It is, just remember not to run all your discard into daze. The only card they have that you caqre about is Force, as the rest you can just generate more mana to deal withOriginally Posted by ThomasDowd
It is, depends on the list.
Normal fish list (20 fish, 4 force, 4 standstill, 4 daze, 4 curse) really only has force as effective counterspell.
Worlds list played spell snare and spell pierce, which can be a nuisance when you count the additional stuff as well.
Winning game 1 shouldn't be to hard. Winning game 2 is where the challenge begins because they can board in more counters (if they have em)
Even then it's winnable but it's a whole lot easier with xantids, also Xantids were the bomb against vengevival.
I am having moderate success on modo right now with ANT.
3 Chrome Mox
2 Underground Sea
1 Tundra
4 Cabal Ritual
4 Brainstorm
4 Dark Ritual
2 Misty Rainforest
4 Lotus Petal
1 Island
3 Spell Pierce
4 Ponder
4 Infernal Tutor
2 Crystal Vein
1 Tendrils of Agony
2 Gemstone Mine
4 Polluted Delta
1 Swamp
2 Ad Nauseam
4 Lion's Eye Diamond
2 Sensei's Divining Top
4 Duress
1 thoughtseize
1 Ill-Gotten Gains
Sideboard
1 Disfigure
1 Spell Pierce
3 Angel's Grace
3 Chain of Vapor
1 hurk's recall
1 Tropical Island
2 Swords to Plowshares
1 Tendrils of Agony
2 Krosan Grip
That's a bit funny to read, but the only weirdness going on is the 3x spell pierce main. Since I have finished my grinding from ANT into better positioned decks, I figured I would post my list.
First: On modo, the daily metagame is populated with a few zoo and goblins, a lot of show and tell/sneak attack, a lot of team america, a lot of burn, and various countertop/thopters and gerryt tempo counter top decks. As you can see ad nauseum really was a poor choice but I know it well and have been happy with improvements to my skill level that resulted in playing through this meta.
The over abundance of counter balances, show and tells, and hymn to tourachs spurred the use of spell pierce, which has been extremely effective. However, spell pierce works exactly in opposition with the rest of the deck. Its terrible against your best match ups (zoo, goblins, etc) and spectacular versus your worst ones. Additionally, I feel somewhat awakard admitting that i dedicated 3 sideboard slots to burn. Who play's angels grace? really? what a scrub!
In the future, I will probably be upping the hurk's recalls as there is a growing contigent of tezz stacks decks that need to experience the blowout that is hurk's recall vrs stacks.
It appears as though you're running Tropical Island for 2 Krosan Grips in the sideboard. No Xantid Swarm, etc. If that's the case, why not stay on color and just play Wipe Away? You'll typically cast Grip/Wipe eot before you want to go off to get rid of that annoying Counterbalance/CotV/Gaddock Teeg/etc.
I didn't much in testing, as usually It's best just to go get Emrakul and bash face. However, if you board Tendrils out and they represent Karakas (obviously being the worst as you can't even duress it) or Humility (or even Oblivion Ring), you auto lose. As Cbalance is likely to run at least 1 of those, it seems bad not to leave one extra card in the main and not just auto lose to it. If you do board it out, I'd suggest making Enlightened tutor your first target with duress/seize.
Humility isn't actually enough, they usually need Humility and two counters (or set up CB Top) due to Chain. Oblivion Ring is 100% irrel. Basically I think it's just Karakas or bust for them. I'm willing to admit defeat to a singleton.
But why you want to give them one more turn to topdeck options? Isn't it just better to kill CB in one turn instead of 2??
Because we win when they don't.
Offcourse it is better to kill CB in one turn, but that's the whole problem, the deck obviously fails doing that consistently.
I have a question towards proper sideboarding: what do you consider the right cards to take out, when bringing in all 4 Xantids?
Depends on your list. Ship it over and maybe we can help you.
I ment why side out Tendrills when bringing in DD pack? I usually stack Sheldock Isle, Emrakul, Tendrils, mana acceleration and discard so after Emrakul bites them for 15 I am able to seal the deal with ToA.. Therefore removing ToA is bad idea in my oppinion.
You may very well be right and tendrils does come out... I admit I never even considered it. I know I hadn't even thought about what Domel suggested (above) to kill in one turn after DD'ing.
(I'll also say that my DD packages were probably horrible as well)
You can put a ritual + tendrills there.
I prefer mostly to go: shelldock, chain/duress, emrakul, random, random( could be anything, even a new doomsday, if you are going to miss a turn), the piles are very board-specific.
if you are affraid of anything they can do, try EoT-ing the emrakul instead of your own turn, that way you can attack with emrakul 2 turns in a row instead of just one.
You don't miss having a Confidant against discard heavy decks (like the mirror or Deadguy/Rock/Suicide)?
You mean decks that play generic removal like Vindicate, Maelstrom Pulse, Engineered Explosives, Pernicious Deed that they won't be siding out anyway? Diluting your deck in the face of resource denial packages is extremely sketchy.
BZK! - Storm Boards
Been there, tried that, still casting Doomsday.
Drawing my deck for 0 mana since 2013.
I replace Preordains and maybe a Chrome Mox for the Confidants against most blue decks with slow clocks (in which case I agree that Xantid Swarm is better), against TES/ANT, and against less aggressive black builds that don't present a very fast clock (in which case you wouldn't want Xantid Swarm anyway).
I'm less experienced as a combo player than you are, but I have found that resolving a Confidant is gold in the mirror match, especially when one or both players is playing 6-7 Duress effects.
Against resource denial decks, I don't really care much about their Maelstrom Pulses, Engineered Explosives, and Pernicious Deeds. Those "answers" are pretty much dead unless I draw my "threat" (Confidant). I know they have another use because you'll probably want to play your Lion's Eye Diamond to get around their discard, but I'm much more worried about other cards in the matchup. And those Vindicates would be hitting your LED/land if you didn't have a Confidant anyway. From my experience on both sides of the matchup, I have found that the best thing to do against resource denial decks--other than win quickly if possible--is to replenish your resources quickly, and nothing besides Ad Nauseam does that as well as an unanswered Dark Confidant. The fact that they may have answers to your Confidant doesn't mean it's a bad card.
Granted, I do see how Xantid Swarm is a better option than Dark Confidant against against most of the metagame, so I'm taking out the Bobs for now and testing out Xantid Swarm instead. I just wanted P-J to chime in on his experiences without Bob.
First of all:
discard, yeah..whatever.
Since you play a whopping 12 cantrips, you should be able to keep your most important spells in the T2 of you library. Using brainstrom the right way is key.
Even if they rip you hand apart, you are most likely to recover faster due to low-land count and a bloody lot of cantrips which fix your hand fast enough into a proper hand. Don't forget there's 7 protection spells which are all discard to take their hand out as well.
I'd gladly go T1 duress, to take out their seize or hymn and then start pondering like crazy afterwards.
Second:
Dark Confidant: I'm not very fond of it, I've never missed it as well.
The mirror is a die-roll anyways. Xantids is only worth it vs chants, I can't imagining really wanting it as well. With duress I want information, xantids ain't giving me that info.
With discards (chants are awesome as well), I can rip his hand apart, take out his combo-potential, while knowing what they can do.
The problem is, the average combo-deck wants to go off T2or T3. Quesstion: how often does a confidant has it's effect.
Well probably not a lot, maybe 2 turns at most. I'm not playing 6 turns in the mirror. I try to keep my cantrips to their best effect, leaving them on top as much as possible and win by that. Ad nauseams are great here.
Also, just play your LED's, they can't take it, it's 3 mana, and makes every IT into a potential ad nauseam or iggy-chain.
One of the better cards for the mirror is: Orim's Chant, but that requires white. A friend of mine split T2 at sunday's legacy event at GP Paris with the U/B/w ANT list, splashing for chants and silences. Though, he had to admit he faced a ridiculous ammount of wastelands.
As Emidln already stated: they don't even have that many cards to board in to board out all their random removal aiming at your goyf, just because you are scared for 8 cards in their deck, which most likely don't have any affect at all (unless they rip you of your last lands and you never draw any).
Xantid Swarm and Dark Confidant are only good vs decks with counters and no removal. I always ignore discard decks.
My current list looks like this:
2 Island
2 Swamp
2 Underground Sea
1 Tropical Island
4 Polluted Delta
2 Misty Rainforest
2 Verdant Catacombs
2 Chrome Mox
4 Lotus Petal
4 Lion's Eye Diamond
4 Dark Ritual
4 Cabal Ritual
4 Preordain
4 Ponder
4 Brainstorm
4 Duress
3 Thoughtseize
2 Ad Nauseam
1 Ill-Gotten-Gains
1 Tendrils of Agony
4 Infernal Tutor
SB:
4 Doomsday
1 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
1 Shell-Dock Isle
4 Xantid Swarm
1 Pithing Needle
2 Chain of Vapor
1 Echoing Truth
1 HurkylŽs Recall
I mostly go -1 preordain, -3 thoughteize/duress + 4 xantids.
You could got -4 duress/seize + xantids, it's about preferences mostly.
This way you keep the ammount of protective cards equal or near equal, while improving the quality of the protective spells, since only a force takes out xantids, that way you go 2-for-1 while a duress only takes a single force against most decks you board them in.
Thanks a lot! Does your description also match Tempo Decks like Canadian/ Team America/ Tempo Bant.dec or only the Merfolk MU in particular? I just donŽt feel comfortable cutting any discard against the aforementioned - but taking out Cantrips/ Mana doesnŽt really make sense either. Normally, IŽd go like -1 Preordain, -1 Ponder, -1 Cabal, -1 Chrome, but sometimes I found myself in situations where I was either lacking Mana or Cantrips to find IT or AN/IGG, but with tons of protection in hand/ on board... maybe IŽll try a split - taking out 2 discard, 1 cantrip, 1 cabal and see how it works.
And what about the Combo MU? Of course against decks without Chant-Effects, Xantids stay in the board - but against the "standard" TES list for instance or against DDFT, what would you take out there? Again, I feel every discard spell is golden in those matches, thus cutting any seems bad. Or is this false logic?
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