That's because Bant is caught in the middle, which is getting eaten alive.
I just wanted to say I put this deck together to gauntlet, and man is it fun. Pounding face with big monsters is usually amazingly fun. It does suffer from the same problems of "I have one piece but not the other, so either you kill me or I topdeck and get you."
Other than that, super fun. I could easily play this deck for 9-10 rounds of Legacy, since the decision trees aren't quite as numerous as other decks.
-Matt
Aye, it's very easy to pilot at 70%, and with a little effort (like playtesting more than 30 min before an event) could be very easy to do very well.
It's only short list for GP Atlanta at this point.
PS: My favorite thing about this deck is that both enablers are available in Korean.
West side
Find me on MTGO as Koby or rukcus -- @MTGKoby on Twitter
* Maverick is dead. Long live Maverick!
My Legacy stream
My MTG Blog - Work in progress
Originally Posted by Koby
Aye, it's very easy to pilot at 70%, and with a little effort (like playtesting more than 30 min before an event) could be very easy to do very well.
It's only short list for GP Atlanta at this point.
PS: My favorite thing about this deck is that both enablers are available in Korean.
Picked up one back during Urza block and just recently got the other 3.
I wish I could just put that picture in my signature. Hot sauce extra spicy.
Picked up one back during Urza block and just recently got the other 3.
West side
Find me on MTGO as Koby or rukcus -- @MTGKoby on Twitter
* Maverick is dead. Long live Maverick!
My Legacy stream
My MTG Blog - Work in progress
That is a sexy set of Sneak attack.
How are your guy's counter packages working? I'm doubting the lack of Daze in the deck. The card is incredibly good and it allows your cards to go off as early as possible. It's a very easy side board card that you can side out. 3 Misdirections may be too much especially with the meta filled with Maverick.
Right now I'm going 3 Daze, 2 Pierce, 2 Misdirection and 4 FoW. The Dazes has been working wonderfully. Stopping things from Thalia and Sylvan Library. It's also a very good card against RUG if your hand supports a turn 2-3 combo. As RUG are often like to be greedy and establish threats and cantrips early and sit on soft counter magic. Daze punishes that early aggression.
I've found without Progenitus, the deck is lacking more targets for FoW and Misdirection. Often I would have combination of FoW and Misdirection sitting in my hand and waiting on a blue source to make those live, very frustrating. Daze does not have those problems. Let me know what you guys think about my counter package. And what about Flusterstorm v. Pierce in main/side?
I'm on 4 FoW, 3 Pierce, 2 Daze, 2 Flusterstorm. Daze feels like the weak link to me.
Ive been playing quite a while with Daze but it's been underwhelming due to this reasons:
1) When you go off T1 with Sol-Land + Peta Daze is urgh, wheres FoW/Misdirection shines
2) When you go off later, Daze looses all of his power
3) When you Daze a Thalia it is no great thing, as youre one land behind instead of paying one mana more? See the difference? 1 card in your hand vs 2 dmg/turn...sounds bad to me
So my Suite atm is:
4 Force of Will
2 Misdirection
2 Spell Pierce
2 Flusterstorm
Sideboard: 2 Red Elemental Blast
Greetings
My counter's main are:
4x FoW
3x MisD
3x Daze
2x Spell Pierce
The most succesful counter-suite lately has been 4 FoW, 3 Misdirection, 3 Spell Pierce Main and Blasts or 1 additional Spell Pierce in the sideboard.
I do agree that Daze has its upsides, but didn't we discuss that already some weeks ago?
The counterspell package is on of the most hotly debated topics on the Sneak & Show thread. Why? Because:
1) the counter-suite is one of the few "flexible" aspects of the deck (the mana base, combo package, and cantrips are relatively agreed upon), and
2) the counterspell package is meta/player dependent. We each expect to see different things each week and we each have our own preferred play styles.
As Philipp put it:
I'm going to:
1) Outline the issues regarding Spell Pierce and Flusterstorm;
2) Summarize some (not all) of the previous arguments made in this thread (there are some really good posts for and against all of the cards, but for the sake of brevity, I could not include them all.); and,
3) Create a decision tree to help players decide which counter spells are best for their decks.
To start with the opening post (which, by the way, has some really good information about sideboard cards as well):
You can see the primer is a little dated (it was last updated in April), as it mentions Progenitus over Griselbrand. Progenitus does have the extra option of being a blue pitch card.
I included the part about Jace because it is another 'must counter' spell for an opponent and, if it sticks, it creates card advantage and can do some nice tricks with Sneak Attack (bouncing end of turn) and Show and Tell (bouncing that Knight they just dropped). Jace also legend rules opponents' Jaces. While Jace hasn't seen any play as of late, it is a card to consider.
Next quote...
Takeaway: Flusterstorm is better than Pierce vs. Combo and Control. Noted.
However, as the Primer and Dresden note, Pierce is better against Walkers, Enchantments and Artifacts. Meta game decision.
Decision tree:
1) I expect to face: a) many combo decks, or b) control decks without permanent hate = run Flusterstorm
2) I expect to face: a) tempo decks with "efficient" mana bases, or b) control decks with permanent hate (Jace, Liliana, Ensnaring Bridge, Humility, etc.), or c) an unknown meta = run Spell Pierce (as Spell Pierce has a boarder applicability).
As JPAnghelescu (who also helped write the primer to this thread) notes:
This recent trend towards Spell Pierce is due to two reasons: 1) Combo isn't being played much right now (RUG Tempo keeps Storm at bay), and 2) In an unknown or shifting meta, which is common with a new set release, Spell Pierce is a better catch-all than Flusterstorm.
Up next, the question of blue pitch cards (to FOW/Misdirection)...
Since we're posting counter suites I'll post mine and my opinions on them.
4 FoW
3 Flusterstorm
3 Daze
2 MisD
also 3 Pierce on the board
4 Force is a given
3 Flusterstorm is optimal IMO. I've found it to be better than Pierce because often it hits multiple counters or forces the opponent to pay more than 2. It's also better than Pierce against storm combo because you can hold it until they play their deadly spell. This way you don't have to worry about which mana producer to counter and just wait till they empty their hand and then counter each one of their 10 copies of what ever crazy storm spell they play.
3 Daze; now if you go back to pages 13-25 or somthing of this thread you'll find I was a daze opponent. Now I'm a proponent. Yes, a turn 1 victory is cool and does occassionally happen, and yes sometimes the deck has to go to turn 12 to win. But MAINLY we win turns 2-4 and in those turns Daze is just the best. It means having the ability to tap out playing S&T and a 1 mana cost counter for backup and then Daze wins the counter war when you bounce your tapped Island.
2 MisD. Well, I used to run 3-4 but I was just tired of my OP casting Jace or Knight the turn before I would win and looking at my hand to find MisD. So I cut it back to 2 and found that it works really well and is easy to side out for Pierce or REB.
Also I would like to say that I've found that 2 Intuition MD is the way to go, at least in my running of the deck. It helps us get that all important game 1 victory. And then I almost always side out them to avoid the all to ever present Surgical Extraction which can wreck us and bring in Spell Pirece of Blood Moon or whatever.
To pitch, or not to pitch, is the question. i.e. the question of how many "pitch counters" to run (i.e. Force of Will and Misdirection). As both Jessenator and I noted, is it really right to play 7 blue pitch counters (see quotes below)?
Let's look at the deck's blue-card count (I'll use a sample list for purposes of discussion):
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
1 Preordain
2 Intuition
4 Force of Will
3 Misdirection
3 Spell Piece
4 Show and Tell
25 blue cards, plus 23 Mana Cards (19 lands and 4 Lotus Petals), plus 12 other combo pieces (4 Sneak Attack, 4 Griselbrand, 4 Emrakul).
Conventional wisdom tells us we want at least 17 blue cards to run with 4 FOW, with 18 or 19 being preferred. In this deck, we have 25, but we also run 3 Misdirection.
However, post-board (games 2 and 3), we frequently cut blue cards (i.e., We cut Intuition every game. However, if the blue cards we are cutting are Misdirections, then, not that big of a deal).
So, cutting Intuition, we go down to 23 blue cards.
Cutting Show and Tell (say vs. the mirror, Reanimator, or Belcher), we go down to 19 blue cards (dangerously low with 7 pitch counters).
Against RUG/BUG, we want to bring in Blood Moon (if Sneak and Show continues to do well, you can expect BUG to gain popularity as the antidote), but what do we cut? -2 Intuition, -2 Misdirection, -1 Lotus Petal, +2 REB, +3 Blood Moon seems like our best bet. Keeps our blue count at 21 with 6-pitch counters (this is the bare minimum ratio I would run).
Some general observations about counters:
Daze shines against combo and tempo decks, where they are likely to: 1) utilize their mana every turn (tap out) and 2) you want to go off quickly due to their increased clock.
Misdirection shines against control decks because it is a "hard" counter. Control decks are more likely to wait, leaving mana open to pay for Daze or Spell Pierce. Additionally, we have more time to sculpt our hand against control decks, since we won't face much of a clock (i.e. holding an extra blue card to pitch to FOW/Misdirection is not as big of a deal).
A few additional notes about Misdirection.
1) It protects Griselbrand from Swords to Plowshares and Path to Exile (assuming there is another creature on board). This becomes relevant when you play Griselbrand, they target with STP/PTE, you draw 7 to find an answer, you would like to hit a Misdirection/FOW.
2) Misdirection is very solid against discard, except duress.
3) Misdirection, along with Force of Will, Sneak Attack, and monsters dodges Inquisition of Kozilek.
As a side note, neither Daze or Misdirection is very good against aggro decks, such as Maverick, hence why both are usually the first cards to be boarded out (Daze can be decent against Maverick on the play, but the tempo loss on the draw is usually not worthwhile and Misdirection, outside of Misdirecting a STP aimed at Griselbrand, is worthless against Maverick.).
Which brings us to the question of blue pitch cards. As previously noted...
and
Griselbrand's replacement of Progenitus reduced our blue count by 4 (or 3 in some decks).
Breaking our blue cards into categories, we have:
11 'cantrips' (4 Brainstorm, 4 Ponder, 1 Preordain, 2 Intuition)
10 counterspells (4 FOW, 3 Misdirection, 3 Spell Pierce)
4 combo pieces (4 Show and Tell)
Which of these are we willing to pitch?
Cantrips- most likely we have used or will use them to assemble the combo or counterspells in our hands. There is the possibility we have a "left over" cantrip.
Counterspells- I could see pitching a FOW to a Misdirection or vice versa or pitching a Spell Pierce (if my hand were something like FOW, FOW, Misdirection, Spell Pierce, Monster, Combo Piece).
Show and Tell - It is possible we have 2 Show and Tell in hand or 1 Show and Tell and a Sneak Attack.
1) However, if I have 2 Show and Tell, I would rather cast one, bait a counter, and cast another the following turn.
2) If I have Show and Tell and Sneak Attack, I would rather use one as bait and push through the other the following turn (I realize there are corner cases where a) "We have to go off this turn," or b) We don't want to cast S&T because they will drop Knight, Belcher, Humility into play, but these are corner cases.
Replacing Progenitus with Griselbrand is an overall improvement to the deck, but it hurts Misdirection, because one of the most common pitch situations is: I have two Monsters in hand, I only need to get one into play, let me pitch Progenitus to FOW/Misdirection to allow Emrakul or my other Progenitus to get into play. However, we now have more of a need for Misdirection in the deck to protect Griselbrand (since Griselbrand may be targeted by Swords to Plowshares / Path to Exile).
Those running 4 FOW/3 Misdirection, no problems with not having enough blue pitch cards? Most of our blue cards are 'business' cards and Jessenator and I have found it unlikely that we will have extra blue cards waiting to pitch.
Last edited by Water_Wizard; 06-01-2012 at 02:58 PM.
You run 12 Counters, I assume 16 Combo Pieces. How many mana slots and cantrips?
23 Mana Slots and you only have room for 9 cantrips (2 Intuition, 4 Brainstorm, 3 Ponder?).
Are you running REB in your board (in addition to the 3 Spell Pierce)?
Thanks!
I'm on my phone right now so it's a little hard to write in completely organized formats. I have realized the problem with 7 pitch counters during my last few weeks of testing. Daze is extremely vital vs RUG tempo in my opinion. Sometimes we should be patient and wait to draw another blue card to make let's say.. FoW and Misdirection live. Against Tempo decks we cannot afford to wait and do that. They'll be throwing bolts at us constantly and spamming threats the first few turns.
Daze is an option vs lower mana decks. The only matchup I am scared of is the RUG tempo matchup. The fact that a lot of people are running 3-4 Pierce over Stifle is pretty scary. They'll leave up 1 mana at the end of turn to probably use the Pierce. We can easily play around their Daze and Daze their Pierce.
All our blue cards in our deck are "business" cards and I often use the cantrips to find combo pieces and the pitch discards would often be dead. I am considering Flusterstorm over pierce or a combination of both. Lost to Flusterstorm a few matches I have played, especially when my friend sided it in during the mirror. 7 pitch discard meaning that we either ditch one for the other, or wait and draw a blue card in order to use it. In a format where RUG tempo is dominant, we cannot afford to do so at times. We need cheap efficient counters that are immune to their Dazes.
@Water_Wizard
16 slots for combo peices (4 Sneak, 4 S&T, 8 creatures)
12 slots for counters (as previously stated)
10 slots for cantrips (4 BS, 4 Ponder, 2 Intuition)..... not sold on preordain just yet
19 slots for land (I use 19 because I run 3 Cities and 3 Tomb) which I've found to be
more than enough. I won't lay a City until the turn I "go for it" so
wasteland is rarley a problem.
3 slots for petal (I know some people like 4 but 3 is all I've ever needed to find one for
a second Sneak activation off of Grislebrand)
___
60 Cards total
I make the extra 2 slots for counters available from running 1 less land and 1 less petal. I think I speak for everyone when I say that lossing a counter battle with this deck is EXTREMELY frustrating and defeating. The extra 2 counters go a long way. I ussually find that I can go 3 counters deep when trying to go off.
I run 2 REB on the board currently though I have been considering cutting them. Mainly for Jace because I do run 3 Flusterstorm MD. They ussually come out when I run into a Jace deck. (-3 Fluster, -2 Intuistion, +3 Pierce, +2 REB)
Comments are most appreciated. Criticism is very welcome and always appreciated.
Colonel,
Thanks for your response. I run a similar list, except +1 Petal, +1 Preordain, -2 Counters. However, I like your finding that 3 Petals is often enough, so I may drop to 3 Petals in order to add an 11th counter. The Preordain is in place of a 20th land and it is a change I am happy I made.
Regarding your sideboarding strategy, I ran into a similar situation. I was running a combination of 5 cards against control decks - a combination of 5 of the following: Vendilion Cliques, Red Elemental Blasts, Pyroblasts, Flusterstorms, and/or Spell Pierces.
The situation I encountered is not having "enough" slots to swap during sideboarding. As our deck is pretty tight (there isn't much to take in/out vs. against most of our match ups), I was having difficulty freeing 5 slots to bring cards in against the control match up.
As you mentioned, you bring in 2 REB and 3 Spell Pierce and cut 2 Intuition and 3 Flusterstorm. I also cut the 2 Intuitions (as is heavily noted throughout this thread, they come out versus most post-board match ups). However, I could not justify cutting Flusterstorms against a control deck. I decided to cut Lotus Petals instead. My strategy being: hit my land drops, sculpt my hand, and go off with as many 1-mana counters as possible, plus the help of FOW/Misdirection. I figured in most "sculpting" situations (basically, draw-go as the control player leaves mana open to pay for our conditional counters and both players sculpt their hands), I would rather draw a Flusterstorm off the top, as opposed to a Lotus Petal. I realize there are certain situations where a timely Lotus Petal can be the difference in forcing through an early combo piece, but I thought, on the whole, it would be better to have more counterspells.
Another reason I cut Lotus Petal over Flusterstorm is it improves our blue count. Related to my earlier post, our blue count is crucial to effectively using FOW and Misdirection. If we plan to cut Intuition every game, then we are down to 23 blue cards (on average). The Spell Pierce/Flusterstorm exchange keeps the blue count at 23. However, a Spell Pierce/Lotus Petal exchange improves the blue count to 26 in a match up where "pitch-counters" really shine.
On a related note: Vendilion Clique is very nice against combo/control match-ups. The current meta is more Tempo oriented, where V. Clique is not as good, but if/when the meta shifts, I expect all of us to be running 2-3 Vendilion Cliques in our sideboards.
@Wizard
I totally understand why you would say "side out petal over flusterstorm against control decks." One of my other decks is counterbalance/thopters. Which is as heavy as a control deck you can play. And I can tell you from experiance the way to beat these decks is speed; raw, nasty speed. (my 3rd and final deck is Maverick, just an FYI). I used to go slow against the control decks but you're playing right into their hands. Against these decks you want the game over by turn 4. You'll never have enough counters/answers against heavy control decks if the game goes late.
Clique...Clique Clique Clique.... I just debated on giving you a long winded answer on why I don't like them. Hell, I'll just say it: I can't justify $paying$ for them. As far as the card it's self. Costs 3, for this deck the only thing you want to pay more than 1 for is Your win cons. Gitaxian Probe** does mainly the same thing for 2-3 less. I know it doesn't get rid of a problem card but hell, it lets you see their hand which can be the most important thing Clique does.
**Disclaimer**
This post is in no way starting a discussion on including Gitaxian Probe
**Disclaimer**
I like your disclaimer.
I like your perspective on control. Counter top I would treat differently than a U/W list without counter top or top/terminus. The reason is, as you mention, giving them more time is "playing directly into their hands." Especially with counter top, once Counterbalance hits play, all of our 1-caster counterspells are worthless, so speed trumps in this match and Flusterstorm is no good, considering it can't counter Counterbalance.
Against the traditional StoneBlade list (without Counterbalance), I advocate the "Grinding Station" plan, basically, sculpt your hand, draw one more threat than they have answers, and push the combo through.
I am interested why you think Clique is bad (besides the money). I like it for two reasons: 1) Flash - you can cast it end of turn 3 to set up your turn 4 combo - they must counter it or lose a counterspell (they are losing a counterspell either way, baring drawing into another one) and it gives you valuable information if left uncountered, and 2) it's a clock - perhaps Clique was more effective during the Progenitus era, because all Swords to Plowshares used to be boarded out (now some are left in for Griselbrand), but it does form an alternate win condition. There is a corner case that it provides Edict/Liliana protection, but that is a pretty particular situation.
There is a reason Reed Duke runs 4 Vendilion Cliques in all of his NO RUG lists. V. Clique is the ultimate e.o.t. 3 play (for the above mentioned reasons). Colonel, please provide your "long winded answer". There are two sides to every coin and I'm interested in your perspective. As I noted above, I don't feel Clique is very good in a tempo environment, but I do feel it is solid against control/combo. As a closing note, Clique is very solid against combo, as we can hold mana open for counters and it creates a clock (plus it's an extra blue card to pitch).
To summarize Clique:
Tempo/Aggro: Not very good against these decks
Control: Gives information, makes them use/lose a counter, creates a clock, alternate win condition
Combo: Allows us to cast e.o.t. (keeping mana open for counters), gives information, causes them to lose a combo piece (assuming they don't draw a new one), creates a clock
I really like the Preordain, its even better than the Ponder at times. I really don't think 18 or 20 lands is the way to go either. Right now I'm running the typical 19 and I don't have a problem with it. I did cut a Volcanic Island for a basic Island. I rather start with the Island than a Volcanic. There was maybe once I needed to fetch for a Volc and I didn't have it, but that's over the course of about 40 matches.
Vendillion Clique is definitely a very viable card, I'm expected to see a lot of SnT type of decks this weekend and that card is an absolutely wreckage against them if played correctly. I'm just worried about having room in the sideboard. What has been your guy's sidedeck? I'm debating between Pyroclasm and Blood Moon. So far it looks like this..
3 Blood Moon
3 Grafdigger's Cage
4 Leyline of Sanctity
2 Pyroblast
2 Echoing Truth
1 Through the Breach (want to up to 2).
I also want stuff like Flusterstorm in the side too. Since Dazes are very easy side outs game 2 and 3 if you're on the draw.
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