[Deck] T.E.S. - The EPIC Storm

[Lemnear]

Oh shit I think I couldve wion that game. Goddamn Im an idiot.

Probe to see his hand, Mox (Silence), Mox (Probe), Petal, LED, Wish, EtW from SB for 14 Goblins.

I missed the fact that you were on the play, duh. Being on the play makes this A BIT easier XD

[Megadeus]

Probe to see his hand, Mox (Silence), Mox (Probe), Petal, LED, Wish, EtW from SB for 14 Goblins.

I missed the fact that you were on the play, duh

Yeah. I derped real hard like a fucking champ. Welp. Now Ill probably think about this retarded punt for awhile. So basically my outs were, anything lol. GOD IM SO DUMB FFFFUUUUCCCCCKKKKK. This is why you dont simply pick this deck up and play it. Ive been doing this for almost three months now and I still suck. With the two probes it literally didnt matter what I drew... BRB killing myself

[Lemnear]

The only variable here was really to either imprint the second Probe or any of the drawn cards/play drawn lands and cast Mox as a blank. The marginal difference is 14 or 16 goblins.

We will both laugh about this in a week :)

[Megadeus]

Agh it is just so stressful to me to think about how bad i punted that game... I was over thinking my own outs. In my mind I was like "This second Chrome Mox is a blank". I think that I forgot that LED could make red mana as well, because I think I was concerned abotu not having any more red mana to be able to cast burning wish AND Empty. Well kids if you want to learn how NOT to play the deck, Ill film my matches next week (assuming I dont get to play Moat stompy next week)

[Kayradis]

I almost finished building the list yesterday. Im playing in a proxies-allowed Thursday night legacy tonight. Im not expecting to do well with the deck TBH, but like Lemnear said, the deck require LOTS of testing and has a really steep learning curve.

Any advices in regards to line of play?

Im really curious about strategies and I'd appreciate ideas!

[Megadeus]

I almost finished building the list yesterday. Im playing in a proxies-allowed Thursday night legacy tonight. Im not expecting to do well with the deck TBH, but like Lemnear said, the deck require LOTS of testing and has a really steep learning curve.

Any advices in regards to line of play?

Im really curious about strategies and I'd appreciate ideas!

One interaction that isnt an easily seen play is if you have Ad Nauseam or Empty the Warrens in hand, Plus LED and Brainstorm + Probe, you can brainstorm you Ad Nauseam or Empty to the top, cast Gitaxian Probe, and crack LED in response, Making it so you can use your LED towards a spell in hand essentially...

Also If you can just go off and make 14ish Goblins On T1 it is perfectly acceptable. Dont be afraid to just be like a belcher deck sometimes.

[Zombie]

^ this. Many Legacy decks just fold to quick Goblins, and even the ones who don't tend to play only a few answers.

Another thing that is ok is midgame Goblins. Like, against Esper, if you know the coast is reasonably clear (esp. after discarding Batterskull), just go for some Goblins. It's not foolproof, but surprisingly not-horrible. This is a gambler's deck. This is an aggressive deck. Always keep those things in mind.

[Lemnear]

I almost finished building the list yesterday. Im playing in a proxies-allowed Thursday night legacy tonight. Im not expecting to do well with the deck TBH, but like Lemnear said, the deck require LOTS of testing and has a really steep learning curve.

Any advices in regards to line of play?

Im really curious about strategies and I'd appreciate ideas!

1) stay relaxed. Most mistakes come from being nervous
2) have pen&paper at hand. Make notes about mana and stormcount EVERY turn it could matter.
3) seize your opponent before you shuffle and put him onto a certain strategy.
4) mull accordingly to your Knowledge about the opponent and his deck (you can read much about that in my reports)
5) don't feel pressured to go off asap if your opponent doesn't present a clock (you can dodge Daze or shit that Way)
6) evade mulligans to 5 or lower at any cost!
7) don't feel pressured to go off fast in face of high damage
8) don't go for Ad Nauseam below 13 Life unless there's no other Option
9) Past in Flames is an Auto-Pilot vs. Decks that rely on Thoughtseize, Hymn and Liliana to Control you
10) Never underestimate the kill via natural chains
11) remember you can chain infernal Tutors for Stormcount
12) diminishing returnes in NOT a panic-button.
13) Use DR if a) EtW is not an option (Deed, etc.), b) you have excessive mana float or c) storm count for EtW is too low
14) IGG is more often useful than you might imagine.
15) Never keep hands which rely on a single resolved Tutor/cantrip on the draw.
16) use Silence to prevent gamebreakers like Show&Tell or Hymn
17) never board out Probes ... not even 1
18) never try to be the Control deck vs other Combo decks
19) Free yourself from mentally focusing on Ad Nauseam for the kill. There a dozens of other ways which newer pilots tend to miss because of that
20) stop Ad Nauseam at 4 remaining life unless you REALLY have to continue to dodge the instant kill via revealing EtW or an opposing Lightning Bolt
21) Check if you played a Land in the turn you cast Ad Nauseam. I tend to forget that often and then have to set me ablaze and jump somersault outta a window in the 13th Floor just to get that +1 mana otherwise.
22) pray I can launch HotS-Vol.3 during the weekend ;)


just from the Top of my head

Edit for everyone who cares: going -1 EtW, -1 Infernal, +2 Xantid swarms is my current plan vs. Show&Tell decks feat. Leyline of Sanctity

[Zombie]

Against discard play artifacts, wish for PiF even if you can't go off.

[Lemnear]

Against discard play artifacts, wish for PiF even if you can't go off.

QFT.

Only exception for wishing for PIF is an active DRS

[Jay_Gatz]

You don't bring in any chains?

[Kayradis]

1) stay relaxed. Most mistakes come from being nervous
2) have pen&paper at hand. Make notes about mana and stormcount EVERY turn it could matter.
3) seize your opponent before you shuffle and put him onto a certain strategy.
4) mull accordingly to your Knowledge about the opponent and his deck (you can read much about that in my reports)
5) don't feel pressured to go off asap if your opponent doesn't present a clock (you can dodge Daze or shit that Way)
6) evade mulligans to 5 or lower at any cost!
7) don't feel pressured to go off fast in face of high damage
8) don't go for Ad Nauseam below 13 Life unless there's no other Option
9) Past in Flames is an Auto-Pilot vs. Decks that rely on Thoughtseize, Hymn and Liliana to Control you
10) Never underestimate the kill via natural chains
11) remember you can chain infernal Tutors for Stormcount
12) diminishing returnes in NOT a panic-button.
13) Use DR if a) EtW is not an option (Deed, etc.), b) you have excessive mana float or c) storm count for EtW is too low
14) IGG is more often useful than you might imagine.
15) Never keep hands which rely on a single resolved Tutor/cantrip on the draw.
16) use Silence to prevent gamebreakers like Show&Tell or Hymn
17) never board out Probes ... not even 1
18) never try to be the Control deck vs other Combo decks
19) Free yourself from mentally focusing on Ad Nauseam for the kill. There a dozens of other ways which newer pilots tend to miss because of that
20) stop Ad Nauseam at 4 remaining life unless you REALLY have to continue to dodge the instant kill via revealing EtW or an opposing Lightning Bolt
21) Check if you played a Land in the turn you cast Ad Nauseam. I tend to forget that often and then have to set me ablaze and jump somersault outta a window in the 13th Floor just to get that +1 mana otherwise.
22) pray I can launch HotS-Vol.3 during the weekend ;)


just from the Top of my head

Edit for everyone who cares: going -1 EtW, -1 Infernal, +2 Xantid swarms is my current plan vs. Show&Tell decks feat. Leyline of Sanctity

Thanks for the advices!

Unfortunately, I won't be able to play since something else just came up. Im still planning to gold fish the deck as much as I can and probably throw a couple games against opponents since there is two standard GPTs this weekend (Providence and Las Vegas). Im stuck at work at the moment and I just keep reviewing lines of play and HotS reports. Stick with me since it's all because of those reports that I'm now playing that deck and slowly leaving my long-loved Combo Elves!

[Lemnear]

You don't bring in any chains?

Really, depends on my opponents exact S&T plan aka UR Wish S&T, OmniTell, SneakShow, etc. Sometimes I board them in, sometimes not; chaining Sneak Attack (or hasted creatures) compared with bouncing Omniscience makes a hell of a difference. In corner cases against a resolved Leyline, i'm completely fine with casting Ad Nauseam into EtW with several Silences and White manasources available. I don't feel convinced to board in chains for the Leylines alone

The xantids are undisputed.

[phazonmutant]

Any advices in regards to line of play?

Im really curious about strategies and I'd appreciate ideas!

People posted some excellent advice above, so I guess I'll just reiterate some pieces of advice that took multiple losses to really understand despite "knowing" them to be true.
- Bryant's said this countless times - be aggressive! If you have a good shot at winning if you go for it and they're unlikely to have ripped the nuts / mulliganed into it / etc, just do it! Most matchups tend to get worse as the game goes on, especially once they get to play a land. That being said, there is a thing as being too all-in. Finding that line is hard.
- Determine when it's correct to play artifact mana against discard decks. There are times when I'd prefer to discard an LED in hand than my one-of tutor, so I don't play LED. But more often I've lost because I forget to play the LEDs (or less often, Petals) that I needed and they got stripped. Usually people won't strip Petals when you have almost anything else in hand, so it's less important to play them out. Obvious exceptions like that game at SCG Atlanta against dredge where I Tutored for a second Petal and he Therapied on the guaranteed 2-for-1.

--
I had a pretty interesting tournament last night. Top4-split, winning $35ish (lower turnout this week). Only 14 people, so unfortunately only 3 rounds.
Round 1 - haganbmj - Maverick
He's a good player and was pretty sure I was back on Storm, so I was feeling nervous about this matchup. I tend to not do as well against Thalia decks, so it's good that I got paired against him so I could practice against hatebears.
G1 - He mulled to 6 and kept a hand with some lands, Hierarch, Plow, and Knight. My hand was pretty mana-heavy without a tutor, so when my Ponder bricked I wasn't very confident. Fortunately he didn't draw a hatebear before I drew a Tutor and won off Ad Nauseam.
boarding: -4 Silence, -2 Duress, -1 Infernal Tutor, +2 Chain of Vapor, +3 Abrupt Decay, +1 Cabal Therapy, +1 Thoughtseize
G2 - I kept a really weird hand (on the draw) that I'd like to discuss with you guys:
2x Chrome Mox, Chain of Vapor, Ponder, Cabal Therapy, Dark Ritual, Infernal Tutor
So my thought process is if I draw a land, I'm very likely to win off of Ponder and also I have a Chain in hand if Ponder bricks. If I draw an LED I just win. There's also (seemingly) plenty of ways to win off of Ponder. If that all bricks, I can imprint Ritual and Therapy him (hopefully with some hand knowledge if I draw Probe) and play the long game. Looking back, my outs were really dependent on finding LED, so that hand may have been loose. What do you think?
In any case, I drew Wish for turn, imprinted Chain on Chrome Mox and Pondered, found LED, and Tutored for Empty for 14. He scooped.
1-0

R2 - Megadeus - TES
G1 - I win the die roll #winning. Probe him seeing no disruption but a guaranteed t2 kill. I Ponder. He Ponders. I kill him.
We laughed about how we talked about boarding in the mirror earlier that day. -1 Empty the Warrens, +1 Cabal Therapy
G2 - This game is very very grindy, but also pretty interesting to learn from. Megadeus made a couple of mistakes we talked about after the match, and I'm not presenting them here to embarrass him (he played well overall!), but rather to help teach other people in the thread what to watch out for.
He Brainstormed, then I Duressed and Therapied him off of Mine and a Petal, then played my second Petal to leave up Silence. I took Petal and Ponder leaving Rite of Flame, Brainstorm, Chrome Mox with the thought that he couldn't use Ponder to shuffle his Brainstorm lock. I think he Brainstormed again and failed to find a kill. I had Tutor, Rite of Flame, and drew Wish with Gemstone on 1, a Fetch, and a Petal, and thought hard about essentially double strip mining myself and burning a Rite to get a Thoughtseize, but decided if he had it, he had it. He imprinted RoF to Chrome Mox and Wished for a Therapy, taking my Tutor. I did nothing. He slammed the Ad Nauseam he hid with Brainstorm! He ended up going from 16 down to 4 (hadn't played a land) but stopped before he found another IMS to kill me. Here's what he revealed (not in order):
RoF, RoF, BW, Duress, Silence, Ponder, Probe, Probe, DR, IT, fetch, City of Brass
Since he had boarded out Empty, the correct play would be to continue to find another R/B source so he could Wish for Tendrils. Given that he didn't, I think the correct play was to play City and leave up Silence, then kill me with Wish for Past in Flames next turn. What he ended up doing is playing Probe (putting himself to 2), playing City, and Duressing my Wish.
I ripped Silence. My play goal for this year has been improving my bluffs and reading, so I tried carefully to make no reaction, and slump defeated in my chair (head resting on hand, shoulders forward, defeated tone of voice). Here was the second major mistake Megadeus made. He untapped at 1 (turning off both City of Brasses he had in play, leaving him a Mine and a Sea). He RoF, RoF, DR, DR (nice draw!), Wished for PiF, leaving 3 R and 3 B floating. Through all this, I'm double checking mana & storm, but careful to leave my hand on the table and act defeated - I was trying to get him to burn as many resources as possible before using Silence. The first thing he should have done is flashback Duress in case I drew Silence - that would leave him with PiF and Rituals in grave and Ponder and IT in hand - not bad! Instead he flashbacked all his rituals and Tutored and Wished, at which point I Silenced. A few turns later I drew Wish and enough mana to kill him. I did create some awkwardness by flopping my hand on the table and saying what I was going to do without actually tapping mana, which he interrupted by Silencing in response to Wish (one good rip deserves another!), but it didn't really matter.
2-0
Sorry that description is so long, but I think Storm mirrors are really interesting (as long as both players see their turn 2, as Megadeus noted!) Hopefully it's useful.

R3 - ID
Unfortunately small turnout. Nedleeds could be right that it's because of degenerate combo players like myself, but combo is not an easy thing to give up... I played 4c cascade last week and got lifetilted when I lost to UR Delver in the Quarters piloted by a bad player.
2-0-1

Quarters - haganbmj again
Fortunately I was higher seed, but I wasn't exactly thrilled to play this matchup again just in the interest of diversity.
G1 - I had a 1-lander that needed any mana source to Ad Nauseam (I had a Petal so colors not an issue). Probe saw a hand with Wasteland, Savannah, and a Thalia and I decided to not play a land. I don't think that's the correct play because he was joking that Wasteland would be good if he saw t3 (indicating he was focusing on playing Thalia) and I had 11 draws to get punished, but my thought was that there are 16 draws (RoF, DR, LP, and LED) that win and I probably lose if he Wastes me. Opinions? I ripped a City of Brass (justice), play it and Silence him on upkeep. He Wasted me, then I drew a ritual to win.
G2 - I kept hand that had a Volcanic, Chrome Mox, Ritual, Therapy, Ponder, Brainstorm, and I think a tutor. Ponder saw a kill next turn, so I decided against imprinting Ritual and blind Therapy. He played Sylvan Safekeeper and Thalia.
G3 - At this point I wanted to trying boarding out the Abrupt Decays for 3 Silence. I've been very unimpressed with Decay against Thalia.deck, and Bryant suggested that on the play I want to make my deck as streamlined as possible when I was playing against Elves at the Open. I opened on a t2 Ad Nauseam hand and won.

There were multiple interesting decision points and hands throughout this tournament, so I hope you guys can make it through the wall of text to let me know your thoughts!

[Lemnear]

G2 - I kept a really weird hand (on the draw) that I'd like to discuss with you guys:
2x Chrome Mox, Chain of Vapor, Ponder, Cabal Therapy, Dark Ritual, Infernal Tutor

-snip-

RoF, RoF, BW, Duress, Silence, Ponder, Probe, Probe, DR, IT, fetch, City of Brass
Since he had boarded out Empty, the correct play would be to continue to find another R/B source so he could Wish for Tendrils.

-snip-

Quarters

G1 - I had a 1-lander that needed any mana source to Ad Nauseam (I had a Petal so colors not an issue). Probe saw a hand with Wasteland, Savannah, and a Thalia and I decided to not play a land. I don't think that's the correct play because he was joking that Wasteland would be good if he saw t3 (indicating he was focusing on playing Thalia) and I had 11 draws to get punished, but my thought was that there are 16 draws (RoF, DR, LP, and LED) that win and I probably lose if he Wastes me. Opinions? I ripped a City of Brass (justice), play it and Silence him on upkeep. He Wasted me, then I drew a ritual to win.

Rd.1 - Ritual, Tutor + Access to T1 Ponder? A keeper

Rd.2 - to continue the flipping is the right choice here till you reach the bottom end of 2 life. With 2 Life I would Start counting the remaining Wishes/Tutors in the deck and calculate the odds.

Rd.3 - sandbaggin the lonely land in you first turn on the play is correct here. You can't afford to loose to Wasteland. The silence to prevent Thalia in T2 was smart. I usually promote to do this against threatening Show&Tell and Hymn too. You traded the Silence here essentially for another draw phase

Overall: Very good game, Sir


Edit RD.2/G2: Did you really have to burn the Petal and cast both, Duress and Therapy that turn? Did i misread or did you discard Ponder + Petal here and leave him the Brainstorm?

If that's the case, taking Brainstorm over Petal would have been much better, unless he floated the nuts. Making him draw 2 possible bricks in a Row (after the First Brainstorm) without any Chance to dig or shuffle would have been a near Auto-win at this point (He had max. 3 mana available afaik)

[Megadeus]

People think storm vs storm is a joke. That shit was intense. Some of the most thoughtful games were played in my opinion. We may not have been slamming thragtusks into each other, but we sure as hell had a very back and forth game.

[Lemnear]

People think storm vs storm is a joke. That shit was intense. Some of the most thoughtful games were played in my opinion. We may not have been slamming thragtusks into each other, but we sure as hell had a very back and forth game.

You'll love the storm-mirror vs. ANT featured in my upcoming report... :D

[Megadeus]

I dont know why, but whenever I tested vs ANT, I just had a lot of trouble winning. Maybe he was just ripping sick, but when I wasnt going off T1, then he was always getting Probe + Therapy.

[phazonmutant]

Edit RD.2/G2: Did you really have to burn the Petal and cast both, Duress and Therapy that turn? Did i misread or did you discard Ponder + Petal here and leave him the Brainstorm?

If that's the case, taking Brainstorm over Petal would have been much better, unless he floated the nuts. Making him draw 2 possible bricks in a Row (after the First Brainstorm) without any Chance to dig or shuffle would have been a near Auto-win at this point (He had max. 3 mana available afaik)

I know that I burned a Petal to Cabal Therapy, but you're right that it seems very incorrect to not take both cantrips... I don't remember exactly what I took, all I know is that I have Ponder and Petal crossed out on my notepad. I know that he had a Petal in play when he cast Ad Naus, so maybe he just played it next turn. Megadeus, do you remember?

[Lemnear]

I dont know why, but whenever I tested vs ANT, I just had a lot of trouble winning. Maybe he was just ripping sick, but when I wasnt going off T1, then he was always getting Probe + Therapy.

ANT has 4 modes:

1) massive discarding from the start, in which it pretty much equals the common BGx matchup sans any pressure
2) cantripping for 1-2 turns while being slower than TES and gett'n killed
3) drawing the nuts
4) loosing hard to Silence