No you are not up 1 card because you have to pitch one to Caverns.Originally Posted by DeathwingZERO
I still fail to see how going first turn Island, Spirit Guide, Flash is inferior to Caverns, Guide, Flash. In both cases your opponent never gets a drawphase/mainphase. First turn Island, waiting until opponent eot then Brainstorm/Mystical Tutor accomplishes the same as Caverns, Brainstorm/Tutor again without pitching a card.Also, if you are on the draw and drop this, you have a turn 0 possibility for the kill, albiet around 5%. But at the same time, you run a very likely chance to setup for the kill via Brainstorm and Mystical Tutor, and are already at a +1 mana source by your first turn, making the 1st turn that much faster (as it's now the average kill turn, not second as it is without Caverns/ESG), and you are still unable to get hit with any Counterspells, and just Daze or FoW/MisD in counter wars, and Stifle rather than Trickbind post-Flash resolving. The faster you are, the less hate there is to take you down.
As I already said Gemstone Caverns are good when your opponent wins the coinflip and wants to go first. But even then you need the Turn 0 win in hand to make it any better than the turn 1 win the opposing Flash deck can produce (not counting the counterbattles, you may be able to Brainstorm off Caverns to see 3 cards but you still have only 5 cards in hand from the start.)This also helps in the mirror match, as you will generally be faster than the opponent on average by a turn, so if the luck of the coin flip puts you at drawing, your still a 40% chance to win before or at the same time they can (assuming they don't play Caverns, obviously meaning they'd want to go first).
I doubt that, however having only played about 20 games with the deck myself I can't tell yet who's right or wrong.My deck lost no consistency at all by putting in the Caverns and the ESGs, they take the place of Lotus Petals and Islands very well. Counting your rarely going to see more than one land source on the table, and the deck is already so "give me win or give me death" post-FS with 8 Pacts, it seems better to just win asap than win when convenient.
I played 6 games versus Stax and Wasteland is a problem. Not that big of a problem for the deck but why play directly into it when you can just get basic Island and not worry?In addition, the only possible hate to care about when going Caverns vs Islands (or more fetches), is that Caverns can be Wasted, but if my opponent ruins his possible Daze/Stifle play on Wasteland to kill off my Gemstone before my 1st turn, I'm all for it. I have a better chance of drawing my 11 "true" blue mana sources than he does having a godhand of multiple viable FoW now, and I still require less conventional mana sources to go off than most of my opponents would to stop me.
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A major point in favor of Gemstone Caverns is that it allows you to cast Mystical or Worldly Tutor on their turn and then win on your first turn if you have the other combo piece. You can even tutor for counter protection if you already have the combo. I don't know if it's enough to warrant maindecking Caverns as opposed to SBing them on the draw, but it's something to consider.
The points of going second is being largely missed here. It's all based on Gemstone Caverns, but it's not to speed you up or gain you cards. The point of going second is that you make your manabase more consistent while not losing tempo or cards.
A hand of Caverns, Caverns, Flash, ESG, Mystical, Brainstorm, Pact of Negation, for instance, isn't all that uncommon. But it sucks going first and it's pretty good going second.
And to those who say you shouldn't run the Caverns as a result, poppycock. Then you're losing your edge of being a combo deck so ridiculously fast that people can't do anything about it. Suddenly those Trickbinds they're holding might not be dead after all.
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No, he has to block one Sliver. Read Protean Hulk. It fetches creatures with a combined cc of 6 or less. That's enough for 4 1cc's and one Heart Sliver. Five creatures attacking means one gets blocked and you're screwed. It also means that StP can target Heart Sliver and you're screwed. Why would you run this over the Karmic Guide combo when they're both immune to lifegain, both require the attack phase, they both can have problems with StP, and Karmic Guide takes does infinite damage and only takes up 3-5 slots rather than 8?
(??...I said the optimal things to fetch with hulk would be 3 poisen slivers, 1 heart sliver, and any other 1 cc sliver)
If he blocks one sliver thats still 4 slivers going through...and lets say you only got 3 1cc's, their abilaties (sp?) stack and you still make him take 12 poisen counters, lets say you got 4 1 cc's that would make it 16 counters.
The karmic guide combo needs a karmic guide, carion feeder, kiki and sky hussar thats 4, but if you run only a singelton of each you open yourself up for trouble if you draw one of the peices so in order to prevent that you would run 2 of each combo peice, or thats what i would do since i would hate to draw into the combo and then start wishing for a brainstorm (8 slots so its the same amount of slots). The upside of my combo is; you can hard cast the peices, and your immune to pithing needel while opening up 4 slots for the deck (5 if you want to be riske and run only 7 slivers).
Flash into...
1 Crystaline Sliver
1 Carrion Feeder
1 Volrath's Shapeshifter
Sac Shapeshifter to get
1 Heart Sliver
4 Virulent Sliver
Now you can beat two blockers.
Of course, the Kiki kill takes up a lot less slots and gets around infinite blockers, so....
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You can't use Shapeshifter because Flash is put into your graveyard as the very last part of its resolution, and therefore ends up on top of Protean Hulk.
After you mentioned Kodama of the North Tree, I've been looking for a way to get Simic Sky Swallower into play. Fierce Empath gets the guy in your hand, but then putting it into play is tricky (Elvish Piper/Blue Braids are one mana too expensive, and Show and Tell is a sorcery).
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Again the sliver kill is a riskier version of the Kiki kill (can some one show me the peices of the kiki kill, when I ran it I used 2 of each of the 'combo' cards just in case i drew into them before i went off...so for me the kiki kill uses 8 slots) that has the benifit of being immune to pithing needle thats it, I just put it out there as the version im testing and so far it's been just as good as the kiki version with the benifit of being immune to needle.
Ravager doesn't actually scoop to Needle at all. Play 1 Ravager, 4 Disciple, 5-6 0cc guys, and 1 Atog in case they needle Ravager.
Still is worse than other combos but let's put the Needle nonsense to rest.
Um, you realize that once flash resolves, then Flash is the top card, right? Hulk hits the yard while Flash is resolving, so Flash goes to the yard after Hulk gets there. So Shapeshifter won't be a Hulk for you to sac.
If I'm wrong on this, you can point it out, but I'm pretty sure that doesn't work.
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Well, you do have a Carrion Feeder to take care of the top card problem.
Personally, I am behind any conversation that includes both poison and The Cheese Stands Alone as win conditions.
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Right, but in Jack's suggestion you want the top card to be Hulk so that Shapeshifter is a copy of it when you sac it to Feeder.
Wait, I have Lesbian points?
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It's understandable you missed this given that Hulk Flash gets like 83 posts per nanosecond. You accrued them due to the following:
Since you're correct and Undisruptable >> Disruptable, you recieved the points.One of the strongest parts of the Marauder/Wall combo is that it relies on state based effects to put things in the graveyard, so your opponent will be staring down 20 life's worth of Disciple triggers before either player has a chance to do anything. A well placed StP on Carrion Feeder will kill the entire Kiki-Hussar chain you're talking about. All in all, even though it takes up more slots, it's extremely resilient, and that's why it's better.
This puts you in second place behind Awesomator, who earned 8 in the Vial Goblins thread, but ahead of me in third, who has 5. Technically I'm the only one allowed to award these, as I invented them, but I made an exception and allowed Volt to award them based on the fact that he was awarding them to me.
Unfortunately, as mentioned, there still aren't any prizes for these yet. But if I get a fresh shipment of lesbians in, you're in good shape.
Less derailing and more complaining about this degenerate combo.
Actually, a merging of the MWS thread and this one might be worth while eventually, since most of the decks being played are Hulk Flash anyway.
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Since i can't find the kiki list can some one post their current one (if you have super secret tech you don't want to share its fine) please?
Its just that last time ive seen the list i thought that the singeltons made it too prone to crapping out.
There's no real reason not to use Gemstone Caverns and go second, it enables either of the Mirage Tutors and it discards either a Disciple of the Vault, Shifting Wall or another Gemstone Caverns 99% of the time.
If for some reason people aren't just tutoring for an ESG and 3 Disciple of the Vault when the other Disciple of the Vault is in hand and there aren't enough ammo creatures, Ball Lightning is some hilarious shit.
2x Kiki
2x Karmic Guide
2x Carrion Feeder
Is only six slots. The Skyknights are completely unnecessary. It shouldn't take up more than six slots if you want the double redundancy.
For my confessions, they burned me with fire/
And found I was for endurance made
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