[Deck] T.E.S. - The EPIC Storm

[Bryant Cook]

Report is up!

[sawatarix]

well done bryant.
although you didn't won the flight + byes, do you wanna join the Bazaar of Moxen in Annecy this year?

[Final Fortune]

There are a couple of different approaches to the discard package, I don't think the 2 life loss is an issue but if you do then playing 3 MD Duress and 2 SB Inquisition of Kozilek is one approach.

I understand that Silence is a powerful card, but I know it's a slow card that strains the manabase in a match up where the manabase is already under pressure from Wasteland. With discard, you can choose to cast it before you go off or on the same turn you go off, you can see your opponent's hand, discard a card and play with perfect information, you can cast it off of a Dark Ritual, you can cast it off of an Underground Sea, you can imprint it for Black mana on a Chrome Mox, you can lead with Gemstone Mine and hold back a fetchland for Brainstorm, you can improve the accuracy of each and every Cabal Therapy there after, you can stop Counterbalance, Chalice of the Void, hate bears and discard from resolving and you can better protect Empty the Warrens by discarding their out or cantrip instead of Time Walking.

I tend to win with Goblins more than any other engine in this deck, so when people argue about the life loss on Thoughtseize I think they're missing the point that even tho' TES is designed to maximize Ad Nauseam by having a low mana curve and a high number of artifact mana it is not as much of an Ad Nauseam deck as it is an Empty the Warrens deck after we added 4 Cabal Therapy and potentially 3 Thoughseize or Duress and Inquisition of Kozilek.

I think people are holding on to Silence too tightly and too worried about 2 points of damage for a card that, post-board, solves so many more problems than Silence does which you can easily offset by playing the 4th Chrome Mox for the times you have to go for Ad Nauseam. I am just straight up tired of seeing Vendilion Clique after Meddling Mage after Counterbalance hit the board while I'm holding Silence for all of these 1 of Misdirections and Spell Snares and Envelops that nobody is really playing enough of to worry about.

The metagame changed UWx is a thing, Clique and Mage and Thoughtseize and Wasteland are bad news, they have too many different angles of attack to put all of our resources into dominating the stack when it's our hand and the board we should be worried about.

[sa3xxx]

Report is up!

Hi Bryant,

would you really SB extraction in storm mirror? If so, what for?

[Bryant Cook]

Hi Bryant,

would you really SB extraction in storm mirror? If so, what for?

Empty the Warrens.

[Royce Walter]

Looking forward to Bryants report.

Royce i'd be so happy if you wrote one too!

I'm not planning on writing one, there weren't very many situations that arose and are worthy of discussing.
The only really interesting moments for me I can describe briefly though.
In game 2 of round 2, I'm on the draw against Death and Taxes, and my opponent says something that indicates he's keeping a fairly risky 7. He plays Wasteland, Vial, and passes. I draw for my turn, and my hand is: Ponder, Scalding Tarn, Volcanic Island, Dark Ritual, Rite of Flame, LED, Infernal Tutor, Burning Wish.

At this point, there are a few options as to what my opponent has:
1) He has no second land, but has a hand full of hate bears and will be putting Vial to 1.
2) He has a second land, and will be ticking his Vial to 1 and casting a hatebear.
3) He kept a hand with no real disruption, but has a Mindbreak Trap.
4) He has nothing and kept in the hopes of stealing the game with Wasteland.

This puts me in an interesting spot. In the case of (1), my best option is play Tarn, pass, untap and kill him pretty easily with Ad Nauseam. (3) will likely be given away by him playing a land and passing, or playing a creature that doesn't disrupt me, such as Stoneforge Mystic, so my best option is likely to play Tarn, pass, hope to draw Probe or Therapy to clear the way, and win with Ad Nauseam. If he plays a land and passes, I likely have to use my Ponder to find a Therapy. In the case of Mystic, it's almost certainly worth it to go for the Ad Nauseam and be willing to lose to MBT. (4) is incredibly unlikely, and if it is the case I am almost certainly going to win the game regardless of what I do in this spot. (2) is where things get interesting. If I play Tarn, pass, he untaps and plays Thalia, I'm priced into fetching, Pondering to find exactly mana + Decay, as Chain of Vapor vs a Vial on 2 is not exactly a winning recipe, at which point I will have to pass the turn, lose one of my lands to Wasteland, and have to rebuild from there. This is, at best, unfavorable.

So my options are to: (a) play Tarn and pass, (b) Ponder to try to find an answer to Thalia, as a turn 2 Chain of Vapor can still be fast enough if I manage to draw a Petal, whereas by turn 3 it will be useless due to the Vial, or (c) make 8 goblins and hope to not see any creature at all on the next turn, as this is unlikely to beat Thalia, Canonist, or Stoneforge.

What do you do?

I elected to do (b), for a few reasons. First, if I Ponder into a Probe + Petal, I can make 14 goblins, which will race a Stoneforge. Second, if I Ponder into Chain of Vapor + Petal, I can bounce a Canonist and Ad Nauseam, or bounce a Thalia and make goblins next turn. Functionally, this boils it down to giving me the best chance of winning in the worst case scenario, while diminishing my chances of winning if he has no second land, since if I draw a Petal, Mox, LED, Dark Ritual, off either the Ponder or draw step, I still beat him Wastelanding and passing back.

I ended up Pondering into no mana, shuffling, hitting no mana, and he had no second land. At the time I thought it was a mistake as I ended up losing the game, but now that I've had some more time to reflect I think I made the right call. Thoughts?

[Pelikanudo]

@Royce Walter:

Interesting...

This kind of scenarious you reach sometimes is what I like so much TES...

IMHO I would have put 8 goblins or scalding tarn pass the turn, the option about ponder... I think you need to assume they will not have Trap in hand on the play and expecting even 3 more times of hate in the form of 2 cost cards. maybe you have sided in 1 or 2 CoV so the odds o drawing them are few... also a Discard effect by your part didn't either save you at that point you needed to draw it.

[WarioMCP]

I've been trying out ANT for the last few weeks and while Cabal Ritual is sweet I really miss the speed of this deck

[mario91234]

Definitely would've tarn->passed there due to the blatant wasteland. I wouldn't be suprised if he kept something like 2x waste/thalia/vial/magiccards. the hand can't really beat a thalia but it is going to kill him 100% baring no thalia/revoker/canonist. You're either being baited there with the wasteland->vial or he kept anti goblin or anti lands.

[Lemnear]

I barely see any reason to start with Wasteland other than Vial itself giving you (potential) free information about him a) having only 1 land and hoping to make it to turn 3 or b) having multiple wastelands. I would suspect to gamble against a colored manasource here rather than a hatebear for him to topdeck. Odds for him are like 35:65 with 7 colorless lands in his deck (Revoker aside here). Scalding Tarn and ship the turn, if you ask me

[sawatarix]

Aggree with lemnear,
I would also just play tarn and pass.
And to the next tournament i would bring in a basic island :D


- Team RUG-STAR Berlin -

[Lemnear]

Brainstorming guys: IF you could wish for instants, which would be your top 3 picks to run in the SB?

[Jin Gitaxias]

I may be thinking too small, but definately an extra copy of Ad Nauseam in the board, play only a single Abrupt Decay to wish for, and third a Chain of Vapor as catch all and/or storm generator.

[sawatarix]

That would lead to cunning wish,saw this one in an ant build years ago which was really bad.
Anyway,if i choose 3 instants:
- ad nauseam
- silence
- abrupt decay


- Team RUG-STAR Berlin -

[Lemnear]

That would lead to cunning wish,saw this one in an ant build years ago which was really bad.
Anyway,if i choose 3 instants:
- ad nauseam
- silence
- abrupt decay


- Team RUG-STAR Berlin -

Tbh, this may should have been a ANT/TES crosspost, but I recently got a nice PM by R3D in regards to Burning Wish in ANT which (for me) not only feel restricted in terms of color requirement, but also in regards to targets as it removes itself, so I thought about alternatives which aren't Grim Tutor which has some life/money requirements.

Shhhhhhh ... I was looking on another Wish ;)

[sa3xxx]

Empty the Warrens.

I think that TS would (on average) have a greater impact on the game, but the extraction has an undeniable surprise factor (at least for me) :)

[Asthereal]

Brainstorming guys: IF you could wish for instants, which would be your top 3 picks to run in the SB?

I tried Cunning Wish ANT (UBw) a while back when they had just banned Mystical.
Targets: Ad Nauseam, Silence/Chant, Chain, Cabal Ritual and Brainfreeze, which I only used once.
Cunning was a little hard on the Ad Nauseam, and I turned out to like Lim-Dul's Vault better as a two-of second tutor effect.
Seriously, Lim-Dul's Vault in ANT is pretty cool. You can use it to find multiple cards you need, and the instant thing has advantages too.

[Bryant Cook]

I think that TS would (on average) have a greater impact on the game, but the extraction has an undeniable surprise factor (at least for me) :)

You need it to Wish for.

[Final Fortune]

Eh, I just don't know about graveyard hate in the SB, you have to take a bad match up some where in Magic and if you can play the 4th Xantid Swarm or Bribery which are going to be good in the Show&Tell and Merfolk match ups as well as at least useful in the Reanimator match up then I think you're better off raising your EV across all three match ups marginally instead of just one moderately.

I also find it's a match up where Discard > Silence because we can stop their Thoughtseize or discard Entomb, if we want to interact with them by using cards like Surgical Extraction then Discard interacts with them just as well as advancing our own game plan. It's another example of our disruption suite being too linear in an environment where there disruption suite is too differentiate and there are other combo decks with strategic superiority on us.

[Bryant Cook]

Eh, I just don't know about graveyard hate in the SB, you have to take a bad match up some where in Magic and if you can play the 4th Xantid Swarm or Bribery which are going to be good in the Show&Tell and Merfolk match ups as well as at least useful in the Reanimator match up then I think you're better off raising your EV across all three match ups marginally instead of just one moderately.

I also find it's a match up where Discard > Silence because we can stop their Thoughtseize or discard Entomb, if we want to interact with them by using cards like Surgical Extraction then Discard interacts with them just as well as advancing our own game plan. It's another example of our disruption suite being too linear in an environment where there disruption suite is too differentiate and there are other combo decks with strategic superiority on us.

We took out the third Xantid Swarm because it wasn't effective enough. Playing a fourth one won't help and neither will awful cards such as Bribery. I refuse to just conceed the match to a popular deck in the format, you can – I won't.

Look dude, Silence continues to perform. If you don't want to play it, no one is forcing you to. But it continues to put up numbers, I don't think I'd completely cut it at any point as long as we're a 3.5 color deck. If anything I could see 4/2/1 on protection.

I've began to think about leaving Silence in against Death & Taxes because discard only hits one of their multiple bears, meaning another is going to come down on turn two. Silence is just too good against Brainstorms, Tops and even Griselbrand. Forcing them to respond instead of waiting is critical in some matchups.