Elspeth and Rhox war monk imho are simply better against zoo. Either alone or together I haven't lost a game against zoo when they've been cast.Originally Posted by hungryLIKEALION
And when I played NO Progenitus I did lose some games to zoo after resolving natural order.
Tell me about it... Goblins almost swarmed past a resolved Progenitus game 3. It's sad when a 10/10 isn't good enough.
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Ok , I was playing Supreme Blue Original list since it was created , and the great problem about the deck is it manabase.I only lost to my own erros or manadenial and bad luck(which just happens to all decks) againts Merfolks , Goblins and Zoo.So the way to improve this MUs is going to get a more stable manabase which Wall of Roots seems very good at in NO CT lists and also can be sac to NO for Progenitus.Stifle also does it but is much more versatile , it can stops enemy wastes , disrupt opponents fetch( but here you must know they will be hurt by this) and which i consider the most important part IT STOPS DEED AND EE ( which are a great problem for low 3cc CB lists like the UGB).So you are trying to solve 2 great problems with Stifle but then you put 4 wastes so it goes in the wrong direction( it can wins games , but seems bad cause you want a stable manabase which can produce UUBG to cast you spells).
Also the UGB list have low 3cc which i think makes SupremeBlue better against a lot of MUs(Ench , BGW Rock, Loam...) and in the Mirror( UGB x SupremeBlue) , about NO it is just the way to win some hard MUs when you cast dude + NO and win, of course it can be dead some times but also stifle or wasteland.
So I think that the NO CB list still have some manabases issues that would be great if we can fix it.And I think UGB lists could be a good metachoice but andrew lists seems a bit wired (thoughtseize , wastes ,sower), low 3cc and also has no 1cc removal or great answer for Aggros.
PS: Last week I just changed to PROBant cause It can easily win aggros games and NO can finish alot of Aggro-Controls Games.
Super Bizarros Team.
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I totally agree with this. I am currently testing a strictly UGW list. When I have enough testing/tournament results, I'll post it here.Ok , I was playing Supreme Blue Original list since it was created , and the great problem about the deck is it manabase.
Ok Andrew, I'll take you out of my ignore list and try to discuss in a civil manner with you.
I apologize in advance for the poor quality of my English, it's not my native tongue.
Agreed.Countertop decks are not tempo decks.
Do I understand correctly if I state the following: You are suggesting to play Stifle in a UGW CB-Top deck ?That being said playing tempo cards like stifle is still quite helpful because of the massive tempo they can generate in the early turns. It doesn't matter if you aren't using this advantage to kill your opponent because dropping counterbalance/top or confidant is just as devastating.
If I understood correctly, then I ask the following question:
How will you capitalize on your tempo gain (i.e. to what end would you want it) ?
I understand Canadian Threshold playing Stifle since the whole deck is build upon capitalizing on such gains, I doubt CB-Top decks aim at leaving (U) open for Stifle on turn 1. I'd rather try landing a Top, but maybe that's just me and I'm an idiot (no sarcasm here).
Yes, I am aware of that.Even decks like landstill have run stifle in the past.
Questions: 1. Why did such decks run Stifle in the past ? Was it to answer a specific threat or was it for mana-denial ? Why would that choice be relevant for CB-Top decks which like to go: Turn 1 - Top ?
IMO, Wall of Roots serves a better purpose than Stifle in this deck. Again, leaving U open for Stifle isn't part of the game's plan IMO.I also find it funny when you supreme blue players criticize stifle as being narrow when you play garbage cards like wall of roots.
Ok, then why did you state the following ?I would hope you have a good zoo matchup as you run so many cards for that matchup. I mean wall of roots, firespout, war monk.
Again, I am confused.Andrew said: As I said before stifle/wasteland is essential if you want to beat zoo.
I suggest going to the results section of this board and checking the placings of this deck at long events in the last weeks. I assume here by "long event" you mean an event with at least 5 rounds + Top8.I would go as far as to say that your deck is too random. You play too many cards that are only good against some matchups for it to do well at a long event.
This can be said of any other deck, why is Supreme-U more susceptible to this ?Eventually you will draw the wrong answers and lose.
Yes I agree. That is partly why some people are debating the Red splash. In my tests, Canadian Threshold has not caused me too much problems (I'd say the MU is about 50-50). What other relevant deck runs Stifle ?Stifle/wasteland can absolutely destroy any hopes you have of casting most of your spells.
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Probably, I won't enter a pissing contest here.Apparently you are just completely ignorant and have no idea what you are talking about.
Don't lump all of Montreal on me; if you want to consider me an idiot, no problem, just don't lump the whole Montreal crew on me. Again, I won't enter a pissing contest here.Although, you are from Montreal so idk what I expected.
Attack the idea, not the person.
Warnings will be issued if you don't get it together.
No, I run UBG countertop.
You don't have that many turn 1 plays besides stifle since you don't run ponder so its not like you're not playing something to gamble on stifling a fetchland. You also don't need to capitalize on your tempo. Sure, quite often you will by landing confidant or counterbalance, but against zoo part of the reason they can destroy you is because they generate a lot more tempo than you do in early turns. They are playing 3/3's for 1 while you are playing SDT. If you keep them from coming out of the gates running it is much easier to stabilize and win.
That is just what stifle does against zoo most of the time. There are games though where you will just flat out win because of stifle/waste if your opponent is short on lands.
Stifle also has plenty of uses. It is much stronger than wall of roots because there are hardly any matchups where it is weak. A few important things it does are stop standstills, stop pridemage, stop opponents wastelands, stop ETW cold, etc. Wall of roots on the other hand will just sit there are prog food against a huge percent of the field.
By long I mean like a GP. There was a time when I played dredge. I stopped playing dredge because over the course of a 10+ round event the deck will just lose to itself too often. A deck like supreme blue which runs a lot of cards that are just dead in certain matchups will have issues in long events. The 4 color manabase only adds to your consistency issues.
Also stifle/wasteland is a must for black countertop to beat zoo. You don't have firespout or even rhox war monk so without having stifle/waste to set them back games can become much harder. You straight up win games at times because of them and they are quite good anyway so they are essential. This is also the reason I run pulse and EE. Both are decent cards and I need more removal than smother, but I could be running a plethora of other removal effects. I have chosen those because they can kill opposing counterbalances as well as other tricky threats with ease and because they can randomly wreck zoo. EE is extremely versatile and is excellent against zoo. You also don't have to worry about the fact that stifle isn't great in the late game as you usually are ahead if it gets to the late game. I have actually hated topdecking stifles in canadian thresh because that deck can get into topdeck mode. This list runs confidant and counterbalance both which are card advantage machines.
You do realize in that data set, CounterTop with Progenitus lists are 2-2 against Merfolk. Other CounterTop lists are 0-5.
Also, none of those CounterTop lists ran any Propagandas or Ghostly Prisons in their sideboards which, in my experience, swing the Goblin matchup from 33/67 to 67/33.
...and Goblins, Merfolk, Canadian Threshold, Burn, other random aggro...
"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.
Andrew, I agree that Stifle is a great card, but I don't like it in a CB-Top deck.
I'll try to keep an open mind; I'd like to see your latest decklist (if you're ok with sharing it here).
That is a highly maindeck and sideboard dependent statement.Also stifle/wasteland is a must for black countertop to beat zoo.
I would think that post-board, the combination of CB-Top, maindeck creature removal, BEB-Hybroblats and EE would do the trick against Zoo. I may be wrong here as I haven't seen your list and I'm reasoning with my experience with a "canonical" UGB-CB-Top build.
In my experience, I'd rather run Thoughtseize than Stifle in UGB-CB-Top; especially in the current metagame where pro-active control can take out an opponent's "Tinker" from his hands before it's too late.
I've never lost to merfolk with black countertop and rhox war monk isn't all that good against a team of islandwalkers. I'm not saying he is bad, but he is underwhelming for a card that requires you to screw with the manabase so much.
20 lands
4 wasteland
2 island
1 forest
1 swamp
3 underground sea
2 tropical island
4 misty rainforest
3 polluted delta
10 critters
4 dark confidant
4 tarmogoyf
2 sower of temptation
30 other spells
4 brainstorm
4 force of will
4 stifle
4 counterbalance
3 daze
3 sensei's divining top
2 maelstrom pulse
1 engineered explosives
3 smother
2 thoughtseize
Sideboard
2 extirpate
2 relic of progenitus
1 tormods crypt
3 pernicious deed
2 hydroblast
1 blue elemental blast
1 threads of disloyalty
1 krosan grip
2 open slots
G1 your zoo matchup would be something like 40-60 if you didn't run stifle/waste. Sure it might be in your favor postboard, but I prefer shoring up my matchup against such a heavily played deck. With stifle waste you are 50-50 game 1. I have also been quite happy with the package and don't intend on cutting it.
Given the number of people complaining about Progenitus, and the card's general weakness to aggro, it might be a good idea to investigate alternatives. I realize that the current attitude is "leave well enough alone" and therefore anticipate this getting dismissed, but I thought I'd throw it out there. From a discussion on the InfoNinjas' team board:
What is the Thopter Foundry combo?
The Thopter Foundry combo involves sacrificing Sword of the Meek to Thopter Foundry to produce small flying tokens and life gain. The Sword then triggers and comes back, allowing you to essentially channel however much mana you wish into a creature and life-production engine.
Have both Sword of the Meek and Thopter Foundry in play.
Sacrifice Sword to Thopter Foundry. [1]
Foundry produces a 1/1 token and 1 life. Sword triggers. [2]
Sword returns to play attached to the 1/1, making it a 2/3.
Rinse and repeat as necessary.
The end result is an army of flyers and a Stream of Life with Buyback.
What are the combo's vulnerabilities?
Both components of the combo are artifacts and it is dependent, at least briefly, on the graveyard. Both components costand are therefore easy to Spell Snare or Counterbalance away. Furthermore, the combo is fairly easy to interact with; [1] and [2] above denote triggers or activations where you will have to pass priority, potentially opening yourself up to an opponent's hate cards.
Hate for [1]:
- Stifle on ability.
- Krosan Grip on Foundry.
- Graveyard removal spell to get rid of Sword.
Hate for [2]:
- Stifle on trigger
- Graveyard removal spell to get rid of Sword.
Furthermore, the combo can be slow and is mana-intensive. Whereas Natural Order into Progenitus is virtually guaranteed to win in two turns, the combo often takes three or more depending on the opponent's life total, your mana, and whether you have to wait until your next untap step to begin activating Foundry.
What are the combo's advantages?
Despite speed and hate issues, the combo is very good at stabilizing. The tokens are excellent chump blockers and it is difficult to get rid of all of them since they tend to show up in great volumes. Furthermore, the life gain associated with Foundry helps get you out of the low life total "danger zone" where red decks can reasonably burn you out.
Also, on second glance, the combo is less vulnerable to hate than it may appear. Since it is in blue, you should have access to counters to protect against Stifle. With the exception of Leyline of the Void (barely played) and Extirpate (fairly bad), you can sacrifice another artifact in response to trigger Sword again and rescue it from the graveyard. Because of this, typical graveyard hate options are quite weak as answers to this combo and your primary worry should be the loss of Thopter Foundry. This can be mitigated somewhat through the judicious use of counters (try to keep Pridemage off the table) and tight play.
How does the combo stack up against existing options?
Thopter Foundry falls into the "multi-card non-storm win combo" category, which is fortunate because it doesn't require a deck to be built specifically to support it. Other combos in this category are Swans-Chain of Plasma and Natural Order-Progenitus.
In many respects, Thopter Foundry is most like Natural Order-Progenitus: both are two-card combos that don't win immediately but put enormous pressure on the opponent. NO has the advantage of being fairly non-interactive and producing a superior clock, but it's poor when you're behind or facing decks that can alpha strike you in response (Merfolk and Zoo's burn package come to mind). The combo also takes up a deceptively large number of slots in the deck, since NO requires more creatures than normal as support, and this ends up diluting the deck's blue count (for Force) as well as making lists very tight, especially the Counterbalance versions. One could make a compelling argument that many of the creature slots were predetermined, but cards like Trygon Predator which often make their way into blue-based NO builds are not tremendously impressive by themselves and would almost certainly be cut if the combo were removed. Note that this argument ignores decks like Elves that are largely unaffected by the downsides associated with the combo due to their high existing creature counts.
However, Thopter Foundry, as previously mentioned, is good at almost any point in the game, and gets significantly better as the game goes on. The life gain and blockers make the combo worth executing when behind, and it can fit in a variety of shells due to having no real requirements for its execution.
Furthermore, many people are beginning to figure out how to play around Progenitus; Merfolk can essentially ignore a successful NO thanks to Lord of Atlantis and decks like Zoo that have burn will try to beat you down to a low life total and then end the game in response to NO. Black decks can answer Progenitus with Perish and the niche decks Enchantress and Lands can prevent it from attacking with Elephant Grass and Glacial Chasm, respectively. NO is also weak against Ichorid and storm which can often go off before NO can be cast.
All of these mean that Thopter Foundry offers a relatively new and compelling avenue for players looking to build control or aggro-control decks with combo finishes.
What's the best shell for the combo?
It pains me to say this, but control decks are essentially DoA in this format: there are too many powerful cards and aggressive strategies that are simply better than a card advantage-focused build relying on high-end bombs. The format is defined by powerful decks packed with threats or ways to find and protect them, and control decks often find themselves in the awkward position of not being able to find enough answers, or the right answers, in time to avoid being slaughtered (the "Dave Price rule"). Put another way, control decks lack the compelling draws of something like Zoo, where a build with Steppe Lynx can turn literally every card drawn into a threat. Control decks with Tarmogoyf fare better, but the format has long since figured out how to answer lone Tarmogoyf beats and one can make an argument that those decks are less control and more aggro-control. Semantics aside, control is sickly at best in Legacy.
I'm therefore not really in favor of using Thopter Foundry in a control shell. On the one hand, drawing your combo instantly stabilizes you as well as producing a clock; on the other, control decks don't want to weigh themselves down with combo pieces, making you less likely to draw the combo overall if you run less than the full four of each piece. Gifts builds patterned on Tezzerator lists in Extended can circumvent this somewhat, but they tend to be slower and have a hard time both dealing with early aggression and finding the combo. Having worked with such builds quite a bit, I can say that they have appeal in the right metagame but are probably not broadly playable outside of that.
On the other hand, one can take a cue from existing NO decks and stick the combo in a Counterbalance or other blue-based aggro-control shell. The use of Counterbalance makes it harder to hate the combo if you can correctly anticipate what the opponent is going to do: leaving a Rhox War Monk on top and using counters in hand to answer bait spells prevents surprise Grips, and Extirpate can be answered in a similar manner. The benefit of all this is that combo-finish Counterbalance decks are a tried-and-true strategy; NO Counterbalance is one of the best decks in the format as of this writing, and therefore emulating it seems like a good place to start. Furthermore, the use of Top and Brainstorm makes finding the combo easier, so you can skimp on the numbers somewhat to make it about as compact as NO-Progenitus currently is. This shell also has the benefit of a beatdown plan as backup.
One thing, Andrew, you just said Stifle stops standstill in one of your posts. It does not. If you try to stifle the standstill trigger, standstill will trigger again from the stifle and still give your opponent three cards.
You're presuming that the Merfolk player has a Lord of Atlantis everytime or most of the time you have a Rhox War Monk. And even if they do have a Lord of Atlantis you can't answer, you can still swing for 3-4 and gain that much life to partially or wholly negate their attack.
6-8 point life total swings are amazing against aggro decks.
I've almost never been unable to cast a Rhox War Monk because of his color requirements. Noble Hierarch is a huge help, and he makes Rhox War Monk swing for four leading to an eight point life total swing.
"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.
Thanks for bringing this thread back to civil discouse. Much appreciated. :)
I'm reading the posts but I just can't understand the discuss about Zoo x SupremeBlue , for me it is 70-30 in favor of SupremeBlue , the hard matches are merfolks and goblins.Goblins (and Zoo , DStomp) can be much easier if you run 3 Hydroblast in the sideboard.
I was thinking about running some EE in maindeck , since it can take care of goblins , zoo , and merfolks explosive begins and also is very versatile and does not suffer to mana denial plan ( you can always play it for 2) the problem is that it seems too slow sometimes , may be running 6-7 StP effects could shutdown merfolks and zoo , but the goblins card advantage ( matron , ringleader and siege-gang) are the cards that really scares me since it is hard to counter with CB or can just enter by lackey or vial.
So i think we should focus on improving Merfolks and Goblins MUs , and remember that if Zoo is popular Merfolks and Goblins aren`t and Supreme Blue should be a good choice.
Super Bizarros Team.
HUEHUEHUE BRBRBR. VIVA DILMA!!! EM NOME DE JESUS CRISTO!
Take another look at the article in question, and read where those stats came from. They didn't come from my testing.
I top 8ed a 30ish man tourney with this deck last night. I run Coatl as a 4 of in my build, more Goyfs is good with me. The card is great, but i could see why RWM gets ran. In my meta Coatl just works better.
Round one i got paired against Goblins and stole two Siege Gang Commanders with my double Vedalken Shackles, then sacrificed them with my Volc Islands to end the game. I though that was pretty humorous.
Dead or Alive, you're coming with me.
-Robocop-
Sorry about that, misunderstanding on my part with that one. I simply looked at the quote Andrew used which was by you and made an apparently wrong assumption based on the list I knew you had advocated in one of your articles.
The idea of fixing up the Merfolk/ Goblins matchup could be accomplished in a number of ways which all seem to be important and possibly equally important. Since both of the matchups are admittedly quite bad on paper, and sideboard slots need to be devoted to both decks which function somewhat similarly, why not run Propaganda/ Ghostly Prison along with some utility cards rather than running Hydroblasts, and Llawan, and possibly Engineered Explosives which can hurt us at times (but EE might be a card that fits the role of working really well vs. Gobbos and Merfolk, although Merfolk run a lot of must kill 2ccs the same as we do). By cutting down on the number of situational cards we can bring in more effective cards and increase our likelihood of drawing something that could possibly win the game if resolved. Other ways of helping out the matchups would be to just test more and get definitive cards that can be boarded out which is only achieved by more testing. All in all we should try to find cards that really hose both Goblins and Merfolk as they are the only things we should fear.
There are two main problems with cards like Stifle/Wasteland in a Counterbalance deck.
The first main problem is that, due to the nature of CB/Top, aggressive tempo cards are just not the natural fit. What is CB/Top looking to do? It's looking to delay the opponent's threats long enough to establish CB/Top and lock the game down. Every deck needs a way to buy tempo early, but you have to keep in mind that there are different kinds of tempo. You have to be careful you are buying the kind of tempo your deck actually wants.
Removal like StP will buy a land drop. It is pretty obvious when you start with 0 land, your opponent plays a threat, then you play a land and StP. You are now +1 land and the board state is the same. If you repeat this process several times it's not hard to see that you can land 3-4 land drops without losing any tempo. However cards like Wasteland do not buy land drops. Wasteland buys attack phases, which CB/Top decks are not concerned about. Wasteland is a card that says "I am fine with the current board state" and that is not something CB/Top decks say very often unless they are already winning (and what is the point of using a win-more card?).
The second main problem with Stifle/Wasteland is inherent to the deck. The fundamental problem with CB/Top shells is that they aren't fast enough to outrace their problems, and so they must be able to deal with pretty much everything this format can throw at them. It is like a bastardized aggro-control deck but forced very far to the control end of the spectrum.
Stifle/Wasteland does very little about the following things you are assuredly going to face in a tournament:
1) Loam+Wasteland recursion
2) Aggressive creature rushes
3) Aether Vial, or other cards that cheat threats into play without actually casting them
4) High-CC cards that ignore CB
It just doesn't deal with the biggest problems of the deck, and what's worse is Stifle/Waste become extremely poor cards to see while digging for an answer to one of the above.
This isn't to say the black splash is bad, as I feel the black splash is very powerful in Counter/Top builds, but rather that Stifle/Wasteland is only good if you can legitimately follow up on the tempo gain. Cards like Bob are awesome with Time Walk effects, but the problem is that even if you Stifle your opponent's first land it is irrelevant because they can simply kill the Bob on their next land drop anyway (since every deck has tons of 1 mana answers to him). Then your tempo is completely lost and you would have been better served by something as simple as Duress.
Maybe if Stifle was good on the draw, or was a good topdeck, or had more synergy with the deck outside of a double Goyf draw it would be more attractive. But it just doesn't have that synergy. I'm not saying that Stifle/Wasteland is awful, but rather that hard removal, permission, or even discard is a better natural fit.
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