i used to run one and took it out when i lost a couple of games where my opponent was at 2 or less life and i had 1 mana or 2 mana while a thassa was in play. in hindsight, the ice is usually about as relevant as the extra mana causes problems. im pretty bitter about those losses though.Originally Posted by FoolofaTook
I'm currently playing 3 Hooting Mandrills instead of 4 Goose and it's working great. It can't be decayed or bolted and tramples over True-Name and Mother. I have no problem casting it and it usually comes into play on turn 3. I have Sylvan Library in sideboard to bring in against decks with plows, but considering maindecking it. Anyone else tried this insane ape?
Ya but he still dies to some other popular removal, and even though T1 Goose is not very impressive at times it is still much better Mandrills in hands like man/goose, bolt, goyf, daze, wasteland, tarn, ponder for instance, and finally a very minor point is the obvious slight non-bo with goyf.
Really cool to see you dip into the Canadian Thresh pool. I don't play the deck much, but watching competent pilots play RUG is a joy. I also assume you're in a super combo-heavy meta, where this deck shines.
I would second what others have said about running Forked Bolt instead of Dismember. Life loss is still relevant, and even in Goyf vs. Goyf situations the Bolt can do wonders.
Rough // Tumble is really really good as a one-sided Pyroclasm, glad to see you're running it.
A book about the dark side of Legacy: "Magic: The Addiction" // Conversations with Magic players: "Humans of Magic"
These are all the great flexibilities that Fire//Ice offers, but the reason you said at the end is exactly the reason why I find it bad. Turn one threats that the opponent plays ie Deathrite, Delver, Mother and to some extent Glistener Elf are all threats that are too high risk to let untap. It's not that it's a bad card I just find it too slow and mana intensive when looking at what we're having to go up against:
Deathrite - If the opponent untaps with this our daze and stifle plan becomes significantly worse in addition it helps them ramp into really good threats that we can't let resolve. If they're brazen enough to jam something like a turn 2 Liliana or TNN and we don't have either force, daze, or if they have their own then it's pretty much game over. I would say this one threat alone makes forked bolt more relevant as a card since it answers it turn 1.
Delver - If they get to flip delver for starters it's 3dmg that we could have avoided. Secondly, if they untap then our daze again becomes worse in terms of being able to back up our removal and make sure their delver hits the bin. It also leaves them more outs with having pierce .
Mother - This one's fairly obvious.
Glistener Elf - Corner case combo deck, but still if their glistener elf tables then we're in a very bad position because they have what Force, daze, pierce and vines to protect it with now.
Fire//Ice more or less offers you better mid to late game answer for larger threats. As the game progresses and the board state starts to fall out of our favor Ice can help tap down their attacker at the last second when they think they're going to win the race. In addition it not only can add a turn to their clock it also does what we want forked bolt for if worst comes to worst which is to have our goyf beat there's. All this considered it boils down to do you want more flexibility in the later stages of the game or excel in the early stages which is what we're already poised to do.
This is corner case, but it's definitely one of the major upsides.
I find Spell snare too good to not play at least as a 2 of. Elves and D&T are some of our worst match ups and unless you expect a lot of them then I wouldn't hedge against them. Snare hits more or less 2/3s of the meta and just about each deck there's some high threat level card it impacts:
Goyf
Thalia
Stoneforge Mystic
Jitte
Snapcaster Mage
Young Pyromancer
Baleful Strix
Eidolon and Price
Counterbalance
Infernal Tutor
All those cards are either in most tempo/aggro, Miracles, midrange stoneblade lists and it's a hard counter against one of the best combo decks. I mean a card that impacts that much of the meta is very versatile on that fact alone especially seeing as each card it hits is an important cog in the opponents deck.
That being said I do like the idea of having 8 removal spells 4 of which being "mini sweepers". When I was running 8 bolt rug it was nice to know no turn 1 threat usually lived past that first turn and this embraces that consistency. I would suggest trying 2 snare / 2 forked bolt / 2 fire//Ice. It keeps the minimum amount of added 1 mana answers for early threats and combines it with more versatility as the game goes on. In addition except for miracles during the early turns and some delver mirrors spell pierce has been less then amazing for me. Most Storm decks seem to be able to play around it with perfect information and stoneblade decks tend to never have high impact spells that run into it.
I would also like to make a PSA Aether Vial in more or less stock RUG Delver is bad lols. I want it to be good, but it's not. It's just too cute/slow. It had it's moments making some threat heavy hands very lethal, but for the most part it just seemed clunky at best. I was hoping it would make snapcaster a part of the family it desperately longs to be in, but it didn't lols. I will say this it did allow for some very tilting responses of vialing in snapcaster and doing something degenerate like flashing back a forked bolt killing two glistener elves.
Although it has already been one month I enjoyed testing and slamming Canadian again @ a local tournament. After Controldecks, Canadian has and will always be a special love for me.
I think Canadian really needs Spell Snare today, as it's such an amazing Tempo Card, doing all the things I don't need to say and helping handling threats 1:1. It is the best card to hold otD against most decks imo.
The second thing I want to adress shortly is Sylvan Library. I think Canadian hast to be the aggressive deck against most MUs to be competitive. This means a card that can refuel is needed enourmously. There have been so many iterations, from Dig, over Vial, to Snapcaster and Loam. For me the good old library is by far the strongest and most underplayed Card of those.
Ofc the maindeck inclusion means no Probe, and Dismember for me. There the SB should help out.
For reference, this is what I was playing (SB could be adjusted to the expected meta)
4 Delver of Secrets
4 Nimble Mongoose
3 Tarmogoyf
2 Sylvan Library
3 Spell Snare
4 Brainstorm
4 Daze
4 Force of Will
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Stifle
1 Forked Bolt
1 Counterspell
4 Ponder
4 Flooded Strand
4 Scalding Tarn
3 Tropical Island
3 Volcanic Island
4 Wasteland
Sideboard:
2 Spell Pierce
2 Pyroblast
2 Grafdigger's Cage
2 Rough // Tumble
1 Flusterstorm
1 Vendilion Clique
1 Ancient Grudge
1 Sulfuric Vortex
1 Null Rod
2 Submerge
A maindeck construction along those lines, seems to be one of the strongest possibilities to play this deck atm.
Would be glad to discuss some of the points I've made.
Greetings
I agree with your take on snare, but elves is NOT one of our worst matchups. I would call it a favorable matchup.
I'd say it's probably pretty even, tilting on one side or another depending on build (Oozes/WRP, amount of burn), and a pretty fragile matchup (who has more broken lands) where small edges spiral out of control very fast.
Just plain wrong.
No it's definitely up there in one of our worst match ups. The only decks that are arguably worse for us are Lands (I would say this one is almost unwinnable), D&T (on par with elves if not worse), Shardless BUG (winnable, but still a very hard MU).
I mean on the draw our dazes may as well be completely dead and same with stifle. Even more so then other MUs where daze and stifle lose value here they're completely dead. Stifle does absolutely nothing unless your otp and hit a fetch turn 1 or 2 and otd we're usually busy bolting their turn 1 dork or cantripping for a bolt. Both Goyf and Goose may as well be nonexistent seeing as they have 8 ways to block bounce and the ground just gets stalled.
The only ways elves becomes a positive MU in my opinion is if we're OTP and have a solid delver hand with daze for their turn 1 threat followed by a bolt for their second threat turn 2. I just played the MU last night and punted game 1 really hard.
I wasn't paying attention to graveyard count swing in with goose, goyf and delver (he's at 5) he blocks goyf and then blocks goose with DRS and proceeds to use two additional untap effects to shrink my graveyard from 9 to 6 and then DRS ate goose. I had drawn Waste and his cradle was tapped so when I swung in I thought him not having the information that cradle would get destroyed might change how he chump blocked ie throwing some guys under the bus then tap cradle next turn and gain 6 or something. I just didn't think about the fact that waste would be another card in the bin and he had 3 ways to eat cards from my bin. He went to 2 but was able to combo off next turn so I don't think it really would have mattered. He had 1 nettle sentinel and proceeded to glimpse into another plus a heritage druid with 2 bounce effects so the chances of him bricking were very low.
Game 2 if I remember right I only had a goose and he had DRS + 2 nettle senitnels and just went on the beat down plan followed by a craterhoof off of NO which got stifled but still a 5/5 haste trumps a goose lol.
I mean in terms of polar opposite decks elves would be exactly that when compared to RUG delver. We want to use mana denial with cheap counters and trade cards 1 for 1. They on the other hand have absurd amounts of mana and lots of card advantage between GSZ, Visionary and DRS + untap effects. Boarding gets a bit better with Rough, Submerge (not that good here IMO), cage and maybe something like Envelop or at least replacing pierces with flusterstorms if you don't have anything better to side in after the previous cards state.
There's also the depressing fact that elves is the better deck for being OTP. If we lose game 1 even if we win game 2 with them OTP game 3 is still very hard because they add in Decays to deal with our best threat against them and they just don't care about goyf or goose.
I would definitely agree that the best CA tool for RUG is Sylvan, but I'm still not sure if it's good enough for MD. The main issue is it doesn't do anything the turn it hits the table and tapping out (more or less most of the time) for something that doesn't do anything and can just get decayed seems really bad tempo. I've tried shaving the 4th goyf for a sylvan and it works, but in the match ups where we want goyf ie other goyf decks or burn it's really depressing drawing that when they have their goyf on the table lols. All the more reason that if I did play it I think I would keep it as a 1 of since we never want to draw 2 and we have enough cantrips to find it if we really want to.
Counterspell isn't horrible I've heard arguments for it as a singleton and you'll definitely get people. Getting to 2 mana is pretty easy and most of the time people will try to play around daze or pierce and then run into snare, force or in this case counterspell. I would actually think this might be better than the 2nd pierce in a split of 2 snare, 2 pierce, 2 forked bolt.
Yeah I really like stifle also for the fact that many people play really bad against RUG imo or at least too cautiously trying to play around everything. This also leads to them holding their 2 drops for turn 3 in preparation to play around daze and then they run into snare and not only is the threat countered, but they played sub optimally the previous turn playing out another 1 drop or durdling with a cantrip.
If I was going to pull 2 spells for 2 Wooded Foothills what would be the best candidates?
I've had terrible mulligan luck in 3 of the last 4 competitions I have taken CT too. It's always not enough land in the opening hand despite pile shuffling, riffle shuffling, etc. Two weeks ago I went 4 rounds in which I saw a total of 2 lands in my opening hand of the round, leading to a 2-1-1 result that was very depressing. Last night in 4 rounds I had a complete mull loss in game 1 of a round, with no lands in 25 cards (7, 6, 5, 4, 3) and a mull to 5 in game 2 of that round in which I never saw the second land. I also had a round in which I mulled 6, keeping a 1 lander with a Tropical Island, Ponder and Brainstorm and never saw red mana and then a mull 5 in which I got mana but was overpowered due to the mull, leading to a 2-2 result on the evening and more agita.
This may just be random but it is becoming a PITA to deal with. I spent a solid 5 minutes of the mull loss round randomizing in every way possible and still couldn't buy enough land for my life.
So I want to try 20 lands next week. What are the logical pulls for the extra lands? I want at least 7 ways to kill DRS, Insectile Aberration and SFM and I also want at least 9 counters.
I would advise against running two copies of Sylvan Library, especially in the main deck. I love the card, but drawing two when you only need one is just way too bad. Seeing as you only want it against decks with Swords to Plowshares and Show And Tell combo, it will also never get handled once it lands, so it's often easy to maneuver the game to a point where you can resolve it. Given how limited its use is, I also feel like it's not a card you want to have main deck right now. Way back when, you could play it maindeck because of how absurd it was against Maverick, Miracles and Esper Blade. Apart from Miracles, these decks are barely played anymore and the format has become much more aggressive.
If your local metagame calls for it, by all means, run it maindeck, but I don't think you ever want more than one.
Regarding Counterspell, in my experience it has always been awesome in just about every matchup. The main argument people bring up against it is that it costs two mana, which I never got, especially when people used to run Snapcaster Mages and Vendilion Cliques in this deck. This is only really relevant in counterwars.
There are only few decks that don't care about their spells being countered, and honestly, even countering a late-game removal spell on a Delver often wins games. Having hardcounters is just very good in even remotely grindy matchups.
Edit:Do yourself a favour and don't do this. The deck has ben running on 14+4 lands since 2007 for a reason. If you feel you're not drawing enough lands after your opening hands, try cutting fetches for additional duals. If you want to run a deck with more lands, try out NLT, if that still exists.
Don't mind me, i'm just writing about Pauper these days: theweeklywars.wordpress.com
deckstats.net archive
NLT will not work in my meta or any other solid Legacy meta at this point. Delver of Secrets is what makes the list competitive at this point. Without it RUG is just too slow to cope with the wide range of fast lists and and it gets out aggro-controlled by the Stoneblade lists with or without TNN.
Given the randomness of a 14 colored land manabase with no acceleration it's surprising that this list still places well, particularly given the re-emergence of Wasteland in the meta. I'm just trying to find an alternative that lets me play the game 90% of the time and lately this list has been more like 75%.
Dude your sample size is incredibly small, the probability that you experience that in the short run isn't that unlikely despite it not being the overall result in the long run. If you wanna run more lands then go ahead, but I have actually done the math and would love to show you if you are interested.
Recently played in a 30 man weekly event at my LGS. There is usually a healthy meta in the room with a good amount of combo and fair decks. This week there was a lot of BUG delver in the room. I have always had an issue playing against bug delver, they tend to go over top of me and can also beat the stifle wasteland game with their DRS.
I'm looking for advice on how to attack the matchup. I tend to lean on my nimble mongeese and play the resource battle. I've also thought about sideboarding divert to redirect abrupt decay and blow them out.
(A bonus question: How do I to also tackle the enchantress matchup? There are two players that have been showing up who play enchantress)
The way to beat Enchantress is to counter everything they try to do early on. They have no targets for your burn so it's a good thing to side out for the extra counters in your sideboard. If you don't have extra counters in your sideboard you have to hope you get lucky on the draw. Dropping a delver or a mongoose and then dazing their first Utopia Sprawl or Wild Growth really helps. Once they get the ramp going you're in trouble because they will then stack enchantments in a way that you can't respond well to them. If they're actually playing more than a few non-basics you can try the mana denial plan, especially if they're foolish enough to fetch a non-basic and then drop an enchant on it to ramp.
My experience against the list is that a seasoned Enchantress player will drop or fetch basic forests and put the ramp pieces on those. If they manage to do this they will make Daze and Spell Pierce fairly irrelevant in a hurry and Force of Will isn't enough to stop the card drawing engines from coming online at that point. Argothian Enchantress has shroud so unless you can Spell Snare or Force her you're in trouble.
BUG Delver just isn't a great matchup for you. Sometimes you can go underneath them, but Decay and DRS both line up well against what you're trying to do. You're in a better place if they're playing the Stifle version because otherwise Liliana is a beating, as is Hymn. Divert is good against BUG decks in general.
You need to stop the draw engine most of all, but Fool is right in that stopping the ramp is part of that. If they get to 5 mana and won't die in your next combat, they've basically won unless their board is otherwise empty. Counter Elephant Grass if you have a fast clock, but otherwise let them tie up their mana keeping it around. If you both 'get' the matchup, I'd say it's close or that Enchantress has a slight edge. Bring in Rough/Tumble, Sulfuric Vortex, and Grip.(A bonus question: How do I to also tackle the enchantress matchup? There are two players that have been showing up who play enchantress)
If Enchantress is on the play it can be a very unfavorable matchup because they get to play their first ramp piece before you play. Then turn 2 they can drop their 2nd land and their 2nd ramp piece is immune to Daze, Spell Pierce and Spell Snare making a 5 mana turn 3 a real possibility.
If we're on the play and can't counter the first ramp piece it just pushes the inevitability back by a turn. So I will always Force the first ramp piece if I have no other way to interact with it whether I'm on the play or on the draw.
I'd most soundly advise against forcing their first ramp piece. While Dazing (with threat) and Piercing (if playing vs unknown or whatever) is def. good I have found the most important spells not to be the ramp spells. What you really want to focus on, and this holds true for most blue decks when confronted with Enchantress, is their namesake effects: Enchantress' Presence and Argothian Enchantress. If you are able to cut them off from their draw-spells all their ramp will eventually just produce one fast big spell that you can FoW in any way given.
Greetings
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