The EPIC Storm (TES) Vs. Fetchland Tendrils (FT) - The Competition

[Bryant Cook]

This competition started in the "What is the best current combo deck?" thread. It's too determine which deck (TES or FT) has a better blue based aggro control and blue based control match-up. Myself and Emidln are going to play six rounds against each Tacosnape running U/b/g/w Landstill and Freakish777 playing UGwb Counterbalance Threshold.

Rules:
Everyone involved is to take notes and save game logs.
If MWS Crashes restart that game.
Keep track of results (2-1, 2-0, 1-2, ect. all 6 rounds.)
Keep track of what each winning turn was.

Decklists:

The EPIC Storm (TES)
Played by Bryant Cook

Lands
4 Gemstone Mine
4 City of Brass
1 Undiscovered Paradise
1 Tarnished Citadel

Creatures
4 Simian Spirit Guide

Spells
4 Orim’s Chant
4 Dark Ritual
4 Rite of Flame
4 Lion’s Eye Diamond
4 Lotus Petal
4 Chrome Mox
4 Infernal Tutor
4 Burning Wish
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
2 Infernal Contract
1 Diminishing Returns
1 Ill-Gotten Gains
1 Tendrils of Agony
1 Empty the Warrens

Sideboard:
SB:1 Diminishing Returns
SB:1 Ill-Gotten Gains
SB:1 Cleanfall
SB:1 Tendrils of Agony
SB:1 Empty the Warrens
SB:1 Thoughtsieze
SB:1 Pyroclasm
SB:1 Shattering Spree
SB:4 Vexing Shusher
SB:3 Pyroblast

Fetchland Tendrils (FT)
Played by Emidln

Lands
4 Flooded Strand
2 Underground Sea
2 Tundra
1 Scrubland
1 Tropical Island
4 Polluted Delta
1 Swamp
1 Plains
1 Island

Spells
1 Wipe Away
1 Cruel Bargain
4 Mystical Tutor
4 Sensei's Divining Top
4 Dark Ritual
4 Cabal Ritual
4 Lion's Eye Diamond
4 Infernal Tutor
4 Orim's Chant
4 Brainstorm
3 Ponder
1 Lotus Petal
1 Tendrils of Agony
1 Brain Freeze
1 Ill-Gotten Gains
1 Doomsday
1 Extirpate

Sideboard:
SB: 1 Wipe Away
SB: 2 Extirpate
SB: 3 Krosan Grip
SB: 1 Echoing Truth
SB: 1 Rushing River
SB: 4 Serenity
SB: 2 Abeyance
SB: 1 Sudden Death

U/b/g/w Landstill
Played by Tacosnape

4 Tundra
4 Underground Sea
4 Tropical Island
3 Polluted Delta
3 Flooded Strand
4 Mishra's Factory
2 Nantuko Monestary

4 Brainstorm
4 Standstill
3 Jace Beleren
1 Life From The Loam

4 Swords to Plowshares
4 Pernicious Deed
3 Diabolic Edict

4 Force of Will
4 Counterspell
3 Stifle

1 Crime // Punishment
1 Extirpate

Sideboard:
SB: 4 Meddling Mage
SB: 4 Blue Elemental Blast
SB: 3 Extirpate
SB: 2 Engineered Plague
SB: 2 Krosan Grip

UGwb Counterbalance Threshold
Played by freakish777

4 Polluted Delta
4 Flooded Strand
4 Tropical Island
3 Underground Sea
3 Tundra

4 Force of Will
4 Counterbalance
4 Daze
4 Thoughtseize

3 Sensei's Diving Top
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
4 Tarmogoyf
4 Nimble Mongoose
2 Mystic Enforcer
4 Swords to Plowshares
1 Pithing Needle

Sideboard:
SB: 4 Engineered Plague
SB: 4 Tormod's Crypt
SB: 2 Engineered Explosives
SB: 3 Krosan Grip
SB: 2 Threads of Disloyalty

Notes and Gamelogs:

[Bryant Cook]

Saved for results.

TES Vs. UGwb Counterbalance Threshold

Round One : 0-2
Round Two: 1-2
Round Three: 1-2
Round Four: 2-0
Round Five: 2-1
Round Six: 1-2

[Bardo]

Folks, let's keep this thread on-topic and rubbish free. Grazi.

[raharu]

Notes and Gamelogs TBA?

[MattH]

...Brain Freeze? May I ask why? Do you really expect to get that much storm, or is it ourely an anti-CB measure, or...?

[Sims]

...Brain Freeze? May I ask why? Do you really expect to get that much storm, or is it ourely an anti-CB measure, or...?

That version of FT is using a doomsday stack. Getting an obscene storm count isn't exactly hard if he gets the combo off unhindered.

[Illissius]

...Brain Freeze? May I ask why? Do you really expect to get that much storm, or is it ourely an anti-CB measure, or...?

Meddling Mage, I think.

[emidln]

It's trivial to get to lethal storm count for Brain Freeze with Doomsday, IGG, and Sensei's Divining Tops in the deck (each can generate lethal storm on their own or in various combinations). This is a better win condition than ETW for near-petalless FT since it manages to avoid mass creature removal (EE/Deed/Clasm) that may be in/have come in while still getting around Mage (and actually Teeg as well).

[freakish777]

Bryant and I are finished with our matches.

I think that all game logs should be posted after all matches are completed. Once they are, I'll be letting Bryant and emidln post the game logs of our matches, and saying that they either match my own game logs, or don't match my game logs.

[Phantom]

Those results aren't that bad at all, IMO. Going 2-4 against your worse MU is not that bad. Report!

Is it the worst matchup? I was always under the impression Dragon Stompy or Stax (basically board based control) was worse, but that might have been before CounterTop. It would have been interesting to see one of those decks included.

Anyway, I love this idea and we need more of it. Highly skilled players playing their decks and taking detailed notes is the type of thing I can eat up, especially when it is not just one on one).

[Zach Tartell]

Warrens shines against those two decks. That's pretty much why I'm sure that TES is better than fetchland tendrils - no warrens vs. yes warrens.

[Jaiminho]

Warrens shines against those two decks. That's pretty much why I'm sure that TES is better than fetchland tendrils - no warrens vs. yes warrens.

Against freakish777's Thresh, game 1 is a goblin freeway and only 2 EE makes it a bit worse for ETW post-SB, but not like they are easy to find that quick. Tacosnape's Landstill has 5 board sweepers that can clear ETW tokens on turn 3 (or 2, for Punishment). They are good against deck number zero one, but I don't believe so against deck number zero two.

[Illissius]

Those results aren't that bad at all, IMO. Going 2-4 against your worse MU is not that bad. Report!

It's actually 7-9 in games, so even closer -- though we don't know which were pre- and which post-sideboard.

[BreathWeapon]

ETW and the Prison match up isn't all that relevant, you either go straight for your Tendrils or you SB in Shattering Spree and just clear their board and win at your convenience.

ETW is really more for running over Counterbalance decks game 1, they usually don't have mass removal or Stifle in any significant quantity.

[Brehn]

ETW and the Prison match up isn't all that relevant, you either go straight for your Tendrils or you SB in Shattering Spree and just clear their board and win at your convenience.

And for Fetchland Tendrils no matchup is relevant, you either clear their board full of permanent hate with Serenity, Wipe Away, Rebuild, Rushing River end of turn and/or you go off with double Chant protection (which you are able to tutor for) and win at your convenience. In fact, for Fetchland Tendrils Chalice-based decks are a bye and Threshold/Landstill should be a ~60%-70%-matchup if you pilot your deck correctly.

...

(wasn't this exactly the way of arguing one should avoid when talking about combo decks?)

(also note that Bryant's list plays exactly one Shattering Spree. I know you play 4, but still)


EDIT: wtf @ deleted posts? wasn't the sarcasm obvious?

[BreathWeapon]

And for Fetchland Tendrils no matchup is relevant, you either clear their board full of permanent hate with Serenity, Wipe Away, Rebuild, Rushing River end of turn and/or you go off with double Chant protection (which you are able to tutor for) and win at your convenience. In fact, for Fetchland Tendrils Chalice-based decks are a bye and Threshold/Landstill should be a ~60%-70%-matchup if you pilot your deck correctly.

...

(wasn't this exactly the way of arguing one should avoid when talking about combo decks?)

(also note that Bryant's list plays exactly one Shattering Spree. I know you play 4, but still)


EDIT: wtf @ deleted posts? wasn't the sarcasm obvious?

I didn't mean TES vs Stax is an irrelevant match up, I meant using ETW vs Stax isn't relevant because the match up comes down to racing the first lock piece with Tendrils of Agony or resolving a Shattering Spree. Stax has too much removal for ETW to be effective, so if you're relying on Tokens to win the match up, you're probably fucked.

Storm vs Prison is just a stupid match up, it always results in one deck completely blowing the other deck out of the water. I didn't mean to imply I've never been locked out of the game, I have and it sucks, hence 4 Shattering Spree; I wouldn't run 4 Shattering Spree if I didn't respect Prison's win % against combo any way.

So in short, ETW is bad against prison, Shattering Spree is good against prison.

[Bryant Cook]

Because this topis is about "What is the best current combo deck?".. I really hope you guys test more matchups.. Not only against Blue Based (I'm thinking of decks like Staxx, Discard, Fast Combo, etc..).

Jip

If you read either thread, you'd know that we're determining which deck has a better blue based control/aggro control match-up.

[Jak]

Can we get the results? I don't mean to spam, but this would end a lot of debate.

[Bryant Cook]

Can we get the results? I don't mean to spam, but this would end a lot of debate.

Freakish and Emildn started, I haven't been able to get ahold of Tacosnape.

[georgjorge]

Those results aren't that bad at all, IMO. Going 2-4 against your worse MU is not that bad. Report!

It's not bad for a combo deck, but considering that you're going 2-4 against a deck that makes up a big share of the metagame (especially when adding other blue-based decks that run CBalance + Top, Force, Stifle and additional disruption, like Dreadstill, UWb Fish, Merfolk or CTop MUC into the equation), it seems to be not enough to get up to Tier 1 status.

And is there any chance for there being a competition against Stax/Stompy builds, or do you guys (emidln + Bryant) have better things to do in the next weeks ? Because I find those things very interesting...