If I was going to run fetches, I would want to run a Stoneforge Package too. At that point you look at adding in Brainstorm... you start looking more like Patriot with a better beatdown plan and a worse control one. I guess thats not totally bad but I get the feeling there are better choices.
It is better to ask and look stupid then keep your mouth shut and remain so.
Originally Posted by Spam
I hope your afterlife is filled with eternal torment.
Fuck. Which one of my quotes do I drop for this?
Hi all,
I have a sideboard question, I wondered if any one would be willing to share its experience.
How do you board against Stoneblade? Against Shardless BUG? Thanks!
Hey guys played in a tourney today thought I would put up a simple and quick report. Made top 4 and split.
29 Creatures
4 Cursecatcher
4 Cosi’s Trickster
4 Silvergill Adept
4 Lord of Atlantis
4 Master of the Pearl Trident
3 Phantasmal Image
1 Sygg, River Cutthroat
4 True-Name Nemesis
1 Thassa, God of the Sea
9 Spells
4 Force of Will
4 Chalice of the Void
1 Umezawa’s jitte
22 lands
13 Island
4 Cavern of Souls
4 Mutavault
1 Mishra’s Factory
SB
2 Submerge
1 Thorn of Amethyst
1 Null Rod
2 Echoing Truth
2 Tormod’s Crypt
1 Grafdigger’s Cage
2 Negate
2 Mindbreak Trap
2 Dismember
Round 1: GWr Enchantress
Not much to say here, got some hot starts but Solitary Confinement and Doomwake Giant shut me down. Only loss of the day.
Round 2: Scooze Reanimator
G1: I lead off with a Cursecatcher and my opponent Brainstorms. I drop a Chalice of the Void on 1, then 2, then clean up with True-Name Nemesis
G2: He kills me turn 1 with a Dark Ritual, Entomb, Shallow Grave Griselbrand. He then draws 7 cards , Lotus Petal, Dark Ritual, Dark Ritual, Buried Alive, Exhume, Necrotic Ooze.
G3: I play a Grafdigger's Cage, then Cursecatcher, Chalice of the Void and had some counters making it hard for him to play.
Round 3: Death and Taxes
G1: I get a turn 1 Cosi’s Trickster (not great in this matchup), followed by a Chalice of the Void on 1. He leads with a Phyrexian Revoker and Thalia, Guardian of Thraben. He Flickerwisps my Chalice of the Void but I resolve a True-name Nemesis with an Umezawa's Jitte.
G2: My opponent leads off with a Stone-forge Mystic retrieving Sword of Fire and Ice. I play a Null Rod then True-Name Nemesis, Phantasmal Image, Phantasmal Image.
Round 4: Affinity
G1: My opponent plays a large amount of spells on the first turn as they usually do and is left with an active Etched Champion on the table. I cast Phantasmal Image copying the Etched Champion to have a blocker. I finally get a True-Name Nemesis out and end the game.
G2: My opponent explodes artifacts out the first turn with 3 Cranial Plating. Super dead.
G3: We play some tiny guys at the beginning. He resolves an Etched Champion, but I Force of Will his Cranial Plating. We exchange an even pace back and forth with Etched Champion and True-Name Nemesis. I Echoing Truth his Signal pest and Force of Will it on the Way down to get ahead in the race and win with the help of a couple lords.
Round 5: My best buddy and I are paired. We intentionally draw into top 8.
Top8: Storm
G1: My opponent goes for the kill and I Force of Will his Infernal Tutor after cracking several Lion’s Eye Diamonds.
G2: I get a Grafdigger’s Cage and a Null Rod into play. He is stuck on 2 lands, so I Negate his Ponder. I stop a couple of Dark Rituals and that ends the game.
http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/53892979
Here's a video of the last round. Not too exciting, mostly me just playing Silvergill Adept and Force of Will, with some tanking.
Did Tricksters and Thassa did anything?
Unfortunately I did not draw Thassa, God of the Sea once during the tournament. I played her in my Aether Vial builds for a while and she was a house against Death and Taxes. I feel like if I don't have Tidal Warrior in my deck I want at least one of her for the unblockable damage. Cosi's Trickster was a 5/5 in my enchantress matchup which was just shy of getting through Doomwake Giant. She was in there for all the Delver matchups with tons of fetches. I played fetchless decks pretty much all day, which was really uncommon in my meta. The card I was really impressed with for the day was Null Rod.
Here is small report from local tournament (13 people).
12 Island
2 Cavern of Souls
4 Mutavault
3 Mishra’s Factory
4 Aether Vial
4 Cursecatcher
4 Silvergill Adept
4 Lord of Atlantis
4 Master of the Pearl Trident
4 True-Name Nemesis
4 Phantasmal Image
2 Merrow Reejerey
2 Vendillion Clique
4 Force of Will
3 Daze
SB: 4 Chalice of the Void
SB: 2 Dismember
SB: 1 Misdirection
SB: 1 Venser, Shaper Servant
SB: 2 Flusterstorm
SB: 3 Cursed Toten
SB: 2 Grafdigger's Cage
Round 1 vs Merfoks (no vial / CotV in MD)
This matchup from my experience in most of cases ends with the die roll. The winner takes game 1 / Loses game 2 and wins game 3. I lost the die roll.
G1: Perfectly fine with scenario.
G2: (Side out: 2x LoA / Side in: 2x Dismember) As before.
G3: Opponent muligans to 5 cards and from the beginning of the game he is in defensive position so I win.
2-1 / 3 pts (2-1)
Round 2 vs Omnitel
I lost the die roll.
G1: He played 4th turn S&T I force. He forces. Omniscience in play. Enter the Infinite. I scoop.
G2: (Side out: 2x Reejerey, 4x TNN, 1x LoA / Side in: 4x CotV, 2x Flusterstorm, 1x Venser)He cast S&T I force. He forces back. I force. He forces back ... He puts Omniscience in play, I put Venser. His last card was Cunning Wish. He wishes for Trickbind to stop Venser's ability. It resolves. Next turn I play Phantasmal Image copying Venser. End of game.
G3: He played turn 4 S&T (with Island, Tomb, Tomb in play) I force. He forces back. I flusterstorms. Next turn vial hit 3 counters I play Vclique in his drawstep seeing Ponder, Enter the Infinite, Quicken, Omniscience. I target ponder (I should leave his hand as it is). He gets brainstorm (if he hit S&T and island in top 3 he wins) and scoops looking at extra 3 cards)
2-1 / 6 pts (4-2)
Round 3 vs Merfolks (similiar build. Guy is playing merfolks for ages)
I lost the die roll.
G1: He starts I loose. He killed me in his turn 4 (kill me or die) by hitting me for 15 dmg (and I had perfectly 15 life). Next turn I would kill him.
G2: (Side out: 2x LoA / Side in: 2x Dismember) As before. I played first and I won.
G3: Scenario from G1.
1-2 / 6 pts (5-4)
Round 4 vs RW Burn (with boros charm and Grim Lavamancer)
G1:
G2: (Side out: 4x Aether Vial, 2x Reejery, 1x Phantasmal Image / Side in: 4x CotV, 2x Flusterstorm, 1x Misdirection). No 1st turn play. He played Lavamancer. I force. I play silvergill he plays Swiftspear and attacks with burn spell. I play turn 3 CotV for x=1. He casts Eidolon. We are atacking back and forth. He is at 3 I'm at 6 with 1x Cursecatcher, 1x Silvergill, 1x Phantasmal image (beeing cursecatcher) and he with Swiftspear in play. I cast Image. Copying Swiftspear attacking for 3.
G3: I kept a risky chand with CotV and 2x Mishra and I didn't hit island for 5 turns). He played 1st turn Lavamancer. I force. He plays Monstery Swiftspear and atacks for 2 (casting chain lightning). I played 2nd Mishra which kept swiftspear at the bay for a while. We draw go for some turns. I finaly drew islands but Red Eidolon hit the board. However I managed to stay at 10 life after casting Master of Pearl Trident and kill him in 3 turns with Silvergill and Cursecatcher.
2-1 / 9 pts (7-5)
I ended 2nd (first was my opp from round 3). We were rare drafting a box of KTK as a prize. From 36 boosters only 2 valuable cards were Sarkhan and Sorin ... n/c
As for changes definitely Misdirection -> Echoing Truth. I want to play 1 Sygg, River Cutthroat in mainboard but I don't what to take out.
Image could go for it. Phantasmal is cool and all but four is too many (it needs help to become a man... or fish... or...).
Quick question. Assuming I cannot have the cliques (Budget won't permit right now) what could those 2 spots be filled with? Thanks!
I disagree. It's like saying Silvergill Adept is bad because you need another fish in hand. I had more problems with casting Adept than Image. Sure, sometimes you have no board, but even then you often can have your own Goyf or Confidant, which is better than any merfolk :)
Even against almost creature-less decks like Miracles it is very good - copying Mutavault in response to Terminus/StP is very powerful often. And everyone knows how crazy powerful can be having extra Nemesis or Cursecatcher in some games. Or Griselbrand. Or Emrakul ;)
I'd play less than full playset only if playing 2 Jitte in main or if you have many Maverics in meta.
To zarvlad:
I consider them disruption slots, 4 jobs I like to have covered (response to Mystic activation, to Show and Tell on the stack, to Miracle trigger and cycling dead cards).
To tell you the truth I have no idea how to replace them (probably why they are so expensive) because they are rather useful.
Maybe adding another Catcher and Image/Pierce since Treasure Cruise is coming to a legacy deck near you. I hope that someone have better answer.
I'll start with that and eventually get those cliques. Thanks! :)
I've cut Reejery and replaced him with 4 phantasmal images and I haven't missed him at all, I strongly recommend others make the change. The only thing holding me back from 4 PI in modern is twin, but since twin isn't a thing in legacy all other removal would deal with PI anyway.
PI is brilliant. He is whatever I need him to be. He can be a lord, a silvergill, a true-name, or he can even be an emrakul (show and tell emrakul into play? Let me just play this phantasmal image in my turn, then when you attack I'll sac 6 other permanents, take 15 life and then win next turn). If you get a vial he is brutal. He can even copy their stoneforge and tutor up our own hate equipment.
He has just won me so many games, I love him to death. He never gets stuck in my hand. If he is drawn after a board wipe I usually don't care, I'll either copy my opponents creature or wait for a creature I want so I get to have two of them: drawing TNN in that situation is like christmas. And combining him with TNN, it makes seemingly unwinnable matchups like goblins actually viable.
I'm also pretty excited about turning my deck into brainy merfolk. I'm 2 fetches away from it as of now. I know it isn't the done thing here but I honest don't know why. It seems really good, preordain has been a great inclusion to my deck so I can only assume brainstorm will be even better.
I don't think that I would cut Rejeerey all together, maybe a 3-3 or 2-4 split with rejeerey-TNN... I do agree that P-Image is insanely good but in regard to your Brainstorm idea. Go right ahead and test it out, let us know when you learn that it is simply not better than whatever your removing". In fact, I can almost guarenty that most of us have tested Brainstorm+fetches and decided that Merfolk does not want Brainstorm as much as it wants other cards. PS, winning more good match-ups is what Brainstorm did for me, but I didn't need help in those match-ups.
Cheers.
...with at least one dissenting opinion. I personally find Brainstorm to be incredible in this deck, as it does a number of things that we need done. The most important for me is that I'd often find myself flooding out or drawing excess Aether Vials or Dazes or Force of Wills late in the game, but having a Brainstorm + Fetchland turns those cards into more guys. It's also useful if you need to hit more Islands, as it's common for me to keep a 1 Island hand but needing to draw to a second one relatively quickly. But for me the biggest thing Brainstorm does is greatly increase the number and frequency of sideboard cards seen. The biggest argument against Brainstorm is that you're just going to be drawing more of the same cards anyway, so why replace those cards with Brainstorm? I find that argument to be completely unconvincing, as the deck is never just 56 creatures and Brainstorms. There are times when you want guys (even specific guys over other guys), times when you want lands, times when you want Force of Will, and times when all of those cards are bad. And the situation is only magnified in games two and three when you specifically sideboard in cards that you want to see, and often, so in postboard games there are definitely cards you'd rather draw above any other cards. Playing Brainstorm lets you play fewer sideboard cards and still see them as consistently as without, or lets you play the same number of sideboard cards and lets you see them more frequently, which gives you much more finesse when it comes to sideboarding. And hitting Brainstorm off of a Standstill activation when you desperately need Force of Will or Spell Pierce or any kind of interaction is just the best. And if you don't want to cast it, like if your deck is performing perfectly, it's much better to pitch to Force of Will than a Lord.
Does Brainstorm do a lot more work in some decks which actually need help with consistency? Sure, but that doesn't mean it's not worth playing in this deck.
Yes I'll definitely be testing brainy 'folk at the first chance I get and reporting back. Shuffling away lands and aether vials seems too good.
I've got 5 blue fetches so far. What are the minimum number of fetches people would recommend to run brainstorm? I was thinking 7, though I've heard 6.
I run 7 now and I'm pretty happy with it, though when I was only playing with 12 blue sources I ran 6 and it was just fine. Six is likely the minimum for Brainstorms.
Hey all, so Minnesota will be the host for the upcoming SCG Open. I'm going to be giving it a shot with Chalice Fish (list to follow) and I wanted to get everyone's take on the deck's position in the current metagame and how to hone in my sideboard accordingly.
I see U/R Delver, Miracles, and elves as the big 3 contenders at the moment. Decks like the other delver variants, deathblade, sneaky show and storm will be represented and have success as well, of course. Legacy is so diverse, its really tough to prepare for everything, so we just do our best, right? With that in mind, here's what I'll be running.
4 Cursecatcher
4 Cosi's Trickster
4 Silvergill Adept
4 Master of the Pearl Trident
4 Lord of Atlantis
3 Phantasmal Image
4 True-Name Nemesis
1 Thassa, God of the Sea
4 Chalice of the Void
4 Force of Will
2 Daze
1 Negate
12 Island
4 Cavern of Souls
4 Mutavault
1 Mishra's Factory
Sideboard
2 Dismember
2 Submerge
2 Umezawa's Jitte
2 Swan Song
2 Relic of Progenitus
1 Grafdigger's Cage
1 Manriki-Gusari
1 Cursed Totem
1 Pithing Needle
1 Echoing Truth
The only thing I'm light on, I feel like, is counterspells. I like having four in the board. I used to have a misdireciton and a negate in there, but moved the Negate to the main and cut the misdirection. In their place I put in the manriki-gusari and Cursed Totem. Some people run flusterstorms since it can work even with chalice on one out. The other option is maybe the other 2 Swan Song.
Anyways, that's where I'm at with it as of now. Any thoughts and comments are appreciated!
I would put 2 Dismembers main from the board instead of 2 random one-drops, sometimes you do not draw the Cavern with Chalice in play.
Hey thanks for the response. So, the dismembers are dead vs. combo AND miracles. With this being the open series, I fully expect to encounter those decks somewhere along the 9 rounds. Last year at this event I opened against Feline Longmore and her High Tide, in fact. I also faced Oops, All spells!, Storm, and Miracles. Do you think the meta will be tilted away from combo enough that this is worth having those dead cards game 1? Where does Dismember really shine? Stoneforge, delver, elves, and DnT, if I put my experience to the task of answering that question. Its a decent chunk of the meta, but at this point I still feel like running them out of the board is best.
I will say this in regards to the other part of your comment - in the dozens and dozens of games I've played with chalices and one drops, less than three times have I been hosed by having a chalice in play, no cavern out, and a one drop in hand. So yeah, you do have a point. I'd maybe cut 1 Trickster for another Daze? I've kind of fallen out of love with Daze lately because I feel like its a bad late game top deck, it can be frustrating to have them and only mutavaults and caverns, and many good players will play around Daze anyways -- whether I have it or not (to a point). All of these factors have led me to comfortably play the two copies. I really do love the Tricksters in the fetch heavy Treasure Cruise meta we find ourselves in. :-)
Is Thassa good? I've only recently added her to my list. I used to run Tidal Warriors, but they were a little slow and janky. I really wanted them to enable island walk (I used to run 2 spreading seas). But now, I'm like, well, if I come against non-elf Green decks without blue, I'm probably just screwed, haha. So anyways, Thassa has the ability to fix draws late game to get the bodies we need to finish the job, or try to dig up counters to stop combo, and then also has that ability to push through damage like my Tidal Warriors/Spreading Seas could. It also has the upside of sometimes being a 5/5 indestructible. All seems good on paper, and I've seen other successful lists run it. I cut my 1 Sygg, River Cutthroat for it, which I may miss.
Looking forward to your input!
Looks like I was on to something. If we consider latest scity top16: http://sales.starcitygames.com//deck...eckshow.php?&t[C1]=3&start_date=10/19/2014&end_date=10/19/2014&start=1&finish=16&event_ID=20&city=Worcester
I managed to be correct on 12 out of 16 decks and most of them use graveyards like there is no tomorrow. Relic and Chalice are awesome.
@Lord of Atlantis
If you say that you were only screwed about three times in dozens and dozens of games, then disregard my opinion. I haven't tested your version so my theory is derived only by hypothetical numbers and experience. If it works, great.
The latest merfolk result in legacy and modern is with a deck that has 1 Thassa. I guess it doesn't hurt to have single copy.
Food for thought, everyone: we are slowly becoming artifact deck (Vial, Chalice, Jitte, Relic...). Could we incorporate Ensoul Artifact and also some Seat of Synod? That could be our second line of attack and a way to use dead Vial/Chalice/whatever. To continue this crazy train: is there a way to accelerate our deck with Chrome Mox (+Misthollow Griffin as free fodder for Force of Will and Chrome mox that can be cast later in the game), Seat of Synod, Mox Opal (and hopefully something else) into all those two drops like our creatures, Chalice on one (also an artifact for Opal), Standstill, Ensouls Artifact...
Too stupid?
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