Shoal increases that chance by a fair amount.Originally Posted by Hollywood
Sure, using Claim/Silence allows you to draw, but your opponent will be drawing, too. I think we see the "time walking your opponent" thing in a different way. In my opinion, nature's claim/reverent silence hardly get through after a couple of timewalks.
Let's say you are facing a rip, and you cast a silence after drawing for 2 turns. The most common decks playing Rip are UWR delver,Stoneblade and Death&Taxes.Uwr/stoneblade should have found a counter by then. If he hasn't you'll end up with 6-7 cards in hand and an empty grave. That's 1-2 more timewalks. Now, 3/4 turns are more than enough to establish a good board position, even against us. Stoneforge for Jitte is hard to beat when your first dredge happens with jitte already equipped and charged. Death and Taxes can't counter, but it has Thalia, which makes you need forest to hardcast the answer to rip. Dryad arbor is also pretty bad at casting hate, in these matchups, they have Wasteland and Swords to Plowshares to remove it before it can tap for mana. Uwr has bolt, too.
Now, about cage: i mostly see it in Show and Tell based decks, jund and team america. Time walking show and tell leads to 15/15s knocking at your door, team america will just draw into counters and try to resolve double deathrite shaman or apply some pressure with delver + goyfs. Jund has just burn for Dryad Arbors and discard to try to furtherly timewalk themselves. It shouldn't be hard anyway vs jund, though, unless they do something stupid like Cage+Ooze.
Another thing i don't like about the green sideboard is the amount of slots it takes. Using force + shoal you basically have 4 cards that are dead versus everything but hate (shoals), for claim to work you need to run forests + fetches in the sideboard, and Silence can't touch cage. Sideboarding without diluting the deck too much becomes quite hard,too, unless you're playing fetches in the maindeck, which is something i'd do only in a bloodghast list.
I'm glad to hear (well, read) that!
I agree on Dryad Arbor being stronger in the maindeck,i'm playing gitaxian in my latest lists because i want the deck to perform at least decently against the whole field, so i needed those sideboard slots for Faerie Macabre. Gitaxian might replace it in the sideboard, Dryad arbor would take Gitaxian's previous place in the MD. This would be a smart choice if you predict a metagame without led dredge and reanimator. Same goes for Sphinx/Kelpie over Griselbrand, i find too many show and tell decks to cut Griselbrand, but i have my kelpies ready, in case s&t drops in popularity. Back when i tested Kelpie and sphinx i liked kelpie more. Persist is pretty good, and it's the only one that can draw as much as Griselbrand does.
I'd never side out street wraith, Zealot seems a better side out to me, it isn't necessary versus the decks playing rip.
My thought process regarding keeping Zealot in is to win as fast as possible before they either find and play Rest in Peace or we counter Rest in Peace and they find another. Despite Street Wraith also being a card that accelerates the deck, it only accelerates the deck if you draw it as opposed to the combo package inevitably accelerating the deck as soon as you cast.
I've had very bad experiences with River Kelpie, the problem is that if you're playing Dryad Arbor, then you're increasing the speed at which you Dread Return and therefore reducing the total number of cards you have in your graveyard. Now assume the opponent is playing counter spells, you don't know which counter spells he's playing and you have to blind therapy your way thru' his hand before you can return a kelpie. What are you going to use to trigger kelpie's draw on the same turn then? I used to get in a lot of awkward situations because of not having the card I needed to start the Kelpie chain and had to wait until the next turn to recur creatures and start drawing, at which point his ass is dead to Lightning Bolt etc. Sphinx just draws his cards with no other conditions attached, so the faster you try to go off the less resources you need compared to Kelpie.
I'm sure it's not going to be a huge difference, but the variance kelpie has for not working at all compared to it possibly being "win more" than Sphinx seems like an unnecessary risk where you either have to pray they don't have removal and pass the turn or return something else some of the time.
I don't understand how FoW lets us DDD? It still sets us back -2 cards in hand.
Do you guys mean that you're able to counter the RiP/Cage while having a Dredger?
I think I just answered my own question, lol.
''The man who passes the sentence should swing the sword.'' Lord Eddard Stark - A Game of Thrones
-Adsum
-ChrisMeister on MTGO
And what about a main split between Balustrade Spy and Griselbrand? Something like 3/1. Do you guys think it's a good idea?
Or is it better to run Spies without the demon? Btw I'm running the blue sideboard
TEAM MtG Berlin
"Dredge isn't a deck, it's public masturbation with graveyard triggers."
I feel its more a question of "either/or" since I think they offer two different gameplans. Test and let us know!
''The man who passes the sentence should swing the sword.'' Lord Eddard Stark - A Game of Thrones
-Adsum
-ChrisMeister on MTGO
Yep. When you're on the draw with unmask, you have to forgo your discard step if you want to hit a RIP before your opponent gets a second land. At that point, you've set yourself back pretty far. With force, you can pick your nose through your discard step, counter the hate card, and then dredge. It hurts either way with a cage or crypt on turn one, though.
Playing tonight @ the local with a new list.
Keep you guys posted.
How did it go?
''The man who passes the sentence should swing the sword.'' Lord Eddard Stark - A Game of Thrones
-Adsum
-ChrisMeister on MTGO
Won the whole thing @ X-1. Beat:
Reanimator
Elves
U/g/w Bant-Blade
Reanimator
List and details tomorrow.
So....sumarizing. our main concern for sideboarding is combo mu.
then creature based hate andar finally artifact/enchantment hate. Reading list, nobody sides anti art/enchant hate.
I'll the deck a try in a very large tournament here where i expect blue and combo based decks. Do you recomend me serum powder?
I wouldn't bother with Serum Powder, the problem with Serum Powder is that even tho' it increases consistency it decreases resiliency, once you've been targetted with Surgical Extraction, Nihil Spellbomb etc. you'll realize your ability to naturally draw 2 dredgers or chain dredgers off of each other in order to use your end step to discard other cards, Cabal Therapy, Dread Return, Ichorid, Bridge from Below etc. you'll realize Serum Powder helps you win more when you're ahead and lose more when you're behind.
I think Shambling Shell, Chancellor of the Annex, Dryad Arbor and Griselbrand are just overall the most consistent choices, with the SB being dedicated to fight other combo decks. I have to admit tho' I'm liking the Gitaxian Probe MD and Force of Will/Disrupting Shoal SB quite a bit, because Gitaxian Probe is a more than reasonable MD card and Force of Will/Disruptiong Shoal pro-actively answer Rest in Peace while giving you game vs combo.
I got it. Thx a lot. Which do hoy think is the apropiated number of slots against combo?
Trap
Unmask
Chacellor
Are great options. With 4 chancellor main, would you dedícate 4 or 8 side slotS?
What kind of combo? I usually have 4 Mindbreak Trap, 4 Leyline of Sanctity and 4 Faerie Macabre
Storm maily
You need about 8 cards then, maybe less if you're playing in a meta with ANT where Leyline of the Void is an option vs them.
Went 3-1 to my lgs tourney (it could been 4-0 but I made a stupid error vs sneak&show), using the blue sideboard.
I faced canadian (2-1), sneak&show (1-2), uwr delver (2-1) and again canadian (2-1).
I'll write a short report if someone's interested.
TEAM MtG Berlin
"Dredge isn't a deck, it's public masturbation with graveyard triggers."
I'd be interested in a report.
''The man who passes the sentence should swing the sword.'' Lord Eddard Stark - A Game of Thrones
-Adsum
-ChrisMeister on MTGO
Yup! Give it a write!
Force of Will and Disrupting Shoal as counterspells are inherently both reactive cards; they cannot be played unless someone represents a spell on the stack. You cannot proactively attack a Rest in Peace or Grafdigger's Cage once they've resolved and when you draw either of those a turn too late. I am on board in agreement with the Unmask/Force correlation, and I like the fact that Force allows for the DDD plan to take effect so you can blow out an opponent. It also solves the problem before it becomes a problem, so I guess at this point we should all agree that Force of Will and Disrupting Shoal are the future of this archetype.
I mean, with waiting a turn with spot removal for those hate cards and putting Dryad Arbor at risk for removal, you're better off playing Force or Shoal to stop that from happening...before it actually happens. I am 100% on board with the Force/Shoal plan.
If this deck is going the way of Shoal and Force, then Gitaxian Probe is the clear frontrunner to replace Arbor. I understand that we initially had it in there to fuel out Dread Returns and Therapy faster, but we're in a situation where we may have to forgo that level of turbo-acceleration in order to battle hate cards post-board. One of the predominant strengths of the Arbors were to ease the strain of post-board anti-hate measures so that you could free up board space with more goodies. Probe can help eradicate some of the pressure that would come with boarding in eight cards to fight Rest in Peace and Grafdigger's Cage directly from your hand, which I do like.Do we necessarily have to play with Gitaxian Probe in the MD if we're playing Force of Will? I think Dryad Arbor is probably the strongest MD slot because it facilitates either Cabal Therapy or Dread Return uncounterably and we have a lot of SB space to just board it instead. I was trying something like out Street Wraith, out Chancellor of the Annex, out Dryad Arbor and in Gitaxian Probe, Force of Will and Disrupting Shoal with a combo package of 2 Sphinx of Lost Truths and 2 Flame Kin Zealot to keep the FoW count at about 18.
Cutting dredgers is never an option unless you're running the full suite of sixteen in this archetype. There are enough chump blockers in this deck (that in turn make zombies) where Tarmogoyf is the least of our worries. There is no fundamental difference between a 5/6 and 6/7 Goyf as they're both four turn clocks. If you can't stop a Goyf from dealing that much damage in four turns, you're either losing anyhow or doing something critically wrong. Serum Powder's effectiveness cannot be measured by such a random corner-case situation. And even if we did, there's a high probability you'll have plenty of tokens to chump the Goyf in the event you want to trade punches back and forth with your 6/6 versus their 6/7. That's not a race they will likely win - not in the face of a gummed-up board state.Also I think I'm done with Serum Powder for a little while, making Goyfs 6/7 is a bit of a problem when you could've DRed Phantasmagorian and not being able to chain Dredgers or draw multiple Dredgers vs pin point graveyard removal makes the deck a bit less resilient. Maybe the answer is to play 4 Serum Powder and not cut any Dredgers for like super, duper consistency, but I'm pretty happy Chancellor of the Annex and Dryad Arbor and I'm really not sure what I'd start to cut other than a Shambling Shell here, Nether Shadow there and a Griselbrand over there etc. for 3 of them.
That being said, I am putting the Powders on ice for a while and going with the Force-Shoal package.
There is a fundamental difference between a 5/6 Tarmogoyf and a 6/7 Tarmogoyf and it's called Lightning Bolt, when you're playing games instead of theory crafting the problem of "bigger Goyfs" comes up when they're clearing the board with Rough/Tumble etc. and racing your life total. Bigger Tarmogoyfs are by no means a reason to cut Serum Powder, but I haven't been happy with them as a replacement for the weakest Dredgers at the point where we stop gold fishing and start facing hate. The answer may very well be to play 16 Dredgers and 4 Serum Powder, but then we face the problem of having to cut another spell for Serum Powder, at which point I'm not certain whether or not Serum Powder is really any better than the alternatives. It's always a posssible SB inclusiong tho' if we want to virtually increase the number of high impact SB cards like Leyline of the Void etc. in our starting.
I have no problem with MD Gitaxian Probe, but if another card is better than MD Gitaxian Probe for whatever reason we have to question whether or not we're putting our SB space to good use otherwise it can live there with Force of Will and Disrupting Shoal. Regardless all that slot does is accelerate the deck one way or the other, be it Dryad Arbor or Gitaxian Probe.
I still think Force of Will is a pro-active strategy, I don't care if we have to wait until the opponent casts a spell in order to counter it, we're essentially preventing the spell before it becomes a problems and the only difference between Unmask and Force of Will is that we're making them commit resources to casting that spell. Whatever you call it, it just doesn't make sense to categorize Force of Will and Unmask in different categories or put Force of Will into the same category as Reverent Silence. Call it pink poka dots and retro plad for all I care, but things should be grouped by function IMO.
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