[Deck] MonoU OmniTell

[alphastryk]

Obviously you can cast Emrakul, I was merely replying to ideas that gravitate around "C.wish into something".
For trickbind to work, it means you have it main deck, which I've not found in samples side tables.

Yes, game one you cannot use wish to get rid of counterbalance (Emrakul is the only real plan here). I'm advocating boarding in the trickbind in the matchup, not playing it main.

[phazonmutant]

About the Counterbalance problem :
If a 3 drop is floated, doesn't that blank all the cunning wish, thus every possibilities of concluding with what you propose ? ( wipe away, release the ants and so forth )
Maybe I missed Emidln's post and if it is explained in it I apologize for the inane question.

Ok, I guess I was forgetting where that post was from. It's pretty reasonable that people might not have seen it. Emidln made an excellent post/primer for his version of the deck here: http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/s...l=1#post718270
Which is over 2 months old and in a different thread

Scroll to the bottom to find his advice on beating Counterbalance. Note that it requires a Trickbind either in the main or boarded in, but he advocates 2 in the 75. That doesn't seem right out to me.

If they have a 2 and a 3 you have to be on Emrakul I think.

Or you can run them out of mana. Chances are decent that you have more business spells than they have mana, depending on your maindeck configuration.

[emidln]

Ok, I guess I was forgetting where that post was from. It's pretty reasonable that people might not have seen it. Emidln made an excellent post/primer for his version of the deck here: http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/s...l=1#post718270
Which is over 2 months old and in a different thread

Scroll to the bottom to find his advice on beating Counterbalance. Note that it requires a Trickbind either in the main or boarded in, but he advocates 2 in the 75. That doesn't seem right out to me.

I feel like the no maindeck win configuration vs Counterbalance is one of those things that will separate people who have either tested the deck or thought about it deeply from those that merely pick it up because "durr, SnT I win!!!".

I feel like everybody talking about Split Second cards has missed the fact that I play Duress effects in my sideboard and can cast them via Omni OR Dream Halls prior to casting Lab Maniac.

I've cut the 4th Force of Will from my deck entirely. It was in the sideboard, and I simply gave up on the corner case where I have a really bad cancel. I replaced its slot in the sideboard with a 2nd (for my 75) Flusterstorm. This lets me have a Fluster wishable and one main against blue control decks that will side in Fluster against me, while siding it against combo decks.

I haven't been playing graveyard hate for a few weeks now. I was on Surgical Extraction, since the only scenarios that ever mattered to me were hitting a Cabal Therapy or Griselbrand. The Griselbrand matchup isn't actually that bad when you have 2 Duress, 1 Thoughtseize, 2 Fluster, 3 Force as you match their disruption and still have a very fast clock (somewhere between turn 2 and 5 depending on the particular hand and whether they target your disruption or your combo). I'm willing to just lose most of my matches to Dredge due to it not being heavily played.

I'm strongly considering dropping the sidedboarded Intuition as I haven't wished for it in a long time. I'd like to find room for another bounce/removal spell that I can side in against hate bears and this might be how I get it. I'm also considering a Careful Consideration as something to do when the dust begins to settle after an attrition war.

[Kirika]

How does this compare to Reanimator and The Epic Storm as far as speed and consistency especially with needed to assemble a 3 card combo? I found I prefered Reanimator and The Epic Storm to Sneak and Show as far as combo decks as both were faster and more consistent. Reanimator has the issue that it gets hit by all the dredge hate and Epic Storm is a headache to play at long tournaments.

[phazonmutant]

How does this compare to Reanimator and The Epic Storm as far as speed and consistency especially with needed to assemble a 3 card combo? I found I prefered Reanimator and The Epic Storm to Sneak and Show as far as combo decks as both were faster and more consistent. Reanimator has the issue that it gets hit by all the dredge hate and Epic Storm is a headache to play at long tournaments.

Speed? Hand dependent, but most often turn 3. Occasionally turns 2 or 4-5. Never turn 1. So, a bit slower than S&S (0.5-1 mean turns slower), much slower than TES and Reanimator (1-1.5 mean turns slower). That's assuming that any arbitrary man Reanimator poops onto the table is GG (more or less true).

Consistency? Difficult to hate out. I believe Counterbalance and hatebears are the best hate and neither are played that much. Discard hurts, but the deck has redundancy and Leylines (if you run them). I think this question is the biggest discussion point for the deck. Catmint thinks that every deck other than Canadian Thresh is garbage, including this one; and lejay and emidln think this deck is the second coming of Academy-Tinker.
My opinion is that S&S is easier to hate out and slow as you mentioned, although it's pretty resiliant; Reanimator is reasonably easy to hate out and somewhat inconsistent to boot; the only real contender for me is TES. TES is more easily locked, but that's offset by just being faster than most hate. I haven't taken Mono-U OmniTell to a big tournament yet, so I can't really say whether it's more or less consistent than TES yet. It's at least comparable, maybe better.


emidln - thanks for sharing your updates! Some questions:
Does your meta not have many hatebear decks like Maverick or Death and Taxes? There's a bunch, and my meta even has a couple 4c Loam decks like what Jeff Hoogland's been advocating. Eladmri's Call has been great in those matchups. Thoughtseize was also a solid card, but you're down to 1. What's your strategy and boarding for those matchups?

[emidln]

emidln - thanks for sharing your updates! Some questions:
Does your meta not have many hatebear decks like Maverick or Death and Taxes? There's a bunch, and my meta even has a couple 4c Loam decks like what Jeff Hoogland's been advocating. Eladmri's Call has been great in those matchups. Thoughtseize was also a solid card, but you're down to 1. What's your strategy and boarding for those matchups?

I never really sided in thought seize vs hatebear decks. I never really wanted to get wasted, which is what happens when you fetch sea to cast thoughtseize. I used to bring in wrote away and other bounce leaving slaughter pact in the side as a wish target. I cut my extra bounce (I mentioned this in a previous post) for a sb emrakul and a sb call. This let's me bring in emrakul and use wish for call as an alternate way of beating hatebears without first removing them. My sideboard has been:

1 FF
1 R&D
1 Lab Man
1 FSM
1 E. Call
1 Wipe away
1 Slaughter Pact
1 pact of negation
1 flusterstorm
1 trickbind
2 duress
1 thought seize
1 swamp
1 intuition

[KobeBryan]

Why do you guys use lab instead of ants/emmy.

Lab still requires enter the infinite to trigger before you can go off.

With emmy, you can have it independent to the ETI as a win con.

[Philipp2293]

First, enter the infinite needs to resolve, not to trigger.

I think the reasons for running Lab Man have been explained by Emidln and others before, same as the reasons Emrakul is ran.

Lab Man has the advantage of not targeting as well as being independent of the structure of your opponents library, which can be relevant against e.g. Sneak Show.
Emrakul, by my understanding, is mainly ran for the Wx Tax Decks (Maverick and Death and Taxes) in order to have a threat which you can push through Thalia/Spheres more easily.

[catmint]

Catmint thinks that every deck other than Canadian Thresh is garbage, including this one; and lejay and emidln think this deck is the second coming of Academy-Tinker.

I am shocked that my comments might have given the impression that I think this way...or are you just fooling me? For me the great thing about legacy is that a lot of decks are strong and viable (also this one) and given the right tuning, a skilled/trained pilot, (a favourable meta) and a bit of luck with pairings and draws a lot of decks can go top 8. Certainly this deck is not garbage as I said a couple of times. There are strength and weaknesses which I pointed out compared to it's closes relatives (other show variants), but neither variant is "strictly better", so instead of replacing anything this decks adds to the legacy variaty.

[apple713]

Catmint thinks that every deck other than Canadian Thresh is garbage, including this one; and lejay and emidln think this deck is the second coming of Academy-Tinker.

unfortunately canadian thresh's mana base is too weak to be the best deck and its a tempo deck so its heavily dependant on its draws and an early jump start.

and the second coming of academy tinker already happened, it was called hulk flash...hulk flash was probably better than academy tinker cause the win was instant and turn 0. Even if this deck was equateable to hulk flash it wouldnt be played as much and its victories be as widespread because of the cost. The deck is not very cheap and its very niche so you probably dont have all of the cards for it just lying around or 300 to spend on show and tells.

The deck is great. Its pretty streamlined for a combo. I like it better than ant cause there are less things that could go wrong. ANT gambles on ad nauseum and doesnt have great control elements as back up until they make an instant thoughtsieze....

Omni anything can just trollop most aggro decks and runs into a few problems against control decks cause it packs so much fewer counterspells. I'm working on a UR variant that should improve consistency much more.

[Dark Ritual]

unfortunately canadian thresh's mana base is too weak to be the best deck and its a tempo deck so its heavily dependant on its draws and an early jump start.

and the second coming of academy tinker already happened, it was called hulk flash...hulk flash was probably better than academy tinker cause the win was instant and turn 0. Even if this deck was equateable to hulk flash it wouldnt be played as much and its victories be as widespread because of the cost. The deck is not very cheap and its very niche so you probably dont have all of the cards for it just lying around or 300 to spend on show and tells.

The deck is great. Its pretty streamlined for a combo. I like it better than ant cause there are less things that could go wrong. ANT gambles on ad nauseum and doesnt have great control elements as back up until they make an instant thoughtsieze....

Omni anything can just trollop most aggro decks and runs into a few problems against control decks cause it packs so much fewer counterspells. I'm working on a UR variant that should improve consistency much more.

Only bad variants of hulk flash could win on turn zero wish spirit guide, gemstone caverns, flash in hulk, kill you. See Steve Sadin's hulk flash list for reference. It ran countertop for crying out loud. Also, ANT gambles on ad nauseam? You haven't played ANT or if you have, you're very much doing it wrong. The name might as well be past in flames tendrils/PIFT because that's how you win over 90% of the time. The name is just a carry over from the mystical tutor days.

@Emidln: Wouldn't fact or fiction be better for recovering after an attrition war? See's one more card, can be cast off just one island if that is somehow relevant, and it draws the same amount of cards as careful consideration or more if your opponent is bad at splitting the piles. The only real downside is if you flip over something like 3 lands, show and tell, omniscience but even then you couldn't combo with just SnT + omni anyways.

[Lejay]

I want to personally thank Lejay and his friends for their hard work on this deck.

Thanks for your trust and running a very close decklist to what I advise, it paid off. Two of your changes were coherent in a meta with less discard (if that was the case) and I don't see having a wishable flusterstorm instead of defense grid a major mistake.

I've been playing unsummon instead of sapphire charm, I really did not find the phasing to be relevant enough to go finding that card in copious boxes of crap.

I have no idea why unsummon is better than vapor snag since people can kill themselves theoretically. But I can assure you that it isn't a good idea to unsummon/vapor snag a meddling mage or a canonist when you play show and tell - > omniscience the turn after.

Good. If the deck can be hated sufficiently and isn't warping the format, it doesn't need to get banned. It really is that simple. This is how players are supposed to respond to new and powerful decks - preparing for them, not merely calling for a banning. It always bothered me as an American player that what seems like the majority (most vocal?) of American Legacy players in fact do call for a banning as opposed to preparing and playing hate. You noticed this too, and I'm assuming that's why you made your call to all the SCG grinders. It makes me happy to see that us Americans appear to be playing smarter this time.

And I realize it's been said, but I want to say it again after reading that sentence: not everyone wants to join you in your efforts of getting Show & Tell banned, and seeing so many crusades against it is getting pretty old. Some people, like myself, actually enjoy the card: it enables archetypes in a similar manner as LED or Æther Vial or what not. When it starts affecting the metagame in a manner similar to Mental Misstep, sure, call for its banning then. Until then, just suck it up please. I don't enjoy playing against certain decks or cards but at least I realize that my beliefs are not universal. "I don't like this card" isn't sufficient reason for a ban, and I think the calling on "those slow to adapt American SCG grinders" (my quotes, not yours) to help you in your crusade comes across as wee bit shady, even if you didn't intend it to or if there are Americans who happen to agree with you.

I'll try to be brief to avoid restarting a ban debate in this thread. But people have to run so much combo hate it is a problem. When other combo decks start to disappear completely because of this combo hate and that top 16 is more and more filled with blue decks it starts to be a problem. A friend of mine pointed out to me recently that it was already the case with a lot of other decks that disappeared because of show and tell. He was saying for example that in a metagame such as what we saw in recent SCGs there is no way a deck like dragon stompy shouldn't prosper if that wasn't for show and tell. But sneak and show had made it obsolete. Show and tell is of course creating archetypes but it makes a lot of decks too weak to be good enough. That should be more and more true as the months pass.

Lets assume that Leyline is 100% better in all situations where it is in your OPENING hand.

Let's assume your opponent plays several discards and not just one.

The more I read this thread the more I think the deck shouldn't be discussed. At this rate, there is nothing to discuss except for the MUD- or possibly the RUG Delver matchup in my opinion.

The only real thing to discuss is making the deck more efficient. Shorter lines of play / increased consistency.

Tom T is right, apple713 is wrong. I don't mind people adapting slots to metagame, I don't mind people playing emidln's list, but seriously this thread should mainly focus on discussing tactics in precise match-ups rather than deckbuilding strategy.

I'm strongly considering dropping the sidedboarded Intuition as I haven't wished for it in a long time.

It has some minor drawbacks but if you play FF in the sb and intuition main this is perfectly fine.

and lejay and emidln think this deck is the second coming of Academy-Tinker.

for the 758th time, the deck has positive match-ups against almost the entire field. That doesn't mean it is a legendary broken deck. If you've got 52 to 56% against a wide range of deck and 65 against some that doesn't make you an academy or flash competitor.

@Emidln: Wouldn't fact or fiction be better for recovering after an attrition war? See's one more card, can be cast off just one island if that is somehow relevant, and it draws the same amount of cards as careful consideration or more if your opponent is bad at splitting the piles. The only real downside is if you flip over something like 3 lands, show and tell, omniscience but even then you couldn't combo with just SnT + omni anyways.

I've played both last year, starting with fact. You prefer careful consideration because often situations where you are both attritioned with enough time to rebuild through wish-> draw spell are against decks with lots of discard. In that case the opponent will often know the content of your hand and will make pretty horrible piles. Also in these situations it won't be that rare that you need to find 2 combo pieces. In which case careful consideration is once again much better.

[blindspotxxx]

Played this deck to a 4-0 last night. Leyline baby loves me :)

I now understand the importance of Emrakul.. That thing is totally needed against Maverick!

[KobeBryan]

I'm having a very hard time beating my brother's bant deck.

He runs the GSZ style deck with 4 FOW and 3 spell pierces

in the side, he has 2 flusterstorm, 1 negate, and 1 teeg.

He just overwhelms me with the control from his deck.

any suggestions? He isn't too afraid of defense grid since he blows it up pretty fast with pridemage. and when defense grid is in play, he just has the mana to pay it.

[Megadeus]

I mean I feel like Bant is such an uncommon deck you shouldn't even worry too much about it...

[Lejay]

I feel like you brother kind of focuses on beating you, so...

I would advise you to play another deck. That is probably the only way to solve the problem.

Just play a non combo deck and teach him about magic.

[KobeBryan]

I feel like you brother kind of focuses on beating you, so...

Just play a non combo deck and teach him about magic.

I played against him with other decks too. Dredge, patriot, and jund.

he seems to have a pretty good matchup against those decks too. I'd have to say, his deck is pretty consistent.

[Lejay]

So I guess you are the main problem.

[KobeBryan]

So I guess you are the main problem.

Why do you always have this elitist attitude. I think you are one of the worst posters in this forum. So what if you tested this deck to hell. I'm asking an honest question here. What do you think the forums are for?

I just realized i blocked you on cockatrice, I think you exhibited this same bs attitude on there too.

[Lejay]

Why do you always have this elitist attitude. I think you are one of the worst posters in this forum. So what if you tested this deck to hell. I'm asking an honest question here. What do you think the forums are for?

I just realized i blocked you on cockatrice, I think you exhibited this same bs attitude on there too.

Maybe you misunderstood me. I wasn't saying you are personnally a problem. I was just implying that maybe if he beats you with a non DTB deck against all of the 4 very different decks you used against him, then maybe, he makes less mistakes than you do which bends the results.