[Deck] Fetchland Tendrils

[Dark_Cynic87]

Does anyone else have a meta in which they have had a chance to test Relic?

I've been using it to a.) get around needle on Top (Dragon Stompy's Needles and also Ichorid's), and b.) as additional hate on Ichorid.

It works pretty well so far. It makes the Ichorid players around here all paranoid and shit. They don't know whether to name Top or Relic and normally go relic (obv. they've caught on that I run it in addition to my 2x 'Pates and E. Truth), leaving me free to use Top.

I've completely dropped the Bargain from my list. I've yet to encounter a situation where it's mattered. It doesn't hurt my control matchup as far as I can tell, either.

Pce,

--DC

[raharu]

Is there any way to combo through Oppression, or is it mandatory to grab an answer from the sideboard first?

[rsaunder]

Is there any way to combo through Oppression, or is it mandatory to grab an answer from the sideboard first?

I dont think so, probably just mystical tutor=>wipe/grip before combo-ing. Although AdN and IT=>IGG dodge it nicely.

[raharu]

Well, IGG gets it's chain broken by Oppression, because the first LED makes you discard, and leaving you with two cards off of a single IGG :3

[GreenOne]

Is there any way to combo through Oppression, or is it mandatory to grab an answer from the sideboard first?

Yes, you have to play doomsday, have 3UR open, Brainstorm in hand or SDT in play and still 4 random cards in hand.
Then you can go for:
[Top]
SDT/Brainstorm
SDT
Helm of awakening
Grapeshot
Random card
[Bottom]

Or you can play doomsday and still have a hand of Brainstorm (or SDT in play)
+3 random cards and pass the turn. You win next turn with 3UR open with this one:
[Top]
Random card
SDT/Brainstorm
SDT
Helm of awakening
Grapeshot
[Bottom]

You can also obviously win with Brainfreeze if you sobstitute R with U.
There probably is something more efficient, this is just from the top of my head. ALso, it's very unlikely to happen.

[Sae~]

I've recently built a Fetchland Tendrils list, and after some playtesting against friends, I wondered why people play a singleton Cabal Ritual main board.

I never get to play the Cabal Ritual for the threshold cost, and it is strictly inferior to Dark Ritual in a Doomsday stack.

It does serve the role of mana fixing every once in a while (to play DD or Bargain), but I'm not convinced it warrants the card a maindeck spot.

What do you think?

[rsaunder]

I've recently built a Fetchland Tendrils list, and after some playtesting against friends, I wondered why people play a singleton Cabal Ritual main board.

I never get to play the Cabal Ritual for the threshold cost, and it is strictly inferior to Dark Ritual in a Doomsday stack.

It does serve the role of mana fixing every once in a while (to play DD or Bargain), but I'm not convinced it warrants the card a maindeck spot.

What do you think?

When the game goes a little later, I frequently use it as a single necessary piece of acceloration. Threshed C.Rit+1 other mana=doomsday+draw4 mana.

It just lets you explode with few cards in hand later on.

[emidln]

I've recently built a Fetchland Tendrils list, and after some playtesting against friends, I wondered why people play a singleton Cabal Ritual main board.

I never get to play the Cabal Ritual for the threshold cost, and it is strictly inferior to Dark Ritual in a Doomsday stack.

It does serve the role of mana fixing every once in a while (to play DD or Bargain), but I'm not convinced it warrants the card a maindeck spot.

What do you think?

When I was testing I found that I wanted 5 ways to cast Doomsday. I already play 4 Dark RItual, so Cabal Ritual is the next best option. You are correct that you will rarely play it at threshold, althuogh that can happen sometimes (and I do tutor for it some in this capacity). If you can get away with running 5 Dark Rituals be my guest, but otherwise, I'm afraid you'll need to stick with Cabal Ritual.

Further, I've been doing heavy playtesting using various protection packages. In the current control metagame, I've found that 4x Pyroblast, 4x Duress, 1-2 Orim's Chant is simply ridiculous. To fit these extra protection in I cut 1 black draw4 and 0-1 Ponder (obv the manabase gets switched around). My record vs blue-based control right now is ridiculous enough that I'll be called a liar for posting it (think winning 90% in matches).

Pyroblast is the best answer to Counterbalance available to the deck. Having 4 Duress, 4 Pyroblast and a KRosan Grip/Wipe Away assures us to being able to deal with CB game 1. Pyroblast is signficantly worse than Chant against Landstill and the combo mirror (and I naturally board that slot out against most aggro anyway) so I would keep 1-3 more Chant in the sideboard for those matchups (Pyroblast + Chant is particularly effective against Landstill, somewhere that Duress is less than ideal). I discussed testing Spell Snare with roodmistah and jegger and I like the idea, but haven't had time to fully test it yet. The configurations I want to look at are Pyroblast + Spell Snare, Pyroblast + Spell Snare + Chant, and Duress + Spell Snare + Chant. I've already done quite a bit of testing with Pyroblast + Duress + 2 Chant as well as 4 Duress, 4 Chant.

[Dark_Cynic87]

I actually use Cabal Ritual when I'm staring down a Chalice @ 1. There are times you just don't have the mana to wipe away//K. Grip it, and in these situations Cabal Ritual becomes very useful. Against Dragon Stompy, I Mystical Tutor in response (If I'm on the play, otherwise the match goes poorly barring god topdecking) and grab it. I can combo off with it and an LED or 2x for the win without ever needing to get rid of the Chalice.

Pce,

--DC

[GreenOne]

I actually use Cabal Ritual when I'm staring down a Chalice @ 1. There are times you just don't have the mana to wipe away//K. Grip it, and in these situations Cabal Ritual becomes very useful. Against Dragon Stompy, I Mystical Tutor in response (If I'm on the play, otherwise the match goes poorly barring god topdecking) and grab it. I can combo off with it and an LED or 2x for the win without ever needing to get rid of the Chalice.

Pce,

--DC

Which stack are you using to win with a Chalice@1 in play?

[Dark_Cynic87]

You have to already have a SDT down to do it. Also, by the time I combo off, DS has already most of the time hurt themselves a bit with Ancient Tombs. Just what my testing has shown...Best move to make is this: Get a basic swamp down quickly.

Normally, it's this:

Top in play, 2B in mana pool.

LED, LED, C. Rit (1 floating), D-Day, pop LED's in response, 1UUUBBB floating.

Stack:
[top]
Meditate
LED
Petal
Tendrils
XXXXX
[bottom]

Tap Top into Meditate, 1BBB floating to draw Top, LED, Petal. Play LED and Petal, pop Petal for 2BBB floating, play Top (countered, but gives storm count +1), Tendrils for 18. I promise they have used Tomb at least once. Also, you are just using the LED in your stack to up your storm count. It has no purpose other than that. It still works...There should be a way to turn the XXXXX into a Wipe Away and move the stack around to actually get a storm count of 9 and remove the Chalice, but I don't remember it. I'd have to look at my notes.

Pce,

--DC

[emidln]

I might as well post the secrets of the trade. You actually have a number of ways to combo out while ignoring Chalice @ 1:


If you have Sensei's Divining Top, Meditate, Cruel Bargain, Street Wraith, or Predict in hand, you can always build a pile with Lotus Petals, Cabal Rituals, and/or LEDs to make the mana to play Tendrils as the 4th/5th card. If you have Street Wraith you can abuse Meditate/Cruel Bargain/Predict slightly better as it opens up access to Lion's Eye Diamond as a mana source. Here's a "secret" pass the turn stack that everyone should recognize:

Requires 1B and some combination of LED/Cabal Ritual with Threshold/Lotus Petal/Land so you can IGG twice and then IT for Tendrils. Depending on your list, you might have to be postboard too. Credit for this one goes to Colby Evenpence when we were testing Doomsday in SI several years ago:

[Top]
Infernal Tutor
Ill-Gotten Gains
Ill-Gotten Gains
Tendrils of Agony
__BLANK__
[Bottom]

[Frenger]

Some discussion on Doomsday.

I took second at fnm last night, losing in the finals to a guy who had lost to ad nauseam last week and so was running 4 Teeg, 4 Mage, 4 True Believer, 4 Orims Chant and 2 Kataki between MD and side (teegs were MD) because he "wasn't gonna lose to that fucking deck again". I managed to squeeze a win game one because he didn't have a teeg, but the next two games I didn't have a snowball's chance in hell.

Regardless, some really interesting situations came up.

What stack do you make if you get chanted in response to Dday? (assume SDT in play, nothing in hand). I thought this was not winnable and scooped. Was I wrong to scoop? Is there a way to win this if you have something specific in hand?

What do you do if you're staring down a True Believer and a Teeg? What stack can incorporate a bounce spell and still kill the opponent? Is there a way to bounce both of these creatures and still win, or is there a stack that just needs to bounce one? I was trying to fit chain of vapor into the HoA/Brain Freeze stack, but I ended up fizzling on myself.

A Kataki is in play. You have an SDT in play and two lands. Assume you have everything needed in hand to go off minus one card. Do you keep paying for the top, limiting your cantripping and tutors, or let the top die hoping to find both a brainstorm/ponder and the card you need. I kept my top alive and topped EoT for about 4 turns, but did not have a shuffle effect. After the match, my opponent seemed to think it was stupid for me to keep my top alive. What would you do here?

One more thing, what the fuck do you do against earwig squad? I got Tendrils, IGG and a doomsday removed from my library after a third turn squad landed. Does this deck have ANY out?

[rsaunder]

Almost all of your problems are solved by boarding in grapeshot+HOA and slaughter pact. It gives you an amazing "pass the turn" stack, getting you around the whole chant thing, doesnt care about teeg or believer (just kill him with the first 1000 or so copies).

Do you play red? If so, pyroclasm would be just too broken for words here.

I'd also put in IGG+IT, it's another out in case mage names DDay, which honestly is the right call against you.

I'd always keep SDT alive, as it greatly increases what you can do with DDay and gives you way more dig power. You were just unlucky when you didn't pull a shuffle effect.

[emidln]

I took second at fnm last night, losing in the finals to a guy who had lost to ad nauseam last week and so was running 4 Teeg, 4 Mage, 4 True Believer, 4 Orims Chant and 2 Kataki between MD and side (teegs were MD) because he "wasn't gonna lose to that fucking deck again". I managed to squeeze a win game one because he didn't have a teeg, but the next two games I didn't have a snowball's chance in hell.

Pyroclasm in the sideboard lets you carve frosty his very own jessica alba lifesize...body pillow out of the afterlife's finest iceberg.

What stack do you make if you get chanted in response to Dday? (assume SDT in play, nothing in hand). I thought this was not winnable and scooped. Was I wrong to scoop? Is there a way to win this if you have something specific in hand?

Depends on the hand and the exact build. You could try something like Brainstorm, Helm, Top, LED, Grapeshot/Tendrils. If you can survive two turns that works. It kinda/sorta works if you Brainstorm into Helm, Cycle tops and then have a red mana somehow (easier if you're playing Pyroblasts) or maybe Tendrils is possible. If you're playing Brain Freeze this is probably easier.

What do you do if you're staring down a True Believer and a Teeg? What stack can incorporate a bounce spell and still kill the opponent? Is there a way to bounce both of these creatures and still win, or is there a stack that just needs to bounce one? I was trying to fit chain of vapor into the HoA/Brain Freeze stack, but I ended up fizzling on myself.

[Top]
Meditate
LED
LED
Pyroclasm
Tendrils of Agony
[Bottom]

If you can get Brain Freeze/Grapeshot in hand, Sensei's Top #1, and any the following 5 cards

Meditate
LED
LED
Echoing Truth/Pyroclasm/Slaughter Pact/Chain of Vapor
Sensei's Divining Top

you might be able to pull this off:

Cost: 4UB + Removal Spell's CMC floating when you play Doomsday + SDT in play + Win Condition in hand + 1 of Meditate/LED/LED/Removal Spell/Sensei's Divining Top in hand/play (+ Removal Spell's CMC (again) if you're a jackass and trying to win with Tendrils)
Benefit: Wins the Game, count the storm for yourself.

// Doomsday pile #1
[Top]
Meditate/BLANK
LED/BLANK
LED/BLANK
Sensei's Divining Top/BLANK
IGG
[Bottom]

The key to this is having mana production with a win condition in hand. The basic procedure is as so:

Use SDT#1 (already in play) to draw into Meditate. Meditate into everything except IGG. At this point you should roughly have 2x LED, Brain Freeze, Removal Spell, and 2x Sensei's Divining Tops in hand (you might have less if you had Top/LED as your extra card and therefore only have 2x LED + Removal Spell + SDT). Play both LEDs, play the removal spell (on True Believer), play both SDTs. Use the LEDs for black mana to draw into Ill-Gotten Gains. Play Ill-Gotten Gains returning LED, LED, Doomsday. Play both LEDs, play Doomsday breaking LEDs for UUU and BBB make your next pile like this:

//Doomsday pile #2
[Top]
Meditate
LED
LED
SDT/Removal Spell
Win Condition
[Bottom]

Top into Meditate, Meditate into LEDs + Top + Top/Removal Spell, play mana, win the game. In all honesty, if you're seeing annoying creatures, my first doomsday pile involving nuking the fuckers is infy easier.

Also, if you can get extra LED/Top instead of a win condition in hand, for an extra 1R (5URB I believe, but RRR can be generated with LED mana at that point) you can put Grapeshot in your initial doomsday pile as the removal spell and the win condition. How techy is that?

A Kataki is in play. You have an SDT in play and two lands. Assume you have everything needed in hand to go off minus one card. Do you keep paying for the top, limiting your cantripping and tutors, or let the top die hoping to find both a brainstorm/ponder and the card you need. I kept my top alive and topped EoT for about 4 turns, but did not have a shuffle effect. After the match, my opponent seemed to think it was stupid for me to keep my top alive. What would you do here?

I would keep the Top. Your opponent is a jackass. Finding 1 combo piece is easier than 2 combo pieces. You'd want to use any Brainstorm/Ponder you found to dig deeper anyway, not to find the card you want.

One more thing, what the fuck do you do against earwig squad? I got Tendrils, IGG and a doomsday removed from my library after a third turn squad landed. Does this deck have ANY out?

Your only out is to get Tendrils in hand asap. Mystical Tutors, Cantrips, etc. You can use Chant to slow your opponent down from prowling the Earwig Squad. Depending on your metagame, you might also try a faster build. You seem to have a ton of aggro so a build emphasizing red could be pretty good. Alternately, you could sideboard 3 win conditions. It's bad, but it means one Earwig Squad doesn't kill you. I take my chances and rawdog Tendrils/abuse Mystical Tutor + Top/Brainstorm.

@ rsaunder

Grapeshot can't kill True Believer and target the opponent. You choose targets for the storm copies while True Believe is still alive.

[Frenger]

Alright. I was playing a straight UB build with brain freeze over grapeshot. I think I will splash red for clasm and grapeshot. My metagame has insane amounts of nonbasic hate though, so creating a four color manabase could be a problem.

This is what I played last night. Ideally that plains would be a scrubland.

4 Flooded Strand
4 Polluted Delta
2 Underground Sea
1 Tundra
2 Swamp
3 Island
1 Plains

So i need a 4c manabase to accommodate clasm (since grapeshot doesn't really matter since you just crack LED for RRR once you make your stack) that still doesn't scoop to wasteland, because I would then scoop to 3/4ths of my metagame, easy.

Something like this?

4 Flooded Strand
4 Polluted Delta
2 Underground Sea
1 Tundra
1 Volcanic Island
1 Scrubland
1 Badlands
2 Swamp
2 Island

[rsaunder]

I've really had no problem with a manabase like:

8 U fetch
2 U. Sea
1 scrub
1 tundra
2 island
1 swamp

But I play the accell-heavy AdN version.

For your build, is 2x swamp, 2x island really necessary? I bet you could just outright cut one swamp and see just-as-favorable results. Being able to cast all your cantrips off almost all the land in the deck is key.

[Frenger]

I've really had no problem with a manabase like:

8 U fetch
2 U. Sea
1 scrub
1 tundra
2 island
1 swamp

But I play the accell-heavy AdN version.

For your build, is 2x swamp, 2x island really necessary? I bet you could just outright cut one swamp and see just-as-favorable results. Being able to cast all your cantrips off almost all the land in the deck is key.

How on earth do you cast pyroclasm then? Off of lotus petals?

I just run one petal, so I would need at least one red dual, likely a volcanic since its easier to fetch than badlands.

I suppose I could cut a swamp. I'm not sure what I would run there though, maybe another cabal ritual since I'm just running one of those as well. I kind of like 18 lands though. I find I rarely get mana screwed or flooded, and the only times I do is because of bad mulliganing, not the deck itself.

[rsaunder]

I don't run clasm in the board, my meta rarely requires it. Besides, I can generally go off before more than one piece of creature-based disruption hits the table. It's not as consistant as DDay-only builds, but it sure is fast and fun to play*.

In my fully-DDay version of the deck, I opted to run 2 extra petals as my extra accell slots. They're far better than extra C. rits, as they manafix. This might be especially important for you in a waste-heavy meta.

*My current build of AdN+DDay FT. It's a little land-light, but I don't see much wasteland where I play. Go -1 duress, +1 island for a metaunlike mine maybe?

4 Brainstorm
4 SDT
4 Mystical Tutor
3 Infernal Tutor
3 Chant
4 Duress
1 Wipe
1 DDay
1 Meditate
1 IGG
1 AdN
1 Tendrils
4 D.Rit
4 LED
4 Petal
3 Chrom Mox
3 C. rit
8 U fetch
2 U. Sea
1 island
1 tundra
1 scrub
1 swamp

[Frenger]

I don't know, I'm more of the opinion that a FT deck should either be AdN or DDAY, and that a mix of the two doesn't get the best of both worlds.

AdN is faster, but also easier to hate. Doomsday only builds are slower, though more consistent and play through hate much better.

I opted for a doomsday list since my meta has a lot of wastelands and a non negligible number of chalices. I find that I don't often have problems with chalice, either going off first, or being able to play through it. However, I would not feel comfortable playing AdN in this situation, since chalice makes it much harder for them to go off.

If I were to play Ad Nauseam, I would play this list, or something very close to it, with it being no coincidence that this is a European list.

5-8) Federico Bonadè - Fetchland Tendrils w/ Ad Nauseam

2 Underground Sea
1 Swamp
1 Scrubland
1 Tundra
4 Polluted Delta
4 Flooded Strand
1 Island
4 Lion's Eye Diamond
4 Brainstorm
4 Lotus Petal
4 Dark Ritual
4 Mystical Tutor
3 Ponder
1 Ill-Gotten Gains
4 Infernal Tutor
1 Tendrils of Agony
4 Cabal Ritual
4 Orim's Chant
2 Sensei's Divining Top
1 Rushing River
3 Chrome Mox
1 Pact of Negation
2 Ad Nauseam

SIDE

1 Rebuild
1 Echoing Truth
1 Hurkyl's Recall
3 Serenity
3 Duress
1 Brain Freeze
4 Tormod's Crypt
1 Wipe Away