I think you're right about Thalia, and she's probably even more important than SFM. I'd cut like utility guys (2nd Pridemage, Scryb Ranger) and a sword to get her in there.
Did you ever have lethal damage trouble? Taiga+Wolf Run is the costliest part of my deck, design-space wise, but I wasn't comfortable cutting and losing wins in the many situations it beats. As above, I do think Mom gives a leg up on beating things like TNN, but it still seems iffy, even against (e.g.) a DRS out of Elves. (There is, obviously, the major difference of Maverick's ability to push through other damage more reliably.)
Originally Posted by 'Nilla Pac
Admittedly, every match I was basically playing the control role trying to stop what they were doing until I could land the combo or a Rafiq to start bringing the beats. I didn't really have lethal damage trouble because none of the matches came down to a board stand-off, it was more like I either had the nuts to stop what they were doing or I didn't. I prioritized things like Maze of Ith and Wasteland vs infect and hatebears vs storm, and once those things were in place they either beat me by destroying my defenses or I just got there with mediocre beats/eventual combo.
Creatures: 14
1 Qasali Pridemage
1 Rafiq of the Many
2 Mother of Runes
2 True-Name Nemesis
4 Noble Hierarch
4 Knight of the Reliquary
Planeswalkers: 2
2 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
Combo: 3
3 Retreat to Coralhelm
Spells: 19
1 Sylvan Library
2 Daze
4 Green Sun’s Zenith
4 Force of Will
4 Brainstorm
4 Swords to Plowshares
Lands: 22
1 Forest
1 Karakas
1 Dryad Arbor
1 Kessig Wolf-Run
1 Sejiri Steppe
2 Wasteland
1 Taiga
1 Savannah
2 Tundra
3 Tropical Island
4 Windswept Heath
4 Misty Rainforest
Sideboard: 15
1 Bojuka Bog
1 Crop Rotation
1 Pithing Needle
1 Life from the Loam
1 Scavenging Ooze
1 Qasali Pridemage
1 Izzet Staticaster
1 Krosan Grip
1 Supreme Verdict
2 Flusterstorm
2 Envelop
2 Meddling Mage
Trying this out tomorrow, inspired by the last few posts. I like Mom a lot, along with Rafiq, but I can't bring myself to move away from Bstorm+Force. Shaving a Daze could be wrong, but it's been so underwhelming against Miracles and Shardless.
Also, a version from Japan that did well: http://www.hareruyamtg.com/jp/k/kD00574W/
Last edited by HSCK; 11-04-2015 at 06:40 AM.
Nice - I've been thinking broadly about getting 2-3x Moms in there, and Daze is a fine shave (as is FoW). Turning Sigarda blue also helps with the count, and "my bombs pitch to FoW" is a good place to be.
Japanese list (great find):
Lands (25)
3 Tropical Island
3 Tundra
1 Savannah
1 Forest
1 Dryad Arbor
1 Plains
4 Misty Rainforest
4 Windswepth Heath
2 Wasteland
1 Dark Depths
1 Thespian's Stage
1 Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale
1 Sejiri Steppe
1 Karakas
Guys+Walkers (13)
4 Hierarch
4 Knight
1 Pridemage
1 Clique
1 E Witness
2 JTMS
Other Spells (23)
4 Brainstorm
4 FoW
3 Daze
4 StP
3 GSZ
4 Retreat
1 Loam
Board (15)
1 Bog
1 Teeg
1 Pridemage
1 Ooze
2 Clique
2 Wilt-Leaf Liege
1 K Grip
2 Pierce
1 Surgical
2 Choke (!)
1 Sylvan Library
I like the Loam, and am really interested in Depths+Stage as another low-investment axis, but it doesn't solve the problem of over-dependance on Knight. It's really interesting that a combo turn includes making a Marit Lage (if you want) instead of Wolf Run. If there was a good way to get haste, like a Haste Steppe, that would be insane for Knight *and* Marit Lage (Slayer's Stronghold is still in red), but alas.
Hm, now that you mention haste, Hall of the Bandit Lord could be a cool way to pump out haste Knights, but it is likely just worse than everything already there.
Last edited by ironclad8690; 11-04-2015 at 11:42 PM.
I think you quoted the wrong poster, haha. Will have some testing in this afternoon.
http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles...ily-2015-11-05
Bahra with a cool spin on it addressing some of the same issues with a pair of Stoneforges and two equipment instead of TNN an Mom. From my testing, Rafiq was incredible while Mom and TNN were definitely solid. DRS decks getting above 20 life was happening in grindy games as they can also shrink and stall the ground, but Rafiq let's you break stalemates and avoid Decay really well.
I watched the stream a bit. I don't really like the cuts (down to 16 blue cards, 2 retreats) required to fit the SFM package.
I think I'll try Mom, and maybe Rafiq.
Unrelated, where do y'all find the Japanese/MTGO lists? I can pull up the urls, but is there a place to subscribe through RSS?
I'm trying this in a local event tomorrow. Does anyone have any suggestions to adjust for the post-GP meta? Miracles is the most popular deck in town and likely to remain so; Shardless Sultai and Grixis Delver are likely to pick up as well.
Eh, I don't think anything changed. Abrupt Decay and Terminus remain the cards to beat.
I've had very little time to work with this, but as above, I think I really like 2 TNN in the Clique slots and cutting 1 Retreat.
I'm less sure about Rafiq for Sigarda (she goes to the board, and is quite good against BGx and Miracles) or a couple Mothers maindeck, but plan to try both. Without Mothers, the Retreat slot is pretty open: Stifle, Spell Pierce, Ponder, Wasteland, 2nd Pridemage are probably the top contenders.
Yeah, Mother seems good against Decay and StP, so I'll try a couple. I think, however, that I'll try the Cliques for now unless you would like to argue in more detail for the switch to Nemesis. So I'll try -1 Retreat, move Sigarda to board, +2 Mothers main and drop Staticaster to make room in board.
How'd it go?
Obviously play whatever you want and enjoy. My TNN vs. Clique thoughts are:
1. Combo is down at the moment and fair decks are bigger. And, the G1 combo match-up is pretty circumstantial anyway.
2. TNN gives even more axes to fight the fair decks. It combos real well with the exalted guys and Retreat (vigilance makes him much stronger, and therefore doesn't require fetch lands to make Retreat useful on their turns), beats Decay (a clear weakness), and can come out so fast that many fair decks can't handle it. (It's worse, but not much worse than Clique against Miracles.) Clique is fragile and often slower against fair decks.
3. My strategy against unfair decks is usually buying time with early counters, then slamming stronger lock pieces (Crop Rotate for Karakas, wipe their yard, Teeg, Ooze) and/or combo-ing out. Clique is fast enough coming down, is not a fast enough clock, and (most importantly) is not definitive enough. It's obviously a good card, and nice to see, but it's filling two hotly-contested spots, and it's not strong enough at what I wanted it for.
I see your point; it's just that I have two copies that I finally managed to trade for, so I've been itching to play with them. I can see the advantages of TNN (though seeing you analyze them in the context of this deck is very helpful), I just think it's a really dull card to play with, so I decided to go with the fun card this time.
The tournament went pretty well BTW. I did lose to Reanimator in the first round due to not mulliganing aggressively enough; he Exhumed Griselbrand T2 in both game 1 and 3 with counter backup, and I had too little interaction. In the second round I got a bye, and then I beat the other Reanimator in the room by just drawing a lot better than him. In the last round I faced Infect, but his draws were a bit slow, so I had the time to slam knight and dictate the pace from there. 3-1 was good enough for a bit of store credit, so I walked away with a Sower of Temptations and a Glen Elendra Archmage from the somewhat picked-out store display. My only true regret is not actually casting Retreat a single time.
If it doesn't make n00bs cry, it's probably not my deck.
For sure.
The T2-3 combo decks are always the toughest matches for decks like this. We have, in theory, some super strong and pretty consistent T2-4 plays on the other end of a GSZ or some such, but we usually have to open proactively, with a mana guy, in order to play that game. Reanimator, in particular, can often feel unlosable if you make it past T4. If they have it on T2, there's often nothing to be done. Not running out Hierarch is usually just too slow, since our answers cost more than (e.g.) Delver's.
Not seeing Retreat is not fun.
Edit: A list made 5th/16, with 59/ my 60 (cutting a fetch for a Crop Rotation maindeck) and a couple changes in the board. Courser is on my list-to-try, and need to see. Swan Song seems questionable with Clique main, since the non-bo is so brutal when it happens.
I know this is an unorthodox suggestion, but is Noble Hierarch's granting of Exalted and reliable generation of mana better than just going with Deathrite Shaman? There are a few obvious advantages:
1. It survives -1/-1 and 1-damage sweepers. Surprisingly relevant, and in a deck that is running stuff like TNN, Clique, potentially Mother of Runes, etc. this can be important.
2. With this deck's own high amount of fetch lands and the the general ubiquity of them, generating mana is rarely going to be an issue. Not to mention, it can grant access to Red and Black mana for sideboard cards and one-ofs, reducing the need to run off-color Duals. Stuff like Abrupt Decay becomes a more feasible SB option. I'll grant that this exposes it to Pithing Needles, but that means they aren't naming Jace/Knight of the Reliquary.
3. Against graveyard-centric decks, running 4 copies of hate in the main deck is obviously a huge advantage. Access to green mana is a given against Dredge and Reanimator, and it wouldn't be too difficult to fit in a Bayou/Scrubland/Underground Sea in there to disrupt ANT/TES. Lands just won a GP, so having a main deck card to address Loam is great. Punishing Fire is another target that could be addressed with Shaman's help.
4. Provided you have access to Black, DRS provides damage (and disruption) without even requiring the attack phase and is generally a much better card to draw in the late-game. This ability seems to offset the loss of Exalted, if not perhaps being outright superior. The reason Hierarch is so much better in Infect is because that archetype wins through Poison damage. Having played BUG archetypes for quite some time, there are so many games that are won thanks to the Shaman's ability.
5. A corner-case, but for the rare occasion when someone is running something like Snuff Out or Ghastly Demise, DRS dodges these.
6. Playing it in the early turns against an unknown opponent provides a bit of ambiguity to your advantage. Hierarch implies Bant, Maverick, or perhaps Infect, whereas DRS implies a whole other range of decks lists. The confusion might distort your opponent's lines of play.
I'm interested in giving this deck a spin and will test DRS in the Hierarch/BoP slots and will report back.
Also:
7. Can become a serious clock with retreat activations in odd circumstances. Drawing a fetch land can drain for 6 in one turn, if you've got the mana. If you're comboing against, e.g., an Ensnaring Bridge that you can't kill, you can circumstancially drain pretty significantly in a single turn - 4-6 activations wouldn't be crazy, if you can cobble together the black mana.
3b. It's x=1 tutorable grave hate with 4x GSZ.
In my earliest iterations, I was running 2 Hierarch, 2 DRS, 1 Bird.
But, against it:
1. Shrinking Knight is seriously bad. In normal grindy games, depending on a Deathrite is often the difference between an 8/8 Knight and a 4/4 Knight. Hopefully you're using their yard and don't have to do this, but when it comes up, it's a terrible feeling.
Even in combo games, there's a list of things that makes everything lethal: our graveyard is untouched, we have a mana dork, they don't have tons of blockers and/or protected blockers (TNN), they haven't gained much life, and we haven't lost too much life. We can usually absorb 1 of those with no problem, and 2 of those if we're willing to waste ourselves out of lands as part of the combo. So, messing with our graveyard in some 25-40% of games means that we're much more open to non-specific problems messing our combo up.
2. Exalted is non-trivial. The deck's secondary win-condition is Clique/TNN/Pridemage beats, and having 1-2 of these effects very significantly affects the game and elevates our guy's relevance. Thinking about a 4xHierarch, 2xPridemage, 1xRafiq list with True-Name makes me salivate.
3. The mana is not dependable, mainly against the many other decks playing DRS, and we really want it to be there. We want to kill Deathrite decks dead while they're adjusting their posture, and that means not dancing with their Deathrites.
4. The black mana is not viable in the deck's current form. It's a travesty that I don't have a 3rd Wasteland, but I don't think it's worth dropping the blue/green* mana even lower, cutting Wolf Run, or shipping Karakas to the board. 3rd Wasteland is a priority over any black source and best case, it'd be a singleton, which is really less exciting for DRS activations. If running several DRS and black mana, Wolf Run has to go. That might be fine, with an extra source of incremental damage, but I don't love that.
(Note: If you go this route, be sure to practice comboing against TNN. You'll need to use Steppe to get past TNN, but you can't use Retreat to untap after getting pro-blue. The optimal ordering is either (a) to activate to get 2 fetchlands ready during your main phase, then attack, and combo off before blockers are declared. Tap down all non-blue blockers with your fetches, then end by fetching out Sejiri Steppe for pro-blue. You can stack the triggers to untap Knight before he gets pro-blue, but you won't be able to activate/untap him again, or, (b) to combo during main-phase for some reason, make sure that Steppe comes on your last activation and put Stepe protection on the stack before Retreat so the untap resolves first, before you attack. This obviously blanks Steppe as protection and you can only do it once.)
* To add Wasteland: If I want 13 Islands for Daze, and to maintain utility lands, I could swap Taiga for Volcanic Island and cut a blue source. This makes red mana less-fetchable, but Staticaster probably won't survive a fair-match-oriented maindeck reconfiguration anyway. If I keep 2 Tundras (and Tundra+Forest is really good; I wish I had 3), I have to cut 3rd Trop or 8th Fetch. Either drops the deck to 12.5 green sources (Arbor sucks) to maintain 13 blue sources for Daze. That's lame.
Wasteland probably needs to be a 23rd land, which isn't terrible in my landfall deck, but space is super-premium, or, come at the cost of losing Wolf Run. Which I hate.
Last edited by anwei; 11-13-2015 at 11:40 AM.
I won a small (14 player) event today, good for a Volcanic (3-0-1, then won out T4). Usually half or so of the room is more casual, so I expected (and saw) fewer top tier lists, including fewer Abrupt Decays, so I decided not to try Mother of Runes until I've tested it more. I played against MUD, Reanimator (unintentional draw), Punishing Jund, Maverick, Reanimator again, and Merfolk. I ran this:
Lands (22)
3 Trop
2 Tundra
1 Savannah
1 Taiga
1 Forest
1 Dryad Arbor
4 Misty Rainforest
4 Windswept Heath
1 Sejiri Steppe
1 Karakas
1 Kessig Wolf Run
2 Wasteland
Guys (16)
3 Hierarch
1 Birds of Paradise
1 Qasali Pridemage
4 KotR
2 True-Name Nemesis
1 Rafiq of the Many
2 JTMS
Spells (22)
4 GSZ
4 StP
4 Brainstorm
1 Sylvan Library
3 Retreat to Coralhelm
4 Force of Will
3 Daze
1 Spell Pierce
Sideboard (15)
2 Envelop
1 Flusterstorm
1 Qasali Pridemage
1 Scavenging Ooze
1 Gaddock Teeg
1 Izzet Staticaster
1 Maze of Ith
1 Bojuka Bog
1 Krosan Grip
1 Pithing Needle
1 Council’s Judgment
1 Sigarda, Host of Herons
1 Crop Rotation
1 Ethersworn Canonist
I liked this configuration: TNN was great, and Rafiq was quite strong once in a while (still not sure on it) and, as before, it's really nice having your expensive stuff pitch to FoW. The fair match boost from True-Name was enough that I cut Path, Submerge, and EE (already have enough utility removal, though I'm not sure on this vs. K Grip vs. Needle) and added 2 more U counters in the 75, which was nice.
The maindeck Spell Pierce could be a Maze in fairer metas, and I might swap them anyway. That card is real good.
Also: another pair of Japanese lists, similar to the one before (one is the same guy), with maindeck Depths and access to Tabernacle.
Played a version of this today at a 2K. First event in about 3 months. Totally botched both my list and my play. Wolfrun and the red splash don't feel very useful. I'd rather be playing the TNNs. I also played without Daze, which I was pretty happy about. I'll post a theoretical list tomorrow after I think about it a little more in depth.
Interested to see it. I thought/tested around cutting KWR some this week (not mutually exclusive with playing TNN), and updated the first post with this:
After playing this weekend and seeing the combo much less frequently (maybe only 2/11 game wins?), and maybe winning more games off Wasteland (and losing some number off bad mana), it's a pretty tempting change to make. (Though, I actually naturally-drew Taiga+KWR several times, and it can be quite good apart from Retreat.)
There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)
Reply With Quote