[Primer] Elves!

[Lans89]

The last time I mentioned something similar (the Bane of Progress-discussion), someone yelled "Yes, but OmniShow can just go and kill you at instant speed", so there's that. If they have it, you're dead before the trigger blowing up their Omniscience has :

It is possible with cunning wish and a blind/brainstorm release the ants, but not with Omnimaniac. Enter the Infinite is a sorcery. But keep denying that Harmonic Sliver has its benefits ;)!

[Echelon]

I'm not denying anything. I'm just regurgitating the popular opinion, whether it differs to my own or not.

[Lans89]

I'm not denying anything. I'm just regurgitating the popular opinion, whether it differs to my own or not.

A well, Harmonic made me win some games that way. And you should have seen my opponents face ^_^! Some Elves players at that time even played a 1-off Humility side, which could also be a blowout (but I never liked it.. They would play Sneak Attack through Teeg, bounce your Humility and clean your board with Emrakul). But now I'm not playing white anymore, and I would advice others to do the same. Just don't forget the '10 ways' to get a turn 2 Ruric!

[Julian23]

10 ways, you say?

At the German Legacy Champs I casted a Ruric Thar and Craterhoof Behemoth on the second turn. My opponent had forgotten that Dream Halls is symetrical.

[Echelon]

10 ways, you say?

At the German Legacy Champs I casted a Ruric Thar and Craterhoof Behemoth on the second turn. My opponent had forgotten that Dream Halls is symetrical.

Best opponent ever!

[Lans89]

10 ways, you say?

At the German Legacy Champs I casted a Ruric Thar and Craterhoof Behemoth on the second turn. My opponent had forgotten that Dream Halls is symetrical.

Haha!

Btw, yesterday I've seen your Twitch video where you won vs a turn 1 Griselbrand xD! Don't know why I had never seen it before. Sneaky Show is often so clunky, I never bring it to a big tournament

[dte]

Hello,

I play a 4th Decay and a null rod in the two traps solt in SB. While null rod is as good as trap vs storm, i find it useful in miracle and D&T as well.
The 4th AD is there because I love the cards in miracle/tempo/blade MUs, which are fairly common, so I choose to be weaker against storm to improve these MUs.

But lurking at many decklists, I almost always find 3 Decay, and I wonder if it's because you prefer to address other MUs (trap) or because you do not want more than 3 Decays in miracle/tempo/blade MUs?

And my second question is why trap over rod?

[Megadeus]

I was wondering what everyone thought of null rod. It seems quite strong considering most of the time our needles name artifacts. I guess it doesn't hit lavamancer and like walkers, but it still doesn't seem bad

[Julian23]

The biggest upside of Null Rod, besides the splashdamage to Storm, is hitting both Top AND Engineered Explosives at once.

[Zombie]

The biggest upside of Null Rod, besides the splashdamage to Storm, is hitting both Needle AND Engineered Explosives at once.

Hitting a Needle? With Null Rod? You mean Top/Jitte, right? And yeah, Null Rod is amazing against a good chunk of the format. As far as more dedicated hate goes, been thinking of putting Revokers in those slots due to the shift away from Storm and into SnT. They can also do work vs. storm/tide while being beaters. Not so useful in Stoneforge matchups though in this deck :/

[Megadeus]

The biggest upside of Null Rod, besides the splashdamage to Storm, is hitting both Needle AND Engineered Explosives at once.

Hitting explosives, jitte, bskull, and led and such seems good

[Megadeus]

Oh yeah and top. Seems strong

[Zombie]

Oh yeah and top. Seems strong

Yeah, it's bonkers. My main issue with it is that it does next to nothing against SnT, which is the other premier combo deck in the format right now. Then again, neither do Thorns, so I guess it's a pretty easy swap if Storm is on the downturn.

[Julian23]

Yeah I meant SDT and EE. Can't count the number of times where my Needle on Top was blown up by Explosives.

Will still stick with Needle for now. Null Rod always felt a bit clunky and doesn't help with Sneak and Show.

[Zombie]

Yeah I meant SDT and EE. Can't count the number of times where my Needle on Top was blown up by Explosives.

Will still stick with Needle for now. Null Rod always felt a bit clunky and doesn't help with Sneak and Show.

Neither does Thorn, and Trap not so much either, though, and I think the discussion here was -2 Trap/Thorn, +2 Rod or +1 Decay, +1 Rod.
Not -2 Needle, +2 Rod, which I agree is madness.

[Megadeus]

I agree Julian. Maybe we could run rod and try some different snt hate?

[Zombie]

Revokers are da shizzle, or so I hear. (stressing again that I'm looking for Thorn alternatives, not Needle alternatives. The Needles won't budge an inch)

[Julian23]

There's tons of alternatives when it comes to replacing Mindbreak Trap with other or more versatile combohate, for sure. That's not the general issue for me though; the decision every player has to make is whether he wants to have access to it on turn0 or not.

Also note that if you're not running Ruric Thar, chances are you don't want Mindbreak Traps as suddenly there's less incentive to buy him anyways.

[dte]

Wha, I'm impressed by how fast answers to questions appears here! It never occurs to me as a reader, but now that I have questions and that I am eager for answers, I'm quite pleased by the alacrity on this forum!

When building a SB, a lot of cards are nice for sure, but the questions is to weight which are te 15 best to answer the MU we will most likely face.

Thanks for the answers about null rod, and I will like to hear more about it but I do not want to let my second question buried: if you had 4 Abrupt decay in your SB, will you automatically put them in in the MU where you include the 3 of them (SFM.decks, tempos & miracle)?

[Julian23]

Probably yes, yes. There are matchups that are rather one-dimensional when it comes to their threats. While it's not the best example, hitting Jitte and some early Delvers goes a very long way against UWr Delver for example.