Vengevine :/Originally Posted by majikal
It's kind of interesting to have these "free" extra creatures come out, but it's pretty dependent on Survival to be good and it's a lot of dancing imo.
That's pretty much how I feel about it, but it does mess up Counterbalance decks pretty much all by itself. The only problem is Pithing Needle on SotF just completely shuts that plan down, so you have to get an active Survival to do anything with it. So is the risk worth the reward?
Or is Cold-Eyed Selkie just a better plan overall?
I'll do some testing when I have a chance, but it seems like it's at least worth looking into.
vengevine does get stronger the more mana u get into play. Vengevine unfortunately doesn't beat goyf :(
Waikiki brings up a couple points that I didn't even think about. But yeah, the more you invest, the better they get, but it's risky, clunky and I'd never want to hard cast one or have it stuck in my hand.
I have yet to play with Selkie, but I know how much it annoys me when Merfolk islandwalk me, so I would imagine that an exalted Selkie could wreck. With Hierarch ramping mana and the 3cc cost (awkward for CB decks usually), I could see Selkie being the best attacker on your end of the board with Goyf and RWM locking up the ground.
I could also see CB players bringing in some form of grave hate against us to prevent LRIona, so I would imagine increasing graveyard dependency as being bad to some degree. But maybe I'm misjudging, because we don't have much dependency (no Genesis, Anger, or other traditional antics) so maybe to some CB players, it would be like Crypt for Iona and Squee. But I'm not sure. I'd just hate to see all of that investment get flushed when you had the option of just going Selkie who doesn't rely on anything but itself and takes advantage of exalted and the fact that the opponent is playing islands.
So far testing with selkie has been awesome. They make enchantment hate a little more dead. Selkie draws ton of cards if he doesn't get blown away. I use the sprite build to prevent this from happening.
@grave hate. During the GP I got all sorts of grave hate against me and I was always happing to see those cards. Survival can easily play around it and its more useless slots for them.
Just went undefeated in the $1k event in GA today. Selkie was a rock star. I'm too tired to give a detailed breakdown but here's what I played against:
Round 1 ANT - 2-0.
Round 2 UW Tempo/Ninjas - 2-0. Selkie got there hard.
Round 3 Goblins - 2-0.
Round 4 - Draw
Round 5 - Draw
Top 8 split the $1100 and played for points.
Round 1 ANT - 2-1. My friend Derrick playing my ANT build. He actually scooped to me before the match started and we just played it out for fun.
Round 2 Bant Aggro - 2-0. Selkie gets there again.
Round 3 Merfolk 2-0. Goyfs, Monks, and Meddling Mages all in his mouth.
Oh, so YOU beat Thor. I didn't recognize the name he gave me. Congrats though.
Dead or Alive, you're coming with me.
-Robocop-
where were you? :p
A 5 page argumentative essay on Walking is where i was. /kills self
Dead or Alive, you're coming with me.
-Robocop-
Sounds like fun =/
Folks, I've been looking through a lot of Bant Survival related stuff over the last weeks and have looked closely at about 50 lists on deckcheck, goldfished a bit and played the deck on MWS and I must say, I enjoy that deck. Guess it's time for me to buy some of the format staples like Goyf, Force and some more Duals.
I tinkered with a lot of things in this deck, as the deck itself is very flexible, something I really enjoy about it and I came up with a list and I would like you who play that deck a tad longer than me to criticise it.
// Lands
2 [5E] Forest (2)
1 [EUL] Island (3)
4 [ZEN] Misty Rainforest
1 [US] Plains (3)
3 [A] Savannah
4 [B] Tropical Island
1 [B] Tundra
3 [JGC] Windswept Heath
// Creatures
1 [FD] Eternal Witness
1 [ZEN] Iona, Shield of Emeria
1 [P3] Loyal Retainers
4 [CFX] Noble Hierarch
4 [ALA] Rhox War Monk
3 [LRW] Spellstutter Sprite
1 [10E] Squee, Goblin Nabob
4 [FUT] Tarmogoyf
2 [DIS] Trygon Predator
2 [MOR] Vendilion Clique
// Spells
4 [CST] Brainstorm
4 [AL] Force of Will
2 [LRW] Ponder
4 [EX] Survival of the Fittest
4 [4E] Swords to Plowshares
// Sideboard
SB: 3 [EVE] Cold-Eyed Selkie
SB: 1 [ROE] Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
SB: 3 [DDD] Faerie Macabre
SB: 1 [EVE] Glen Elendra Archmage
SB: 2 [TSP] Krosan Grip
SB: 3 [ZEN] Spell Pierce
SB: 2 [FNM] Tormod's Crypt
I think the SB is fine for an unknown meta, what do you think?
Emrakul is mainly integrated as a matter of anti-GY hate and to put my GY back into my library.
If I want to shuffle back some stuff I always use jotun grunt or loaming shaman. They can also annoy the opponent.
@Majikal
Grats! nice to see you liked the selkie they have been pretty awesome for me awell.
Looking forword for a more detailed report + decklist sb strategies If you feel like it. PM could also work tho.
I see where you're coming from, but isn't the Annihilator ability useful against, let's say, Enchantress?
While this seems cornercase in regards of big tournaments, 1 of our local players plays Enchantress and we often joke around that pretty much every player in Germany has the cards for Enchantress, so it seems like a decent inclusion.
Also, Loaming Shaman is kinda one-shot, Emrakul can keep shuffling stuff back. Isn't that relevant?
I haven't ever lost a match against enchantress and I never ever felt I needed a card against it beside iona. Seems like overkill to me.
They can easily O ring emrakul anyways.
Okay, sounds logical to me.
Anything else you can say about my list? Is it ok so far?
It's pretty nice so far. Just play alot with it and tune it into your own preference. I prefer to run pridemage for the additional exalted effect u get instead of the predator. I run 2 pride 1 predator.
I find myself kicking in with a single faerie with some exalted boosts on it often enough.
I also think u want llawan vs merfolk and progenitus in the side.
I can wholeheartedly agree with Waikiki on that front: Llawan is a freakin' house. If you can land Llawan, the game is over for Merfolk.
I like Loaming Shaman too, but it isn't nearly as impressive against anything that tries to use Show and Tell and/or Eureka. Grunt is a limited effect that requires it to be in play. Emrakul does multiple things:
1) Protects graveyard
2) Provides massive threat via Retainers
3) Provides massive threat via Show and Tell
4) Repeatedly shuffles threats back in
Grunt doesn't do most of these things. Grunt has the upside of being able to shuffle opponent's cards back in, but that's about the only real advantage I can see over Emrakul. Emrakul is a pretty solid SB card against several decks. Recylcing threats vs Counter heavy decks, protecting GY and being a threat vs SnT decks makes it a worth singleton IMO.
I'm not a big fan of Eternal Witness. She's pretty slow. I don't think you need 4x RMW either. And I prefer Pridemage to Predator. I want my kills now and there aren't many decks that require multiple Enchant/Artifact kills to beat. We're testing out Meddling Mage in place of Sprite right now. It's doing pretty well so far.
your missing the most important thing.
Grunt does something without survival.
Grunt is actually castable and a nice clock.
Emrakul is just fancy imo.
I haven't ever had a moment where I wished I could shuffle something back while I could just as wel find something new.
Grunt is too slow from my own testing. There are lots of times, particularly against decks packing Counterbalance, where I just need to get Iona in play, but my Loyal Retainers gets countered, or Iona gets bounced back to my hand, and Emrakul lets me just go off again the next turn. Also it's really good against Lands, because you gain inevitability even through Maze of Ith and Glacial Chasm.
@ majikal, what list did you play at Chatsworth?
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