I'd definetly pass on he enforcer in that list but instead I'd cut 1 or 2 lands and one of the knights for either cantrips or counterspells/O-Rings but otherwise I really like the above list. Come to think of it cutting Spel Snares seems really bad since they can stop the menace that is CB.Originally Posted by Captain Hammer
Am I the only one here who realizes that KoR's ability is preceded by the tap symbol? People who are saying that Knight is good because he has an ability and because he's big don't seem to realize that making use of one precludes making use of the other.
If you keep him open, you've essentially got a big wall with a marginally useful ability.
If you swing with it you can't use the ability at all, so you're playing with a big three mana guy that's like Terravore, except worse.
If you grow it for a few turns and then start swinging with it, why the fuck are you running it over Quirion Dryad, which a) is cheaper, b) is less color intensive, c) doesn't require you to modify the deck at all to accommodate him (because he triggers off your cantrips and counters, which you'd play anyway), e) can get bigger faster, and without having to sit on the bench for a few turns, and f) doesn't require you to sit around doing stupid shit when you should be winning? Let's face it: in the time it would take you to get Knight up to a useful size and swinging into the red zone, Tarmogoyf and Enforcer will have already ended the game.
KoR is Danger of Cool Things. This deck will never be as good at the tempo game as Thrash or Black Threshold is simply because it doesn't have reach or discard and a draw engine. The appeal of using white in the first place was the ability to err on the side of control, thereby gaining an edge in matches like the mirror where you could outmaneuver the other guy. If that's the case, why are we adding a guy that taps to Wasteland both players? And why are we adding Stifle to a deck that's slower than the aforementioned tempo-oriented Threshold builds?
I really don't get it.
TEach us something we dont know. Seriously, everyone know it has a tap symbol.
You can attack, or you can use its ability.
There, its settled.
If it attacks, its a Terravore, but worse. True true. Terravore is stronger. But terravore costs double green and 4 total. Knight costs W, G for a total of 3. There is a big difference here. Between 3 and 4, there is a huge difference.
But i am not arguing Terravore would be worse than knight in UGW. I havent tested it.
If you dont attack KOR is actually better than Terravore. (and trust me, that happens alot). You dont always attack with goyfs, and mongoose. Right? The opponent might have a blocker, then opponent might have more creatures than you. There are plenty reasons why you might not attack. And this is when KOR ability comes in handy. Its a free shuffle library ability. It can make your deck thiner (by removing lands). IF you have a sensei's in play, its the real combo. Terravore can't do that. PLUS, the more you wait, the bigger KOR grows! And when the board turns into your advantage (because you drew into a removal or you played a goyf or a creature) you can then proceed to the beating! KOR probably grew to a point where it can outstand every blockers. This is giving KOR an edge over Terravore in my opinion.
I can think of two reasons why Dryad is worse than KOR
1- 2cc : It doesn't dodge CB as easily
2- It requires a huge investment. Casting spells to boost it. It is an extremely poor topdeck. 2 for a 1/1 in the late game is bad, especially when Goyfs are like 5/6.
Assuming that you play him very early on, you may have to wait one turn to attack with im. But that ONE single turn that you leave him up as defense, you prevent your opponent from attacking, you attack your opponent's manabase and screw them out of a color, you pump him up and you get to threshold a lot faster. All that in just one turn. After just that ONE turn, he's already a 6/6 or 7/7 way bigger than Dryad was evevr going to get until atleast four turns later.
Then you can swing with him all you want as a 6/6 or 7/7. Or if your opponent is manascrewed and you have lots of lands you can simply lock him out of the game completely (he's flexible like that) and then swing with him for the win.
What's so hard to get?
He's a bigger goyf that if he comes out early game has to wait one turn longer to attack but during that turn DISRUPTS your opponent's color base, prevents your opponent from attacking, builds up threshold, pumps itself, and shuffles your library for Brainstorm/Ponder.
If he comes out at any other time than the very early game, you don't even need to wait that one turn, you can just start swinging with him right away.
Terravore costs 3 and it would suck everyone's balls in this deck. Also, Knight seems horrible against board control since it must overextend your mana base (read: draw less lands because you are taking the out of your deck) in order to make it big and then, but only then, take life away from your opponent. Nonetheless, Knight seems good enough against aggro -- not offensive at all, though, at least for 3-4 turns.
Aggro_zombies pretty said it right in the last big paragraph. I'd rather splash red or play Rhox War Monk to beat aggro more consistently than play a suboptimal dude that won't help against some uncomfortable/unfavorable/whatever matches like Rock and Landstill.
Keep moon-walking.
Rhox War Monk sucks. Please don't compare him to this. I played both with and against Rhox. He's passable against aggro. But Knight is a lot better against aggro than Rhox. A 3/4 lifelinking wall can't compete with a 4/4 or 5/5 that gets +2/+2 every time he blocks. And he's actually quite excellent against Rock and Landstill. I don't know where you got the idea that he's isn't good agianst these matchups. Just dont overextend against these matchups and he's a godsend. Getting wastelands to blow up manlands or cutting Rock off of a color is tech. Having 4 guys that are a lot bigger than Goyf by the midgame is tech.
As for Spell Snare, it's always been hit and miss for me. Sometimes it's fantastic (stopping CB, Counterspell and Edict). But often, it's not able to counter the stuff I want it to counter (StP, FoW etc).
A card that I had played off and on was Divert. Now there's a powerful card. It actually counters the cards that I want to counter (StP, FoW and such along with stuff like Edict and Counterspell). It works esp well with the increased threat density and the increased mana disruption package. I'm going to play it instead of Spell Snare actually. I think it will prove worth inclusion, but I'll say for sure later.
Another card I always wanted to test was Disrupt. It's basically a 1cc Daze that also draws you a card. But I don't think I'll get around to testing it anytime soon.
Seems pretty bad, broski, considering how you want to win quickly when you're ahead.
No trample lol wut. Your 6/6 is really useful when he's a really bad The Abyss.
So you blow up all your color producing lands to find the 4 Wasteland that will let you "lock your opponent out of the game"? That sword cuts both ways, broski. Also, if we're talking locks, this is nowhere near as good as Life from the Loam plus Wasteland.
...which isn't a justification at all, because that's true for every creature, especially Terravore - which, by the way, will be larger at this point anyway. But that's a moot point, since Terravore is unplayable in this deck anyway, and KoR is a worse Terravore.
I realize at this point that nothing I say, logical or otherwise, could get you to give up your fixation on a creature that doesn't belong in this deck. However, a part of me still feels compelled to rebut your arguments because you're wrong (in b4 the last refuge of people who are wrong, namely "Well, then how about YOU play him and you'll see how good he is!").
If you're playing this guy as a solution to aggro, YOU'RE PLAYING THE WRONG FUCKING THRESHOLD SPLASH. Red has a much better aggro matchup (due to its sweepers) and doesn't need to run suboptimal guys to do it. "But I wanna play white!" is no excuse to run a guy in a deck he doesn't belong in.
If you're playing this guy to screw the opponent on tempo, YOU'RE PLAYING THE WRONG FUCKING THRESHOLD SPLASH. Black has discard and Bob in addition to Wasteland and Stifle, making it infinitely better at hosing an opponent than this thing. Sure, it might not have as many big guys, but it doesn't need them when it's drawing two cards per turn and the opponent can't do anything due to lack of mana.
If you're playing this guy as a disruptor against control, YOU'RE PLAYING AN INCOMPETENT FUCKING CONTROL PLAYER. This guy Wastelands both players when you use its ability. If the control player can't punish you for that with Crucible, Deed, EE, Swords, Edict, Smother, Stifle, or whatever else they run, he needs to clock more time with his deck. If the control player doesn't even know how to play around Wasteland effects, he's just plain bad. That's also ignoring the fact that this guy is a turn slower than Standstill and won't start swinging until turn five at the earliest, making it as slow as Enforcer, except without the upside of evasion and being harder to kill with EE.
In short, this guy has a nifty ability that's not actually that great when you think about it. You have a maximum of four turns of mana disruption, and if you use them you're essentially fogging your big guy for four turns, which kinda defeats the purpose of having a big guy in the first place.
He's not really great as a wall against aggro because they'll either swarm you or evade you.
Control tends to run a lot of a certain class of spells colloquially known as "removal." Removing your big guy after you've just Wastelanded yourself once or twice seems pretty sweet to me, especially since I, as the control player, should have a way around land destruction effects (or at the very least I'll have more lands than you).
He does jack shit against combo.
Three strikes, broski.
tl;dr he's bad in this deck.
Last edited by Aggro_zombies; 02-04-2009 at 12:59 AM. Reason: Edited because I'm fucking psychic.
No, like AZ said, is Knight good at all or even better than something like Terravore or Dryad? You can't abuse the Crop Rotation on a stick (let's face it, getting a Wasteland is weak and your list runs 19 lands...) and it weakens the mana base (this isn't Tempo Thresh). Are you running it just to have a big threat outside of Goyf? Play Mystic Enforcer. Terravore will even be bigger than Knight anyway.
Rhox War Monk is actually amazing against aggro. Isn't this why you are running more creatures, to have a better aggro MU? Then they should be compared. Rhox War Monk is out of burn range with an ass of 4, gains 3 life every time he hits or blocks, and costs 3. How does that suck against aggro?
AZ, I'm playing him because he's damn good, that's why.
I'll say the same thing as people gave back when a few thresh players insisted that Werebear was better than Tarmogoyf before they had a chance to test it.
Stop theorizing so much and just test the freaking card (with stifle and wasteland) and then get back to me.
He's actually bigger and better than Tarmogoyf.
Yes, I went there.
90% of the time that he came into play, he came into play bigger than Tarmogoyf would've been if I played Goyf at that same time. And guess what, even without using his ability once, he just keeps getting bigger as the game goes on at the same or a slightly faster speed than Goyf.
With very few exceptions, Knight was always the biggest threat on the board, even a board with Tarmogoyf and Mystic Enforcer in play (I didn't find it in my heart to cut Enforcer so I kept him in the deck.)
But that's not the key part.
The key part is, the deck was stronger than it had ever been before, seriously. He won several games all by himself without even having to attack once.
This is what justifies the higher casting cost than Tarmogoyf. His absolutely broken ability to grab you Wasteland after Wasteland and lock your opponent out of mana completely while you recover quickly thanks to the cantrips.
There was a huge chunk of games, close to a third of the games where I managed to cripple my opponent's manabase and halt his gameplan completely as soon as I resolved him. Thresh is designed to function on 1-2 lands. Many decks aren't. And anytime you run into one of those decks (and yes, that included a rock variant), he wins you the game by himself by locking your opponent out completely.
It honestly feels like I'm playing a Doran Suicide when I play this guy. That deck rocked because it played 12 powerful land destruction spells (4 Wasteland, 4 Sinkhole, 4 Vindicate). This deck plays the same amount of LD, or practically it plays a lot more LD (4 Wasteland, 4 Stifle, 4 Knight - which if one resolves effectively equals you drawing all 4 Wasteland if you want to pursue the LD strategy).
When Tarmogoyf was first spoiled, several people here insisted that Werebear was better, until they got around to testing the card that is. This card is more subtle than Tarmogoyf. But if you take the time to test a build, any build with 3-4 wastelands for a total of 19-20 lands (and probably 4 Stifle), you will come back with a big smile on your face. That's a promise.
If you're curious, this was my manabase...
1 Island
1 Forest
1 Plains
3 Tundra
3 Tropical Island
3 Windswept Heath
4 Flooded Strand
4 Wasteland
If I were to make any changes to the manabase now, I would probably cut the Plains for the last Windswept Heath as I never once liked it when I drew the basic plains. Other than that, I highly recommend going with a similar configuration.
Last edited by Captain Hammer; 02-04-2009 at 01:50 AM.
As someone already said. This is a terrible manabase for UGw Balanced Threshold. 6 lands that force you to automulligan a 1 land hand is bad. 6 non-lands that keep you from playing Counterbalance early on a reliable basis is even more terrible.
I don't care how good you think Knight is. If you like him play him but don't build decks that pretend to be tempo+control Threshold with Knight as "fast clock". The deck is going all over the place and the mana base is only just the beginning.
TS Crew
Lol what's up with all this thickheaded refusal of innovation. You know if we'd always listen to people who don't want to test new cards we'd stil be hanging with werebear and Thresh would be tier 3 at best.
Best way to show em is go out and play. I still remember while people where staunchly defending their Werebears on the Source I won myself 20 Duals in San Diego and had a nice little laugh at all the knuckleheads out there.
All those testing don't let other's flaming get to you, they might end up on your side. I remember Adan flaming me when I suggested O-Ring for the first time and now he's flaming people who don't play it...
Are you sure of that; I think it was a minority who were against Werebear. If I recall, Bardo had almost all of us convinced that Goyf would answer Threshold's prayers about three weeks before the set was out. He even showed sample games to convince us that Werebear could go back on the shelf.
The arguments given against the inclusion of Knight in UGW-Threshold (with CB) are pretty solid - the proposed manabase sucks (http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/s...ostcount=1789), i.e. there's a good chance you won't get your UU for an early CB and you might even get screwed out of U early game (thus slowing down the cantripping and Dazing early game). Without Wasteland, maybe, with Wasteland, no thanks. My 2 cents...
Hmm, not that I think the Knight is that good, but what about using him as a Mini-Toolbox?
Just adding 2 Wastelands to the normal 16-Land base as a Weapon vs. Recursion Lands like Academy Ruins or to punish a weak Manabase. Then you may consider runing 1-2 Tabernacle as Sideboard Option against Swarm Decks.
This way, it may be run, but to push Full Stifle/Waste in Control-Thresh is not the way, I think...
W does not automatically means control.
There are 2 ways to use the knight in UGW Threshold :
- in a classic CB deck : the idea needs a lot of work with utility lands (like Tabernacle) to prove its strength
- in a tempo deck without CB like Canadian Threshold and Team America : no problem for color screw because no need for UU
The Knight may be very good in one type of deck and bad in another (some will say in the two).
I don't think the Knight is a must play card, but i think if offers a new and interesting direction to build a UGW threshold deck. This direction will need some work, the list i brought is a draft, but it has a good potential.
Test it in a tempo deck and you will be surprised.
my bad about terravore
Relic of progenitus kills terravore. KOR can still survive to it
I am not saying that KOR will make it to UGW, but im definately testing it. Its fairly decent blocker. The same way tarmogoyf is a faily blocker. Neither has evasion (so stop using this excuse).
3 for 4/4 is fairly decent (assuming 2 fetchland in graveyard)
You dont have to abuse its ability to make it good. Just pointing out how his ability can actually break stall during game. Whether by shuffling library to abuse sensei, to abuse bs, ponder, or simply boosting it +2/2 everytime you use its ability (assuming you sac a land to get a fetchland)
Im definately not adding suboptimal lands (wasteland or any other utility) just to make the crop rotation cool. Im keeping the traditional ugw mana base.
Robert
Not to mention building threshold or mana screwing your opponent out of the game with 4 Wastelands. Many decks including the rock and landstill cannot function effectively at 2 land. Knight ensures that they are stuck at 0-1 land for roughly 8-10 turns. Meanwhile my build has no problem using cantrips and the 20 land base to find as many lands as it needs to stay at 2-3 that whole time and continue to lay down threats. This has already won me more games than I can count.
Wasteland + Stifle works beautifully in the deck. It's a mistake not to play it.
I'm not playing counterbalance genius. I already mentioned that it wasn't pulling it's weight. And once it got the boot BB became completely unneccesary for the deck. Having a little bit of resiliency to nonbasic hate however is never a bad thing. The only reason decks play 16-17 blue sources is because they want BB for counterbalance and counterspell. This build plays neither.
Here you go...
1 Island
1 Forest
3 Tundra
3 Tropical Island
4 Windswept Heath
4 Flooded Strand
4 Wasteland
4 Tarmogoyf
4 Nimble Mongoose
4 Knight of the Reliquary
4 Force of Will
4 Daze
4 Swords to Plowshares
4 Ponder
4 Brainstorm
4 Stifle
4 Utility/Spell Snare (I am playing 3 Spell Snare and using the remaining slot for Divert. If you really want, you can cut a Knight or maybe even a Daze to make room for more utility. But I personally am 100% pleased playing the full 4 Daze and 4 Knight)
You only need 14 blue producing lands in a deck to reliably hope to see one each game. That had been established a while ago.
And I specifically stated in my post that I recommend cutting the Plains for a Windswept Heath. So that's 15 blue producers. If you think it's really a terrible idea to leave yourself access to a single basic forest and basic island in a meta filled with nonbasic hate, you really need to play more.
CB + STP are two main reasons to play UGW. Cutting one (CB in your case) is a bad idea.
On its own, CB can win so many game that its ridiculous to even think about not playing it when you can and when your strategy can support it
Robert
Proportionally, Knight wastelock ability by itself won me a large percentage of games than CB+Top did! This isn't even factoring in it's beatdown ability. Try it out yourself if you don't believe me.
Way back, I had CB+Top in the Knight build if you recall. It just wasn't good enough. Games end with your opponents playing a lot less cards out than before thanks to repeated Wastelands.
The new build is by design more aggressive, and on a much lower curve now. It plays out better this way.
Omg, are you serious?
e:\ Because a "wasteland lock" with Knight sounds sooo crappy.
Every DTB forum update is simply shuffling around the same ten decks.
I don't care how it sounds.
Yes, atleast 1/3rd of the wins came off of Knight + Wastelock to manascrew the opponent. You can't even hope to get the CB+Top lock down that often.
When you already blow up stuff with Stifle and your curve averages 1.2cc and you play 8 cantrips, keeping any opponent with a curve of 2cc or higher down to just one land (or no lands) and making most of their hand into dead cards becomes very very worthwhile.
I'm playing more tonight, so I'll post more thoughts tonight or if it's late, tom morning.
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