I am starting to convert as well. I played a mono-white stacks deck yesterday as wel, and I took the match 2-1. Duress/Thoughtseize is 100x better with this matchup than is chant. I was able to duress him turn one in both games I won, and that can be devastating to them.
So my question is, how do you get past Merfolk or some other deck that runs at least 8 counterspells? Is that where Bob saves the day?
I'm guessing that's where Xantid Swarm comes in?
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I always board in 3 Xantid Swarm and they either a) don't get resolved, b) don't get drawn, or c) somehow get killed by the one removal spell my opponent didn't side out. I wonder if dropping a tropical island game 1 is a giveaway that I have Swarm in the side? But I don't want to waste 1-2 slots of my sideboard on lands. Anything else worth trying? What about defense grid? That shuts down force and daze. No one has commented on my Cabal Therapy idea either. If your opponent has 2 forces, cabal therapy is a great way to lure them out since if he doesn't counter it, he loses them both anyway?Originally Posted by kicks_422
@sigfig: First off I do not think it is necessarily a bad play to run a land or two in the board (specifically a Trop). I have always found increasing the land count to be handy against control lists. Having an additional land in the deck does increase your ability to play around Pierce and Daze (a little bit). Not to mention it does help to mask your ability to play KGrip and Swarm. As for your Cabal Therapy plan I would be hesitant to run with it. While it does give you the ability to blow out an opponent... I simply don't think it is worth the risk of hitting nothing or calling the wrong card.
Things like this always fascinates me, because I had the opposite "development", where I realised how insane(ly good) IGG really is, started running Chants as protection and then realised how good they are. Maybe I should try the BU 2 Tendrils-deck with Duress-protection again and see if I would miss IGG or not, now that I have played the deck more.
Really Merfolk only has 4 counters and a bunch of taxing effects. Bob and swarm can help - especially since Merfolk generally has no way of dealing with resolved permanents, but it's often enough to Duress them as a resolved Duress effect not only stips a potential counter from their hand but also lets you know exactly how much extra mana you'll need to come up with in order to go off. Think of it this way, a Cabal Ritual without threshold essentially counters a Daze/Cursecatcher.
awesome
Ad Nauseam is the WORST engine ever you could use against Merfolk and this is even more true in a list playing 2 ofs. They have a relatively fast clock and can take you down to few life (and by few, i mean 10-11, when you must start to get some luck because going off with Ad Nauseam is *not* safe) in 2-3 beats. Dark confidant is just too slow in this matchup to shine. Cabal ritual gets owned Daze or Cursecatcher very easily if not cast off a Dark Ritual previously.
Seriously,i'd like to know how that UB list can win against Merfolk piloted by a good player who knows to hit in the right points. I mean, if you aren't able to go off lightning speed, they build a good board and a minimal qty of disruption and bash your ass off.
Plus, I can't understand how it is earthly possible to leave IGG which is a guaranteed way to win against things like Zoo, which they tell me are quite popular in the format. The "you can do a Mini Tendrils then go Ad Nauseam again and then Tendrils again" issue is not always doable, as it is true that those Saito-ish lists do *not* always kill on turn 2. And I'm saying these things *not* because I play Doomsday ANT then I hate every other configuration: I picked up Rico Suave's list which is pretty well tuned, and it sucked losing from Zoo because I didn't have a first turn go-off ("only" third turn) and he just took me down to 13 and I wasn't able to flip enough cards from Ad Nauseam (because of, curiously, flipping the second AdN).
And Dark Confidant was always, ALWAYS underwhelming against blue if not seen in the first turns, and I often found myself in a situation against Pro Bant where I was under pressure attacked by some Goyfs and RWM, had Confidant out, and despites providing me cards he was antisynergic with the aim of the deck, since this deck practically only kills via Ad Nauseam, you want your life to be the highest as possible. I could stand him with IGG (and with Chants, then), but here...
I'm not willing to flame, beware. Everyone is free to play what suits him more. But to me it's underpowering to flat the real deck's possibilities into a single storm engine (ok, there's natural Tendrils, but honestly that's pretty situational to pull off), which happens to be the most unstable one, too. AND I KNOW that Saito won a big tourney and top8ed a GP with it and bla bla bla and now there's this tendency to take his list and copy-paste it, but still, I dunno.
Last edited by Piceli89; 03-24-2010 at 08:31 AM.
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@Emidln,
How critical are Chrome Mox 1-2 to the Ad Nauseam chain when compared to just using a set of SSG? I hate, hate, hate Chrome Mox and would rather have an SSG so I can push more aggressively with Burning Wish or counter Dazes but I'm not sure how it effects the math on the Ad Nauseam front, do you have any experience with the SSGs in your list?
I haven't actually done the math without Chrome Mox. I did test 2 SSG alonside 2 Chrome Mox in NLS with this configuration:
15 Land
4 BS
4 SDT
1 Pon
4 Duress
3 TS
4 Dark Rit
4 LED
4 Petal
2 Mox
2 SSG
4 Wish
4 Mystical
0 IGG
1 DD
1 AN
1 Med
2 SLOTS
with two free slots varying between Chrome Mox #3, SSG #3, Land#16+Rain of Filth, Xantid Swarms #1 and/or #2, Ponders #2 and/or #3.
The way the math works out in this list, you have a total CMC (excluding Ad Nauseam which you can't flip) of 44 (what it is without adding free slots)-48 (SSG#3 + 1CMC spell) depending on your last two slots. It's worth noting that at 44 CMC (Mox + Land) this is the lowest CMC of any modern ANT build while still playing as many or more IMS.
Interestingly enough, adding in SSGs #3 & #4 would leave us one higher than Saito's GP list (he was at 49) and still lower than the second place list.
I'm not entirely sure that I'd want to drop any number of Chrome Mox, despite how awful they are anytime you're not resolving Ad Nauseam because I'd really want to guarantee finding a black IMS if I don't have access to lands as IMS. However, playing 4 Petal, 2 Mox, 4 SSG would be kinda interesting and would also open up the plan of playing Pyroblast, Shattering Spree, or extra ETW in the sb.
In the NLS list I'm proposing, after Ad Nauseam you have 4 ways to win (and thus you can stop on any of these once you get mana to use them):
Doomsday (requires 1(R/U/1)BBB) + Cantrip (assuming you can scrounge up 2 cards in hand as well)
Tendrils (requires 2BB)
Burning Wish (requires 3RBB or 4RR(ETW))
Mystical Tutor + Cantrip (requires 2(1/U)UBB)
Only Burning Wish->Tendrils/ETW is playable without a black IMS given that you could use 2x SSG + 2x LED or 3x SSG + LED. Mystical Tutor + cantrip is playable without a Rit, but you'd still need a black IMS (given that all non-land blue IMS are black IMS in this deck) if you have 2x IMS + 2x LED or 3x IMS + LED. With 10 IMS, Tendrils and Doomsday might have an outside chance of being playable without a Dark Ritual (or maybe a Rain of Filth since it's serviceable on 2 lands and a Dark Rit on 3?) but you're probably going to need one anyway.
However, one of the things a build like this has going for it is that it's so much more efficient with its Ad Nauseam flips that it will, on average, draw more cards than other builds. This means that you'd not only have more IMS, but you'd be drawing as many or more cards than others and thus drawing more of them. This makes going off with 0 mana floating and land per turn already played a lot less scary (making Ad Nauseam a lot better). Incidentally, this also means you should, on average, be able to flip at lower life totals since you can not only draw more cards than opponents but you have more ways of finding a win condition and thus stopping sooner.
I don't have a lot of time for magic right now due to my business picking up, but I would be interested in someone's testing results with a 4x SSG NLS list.
BZK! - Storm Boards
Been there, tried that, still casting Doomsday.
Drawing my deck for 0 mana since 2013.
I'd like to point out that every card you draw off of Confidant is one less card you need to rip from AN. In effect it's a slow rolling AN that happens to occasionally bash or block. Life you lose form Confidant is the exact same life you'd lose while flipping cards to AN (sometimes even less since with Confidant you actually have more control over what you flip).
Just food for thought...
Confidant is also dead while losing you two life when you flip it to Ad Nauseam.
BZK! - Storm Boards
Been there, tried that, still casting Doomsday.
Drawing my deck for 0 mana since 2013.
Indeed. I was merely pointing out that it's untrue that an active Confidant loses you life they you'd otherwise be able to use with Ad Nauseam.
You play AdN because it makes it so easy to get to a lethal Tendrils. Bob seems to be a lot worse at doing that. The difference between fast and slow here seems very significant. I don't think it is a profitable way to consider the role of Bob in a deck like this, or am I missing something?
Theoretically, Bob was meant to slowroll card advantage in the control-ish matchups, allow you to stockpile rituals, dig you to your Chant or Duress and be an annoyance in general. In reality it rarely worked out, and only if your opponent had a slow (ie non Goyf, not Geese) start as Confidant usually needed at least 2, and possibly 3 active turns to do what it's supposed to do. So it faded from most boards, though I know some people who still swear by it.
Last edited by hismastersvoice; 03-25-2010 at 07:18 AM.
There seem to be a few issues here:
1) Bob
Bob is meant to be extra copies of Ad Nauseam, with the drawback of taking a few turns to set-up and being vulnerable to creature removal but with the plus of costing 1B and dealing damage.
His main purpose is to act as a threat that the opponent must stop. He acts as an engine by himself and will quickly overwhelm defensive strategies like CB, Landstill, or anything packing 10+ cards that your Duress/Thoughtseize package would not be able to handle by itself. Typically, decks with that many defensive cards are not able to apply the quick pressure needed to make Bob's slow nature a problem.
With Bob, you can act like you're running 12-14 copies of Duress instead of 6-7. You can draw into Grip. You get inevitability. And most importantly, you don't need to actually resolve another engine because Bob is your engine. And it comes down really early.
2) Merfolk
Bob is not necessary against Merfolk. As mentioned before Bob is for decks that your Duress/Thoughtseize disruption does not handle by itself, but Merfolk is handled quite well by Duress/Thoughtseize. They run 4 cards you care about - Force of Will. They run about 8-12 other cards that are countered by having mana. And the rest of their deck is a simple, mindless beatdown deck.
Once you start thinking of Merfolk like a Zoo deck with 4 Mindbreak Trap, the match becomes much easier to grasp. I know a lot of people respect Merfolk, and it sees a lot of play for budget reasons, but it's really just not a good deck.
The key to beating it is to play mana. Lands are a good start. Rituals, Petals, Chrome Mox, LED, and searching into more of those is a huge advantage. What do their Dazes and Cursecatchers do if you trump them by having....mana? When I see people cut back on their Chrome Mox count and their Cabal Ritual count, then complain about losing to Merfolk, I scratch my head. Does your opening hand have a Duress, 2-3 land, a Ritual, and some kind of gas? Then you are likely going to beat Merfolk. It's really that simple.
For sideboarding, I generally increase my land count by 1 and take out a Top. That's it.
3) Speed
I've seen a few complaints here about struggling against Merfolk/Zoo beatdown.
First, IGG will not save you against Merfolk. IGG is awful against blue in general, and that includes Merfolk. IGG is better against Zoo, but this deck dominates Zoo even without IGG. It's just not necessary.
Now, as for speed, there will be times that Zoo can drop 10-11 damage into you by turn 3. On the play. And if you have a slow hand, you may not go off until turn 3. You could be in a sticky situation as they'll likely be holding a Bolt or two in hand. And you'll go for AN and flip into a 2nd AN and be right at 5 life and need to keep pushing, despite knowing they have a Bolt. And you could flip right into Tendrils and lose. And you could have won with IGG.
But guess what? It's Zoo. You can just go beat them in the other 2 games and take an easy match.
I don't know why people insist on including a card that is only good against matches that the deck should beat anyway. I'd rather have a great match against Zoo and a good match against blue, as opposed to having a terrific match against Zoo and an unfavorable match against blue.
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@Emidlin,
I'm running your list with -3 Rite of Flame, +3 Simian Spirit Guide and -1 Meditate, +1 Infernal Contract to good results in Moscow ATM, I gold fished the deck a ton and found the lack of Chrome Mox crippling off the Ad Nauseam chain. I found Cabal Ritual underwhelming, and I also found I preferred Thought Seize to Duress (or at least having access to a full set of Thought Seize) for removing Meddling Mage and post-board hate bears pre-emptively so I did a 3/3 split MD.
Not sure how necessary Ponder was, I didn't mind it as another cantrip but I didn't find it useful in any Doomsday piles IRL so I'm thinking I'd rather just have another discard effect MD - I really, really hated not opening with 1. I like having the Draw 7's in the list with the SSGs and think it's a big selling point of the card because you can more easily grab Tendrils after it, I wanted that path to victory several times vs aggro.
The deck is damn solid tho', and I'd say SSG > Rite of Flame by a mile.
Are you playing with or without IGG in your main? If you play IGG, there is one pile where Ponder isn't required, but is a mana more efficient than anything else (it's a 1 card in hand pass the turn pile). Outside of that Ponder doesn't seem to be strictly necessary, I just don't know something else that I'd rather have in the deck.
Why switch Contract for Meditate in the main. Being able to go off with two life was the primary motivation here. Is this just so you can cast it off a Dark Rit vs control? I've sided out Meditate or something else for Contract against decks likely to have red blast in the past, but I've never really encountered somewhere I had the ability to produce BBBBBB but not BBBBBU due to the deck only playing one non-blue land (6 black of double Dark Rit requires two black lands, one of which would have to be Underground Sea in this list).
I, too, like a full set of Thoughtseize against hate bears. The lists I generally propose run a 4/3 split on Duress/Thoughtseize if they have the space maindeck with the 4th Thoughtseize wishable game one and sideable against blue and hate bears (often for Duress vs the hate bears).
SSG does seem to be a lot better than Rite of Flame. I could see even 4 SSG working really well in a list without IGG. I don't think Chrome Mox can be removed safely (without severely affecting the power of Ad Nauseam), but it would be interesting to see more data on the subject.
BZK! - Storm Boards
Been there, tried that, still casting Doomsday.
Drawing my deck for 0 mana since 2013.
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