Re: New listOriginally Posted by Bryant Cook
How strongly do you feel about having 4 Duress over 4 Therapy, I've had awkward games lately where Duress has showed 2 FoW or other such issues. I think, even without MD goblins, it can be really important to have Cabal Therapy as a way to deal with multiples of a counter, or cards like SCM/Meddling Mage, especially with no Thoughtseize SB.
With Pyroclasm in board, have you considered increasing the number of Gemstone Mines in the deck? The only way to cast both Decay and Pyroclasm off 2 lands is with a black source and a Gemstone Mine. Given that DnT and Burn are the matchups where you'd often bring both, the former constricting your mana and the latter damaging you for playing nonbasics, it could be important to have that flexibility.
Also, what are your thoughts on Pyroblast? Given that Meddling Mage is increasingly popular, and Ascendancy/Counterbalance/SnT are all worth trying to counter, I feel like it's worth trying again.
trygon predator reminds me of good old vintage but it could also do a decent job in legacy.
3 mana seems a little bit expensive for a deck like Tes with only 12-13 lands even if we have stuff like chrome mox or rituals to power out trygon predator on turn 2.
Overall it has been a solid utility creature in the past so i would love to see it in the current legacyformat again. #oldschoolwins
Tell me how your testing goes.
cutting massacre in a field full of jeskai delver doesn't appeal to me and to be honest i don't think we need that extra slot in the sideboard.massace + chain of vapours should be enough to deal with problematic permanents.
That's why I considered it in the Sol Land build rather than the one with Moxen and CR. Mana for Decay or Trygon is equally awkward.
IF Predator does it's job also in a real field test, I'm not even sure if we NEED stuff like CoV anymore, as Trygon is a (pricey) out for even several pieces of hate where Decay and CoV can only trade even at best (Revoker+Canonist or Chalice + 3Sphere ... you get the idea). Between Decay and Trygon, I dunno if we need more against permanents. 2/2, 3/2 split? Dunno
I've had Pyroclasm in the board during the BoM 8 Mainevent instead of the Grapeshot. Would have prefered Massacre even back then with all the UW(x) Stoneblades. 1-vs.3-mana makes quite some difference against D&T even if I sure see the point of boarding the Clams compared to Massacre sitting in the board.
Flight to Munich is scheduled at Friday afternoon, so I hope I'm not too drained for the Saturday tournament there, before I head to Ingolstadt visiting my Parents.
@Max
I doubt that you want to bring in Clams + Decay against D&T. W/o Gemstone you need 3 IMS to cast both if drawn
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the only creatures we care about are white so why not playing the cheapest and most efficient removal (massacre). I like it alot in a burning wish based storm deck because in ANT a massacre or two weakens ad nauseam whereas Tes has not problem at all with that.
Have a great time in bavaria my friend and greetings to Julian and Manipulato, they should be in Munich at the tournament i guess.
PS:you have a private message in your box ;)
Played the list w/ 2x Cabal Ritual, 2x Chrome Mox, 1x Bayou, 0x Empty maindeck in a 44-man tourney this weekend for a top 16 finish. Sideboard was 2x Xantid Swarm, 2x Needle, 3x Abrupt Decay, everything else the usual.
R1: Elves -- draw. We shuffled way too much with mulligans between both of us, could have killed him in Game 3 with one more turn. Game 2 he gets a quick hardcast Craterhoof to take me to 1 life, I couldn't go for Past in Flames or Natural Spellchain victory.
R2: Tezzeret Stax -- win 2-1. Not too much going on, he doesn't seem too experienced with storm.
R3: Tezzeret Stax -- lose 1-2. I take game 1 by stripping him of all his counter then going for T1 14 goblins. It's the only time I go for goblins the whole tourney and it gets there. Game 2 he gets a god hand, T1 chalice for 0 and 1. Even then I had some outs by casting stuff into chalice to fuel graveyard for eventual cabal ritual shenanigans. Unfortunately for me, he sets up Lodestone golem and trinisphere the turn I can go off and I'm royally screwed. Game 3 he starts with Leyline of the Void. I'm not too worried about it, except that I get a bad Ad Nauseam from 18 and have to abrupt decay his Baleful Strix while I'm at 1 life and pass the turn. I make a punt by not using an extra internal tutor to shuffle my library when I needed to find an LED to storm for 9 (he's at 18) and I find 2 Gixaxian Probes on top. I still almost win because I discard down to 7 for 2 turns and play draw-go while he has no pressure. But I realize my mistake when I'm unable to storm 9, only 8, and I lose. Damn you Leyline!
R4: Elves -- win 2-0. Not much to say, the deck does its thing.
R5: Sneak Show -- win 2-1. I lose game 1 when he has a quick S&T. I take game 1 with Ad Nauseam. Game 3 I get the Swarm down, he can't deal with it but I have no pressure. A turn later, my 2 Probes grant me a lucky Ad Nauseam topdeck the turn before he kills me and I kill him instead.
R6: Miracles -- win 2-0. Game 1 he doesn't set up counterbalance and I kill him. Game 2 I can't find a tutor to save my life, but I keep a hand with Needle AND swarm and it proves to be very good. I start to draw all 3 of my Abrupt Decays while he can't find counterbalance and needle sticks on his top. About 10 turns later (no exaggeration), he Cliques me on my draw step and misplays - sees my hand of Duress, 3 Decays, LED (I didn't play it thinking he might have kept in Council's Judgment), rite of flame and elects to take a Decay! I then draw a replacement card - which is infernal tutor. I duress him, see 2 Counterbalance, Force and a Jace. Take Force and kill him. I tell him afterwards he should have taken the LED, Duress or nothing at all. those would have been better options. But he makes top 16 and goes on to finish 2nd, so what do I know? :)
Top 16 playoff -- we play single elimination rounds w/ full information about opponent's decklist.
R1: Omnitell -- lose 0-2. A combination of bad draws and misplay. Game 1 he keeps a no lander with S&T, 2x Probe, Dig Through Time and some other stuff. I turn 1 Duress him on the play and take Show & Tell. But I can't find a tutor despite having 3 brainstorm/ponder effects with fetches. He eventually gets 2 force of wills, my single cabal therapy can't deal with both as he counters one, and so he holds me off for the win. A little frustrating but close. Game 2 I mull to 5 because I don't have pressure OR discard in my opening 7 or 6 cards. I open with Duress to take show & tell. I get a second discard effect while I know his hand is Omniscence, Cunning Wish, DTT, Brainstorm, lands while he taps out for Ponder. I make the mistake of taking his brainstorm, thinking I don't want him to find the second show & tell. What I didn't see was that he subsequently Cunning Wishes for Noxious Revival and takes back the Show & Tell to win! I was too focused on stopping Show & Tell that I didn't see that the right line was to take Omni or the Cunning Wish to force him to keep digging. It probably didn't matter as I was too far behind, but still bad plays.
So overall I was very happy to play storm, despite a somewhat disappointing finish. The 0x Empty maindeck felt right because I never felt compelled to go for Goblins, and the only annoying thing was Abrupt Decays being 2 CC while flipping over cards (a necessary evil, though). I felt fine vs. Force of Will decks, and would be nice to win more than 1/6 die rolls, but hey that's life. I had been playing other decks this year, so it's good to go back to storm in a big event in a meta that I feel is especially soft to it.
And to all my opponents who said I should have played ANT instead of TES, I will say to them, "No thanks"We're talking about a meta right now that has no wastelands, contains plenty of fast combo (Elves can kill on turn 3), and has little hard counters and plenty of Pyroblasts. I prefer to win or lose quickly, thank you very much.
A book about the dark side of Legacy: "Magic: The Addiction" // Conversations with Magic players: "Humans of Magic"
This will be short because I'm posting from my phone. The advantages of Pyroclasm over Massacre is that you can side them both in against UWr and Elves, keeping one in the side for the D&T matchup. Wish is shut off against UWR, meaning that Massacre isn't actually an option and it's painful off Ad Nauseam to side in. If they don't have Meddling Mage and you're using Massacre you're likely not using your wishes properly.
Not to mention, D&T is nowhere to be found. I'd rather not run narrow sideboard options when I could have more versatile ones.
I prefer 4 duress over 4 therapy because in our most difficult match ups we can beat slower decks with Force but we have issues not knowing with Therapy. On initial turns I see more value stopping an early counterbalance/show and tell/exhume rather than the small percentage of hitting two forces with a forth copy of a card.
The "2 FoW but no Pitch" example is totally misleading. What matter in terms of Therapy vs. Duress is that Therapy can hit Delver/SFM/Thalia/Griselbrand (in case of double-enabler)/Eidolon/Meddling Mage/Canonist/etc. on sight and helps to Ride Goblins to victory.
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True on all accounts, but I'm with Bryant here.
We ride the Goblins rarely with the new Cabal Ritual list, and the thing is: Therapy is only good against all the cards you mention if we actually have a Probe to check what they have. Otherwise Therapy will only take what we fear most, and only if they have it. Are you willing to cantrip into a Probe, running the risk that this takes time, time that they'll use to cast that Canonist/Meddling Mage/Delver (bad example anyway)?
Therapy, as I see it, only has a clear edge against Burn with main deck Eidolon, and against Maverick/Death&Taxes. Bryant mentioned not encountering the latter two very often, and neither do I, so I feel the 4x Duress, 3x Therapy in a list with no Empty the Warrens main makes perfect sense right now.
The benefit of a T1/2 Discard spell for the reason of disruption rather than your protection only applies to the combo mirror or Lock-decks and in all other instances you want to cast your discard close to your combo turn anyways to protect it, which means you have plenty of options and time to peek into your opponents hand in the meanwhile (see: SB discard) to hit the right card without the call-what-you-fear concept against control.
We have 6-mana playlines for EtW via Wish and via IT for a total of 8 mana and just because we reduced the quantity of T1 Goblin bursts does not mean we should weaken the trait (in general and outside of T1 like against control) by removing the Mindtwist-sideeffect of EtW to ride the Goblins. This is pretty much an unneccessary step leaving you with 4 Duress to replace in hatebear matchups for games 2/3, not to speak about game 1s being a blank.
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I just mentioned the hatebear matchups don't come up often anymore.
But other than that I have presented my case.
Duress is more reliable.
Therapy has the higher potential power.
In matches where you need that raw power, and in matches where you want to go for Empty, Therapy is the better card. In all other matchups the reliability of Duress will help in the long run. In the current meta, and in the list with no main board Empty, I choose the 4th Duress over the 4th Therapy. But by all means feel free to choose the other way around.
I'm just interrested as in the ANT thread there is the tendency to run the split in favor of Therapies lately despite them not having the quick EtW (or EtW at all) as a plan.I just mentioned the hatebear matchups don't come up often anymore.
But other than that I have presented my case.
Duress is more reliable.
Therapy has the higher potential power.
In matches where you need that raw power, and in matches where you want to go for Empty, Therapy is the better card. In all other matchups the reliability of Duress will help in the long run. In the current meta, and in the list with no main board Empty, I choose the 4th Duress over the 4th Therapy. But by all means feel free to choose the other way around.
I'm still waiting for the metagame reaction on Mavericks latest success and until then I'm fine with Therapy as a tool to delay a clock in case of need :)
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I fail to see what I said as misleading. Show me evidence that on a fourth copy of a card being more effective against doubles of another card being better than a consistent card that always hits on initial turns in our worst match-ups.
We rarely use Empty nowadays, so the riding the goblins plan is ridiculous.
I think there's too much emphasis being given to secondary benefits of Cabal Therapy in this discussion. The synergy with Empty the Warrens and the ability to hit multiples is just a bonus and not the main argument against Duress. In my opinion, the main question we should be asking is if it's more important to be able to hit creatures (Vendilion Clique, Meddling Mage, Thalia etc) than to be more consistent in scenarios were we:
+ Don't know what they have due to Gitaxian Probe or other information gathered.
+ Fail to guess the card they have.
+ The failure results in them keeping a relevant card that we also don't want them to have (since we obviously named something we feared in this case). If the revealed card isn't relevant (for example, we confirm they don't have the named Force of Will, but they have a Daze which we can combo through regardless) then missing had no negative impact.
Frankly, that's quite a few hurdles that Cabal Therapy has to trip over before Duress is better.
Am I arguing for Cabal Therapy? No. I'm saying that we need to focus on the most relevant factors when deciding between these cards.
Honestly, while that is a lot of criteria Cabal Therapy has to fail, I think it does occur fairly often when playing against decks like Miracles - their hands often contain some sort of duo/trio of cards that we often can't afford to miss on (e.g. Counterspell + Counterbalance. Flusterstorm + Spell Pierce). Thus, I'm erring towards Duress at the moment.
I've been thinking, it may be possible to do 1 Pyroclasm/1 Massacre but I'm still on the fence. You could side in Massacre versus UWr Stoneblade along with Pyroclasm and it would be no different from having an Empty in our deck. The downside to this is now we can't side in Massacre versus Elves.
got paired with two tezz in a row, really crazy...there are always some random players here choosing this kind of decks,tezz,mud...
beating miracle is good, but there are few skilled miracle players...we all know when to cast clique correctly against storm....
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Currently play: Sneaky Show/ Lands
I am currently using the 1/1 split and really like it. Couldn't say if 2 Pyroclasm is better since I've done no testing with it. I am surprised that I don't miss Pithing Needle that much.
I was talking to Lemnear on Facebook and we concluded that Void Snare is basically just a safety net and have replaced that. I've made it a second Pyroclasm, still with a Massacre in there.
Void Snare feels like the 16th SB card. I think I've wished for it once. 3 wipes seems aggressive, but in this meta with Young P and Elves it might just be right.
Is there a significant reason to be running Carpet of Flowers? I remember before reading that it hadn't tested particularly well. The reason I ask is that, if you just want more mana sources for control games, why not just sb lands? lands can't get pierced/dazed/torn/etc and if you're going long you have the time to hit land drops. the edge we gain doing that is that we can sb bayou+trop or double bayou over carpets and then open up a slot for something, even if it's just a game-1-optimal land like Underground Sea or Gemstone Mine.
I haven't said recently that it didn't test well. I cut it when we added Cabal Ritual back in, but with Needle being lack luster with Show and Tell players now opting for Omni over the Sneak version Needle has lost some of it's luster which is why I swapped back. They could be Pyroblasts, but that's likely overkill on the Miracles/Show & Tell hate. I prefer Carpet because it's much higher impact than additional lands and doesn't create issues with becoming hellbent.
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