[Deck] T.E.S. - The EPIC Storm

[Lemnear]

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.

Thinking about it, I get the wacky feeling that with todays Penetration of blue decks, we can even mainboard the Carpets instead of the Cabal Rituals and durdle with the mainphases :)

On the other hand, I can barely remember a situation in which it was better than a Dark Rirtual. Left rarely any lasting impression in the Delver Matchups for me months back, so I'm not fond of them returning to my SB

[wonderPreaux]

On the other hand, I can barely remember a situation in which it was better than a Dark Rirtual. Left rarely any lasting impression in the Delver Matchups for me months back, so I'm not fond of them returning to my SB

This is one of those things that keeps coming up for me, it's not as though people don't know to hold fetches as long as possible or strategically use Daze in order to restrict the effectiveness of cards like Carpet or Massacre. I feel like additional initial mana sources, in general, just aren't going to be "high impact". When I was starting out and we just dropped white, I liked just having the Trop in the board for Decay/Swarm as a backup mana source for tempo. You could take it slower and play lands to get past Daze, and the card justified itself by enabling your splash, so it felt like an all-around solid slot. Mana, on it's own for mana's sake, just feels like an unexciting use of a slot. While Carpet does have decent upside potential, it irks me that the only reason I'd get decent amounts of mana, such that it's better than the relative consistency of a land, is that either the opponent has poor mechanics or they found a good reason to expose lands to tap, often one that makes my Carpet much less important (Jace, Meddling Mage, Counterbalance etc.) I played around with sb carpets/lands in ANT and TES, and it was pretty meh all along, just because blue decks bring in more counters, the game goes longer and you have time to just find your lands and do whatever. Moreover, I don't even think the hellbent issue is as big a deal, since a lot of t1/2 hands involve either LED or goblins and our only path to goblins these days doesn't require hellbent. Lands also reduce the number of hands you have to mull due to having no lands, which is also worth considering, in my opinion.

When I stop being sick and so I can stream w/o coughing and running off for tea all through an event, I think I'll try a board like this:
1 Tendrils
1 EtW
1 PiF
1 Tutor
1 Bayou
3 Decay
3 Swarm
2 Pyroclasm
2 Chain of Vapor/Massacre + Therapy/Massacre+Pyroclasm/Pyroclasm + Therapy

The Bayou in the main would likely be replaced by Gemstone Mine, as 7 fetches for 4 Targets seems awkward, though maybe Underground Sea is better, idk.

[Lemnear]

This is one of those things that keeps coming up for me, it's not as though people don't know to hold fetches as long as possible or strategically use Daze in order to restrict the effectiveness of cards like Carpet or Massacre. I feel like additional initial mana sources, in general, just aren't going to be "high impact". When I was starting out and we just dropped white, I liked just having the Trop in the board for Decay/Swarm as a backup mana source for tempo. You could take it slower and play lands to get past Daze, and the card justified itself by enabling your splash, so it felt like an all-around solid slot. Mana, on it's own for mana's sake, just feels like an unexciting use of a slot. While Carpet does have decent upside potential, it irks me that the only reason I'd get decent amounts of mana, such that it's better than the relative consistency of a land, is that either the opponent has poor mechanics or they found a good reason to expose lands to tap, often one that makes my Carpet much less important (Jace, Meddling Mage, Counterbalance etc.) I played around with sb carpets/lands in ANT and TES, and it was pretty meh all along, just because blue decks bring in more counters, the game goes longer and you have time to just find your lands and do whatever. Moreover, I don't even think the hellbent issue is as big a deal, since a lot of t1/2 hands involve either LED or goblins and our only path to goblins these days doesn't require hellbent. Lands also reduce the number of hands you have to mull due to having no lands, which is also worth considering, in my opinion.

P.S. I'm pondering about the option to include more copies of ToA in the SB for mini-Tendrils against Burn/UR Delver/Miracles/etc. for a Grinding Station like post-board plan. Do you guys think this might be worth exploring?

[Bryant Cook]

This is one of those things that keeps coming up for me, it's not as though people don't know to hold fetches as long as possible or strategically use Daze in order to restrict the effectiveness of cards like Carpet or Massacre. I feel like additional initial mana sources, in general, just aren't going to be "high impact". When I was starting out and we just dropped white, I liked just having the Trop in the board for Decay/Swarm as a backup mana source for tempo. You could take it slower and play lands to get past Daze, and the card justified itself by enabling your splash, so it felt like an all-around solid slot. Mana, on it's own for mana's sake, just feels like an unexciting use of a slot. While Carpet does have decent upside potential, it irks me that the only reason I'd get decent amounts of mana, such that it's better than the relative consistency of a land, is that either the opponent has poor mechanics or they found a good reason to expose lands to tap, often one that makes my Carpet much less important (Jace, Meddling Mage, Counterbalance etc.) I played around with sb carpets/lands in ANT and TES, and it was pretty meh all along, just because blue decks bring in more counters, the game goes longer and you have time to just find your lands and do whatever. Moreover, I don't even think the hellbent issue is as big a deal, since a lot of t1/2 hands involve either LED or goblins and our only path to goblins these days doesn't require hellbent. Lands also reduce the number of hands you have to mull due to having no lands, which is also worth considering, in my opinion.

You're also talking of days when we played twelve lands in the main. We're up to thirteen already, fourteen is just too many in my opinion (I sometimes even flood out with thirteen). I have very little interest in sideboarding a fourteenth land. If I did, it would be something unique that had functionality like a basic Island/Swamp or Tropical for an additional searchable green source.

Carpet doesn't need to be a Dark Ritual every single turn and I feel that's where players lose focus, I'm fine with it being a colored Sol Ring every turn. At worst, it will function as a way to keep them from being active (casting cantrips to find additional threats/counter spells) or will effectively be a land without the downside of ruining Hellbent which is a real thing. I've beaten ANT players on more than one occasion because they drew a land for turn and then were forced to pass the turn - it's very much a real thing. Brainstorm and Lion's Eye Diamond are not always there to fix the situation.

[Lemnear]

Against many Delver is was simply a Rainbow manastone which required me to fetch the Tropical in the face of Daze. If the game dragged out because of the Delver pilots defense, the Carpet lost a lot of relevance not being a land, also because access to Brainstorm and LED increases with every turn played. It's not that dropping lands is a bad thing if you can use them for a Tutor chain. Between this memories of 2013 and the fact that UR Delver is fine with a Basic Island and a Basic Mountain in play, I don't see Carpet shine unless you face Various Blade variants which will need to control 2-3 Islands to deploy threats and hatebears which you can remove with Decay and pay for it with mana provided by Carpet (which would throw up the question of why not running more mana efficient removal then instead. Different topic ;P). In case of Miracles, I agree with Max' Observation that mana isn't the deciding factor if it's tacked to turns played because of Counterbalance, SDT and Clique. I can see the urge to run a second green Source in the board for matchups like D&T, MUD or against Wasteland, now that we reduced our outs for quick combos but have to deal with quite some shit on a reactive base

[Bryant Cook]

I'd like to note that I don't think Carpet is a staple in the sideboard, but I have very little interest in playing additional lands or Pithing Needle (At the moment) in my sideboard. I just believe that Carpet is likely better than the alternatives, the slot could easily be Chain of Vapor (which I feel like we rarely use) or Pyroblast (It may just be too much hate against the same few decks).

[Lemnear]

I'd like to note that I don't think Carpet is a staple in the sideboard, but I have very little interest in playing additional lands or Pithing Needle (At the moment) in my sideboard. I just believe that Carpet is likely better than the alternatives, the slot could easily be Chain of Vapor (which I feel like we rarely use) or Pyroblast (It may just be too much hate against the same few decks).

I could easily see anti-creature stuff here to delay clocks and save is some precious lifepoints while also dealing with hatebears. Could essentially achieve the same as Carpets: influence the race between opposing threats and our development

[wonderPreaux]

P.S. I'm pondering about the option to include more copies of ToA in the SB for mini-Tendrils against Burn/UR Delver/Miracles/etc. for a Grinding Station like post-board plan. Do you guys think this might be worth exploring?

I tried that once, same kinda logic. Ended up being rarely relevant and it could've been a Grapeshot all the times it would've been useful. There's also the low amount of lands we play, which makes "Grinding Station" worse, though, if you wanna board to 14 lands...

You're also talking of days when we played twelve lands in the main. We're up to thirteen already, fourteen is just too many in my opinion (I sometimes even flood out with thirteen). I have very little interest in sideboarding a fourteenth land. If I did, it would be something unique that had functionality like a basic Island/Swamp or Tropical for an additional searchable green source.

I agree with the functionality point, the Tropical Island in the sb that I mentioned was the green source we used, same kind of idea. Your sideboard land could be a basic, you could main a basic or two and have the Bayou in the side, you could have a 2nd Bayou or Trop, or... idk... a Badlands? IDK why you'd do that... there are probably a few ways to configure it depending on your meta, that's what I'm saying.

Carpet doesn't need to be a Dark Ritual every single turn and I feel that's where players lose focus, I'm fine with it being a colored Sol Ring every turn. At worst, it will function as a way to keep them from being active (casting cantrips to find additional threats/counter spells) or will effectively be a land without the downside of ruining Hellbent which is a real thing. I've beaten ANT players on more than one occasion because they drew a land for turn and then were forced to pass the turn - it's very much a real thing. Brainstorm and Lion's Eye Diamond are not always there to fix the situation.

Against many Delver is was simply a Rainbow manastone which required me to fetch the Tropical in the face of Daze. If the game dragged out because of the Delver pilots defense, the Carpet lost a lot of relevance not being a land, also because access to Brainstorm and LED increases with every turn played.

I think this is the crux of the argument for/against Carpet. If you plan on going off on, say, turn 3 and you opened 2 lands + Carpet, you're relatively safe from bricking due to drawing lands. However, if your waiting until turn 6 because you had to find discard spells, do some contortions with Wish etc it becomes debatable how good the Carpet was because you had all the time to hit land drops at a normal pace and you effectively played a land that was capable of being Pierced, Dazed, Torn etc. I think the disconnect here is how "long" is a long game in the situations we're talking about.

It's not that dropping lands is a bad thing if you can use them for a Tutor chain. Between this memories of 2013 and the fact that UR Delver is fine with a Basic Island and a Basic Mountain in play, I don't see Carpet shine unless you face Various Blade variants which will need to control 2-3 Islands to deploy threats and hatebears which you can remove with Decay and pay for it with mana provided by Carpet (which would throw up the question of why not running more mana efficient removal then instead. Different topic ;P). In case of Miracles, I agree with Max' Observation that mana isn't the deciding factor if it's tacked to turns played because of Counterbalance, SDT and Clique. I can see the urge to run a second green Source in the board for matchups like D&T, MUD or against Wasteland, now that we reduced our outs for quick combos but have to deal with quite some shit on a reactive base

I will give a point in favor of Carpet that I love the idea of siding it in matchups where I'd also be playing Decay. Though, again, when the reason it's a Sol Ring or better is that I'm now looking at a Meddling Mage or Counterbalance, idk that I'd be winning real soon.

I'd like to note that I don't think Carpet is a staple in the sideboard, but I have very little interest in playing additional lands or Pithing Needle (At the moment) in my sideboard. I just believe that Carpet is likely better than the alternatives, the slot could easily be Chain of Vapor (which I feel like we rarely use) or Pyroblast (It may just be too much hate against the same few decks).

I could easily see anti-creature stuff here to delay clocks and save is some precious lifepoints while also dealing with hatebears. Could essentially achieve the same as Carpets: influence the race between opposing threats and our development

FWIW, I like the direction of the sb lately, Pyroclasm does seems great for mowing down tokens and Mages, whereas Decay would just deal with a Mage and leave me eating 6 dmg or w/e, that's pretty nice. I also like the idea of slaughtering Elves and random Infect dudes. IDK how good it would be, but we could just have, like, 4 Clasm in board and swap the Duresses for them in Creature matchups, so the opponent can't stick anything. The only thing I wonder about is how people feel about having no sb discard spell, i keep coming up against scenarios where I'd really like it, the obvious stuff like combo mirrors, or getting a discard out ahead of something like Jace or Batterskull.

[Bryant Cook]

If you dislike Carpet it could easily be Cabal Therapy and Void Snare, which isn't awful, but I think I'd get more milage out of the other slots as I rarely find situations in which the sideboard discard spell is more effective than just fetching for Past in Flames.

[Lemnear]

If you dislike Carpet it could easily be Cabal Therapy and Void Snare, which isn't awful, but I think I'd get more milage out of the other slots as I rarely find situations in which the sideboard discard spell is more effective than just fetching for Past in Flames.

Pretty much occurs in every double-Tutor-scenario which sure happens to me more frequently because of the 8 MB Tutors and the habit of exchanging the 4th Tutor for SB hate in games 2 & 3 rather than the other way round. Like mentioned many times before, I prefer discard-on-demand rather than having discard but needing business.

A matter of taste for game 1 Layouts if you ask me.

@Max in regards to Grinding Station:
I apologize because I did not mention that the idea was for the Sol Land list. We often have two approaches for discussion in this thread and I constantly miss to Highlight the specific list I'm talking about even if I made the same mistake a few days back with Trygon.

[Lemnear]

Just because I remember it (and might have forgotten to write here): Finished my testing of Bayou vs. Tropical a while ago. Bayou is the winner

[Bryant Cook]

Played in a small local tonight. Swapped out the Carpets for a void share and a therapy last second after scoping the mets game. Went 4-1-1 on the night losing to mono-red MUD. Never once did I want those sideboard slots for any of the cards mentioned, I played the combo mirror twice in TES and reanimator. I'm going to keep looking for a better solution for those slots.

[disgustipated]

Played in a small local tonight. Swapped out the Carpets for a void share and a therapy last second after scoping the mets game. Went 4-1-1 on the night losing to mono-red MUD. Never once did I want those sideboard slots for any of the cards mentioned, I played the combo mirror twice in TES and reanimator. I'm going to keep looking for a better solution for those slots.

I had Void Snare out of my board and faced MUD today. I'm running 2 Trygon Predators, so I won both games post board quite easily. But Lodestone Golem is unanswerable without CoV or Snare, which I only realized after probing him T1 and luckily had a Therapy in hand.

wonderPreaux: I've wanted Badlands a few times when trying to cast Burning Wish and Massacre in a turn with only Gemstone Mines, Volcanics, Trop or Petals as my other mana sources. I'd have to shell out for the Scalding Tarns to play one, but it probably isn't worth it anyway as it would make 1-land cantrip openers worse (same problem as Bayou).

This is my current board:
2 Trygon Predator
2 Abrupt Decay
2 Xantid Swarm
2 Pyroclasm
2 Pithing Needle
1 Massacre
1 Past in Flames
1 Tendrils of Agony
1 Empty the Warrens
1 Infernal Tutor

The Predators have been good against the stompy/prison decks with lots of different hate pieces. I have yet to try it against Miracles though.
I had the Needles in for Wasteland heavy decks with other targets, as well as Miracles for Top and Jace. I haven't been bringing it in for a few days, so I may change them to Carpets or something.
I have gotten so many 2 and 3 for 1s with the 3 sweepers. Most people seem eager to flood the board against Storm. It's also nice having the Pyroclasms that don't suffer from Sylvan Safekeeper, Daze, Wasteland, etc. to remove their Plains. I've even seen people Vindicate their own Plains. I suppose Canonist is that important. >.<

Realizing that the Predator is actually somewhat viable, it made me wonder, why not just run Pernicious Deed? Yeah, it's slow, but the decks we would want it against don't have a fast clock as their too busy slamming down hate pieces. We could blow it on their end step before we're ready to go off. Just a thought. Probably not a great one. :P

[Bryant Cook]

Yeah, Deed seems great! Can we try Spiritmonger too?

Badlands is 'bad' because we want to be able to cast our initial cantrips, while Bayou serves an entirely different purpose. Bayou is there to cast Xantid turn one while providing a combo color on turn two, Badlands serves zero function other than the "Hey, I've got tons of colors!" aspect.

MUD isn't a real aspect of the metagame when it comes to building our sideboards.

The only fetches we can run with Sea, Volc, Bayou (and even Badlands) are Delta, Mire and Misty. Scalding Tarn doesn't search for Bayou.

[Lemnear]

Yeah, Deed seems great! Can we try Spiritmonger too?

Let me translate:

"Deed costs at least 4 mana against Thalia and Thorn and you have to shell out additional mana for activation you should better use for getting your combo going."

Trygon is castable BECAUSE of being a creature despite it's manacost and I have to test how the Position of Pyroblast in the current metagame prohibits it's undoubtful potential

P.S. I'm at the Airport leaving for Munich and exactly 75 cards with me plus a mini-trade binder if someone is willing to trade me a FBB german Bayou

[Lemnear]

Damnit! Forgot my Source playmat at home DD:

[Asthereal]

Damnit! Forgot my Source playmat at home DD:

[itrytostorm]

P.S. I'm at the Airport leaving for Munich and exactly 75 cards with me plus a mini-trade binder if someone is willing to trade me a FBB german Bayou

What is that 75? Sol lands with Trygon? Or more like the front page list?

[paeng4983]

We had our year end legacy last Sunday and I brought this deck with me. I I used Cook’s list with a difference of -Massacre +Void Snare in the side board list. We had it five rounds then cut to top 8.

I won against the following:
URW delver 2-1
Reanimator 0-2
Goblins 2-0
Omnitell 2-0
Reanimator ID

Lost to an Omnitell in the quarters.

I think the two Carpets should be a Thoughtseize/ Needle/ Surgical.
Reanimator and Miracle decks will surely be on the horizon (again) if UR cruise lovers will still be rampant after BR announcement.

Happy Holidays to all TES players!

[Lemnear]

What is that 75? Sol lands with Trygon? Or more like the front page list?

Had Sol Lands with Trygon with me, but was unable to stay in Munich till Saturday evening ... no tournament for me

@Paeng: any recurring pattern which have you headaches against these S&T archetypes?