[Deck] Nausea - Tendrils for the win.

[My Name Is Scott]

The deck originally ran Brainstorm and I think it was a bad idea to replace it with Sleight in the first place. I never really liked it in the deck, a draw 3 is just way more powerful when setting up for the turn 2 kill.

The problem with brainstorm is that you never want to draw what you put back. Putting sleight in over brainstorm was a huge improvement, as the deck didn't have enough shuffle effects to support a good brainstorm. Brainstorm has yet to be tested with the addition of three more shuffle effects as far as I know. That's the reason roop didn't have a definate slot, sleight of hand may still be better.

[Ebinsugewa]

I'm really not a big fan of Brainstorm for the reasons already stated. At absolute worst, Sleight replaces itself and clears off the top of your library. Having to dilute the deck with shuffle effects is not worth the Ancestral that Brainstorm may or may not provide you.

On a testing note, preliminary goldfishing with the deck has not proven Infernal Tutor as a factor in my wins (IE it was a Storm spell if I even cast it at all). But, I do believe this is a result of the small sample size, and I will continue to play the deck. Meditate coming back is a major plus, the deck was lacking with the draw that Night's Whisper provided :(

[clavio]

I have to disagree, It has been much more effective than whisper in all of my testing. I have only once had to cast it for storm once. It is so good that Im going to buy some and make this one of my primary decks that I play.

[ACME_Myst]

Hi all,


first off, let me make one thing clear. I have absolutely NOBODY over here to competetively (?spelling?) test against Tier1 Legacy decks. Therefore my experiences in testing rely more or less on some vintage (5C stax and WTF in particular) and Legacy rogue decks. If someone from these boards would like to help me test this with Magic Workstation or the like, please send me a message.


Now, for my current decklist:

//Land (11)

1 Swamp
1 Island
4 Polluted Delta
1 Underground Sea
2 City of Brass [should probably be Seas too..]
2 Ancient Tomb

//Creatures (3)

3 Trinket Mage

//Artifact Mana (8)

4 Lotus Petal
4 Lion's Eye Diamond


//Spell Mana (8)

4 Dark Ritual
4 Cabal Ritual

//Cantrip (8)

2 Sensei's Divining Top
4 Chromatic Sphere
2 Night's Whisper

//Draw/Tutoring (9)

3 Meditate
4 Infernal Tutor
2 Spoils of the Vault

//Random (13)

4 Helm of Awakening
4 Duress
1 Ill-Gotten Gains
1 Diminishing Returns
3 Tendrils of Agony


Sideboard

[Nothing yet]

So that's it for the decklist. Here are some explanations of cardchoices:

Land:

Fetches/Duals more or less explain themselves I guess. Ancient tomb is in there to drop 1st turn helm or top + activation.


Other Mana:

Also explains itself. 8 Rituals, petals + LED. LED is great, super synergy with Infernal Tutor, big draw spells or IGG.

Cantrip:

Sensei's Divining Top: Great setup card, combo's with Helm to go infinite and is great with fetch.

Chromatic Sphere: 1 Mana colorfixing cantrip, 0 under Helm. Superb.

Night's Whisper: I felt like I needed another setup card in this deck and was really doubting between whisper and brainstorm. I finally decided for whisper because it net's you an extra card. Should I ever start to run Force of Will then I'd probably switch to brainstorm.

Draw/Tutoring:

Meditate: Legacy's best draw spell, but not always wanted since it doesn't ensure victory. I feel running four is too much, but I may be wrong here.

Infernal Tutor: Basically the card this deck is build to abuse. I simply love it. With LED it becomes a demonic tutor, without LED it helps you find redundant rituals/tendrils so you can have a good game against control without actualy giving them a vital countertarget.


Spoils of the Vault: Someone once said this card is Legacy's vampiric tutor. Well I agree, even though it sometimes randomly kills you, it's very powerfull when used as it should be.

Creatures:

Trinket Mage: Probably a strange choice, but since the deck was build to abuse Infernal Tutor, and since that card works so great with LED, I figured I should include Trinket. Besides finding LED to "free" your infernal, it also acts as a mini-toolbox tutor finding sphere's tops or petals as desired. With Helm in play and when fetching LED it actually accelerates too!


Random:

Helm of Awakening: Great enabler to go off. Helps about every card in the deck and combos great with top.

Duress: I should have at least some kind of protection against control right?

Diminishing Returns/Ill-Gotten Gains: Your bombs. Resolving one of these usually wins you the game.

Tendrils: duh.



So now that we've got all the cards covered, some good news, and some bad news:

The good news: This decks average goldfish is somewhere around turn 2.8 . I figure that's pretty fast, or at least for Legacy it is. Speed should really be this deck's greatest strength, and personally I don't think I would mind removing the 4 duress if it would significantly lower my goldfish.

The bad news: Well, even though it's possibly to create a redundant hand with infernal tutor to play around FoW and friends, this deck (like most combo, but still..) has a pretty bad game against most control. It sort of autoscoopes to 3Sphere, sphere of restistance and that sort of stuff. Wasteland is a bitch too, even though you can play around it.



Here are some goldfishes with the deck, just to give you guys an idea about how to play this. As it happened, in the three goldfishes I did I drew three distinctly different "types" of opening hands. Please note these are actual goldfish hands, not hands I made up:


Goldfish nr 1 "The Suicide Hand":

I lose a dieroll to my virtual opponent, so let's assume we are on the draw.

My opening hand:

2 Spoils of the Vault
Infernal Tutor
Tendrils of Agony
Dark Ritual
2 Lotus Petal

So as said, this is kind of a suicide hand. Especially since I have a double Spoils, this hand is very risky to keep. I decided I should however, since if my opponent won't play any counterspells or the like, this will probably result in a turn 1 win. I figured that whas pretty sweet since I needed a demonstration goldfish for here, and turn 1 kills always look good. So here we go:

Turn 1:

draw: polluted delta

1 play delta (why not..)
2 play petal [Storm 1]
3 play petal [Storm 2]
4 Break 2x petal [Storm 2, BB]
5 Play Dark Ritual [Storm 3, BBBB]
6 Spoils for Lion's Eye Diamond [Storm 4, BBB]
find it 11 cards down, bringing me down to 9 lives.
7 Infernal Tutor for second LED [Storm 5, B]
8 Play 2x LED [Storm 7, B]
9 Play Spoils for Infernal Tutor, break 2x LED in response [Storm 8, BBBBBB]
find it 6 cards down, 3 lives left
10 Play Infernal Tutor for Tendrils of Agony [Storm 9, BBBB]
11 Play Tendrils [Storm 10]


Ok, so I have to admit that hand was just über broken. Let's shuffle up a new hand:


Goldfish nr 2 "Average":

I win the dieroll, so I will go first.

My Opening hand:

Helm of Awakening
Tendrils of Agony
Infernal Tutor
Lotus Petal
Underground Sea
Night's Whisper
Trinket Mage

So that's an average hand. It's got some tutoring, some draw, a little bit of acceleration and a land. I decide to keep, so here goes:


Turn 1:
Play Underground sea, play lotus petal, play Helm of Awakening.

Turn 2:
Draw Polluted Delta.
Play delta, break for swamp, play Trinket Mage for LED.

Turn 3:
Draw Chromatic Sphere.
Attack with Trinket Mage, bringing him down to 18 life.

1 Drop Sphere [Storm 1]
2 Drop LED [Storm 2]
3 Swamp, break sphere [Storm 2, B]
draw Lotus Petal
4 Play Petal [Storm 3, B]
5 Play Whisper [Storm 4]
draw dark ritual and helm of awakening
6 Tap Underground Sea, play Infernal Tutor for second Dark Ritual [Storm 5]
7 sac petal, play Ritual [Storm 6, BBB]
8 play Helm of Awakening [Storm 7, BB]
9 Play Dark Ritual [Storm 8, BBBB]
10 Play Tendrils [Storm 9, BB]


Alright, so that average hand without any real bombs or rituals just gave us a turn 3 victory. Pretty nice. Let's have one more go:

Goldfish nr 3 "I need that topdeck":

Once more, I win the dieroll, so I will be on the play.

Opening hand:

Island
Trinket Mage
Dark Ritual
Sensei's Divining Top
2 Lion's Eye Diamond
Infernal Tutor


This hand is great vs any non-control deck. ANY black mana source you find will win you the game right here, right now. I guess this is a reason to keep the hand for the purposes of goldfishing. In a real match, you might want to consider your chances a little bit more carefully.

Turn 1:
play Island, play Top

Turn 2:
During my upkeep, tap island to look with top, revealing:

Polluted Delta
Trinket Mage
Lotus Petal

Remember that part about only needing one black mana source? I stack the petal on top, drawing it during my draw step. After that:

1 Play petal [Storm 1]
2 sac petal, play dark ritual [Storm 2, BBB]
3 play double LED [Storm 4, BBB]
4 play Infernal Tutor, crack 2x LED in response [Storm 5, BBBBBBB]
search for Ill-Gotten Gains
5 play Ill-Gotten Gains [Storm 6, BBB]
Return 2x LED, Infernal Tutor
6 play double LED [Storm 8, BBB]
7 play Infernal Tutor, crack 2x LED in response[Storm 9, BBBBBBB]
fetch Tendrils
8 play Tendrils [Storm 10, BBB]


well, these are just three goldfishes I wrote out for you guys, hope it makes some things clear about playing this deck.


Also, I spend the better part of my evening yesterday testing against a combo/control deck running 4x FoW, 2x Daze, 2x Mana Leak and 4x Duress, combined with lots of early game carddraw (Brainstorm and friends) and that deck having about a turn 4 goldfish. Oh yeah, it ran 2x Stifle in the maindeck as well. These conditions forced me to race against a deck running about all the hate I could possibly not wish for. Although these are really bad conditions, I still went 50/50 against the guy and we still need to play the deciding match. After those games he told me that even though he had FoW, he could never really find any good target to use it on, simply because I never really made any *very* important plays, so it wouldn't really matter it he forced or not. My point in saying this is actually giving an example that it is possible to have a decent matchup against a deck running lots of control combined with a fast clock.


If you've come to here, thank you for reading through all that crap I wrote. I would ask anybody who is interested to come up with ideas to further develop this deck as I would really like to make it competetive.

grtz,

Thomas

ps. Once again, if you would like to help me test against Tier1 decks you have experience playing with, please do PM me.

[Jander78]

Merged threads.

[Ebinsugewa]

I have to disagree, It has been much more effective than whisper in all of my testing. I have only once had to cast it for storm once.

I'm certainly not doubting the usefulness of the card, but in my preliminary testing, I can't declare the deck broken enough to play again. I'm glad you have had better luck though.

PS - Merged what threads?

[ACME_Myst]

well,

i started a new thread in the new&developent forum for my deck, but he merged it with the nausea thread. so please note my build isn't trying to be a new build of nausea, rather it's a standalone tendrils build.

i must say however that there definitly are some overlapping things between the decks. don't know if anybody is interested in my build since i don't really have any reports on matchups against Tier1 decks, but maybe it brings up some ideas on how to insert Infernal Tutor in nausea. i don't know, i merely figured i wanted my list online for discussion, so that might explain some things about that post (the goldfish games for example) which otherwise might seem out of place.

greetz

[MasterBlaster]

I have to disagree, It has been much more effective than whisper in all of my testing. I have only once had to cast it for storm once. It is so good that Im going to buy some and make this one of my primary decks that I play.

I finally got around to throwing this deck together and trying it out and I have to say that I completely agree with Clavio. Infernal Tutor is simply amazing and it's not nearly as dependent on LED as I thought it would be. About a third of the time I cast Infernal Tutor with an empty hand, I didn't use an LED to help to empty it.

Also I kind of think that a second Meditate should be put into the deck somehow.

[Locutus]

Hi all,
I've been reading this thread for some time now, as Nausea is kind of fun to play :)
I played the deck this weekend at our local legacy tournament, mostly because everyone else said you can't play tendrils in legacy. I'm from Germany and there aren't many lagacy players around here, so most tournamenst are about 20-30 people, and we don't really have a metagame here, as half of those people are playing their own creations, so it's hard to predict what's coming at you. The non-rouge decks always include goblins and some survival decks, so I thought playing combo would be a good idea.

Here is my Decklist:

//Mana
4 Dark Ritual
4 Cabal Ritual
4 Lotus Petal
4 LED
4 Land Grant
3 City of Traitors
1 Taiga
1 Bayou
1 Tropical Island
1 Wooded Foothills

//Tutor
4 Burning Wish
3 Spoils of the Vault
3 Infernal Tutor

//Cantrip/Draw
4 Chromatic Sphere
3 Darkwater Egg
3 Shadowblood Egg
4 Meditate
3 Brainstorm

//Others
4 Helm of Awakening
2 Tendrils of Agony

//Sideboard
3 Xantid Swarm
3 Duress
1 Cabal Therapy
1 Firebolt
1 Ill-Gotten Gains
1 Diminishing Returns
1 Reverent Silence
1 Echoing Ruin
1 Cruel Bargain
1 Infernal Tutor
1 Tendrils of Agony


I would have played one Ill-Gotten Gains main insted of a Meditate or Brainstorm, but didn't get another one, so i left it in the board. I choose Meditate over Night's Whisper, because i never had a problem getting a blue mana to cast it while testing, and four cards are usually enough to win right then. Also it is instant, so you can go like Burning Wish, response Meditate, response sac LED, so you get the mana, draw four cards and then get whatever is missing with the wish :)

We were 28 people, so we played 5 rounds.

Round 1 was against some Mono-G Stompy.
He played first both games, but i went off turn 2 and 3, so it was 2:0 in under 10 minutes. Aggro decks without any disruption are not scary, but he claimed i would have been dead next turn in both games. I was at 13 and 10 life, so I guess he was right.

Round 2: Rifter
Not a bad matchup, but Abeyance is kind of bad for you. I played first, and he played a plains on his first turn. I went off turn 2 without playing a helm, and it worked really good. After i played Tendrils with storm 12+, he revealed the Abeyance from his hand and scooped. Game 2 my opening hand wasn't as fast as in Game 1, but after playing a helm turn 2 i went off turn 3 again, starting with ritual, wish for Therapy, Therapy naming Abeyance, 'cause it is the only way I can loose this matchup. He didn't have one, and didn't draw one through cycling with my Infernal Tutor on the stack, so again it was 2:0 in really short time.

Round 3: Some kind of 4-Color Control
Not much to say here, both games he got turn 2 Meddling Mage naming Tendrils with Force backup for my Firebolt. 0:2 :(

Round 4: ATS
I play first, going City, Helm, go. He drops a Bird, and i kill him turn 2. Game 2 I mulligan down to 5, and the only mana sources i see are cabal rituals, and no fixers at all. I'm down to 6 life when I finally see a chance to go off, but i have to spoil for another ritual losing 8 life.. In game 3 my starting hand again isn't to hot, I had 2 Duals and a City but no helm and no tutor. I play lands for three turns, then dropping some eggs until i finally draw some tutoring. I start going off, and he hardcasts a Force on my Dark Ritual, but I got another one, so it doesn't matter. He showed me a Stifle in Game 2 after i killed myself, so i Wish for Duress before playing Tendrils, and of course he had a Stifle in his Hand. I end up with 3 Mana and stormcount 8 with Tendrils and Infernal Tutor in my Hand and Helm in play, so I play Tendrills for 18, bringing him down to 1. He naturalizes my Helm on his turn, but can't do much else. I had all three duals in play, and luckily drew a City from the Top, so I'm hellbent for the Tutor, find a Burning wish and have the mana to play it, giving me the Firebolt of inevitable Doom in my Hand. I nevcer thought i would use it to kill a player when putting together the SB..2:1

In the last round, my possible opponents are:
Rifter
NQG
2x Goblins
RGSA
Solidarity
Blue Weenie
So I have 4 autowins, one mediocre matchup, one bad matchup and an autoloss..guess which one i got? Yeah..Storm at instant speed >> Storm at sorcery speed :(

So in the end I got a 7th place with 3-2, which could have been a 4-1 4th place with a little bit more luck with the pairings. I had a lot of fun playing the deck, and a lot of time to recover from the hard thinking between the rounds, a clear advantage over solidarity :D
Oh yeah, and i got a Blistering Firecat for my 7th place *wee*

As far as the deck is concerned, Infernal Tutor really is a great card, it only sucked one time when I tried going off to soon. Also Brainstorm is better than SoH, because you dig a card deeper, and often will either have a way to shuffle (I had 8 shuffle effects in my deck), or you have a Spoils, which can remove the two cards you put back if you don't need them, or can just cantrip if you name than when you just need more spells for your stormcount, or you can put back a card you want to play, than crack an LED und draw the Card with a sphere/egg. I would consider Spoils as the worst card in the deck, because it is very risky. While goldfishing i often did something like Bayo, eot Spoils for Helm, lose 35 life. It also makes Infernal Tutor worse, as you sometimes remove tha card you want to find from the game. I definitly wouldn't play more than 3.

Locu

[clavio]

I played nausea today. I went 1-2. I gotta say, Im not happy. I think I played the deck adequetly enough, I just got shafted I guess. I didn't take any notes or anything so this might not be 100% what happened. But I just want to point out the problems I had.

To be fair all of my opponents played force of will.

Match 1: Hes playing ATS (wtf)

game 1 I go off like turn 3. Standard stuff.

game 2 I go land grant, he goes force of will. He goes cabal therapy, being he knows every card in my hand. He flashed it. He sex monkeyed my helm, but I dont think it mattered. He ended up winning via creature beat.

game 3 I spoils to death, and I would have won right there if I had not been killed my myself.

Match 2: Aluren
I won, he had some shitty luck.

Match 3: Relic orb

Game one: he counters all of my shit, then beats down with efreet
Game two: he counters all of my shit, then beats down with efreet. Chalice for one at some point. He also bounced my xantid swarm, and it couldn't come back thanks to chalice.

I want to cut down my spoils count. I think 2-3 should be good, but 4 is just over the top. Infernal tutor is pretty bitchin, I think Ill play 4. Overall I think this deck can be one of the best, it just needs to be refined a little bit

[MasterBlaster]

I'll have to disagree with you. Spoils may suck but it is a necessary evil. Often I find myself very dependent on Spoils to grab me the Helm or Ritual that I need to start comboing. Also I hope that one of those 4 Infernal Tutors that you're playing is in the sideboard.

[Locutus]

With 4 Burning wish and 3 Infernal Tutor main, I think 2-3 Spoils is enough tutoring power. Spoils is good, because it can get Ritual, Helm, or LED before you go off, but playing two spoils in one game will often cost more life than you have, unless you get really lucky.

[MasterBlaster]

With 4 Burning wish and 3 Infernal Tutor main, I think 2-3 Spoils is enough tutoring power. Spoils is good, because it can get Ritual, Helm, or LED before you go off, but playing two spoils in one game will often cost more life than you have, unless you get really lucky.

Burning Wish and Infernal Tutor are both great but they do little to set you up to start the combo because they can't grab a Helm or Ritual. Also casting multiple Spoils isn't so bad if you're running Brainstorm.

[PunkRocker1134]

Still only Three Spoils is really needed. Atleast so far in my testing. Then again I run a mix of Iggy Pop and Nausea and to be honest I think it is much better than Nausea. It has consistancy and some speed.

[Evil Roopey]

Still only Three Spoils is really needed. Atleast so far in my testing. Then again I run a mix of Iggy Pop and Nausea and to be honest I think it is much better than Nausea. It has consistancy and some speed.

So it's basically Iggy-Pop with wishes? Or does it just have the Nausea mana-base? I have actually been thinking about doing something similar to this, but never really got around to it.

[PunkRocker1134]

this is what mine looks like:

Iggy/Nausea


// Lands
4 [EX] City of Traitors
1 [B] Bayou
1 [R] Tropical Island
1 [A] Taiga
1 [ON] Wooded Foothills

// Spells
2 [SC] Tendrils of Agony
3 [DIS] Infernal Tutor
3 [ST] Sleight of Hand
4 [VI] Helm of Awakening
3 [MR] Spoils of the Vault
4 [JU] Burning Wish
4 [TE] Lotus Petal
4 [MM] Land Grant
3 [OD] Shadowblood Egg
4 [MI] Lion's Eye Diamond
4 [US] Dark Ritual
4 [TO] Cabal Ritual
3 [OD] Darkwater Egg
4 [MR] Chromatic Sphere
3 [US] Ill-Gotten Gains

// Sideboard
SB: 1 [SC] Tendrils of Agony
SB: 1 [DIS] Infernal Tutor
SB: 1 [US] Ill-Gotten Gains
SB: 1 [FD] Night's Whisper
SB: 1 [6E] Diminishing Returns
SB: 1 [MR] Promise of Power
SB: 1 [R] Regrowth
SB: 1 [7E] Infernal Contract
SB: 3 [8E] Defense Grid
SB: 4 [GP] Leyline of the Void

Mine is more of a nausea base with Iggy in the deck, but with Iggy maindeck we also gain the ability to side in Leyline and use Iggy as a Mind Twist. Also it gives Infernal tutor a better target then Mediate. I am tempted to run Iggy with Burnign wish too. This is what I've been messing with and to decent goldfishes at the very least.

[GreenOne]

Reanimate!

Has anyone ever tested rite of flame or second sunrise?

Second sunrise can be funny with all those eggs, LED, and petal. You can IT for it and break LED for WWW.

[MasterBlaster]

I haven't tested either of those cards but I can't imagine Rite of Flame being any good as Nausea doesn't run enough red cards to justify it and it makes a horrible wish target because it doesn't give enough mana.

Second Sunrise on the other hand might be really good. The only problem would of course be getting the double-white. I'll test it(eventually).

Edit: Anybody know what I should cut from the deck to fit in a Second Sunrise?

[Evil Roopey]

// Lands
4 [EX] City of Traitors
2 [ON] Bloodstained Mire
2 [ON] Polluted Delta
1 [B] Volcanic Island
1 [U] Underground Sea
1 [A] Badlands
1 [U] Bayou

// Spells
4 [MR] Spoils of the Vault
3 [SC] Tendrils of Agony
4 [MR] Chromatic Sphere
4 [MI] Dark Ritual
4 [TO] Cabal Ritual
4 [TE] Lotus Petal
4 [MI] Lion's Eye Diamond
3 [OD] Darkwater Egg
4 [JU] Burning Wish
3 [OD] Shadowblood Egg
4 [VI] Helm of Awakening
3 [DIS] Infernal Tutor
1 [US] Ill-Gotten Gains
1 [OV] Meditate
2 [MM] Brainstorm

// Sideboard
SB: 1 [SC] Tendrils of Agony
SB: 1 [US] Ill-Gotten Gains
SB: 1 [FD] Night's Whisper
SB: 1 [DS] Echoing Ruin
SB: 1 [OD] Simplify
SB: 1 [JU] Cabal Therapy
SB: 1 [OD] Firebolt
SB: 1 [R] Regrowth
SB: 1 [OV] Infernal Contract
SB: 1 [AL] Diminishing Returns
SB: 1 [6E] Doomsday
SB: 1 [MM] Unmask
SB: 1 [US] Duress
SB: 1 [OV] Pyroclasm


That is my current list. Just thought it might fuel some discussion.

[MasterBlaster]

So the changes are:
-4 Land Grant
-1 Wooded Foothills
-1 Taiga
-1 Tropical Island
-1 Brainstorm
+1 Ill-Gotten Gains
+2 Bloodstained Mire
+2 Polluted Delta
+1 Volcanic Island
+1 Badlands
+1 Underground Sea

I'm guessing the changes were made to make it more consistent.

What were the reasons for taking out Land Grants in Favor of Fetchlands? I would have figured a free spell would have been too good to consider it's removal.