[Deck] TinFins 3: Return of the Onion Burst

[kihachi]

Nice report, kihachi, congrats on placing in the money!

How do you feel about your list moving forward? Any need to remove S&T or add Silence?

Thanks!

I figured that the lack of Silence and existence of S&T and Decay would be questioned. I don't think Silence would be bad as a 1-2 of, but I wouldn't know what to cut. Don't want to cut a discard spell, as they are protection and potential combo pieces. I could cut what I normally cut to sideboard, which is a Children (bad grammar ftw) and a Chrome Mox, but those both add consistency to the maindeck. On the plus, it would open up Pull from Eternity in the board, but wouldn't allow Abrupt Decay, which I think shores up one of our worst matchups and one that will probably become more prevalent now with two straight SCG wins.

I also loved Show and Tell. It's a great compromise between a transformative sideboard and one with answers. I've also been thinking about Cabal Ritual to go with it in the board to up the off-chance of hardcasting Griz as another way around graveyard hate. S&T is great though because people will just keep hands with graveyard hate and nothing else against you.

As far as the Hulk-Flash inspired version of the deck, I don't know if it'll be that good without Mystical Tutor, but it's probably worth a shot. At the point where you have to cast clunky cards like Lim-Dul's Vault or Spoils of the Vault, it probably isn't better than the original deck (though I definitely could be wrong).

Lim Dul might be an interesting card in its own right, as it offers deep digging for little life loss, but the price of two mana might just be too d*mn high. Spoils looks like it's going to just do too much damage in many cases. When I was testing 4 Probes and 2 Thoughtseizes I honestly had a hard time goldfishing sometimes because of life loss. Granted, not often, but add in the fact that your opponent might slow you down and/or damage you, and its worrisome.

[Freggle]

After some minmal testing and modification of the list I posted earlier today I can say that Lim-Duls Vault does show quite a bit of potential. The initial conceptual list was too mana light as many suspected.

Here is a list that seems pretty wicked (I'm sure it is not optimal):

Combo Stuff
4 Shallow Grave
2 Griselbrand
2 Children of Korlis
4 Entomb
4 Dark Ritual
1 Laboratory Maniac
1 Show and Tell

Search Stuff
4 Lim-Dûl's Vault
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder

Disruption
3 Cabal Therapy
4 Force of Will
3 Daze

Mana
4 Marsh Flats
4 Polluted Delta
1 Swamp
4 Underground Sea
4 Lotus Petal
2 Verdant Catacombs
1 Chrome Mox

I cut the probes because they no longer seem needed, and it makes keeps harder to gauge (though I love the card and the information it provides.)

I tested dropping Emrakul & adding Laboratory Maniac based off of comments in here by Bobmans. I liked that it is an instant speed win, doesn't give a crap about what your opponent is doing and it is a hedge against a helm kill on it's own. With a grip of FOW's it is unlikely it will get removed when comboing & it saves a slot since we do not have to loop.

The single Show and Tell is mained as a hedge against G1 yard hate (because why not). With Vault it is surprisingly not too hard to assemble Grizzy / S&T in hand. Could / should just be a Chain of Vapor I guess, but it was fun.

Second Children is in there to ensure we deck ourselves.

I'm not sure if the cuts I did for mana are correct but this list functions perfectly fine. It can currently play through a lot of hate main, but I'd like to squeeze more targeted discard in there to make playing againt it much tougher. ...do you play around Daze? ...or do you play around discard?

[ThomasDowd]

the last two pages of this thread are getting real good. thought about trying to fit in Force the other day but couldn't figure out how to up the blue count. also you need a very good reason to run it over discard since discard is both an enabler and disruption which is huge, being able to do multiple things makes the cards very very good for you.

I played a list at the weekly last night went 0-2 drop playing against fish both rounds. hands were too slow( i probably kept some real stinkers) felt the pressure of wasteland. also running off of 3 hours of sleep, a full day of work and having not touched a magic card for 3 weeks and never playing tinfins before made it a poor outing.

after my first two rounds and then some games against rug before i came home to get more familiar. i changed some things today from how it felt yesterday. the doomsday board was never used and ultimately probably too cute and too many spots. I like having a third griselbrand as i was stuck often enough drawing to only entomb or fatty (7ish outs), and i wanted another discard outlet. I could even see maybe going 2/2 on study/probe.

still have no idea what the hell to do with the board.

2 Children of Korlis
1 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
3 Griselbrand

4 Brainstorm
4 Cabal Therapy
1 Careful Study
2 Chrome Mox
4 Dark Ritual
4 Entomb
3 Gitaxian Probe
3 Goryo's Vengeance
4 Lotus Petal
4 Ponder
4 Shallow Grave
1 Tendrils of Agony
3 Thoughtseize

4 Marsh Flats
4 Polluted Delta
1 Tundra
1 Swamp
3 Underground Sea

Sideboard:
6 ?
2 Chain of Vapor
1 Echoing Truth
2 Pull from Eternity
2 Silence
2 Surgical Extraction

i do like some of the board options up for discussion , but i hate the storm variant running off of IGG, since they are bringing in grave hate anyway.

[kihachi]

ThomasDowd - what about... -3 Probe, +1 Careful Study, +1 Griselbrand, +1 Thoughtseize?

I don't necessarily hate Probe but I think this increases the likelihood of drawing and binning a Griselbrand as an Entomb alternative. My exact list is pretty much your deck with those changes, but Reanimates instead of Studies. You could argue easily that the first half of the combo needs more help than the second half, and go with Careful Studies on that logic.

As for the sideboard I'm sure I'm in the minority here but as I explained above I really liked having 4 S&Ts to board in to, and I did it against pretty much every deck aside from Sneak and Show.

[Dark Ritual]

Almost zero reason to run force of will over unmask over countering e tutor/brainstorm -> rest in peace or other hate permanents landing before we can discard them. Our black count is quite high. Unmask also functions as a free discard outlet for our griselbrand, allowing us to turn 1 ponder into turn 2 unmask ourselves into shallow grave/vengeance without requiring any fast mana like moxen, petals, or dark rit's.

Spoils of the vault is the nut low in here. Hitting ourselves for 15 to find entomb to get griselbrand just invalidates our strategy of winning with griselbrand. There's also the awkward stuff that might happen when exiling cards like exiling tendrils of agony or emrakul or something.

Not really a fan of lab maniac over tendrils of agony. Having to loop your deck to cast emrakul isn't really an issue, as that's pure showboating unless something happened to tendrils that makes it so you can't cast tendrils. After drawing your deck one time your storm count is generally over 15 with ease, as you dark rit 4 times, mox twice, and petal 4 times and that's 10 storm before looking at gitaxian probe, duress just because, shallow grave, reanimate, children of korlis, etc. etc. Killing the opponent is trivial once you draw your entire deck. As for plow or something on maniac, you just drew your deck. You can cabal therapy their StP's away with ease, same with abrupt decays and company. Same with thoughtseize or just resolving silence. We're trying to make the deck more consistent in putting griselbrand in the yard, everything after that is simply elementary.

I like the LDV idea, interested to hear how it pans out.

EDIT: Yeah, I was wondering when this would hit established. Deck is gaining ground and decks do not simply get 2nd at an SCG Open.

[Richard Cheese]

Ok, there's still some formatting to be done, and new ideas are coming in so fast it will probably be outdated by next week, but the new primer is up in the first post. Established, here we come!

[Raystar]

Almost zero reason to run force of will over unmask over countering e tutor/brainstorm -> rest in peace or other hate permanents landing before we can discard them. Our black count is quite high. Unmask also functions as a free discard outlet for our griselbrand, allowing us to turn 1 ponder into turn 2 unmask ourselves into shallow grave/vengeance without requiring any fast mana like moxen, petals, or dark rit's.

Spoils of the vault is the nut low in here. Hitting ourselves for 15 to find entomb to get griselbrand just invalidates our strategy of winning with griselbrand. There's also the awkward stuff that might happen when exiling cards like exiling tendrils of agony or emrakul or something.

Not really a fan of lab maniac over tendrils of agony. Having to loop your deck to cast emrakul isn't really an issue, as that's pure showboating unless something happened to tendrils that makes it so you can't cast tendrils. After drawing your deck one time your storm count is generally over 15 with ease, as you dark rit 4 times, mox twice, and petal 4 times and that's 10 storm before looking at gitaxian probe, duress just because, shallow grave, reanimate, children of korlis, etc. etc. Killing the opponent is trivial once you draw your entire deck. As for plow or something on maniac, you just drew your deck. You can cabal therapy their StP's away with ease, same with abrupt decays and company. Same with thoughtseize or just resolving silence. We're trying to make the deck more consistent in putting griselbrand in the yard, everything after that is simply elementary.

I like the LDV idea, interested to hear how it pans out.

EDIT: Yeah, I was wondering when this would hit established. Deck is gaining ground and decks do not simply get 2nd at an SCG Open.

I believe Unmask exiles the card...it would be a bit overpowered otherwise...

[Lemnear]

I believe Unmask exiles the card...it would be a bit overpowered otherwise...

Read what he wrote. You Target yourself with Unmask to discard Griselbrand. There is nothing about Griselbrand being the pitched spell and binned doing so

[catmint]

If you play with more cantrips and tutors you loose the decks biggest strength: speed but gain more protection (force/daze). A normal tradeoff.

Remember with calebs list I goldfished: 14% T1, 40% turn2

If Lim duls vault is a mayor player you basically setting yourself up for turn 3. What I would like to abuse then is Gitaxian Probe and Thought Scour (or careful study). Probe can draw you in your pile for free and Scour can become a "cantripping entomb". Scour can also function as an entomb or a shuffle effect after a brainstorm. Ponder would have to go though.

The big advantage of this setup i guess is that it is easier to transform.

[Raystar]

Read what he wrote. You Target yourself with Unmask to discard Griselbrand. There is nothing about Griselbrand being the pitched spell and binned doing so

My bad, I misread what he said.

[Falconer]

@ Freggle
Just as constructive feedback, I also have two issues with your new list. After I was one of the people that had no confidence in your old Mana Base I can’t say that I love your new one more. You have 10 Fetch Lands but 5 Mana producing Lands. Shuffling effects are nice but a 2:1 ratio from Fetch Lands and Mana producing lands really seems off. Especially after the regular TinFin build running 8 Fetch Lands, 6 Mana producing Lands and two Chrome Moxes you have arrived at the same number at Mana Sources only with the ability to produce less Mana. Consider that Chrome Mox like Lotus Petal allow you to play Lim Dûl’s Vault on turn one, especially now that you have more blue cards to imprint into Chrome Mox. Do you have any reason to build the Mana Base that way?
The second one is your selection of Win Conditions. The beauty of the 1* Emrakul + 1* Tendrils builds is that you can win on the spot if you have a Griselbrand in play, either with 22 flying hasty damage or with a follow up Tendrils if you can’t find your Emrakul or an Entomb to get it into the grave. You have only the Laboratory Maniac which should makes you even more fragile if anything happens to the Laboratory Maniac. For example an Abrupt Decay could kill Laboratory Maniac in response to you attempting to deck yourself. And Abrupt Decay is currently a card which is maindecked by at least two important decks. After you are only running one Laboratory Maniac the chances that you can’t find a Maniac are as high as the chances of not finding an Emrakul but you have no Plan B for this Situation. While I am willing to discuss if there is a better Win condition than Tendrils for this Deck, I clearly like what Emrakul does for this Deck, sweeping the board, reshuffling the Graveyard to use some cards again as a result I consider dropping Emrakul the wrong idea for this Deck.

@ Richard Cheese
Nice Work with the primer.

[kihachi]

Richard Cheese - New primer is killer!

It made me consider my sideboarding at SCG Indy. I would bring Emrakul out a lot just to make space for sideboard cards, which I think is fine since you really just need to draw your deck and cast Tendrils. Not being able to get your Tendrils after multiple Children activations is possible but not probable.

But maybe keeping Emmy in and siding out Tendrils is the way to go? I wasn't often able to go off without attacking with Griselbrand, so the reanimate-swing for 22 plan isn't great to rely on. But I could just rely on drawing the deck and hardcasting him for the win. Also, most people won't make you go through the combo for a second time anyway, I've found. I don't have the guts to side out all the wincons and Mike Long them though.

So, do people think it's better to side out Emrakul or Tendrils?

[.dk]

I think it depends on what you think they're going to bring in. If you're suspecting Leyline of Sanctity, for example, it might be right to board out Tendrils and just go for Emrakul, since you'll have to get rid of Leyline anyway. You'll need bounce or removal for it one way or another if you're going for Tendrils, and I heard Emrakul removes Leyline just fine as it is anyway.

I can't think of a case where I would want to board out Emrakul though. He's just so useful in all of his modes.

/edit

@Freggle - I've tested lists similar to that pretty extensively in the past. A bit less countermagic (no Forces) and more discard, along with 2-3 LDV. Overall, I think it's a valid approach, but changes the general strategy of the deck. You're slowing down significantly vs. the standard Tin Fins lists, and trading that for protection in the form of countermagic to be able to go off protected almost assuredly on T3. I wasn't a huge fan of that for the reasons of cards like Extirpate, Leyline of the Void, and Knight of the Reliquary making Bojuka Bog basically invalidating the counterspells you have in hand. I feel that discard is superior in these cases as it can deal with multiple counterspells (in the case of Therapy), most grave hate (including 2 of the 3 mentioned above), as well as serve as combo pieces in an incredibly tight maindeck. My take anyway - since we're vulnerable along multiple lines (storm hate, graveyard hate), going off as soon as possible seems like a better plan to me so that they have less opportunity to draw or cantrip into hate.

[Kap'n Cook]

@Richard Cheese

Read the primer and while I don't think the Painter sideboard plan is the way to go for this deck, Humility doesn't actually stop the combo.

Also, Koby did a number on me in a 2-man with a Serenity out of the board

[Richard Cheese]

After some minmal testing and modification of the list I posted earlier today I can say that Lim-Duls Vault does show quite a bit of potential. The initial conceptual list was too mana light as many suspected.

Here is a list that seems pretty wicked (I'm sure it is not optimal):

Combo Stuff
4 Shallow Grave
2 Griselbrand
2 Children of Korlis
4 Entomb
4 Dark Ritual
1 Laboratory Maniac
1 Show and Tell

Search Stuff
4 Lim-Dûl's Vault
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder

Disruption
3 Cabal Therapy
4 Force of Will
3 Daze

Mana
4 Marsh Flats
4 Polluted Delta
1 Swamp
4 Underground Sea
4 Lotus Petal
2 Verdant Catacombs
1 Chrome Mox

I cut the probes because they no longer seem needed, and it makes keeps harder to gauge (though I love the card and the information it provides.)

I tested dropping Emrakul & adding Laboratory Maniac based off of comments in here by Bobmans. I liked that it is an instant speed win, doesn't give a crap about what your opponent is doing and it is a hedge against a helm kill on it's own. With a grip of FOW's it is unlikely it will get removed when comboing & it saves a slot since we do not have to loop.

The single Show and Tell is mained as a hedge against G1 yard hate (because why not). With Vault it is surprisingly not too hard to assemble Grizzy / S&T in hand. Could / should just be a Chain of Vapor I guess, but it was fun.

Second Children is in there to ensure we deck ourselves.

I'm not sure if the cuts I did for mana are correct but this list functions perfectly fine. It can currently play through a lot of hate main, but I'd like to squeeze more targeted discard in there to make playing againt it much tougher. ...do you play around Daze? ...or do you play around discard?

I really like how you're approaching this, and I'm interested to see how this version pans out. My $0.02: I don't think a straight comparison to Flash Hulk is really accurate, since that deck needs only two mana to go off, period, since Hulk tutors for the rest of the pieces and plays them for free. We actually need to generate a lot of mana even after we've resolved our critical reanimation spell, and we're fairly dependent on our life total for improving our odds of finding a win condition.

I will say though that by switching to Lab Maniac, you're getting closer to the all instant-speed Mogg Fanatic kill in Hulk, although I think you should be cutting Tendrils for it rather than Emrakul, since the shuffle effect can be critical sometimes. You might want to check out Chapin's article on Vintage Flash Hulk here. It might be worth looking at Pact of Negation over Daze, since you can technically win with the Pact trigger on the stack with Lab Maniac. I'm just not sure if the deck can do that consistently without casting Lotus Petals.

[Joe Eigo]

So, do people think it's better to side out Emrakul or Tendrils?

IF i side out a wincon it's always the Tendril's, since it's the least necessary, in my opinion. 95% of the time, if i won the first game, it was with Tendril's. So in case they board anything against that (e.g. mentioned Leyline of Sanctity or G.Teeg guy, ...) you will not have any in the deck anymore. And opponent having dead cards in deck = good for us.

[Koby]

Welcome to Established!

[Raystar]

Welcome to Established!

Great job guys!

[.dk]

Wahoo! Established! :)

Thanks again for everyone who has helped to get the deck to where it is! Next step... wtf do we do about a sideboard. :)

For those that haven't yet - check out the new primer! Hopefully it answers a lot of questions about the deck and some cards/concepts that have been considered and tested in the past.

[Dela]

FANTASTIC work on the primer! Great explanations of everything from the name all the way down to quirky deck interactions. Well done.

Food for thought: If we are looking for another shallow grave effect (or slowing the deck down) what about Corpse Dance? Sure +1 mana is an issue, but we all know how much better Shallow Grave is vs Goryo's