I personally feel like 6 is too low. 7 is the sweet spot for me in Ad Naus builds. I like 8 (with a singleton Tseize) in my current non-AN, PiF/Empty-main build, and that's the list I have having the most success with when I play.Originally Posted by Tombstalker
Is there a list combining top and LDV???
Thx!! i guess top + LDV replace B. wish right??
Except there aren't enough good card options in Storm to not need "significantly worse" cantrips past Brainstorms, Ponders and Probes, because Grim Tutor is inefficient, Burning Wish is underpowered and Lim Dul's Vault, Personal Tutor and Sensei's Divining Top aren't established yet. Preordain is about as good as Ponder is, and I don't think you can directly compare Preordain vs Sensei's Divining Top because there isn't a linear relationship between the number of Preordains and Sensei's Divining Tops in your deck. For instance, 1 Sensei's Divining Top is better than 1 Preordain, but 4 Preordain are better than 4 Sensei's Divining Top
I like LDV/Top, but it seems slower than the 16 cantrip version, which is kind of disconcerting.
With a "tutor" like LDV, is 16 cantrips necessary? Sure, LDV requires more...brain activity to be a competent play, but knowing the top five cards of your library is insane. Moreover, picking those 5 cards and reordering them is even crazier. Then, you have over 8 cantrips that will allow you to draw at least one of those cards, or up to all (Ad Nauseam) of those cards, and with
AN in mind, it can all be end of your opponents turn with the help of a couple rituals. Not the best idea, but drawing lots of cards in response to a discard spell that would otherwise take your only win-con is a good choice in my opinion.
-ABC
Is it only me, or does all the development, resulting as a reaction to any meta-shift, make the deck slower and slower?
It's one thing to run expensive Tutors like Grim in addition to Infernal, or getting used to cantrip for 2-3 turns into a card-configuration that can win, but SDT and LDV are significant mana-sinks and carddisadvantage and with the cutting of Ad Nauseam (which I promoted months ago), I don't feel you can make up for that Investment.
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Obviously not, considering the only way you could afford to play LDV in the first place is by cutting cantrips, I think the "standard" LDV list is like 2 LDV, 2 SDT in place of the 4 Pre-Ordains.
It doesn't make up for card disadvantage, but it does give you card quality, something vital to the life of storm. Back in the days of Mystical Tutor when I was playing D-Day FT AN hybrid (ran a full set of tops), you could run 7 discard spells and a single Chant and win a war of attrition vs. blue.dec. You can't do that with this deck, and it's because you are too busy durdling around with all those clunky cantrips to do anything other than combo off as fast as your scared little deck can manage. Doomsday went off turn 3, occasionally turn 4, and that happened more against blue than anything. Win through graveyard hate, hate bears, you name it. Any D-Day player knows that the top 5 cards of a library is all you need. I see no reason to change philosophy now, especially when your choices are smaller via a lack of mystical. In fact, LDV is basically the next best thing to Mystical, doing the exact same thing, costing only B more and giving you the next top 4 cards of your library in any order you want. Life total, shmife total, its a bargain for its plethora of uses.
EDIT: Took me long enough that I guess I should have noted that this was in response to Lemnear. FF, obv. you are correct. That's the point I was trying to make.
I agree with the obvious analogies between LDV and Mystical, however the deck back then was an Ad Nauseam deck which basically only needed the namesake card and 5 mana to work.
Imo the things greatly differ if you cut AN and make the Main-engine PIF, which still needs Rituals/cantrips/infernal in the graveyard to achieve enough stormcount + mana for being finally able to fetch ToA.
So I doubt we can make Mystical + Ad Nauseam a proper example to advocate for LDV + PIF
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Well yes, obviously, but then we wouldn't be talking about AD Nauseam Tendrils, would we? That would be PiF-Tendrils; a different deck with different routes to victory.
-ABC
Indeed. Still, the current discussed standard is EtW + PIF w/o AN afaik, so I was refering to that one 'cause it was discussed here due to the lack of an own thread. Tribute to the threads-multi-layer of builds :/
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Saying that Preordain is about as good as Ponder essentially invalidates everything else you said. Also, you can't make a blanket statement that 1 Top is better than 1 Preordain. They are completely different cards, and Top costs 1 more mana to look at cards once which is a huge deal. Regarding Grim, it is still a very good card. It lets my list run 150% of the normal number of tutors and better utilize Past in Flames which is the best engine in the deck.
How does saying Preordain is about as good as Ponder essentially invalidate everything else I said? I've played the 16 cantrip version of Tendrils exclusively at local tournaments for some time, and the power level of Preordain isn't far behind the power level of Ponder if you consider Ponder is only strictly better than Preordain when combined with a Fetchland. Yes, I can make a blanket statement that 1 Top is better than 1 Preordain and that 4 Preordain is better than 4 Top, because a single Top will have significantly more powerful board presence vs your more difficult match ups compared to a single Preordain, where Preordain becomes more powerful as the total number of Preordains increases because the deck can begin to chain cantrips mana efficiently while building Threshold. If I'm choosing the 9th cantrip, then I'm choosing Top over Preordain because it makes the biggest difference vs discard, where if I'm choosing to build an engine out of cantrips than Preordain is clearly better than Top because multiple Tops are redudant and a single Top is mana inefficient as a card quality engine when having 16 cantrips lets you essentially cantrip every turn anyway. I can't say a single Preordain is strictly worse than a single Top vs RUG and such, but in a metagame defined by discard I think Top clearly wins; I mean you don't exactly see anybody SBing Preordain compared to Top right now.
I think the difference between Infernal Tutor and Grim Tutor is much more significant than the difference between Ponder and Preordain, it is noticeably worse in every situation that I've come across and I think that people's interest in Burning Wish, Lim Dul's Vault and Preordain speaks of people's discontent with the card. I don't fault anyone for playing it, but for me it's been rather lackluster.
My friend told me about an ant player using young pyromancer in the sideboard. The card seemed to be doing pretty well from what my friend described. Basically becomes an empty the warrens, and is a backup plan against force of stupid.
Emptying the Warrens: So YOU don't have to!
Without a fetchland, Ponder is strictly better than Preordain when you don't want any of the top 3 cards on top of your library.
And Preordain is strictly better than Ponder when you want 1 card on top of your deck but not the other, I think it's completely situational which cantrip is actually better sans fetchlands. I'm not saying Ponder isn't better overall, but Preordain is still pretty close.
This is actually false. Preordain is not "strictly better" in this scenario because Ponder can see and reorder a third card than Preordain cannot see...
not really. look, to me, another tutor is just better than another cantrip. i can give you situations where grim is better than infernal or another cantrip, and i think that a lot of people dont play the card because is expensive. preordain is good, but cmon, 3 preordains and 1 grim seems (to me at least) just better
There's a difference between seeing and re-ordering a third card that you'll have to draw thru' anway and sending a second card to the bottom of your deck so you wont have to draw it at all obviously, that said I usually prefer Preordain over Ponder without a fetchland because the Scry clears the top of the deck of an unwanted card before I follow up with another cantrip. The fact that I always seem to lead with Preordain makes it the preferable cantrip, I'd rather have 2xPreordain, 1xPreordain and 1xPonder or 1xPreordain and 1xBrainstorm than 2xPonder or 1xPonder and 1xBrainstorm fwiw if I'm not holding a fetchland.
Look, I get that you don't like Preordain, but functionally it does what it needs to do close enough to Ponder for me not to have to worry about the deck being strictly worse without Grim Tutor. Even if it was just equal to Ponder without a fetchland and worse than Ponder with a fetchland, that's still good enough to get played in my book.
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