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

[Lemnear]

Hi what was your side in in side out game 2 ?

-3 Duress, -1 Infernal, -1 EtW, + 3 Xantid Swarms, +2 CoV

[Jaycounet]

-3 Duress, -1 Infernal, -1 EtW, + 3 Xantid Swarms, +2 CoV

Hum i've surelly miss somehting

how many dures / therapy are your running ?

[Bed Decks Palyer]

Edit: all those talk about keeping track of mana/life/storm isn't really helpful if you never played with this deck in a real tournament Environment and make mistakes being nervous and such

Yes, but JPoJohnson asked about some tips (and clearly didn't need help with "keep priority after playing IT" kind of things), but rather with these not-so-obvious and kinda-outside-the-game things.

Making excessive notes is time consuming in your turn. The mana-colored-dice-System I presented a few pages back works wonders. Without trying to be a douche, but didn't you announce to sell your ANT/TNT after going 0-X in 2 tournaments in a row with storm? I would have loved to see those excessive notes to analyze what wet wrong...

You still need to switch pen and dice. Then swotch back dice and pen. Then switch pen and dice. And then... you know. Also, even if you use the 1-20 spindown dice instead of the random ones, you still need to manipulate them. I find it distracting, annoying and time consuming. Add tokens, Therapy notes, etc. and you may get lost in the process. But to each his own.
Notes are gone, I use them when I write reports and then they end in waste. Also, it's not like I do excessive notes.. (I find it strange that you thougt andasked about it, after all, you also must do some notes unless your reports are written from memory.) I basically never write anything unimportant, and then I write down the spells chain and such to have a written testimony of what happened in case argument arises, then I got the life points (and next to them I write what happened, if it's important; this way you may easily associate the game factors like life lost so far, number of Duresses played, the cca number of turns, etc.)

19 19 Ponder
18 19 Dur (Daze, FoW, FoW, Plains, fetch, Mystic) -> FoW
17 18 CoF
17 18 Mystic (BSK)
17 18 eot BSK; eot LDV (FoW)
13 22
11 21 GP, CT (FoW!)
DRit, CoF, CRit, LED, IT (LED: RRR) -> PiF; PiF, Drit, Dur, Crit, IT, GP, ToA
9 21
37 0
And imagine a "U:", "B:" and "R:" columns somewhere on that paper.

LEDs are already gone, so are the two of three USeas. Also, the reason why I'm selling the deck are not the two losses. I'm not that silly.

[Deviruchi]

Ok guys, confession time: I've never been to a legacy event.

There, i said it. Im taking TES (Played many many games with it for many months now) to a GPT this weekend and wondered if there were any general tips to give for either piloting this deck or things to watch for in a tournament setting?

Get some sleep. Stay hydrated. If you are thirsty it is already too late. Try to act the same all the time. Don't let them read you. Hide your goblin tokens. Try to figure out your next play/turn (order of spells) in your head so you won't make an error. Write down stack if you plan to cast PiF / IGG / DReturns. Some opponents can try to tell judge that you didn't cast some spells and your storm count is 8/9. Print SB advices if you don't remember / understand them by heart. Think. Be confident. Be humble. You are not Bryant Cook.

Good luck!

[Lemnear]

@BDP

I have the advantage of untimed rounds in the events I wrote these reports and use partly stenography, otherwise it would be impossible to catch all the details.

[davelin]

Lem,

What are you taking out to make room for the Pyroclasm in the board?

[Mindlash]

Lem,

What are you taking out to make room for the Pyroclasm in the board?

Ill-Gotten Gains or as of the new list in the starting post Tropical Island.

[Bed Decks Palyer]

@BDP

I have the advantage of untimed rounds in the events I wrote these reports and use partly stenography, otherwise it would be impossible to catch all the details.

I found the 50 minutes enough, also I don't write everything. It takes very little time to write these things down, and you may use the opponents' time when they're fetching, kiblering and such. You can't do much stuff during your combo turn, but well, there's hardly anything else necessary enough than to write down the spells chain and you're doing it so or so to have that written testimony of things that happened. I can't stenograph, but I don't think that it takes that much more time to use the usual shortcuts then to stenotype:

19 19 BS
18 19 Dur (FoW!)
18 18 CB
17 17 SDT
16 17 Decay
14 17 GP, CT, DRit, blargh, blargh, blargh...

[Lemnear]

Lem,

What are you taking out to make room for the Pyroclasm in the board?

With the additional land already in my MB over the 3rd mox, I have Bryants SB Tropical slot open for a meta-slot like Clasm

[davelin]

With the additional land already in my MB over the 3rd mox, I have Bryants SB Tropical slot open for a meta-slot like Clasm

For the SCG open this weekend, I am thinking of running the same SB as you but possibly without the MB change (-1 Mox +1 Fetch). Think that's a mistake? Is the extra land against mana denial worth the explosiveness versus other decks?

[Jaycounet]

Hum i've surelly miss somehting

how many dures / therapy are your running ?

you wish the therapy ?

[Lemnear]

For the SCG open this weekend, I am thinking of running the same SB as you but possibly without the MB change (-1 Mox +1 Fetch). Think that's a mistake? Is the extra land against mana denial worth the explosiveness versus other decks?

Let me set the question here into another perspective: how good is having Chrome Mox in your starting grip (not to talk about mulligans) or drawn in average? Is it better than a land in non T1-AN/EtW hands? Is it better than a land versus discard? Is it better to play around taxing effects (permaments and spells aka thalia and softcounter)?

These are the questions I asked myself as my meta shifted away from Combo and Aggro, towards an undefined mass of Flusterstorm/Thoughtseize/Daze/Pierce/FoW/Therapy/Stifle/Wasteland ... Heck, I barely face anything that isn't Delver in various Colors or a flavor or Show&Tell!

I am overall unwilling to go all-in on turn 1/2 in this metagame as you might imagine and therefore I like to operate on a more stable manabase to Dismember my opponents and win out of the blue after doing so. A lot of those matches turn into attrition wars and I like creating cardadvantage with Wish->Therapy, rather than 2-1 myself early.

It's a metagame choice. Nothing more

you wish the therapy ?

To answer this and the question before: i have 3 Duress Main, 2 Therapy Side. I boarded out all discard in Game 2 and wished for the Therapy because he didn't drop a leyline so I was able to strip his 3 Omniscience (knew 2 off a T1 Therapy)

[JPoJohnson]

I've used dice to tally everything since I picked up the decks at the beginning of this year so it's not an issue, I enjoy using the dice. I've never written anything down, but I have in mind a coding way to keep tallies of everything without them understanding what I'm writing. I would love to come back with a clear concise tournament report, but I guess we'll see how my notes turn up haha.

I'm confident enough in my abilities to use the deck and manipulate it in a way that is effective, whether optimal or not on certain plays is another thing, so I'm fine with that. Perhaps in certain situations I may get nervous as I'm playing, but the game is for fun regardless of whether you win... right? I'm just excited to finally be able to put it to good use beyond the three different playgroups I've bounced around in (And like I posted prior, there are some quite competitive decks in them. I was surprised how powerful the deck was against Merfolk (My other deck). It was a great feeling looking at my hand and realizing what spells I could play to bait out their counter spells since they feel important, but are really throw away. I hope to get better at reading my opponent and playing the deck based on the opponent's deck.

[Jaycounet]

Ok it was not clear

(omniclash game still a quite hard to manage is quite quick and without xantid quite dangerous to go all in)

[oSeabass]

I have tried dice but find it difficult to manage when multiple values change at once.

I now write down notes using a simple scheme. An example from my last storm match looks like this.

S 1 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11
B 3 2 5 3
U 1 0
R 2 3

Write down the latest values as they change. Don't cross out or erase them. Sometimes, like casting a couple petals when the coast is clear, I will skip over intermediate results.

I really like your idea of having that style for counting the mana and storm. It looks very helpful in tracing things back. I will def. be trying that style the next time I storm. I normally use a full new sheet of paper in a little 6 x 9 inch memo book from Staples. Life totals on the top left and Storm stuff on the right. I use the top right half as space for cards revealed (off Probe, Therapy, etc.), and the bottom half for Mana and Storm count. I use tally marks in the traditional slash the 5th mark, start a new set at 6.

I have not been a fan of dice, I do have a colored set of d12 for each color of mana as well as a neutral color for the storm count. This made me slow down as I found the right number (no spin down). I switched over to pen and paper, and I like it better because it seems more fluid when you need more time to think through a line of play. You can spend brainpower figuring a sequence, instead of looking for 4 on your red die.

On taking notes: I constantly make notes during a match. If an opponent played some land weird, or something in an odd order that makes me question it, I normally write it down in my notes area with the revealed cards. Whenever a revealed card is played, I cross it out. Once that list gets down to a card or to I either circle the remainder or cross it out and rewrite it in a cleaner space.

During AdN, when I am losing a bunch of life I normally start before the starting life total, and count it down out loud as I reveal. If I ever get to a point where I want to think about the cards left and the life total while AN is resolving, I write the current life total down and circle it really big. I normally mention I am at X life, and I am going to think a little before I keep going. This way my opponent has a chance to comment on the life totals, as well as make me pause to think through what they are playing and how to win. Example: playing against RUG, I knew something was in their hand by the lines they took, but I couldn't resolve Silence. I paused at 5 life knowing they had a Volcanic untapped which could potentially be something like Bolt for 3 to the dome to win.

@Bed Decks Palyer: I really like your way of annotating spells to help record lines of play. I may try that at a local GPT coming up.

[davelin]

Let me set the question here into another perspective: how good is having Chrome Mox in your starting grip (not to talk about mulligans) or drawn in average? Is it better than a land in non T1-AN/EtW hands? Is it better than a land versus discard? Is it better to play around taxing effects (permaments and spells aka thalia and softcounter)?

These are the questions I asked myself as my meta shifted away from Combo and Aggro, towards an undefined mass of Flusterstorm/Thoughtseize/Daze/Pierce/FoW/Therapy/Stifle/Wasteland ... Heck, I barely face anything that isn't Delver in various Colors or a flavor or Show&Tell!

I am overall unwilling to go all-in on turn 1/2 in this metagame as you might imagine and therefore I like to operate on a more stable manabase to Dismember my opponents and win out of the blue after doing so. A lot of those matches turn into attrition wars and I like creating cardadvantage with Wish->Therapy, rather than 2-1 myself early.

It's a metagame choice. Nothing more



To answer this and the question before: i have 3 Duress Main, 2 Therapy Side. I boarded out all discard in Game 2 and wished for the Therapy because he didn't drop a leyline so I was able to strip his 3 Omniscience (knew 2 off a T1 Therapy)

Any concerns the loss of the third mox has on a resolved Ad Nauseum?

[Lemnear]

Any concerns the loss of the third mox has on a resolved Ad Nauseum?

Only if I already burned 3+ mana artifacts, have already made my landdrop and Ad Nauseam without mana floating

[Final Fortune]

Odd thought, but considering Abrupty Decay and Xantid Swarm are green and we're playing a Tropical Island in the SB, is there any merrit in replacing Silence with Autumn's Veil? Obviously Autumn's Veil is strictly worse vs Vendillion Clique, combo, discard and hatebear based decks than Silence, but it does have the merrit of being a more color efficient protection spell for the combo post-board.

Probably an unsound idea, but I thought I'd bring it up. Maybe it's a viable way of playing Silence 5+ post-board for counter/removal heavy match ups where Xantid Swarm is otherwise unplayable or further diversifying MD disruption i.e. 3 Silence, 1 Autumn's Veil, 2 Duress, 1 Cabal Therapy etc.?

[TimHarding]

Any concerns the loss of the third mox has on a resolved Ad Nauseum?

Concern yes but, I've gone to two and not once had had issues after resolving..

[Jay_Gatz]

Odd thought, but considering Abrupty Decay and Xantid Swarm are green and we're playing a Tropical Island in the SB, is there any merrit in replacing Silence with Autumn's Veil? Obviously Autumn's Veil is strictly worse vs Vendillion Clique, combo, discard and hatebear based decks than Silence, but it does have the merrit of being a more color efficient protection spell for the combo post-board. Probably an unsound idea, but I thought I'd bring it up. Maybe it's a viable way of playing Silence 5+ post-board for counter/removal heavy match ups where Xantid Swarm is otherwise unplayable or further diversifying MD disruption i.e. 3 Silence, 1 Autumn's Veil, 2 Duress, 1 Cabal Therapy etc.?

You can't time walk with autumns veil.