[DTB] Team America (Aggro/Tempo Thread)

[KobeBryan]

I concur with Deviant. Rest in Peace is most certainly coming in against us unless for some reason they don't have it in their board. Having 2-3 Golgari Charm takes pressure off Abrupt Decay to kill the pesky enchantment so that we can use the latter to kill Delver and SFM in the UWR matchup. Plus, it seems bad to board out threats in an already rather threat light deck (most UWR lists only play 10 creatures total md so they're going down to 8 boarding out their md TNNs). So I say let people play badly and still bring the charm in since it's so flexible in what it can do.

I've been losing to ruw quite a bit. I say it's a bad matchup. How do you guys feel

[Dragonslayer_90]

I've been losing to ruw quite a bit. I say it's a bad matchup. How do you guys feel

I say it's pretty even, like 50-50 honestly. I don't lose to them or beat them all the time. If I play tightly and don't get too unlucky with draws I can beat them.

[deviant]

Imo, the mu slightly favors TA.
Uwr has less navigation room in their gameplan in this mu. In TA side you can adjust yours a lot more, depending on the kind of draw you/him are having.
Unless I get a delver draw, my concerns are primarily in not dying.

Batterskull is their only lategame, try to snatch that with discard / save pulse for it.

Kill delvers and sfm on sight, latter no longer a priority if skull is gone.

Try to keep a charm or liliana in reserve for tnn.

Use your wastelands in their white sources, unless you have a delver draw and feel like you can push the advantage.
Don't be too eager to get on board, unless they pressure you to. If they are not deploying threats they are more vulnerable to hymn, try to capitalize and protect your threats from stops.

Never fall behind on board, they are very good at pushing their advantage - easy to say, I know.

I sb 4 fow 4 daze 2 stalker 0-1 bayou out, with 3 charms 3 disfigure 1 pulse 1 vendilion 1 liliana 0-1 tar pit 1/2 seize coming in.
I have found this to be a good base, adjusting to how they fetch with sfm, use their bolts, how they use their wastelands, which color they go after etc.

[KobeBryan]

Imo, the mu slightly favors TA.
Uwr has less navigation room in their gameplan in this mu. In TA side you can adjust yours a lot more, depending on the kind of draw you/him are having.
Unless I get a delver draw, my concerns are primarily in not dying.

Batterskull is their only lategame, try to snatch that with discard / save pulse for it.

Kill delvers and sfm on sight, latter no longer a priority if skull is gone.

Try to keep a charm or liliana in reserve for tnn.

Use your wastelands in their white sources, unless you have a delver draw and feel like you can push the advantage.
Don't be too eager to get on board, unless they pressure you to. If they are not deploying threats they are more vulnerable to hymn, try to capitalize and protect your threats from stops.

Never fall behind on board, they are very good at pushing their advantage - easy to say, I know.

I sb 4 fow 4 daze 2 stalker 0-1 bayou out, with 3 charms 3 disfigure 1 pulse 1 vendilion 1 liliana 0-1 tar pit 1/2 seize coming in.
I have found this to be a good base, adjusting to how they fetch with sfm, use their bolts, how they use their wastelands, which color they go after etc.

That is exactly how i board.

[Dragonslayer_90]

What Deviant said, though if you start off with only one removal spell in hand and no discard, I would probably save that removal spell for an early mystic instead of killing a T1 Delver. I got boned one time because I opted to kill an early delver and lost to a turn 2 stoneforge mystic into batterskull because I had no other removal. Seriously, the only thing remotely scary for me out of UWR is an early Stoneforge-Mystic-into-Batterskull, not TNN really.

[Dragonslayer_90]

There's something that's been on my mind in regard to this deck. It's Tombstalker's place in the deck. I've always found him to be utterly amazing or uncastable garbage that rots in in my hand. I find myself siding him out a lot since I take him out against most combo decks and any UWx deck with swords and jace (stoneblade variants and miracles primarily). These deck types take up a sizable portion of the general meta, which makes me wonder why I am playing this card? I am not saying it's a terrible card in general. Tombstalker's won me games that I could not have won otherwise, but when I side out a card in so many match ups it makes me wonder why I'm even playing the card. Is it just one of those cards that's only good the decks Game 1s but not so much in postboard games? Let me know your guy' opinions.

[Purgatory]

Finished second, out of 16, in another local today. Played the stock list (borrowed the missing lands this time) with Dismember and Sylvan Library.

My matches:
Elves (1-2)
BUG (2-1)
Affinity (2-1)
BW Deadguy Blade (2-0)
ID with Burn for T4

SF: Miracles (2-0)
F: Elves (1-2)

My sideboard:
1 Vendilion Clique
2 Spell Pierce
3 Disfigure
1 Surgical Extraction
3 Golgari Charm
1 Tormod's Crypt
2 Pithing Needle
2 Winter Orb

So despite bringing in 8 cards to beat Elves, I still lost to the buggers twice. I boarded out Daze and Hymn for Disfigure, Golgari Charm and Pithing Needle. I really need to get a couple of Cages, sure, but other than that - what are you guys' game plans vs. Elves?

[Griselpuff]

There's something that's been on my mind in regard to this deck. It's Tombstalker's place in the deck. I've always found him to be utterly amazing or uncastable garbage that rots in in my hand. I find myself siding him out a lot since I take him out against most combo decks and any UWx deck with swords and jace (stoneblade variants and miracles primarily). These deck types take up a sizable portion of the general meta, which makes me wonder why I am playing this card? I am not saying it's a terrible card in general. Tombstalker's won me games that I could not have won otherwise, but when I side out a card in so many match ups it makes me wonder why I'm even playing the card. Is it just one of those cards that's only good the decks Game 1s but not so much in postboard games? Let me know your guy' opinions.

Yeah, he's bad vs. almost half the format right now, but against the rest he's insanely good. The other option would be TNN (discussed at length) or Nimble Mongoose which doesn't do well with DRS, but might be okay. Still, Goose is only better vs. StP decks and Tombstalker is better vs. almost everything else. Having 2 match-up dependent cards MD imo is fine as you always have Brainstorm.

[Grand Superior]

There's something that's been on my mind in regard to this deck. It's Tombstalker's place in the deck. I've always found him to be utterly amazing or uncastable garbage that rots in in my hand. I find myself siding him out a lot since I take him out against most combo decks and any UWx deck with swords and jace (stoneblade variants and miracles primarily). These deck types take up a sizable portion of the general meta, which makes me wonder why I am playing this card? I am not saying it's a terrible card in general. Tombstalker's won me games that I could not have won otherwise, but when I side out a card in so many match ups it makes me wonder why I'm even playing the card. Is it just one of those cards that's only good the decks Game 1s but not so much in postboard games? Let me know your guy' opinions.

I agree. When he's good, he's incredibly good because he's the biggest flyer in the format that isn't cheated into play and he dodges Abrupt Decay and Lightning Bolt all day. But he has the inherent drawback of being terrible against STP/bounce/Submerge and the fact that he gives our deck an almost Dredge-like reliance on the graveyard (3 out of our 4 threats care about the graveyard). I personally think that he's the best option our deck can play right now (TNN in my opinion just didn't provide enough punch) but I long for the day when something gets printed that can replace Tombstalker.

[danyul]

@Purgatory - there is some light discussion of the Elves matchup in the previous two pages. Your strongest card against them is likely G.Cage, as you already know. I'm not sure how sexy Pithing Needle is in that matchup. You could swap one of those for a V.Clique, perhaps, the next time you board.

[Purgatory]

@Purgatory - there is some light discussion of the Elves matchup in the previous two pages. Your strongest card against them is likely G.Cage, as you already know. I'm not sure how sexy Pithing Needle is in that matchup. You could swap one of those for a V.Clique, perhaps, the next time you board.

Sure, I boarded it mostly to combat Wirewood Symbiote, it is easily one of the most annoying creatures in the match-up, IMO.

[deviant]

TStalker is one of the reasons I'm liking this deck so much.
Sure, I too sb him out a lot, but that hardly makes a bad md card.
People rarely play RiP md, which is one of the biggest reasons that make me want to sb stalker out, as those decks are sure to also have 4-5 stp postboard.
Him being unboltable, undecayable is a huge bonus in many mu's.

Playing with him requires some foretought though. How many times has your stalker been submerges f.e?
Well could you have fetched differently or did you really have to get that forest on the table?
Did you bait the stop sufficiently, or did you get unnecessarily aggressive with closing the game?

People I see mock stalker most, tend to play him pretty horribly :/

And about the elves mu, I still hold my ground on this:
No matter how many hatecards you think you need, you need practice more.

Learn to win with removal and pinpoint discard only, you can add the cages later if you want to, but testing with those teaches you to play the "cage games", and it's the cageless games you should worry about the most :)

[Dragonslayer_90]

TStalker is one of the reasons I'm liking this deck so much.
Sure, I too sb him out a lot, but that hardly makes a bad md card.
People rarely play RiP md, which is one of the biggest reasons that make me want to sb stalker out, as those decks are sure to also have 4-5 stp postboard.
Him being unboltable, undecayable is a huge bonus in many mu's.

Playing with him requires some foretought though. How many times has your stalker been submerges f.e?
Well could you have fetched differently or did you really have to get that forest on the table?
Did you bait the stop sufficiently, or did you get unnecessarily aggressive with closing the game?

People I see mock stalker most, tend to play him pretty horribly :/

I meant no disrespect towards Tombstalker if you think I'm one of the people "mocking" him. Just trying to understand why he's important to how the deck works despite getting sided out a lot.

[deviant]

I meant no disrespect towards Tombstalker if you think I'm one of the people "mocking" him. Just trying to understand why he's important to how the deck works despite getting sided out a lot.

Ah. Did not mean it like that, though I see now how it may seem like it :/
Just prompted a vent of some kind to loosen up too much and come off :)

[CroSS.24]

Alright its time for me to show you guys what I've been working with for awhile now. I have been playing this deck and tinkering with it for a long time. I think it is to the point where I can post it and get some helpful input on it. It is more creature heavy then the typical build and plays more like RUG delver than the TA you're use to. I find that it is better than the list everyone is running, but that is mostly due to me being more of a "control" player than a "disruption" player. Here it is


4 Deathrite Shaman
4 Tarmogoyf
4 Delver of Secrets
4 Dark Confidants

4 Brainstorm
3 Ponder
4 Force of Will
4 Daze
3 Spell Pierce
4 Stifle
4 Abrupt Decay

4 Polluted Delta
4 Verdant Catacombs
3 Underground Sea
3 Tropical Island

[YamiJoey]

Cut the Bobs for Wastelands and you'll have a reasonable imitation of the RUG deck you're going for. Without them your mana denial plan is super weak.

[Purgatory]

Cut the Bobs for Wastelands and you'll have a reasonable imitation of the RUG deck you're going for. Without them your mana denial plan is super weak.

The list is 56 cards, I assume he forgot about Wasteland.

[YamiJoey]

The list is 56 cards, I assume he forgot about Wasteland.

... So play 8?

[trollking21]

... So play 8?

If I can play 8 wastelands I'm playing 4 stifle snapcaster and sinkhole.

[YamiJoey]

And the SCG commentary team will still say that their opponent got unlucky from not drawing enough lands.