Quote Originally Posted by catmint View Post
Maybe it is also a phenomenon that I can see with 2 very good austrian players and friends of mine. One is playing Storm - the other Canadian and canadian gets his ass kicked all the time like its the worst matchup. In tournments however the canadian player wins a lot against torm and the storm player has a tougher time against canadian. Our explanation is that the better you know each others playstyle the more it favours the combo player. Therefore I would recommend testing against different Canadian players and not only your buddy and yourself to get more reliable results.
Sorry, I hope I'm not hijacking the thread too much, but this was a really interesting statement to me. I've played against alphastryk piloting Miracles with a lot with a bunch of different combo decks and I'm very, very positive in tournament matches even if I'm not always so much in playtesting. But on the other hand, my percentages against Miracles played by other people is much worse. I wonder if that's part of what you're describing - I just know his playstyle and I get to make the decision to go for it or not.


Quote Originally Posted by emidln
A negative storm matchup is randomly something that can be addressed, although doing so tends to weaken the Thresh matchup enough to not really make it worthwhile until OmniHalls has significant penetration. The reason I was advocating a singleton Underground Sea and sideboard Thoughtseize is that these cards significantly increase your matchups against other combo decks (Storm, Reanimator/TinFins, Sneak Attack, and OmniHalls). Thoughtseize can also deal with cards like Krosan Grip if they begin to see play. Further, the line of play in the R&D->Lab Man build included stacking 2x Thoughtseize so you can always cast Thoughtseize (2x so you can cast off Dream Halls by pitching the other Thoughtseize) pre-Lab Man (so you can even beat the most random hate like Sudden Shock/Death/Spoiling).
It seemed like you were also advocating cutting Leylines. So you see them as less necessary than Lejay? Or alternatively do you just see the Thoughtseize package as specifically a way to tune the deck if you don't expect lots of discard decks and do expect lots of combo?

It was suggested in the Omniscience thread, but I could see playing a couple of Lim-Dul's Vaults would help tremendously with assembling a 3-card combo with different card types. It also has the nice benefit that you don't need Impulse or Trickbind in the maindeck for a Firemind's Foreskin pile.

I've done a little bit of testing with LDV, but so far it's been irrelevant - the opponent put up basically no resistance.