[Deck] Canadian Thresh (a.k.a. RUG Tempo, Tempo Thresh)

[Borealis]

I also had some trouble fighting Goblins at the Worcester SCG a couple weekends ago, but the reason I lost was because I punted. It's a tough matchup, especially if they know what they are doing and have an optimized list, but it's not particularly good or popular right now. A 7th burn spell could help, but that's as far as I'd go toward making it better.

On Spell Snare: I cut as well because I was down to 2, and I didn't feel like 2 is the right number at all. You want to draw Snare early in the game, and running less than 3 feels wrong. When it's good, it's very good, but when it's bad it's very bad. But it's not going to change that much in the mirror, since you might draw it after Goyf/Ooze has resolved, or they might just counter it anyway, or cast Goyf when you tap out. Submerge/Mind Harness, Life from the Loam, and tight play are still your best bets against the mirror. And unless your meta is crawling with Stoneblade and Countertop Decks, I can't see the justification of holding onto 2-3 cards that are bad in every other relevant match right now.

I'm still running STifle (down to 3 now), but I might just switch back to the Costa-style list with heavy counterspells. (4 Daze, 4 Pierce, 4 Force) Also, Chain Lightnings are definitely back in my deck right now.

[Mandalay]

what you guys think of jace phantasm (m13)?

u

flying

gets +4/+4 if opponent has 10 or more cards in gy.

1/1

like that he flies which gives him evasion early on compared to geese which only has shroud. plus with our scours, i think it would not that be hard for this guy to be 5/5.

[Ziveeman]

Goblins was a problem mainly because of Cavern. It's easy to Force a Lackey and stunt their tempo for a couple of turns, so them having Cavern forces us to have a burn spell, which is more difficult to find. We split the first two games but I lost game three indirectly because I chose to keep a Bolt off a Ponder to kill a Lackey instead of keeping a Wasteland and trading my Mongoose with his Lackey. The game went much longer, and I managed to stabilize with two Goyfs and a Mongoose and get him down to 5 life but he topdecks a Relic of Progenitus to wipe me out. The whole game Cavern was doing a lot of work since I kept drawing into Force of Wills (I even boarded in Sulfur Elementals just to board out Spell Pierces) and I was forced to let his Ringleaders resolve, Siege-Gangs, etc.

As for Spell Snare in the RUG matchup, I don't feel it's right to have a card that only answers 4 of their cards. Submerge takes card of these creatures in the matchup anyway. Nimble Mongoose is the real threat in the matchup. I lost two of the mirrors because of Mongoose and triple Submerge post-board. I couldn't draw any Submerges to save my life.

[Borealis]

Agreed Ziveeman, although we only run 3-4 Forces, and 6-7 burn spells usually, so it's still easier to find a burn spell in most cases. Either way, Gobbos is definitely not a positive matchup for us, and if it was more popular I could definitely see running the 2-3 Forked Bolts that help against the other creature decks too. I run 2x Mind Harness and 3x Submerge in my board, so at least I have the Harnesses. I'm also considering cutting the 3rd REB for a BEB, or posssibly a Flusterstorm. BEB is great against gobbos obviously, but Flusterstorm seems like a better REB in the combo matchups, which is more of my concern. But honestly, it's GOBLINS, and I can't imagine seeing it more frequently than the Tier 1 decks that we should be more prepared for. Rogue strategies keep the balance in Legacy, and you just can't beat them all.

Jace's Phantasm is an interesting card, but ultimately I think it's not good enough for Legacy RUG. It's slower than Nimble Mongoose, and you have no control over their graveyard outside of reactive spells and like 2 Thought Scour. Thought Scour is great for Mongoose, since casting it nets you 3 more cards toward threshhold, whereas it's only going to add 2 to your opponent's yard. Even if Jace's Phantasm was looking at our Graveyard, you'd need another Thought Scour or roughly 3 more turns to make it an actual threat. If it had hexproof and flying, it would be worth it, but just being a 1/1 flyer until turn 7-10 (or never) is not good enough to improve our clock. Giving your opponent control of the ability weakens it too much. Delver is light years ahead of this card.

[Ziveeman]

Yeah, I couldn't find a Forked Bolt to save my life versus Goblins. I was running 3 Forked Bolt before this weekend and I was definitely cursing myself for cutting it down to 2. After 17 rounds of Magic I didn't face a single Sneak Show deck!

[I am the brainwasher]

Someone had to start this anyway, so I'll make the first step:




I am disappointed by Lightning Bolt.
I recognized that in the creature-based MU's, I want Forked Bolt/Fire to get a 2to1 and Dismember/Ice to deal with Batterskull, KotR and Scavenging Ooze (Tarmogoyf, Tombstalker etc. playing the 2nd fiddle) way more often than I wanted Bolt.
There is no such competetive deck right now that has a creature with toughness 3 that needs to be handled.
Against Control or Combo, Lightning Bolt is decent, but gets boarded out quite often since you need the space for more potent cards.

Where does that leave Lightning Bolt? Lightning Bolt has become more of a card that does the best job when it is thrown at face. Nearly every other usage of it, would have been done better by a replacement, nameley Fire/Ice, Forked Bolt, Dismember and last but not least, Spell Snare.
Everyone remembers those games where a topdecked Bolt sealed the deal, you burned out the control deck that left you no chance to win the game with your creatures and the EoT3toyaface to fill up Threshold to stab with Mongeese saved your butt? Great, so do I.
On the other hand, I also remember a lot situations (especially lateley) where I don't wanted to see the Bolt but another Removal/Burnspell, which costed me games.

Top8 candidate Simon Rouze´ did the same thing (well, not playing Stifle is still meh IMO) and I think I got the thought behind that pretty clear due to my testing as off lateley.
Discussion and Crticism is highly apprecieated. I got the impression that Canadian Threshold is real rocket science right now to constantly keep up with the meta.

[Water_Wizard]

If you're not running Lightning Bolt, than the only reason to run red is Forked Bolt, Fire/Ice and cards out of the board? Why not switch to BUG? Seems black adds better removal (Ghastly Demise / Darkblast / Go For the Throat / Snuff Out) and discard, plus some good sideboard options (Engineered Plague, Diabolic Edict, etc.).

[I am the brainwasher]

It is not about trying to make a different deck out of Threshold, it's about the correct configuartion for the actual meta, which is not the easiest right now. So pls stop wasting time of both of us here and say something that is at least a bit useful or go troll somewhere else.

[Koby]

That's a line of thought I was wondering too. Without Lightning Bolt, what reason is there to be playing Mountains? Lightning Bolt makes the deck work quickly. Without it, you need more disruption (usually to the hand) in order to buy enough time for the creatures to finish the player off.

It's an interesting thought process, but I think this deck needs Lightning Bolt to be competitive. Forked Bolt, not so much.

[Mark Sun]

It is not about trying to make a different deck out of Threshold, it's about the correct configuartion for the actual meta, which is not the easiest right now. So pls stop wasting time of both of us here and say something that is at least a bit useful or go troll somewhere else.

I will preface this by stating that Water_Wizard could have presented his point a little bit better. It does have some validation though. If you do cut Lightning Bolts, does having Forked Bolt or Fire/Ice, and Sulfur Elemental/Sulfuric Vortex/REB out of the board make the red part of RUG worth it? A quick comparison of black sideboard choices does give us Dread of Night to act as a pseudo Sulfur Elemental effect, and of course the aforementioned removal. The only thing that I would miss dearly is REB and perhaps Ancient Grudge a bit.

I do agree with you though, Lightning Bolt has been lackluster and I've actually been looking into cutting them myself. I want to make space for a distribution of 3 Spell Pierce/4 Stifle maindeck with the flexibility of playing Fire/Ice (currently that so my blue count is reasonable) and Dismember. Let me take this a step further, though, by saying that the other card I haven't been liking recently is Tarmogoyf. I'd rather have something else there entirely.

[I am the brainwasher]

I do agree with you though, Lightning Bolt has been lackluster and I've actually been looking into cutting them myself. I want to make space for a distribution of 3 Spell Pierce/4 Stifle maindeck with the flexibility of playing Fire/Ice (currently that so my blue count is reasonable) and Dismember. Let me take this a step further, though, by saying that the other card I haven't been liking recently is Tarmogoyf. I'd rather have something else there entirely.

I don't like Goyf that much either. I have gone down to 2.
The problem right now is that there are a lot of difficult MU's where you want to have a completeley different configuration of Snare/Pierce and a variety of Removal or none at all. The situation where you were good to go with your exact same 60/75's every single week/month has changed dramatically and the deck is confronted with a problem it never had before: How do I adapt?
I have not 100% decided which suits my playstyle the best, but IMO the main decision comes down to playing a straight list that is stronger in specific MU's, while beeing weaker to a huge variety of decks, or a list that has allover more equal chances, but is also not as strong in specific MU's.
The list I posted a page ago is definetly the 2nd type. I could see a straight list beeing strong as well, but I am not that convinced that those will do as good since Legacy is a archetype-farting Tornado right now, which will be uncontrolable when Show and Tell based combo sees lesser play.
Developing the optimal answer-suite Vs. going straight forward.

[Mandalay]

i have to agree that bug tempo provides more efficient removal and the red cards that u will replace with in favor of seize and iok would be better than lightning bolt and/or other burn spells. re goblins mu, why not board in pyroclasms instead? or firespouts?

[jimirynk]

why not board in pyroclasms instead? or firespouts?

[jimirynk]

My current SB for my costa style md:
1 grudge
3 crypt
2 rough/tumble
3 pyroblast
3 submerge
2 sulfur elemental
1 life from the loam

[useL]

My current SB for my costa style md:
1 grudge
3 crypt
2 rough/tumble
3 pyroblast
3 submerge
2 sulfur elemental
1 life from the loam

So no Sneak & Show in your meta?

[cheerios]

For the guys disappointed with 4 Goyfs, have you guys tried 2 Goyfs and 2 Snaps? So far it has been working for me.

[Pherion]

For the guys disappointed with 4 Goyfs, have you guys tried 2 Goyfs and 2 Snaps? So far it has been working for me.

Snap still feels mana intensive to me. Then again I think I'm running 17 lands! How often do you have it in hand, and don't have the mana to make it useful?

[jimirynk]

So no Sneak & Show in your meta?

If I was to change my board to improve the sneak and show mu I would play a catch all before drake:

1 grudge
2 rough/tumble
3 submerge
2 pyroblast
2 disrupt
3 crypt
2 sulfur elemental

[Pherion]

If I was to change my board to improve the sneak and show mu I would play a catch all before drake:

1 grudge
2 rough/tumble
3 submerge
2 pyroblast
2 disrupt
3 crypt
2 sulfur elemental

Are you saying that you'd side in Disrupt (it's the only difference from you're previous board). I'd say that pyroblast and REB are both superior in every way. They have the same CMC basically (just different color), and they are hard counters for the only target you care about - SnT. Disrupt is like an expensive Daze that cantrips. Between Ancient Tomb, City of Traitors and Lotus Petal, Sneak and Show can power out quite a bit of mana by turn 2-3. Playing around daze is usually just second nature for a good Sneak and Show player, and it's unlikely the extra 1 from disrupt would really make that much difference - my opinion.

I'd suggest running more pyro/REB if you want to keep fighting it on the stack.

[jimirynk]

Are you saying that you'd side in Disrupt (it's the only difference from you're previous board). I'd say that pyroblast and REB are both superior in every way. They have the same CMC basically (just different color), and they are hard counters for the only target you care about - SnT. Disrupt is like an expensive Daze that cantrips. Between Ancient Tomb, City of Traitors and Lotus Petal, Sneak and Show can power out quite a bit of mana by turn 2-3. Playing around daze is usually just second nature for a good Sneak and Show player, and it's unlikely the extra 1 from disrupt would really make that much difference - my opinion.

I'd suggest running more pyro/REB if you want to keep fighting it on the stack.

I like disrupt because it hits more targets then reb right now, I bring it in vs reanimator, dredge, mirror, any deck with ponder or hand disruption.
Its also great vs countering half a lingering souls.