the crap out of me.
    I sideboarded in trickert and chaos and he had sideboarded in deafening silence. So I got wasted and silenced out.

    Honestly not sure what to do against his deck except bring in Pyrokineses to kill the elves and hope that it's good enough. He was running the Elf that lets you fetch up lands and also a single Ramunap to play lands from the graveyard so it was very very easy for him to waste-lock me with green sun's to tutor up the elves and ramunap.

    Round2: U/W Storyteller sharks (2-0 win)

    G1-
    -> Easy win, opponent had no idea what I was doing so it's super easy.

    G2 -
    -> Held off on going off on turn 3 as I didn't want to tap out for Technique into double counter and then have him untap into a Teferi.
    He then went to play T3f3ri on his t3 and I crabbed him (Crab is soooo good)
    Then I combo'd off and won as I felt safe for further Teferi's

    ---

    So overall I felt pretty crap about my performance, definitely should have been 2-1 instead of 1-2, but even then my draws and the run for the day was pretty bad.

    At my weekly legacies (featured in picture above :D) over the past few weeks I'm currently 14-1 with the deck, and the 1 loss was because I kept a bad hand and then sideboarded poorly. So I'm guessing it was karma coming back to bite me.
    But also could be the difference between weekly fun times and a more serious approach to a tournament.

    I still overall really dislike the chaos/trickery sideboard combo, I never know when to bring it in and how to use it properly. But I'm also not sure what to use over it
    Crabs I love and I've found pyro to be really good.

  15. #135

    Re: 'Mississippi River' (All In Creativity Technique Combo)

    Quote Originally Posted by Foxiferous View Post
    I still overall really dislike the chaos/trickery sideboard combo, I never know when to bring it in and how to use it properly. But I'm also not sure what to use over it
    I was very enthusiastic of "Throesbalt" being discardproof and one turn faster than CMC6 cascaders, I've been trying it against a wide range of opponents, from reanimator to storm to elves and stompy.

    To my disappointment, I found out that there's a vast number of things that can go wrong.

    1. You can reveal the 2nd trickery with trickery, which never happened to me and i'm not exactly sure what happens, but i suspect you fizzle the combo. Although rare, it's a possibility.
    2. You can turn draw into the 2nd trickery
    3. You can turn draw into one of your techniques
    4. Your trickery can mill the 2nd trickery

    all of these 4 situations greatly reduce your chances to get a lethal boardstate.
    You can partly fight the fizzle rate by removing a certain number of cmc6 cascaders, therefore improving the chances of flipping Wanderer, Emrakul or Apex Devastator (yep, i play 1 copy), but it's just a partial solution, you still whiff.

    Overall, i wouldn't say the backup combo is bad, it turns some matchups from unplayable to ok, but every time you cast Throes you clench your butt and pray to the gods of Magic....

  16. #136
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    Re: 'Mississippi River' (All In Creativity Technique Combo)

    Quote Originally Posted by Cave View Post
    I was very enthusiastic of "Throesbalt" being discardproof and one turn faster than CMC6 cascaders, I've been trying it against a wide range of opponents, from reanimator to storm to elves and stompy.

    To my disappointment, I found out that there's a vast number of things that can go wrong.

    1. You can reveal the 2nd trickery with trickery, which never happened to me and i'm not exactly sure what happens, but i suspect you fizzle the combo. Although rare, it's a possibility.
    2. You can turn draw into the 2nd trickery
    3. You can turn draw into one of your techniques
    4. Your trickery can mill the 2nd trickery

    all of these 4 situations greatly reduce your chances to get a lethal boardstate.
    You can partly fight the fizzle rate by removing a certain number of cmc6 cascaders, therefore improving the chances of flipping Wanderer, Emrakul or Apex Devastator (yep, i play 1 copy), but it's just a partial solution, you still whiff.

    Overall, i wouldn't say the backup combo is bad, it turns some matchups from unplayable to ok, but every time you cast Throes you clench your butt and pray to the gods of Magic....
    Yeah. These points (and the math) came up earlier in this thread. That's why it's not the main plan.

    3-4 Throes 2 Trickery was decided as a good compromise to go off fast and reduce the fizzle rate (4 Throes 4 Trickery is worse because hitting another Trickery kills the chain).

    It still fizzles more than the main plan. However in some fast matchups doing nothing till Turn 3 OTD is bad, so gambling on the faster Throesbalt is a better plan. Especially because the deck has little flexibility to board in defensive cards vs fast combo. What else do you bring in? It makes a decent SB plan. An earlier plan was 4x Maddening Hex, but many combo decks win through that or discard it. Compared to that, Throesbalt is more effective and resilient.

    When Maddening Hex is strong, you can board in 4x Throes 1x Hex to have a consistent discard-proof Hex.

  17. #137
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    Re: 'Mississippi River' (All In Creativity Technique Combo)

    Heard there was a Mississippi River mirror match at the Bazar of Boxes top tables, anybody have more info?
    Quote Originally Posted by GreatWhale View Post
    Gross, other formats. I puked in my mouth a little.

  18. #138

    Re: 'Mississippi River' (All In Creativity Technique Combo)

    https://www.mtggoldfish.com/tournaments/legacy#paper

    Both decks made it to 5-1, one list has less lands and 8 leylines sb, the other list has 40 lands and the throes+tibalt package and looks like the OP's list.

  19. #139

    Re: 'Mississippi River' (All In Creativity Technique Combo)

    Quote Originally Posted by PirateKing View Post
    Heard there was a Mississippi River mirror match at the Bazar of Boxes top tables, anybody have more info?
    I piloted the deck to top 8 and lost in the mirror match. Will post a tournament report tomorrow!

  20. #140

    Re: 'Mississippi River' (All In Creativity Technique Combo)

    Hello,

    [first of all, sorry for the long post]

    I wrote simulations for Living End and Glimpse of Tomorrow in modern and after seeing this deck online, thought I could easily adapt to this deck and see if I can add insights to the community.
    After summarizing the first results, I was pointed here. It has been a great read, excellent work!

    Still thought it might be worth sharing the results. At worst it can be used to crosscheck other numbers.

    Simulator: (Feel free to skip this if you don't care)
    As for the legitimacy of the simulated results, there's always the potential for failure.
    I manually checked about 100 games the simulator played. they seem fine to me, but I'm just a single person. Errors can't be ruled out.

    In general, I simplified the problem as follows: All 6cmc cascades are Boarding Party. All lands are Ancient Tomb. All spells are colorless. => perfect mana always.
    No mulligans implemented yet (will post again when I get to it), hence any hand that does not cast Throes by turn 2, or creativeT/cascader by turn 3 is considered a game loss.
    CT is always demonstrated.

    A win is when at least 1 wanderer/emrakul is cast and the total power of the board is >10 (maybe this threshold should be higher).
    It plays an equal amount of games on the Play/Draw. the numbers below are the average of play/draw games.

    Happy to share the python code in case you are interested.


    Number of CMC=6 Cascaders:
    I first ran the simulation without Trickery, just to get a feel for how many lands vs cascade spells I want. Turns out with only 1 emrakul and 4 wanderer, 11 cascaders was optimal (according to the criterion defined above).
    Note that more cascaders lead to fewer 'fail' games but also tend to fizzle more often. The winrate includes failed games and with a better mulligain strategy than 'no mulligains at all', I expect the effect of this to be even lower.
    => I'll stick with 11 cascaders until other simulations point me elsewhere.

    No further exploration into other numbers of emrakul/wanderer/otherwincon. but should be easy to adapt the code accordingly.
    For reference, here's the outcome:
    Num Cascade6: 11
    won 922135 out of 1000000 games 0.922135 ratio
    failed 53873
    games that did not fail, but also not win on the spot 23992
    avg boardsize 67.41395394064433
    11 Cascaders: 0.922135 Winrate

    (just making this clear: winrate should be viewed as a relative metric here. a) it is better than your normal paper game because the mana is perfect, but b) the winrate is negatively affected by the poor mulligain rule (no mulls). similarly 'failed' is inflated. avg boardsize is inflated because all cascaders with mv=6 are boarding party)


    Tibalt's Trickery:
    With that said, I then experimented with various numbers of Trickery + Throes.
    A) finding the right number of cards to bring in,
    B) finding the right cards to bring out.

    Some constraints here:
    - only cmc6 cascaders and lands can be boarded out.
    - no maddening hex (for now, will get to it soon)
    (if you think boarding out wanderer/emrakul/ct comes up, please let me know. also, if you think the package comes in alongside other hate pieces except for hex, let me know. happy to run those numbers as well.)

    Long runs 2 trickery 3 throes
    Summary with trickery enabled
    Siding out 1 leads to a winrate of 0.823846
    Siding out 2 leads to a winrate of 0.823368
    Siding out 3 leads to a winrate of 0.820745
    Siding out 0 leads to a winrate of 0.820726
    Siding out 4 leads to a winrate of 0.813962
    Siding out 5 leads to a winrate of 0.803907
    optimal to board out 1 cmc6 cascade spells

    Long runs 3 trickery 3 throes
    Summary with trickery enabled
    Siding out 1 leads to a winrate of 0.824843
    Siding out 0 leads to a winrate of 0.824385
    Siding out 2 leads to a winrate of 0.822
    Siding out 3 leads to a winrate of 0.815689
    Siding out 4 leads to a winrate of 0.805178
    Siding out 5 leads to a winrate of 0.792261
    optimal to board out 1 cmc6 cascade spells

    Long runs 2 trickery 4 throes
    Summary with trickery enabled
    Siding out 3 leads to a winrate of 0.778046
    Siding out 4 leads to a winrate of 0.77659
    Siding out 2 leads to a winrate of 0.774626
    Siding out 5 leads to a winrate of 0.773198
    Siding out 1 leads to a winrate of 0.771279
    Siding out 0 leads to a winrate of 0.765072
    optimal to board out 3 cmc6 cascade spells

    Long runs 4 tricker 4 throes
    Summary with trickery enabled
    Siding out 0 leads to a winrate of 0.771179
    Siding out 1 leads to a winrate of 0.77051
    Siding out 2 leads to a winrate of 0.768391
    Siding out 3 leads to a winrate of 0.762464
    Siding out 4 leads to a winrate of 0.75417
    Siding out 5 leads to a winrate of 0.741701
    optimal to board out 0 cmc6 cascade spells


    some thoughts on this:
    seems to me as if 3/3 and 2/3 are better than the other combinations, which as far as I can tell from glancing over this forum is also the conclusion others have arrived at.
    Is the 4th Throes only for when you also bring in Hex? Do you bring 2/3 for matchups where Hex is irrelevant?


    Companion:
    Lastly, I've seen a bit of debate over Keruga. Have people tested Jegantha in here?
    Might be a bit of a wild guess, but with some rework of the manabase, we could move away from double G, or double U cards and just run 5R and 4UR cascaders.
    some upside of jegantha:
    -in the face of stax, this is a reasonable body (in particular, if you opponent has 1 stax piece + urza's saga, it can wall the 4/4 constructs which keruga can't), while also providing a manasource.
    -even though the mana can not be used fully, it helps a bit with casting 1 creature a turn as this is mana that does not require sacing.
    -it's a card the gains a lot with gemstone caverns allowing you to utilize 3 and 5 mana which might allow you to go under wasteland + loam decks (untested).
    -it helps with hardcasting the wanderer if that is where your game is at.
    -it can fix your mana, letting you cast a 5R card with only green mana, as well as a 4UR card with only R or G mana.
    -it sadly does not work with force of vigor, pyrokenisis, fury.

    Blood Sun:
    post #41 suggested to run pithing needles for wasteland against loam decks. ...I wonder if blood sun is just better at doing the same, while also cantripping, shutting down thespian stage/dark depths as well as urza's saga tokens. getting to 3 mana is more than getting to 1 against a wasteland deck, but it does significantly more when it resolves. ...with all that said, needle seems really bad to me, so maybe a better version is still not good enough.
    Another thought is that Blood sun stops city of traitors from sacing itself and makes our lands come in untapped. This might be enough to make T2 Throes > Blood sun, T3 > combo again ftw quite consistent. Maybe this can be a 1 off, similar to Hex.
    I might be missing something, but as far as I can tell, their most common answer to an unexpected blood sun will be to reach the 3rd chapter on urza's saga, fetch explorers map, crack it for boseiju and blow up blood sun (which at least buys us time and gives us a land).


    Aeve: (disclaimer: the following is highly speculative / was not tested to the same extent as the rest of this post)
    just while I'm here. looking at cards that work with jegantha, made me reevaluate the aeve slot.
    temporal fissure has been noted before, but I think Noise Marine might be worth looking into, IF you already have the trickery package in the sb.

    In games where you bring in trickery, noise marine can replace emrakul as a card that shoots the opponent for 18 dmg on average while also being a potential combo starter.
    It's worse in the force + surgical games, but assuming you started with a creature, you still get to put 2 bodies into play and kill a thread of theirs while they go down 3 cards. might be enough to bridge the game towards 'play 1 creature per turn', especially when you have access to an extra body/manasource in the companion zone.

    Additional thoughts: I ran simulations with this. bringing in noise marine shifts the ratio of trickery to cmc<6 cascades.
    from preliminary results, I'd suggest to have 3 trickery, 3 throes and 1 marine, and bring in all 7 over 1 emrakul, 1 cascader, and 5 lands.

    note that mariner evaluates the storm count upon entering the battlefield, not upon cast, meaning it will always deal near max damage.
    the only exception to this is when you have multiple branches still on the stack, in those games you can decide to not cast mariner and spin into it at a later point
    (you only turn it down if you already have several branches meaning you won't fail anyways. with no branches, it shoots for max damage which should be the number of non-lands in your deck minus spells in hand plus spells you demoed your opponent into. the simulations I've ran, always casted it as early as possible and ended up with 18dmg on average, in practice I think it should be well over 20).
    Last edited by d3spam; 07-20-2023 at 05:07 AM.

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