In my experience 1 in 10 Painter Stone players will do that. Remember being able to counter EtA and Terminus can be vital to them.Originally Posted by dsck
I dont think you have played against 10 different painter players. Grindstone is quite good against setting up miracles and they dont have to overextend into terminus.
Sometimes the matchup feels very easy and sometimes they have the nuts.
Over the years probably more than 50 (obv. incl. online).
Most (semi-)unfair decks can draw the nuts, so that's a moot point to bring up. Overall this is a positive MU - though it depends on your build. Here's mine for reference:
4 Jace
3 EtA
4 FoW
2 CS
4 CB
4 Top
4 BS
1 Ponder
1 SCM
4 STP
3 Terminus
1 Verdict
2 EE
4 Strand
2 Tarn
2 A. Mesa
4 Tundra
2 Volc
5 Island
3 Plains
1 Mountain
SB:
2 REB
1 Pyro
2 Pyroclasm
2 Bloodmoon
2 Wear/Tear
3 RiP
1 Terminus
2 Spell Pierce
Last edited by klaus; 10-13-2013 at 06:10 PM.
Thank you for sharing your list klaus.
Why don't you play Vendilion Clique (and Venser) ? I find Clique extremely useful to put your stuck in hand miracles back into your deck in addition its usual effect.
Are you considering playing a 4th EtA in your sideboard ?
Are you happy about your 3rd plains ? Don't you have some problems to cast CB and CS on Turn 2 too many times ?
How have been Blood moon and Pyroclasm ?
I know Spell Pierce is better in the mirror and in a few other matchups but i feel like the slots should be dedicated to combo decks and Flusterstorm is better there.
I feel you should play the second copy of Snapcaster Mage maindeck. I'll accept the fact that you are pushing towards a very hard-control concept of Miracles and thus you want to skip on Vendilion Clique, and that's fine (although I disagree), but you really need a cheap clock against combo decks to put them under pressure while locking down with Counterbalance and counterspells on Top. Entreat the Angels is obviously the nuts against fair decks and I got to 3 copies as well, but unfortunately it's kinda lackluster in matchups where your priority is to gather as much blue cards as possible, where durdling with Tops to setup Miracles becomes a late-game issue (granted you manage to reach the late-game).
3 Plains are also absolutely correct in a double white spells-heavy version, and the Mountain can be fine as Karakas equivalent as well given how much red is in your sideboard and no Cliques.
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Avatar of kicks_422's creation and property
See my answer @Picelli below.
No. My general rule of thumb is: Play the full playset only if you're rather happy than sad to see it in your starting 7.
The 3rd Plains replaced Karakas. With 19 U producing lands (incl. fetches) and some cantrips that list is actually pretty good at casting CB on turn two. However I frequently find myself in scenarios, in which I have access to UU on turn 2 whilte holding CB, but decide against casting it, in order to be able to counter stuff with CS, search for FoW in resp, play around Daze etc..
I tested Pyrocolasm in the MD and was rather disappointed. However it has probably been the strongest SB addition in a long time. Shoutouts to Lemnear, a fellow Berliner, for bringing that up 1-2 pages back. // Blood Moon is decent but not amazing atm, since it's become harder to catch people with their pants down and Decay is a card. It basically boils down to being a commitment to four strategies out there which are tough to beat w/o it: Lands.dec, Punishing Fire, UBG control, and Cloudpost.dec. I still bring it in against decks like RUG, Dredge and Landstill.
You are right about F. Storm being superior against Storm. However there are quite a few decks out there against which I'd prefer Pierce: Enchantress, Stax, any U Control archetype (including Tezz Control, Thopter-based decks), Painter Stone, Pox (countering Lili is vital), the list goes on. And Pierce still shines against Combo to a certain degree - well at least it's decent at buying enough time to set up CB/Top. :)
The second SCM is definitely an option! It pimps the CB curve and can act as an additional BS, allowing us to ship back miracles, which is especially useful when rocking the 3rd EtA.
It's tough to find the right card to cut though. Suggestions?
Clique is awesome against Combo - no doubt about it and it does a good job against Control by clearing the way for Jace, but that's basically about it. I almost never won on the back of the combat dmg it did, making the body near useless, Karakas* tricks hardly ever came up either. *We have no way to tutor for it, so finding it on time against Grisel.decs rarely happened, thus I came to cut it for good. I replaced it with the third Plains, which enhances the manabase and neatly supports those SB Blood Moons. If your meta is super combo-heavy, cool / if not: there are better options imo.
I got the feeling 2,5 EtAs is the right number (for real). Those suboptimal 0,5 excess EtAs I play are1 a commitmennt to the 50 minute time limit. You know me: I've been playing UW Control for at least a decade and if there's one thing that frequently frustrated me it was timeout draws combined with slow playing opponents.
Cheers! My bad. 2 EE. // Edit: Fixed
Last edited by klaus; 10-13-2013 at 06:09 PM.
Went 5-2-2 today in the Milwaukee SCG playing UW/br miracles. Considering I've only played in legacy tournaments twice the past six month (or more), and found out about the 5k on Thursday, I was pretty happy. If my one loss was a win, then I would have been 14th. If a draw was a win, then around 24th. I played pretty well most of the day, but still just a bit too rusty to play 100% all the time. I thought I did a good job playing to my outs in most situations though, so that's something at least. The list featured some great cards like baleful strix and Sorin, Lord of Innistrad, and I was immensely happy with how it performed all day. The curve was very fluid, I had a ton of options, and I noticed a huge difference with 24 blue cards (compared to 20 or 19 in some lits I've run in the past.) Working on a report at the moment, hopefully I can have that up soon.
wow, that's crazy. Sorin? Can't wait to read it.
-ABC
This was my list, in case you were curious:
// Lands
4 [ON] Flooded Strand
1 [ZEN] Marsh Flats
3 [ZEN] Misty Rainforest
4 [R] Tundra
1 [LG] Karakas
5 [5E] Island (3)
2 [A] Underground Sea
1 [WWK] Creeping Tar Pit
1 [IN] Plains (2)
1 [R] Volcanic Island
// Creatures
3 [MOR] Vendilion Clique
4 [PC2] Baleful Strix
// Spells
4 [AL] Force of Will
3 [WWK] Jace, the Mind Sculptor
2 [AVR] Entreat the Angels
4 [MM] Brainstorm
4 [CS] Counterbalance
3 [AVR] Terminus
4 [4E] Swords to Plowshares
4 [CHK] Sensei's Divining Top
2 [7E] Counterspell
// Sideboard
SB: 1 [7E] Counterspell
SB: 3 [ALA] Ethersworn Canonist
SB: 2 [ARE] Enlightened Tutor
SB: 2 [RTR] Rest in Peace
SB: 1 [DDG] Oblivion Ring
SB: 1 [DDK] Sorin, Lord of Innistrad
SB: 3 [LRW] Thoughtseize
SB: 2 [CH] Blood Moon
Sorin was fantastic (in my experiences today). The lifelink to stabilize when you're low on life is huge, and then not only that, but if unanswered you just take all your opponent's (nonhexproof) creatures, and basically win the game there. It's really awkward for anybody trying to win with creatures. Plus he can kill Jace easily. (Also, be warned, my reports are very long.)
EDIT: Just finished the report: http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/s...782#post757782
Last edited by Valtrix; 10-14-2013 at 04:30 AM.
Gratz on your finish!
Strix seems like an awkward inclusion at first sight imo. It gives meaning to your opponents' creature removal, making it less of an actual two for one, doesn't synergize well with Terminus, requires off-color mana, and other than in BladeControl can't be transformed into an actual threat with equipment. I'd much rather just play a mix of EE / Vindicate / Ponder / SCM.
Splashing red just for Blood Moon makes your manabase more vulnerable than necessary - a 3,5 color deck also doesn't seem like an optimal home for that card. I would recommend adding the second Basic Plains at least, so you can still cast EtA under it.
EE looks like a worthy candidate to consider: being able to destroy CMC 4 permanents feels nice.
I've been testing Sorin a little bit back in the day and he actually performed well. The only reason I'm not rocking one in my list is that the black splash turned out to be inferior to the red one.
This is roughly what I'd assemble if I were to go with UWb again:
4 Jace
2 EtA
4 FoW
2 CS
4 CB
4 Top
4 BS
2 SCM
4 STP
3 Terminus
1 Verdict
2 Vindicate
1 Sorin
4 Strand
2 Delta
2 Flats
4 Tundra
2 Underground Sea
5 Island
2 Plains
1 Swamp
1 Kor Haven
SB:
2 Duress
2 Inquisition of K.
3 Engineered Plague
1 Disenchant
3 RiP
1 Terminus
3 Spell Pierce
Klaus,
I gotta hand it to you. Giving such neutral and almost positive advice on that heap of garbage list that he won a little bit more than half of the games with. I have never seen such an unsynergistic list in my life.
notice how Valtrix has 3 Canonists in the SB? I find myself keep playing Canonists in almost every SB games.
vs Storms
obvious choice, can work against Doomsday
vs Reanimator/tin-fin
shuts down entomb -> Emrakul -> shallow grave trick
cannot lead the turn with a discard first, then reanimation spell
vs dnt/goblin
a blocker
vs Shardless BUG
cannot cascade when playing Shardless. Cannot play anything the turn Ancestral Vision resolves naturally from suspend.
Basically, any aggro-control/tempo decks (creature Beatdown with cheap counters), Canonist is bad, i.e. Merfolk/RUG Delver. is MD Canonist a bad idea?
Shardless Agent is an Artifact, so it doesn't work against them. I'm looking into maining my Arcane Lab. Arcane Lab + Counterbalance is incredibly efficient.
EDIT:
// Permanents: 18
3 Sensei's Divining Top
3 Counterbalance
1 Energy Field
3 Rest in Peace
1 Arcane Laboratory
1 Blood Moon
1 Detention Sphere
1 Helm of Obedience
3 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
1 Engineered Explosives
// Spells: 19
4 Brainstorm
2 Enlightened Tutor
3 Swords to Plowshares
1 Counterspell
4 Force of Will
3 Terminus
2 Entreat the Angels
// Lands: 23
2 Plains
5 Island
1 Mountain
1 Karakas
1 Mystic Gate
4 Flooded Strand
3 Scalding Tarn
2 Arid Mesa
3 Tundra
1 Volcanic Island
// Sideboard
1 Pithing Needle
2 Red Elemental Blast
2 Flusterstorm
1 Energy Field
1 Ethersworn Canonist
2 Vendilion Clique
1 Wear & Tear
1 Helm of Obedience
1 Supreme Verdict
1 Batterskull
2 Misdirection
Might cut the Canonist out of the board, possibly for a Venser. Not sure what for, but Canonist isn't doing much.
The conspiracy goes deeper than you might think.Can I pay you for not posting in this thread?
I don't really feel like giving meaning to my opponent's removal is that big a deal. The thing is, even if they do use removal, you aren't down a card. You are down some mana investment, but not a card, which is a huge deal to me. Although, even in cases when they do use removal on it, their removal isn't completely dead regardless. For example, if your opponent uses abrupt decay on your Strix to get damage through, then they don't have that decay for your counterbalance. If it gets bolted, that's three more life you have. What's also relevant is being able to Entreat for a small X and still be able to win off that. For example, maybe you can only Entreat for X = 2 (or even 1) because of your mana, or you need to play around Spell pierce, or what have you. If they used removal on Strix, that means you have an angel(s) still. Remember too in decks with filter effects, they would normally shuffle away removal. So making them use it means they can't just shuffle it away to get a new card to threaten you with.
I can see why you dislike the interaction with Terminus, but if your situation is that you have strix in play, and you still need to terminus for whatever reason, you're not even down any cards when Strix goes to the bottom. I can't reiterate this enough; the fact that strix always replaces itself is huge. Plus, Strix can force people into multiple creatures, which you can then sweep away with terminus.
The other thing that I like about Strix is that it gives you something relevant to do in early turns as a proactive answer. I've played really control heavy decks, and I liked having answers to everything my opponent did, but that was usually reactionary. Strix comes down as a proactive answer, which is something I truly appreciated for this deck.
Blood moon was a meta call--I saw a lot of people playing Shardless BUG, delver decks, and lands before the tournament. Since I also had never played against BUG before, and didn't have time to test it, I thought it would be a strong call to bring in a card to "almost" win me the game on the spot. Honestly, I'm only giving up a single basic island for a volcanic island, going from 7 basics total to 6. I don't feel like this really weakens the manabase much at all, and I think if you expect the decks blood moon is great against, I believe that the amount of games you win by having access to moon will be far more than the games you lose because you naturally drew your volc, when you really needed a basic instead (like, almost never).Splashing red just for Blood Moon makes your manabase more vulnerable than necessary - a 3,5 color deck also doesn't seem like an optimal home for that card. I would recommend adding the second Basic Plains at least, so you can still cast EtA under it.
I originally had the second plains, but with so much blue in the deck I was almost never happy to draw it, and it hurt me the majority of the times I drew it. I almost want to get rid of Karakas because of this. The only thing I am unable to cast with only 1 plains is entreat, if for some reason I can never get access. Usually that would mean a blood moon is out, but realistically against any deck I truly want a moon effect against I can afford to win with just my blue win conditions (Jace or Clique) because of how those spells dominate the game.
I really like EE; in fact I ran intuition for loam/academy ruins/EE in a control shell several years ago. My complaint though was that EE is just too much mana investment on top of everything else I want to do in this deck. I like it's flexibility, but in general I prefer counterspell as a cheaper catch-all answer, which also controls the stack, and never lets my opponent get any comes into play effects.EE looks like a worthy candidate to consider: being able to destroy CMC 4 permanents feels nice.
I really liked him. From 20 he's the same clock as an Elspeth, but the life link and his ultimate really can help keep a match against a deck with creatures in check after controlling the board for a few turns with him out.I've been testing Sorin a little bit back in the day and he actually performed well.
I'm not completely convinced of this (I mean, if I was, then I would have focused just on red). In my opinion, and from games I have played, strix is a powerful option in the main; although one might be inclined to disagree. This was enough of a draw to me to run black, and then I realized how nicely thoughtseize supplemented my game plan post board, particularly agianst unfair decks. As such, this is why I elected to go with the black splash.only reason I'm not rocking one in my list is that the black splash turned out to be inferior to the red one.
Comparing the two splashes, black mostly gets discard (thoughtseize), whereas red gets pyroblast/RED and pyroclasm. Blood moon is definitely splashable as I did though, so I don't really consider that to be I do think red is better suited against creature decks because of pyroclasm, although realistically I think you can manage with running porphyry nodes or maybe verdict with just white(/blue), if you really want to hate on creatures. Then REB/pyroblast is the main other draw (since you can run moon with 4c if you relaly wnat) for running this color, and compared to a black splash the main other card to compare to would be thoughtseize. One is reactive, the other is proactive, and while they have some overlap in utility against decks you might want them with, they certainly do much different things.
Thoughtseize is immensely stronger any unfair decks as a proactive answer. This was the second reason why I wanted black splash, because I expected to be up against more unfair decks on the day. Knowing their hand and not having to leave a R up gives you a lot of options in these matchups. Thoughseize, in my opinion, is also very useful against the same blue decks as REB, for the same reason it's good against unfair decks. It can also let you know if it's safe to play your win-conditions, and a turn earlier if you don't need an extra R. That said, it certainly loses value over time, whereas REB does not, which is something I dislike.
REB definitely wins out against delver decks though, which alone may be enoug of an edge to make red a more valuable boarding color in general.
I'm glad that we can have meaningful discussion on these forums, thanks for the insight. I certainly think just calling a list garbage, then justifying it with a tournament placement really proves something.
Before I get to Canonist,
1. I still don't understand why would people run anything other than 4 Top.
2. Arcane Lab is asking to get Pyro/REB. You can do the Exact same thing with Rule of Law, which doesn't suffer that problem.
Now Canonist, you're correct, I forgot Shardless is an artifact. I still feel Canonist is diverse enough. It can block for you in aggro match-ups and I once killed a storm player just by turning it side-way, I don't think Rule of Law can do that.
Arcane Lab can be discarded to Force. We were having this discussion, and it all depends on your Force and total Blue count. I have a super low Blue count in my deck, thus RoL seems relevant.
SDT's were being sided out too often. You just see SDT off SDT way too often with 4.
The conspiracy goes deeper than you might think.Can I pay you for not posting in this thread?
Tops being sided out? I can't think of one instance where I could ever imagine myself siding out tops. Easily the best card in our deck.
Yeah, pretty sure less than 4 Top is wrong. It's pretty much the best card in the deck. Set ups Miracles, Counterbalance, gives you extra blue cards for Force, gives you instant speed Terminus and Entreat. Plus sometimes you want to have 2, so you can tap 1 to draw and still have another on the board to use Counterbalance for example. 4 is definitely correct.
Also simply using one to draw, fetching, and still having a second in play is fine as well. I would rather see all 4 tops in a game than none at all.
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