I just like having the full four copies of knight. Especially since they can get swords or flipped from dredging.Originally Posted by apocolyps6
I'll give your build a spin sometime! I like stone forge and a turn one mystic seems sweet
Right now I'm practicing for our big local eternal event in March.
Awesome.
If there isn't a lot of DRS, D&T or other decks you would want dismember against you can probably play a knight instead of that and add a Loam as a 61st card.
In the SB, I am currently playing:
- 2x Containment Priest
- 1x Ajani Vengeant
+3x Grafdigger's cage
The priests also do work against Sneak & Show but they are not needed for that matchup. A 1drop is much more potent against dredge/reanimator and mulliganing to a 3of is better than mulling to a 2of. I think just aggressively mulling to this gives the deck a decent chance. If they don't have the claim/force right away we have the time to play some actual magic. Oh and Ajani mostly went in against decks that were already good matchups, or decks that were really bad ones. Basically the card is low impact :/
- 1x Golgari Charm
- 2x Sudden Demise
- 1x Zealous Persecution
+ 2x Pyroclasm
+ 2x Toxic Deluge
I'm still not sure where I want to be with the board wipes. Demise and ZP were good against UR delver, but I think I want more powerful if less precise tools. It was important not to lose whatever creatures I had against UR, but now I think that matters less.
Tell me how the testing goes.
I played a Burning Wish list at my local yesterday. Wrecked Deathblade and Mono-Red Sneak Attack 2-0, but had real problems against Death & Taxes.
Game 1 on the play he had Aether Vial into Aether Vial Aether Vial. I had Burning Wish, Bob, and Chalice for turn 2 plays. I decided to go with Chalice just to shut off Plows, which was probably incorrect. I played Bob the next turn but by then he had a bunch of men including Thalia and was Porting me every turn. I drew an Abrupt Decay which I could cast through Thalia and was forced to go after his Flickerwisp, but he Flickered off a Vial in response. I died soon after. Not sure Burning Wish for Shattering Spree or Pulse earlier would have been better since I don't think I ever had mana to cast either spell and he would have already gotten value out of Vials anyway.
Game 2 I had turn 1 Chalice on the play and an Abrupt Decay for his Stoneforge. I felt pretty good but he went on some weird LD plan, Wasting my only Green land, Stone Raining my Mox Diamond with Council's Judgment, and Mangara-ing another one of my lands. He was attacking me this whole time and I just died with Green spells I couldn't cast in hand. Turn 1 Chalice on the play doesn't always get them lads.
The only thing I did with Burning Wish all night was get a Reverent Silence to blow up an exposed Sneak Attack. He showed me a hand full of Emrakuls after I won that game. Thanks Burning Wish! I drew Devastating Dreams twice, once I couldn't cast it, and the other time I had better things to do. Overall the other aspects of the deck functioned well as usual. Obviously this was a small sample, but I will definitely be back on Liliana for the foreseeable future.
IDK if 3 matches is enough testing to discount stuff, but Burning Wish is pretty slow and Dreams is kind of situational.
Chalices are horrible against D&T. They play 4 vials so the chalice has to come down before that. They play ~1 cavern so they can resolve a mom through a chalice. They only have 12 1drops so chalice at best is usually not that good. After all that they can flickerwisp the chalice in case everything has gone well for you so far.
The LD plan from D&T is also very legit. I board out 2 moxes because drawing them is just horrible and it is easy to turn them off with revoker or flickerwisp.
Did you have a massacre in the wishboard?
Haven't played a lot of this matchup, thanks for the tips. Do you think it is worth keeping Chalice in on the play and taking it out on the draw? Do you think Moxes vulnerability to Revoker/Flickerwisp outweighs the benefit of them being Waste/Port-proof?
I had Toxic Deluge instead of Massacre in my wishboard because I thought it was more versatile. Massacre would have been amazing there, but unfortunately he never actually had a Plains that game. If I had to play Burning Wish again I think I would play Massacre instead, I don't know how often the "Toxic Deluge your Progenitus for 10" and similar scenarios actually come up.
If we imagine that we are on the play with a chalice in our opening hand there are 2 scenarios. It is either a turn 1 or 2 chalice. If it is a turn 2 chalice and our opponent has a turn 1 play, the chalice is kind of too late imo. The T1 chalice is effective but still probably not great for the reasons I mentioned before.
I think 4 moxen is too much, and our deck functions worse with 0. The 2nd mox is often a blank. I think the mox hate is more powerful than the land hate. ports can be wasted and destroyed lands can be loamed back, but wisps and revokers are removal + threat.
Another downside of playing moxen and chalices is that we want to be drawing nothing but castable removal (and maybe threats) and the artifacts are very dead topdecks.
Burning wish in general is not great as everything costs 2 extra mana and that adds up through waste/port/thalia. I'd maybe board them out for all the removal/boardwipes you can fit.
I'm looking into playing 4C Loam this weekend, but I don't in quite a while.. What has been the consensus been in Qasali Pridemage vs the disenchant Elf? I love the mages Exalted ability, but having an etb skill in the elf counts a lot!
The choice is pretty straightforward.
If you're looking to play one of the two in the mainboard, the general consensus is that you should run Qasali Pridemage. It's cheaper and has a more relevant body, which makes it more useful in the event of them not having anything worthwhile enough to target.
If you're looking to put one of them in the sideboard, run Reclamation Sage. Its mana cost makes it better suited for taking out truly troubling targets like Blood Moon if you cast it, and not having to sacrifice the creature means instant value.
There's hardly ever a time when you should have to deviate from this easy selection method.
Cool! Thanks for the quick reply!
I'm going with a similar list to Dosferra, which is essentially the BOM9's but with the Depths combo. But I like having a singleton Tarmogoyf, so I'll have 61 cards. I remember when I was testing Pack Rat that I really missed having a regular 4/5 body to tutor for when I needed some quick defense/offense for 3 mana.
So probably changing Pridemage for the Elf on the board.
Out of curiosity, what did you remove to fit in the Dark Depths combo?
2 of the cycle lands, so I'm going with 1 Barren Moor and 1 Tranquil Thicket.
That seems painful.
It sure loses some drawing shenanigans in exchange of an extra kill con. Would you prefer cutting something else?
I'm not a fan of Dark Depths at all in the slightest, but if I had to offer an opinion, "kind of".
I mean, if you had to pick a card that you could live without, the cycle lands are easily the first cards that come to mind. They're not a land that you actively try to make mana out of. They don't hurt your opponent. They don't bury your opponent. They don't do anything really extravagant or drastic. Not like mother fuckin' Chalice of the Void. Or mother fuckin' Knight of the Reliquary. And so on and so forth. But there's a reason, with regards to any deck, that you don't run 60 copies of Knight and call it done. You need the glue, and the cycle lands are that glue.
Given that turn ones usually result in a great twiddling of thumbs without Mox Diamond, if you feel like your opening hand is light on land, you can easily afford to play a tapped Barren Moor on turn one for value. On the flipside, if you feel like your opening hand is would be good if only it weren't nothing but land, you can go Bayou->Barren Moor for value. Then of course you have the cute interactions with Loam.
By sharp contrast, you can do none of that with Dark Depths or Thespian Stage. Nor could you do it with a Stoneforge Mystic, or any of the other flamboyantly fantastical finishers. You can't just straight up swap Tranquil Thicket for Dark Depths on a one-to-one basis just because they're both lands any more than you could swap an Island for Emrakul on a one-to-one basis because they're both colorless. Dark Depths is nothing except Mox food until you find Thespian Stage. And same goes for the reverse.
also, this is while distracted at work, so sorry if it's poorly formatted
To be fair Thespian's Stage does produce 1 mana, haha. And I totally agree with all your points, except that if Emrakul was as easy to get in play as much as Marit Lage, I'd exchange an island for it any day. You need an entire engine to run Emrakul, while Marit Lage is 2 of 61 cards that won't blow my game. It let's me fight in a third way of action, and will make people sweat just by the sight of either piece of the combo. If I can't combo I'm 98% the cycle land won't make a fundamental difference in the performance. I likely can still play Knight, Bob, Punishing Fire and Loam with no problem. And all of those cards even has uncoloured card costs, so those combo lands can still help me even if I don't find their other side of the orange.
Really? I thought it was an excellent comparison. If UWx Stoneblade decided to put one Show and Tell and one Emrakul into their mainboard, which deck would have a more difficult time making their combo work?
I didn't know uw stoneblade had that many ways to tutor either or both of emrakul/show and tell.
To be fair, neither does Loam.
There's no Crop Rotation. No Ancient Stirrings. Outside of untapping with Knight of the Reliquary (which is usually an already winning position) or excessively dredging with Loam (which is a bad plan), your only method of finding Depths and Stage is flipping off the top.
IDK man, I win about a third of my games with marit lage. I'm not trying to be cute or anything, there are legitimately plenty of cases where you just can't fight through some board state. It costs exactly one land (because stage is a fine card on its own and at least makes mana), and adds a new dimension to the deck.
Your Stoneblade Show and Tell comparison is way off. So much so I'm wondering if you have seen this deck operate with a Depths in it.
I've held opinions pretty similar to yours until I actually played with the card
Couple of notes:
1) Putting a copy of show and tell and emrakul into a stoneblade doesn't even come close in comparison to putting DD + Stage in a 4c loam deck.
2) By the statement you wrote above, you completely negate your argument for not cutting down to 2 cycle lands from 4 (in addition to horizon canopy).
I have played this deck with and without DD + Stage and there is zero downside to playing with DD + Stage. Many times I have been able to race Show and Tell Decks due to being able to have the ability to create a 20/20 indestructible flyer where I wouldn't have had the ability to with karakas alone.
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