[Deck] Death and Taxes

[Barbed Blightning]

Hi guys! Figured i should finally get an account to chime in from time to time rather than just hanging around and stealing your ideas.

The interaction that I like the most in Death and Taxes is vial/Karakas/Mangara, but as the format gets faster and plays get more and more powerful, it doesn´t make much sense anymore. If you want a maindeck (to be sided out in 90% of match-ups) answer to permanents, consider unexpectedly absent.

I´ve got more of an idea about Vintage than Legacy, so I may be off base here, but why are there no chalice of the void in people´s sideboards? Chalice for one seems like a very strong play against at least three of the deck´s harder match-ups; Elves!, Canadian Thresh and High Tide. Chalice for zero should make the storm match-up close to un-loosable.

Grafdigger´s cage seems like it should be more than a one-of in sideboards if there are Elves!, Reanimator or Nic Fit in the meta. This deck has no tutors, after all.

Lastly, what is your experience splashing green for Gaddock Teeg? The splash seems possible and the guy does some serious damage against a broad range of decks. It also seems like a decent idea to add another bounce-able blocker to the maindeck. Knight of the Reliquary may be worse in a deathrite-infected metagame, but is either big or at least a fine utility creature (answering Show and Tell from your hand, among other things). Something like this?

3 Horizon Canopy (Love this card. Counteracts flooding from the 23-card land base.)
2 Karakas
4 Rishadan Port
4 Wasteland
4 Windswept Heath
4 Savannah
2 Plains (how bad is this low number really? We should generally be the most stable wasteland deck.)

4 Mother of Runes
2 Phyrexian Revoker
4 Stoneforge Mystic
4 Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
4 Serra Avenger
1 Gaddock Teeg
3 Knight of the Reliquary
4 Flickerwisp

1 Batterskull
1 Umezawa's Jitte
4 AEther Vial
4 Swords to Plowshares
1 Sword of Fire and Ice

SB: 4 Chalice of the Void
SB: 3 Grafdigger´s Cage
SB: 1 Pithing Needle
SB: 3 Rest in Peace
SB: 2 Ratchet Bomb
SB: 2 Gaddock Teeg

The format is getting "faster"? Really? That's not at all what is happening.

DRS and TNN have, if anything, slowed the format. That's how we have risen, because we prey on the combo decks that have slowed down to be better equipped against the BGx decks and the tempo decks that prey on those combos. Seriously, when last did you find yourself against Belcher? TES? Hell, even reanimator is suffering and ANT (winning turns 3-4) is the fastest deck seeing a reasonable amount of play.

Mangara is a motherfucking wrecking ball to a lot of the rest of the format and, while he is safe to bench against many decks, the nature of this one is to make the game a hostile environment for your opposition, thus requiring the right hate post-board. Mindcensor, for example, is targeted for a specific matchup (GSZ decks) whereas bears like Revoker and Thalia hit just about everything. Mangara is indiscriminate with his removal, thus making him a great main deck card and a way to just steal some game 1s; he sucks in the SB, which many seem happy to relegate him to.

I hope this answers the broader question of Mangara's inclusion: yes he is often sided out, but he gives us a solid out to many things (look to the fringe decks like Lands), supplementing our broader game one. I've used him to bait removal, regain control on an opponent's mana or threats, as 2-for-1 on defense and simply a way to laugh at S&T decks.

Finally a list of matchups in which I keep Mangara in:

SneakShow
Omni
Miracles
Blade variants
Lands
12-post
Shardless
Maverick variants

Speaking of Mav, why should anyone play your GW list over Maverick?


Sent from my mobile phone; please ignore spelling errors or grammatical laziness.

[monovfox]

TNN significantly sped up the format. Instead of having goyf-stalled boards, we have true name nemesis killing people. It is a guaranteed 3 damage a turn. Infact, TNN is the reason you see less DRS decks being played, and why BUG Delver and Jund are the only DRS decks left (hint: They're actually fairly fast).

Also, GW DnT isn't that good. If you want to play a vial maverick deck, I suggest that is what you look at (even though it sucks)


Also, notice what decks run TNN?

Tempo, and Stoneblade. Both are not considered slow decks by any means. Especially tempo.

[klaus]

Tempo, and Stoneblade. Both are not considered slow decks by any means. Especially tempo.

On a more serious note: it's hard to generalize and evaluate the format's tempo. Belcher disappearing from the landscape is not an indicator whatsoever. I don't have the numbers at hand and am not motivated to do the related research, but I have got a feeling the current amount of Combo decks is higher than 6 months ago.

[from Cairo]

I don't have the numbers at hand and am not motivated to do the related research, but I have got a feeling the current amount of Combo decks is higher than 6 months ago.

From our DTB section



June 2013 - 474 pts out of a total 1574 = 30% combo



December 2013 - 874 pts out of a total 3368 = 26% combo

So I guess as far as combo decks putting up results not much has changed in 6 mo they make up 25-30% of top finishes, which sounds about right when one looks at SCG T8s and often sees 2-3 combo decks. I didn't do the math on it, but this past month seemed like about 25% tempo decks and the remaining 50% being midrange.

[Barbed Blightning]

TNN significantly sped up the format. Instead of having goyf-stalled boards, we have true name nemesis killing people. It is a guaranteed 3 damage a turn. Infact, TNN is the reason you see less DRS decks being played, and why BUG Delver and Jund are the only DRS decks left (hint: They're actually fairly fast).

Also, GW DnT isn't that good. If you want to play a vial maverick deck, I suggest that is what you look at (even though it sucks)


Also, notice what decks run TNN?

Tempo, and Stoneblade. Both are not considered slow decks by any means. Especially tempo.

TNN sped up the format by... being able to attack on turn 4? I think we're using different definitions of "fast."

If anything, TNN anchored the format to midrange speed.

Sent from my mobile phone; please ignore spelling errors or grammatical laziness.

[RecklessEmbermage]

Chalice shuts to much of your deck down.

I don´t think so. Most D&T lists run 12 one-drops main. None of these should be boarded out against Threshold. On the other hand, Thresh is all one-mana spells except goyf, daze and force (which may be boarded out). That doesnt seem bad to me at all.

The format is getting "faster"? Really? That's not at all what is happening.

DRS and TNN have, if anything, slowed the format. That's how we have risen, because we prey on the combo decks that have slowed down to be better equipped against the BGx decks and the tempo decks that prey on those combos. Seriously, when last did you find yourself against Belcher? TES? Hell, even reanimator is suffering and ANT (winning turns 3-4) is the fastest deck seeing a reasonable amount of play.

Mangara is a motherfucking wrecking ball to a lot of the rest of the format and, while he is safe to bench against many decks, the nature of this one is to make the game a hostile environment for your opposition, thus requiring the right hate post-board. Mindcensor, for example, is targeted for a specific matchup (GSZ decks) whereas bears like Revoker and Thalia hit just about everything. Mangara is indiscriminate with his removal, thus making him a great main deck card and a way to just steal some game 1s; he sucks in the SB, which many seem happy to relegate him to.

I hope this answers the broader question of Mangara's inclusion: yes he is often sided out, but he gives us a solid out to many things (look to the fringe decks like Lands), supplementing our broader game one. I've used him to bait removal, regain control on an opponent's mana or threats, as 2-for-1 on defense and simply a way to laugh at S&T decks.

Sorry, I was being lazy. The decks in the format have gotten more cards with high and immediate impact. Deathrite, Jace or Liliana do a lot on their own. Bloodbraid and Stoneforge have already gained advantage even if they are killed immediately. All these cards can be answered by Mangara+Karakas, but this is a 2 card-combo in the first place and the effect takes more time to set up. The more enter the battlefield effects and cheap chinese menu cards there are in the format, the less viable I believe Mangara gets. This was also why I thought Mangara had been taken out from the last iterations of Team Rocket´s (Enevoldsen and Bonde´s team) deck.

That said, I would love to be proven wrong and appreciate you explaining how Mangara is still good for you and showing which match-ups you keep him in against.

Speaking of Mav, why should anyone play your GW list over Maverick?

First of all, the list I laid out there is just D&T with a light splash. Maverick is a completely different animal. I was pretty clear about why I find the green splash interesting: Gaddock Teeg is very potent. He deals with many of the same spells that mindcensor deals with (and many others), while costing one less. As you can see from the proposed list, I´ve cut back on the number of revokers too. D&T will take a lot of collateral damage in metagames that adopt to TNN, because of all the X-1´s in most lists, dying to persecutions and golgari charms. This is another strike against mindcensor and reason to play green for Teeg and possibly KotR.

Obviously, you guys are the experienced D&T players, while I´m just posing some questions: How bad is it really to splash? Has anyone tried Chalice? Is it worth consideration?

[raikenxy]

I don´t think so. Most D&T lists run 12 one-drops main. None of these should be boarded out against Threshold. On the other hand, Thresh is all one-mana spells except goyf, daze and force (which may be boarded out). That doesnt seem bad to me at all.



Sorry, I was being lazy. The decks in the format have gotten more cards with high and immediate impact. Deathrite, Jace or Liliana do a lot on their own. Bloodbraid and Stoneforge have already gained advantage even if they are killed immediately. All these cards can be answered by Mangara+Karakas, but this is a 2 card-combo in the first place and the effect takes more time to set up. The more enter the battlefield effects and cheap chinese menu cards there are in the format, the less viable I believe Mangara gets. This was also why I thought Mangara had been taken out from the last iterations of Team Rocket´s (Enevoldsen and Bonde´s team) deck.

That said, I would love to be proven wrong and appreciate you explaining how Mangara is still good for you and showing which match-ups you keep him in against.



First of all, the list I laid out there is just D&T with a light splash. Maverick is a completely different animal. I was pretty clear about why I find the green splash interesting: Gaddock Teeg is very potent. He deals with many of the same spells that mindcensor deals with (and many others), while costing one less. As you can see from the proposed list, I´ve cut back on the number of revokers too. D&T will take a lot of collateral damage in metagames that adopt to TNN, because of all the X-1´s in most lists, dying to persecutions and golgari charms. This is another strike against mindcensor and reason to play green for Teeg and possibly KotR.

Obviously, you guys are the experienced D&T players, while I´m just posing some questions: How bad is it really to splash? Has anyone tried Chalice? Is it worth consideration?

In regards to you splashing green for gaddock teeg...

Deadguy Ale used to be one of my favorite decks, and I have since tried a death n taxes for a black splash with BOB and Tidehollow sculler... the effects were cool... but as I got to playing the deck I cut down on both the scullers to two main deck and the Bobs to 3 maindeck in place for more flickwerwisps and revokers... after several test runs yesterday with my playgroup I cut the Bobs and scullers entirely from the mainboard and have since opted for the full mono white list championed as the norm...

Splashing is a cool idea, however when you think your adding a cool splash for an added effect like i was for Bob and sculler... i was actually weakening the synergistic value of the remaining cards I was playing. By splashing colors, you open yourself up the following problems ...

-weak tempo game
- unnecessary wastelands
-requirement for fetch lands
-weakness to blood moon
- color locking yourself

these problems are not minor at all. The tempo match is in Dnt favor from every game I have ever played. If they don't counter aether vial they are pretty much dead. Running duals allows all decks playing wasteland to use soft mana denial against you, which you want to be part of your plan, you want to make your cards as live as possible, not theirs. You may think well if they have waste they'll waste a port or a karakas... well that's great... You don't care honestly if they do that as you run a high number of basic lands and no fetches. you'll always have mana for your spells. but if they waste you out of a color and you don't have a vial active you know have a dead card in your hand and your fetches are now required to get you another wasteland target in order for that card to become live. i'm not saying dnt can't get wasted out of games as i have seen it happen, but it's very relevant that all the spells require just white mana.

Blood moon is a very viable game plan used in Sneak in show to attack the metagame, one of death n taxes best matches is against this deck... there is no reason to give up game against an already favored match just so they can steal games from you.

By running fetch lands you run into the same problem that merfolk has, a lot of our cards cost WW... you want white sources, by taking lands out of your deck you run the risk of not drawing white sources when you need them ...

In regards to gaddock teeg... he's good against combo yes... however your deck already does what his base ability is anyway ? Your opponents spells will always cost "more" then four mana after being ported, wasted, and taxed by thalia. The same goes for his ability to prevent X spells from being cast... those spells are all affected by the Dnt main strategy. From playing the deck, I've always known I'm doing a good job when opponents lands are tapped and his hands are full of cards. If he has a fist full of cards on turn four, five and six it means the game plan is working, he can't cast anything, and your likely one batterskull swing away from forcing a concession.

if you like the splash by all means test it, that's what I did with black for bob and sculler, but I'm jsut warning ya I came to the conclusion that mono white is just better, more consistent, and is capable of theoretically doing what the splash cards do anyway.

[Barbed Blightning]

In regards to you splashing green for gaddock teeg...

Deadguy Ale used to be one of my favorite decks, and I have since tried a death n taxes for a black splash with BOB and Tidehollow sculler... the effects were cool... but as I got to playing the deck I cut down on both the scullers to two main deck and the Bobs to 3 maindeck in place for more flickwerwisps and revokers... after several test runs yesterday with my playgroup I cut the Bobs and scullers entirely from the mainboard and have since opted for the full mono white list championed as the norm...

Splashing is a cool idea, however when you think your adding a cool splash for an added effect like i was for Bob and sculler... i was actually weakening the synergistic value of the remaining cards I was playing. By splashing colors, you open yourself up the following problems ...

-weak tempo game
- unnecessary wastelands
-requirement for fetch lands
-weakness to blood moon
- color locking yourself

these problems are not minor at all. The tempo match is in Dnt favor from every game I have ever played. If they don't counter aether vial they are pretty much dead. Running duals allows all decks playing wasteland to use soft mana denial against you, which you want to be part of your plan, you want to make your cards as live as possible, not theirs. You may think well if they have waste they'll waste a port or a karakas... well that's great... You don't care honestly if they do that as you run a high number of basic lands and no fetches. you'll always have mana for your spells. but if they waste you out of a color and you don't have a vial active you know have a dead card in your hand and your fetches are now required to get you another wasteland target in order for that card to become live. i'm not saying dnt can't get wasted out of games as i have seen it happen, but it's very relevant that all the spells require just white mana.

Blood moon is a very viable game plan used in Sneak in show to attack the metagame, one of death n taxes best matches is against this deck... there is no reason to give up game against an already favored match just so they can steal games from you.

By running fetch lands you run into the same problem that merfolk has, a lot of our cards cost WW... you want white sources, by taking lands out of your deck you run the risk of not drawing white sources when you need them ...

In regards to gaddock teeg... he's good against combo yes... however your deck already does what his base ability is anyway ? Your opponents spells will always cost "more" then four mana after being ported, wasted, and taxed by thalia. The same goes for his ability to prevent X spells from being cast... those spells are all affected by the Dnt main strategy. From playing the deck, I've always known I'm doing a good job when opponents lands are tapped and his hands are full of cards. If he has a fist full of cards on turn four, five and six it means the game plan is working, he can't cast anything, and your likely one batterskull swing away from forcing a concession.

if you like the splash by all means test it, that's what I did with black for bob and sculler, but I'm jsut warning ya I came to the conclusion that mono white is just better, more consistent, and is capable of theoretically doing what the splash cards do anyway.

Thank you. Exactly my point: by splashing you gain some slight advantages but you sacrifice synergy and stability-critical elements of the mono W builds.

@reckless: my point was that by adding KotR and Teeg, why not GSZ? Hierarch? DRS? Why play 4 ports (or ports at all) when you have a solid toolbox with KotR?

See where I am going? Adding Teeg or Pridemage makes sense, but when we add Knight (a reasonable idea, I'll add) we might as well play a deck with a diversity of tools. This is the fundamental problem with D&T: unlike other decks, cross-pollination is basically impossible due to our primary strategy of mana denial, which relies on a high basics count.

Sent from my mobile phone; please ignore spelling errors or grammatical laziness.

[raikenxy]

Thank you. Exactly my point: by splashing you gain some slight advantages but you sacrifice synergy and stability-critical elements of the mono W builds.

@reckless: my point was that by adding KotR and Teeg, why not GSZ? Hierarch? DRS? Why play 4 ports (or ports at all) when you have a solid toolbox with KotR?

See where I am going? Adding Teeg or Pridemage makes sense, but when we add Knight (a reasonable idea, I'll add) we might as well play a deck with a diversity of tools. This is the fundamental problem with D&T: unlike other decks, cross-pollination is basically impossible due to our primary strategy of mana denial, which relies on a high basics count.

Sent from my mobile phone; please ignore spelling errors or grammatical laziness.

@barbedlblightning : I'm glad I got your approval in my explanation lol, I am by no means a master of this deck but I intend to keep playing it until I am. Splashing black in my initial experiments always brought about cool tricks with sculler and bob provided the final kick to end games, but found the black splash just wasn't worth the downsides that came with the benefits. I can only imagine the green splash will fail as well... especially when the deck already does what the green cards would do anyway. Dnt has land redundancy in running 3 karakas and four ports/wastes, so the abilitiy of knight is almost useless as you'll most likely have already enabled your mana denial plan by the time he gets going ... gaddock teeg, though a boss in maverick.... is underwhelming in Dnt as the combination of all the decks key parts produce the effects teeg would bring to the board anyway. Also, by running knight, and more fetches, duals, you increase the power of opposing deathrite shamans. Deathrite is a kill on site card as is every time i've played against it, it screw the mana denial plan and forces us to rely on white weenie beatdown to get damage through. I don't want to make my opponents cards more powerful, i want his cards to be absolutely useless whether they're on the board or in his hand.

[berry]

@barbedlblightning : I'm glad I got your approval in my explanation lol, I am by no means a master of this deck but I intend to keep playing it until I am. Splashing black in my initial experiments always brought about cool tricks with sculler and bob provided the final kick to end games, but found the black splash just wasn't worth the downsides that came with the benefits. I can only imagine the green splash will fail as well... especially when the deck already does what the green cards would do anyway. Dnt has land redundancy in running 3 karakas and four ports/wastes, so the abilitiy of knight is almost useless as you'll most likely have already enabled your mana denial plan by the time he gets going ... gaddock teeg, though a boss in maverick.... is underwhelming in Dnt as the combination of all the decks key parts produce the effects teeg would bring to the board anyway. Also, by running knight, and more fetches, duals, you increase the power of opposing deathrite shamans. Deathrite is a kill on site card as is every time i've played against it, it screw the mana denial plan and forces us to rely on white weenie beatdown to get damage through. I don't want to make my opponents cards more powerful, i want his cards to be absolutely useless whether they're on the board or in his hand.

The not-helping-Deathrite point is one that I think is underestimated and overlooked. It's not like it's THE reason to be monocolored but it's another strong one in a meta full of DRS. I keep mono in both legacy and modern and love the feeling of "not helping".

[Barook]

Haven't played for a while due to various reasons. The current online Metagame looks kinda like this, although it also takes data from the Pre-TNN meta.

Metagame currently looks like this:

- TNN decks (loads of them)
- S&T decks
- various Storm variants
- Imperial Painter
- occasional BUG decks, Jund, Miracles, Pox

I wonder what kin of MD configuration I should run. SoFaI is a given due to the amount of TNN, but what about the rest? More flyers? Or some Mangaras?

[Alfy]

The not-helping-Deathrite point is one that I think is underestimated and overlooked. It's not like it's THE reason to be monocolored but it's another strong one in a meta full of DRS. I keep mono in both legacy and modern and love the feeling of "not helping".

As someone playing a lot of DRS in modern, I'm sorry to say I agree: playing against a mono colored deck is disheartening. Not only are you not guaranteed DRS mana, but eating up your own lands often ends up making your Goyf smaller. It's rarely affects the long game, but it tend to slow things down just enough in the early turns.

[Mr. Froggy]

I went ahead and sold off a major part of my collection (on MTGO) to build this deck since I have it in real life, but no one to play against. Now I own Wastelands and Ports, both on MTGO and in card collection. :)

Finally I can test more!

[Barook]

http://de.twitch.tv/scglive

There's currently D&T on the stream. The second game was just fantastic how Andrew fought through Liliana and other locks.

Wow, just wow. If you missed it, try to catch the replay or watch the video later.

[raikenxy]

http://de.twitch.tv/scglive

There's currently D&T on the stream. The second game was just fantastic how Andrew fought through Liliana and other locks.

Wow, just wow. If you missed it, try to catch the replay or watch the video later.

I SAW THAT!!!

the match was fantastic, even though shrout lost in the end he was so close to winning it all. im not sure but i think if he had sand bagged the flickerwispinstead of being agresive with mincensor he could have won

[RecklessEmbermage]

Thanks Raikenxy and Barbed Blightning for being quite explicit and very clear. Berry too: Not helping deathrite was one of the main arguments against playing fetchlands (and non-basics in general) that I had in mind in the first place.

I´ll see if I get some testing in, but am sure you´re right.

Edit: By the way, watching the stream, and... Jund Depths looks awesome!

[Mr. Froggy]

Playing this deck is a lot harder than I thought it was going to be...

I love how the engine controls though; its like throwing wrenches in peoples' gears.

[Kayradis]

I do have the deck IRL and it's simply so fun to play.
I got Elves! on MTGO.
Wanna test on it?

[Mr. Froggy]

I do have the deck IRL and it's simply so fun to play.
I got Elves! on MTGO.
Wanna test on it?

I just lost horribly on MTGO vs Elves :P

[Mr. Froggy]

I beat Elves! :)

Wasn't easy though, but I got the win. I'll post my game on YouTube if you guys want to see, and maybe critique my plays? :)

EDIT:

Videos are live, take a look!