I am currently toying with a cabal pit or a bojuka bog. In the right meta, any of them can be very useful.
I also like to always have access to a manland. I've been rocking nantuko monastery for the last 6 months, but Deathrites are a pain lately, so I am gonna toy with a tapped one(treetop, stirring wildwood, RG one).
Yeah, if you're insatisfied with it try a new tech perhaps! I have tested Treetop Village before and it's pretty neat, specially if you have a TNN in front of you. You can just endlessly swing for 3 in such occasion. Or maybe urborg?
I like playing a manland. I used to play Stirring Wildwood (mainly because I have a swag signed Japanese one tbh) but I think Treetop Village is better. In the matchup where manlands matter most, Miracles, you have to worry about RIP so I'm not crazy about Nantuko Monastery.
Props of SCG Prov:
Met Seraphix
Hung out with friends because "local event".
... And that's about it. Played against two Sneak 'n' Shows. Failed to make money.
Originally Posted by sdematt
My surprise at seeing someone else in the room on the same deck cannot be put into words.
"Failed to make money" would be a gross understatement of my experience. The meta was surprisingly unfair (look at the Top 16), and well, when you don't see your sideboard cards in game 2 you kind of just die.
And Life from the Loam is just terminally slow in this meta for anything with the aggro concept anywhere in the equation.
Anything that takes 3 turns to get rolling and doesn't kill the opponent on turn 4 had better have a lot of permission or disruption or it is going to be DoA.
I definitely shit my pants a little bit when you said you were running the same deck, and I shit them a little bit more when you said who you were.
Anyway, ignoring FoolofaTook, I didn't feel like I was at a disadvantage going into the room. Sure, the top 8 was a bunch of OmniShow, but that shouldn't preclude me from putting up a decent showing. I don't think I necessarily made any play mistakes. I just think that it wasn't my turn to shine.
Like, round one I played against Maverick and was on the draw. Looked at my opening hand. Had turn one Chalice of the Void and an Abrupt Decay. Pretty fukken sweet, right? So, he drops a Deathrite Shaman turn one. I cast my Chalice figuring I can deal with whatever threat he pumps out on his next turn. Pass the turn, he plays a Cavern of Souls naming Human, a Mother of Runes, and a Sylvan Library.
...
And it was basically just more of that. I felt like I played well, but too often my opponents got the nuts and I didn't, and it certainly didn't help to play against my absolute worst match-up twice.
Aaanyway, I continue to be especially happy with the list.
The "major" point of contention is still Horizon Canopy. I left it in for this weekend because I didn't want to change it up without seeing how its replacement would do, but I kept track of its performance this weekend. While it by no means hurt to have Horizon Canopy, I ended up activating its ability (get ready) once over the course of an eight round tournament, and once I had I realized I didn't even need to. I realize that one tournament is not a great metric and that various one-ofs in the deck might have put up a similar frequency of results, and I can't say how much more effective something like Cabal Pit would have been (which is an all-time favorite card of mine), but I do know that there's no reason at this point to not meddle with Horizon Canopy and the third flex Bayou.
Something else I've been trying to pay attention to, and this makes me somewhat sad because I just picked up a Russian copy, is the Ancient Grudge in the sideboard.
Let me first state that I fucking love Ancient Grudge. Fucking. Love. Ancient Grudge. But it's become all too apparent that it's very difficult to actually achieve value with Ancient Grudge. Nearly every deck will freak out as soon as they see Knight and Loam and pack every bit of graveyard hate from Rest in Peace to Yixlid Jailer and, when they do, Ancient Grudge just becomes Shatter.
I do still feel the slot is needs to be dedicated to a like effect though. I've always felt Krosan Grip is too clunky, so Wear//Tear is probably what I'll be looking to try out. I realize it won't have too many opportunities to get a two-for-one, but I feel the option of versatility would be worth it.
Kronberger Special
25*Land
1*Forest
2*Barren Moor
3*Bayou
2*Grove of the Burnwillows
1*Horizon Canopy
1*Karakas
1*Maze of Ith
1*Savannah
2*Scrubland
1*Taiga
2*Tranquil Thicket
4*Verdant Catacombs
4*Wasteland
12*Creatures
4*Dark Confidant
1*Scavenging Ooze
1*Gaddock Teeg
4*Knight of the Reliquary
1*Qasali Pridemage
1*Dryad Arbor
23*Other Spells
3*Liliana of the Veil
3*Punishing Fire
2*Green Sun's Zenith
3*Life from the Loam
1*Sylvan Library
3*Abrupt Decay
4*Chalice of the Void
4*Mox Diamond
Sideboard
1*Containment Priest
3*Ethersworn Canonist
1*Spirit of the Labyrinth
1*Thrun, the Last Troll
4*Leyline of the Void
1*Thoughtseize
1*Toxic Deluge
1*Ancient Grudge
2*Golgari Charm
Ditto not feeling bad about the deck. Despite my dismal showing, I think the deck is fine and would play it at a big tourney again. This deck is far from defenseless and is capable of being quite unfair. Variance happens and is what you sign up for when you don't run Brainstorm & Friends, and I still have a lot of room to improve my play as well.
Which deck did you play against twice? Burn?
I think the 3rd Bayou is legit, certainly more so than the 2nd Taiga. Even with it I still sometimes don't have BB for Liliana, which came up a few times this weekend. I've always played a 5th fetch for this purpose.
Krosan Grip is one of my pet cards but I swear its actually good. It is super versatile, easy to cast, and Split Second is unreal. I'm fine with Wear // Tear never being a two-for-one but it uses the two splashiest colors, Tear won't work through Chalice on 1, and it can be countered by spells.
For anyone who cares, I played this:
4x Verdant Catacombs
1x Windswept Heath
3x Bayou
2x Scrubland
1x Taiga
1x Savannah
1x Forest
4x Wasteland
1x Dryad Arbor
1x Karakas
2x Grove of the Burnwillows
1x Treetop Village
2x Barren Moor
2x Tranquil Thicket
4x Chalice of the Void
4x Mox Diamond
3x Life from the Loam
2x Green Sun's Zenith
1x Sylvan Library
3x Punishing Fire
3x Abrupt Decay
3x Liliana of the Veil
4x Dark Confidant
1x Gaddock Teeg
1x Scavenging Ooze
1x Tarmogoyf
4x Knight of the Reliquary
SB 4x Leyline of the Void
SB 3x Ethersworn Canonist
SB 2x Golgari Charm
SB 1x Toxic Deluge
SB 1x Thrun, the Last Troll
SB 1x Gaddock Teeg
SB 1x Reclamation Sage
SB 1x Phyrexian Revoker
SB 1x Krosan Grip
From what I can gather the 4c loam list is a bit "closed", beside a couple flex slot (1 creature, manabase and 1 slot that can be anything, including land). My question now, and what I will begin to test this week is Is there a true advantage to play 4c loam vs Junk loam.
From what I can gather, losing red is losing the pf. Red does not give a lot of sideboard options that we truly need IMO.
The list I am going to test is the following:
2x Barren Moor
2x Bayou
1x Cabal Pit
1x Dryad Arbor
1x Forest
1x Karakas
1x Maze of Ith
2x Savannah
1x Scrubland
1x Swamp
2x Tranquil Thicket
4x Verdant Catacombs
4x Wasteland
2x Windswept Heath
4x Dark Confidant
1x Deathrite Shaman
1x Gaddock Teeg
4x Knight of the Reliquary
1x Scavenging Ooze
1x Tarmogoyf
3x Green Sun's Zenith
3x Life from the Loam
4x Chalice of the Void
4x Mox Diamond
4x Abrupt Decay
2x Sylvan Library
3x Liliana of the Veil
Sideboard (15)
1x Bojuka Bog
1x Engineered Plague
3x Ethersworn Canonist
1x Gaddock Teeg
2x Golgari Charm
1x Krosan Grip
4x Meddling Mage
1x Toxic Deluge
1x Tundra
Pros:
More stable manabase
Mostly the same shell
Cons:
Loss of Punishing Fire for the more aggro matchups
The sideboard is only for testing the possibility of a 4 color for meddling mage to help the combo matchup.
Will post feedback at the end of the week. Feel free to comment and say that my assessment is wrong :)
PS. Sorry about the english but I am dumb today
I was also able to play the deck two weeks ago at the first tournament of the magiccardmarket series in Rome. 200 players showed up and i finished 20th going 6-2.
A short summary of my matchups:
Lost to Infect and UR Delver (Price of Progress is a good card :( )
Won against: Infect, MUD, Burn, Dark Depths Combo, Death and Taxes and 12-Post.
Played a pretty stock list with three Thoughtseizes in the sideboard. They did impress me. I bring them in against any sort of combo and when i board out Chalice.
Pilhas, you really don't have to go as far as blue to have good combo matchups.
My current list has excellent matchups against combo decks that aren't mono-blue.
How combo saturated is your meta that you want 8 cards for it? Either way I've found Thalia to be on average stronger disruption than canonist or mage. Instead of just turning off a card or a line of play she usually does that as well as taxing the cantrips/answers that the opponent tries to deploy. That plus your mana denial can buy you multiple turns with which to find a second piece of hate to lock the game out or just draw more wastelands to do roughly the same.
Yes this is pretty bad against OmniTell which is the combo flavor of the month ATM but I've played Trinisphere(s) in the past to combat them. Both Thalia and the 3ball as well as canonist interact favorably with bounce spells which the opponent won't be able to cast in the S&T turn, whereas a single mage can't stop the gameplan and protect itself.
Again, if your meta is really that combo heavy then maybe you want to go down on Pfire and (real) removal spells, but I think on average the red splash does a lot against the tempo/midrange/creature decks in the format and is also a way to close the game out against control if something went wrong in the .
schniggaz I'd be interested to know how the infect games went.
The thing about Thalia is that it hurts us quite a bit, although it is still fine I prefer canonist because our 1 card per turn is usually more powerful than theirs
Thalia for sure hurts us, but our mana base is much more robust so we have the advantage of casting spells better through her, compounding her effect with other mana denial, and having a 2/1 body on the board.
Canonist is fine at doing her job, but she won't stop an ANT player in possession of 2 fetch lands from decaying her on your end step and going off.
Canonist also matters less against a lot of the combo decks like sneak & show or (manaless)dredge where they only actually need to resolve 1 spell. She is better against elves (if you decide not to play other cards for that matchup) but I find Thalia more versatile in that I can board her in against other decks with weak manabases or mana intensive plays like miracles or burn and have her function just fine in that role too.
Edit: In order to cast 2 cantrips through Thalia the opponent needs 4 mana. That is the point where the "precombo" disruption of canonist becomes stronger. This is if we ignore the fact that the opponent can play a spell on their turn and one on ours
just managed to 3-0-1 at the today's tornament with schniggaz's 61 from 108 page (dd combo, single ds, thrun, 6 fetches)
sideboard looks like these:
1 Gaddock Teeg
2 Ethersworn Canonist
1 Jund Charm
1 Krosan Grip
1 Surgical Extraction
2 Golgari Charm
2 Slaughter Games
3 Thoughtseize
1 Nihil Spellbomb
1 Engineered Plague
played contra Grixis Tezz 1:1 (thoughtseizes were good in this match), TA 2:1, UWR Delver 2:1, UB OmniTell 2:0 (won the first game with a mull to 4 on the draw, lol)
Niklas, what did you cut for 3 thoughtseizes in your sideboard?
thanks in advance!
Woo! Got the namesake representing the Thoughtseize!
I love the one I have and tried going up to two (not enough room in the sideboard), but I don't know how I'd feel about going up to three. Especially since I rarely find myself actually boarding out Chalice of the Void.
Also, I've been chatting it over with a few friends and while the consensus both in theory and in practice is that Wear//Tear is by far the better card in general, it's agreed that Krosan Grip is necessary so long as OmniShow is a relevant part of the meta.
As I said above, I tested the version without the red and...... shelved it. God I missed my punishing fires.
The change had its pros though, It made me rework my manabase so that its more consistent, and made me rework the sideboard also.
The three cards I am testing right now are Garruk Relentless -> in place of the third Liliana and Tarmogoyf -> In place of the random slot(Vindicate/Dreams/etc..).
Been very happy with the Goyf against combo, gave an extre pressure that I believe was needed.
Now if I can just find room for the 3rd Zenith....
Yeah, I mean, I can't really say that Punishing Fire is one of the best cards in the deck considering the "threat"-density of the deck, but it's fairly safe to say that Punishing Fire is absolutely indispensable. And, even though it is the only red effect in the deck, it's not exactly true that adding another color taxes the mana base too heavily. True, it does prevent us from running more utility effects and sometimes from getting out Liliana consistently on the third land drop, but I feel that's a very small price to pay.
Has anybody tried scroll rack? I am currently running 3 confidant + 2 sylvan library and trying scroll rack as the 2nd library.
The interaction with loam seems really profitable, EoT put 3 land on top, draw 3 and loam on draw phase.
I only been testing in solitary mode, can only test at weekends, but any feedback on being tried before would be appreciated.
Though it would be cool to "draw" three every turn with Scroll Rack and Life from the Loam, I think the fact that Scroll Rack is completely worthless without an active Life from the Loam makes it not a practical plan.
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