The more lategame stuff you cram into the deck, the better it gets in the lategame of course. But the RUG and Maverick matchups suffer a lot from most of the cards you named so I don't think going to deep is the way to go in the current Meta. But in general Punishing Fire is quite good in the mirror, you have a lot of Mana and he has no real way to deal with it in game 1 (Game 2 often won't finish anyway).Originally Posted by Star|Scream
I added 2 Liliana of the Veil for an Innocent Blood and a Punishing Fire. It feels like an improvement because the deck needed a bit more threats in controllish matchups. How was the deck doing in general for you?
I've been building GBw for almost a month and immediately dumped it for GBr!
Seriously with Terminus on the rise Sigarda isn't as great as I feel everyone is making her out to be. She's a great finisher, don't get me wrong, but she doesn't provide A: card advantage (token makers/witness) or B: extreme utility (ooze) She can't regenerate, and doesn't have vigilance or anything. At least broodmate can swing for 4 while holding back a blocker.
Plus Show and tell is such a beating that I think the only way this deck can hope to survive it is on the stack (blasts)
I haven't quite gotten the hang of the Huntmasters though. Still learning the card.
regarding playing the blue mirror:
I forgot that I had a grove in the graveyard when he brought out the phantasmal -> Kokusho engine and I think we both forgot about image's targeting clause, because I was thinking since it was a 5/5 it can't be killed by a fire in response to him re-casting recurring nightmare.
Yeah I played against that same BUG explorer too it went something like this....no Green Sun Zenith though.
2 Bayou
4 Brainstorm
4 Cabal Therapy
4 Dark Confidant
3 Eternal Witness
2 Forest
4 Intuition
3 Island
3 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
1 Kokusho, the Evening Star
2 Misty Rainforest
1 Palinchron
3 Pernicious Deed
3 Phantasmal Image
3 Recurring Nightmare
3 Swamp
2 Tropical Island
2 Underground Sea
3 Unearth
2 Verdant Catacombs
4 Veteran Explorer
The palinchron here is a means for infinite mana? I don't really understand what that is supposed to accomplish, unless the goal is to infinite them out with Kokusho.
Palinchron + Phantasmal Image is infinite mana (if you have seven lands, anyway). If you add Recurring Nightmare, you can infinite them.
Making infinite mana in many decks would be incredible because it would let you play a bunch of expensive cards. If you've already got 7 lands, I question the utility.
Magic Level 3 Judge
Southern USA Regional Coordinator
The goal seems to be to produce infinite Mana with either Recurring Nightmare + Palinchron or Phantasmal Image + Palinchron. Intuition is a key card. Then use the Mana to go infinite with Witness / Recurring Nightmare to play your whole graveyard again (infinite Brainstorm or Intuition) and kill with Kokusho. Should go without saying that this version just dies to RUG. Also Dark Confidant is bad in this deck, even more in a version that already has Jace, Brainstorm, Nightmare, Intuition and Unearth. But I won't say it is a bad idea in general, it just needs fixing. Cutting Confidants should be step#1.
Cast palinchron, untap.
Cast Recurring nightmare
Recur e-witness, target brainstorm
cast brainstorm
cast Recurring nightmare
Recur palinchron, untap
repeat. Draw through your deck until you hit a kokusho
It's very susceptible to extirpate, but then they can just drop jace.
I was sitting there wondering why in the heck he was imaging my explorers until he starts pulling out more basics than I had! Ugh!
One extremely cool thing about Intuition that I remember from playing GBu Survival is that it can grab 3 Cabal Therapies to annihilate hands which is great against Combo and very useful against Control. The deck seems interesting.
I really don't understand the Confidants though. They should be GSZs, 100%. With so many Recurring Nightmares Explorer is more important for his version than for normal Nic Fit. For example in your game, relying on your opponent to play Veteran Explorers to copy them seems not like the most reliable plan. It also grabs Witness which is a key card and with Fierce Empath it could even get the Plainchorn (Kokusho too).
If you generate a billion mana and are casting pallincron over and over, wouldn't you just cast something like blue sun's zenith or brain freeze?
Not a terrible idea considering with all the explorer mana you can emergency BSZ yourself for several cards as well
Maybe remove the bobs for a secondary kill.
Seriously?
You're much better off playing something like Kamahl, Fist of Krosa (or something that can win you the game in 1 turn with infinite mana), at least it's zenithable and it actually -does- something when you're not going off... like alpha striking, making wrath effects quite unprofitable, or turning Pernicious Deed into a one-sided geddon
p.s. no, I'm not suggesting his inclusion, I don't really care about the deck either since I mainly play storm anyway, but seeing freeze as a possible inclusion made me wtf aloud in the office.
miLLe!!!!!
What are you talking about? The deck doesn't even run GSZ, and it only needs one copy of BSZ in the deck. Does your boss know you're nerdraging at work?
Right, I skipped a step :P
My flow of thoughts started from this post:
Since I agree I somehow went on reading giving it for granted :)
Ok, it's a singleton, but if you aren't playing gsz it'll be stuck in your hand more often than it being actually useful (i.e. winning games you otherwise wouldn't have won) because you're too short on mana for it to make any difference
In any case, just random opinions, didn't mean to bash if that was the idea I gave.
Luckily I was at home by the time I read this one, a wtf can somehow be explained, a LoL is much tougher :P
miLLe!!!!!
I just pictured some dude in my office going nuts about a post someone made on a website... "Brain freeze? WTF is he thinking? OMG NOOB" <table flip> haha
p.s. I think the BSzenith would be better than brain freeze since you can emergency target yourself if needed.
Hey guys.
I thought i'd chime in as the thread seems a bit 'bluer' than before, so I feel as though I can share my list. I was working on a rock list, with a blue splash for gifts ungiven for a little while, then was quite pleased when someone won something with something similar (minus the splash for gifts), and it'd be great to get some feedback from people with more experience of the deck. I've very consciously tried to keep it as focused as possible, and there are no 'Timmy' style kills, just using gifts for value or to set up graveyard shenanigans. So here it is:
3 Sensei's divining top
2 Academy rector
1 Deranged hermit
1 Dryad arbour
2 Eternal witness
1 Grave titan
1 Kitchen finks
1 Sun titan
4 Veteran explorer
2 Wall of blossoms
1 Oblivion ring
3 Pernicious deed
1 Recurring nightmare
3 Gifts ungiven
1 Path to exile
1 Swords to plowshares
4 Cabal therepy
2 Green sun's zenith
3 Innocent blood
1 Maelstorm pulse
3 Bayou
2 Forest
1 Island
2 Phyrexian tower
2 Plains
3 Savannah
2 Swamp
1 Tropical island
4 Verdent catacombs
2 Windswept heath
Sideboard (largely terribad)
1 Tormod's crypt
3 Ethersworn cannonist
1 Gaddock teeg
3 Kitchen finks
1 Orzhov pontiff
1 Wickerbough elder
1 Leyline of the void
1 Extirpate
1 Surgical extraction
1 Duress
1 Thoughtseize
This is about the 4th serious effort at the deck, and I did a lot of testing. A 'standard' gifts pile (vs aggro, say) would be Sun titan (I like to call him a FUN titan) / Eternal witness / Deed / Recurring nightmare, which works at 6 mana, so it makes gifts one of the most awesome topdecks, enabling a complete set up of graveyard and hand in one shot. It also has emergency uses i.e. Swords / path / innocent blood / pulse and some more .... esoteric piles. In my mind the 'free' slots in the deck are the 2nd wall of blossoms and the grave titan (maybe these should be something else, like an ooze and a green sun or something...). Its also possible that the 2nd tower could be a volraths stronghold, but getting instant speed deeds from saccing rectors is literally insane. As I'm finding that they are actually really good at defending from swords to plowshares, because having creatures exiled is stronger vs me than more normal builds The deck is still weak to combo and a little bit bad against burn, so also if anyone could think of interesting piles vs them, that would be sweet. I even had 1 timely reinforcements on the board, which was actually really good. I wonder why I took it off? :). The finks are mainly on the board vs burn, but also I tend to board the gifts out g3 if they bring in loads of graveyard hate and put the finks in. It usually catches people out....
So please please, comments / suggestions / non-Timmy ideas ideas really welcome. Do we really just have to autolose to combo? :(
The Spanish Tunnel King
Last edited by The Spanish Tunnel King; 05-27-2012 at 01:09 PM. Reason: Spelling
We most certainly don't have an auto-lose to combo, at least my list doesn't. Post-board I am packing 4x Duress, 2x Hymn, 3x Surgical Extraction, 4x Cabal Therapy, and crypts depending on the deck..
Blue is an interesting splash, though I probably wouldn't opt for Gifts Ungiven, I'd be packing Fact or Fiction, which is something a list earlier had been running to what he said good effect. I have yet to test that build though, Fact or Fiction does seem to provide an absurd benefit to the deck. I often find that my only real "issue" is that I start top decking against Stoneblade while they do some assortment of: Brainstorm, fetch, snapcaster brainstorm, jace, brainstorm, stoneforge for sword of feast and famine, go nuts etc.
Although on second thought, Gifts Ungiven might be better than Fact or Fiction.. it guarantees you're getting what you want, and a pile like: Eternal Witness, Kokusho, Recurring Nightmare, Volrath's Stronghold would be rather nuts.
I would probably make a build of something like this:
//Creatures: 12
2x Eternal Witness
4x Veteran Explorer
1x Thrun, the Last Troll
1x Trygon Predator
1x Wickerbough Elder
1x Kokusho, the Evening Star
1x Scavenging Ooze
1x Grave Titan
//Spells: 20
4x Cabal Therapy
4x Green Sun's Zenith
4x Gifts Ungiven
3x Maelstrom Pulse
3x Pernicious Deeds
2x Recurring Nightmare
//Planeswalkers: 5
3x Liliana of the Veil
2x Jace, the Mind Sculptor
//Lands: 23
2x Bayou
1x Underground Sea
1x Tropical Island
4x Verdant Catacombs
3x Misty Rainforest
1x Phyrexian Tower
1x Volrath's Stronghold
4x Forest
3x Swamp
2x Island
(It feels really, really good when you just ballpark a list off the top of your head, then go back and count to see what you need to cut and you hit 60 cards exact)
That actually looks rather effective.
@The Spanish Tunnel King: Running four colors just doesn't seem doable at the moment. Maybe you've found differently, but I've even had problems on three colors against some decks, i.e. Death and Taxes w/ Wasteland/Port.
Beyond that, it certainly doesn't seem bad. Gifts seems like a great card to grab part way through the game. My only real complaint about it would be it's weakness to graveyard hate and that it's too slow to help you stabilize against some of our poorer match-ups towards the beginning of the game.
Probably needs some tuning, but it certainly looks interesting.
In not-at-all-related news, I'm currently tuning a GBr list that focuses more on mana sinks than huge creatures, only running one that costs more than four. Instead, the ramp from Explorer can be used for things like additional SDT activations, Punishing Fire, and a couple other neat little tricks. I'll put it up here for you guys to take a look at when I'm done testing it a bit more.
I honestly feel that this may be one of the smarter approaches. I often look at my deck and really evaluate the use of big drops--I win almost every game on the back of Thrun + Sweepers and removal. Thrun is -always- my goal: destroy their hand, land thrun, win the game. Though if I went back to GBr I'd undoubtedly still drop a Broodmate Dragon in as I always felt that Broodmate Dragon was -far and away- the best finisher for the deck.
Red, to me, also has some of the best options against combo: Pyrostatic Pillar is an absolute bomb, as is REB.
I find that one of the highlights of running a Veteran Explorer setup is that we can pop deeds for stupidly high numbers, we can play and pop it for 3 or 4 on the same turn.
Punishing Fires seems really good too, I did limited testing with it and wasn't thrilled, but it sure does seem to answer things that we have a lot of problems dealing with (namely, planeswalkers).
I'm also toying around with a few other mana sinks, mainly Kessig Wolf Run and Bonfire of the Damned, with Wolf Run as a singleton and Bonfire as a 1- or 2-of. I'm kind of liking keeping the deck at one or two creatures with CMC > 4.
It also kind of limits you to big creatures that can be GSZed, but I'm really not seeing the problem there, especially in red. Broodmate Dragon is a great finisher, and Primeval Titan can be really scary when you use it to fetch Wolf Run and swing for tons, as is epitomized by Wolf Ramp in standard.
Maybe not the best approach, but I'm at least going to go through all the motions and test it properly. Only time can really tell where it's better, if anywhere.
How many Groves do you run?
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