There's not that much at 1cc that we'd like to counter against the field. If you're looking to stop spot removal, Mother of Runes does the same thing.
It actually might be strong against Zoo, Thresh, and obviously TES, so I'll test it out a bit. I see getting it bolted in response to lose tempo sucks a bit, but maybe we could draw out their burn with Moms and Wayfarers early.
I do remember one game where I played a Jitte and the other guy casts 2 Spellstutter Sprites to try to counter, but I had Swords in response. I don't want that to happen to me.
I also see it as being useless against Merfolk, Landstill, 43-lands, all the stompy decks, etc. and having a maindeck card so useless against such a chunk of the field is pretty painful, which greatly contributed to the decision not to run it in the first place.
In a deck like Faeries, you can scale the Spellstutter Sprites and have more resistance to the counterburn.
Riptide lab is probably not a good tech decision, since we try to minimize lands in play to maximize Wayfarer and Knight, but I'll look at SSS.
Yeah, just tossing the idea out there. I've got the bulk of the stuff coming in the next few days for the deck so hopefully I'll be able to give it a whirl this week.
Are you still running a 2x of Ancestral Visions? That's the card I'm really most torn on with the deck - It's great early, and still decent late but if you need something _now_, it's terrible to topdeck. Have you thought of running something that's more dig than draw, like ponder or impulse?
We probably shouldn't reveal *all* our tech right before a big tournament, but we're no longer running ancestral visions.
For the skeptics, I should note that recently I have found a terrible matchup. If a deck, such as the one I ran into Nihil playing in a source tourney, runs like:
8 mass removal (Maverick was piloting this, he had deeds and crime/punishment)
some spot removal (he had swords)
but the planeswalkers like ajani vengeant and say elspeth so that you can't afford to just play 1 creature.
Must counters/discard like recurring nightmare loop/thoughtseize/cabal therapy
We didn't test this because we thought we had all bases covered playing against regular rock. The kind with the beatdown plan at least in the background, where if we survive to lategame then our lategame is better. Surviving was easy.
The only way I see it as possible to win against this deck is either:
I open wayfarer, and then either he has no swords or I have mom.
Or
He gets mana screwed/flooded.
After sideboard this MU is also pretty dismal. Currently trying to fix this because all it takes is for a rock player to deviate to deviate to the control side. There's like aggro rock and control rock. Anything with lategame staying power will ruin control rock since it can't counter stuff/fight topdecks, but I can't think of anything. Crucible is the only thing, maybe I'll try it in the sideboard and my excuse for running such a card would be that it breaks the CB lock with wastelands. Really not sure about this though...
Have you considered running your own Elspeths? It solves mass removal, spot removal, and is a permanent source of card advantage to combat discard. It's also removal for their Elspeths. I've played 2 Elspeth in UGw countertop to help against loam-Rock and landstill decks, and they worked pretty well.
The one card that i've found to be awesome against control-ish rock builds is Jace. Even if they have Vindicate or EE to kill it, you still get card advantage. I'm not sure if it's worth changing your draw package to deal with control-ish version of rock, but getting what's effectively a Bob for 3-5 turns is usually enough to put you ahead.
Yeah I thought about it. But
http://www.cardshark.com/magic/card_...?card_id=27240
and
http://www.cardshark.com/magic/card_...?card_id=25069
is what stopped me. For an individual like myself about to play in perhaps at most one tournament every 2 or 3 months, (I play when school is off.) it's not worth even like $10 to improve the control matchup that marginally. I mean in the way of must counters, we already have lots. The other thing is:
typically the kinds of control decks I'm worried about have a "gameplan" that transcends making silly 1/1 dorks. I'm not worried about landstill, I'm worried about like, rock decks that try to get into loam loops, witness loops, raven's crime/worm harvest loops... Against this sort of a deal, I think deep analysis is actually the best bet.
I have been playing the deck quite a bit against several decks. In general I found that when you play this deck white weenie mode due to no drawing any counter or draw spells is bad luck and basically looses, which did happen quite a bit to me anyway ><. Most likely just my bad luck. It really needs the other cards to function well unfortuantly. With that said I did found that Serra Avenger working very well, even if it comes turn 3 earlies of a vial or else turn 4. Flying and vigilance is perfect for a 3/3 beater. I really feel that this card should not be cut at all.
The other 3 cards that I did feel were doing pretty bad is Court Hassar and Ancestrall Vision. (The former being used for FoW 80% of the time). I cannot say which card is good other then those already mentioned but I do feel like it is better to have Vendillion Clique or Stifle in the deck instead. Most likely Clique. I will test those cards when I have the chance.
We've made a few changes to the deck in the past month. The sideboard is quite different and handles much better.
I'll post the updated list later this evening, after Jeff is done with the LA tournament. Unfortunately, I got sick on Friday/Saturday. Some local SD players graciously offered me a ride to the LA tournament, but I wasn't feeling 100%, and I didn't want to get all of them sick, so I'm home and Jeff's playing it out.
He called me to tell me that he's 3-0 (6-0 games), drawing some easy matchups against tier 1 decks. So hopefully that means he'll have good tiebreakers.
@Elspeth
We've been systematically removing any extremely expensive suggestions (e.g. Elspeth) that we can establish as having a marginal effect. Elspeth was pretty good in testing, but she wasn't clearly better than the alternatives, and we stopped testing it when we realized the improvement was slim and possibly it's even a downgrade. Unless you physically own Elspeths already (because of Standard, Ext, or lucksack Limited), I wouldn't bother testing her.
Are you guys watching the LA SCG 5k now?
The guy is playing WWu with the fathom seer and wayfarer combination and everyone was just shocked.
He's 6-0 now too. Just won the game. They're speaking with him now. http://www.starcitygames.com/php/new...cle/18542.html
Good to see some solid results with this deck finally.
I'm not eating any words, I've never said this deck was bad. In fact I've only ever suggested improvements (and obviously the COURT HUSSAR IS BAD!!! sunk in). Look at all of my posts in either thread, I've never said this deck was bad.
In fact I've had the deck built and sitting in my card stack for over a year.
But I still stand by everything I've suggested before.
haha i know, i guess i was refering to the little recent banter in the merfolk forum.
Originally Posted by DukeDemonKn1ght
Well, you know, that, and the fact that this deck actually has a bunch of top 8's to back up its reputation...
Last edited by Zilla; 01-04-2010 at 04:12 PM. Reason: Thread clutter.
Yeah it's annoying to have a merfolk thread clogged with arguments about nogoyf. Your point?
(Just like it's annoying to clog this thread with merfolk talk, so stop)
The deck really does look like a pile, cool to see it work out and grab a T8 slot. Looking forward to seeing where it goes from here.
Hahaha!! Rocketlaunching this from N&D to SD in a hurry. Well done, and congratulations!
I never gave it a look before. Fortunatelly I own all necessary stuff, I'll give this deck some attention in the next few days. ^^
Tapping lands and watching the sky falling since 1995.
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this deck got 3rd or 4th in the scg $5000 today. good job deck designer!
Favorite Card: Dark Depths
Nice job, Jeff. He told me he'll write up a full tournament report for this one.
I'm surprised he lost to Zoo. I used to play against him with that deck all the time and he'd usually trounce me.
The trouble of playing a card game is sometimes you can do no better than rely on chance.
I was there today as well and was rooting on Jeff. He has some pretty good stories to tell, so I will let him tell them. It is surprising to hear he lost to Zoo, but I would assume that he was unable to get an active Mother of Runes in the games he lost. It would seem that card would be especially key in saving bros from removal.
@Jeff: Did you guys run splits or what happened with the money situation?
I talked to him briefly, he was pretty vague about the loss. I heard his complete matchup breakdown, and he got pretty good matchups all
day.
I know he chose not to split (and I agree with that) because he put the Zoo matchup at over .500, so a hedged bet is suboptimal in that situation. Or effectively, not splitting would be placing a positive bet, so he did. Zoo in the semi's was probably the worst matchup he saw, but it's still the right decision not to split.
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