I couldn't agree more.Originally Posted by Jeff Kruchkow
The lists that are being thrown in here every other post are starting to get ridiculous. You don't need to post a new list after a single card change.
Also, 4x Mystical tutor with 4x Mox is awful. The card disadvantage will kill you against a real opponent.
1) Cutting Infernal Tutor for Mystical Tutor reduces the "gold fish" speed of the deck, but it doesn't necessarily reduce the actual speed of the deck, because a lot of the time your ability to go off isn't determined by drawing the perfect hand for Infernal Tutor but by finding the exact card you need to make your Starting 7 busted - so the speed issue is a really grey area.
2) Saying 8 cantrips forces you to skip turns because the 8 cantrips are set up spells is really linear thinking, because Brainstorm and Ponder usually enable you to combo on the same turn by either finding more mana, a threat, disruption etc. You don't have to use them as set up spells, usually whatever is in the top 3 will make up for the investment of U (especially hitting a land).
3) Double Burning Wish is great, usually I just use one Burning Wish to either grab Thought Seize, bait Spellsnare or grab Diminishing Returns after failing to resolve another bomb.
4) You don't need more than 4 protection spells, but more than 4 protection spells are nice. The less time you have to look for protection the more time you have to go off, it's really just risk vs reward and totally depends on how comfortable you are coin flipping game 1. It also really depends on their disruption package, if they run Spellsnare instead of Stifle you can just skip protection and go for the 3 MD Empty the Warrens plan.
5) If you run bounce, you run Chain of Vapor. The card is suppose to deal with Meddling Mage, Gaddock Teeg, Arcane Laboratory, Runed Halo and that kind of stuff. Trinisphere, Chalice of the Void and Counterbalance essentially both stop you from comboing and stop your from tutoring for removal, so just go with what works for the little nuisance cards. You also want the cheapest removal possible, because it increases your ability to remove a problem card and go off on the same turn. Prison is always going to be a coin flip, you just hope that you either win the coin flip or they have to mull really hard for Trinisphere or Chalice of the Void and that gives you enough time to remove it and go off.
6) Running Ill Gotten Gains, Diminishing Returns and Empty the Warrens was never the "strength" of TES, rather it was just necessary to run 2 different storm engines and 2 different kill conditions because you had to choose between recurring a counter, drawing them into a counter or getting sweeped. Now we basically just risk killing ourselves for a significantly more powerful card when cast all by itself and turned the cantrips into enablers for LED.
7) LEDless post-board is totally viable, I run a verions of AnT that just MDs 8 Red Blasts, and it really screws aggro-control when all of your counters are more efficient than their counters. The problem tho' is that you pretty much open yourself up to prison at the cost of PWNing aggro-control, but if prison doesn't exist
8) IMO, more than 1 Cabal Ritual just isn't worth it, the card is randomly great to tutor for or reveal off Ad Nauseam, but it's a pretty sub-optimal accelerant in your starting hand and in the early game too. A singleton Tinder Wall is pretty damn strong, I'd suggest trying that if you're looking for a little more acceleration.
9) A few people MSGed me for my current list, so I'm just going to post it here instead of replying to each MSG.
MD
1 Tendrils of Agony
4 Ad Nauseam
4 Infernal Tutor
4 Burning Wish
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
4 Duress
4 Dark Ritual
4 Rite of Flame
4 Tinder Wall
4 Lion's Eye Diamond
4 Lotus Petal
4 Chrome Mox
4 City of Brass
4 Gemstone Mine
2 Glimmervoid
1 Forbidden Orchard
SB
1 Tendrils of Agony
4 Empty the Warrens
1 Diminishing Returns
1 Ill Gotten Gains
1 Thoughtseize
4 Cabal Therapy
1 Death Mark
1 Shattering Spree
1 Simplify
Sorry for the crappy English, not a lot of time and a lot of random thoughts, I'll edit this when I have more time.
1) Yes, it does reduce the goldfish speed because you dont have the explosive IT hands. Instead, you have to play Mystical and wait a turn or use a draw spell in which case you probably need to wait a turn after that anyway.
6) I would say that having 3 diverse storm engines and 2 very different (from a hate perspective) kills is an enormous strength. It means that your opponent has to choose the correct hate card based simply on a guess. Whether you agree or not, diversity IS a strength of the deck and cutting down on that hurts you.
7) No. You drop your LED's and you will lose to aggro and counterbalance both. LED helps you explode and get the win before anything significant (Chalice, EE, Deed, Counterbalance, Trini, Thorns, etc.) can hit play.
8) The Tinder Wall discussion has been had a million times. IMO 2 Cabal Rit are perfect as, like you said, it is randomly amazing and is good post-AdN but can be lackluster in the opener.
Yeah. That.
I've seen TarmoSlight players siding in graveyard hate, cause I was winning the first match with IGG: Ad Nauseam becomes unviable if you can't combo on the first or second turn against it. Siding in their graveyard hate they just slowed their clock, making Ad Nauseam relevant again, or you can still combo with Returns.
Other times you're playing against goblins and they play a Pillar on turn 2. You're fucked up if your only engine is AN, but you still can win with IGG.
The deck doesn't always have versatility: you can't always decide what your engine is going to be, but you put the opponent into difficult decisions. Keeping a hand without first turn disruption but with a counterbalance becomes risky when there's ETW involved. If you're playing burn and got a hand with 2 mountains, 3 bolts and fireblast but no Pillar/other hate this hand is definetly keepable if you know your opponent is going to play AN. Things change when IGG is involved. And so on.
The deck runs quite smoothly with 7 protection spells between Chant and Duress and 1 bounce. I love to have protection when needed to, and both duress/chant are not plain useless (like pyroblast) in matchups where you're not expecting disruption from the opponent.
Currently Playing: Nourishing Lich.Deck
Current Record: 1-83-2
5) Yes, it reduces the gold fish speed, but reducing the gold fish speed doesn't necessarily mean you've reduced the actual speed of the deck, because if you're casting Mystical Tutor your searching for the critical accelerant, disruption or removal to win where Infernal Tutor is a brick.
6) No, the opponent doesn't have to choose the specific hate card "at a guess" the opponent chooses the hate card that does the most to every Storm engine and kill condition. Counterbalance, Trinisphere, Chalice of the Void, Gaddok Teeg, Ethersworn Canonist and Arcane Laboratory don't care which strategy you're trying to use. In pre Ad Nauseam TES, each Storm engine and win condition essentially covered the weaknesses of the other Storm engines and win conditions, now of the alternate Storm engines and win conditions just go to the SB for Burning Wish.
7) You don't need LED to beat aggro, and if you need LED to beat aggro then you're a bad Storm player. LEDless AnT is Top 8ing in aggro fields, and LEDless AnT with 8 MD Red Blasts has a very, very good game vs Threshold
8) No, we haven't had the Tinder Wall discussion a million times, people just dismissed Tinder Wall because it's green and it's "removable," but it's still arguably the best tertiary accelerant I've played with in the deck. One Cabal Ritual is fine with Mystical Tutor, but there's just very little reasoning to play two.
There just seems to be a lot of shoddy reasoning and throw away comments here that don't even make any sense, the ol' Chrome Mox + Mystical Tutor = "too much card disadvantage" being the absolute worst argument considering a Storm deck playing both is in the DTB and TES isn't.
I'd just like to ask a noobish question: Does Undiscovered Paradise force the user to bounce it in the untaps tep even if it wasn't tapped in the previous turn for mana ? Because, if it's so, then that card really sucks. And if it isn't so too, I believe there are better options.. Because usually in the first turn you play a setup spell or , more rarely, cast a protection spell, so being forced to undo to hand the Paradise really can hurt you. You may say that "this deck needs a singleton land to go off" or similar things, but playing it ( with Cook's list) i usually needed that 2 lands on the board to get enough mana to go off.
Couldn't it be cut for, say, a 2nd Orchard or a Glimmervoid? I know that all those lands suck, but Glimmervoid has a drawback that can be quite "controlled"..hoping not to open with a hand without artifacts.
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no, bouncing it is part of the mana ability. so unless you use that mana ability to make mana it won't bounce itself
If you tap it for black with an urborg in play it also won't get bounced
Level 1 DCI Judge
Actually reducing the goldfish speed does mean reducing the actual speed. What im saying is that IT can act likemystical depending on the hand, and is also a useful tutor post AdN.
Counterbalance - is played everywhere, Trinisphere - is in like 2 decks, Chalice of the Void - isnt just storm hate and can easily be played around, Gaddok Teeg - really?, Ethersworn Canonist - shattering spree says Hi and Arcane Laboratory - really? After those, other hate cards like Jund Charm, Extirpate, Runed Halo, and EE that are actually played can be avoided based on the route you take.
Taking out LED slows you down significantly and that is a fact whether you will admit it or not. And slowing yourself down opens you up to more damage from aggro or even losses. And hell, without LED to loop once they get a couple of swings in you have a huge chance of fizziling hard off of AdN.
Tinder Wall is bad. There is at leasta page of discussion on why that is and if you are still confused as to why PM me and I will be happy to explain.
And how is Mox and Mystical being too much disadvantage shoddy reasoning. Last i checked using those 2 is -2 to yourself so that seems to be a fact that it is disadvantage. And if you have to use 3+ of those cards pre AdN, you're hand is gonna get wrecked.
As far as ANT being in the DtB and TES not, the only combo that t8'ed at the GP ran Burning Wishes and rites which most ANT dont. It was more of a hybrid of the 2 than it was 1 or the other.
It's arguably the fourth accelerant of the deck (LED, Dark Ritual, Rite of Flame). Those are automatic 4ofs. It can be argued that the deck needs 1 or 2 Cabal Ritual. The only reason to play 2 is to IT for it, but there's no place for more than 1-2 Tinder Walls.
Currently Playing: Nourishing Lich.Deck
Current Record: 1-83-2
Listen, you have 42 posts and either little or no experience playing Storm judging from your comments. It's nice to have an opinion, but trying to assert your opinion on some who has played TES just as long if not longer than Bryant has with out any experience or testing isn't going to get you any where.
No, reducing the goldfish speed of the deck doesn't reduce the actual speed of the deck, because in real games your opponents mulligan into counters or disruption and tutoring for answers becomes a mandatory criteria for "going off." Losing a turn or even two turns vs aggro doesn't matter, Emidln more or less proved this with DDFT already, and LEDless AnT is proving it again right now.
The point is Trinisphere, Chalice of the Void and Counterbalance stop Mystical Tutor from tutoring for Chain of Vapor, so adding Chain of Vapor to remove those cards is incredibly stupid. If you add bounce, you add bounce to deal with Arcane Laboratory, Gaddok Teeg, Ethersworn Canonist or Meddling Mage etc. where none of those cards prevent Mystical Tutor from tutoring for Chain of Vapor.
Removing LED and reducing speed is not the point, you use the threat of LED to force the opponent to mulligan into a counter or lose, and you don't use LED to Mind Twist yourself vs their counter. The Storm vs aggro-control match up isn't about speed, Force of Will is Turn 0, the match up is about who has the most disruption and the right disruption. If you look at Italian LEDless AnT lists, they're running 8 Red Blasts MD, because they know 8 Red Blasts MD is the most and the right disruption when facing Force of Will, Counterbalance and Meddling Mage.
Tinder Wall is good, there's at least a page of discussion on why that is, and if you're still confused as to why you can PM me and I'd be happy to explain it to you.
Because Mystical Tutor and Chrome Mox isn't "too much" card disadvantage, card disadvantage doesn't matter when the cards you are playing win the game for you. Infernal Tutor will NEVER, EVER act like Mystical Tutor, because Infernal Tutor finds copies of cards you already have instead of finding cards you're missing and that is a big difference. What most people fail to realize is that Infernal Tutor is a dead card until you are ready to win, and when you are ready to win then losing 1 card from your draw doesn't really matter. Mystical Tutor brings consistency and rewards skill, Infernal Tutor just relies on drawing otherwise busted hands.
@GreenOne
I agree and I disagree, if you're not running Mystical Tutor then you can run 4 Tinder Wall, but if you are running Mystical Tutor then you can run 1 Tinder Wall with out the G mana "gumming up" your combo turn. One of the problems a lot of people have with Tinder Wall is that they're still using Orim's Chant at 4x, I'm not using Orim's Chant at all, so the W you use to disrupt the opponent is the same G mana I use to accelerate (with Duress being resolved via Dark Ritual).
Running 2xCabal Ritual for Infernal Tutor isn't enough of a reason to run two, a lot of the time I have difficulty justifying even 1 Cabal Ritual because tutoring for a Dark Ritual or second Rite of Flame is usually good enough.
I can see your point here, but please do not diminish the guy's point on the basis of him having no experience. You cannot tell from his post count wether he is experienced with this deck, and even if he isn't, it doesn't make any well-argued points he makes any less true (I am not saying the points are well-argued, just that you shouldn't judge people like this).
This is true for those decks that focus on more disruption than the opponent has hate, but I don't think this strategy is comparable to what TES tries to do. TES tries to win before most disruption lands, so it has to have very few disruption on it's own. Hence, the goldfish rate of the deck can certainly increase the speed of the deck. Any additional turn 1 wins you have will probably mean more won games anyway because of the reasoning I'm sure you're aware off.
I disagree here to some extend. Any form of aggro-control only has 4 FoW for turn one wins, and only 4 FoW 4 Daze (which certainly doesn't always matter) and perhaps Spell Snare (which you will often be able to play through I think) on turn 2. You can win this matchup by either having more disruption, or being so fast that you can win before the disruption comes down.
Completely agreed. IT often just sucks at finding what you need, and it can't be compared to Mystical Tutor in this aspect.
Cardadvantage doesn't matter for fast combo like TES at all. I've heard Bryant use this argument before, and I belive it's untrue. Wether you win against decks that disrupt you, isn't a matter of carddisadvantage, it's a matter of finding the right cards. TES can win with 2-3 cards in it's hand, it doesn't need a full hand at all. Finding the right disruption should certainly be priority, even though it will cost you cards.
Last edited by Bahamuth; 03-29-2009 at 08:21 AM.
"Part of me belives that Barrin taught me meditation simply to shut me up."
-Ertai, wizard adept
http://solidarityprimer.proboards85.com/index.cgi
I'm not dismissing his "argument" because of his post count, I'm telling him that his "argument" has no basis in either theory, experience or practice and he can't just keep reiterating everything Bryant says as gospel and then tell me everything I say is wrong "just because" when Bryant's arguments are more or less just based on his play style and personal opinion at this point.
Granted, in context, for game 1 TES "coin flips" with a limited amount of removal and a lot of acceleration vs an unknown opponent, but game 2 it can and perhaps should deviate from this game plan by SBing out Infernal Tutor and Lion's Eye Diamond and SBing in 8 Blasts to flip the script. Essentially, you know you are on the draw and you know your opponent is mulliganing for disruption ... so why would play into that when you could side step it and just blast all of their counters and permanents? I'm not saying you should do it, because I'd rather use discard and resolve LED, but LEDless AnT has shown us the strategy is viable.
There are a lot of reasonable branch for Storm combo right now, and IMO that's a good thing, because it just makes us all that much harder to deal with.
Really? Are we going there? Because I've never put up numbers or I've never spent time and time again tweaking, adjusting, and tuning the deck. I stay out of this thread because of the people like you to be quite frank. Throwing random ideas up against the wall without ever actually casting a single spell you mention. I go to factual large events and contribute to the community instead of playing on Magic Work Station. But I'll keep to my opinions and style instead of numbers and results. Thank you.
It's getting heated in here. Relax, everyone.
I never said your results, practice and opinions weren't relevant, I said they weren't Gospel i.e. people just can't keep reiterating everything you say with out saying anything themselves. If you want to dismiss my results, my practice and my opinion as a MWS random who never attends "factual" events that's your perrogative, not all of us are in the U.S., in college and flip burgers (or whatever). The fact of the matter is some of your opinions are just opinions regardless of your "numbers and results," saying 4 Chrome Mox and 4 Mystical Tutor isn't viable when AnT is a DTB and TES isn't just doesn't make any sense.
We've rarely agreed on anything, and it takes you forever to recognize other people's arguments even when you're wrong, so you go your way and I'll go mine.
You know that player skill comes from, well, being good at Magic. Playing a deck for a while does help you become better at it, but being a good player just helps overall. See the pros at the GP; they are really good players who have close to no knowledge of the Legacy format, yet they continue to dominate.
Also, I can attest to how much Jeff has played with TES, and it definitely isn't "little or no experience". He actually placed higher with TES at GP Chicago than Bryant Cook did. Ergo Bryant Cook has little to no experience with TES..? I'm sure that's arguable.
Apart from flames and similar disputes,
I was trying the old list of TES, the AN-less one which ran 1 MD etw, DR and 2 Infernal contracts. I don't know if what i'm going to say it's true, but, paradoxally, i found that that list, which ran less protection and was without such a bomb which AN is, was better against CB decks. The point of running less protections spells ( only 4 chants) and the presence of SSG allowed more acceleration and digging into a deadly spell into the first turns. While this is still possible with the new An-with list, i found that sometimes you open with mediocre hands where protection pieces or tutors are redundant ( often it happens to me something like 2x wish, 1 tutor, 2 orim's, 1 land and 1 ritual), and you're going to mull that quite hopeless hand.
I have also read the tests made by Bryant against 4-color CB thresh, and was pretty surprised, since i expected frankly TES to do 0-6 against that deck. But still, it managed to push 2 games.
So, i 'm asking myself whether the AN-less list, which runs the singleton EtW Maindeck that i love if cast quickly against threshold variants, can paradoxally be more suitable for a CB-heavy metagame. I know we lose the main bomb of the deck, but also opening with draw4-s or higher percentage to pull off that 14 tokens g1 isn't that bad. Of course, on the other side is also true that, with only 4 protection spells, that's not going to go on the long distance against dazes, stifles, snares ,ecc...
But with the "new " list, i often stuck with dead cards in hands, and i wasn't allowed to do anything, giving my opponent turns to cast his UU shit. O really dunno whether it's just bad luck (even if it happened way one more time than once) of mine or not proper game skill, but i feel the old list can still say something. Just an odd thought, though.
Anyone can tell me something reguarding this?
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I don't understand what you want to be told. You seem to have your opinion already. The newer lists lack MD ETW, that's really the only downside. Nauseum was the natural replacement for Returns.
I don't want to be told anything in particular, but above i was just referring to the fact that with the new list, which is yours and i'm testing at the moment, i found several ( and i underline-several) situations in which i open with hands such: chrome mox-chrome mox-land-orim-rite of flame-tendrils-ponder, or similar shit. Well , probably that's just me being incredibly unlucky (or you who draws always perfect hands, depending on the point of view). I know that i have to mulligan it, and i'm beginning to get frustrated too every time i open a hand with 2 moxes and /or 4-5 cards with different colours, which i'm not able to make work together, even pitching then to moxes. I dunno if something similar has happened to all of you, but it happens, i sweat, and not only once. Furthermore, i want to cut my veins when i always find that fucking tendrils in the opening 7s.
For this reason i advocated somehow if the Pre Nauseam version couldn't be slightly better, since it ran +1 ponder and , most of all, 3 moxes
furthermore, the fact of having EtW as a Maindeck kill condition could easily be a plus against counterbalance decks i guess. And , testing it, i felt it was running more "smoothy" than this one (apart from Diminishing Returns, which is a card clearly based on luck).
It's not that i don't like the new list of yours, I'm testing it pretty intensively and i sometimes get turn 1-2 kills.
And i admit running 4 ITs and 4 Wishes seems to be pretty good,even if it sucks opening with 3 of them in hand.
The point is that, on average, there are at least 3 times on 10 when i draw such horrible hands that i want to throw the deck against a wall, or just be forced to mulligan, which decreases drastically the chances of having a suitable fast-kill hand. And now maybe it's just MWS "goldfisher" which is incredibly bad for unkwown reasons ( there were times when i opened with 3 moxes..), but I'm a little scary about this happening to a real-life tourneament.
Pay attention, I'm not saying this deck sucks, I'm deeply in love with it. But i found it several times autolosing to itself with horrible hands, even before than from the opponent. I repeat, maybe that 's just MWS, maybe that's just me, but i don't want to believe that this deck relies heavily really only on a dose of good luck in opening. I always read things in this post such as " with this deck you go turn 1 protection/cantrip, turn 2 fast kill", but this happened quite few times in relationship to the quantty of games tested in goldfish. There were cases in which i missed a single mana,in others i wasn't just able to find a land and had to mull (even to 5), in other, playing against real opponents, i had such fragile hands that a single wasteland cut me off the game.
For example, if you'd open with a hand such as
CoV, MysticalT,Orim,Mox,Land,Petal,IT
Would it be to keep or to mull? i 'd think this hand is pretty LED -dependant to go off, so i just can't decide whether to risk and get it on the draw ( the percentage of which in kinda low), or mull.
And with this?
Orim, IGG, Wish, Land, Land, Mox, Led
It may be a good land, but again, it all depends on what is going to be on topdeck. If i'd topdeck a good accelerant, it may be ok, even if the only way to " go off " would be perhaps a EtW (IGG is kinda weak when it's not along with Dark rituals).
I also tried, for the sake of argument, to fit a EtW in the MD , but eventually gave up because i couldn't put another heavy 4-cc card, and just making -1An +1 etw was way risky, since AN still remains the main bomb of the deck.
I could try to make -1 Duress +1 Ponder to increase the probabilities of stacking a correct sequence of "storm cards"-hand, but running 6 pieces of protection may be too much low, especially in a meta heavily relying on blue as mine. It's sad that in this deck, increasing an aspect decreases another, but i feel the deck must not die to itself before of all.
Or i ca try -1 Orim +1 Duress to make the "color "issue slightly better, but it's clear that Orim is such that goodness against also nonblue decks ( a timewalk which gains you time to build combo is teh nuts) that's clear > Durex. But it has the fault of not being in colour, not being able to be dropped after a Ritual-which reallt COUNTS, so far, so needing 1 land "reserved" each time to be cast.
Thanks for your patience.
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Simply in reference to the hands thing, all storm combo decks will have this its inherient to running the cards that combo does but MWS shuffler is an issue as i have on more than one occasion opened 7land hands while running 10 lands.
However, after having played with the deck in real life at the GP, shitty hands like that don't occur more than 1 in 20-30 games and when they do the mulligan is usually pretty good. If i remember right I only mulliganed somewhere near 3 times total at the GP. The deck is very consistent and i would suggest to anyone having issues with bad hands with TES, sleeve it up and then test either against friends or just goldfish because in my experience, real life is much more hospitable for this deck.
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