[Deck] The Rock

[Hapless Researcher]

By cutting Knights, you're essentially cutting acceleration and a Planeswalker, in addition to a finisher.



a) STP is better in the, "I need real removal" matchup. The one where they play creatures you need to kill. I'm sorry if I'm being a bit facetious, but STP is very good at removing creatures without a condition, whereas Jitte is slow and pings small things. That's fine against Goblins, but you still need STP to back you up. It's the reason why it's an automatic 4-of in white decks.

b) Top is cuttable if you needed to. I found Sylvan did more work on Sunday, but this wasn't to say Top was ever bad.

c) Knight's very good. You can mana fix, Wasteland, Karakas, and then beat down later. It's a planeswalker that destroys lands that turns into a creature and attacks later on. I'd rather have Knight and just kill their Deathrite than play less Knight. Plus, you can always use your Deathrite to muck the land they target so they don't get the mana.

d) Wastelands excel in matchups where they have lots of nonbasics, you need to kill a specialty land, or they are colour or mana hungry. You use it mostly against Maverick, but also if players get greedy or to pump your Knights. It kills Mutavault, dual lands, Maze of Ith, Mishra's Factory, Rishadan Port, etc. You COULD play without them, but you'd be losing a bit of edge. Sometimes, players get greedy and fetch all nonbasics, then you can set them back 2-3 turns with Wasteland tutoring off Knight.

-------

I think where you may be having issues is that you're trying to make a Lingering Souls deck out of this deck by cutting everything that makes Junk a deck. If you want to be all in on tokens, don't screw around with Knights at all, run SFM, Dark Confidant, and such and run a straight up BW Tokens deck, which is pretty good at the moment.

-Matt

Based on the list you took to the Open, what would you consider the cards that underperformed the most, and what changes would you make?

[Barbed Blightning]

@Matt: you mentioned in your report that Linvala was beating you down something fierce in you maverick matchup, but you also said you had a Karakas out. Was it wasted by the time she started swinging?

Regardless, obviously an awesome report & job at the Open. I'm curious: how good is Garruk and Uvenwald, and why no Liliana (I know you mentioned a page or so back that you dislike it, but is there a reason for it)? I'm working at the Rock right now, but do you have any suggestions for creatures to take goyf's place in the meanwhile?

Thanks!

[sdematt]

Based on the list you took to the Open, what would you consider the cards that underperformed the most, and what changes would you make?

The article I'm writing for a certain major website is going to talk about this, but if I had to give a hint, Timely was never brought in from the board (but I also never faced RUG Delver, so...), Ooze was only okay (obviously it was the nutters against Reanimator, but overall, I didn't gain as much as I thought I would in the Maverick match), and there's a few others I'll discuss.

Barbed Blightning

@Matt: you mentioned in your report that Linvala was beating you down something fierce in you maverick matchup, but you also said you had a Karakas out. Was it wasted by the time she started swinging?

Regardless, obviously an awesome report & job at the Open. I'm curious: how good is Garruk and Uvenwald, and why no Liliana (I know you mentioned a page or so back that you dislike it, but is there a reason for it)? I'm working at the Rock right now, but do you have any suggestions for creatures to take goyf's place in the meanwhile?

I got to use Karakas once before it got Wastelanded. I needed to tap it for mana to play something, then the next turn I bounced, then I got Wastelanded, then Linvala was recasted.

Garruk is actually REALLY good. In the non-aggro, non-combo matchups, he's fierce. You really don't want him against:

High Tide
RUG Delver
Storm variants/any Combo
Reanimator


Anything where's you fighting a creature or control game, you want Garruk. Maverick, Bant, Merfolk, Miracles all have a hard time dealing with Garruk. Pooping a token makes Terminus a lot less good, deathtouch Wolves against Maverick are really great and the Overrun helps seal the game and changes the way they need to do combat math, etc. Liliana doesn't change this match significantly. Yes, Liliana does muck cards, but against Miracles, that's not the greatest. Sure, they discard a card per turn, but that doesn't help against an active Jace, whereas Wolf tokens on the attack may. Liliana mucks a creature for -2, but producing a deathtouch blocker +1 is what Garruk does, which essentially mucks a creature. Neither can be Show and Telled, so that's moot. The card discard isn't symmetrical against most non-combo decks because you always have cards you want to play that will sit in your hand; you have more cards you want to play than mana, most of the time, so getting rid of answers is not necessarily key. Against High Tide, Liliana is fine, at least moreso than Garruk. The pace of High Tide is enough such that the 1 card per turn could actually put them in danger where Garruk doesn't. I just don't like the fact Liliana doesn't do as much, at least for the build I'm playing.

If you're not running Goyfs, I'd say run:

4 Knight
4 Confidant
2 Scavenging Ooze
3 Deathrite Shaman
1 Gaddock Teeg
1 Ulvenwald Tracker

You don't have as much actual fat, but you're got some of the utility cards from the board, as well as cards that hate on other Tarmogoyfs (aka. Ooze and Tracker to fight Knight vs. Goyf should it come up).

-Matt

[Zeckk]

I'm sure Matt will explain the lack of liliana in his article, but this is what it's boiled down to for me - Liliy is great, if she sticks. Right now, will RUG Delver and a host of miracles decks sporting spell pierces and dazes, it's just too hard to land her without being a VERY dedicated discard deck, which opens your deck up to certain weaknesses against the field and affects your sideboard slotting. As much as I like liliana, she's just a different direction for the deck.

If you're not running Goyfs, I'd say run:

4 Knight
4 Confidant
2 Scavenging Ooze
3 Deathrite Shaman
1 Gaddock Teeg
1 Ulvenwald Tracker

You don't have as much actual fat, but you're got some of the utility cards from the board, as well as cards that hate on other Tarmogoyfs (aka. Ooze and Tracker to fight Knight vs. Goyf should it come up).

This is very close to the creature shell I was running before switching to the stoneforge shell. I don't really agree with tracker and teeg maindeck, though that's usually because miracles has so many answers to teeg maindeck that a single teeg is usually worthless.

[sdematt]

True, but they have to dig for Swords.

I just won a GPT tonight for Denver, facing High Tide in the finals ; I got my revenge by beating them 2-0.

-Matt

[Hapless Researcher]

True, but they have to dig for Swords.

I just won a GPT tonight for Denver, facing High Tide in the finals ; I got my revenge by beating them 2-0.

-Matt

What was the list? Gonna post a Tourney Report?

Gratz.

[ZeinVoncy]

True, but they have to dig for Swords.

I just won a GPT tonight for Denver, facing High Tide in the finals ; I got my revenge by beating them 2-0.

-Matt

I just cannot LoL enough, congrats Matt! As one of the hardest working Rock players, its deserving. I just wish I had enough time to throw my deck into a few tournies here to represent as well. Looking forward to your article, would you at least do us the privilege of letting us know which site to gaze upon?

[sdematt]

It's Eternal Central. I know they're kind of smaller now, but it's still better than nothing.

I'll write a tournament report Tuesday night; I've got a project and a lab exam due Tuesday :/

The list was the same except the sideboard was:

3 Hymn to Tourach
2 Gaddock Teeg
2 Extirpate
1 Surgical Extraction
2 Pernicious Deed
1 Garruk Relentless
1 Bojuka Bog
1 Golgari Charm
1 Ulvenwald Tracker
1 Virtue's Ruin

And to note: the 70/76 card mirror match is dreadful. I had to play it. It was a great ego-boost, but awful to grind out.

-Matt

[stealth]

I just cannot LoL enough, congrats Matt! As one of the hardest working Rock players, its deserving. I just wish I had enough time to throw my deck into a few tournies here to represent as well. Looking forward to your article, would you at least do us the privilege of letting us know which site to gaze upon?

The report is on the previous page.

[Hapless Researcher]

May I ask why it is that most Rock lists are running 61 cards in the main?

[sdematt]

May I ask why it is that most Rock lists are running 61 cards in the main?

Because you have enough card draw and filter to get through a ton of cards, and you're a control deck much of the time: you want to have an answer. If I consider Garruk my 61st, he's done way more work at 61 than my 60 could have done.

The statistical disadvantages are present, numbers don't lie. How much the disadvantage is is minimal, but present. There was a thread on this, and calculating the differences are super awful and hard to do, but again, we're running land and creature toolboxes, so I like to squeeze in the extra bullet. Another marginal benefit is if they try to Brain Freeze or BSZ you for exact, you're just next-leveled them, but that's pretty corner case

Also, I'm a big fan of the so-called "61 card special." Some might say it's not optimized, but my results speak for themselves.

-Matt

[Zeckk]

It's Eternal Central. I know they're kind of smaller now, but it's still better than nothing.

I'll write a tournament report Tuesday night; I've got a project and a lab exam due Tuesday :/

The list was the same except the sideboard was:

3 Hymn to Tourach
2 Gaddock Teeg
2 Extirpate
1 Surgical Extraction
2 Pernicious Deed
1 Garruk Relentless
1 Bojuka Bog
1 Golgari Charm
1 Ulvenwald Tracker
1 Virtue's Ruin

And to note: the 70/76 card mirror match is dreadful. I had to play it. It was a great ego-boost, but awful to grind out.

-Matt

I can't really agree with the 3 Hymns in the side. The only matchups I see you wanting them are RUG Delver (in which case there are better options), SnT (in which case there are better options), and Pox (which is a trash matchup anyway). Heck, the lack of mox diamonds in your 75 is the biggest reason I don't understand the hymns, since turn 1 hymn was one of the only reasons hymn was still seeing play.

[Viridia]

I'm pretty sure the Hymns are mainly there for combo matchups, so you can go T1 Discard - T2 Hymn - T3 Threat/Discard

[AggroSteve]

Hi guys, i was on a small tournament in vienna last wednesday.
It was awesome, so many nice people, i just wish i would live near there (not approximately 5 hours of train away :P)

i had a suboptimal list to play with, but mainly due to lack of old duals, so i had to play with shocklands and therefore did not expect that much of a good finish :P. On the contrary i went 3-1 (7-3-0 in games) in 4 rounds of swiss that rather surprised me, if i had some old duals maybe i could have finished first

ok now my list and a report ,big part is out of memory because i did not take notes :P

LIST

23 lands (3 wasteland, 1 bojuka-bog, 1 karakas, 6 duals being 3 overgrown tomb, 3 godless shrine)

4 deathrite shaman (finaly got them and mox diamonds were switched out for this little guy)
4 dark confidant
4 tarmogoyf
4 knight of the reliquary

4 swords to plowshares
2 abrupt decay
3 vindicate (still love this one, and they helped a lot because hitting a land i still soooo valuable at times, its unbeleavable)

3 senseis divining top
2 liliana of the veil

4 thoughtseize
4 hymn to tourach

SIDEBOARD

2 pernicious deed
2 zealos persecution
2 path to exile
3 extirpate (i prefer non-counterability over 0-mana surgical extraxtion)
2 timely reinforcements
2 gerrards verdicts (forgot both my duresses and inquisitions at home)
2 gaddock teeg

a few things to the list:

sdmatt is completely right with the liliana argument, but i think using her over garruk depends a bit on playstyle and meta, in my case i haven't got a garruk and i love lily, even if sometimes she is a bit conditional, not being a beating everytime she lands, but does not matter to me, at worst she is an edict effect
vindicate is still awesome, and coupled with hymn and wasteland it gives you a viable manadenial plan which helped me quite a few times in the tournament
DEATHRITE SHAMAN is the most recent addition to my deck, and i simply have to say: "HE IS AWESOME", specially in multiples, and often underestimated. At first i was sceptical, but he is way better than mox diamond IMO, as he is in fact another must-handle-card for most opponents, and not even a bad clock if you got 2 in the field :P
Hyme is still great, but probably the weakest card in the maindeck and is the only card i thought of replacing for more targeted discard, but still it is card-advantage and together with vindicate a reasonable choice for a maindeck card

To the tournament (just a short report because i did only take notes on the 1st Round :P

1st Round: Hannes with Maverick (very nice redhead :P) 2:1

Game 1: I lead with a thoughtseize on his hierarch followed by a turn 2 thoughtseize on his knight, leaving his hand with only a jitte, a wasteland and other lands. I waste his savannah and abrupt decay his jitte in response to a thalia, which was attached to his dryad arbor. I play a 5/5 knight followed by a 4/5 Goyf starting to beat face, topdecked liliana makes him sac his thalia and turn after makes him discard his last card in hand which was garruk. WIN
Board in: 2 persecution, 2 deed, 2 path to exile
Game 2: I keep a strange hand with 3 thoughtseize, confidant and lands after a mulligan to 6, he starts with savannah and gives the turn to me, i go with thoughtseize seing 2 or 3 thalia and a GSZ, picking a thalia, his 2nd turn thalia screws with my plans of discarding his relevant stuff, he further slows me down with 2 wastelands and ultimately beats me with 3 small guys, removing my stuff with either a jitte or swords to plowshares. LOSS
Game 3: Game 3 was a blast, i got so nervous i began shaking in the last minutes of the game :D. Sadly from this game i stopped taking notes, but it was a back and forth the whole time, with me discarding his stuff, him removing my knights. I zealos persecutioned his hierarch and thalia and play a goyf afterwards followed by a knight. I shrink his knight with bojuka bog, he shrinks my stuff back with his topdecked bojuka bog, making my knight as worthless as his, and my goyf was even smaller than anything else on the table :(. i get to remove his knight but he still got a thalia, a scryb ranger and a quasali in play, while my knight and goyf ironically were to small to fight back (at least knight grows fast :P). I get beaten down to 4 with a exalted scryb ranger and topdeck a deed while he is tapped out (cannot remember why) and luckily i got a knight still in play to be able to play my deed and immideately blow it for 2, because of my knight fetching another land. His board got whiped clean and leaving me with my 5/5 knight while he was at 9 lifepoints. After the boardwhipe he played elspeth, immideately making a token for lethal next turn. I topdeck a divining top, searching the top not finding a thing, then using a fetch and find swords to plowshares, path to exile and a vindicate on top (what a lucky bastard i am :P), i start removing his tokens every turn and beating with my knight until he concedes 1 minite before time out was called. WIN

2nd Round: Michael with Reanimator 2:0

Game 1: He wanted to go first but hat to mulligan to 5 so i had a lot of time and an awesome hand against him. He lead with Polluted Delta, go. I play my Godless Shrine into Deathrite Shaman, he fetches a Underground Sea for Brainstorm but misses to Force my Shaman (misplay on his part as he said after the game). 2nd turn i play Karakas leaving him with a sad face and try to vindicate his only land, which he daces leaving me with an additional tempo-andvantage. 3rd Turn i play confidant leaving karakas open. 4th turn he finally gets a griselbrand in game but gets immideately bounced but still getting him 7 cards, as he sees that he had no chance of winning. WIN
Board in: 3 extirpate, 2 path to exile (out went hymn and 1 liliana)
Game 2: He has to mulligan again to 6, i have 2 thoughtseize, 1 goyf and 1 swords to plowshares in hand. He daces my first thoughtseize, but is now open to my second one. He had no discard-outlet and i stripped him of his reanimate, while drawing 2 consecutive extirpates. WIN

3rd Round: Stefan with Canadian/RUG Delver 2:0
I really got lucky in both games. When i saw his first turn i told him, that this game will probably go to him, but appearingly my deck loves me :P
Game 1: He leads with ponder (luckily no delver), and i Wasteland his Tropical. He drops another land but has no counterbackup, i drop a shaman and the next turn i drop knight number 1 which gets immideately forced, he plays a nimble mongoose and burns my shaman to hell. I try to get rid of goose which gets removed from the game, but he followed it with another one. I play my 2nd Knight being 4/4 that gets dismembered, but only after wasting 1 of his 2 lands. i want to vindicate his other land, but this meets force. The Turn after i play liliana number 1, which gets spell pierced, and the following turn i get to play liliana number 2 killing his mongoose, he burns down my liliana, but draws nothing relevant anymore, while i get to play 2 deathrite shamans and a confidant eating away his life quite fast.
Board in: 2 gerrards verdict, 2 timely reinforcements, 2 path to exile (boarding out hymne and vindicate, leaving a singe hymne in the deck)
Game 2: First turn thoughtseize which resolves from my side, stripping his spell snare (i think away), he lands a topdecked Goose afterwards. I play my 2nd turn hymn stripping 2 lands from his hand . The turn after the goose gets removed and his only land in play gets wastelanded, manascrewing him completely. He draws no other land and a goyf is eating 4 of his lifepoints a turn until he concedes.

Both of us actually could not believe that i won, specially with shocklands.

4th Round: Roman with Canadian/RUG Delver 1:2

Game 1: He leads with delver turn 1, followed by a second one turn 2, i get rid of the first flipped one, but he playes a 3rd one right after, making this game extremely short, and i do not get to do much because of his double stifle in hand cutting me of green mana, while i had 2 abrupt decays in hand.
Boarding: same as before only leaving a 2nd hymn in the deck this time and removing a confidant in its place
Game 2: Again i get to see 1st turn delver which is removed immideately. Sadly i do not remember much of this game, but i know that 2 deathrite shamans and a goyf safed my ass from getting burned out, and i got my opponent manascrewed again with double wasteland. He did not draw another land for over 3 turns, and the one he draws gets wastelanded as well
Game 3: 1st and 2nd turn Delver again, but i get to handle both of them with a sword and a path to exile but they ate quite a lot of my lifepoints (together with shocklands obviously). My 1st reinforcements get forced, but my second lands giving me 3 tokens against his lonely 1/1 goose (with him having 4 cards in the grave) and i went up to 10 life again. I thought i got lucky but next turn he double submerged 2 of my tokens and bolted the other one, giving his mongoose shrowd and 3/3. I lose life again until i go to 4 again. but my Goyf save the day (at least i thought) until he gets submerged as well. finaly i somehow removed the goose after a bojuka bog and a path to exile still leaving me with 4 life. my opponent has only 1 card in hand which is ponder, and i draw a knight i could play the turn after so i could wasteland his only red mana next turn. Roman plays ponder, smiling a bit, ..... End of turn Bolt to my face getting me to 1, and then he draws another bolt and smashes it into my face. If i had 1 turn more time i could have turned the table.

Fazit: The deck is just awesome, and shamans really are great. Bojuka bog is really good and will never ever go out of the deck again. It helped quite a lot. I was surprised to be in the top ranks even with shocklands in my deck instead of real duals. Maverick was the most exhausting match i had to fight, and manascrewing RUG-Delver is really funny, with it being extremely strange that the only game i won against RUG-Delver were the ones i got to manascrew them. I find this to be quite intresting.
I was really happy with the deck, and going 3:1 on my first competitive Legacy-Tournament (even if just a small one) was really cool, and is most thanks to this thread.
thanks guys

[ZeinVoncy]

The report is on the previous page.

I mentioned report no where's, but I did mention the article he's writing for another site . . .

It's Eternal Central. I know they're kind of smaller now, but it's still better than nothing.

-Matt

I know of the site, used to check it out all the time until they made a few changes (I think membership vs non-membership) and I lost interest in the information (and I don't pay for any memberships) they were giving, though Stephan does offer some of the best advice for Vintage.

And to the 61 cards, a lot of ppl start getting in statistics with that, and depending on what type of deck you're playing(combo having the strongest statistical importance) a 61st card is viable. I've done it on occasion and had no dramatic change in the out of the game.

[Hapless Researcher]

So, I've been testing Lingering Souls, and it made me wonder if Cabal Therapy might suit this build?

I'm considering it possibly as a Thoughtseize replacement since it can be card advantage. Am I crazy?

[lavafrogg]

Sorry I have been gone!! Congrats Matt!!

[ESG]

Another marginal benefit is if they try to Brain Freeze or BSZ you for exact, you're just next-leveled them, but that's pretty corner case :tongue

I'm a staunch supporter of 60 cards rather than 61, but this argument is hilarious and I want to see it happen. That would be the best.

[sdematt]

I'm a staunch supporter of 60 cards rather than 61, but this argument is hilarious and I want to see it happen. That would be the best.

This did happen once when I was playing Aggro Loam against Spring Tide or whatever, the Reset High Tide deck. I was playing a 62-card mainboard for testing, so my opponent milled me for exactly what would be my 60th card, since he counted out my hand, graveyard, and stuff in play. Turns out, he was 2 cards off and I killed him :P

-Matt

[Claymore]

While a valid tactic, I learned at a Star City IQ that the amount of cards in your library is public information so they can just ask you what's left.