Is 23 land where you want to be if wastelands are in your meta?Originally Posted by Rock Lee
That list is 25 land. Unless you're not counting Ugin/Glacial chasm as mana producers, which we have listed under lands for a long long time.
Rock Lee, is Ugin the real deal? How good is he in this deck? I'm considering getting my hands on 2-3 Ugins, and it would make the decision to trade for them much easier if he has a home in legacy.
Ugin feels very nice. Easy to cast. win condition itself and very good against all midrange and control decks;)
Hey Rock. What are the BEB in the board for? Do you miss the repeals or does Ugin and the dig to find him from Stirrings help against the Delver lists? Also is Wurmcoil for midrange as well?
Love Rock's new list. Not playing with Repeal seems borderline scary at first, but the extra dig feels really good. Ugin is an absolute house. If he resolves against a fair deck it should be very hard for you to lose. I like this one better than the last so I think I'll be running this 75 at SCG Indy. Hope to see some of you there! :)
Yes, you probably need Candelabra if you're running a Cloudpost deck.
I will be there too and running it as well. I'll probably be sitting at table 1 or 2 at the players meeting. Or you can pm me if you wanna meet up.
This list runs very similarly to high tide, where you just take a beating for 3-4 turns, surviving any way you can, and then pop out an Ugin/Titan/Eldrazi on turn 3-4. The hardest part of the deck is properly naming with Revoker, or just realizing that against aggro, Revoker is there to simply "gain" you 2-3 life via bolt absorption/blocking pyromancer/swiftspears.
This build is definitely hard to play in the sense that you need to know how to stall/last long enough. This was a skill that was required previously anyhow, but without repeal that job can be much harder. My general priority for CMC 1 spells I bait into being countered are: Candelabra > SDT > Brainstorm > Ancient Stirrings > Crop Rotation.
Yes I value Stirrings that highly. Especially against tempo they will snap-counter it, since it is basically an automatic "get-glimmerpost" card if you already have one and thus another Glimmerpost or Vesuva grabs it.
Good luck at Indy. I almost went myself.
BeB is a great cover-all for so many things: Storm, burn, big red, pyromancer, dack fayden, Miracles siding in red things (my local miracle players side in 3 Ruination and 1 blood moon), Elves if they go annoying GSZ targets (again local elves players side in both ruric thar and Realm Razer), I side in the BeB vs reanimator just to kill the sire of insanity.
In this current build I could also see running The Tabernacle at Pendrell vale over the Blue Elemental Blast.
A refined build of what I posted yesterday. Not early enough for our SCG Indy folks sadly, but hopefully helpful nonetheless:
// Lands
1 [WWK] Eye of Ugin
1 [AVR] Cavern of Souls
1 [WWK] Bojuka Bog
1 [LG] Karakas
4 [FNM] Cloudpost
4 [ZEN] Misty Rainforest
2 [TSP] Vesuva
4 [SOM] Glimmerpost
1 [IA] Glacial Chasm
4 [R] Tropical Island
1 [US] Forest (3)
1 [CHK] Island (1)
// Creatures
4 [M12] Primeval Titan
1 [ROE] Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
4 [MBS] Phyrexian Revoker
2 [SOM] Wurmcoil Engine
// Spells
4 [MM] Brainstorm
2 [AQ] Candelabra of Tawnos
2 [US] Show and Tell
4 [ZEN] Expedition Map
2 [FRF] Ugin, the Spirit Dragon
4 [ROE] Ancient Stirrings
3 [CHK] Sensei's Divining Top
3 [UL] Crop Rotation
// Sideboard
SB: 3 [JGC] Flusterstorm
SB: 2 [NPH] Surgical Extraction
SB: 2 [THS] Swan Song
SB: 2 [TSP] Wipe Away
SB: 3 [ALA] Relic of Progenitus
SB: 2 [SH] Ensnaring Bridge
SB: 1 [NPH] Karn Liberated
Started 4-1 before crashing and burning to a 4-4 drop, having to play someone in my playgroup along the way. I'm obviously disappointed in the finish but I had a lot of fun. I'll have a fairly short writeup in a little bit: I decided to spend more time actually focusing on my matches instead of trying to write a comprehensive play-by-play like I usually do. I can say, though, that Ugin is an absolute monster.
Updating post with writeup. Again, notes are pretty simplistic, but it is what it is. List is Rock Lee's list here: http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/s...l=1#post864762
Round 1: Esper Stoneblade
Game 1: I never drop below 20. Candel is down early, Titan hits turn 4, and that is that.
Game 2: He gets me to 17. Meddling Mage names Emrakul. I learn he has black mana in his deck. Liliana of the Veil comes down, but Ugin comes down next and he's even better. Ugin clears out Stoneforge Mystic, Liliana, and Meddling Mage. True-Name Nemesis comes down after that and Ugin handles that, too. I get a Cavern of Souls and Titan, and the game is over.
Round 2: Maverick
Game 1: I mulligan to 5. He Wastelands 2 Cloudposts. He gets me to 3. None of that matters. Show and Tell gets down a Titan. It eats a Swords to Plowshares, but it's given me enough land and gained me enough life. Ugin hits the battlefield and wipes out 2 Knight of the Reliquary, 2 Deathrite Shaman and a Mother of Runes. Ugin goes all the way.
Game 2: Show and Tell fun gets interrupted by Containment Priest. I put a land down instead. Explosives on 2 gives me a 3-for-1, claiming the Priest, Qasali Pridemage, and some other hatebear (maybe Spirit of the Labyrinth?) I don't remember. Titan comes down next, and that is that.
Round 3: Elves
Game 1: He mulligans once. I figure out what he's on and Turn 2 Revoker names Heritage Druid. This buys me some turns, but eventually Cradle gets down Craterhoof and lethal damage.
Game 2: He mulligans once. Turn 3 Show and Tell brings a Titan to class, and that and a Chasm keep him from doing much of anything.
Game 3: He mulligans once. He immediately uses Pithing Needle on Expedition Map. I Revoker Heritage Druid. I have no shuffle effects except Map. I do get a Glacial Chasm down, but my last Top activation sees Map-Map-Map. I die to the Lollipop Guild.
Round 4: UWR Delver
Game 1: Two Show and Tells get countered, but he has little to no pressure whatsoever. A Titan sees play, and while it immediately eats a Swords, it doesn't matter. I win with the lands I get.
Game 2: Oh, hey, there's a Delver. Meddling Mage names Emrakul, Primeval Titan gets countered, but Ugin does not. Ugin goes all the way.
Round 5: Sneak and Show
Game 1: He mulligans. He fetches and Probes me Turn 1. I name Sneak Attack with Revoker on Turn 2. I name Griselbrand with Revoker on Turn 3. He scoops.
Game 2: He counters Ancient Stirrings. He counters Top. I get a Revoker down, but he has a Pyroclasm as well as a counter for my counter. Giant monsters bash my face into mush.
Game 3: I get Revokers again, and this time there isn't much he can do about it. Eventually he gets down a Show and Tell. I get a Titan and he gets Ashen Rider. Rider exiles the Titan, but it no longer matters as I'm now on Emrakul mana after already having Karakas in play.
Round 6: BUG Delver with Bobs
Game 1: He mulligans once. His army of little dorks gets me down to 4. But eventually Ugin hits the table and things immediately take a turn. Ugin goes all the way, and my seventh permanent I put onto the battlefield is another Ugin. He scoops.
Game 2: Engineered Explosives nets me a 2-for-1, but Wasteland and Surgical Extraction (which I later found out he runs exactly one of) wipes out my Cloudposts. Wurmcoil Engine and two Show and Tell get countered. I put up a good fight, but not good enough.
Game 3: He mulligans once. Turn 2 he hits me with Hymn to Tourach and I made what I believe was a fairly significant mistake. Let me explain a bit:
I used Brainstorm in response. My cards that I remember were Land I didn't care about/Brainstorm/Primeval Titan/Karakas/Eye of Ugin/Cavern of Souls. I wanted to basically protect those last four cards. I reasoned that I would probably have to leave the Titan exposed to danger, as at least I have more of them. I hid the Eye and the Karakas, and in hindsight I think this was wrong. It probably would have been wiser to hide the Cavern and leave the Karakas exposed. In any case, I lost the land I didn't care about, and the Cavern which I really cared about. The Titan I attempted to cast later got countered and I died. He also managed to knock another Cloudpost out of my hand with a second Hymn, and he Surgical'd my Cloudposts again.
Round 7: Jund Depths
Fairly well-known opponent here.
Game 1: I flat-out just get grinded to death. Loam engine comes online early and I just can't do much of anything.
Game 2: I manage to play in the dumbest way possible and still manage to win. He has Raven's Crime in his yard and an active Life from the Loam. He casts Pithing Needle while I have a Misty Rainforest on the battlefield and an empty hand. Like an IDIOT, I let it resolve. He names Misty Rainforest. The next card I draw is another Misty Rainforest, and Raven's Crime takes it. The next card I draw is a Primeval Titan, which would have been castable if I had used fetchlands. Instead, it also gets discarded. And yet, I pull out the win after eventually getting a Top on the board and doing Eldrazi-like things.
Game 3: We get delayed after a judge discovers that a card from his deck is on the floor after we draw our opening hands. I know exactly when it happened - he accidentally (and I do legitimately mean accidentally) knocked some cards over on Game 1, and apparently missed one while picking them up. I have no reason to believe it was intentional. The initial ruling is a game loss, but an appeal is made to the Head Judge, who ultimately rules it as a warning for looking at extra cards. Anyway, I didn't draw a colored source, while he got both Depths and Stage out by Turn 3 as well as Pithing Needle for Karakas. I did have Ugin mana, so I cast Ugin, Bolted myself, and conceded.
Round 8: BUG Delver with Bobs
This guy is in my playgroup. While it's nice that I can liberally use profanity while playing him, it's annoying to play against someone I see once a week anyway.
Game 1: I mulligan once, and BUG does BUG things. I die slowly, but steadily, and the threats I cast eat Force of Will.
Game 2: He counters Top. He counters Map. He doesn't counter Show and Tell. Sucks for him.
Game 3: I get Boettcher'd. My 7-card hand sees 6 lands and gets shipped. My 6-card hand also sees 6 lands and gets shipped. My 5-card hand has a Tropical Island and a Top, which is a snap-keep for me. Unfortunately, Top eats Force of Will and Tropical Island sees Wasteland. BUG does BUG things.
-----
Final Thoughts
For the most part, the list is solid. When it hums, it HUMS. Ugin is an absolute monster. The sideboard wasn't quite right for the situation (a lot of Storm players, although I didn't play any), although everything did get used at some point, which is all you can ask. The Jund Depths match was super frustrating because a lot of cards we commonly run that are super good against them - Repeal, Pithing Needle, Chain of Vapor - weren't in the deck and would have been fantastic there. Rock's new list with Karn helps there, since Ugin can't handle most artifacts. But still, again, Ugin was the MVP of this tournament: he got a minimum of two permanents every time he got onto the board, and he will pretty much win a game by himself against just about any fair deck.
Last edited by Zotmaster; 02-02-2015 at 01:00 AM.
Yes, you probably need Candelabra if you're running a Cloudpost deck.
I still don't get the purpose of running Surgical Extractions in sb. Could someone please explain to me what they are for? (except for obvious applications like playing against Reanimator or nerfing a Past in Flames route)
Disclaimer: Despite having it in the list I want to try out later this week, I have not run Surgical in the past, so the following is purely based on theory and may be entirely wrong.
Apart from its role against graveyard dependant decks like Reanimator, Dredge, Loam etc., Surgical is more effective against combo decks than merely disrupting Past in Flames. Several of their routes rely on chaining Infernal Tutors. Either through Past in Flames or using the first one to get mana or Ad Nauseam and later a second one to get Tendrils or by simply chaining them into a natural Tendrils. Most of the times all of these lines offer you a possibility to remove their Tutors before they get to Tendrils, which forces them to find the kill with cantrips or their singleton Grim Tutor. Apart from Tutor, which appears to be the biggest target, taking LED or either of their Rituals can seriously hamper their mana and if everything fails, taking a cantrip can delay their setup quite a bit. Also Surgical can do all those things while being on the draw or without either open mana or a card to pitch. Itsn usefullness is not limited to Ritual based Storm decks either. E.g. against High Tide it is quite versatile too.
It also offers some applications against different decks. It might be worth a shot to bring it in against decks that rely on Wasteland to interact and delay you, similarly to Needle. Surgical means you always will loose your first land as it does not offer the possibility of being dropped preemptively on the first turn, but in return it is more useful in the always difficult combo match-ups.
Other more fringe uses that come to mind are: neutering Snapcaster, removing a creature against Sneak&Show after it gets sacrificed and in case of Emrakul before it gets shuffled back in (you will still be in bad shape, but at least you have just halfed their wincons if Surgical resolves).
Surgical is there because multiple wastes is back breaking, so thus a RNG limiter. They are there less for recursion, since that is what bog is for.
You will be pleased to note though that my current build has none in it. This build is back to the roots more, and reminds me significantly of the build I ran when Hive Mind was everywhere, with one extremely cheeky land in specifically to beat it.
// Lands
1 [WWK] Eye of Ugin
1 [AVR] Cavern of Souls
1 [WWK] Bojuka Bog
1 [LG] Karakas
4 [FNM] Cloudpost
4 [ZEN] Misty Rainforest
2 [TSP] Vesuva
4 [SOM] Glimmerpost
1 [IA] Glacial Chasm
4 [R] Tropical Island
1 [IN] Forest (3)
1 [SOK] Mikokoro, Center of the Sea
// Creatures
4 [M12] Primeval Titan
1 [ROE] Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
3 [MBS] Phyrexian Revoker
1 [SOM] Wurmcoil Engine
// Spells
4 [MM] Brainstorm
2 [AQ] Candelabra of Tawnos
2 [US] Show and Tell
4 [ZEN] Expedition Map
2 [FRF] Ugin, the Spirit Dragon
4 [ROE] Ancient Stirrings
3 [CHK] Sensei's Divining Top
3 [UL] Crop Rotation
2 [10E] Pithing Needle
// Sideboard
SB: 1 [MBS] Phyrexian Revoker
SB: 1 [SOM] Wurmcoil Engine
SB: 3 [ALA] Relic of Progenitus
SB: 1 [SH] Ensnaring Bridge
SB: 2 [FD] Engineered Explosives
SB: 2 [DS] Trinisphere
SB: 2 [OD] Moment's Peace
SB: 1 [LG] The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale
SB: 1 [WWK] Lodestone Golem
SB: 1 [NPH] Karn Liberated
Mikokoro, Center of the Sea, I came to the simple realization today, beats Infernal tutor, giving you a Crop rotate-able answer to both Past in Flames and hellbent Infernal tutor. The card also can dig you out of a rut when your eye of Ugin has been blasted and you need a post-titan way of winning the game. Since you can cast everything in your deck, them also getting a card is less significant.
Some niche plays with it also:
Candelabra obvious untaps it, so you can go slightly more nutters if needed.
Against Spirit of the Labyrinth, activating it on their turn draws only you a card.
Against Omnishow, you have the ability to either win a lethal clash or draw them out, although this is only realistic with Trinisphere/Sphere effects, a card I am investigating on the main.
Also extra bonus, I found a foil one a week back and had no clue EDH was exploding its price.
Mikokoro aside, this build signals a return of Pithing Needle. This simply makes annoying Wasteland variance not cripple you. Every time I have done well with the deck I have maindecked Pithing Needle, despite me hating the card incredibly. This often indicates that a strong build is gelling.
Some points I'm investigating for future builds (a list I might post for future builds to give an idea of where I might be going):
- No island worries me, even if this list is very light on blue, Show and Tell -> Titan is such an easy out vs blood moon
- Lodestone might merit a main spot with so many artifacts and so little impact overall
- Trinisphere also shares this spot. A good maindeck card against combo that includes omni is in my sights. Really the only failing of Revoker.
- The sideboard is either perfect or slapdash in its current form. I always prefer many 1-2'ofs in a sideboard ala Tom Ross, but I understand it makes many people lose their minds and can indicate sloppy deck construction.
Isn't that wonderful? I suspect the price of Ugin will never go down that low either because of that format, especially foil ones!
I'm stoked for this list...I will definitely be running it tomorrow! It looks like the lovechild of Tron and 12Post. Speaking of Tron, I just won a PPTQ with it yesterday, including x1 Ugin main. The card is literal bonkers.
Just want to double check this understanding of Mikokoro. You need to have mikokoro in play, with lands untapped whenever they combo off...
For the clash kill...they place Emrakul on top of their library, you force them to draw it. The clash sees nothing and proceeds to go to their graveyard? If they are playing Noxious revival in SB. Can't they just go -> Cunning Wish -> Noxius Revial -> Release the Ants on Top -> Cast Enter the Infinite and reset the combo kill?
For the Emrakul kill..They cast Emrakul and move to their next turn, on their upkeep you make them draw a card and they die on their endstep? They could also cunning wish for trickbind/stifle and stop the mikokoro draw.
I like it for a draw engine though!
Another tech play could be to play some number of Life from the Loam with it to combat Surgical Extraction effects. If you have an Eldrazi on top, dredge loam to blank it.
Consider that they are going to give you a free permanent, so 2 lands + mikokoro, or a crop rotate. This is why the realistic answer is having a sphere effect in play, 3sphere being the best. So a sideboard plan, something the deck didn't have effectively.
I love the new list, Rock! I'll be testing this tomorrow at my weekly. I have a few questions, though.
Its usage against hellbent Infernal Tutor is obvious, but I'm a little more confused on the answer to Past in Flames. Maybe I'm just slow, but I'm not seeing it here.
I also wonder about the sideboard. The usage of 1- and 2-ofs doesn't really scare me, but I was just wondering if you'd talk a bit about what matchups you have in mind for each card. I could see literally the entire 15-card set being useful in certain matchups, but I imagine that's probably not what you have in mind. I find understanding your rationale helps me make decisions, and sideboarding remains a weak part of my game.
Yes, you probably need Candelabra if you're running a Cloudpost deck.
He means two different answers - both "Crop rotate-able": Bog for PiF and Mikokoro for Tutor.
Some of my friends sell records,
some of my friends sell drugs.
Regarding Mikoro vs Infernal Tutor: note that if they draw an instant they can cast it for profit and then resolve a Demonic Tutor.
It may work most of the times but not always.
Ignorance is strength
Has to be a ritual. And have the mana. Because a brainstorm is not enought.
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