[Deck] T.E.S. - The EPIC Storm

[LDX]

It indeed seems to be a general case I couldn't see for myself. The only Teeg or Leyline I see here are surround by 4 Chalice each. With the exception of Elves!, of course.

[RaNDoMxGeSTuReS]

What I'm left wondering now is if Cabal Ritual is better off as additional lands, don't get me wrong, I've been a super big fan of Cabal Ritual over the last few weeks. But I think I would rather have Chrome Mox against Delver decks than Cabal Ritual, which means it would save two potential sideboard slots.

I've never been a fan of Cabal Ritual.

[Bryant Cook]

I'm going to start doing a mailbox series on the website. Please submit any questions you might have, they don't have to be strategy (Although, I would prefer some).

For example:
"Do you have a favorite match?"
"How much did you pay for your X (Insert card here)"
"What would you do with this hand?"

Submissions must be through the contact form on the website with a subject line of "TES Mailbox".

http://www.theepicstorm.com/#message

[LDX]

http://www.theepicstorm.com/the-epic...the-hate-deck/

I guess you could say this is where I am, right now.

I appreciate the new suggestions too, like Sulfur Elemental, but I needed something to get rid of Chalice before anything else. Next article should be a better, proper report on Thursday tournament.

[Pelikanudo]

Gemstone Mine is terrible, we're not casting Silence anymore, so why do you want to expose your manabase to Wasteland so much? Are you so bent on gold fishing that you can't appreciate the added consistency of shuffling after cantrips and just being a more consistent T2 deck? Cutting Chrome Mox to 2 isn't that big of a deal for the 3rd Duress or the 14th land, that said I think I'm going to play without Swamp for the 3rd Underground Sea and Blue Fetchlands for SB Bayou and Tropical Island because I like having the SB lands to replace the MD Chrome Mox post-board for Miracles. 2 Chrome Mox feels like a good number because you can maintain IMS parody by SBing the 2 most situational lands in the deck.

I will only keep the discussion with you as I've been blamed for keeping this discusion alive:
I prefer to play 3 moxen and 7 discard effects therefore I need to compress the deck the most possible so I need to play 12 lands and they need to be the most versatile possible, I even thought in going back to -1 Volcanic -1 fetch +2 city of brass

another reason is the polivalance Gemstones offers to me - I love using a single land to play ponder, duress and RoF as example.

Also I don't use cantrips B.S mainly the same way I use in other decks like TNT, I only see the benefit of using more fetches when playing B.S., but I usually use B.S. on the before turn of comboing or in the same so I just don't need to stabilize in here with B.S. - a usual play is to duress, ponder, B.W. for X, therapy maybe and finally B.S. for the win. just an example.

Other reason is that from the change to full of discard I haven't had any need of swithing anything else in my 60, I'm really happy with this vs all the decks in general...

On the other hand the unique alternatives of testing I've been evaluating which involves all of them taking out -1 discard (something I just don't want...) are:
a) 13 lands 8 fetches 2 U.Sea 2 V.Island 1 Balands - likely the most consistent move in regards of mana availability
b) 13 lands 8 fetches 2 U.Sea 2 V.Island 1 bayou - to save 1 side slot
c) 13 lands 8 fetches 2 U.Sea 2 V.Island 1 swamp - to test the 'duress with swamp and sitting on fetches' concept

as said, I'm reluctanct to such changes, If I start to loose the few tournaments I assist maybe I try something new...

[LDX]

Any last advice before I try to take on this?

Main deck Engineered Explosives. Enlightened Tutor to get it any day. Two Ethersworn Canonist maindeck. Best hate to bring? :)


3 Mother of Runes
4 Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
2 Ethersworn Canonist
3 Stoneforge Mystic
2 Vryn Wingmare
1 Brimaz, King of Oreskos
3 Flickerwisp
3 Phyrexian Revoker
1 Mirran Crusader

4 AEther Vial
1 Enlightened Tutor
1 Engineered Explosives
1 Umezawa's Jitte
1 Batterskull
1 Sword of Fire and Ice
1 Manriki-Gusari


4 Swords to Plowshares

1 Cavern of Souls
1 Eiganjo Castle
1 Flagstones of Trokair
1 Ghost Quarter
3 Horizon Canopy
3 Karakas
6 Plains
4 Wasteland
4 Rishadan Port



SB: 3 Chalice of the Void
SB: 2 Council's Judgment
SB: 1 Enlightened Tutor
SB: 4 Leyline of Sanctity
SB: 2 Containment Priest
SB: 3 Rest in Peace


My still in testing list is just following. I'm mostly trying to adapt to the above deck. I avoided the Cabal Ritual and kept the Chrome Mox in an attempt to go as fast as possible on Empty the Warrens, but EE now scares me. Also, since I have so much hate, I wouldn't know the optimal sideboarding options. I had poor success with Dread of Night or Sulfur Elemental as they don't remove SFM racing with Batterskull, or Ethersworn Canonist, or Phyrexian Revoker. Someone talked about Hurkyl's Recall + Dread of Night being better than my setup, as it removes everything I have problems with. Thoughts?

4 Polluted Delta
3 Bloodstained Mire
2 Volcanic Island
2 Underground Sea
1 Swamp
1 Bayou

4 Rite of Flame
4 Dark Ritual

4 Lion's Eye Diamond
4 Lotus Petal
3 Chrome Mox

4 Infernal Tutor
4 Burning Wish

4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
4 Gitaxian Probe

4 Cabal Therapy
2 Duress

1 Empty the Warrens
1 Ad Nauseam

SB: 3 Xantid Swarm
SB: 1 Massacre
SB: 1 Tendrils of Agony
SB: 1 Empty the Warrens
SB: 1 Past in Flames
SB: 1 Grapeshot
SB: 2 Echoing Truth
SB: 3 Shattering Spree
SB: 2 Chain of Vapor

[Final Fortune]

Recent testing has brought me closer to previous lists with small nuances,

1 Ad Nauseam
1 Empty the Warrens
4 Infernal Tutor
4 Burning Wish
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
4 Gitaxian Probe
4 Cabal Therapy
2 Thoughtseize
4 Dark Ritual
4 Rite of Flame
4 Lion's Eye Diamond
4 Lotus Petal
3 Chrome Mox
4 Polluted Delta
4 Misty Rainforest
3 Underground Sea
2 Volcanic Island

SB

1 Tendrils of Agony
1 Empty the Warrens
1 Dark Petition
1 Past in Flames
1 Thoughtseize
1 Void Snare
1 Massacre
4 Abrupt Decay
1 Bayou
1 Tropical Island
2 Pyroblast

Arguments I listened to, lessons I learned;

1) Lemnear made a good point about just protecting the manabase with Fetchlands and waiting to cast discard, while Pelikanudo made a good point about polyvalent land. I was having a problem with Swamp and Bayou not being able to create "velocity" by not being able to cast cantrips, so I removed the Basic Land and SBed the Green Dual Land so that all of the MD lands provided blue mana and a combo color.

2) Chrome Mox is a desirable card MD, but an undesirable card post-board so my solution was to MD Chrome Mox while being able to SB them out for other IMS post-board. Having moved Bayou to the SB already, I decided to add a Tropical Island so that I could SB in 2 lands for 2 Chrome Mox. Not having a basic land MD, I changed Bloodstained Mire for Misty Rainforest so that I could fetch for either Green Dual Land.

3) With 2 Green Dual Lands in the SB i needed to make space for them, so I decided to cut Chain of Vapour from the SB and rely on Abrupt Decay and Void Snare as my only form of removal vs D&T, MUD and Junk. Realizing this removal package was serviceable, albeit mana inefficient, I decided to replace MD Duress with Thoughtseize so I wasn't forced to SB out discard vs creature decks and had extra protection vs Vendillion Clique and Meddling Mage in the aggro-control match up as well.

4) I'm playing Pyroblast over Xantid Swarm at the moment because I think having protection, removal and disruption in a single card makes it more flexible than Xantid Swarm vs Miracles, Blade and Omnitell.

I think this is closer to the "classical" approach of TES while being able to gain a more stable manabase post-board vs our most common, difficult match of Miracles. It feels a bit "full circle," but I feel the extra Fetchland and Blue Dual Land makes the mulligans more consistent and spending the SB space on the Green Dual Lands is worth it becuase it removes "sub-optimal basic lands" from your MD while giving you a strategy for SBing out your Chrome Mox post-board for other IMS. Once you have 2 Green Dual Lands for replacing Chrome Mox, you extend the utility of Abrupt Decay vs decks like D&T, MUD and Junk so Chain of Vapour becomes less relevant and Thoughtseize takes off a bit of the burden from having to remove a Thalia, Guardian of Thraben, Phyrexian Revoker, Gaddok Teeg, Meddling Mage or Ethersworn Canonist etc.

I think this might be a happy medium between TES players who are on opposite ends of speed vs consistency.

[Pelikanudo]

@Final Fortune:

I discarded completely adding the 13th land as a Blue producer because of the following reasons:

Having in mind the Mana Base of 12 Lands (with Gemstone + 4 fetches + 2Sea + 2V.Island) which has been strong enough to demonstrate beeing a consistent manabase for years, therefore having 12 Blue producers + X should not involve mana issues regarding casting cantrips in the 1st turn - you have exact the same possibilities with The Manabase of 12 lands than with 12Lands_8FetchesPlusPlain.
The issue I discussed with Lemnear is that:
What happend if you play 12 lands and among them 8 fetches?
If you dreaw a FetchWhichShouldBeGemstone -, once you fetch for a land you have less lands left in the deck - this is a fact, therfore having a 13rd land solves this issue regarding of probability of reaching a land once you fetch with a FetchWhichShouldBeGemstone

Concluding: I've been pondering which land should be the 13rd land and my conclusion is Badlands in regards of mana availability becasue:
a) The 12LandsGemstonesManabase has the same BlueProducers than 12WithFetches+Plain
b) If you start with V.Island or U.Sea, you may have failed because you choose VIsland but you want for example to play a duress and next a RoF so having [USea OR VIsland] plus Badlands seems to me the perfect conjuntion, even if you draw it after this scenario.
c) having Badlands makes maybe, worth playing tropical as youll have access to A.D. with both Tropical and Badlands. - 2 lands only.
d) it is more likely that you need to fetch for U.Sea - and a scenario which involves ponder or duress and maybe no other land in hand - having badlands left in here seems wonderfull

Above all, sure having 13 blue producers makes cantrips beeing casted more likely than 12.

EDIT: See this deck... this first intrigues me...:

http://tcdecks.net/deck.php?id=17071&iddeck=128099

or this:

http://tcdecks.net/deck.php?id=14608&iddeck=107984


@LDX: there are lot of strategies vs D&T...
I'm not sure if 3 Shattering Spree is the right move as this is sorcery and only is used vs artifacts specifically Chalice.
likely the post polivalent card - I love having polivalent cards like E.TRuth for you in conjuntion to CoV - the problem of CoV is that at ChaliceAt0 is bad...
Apart, not sure if Nedle makes sense as this avoids E.E., Wasteland, Rishadan, Jitte and Batterskull.

[Final Fortune]

You care too much about having access to any mana you want at any time instead of having consistent mulligans, better cantrips and protection against Wasteland, a 3 color deck with 4 Lotus Petal and 3 Chrome Mox doesn't need a 5 color land, nor does it need a land that doesn't create velocity by only casting combo colors. I doubt the hands you open with Badlands are really going to be worth Badlands + Tropical Island vs Miracles, especially considering there is no additional Fetchland that supports searching for both of those color combinations so you are left with 2 Fetchlands that can't search for Badlands or Tropical Island if you play the split. Even with 13 lands, there are just too many 1 land hands that could be salvaged if you had the blue mana to cantrip into the next land, and Bayou and Swamp were giving me fits whenever I drew them. TES isn't really like ANT where you have the luxury of playing basics, G dual lands or Badlands without significant drawbacks because 13 vs 15 lands is a tremendous difference.

Edit: I do agree tho' that Bayou isn't very good without Xantid Swarm, right now I'm actually looking at UR/UG Fetchlands and SB Taiga because it gives UBGR and gets fetched with all 8 fetchlands.

I think since Lemnear pointed out that discard in TES should be played more like Silence as a default, I've just come to realize that making each non Fetchland drop enable cantrips in order to find another land, preferably a fetchland, is just so important for protecting yourself vs Wasteland by chaining cantrip into land into cantrip etc.

[Lemnear]

I prefer to play 3 moxen and 7 discard effects therefore I need to compress the deck the most possible so I need to play 12 lands and they need to be the most versatile possible, I even thought in going back to -1 Volcanic -1 fetch +2 city of brass

What a nice self-fullfiling promise.

You once more draw conclusions without questioning, if the 3 Moxen/7 Discard base you take as justification, are correct. Its the same stuff I was talking about in your Doomsday/PIF deck thread, where you simply decided that 2 Doomsday/1 PIF/4 Petitons HAS to be the correct base and continued to argue based on that fixed idea.

another reason is the polivalance Gemstones offers to me - I love using a single land to play ponder, duress and RoF as example.

Oh, a single Gemstone does produce Black & Red initial mana to cast Ritual & Rite? No it does not, so fuck this shit. You need two IMS in any case. Do Volcanic + Bayou produce Black & Red initial mana as well as all 4 colors the deck runs? They do. Can you protect those with fetchlands? You can.

Also I don't use cantrips B.S mainly the same way I use in other decks like TNT, I only see the benefit of using more fetches when playing B.S., but I usually use B.S. on the before turn of comboing or in the same so I just don't need to stabilize in here with B.S. - a usual play is to duress, ponder, B.W. for X, therapy maybe and finally B.S. for the win. just an example.

You really want to tell me that this is sound with your previous arguments of aiming to go off T1/2 and only 12 lands?

Recent testing has brought me closer to previous lists with small nuances,

.
.
.
2 Thoughtseize
.
.
.
3 Chrome Mox
.
.
.

This sounds like a huge step backwards in the face of any Delver deck ever. More self-inflicted damage, no basics and less efficient manasources at the same time

TArguments I listened to, lessons I learned;

1) Lemnear made a good point about just protecting the manabase with Fetchlands and waiting to cast discard, while Pelikanudo made a good point about polyvalent land. I was having a problem with Swamp and Bayou not being able to create "velocity" by not being able to cast cantrips, so I removed the Basic Land and SBed the Green Dual Land so that all of the MD lands provided blue mana and a combo color.

polyvalent lands are nonsense, if you can't get around Daze/Wasteland at all. You need land volume to get around that and if you run more lands the need for polycalent lands decreses automatically. In TES' history the number of gold lands decresed every time the number of lands was increasing (see this threads history with 11/12/13 lands.)

2) Chrome Mox is a desirable card MD, but an undesirable card post-board so my solution was to MD Chrome Mox while being able to SB them out for other IMS post-board. Having moved Bayou to the SB already, I decided to add a Tropical Island so that I could SB in 2 lands for 2 Chrome Mox. Not having a basic land MD, I changed Bloodstained Mire for Misty Rainforest so that I could fetch for either Green Dual Land.

Its not in general, but highly influenced by metagame structure. You would choke on that sentence the first time you play in a meta full of Chalice and tempo decks

3) With 2 Green Dual Lands in the SB i needed to make space for them, so I decided to cut Chain of Vapour from the SB and rely on Abrupt Decay and Void Snare as my only form of removal vs D&T, MUD and Junk. Realizing this removal package was serviceable, albeit mana inefficient, I decided to replace MD Duress with Thoughtseize so I wasn't forced to SB out discard vs creature decks and had extra protection vs Vendillion Clique and Meddling Mage in the aggro-control match up as well.

MUD/D&T are how much of the metagame compared to Delver where TS really sucks ass? I'm also annoyed to repeat all the stuff on "I can discard any harebear as my opponent is never going to topdeck/palm a second one". Why do you argue with Decays serving as all-purpose removal with two green lands if you din't want to board them for the Duress slots against hatebears anyways?

4) I'm playing Pyroblast over Xantid Swarm at the moment because I think having protection, removal and disruption in a single card makes it more flexible than Xantid Swarm vs Miracles, Blade and Omnitell.

Xantid has neen crap against Omni and Miracles for me and Pyroblast very inefficient against Miracles as well. Discard is better than blast against Omni if you ask me, so by running 7 in the main I never felt the urge to run Lyroblasts in addition.

I think this is closer to the "classical" approach of TES while being able to gain a more stable manabase post-board vs our most common, difficult match of Miracles.

The classical approach has current problems due to the metagame structure and maintaining those problems in every game 1 isn't going to carry you far. The manabase rarely presented the problem we have with Miracles therefore I didn't saw a point in Carpets either. Our problem is Counteralance + SDT. They can do shit against storm without those on the table.

It feels a bit "full circle," but I feel the extra Fetchland and Blue Dual Land makes the mulligans more consistent and spending the SB space on the Green Dual Lands is worth it becuase it removes "sub-optimal basic lands" from your MD while giving you a strategy for SBing out your Chrome Mox post-board for other IMS.

We had this approach in 2013, but the metagame has come to a point where fixing the deck with the SB if you face Delver and blue isn't happening occasional but became the norm in more than 75% of possible matches and the question is legit why you don't start game 1 essentially with the postboard configuration.

@Final Fortune:

I discarded completely adding the 13th land as a Blue producer because of the following reasons:

Having in mind the Mana Base of 12 Lands (with Gemstone + 4 fetches + 2Sea + 2V.Island) which has been strong enough to demonstrate beeing a consistent manabase for years, therefore having 12 Blue producers + X should not involve mana issues regarding casting cantrips in the 1st turn - you have exact the same possibilities with The Manabase of 12 lands than with 12Lands_8FetchesPlusPlain.
The issue I discussed with Lemnear is that:
What happend if you play 12 lands and among them 8 fetches?
If you dreaw a FetchWhichShouldBeGemstone -, once you fetch for a land you have less lands left in the deck - this is a fact, therfore having a 13rd land solves this issue regarding of probability of reaching a land once you fetch with a FetchWhichShouldBeGemstone

There is no fucking evidence for this claim. The manabase in question did not stay compeditive over years and had neither relevance for todays metagame

http://tcdecks.net/deck.php?id=14608&iddeck=107984

You really want to make points on a pre Khans list of how to battle todays metagame? Maybe you should go to the ANT thread and post an age-old storm list with IGG claiming that the card is still the bees knees


P.S. I guess its time to take a break from this thread

[Final Fortune]

I'm not arguing that Thoughtseize replaces creature removal vs D&T, we've had that argument before. I'm arguing that Thoughtseize reduces the number of creatures that resolve so that you have to remove less of them. And yes discarding hatebears is relevent, even outside of the aggro matchup being able to discard Vendillion Clique, Meddling Mage and Stoneforge Mystic are useful in the aggro-control and control matchups. I argued against the 2 Green Land, Abrupt Decay strategy vs D&T because of Thalia, Guardian of Thraben before and it's still an issue now, obviously it's more difficult to resolve 2 mana, multi-colored removal thru' a mana-taxing effect than a 1 mana single-colored removal. The difference now is blue is a greater % of the metgame than it was then, so it's less relevant how good your removal is vs D&T and more relevant how many lands you have in your SB to replace Chrome Mox in control matchups. It's Abrupt Decay's satisfactory, yet inefficient performance in the D&T, MUD, Junk, Maverick match up that caused me to replace Duress with Thoughtseize.

Do you really think there's no difference in how you should board in a matchup based on whether or not you are on the draw or on the play? Because I do, and I also think I'd rather SB out Cabal Therapy vs a deck that has numerous hatebears than Thoughtseize as well, so I'd rather have a MD card that gives me the option of keeping it post-board as opposed to a MD card that forces me to SB it out. You wouldn't lose the game to Shock if you actually had Chrome Mox in your deck, it pisses me off when other people don't consider the changes to the deck as a whole too ...

Polivalent lands do matter, 2 MD Bayou or MD Swamp and Bayou do not cast cantrips, it's not only the total number of lands that matters it's the ability of those lands to provide relevant mana, and while I disagree with Gemstone Mine over Fetchlands I think it's important that every land produces blue mana so that you can cantrip and find those additional lands and/or mana sources.

I thought a long time about a 15 land MD and just being a T2 deck, the thing is I've always had a blue heavy metagame and Chrome Mox was never that terrible vs aggro-control. I don't know whether or not the solution is 3 Chrome Mox and 13 land or 2 Chrome Mox and 14 land, but I do know that we don't have to think in black and white terms of Chrome Mox or no Chrome Mox to increase consistency. I've tried it your way, I've tried it Bryant's way, I've tried to Pelikanudo's way, I've tried it my way and I think there are relevant points from everyone's perspective if you're willing to listen and test. It gets really tiring listening to you argue like a fussy little bitch any time some one else's opinion differs from your own, do you really think that you stand to learn nothing from anyone else in this thread?

[Bryant Cook]

TES Mailbox #1

[bennotsi]

TES Mailbox #1

Nice read, thanks for posting!

[Lemnear]

I don't know whether or not the solution is 3 Chrome Mox and 13 land or 2 Chrome Mox and 14 land, but I do know that we don't have to think in black and white terms of Chrome Mox or no Chrome Mox to increase consistency. I've tried it your way, I've tried it Bryant's way, I've tried to Pelikanudo's way, I've tried it my way and I think there are relevant points from everyone's perspective if you're willing to listen and test. It gets really tiring listening to you argue like a fussy little bitch any time some one else's opinion differs from your own, do you really think that you stand to learn nothing from anyone else in this thread?

It's not about black/white thinking it's about the kind of arguments/situations picked to support the ideas which leave me baffled at times.

[LDX]

Quick update from the tournament. Couldn't receive Shattering Spree in time, and the person who was supposed to bring me Echoing Truth forgot them. Played regular list, ended up 3-2 in a Double Elimination tournament. Lost twice against a special homebr-wait, no, it was just Death & Taxes. The same player twice.

I'll report for next Wednesday most likely.

I swear I listened to you guys, but Abrupt Decay is not enough.

See you with a report!

[Final Fortune]

Yeah, even Abrupt Decay with 2 Green Dual Lands can struggle vs Thalia, Guardian of Thraben or Wasteland and Rishaden Port. One of the points I was discussing over PM was whether or not I should be SBing Chain of Vapour since all Lands produce blue and just run Krosan Grip in the SB to have the best removal vs Miracles and D&T in terms of efficacy and cost effectiveness.

[Lemnear]

Yeah, even Abrupt Decay with 2 Green Dual Lands can struggle vs Thalia, Guardian of Thraben or Wasteland and Rishaden Port. One of the points I was discussing over PM was whether or not I should be SBing Chain of Vapour since all Lands produce blue and just run Krosan Grip in the SB to have the best removal vs Miracles and D&T in terms of efficacy and cost effectiveness.

There is nothing wrong with running 4 Decays and 3 CoV imo. There is enough space in the SB

[Final Fortune]

There is nothing wrong with running 4 Decays and 3 CoV imo. There is enough space in the SB

Maybe, but I'm not sure Abrupt Decay's ability to hit Meddling Mage over Krosan Grip's ability to hit Needle is necessarily any better, there's also Wipe Away to consider and playing the deck without any green at all.

[Lemnear]

Maybe, but I'm not sure Abrupt Decay's ability to hit Meddling Mage over Krosan Grip's ability to hit Needle is necessarily any better, there's also Wipe Away to consider and playing the deck without any green at all.

You can still point Decay at SDT eot, untap and proceed with the once more relevant discard for what it's worth. The question for me is if I would like to play Krosans in addition to Decays at this point if it wasn't for the 3cc flips. Wipe Away is unreasonable compared to Decay or CoV as it can't realistically beat Thalia nor stuff like multiple Counterbalances or CB on the field +Counter in hand. It's simply iffy to spend a card without being able to combo off automatically. The same is true for Meddling Mage + FoW in opponents hand: you need the eot Wipe Away + discard to get through unlike with Decay

[Final Fortune]

Eh, compared to Krosan Grip not hitting Meddling Mage has its draw backs as well, I don't think there's a perfect solution to the problem.