[Deck] ANT (Ad Nauseam Tendrils)

[Lemnear]

The conceptional mistake is investing 2/3 turns of cantripping to find a configuration of cards which turn Ad Nauseam on, just to find out one of these:

- that softcounters/discard already disrupted your gameplan
- creatures/burn took you below 10 Life
- Your flips off Ad Nauseam cause more damage and offer less Initial mana sources

The time I played this deck I could have cut Ad Nauseam and barely noticed

[Dzra]

By the time you move to plan C, you might not have 14 life. I said it should be plan A. This does not entail be lazy with your Ad Nauseams. It just means it should be your go to plan.

I think by plan A, B, C etc he means that Tutor chain is preferred over PiF which is preferred over AdN. He isn't saying he is going to wait until the last possible moment to AdN as that would be fairly useless. Some hands/game states can produce multiple lines. If given the choice, those are simply the order of preference he will pursue. Some hands can't produce many lines and those are usually the ones where you have to AdN.

TES casts a better AdN. ANT gives you more play (it also can give your opponent more play, so you better be sure you want it).

[JamieW89]

By the time you move to plan C, you might not have 14 life. I said it should be plan A. This does not entail be lazy with your Ad Nauseams. It just means it should be your go to plan. Maybe Adam Prozak feels the same way, so from your analysis, he wants to make the best Ad Nauseam deck... I'm not sure.

Thanks for the analysis too.

But making ANT the best possible Ad Nauseam deck is pointless since there is a deck which will always be a better AdN deck. This point has been made too often, but it has to be repeated as it's probably the most important feature of this deck, despite its name fooling many people. This is almost like saying Doomsday should become the best Empty the Warrens deck.

You can still cast a quick Ad Nauseam when it appears to be the best gameplan, and often you can just stop at safe life, pass and kill them next turn when it doesn't get there. However, the aim is to utilize tutor-chains and the graveyard engine whenever possible for risk-free wins. The fact that Ad Nauseam is plan C doesn't mean you try it after other plans fail, you try it when you expect that other plans will not work, this is often turn-1 and 2 despite it being the last resort option (as Dzra pointed out).

The spectrum goes:
Glass Cannon (SI/Belcher): All for speed, sacrifice protection
TES: Quick & good Ad Nauseams, strong usage of Empty the Warrens, Burning Wish versatility and good protection. Weaker to LD and soft counters (and discard, yes).
ANT: Robust, resilient, slightly slower risk-free wins using tutor-chains and PiF/IGG.
DD: Even more solid and slightly slower, most versatile protection suite. Manabase is an issue, however. (It is also hard to play.)

[Lemnear]

TES: Quick & good Ad Nauseams, strong usage of Empty the Warrens, Burning Wish versatility and good protection. Weaker to LD and soft counters (and discard, yes).
ANT: Robust, resilient, slightly slower risk-free wins using tutor-chains and PiF/IGG.

[Pdingo]

Well i won yesterday a 4-0 Event.

I play this list:

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

SB: 4 Dark Confidant
SB: 1 Bayou
SB: 3 Abrupt Decay
SB: 2 Chain of Vapor
SB: 1 Cabal Therapy
SB: 3 Carpet of Flowers
SB: 1 Karakas

Match 1 against Uw Controll version. Not Miracle

G1: I know that he have a spell pierce in hand and 4 cards i dont see (He draw 3 with ancestrall vision)but i have 4 Lands in play + LED and petal(still in hand Infernal tutor and AD )play a DR and that resolve then i play AD and do not crack the LED ( Maybe he have a FOW), he havent and play only pierce and i pay 2. And win into AD(Have to Pass a Turn then going off again with Discard).When he had a FoW i can still go off next turn with Infernal Tutor. I mean this game i cant wait longer because he drawn only more counters.
G2: I mull to 5 and he have enough counters..
G3: I win easy with a good hand and discard.

1-0-0

Match 2 against MUD

G1: I can start and discard him chalice. then i cant me slow down and i can go off:)
G2: I take a mulligan and he cast a trinisphere then at his next turn i will decay his sphere but he play a second sphere..But have still a second 2 decay in hand;)
But then in he's next turn he wasted me and play a Lodestone Golem. Game
G3: I begin again mull to 6 then to 5 and have the nicest 5 card hand ever! fetch, Tutor, LED, DR, Cabal. Ok play it and Ad nausaum make it it.

2-0-0

Match 3 against Dredge

G1: He mull to 4 but have still loothing, loothing, land and a other card. But he dredge not good and is a turn to slow. I go off.
G2: He have a better hand then g1 but i'm a turn faster again and win with PiF

3-0-0

Match 4 against Dredge again

G1: Dredge can be fast but i think we are a little bit faster..
G2: He plays imp and i play a first turn Confi with petal and land, i mean BoBs are on the draw better then discard. He dredge a little bit and play Therapy but he says LED and not Tutor and i havent a LED in hand.
Then on my turn i draw a BS with confi and draw 1 more in the draw step^^ and have now zero lands in hand only BS, Ponder, Confi ,Tutor, DR, Cabal Rit. Now i can play Ponder that's seems better when i have no land in hand because i can shuffle but he goes off with he's dredgers. Or i play a BS for a aggressive Draw and to go off maybe. I play BS and i think it was the correct play, and draw LED, petal and a Land. haha cool and i go off with PiF.

4-0-0

Well my List plays very nice and makes a lot fun. I hope your enjoy. feel free.

Greets from Switzerland

[JamieW89]

..

Because stating that a deck with more (preordains) and better (due to more shuffle effects) cantrips, better sb options (Confidant, Divert) versus discard, Cabal Ritual and MD Past in Flames is better against discard is clearly a totally insane claim.
The wins are "risk-free" in that you win on the spot, without variance involved assuming the opponent is neutralized, when using PiF (with the exception of rare situations when you need to rely on cantrips), IGG or simple tutor chaining. This is opposed to flipping cards with ad nauseam which might kill yourself or passing the turn with tokens which allows the opponent to topdeck. What is strange about this point?
You think ANT is not slightly slower than TES? I wouldn't say it's a lot slower, maybe just 'slower' would suffice.

And why not argue the points instead of posting a trolling picture..

..

Nice result, how do you like the sb carpets?

[Lemnear]

amazing, you won most Games off raw speed and good draws than chaining Cantrips for turns...

quot erat demonstrandum

Because stating that a deck with more (preordains) and better (due to more shuffle effects) cantrips, better sb options (Confidant, Divert) versus discard, Cabal Ritual and MD Past in Flames is better against discard is clearly a totally insane claim.

Killing before Hymn hits is a strategy. I can create a dozen artificial situations in which Silence protects you from discard or a topdecked Burning Wish is miles better than a Preordain.

.
The wins are "risk-free" in that you win on the spot, without variance involved assuming the opponent is neutralized, when using PiF (with the exception of rare situations when you need to rely on cantrips), IGG or simple tutor chaining. This is opposed to flipping cards with ad nauseam which might kill yourself or passing the turn with tokens which allows the opponent to topdeck. What is strange about this point?
You think ANT is not slightly slower than TES? I wouldn't say it's a lot slower, maybe just 'slower' would suffice.

Sorry, but if you kill yourself off Ad Nauseam in TES aka don't know what possible cc flips remain in your Deck, you should stop playing the card/deck. If you, somehow but unlikely, are forced to flood the field with goblins, you can still prevent topdecked Outs via "chant-walking".

I wouldn't say that a rel. difference of 1.25 turns for killing should called "slightly". Against a Lot of decks, a List Turn is huge

And why not argue the points instead of posting a trolling picture..

Because we discussed ALL THIS 3 Pages ago. It's like the motherfucking B&R thread in which we repeat the Same cards, the Same arguments, the Same Claims, the Same whining every 7 pages

[Pdingo]

@Jamie

Well i use it only against the UW controll Guy because he use Pierce, but they dont see play the last turnier. But i think they are pretty good against Decks like RUG or BUG. I take this list to the GPT for Strassbourg this Friday.

@ Lemnear

ok that was pretty good Draws but i dont write in this small each cantrip i use only the important.^^

Greets

[Lemnear]

@ Lemnear

ok that was pretty good Draws but i dont write in this small each cantrip i use only the important.^^

Greets

of course not :)

However you might agree, that SPEED was an important, if not most important, aspect in at least 3 of the matches. I'm unable to analyze the First match under the aspect of being faster than the Ancestral Vision in that scenario and the possible Impact on the game/on your opponents Hand.

P.S.: Playing UW Control without Countertop/Miracles or SFM/Batterskull is plain wrong these days

[aaronm678]

I'm also kind of curious why everyone is saying ANT is better than TES against discard -- Hymn on the draw against TES is way too slow, and they run so much more mana that Brainstorm is pretty much always going to save their hand from targeted discard.


@Koby

It seems like your testing is an argument for dropping the green splash. It's obviously not enough to make the CB matchup favorable, it seems like its better off to just ignore that and make the mana stable (you've basically cut 2 fetches for Gemstone Mines and taken up 5 SB slots on an un-winnable matchup anyway). I think if you ignore the CB matchup, you can make the Tempo/Stoneblade matchups a lot more even with Bobs and additional fetches, and you even have room to put a 6th tutor in the SB for matchups that you really want it (I really like having 6 tutors in any combo matchup, against almost everything else I have 5 after SB)

@Lemnear

1.25 turns slower is definitely exaggerating, except MAYBE if you're talking 100% goldfishing (even then, I think its probably turn 3 vs turn 2 average). ANT is generally a turn 3 deck with protection (it uses discard to set up a turn 3 kill), with the occasional turn 2 (but very rarely if it needs discard), and the occasional turn 4. TES is generally a turn 2-3 deck (closer to 3) if it needs protection, since it often needs to generate W, B, and R on the combo turn, which can take some time to set up.

[jin]

The time I played this deck I could have cut Ad Nauseam and barely noticed

This is probably true for many ANT players. It's a shame.

I think by plan A, B, C etc he means that Tutor chain is preferred over PiF which is preferred over AdN. He isn't saying he is going to wait until the last possible moment to AdN as that would be fairly useless. Some hands/game states can produce multiple lines. If given the choice, those are simply the order of preference he will pursue. Some hands can't produce many lines and those are usually the ones where you have to AdN.

TES casts a better AdN. ANT gives you more play (it also can give your opponent more play, so you better be sure you want it).

Thanks for clearing that up. Miscommunication I suppose. I don't know if ANT gives more plays though. Burning Wish gives TES access to a lot of storm engines.

But making ANT the best possible Ad Nauseam deck is pointless since there is a deck which will always be a better AdN deck. This point has been made too often, but it has to be repeated as it's probably the most important feature of this deck, despite its name fooling many people. This is almost like saying Doomsday should become the best Empty the Warrens deck.

Would ANT still be scary when your opponent aren't afraid of your Ad Nauseam? I would assume you'd want to maximize your strongest card, not play cards that weaken it. Maybe you should play Grim Tutor in the Ad Nauseam slot and move Ad Nauseam to your SB....

[aaronm678]

Would ANT still be scary when your opponent aren't afraid of your Ad Nauseam? I would assume you'd want to maximize your strongest card, not play cards that weaken it. Maybe you should play Grim Tutor in the Ad Nauseam slot and move Ad Nauseam to your SB....

You can play Ad Nauseam in this deck without it being your primary strategy...if you want Ad Nauseam as your primary strategy, you probably need to play 3+ Chrome Mox, and you probably also want BW so you can win off Ad Naus without an LED (in other words, you should play TES).

Ad Naus fills an important role in the deck -- it gives us a way to win when we generate a million mana and are facing Graveyard hate, but can't generate enough mana to tutor chain, and it's just a way to draw 10 cards for 10 life at instant speed. Both are pretty good in a lot of really popular matchups, even if we're not using it as our primary strategy.

[Pdingo]

@Lemnear

Agree, Speed was very important in those Match ups. I think in the first Game i cant play faster because i have to play around pierce, clique and and and.., but have to go off.^^

Yes i think to that UW control without SFM and Top etc. is wrong. But sometimes you play against fishes.;)

[Megadeus]

Really? I've been lazy with ANT and just gone for Ad Naus and gotten punished for it plenty of times when I could have thought a little bit and gone for a different kill.
I've always been of the opinion you should go for (1) tutor chain, (2) PiF (or if they have nothing and you're lazy), (3) AN if the choice is between going off now when the coast is clear or waiting (and you have 6+ mana, and you're at above 14ish).

Still working on the spreadsheet, but here's some interesting conclusions from my analysis of Ad Nauseam:
The difference in Average CMC and expectation aren't really all that much different for the different builds. TES is the best at avg CMC (not including Ad Naus) of .78, but the others aren't far behind. Prosack ANT=0.83, Grim ANT=0.86, TNT=0.88.
If we pick an arbitrary starting life total of 14, the expectation for cards drawn is 18ish for TES, 17 for Prosack ANT, and 16ish for the other 2.

However, that doesn't actually tell the whole story, in fact it's a pretty crude way to look at Ad Nauseam. Just as important is the variance - for example how often we'll draw a bunch of 2s and 4s in a row compared to how often we'll draw a nice mix of 0s, 1s, and 2s.
The standard deviation for TES=0.80, Prosack ANT=0.90, and the other 2 are around 0.94. That is pretty sizeable decrease in standard deviation! So you would expect TES to have more consistent Ad Nauseams that flip lots of 1s, 0s, and some 2s, whereas the others will have more swinginess with strings of 2s and 4s.

You also need to remember that TES plays more free mana in chrome Mox. You not only draw another card or two, but you have a much better chance in going off on the same turn that you cast Ad Nauseam.

[codegoblin]

As promised, here's my testing log from December. Not much has changed in Legacy, except metagame shifts, but the deck is basically the same.

Clicky the linky

Hey this is Cody from SoCal btw ...

Yeah those non-BUG FoW w/l ratios seem really wrong to me, personally. Do you have a similar study conducted with TES? I'm also gonna conduct a similar test using the following list:
http://www.mtgtop8.com/event?e=4636

I was a big time proponent of the Teemo list until recent playtesting with the wishless cantrip list ... which has led me to understand the resiliency of having those draw spells.

In my experience, the combo RB ritual thing can get really awkward in TES, as well as the reliance on EtW (which I hate), and those are actually the main things that deter me from continuing to play that deck. I like Silence, don't get me wrong ... actually, no, LOVE it. If I could reliably get silence into an all B tutor storm deck that would be tits. Another thing is I'm pretty sure that ad nauseam is always luck dependent no matter what deck it's in. Just because TES has more reliable ad nauseams doesn't mean it can't whiff.

Also, jeez, how often are you guys not floating mana when you ad nauseam playing AnT? It should go without saying, but that's a big difference between AnT and TES. Floating mana into it, even 1, and more often than not I get the win.

[Koby]

Assuming each win represents prizes worth 3.1 tix, and each match eats 2 tix; well that data cost me a bit to generate. :P
Once I noticed my FOW matches were not winning as often as I would have thought I would; I scrapped the deck.

[codegoblin]

Assuming each win represents prizes worth 3.1 tix, and each match eats 2 tix; well that data cost me a bit to generate. :P
Once I noticed my FOW matches were not winning as often as I would have thought I would; I scrapped the deck.

Pffft ... it's called cockatrice, bro! Anyways, I'd still like to see a similar study conducted with TES. it'd be nice to get real metrics on these decks. I like both, but I really love the inevitability of ANT

[Dark Ritual]

This is probably true for many ANT players. It's a shame.



Thanks for clearing that up. Miscommunication I suppose. I don't know if ANT gives more plays though. Burning Wish gives TES access to a lot of storm engines.



Would ANT still be scary when your opponent aren't afraid of your Ad Nauseam? I would assume you'd want to maximize your strongest card, not play cards that weaken it. Maybe you should play Grim Tutor in the Ad Nauseam slot and move Ad Nauseam to your SB....

Ad nauseam is literally flipping a coin to determine if you win or lose if your opponent has a flipped delver (or even unflipped delver) in play. This is why I hate casting the card outside of TES. TES has 7 initial mana sources post nauseam if it used a land drop. We have 4 without a landdrop remaining. The reason PiF and tutor chaining are the preferred kill methods are because they are GUARANTEED to kill the opponent if they have no interaction. It really doesn't take much skill to play ad nauseam optimally. Okay, so I flip until I hit petal, dark rit, LED, infernal tutor and then play all of those into a tendrils that is almost guaranteed to kill the opponent at that point? And it's a bad idea to flip when I'm at 4 or less life if tendrils and PiF are still in the deck? Shocking. Resolving ad nauseam isn't rocket science, it's actually quite easy if you can do math on the fly and if you can't do math on the fly, why are you playing storm combo again?

@Lemnear: So speed mattered against dredge and MUD. Shocker that speed matters in the combo mirror and against a deck with no countermagic but permanent based disruption.

I wouldn't ever drop the green splash. How is echoing truth better than abrupt decay again? On top of that, it really doesn't weaken the manabase much at all. The only difference is if you run trop MD or SB, and if you run trop sideboard with 2 islands maindeck, the manabase is actually strengthened as boarding in an additional land is actually useful against RUG even if it is just an island that can be wastelanded.

If you want the best possible ad nauseam deck, play TES with 4 chrome mox and 4 petal. Then ad nauseam can almost never whiff at 13+ life. Just be aware of the shitty topdecks that chrome mox offers because chrome mox is terrible when it isn't flipped off of AdN typically outside of corner cases at least in my experiences with the card in TES.

[phazonmutant]

In my experience, the combo RB ritual thing can get really awkward in TES, as well as the reliance on EtW (which I hate), and those are actually the main things that deter me from continuing to play that deck. I like Silence, don't get me wrong ... actually, no, LOVE it. If I could reliably get silence into an all B tutor storm deck that would be tits. Another thing is I'm pretty sure that ad nauseam is always luck dependent no matter what deck it's in. Just because TES has more reliable ad nauseams doesn't mean it can't whiff.

I prefer to think of it as TES getting to play Empty (and have it be good). We can do graveyard loops, but we also have the potentially to make a quick or low-resource 10 goblins, something that fewer than half the decks seeing play can realistically recover from. Also, you obviously don't go for Empty if you see they have ways to answer it and can't Duress or Chant-walk them.
Keep in mind that Empty doesn't have to deal the full 20, it just has to deal enough that 2 or 3 cards and a Burning Wish can turn into a Grapeshot kill. There's definitely an element of risk involved with Empty, but far less that it's made out to be, and for sure less risk than a quick Ad Naus out of ANT.

You're definitely right that TES's Ad Naus's can whiff. Just tonight I had only like a 80% win rate off of Ad Naus, pretty comparable to ANT with 1 floating. Nature of the deck, I suppose.

It really doesn't take much skill to play ad nauseam optimally. Okay, so I flip until I hit petal, dark rit, LED, infernal tutor and then play all of those into a tendrils that is almost guaranteed to kill the opponent at that point? And it's a bad idea to flip when I'm at 4 or less life if tendrils and PiF are still in the deck? Shocking. Resolving ad nauseam isn't rocket science, it's actually quite easy if you can do math on the fly and if you can't do math on the fly, why are you playing storm combo again?

Yeah, that pretty much describes storm, and people still consider it "hard to play". If anything, PiF is easier - you don't even bother counting most times! If: tutor and 3+ rituals, then PiF! Else, durdle.

[codegoblin]

I prefer to think of it as TES getting to play Empty (and have it be good). We can do graveyard loops, but we also have the potentially to make a quick or low-resource 10 goblins, something that fewer than half the decks seeing play can realistically recover from. Also, you obviously don't go for Empty if you see they have ways to answer it and can't Duress or Chant-walk them.
Keep in mind that Empty doesn't have to deal the full 20, it just has to deal enough that 2 or 3 cards and a Burning Wish can turn into a Grapeshot kill. There's definitely an element of risk involved with Empty, but far less that it's made out to be, and for sure less risk than a quick Ad Naus out of ANT.

You're definitely right that TES's Ad Naus's can whiff. Just tonight I had only like a 80% win rate off of Ad Naus, pretty comparable to ANT with 1 floating. Nature of the deck, I suppose.

My problem with empty is that sometimes it is the only option in your hand, and having to pass the turn vs fast combo f'ing sucks, OR they're playing white and/or blue and might have access to terminus, detention sphere, or echoing truth (i've seen it a fair amount actually). I think I take the prosak view where it's kinda like ... damn, if I'm gonna combo off, I want the kill THIS turn. Maybe I'll test TES a little more. I've taken it to a couple events and done OK with it, maybe my mind is too much in the mindset of ANT though. I feel like they are much different decks ... so much so that I have a hard time considering either one of them "better." That being said, if there are empirical findings towards one being the better, I'd love to hear any/all of it.