Quote Originally Posted by Patrunkenphat7 View Post
Martin is exactly correct. There are a ton of lines that you need to analyze for the comparison between DP and Grim in terms of turn 1 Empty capabilities, but overall the numbers/options favor Grim Tutor in this specific respect. @Jonathan I like your decklist idea as a whole, and I think 7 tutors is worth exploring. I would try to vary the 3 DP numbers with either 2 DP, 1 Grim or 1 DP, 2 Grim, as multiples of either of those cards can be quite poor. Grim is a good tutor to flood on as long as you are flooding with other tutors that are not other Grims - it adds some nice power/flexibility to your combo.
Agreed on all counts.

It's worth pointing out, however, that in spite of the fact that there are four situations in which Grim shines compared with Petition (fast Empty, setting up a combo a turn in advance of firing, finding non-combo cards to pull us out of sticky situations, no spell mastery), it's significantly worse when we're aiming to do an AdN- or PiF-Tendrils combo, both of which are ostensibly what the deck is built to do. I'm not sure deviating from that plan more broadly is a good idea because it's a solid plan against most decks that aren't Eldrazi or Miracles; we might risk losing a lot of matches that used to be in our favor.

Maybe I'm just newbing it up, but I don't think it's ever a good idea to run AdN and Grim together. If we AdN into both Infernal AND either Grim or Petition, we're taking a big hit (bigger on Petition), but bleeding 6—or worse, 9—in order to combo at all is really bad. It's less of a problem if we can break several LEDs with AdN or Grim on the stack, but that doesn't happen all that often (there's a reason Army of the Damned doesn't get played very much in Burning Wish decks).

I feel like the new meta won't necessarily require a whole load of restructuring, but it might make a few builds suffer, at least for the time being. We either need to go really quickly or have answers to at least one (often two) artifacts just to pull off a combo, and I'm not sure we'll have the life or the time to count on AdN or Grim-for-disruption. I also don't think the multi-Tendrils plan is all that useful in this matchup unless we can hope to cast more than one on separate turns, and I don't think that's feasible with 8-12 lockdown artifacts lurking. I think it's pretty imperative to run at least one (I'd prefer more at this point) non-Infernal tutor in the deck because Chalice on 2 shuts us down if we don't.

With all that having been said, I still think Ad Nauseam is worth keeping in the 75, probably the main, and I'm interested in trying Jonathan's build if I get the chance soon. Extra Petitions [EDIT: 3] is a plan I felt too scared to try before, but it might be a good way to get around those damnable Chalices. I didn't play AnT last week, but the week before I managed to pull off two combos in three games against Eldrazi, winning one game and digging to death in the second, even with hate artifacts on the board at the opponent's EoT. In game 2, I hit everything I needed off of AdN after EoT Hurkyl's, and in game 3 Infernal was locked by a Chalice and I didn't have the life to dig enough mana to combo. Petition wasn't live without more mana than I could find, but Grim would've straight killed me even with a better set of AdN flips.

I'd love to hear what people think of using Empty instead of AdN. I like them both, but I feel like they are so different in cost, effect, and situational utility that I'm reluctant to cut AdN preboard.