Miracles don't happen unless you believe :)Originally Posted by FortyThree
In all seriousness though, I've been testing Einherjer's list extensively and in the BUG matchup I find that, though the Spell Pierces are a huge reprieve when you draw them at the right time, they are not necessary. For me, it seems that this matchup usually has the following pattern: complicated game state (when both players start the game) --> simplified game state (after BUG's discard/Liliana) --> complicated (when BUG starts grinding out damage/card advantage). The turning point is when both players have few resources, in the simplified state. At this point, our superior card quality SHOULD be able to take over the game. While our opponent is drawing Tarmogoyfs and dead discard, we are drawing Jaces and game-ending Entreats. Playing Ponders over the Pierces is huge here in that it boosts our card selection by a significant amount.
One thing to remember about Spell Pierce is that it is only conditionally good - there are scenarios where you draw it on t1 and counter that Hymn or Liliana and it looks awesome. But more often than not, these golden situations don't happen, and instead you might draw Spell Pierce when you're trying to build back from the already-resolved Hymns and the Lilis. I would suggest going to your next local and trying out 4 Ponders. Change the mindset from preventing the discard to "drawing out of it". Note that in this scenario, you shouldn't apply the normal stigma to "drawing out of it" because our deck is slowly becoming more designed to do that kind of thing with 4 Tops, 4 Brainstorms, and 4 Ponders.
I think people have the same bias about Karakas. I don't get it why this card sees so much play. I mean it doesn't really hurt in our deck, but when people play it alongside Bayous, Underground Seas, Tundras, Scrublands and Wastelands, i want to see them playing against a Wasteland/Stifle deck.
The Open winning list is good, but it would be a lot more consistent with 3 Volcanic Islands.
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Consider how little red I had (3 blasts, Stoneforge over EE). It didn't come up much at this tournament, but more often the Volcanics get in the way than the red spells do. The only matchups to even board all 3 red cards are Miracles and Show & Tell builds, where Wasteland isn't an issue. On the other hand, Karakas is an overperformer in the matchups it's there for, Death & Taxes and Sneak Attack. If I were to cut it, I'd replace it with the Mesa it was originally. That said, I'm still considering going the opposite way and boarding the second because of how important it is there.
To the point about Stoneforge in the side, I've been very impressed with it in this build because the rest of the creature suite strongly discourages keeping removal in for postboard games and Stoneforge is a game-winning threat when left unanswered. The upside here is very high, but even the downside of them having removal and you having SFM is fairly low. Knowing it won't be killed on sight against Delver variants, Stoneforge variants, and the mirror postboard is awesome.
Last edited by IsThisACatInAHat?; 08-11-2014 at 10:52 AM. Reason: spelling
Great success!
Well, I just watched your final game, and I'm convinced to give the 4 ponders a try. The consistency you achieved without seeing a top until quite late looked really appealing, so I'm going to go ahead and give it a shot.
Congratulations on the win!
It's been a while since I've seen you posting here, welcome back and congratulations again! I didn't catch the Elimination rounds, and as you weren't featured in the Swiss rounds I didn't get the chance to take a glance at your play, but I will do so once the VODs are up!
I do agree on playing 2 Volcanic Island, as I think that three is good if you dip heavily into red, which you shouldn't do anyways. However I strongly disagree on Karakas, but I've made my point in several articles already.
I also do not quite agree with the way you incorporated 2 SFM and 1 Mystic into the SB as my cuts would have been different, but as said above, I am still working on them. Anyways, the inclusion of Pithing Needle is a neat step in the right direction, aka a counterpart to help with Sneak Attack where SFM is absolutely useless.
I'd love to hear your reasoning, and congratulations again, you showed those 5 (?) Delver puppies who the master is!
Greetings
I've never liked Spell Pierces, but personally I cut them when I added REBs to the maindeck (Council's Judgment only helps secure the decision). Without Pierces or REBs, we really don't have much stack interaction.
I've found that this works a lot less than anticipated. Any deck with Bolts will almost always leave in at least two, but the really surprising thing is Plows. The problem I ran into is that a lot of not-very-savvy players will leave in a bunch of Plows because they don't know any better, and then many of the good ones will leave in some amount of removal in anticipation or else have plenty of ways to deal with equipment (Artifact/Enchantment removal is already good against us anyways).
If you're having a lot of issues with Burn, you could try a BEB or two. They are good there and have a lot of upside against Sneak and Show. Lately, I cut the BEBs myself in hopes to hedge a little in other directions, but it's still a strong card against a few decks. Recently, I've also been bringing in Pithing Needle against Burn and blind-naming Vexing Shusher. Sometimes having the removal for Shusher isn't enough and if it gets any activations off then you're just dead.
Maybe this was already said, but 8pm in what time zone?
Sorry, nope I didn't say it yet!
I will stream the Legacy Daily Event at 8pm UTC+01:00 (2h and 16 minutes from now), playing Miracles. I'll sadly have no webcame as of today, but I plan on buying one this week! Rest should work just fine. Come over and watch! http://www.twitch.tv/the_einherjer
See you later!
Greetings
Nah, don't run BEB. Many Burn or U/R Delver decks will have Pyroblast or REB in the SB. As matter of fact, lots of decks have Pyro of REB in the SB. Rather, run Celestial Purge. Purge can take care of Burn/Goblin/Liliana/DRS/Dark Confidant... etc, while capable being flashbacked.
If you trade an EE for the 4th Terminus this list is the "stock" one. Slight variations of this stock list have been responsible for most of the high profile finishes with this deck. Even Einherjer got his finish with a 3 card variation to this. This weekend at the SCG Open appears to be the first high profile finish with Einherjer's list from his article; unless you count Raphael Levy's list which was present in the European metagame for some time (they both ran 4 Ponder, no Pierce).
So I definitely wouldn't say Spell Pierce is "collectively" over. Only time will tell, but 67% of the decks cashing dailies still run 2 Pierce. I personally think 4 Ponder just makes you even more dominant over these fair decks while making your tougher matchups worse. I just tested against reanimator (I know nobody actually plays the deck, but it represents a turn 2 goldfish deck) and I basically needed double counter in my opener to have a chance against most his draws game 1. That practically requires Spell Pierce, and even without it, tapping out for Ponder further increases the probability they go for it, even if you have no disruption at all. It also is frustrating with Counterspell or Clique, making you even more likely to expose yourself, just to resolve what you assumed was a "cheap" cantrip. But maybe just being even better against the fair decks just constitutes smart metagaming?
It kind of reminds me of this new Planar Cleansing trend in Standard UW. You optimize the deck into this theoretically perfect goldfishing machine, but you become a sort of glass cannon with extreme weaknesses. There's no Boros Charm in Legacy, but with a single piece of disruption a combo deck can basically go off on Turn 1 or 2. 2 Pierce puts you at 18% to have double counter, as opposed to 8%, which isn't the biggest thing ever, but seems significant enough to me, especially when you add in the Ponders stripping you of your ability to bluff.
I will reply to the rest tomorrow as I am short on time, just wanted to point out that this is the 2nd, not first high profile finish with my list, and I havn't registred it yet at a big tournament on my own...
Greetings
I feel like the Clique/Venser build is superior to 4 Ponder build because it attacks a large portion of the bad matchups much better than Ponder/Snapcasters do.
Also, Clique/Venser are much better in the mirror than Snapcaster #2 and #3. I like one Snapcaster, but his value shines mainly w/ Red blasts in the mirror which is the cheater build that already runs Clique/Venser.
The advantage of the Ponder build is the added consistency. You will execute the game plan much more consistently because of the dig/shuffle. I imagine it being great vs discard decks like BUG. However Clique and Venser attack Liliana much better.
Edit: Can you overpower Liliana w/ Snapcasters and 4 Ponders to find Entreat faster and force Liliana to -2 the Snapcaster consistently? It seems like Snapcaster loses a lot of value to DRS if the BUG opponent sorcery speeds the activation when you can't Snapcaster in response.
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EDIT: This post sounded a bit negative, so I rearranged things =P
Many Congratulations to the winner =) Good Show! I love the 4 ponders and am playing my current list as such both online and in paper =)
From reading through here, it looks like I should be on the lookout for SFM and Batterskull to see more board play.
Looks like the winning list ran -1 Arid Mesa // +1 Karakas and -1 Counterbalance // +1 Counterspell
I am very much on the fence concerning Karakas, though my current build is a cut+paste of Ein's latest post (though I have it in my online version, due to not having a second mesa). I'm also not sure about cutting down on counterbalances, but I can see why you (probably) did it (SFM package)
They banned Top, so now I play Grixis Delver.
The only relevant MU's where Joe's build is better are Shardless BUG, to some extent Sneakshow (Venser &Clique are nice to have, but don't really shine. Of course it depends on the opponent. If he's very stupid and plays Show&Tell into Emrakul after it's obvious that you're on Miracle, yeah then Venser is good. But if you play against good S&T players, Venser will like Karakas do almost nothing against the flying Yawgmoths Bargain or Sneak Attack) and the Mirror. Against Esperblade, Delver decks, Death and Taxes and any other creature based deck Einherjer's build or a 4 Stp/Snappy/Ponder build is better.
In addition to that I think it's more likely to play against more Delver decks than Shardless BUG, Sneakshow and the mirror combined. If you also consider that these not so good MU's can be fixed with some game breaking SB cards like Blood Moon, Humility and other huge bombs, i think it's obvious that a Snap/Ponder/4 Stp build is better in the current metagame.
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I can play legacy whenever I want. Cardboard has no value. Data has no value. My time and enjoyment has high value to me. More legacy = more fun. Buy in.
I have never not run 4 ponders. They are incredible. I suggest everyone try it.
Is there any way to see a recording of this stream? I wanted to watch but couldn't be online yesterday evening.
Thanks!
You can always go to his twitch channel and look at the tab of 'past broadcasts'.
But trust me, you didn't miss much...
Sadly though I have to agree. My unfamiliarity with the program didn't help with the start, but it ended up not mattering as I disconnected from MODO after about 10-15 minutes. I didn't manage to come back so I was dropped. Sorry for the low quality that the stream has represented, it wasn't the way I planned it to, that's for sure!
Greetings
Mach dir nichts d'raus! When is the next stream going to be? also are you going to upload recordings?
Thanks for the kind words but I am a little pissed. I bought a Webcam today, though I am short on time in the days to come - I plan on streaming at the beginning of next week. I don't think I can upload my recordings, as I'd prefer to play music at my stream for myself + the viewers, which disables me from re-uploading the content, as Twitch will probably mute the whole stream due to copyrights. I am sorry.
Greetings
Don't be too hard on yourself. It takes time and practice to get used to streaming (both commentating, looking at the chat and answering questions while playing at the same time). Not to mention the constant struggle that is playing MODO.
Even the mighty Joe Lossett didn't exactly bring his 'A' game the first times he streamed if my memory serves me correctly.
All in all it was a great advertisement as to why people should stick to paper magic and ignore its dimwitted digital brother.
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