[Archetype] CounterTop

[Hanni]

Without Survival, you can't just tutor up a Shriekmaw to kill my Peacekeeper, or a Pridemage to destroy my Tormod's Crypt. Our hate will actually be reliable now that Vengevine players don't also have a toolbox of answers.

Except the deck is 1-2 turns faster than Survival versions, which makes it possible to race relevant hate. Plus, you know, there's a sideboard, allowing Vengevine to bring in a backup plan.

[keys]

Except the deck is 1-2 turns faster than Survival versions, which makes it possible to race relevant hate. Plus, you know, there's a sideboard, allowing Vengevine to bring in a backup plan.

Typical Survival Vengevine had about a 4 turn clock. Are you saying this deck wins on turn 2 or 3 consistently? Intuition costs 2U... how often are you expecting to get turn 1 Imp/Rootwalla/Vine hands? You have a 10% chance of having all three in your starting 7... I call bullshit.

[Barbwire]

Typical Survival Vengevine had about a 4 turn clock. Are you saying this deck wins on turn 2 or 3 consistently? Intuition costs 2U... how often are you expecting to get turn 1 Imp/Rootwalla/Vine hands? You have a 10% chance of having all three in your starting 7... I call bullshit.

<---Concure, though I believe the actual % rate is lower than 10 ;)

[keys]

The chance of having one card in your opening 7 is about 47%. The probability of all three is .47 ^ 3, correct? Maybe I'm doing this wrong...

Of course there are other combinations of cards that will put Vengevines into play on turn 2, but none of these will be faster than a turn 3 kill.

[Barbwire]

The chance of having one card in your opening 7 is about 47%. The probability of all three is .47 ^ 3, correct? Maybe I'm doing this wrong...

Of course there are other combinations of cards that will put Vengevines into play on turn 2, but none of these will be faster than a turn 3 kill.

I believe the % of having 1 card out of 60 in your opening hand is 1.6% this number increases according to copies of the card within the deck so for a consistant scenario we'll go with 4 = 6.4%. Now wanting to have 3 of the cards you need to pull it off in opening hand you do 6.4/3 = 2.13% overall. I believe, though I'm not that great at statistics.

[Barbwire]

Regarless of the actual % rate, I don't believe that deck spits out a consistant 2-3 kill

[luma]

The odds for having at least one specific card in your hand doesn't increase straight according to the number of copies. The odds for a one-off to appear in your opening 7 is 7/60 = 11.7%. For a card that you have two in your deck, 22.1%; three: 31.5%, four: 39.9%.

If you need one each of three cards in your opening 7 (imp/rootwalla/vine for example), and there's four of each in your deck, the odds for that are 6.5% if you allow multiples of those three cards, 3,2% if you don't.

[Barbwire]

So ya...I was closeish, forgot to divide the opening 7

[Mantis]

IIRC from math 5 years ago, this is the way to calculate:
For a 1-of to show up in your opening 7: 1 - (59/60 x 58/59 x 57/58 x 56/57 x 55/56 x 54/55 x 53/54 ) = don't have a caluclator here
For a 2 - of it's 1 - (58/60 x 57/59 x etc. etc.)
For 3-of: 1 - (57/60 - 56/59 etc.)
Etc.

First you calculate the chance of not drawing the card and then you have to substract that chance from 1 (or 100%)
You have to keep in mind that with each card you draw, when opening your hand of 7, the number of cards left in your deck decreases and the chances of drawing the card become higher.

[Nidd]

Anyone got a recent list of a Bant CounterTop without the Red splash at hand?

[bokepa]

Anyone got a recent list of a Bant CounterTop without the Red splash at hand?

This is what im using:

2 x Flooded Strand
3 x Windsteaph Heath
4 x Misty Rainforest
3 x Tropical Island
3 x Tundra
1 x Island
1 x Forest
1 x Plains
1 x Dryad Arbor

4 x Noble Hierarch
4 x Tarmogoyf
3 x Rhox War Monk
1 x Trygon Predator
1 x Progenitus

4 x FoW
3 x Daze
4 x CB
4 x SDT
4 x Brainstorm
4 x Swords to Plowshares
3 x Natural Order
2 x Story Circle (Testing)

SB (Testing):

2 x Dueling Grounds
1 x Maze of ith
1 x Academy Ruins
1 x Knight of the Reliquary
1 x Empyrial Archangel
2 x Krosan Grip
3 x Spell pierce
3 x Tormods Crypt
1 x EE

The 2 Story Circle main:

Pros:

They prevent Trygon Predators from owning you.
They make your CB better attracting removal.
They stop opposing Progenitus.
They give you time to resolve your own Progenitus.
They make opposing Piledrivers, Terravores, Countryside Crushers, Knight of the Reliquary and Coralhelm Commanders less scary.
Make opposing burn easier to deal with.
Prevents Jitte and Swords from getting out of control.
Its a soft lock with Dueling Grounds post side.

Cons:
Its a dead card vs Blue and Black control (AKA BUG JaceStill) wich is a bad matchup.
You need a lot of white mana for it to work properly
Normal sided cards against us like: Pithing Needle, Krosan Grip are good against it.


The testing synergies of SB i think are evident:

Dueling Grounds owns Tribal and lets you soft-lock with Empyrial, Maze of ith or Story.

Knight is there as extra body and a tutor for Maze of ith / Academy Ruins. I use EE and Tormods becouse they are recovered with Academy

Spell pierce vs combo and mirror

Krosan because its neccesary

Empyirial vs Zoo, burn, sligh...

[AggroSteve]

hi guys, lately i have been toying around with a UGR countertop-list using the Grove of the Burnwillows+Punishing Fire combo, but no Jace TMS (haven't got the money)

here is my list, sideboard is still under construction but obviously for both MD and SB i will take every suggestion under consideration, and i would also love some constructive criticism, since it allways helps developing the deck further

here is my list, so (still have only got the shocklands, but will get real duals as fast as possible)

2x island
1x mountain
1x forest
4x grove of the burnwillows
4x steam vents
2x breeding pool
3x scalding tarn
3x misty rainforest

4x tarmogoyf
4x loarscale coatl
2x vendilion clique

4x senseis divining top
4x counterbalance
4x brainstorm
2x ponder
2x spell snare
3x counterspell
4x force of will
4x lighting bolt
4x punishing fire

first of all, what do you think of the list, second thing what could you see being improved and how, what cards (shocklands aside) would you cut for what
from testings punishing fire feels quite fine against any kind of weenie and tribal, but a little manaintensive, and loarscale coatl gets fat quite fast, which is the only reason it is in the deck, since otherwise i can get a bit of problems with opposing fat, due to the lack of StoP

what do you think on counterspell vs. daze which counter would be more suited here in your opinion?

[ZeroStride]

First you calculate the chance of not drawing the card and then you have to substract that chance from 1 (or 100%)
You have to keep in mind that with each card you draw, when opening your hand of 7, the number of cards left in your deck decreases and the chances of drawing the card become higher.

This is correct, for the math bit above that quote, you want to be using this, though: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperge...c_distribution and you will probably want a refresher on Binomial Distribution (req. for solving Hypergeometric): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binomial_distribution

In this case:
'n' is the number of cards drawn, 7.
'N' is the number of cards in your library, I am assuming 60.
'm' is the number of times the desired card occurs in N, assuming 4.
'k' is the number of desired successes, so 1.

So in the average case (60 card deck, 4-of-card, 7-card opening hand) you have a 39.9% chance to see at least one instance of the desired card. Please note the 'at least' part.

[Barbwire]

I chose counterspell over Daze for my build (which is a page or two back). I like daze, but late game its just not as affective as a hard counter, and you can't always count on the CBT to take care of every spell.

[Rune]

hi guys, lately i have been toying around with a UGR countertop-list using the Grove of the Burnwillows+Punishing Fire combo, but no Jace TMS (haven't got the money)

here is my list, sideboard is still under construction but obviously for both MD and SB i will take every suggestion under consideration, and i would also love some constructive criticism, since it allways helps developing the deck further

I don't think the Grove/Fire combo fits very well in CounterTop since both "combos" use a a lot of mana. Punishing Fire + Grove of the Burnwillows is pretty awesome, but I think it's better in a deck like Next Level Threshold where you don't have to spend a lot of mana on topping each turn. The NLT decks can also protect the Grove with Stifle. For Ugr decks I also think that Jace2 is a better way of answering fatties than by playing Lorescale Coatl.

[Valtrix]

Honestly, if you're going for Grove/fire, then you may want to consider changing your manabase a bit to support knight of the reliquary over lorescale coatl. He can help you fetch your combo better and is frankly just much much stronger than lorescare coatl in general. Then you could also replace the bolts with swords. One thing I notice is that you're going to have a very tough time dealing with anything with more than two toughness.

As such, that's part of why I'm also not convinced that grove/fire is worthwhile in this deck. 2 damage is not a whole lot in legacy. You can some guys, but it's really not enough against a lot of the threats in legacy. Sure, it's awesome against goblins, can hit half of zoo's creatures, and might even get there against merfolk if you're lucky (though they might just play lords smartly). This seems pretty narrow to me. In addition the combo is fairly slow as a finisher, and it also gives you an awkward manabase. A R/G land is usually not what countertop wants. Sometimes even just drawing your basics when you need sucks.

[Malakai]

The question is a simple one:

Within a countertop shell, is the Grove of the Burnwillows - Punishing Fire combo fast/powerful enough to be better than the alternatives (e.g. Firespout) against Merfolk and Goblins?


---


I am doubtful, but I have not done the testing. Note that the "countertop shell" portion is vital; quoting results from a loam or zoo shell is a waste of time.

[AggroSteve]

not even i think i have done enough testings, but burnwillows/p.fire combo gives us at least another way to generate CA, and it works fine against any tribal deck and thanks to the recursion you would not even be forced to have counterbalance out against these decks, so i think it is acceptable in ways of manaintensivness... at least against tribal

though the main problems with the list i posted are probably that even with on color down the manabase is just as shaky as before and i actually give my opponents more outs/ways to kill me simply because i do not have swords to plowshares

but lets compare firespout for instance to punishing fire.... firespout is awesome at burning out tribals, but goblins actually are able to recover quite fast post-firespout, and merfolk sometimes have to many lords out at the times you find a spout
punishing fire would be way more mana intensive... but you can still use your countertop to counter various things and still get punishing fire back to your hands, and if opponent did not play anything just burn out a lord/goblin at end of turn .... the main problem with this is deciding what is more important to get rid of

maybe you guys are just right that p.fire is not well placed in a countertop-shell..... still i will do some testings and maybe come up with a good list^^
(but loarscale coatls will be removed from the list, its only stupidly big and does nothing, i prefer clique after testing both)

PS: i would still love if you guys would help me get some more ideas.... lately 3 creatures caught my eye that could be used instead of coatl

trygon predator
troll ascetic
omnath, locus of mana

sorry i do not know how to link pictures

[Valtrix]

not even i think i have done enough testings, but burnwillows/p.fire combo gives us at least another way to generate CA, and it works fine against any tribal deck and thanks to the recursion you would not even be forced to have counterbalance out against these decks, so i think it is acceptable in ways of manaintensivness... at least against tribal

That's the thing though....I'm not sure that combo that's going to take up a lot of your MD slots is worth playing just because it's "good vs. tribal", since I think it hogs up space against a lot of other things and makes your manabase real awkward. I'll admit that I've considered it against goblins in my build because that matchup can be very hard, but I think that goblins is going to decline in the metagame yet again. In terms of other decks though, firespout is pretty awesome against merfolk and zoo (probably the only other two decks that this fire combo is probably useful against), but I think in most cases I'd just want the firespouts to hit wild nacatls, leveled coralhelms, or multiple lords.

I think there's also strength to firespout in the sense that it forces your opponent to slow down their assault, whereas fire does not do so. Just having the threat of wrathing their board can buy you a lot of much needed time sometimes. Furthermore, firespout has usefulness against destroying empty the warren tokens, and let me tell you that firespout has saved me several times against combo this way...

To me it just seems that firespout is more reliable over the fire combo without any of the (manabase) drawbacks of trying to support the fire combo.

sorry i do not know how to link pictures

Put "cards" and "/cards" around what you want to have linked, only use brackets [ & ] instead of the quotes I used. The nice part is that if you put that command just around a list of a bunch of cards it will link all of them and be smart to figure out what are actually cards! This is useful when linking a whole decklist.

[Koby]

Whatever happened to Baseruption variant of Counterbalance/Top?

Baseruption Thread

Is it still viable today? If so, what can we update? If not, what has invalidated its strategy?