Oops, All Spells! (Formerly The Rogue Hermit)

[rakevinwr]

I saw one play on camera against High Tide where the pilot lost because he had to imprint Chrome Mox with Summoner's Pact. What do you guys think about running a creature like DRS as a target for summoner's to imprint as black mana on the Mox? Something like Slitherhead would work just as well but I like the idea that if we ever do cast DRS he can work as a mana source.

After seeing the plays this weekend it seemed to me like Living wish will be needed in some form or another for grabbing Cavern of Souls from the SB. similarly I really like Chancellor of the Annex in a counter heavy meta.

[Tlbwars]

So.... do i build this deck or Belcher !? ... (competitive/fun point of view)

[gkraigher]

I saw one play on camera against High Tide where the pilot lost because he had to imprint Chrome Mox with Summoner's Pact. What do you guys think about running a creature like DRS as a target for summoner's to imprint as black mana on the Mox? Something like Slitherhead would work just as well but I like the idea that if we ever do cast DRS he can work as a mana source.

After seeing the plays this weekend it seemed to me like Living wish will be needed in some form or another for grabbing Cavern of Souls from the SB. similarly I really like Chancellor of the Annex in a counter heavy meta.

What is DRS?? Is it deathrite shaman?

[nudon]

I saw one play on camera against High Tide where the pilot lost because he had to imprint Chrome Mox with Summoner's Pact. What do you guys think about running a creature like DRS as a target for summoner's to imprint as black mana on the Mox? Something like Slitherhead would work just as well but I like the idea that if we ever do cast DRS he can work as a mana source.

After seeing the plays this weekend it seemed to me like Living wish will be needed in some form or another for grabbing Cavern of Souls from the SB. similarly I really like Chancellor of the Annex in a counter heavy meta.

Unless you're running the living wish package (absolutely necessary in my opinion) and want to reuse your mana next turn for spy, there's almost no reason to imprint chrome mox with summoner's pact. Though I didn't see the match, I heard he had either a dark ritual or cabal therapy he could have pitched to mox as well. Hearing this, I feel the pilot either made mistakes or just picked up the deck after seeing the article on scg without actually testing. Though I don't think it's necessary, DRS would probably be the way to go if you feel you needed that 1 extra creature to pitch to mox as you stated.

As I've stated before, grabbing cavern is a really nice luxury but grabbing the swamp from the sb is usually more relevant if you've already got informer/spy in your hand or a second wish. Chancellor of the annex is a must in the sb (at least 3). It's good against almost every hate except crypt, macabre, and leyline of the void.

[nudon]

What is DRS?? Is it deathrite shaman?

Yes

[rakevinwr]

Unless you're running the living wish package (absolutely necessary in my opinion) and want to reuse your mana next turn for spy, there's almost no reason to imprint chrome mox with summoner's pact. Though I didn't see the match, I heard he had either a dark ritual or cabal therapy he could have pitched to mox as well. Hearing this, I feel the pilot either made mistakes or just picked up the deck after seeing the article on scg without actually testing. Though I don't think it's necessary, DRS would probably be the way to go if you feel you needed that 1 extra creature to pitch to mox as you stated.

As I've stated before, grabbing cavern is a really nice luxury but grabbing the swamp from the sb is usually more relevant if you've already got informer/spy in your hand or a second wish. Chancellor of the annex is a must in the sb (at least 3). It's good against almost every hate except crypt, macabre, and leyline of the void.

Nudon, thanks for the reply!

Looking back at the video you are correct, and the pilot made the mistake of waiting to go off against a blue deck giving him time to dig for Force.

Picked up my Chancellors yesterday, what cards would you recommend boarding on to bring them in? Manamorphose? Or something like Street Wraith.

[nudon]

Nudon, thanks for the reply!

Looking back at the video you are correct, and the pilot made the mistake of waiting to go off against a blue deck giving him time to dig for Force.

Picked up my Chancellors yesterday, what cards would you recommend boarding on to bring them in? Manamorphose? Or something like Street Wraith.

Here's a rough guide how I would sb.
Any U/x deck:
+3 chancellor of the annex, +3 leyline of lifeforce, -1 therapy, -1 bridge, -4 chancellor of the tangle

Jund, Junk, BUG tempo, decks with heavy discard:
+3 chancellor of the annex, +3 leyline of sanctity, -1 therapy, -1 bridge, -4 chancellor of the tangle

Combo, fair decks without discard:
+3 chancellor of the annex (leyline of sanctity if TES/ANT), -2 therapy, -1 bridge

The belchers come in game 3 for wish if he had macabre or leyline of the void. If you want me to give advice on a list you have, please post. Hope this helps! :)

Here's my list for reference:
//Win Conditions
4 Undercity Informer
3 Balustrade Spy
4 Living Wish

//Mana Fixing
4 Summoner's Pact
1 Wild Cantor

//Mana Generation
4 Chancellor of the Tangle
4 Elvish Spirit Guide
4 Simian Spirit Guide
4 Lotus Petal
4 Lion's Eye Diamond
4 Chrome Mox
4 Dark Ritual
4 Cabal Ritual

//Combo
3 Cabal Therapy
4 Narcomoeba
1 Bridge from Below
1 Dread Return
1 Angel of Glory's Rise
1 Azami, Lady of Scrolls
1 Laboratory Maniac

//Sideboard
SB: 1 Balustrade Spy
SB: 1 Cavern of Souls
SB: 1 Swamp
SB: 3 Leyline of Lifeforce
SB: 3 Leyline of Sanctity
SB: 3 Chancellor of the Annex
SB: 3 Goblin Charbelcher

[Smmenen]

Here's a rough guide how I would sb.
Any U/x deck:
+3 chancellor of the annex, +3 leyline of lifeforce, -1 therapy, -1 bridge, -4 chancellor of the tangle

Jund, Junk, BUG tempo, decks with heavy discard:
+3 chancellor of the annex, +3 leyline of sanctity, -1 therapy, -1 bridge, -4 chancellor of the tangle

Combo, fair decks without discard:
+3 chancellor of the annex (leyline of sanctity if TES/ANT), -2 therapy, -1 bridge

The belchers come in game 3 for wish if he had macabre or leyline of the void. If you want me to give advice on a list you have, please post. Hope this helps! :)

Here's my list for reference:
//Win Conditions
4 Undercity Informer
3 Balustrade Spy
4 Living Wish

//Mana Fixing
4 Summoner's Pact
1 Wild Cantor

//Mana Generation
4 Chancellor of the Tangle
4 Elvish Spirit Guide
4 Simian Spirit Guide
4 Lotus Petal
4 Lion's Eye Diamond
4 Chrome Mox
4 Dark Ritual
4 Cabal Ritual

//Combo
3 Cabal Therapy
4 Narcomoeba
1 Bridge from Below
1 Dread Return
1 Angel of Glory's Rise
1 Azami, Lady of Scrolls
1 Laboratory Maniac

//Sideboard
SB: 1 Balustrade Spy
SB: 1 Cavern of Souls
SB: 1 Swamp
SB: 3 Leyline of Lifeforce
SB: 3 Leyline of Sanctity
SB: 3 Chancellor of the Annex
SB: 3 Goblin Charbelcher

I think your list is pretty much perfected at this point, but I still have two suggestions:

1) Shouldn't the SB creature be Undercity Informer, and not Balustrade Spy? If you are generating mana with Chancellor, etc, you should have the cheaper creature in the sideboard, shouldn't you? It is easier to Living Wish and cast Informer on turn one than LW + Spy. Or is your rationale that you will probably play the creature the following turn in one shot? All of my testing has been Vintage so far, but my intuition is that you want the cheaper creature in the sideboard and force it through on turn one. I guess the concern, though, is that a player will try to kill it with removal or burn, and so you may just wish to wait to play it if you can't activate it. In vintage, you can easily resolve it and activate it on the next turn...

2) I still prefer the 3 Narco/2 Bridge split for one very important reason: If I'm going to draw one of those five cards in my opening hand, having 2 Bridge increases your chance of having a black card to imprint on Chrome Mox. That's my split in the Vintage deck. I understand your point about sideboarding, which is well taken. One of the things I like about Spy is that you only need 2 Narcos in the GY with it in play to Dread Return.

[nudon]

I think your list is pretty much perfected at this point, but I still have two suggestions:

1) Shouldn't the SB creature be Undercity Informer, and not Balustrade Spy? If you are generating mana with Chancellor, etc, you should have the cheaper creature in the sideboard, shouldn't you? It is easier to Living Wish and cast Informer on turn one than LW + Spy. Or is your rationale that you will probably play the creature the following turn in one shot? All of my testing has been Vintage so far, but my intuition is that you want the cheaper creature in the sideboard and force it through on turn one. I guess the concern, though, is that a player will try to kill it with removal or burn, and so you may just wish to wait to play it if you can't activate it. In vintage, you can easily resolve it and activate it on the next turn...

2) I still prefer the 3 Narco/2 Bridge split for one very important reason: If I'm going to draw one of those five cards in my opening hand, having 2 Bridge increases your chance of having a black card to imprint on Chrome Mox. That's my split in the Vintage deck. I understand your point about sideboarding, which is well taken. One of the things I like about Spy is that you only need 2 Narcos in the GY with it in play to Dread Return.

1. In the scenario where I have 5 mana and cannot fully cast spy off wish, I think it's better to just use tangle's mana to cast living wish and wait a turn than leaving informer exposed to removal for a full turn. The deck already loses to FoW (without therapy/cavern backup) so I don't want to open myself up to bolt, swords, dismember, etc too. Also, there are many situations where LED serves as that 4th mana to activate informer. Having 4 informers MD maximizes this play. In addition, spy in the sb gives you 4 additional chances to pitch narcomoeba(s) to chrome mox without fear of fizzling (as noted by you). Finally, you still have the option to swap informer out for spy games 2 and 3 if they don't have removal.

2. Like you said, the main advantage of having 2 bridges is an extra card to imprint chrome mox for black mana. You also get extra tokens in most cases to sac to therapy to see what they're playing. However, that advantage is negated if the opponent is smart and scoops in response to therapy game 1. It was a personal preference but I wanted to give myself more options post-board for the plethora of hate coming my way. Either way is probably fine I think.

Hopefully this deck isn't perfected just yet since I don't feel it's as consistent as belcher at this point haha.

[alphastryk]

I think your list is pretty much perfected at this point, but I still have two suggestions:

1) Shouldn't the SB creature be Undercity Informer, and not Balustrade Spy? If you are generating mana with Chancellor, etc, you should have the cheaper creature in the sideboard, shouldn't you? It is easier to Living Wish and cast Informer on turn one than LW + Spy. Or is your rationale that you will probably play the creature the following turn in one shot? All of my testing has been Vintage so far, but my intuition is that you want the cheaper creature in the sideboard and force it through on turn one. I guess the concern, though, is that a player will try to kill it with removal or burn, and so you may just wish to wait to play it if you can't activate it. In vintage, you can easily resolve it and activate it on the next turn...

2) I still prefer the 3 Narco/2 Bridge split for one very important reason: If I'm going to draw one of those five cards in my opening hand, having 2 Bridge increases your chance of having a black card to imprint on Chrome Mox. That's my split in the Vintage deck. I understand your point about sideboarding, which is well taken. One of the things I like about Spy is that you only need 2 Narcos in the GY with it in play to Dread Return.

1) Having the maximum number of the Informer main allows you to use LED as a 4th mana to go off. That has come up a lot more than wishing for the combo man and being short one mana, with a chrome mox in play.

2) I definitely agree on the split being 3/2 for improving chrome mox.

[slylie]

Unless you're running the living wish package (absolutely necessary in my opinion) and want to reuse your mana next turn for spy, there's almost no reason to imprint chrome mox with summoner's pact. Though I didn't see the match, I heard he had either a dark ritual or cabal therapy he could have pitched to mox as well. Hearing this, I feel the pilot either made mistakes or just picked up the deck after seeing the article on scg without actually testing. Though I don't think it's necessary, DRS would probably be the way to go if you feel you needed that 1 extra creature to pitch to mox as you stated.

As I've stated before, grabbing cavern is a really nice luxury but grabbing the swamp from the sb is usually more relevant if you've already got informer/spy in your hand or a second wish. Chancellor of the annex is a must in the sb (at least 3). It's good against almost every hate except crypt, macabre, and leyline of the void.

I think most good players will just counter the living wish.

[nudon]

1) Having the maximum number of the Informer main allows you to use LED as a 4th mana to go off. That has come up a lot more than wishing for the combo man and being short one mana, with a chrome mox in play.

2) I definitely agree on the split being 3/2 for improving chrome mox.

After some more thought, I agree 3/2 split is probably correct because there's still a decent good chance (7/11) your win-con will be balustrade spy in case you decided to board out a bridge and got a narcomoeba stuck in hand.

I think most good players will just counter the living wish.

I agree on this and there's not much we can do about it unless you're running pact of negation (chancellor of the annex helps me post-board). However, it's still better than getting a rogue countered (2 mana for wish instead of 4 for rogue).

[Ziveeman]

By the way, Reuben Bresler mentioned that 3 Rogue Hermit/Oops All Spells/Undercity Informer-Balustrade Spy decks made the Top 32 of SCG Edison. Pretty good showing in my opinion. There were 7 in the room apparently.

[Darklingske]

Stephens article is up at Eternal central: http://www.eternalcentral.com/?p=3544

Nice article Stephen! And looking forward to the legacy part!!

[The Informer]

One other note about the deck from my experience playing it at Edison. I played the Fiend Hunter/Angel of Glory's rise kill, and after the tournament, stand by the decision to run it over Azami/Lab Maniac. Were I to play in another tournament tomorrow, I would play the same kill again. It is slightly more vulnerable, but if you play smartly, it will it not make any difference, and it saves space. More importantly, the odds of having a combo piece in hand go way down, and the odds of having two in hand go way down. With regards to non-permanent based disruption, it will to matter, since you can strip their hand. With regards to permanent based disruption, there is a slight difference. If I were to play again, I would probably put a Lab Maniac in the sideboard for that reason. But I would leave the kill in the main deck the same.

[Bahamuth]

So I wrote a program that can goldfish this deck. I first tried my own list:

Running:
4 Chrome mox
4 Petal
4 LED
4 Dark Ritual
4 Cabal Ritual
4 Pact
4 ESG
4 SSG
2 Chancellor

4 Manamorphose
1 Cantor

4 Spy
3 Informer
4 Living Wish
1 DR
1 Bridge
4 Moeba
2 Therapy
1 Angel
1 Fiend Hunter

These rates are for turn 1 wins:

Winrate for 7 cards: 39.1%
Winrate for 6 cards: 19.7%
Winrate for 5 cards: 5.59%
Winrate for 4 cards: 0.69%

Total Winrate including mulligans: 53.9%

These percentages have been found goldfishing a total of 10000 times for every amount of cards in hand.

I also tried the SCG list with 4 Annex mainboard. It had

Winrate for 7 cards: 34.5%
Winrate for 6 cards: 18.6%
Winrate for 5 cards: 5.59%
Winrate for 4 cards: 0.73%

Total Winrate including mulligans: 49.9%

These numbers could potentially be used to compare lists that have otherwise the same properties. For instance, comparing the above 2 lists makes no sense, since it has the difference of 4 Chancellor.

If anyone has any lists that are unique enough that they want ran, you can post them here and I'll try.

[nudon]

So I wrote a program that can goldfish this deck. I first tried my own list:

Running:
4 Chrome mox
4 Petal
4 LED
4 Dark Ritual
4 Cabal Ritual
4 Pact
4 ESG
4 SSG
2 Chancellor

4 Manamorphose
1 Cantor

4 Spy
3 Informer
4 Living Wish
1 DR
1 Bridge
4 Moeba
2 Therapy
1 Angel
1 Fiend Hunter

These rates are for turn 1 wins:

Winrate for 7 cards: 39.1%
Winrate for 6 cards: 19.7%
Winrate for 5 cards: 5.59%
Winrate for 4 cards: 0.69%

Total Winrate including mulligans: 53.9%

These percentages have been found goldfishing a total of 10000 times for every amount of cards in hand.

I also tried the SCG list with 4 Annex mainboard. It had

Winrate for 7 cards: 34.5%
Winrate for 6 cards: 18.6%
Winrate for 5 cards: 5.59%
Winrate for 4 cards: 0.73%

Total Winrate including mulligans: 49.9%

These numbers could potentially be used to compare lists that have otherwise the same properties. For instance, comparing the above 2 lists makes no sense, since it has the difference of 4 Chancellor.

If anyone has any lists that are unique enough that they want ran, you can post them here and I'll try.

Thanks for writing the program! The core of our deck is largely the same so I'm kind of curious how manamorphose affects the win %. The difference between your main deck and mine is: -4 manamorphose, -1 narc, -1 fiend hunter, +2 chancellor of the tangle, +1 therapy, +1 bridge, +1 azami, +1 angel. Not sure how robust your program is but there's also a swamp in my sb to turn on dark/cabal ritual in case I have only green/red/blue (narc on mox) sources.

[Darkenslight]

Thanks for writing the program! The core of our deck is largely the same so I'm kind of curious how manamorphose affects the win %. The difference between your main deck and mine is: -4 manamorphose, -1 narc, -1 fiend hunter, +2 chancellor of the tangle, +1 therapy, +1 bridge, +1 azami, +1 angel. Not sure how robust your program is but there's also a swamp in my sb to turn on dark/cabal ritual in case I have only green/red/blue (narc on mox) sources.

...I'm trying to figure out how the Angel/Hunter kill works, but I can't see it. Could someone please enlighten me?

[Climax]

...I'm trying to figure out how the Angel/Hunter kill works, but I can't see it. Could someone please enlighten me?

Angel returns Hunter, Wild Cantor, Informer.--> Hunter exiles Angel. Wild Cantor is sacced for Mana, so you can sacrifice Hunter for Informer and target your opponent. Angel returns. Rinse&Repeat

[Bahamuth]

Thanks for writing the program! The core of our deck is largely the same so I'm kind of curious how manamorphose affects the win %. The difference between your main deck and mine is: -4 manamorphose, -1 narc, -1 fiend hunter, +2 chancellor of the tangle, +1 therapy, +1 bridge, +1 azami, +1 angel. Not sure how robust your program is but there's also a swamp in my sb to turn on dark/cabal ritual in case I have only green/red/blue (narc on mox) sources.

I can fit the Wish to Swamp in I think. I'll try your list soon.

By the way, I don't think it's very obvious if 3 Moeba 2 Bridge is better than 4 Moeba 1 Bridge. The upside if 3-2 is that you have more black cards, but the downside is that if you draw Moeba+Bridge, you can't win whereas if you draw Moeba Bridge in the 4-1 config, you can.