Regarding the past few pages of debate over Firestorm v. LED in the main. In any specific meta, any card choice may be correct. However, I believe that some are coloring too heavily their choices regarding main-decking Firestorm due to their local preferences. And that a wider view is needed if taking the deck to a full-size tournament.
I think that it's fair to say that there are decks that LED is strictly better against than Firestorm. Specifically decks that have no relevant disruption or GY hate(all assuming in game one of course). These decks I might expect to see are: Goblins, Dredge, MUD, D&T, Affinity, Burn, and Loam.
Then there are decks that I still believe that LED is better, due to their either being as fast, or faster, their having minimal disruption(and LED allowing you to race what they might find), having decent disruption, but not having enough of a clock for it to matter, and/or their having no good targets for Firestorm(again, assuming game one). These decks might be: Show and Tell, Miracles, TruBlade(no Shaman), Patriot, Ad Nauseum, Jund, Reanimator, Maverick, High Tide, Painter, and 12Post,
Then you have the decks that in most cases, either due to heavy permission/disruption, or a devastating weakness to Firestorm, these are the decks that I might prefer Firestorm main over LED: Deathblade, BUG, RUG, Elves, Merfolk, U/R Burn, and Bant.
Now the first four decks on that last list could easily add up to 30% of the field in some metas. And that might be enough to sway me. But in a 300+ tournament, I don't think many could make that call ahead of time. And I think that the number of decks LED is better against would lean me toward running it main more often than not.
And for those concerned with fields filled with maindeck Shaman, I think that you are overlooking one issue with Firestorm main. I think it's fair to say that a resolved LED will allow you to outrace Shaman with a decent hand. People are just concerned that LED is countered by the large amounts of permission that most decks running Shaman run. Well, Firestorm is counterable too. Sure, you get the discard, but if you pitch, say, a Troll, and an Ichorid to a EOT Firestorm targeting Shaman, and they counter it, you are in worse shape than if you had an LED countered. In the latter case, you can sandbag until you have more than one dredger, and a draw spell. If Firestorm is countered, you have lost your dredger if you don't have another+another discard outlet, or you have lost your Ichorid if you do. And it's very easy to find additional discard outlets before sideboarding. It's one of the reasons I remain so faithful to PImp. Regardless of his other benefits, he helps play around Wasteland, which most of these decks run, by keeping a discard outlet in play, allowing you to sandbag a land for your draw spell. Instead of needing two lands in the same turn, or being forced to Firestorm at your most vulnerable due to an opponent's discard or Waste.
Last edited by Parcher; 01-24-2014 at 02:50 PM.
~ Team Unicorn MottoOriginally Posted by MacGruber
It's not so much about comparing LED and Firestorm when drawn in hand but comparing LED and Firestorm when drawn, in situations where you're facing a T1 Deathrite Shaman and forced to either draw or cantrip into a solution LED is significantly worse than Firestom because the Deathrite Shaman is live. I don't think anyone would argue that SBing out LED for Firestorm vs Deathrite Shaman.dec is correct game 2, but obviously it's not a matter of face rolling your keyboard on MTGO either.
Like I said, I understand if people want to play with LED, so do I, but there is point where the presence of Deathrite Shaman in the metagame warps considerations and if your Top 8 looks like BUG, Deathblade, BANT, Jund, Junk, Deadguy, Elves etc. just crying about how unfair the metagame is as opposed to doing something about when an alternative to LED exists is just stupid.
I agree with your love affair with Putrid Imp tho', I find myself cheating on her with her younger sister Tireless Tribe all of the time.
why would you take out LED against Junk, deadguy, jund or elves... none of these decks play counterspells. your sideboard plans against these decks should pretty much be the same as Maverick... just to blow them out. As they run no library manipulation or counter spells they are essentially crossing their fingers that they live to see turn two... why wrath their board when you can just kill them
Last edited by raikenxy; 01-25-2014 at 02:26 AM.
Ok then so there is no Issue with LED being MB here. Thats good.
Why would it lose its effectiveness? You can potentially drop a 2nd land your next turn and still avoid playing around Daze.... :/ And still have the availability to crack an LED (I'll be honest here if they didn't daze the Faithless I'm going for the Flashback). One has to play smart yes, but you shouldn't play passively either.
G2 I don't look for a hand that will try to combo out turn 1. I'm looking for any decent 7. What I'm not going to do is aggressively mulligan for that Nature's Claim or Wispmare in my case, because I'm not going to assume my opponent automatically has the RIP in his opening 7; I dont' want to compromise my own gameplan. If they run out their RIP turn 2 then I'm going to have to dig for my answer at that point.
Also were talking about Death and Taxes which means they don't get to play cantrips to find their hate. They have to peel it off the top or mulligan to RIP as if it were a LOTV or risk getting run over again. This is exacerbated by the fact that they only really run 2 copies. It only gets really annoying if they start to do their thing with Thalia etc. Wispmare helps a bit in that regard as its able to bypass the Thalia Tax unlike Nature's Claim; we all know playing 2 mana answers is not ideal.
I don't play nor have I seriously played Ray in a tournament to really comment.
If they RIP turn 2 like they should and they get my T2 discarded dredger (Will be on the draw G2 I'm assuming) then I woudln't have lost much or really gotten blown out by it. So I wouldn't say that they've completely crippled me; You should be sandbaging extra dredgers to start your engine again once you've removed the RIP. I mean unless you're going to play Annul or Swan Song to beat it on the stack how is wispmare lame agaisn't RIP?
Amen!
Overall I think the discussion is good as we all help each other become better players/pilots.
It depends, one of the problems I have with taking other people seriously about Dredge is that they rarely make the distinction post-board about whether or not they're on the play or on the draw and what type of graveyard hate they're opponents are playing, because if you lost game one, you're on the play and your opponent has more hate than Deathrite Shaman in his deck then you have to ask yourself what that hate is and whether or not you should play into that hate aggressively. There's a serious difference between 4 Deathrite Shaman and X hate cards when you're on the play and 4 Deathrite Shaman and X hate cards when you're on the draw and what those hate cards are. If they have instant speed graveyard removal like Surgical Extraction or Faerie Macabre you have to reconsider how "gung ho" you should actually be vs them because committing to Lion's Eye Diamond vs said hate is a game loss where only losing a Dredger otherwise means you still have a chance to top deck out.
I generally agree vs decks without counters then LED is probably the right choice, but you're going to feel differently when Junk is playing 4 Faerie Macabre post-board etc. I think most of the players who play those decks understand Deathrite Shaman alone isn't enough to give them a good match % vs Dredge.
... i'm going to feel very happy if any junk player is playing 4 faerie macabre post board since this just means they are pretty bad ... lol...
and even in that situation what are you going to take with a turn one discard... their faerie ? their surgical... your still left with an active deathrite shaman and have essentially done nothing to progress your game state. and even if you don't have discard, and your using the firestorm your proposing main deck to kill their deathrite shaman... their surgical or faerie take's your graveyard anyway ... so you've effectively done nothing again ? Going fearless has always been one of the staple dredge strategies game two, And I see no reason why LED in that situation is not just plainly better then either firestorm or discard. It progresses your game plain, it drowns deathrite in card advantage and you get to see the hate their playing all in one game?
Ragmuff(zing!), I agree with the meat of your post, but Faerie isn't bad since it's uncounterable hate against Reanimator. I wouldn't be that surprised to see it.
Team Hammafist-We don't take kindly to those who don't take kindly."Got any trade boogas?"
I don't even know how to address this post, in a world where the opponent draws the first, second and third nuts vs us we're going to lose regardless of which cards we play, you don't even seem to recognize the difference between losing a Dredger while resolving LED and losing a Dredger while resolving Firestorm ... discarding your hand as opposed to discarding 2 to 3 cards is kind of huge ... any card that lets you Dredge incrementally is going to be a better choice than a card that commits you to going "all in" vs hate. That's why people usually board out LED and Breakthrough post-board, and I have absolutely no fucking clue why you're bringing up discard, comparing it to LED or playing it vs the Junk match up at all? Fearless as a strategy kind of fucking sucks, the entire concepts of DDD and being Fearless are vestigial ideas from back when Deathrite Shaman didn't exist and people played Tormod's Crypt. We live in a world where Deathrite Shaman is in damn near every good deck in the format and people SB Rest in Peace and Grafdigger's Cage.
There's a point where the amount of hate you're going to face isn't worth playing LED over Firestorm or even Tireless Tribe, if you stop yammering about theoretical nut draws and actually play real games with Dredge you'll realize shit like losing the coin flip and getting Thoughtseized happens or mulliganing to 5 where LED isn't so great when you have nothing to go with it. Yeah it's a really good card, but it isn't absolute necessary for the archeypte and there are reasons why people want to play other things.
I have no clue what your ire is regarding Faerie Macabre, uncounterable answers to Reanimator in a deck with out counterspells to win on the stack are like kind of really important.
Statistics and math aren't even important, since ragamuffinvb can get LED + Faithless Looting + Land + 2 Dredgers every hand he opens :)
Let your Dredge 6 be: Narco, Narco, Narco, Bridge, Bridge, Dread Return
I'm doing the quadlaser build. My sideboard is as follows
3 firestorm
3 chain of vapors
3 natures claim
2 dread return
1 Iona
1 flamekin
2 tarnish citadel
How is this sideboard. Any recommendations. I haven't played this deck in 2 years
Has anyone tested Gitaxian Probe?
Initially I was a bit confused when I seen it in the GP list. I think this card was dismissed a little too quickly on this thread.
The best matchup to side Probe in is against combo, obviously as it speeds up our deck some.
Game 2s and game 3s can be tough when trying to guess what hate you are up against. Even if you know that your opponent probably plays something like a 2/2 split of Cage & RiP then who knows which to try and name with Cabal Therapy. Or which is better to name against elves: Ooze, GSZ, or maybe just Glimpse of Nature? Or which is better against is better to against Reanimator Careful Study or Entomb? Best card to name against Show and Tell? Storm decks?
These are all rhetorical questions because there is usually a best card to pick against each deck when using Cabal Therapy. However, this does not mean you will pick the right card. Even skilled dredge players probably only have a 50/50 shot of picking the right card simply because the best card to name isn't the one that is in hand. And there are plenty of instances where we only have access to one Therapy early on. Or we could greatly benifit from having one more creature on the board.
So Probe ups the effectiveness of a Cabal Therapy from <insert random % here> to 100%.
Making Cabal Therapy better is only one upside to Probe. It does this while speeding the deck up not slowing it down(like Unmask). Being able to progress your dredges while gathering free info is quite nice.
Worst case scenario: Probe lets us dredge 4-6 cards on turn one while gathering free info.
I haven't play tested the card enough to say whether it should be in the maindeck, but more people need to test the card more in their sideboards.
After being one of the earlier adapters of Probe in TES and seeing its power in dredge(after dismissing initially), I am going to say that Probe is much stronger than many Legacy players initially realized(perhaps because it was overshadowed by Mental Misstep).
just keep siding out them LEDS against tempo brah ;), u suggested that right ?
Ofcourse you SB out LED vs tempo, do you really want to lose to Deathrite Shaman, Nihil Spellbomb, Grafdigger's Cage, Surgical Extraction or Faerie Macabre that fucking hard? If you actually played this deck seriously, which you obviously fucking don't, you'd clearly understand the problem of being on the draw game 2 the majority of the time, assuming you win game 1 the majority of the time, facing Force of Will, Daze, Spell Pierce and Flusterstorm with Force of Will and Daze's probability enhanced by Brainstorm and Ponder and then facing either Thoughtseize or Red Elemental depending on their variant of tempo. All of that is then backed up by incredibly potent graveyard hate that leaves you practically helpless after you've commited your entire hand to LED and got either your draw spell countered or your Dredger RFGed compared to Firestorm being an uncounterable discard outlet or Tireless Tribe being a counter resistent discard outlet that are incremental instead of commital. It doesn't make sense to play a card as commital as LED when you know you're facing 100% of the opponent's disruption and hate cards on the draw backed by cantrips, something like Tireless Tribe is significantly better than LED because it can slip thru' Spell Pierce and Flusterstorm, dredge your second turn while only committing 1 card to your graveyard and guarantee you'll have the dredger back in your graveyard for your draw spell or for your draw step in the event your draw spell is countered without ever facing a blow out.
You just come off as one of those poor, punk school kids who can't afford to buy a manabase and play Dredge because it's the only competitive deck you can get your hands on and then become enamored by all of the blow out wins with LED and Dread Returning Griselbrand instead of the players who play this deck because they actually want to and know the importance of winning small against hate instead of winning big uncontested. I mean you do know that you no longer have the element of surprise games 2+, your opponent SBs in hate game 2, he will be on the play game 2 and can choose to mulligan accordingly knowing what he's facing and having much higher impact cards vs our strategy? LED isn't the fucking answer to every deck in the format, it's a situationally awesome card that you have to be able to use judiciously and know when to SB out for alternatives. If you want to play with LED MD I get it, but don't fucking act like cards like Firestorm or Tireless Tribe or Thoughtseize don't have their place in Dredge and that LED is always the right choice regardless of the metagame, being on the draw and opponent's hate cards.
And if you're not aware of it, the policy at a lot of major events is to give your opponent your deck list in the top cut which gives us the informational advantage with Cabal Therapy and our SBing choices.
@Jaumauer
I have tested Gitaxian Probe, and the problem with Gitaxian Probe as well as Street Wraith is that they're just low impact cards that force you to SB out high impact cards. If you're facing enough hate, I think there's problem some merrit in SBing them so you can cut Breakthrough and then have a more incremental draw spell that can help fight thru' hate. I actually really like Street Wraith in the SB vs Deathrite Shaman because you can still go DDD and then trigger the Dredger in response to the Deathrite Shaman activation. Gitaxian Probe is kind of a weird card, because you'd ideally play it before you played anything else and therefore wont really get the ability to use it as a draw spell to trigger Dredge that often. So I don't know whether or not Gitaxian Probe is better than Street Wraith at that roll or whether or not we'd have SB space for both but they definitely have things going for them as SB cards that make us more resilient to hate while not being dead in the absence of hate. That's why I really like stuff like Firestorm and Tireless Tribe, they're still good and advance the decks game plan in the albeit rare event that you don't face any resistance. If you like cards that have that sort of soft power feel, I'd recommend looking into other stuff like Leyline of Sanctity, Chancellor of the Annex, Contagion, Dryad Arbor, Phantasmagorian and Serum Powder as well. Manaless Dredge has a lot of good card examples of the "win small" philosophy that LED Dredge players typically overlook in favour of more direct answers like Nature's Claim. I tend to avoid cards like that as much as possible myself, even Chain of Vapour is kind of "meh" at being useful when the opponent doesn't draw hate.
I think instead of this stupid adherence to an outdated "fearless" concept or paranoia over hate you just have to ask yourself what cards deal with the problem while while advancing your game plan, I'd really try to play with Street Wraith, Gitaxian Probe, Phantasmagorian, Tireless Tribe, Firestorm, Chancellor of the Annex, Thoughtseize etc. before I rely on direct answers to hate cards. Especially RIP, because what a lot of players don't realize is that even if you Chain of Vapour that thing, you've still lost your Dredger and if you don't discard it immediately they're just going to play it again and even if you choose to play Nature's Claim you've pretty much reduced your outs for lands by 4 so there's really no good way to deal with it. I think that's why a lot of us have turned towards brining in more discard on the draw, the only way to beat that fucking thing reliably is to discard it before it hits the ground. I gave up on Manaless Dredge because I just couldn't find any way to beat aggro-control with 3 RIP post-board.
I'll tinker with those cards in the SB on MTGO and let you know how it goes.
Take it easy dude, no reason to get mad.
We all know that LED is the reason the archetype is viable today (well, most of us know), but the deck needs space to manuever trough hate, and most of us board LED out the majority of time to make up for not being dead to an Leyline or rest in peace.
About firestorm vs LED, I tested them both, but I think that right now firestorm isn't what we need (unless on a creature heavy meta), we need speed to keep up in this fast paced meta.
this escalated quickly...
Seriously?You just come off as one of those poor, punk school kids who can't afford to buy a manabase and play Dredge because it's the only competitive deck you can get your hands on and then become enamored by all of the blow out wins with LED and Dread Returning Griselbrand instead of the players who play this deck because they actually want to and know the importance of winning small against hate instead of winning big uncontested. I mean you do know that you no longer have the element of surprise games 2+, your opponent SBs in hate game 2, he will be on the play game 2 and can choose to mulligan accordingly knowing what he's facing and having much higher impact cards vs our strategy? LED isn't the fucking answer to every deck in the format, it's a situationally awesome card that you have to be able to use judiciously and know when to SB out for alternatives. If you want to play with LED MD I get it, but don't fucking act like cards like Firestorm or Tireless Tribe or Thoughtseize don't have their place in Dredge and that LED is always the right choice regardless of the metagame, being on the draw and opponent's hate cards.
And if you're not aware of it, the policy at a lot of major events is to give your opponent your deck list in the top cut which gives us the informational advantage with Cabal Therapy and our SBing choices.
@Jaumauer
I have tested Gitaxian Probe, and the problem with Gitaxian Probe as well as Street Wraith is that they're just low impact cards that force you to SB out high impact cards. If you're facing enough hate, I think there's problem some merrit in SBing them so you can cut Breakthrough and then have a more incremental draw spell that can help fight thru' hate. I actually really like Street Wraith in the SB vs Deathrite Shaman because you can still go DDD and then trigger the Dredger in response to the Deathrite Shaman activation. Gitaxian Probe is kind of a weird card, because you'd ideally play it before you played anything else and therefore wont really get the ability to use it as a draw spell to trigger Dredge that often. So I don't know whether or not Gitaxian Probe is better than Street Wraith at that roll or whether or not we'd have SB space for both but they definitely have things going for them as SB cards that make us more resilient to hate while not being dead in the absence of hate. That's why I really like stuff like Firestorm and Tireless Tribe, they're still good and advance the decks game plan in the albeit rare event that you don't face any resistance. If you like cards that have that sort of soft power feel, I'd recommend looking into other stuff like Leyline of Sanctity, Chancellor of the Annex, Contagion, Dryad Arbor, Phantasmagorian and Serum Powder as well. Manaless Dredge has a lot of good card examples of the "win small" philosophy that LED Dredge players typically overlook in favour of more direct answers like Nature's Claim. I tend to avoid cards like that as much as possible myself, even Chain of Vapour is kind of "meh" at being useful when the opponent doesn't draw hate.
You really need to check yourself and your ego at the door, pal. Stop belittling others to prove a point. You're easily the most disagreeable and combative person I've met on this forum in the eleven years since I've been here. You've been doing it for years, and I'm sick of it - I really am.
Not everyone is going to have the same opinions as you do, and not everyone is going to play the exact same list. Your feedback is welcome, but seriously: do not insult other people like that again in this thread or any other thread.
(And yes, that's me back-door moderating. Enough is enough.)
Just because you board out a card most games DOES NOT MEAN it's not important in the maindeck. It's presence in the first game is vital. You MUST win the first game. It's presence affects the way they will board and play in the next two games and if you choose to side it out and play a different style... Curveball. Your advantage.
“There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle".
- Albert Einstein
Boarding out LED against tempo is wrong.
Tempo decks ,like RuG and Patriot, use too many soft counters. LED will either pay for the soft counters or help you cast 2-3 discard spells on turn one(itself included). These aren't decks we can just sit around DDDing against because not only do they have a clock but lately have been playing RiP as well.
I don't know why people are boarding out LED in most match ups. I usually only board out LEDs against slow decks like miracles that play RiP in their board.
Top decking a LED or having one in play can quickly turn the game into your favor after you dispose of whatever hate that is in play be it a RiP, Leyline, or cage.
Agreed, we need speed, the "garanteed" game 1 is one of the main reasons to play dredge in the first place.
Seriously, if his trolling of other people's card choices and SBing decisions isn't deserving of a good flaming then I don't know what is. I haven't disregarded other people's opinions or card choices at all in this thread - if anything I've promoted alternatives to the MD and SBing and promised to test other people's SBing ideas - while all any one else can do is say LED is irreplaceable in the MD or LED should be played vs tempo regardless of who's on the play, who is on the draw, what version of tempo they are playing and what their SBs are. I refuse to accept that MDing LED is necessary, altho' I understand why people would play LED MD, and I refuse to accept that SBing LED is incorrect when people are saying it's "always right vs tempo" without taking every possible factor into account. There are situations to keep LED in, like when UWR Delver is playing Spell Pierce and Flusterstorm as soft counters and Rest in Peace as their hate, and there are situations to kick LED out when RUG is playing Surgical Extraction and Red Elemental Blasts. It's a situationally dependent judgement call, and you're being a hypocrite by saying I'm being the unreasonable one in this thread when everyone else is treating the deck as if LED were irreplaceable or should never be SBed out.
I have no problem with the people who want to play with LED in the MD if they're metagame consists of combo decks that are faster than Dredge as opposed to tempo decks that cast Force of Will and Deathrite Shaman, and I don't SB out LED vs UWR Delver either, but to say you shouldn't SB out LED vs any variant of tempo is just an incredibly miopic opinion. You're SBing plan shouldn't be the same against a RUG player who is SBing 4 Surgical Extraction and a RUG player who is SBing 4 Grafdigger's Cage, as an example, it doesn't make any sense to take the risk of being blown out of the game when your opponent can mulligan and cantrip into free, instant speed graveyard removal when you could play Tireless Tribe, get a single Dredger RFGed and then top deck or draw into more Dredgers while still having a hand.
Dredge is not Storm, if you want to risk your hand by going all in when you're facing the opponent on the draw then you should play Belcher instead.
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