+1Originally Posted by Norm
Looking foward to your report. :-)
I don't like Daze that much either, but it's advantages are pretty big: It can counter a Knight of the Reliquary, a Peacekeeper or a Qasali Pridemage if we don't have the Force of Will and only the combo in hand that is vulnerable to one of the creatures mentioned above. So for that it is quite nice.
I actually went away from Daze completely previously, playing Spell Pierce and Flusterstorm instead but sometimes found myself wanting to counter a creature or similarly when I was tapped out. So I'm back to using 2 Daze now.
My current Counter-package:
4 Force of Will
3 Misdirection
3 Flusterstorm
2 Daze
This package has served me very well, winning several games off the back of Flusterstorms
Flusterstorm is much less relevant than Spell Pierce, it is to linear to play main deck.
Daze, while not being "great", affords us a free catch all counter, and in conjunction with FoW, Pierce, and MisD, creates a cheap and effective counter tool box. Flusterstorm simply makes your tool box much more situational.
Honestly, Pierce is one of the best blue cards right now...
Spell Pierce doesn't counter that much more than Flusterstorm does and it's more important to win the counter wars than anything else. Spell Pierce goes dead in the mid to late game a lot more often than Flusterstorm does as well, it's normal for Flusterstorm to counter for between 3 and 4 additional mana depending on Lotus Petal.
I think Fluststorm is more of a SB card where you're more concerned about stopping Pithing Needle from resolving, similar to Reaniamtor and Tormod's Crypt etc.
On one hand you defend Flusterstorm in direct comparison to Pierce, then on the other hand you belive it is a side board card. I do not understand this logic, as we are discussing main deck counter packages.
There is good reason why Pierce is run main over cards like Flusterstorm, Dispel, etc; it is relevant against all spells that we care about, and it's cost/effect ratio is above the curve for this archetype.
Is the Leyline of Sanctity really as strong as some claim it to be?
I guess it helps against storm, but against the rest of the field you can only bring it in against heavy discard decks like BW, Pox and Nic Fit right? Since I run 2 misdirection & 3 pierce MD I feel not completely naked against those decks.
I am thinking about playing 2 red-blast and 2 Jace instead, along my 5 GY spots and 3 bounce, 3 blood moon.
Currently playing: Elves
Sorry, second line should be Spell Pierce is more of a SB card, hence the argument for countering Pithing Needle.
Yes, Spell Pierce counters more cards than Flusterstorm, but Spell Pierce doesn't counter any more significant cards than Flusterstorm does game 1. You want the better, linear counter game 1 and the more flexible counter game 2 when the ability to counter Artifacts, Enchantments and Planeswalkers etc. becomes necessary.
I've been content with 3 Spell Pierce, 3 Misdirection, 4 Force of Will as counters. I don't particularly like Daze in situations that aren't protecting my combo as it sets me back a turn, but I'm not entirely against running it.
As a side note, I'm currently testing Chalice of The Void in my board after a friend suggested it over Leyline. I like what it does for our UR Delver matchup and the fact that you don't need to mulligan into it as aggressively.
Additionally, here's my tournament report from SCG Providence: http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/s...555#post641555
Chalice? Ugh.
Why on earth would you shut off 8 cantrips, Pierce, and REB in your own deck?
Because an early Chalice on one against UR Delver is literally game over, it's also very effective against discard as most of them are CMC 1 and Burn has a hard time fighting through it. I'm alright with siding out a few Ponders against those decks and the rest may be pitched into Force or used to hold you over until you land a Chalice if needed.
This card is also fantastic against reanimator, storm, elves, rug delver, etc. It's versatile and doesn't influence you mulligan decisions as heavily as Sanctity. I haven't settled on it, but the pros appear to outweigh the cons at this point.
Chalice is definitely powerful. Pretty much like Blood Moon it turns some of our cards into dead ones, but shuts down some decks completely in return.
But I probably wouldn't play it over Leyline of Sanctity. It just autowins too many games. I once Show and Told it into play against U/B Control (with Liliana, Jace, Edicts and stuff) when I didn't have it in my starting hand and used another Show and Tell two turns later to seal the deal with Emrakul, while being protected from Edicts, Liliana and Jace.
Even though Leyline doesnt protect your Emrakul from Jace as he targets the creature and not the player, I agree with Leyline being better than Chalice as far as my testing has shown.
Who are you?
But it protects me from Jace ultimate, so it's also good against decks with Jace as main win option (although these aren't played much right now).
Although not a fan of Leylines in general, I realize Sanctity does provide a sweeping array of hoses when entering a large or unknown meta.
My problem with Chalice is that this archetype is so narrow, that boarding out and shutting off our Ponders, Brainstorms, and to a lesser extent Spell Pierces, REB's, etc; negates the streamlined simplicity of the combo.
Interesting conversation about Chalice vs. Leyline. One more advantage of Chalice@1 is that it shuts down Chain of Vapor in the storm matchup, while Leyline does not.
I see more than others do because I know where to look.
If it's not high tide, you want to be chalicing for zero against storm. It shuts down their artifact mana and slows them alot. You can't Adnauseun with zero floating or iggy loop with led. Also most importantly it does not affect your own cantrips. Of course chalice is also good against high tide @1 while Leyline is useless because once they reach infinite mana they can just find a bounce and get rid of leyline. However surgical and the slow speed of high tide give us the edge IMO against high tide.
As a stormplayer who's played the matchup a lot I must say I disagree. Chalice at zero is okay, turning off a lot of the options storm has to explode in turn one or two.
Let's take a look at the cards ANT plays which are untouched by CotV@0. TES is much more affected, because it relies on an early Ad Nauseam and plays Crome Moxen to achieve this more consistent with little or no mana floating after AN.
Dark Ritual
Cabal Ritual / Rite of Flame
Ponder
Brainstorm
Preordain / Gitaxian Probe
Burning Wish / Grim Tutor
Infernal Tutor
Duress
Thoughtseize / Cabal Therapy
(postboard) CoV, Echoing Truth
Seems enough to combo out.
I assume you play Chalice early (turn 1 or 2) to be able to land it before Storm goes Berserk. The problem in the scenario is that you actually give them time to find a solution (postboard) or ignore it by finding enough rituals to fuel up the combo. I personally think that setting up is the point where SneakShow has to stop or interrupt combo. This means: Dazing Cantrips when possible, because any good storm pilot will try to get discard for your counters as soon as he sees the first island. Collecting all the Combo parts plus Disruption usually takes all your mana and cantrips for the first two turns. Shutting this off is propably the best way to buy time and land your own combo. I admitt that I might be wrong since we've not been testing CotV, but from a few dozen of testgames that's the basic issue I believe.
Decks I play and/or care about:
Reanimator
ANT
LED - Dredge
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