Usually I use it this way: ramp up to 4 mana, swords a guy (or brainstorm), play Wing Shards. A huge swing in your favor. If not, its still 1 for 1. You also forget situations where they path/bolt/chain the possible blocker.
In the above mentioned situation, even Disenchant is better than Needle. Modern Survival runs up to 4xQP, postboard Grips and/or Nature Claims come in (they always board them), and its not like they have a lot of targets (we only run 2 jittes and maybe 1-2 Relics). If they don't have all that, Needle is golden, but they do, you just can not count on them not having the removal, because they have more of it, than you have needles. And suddenly its a do-nothing.
No it doesn't. They run 2-3. And if they do: first place a Needle@Survival, if you draw a second Needle, put it on Pridemage.Originally Posted by Tinefol
If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, it's probably delicious.
Team ADHD-To resist is to piss in the wind. Anyone who does will end up smelling.
Retribution of the Meek is pretty narrow since it can't even hit most of the Zoo creatures, RWM,Qasali, the Merfolks, and so on. Not even Goyfs, on certain situations.Add to this the fact that it costs 3 and it's a sorcery, so you'll arguably have to tap out yourself and get Daze on your teeth. Also, since most of those decks operate on Exalted, it's even worse.
Path of Exile instead is obviously antisynergic with the deck, you want to progressively manascrew them and you're giving them a wasteland-proff land in exchange of a creature.
At this point, I think I'll regret my words and fuck it all. I'm going to try Wing Shards. But i still think it's too slow and, most of all, easily bypass-able. How many of them are you trying, Tinefol?
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Avatar of kicks_422's creation and property
2-3 in the board. I think 2 is the right number against most decks, you don't want them clog in your hand early game, I only want 3 against Progenitus deck or non-blue aggro (zoo, berserk stompy).
Reanimator builds, especially the ones touted on thesource splash green for nature's claim/grip, which led me to reject the meekstone plan. However, with all the hype surrounding the LSV/GerryT-style straight-up UB build, maybe meekstone will get the job done. Terastrodon could be a problem, but I guess that's easier to deal with than some of the other potential targets.
I am playing Wing Shards too, and can just suggest to test it before throwing away. For me it was always awesome to the moment. Also WS can be a good surprise card in the mirror.
What's the problem with Curfew? It's kinda bad at dealing with NO Prog but deals with reanimator just fine.
Wing Shard seems bad at dealing with Iona at white.
I'm going to try Waterfront Bouncer. He's funny with Fathom Seer, too...
Was this even a real Skeggi's hero?Lol. You're my hero.
Did some pre-board testing last night against 3 different decks NO Bant, faeries(jitte), Survival(not survival toolbox). Did well against survival and about 50/50 against the other two. I was running 3 vials, 1 sphinx. Wastelanding green sources, StP noble hierarch, and saving force for natural order seems to be the key for bant. Faeries come down to trying to make the Jitte stick but we kept canceling each others and eventually bitterblossom and basilisk collar was too much. Survival I'm still not sure about since there seems to be a bunch of builds out there.
Other then countertop I'm not sure how much I like aether vial. Seems like other then the occasional combat trick I almost never have a problem getting creatures into play with the mana I have.
The few times I had sphinx I just used it as FoW fodder. The only time I can cast it is when wayfarer is really busy, if its not I rarely have cards in hand I want to dump. Next time I play I'm going to try 2 Aven Mimeomancers as they can hurt gofy, KoTR with Jitte and make fathom and wayfarer hitters later in the game.
I have a lot of experience playing with mimeomancer in my non-merfolk fish. I actually do love the card. The problem I usually ran into is that burn is pretty predominant in my meta and he just gets torched by everything... darkblast as well. Worrying about how easy it is to remove something isn't always the best logic when deciding cards, but he is fragile. I was playing three colors too and found him easily castable, but I wouldn't suggest tapping out for him. By the time you have three mana, daze might not be that useful if the opponent has mana open. Giving three power and evasion to your own creatures is pretty awesome, but I have to tell you that in all my testing against Canadian Thresh I think I maybe put a counter on a goyf once. It speeds up Fish's clock oh so much. I ended up cutting it. However ending it right quick with 3/1 flying javelineers or lavamancers was super fun... that and 3/1 flying meddling mages. My 3/1 flying horsemanship Wu Scouts with jitte was just lolzy.
All in all, mimeomancer is win more beater who dies really easily and it's sad when you don't get a feather counter off.
You should probably know that the creatures remain 3/1 flyers even if mimeomancer leaves play. Read the card carefully or go read the official FAQ on that set if you have doubts.
I always giggled at the thought of making a 3/1 flying dreadnaught but I never got to test it against dreadstill. Extra stifles spoil fun though I imagine.
By the time you can cast mimeomancer, you can probably cast SAvenger and she has a bigger ass with vigilance to boot. If you're looking for something to sub out for the sphinx, would it be wrong to consider Serendib Efreet? 4 power is nice, but you have less chance to pwn yourself with the efreet if they rfg the sphinx. Who are we going to be doing battle with in the air that has a bigger butt than 3 besides some crazy reanimation target? tbh I'm scared of those turns where I have discarded cards but haven't drawn cards off him yet but I am very much looking forward to trying it considering it made it into pi4's list, someone who has done infinitely more testing than anyone else as far as I can tell. No, I don't think we want Sea Drake either.
Here's a gatherer search that looks for flying blue creatures with power 4.
http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Se...nced&color=%20[U]&type=%20[%22Creature%22]&text=%20[flying]&power=%20=[4]
GL
I don't understand this logic. I agree that you should be additionally scared that sphinx be removed, because you stand to not only lose the 4/4, but to lose cards drawn yet. But if you replace sphinx with efreet, you will most definitely not draw cards.
It's like someone presents like a 50/50 shot at $100,000,000, and you're like: well if I took that, then I'd be biting my fingernails, so I'll just deny it.
Discarding cards to sphinx is ~ nothing (and if it's not, you should just cash it in right away.) Sphinx is only bad when your hand is full of goodies, in which case you should win anyway. And even then, sphinx is a blue card, meaning there are 8 ways to dump it. But you don't even have to dump it. Most decks in the format fold to UWT if UWT is holding 3 or 4 threats. So you have a choice: would you like to run a 4/4 that draws cards like 80% of the time, and then gets swordsed the other 20%?
Or would you rather not draw cards, so that way when someone swords, you don't lose out on drawing cards. (But only because you decided to lose out on it by not running sphinx.)
See how ridiculous that line of reasoning is?
To make this even more accessible to anybody who failed to understand my above efforts, consider a creature 1UU: 4/4 flying with you draw 3 cards when it dies.
When someone swords it, you're obviously disappointed. It doesn't matter how much you paid for it. Even if you paid just U for it, you should be just as disappointed as if you paid 3UU. What you lose is: 3 cards and a 4/4 flying. I'd be pretty upset if that happened. But if you're going to count that as a loss, then you should definitely have counted me as getting 1UU for a 4/4 flying AND +3 cards as soon as I cast sphinx, for otherwise there's an imbalance in your counting where I lose cards that I was never counted as having. But what you shouldn't say is like: I don't want to play a massively advantageous card, because if my opponent happens to luck out an answer, then I only get ~status quo, which is scary!
Even efreet's drawback is worse when it gets swordsed. Efreet probably cost you 2-3 life in the time you're assuming either creature sticks around, and then it having 1 less power probably gave your opponent 2 extra life, and lets you gain 1 fewer life off swords, so like a 5-6 life swing. And then that's the case where sphinx and efreet are closest: when they don't really live to do that much, AND the removal removing them was an "RFG" removal. In that case, the relative change is I lose my 3 most useless cards to swing the life totals by 5-6. That's pretty close, unless I have a brainstorm.
But it's not even in the same ballpark when it doesn't get swordsed, cause then it's an extra 2 damage to the opponent's face instead of 2 damage to me, and if the opponent hasn't died, then efreet probably evens the damage score over the next two turns by dealing 1 to you, 3 to him, but vexing sphinx does everything efreet will do for the rest of the game while letting you trade 3 cards for 3 cards.
As I said, it's not even in the same ball park.
Is Drake that bad even with Fathom Seer?No, I don't think we want Sea Drake either.
GL
Can you post your most recent decklist, please? I still cannot find a place for some cards (namely the Sphinx), mainly because I play 18 lands and use four equipments.
Was this even a real Skeggi's hero?Lol. You're my hero
List is at the bottom of page 45 I think.
Maybe I shouldn't have mentioned Serendib Efreet :)
The decklist is pretty solid it seems. I'm sure there are incoming top finishes.
I'd like to hop on some MWS tourney with it but it doesn't look like I'm going to get WINE to run it.
Stoked for rest of cards to arrive. Does anyone have a link to a page with sideboarding suggestions against certain decks? Some guidance on what to take out and what to add for the MU would be very appreciated. Don't want to overlook something.
There are a few reasons I dislike sphinx.
1) Unless wayfarer is active I almost never have cards in hand I want to dump. I want to play mom, avenger, seer, swords, fathom, etc....there just isn't anything other then land want to see. And even then I will save brainstorm + fetch/wayfarer to get rid of the land anyway.
2) StP is the most used removal in the format. NOBant, zoo, dark zoo is popular where I play and I see swords about every other game.
Aven looks pretty flexible as I can weaken there creatures and pop with jitte or turn a late game useless wayfarer or mom into a 3/1 flyer.
Serendib is another creature I am looking at as well. I also want to try that coralhelm commander since its UU I can vial it in and for 2 and level it to a 3/3 flyer or even 4/4 late game.
Are we reading my posts?
Really?
Yes, really.
This was posted on the same page in fact.
Pi4, you make no sense at all. You talk like Sphinx is a draw engine.
Except that when you get to draw 3 cards from a dying Sphinx (if he doesn't die because you don't pay the upkeep), he's already cost you 1+2+3=6 cards. If he does die during upkeep, he costed 1+2=3 cards, so you net nothing. If you count the Sphinx too, you have CDA.
If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, it's probably delicious.
Team ADHD-To resist is to piss in the wind. Anyone who does will end up smelling.
My earlier reply of "Really?" should have had sarcasm tags.
I said I dislike sphinx for a few reasons and was voicing my opinion. I thought the general use for these threads was to work on deck archtypes. Pool testing/game results so people could try different cards and report back so we can all learn. Not sure how comments like "Are we reading my posts?" help with discussion. While your opinion has weight since you have played the deck a ton, it is still opinion, not law.
But you should not have been discarding cards that you would count as cards. Like if you have to pitch serra avenger, jitte, brainstorm to keep it going, then you just cash in for the 3 cards.
I don't get it, are you that reluctant to take a "-3" when you lose land land vial?
@kicbak
Also, ideas about what makes the deck good are not opinions. There is a set of ideas that are the best, and lesser ideas. You can criticize me for not having the optimizing idea, but have the balls to not get all post-modernist and say "EVERYBODY GETS THE RIGHT TO THEIR OWN OPINION LOLOLOLOL"
To Both of you:
I should note that I thought it was so self evident that worthless cards should not be counted in "CDA" that I probably did not bother to emphasize it enough to make the point. I thought I was being pretty clear when I counted sphinx as "+3" but I suppose instead of assuming I was implying the discarded cards were worthless, you assumed I forgot that you had to discard or something. I'm sorry you think I'm that absentminded, but generally if there are two arguments, and one doesn't make sense, and one makes sense, I'm making the argument that makes sense.
Here that argument is: the cards you discard don't hurt you much. Definitely not even close to the full -3. I never pump sphinx to keep it alive after the 3rd age counter, but only because I never have 6 craps in hand.
It's your problem if you want to do strict bookkeeping on CA just so you can tell your friends about "that one time you got +4, yeah!" But I don't get why you can't just make the next level of abstraction, and recognize that sphinx effectively gives you card advantage in all cases except ones where you win. (I.e. your hand has no dead)
@Skeggi: I assume you read my whole post, otherwise it would be flawed of you to send in a rebuttal. Supposing you did, is it that you disagree with my claim that sphinx is virtual CA, or is it that you misunderstood? I felt like I was completely forthcoming on that aspect of sphinx, but I suppose I didn't type it in italicized bold all caps or anything.
Also, since some people apparently don't understand that an analogy can be a rescaled version of the situation (so playing a vexing sphinx only mirrors a 50/50 shot at 100 million $ in the sense that it's a + vs. nothing bet, not that you literally get an EV of 50 million everytime you start a game with it.) I thought I would clarify. I normally don't give analogies since people I talk to can usually understand things in the abstraction, but in general presentation analogies and examples typically aid understanding. If you wish to be so obtuse as to ignore the purpose of the analogy (I know you're smart enough to see through the fact that vexing sphinx is not literally a 50/50 shot at 100 million) then I can't really help you. The deck has a record to back up my claims, I personally am even on the scoreboard as being much higher than 50%, and Matt's claim shows unbiased tournament result averages to be around like 65%, I don't really see why there's doubt. There should be trust, if for no other reasons than empirical ones. The "biased" results of taking a sample from TS was even like >70%.
Toward the general public: I'm now *testing* 3 curfews and 1 aether spellbomb. If anybody else is interested in gathering ideas on this, let me know what you find.
// Lands
4 [ON] Flooded Strand
4 [A] Tundra
3 [ON] Windswept Heath
3 [TE] Wasteland
2 [9E] Plains (1)
1 [BD] Island (3)
// Creatures
4 [ON] Weathered Wayfarer
2 [CS] Jotun Grunt
4 [DD2] Fathom Seer
4 [UL] Mother of Runes
4 [TSP] Serra Avenger
2 [WWK] Stoneforge Mystic
2 [CS] Vexing Sphinx
// Spells
4 [BD] Brainstorm
4 [AL] Force of Will
4 [OV] Swords to Plowshares
2 [BOK] Umezawa's Jitte
2 [DS] AEther Vial
3 [NE] Daze
2 [ZEN] Spell Pierce
// Sideboard
SB: 1 [LRW] Thorn of Amethyst
SB: 2 [ALA] Relic of Progenitus
SB: 3 [MI] Enlightened Tutor
SB: 1 [SHM] Wheel of Sun and Moon
SB: 2 [ALA] Ethersworn Canonist
SB: 2 [WL] Aura of Silence
SB: 3 [US] Curfew
SB: 1 [MR] AEther Spellbomb
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