Definitely not against UWMiracles, Where any available beater and some numbers of burn spells (usually 7-8) to the face, is our only win-con.. I've seen numerous players overcommit to landing threats in multiples and paying a heavy price after terminus. You would always want something in your hand even if youve dropped 1 or 2 crits already.. so cutting down beaters (any of our standard 12), i think is not a good decision vs this MU.Originally Posted by Purgatory
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Im agree about to play 4 goyfs, for example against combo is very very important to put pressure at the beginning, if we dont do this, they can sculpt their hand :(,
Sorry but... this argument just doesn't say anything at all. Please name to me a matchup where "any available beater and some numbers of burn spells" is NOT our only wincon.
Indeed. :) I find that against Miracles, where at least I tend to just play my threats one by one and then save burn spells to get in the last 3-6 damage, 11 threats are plenty. Especially against a deck where you always want to have a blue open for Stifle or Spell Pierce/Snare (or a red up for REB/Pyro post-board), the mana cost of Tarmogoyf is heavy. Nimble Mongoose is a much better threat in the match-up anyway, and if they run Helm-RiP main, Delver is more important.
I think playing 4 goyfs right now is probably the best option, maybe if you don't like the full set you could try the 3-1 split with a scavenging ooze... but it's still too mana intensive for our deck.
Talking about goyf... what do you think about replacing the forked bolt/chain lightning slot for 1-2 tarfire? isn't that great for our strategy? A shock that gives goyfs a permanent +1+1 is sweet!
I want to step away from discussing list-tweaks of 1-2 out of the 75 cards for a while and discuss an in-game scenario that is becoming increasingly common.
You are playing against a Team America or Jund deck, i.e. you know that they rely heavily on a non-basic, multicolored manabase and also use Deathrite Shaman. Fortunately, you have the best available hand with answers for everything, including volcanic island, wasteland, stifle, lightning bolt, delver. Unfortunately, you are on the draw, and the opponent leads with nonbasic into DRS.
What's the play?
draw, land, go.
that's the play when you have stifle in hand, no matter what.
Bolt the Shaman.
Even if you Stifle the fetchland that they might or might not have (they're just as likely to have a Dual or Basic in hand), they're still able to cast a 2-drop thanks to their uncontested shaman. And if they didn't follow up with a fetch, now they have the possibility of dropping a 3-drop or a 2-drop and a 1-drop. Have fun dealing with a turn 2 Liliana. (unless you really want to blow a Stifle on a DRS trigger??)
Shaman needs to die early so that your eventual Mongoose reaches Threshold ASAP. You're not going to win in the long game against one of these decks, so having a shrouded robust threat to clock them while you disrupt their line of play is going to be one of the best options of winning.
This is a great example of why I hate playing Stifle. It presents you with scenarios like this where often you're 'damned if you do, damned if you don't'. Some people might look at this as great since it presents plenty of options, but I think it's more a problem of a deck construction that isn't able to maximize each of its turns entirely, and runs too many situational cards that only function in narrow circumstances. (Yeah, if you had won the die roll AND they lead with a fetch, you'd feel justified -- but the actual percentage of times that happens is comparitively low that Stifle does little or nothing in a given match.)
The hand you posited isn't even 'the best available', since you're susceptible to a Wasteland blow-out, don't have a Daze (meaning you might just lose to an early Tarmogoyf), and don't have a Ponder to dig into the correct follow-up sequence.
This rigid rhetoric is not only wrong, it's also harmful to the quality of this thread and to anyone looking to pick up the deck hoping to be competitive with it. I think it should be obvious to anyone playing Legacy for more than a couple months that there often isn't just one correct line of play and that many decisions hinge on a multitude of factors the make it wrong to make some sort of all-encompassing 'golden rules'. 'Rules of thumb', sure. But those are different and should be presented as such.
You might note that I described a hand 'including' the five mentioned cards. Feel free to throw in a ponder and a daze in the mix.
If this hand has Daze its ridonkulous. Bolt shaman, daze goyf/bob if they even try to play it. Your turn wasteland keep stifle open? (If you didnt daze. )
I agree that the hand is good, which was the whole point. Still, it allows for a lot of options, which is why the scenario is interesting to discuss.
I am not 100% on bolting DRS straight up. I would at least consider just dropping volcanic island and pass. Regardless of whether he plays a fetch or a dual, he will not reach 3 mana. Just observe and act with stifle and daze as appropriate. If he does not act, kill the DRS eot.
Not sure. I dont like stuffing the DRS trigger. (Remember if his opening is fetch then DRS he can still activate DRS for 3mana if his Second land is a dual.) This just seems like a situation where the details really matter. Did he open with a fetch? Did I draw a daze? Does he play around daze?
At least my post is helping new players approaching the deck, you're not giving any advice to a novice player reading this. I know very well the rug tempo strategy, and I also know as you stated that there is no correct play 100% of times. But in that particular case leaving yourself mana open for stifle will be the correct play 95% of times. you want to use your stifle on your oppoent's fetchland more than anything else on the first turns, you can't afford to watch your opponent fetch undisturbed with stifle sitting in your hand. if he doesn't play a fetchland you just bolt the shaman eot.
one last note:
this makes no sense at all. If he casts shaman off of a nonbasic and we start with volcanic (and this is exactly our scenario), he will NOT be able to do that. please stop confusing other players.
Totally agreed. One turn of Deathrite Shaman this early won't win them the game. Everyone who responded seemed to ignore the fact that BUG or Jund also play Wastelands. Your play is best because it also protects against incoming Wastelands that could target your Volcanic Island. I wouldn't Bolt the Deathrite Shaman until turn 2 either, so I don't get blown out of the water by Wasteland. Getting hit by Wasteland there effectively shuts you off of your Daze-awesome hand.
I think the only comments harmful to the thread are your comments that prioritize attacking the speaker rather than addressing his comment. Just stop.
The described hand:
volcanic island, wasteland, stifle, lightning bolt, delver
First of all we are missing 3 unknown cards in our turn, which brings up a lot of variables of course, but for the sake of understanding what is the "problem against jund on the draw" I like this task.
Even if we have another colored source to not have the consideration of losing against a wasteland, the question is: what do we achieve by bolting the shaman? The opponent gets to 2 mana next turn anyway, but might also resolve a fetchland.
So what do we lose by not bolting the shaman: Nothing, the opponent gets to 2 mana, but we have the option of stifleing a fetchland/wasteland. If he plays a non-fetchland the shaman is not active and we likely bolt it end of turn. If not because we pierce/snare, we bolt the shaman next turn leaving stifle open from another island. Waste has to wait.
The situation would be worse if the opponent would have led with fetchland into deathrite, since then we are talking about the opponent possibly having access to 3 mana in case he follows-up with a non-fetchland. In that case it might be even ok to force the shaman leaving stifle open the next turn and then wasting our turn 2, hoping to win with the screw. Or just bolting the shaman forcing the 2 drop and then wasting with Stifle open. Any scenario where the shaman lives gives them possibly access to 3 mana turn 2 which can decide the game right there (Thoughtseize into Hymn/confidant being one of the worst). If we have spell pierce I think it is correct to let the shaman resolve and say volcanic go hoping to pierce a hymn/liliana and then follow-up with bolting the shaman in our turn and leaving another island open for stifle (and in the best case an alternative spell like another bolt/pierce/snare/brainstorm if it is correct to play it EOT). I would wait with the wasteland 1 turn in this case.
The key to understand here is to break the tempo loss of being on the draw against a deck with acceleration and a good curve that wrecks us. Similar to Maverick the odds are bad to beat that. The cards and angle of attacks are totally different but the concept is the same.
On more thing: I don’t like the attitude of not playing Stifle because the decisions are more difficult. If Stifle makes you play bad you should play another deck. Go through the outlined scenarios with Stifle being something else like Thoughtscour/Snare and see how they play out.
Currently playing: Elves
I can think of numerous examples where the logic of going 'Draw Go' just because you have a Stifle in your starting hand is wrong. Let me just give you three such examples: 1) against Goblins where your removal spell in hand is sorcery-speed and they dropped a Lackey turn 1; against almost any combo deck where your alternative turn 1 option is to deploy a Delver and thus establish a clock; against UW Miracles where you have a Daze and can also drop a turn 1 Nimble Mongoose.
The theme here is often that Stifle gets progressively worse and worse on the Draw in comparison to being on the play, and that against many decks you need to prioritize establishing a Clock before you worry about Stifle. I would argue that your quoted 95% is far lower than reality. To list every single example of where the rule of thumb of going 'Draw Go' with Stifle in hand would be too exhaustive to attempt listing out in this thread. But I hope it's apparent why this is the case.
The response I made to this individual was attacking the idea of having an all-encompassing statement like 'do [this], no matter what'. Not sure why there's any confusion here or feelings getting hurt.
The decisions aren't necessarily more difficult, the problem is that Stifle forces you to pritoritize maximizing its value to the detriment of other lines of play. How powerful Stifle is is going to largely hinge upon unknown data: Are you going to win the die roll? Is your opponent's deck even one which is actually susceptible to it? Does he have a few opening plays that will get wrecked by it, or is going to deploy a bunch of basics and make holding up Stifle look stupid? Does this player know how to 'play around' Stifle and minimize its impact?
It doesn't necessarily make the player play poorly, it just leads to cases where playing it "correctly" force you into awkward scenarios. Sometimes you simply don't know what the correct line of play is due to unknown information. And as with almost every scenario, it depends a lot on the rest of the hand and the board state.
Conversely, Thought Scour and Spell Snare hold their respective value for much longer into the game, whereas Stifle can quickly become irrelevant.
If you're expecting a bunch of mirrors all day, then yes, by all means play 4 Stifle. But if your expected metagame has a healty amount of variety, I think you'll often find yourself often wishing you didn't.
i really enjoy reading the discussion above, and I understand the dilemma we face because of the first turn DRS in this scenario. That makes me wonder: should we actually keep this hand on the draw? I know we are missing two cards, but I would personally ship this hand away because
1) it doesn't have library manipulation
2) it doesn't have counterspell to stop the early threat (yes, we have stifle, but we are on the draw, we can't utilize the the "stifle-the-fetch" trick to stop the turn two threat...)
I enjoy this exercise as well. I think to properly figure out the best line of play though we need all of the info. For example:
What are our other 1-3 cards (depending on how many times you mulligan and such)?
Did our opponent fetch into shaman?
What land did he fetch (maybe he got a scrubland showing zombies)?
Also to who asked if we even keep this hand, assuming you know you are on the draw, but you dont know what deck your opponent is on do you keep the hand?
Maybe someone should do a Sample hand article similar to Bryant Cooks articles he does for TES?
Using Decked (an app for iPhone I highly recommend), I generated some 7-card handers to consider. I didn't bother posting any of the ones with no blue sources, as those would obviously be mulligans. This was using the Saito list, and I think it'd also be good to perform this exercise again later with a list that incorporates 4 Stifles.
Keep or mulligan, and if kept what is the turn 1 play if you're A) on the play or B) on the draw against an unknown opponent who played a non-descript blue fetchland and passed. And a 3rd question C): is the play you'd choose to perform the only correct choice? why or why not?
1. mongoose, daze, FoW, ponder, tarmogoyf, tarmogoyf, volcanic island
2. delver, lightning bolt, daze, mongoose, misty rainforest, ponder, ponder
3. daze, volcanic island, bolt, spell snare, daze, wasteland, misty rainforest
4. FoW, scalding tarn, nimble mongoose, misty rainforest, delver, spell pierce, chain lightning
5. brainstorm, brainstorm, wasteland, volcanic island, chain lightning, spell pierce, misty rainforest
6. brainstorm, lightning bolt, tropical island, lightning bolt, misty rainforest, lightning bolt, spell snare
7. wasteland, ponder, volcanic island, wasteland, chain lightning, spell pierce, misty rainforest
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