UG Madness just got better.
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Originally Posted by OBFREELY
Team Brown & Team Unicorn. Does that make me a Brown Unicorn?
Trygon Predator?
Trinket Mage?
Maybe even Eternal Witness?
A lot of utility in that slot, I'd say...
"My sky is darker than thine!"
SENTENCED - 1993
Uh, your combat math is wrong. Did you forget to activate library or something?
Should be:
T1 Hierarch
T2 Liberry
T3 Coatl
T4 take 6
T5 take 9
T6 take 12
(Assuming your opponent does nothing).
But that just seems much worse to me than like:
Turn 1 Ponder
Turn 2 CB
Turn 3 Top or whatever else.
Coatl is broken on its own, you don't need SDT 5-8.
Uh, your combat math is wrong. Coatl starts as a 2/2, not a 3/3, fool was right there. Also what is a Liberry?
edit: oh I guess you were expecting the coatl to swing by himself.
No, Noble Hierarch has Exalted, so the snake gets an extra +1/+1. Not that it's worthwhile or anything.
This.
I like these options, I definitly want to play at least 12 if not 14-16 creatures. So thanks zulander. If you actually took the time to read my post and not just look at the list you would see that the list was unfinished and I was looking for ideas for creatures.
Anywho, I also thought maybe vendilion clique. People have been playing it in my metagame and the draw off it is good with the snake. I like witness but the ability to be pitched to force like with clique or trygon is cool. Also, does equipment have a place in this deck if I add more creatures?
KC Keel - 20
TCG Player - Magic: The Gathering
Preferred Format: Legacy or Limited
Team Melee
drummerkilz06@yahoo.com
The only equipment I would consider would be Jitte. The others are too mana intensive.
Although if you go with Trinket Mage a singleton Sigil of Distinction gets there.
gilder bairn eats up chalice and engineered explosives all day long. you thought he was broken before? coatl just got ridiculous!
Sword of Fire and Ice. Makes your Coatle unblockable by theirs, dodges Bounce, acts as spot-removal vs small stuff, draws cards (-> Coatl!)...
I think the extra mana is a worthwile investment here.
"My sky is darker than thine!"
SENTENCED - 1993
Does Thresh play Sword of Fire and Ice now to win Goyf Wars? No. Is Sword of Fire and Ice better than Sower of Temptation? No.
Is it even better than Control Magic? No. Does Control Magic see any play now? No.
I love me some SoFI, but even in a deck with 15 creatures, it's probably better as a few big creatures than a big equipment.
InfoNinjas
Is Thresh the only deck that can play Coatl? No.
Are there any decks in the format that play SoFI? Yes.
Can a new/developmental deck also run SoFI? Yes.
Can SoFI kill an opponent's Sower? Yes.
Is the reference to Control Magic relevant in this chain of argumentation in any way? No.
"My sky is darker than thine!"
SENTENCED - 1993
That's Threshold. I don't think Threshold is necessarily the best way to exploit Lorescale Coatl. The testing I'm doing is showing Lorescale Coatl plus SDT to be underwhelming at this point. You really do not want to use SDT as a cantrip because it's hard to get it to stick once the opponent is thinking hard about what your deck does.
Sylvan Library lands early and then stays down and makes your opponent think really hard about what he wants to counter. Does he want to Force the Library or save the counter for Counterbalance? Using SDT as the primary pumper gives your opponent several opportunities to re-evaluate what is important and modify their position. Using SL gives them one chance, when it is cast, and then they have to live with it.
The fact that SL costs no mana after it is cast is also very real. I'm finding myself just leaving a 2cc spell on top once Counterbalance is in play in the Threshold matches and having very little trouble after that point. No Counterbalance, no Tarmogoyf, no Daze makes Threshold an unhappy puppy. Add in 3 Spell Snare main deck and Threshold is weak in the matchup.
To make sure they don't stick your ideal start you have Daze, Spell Snare and Force of Will plus 2 Krosan Grip main deck. The most vulnerable position the deck is put in is when it has tapped out to play a Sylvan Library on turn 2 (assuming no Noble Hierarch turn 1) and even then it has Daze, Force of Will and turn 3 Krosan Grip to recover.
Looking at 3 cards a turn for no mana with fetches to reshuffle is a really powerful effect. Without Counterbalance in play it is as powerful as SDT, because it frees up all your mana to be used in a turn instead of requiring one mana to be reserved for an EoT Top at the end of opponent's turn. It also gives you less conflicts between using Spell Snare, Swords to Plowshares and then being unable to activate Top at EoT.
Since the coatl has no trample or flying, I have found that excessive pumping is useless, because it just gets chump blocked anyways. Burdening the deck with suboptimal cards to give the coatl maximum pump seems useless to me when he just gets chumped. And when he goes unblocked he normally kills the opponent in 2-3 hits anyways, is it really worth all the suboptimal cards to maybe kill one turn earlier?
The extreme aggro mode that you can be in with a good draw is something that many decks can't handle. It's not something that comes out every game, it maybe is there one of of five games or so but it is a pretty solid winner when it emerges.
The meta really is not equipped to deal with a huge creature early on backed by a lot of counter control. Yes, the coatl gets chump-blocked a fair amount, however very few decks can do this consistently for more than a turn or two. Even the ones that can do this are usually building up a huge card disadvantage in the process and your alpha strike capability just keeps building to the point you'll one-shot them the first turn they can't keep up.
The point everyone is trying to make is that you can do that anyway, with more stability.
I wouldn't really describe him as an extreme agro creature, he doesn't come out very fast, he's pretty slow for agro.
This is currently a very popular strategy, playing fast big goyfs and beating down with protection. Most decks in the format are prepared to deal with this, coatl is no faster.
Exactly why you don't need all the sub optimal cards, do you really need your coatl to be a 40/40 when it's going to kill them in one hit anyways?
I agree wholeheartedly with the sentiment that Coatl should be a supplemental beater type creature, instead of building a deck to maximize pump. Much as you don't see decks run suboptimal tribal cards or planeswalkers (yeah I know some decks run Jace) to pump goyf excessively - because you don't need to. Although card draw is always good, pseudo-card-draw in the form of double Tops, or Sylvan Library is completely unnecessary, especially as Coatl is guaranteed to get better as the game progresses (in the sense that if you have one on the field, that is, not if you're in topdeck mode).
Of course, the flaw with this is that goyf has a size cap, while Coatl does not. But really, if you're able to make a 40/40 Coatl, shouldn't all the card quality and card advantage have won you the game long before that point?
Turn 2 or 3 is fast enough to make a lot of decks uncomfortable. He would be a lot less aggro without Noble Hierarch and Sylvan Library.
I don't think in the early game that Goyf and Coatl are even on the same page. Having a creature land at 2/3 or 3/4 and then grow out naturally over the next few turns to 4/5 or 5/6 is a completely different ballgame than having a 2/2 land and potentially be a 9/9 on turn 4 or even larger.
Goyf is going to land bigger and be more of an immediate beater in the midgame and he has more immediate defensive value in the early game, however he really is not the threat that coatl is at any point in the game. He's capped and does not have evasion and those two factors are going to mitigate against goyf solutions working fully effectively against coatl. As an example, you cannot just draw a goyf and drop him against a coatl that has been on the board for a few turns because he's just a chump blocker in that scenario.
Using goyf as a wall has been a big part of the strategy of the blue decks that have employed him. The idea has been that usually when you drew a goyf you were pretty much assured a stalemate at worst and you had a good racer against even a creature with evasion in the worst case. Now the meta has shifted some and goyf is going to be a middling creature in terms of P/T when he hits the board in many cases. Blue specifically had only a couple of creatures that dealt proactively with goyf before this set: Phyrexian Dreadnought and Sower of Temptation. Now you add Lorescale Coatl to the mix and it definitely diminishes Tarmogoyf as a factor.
You still need it in blue decks for the early defense and because it will block the opponent's goyf forever, but it's no longer a draw and win card the way it was.
As to the point of why you need a 40/40 coatl. Really you don't. But having a creature sit on the table and quickly grow out to 18/18 or whatever amount of life the opponent has left after fetching and forcing is a real factor in the game. This is not something that happens by turn 15 with a Sylvan Library in play, it happens by turn 7 or 8. That kind of pressure is exactly the kind of thing that has been lacking in the non-Dreadnought blue decks and it's there in full force with coatl.
This discussion reminds me of the decks of olde T2 that tried to "break" Goyf by playing Chromatic Star and Seal of Fire main. Sure Sylvan Library is good in conjunction with Coatl, but that doesn't change the fact that Coatl is plenty good on its own and Library hasn't been since, iunno, Sun Tower Stax?
Adding cards to the meta or discovering them constantly resets the value of other cards. How much was Sensei's Divining Top being used before Counterbalance started to get played?
Stifle was used as a sideboard card mainly before Phyrexian Dreadnought was re-errata'd, now it sees play main deck mostly in decks that do not even play the big guy.
Protean Hulk saw almost no play until the re-errata of Flash.
Grindstone before Painter's Servant?
Etc.
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