On Specters and Sinkholes:
About Specter, is it currently general consensus that it be dropped? Both Hanni's and Nitewolf's lists do not run Specter...turn 1 Specter turn 2 Sinkhole is one of the most broken openings we can lead with...I see no reason to not run it.
On Sinkhole, our most broken plays generally involve it. Personally, I wouldn't drop our random wins cards...
@Rsaunder:
Why Black Kngiht over Carnophage? Firsty Strike is relevant at times, but Black Kngiht isn't a one-drop, thus cant block Lackey on the draw, barring Rituals... Once Lackey drops something big, the game is already over for us, no?
I honestly hate dropping a first turn spectre unless I feel some kind of lucky. It can just get shot down and two-for-one'd too easily. I usually rit out a hymn+manaburn for 1 over him. IMO, he's amazing, an excellent turn 3 and later creature that just utterly wins games against combo and control and some bad aggro, but he's just too risky a first turn drop.
I'm trying out knights because of their abilities. First strike and pro-white are just excellent with jitte. Carnophage just seems like he doesn't do enough of anything to warrant inclusion. If I were that worried about first turn lackey to devote slots t oit, I'd play funeral charm or darkblast. I may elaborate further, but I have to go to school now, so later!
I'm here to kick ass and play card games.
BZK
If they kill my turn 1 Specter(if I played it using Rit I probably have some kind of 2-drop more valuable, thus i play the Specter First), then all the better. They have less removal for my two drop, e.g. Confidant.
Hey..
I'm new in legacy, this forum and this post..
But what i noticed the last couple of pages of reading is that there is a very big focus on the cards the deck should consist of.
Generally theres the deckcore and from there a few cards that differ from person to person/deck to deck. Instead of focusing on these minor tweaks that don't really change the deck alot, but more is personal preferences, i would like to know how you guys play the deck.
Is the drops like:
1. Discard -> LD -> Creatures/
2. LD -> Discard -> Creatures
or
3. Creatures -> LD/Discard
Ofcourse it depends on the situation. But i figure option 3 is the least optimal. This is due to the nature of disruption like discard and LD.
Counters most often improve as the game goes on, and spot/mass removal is fairly steady or improves a little as well.
Opposite the above, LD and discard are best early in the game. To draw a sinkhole turn 10 aren't really optimal.
Where it's difficult is on turn 1, 2 and 3..
Should you drop a sinkhole before a Black Knight or even a Dark Confidant, simply because you have the chance of disrupting your opponent to an extend where he can't come back?
In my opinion this is a very fine line, but i think that approach 1/2 is always better than approach 3.
I think that the way to play this deck is Distruption -> Aggro and not Aggro -> Disruption.
PS: Ofcourse the way you should play the deck depends on the opponents deck and whether on the play or not. For now my thoughts are about the big picture and not very detailed for every type of matchup.
-Bondafong
@rsaunder - I tested and tested and tested smallpox and I absolutely love the card. It made a lot of my matchups better, but it did not help the problem I was having with the tier 1 decks. Sure, smallpox is amazing against threshold and fish, but we shouldn't have trouble beating those decks anyways. The real problem decks in testing have been Goblins and TES. If TES drops 10 goblins on turn 2, your only possible answer to that is engineered plague. Smallpox can help you prevent that from happening, but not enough for it to merit inclusion in my opinion.
I do not agree with sinkhole in the maindeck of this deck due to the prevalence of both daze and goblins. I would much rather have swords to plowshares over sinkhole in every small aggro and aggro-control matchup. I have honestly found that wasteland and vindicate have been enough land destruction to color-hose the decks that really need color hosing (combo, survival, goblins 2nd color, etc...). If you were to run a combination of smallpox and stp, I think we could be onto something. But Goblin Lackey is a must answer threat, and smallpox only answers it on the play, when you have double black in your hand, and more likely than not will need to follow that up with another land that produces black so that you can actually do something post disruption. Further, I like the idea of maindecking plague and smallpox. In the matchups where smallpox is good, plague is bad and thus can be discarded to it.
In short, if you are going into random.meta, I would suggest leaving the engineered plagues in the sideboard. If you are going to GP Columbus, I would maindeck the crap out of them (3x in my list).
One final question: what sort of gauntlets of testing are you putting your decks through? How are your matchups? While I like the idea of the black knight and jitte (more aggro version), is it actually helping the deck in some way that the controllish (pikula style) version was failing?
edit: @bodafong
I think that your brief analysis of the fact that this is not the same for each matchup is very important. If I have duress in my hand and dark rit -> hippy that I can do turn one on the play, my choice on which to do is usually up to intuition. That said, duress is usually the right play. On the other hand, if I do not have the duress but I have hymn to tourach in its place, I will probably play the hippy with dark rit and then cast hymn on the 2nd turn. If I'm on the draw and my opponent drops a lackey, I feel the obvious play is to dark rit -> hippy so that you can stop the HUGE tempo loss.
Last edited by Seraphim; 04-05-2007 at 02:21 PM. Reason: response to post
You have no concept for wither tempo, or card advantage in that case. They just traded 2 cards for 1, no matter what 2 drop you may or may not have stick afterwords.Originally Posted by Hummingbird TG
@Seraphim: Interestingly, before the inclusion of grunt/smallpox in my list, thresh was a horribly bad matchup. They ran very well off of 1 land, then counterted whatever was relevant. Truth be told, I've never tried it without 1 or the other, but I haven't really had a reason to recently.
Against TES after game 1, a full compliment of e. plagues come in, as well as everything else in the board that could possibly hurt them, but seriously? 3 MB? It's not like goblins is disgustingly prevalent right now, or that the pre-board TES matchup is that bad or prevalent.
This is all with the non-knight version. My gauntlet right now is whatever I can get games against. I go out of my way to play a lot of solidarity, TES, goblins, thresh, and randomaggro.dec. I also play against aluren, other storm combo, Shotgun Facelift on occasion, other lesser board control decks, landstill, pox, burn, and survival variants. I won't give numbers due to the nature of numbers to be guessed on and fabricated, so I'll give a general good/bad/variants therof.
Thresh: Good
Goblins: Even matchwise. Game 1 is negative but winnable, games 2 and 3 get way better.
Solidarity: Good, even with boarded diverts
TES: In our favor. A little. Be wary of burning wish=>etw.
Aluren: Wicked in our favor. Almost unlosable.
Landstill: Positive. <3 weak manabases.
Survival: Even. Depends a lot on an early smallpox.
SI/Storm: Even to a little in our favor.
Pox: Good
Burn: Winnable negative
Facelift: Negative
Other lesser board controll: Even to good depending on the build.
Iggy Pop: Depends on playskill a lot. I've got a very pos matchup so far.
With Knights, I haven't really had much time to work on it yet ^_^
I'm here to kick ass and play card games.
BZK
For the record, I havn't released anything about Facelift to the general public, only to a couple of people at the running GAGG after which I changed the list substantially.
I'm not releasing the exact list, but it's BGR Board Controll in the spirit of Truffle Shuffle/Train Wreck except with a better Goblins and a dedicated aniti-Combo sideboard.
Also, as a general rule against combo, play disruption before creatures. No matter how good dropping specter turn 3 against a slightly disrupted opponent seems, chances are Vindicating their land is a better play.
Also, because it is making my screen stretch like crazy:-Slay
Team Rehab- We Keep Coming Back For More
Team Blitzkrieg- Swagga.
Storm Boards
Well, giving Dark Confidant a higher chance to stick=a higher chance to win. If uninterrupted, Dark Confidant will give me more card adv. than StP on Hippy...
Okay, from a strictly card advantage standpoint (and viewing that casting creatures doesn't count as disadvantage, as they affect your board position) it goes -1 rit -1 hippy +1 opponent's removal. 0 dark confident, first draw +1. This means that on turn 3, you've done nothing except cast creatures and have netted a net of no card advantage. If I were to do this in any tournament against any player who was worth thier salt, I'd be in bad shape for the rest of that game. Creatures are the last thing you want to play generally; maybe that's why you don't like smallpox. The only time I'll hit the rit hippy first turn is if I know exactly what my opponent is playing and I don't fear cheap removal (i.e. solidarity) or if I'm feeling particularly ballsy on the play game 1. There are always other options for your mana that early in the game, turn 1 hippy is almost never the best.
I'm here to kick ass and play card games.
BZK
Remember that Turn 1 Hyppie, turn 2 Hymn is always good aganst Goblins, and Solidarity, and also against thresh or Fish if they don't have a Swords. You can't always be holding Swords...
@rsaunder
I think the primary reason why you are so against turn 1 hippy is the sheer amount of 2 drop land destruction you run. If you want to run 16 land destruction spells (including 2 that sacrifice your own lands and 1 that hits your creature and lands) then hypnotic specter is probably not getting played to its best ability. The entire reason to run hippy is for him to be played turn 1. Hippy + dark rit is a combo that every deck fears. It tells threshold that they must have a StP or FoW or will flatout lose their ability to control the stack for the rest of the game. It wins the combo match outright. It gives control nightmares (even though control doesn't see too much play). Midrange aggro usually has even fewer outs to that start (usually just stp or lightning bolt) since they usually plan to block a lackey instead of outright kill it. I can't really come up with a time when Dark rit -> hippy on the play is a bad play unless i'm playing against mountains.
OK, now for the meat of the conversation I am hoping to start. I compiled a list of cards that I think everyone agrees with in the maindeck and a list of cards that can be arguably included. No, I have not included every black / white card with CC < 3, but I have tried to be pretty liberal in my list.
slots that are auto-includes:
4 dark confidant
3 nantuko shade
4-9 more creatures
4 duress
4 hymn to tourach
4 vindicate
9-17 more nonland spells
4 wasteland
2 bloodstained mire
2 polluted delta
4 scrubland
4 swamp
4 - 7 more lands
cards to be included:
Creatures (4-9):
hypnotic specter
withered wretch
jotun grunt
black knight
black 2/2 bushido guy with prowhite (forgot his name, hand of something)
phyrexian negator
rotting giant
9-17 of the following:
removal:
cursed scroll (absolutely amazing in the more controllish builds)
smallpox (very good against midrange aggro)
engineered plague (excellent against goblins, slivers, and weenie aggro)
swords to plowshares (excellent against aggro and aggro-control)
possible equips:
jitte (very good against goblins and weenie aggro)
sofi (very good against goblins and red sligh)
solas (very good against red sligh and aggro-control)
generic:
gerard's verdict (great against control and bad players)
sinkhole (good overall card for most non-weenie aggro strategies)
night's whisper (questionable inclusion)
acceleration:
dark ritual (very strong in opening hand and coupled with cursed scroll or nantuko shade)
chrome mox (very good when coupled with smallpox or dark confidant)
lotus petal (better in decks with much more white in them)
lands (4-7):
flagstones of trokair (merits inclusion for white spells and smallpox)
volrath's stronghold (only usable if count of non-swamp lands is low)
urborg, tomb of yawgmoth (good at fixing heavy white / black mana bases)
tainted field (scrublands 5-?)
swamp (not wasteable)
polluted delta (deck thinning at the cost of life...)
bloodstained mire (same as delta)
sb (15):
dystopia (house against all things green or white)
perish (great against green)
engineered plague (goblins are annoying)
darkblast (goblins are still annoying)
swords to plowshares (aggro-control rules the format)
withered wretch (good against thresh and random graveyard strategies)
jotun grunt (better against thresh, worse against random graveyard strategies)
phyreixian negator (great against combo)
disenchant (artifacts and enchantments are bad, mmmkay?)
sword of light and shadow (great for white / black matchups and red sligh)
pithing needle (combo breaker, aether vial disabler, etc...)
As you can see, there is a lot of wiggle room here.
If you want to run equipment, I suggest going towards the higher end of the creatures range. Acceleration like dark ritual / chrome mox would probably be useful, too, in that scenario.
I'm not sure if I would run more than one flagstones of trokair without smallpox. If you do decide to run smallpox, you probably need to be at the higher end of the land range.
I believe I have put forth a fairly accurate assessment of the deck's open slot choices. I feel that creatures are almost a personal preference. Most people agree that jotun grunt is a 2-3 of in the maindeck. Hypnotic Specter is usually a 3-4 of in 50% of the decks I've seen. The rest is up for debate I guess.
ps - If I missed something that merits inclusion, please let me know and I will add it to the list as I get the chance. Thanks!
I always like analasys like that for some reason. Not sure why. A couple of inclusions you missed, though, Tomb of Urami in the land spot and nodes, Extirpate, and Serenity in the board. And that bushido guy is Hand of Cruelty.
I disagree with your analasys of Hippy. For me, he simply isn't at his best as a turn 1 play. I like playing him turn 3 after I've already played a strong tempo game to get a massive card advantage swing without walking into a 2-for-1+tempo loss. If it's my only option turn 1 (wither that or do nothing), I'll take it, but I usually like to explore my other tempo and disruption choices in the early game.
Say it's game 1 against an unknown deck, and I'm on the play. I have an option of turn 1 duress or turn 1 Hippy. I'll almost always play the duress to both see what the opponent is playing, hopefully screw up his mana curve, and make it safe to play out my threats after a turn or two. Perhaps it's just my more controllish playstyle with the deck, but I find playing the tempo game then dropping your threats is a stronger strategy. That said, against solidarity, turn 1 hippy is the best possible play and if it sticks, you kinda just win.
I'm here to kick ass and play card games.
BZK
I'll always play the Duress first. But if I'm holding Bob and no Duress(although a possible Hymn), I'd go with Hyppie first. Bob, if left unanswered, wins the game. I'm sure many can attest to that. Hyppie baits the removal for Bob, and Bob sticks for long enough for me to draw the nuts, then I win.
@seraphim:
In fact, when I see basic Mountains, I prefer Dark Rit into Hyppie as one of my best turn 1 openings. Gobbos only has 2 answers to turn 1 Hyppie, Pyrokinesis and Incinerator, one of which needs a few turns before it can do something, by which time Hyppie would have done what it needs to. And Basic Mountains in Legacy generally mean Gobbos.I can't really come up with a time when Dark rit -> hippy on the play is a bad play unless i'm playing against mountains.
Also, Negator when we can't clear the way for him? To the board! And we can't possibly suppport BOTH Rotting Giant AND Grunt here...
BTW, Black Knight >>> Hand of Cruelty, because First Strike + Jitte is crazily powerful.
--
Discussion:
Who thinks we should run plague MDed? I find that having some bombs against Gobbos is necessary...it makes sticking Confidant more like a win to me. If yes, what number? 2? 3? Replacing what?
Before I switched to Red Death I ran 2 MD Plagues to some ok results. But I also hated seeing it in every other matchup that wasn't called Goblins.
well, if you choose to run jitte, black knight may be better than hand of cruelty. Something to note, however, is the fact that hand of cruelty does not die in combat to any 2/2 and can take down threshed mongeese without any help.
Black Knight also doesn't die in combat to any 2/2 the last time I checked because First Strike owns.
Any creature, if unanswered, wins you the game. Deadguy isn't a deck of furthering your own strategy in the early game, it's a deck of hampering your opponrnt's strategy. If you go into playing a Rit=>hippy for the sole purpous of getting rid of removal for Bob, then you're simply playing the deck wrong. Getting 2-for-1'd so that another creature has a better chance of survival is NOT a strategy a resource denial deck can utilize. Even if I didn't run 3 smallpox, Hippy still wouldn't be an optimal first turn rit play. Hippy is amazing because it nets +1 card advantage at random a turn while doing damage. Not because it can be played first turn off a rit.
You're mentioning Hippy against goblins doing quite a bit. From my experience, the one card I nab oout of their hand with the Hippy rarely does much to hamper thier game plan of running the hell over me with all of the other cards in their hand, even if it does hit turn 2. I mostly use Hippy off of rit in that matchup as a deterrant against a lackey attack.
Also, Black Knight is >>>> Hand of cruelty. First strike is the balls.
@E. Plague: Haha, free MB slots. Honestly, if it's worth running MB plagues, then deadguy is a bad choice for your meta. If you really think they'd be helpful, then 2 replacing like 1 duress and 1 something crappy in the gobs matchup.
I'm here to kick ass and play card games.
BZK
I think its about time that someone responds to some pretty bold claims there. Number 1: Hypnotic Specter is not a good late-game card against non-blue, non-combo decks. Why? Because a 2/2 for 3 is a bad creature for an ability that is irrelevant past turn 4-5. The only way that hypnotic specter will do damage to a player's hand is if you are able to play him when they have cards in it. This means one of 2 things: 1) it is early enough for them to not have emptied the cards in hand or 2) you are forcing them to withhold cards by denying whatever resource they need to deploy them (ld usually). So to conclude point number 1, if you are not playing against a combo / blue deck, hypnotic specter is not a good play past turn 4 due to the fact that for 3 mana you can get much better game-finishers. Playing hypnotic specter turn 1 is right in probably close to 60% of the matches you will play at any given tournament.
Number 2: Baiting a hyppie is a very strong play if you have a dark confidant in hand against blue / combo decks. Dark Confidant will fill your hand up with more gas that will allow you to overwhelm your opponent with hand attack and ld. Times when this is suboptimal are when playing against midrange aggressive decks / red sligh.
Number 3: The amount of time and resources necessary to handle a 2/2 are significantly longer and much easier to handle than they are to handle say a 5/5 trampler. Arguing that any creature will fit the description is flatout wrong. The reason hypnotic specter is run instead of phyrexian negator is because it poses a much better threat to combo and aggro-control than negator does. No, it does not finish the game as quickly, but it puts its controller in a much more adventageous position every time he connects as opposed to hoping that they don't just draw play an stp / lightning bolt or the final combo enabler.
Concerning Eplague: Engineered Plague is amazing at shoring up 2 very popular matchups 1, goblins, 2, Igg and TES. Dropping a bunch of goblin tokens is TES's default way of dealing with disruption. Eplague whipes that answer away in a very timely and efficient manner. Eplague is the only way I can conceive to make this deck beat goblins game 1. Pikula apparently thought so too, when he made the deck. And finally, Eplague is very good at destroying threshold's creatures in the early game if you have any way to disrupt their graveyard (read jotun grunt or withered wretch).
If it were an ideal world and percentages played out how we always wanted them to, we would always win games 2 and 3 against goblins due to our disruption backed with plague. Considering that its almost impossible (only about 10-15% of game 1s) to win game 1 against goblins without it in the maindeck, I think its ludicrous to not give yourself somewhat of a chance (each maindeck eplague increases the matchup percentage by 10-15% in game 1). Assuming you lose game 1 versus goblins (85-90% chance is fairly likely) and you are able to make your matchup somewhere around 80-20 post-board, the goblin player still has a 35-40% chance to win the match because they only need to win 1 of the next 2 games!
I'm not okay with dropping 35-40% of my matches against the format's defining deck and what will almost definitely be the most played deck at the gp. The entire reason I play pikula is because my win % against goblins is around 75-85% because of my maindeck plagues.
Last edited by Seraphim; 04-12-2007 at 05:27 PM. Reason: grammar and content
1) Even with 3 Maindeck Plagues, I don't think the Goblins Matchup can be 75-85%, due to the lack of other Gobbos Hate Deadguy runs maindeck. What other anti-aggro cards do you exactly run maindeck, and how many other matchups do you compromise?
2) 'Normal Deadguy' definitely doesn't have a postboard 80-20 against Gobbos. How much testing have you done?
I guess to have a good point of reference, my build for gencon was the following:
4 Dark Confidant
3 Nantuko Shade
3 Hypnotic Specter
2 Withered Wretch
2 Sword of Fire and Ice
2 Cursed Scroll
4 Duress
4 Hymn to Tourach
4 Vindicate
3 Swords to Plowshares
3 Engineered Plague
4 Dark Ritual
4 Wasteland
1 Tainted (white one, forgot name)
4 Scrubland
4 Polluted Delta
1 Volrath's Stronghold
8 Swamp
sb:
1 Engineered Plague
4 Sinkhole
2 Sword of Light and Shadow
2 Darkblast
2 Withered Wretch (jotun grunt was not legal)
4 Dystopia
The best way I found to beat goblins and threshold was to lock them out...Engineered plague on mongoose / bear with a wretch on the board or 2x eplague on goblins or 1 eplague and a sword of fire and ice.
Game 2 against goblins, I boarded 2 more wretch, 2 darkblast, and the 4th eplague for 4 duress and 1 hymn to tourach. More creatures to hold the swords and another eplague helped ensure that I didn't lose matches against them. Game 1 was around 50/50 with them. Games 2 and 3 were 80-20 if you played smart.
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