You're right, I got the timing wrong once again ;) My bad - doesn't make Retribution of the Meek any less awesome in my book though.
The card Retribution of the Meek would be replacing would be Vesuvan Shapeshifter, which does an equal job at doing every single one of the things above, and Vesuvan Shapeshifter is blue, and Vesuvan Shapeshifter isn't dead weight until the opponent drops Progenitus. Vesuvan Shapeshifter is damn near STRICTLY better.Originally Posted by Moonlight
And it's not even clear that Vesuvan Shapeshifter should even be played at all, but why the hell are people talking about Retribution of the Meek?
@Colo: It's probably playable in DnT because DnT scoops to a ramped Progenitus, but we can counter the Natural Order. Throwing in answers that serve no other purpose isn't needed when you have the flexibility of blue permission.
I indeed thought about shapeshifter, mainly for its interaction w/ fathom seers... the thing that hurts me is the 5cc cost (no matter how you look at it, it's always 5!), which means it can't be vialed in and only has to be hardcast. It's more or less the same problem I have with Aven Mimeomacer. I'm testing it and it's a damn good creature with a damn good effect. But UW tempo works fine with 1-2 lands, better with a vial active. But I can't vial him because he's the only 3cc in creature of the deck, and there are situations in which I can't hardcast him and it's really annoying. Shapeshifter costs 5 to be cast and activate it's effect...Even uglier...
At BFT against PC: yeah, the real difference is b/w zoo and ichorid/burn. BFT also saves a turn against progenitus, but I think it really comes down to ichorid. My meta would have some ichorid but I think totally misses burn, and sees few goblins. The dominant decks are atm zoo, merfolk, dark dephts in various variants (has anybody tested this MU?).
Owns them pretty good, consistent down the board with every version of Dark Depths I've run into.
Although sometimes they have other stuff that isn't terrible, the Dark Depths Combo itself does nothing against us unless you do something dumb like tap a wasteland for any reason.
I apologize if it's been discussed+discarded... Anyway, taking the risk of being charged for blasphemy, I shall hereby suggest the green splash.
I'm aware that a big chunk of the creativity (deck-buildingwise) this archetype inherits does get lost along the way - I'd most likely dislike the idea if it were my own UW baby ;-) [oh now it's dawning on me, I think the decks' nameused to be NoGoyf, right?!, damn..]
That being said, I'm 90% sure some of the usual green suspects would improve the archetype considerably.
The candidates:
MD:
- Tarmogoyf --------- yeah..
- Qasali Pridemage-- the original list has trouble fighting problematic non-creature permanents preboard. This guy is amazing and you know it!
SB:
- Krosan Grip------ yeah.
- Gaddock Teeg--- I don't think I need to emphasize his value, though the inclusion of 3 might be a meta call.
---
To make a long story short, I've tested the UGW version (obv. less than 1.5 years, but whatever) and found it to be superb.
The only obvious downside being potential mana issues, which I didn't really encounter, due to Vial being a mana fixer [all green addtions (barring Grip) are vialable (pun intended)], Wayfarer is a mana fixer,too. Nevertheless, upping the land count to 18 appears to be reasonable when going 3-color.
-
Here's my current version:
(some explanations can be found below)
4 Flooded Strand
3 Windswept Heath
1 Plains
1 Island
3 Tundra
2 Tropical Island
1 Savannah
3 Wasteland
3 Mother of Runes
3 Weathered Wayfarer
4 Serra Avenger
4 Fathom Seer
3 Qasali Pridemage
4 Tarmogoyf
2 Spell Snare
3 Daze
4 Force of Will
4 Brainstorm
4 Swords to Plowshares
2 Umezawa's Jitte
3 AEther Vial
[...61 cards]
SB:
3 Krosan Grip
2 Relic of Progenitus
1 Tormod's Crypt
2 Path to Exile
2 Gaddock Teeg
1 Enlightened Tutor,
1 Dueling Grounds
3 "meta slots" (probably more toolbox stuff)
----------------------------------------------------------------
Some explanations:
Snare beat Pierce due to Pridemage being able to handle permanents.
The CMC1 slot was a little clogged imo, which is why I cut one 1 Mother & 1 Wayfarer - didn't miss them sofar.
I also cut the Stoneforge guy, whoadmittedly is quite amazing at times, no doubt - he was no competition for the Lhurgoyf and his friend, however.
It isn't marit lage that scares me...
-UB version: counterbalance and 12/12. Plus confidant which is a HUGE pain in the ass. Force of will stifle daze and diamond to ramp up a threat on t1 (any threat would do). I don't think the MU is really good, though they tend to empty the end soon.
-BG version: confidant is still the problem, but then there's a more rock-ish setting. And rock is a hard Mu I think, pernicious deed is a bitch, too many removals, targeted discard etc.
Here's last top8 for reference: http://www.dragonsleague.it/archivio...&dt=2010-02-07
@klaus: where's your cool avatar gone?!? :) Aura of silence is still better than grip...and there's 61 cards... :(
@ gushta:
Alongside Pridemage, Grip is certainly your better weapon.
Also, facing CB can be a pain the butt, and Aura does not realiably solve this problem.
Boasting 18 land, a 61 cards total does not feel too bad, actually.
---
Sidenote: I don't wanna hijack this thread with that green splash thing - let me know if it's unwanted. No offence would be taken.
Peace.
I tried something similar, why no Knight of the Reliquary?
It has synergy with every card in the deck. and is like 7/7 for 3.
Did you actually try playing the green version before you posted it? You're trying to run three colors, including WW and UU requirements off of 15 colored lands.
Go bother the people in the Bant thread about adding Weathered Wayfarer, Mother of Runes and Stoneforge Mystic to their deck if this deck isn't just a joke. People much better at deck designing have tried to make the G splash work. It costs running two extra lands at least, plus cutting basics (and making it so you can't fetch basics as often), plus taking more mulligans and getting color screwed much more often. That's the cost, now weigh the benefits and tell me if it's really worth it. This might involve actually playing UW Tempo the way it was designed for the first time so that you can understand how little this deck needs Tarmogoyf/Qasali Pridemage.
Bottom line: If you can get the job done with fewer colors, that's going to be better in the long run. Not that the cards you're adding are horrible or that I wouldn't play them if they existed in-color, but you have some mad delusion like adding extra colors doesn't change any of the math on the mana base. You can't just go: -basics, -non-basics, +different non-basics and bam, you've got a smooth mana base with an extra color.
You would hardly ever want to up Vial to 3. And 3 mana can be tough at times in the face of the Phathom Seer drawback.
I might be wrong about this, even more so since I haven't tested the guy yet.
Knight's ability is nothing to sneeze at but at the end of the day Wayfarer does a better land job, while Tarmogoyf brings enough weight to the battlefield.
Ofc you're right, but a resolved vial with no needle on sight is good enough to evade cb (cb player has its weapons, we have ours)
, and I like aura's ability to completely shut off mana artifact of ant and wreck enchantress which is otherwise problematic.
Go bother the people in the Bant thread about adding Weathered Wayfarer, Mother of Runes and Stoneforge Mystic to their deck if this deck isn't just a joke.So much aggressivity in this thread.People much better at deck designing have tried to make the G splash work.
About Shapeshifter, I tried it MD*2 instead of 1 Fathom Seer and the remaining knight (I also made change in the SB, for the reasons I've said earlier). Alongside, I removed 1 basic Plains for 1 Karakas. I did a dozen of games against random MWS players. The only impact of the changes I could notice was the fact that Shapeshifter could be pitched to FoW contrarily to Knight. I never could take great advantage of Shapeshifter before the game was already won and I never wanted another creature in its place (the rest was already enough). If I remember well the only time I played Shapeshifter, it copied Serra Avenger for extra-beatdown. It's a bit weak for a 5 mana involvement. But, anyway, it's something it can do. About Karakas, I actually liked the fact it was generally the first wasted land (and not the tundra). I've never felt sorry about the fact it was wasted. It did not happen to save my ass, against a resolved Iona for instance, but I like the fact I have a tutorable 1-of in addition to the expensive Shapeshifter to do that.
Finally, my experience is a bit on the side "no major change observed". Not very interesting. But I thought I could share anyway so that people are not too "afraid" to change established slots, in spite of their deisgners' authority.
For the sake of agrument. This is flawed reasoning. A Tarmogoyf would be replacing Serra Avenger. And by the time you can hardcast force of will you'll most certainly have the UU requirement. If you want to reason that Jotun Grunt + Serra Avenger > Tarmogoyf + Pridemage then I'd love to hear your arguments.
-4 Serra Avenger -2 Jotun Grunt -1 KotWO +4 Tarmogoyf +3 Quasali Pridemage and fix your manabase as you won't need WW anymore.
Serra avenger is simply great and it's untouchable...plus klaus didn't touch it. WW is not a hard requirement and the manabase is sufficient as I'm testing a little his list. The real issues I see:
-2 drop@1 = less probability do do something effective on turn1, which is a thing that the deck ABSOLUTELY NEEDS;
no jotun grunt means no recurring wasteland, which is bad :(
Tarmo is probably not needed in 4 copies as it isn't big enought in the early game: we tend to have only lands and instants in the grave, other things are up to the opponent. Qasali pridemage is the real big guy of the scene, I love this guy.
You say that one of the "problems" of the deck is mana flooding late in the game, and as such you only want to run 17 lands. Could a 1 of Cephalid Coliseum be a solution for this?
We've always encouraged people to test their ideas. What we discourage is people NOT testing their ideas.
What's really interesting about the thread is all of the criticism/bad ideas come from people who have never played the deck. The people who actually bite the bullet and play the deck as written generally aren't changing anything (or they have metagame changes, particularly to the sideboard and generally they come here to talk about WHY, which is actually interesting to read). If you look back at the thread, I've always encouraged people to do their own testing and for people familiar with the deck to make changes provided that they just know the justifications for why it's in there (not just like: "Oh, that card seems bad, I'll cut it" although nobody has actually done that, yet). Audibles are some of the most powerful deck designer tools.
So it might seem like I'm always just shooting down any possible changes, but I'm only shooting down the subset of ideas that both look bad and are untested by the poster. That happens to be the vast majority of the changes, since a lot of people want to post in any thread, "'Such and such' would make the deck better!" Unfortunately, these people have never tested "such and such" or the original decklist. I would look at their ideas a lot more closely if they had, but the thread is just clogged with these posts.
The thing is that the "such and such" is horrible and people who test before posting figure that out on their own (thank you to the unsung heroes who test their stuff first and then end up not posting), and then the people who have played the original decklist are generally pretty content (and they understand the basics like how Green doesn't help the deck, which you'd figure out after a play or two).
I mean, so let's just go through an example of what people say when they don't bother to test their ideas or the original decklist:
@Nessaja: I wholeheartedly encourage you to spend your time testing this idea.
Wait till this thread gets bigger, then the same ideas will come up that have previously been laughed off. Merfolk is back to "What if we add countertop in here!?!?"
Quite seriously though, what is your gameplan against decks which pack EE and/or Deeds and/or Wrath? Mom is only good against colors, and if there is enough redundancy and counters in blue control decks (landstill style) or discard in black control decks (rock style) then you won't have infinite counters or card advantage to beat them.
When you sideboard in Aura of Silence to take care of it you have to take into account they sideboard in K grips for your already known vials and jittes.
I ask because I watched one of the 2 nogoyfs getting blown out yesterday by 4c landstill. FYI there were 2 there who didn't make top 8, and 2 decks with green splash and wayfarer (have to assume they're taking nogoyf's idea) who also didn't make it.
And to preemptively stop your "those are bad decks" argument that I've heard at least 5 times from pi4, people play bad decks and you lose to them if you aren't prepared, that's what happens in tournaments.
I agree with PI here. I took the deck for a test drive this Wednesday at a weekly local, and basically, when your opponent realizes the power of Wayfarer and friends, they aren't so quick to get nonbasics, they have board sweepers, etc. For those curious, I went 1-2, getting the bye in the last round and hanging it up.
Had an expected excellent start 2-0 against UW Merfolk, never dropping to below 14 life (until they swung at me with team g1, while my Avenger was carrying a Jitte and them at 5). Then played against Doran Rock, overwhelmed by Cabal Therapies and Pernicious Deeds (Therapy was powerful here, especially because he knew what I was playing). Engineered Plague came down on "Human" to put things out of reach, and I hear Eternal Witness and Profane Command make an awesome combo with that in play. This of course tipped off the B/W good stuff player, who came back down 0-1 with the same deal. Of course, it also didn't help that I had Enlightened Tutor Thoughtseized away and never drew my Aura of Silences, but stlll. It's a rough matchup.
I played the 75 in the first post, btw. I had made some of my own changes but decided not to add them beforehand (ie., SoLaS for Knight, etc).
Delver enthusiast and avid practitioner of blind flipsmanship.
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I was there yesterday playing nogoyf, and I lost to 4c landstill. My only loss of the night - I'll be writing up another report (as I tried out shapeshifter instead of white orchid) that will detail things a bit.
I made a _ton_ of mistakes playing (not to take anything away from the pilot of landstill, he was certainly very good). IE saying 'okay' to spells resolving when I had a counter in hand that I wanted to cast, sideboarding incorrectly, etc.
Landstill seems to be a difficult m/u though - game one you have no answer to a resolved crucible, and absolutely no way to deal with ltfl (which is an unconventional call in landstill, but it's certainly played in lands, etc)
I just lost a MWS game to cursed scroll, of all things, from a B/W deck that ritualed it out turn 1 (and me without a force). Yea, turns out recurring colorless damage is hard to deal with, especially with no artifact or enchantment removal in the 75.
"If your enemy is secure at all points, be prepared for him.
If he is in superior strength, evade him.
If your opponent is temperamental, seek to irritate him.
Pretend to be weak, that he may grow arrogant.
If he is taking his ease, give him no rest.
If his forces are united, separate them.
Attack him where he is unprepared, appear where you are not expected."
-Sun Tzu
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