GerryT has been doing a lot of work pushing this archetype, you know, winning the Invitational and all. Mods, can we get this thread moved to Established?
The primer definitely needs to get updated though. Kyle's primer is a good start, but outdated.
Languages and dates for every set. For all you true pimps.
Just went 6-0 at Small LGS 14 people tournament playing Gerry T's 75 minus Hymn in board for FoW. Report coming up tomorrow or Monday.
Hi, I'm putting this thread in the DTB until the next monthly update. You can read why, and why it wasn't put there before, here.
YOU'RE GIVING ME A TIME MACHINE IN ORDER TO TREAT MY SLEEP DISORDER.
Thanks! There was a distinct lack of discussion about this deck on the forums. Hopefully this will help!
I was hoping to revamp the Primer for this deck. I will be working on it this week and attempting to post it as the new Primer.
I don't know if this will help to reignite the topic but you can read my report of GP Strasbourg with the deck here : http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/s...BUGr-Shardless
Hopefully, you'll be able to understand my poor english.
I just wanted to chime in on the differences between mine and Lejay's list.
1) Baleful Strix is good vs other Goyf decks (and can block Emrakul/Griselbrand if they are dead on board the next turn; not always relevant, but it won me a game in Top 8 of the Invitational). They are cuttable depending on what you expect to see.
2) The discard package is my way of beating combo. Liliana of the Veil is a fine tool for Edicting people or destroying control, but in order for it to be good against combo, you really want to curve discard into it. Force of Will + Liliana will leave you with a bad Storm/Show and Tell matchup.
If you play discard, you should typically side out most, if not all of it, against other control decks. The games will go long and they are horrible topdecks.
3) Maelstrom Pulse is the answer to Esper Stoneblade and various other problems you'll face. Europeans don't need to worry about that too much, but on the Open Series, there is a lot of it. Being able to handle Batterskull, Lingering Souls, and Jace with one card is the reason I won the Invitational.
4) Four Wastelands aren't necessary, no matter what version you're playing. Your lands in play are more valuable than theirs. The only reason I play any is to kill problematic lands like Grove of the Burnwillows, Maze of Ith, Creeping Tar Pit, etc. Playing your own Tar Pits makes your mana base better and gives you a solid threat against other control decks. It's also a very good way to pressure planeswalkers.
5) Nihil Spellbomb is very good. I side it in against the obvious Dredge, etc decks but it's also good against Punishing Fire, Snapcaster Mage, and Nimble Mongoose. Those are probably the best ways for other decks to fight you and Nihil is a universal answer. It's far better than something like Leyline of the Void because it also cantrips so you're not losing value against other control decks.
6) Phyrexian Revoker is very good against Sneak and Show. That's basically the only thing I'd want to incorporate from Lejay's list (unless the metagame is suddenly devoid of combo). It's also another card that, like Pulse, lets you beat random strategies.
7) I like Chill. There are random decks out there like Goblins, Burn, anything with Punishing Fire, Sneak and Show with Blood Moon and/or REB sideboard, Belcher, some versions of Storm, etc that have a difficult time dealing with Chill. It's one card that deals with a lot of the randomness that exists in Legacy, so I wouldn't play without it.
Thanks for the input! Just curious, but what did you bring in/out against Esper Stoneblade? From the looks of it, you brought in some Nihil Spellbombs and I would guess the second Maelstrom Pulse. Did the Baleful Strixes come out there since Esper doesn't really have any good singular creatures for the Strixes to fight?Originally Posted by GerryT
Was only playing 2 Thoughtseize in the main awkward at all? Thoughtseize, to me, has always been one of those cards you want to see early.
Vs Shaheen I probably did:
+ 3 Nihil, 1 Pulse
- 1 Hymn, 3 FOW
Strix is not good against them but I'd rather have a cycler than extra discard spells.
Thank you for sharing your point of view Gerry :)
I totally agree with you that Thoughtseize and Hymn to Tourach are miles better than Liliana against combo (well, Liliana is still very good but you need a turn 1 or 2 discard to survive most of the time) and that's why i changed Lejay's list to include a few discards maindeck.
About the Wasteland, i think it's pretty hard to know for sure if it's better to play Wasteland just as a way to kill problematic lands as you do or to envisage the fact that Wasteland can very easily win you games against greedy/unlucky opponents or just by tempoing them out. I personally won a lot of games thanks to Wasteland during my few tests and during the tournament (especially with Life from the Loam).
I will give Chill a try, it seems worth it.
What do you think about Whipflare ?
Are you sure it's good to keep 4 Abrupt Decay against Esper Stoneblade ?
Loam seems bad in a field of Deathrite Shamans. I usually board in Nihil Spellbomb against decks that can Loam me anyway. That card is typically ineffective.Thank you for sharing your point of view Gerry :)
I totally agree with you that Thoughtseize and Hymn to Tourach are miles better than Liliana against combo (well, Liliana is still very good but you need a turn 1 or 2 discard to survive most of the time) and that's why i changed Lejay's list to include a few discards maindeck.
About the Wasteland, i think it's pretty hard to know for sure if it's better to play Wasteland just as a way to kill problematic lands as you do or to envisage the fact that Wasteland can very easily win you games against greedy/unlucky opponents or just by tempoing them out. I personally won a lot of games thanks to Wasteland during my few tests and during the tournament (especially with Life from the Loam).
I will give Chill a try, it seems worth it.
What do you think about Whipflare ?
Are you sure it's good to keep 4 Abrupt Decay against Esper Stoneblade ?
Sure, sometimes you can Waste people out but this deck is not designed for tempo. Trying to take the free win is greedy and you probably shouldn't ever do it (unless they're like stuck on one land or something, but even then, you probably still win by just developing your board).
Whipflare is fine if you expect a bunch of non-Affinity aggro decks. I think you can do better though.
I went from siding out all Decays to 3 then 2 then 0. Killing Stoneforge Mystic or Umezawa's Jitte is very important. As long as they can't Batterskull you early, they basically can't win.
I agree with Gerry about the the Decays in against Stoneblade. You basically stop their early plan and then just start one for one-ing them till you get your two for ones. At that point your so far ahead with your card advantage that they cannot keep up.
After a long break from the game we all love, I decided to sleeve this little beauty up.
4-Deathrite Shaman
4-Brainstorm
4-Ancestral Vision
2-Thoughtseize
4-Abrupt Decay
3-Hymn to Tourach
4-Tarmogoyf
2-Baleful Strix
4-Shardless Agent
1-Maelstrom Pulse
3-Liliana of the Veil
3-Jace the Mind Sculptor
4-Verdant Catacombs
2-Misty Rainforest
2-Polluted Delta
3-Underground Sea
2-Bayou
3-Tropical Island
2-Wasteland
2-Creeping Tar Pit
1-Forest
1-Swamp
1-Maelstrom Pulse
3-Nihil Spellbomb
3-Rapid Hybridization
3-Force of Will
The rest of the sideboard is always dependent on what I think when I show up.
This has been fantastic in my local meta. Winning (splitting the finals) of both small tourneys i went to. I'm lucky however as there was no combo in the room (pretty much all fair decks-Dead Guy, NicFit, Loam, Goblins, etc). I would like to step up to the plate and head to Mythic Games next month. Any suggestions on tuning this for a more diverse meta
Rapid Hybridization? Not even Pongify? Come on.
Seriously though, Rapid Hybridization? That card doesn't do anything. Throw some Engineered Plagues in, and/or just copy a sideboard from the internet. I'm sure TC Decks can help you out.
Languages and dates for every set. For all you true pimps.
If you are playing black at least play like a Go for the Throat or something... Rapid Hybridization SUCKS. (Unless you are killing your own undying dude)
Agree about all this. Strix vs fatty from sneak show also came up for me several random times, but not up to the point of keeping them post sb.
Discard is the necessary and only way to beat combo decks quite reliably since counters aren't as available and everything else is weak either against show and tell or storm (and/or other kind of combos).
This deck is great at beating about everything in the format that isn't combo and when I start adding discards problems arise. Since this deck is so much favored at playing a long game, you often lean towards it, and the situation where you are on topdeck mode being slightly ahead, at parity, or slightly behind arises very often. Drawing or cascading discard at this point is horrible. The deck can draw too many lands sometimes, it's too much of an issue if you add discard. That's why I want them in the sideboard against slow control and combo, where I know they will be relevant at almost any point in the game.
I don't believe in the (non-combo at least) deck that will beat the 95% of the format. So I like to optimize what the deck does best, beating 80% of the non-combo field. If your metagame as 30% of combo decks like the GP's day2, then you should probably play another deck (try BUG delver for exemple).
I agree discard isn't really good vs esper and you can't have too many against even miracles. I started with 7 discard sb in my list but testing slowly demonstrated that I had to vary my cards against control. My current sideboard hasn't changed since the week before the GP :
SB: 1 Grafdigger's Cage
SB: 1 Duress
SB: 1 Ancient Grudge
SB: 2 Vendilion Clique
SB: 2 Phyrexian Revoker
SB: 2 Leyline of the Void
SB: 3 Whipflare
SB: 3 Thoughtseize
Main deck hasn't changed in months now.
Maelstrom Pulse is part of a group of cards (pulse, loam, jitte...) that I would appreciate as a one-of in my main deck (or even sb) but that after testing were all considered inferior to any other slot. Without whipflare/grudge/revoker I can understand you want it more than me.
Grove is x4 in decks :). But that isn't my main argument. I tried reducing the number of wastelands, but with shaman wasteland is very strong, allowing you to out tempo your opponents quite reliably. This deck can play the long game with CA so that seems counter-intuitive. But the thing is this deck can generate a ton of CA without any or almost any tempo loss (and since you can't really lose tempo to make CA in this format without being punished severely by a lot of decks, that's the reason shardless is the deck that makes the most CA by far in Legacy).
I don't know how many times I told people playing stone blade how having wastelands in their lists is a mistake. But that just isn't the same thing in a deck playing DRS and 0-1 basic.
About Tar-Pit I feel it is really valuable only against control, and that match-up is already favourable. Therefore, and that may be because I play this deck quite often with tempo-oriented tactics, I don't play any.
I play leyline of the void because the kind of grave decks I want some improvements against are either violent ones (dredge, a bit reanimator, tin fins, and oops all spells) or punishing fire decks. I am also very happy for the occasionnal slow loam deck. I don't really want improvement against TT, with my list it's one of my best match-ups with just the maindeck.
Leyline being easy to hardcast with DRS is also nice.
The grafdigger's cage is an additional slot I added when I started to cut some discards. I didn't feel like 3 leylines would come in against punishing fire and I was happy to have one more slot against elfball/maverick.
Never tested it. I don't focus a lot on these decks or really want discard against the combo ones. I could see myself adapting and playing it in some metagames.
Reducing it to aggro decks is wrong. Esper, jund and elves are the deck I use it the most against. It kills all creatures of the UWR patriot tempo and UR delver too but I won't list all the deck it is useful against. I don't even side it against zoo when I occasionnaly face them.
Like I said to you at the GP, every single person I talked to was pessimistic about the red splash. Everyone of them adopted it with enthusiasm after testing.
Without whipflare I can understand the necessity. I currently keep 2 decays in.
CLICK HERE FOR THE RULES OF A VERY FUN MULTIPLAYER CASUAL FORMAT
You very likely can build it without spending any money, just out of what you already have.
An example with my (very large) list in a visual form
Copying a sideboard from the internet is one of the most retarded things I've ever heard. Unless you're playing something like Storm or Hexdepths where most of your sideboard is actually a wishboard (and the rest are pretty obvious, like the Decays in TES) -- saying that a blue control deck should copy a sideboard is moronic at best, and malicious at worst.
While I'm not convinced that Hybridization (or Pongify, if you prefer) is actually amazing or completely unplayable, I do recognize it as an out to a problem that the deck has: Mirran Crusader. If Vizz has a lot of Crusader around (and he did specify Deadguy as a local deck with a presence), then I could certainly get behind it. Hybridization also deals with big fat fatties which Shardless would otherwise be completely reliant on planeswalkers to deal with. Not like the deck cares about a 3/3 anyway.
I like Lejay's list much more.
Basically: the full set of FoW instead of 3, and Lilliana > Hymn.
Why would you ever want to skimp on FoW, if card-disadvantage is the kind of thing you should never have a problem with?
Baneslayer Angel
a bullet renders all sizes equal
Because drawing multiples is bad, much like the discard, but at least discard is a one-for-one trade. Just because we have card advantage doesn't mean we are ever up enough cards to just throw away our advantage. There are very few things worth FOWing that you can't deal with via a card that trades one-for-one.
There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)
Reply With Quote