The name of the game is effecacy: canonists will slow the loam player down for a turn or so before they kill it and aside from any time advantage gained, they leave no footprint behind on the game and are terrible in combat versus loam goyfs and giants...they even die to a Bob.
Samurais and grunts both have a tangible effect on the game after leaving play in most cases and can hold their own in a fight, both because of being 3/3s and 4/4s in combat and while also serving to make a graveyard smaller or stop it from getting bigger.
Between outright effect and stats, canonist is beat. Canonist also happens to be vulnerable to hull breach and that is just one other thing to worry about, albeit small.
In all honesty, I have never been particularly scared of grunts while playing my loam deck. The grunts need to be supported by some means of aditional disruption or a winmore engine, like mangara+wisps/karakas to concern me because my threat(s) won't be able to just wait while I am not bothering with dredging and waiting for a grunt to gorge himself to death.
Mask of memory strikes me as a very solid card in the match in that it shores up the issue of needing to attack both the man plan of loam as well as the loam plan by letting you rip through your deck quickly, finding additional pieces and keeping a grunt from burning out too fast. Samurai strikes me as a card that I would be bringing in as superfluous hate in that his staying on the table is not something to rely on necessarily, but is awesome to flash in response to things.
That is all in theory, but not unlikely scenario such as the above, grunt is a far more valuable time advantage tool than a canonist would be in that grunt will be forcing the loam player to either forfeit their turns in the hopes topdecks will be kind and yours will be poor or dredge away and only be able to get rid of your Karakas after they have been used once.
Most of the times that I have seen grunts, it has been against UGw CB decks which aside from CB, have fairly weak bad support for their grunts in regards to attacking loam's other strategies...unless they have a more dedicated sb. I don't want to talk about those stupid games of having ten pieces of hate brought in though.
-It could be about four of anything and I would agree.Originally Posted by Nihil Credo
Silver Knight > Ethersworn Cannonist against Goblins, Burn, Ichorid, and Aggro Loam. In fact, of the decks you listed, Cannonist is only good against Elves and decent against Aggro Loam. Maybe they should be in the board or not in the 75 at all.
With your current list, I'd board -4 Cannonist, -1 Flickerwisp, -1 Wasteland, -1 Isamaru, +3 Burrenton Forge-Tender, +1 Oblivion Ring, +3 Tivadar.
If you replace Cannonists with Silver Knights, don't board in the Tivadars and take out an extra Isamaru or Wasteland.
+1 Jotun Grunt, +4 SotPC, +3 Glowrider -3 Mangara, -3 Oblivion Ring, -1 Cannonist, -1 Flickerwisp.
"Casual sex, NO Touching/Licking/Sucking/Groping/Fondling/Riding/Tickling/Binding/Quitters/Italians. Play Fast, Be Polite, Have Fun."
Sure as hell sounds like fun.
I would say that the cannonist has lots of uses that you really donīt think about... All decks that play cantrips loose a lot of speed and if they play a goyf in their turn, you can plow them on the same turn without having to risk a FoW or Daze.
I played against sui+red yester day and vialed out a cannonist in response to a dark ritual (so he had 3 mana and no possibility to play spells). I know this sounds really far fetched, but these occurences start to happen each and every other game. People dislike him, so people usually use their removals against him, rather than saving them for your real threats.
Mordel, I don't know how often you have played against this deck with aggro-loam, but the Grunt is about as good a card as you could ask for when fighting aggro-loam. The only time he is not a total bomb is when the aggro-loam player is way out in front on the board and you are low on life-aka about to lose anyway.
Samurai does little except in rare circumstances and against Ichorid, hence his diminishing role in general. So no argument there.
I think most players are still trying to nail down the role of Canonist. I recently went from 4 to 3 in my main, but I doubt I will be removing it from the main anytime soon. I am fairly sure that you have not played aggro loam against this deck with him dropped on you early on. He slows aggro loam down to a crawl. This card pays dividends in that matchup big time. Interestingly though, it seems to me that I win or lose this match based on how much removal I draw more than the particular creatures since most of D+T's guys have some sort of pertinent disruption or delay to throw at aggro loam, and Loam's guys are all big dudes.
I want to add that none of the cards in this deck are likely to make the opponent scoop up all by itself. That has always been the case with this deck. Rather, it is the stacking of annoying disruptive elements on the backs of small to medium attackers that does the job.
"Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job."
"Politicians are like diapers. They should be changed often and for the same reason."
"Governing is too important to be left to people as silly as politicians."
"Politicians were mostly people who'd had too little morals and ethics to stay lawyers."
The only time Aggro Loam plays more than one spell per turn is when they're in Loaming mode. If they're in Loaming mode, either they've got the Seismic Assault in which case Cannonist isn't even a speed bump, or they've got the Devestating Dreams and he's not even a speedbump. If they have neither of these, all he does is make Crusher and Terravore a little smaller, or at best force them to spend two turns wishing for DD and casting it instead of one.
Like you said, the match really comes down to the amount of removal you draw. And usually you'll draw more than enough removal. I haven't played a single game against Aggro Loam with Cannonist in the main, but I think I'd rather have Burrenton Forge-Tender, the extra Grunt, and/or Tivadar than Cannonist.
How would you board with his list? Cut more Isamaru and Wasteland?
"Casual sex, NO Touching/Licking/Sucking/Groping/Fondling/Riding/Tickling/Binding/Quitters/Italians. Play Fast, Be Polite, Have Fun."
Sure as hell sounds like fun.
Quote-
4. How does the Mangara cheese work?
You tap him and return him with either Karakas or Stonecloaker (or "flicker" him from play with the wisp) while his ability is on the stack. Do not tap Mangara and ask "OK?". You have to respond with the unsummon effect before you ask for a response or you may not get a chance to.
Does this work? Do you still have priority?
Pretty much, yes.
When you tap him (to pay the cost of using his ability) and put the ability on the stack, you'll get priority back. Before you pass priority, you need to put the Karakas/Stonecloaker/Flickerwisp ability on the stack.
If you put Mangara's ability on the stack, then pass priority, if your opponent passes it back, it's too late for you to use an unsummon effect to save Mangara.
Oh man, are you going to playing D&T now Jeff?Pretty much, yes.
When you tap him (to pay the cost of using his ability) and put the ability on the stack, you'll get priority back. Before you pass priority, you need to put the Karakas/Stonecloaker/Flickerwisp ability on the stack.
If you put Mangara's ability on the stack, then pass priority, if your opponent passes it back, it's too late for you to use an unsummon effect to save Mangara.
I've been messing around with a deck that's not the main list, but has many similar elements to it.
What does everyone think about the new common Qasali Pridemage? I think that with it in BGw Threshold D&T's good match up with it goes out the window. I think that it's almost a more important removal target than Goyf now because without Aether Vial we're pretty much screwed.
I don't think the pridemage is a major problem. I played in a tournament against UGw and UGwb Threshold decks, and only lost a single game. In those matches Stonecloaker, Mangara and Dog tricks won me the games. I know it's not a lot of testing, but i still managed to win against countertop lock and triple goyf, on the back of stonecloaker and mangara.
I was really happy that I played 3 stonecloaker that day, although it sucks to have two in hand with no creature in play, it rarely happens so the fact that they have flash really makes up for it.
I do believe that it is possible to keep one of them out if you have the mana/Vials. Ya gotta mess around with the stack though, but the deck does stuff like that anyway.
I'm not too good with stack manipulation (but getting better by playing more with this deck) - could you tell me how you could get one of them out even though you have no creatures on the board? I'm curious to add more stack tricks to my arsenal...
You can't- both Stonecloakers will trigger and eventually make you bounce one of your creatures. If cloaker's ability was targeted, you could play/vial one, make it target itself and play/vial the other one, also targetting the first cloaker, so you'd get to keep the last one. But as it is worded, you just can't.
Could you do it like this?
Play Stonecloaker 1
Stonecloaker 1 resolves
Stonecloaker 1's return creature to hand ability on the stack targeting Stonecloaker 1
Stonecloaker 1's remove card in graveyard from game ability on stack targeting a card in a graveyard
Put vial activation on the stack
Vial resolves, put Stonecloaker 2 into play
Put Stonecloaker 2's return creature to hand ability on the stack targeting Stonecloaker 1
Put Stonecloaker 2's remove card in graveyard from game ability on stack targeting a card in a graveyard
So the stack looks like this...
Top
Stonecloaker 2's remove card from graveyard ability
Stonecloaker 2's return creature to hand ability
Stonecloaker 1's remove card from graveyard ability
Stonecloaker 1's return creature to hand ability
Bottom
then...
Stonecloaker 2's remove card from graveyard ability resolves, removing a card in a graveyard from the game
Stonecloaker 2's return creature to hand ability resolves, returning Stonecloaker 1 to your hand
Stonecloaker 1's remove card from graveyard ability resolves, removing a card in a graveyard from the game
Stonecloaker 1's return creature to hand ability resolves, which does not have a target anymore so it does not do anything
You are left with Stonecloaker 2 in play.
Is that at all right or at all possible? Or am I breaking a rule somewhere?
Edit: And I've just realised that, as loop said, it's not a targeted ability. It says "return a creature you control to your hand" not "return target creature you control to your hand" So now I understand that you can't do it like this.
Last edited by pandaman; 05-22-2009 at 12:08 AM. Reason: Wrong
And I've just realised that, as loop said, it's not a targeted ability. It says "return a creature you control to your hand" not "return target creature you control to your hand"
So what I wrote in the last post won't work at all...
The problem is, Stonecloaker doesn't target. The ability of the first one resolves as the last trigger on the stack, forcing you to return a creature to your hand.
I think I would swap out Isamarus for Forge Tenders. I agree that they are pretty good in that matchup. I don't know about cutting Wasteland though. Aside from not wanting to see any lands cut, I have definitely kept Loam decks from casting Loam for quite a few turns with Wastes and Ports. Once you keep them off green in the main phase, they have to topdeck a green source. While that isn't particularly hard, it can take a few turns. And that's precisely how this deck wins. In that span you may even be able to Grunt or Cloak their lands out of the graveyard making his job even harder.
About the Canonist, I think you are forgetting that they have Mox and Burning Wish in addition to Loam. This deck commonly plays more than one spell per turn when it can. I tell you that Canonist does me good because the opponents have complained about it.
"Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job."
"Politicians are like diapers. They should be changed often and for the same reason."
"Governing is too important to be left to people as silly as politicians."
"Politicians were mostly people who'd had too little morals and ethics to stay lawyers."
hmm.... doesn't target, so I guess I was wrong.
my bad, they will bounce each other.
@ Finn: what do ya think about having out two aether vials since the deck doesn't have Cataclysms mainboard anymore? I have found myself in combat situations where a vial @ 1 and a second vial @ 3 helps out greatly, but it is also kinda of an iffy thing to do. Just looking for your thoughts.
Frankly that is not as easy a question as it used to be. I think it depends on the opponent and not so much the game state. I agree with what you are saying about having one set to 1 and another to 3. I have been there. Thinking about it, I hold on to a vial IFF I think the other one is likely to get hit by a sweeper. So against something Like Faerie Stompy, I am going to commit them both and against Landstill probably not. There is a speed issue to consider here, wanting to be aggro against Landstill for example, but I think that the Vial is just so important that I am willing to slow down a degree to avoid a devastating Deed. Threshold is an interesting quandary. There is a guy near me who plays Engineered Explosives in his Thresh list, and I have to hold my Vials against him. But most players do not play that card, so I would gladly play two against Thresh in the early going in most cases, Pithing Needle or no.
"Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job."
"Politicians are like diapers. They should be changed often and for the same reason."
"Governing is too important to be left to people as silly as politicians."
"Politicians were mostly people who'd had too little morals and ethics to stay lawyers."
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