I've been quiet lately -- my life has been pretty busy. Here's some updated decklists with anecdotes.
The Classic: Scapewish
Depending on the expected metagame, these are my three builds of Scapewish. They're all pretty close to one another really, it's just a few flex spots between the different subversions.Originally Posted by Arianrhod
Thunian Fit:
I won a small local event a few weeks ago with Thune, good for almost 500 in store credit. That version had the Mindcensors in the sideboard -- they greatly impressed me, so I moved them maindeck. Moat was so awful that it's now been cut from the deck entirely. In its place is Mirari's Wake, which chunks up our small utility creatures a bit while enabling the inevitable finish of mise-Wish into Emrakul. It also provides a few other small synergies across the board that aren't immediately obvious. For example, with Wake out, you can respond to removal on your Spike by going infinite (assume they let you remove the 1st counter. they remove it in resp, you remove the 2nd counter and go off -- the spike won't die as it is now a 1/1 instead of a 0/0).
The Menagerie
I haven't updated the sideboard on this for a while, but I wanted to say that I did actually play this at the last 40duals at Tales of Adventure. I was bored and felt like having fun, so I updated the old 5-color Pod that I originally designed as a joke when everyone was arguing about which colors of Pod were best. I decided that I was going to try to prove that as long as you take 4 Explorers and 4 Therapies and built your deck remotely competitively, you can still do well.
I ended up going 3-3 and dropping before the last round because my car wanted to leave early. I beat Sneak and Show r1 on camera, lost to Death and Taxes in an insanely close matchup wherein I never saw a Pod ever, beat Esperblade, lost to a pair of lucky topdecks across two games by another Sneak and Show, and I can't remember the other two matchups anymore. The deck was actually not that bad at all. Legacy decks are ill-equipped to handle sudden Pod chains for victory -- I remember catching several opponents offguard as I instantly killed them out of nowhere from unassuming 1-drop + 2-drop board states. Also, Progenitor Mimic is a god.
Mana Confluence makes the deck much better. In the version that I played at ToA, I had Deathrites with a fetch/dual mana base which had 2 City of Brass and 2 Reflecting Pool alongside 2 forest + 1 of each other basic. The manabase was "okay," but I definitely suffered sometimes. Mana Confluence gives us enough rainbow lands that we can abandon fetches and duals entirely, and run a rainbow+basics manabase which should eradicate any mana problems. Deathrites became Birds because of the lack of fetches.
The sideboard needs updating to be less troll. I decided that I wanted to run 15 1-ofs, so I set it up that way purely because I wanted to. Some of it was amazing, like Orzhov Pontiff, the god, and some of it was terrible. Being able to run Slaughter Games alongside Negate/Flusterstorm alongside haetbears/Glen Elendra is absolutely bonkers good though. I've never felt so favored against Sneak and Show in my life.
Gifts:
This one is experimental. Longtime members of this forum will know how long I've been trying to make Gifts work. The problem has always been that we didn't have a good thing to Gifts/Rites up. RuneScarred -> Nightmare was adorable, but too clunky. It didn't -actually- win the game. I realized that Priemval -> Stage/Depths is the 1-card combo that we needed for Gifts to function. I'm a huge fan of Kiora at the moment in general, but she also helps here because if they solve your 20/20 somehow, you can Loam back both pieces, -1 Kiora, and play both of them to go off again the next turn. Coiling Oracle is over SakuraTribe here because of Force of Will count. It's also really easy to set up Oracles with Brainstorm / Jace. I really want some Courser of Kruphixes in this deck, because that guy is pretty awesome and plays well with Brainstorm, but space is pretty limited. The deck is also currently suffering from "what next" syndrome -- as in, you Gifts for Titan/Rites, now what do you use subsequent Gifts for?
It's possible that since this deck has a sufficient blue-count (22 iirc), Griselbrand may actually just be correct.
Anyway, that's what I've been up to / where my brews are at for the moment. If you have thoughts / questions, leave them and I'll reply as able.
Thunian Fit list and the Menagerie lists are both really interesting looking to play.
Gifts though. I don't know. I think when you start playing gifts, you're almost wanting to move more towards a maverick/lands.dec sort of direction, because there's a fair amount of redundancy in the MB, it's tough to get good value out of your Gifts after the first one unless you start naming lands and loam, but that doesn't play as well with the VE/CT engine either. Like, if you're going Gifts combo, part of me thinks that you'd want to play at least another impact card to send to the yard, maybe 4 is too many gifts? I think it probably would play better with the sideboard, but is it good enough? I play a lot of gifts combo in modern, and primeval titan just doesn't seem like enough impact to make it worth it. Iona would be, or even Sun Titan, but those both require a much more heavy white component than what's given. Grizbeezl might be too, mostly because it'd play more like reanimator once you did that in drawing countermagic to defend the boardstate as the draw 7 puts you ahead in cards, but not necessarily on board, where hand resources aren't as powerful for us as say it would be in reanimator or tin fins or sneak and show.
It's interesting, but I think it'd probably want to move out of the nic fit shell and more to a 4 color maverick-esque deck. There's a certain amount of delicious power in VE/CT, but my gut tells me the nonbo interactions with gifts make it difficult to get good value out of that.
Also, speaking of 40 duals, is anyone going to Binghamton (NY) for the 40 duals?
My goal with the first sketch of the Gifts deck was to keep it as linear and streamlined as possible. 3 Gifts is entirely possibly correct, as is maybe running 2 Force main 2 side, or who knows. There's definitely space to be opened up for more tech. I think that Primeval -> Depths/Stage (or 2 tar pits even) is 100% impactful enough. I don't disagree that having a second target would be very nice, but it comes into a question of which one, as you touched on. Elesh and Iona are both sideboard options. Sun Titan requires a different build. Consecrated Sphinx has all the drawbacks of Griselbrand with none of the advantages. Frost Titan doesn't do enough. Etc etc.
I'll be at the 40 duals in Bing.
The gifts deck needs a wasteland and raven's crime. Loam lock + pitch two cards a turn seems like a good way to beat miracles, which is otherwise a pretty tough matchup for nic fit decks.
Wasteland is pretty useless against miracles. Same goes for ravens crime if they have CBtop going.
They just need to stick jace and terminus our dudes. Waste and crime do nothing to stop this
But against other decks wasteland and ravens crime are both very viable cards.
Wasteland didn't make the cut because the deck is already high on lands that don't make mana (colored, anyway) thanks to depths/stage. Furthermore, act of nic fitting gives your opponent 1-2 basics on average, which helps them evade wastelock. I'm usually a fan of a Waste in Living Wish versions because sometimes you need to take out a problematic utility land, like a Karakas or a Tabernacle or something. I could see squeezing a waste in, but I wouldn't run it with the intent of wastelocking. It'd just be for like random Karakases or Maze of Iths or whatnot.
Raven's Crime is useless vs Miracles, as is most discard. They can live entirely off of their Sensei's Top to not detriment. In some ways they actually prefer it, I think.
Tell me more about the mindcensors, I might test them.
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If they're half as good in legacy as they are in a format where 40% of the decks play lightning bolt. It's probably a really good card. There's literally hundreds of good applications for it, other than just de facto wastelanding your opponent.
They stopped ANT in its tracks (Infernal Tutor) while providing a clock, and they also made Aluren's life a lot harder when I played vs that. I boarded them in vs a few other matchups but never saw them. They give a good maindeck hate option for a lot of decks in the format, while still providing general utility and value even where they aren't good. Worst case they're a 2/1 flyer which can block a Delver. You might get a Stoneforge with it, or even just the traditional "fetch -> wasteland" is still value. Also very reasonable against things like Elves, which have proven to be problematic.
We'll see how they go -- this will be my first event with them maindeck, but I think that, at least on paper, they definitely look good enough.
Being a flash creature also plays well with Gavony since you can make a 3/2 out of nowhere, and costing 3 mana is perfect since it opens up t1 therapy t2 explorer fb therapy with 3 mana open. That's a curve that will wreck combo and annoy a lot of fair decks.
Just a rundown for everyone else on what Mindcensor's fun-ness is about:
Miracles - Fetchlands, sometimes Stoneforge, Enlightened Tutor
Storm Combo - Infernal Tutor, Fetchlands
DDFT - Doomsday, Fetchlands (oh man, it's so good against Doomsday)
Elves - Natural Order, Green Sun's Zenith
Jund - Fetchlands
BUG - Fetchlands
Goblins - Goblin Matron
D&T - Stoneforge
URx Delver - Fetchlands, Stoneforge Mystic
Merfolk - Nothing
MUD - Kudotha Forgemaster
Maverick - GSZ, Fetchlands, Stoneforge Mystic, Knight of the Reliquary
Stoneblade - Stoneforge Mystic, Fetchlands
Nic Fit - Basically sucks the life out of every non-punishing fire version.
Show and Tell - Fetchlands, Intuition
Dredge - Nothing
Painter Combo - Imperial Recruiter, Fetchlands, Enlightened Tutor
Reanimator - Entomb, Fetchlands
Aluren - Imperial Recruiter, Fetchlands
High Tide - Fetchlands, Merchant Scroll, Intuition
I'm going through my prep book for tomorrow, and I've been writing down Cabal Therapy scenarios for each deck and what to name (because I know the cards, but have a serious issue with presque vu, or the name of the card being on the tip of my tongue). Just came to a few conclusions
I'm going to an unknown meta. I'm going to probably blind name with Therapy T1 so I can T2 play VE/CT flashbacked often enough. I don't particularly like naming force of will, because often times it does straight up become a 2 for 1 regardless. If they force of will the first one, you've 2 for 1'd them, and can possibly 3 for 2 them (or better). If they force of will the second one, the same ratio applies, but, if you hit with the first one, chances are, you've ripped their hand from the second one (and subsequently get to play around soft counters like spell pierce & daze).
The question becomes then, should you Cabal Therapy blind on the play, game 1 assuming you have a creature play T2? It's not the same when you're being proactive with Storm Combo & Cabal Therapy, and you're actively trying to find cards that prevent you from winning, here, you're looking for cards to remove and gain card advantage, most of the time, when you're pushing T1 Cabal Therapy lately blind, I feel like there's 7-ish options.
1) Deathrite Shaman
2) Sensei's Divining Top
3) Brainstorm
4) Swords to Plowshares
5) Force of Will
6) Mother of Runes
This assumes you don't lead with either DRS or VE (which I think the latter is rather risky-ist of all).
1) Would you take these odds: 14% chance G1 naming Deathrite Shaman and hitting blind game 1? The grand assumption is, you're improving your G1 matchup in a matchup that's already pretty good for most variations of Nic Fit, and in all 0-for-3 them at best (Hit double DRS, VE turn 2, gain 2 cards at the loss of CT+VE, they lose 1 more card), 2-for-1 at worst (Sac DRS after miss for Flashback CT naming True-Name Nemesis). But you're also ensuring the fact that you have dominance with early DRS's, which is a real thing. In G2/3 I'd much more likely advocate for this line of play, but G1 blind, I think it's weak-ish.
2) Would you take these odds: 8% chance G1 naming Sensei's Divining Top and hitting blind game 1? I think you're in the drivers seat of that matchup assuming you have further gas to move forward. You'd then push the flashback for Cantrips/Filters, and go from there.
3) Would you take these odds: 24% chance G1 naming Brainstorm and hitting blind game 1? Brainstorm is a powerful card, you know this, I know this. Everyone does. But at this point, you're just setting yourself up for a good Cabal Therapy #2, and weakening their ability to filter and draw. It's by far your most likely card to hit in any general circumstance blind, and most likely to disrupt their gameplan followed by DRS.
4) Would you take these odds: 14% chance G1 naming Swords to Plowshares and hitting blind game 1? I've been naming StP a lot, because I use it to protect my turn 2 DRS more often than not, but I feel that it's only a situational play because I do want them to use their StP early and often.
5) Would you take these odds: 22% chance G1 naming Force of Will and hitting blind game 1? I feel this is likely the weakest one... at times, and where I really do enjoy playing in the bug shell go to Misty Rainforest, Underground Sea, Cabal Therapy naming Force of Will. If you slow-roll a little bit, vs tempo decks, they'll slow their tempo on one landers, thinking they're the control deck vs combo if you have the second fetchland in hand and keeping open Spell Pierce or Brainstorm mana and you just explode on them T2/T3 after they botch their T1 play (playing brainstorm over a threat, or wasteland), and your T2 play usually becomes much better. But in all other situations, it's not great. It's just a card that doesn't really matter that much to us early in the game. Later in the game on a flashbacked CT, it's certainly more relevant, but early? Not great, but if you're playing a SnT deck, you're more likely to be able to actually cast it a second time to get Show and Tell out.
6) Would you take these odds: 4% chance G1 naming Mother of Runes and hitting blind game 1? Nope. Unless you know that your opponent is playing D&T, there's no reason to name this, no matter how painful it can be.
Cards I wouldn't name T1 Blind on the play... basically a list of 2 drops.
- Liliana, of the Veil (22% of decks, 31% in hand, 7% chance blind): Rather name on Flashback
- Stoneforge Mystic: Rather name the Equipment
- Jace, The Mind Sculptor (25% of decks, 31% in hand, 8% chance blind): Rather name on Flashback, it's not coming down fast until you sac VE to CT anyway.
- Delver of Secrets: Average 11 ways to deal with a flipped Delver MD.
- Tarmogoyf: Average of 7 ways to deal with Tarmogoyf MD.
- Abrupt Decay: Reasonable, but suffers from the Swords to Plowshares idea that wasting their targeted removal early is generally better, and if you have a fb CT late, you can do that, and follow it up with a Recurring Nightmare if you want.
- Hymn to Tourach (15% of decks, 31% in hand, 5% chance blind): The kind of card I'd probably sac a Baleful Strix for to FB and get this card. Sacing a DRS is probably not the right plan, and naming it T1 isn't great either, if you have action heavy hand, you want the DRS, if you have a land heavy hand, you shouldn't care.
- True-Name Nemesis (22% of decks, 31% in hand, 7% chance blind): A card that's not that scary by itself, and requires usually Equipment (see: Stoneforge Mystic), or you can name it flashbacked.
This obviously changes on the draw, as if you're any good at the card, you should probably hit something 75% of the time. I've taken the thought that it's more important to hit, than to necessarily find the card that's going to beat you, because as I mentioned earlier, we're not following a "mostly linear" gameplan where we're stone dead to certain cards, I think creating the card advantage early and often is significantly more important than finding the right card first.
So, what do you do? Just never lead with CT without more information? That's an option in a situation like 2 fetchlands, VE/CT, where you can play around Daze in that regard
- Fetch land pass, Cabal Therapy naming X, Veteran Explorer, Flashback CT (when you don't suspect daze)
- Fetch land pass, Veteran Explorer, Cabal Therapy naming X, Flashback CT (when daze is possibe)
It's a much easier scenario to play with Veteran Explorer though than with Deathrite Shaman.
Example: 2 Fetchland, DRS, Cabal Therapy, GSZ, Deed, Land? Would you lead with DRS into StP or lead with Therapy?
- If you lead with DRS and it gets pathed, bolted, whatever, T2 GSZ for VE, Turn 3 CT (assuming you draw any non 1-drop T2), Flashback CT.
- if you lead with DRS and it gets pathed, bolted, whatever, T2 CT, pass, T3 GSZ for VE, Flashback CT.
- If you lead with CT (I'd probably blind name DRS knowing I have DRS in hand), and miss, you will know if your DRS gets removed, and have additional information what and if you need to immediately sac DRS to CT a second time. So T2, DRS, Flashback CT.
You wouldn't have that opportunity with the first line unless you played a Dryad Arbor. And the line is relevant against 2 drops, like Show and Tell (it is, you know it), Liliana, of the Veil/Shardless Agent (if you didn't name DRS), Counterbalance (you're already in a meh place if you're naming that). Again, it's subject to change based on what's in your hand (an Abrupt Decay really makes a difference), and if they have Stoneforge Mystic or not. Because line 1 is okay vs stoneforge mystic.dec. Line 2 is probably better vs Delver.dec than line 1. Line 3 is what I think is best vs combo decks, but it puts you back a turn if DRS doesn't get bolted or pathed vs the fair decks.
Thoughts?
Crap double post
@ tadiou: Brainstorm is usually the best one for blind therapy since so many decks run it anyway. Naming that can also make the opponent regret keeping shaky hands with brainstorm in them.
However if ya have an idea of what their playing, then it becomes very matchup dependent. Arianrhod had a pretty good list of therapy situations in his primer, some important ones being naming stifle against RUG delver if on the draw. Not sure what happened to it though.
It's kind of outdated now, but a lot of it does still hold true. I'll re-post it for convenience:
If you're on the play in a blind situation, always name Brainstorm. Brainstorm fucks with subsequent Therapies, it's in the largest variety of decks and is a reason to keep a hand from a blue player's perspective, and most combo decks are also Brainstorm decks, so you can hurt their digging / remove their ability to hide important pieces.
Feel free to track me down tomorrow, Tadiou -- my name's Kevin McKee if you aren't already aware of that.
Only about 2 players out of 535 playing nic-fit at the on going BoM (http://www.twitch.tv/bazaar_of_moxen , http://www.bazaar-of-moxen.com/en/index.html). Not sure how much info will be gleaned from this event.
Notes on the Therapy guide that are for sure inaccurate/outdated:
Elves is now always Natural Order instead of Glimpse. Exception might be me tomorrow with Thune, since if I have a Mindcensor I don't care about NO. Realistically they're keeping a lot of hands with a t2-t3 NO for lethal these days and caring less about Glimpsing off. If you're on the draw and you have enough experience with/vs elves to know that their opener can't t2 NO, then name Glimpse first and hit NO on the flashback.
ANT/TES is always Dark Ritual now, followed by shaping from there based on their hand. Storm players like keeping opening hands with Dark Ritual, a lot. They keep more hands with D.Rit than they do with LED, as D.Rit is easier to use and figures into more of their broken openings. LED can't cast Ad Nauseum. Dark Ritual can. You're still aiming mana on the initial cast and business on the flashback, though.
Most BUG Delver decks aren't running Stifle anymore. Brainstorm on the play or -possibly- Delver of Secrets. Hymn to Tourach on the draw, possibly Force of Will. They typically run 3 copies of both Hymn and Force, and those are the only things that they can do that can really interact with us as long as we play around Daze (or through it, if our hand enables that).
Miracles depends somewhat on the version of Nic Fit you're playing. Some care about Counterbalance more than others. Top is usually the best name on the play. If you're on the draw and they played a Top, then you probably want to name Counterbalance just so you don't get locked out of your developmental stage. If you're on the draw and they didn't play a Top, but they Brainstorm, then you probably call like Counterspell or Snapcaster or something else that's mediocre but useful to have. If you're on the draw and they didn't play a Top and they don't Brainstorm, then you probably call Force of Will or Jace.
Definitely had that in mind, I should be there at the crack of dawn because I'm driving the Head Judge there.
In my local meta, I'm like 100% sure what everyone's playing 85% of the time (those odds), and generally do very well. Knowing what to Therapy for with knowledge of what you're playing against is significantly easier though. I'm pretty much going to force my friend playing reanimator to get me food while I scout.
But, the tldr was about more than just general CT usage, I was trying to evaluate what the best line is blind if it was to go land pass, CT naming Brainstorm, or CT naming DRS now.
I deduced those are basically the 3 only actual good lines if you have Cabal Therapy in hand, and was trying to piece together good plays, and the reason why I did bring it up was because I was evaluating that situation where you know like BoM where 25% of the meta plays Deathrite Shaman, is there ever the case that that's the right call if you have DRS in hand? If you don't, I'd name Brainstorm, but, after playing with 4 DRS for the past two months, it's something I've contemplated and thought about. It's closer, but probably still not worth it. DRS advantage is a thing in those matchups, but just wanted to get some thoughts on it.
Despite the increasing popularity of Deathrite, I think Brainstorm is still more widely played. In addition to that, it is not only one of the strongest cards in legacy but one of the strongest cards against Cabal Therapy specifically. Assuming a truely blind scenario, it's very difficult to imagine it being correct to name anything else. I could maybe see an exception if you don't have a veteran explorer or anything good to flashback and need a couple of turns to not get your cabal therapy eaten by their deathrite shaman. Still, in a situation like that the best play might just be to wait on casting therapy till you have more information. If I had a Deathrite Shaman to play instead, I'd probably just do that in almost any scenario. If DRS eats a removal spell I'm generally not that upset, especially if the option to veteran explorer into more lands is already present in the hand.
Then the question is: When would you hold? And if you're holding, aren't you still subject to getting Brainstormed at that point and time anyway when you do choose to Therapy? Knowing what your opponent thinks they think is good and want to hide and what they think you'll name, vs what you think is good and what you will name, and what you think they'll name and choose to hide. It is part of the game of Cabal Therapy (and probably the most fun I can have while playing magic).
What kind of hands would you keep, that you'd hold a CT up blind? Brainstorm is pretty much a 4 of in 60% of MTGTop8 decks (which I think's pretty fair to say, that's what it is in most matchups).
It's not a large case of games that'd probably be like this, but I think my probability chart puts it at around 7% of games.
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