[Deck] ANT (Ad Nauseam Tendrils)

[Lemnear]

ANT is easier to play, for one. .

So we evaluate the strength of a deck not because of it's performance but of the a) amount of players which pick it up and b) the linearity to play it without practice? No wonder Burn was considered a DtB last year on TheSource lol

[Koby]

So we evaluate the strength of a deck not because of it's performance but of the a) amount of players which pick it up and b) the linearity to play it without practice? No wonder Burn was considered a DtB last year on TheSource lol

It may not be elegant, but it's simple and consistent. Either way, if people wanted to spike the DTB status, they could all play Dredge for 4 weeks straight, and that would work just as well. The DTB isn't tracking "most powerful deck"; it's tracking "the most likely deck you'll face". That latter does get influenced by the frequency of people playing a given deck.

[Zombie]

Well, the DTB is part what performs well, part what is played a lot. Basically, doesn't matter if Lich is the bees knees, preparing for it is largely useless.

There's a saying in Finland that goes roughly "When shit gets paired against shit, shit wins", or more politically correctly, be mindful of sheer clout.

[AlleywayJack]

I find it funny that ANT only top 8s and TES wins, yet ANT, not TES, ends up in the DTB section.

http://www.mtgtop8.com/event?e=4172&d=224385
its labeled as TES for some reason, but its obviously an ANT deck. actually the only 1st place on page one of storm is one ANT deck.

also i didn't realize this was the place to incessantly argue over which storm deck is better. each deck has its own strengths and weaknesses. people are going to play what they want to play. as far as i know, DTB is a representation of what people are playing and what you should expect to be playing against. not a representation of the most powerful deck in the format. obviously there is a link when comparing the two, but in no way does DTB status make a deck better. if anything being on the dtb page is worse for a deck because then everyone knows the latest tech.

a productive conversation on how to make either deck better would be time much better spent, rather than uttering repetitive babble over TES vs ANT. its a circular conversation. the ANT players are going to play ANT and the TES players are going to play TES.

[mort-]

Isn't the question if this or TES should be DTB kind of offtopic?

To be ontopic, I think Prosak did the right thing by splashing Gemstone Mines into the deck and this should be looked into further.
=> http://sales.starcitygames.com//deck...p?DeckID=53166 his list, for reference.

I've been toying around with that list a bit and came to the conclusion that, if one plays 4 Gemstone Mine (-1 Underground Sea, -1 Island), the disruption package can easily be changed to 2 Cabal Therapy, 1 Duress, 3 Silence.
Which has been the bomb. Currently, I feel there is so much going on between Misdirectionn, Divert, Flusterstorm, Mindbreak Trap, etc. that Silence is an absolute monster. So I tested it and never looked back. The other change I made was swapping 2 Preordain with a Grim Tutor and a card that has imho been greatly overlooked in decks running GT - Chain of Vapor.

With the mentioned changes I made I'm actually testing (with GP Straßbourg in mind) the following list:

Lands:
1 Island
1 Swamp
4 Gemstone Mine
1 Bloodstained Mire
4 Polluted Delta
2 Scalding Tarn
1 Underground Sea
1 Volcanic Island

Spells:
4 Lion's Eye Diamond
4 Lotus Petal
1 Ad Nauseam
4 Brainstorm
4 Cabal Ritual
1 Chain of Vapor
4 Dark Ritual
2 Cabal Therapy
1 Duress
4 Gitaxian Probe
1 Grim TUtor
4 Infernal Tutor
1 Past in Flames
4 Ponder
2 Preordain
1 Tendrils of Agony

Sideboard:
3 Carpet of Flowers
3 Abrupt Decay
1 Chain of Vapor
1 Hurkyl's Recall
2 Ignorant Bliss (love this so much)
1 Cabal Therapy
1 Empty the Warrens
2 Massacre
1 Tropical Island

Will post a small report of noticable events while testing this list when I have a bit more of time, so the list isn't so alone in here ;D What I can say (and can't say enough) that Silence is brilliantly good atm.

Greetings,

Florian

[AlleywayJack]

Isn't the question if this or TES should be DTB kind of offtopic?

I've been toying around with that list a bit and came to the conclusion that, if one plays 4 Gemstone Mine (-1 Underground Sea, -1 Island), the disruption package can easily be changed to 2 Cabal Therapy, 1 Duress, 3 Silence.
Which has been the bomb. Currently, I feel there is so much going on between Misdirectionn, Divert, Flusterstorm, Mindbreak Trap, etc. that Silence is an absolute monster. So I tested it and never looked back.

instead of going to all that trouble to play silence, couldn't you just keep the discard set up play SB xantid swarm instead? your already splashing for abrupt decay. carpet of flowers isnt very good so you already have 3 open slots. xantid swarm also dodges spell pierce, spell snare, flusterstorm, easily dodges daze, and fits into your colors without any trouble.

also imo chant effects are only good in certain matchups. i like that you can "chant-walk" against non blue decks, but again, imo, discard does alot more damage to a wider variety of the field.

[mort-]

instead of going to all that trouble to play silence, couldn't you just keep the discard set up play SB xantid swarm instead? your already splashing for abrupt decay. carpet of flowers isnt very good so you already have 3 open slots. xantid swarm also dodges spell pierce, spell snare, flusterstorm, easily dodges daze, and fits into your colors without any trouble.

also imo chant effects are only good in certain matchups. i like that you can "chant-walk" against non blue decks, but again, imo, discard does alot more damage to a wider variety of the field.

I'm not a fan of Xantid Swarm. The choice Swarm against Carpet is imho solely dependend on the RUG matchup (which might be a german thing, because RUG makes a pretty big part of the meta here). So, Swarm does basicly nothing here, because they'll most certainly leave Bolts in, while Carpet nets you at least two mana, even if you get wasted to death. That was the most important point which got me to switch the two sets.

Splashing Silence isn't trouble at all, it's just 2 up to 4 Gemstone Mines, which actually fit quite nicely into the mana base. Currently.. in this meta, combo is on the rise everywhere and I always felt kind of naked playing the mirror without Chanteffects while my opponent had them. Against Maverick it's a Time Walk where Duress might miss Thalia. It's super against a Force under a Top (yes, Swarm does that too, but you do have to untap with it). It helps at least a bit against Tin Fins / Reanimator / SnT. Snapcaster are everywhere, so discard doesn't do that much here again. And of course, being able to fetch it with Grim Tutor while comboing off (serving as bait, also) is great - which is, by the way, one of the situations I wanted to describe later.

So, in my oppinion, Silence decks most of the archetypes that are currently dominant better than discard does.

[Megadeus]

TES also plays City of Brass to make it more likely that we can cast our Silences. 4 Gemstones may not be enough. And for this deck relying heavier on a land that eventually depletes itself may be a problem.

[mort-]

TES also plays City of Brass to make it more likely that we can cast our Silences. 4 Gemstones may not be enough. And for this deck relying heavier on a land that eventually depletes itself may be a problem.

Funny that you mention it :D I actually played City of Brass on Sunday instead of Gemstone Mine (well.. because I got them altered and stuff) which got me almost killed in two games. I don't think you'll use the land more than three times, but if you happen to draw two, CoB could turn into a problem.

[Megadeus]

Well TES usually does 4 Gemstones and 2 City of Brass. But it mitigates the life loss/depletion of counters by just being faster and therefore not using the lands as many times per turn. I have had issues of using up all of my counters on mine. Im sure that ANT probably would activate their Mine/City of Brass an average of almost one time more than TES. Which is why I am not sure if you really want to risk stretching the mana base too far here.

Not to mention that if you are playing something like this you play less fetches which not only weakens your Brainstorms, but Cabal Ritual becomes much slower.

[mort-]

Not to mention that if you are playing something like this you play less fetches which not only weakens your Brainstorms, but Cabal Ritual becomes much slower.

I switched 1 Underground Sea and 1 Island for the two extra Mines, so no, no Fetchlands cut.
And I don't get why you have issues with the depletion of counters. I mean, even if TES is faster, this is still a combo deck. So even IF you land a Gemstone Mine T1, you should kill T3, meaning your last counter goes into the combo turn. If not, I think something is going wrong.

[DarkJester]

Isn't the question if this or TES should be DTB kind of offtopic?

To be ontopic, I think Prosak did the right thing by splashing Gemstone Mines into the deck and this should be looked into further.
=> http://sales.starcitygames.com//deck...p?DeckID=53166 his list, for reference.

I've been toying around with that list a bit and came to the conclusion that, if one plays 4 Gemstone Mine (-1 Underground Sea, -1 Island), the disruption package can easily be changed to 2 Cabal Therapy, 1 Duress, 3 Silence.
Which has been the bomb. Currently, I feel there is so much going on between Misdirectionn, Divert, Flusterstorm, Mindbreak Trap, etc. that Silence is an absolute monster. So I tested it and never looked back. The other change I made was swapping 2 Preordain with a Grim Tutor and a card that has imho been greatly overlooked in decks running GT - Chain of Vapor.

With the mentioned changes I made I'm actually testing (with GP Straßbourg in mind) the following list:

Lands:
1 Island
1 Swamp
4 Gemstone Mine
1 Bloodstained Mire
4 Polluted Delta
2 Scalding Tarn
1 Underground Sea
1 Volcanic Island

Spells:
4 Lion's Eye Diamond
4 Lotus Petal
1 Ad Nauseam
4 Brainstorm
4 Cabal Ritual
1 Chain of Vapor
4 Dark Ritual
2 Cabal Therapy
1 Duress
4 Gitaxian Probe
1 Grim TUtor
4 Infernal Tutor
1 Past in Flames
4 Ponder
2 Preordain
1 Tendrils of Agony

Sideboard:
3 Carpet of Flowers
3 Abrupt Decay
1 Chain of Vapor
1 Hurkyl's Recall
2 Ignorant Bliss (love this so much)
1 Cabal Therapy
1 Empty the Warrens
2 Massacre
1 Tropical Island

Will post a small report of noticable events while testing this list when I have a bit more of time, so the list isn't so alone in here ;D What I can say (and can't say enough) that Silence is brilliantly good atm.

Greetings,

Florian

Hey, list looks very nice. I think I will give it a try at my next tournament (btw. your list has 57 cards, I think you forgot the Silences ). Is Ignorant Bliss really that good? And ETW comes in against Canadian I think, wouldn't the 4th copy of Silence be better in that specific MU?

[Zombie]

In my experience Delver's way of dealing with a fast Warrens is "die horribly".

[DarkJester]

In my experience Delver's way of dealing with a fast Warrens is "die horribly".

That's true, but is this deck build to support an early warrens consistently? Just asking questions, I never tested mort's list but know the Etw-power from TES (really good in here) and from the UBR-WishANT (where ETW rarely shines during the first turns of a match. It seems to be more of a grinding card in here).

[mort-]

Yeah.. Silences are missing. Whooops :D
I think I'll also upgrade to 4 Silences and cut the Duress.
And yes, Ignorant Bliss is that good. Nothing beats the face of "Hymn to Tourach, you." "Response, Ignorant Bliss". And then... the face :)

Edit: Yeah, early Warrens works quite well, especially with the Chain to add 2 / 3 Stormcounts.

[Zombie]

I wouldn't board Warrens in. This is a longer game deck built on the power of Cabal Ritual and Past in Flames fueled by Cabal Rituals. Not ideal ground for getting off those fast Warrens.

[Dzra]

Is there a reason that Carpet of Flowers or Xantid Swarm is favored over something like Defense Grid when boarding against RUG? I feel like I'd rather wait the extra turn and be able to fetch basics than have to open up a Bayou to Wasteland.

[Lemnear]

Amazing ... after burning wishes, chrome moxen, empty the warrens and Rainbow Land Players try out Silences in ANT?

I have no idea why ANT still Claims it's own identity because of Cabal Ritual and PIF maindeck (instead wishboard) if the Rest of the deck mimicries some TES' techs here and there in a rotation.

Divert > Ignorant Bliss

[Sigyn]

Divert > Ignorant Bliss

Both are pretty bad imo, if I had to run one of those I'd definitely agree with you, but since divert doesn't provide protection from duress I prefer running Dark confidant instead even though is sensible to removal spells.

I personally don't like silences at all in this kind of decks, I understand them in DDFT or TES since you want to stop all kind of interaction when you go diminishing returns/Tspiral/Doomsday, but in ANT is much better going for the discard plan, one of the strenghs of ANT over the other storm combo decks is the manabase, which is pretty solid, adding white makes it more vulnerable.

[Pdingo]

Hei Guys

Im from Switzerland and a great fan of ANT and TES but at the moment now i play ANT/TNT.
Here is my list:

4 Polluted Delta
2 Underground Sea
1 Volcanic Island
1 Badlands
1 Island
1 Swamp
4 Infernal Tutor
4 Gitaxian Probe
4 Dark Ritual
2 Cabal Therapy
4 Cabal Ritual
4 Brainstorm
4 Duress
4 Ponder
3 Burning Wish
1 Tendrils of Agony
1 Past in Flames
1 Ad Nauseam
4 Lion's Eye Diamond
4 Lotus Petal
1 Chrome Mox
2 Verdant Catacombs
2 Scalding Tarn
1 Tropical Island

SB: 1 Tendrils of Agony
SB: 1 Ill-Gotten Gains
SB: 1 Empty the Warrens
SB: 1 Pyroclasm (We have a lot esperblade player and it takes the hatebears)
SB: 4 Dark Confidant(Should be have to play! so good against Discard and Combo)
SB: 4 Abrupt Decay (I play 4 decays because: They are to good in the meta right now and in Switzerland we have a lot Miracle and other match up where are the decay so good)
SB: 1 Cabal Therapy
SB: 1 Bayou
SB: 1 Meltdown (Changing Slot but when i know, someone play MuD, affinity etc)

The list perform very well with the green split to.
I like the SB very much.

I hope your enjoy my list:)

@Silence , i think its not a good card in ANT because its not TES! Why we should the mana base bader when we cut basics or discard for silence and gemstone mine? ANT play enough discard for protect the Combo Turn and it is more conistant with basic and discard.
I only like Silence in TES because its fast combo and have to go off faster then ANT!


Greets from Switzerland