Looking for some advice on the correct line of play here.
Let me preface by saying that I'm inexperienced with the deck, and frankly awful at playing it. However I still really like it and want to put in the time to learn it.
Playing against U/R delver stock list.
I have 3 Tundra and 2 Island in play. No other permanents.
Hand is Entreat, STP, Pyroblast, Flooded Strand
Life totals both at 17
Opponent casts Young Pyromancer
I let it resolve, then cast STP. Opponent responds with bolt to my face to make a token.
On my turn I blind flip Terminus. With no way to get it back on top of my library, I reveal and cast for W to wipe the elemental token.
I feel like I find myself in this spot a lot, trading one for ones only to then draw a sweeper or a better specific answer (e.g. Drawing REB after STPing a Delver).
Is the correct line to wait as long as possible to get rid of creatures so as to maximize the chances of drawing your best answer? Or am I just being too results oriented considering my next turn draws.
Thanks!!!
You should be greedier with your removal spells (this also applies to playing a control deck in other formats as well).Originally Posted by pnutbutr
Given you're still at 17, you still have quite some time before you actually need to answer the YP.
EBWOP:
if he casts a cantrip after casting the pyromancer, it is more correct to then STP his guy (since you're not guaranteed a terminus anytime soon).
given that he passed the turn, it was fine to just let the pyromancer sit there
Thanks guys, you're confirming my suspicion as to what I should have done. I suppose that the patience comes with more practice.
Follow up question, assuming I've already swordsed the YP... After blind flipping the Terminus, do you cast it to get rid of the elemental token or hang on to it to potentially hard cast as a sorcery if he goes off?
While first reading your other post, I cringed a little when I read you used the terminus to kill 1 elemental when at 17 life. Killing the pyromancer immediately with stp was absolutely right. If he just plays pyro and passes, it might not be a bad idea to wait till your turn to STP in that situation. If he casts a ponder, probe, etc, I would immediately STP though. Pyromancer can run away with games very quickly and definitely needs to be killed on site if you dont have guaranteed sweepers set up.
However, with 17 life I would have just drawn the terminus and used it later. Already at 6 lands, hard casting it is reasonable and so is drawing a brainstorm effect. Another play that I don't see people do often enough, is in that situation if my opponent was out/low on cards in hand, I suspected he had no daze blowouts, and I have nothing better to do with my mana, I would highly consider casting the entreat for x=1. They cannot easily answer a 4/4 with flying and even if it doesn't win the game, fighting through it will cost them a lot of resources.
I can see waiting on the StP, but if you don't you almost certainly don't Terminus a 14 turn clock. Leave the Terminus in your hand, put Strand onto the table. You can now hardcast Terminus if you REALLY need to, or hell make an Angel and play around Daze. Everything in your deck is a good draw at this point, except for a few pieces of Countermagic. Keeping your hand stacked with answers and a win condition here means a Brainstorm or Jace later on will absolutely win you the game on the spot.
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I disagree with this assessment. Without a doubt Jarvis has many decent finishes, but how much experience do you have with Miracles? The key here is really the fact that the Miracle players has No SDT, No CB, and No Brainstorm/Ponder after all these turns. That's not how you would prefer to start the match. YP's advantage is cumulative over turns, asking the Miracle player to answer, similar to Dark Confidant in a way. I would definitely get rid of YP asap simply because I don't have SDT anywhere.
Thank you very much, Sir!
If I could, I would do that. But I played 10 tournaments during this journey, one of them being my Top8 at Prague Eternal Vintage, so there is no way that I can relieably tell you what I faced. But as soon as I wake up tomorrow I will start working on the big report, but here are some key points how I did at the bigger tournaments:
Prague Eternal Trial: 19th of 78. Loss against UR Delver and 75 card mirror.
Prague Eternal Main Event: 19th of 144. Loss against UR Delver and Sneak Attack (on coverage).
GP New Jersey: 4th of 4003: Loss against UR Delver and Infect (Top4). (I should be on camera in R13, Quarters and Semis, was on back-up a lot, not sure how much of it made it to the live stream)
SCG Richmond: 10th of 225: Loss against UR Delver and UWR Midrange (Was on back-up coverage a lot, don't think I made it to live)
A few notes: UR Delver is no bad MU, I beat this deck at every of these tournaments at least once. It's just what I see as the statistical loss vs Delver that has to happen after a while(because all of them are different variations of good MUs - with UR being on the tougher end of the scale). And my friend Tomas Vlcek also finished quite similar to me in all of these tournaments. List is outstandingly awesome, but more on this in my real report.
You are in no position to question Jarvis' judgment here(and on literally any other subject). And by the way, he is right.
As I am back on my PC I'm able to answer questions again, so if you have them, let me know or wait for the article(s).
Greetings
Screw Delver
Congrats on your good placings while in America Phillip, I was sitting next to Tomas at the player meeting and he convinced me to drop Blood Moon from my SB before we had to turn in lists lol.
I think the average player is going to Swords EOT (not to say that that's right). Why do you feel that waiting is correct? With only an Entreat and Pyroblast in hand, he's drawing blind with no immediate gameplan besides maybe casting Entreat for 1 with Red Blast up. A single angel token doesn't race a Pyromancer and each draw step you give your opponent with Pyromancer on board has a 70% chance of making the Swords in your hand even worse.
Did you simply mean he should draw his card for his turn to see what it was before Swordsing? If he wasn't going for the hardcast Entreat then this sounds correct, but that feels like a case of 20/20 hindsight really. Or are you willing to tank 10 or so damage with faith that your deck will deliver? I feel this is a tactic that really differentiates control players and it's always interesting to hear people's assessments on when and why one should go for "the greed". In this case, I'm with the other poster in that no Top or Jace makes me feel pretty humble.
Just drawing for turn seems like a better plan. You can cast every card in your deck that you may want to. If you don't StP and then flip the Terminus, I'd be tempted to go for it there. You clean the board no matter how many tokens they want to try and make. You expect to draw a blank, and if you do your StP is just as good here as it was a couple of phases ago. If you draw live you have other options. You can still StP -> Jace through a Daze if you feel so inclined. (Depending on how much you expect them to have a Pierce.)
UW Control is all about getting draw steps. You keep hitting your draw steps until they die. This next one is free, as the Pyroman doesn't have Haste, so take it before you make any actions. If you draw anything that makes you feel vulnerable (Land etc.) then you go ahead and kill the guy, but wait to see what your deck delivers first.
The conspiracy goes deeper than you might think.Can I pay you for not posting in this thread?
if you draw blank(s), your StP isn't just as good. If you StP on your own turn after the blank draw like a land, he would still Bolt -> token, and that token now can attack at opponent's turn. This is hindsight knowing he has a bolt. It's possible he could play multiple instants to generate more tokens. Hence you might want to fire off StP on your opponent's upkeep after drawing the first blank. Let's say you just keep holding onto StP, your opponent will most likely bolt/cantrip on your turn anyway, and try to swing for 3~4 damages when it's his turn again. I understand the patience and making good trade in the general sense, in this scenario I don't see how waiting is better. Of course, do let me know where my reasoning is flawed.
How is your StP worse? The token could attack if you cast it on their turn. You lose nothing except mana, and that is not your bottleneck here. Doing it on your opponent's upkeep is way worse. They now have 3 mana to cast Instants with. :S
Waiting for your draw step is correct here. Always.
The conspiracy goes deeper than you might think.Can I pay you for not posting in this thread?
Just so i understand the positions correctly, what exactly is the debate about? i dont quite understand either of YamiJoey's or twndown's position.
1) Should we STP the Young Pyromancer immediately upon resolution, or wait till EOT?
2) Whether to cast the terminus with only a token on board (and at 14 life)
Board State:
3 Tundra and 2 Island in play. No other permanents.
Hand is Entreat, STP, Pyroblast, Flooded Strand
Thoughts:
1) i cant see how STPing the Young Pyromancer immediately is wrong. Keeping the STP till EOT just lets him cast sorceries and get tokens. YP is the single biggest threat that UR has against us.
2) Terminus is quite wasteful on a 14 turn clock. Given the current board state, almost any card you draw from now on, other than terminus, is going to be useful
- Lands allows your to Entreat with Daze/Pyroblast backup
- Top, Ponder, Brainstorm are quite the nuts(20-25% chance of drawing into them)
- CB will be awesome given that you still have 14 life
- Resolving Jace and BS is almost as good as gg.
- Snaps with STP is graveyard is also awesome
I don't think we're debating. YamiJoey's correct, StP immediately is wrong. If I had written otherwise, then it's my mistake. Sorry for the confusion.
Now, say on our draw step is a blank (instead of a natural Terminus), like a land, then I feel there's a strong argument in StP that YP on that opponent's upkeep. That's all.
After pyro resolves the opponent has priorety. If he wants to cast a sorcery he can. STP cannot stop that. If he cast anything I would STP in response so he can't chain spells for value. If he just casts pyro and passes, casting swords is wrong. If we drew a SFM or CB or something, cast STP to bait out counters/cantrips and then resolve the betters spell. Otherwise the best time to cast the stp is in his draw phase if we are not worried about countermagic, or during our mainphase if we are. If he's going to cast instants like bolt or brainstorm for value, STP does nothing to break that up. In this situation, since we likely don't care if he taps out on his turn, casting the STP at the end of his turn does not really get accomplish anything.
Wait. i can't see how holding the STP till your next upkeep is the right play here.
1) you risk him casting sorcery spells to generate tokens. Once YP becomes active, and generates 2 tokens, we will be in a very bad shape, especially since we have no card selection and no terminus ready.
2) What is the next best alternative for us if we dont STP immediately, or at the very least, EOT? the case would be a natural terminus, but that's like a 4 out of 45 outer. (<10%). Brainstorm will be decent, but it doesn't definitely give us an out to an active YP still.
3) Assuming we draw a Jace and we STP after the draw step. We wont be able to cast it with Daze + Pyroblast backup should we want to land it that turn.
If lets say the YP was a Delver or Swiftspear instead. Then yes. i would agree that there is no urgency in STP, and we can wait out a few draws. But for YP, i would STP the first opportunity i am confident in resolving it.
PS: Depending on the opponent's hand, i can also see the merits of holding STP till your next turn so that you can STP with a pyroblast backup.
No you wait till the opponents upkeep. If he has an instant he wants to cast, he will do it at your EoT, to which you can respond to with STP to play around countermagic. Otherwise, you do it on his upkeep before he draws into more instants possibly. STP "immediately" really means at the end of his turn or after he casts a sorcery. You do not get priority at a point before the opponent could cast a sorcery if he wanted to, so there's no real reason to cast the STP on his turn if he just passes.
Again, lets look at next best alternatives.
1) YP is something you definitely need to deal with urgently. You choice will then be limited to:
- His current turn (first priority you get, his EOT)
- Your turn
- Before his next draw step
Assuming now that he has no sorceries, or he would have already cast them, and we can't do much about instants anyway, why deal with it later when you can deal with it now, and have additional mana in your next turn if you do draw a Jace or Ponder?
The only real reason i can see waiting to your turn (or after) is if you are worried about a FOW, and want to land the flooded strands so you can STP with pyroblast backup.
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