[Deck] Death and Taxes

[grayryker]

The Legend rule is not exactly a problem for Flagstones. As for Blood Moon, my builds still run 6-7 basics. The cost of running it is incredibly low, and it allows for Cata into have Port online for their only land, or simply being slightly closer to casting spells again.

All those "Ifs" seem to be assuming that you bring in Cataclysm against random decks. You pick when to bring it in. You pick when you cast it. Against the decks that you want it, your creatures are almost always superior. Very few decks are running the same number of powerful artifacts, and typically the worst case scenario involves them keeping a Library or Dread of Night. The card takes Big Blue style decks that are typically more resistant to mana denial because they run more lands. You sort of force a game reset, where you play out the early game again. You are able to apply pressure and force them to cantrip into answers while choked on mana, and strand the expensive cards that Taxes typically has difficulty beating.

I wasn't assuming "bring[ing] in Cataclysm against random decks"... I gave specific examples covering a variety of blue decks that people normally side it in against. All you did was describe to me what Cataclysm does without covering any of its flaws. In addition, I'm saying this idea of "slightly closer to casting spells again" is such a weak (and improbable) advantage it doesn't merit running flagstones purely to combo with Cataclysm. Contrary to popular belief, running 6-7 basics doesn't make a deck good to blood moon especially in a non-fetchable build. Anyways, this topic has been discussed to death and it's time to move on.

[WashableWater1]

@Water, what's your Flagstones manabase look like?

I've been running this online:

4 Flagstones of Trokair
4 Wasteland
4 Rishadan Port
3 Karakas
6 Plains
2 Cavern of Souls

If I decided that Flagstones are a higher cost than I'm comfortable with Ill swap them 1:1 with Plains

[Stevestamopz]

@Water, what's your Flagstones manabase look like?

For reference, my manabase is:

1 Cavern of Souls
3 Flagstones of Trokair
3 Karakas
8 Plains
4 Rishadan Port
4 Wasteland

I remember Bahra played the full 4 but I just never bothered buying the 4th. I don't think it matters that much anyway because Cataclysm doesn't need Flagstones to be good. It's simply another utility land that has virtually no-downside to include in your mono-white deck and is a nice pay-off if you manage to be charmed enough to draw both Flagstones and Cataclysm and have Cataclysm resolve.

Also lol @ calling Cataclysm win-more while advocating for a 4 mana Planeswalker in the same spot.

[Colin]

Success rate depends on the number of samples you have against these decks. If we are talking 30+ games where you come out on top against each of these archetypes maybe you are just good. Overall, I don't have mtgo but just from seeing clips online I find players to be better decision makers. You will find more players who are more knowledgable about the format whereas paper players don't really review a wide variety of decks that go beyond their local meta. Sure they might do some last minute research for a big tournament but people I know don't study a match-up until they face it personally. Also, some decks are harder/easier to play online and that also affects decision making skills.

I'm just playing at this point, taking some tallies when I get to play against DTB instead of fringe. Maybe 15-20 matches against both Grixis and UWx. I'm probably ~75% game win rate and ~85% match win. I think Medea's response is probably why I'm experiencing these numbers. I need to play more league/pay to play events.

The general free to play tournament practice room has many pretty terrible players. It's a ton of people learning their decks and the MTGO client. Spend some time here when you first start out so you don't lose games to stupid stuff (and my god, does that happen in those first few games...), but then move on to paid events. People scoop too early, drop before playing sideboard games, etc. If you want experience against fringe decks though, this is a good place to find that.

The average MTGO Legacy player in a league is likely better than the average Joe who shows up to your Legacy night in town or maybe on par with people who go to play in Opens. They might not always be dedicated experts of the decks or anything, but play level is usually competent to good.

The great MTGO players (e.g. Legacy specialists like Bryant Cook) are wonderful to play against and likely better than most or all of the people you will play against locally. These players will be on par with what you see towards the end of an Open or GP in terms of skill.

edit: You also should be able to go infinite pretty easily on MTGO if you're a good player. I haven't put any money into the system other than what I paid for the deck. A 3-2 finish lets you enter another for free with about $2 profit to boot, and a 4-1 or better finish puts you pretty far ahead in terms of value with all the treasure chests you get.

I will put more focus into the pay-to-play. For reference, when I can make it out to large legacy/vintage events, I'm a pretty solid top 64 player. usually in contention for top 32 until I punt over something really stupid (or sit down to fucking tinfins in round 6 of eternal weekend in the 5-0 bracket and get turn 1'd two games in a row. seriously, did nobody have FOW sleeved up that day!)

I'm flying for EE7 and EW2017 and I just need to get in reps.

[WashableWater1]

A quick opinion poll:

How do D&T players feel the average MTGO player stacks up to the real world? And across the various play options: Daily, general match making etc.?

I finally conceded to not having enough access to paper players and I bought into MTGO and have been play testing quite a bit.

I've found my success rate against the new U/W miracles, grixis and 4 color is much higher than i think my play skill warrants.

My experience is that the skill ceiling is the same, the best players often are active online and in paper. I do find that the floor is significantly higher than paper, where I run into more newbies, people that borrow decks, and people that play because it's fun to do with your friends. These people I feel like I see less online. My experience is almost completely Leagues though.

[Medea_]

I'm just playing at this point, taking some tallies when I get to play against DTB instead of fringe. Maybe 15-20 matches against both Grixis and UWx. I'm probably ~75% game win rate and ~85% match win. I think Medea's response is probably why I'm experiencing these numbers. I need to play more league/pay to play events.



I will put more focus into the pay-to-play. For reference, when I can make it out to large legacy/vintage events, I'm a pretty solid top 64 player. usually in contention for top 32 until I punt over something really stupid (or sit down to fucking tinfins in round 6 of eternal weekend in the 5-0 bracket and get turn 1'd two games in a row. seriously, did nobody have FOW sleeved up that day!)

I'm flying for EE7 and EW2017 and I just need to get in reps.

Ahahahaha, I'm pretty sure that was my roommate. Either that, or there was another guy who went 6-0 with Tin Fins.

[grayryker]

Anyone find BR Reanimator to be an unfavorable match-up? I've definitely lost more than I've won with either mono white and the multicolored version of the deck. Being locked down by Unmask, Collective Brutality, and Chancellor of the Annex games 2 and 3, not drawing the right sideboard card, none of your cards doing anything remotely effective to stop their sheenanigans, etc... I don't think I am playing poorly in this fairly straightforward match-up.

I've had some success with Faerie Macabre as a quick playable interaction past Chancellor and Thalia (this is where surgical extraction lets me down). It's pretty decent against Lands as well. I feel somewhat ambivalent about Containment Priest. Was wondering how many cards you guys dedicate to this match-up.

[WashableWater1]

I find it reasonably unfavorable, but it's just inconsistent enough and we pack enough answers that I don't think it's terrible. My current grave hate side board is 2-2-2 Containment Priest, RiP, and Macabre. My sideboarding plan always takes in Path and Pithing Needle when I run it. Path is pretty obvious, they go fast and having more ways to beat turn one fatty is necessary. Needle on Griselbrand is unexciting, but if you can stop them from drawing 7-14 he's actually not that scary. It clips his wings enough for me, and that's how I lose most games.

[Medea_]

Anyone find BR Reanimator to be an unfavorable match-up? I've definitely lost more than I've won with either mono white and the multicolored version of the deck. Being locked down by Unmask, Collective Brutality, and Chancellor of the Annex games 2 and 3, not drawing the right sideboard card, none of your cards doing anything remotely effective to stop their sheenanigans, etc... I don't think I am playing poorly in this fairly straightforward match-up.

I've had some success with Faerie Macabre as a quick playable interaction past Chancellor and Thalia (this is where surgical extraction lets me down). It's pretty decent against Lands as well. I feel somewhat ambivalent about Containment Priest. Was wondering how many cards you guys dedicate to this match-up.

http://www.thrabenuniversity.com/?page_id=1252

[rostov]

Anyone find BR Reanimator to be an unfavorable match-up? I've definitely lost more than I've won with either mono white and the multicolored version of the deck. Being locked down by Unmask, Collective Brutality, and Chancellor of the Annex games 2 and 3, not drawing the right sideboard card, none of your cards doing anything remotely effective to stop their sheenanigans, etc... I don't think I am playing poorly in this fairly straightforward match-up.

I've had some success with Faerie Macabre as a quick playable interaction past Chancellor and Thalia (this is where surgical extraction lets me down). It's pretty decent against Lands as well. I feel somewhat ambivalent about Containment Priest. Was wondering how many cards you guys dedicate to this match-up.

Thanks medea for latest article. Brings back memories.

13yo son's scribbled notes, GP Vegas, round 5:
G1:
T1, G (I'm guessing griselbrand) in GY / karakas.
T2, thoughtsieze vial / plains, mom.
T3 (my comment: basically with karakas in play the rest went down locked in)

SB: 12 (I'll ask him later what the heck he took out. Guessing the SFM package plus a few avengers and some)

G2:
T1, Iona, faerie / karakas
T2, collective brutality, canonist / topdeck RIP, plains, RIP
T3: (my comment: things went pretty downhill for opponent)

SB registered:

[Sideboard]
2 Surgical Extraction
1 Faerie Macabre
2 Rest in Peace
1 Manriki-Gusari
2 Council's Judgement
2 Containment Priest
3 Ethersworn Canonist
2 Sanctum Prelate

He's got 3 mirran's in his mono-white MB, and has been very grumpy pre-event about reanimator, having lost a lot of online and training matches against them. Took me a bit to convince him to go easy on a playset of Macabres when registering but still his GY hate was still high for a wide meta... He was happy with results though, but attributed G1 to pure luck having to be on the draw with a karakas and nothing bad coming out of the GY yet....

[iatee]

BR feels like a bad matchup because you don't have any agency when you lose, but I am pretty sure my win % is something like 75% vs it overall. It's annoying to face it, since you still can always be turn 1'd twice in a row - but I definitely think we're favored, unless they really stack their board to beat DnT.

As with all combo matchups, you really want to win the die roll. But even if you don't and lose g1 - the deck loses to itself a good % of the time and white gets to play some of the best sideboard cards against it.

Unlike a lot of legacy decks, we have tons of answers to a reanimated Chancellor / whatever big dude in the main. I always play at least two Path to Exile, which is card that's both good against them without being super narrow graveyard hate.

Faerie Macabre allows you to beat hands that a FoW deck couldn't beat.

[Medea_]

BR feels like a bad matchup because you don't have any agency when you lose, but I am pretty sure my win % is something like 75% vs it overall. It's annoying to face it, since you still can always be turn 1'd twice in a row - but I definitely think we're favored, unless they really stack their board to beat DnT.

My online win percentage against it is probably in that ballpark as well. The B/R Reanimator players really feel favored, but I don't see it. Unless you get the nuts twice in three games, we pull ahead pretty quickly.

[grayryker]

Thanks for the input everyone. The games that I do win are almost purely due to their slow starts, rather than how exceptional my hand is. I'm interested in how probable they can reanimate a turn 1 creature because that percentage has always felt quite high from my perspective (maybe I can google later). Overall, it feels like it comes down to their opening hand rather than my own.

There is an interesting data on the mtglegacy reddit page where DnT is scoring in the 40ish percentage rate. This would be an interesting to discuss I think on whether we take this percentage seriously.

[rostov]

Meant to ask: one thing that wrecked my DnT darling during Vegas was Dread of Night. Is Council's judgement the preferred way to deal with that?

[Medea_]

Thanks for the input everyone. The games that I do win are almost purely due to their slow starts, rather than how exceptional my hand is. I'm interested in how probable they can reanimate a turn 1 creature because that percentage has always felt quite high from my perspective (maybe I can google later). Overall, it feels like it comes down to their opening hand rather than my own.


There is an interesting data on the mtglegacy reddit page where DnT is scoring in the 40ish percentage rate. This would be an interesting to discuss I think on whether we take this percentage seriously.

The RB Reanimator primer on this site has some of that stuff. It's worth reading if you are struggling. I think there's also math about how likely you are to find X missing piece.

I haven't checked in the last few days, but my MTGO Legacy League win percentage somewhere around the 70% mark. The average pilot is bombing hard though. Not sure how much of that is due to budgetary constraints, but something is way off there.

Meant to ask: one thing that wrecked my DnT darling during Vegas was Dread of Night. Is Council's judgement the preferred way to deal with that?

Council's Judgement gets it off the table, and a Gideon, Ally of Zendikar emblem negates it.

[rostov]

Understood. From what I understand the council's didn't go in (belief was to board in storm disablers) post-board against one of the rounds against ANT, and ANT boarded in the single dread and drew it early. Guess we'll chalk it to lesson learnt / inexperience with understanding format.

Cheers

[grayryker]

The RB Reanimator primer on this site has some of that stuff. It's worth reading if you are struggling. I think there's also math about how likely you are to find X missing piece.

I haven't checked in the last few days, but my MTGO Legacy League win percentage somewhere around the 70% mark. The average pilot is bombing hard though. Not sure how much of that is due to budgetary constraints, but something is way off there.



Council's Judgement gets it off the table, and a Gideon, Ally of Zendikar emblem negates it.

Do you mean it's 70% overall or just against Reanimator? Either way that's extremely high and it would be nice if you post some sort of data sheet with samples (if MTGO provides this). This sort of data would be useful for all of us.

The data posted by reddit user nocley and Julian Knab all seem to indicate DnT is not doing too well at the moment. I think it would be foolish to dismiss this as "players who do badly are new or using a budget version or both". Multiple statistics are placing this deck below 45%, which is surprising even on MTGO where Delver has greater popularity than on paper. There is a lot of overlapping consistency between the data posted by the two. Looking at Knab's article, some outliers definitely exist (100% against Infect on 3 samples) but the others seem much more consistent (54% against Show and Tell, with 13 matches) and justifiable, if not shocking (25% against Grixis Delver, with 25 samples). Also, the data posted by nocley seems to strongly indicate that meta differences (local vs online vs paper tournaments, etc.) are not substantial to the winning percentage of a deck, given enough samples.

[grayryker]

Understood. From what I understand the council's didn't go in (belief was to board in storm disablers) post-board against one of the rounds against ANT, and ANT boarded in the single dread and drew it early. Guess we'll chalk it to lesson learnt / inexperience with understanding format.

Cheers

Well to be fair, Council's of Judgment is extremely bad against 99% of that deck. So it's not a bad idea to NOT sideboard this card in, unless you knew beforehand that Dread of Night is coming in.

You probably want to side in a single artifact/enchantment hate like Seal of Cleansing, if you have the space, as you can also hit all the mana rocks. Ratchet Bomb is also an underrated option in my opinion, as it handles turn 1 Empty the Warren and is fairly versatile.

[WashableWater1]

Well to be fair, Council's of Judgment is extremely bad against 99% of that deck. So it's not a bad idea to NOT sideboard this card in, unless you knew beforehand that Dread of Night is coming in.

You probably want to side in a single artifact/enchantment hate like Seal of Cleansing, if you have the space, as you can also hit all the mana rocks. Ratchet Bomb is also an underrated option in my opinion, as it handles turn 1 Empty the Warren and is fairly versatile.

Whenever I used to play ANT I'd always have 3 Dreads in the board. I always bring in all my CJs because I expect them to have something like that, and there are a ton of bad cards in the maindeck to cut.

Do you mean it's 70% overall or just against Reanimator? Either way that's extremely high and it would be nice if you post some sort of data sheet with samples (if MTGO provides this). This sort of data would be useful for all of us.

The data posted by reddit user nocley and Julian Knab all seem to indicate DnT is not doing too well at the moment. I think it would be foolish to dismiss this as "players who do badly are new or using a budget version or both". Multiple statistics are placing this deck below 45%, which is surprising even on MTGO where Delver has greater popularity than on paper. There is a lot of overlapping consistency between the data posted by the two. Looking at Knab's article, some outliers definitely exist (100% against Infect on 3 samples) but the others seem much more consistent (54% against Show and Tell, with 13 matches) and justifiable, if not shocking (25% against Grixis Delver, with 25 samples). Also, the data posted by nocley seems to strongly indicate that meta differences (local vs online vs paper tournaments, etc.) are not substantial to the winning percentage of a deck, given enough samples.

Where is this data being gathered from? I have found that Delver and Sneak and Show have been tougher to beat up on recently. I'm seeing way more Omni's out of SnS and actually seeing dedicated DnT hate out of Grixis Delver. I've faced multiple Dreads and Null Rods.

[grayryker]

Whenever I used to play ANT I'd always have 3 Dreads in the board. I always bring in all my CJs because I expect them to have something like that, and there are a ton of bad cards in the maindeck to cut.



Where is this data being gathered from? I have found that Delver and Sneak and Show have been tougher to beat up on recently. I'm seeing way more Omni's out of SnS and actually seeing dedicated DnT hate out of Grixis Delver. I've faced multiple Dreads and Null Rods.

Yeah I see variations of 0 to 3 Dread of Nights and that's probably enough incentive to bring in Council's Judgment actually.

Here is Julian's article ( http://itsjulian.com/too-much-inform...ies-frankfurt/ ) and you can find the other data from reddit, which are split between two posts. Objectively speaking, it looks like Deathblade has the best percentages in the meta due to its near 60% win percentage in both data. I've played the deck and it's fantastic, with a ton of early and late game power.

There are many reasons why Grixis Delver has an edge over Death and Taxes. The first is that mana denial does nothing to this deck except with Thalia, as they can operate on 1 mana and have access to Deathrite Shaman. It's a 3-color deck that doesn't fear Wasteland. The second is due to cards like Cabal Therapy which really hurt your late game by taking away equipments taken by Stoneforge. They also have multiple ways to deal with your Aether Vial even on the draw, which slows down you a lot. Sultai Delver is a bit easier in my opinion but only because they have a higher curve. Deathrite Shaman is one of the main reasons why I'm moving away from Port/Wasteland but also many other non-shaman decks (Show/Tell, Reanimator, Lands, Elves, Burn, Storm, etc.) are rarely affected by Port/Wasteland as well. I would say out of those decks, Port/Wasteland can be good against Lands - with Rest in Peace - but the odds are not likely when they have their own Wasteland/Port and Life from the Loam.

And yeah Omnishow is a pretty bad match-up.