Doorkeeper Thrull's also way better than Squire. But Dreadnought already wasn't playing either Torpor Orb or Squire (or Hushbringer). Blue's enablers are better. 4x Stifle 4x Dress Down already counter enemy ETB triggered abilities and pitch to Force.Originally Posted by Clark Kant
Reasons to consider Doorkeeper might be if you go UW and want more copies of Dress Down but less copies of Stifle, e.g.:
-More hate for enemy creatures
-Ambush small attackers like Bowmasters
-Midrange deck without Wasteland/Daze/Stifle mana denial plan
-Avoid 2-for-1s with Stifle+Dreadnought
-White count for Solitude
White is a good color to be in because of the premium removal, planeswalkers, and board reset. You lack a secondary threat (probably can't afford to splash UUGG Uro) but could play a more controlling game with Dreadnought finisher and Scroll of Fate.
New Phyrexia release: May 13, 2011
https://mtg.fandom.com/wiki/New_Phyrexia
Mental Misstep ban: Sep 20, 2011
https://magic.wizards.com/en/news/fe...s-2011-09-20-0
Misstep era was May-Sept 2011.
Dreadstill was Tier 1 in 2010, but saw a huge dip in play by 2011. mtgtop8 2011 Dreadnought: https://www.mtgtop8.com/archetype?f=LE&meta=61&a=85
Most 2011 Dreadnought results are before NPH. Stiflenought/Dreadstill already saw a decline in early 2011 leading up to NPH. I don't know why - I wasn't in the Dreadstill community - but it was already on the decline and not a DTB.
Mid Apr 2011 - mid Oct 2011 (bigger than the Misstep era): only 3 results.
1 links to Hive Mind (error). The others run 1 Dreadnought, like the SCG Seattle deck. They rely on Trinket Mage to find 1-of Dreadnought, so Torpor Orb is not enabling their 12/12s.
My memory from that era could be wrong, but the data shows it too. Stifle+Dreadnought disappeared during the Misstep era. There weren't opposing Dreadnoughts across the table.
My point was that your Torpor Orb deck is not getting out-12/12ed by a deck with 1 Dreadnought. They produce max 1 Dreadnought and probably can't find it with Trinket Mage turned off.
Yeah, the red list I proposed earlier was not good. It was a draft thought experiment and has obvious flaws you raised (note it was less than 60 cards, so there is room for advantage at 2 cmc or Mox/SSG acceleration).
Bg MaskNought was the first logical progression and saw the most competitive play. Turning on hostile 12/12s was rare, see above.
Tomb is a later progression from there & Hive Mind, seeing that skipping 1cmc helped.
I cannot find an old list to get an exact build, so I'm speaking from rough heuristics. The key difference in that meta was you could afford to play Chalice @ 1 and Dreadnought in the same deck, so you could run 6-8 Sol Lands + Mox and push the advantage bar on 2 cmc (unlike the red build). Normally you can't run Dreadnought and Chalice together. In my own words "nonbo". But the Misstep meta was hostile to 1 cmcs. Stifle+Dreadnought was not a favorable plan. If Dreadnought is the only 1 cmc in the deck and Mask cheats you around the CMC, then you could actually play Chalice and Dreadnought together. You could use Tomb/City to skip ahead on CMCs in a meta where you already want to avoid 1 cmc: dodging enemy Misstep, your own Chalice, and enemy CounterTop. It was never a better time to avoid 1 cmc.
It was not the most common version of MaskNought (i.e. you expect more Bg results). It was more of a Stompy-Mask hybrid, but it was a thing that was played and worked in that meta. That's all I claimed. It worked because you wanted to do things like skip 1 cmc, cut Stifle, and play 2cmc colorless enablers. Tomb helps that plan.
Only pointed to it as a flash in the pan. The original comment was an aside. Misstep era was introduced as the exception, not the rule.
It wasn't a reason to play TombNought now. No extrapolation. If you think otherwise, quote where I said so.
Why didn't the Dreadstill community experiment with it? Mask also has a good interaction with Fathom Seer (playable draw engine in those days).
Never said that. Quote me where you think I did.
All I said was that A) Mask and B ) blue stompy were (separately) competitive ways to navigate the Misstep format. Results support both.
I said TombNought was a progression from those 2 ideas. The strongest claim I made was that it had a good win rate in that warped meta, not that it was the best solution or most popular.
Kerrigan's SCG feature match coverage was June 2011. In those days an SCG feature match & article got seen by a large audience (content was rare then, not saturated like today), so a large part of the Legacy community was aware of the tech and rules for several months of the Misstep era from July 2011 to the Sept 20th ban.
Before that, players may have been unaware how Mask worked. But that video and article would have brought awareness. Kerrigan explains the correct CMC rules in the article: https://articles.starcitygames.com/a...orb-in-legacy/
TheSource thread has the correct rules too: https://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/...an-Dreadnought.
That thread was 2010, just after the unban, before Mask saw any play, so at that point players were still figuring the card out. Future players had the answer a quick search away. Gatherer has it too.
A Level 2 Judge should know too. You just had to call a judge.
Overall the potential for rules violations was high, potentially inflating the win rate at smaller paper events. That was a feature of all paper Magic back then though. Sometimes you won because opponent drew too many cards off Brainstorm and you caught it, not because your deck was better. That could happen even without a complex card like Illusionary Mask. You know how many players would try to cast Force of Will for 0 through Trinisphere? Rules errors might have inflated Mask win %, yes. But honestly just being attentive to opponent's errors and not making your own added 5-10% to win rate regardless of what deck you were on. That's why the same players made the top tables over and over.
On Uro, the threat of a 6/6 isn't what matters so much as CA and ability to re-cast with minimal limitations. Doesn't matter what colors you choose, you have to recoup CA.
The bigger issue with white is that it didn't get DRC and is not an effective colorset for Saga/Mycosynth. White isn't the best for CA, and you have to run March of Otherworldly Light over Ending that tops out at 2c (the upside is that this one-shots Saga). It's generally worse against PWs than Pyroblast.
The upside of white is cycling for mana (Timeless Dragon), however Lorien is a better card as you can keep 1-landers. The problem however is that a 1x Currency Converter isn't something you can see enough of with without Saga to helping to find it.
As compared to red, the total mana requirement of white is a lot higher, another place where Saga isn't going to help you. The color pip requirements are heavier than UR, so Hall of Storm Giants is still a better fit in a manland slot...but even this was displaced by Otawara.
Circling back to CA, it's still Standstill and later on Lorien operates as additional copies of Standstill. While game actions are abundant, game action threats have dropped (manland to Otawara, trim Dragon fraction into Lorien). All these factors create a problematic scenario for gameplan progression - enemy PWs can sneak through the cracks.
There are massive benefits to UW however. Karn/Teferi is an incredible combo, but keyword haste on Minsc does pose problems (however Minsc use is down). Verdict is the perfect card for a Dreadnought deck. Teferi + Scroll of Fate is pretty much unbeatable (don't have to chew through removal). Karn keeps re-finding Dreadnoughts, guns down basics (while Stifle/Wasteland hits the nonbasics + Crucible wish), and kills Chalice. There are so many slots that kill or ignore Chalice that our favorite hostile opener is Chalice on 1 (which we let resolve).
While Dreadnought is very well supported by this type of hard control, it is decidedly not trying to win with damage. The 12/12s are only really there to combat combo and things like Post. This deck does well when we generate pseudo-CA by not turning on hostile kill spells (so Dress Down is at most a 2x b/c making sorcery speed threats is poor play vs removal-based decks).
---
Concerning the new Torpor Orb guy, it's just going to die to removal and lock you into playing Noughts in a main phase...and we already have Torpor Orb in the SB, which means it's in hand with a Karn. I'd still rather have a card that gets me to 3 mana and denies monarch by stripping Horse Aer Lingus [Forth] 2/2s of their keyword haste (i.e. another copy of Dress Down).
I think there are too many mana issues and moving parts to engage in Saga find Map find Lotus Field -> now I can switch March back to Ending stuff. That said, Karn wish Hex Parasite + Saga find Parasite is a novel way to attack hostile PWs. Just a little too cute until wotc bans Tomb, Echo, Grief, and Beans (this is unlikely).
You don't have to recoup CA if Thrull is replacing copies of Stifle instead of Dress Down. If you stay on 4 Dress Down and pivot away from Stifle, you avoid the structural 2-for-1s and don't need the CA as badly.
Between cutting Stifle and no DRC, you lose a lot of speed, so you can't really be a racing deck like UR. But UW was never good at racing anyway. White does play better control.
Why is white not an effective colorset for Saga? It doesn't do 1-card Delirium for DRC, but it does do Map into Karakas/Hall of Heliod/Lotus Field? Also 1-of Currency Converter.
The color pips don't seem like a problem if your mana looks like:
//Lands:
4 Flooded Strand
4 Prismatic Vista
2 Tundra
3 Island
2 Plains
1 Karakas
1 Otawara, Soaring City
2 Urza's Saga
1-2 other lands
//Cyclers:
2 Lorien Revealed
2 Timeless Dragon
1 Currency Converter
1 Expedition Map
That should be stable access to colors.
Meanwhile you don't need redundant Thrulls and your lategame plan seems strong
//Enablers: 8
4 Dress Down
2 Doorkeeper Thrull
2 Scroll of Fate
//PWs: 4
2 Teferi, Time Raveler
2 Karn, the Great Creator
If the main PW of concern is Minsc, Hydroblast answers that. Hydroblast also counters Forth Eorlingas even better than Dress Down. You lose removal for enemy Teferi & Narset though.
You lose Prismatic Ending, but in the age of The One Ring and Kaldra Compleat 3-color Ending falls short anyway, at least March can answer them.
Is the Thrull really that bad? It does die to removal but also Stifles opponent's triggers (+1 card) and can ambush a Bowmaster to get it off the board. Combined with well-timed gravehate you can eat a DRC too.
https://twitter.com/4dogs1suit/statu...RPhE-V5Fw&s=19
I just don't think I can pass this up
So I'm going to play br with the sol lands
Yeah it is a great turn 2 kill. Why Monolith? Mox or SSG does the same but can also fix red.
The kill itself is high variance so you should have a good fair plan too.
What are you playing in black? Discard? Kroxa? Molten Collapse seems strong.
Monolith gives you up to seven mana turn 2, a mox gives 5
Black for Bowmasters
In UW you don't really play creatures or win by damage, so making Noughts at sorcery speed is not useful (there's basically a 100% chance their hand is multiple kill spells). This is what limits Dress Down to 2x. Stifle is there to pick fights we don't care about, rather than making Noughts. The goal is Scroll on EoT protected by Teferi passive - this is how we beat removal. Once Karn is in the mix you use Dreadnought looping and 2/2 lands [Scroll] to discard usually about 8x kill spells; otherwise you wipe all their lands and only then make Dreadnoughts vs a hand of mono-kill spells they can't cast.
---
Saga contaminating an opening hand is pretty rough for UW due to higher cmcs and color pips. We're not going to overload removal like UR can. If I'm choosing between a Saga and a Wasteland, I'm going to choose Wasteland in UW. When it comes to land totals, white has to play a little lower than UR (no Spikefield) and lower than UBx's CTP (that's Landstill colors, not playable with Nought). White spell lands are trash, and I can't go above 2x Otawara. In the 21-22 range you can't afford to be drawing Saga (Wasteland is really important, and you have Sevinne's target Wasteland and Karn wish Crucible) - damage from constructs & Nought isn't the currency of UW, absolute mana denial is. There is a maximal amount of colorless lands UW can get away with. Wasteland wins out here.
---
There's this very strange tendency for people to notice that Bowmaster is a huge problem for mana bases held together by yolo-cantripping [Xerox], but then think it's our problem too. You really shouldn't be using a sketchy manabase that demands mulling away your CA. You know this because 2-for-1'ing yourself does not lead to a large enough hand for sculpting with 1-for-1s to matter (particularly when such deck construction creates glaringly massive weakness to Ancient Tomb). If you want to kill Bowmasters, you use Shark Typhoon and a real mana base. A whole 2 damage per turn is not really meaningful, so as long as you have the ability to progress your mana without creating a massive orc army problem for yourself, you just take your time. Ideally you would have Spikefield Hazard and the ability to delete Bowmasters with land slots, but you're not UR so you have to get more creative and construct the deck to not be affected by the passive and have wraths.
As printed Doorkeeper Thrull lacks hexproof, so I don't trust it to complete a trade with Bowmaster in the slightest. When it inevitably fails, it's not like I can fire off a Brainstorm with their kill spell on the stack - it doesn't stop the passive. If you're building into loses to Bowmaster, Thrull won't get you out of that situation.
---
Concerning Torpor Orb effects things that we need to see in addition are:
-Hexproof/Shroud
-protection from white plus regenerate/indestructible
-creatures and PWs cannot use activated abilities
-casting spells cannot generate triggers (Chalice, Counterbalance, Beans, Storm, Ulamog trigger, DRC trigger, cascade, etc)
The flying, flash, lifelink, hits artifacts, stops death triggers stuff just isn't good enough.
What do you need 7 mana for? All you need is at 1-5 mana.
Unless you're a Voltaic Key deck (Karn Forge, Paradox combo), Monolith is 1-time ramp like SSG. You don't need 1-time Monolith unless ramping into a big play like Peer into the Abyss. Dreadnought shouldn't need that.
T1 Tomb/City + SSG/Mox -> Scroll
End of turn Manifest Dreadnought
T2 land, Pyrotechnic Performer, flip 12/12 & attack -> 24 damage
No need to store up 7 mana. But red Mox helps for Pyrotechnic Performer and other colored cards.
The odds of that in an opening hand is pretty low. That's a lot of 39.9% chances you have to roll together...and if you don't roll that, a simple Wasteland would be pretty devastating.
Can't Currency Converter tokens, Scroll manifesting lands, and Saga constructs tilt that balance though to drain their removal? Saga into Converter helps that plan.
I suppose Landstill does that plan even better (+ Shark Typhoon, - the 2-for-1 12/12), but can't Dreadnought try to overload their removal too?
Why not have Dress Down at 4x? It's not just for sorcery speed Noughts. It's often 1.5 cards by Stifling opponent's card advantage creature & cantripping.
For instant Noughts, the cards I posted do build towards Scroll + Teferi endgame.
Does Saga hurt opening hand mana even as a 2-of, even with 4 colorless land cyclers (fix from colorless) and turning into Map/Converter? Wasteland is also colorless and puts you back a land. Don't see how that leads to more stable mana.
What's sketchy about that manabase? It should hit UW colors easily.There's this very strange tendency for people to notice that Bowmaster is a huge problem for mana bases held together by yolo-cantripping [Xerox], but then think it's our problem too. You really shouldn't be using a sketchy manabase that demands mulling away your CA. You know this because 2-for-1'ing yourself does not lead to a large enough hand for sculpting with 1-for-1s to matter (particularly when such deck construction creates glaringly massive weakness to Ancient Tomb). If you want to kill Bowmasters, you use Shark Typhoon and a real mana base.
It's not that Doorkeeper is ambushing some dangerous lethal creature, but that you're getting a 2-for-1 by ambushing an x/1 or Stifling their ETB trigger and then drawing a removal spell. Even if you don't enable a Nought, you traded positively unless they have removal open when you put Thrull on the stack.
Shark Typhoon is a better ambusher though, true.
The deck needs a fair backup plan. It can't be the only plan. Point was that Monolith ramping to 7 isn't needed.
Scam has similar percentages is still Tier 1. As long as the deck has a reasonable fair plan, it's OK to only have the big play some fraction of the time.
To avoid losing to Wasteland, need more low mana plays (i.e. ignore the deck I posted before, start from broader picture).
Last edited by FTW; 01-29-2024 at 10:38 AM.
the 7 mana is for when you don't have these elements.
What do you need 7 mana for?
4 is enough for The One Ring or Karn, the Great Creator.
What if I want to also cast the thing I want after t1r or karn? Not of this world
Realistically, it's 6 mana (to ritual's 4) since you need a second sol ring and 6 mana is a much more obvious break point which casts: Mask+Eater of Days, Wurmcoil Engine, Karn + Orb, mask+2 myr superions, chromatic orrey, etnerity vessle, Kaldra, Big Karn, Vanguard Supressor + 1 squad, Scarian Infultrator + Squad 2, Endbringer, Battleball, Spine of Ish Sah, Staff of Nin, Phyrexian Devourer
Going 4x Scroll 4x Mask would be interesting because you could reliably make facedown creatures for Pyrotechnic Performer.
But Mask's flip is not a game action you can control at any time, Mask makes the 2/2 at sorcery speed, and it casts the card - so it's better if the new set has some good Manifest/Disguise enabler.
Mask is also redundant in multiples (Scroll turns extras into 2/2s) so it may help to have card filtering like Fable or Daretti to convert extra Masks into useful cards, or to tutor for it (Karn, Goblin Engineer).
Edit: Other cheap creatures in RB you could consider cheating out
Vexing Devil
Death's Shadow
Hunted Horror
Myr Superion
Kroxa, Titan of Death's Hunger
Last edited by FTW; 01-29-2024 at 01:16 PM.
Controlling the flip is the easy part. If you have keyword morph or megamorph or disguise/cloak (whatever they call the new one), it works like you want it to.
For all other creatures without that text printed on the face-down side, you merely have to tap them. This is trivial with Survivors' Encampment, but the biggest issue there is the lack of Desert-Fetchlands or competitively costed keyword desertcycling. Springleaf Drum is not a playable card.
It is important to remember that you can announce a split second spell -> pay by tapping a flipping a face-down and protect their trigger with split second. You can also flip a morph/megamorph/disguise-cloak/manifest of you have extra mana, with split second spell holding down the stack.
What happens when you play Valki, God of Lies facedown for 2 mana in paper Magic? Does the piece of cardboard grow a 4th dimension?
You have a 2/2 morph or manifest. Hidden under that is an unplayable 2/1. Casting it as morph or manifesting will delete the entire text box. You cannot choose to morph/manifest the back face of a card with 2 sides.
Face-down, like tapped, is a status. Anything can be turned face down. Even things with non-magic backs. This isn't transforming, and when turned face up it will be valki. Never the back side because the back side isn't knowable to mask or scroll.
This is a rule change, btw. It used to be DFCs couldn't be face down.
There are currently 2 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 2 guests)
Reply With Quote