[Deck] TinFins 3: Return of the Onion Burst

[phazonmutant]

This will probably be answered in greater detail with your data, but generally speaking, did you like the tops? I've toyed with the idea of picking some up for this deck, but thought they'd be too slow/mana intensive.

Not sure I agree with cutting tendrils; call it a security blanket, but there's a relevant non-zero number of times where tendrils has gotten the job done for me where attacking could not. Thoughts on cutting both LDV for tops? Or 1 LDV and 1 Ponder maybe?

LDV is very slow too. It costs 2 and takes another turn to draw the card. Also it can cost a significant amount of life. I don't see Top and Ponder as occupying the same slots at all - LDV and Top are both later-game ways to find what you need, while Ponder finds a specific card at the low cost of U. My overall impression of Top was that it was fine. I think if I were playing another cantrip I would prefer to have Preordain, but Top has some big upsides against discard and with Mentor.

So to answer that question of is Tendrils necessary, I marked one Top and thought about if it were LDV, and considered the other as if it were Tendrils when I drew them. One game of 25 I fizzled because of not drawing a way to continue while at the same time drawing the appropriate mana and the "Tendrils top". I hardcast Emrakul something like 8 times. It's actually quite easy to do, although it takes some game time.

[alaska]

LDV is very slow too. It costs 2 and takes another turn to draw the card. Also it can cost a significant amount of life. I don't see Top and Ponder as occupying the same slots at all - LDV and Top are both later-game ways to find what you need, while Ponder finds a specific card at the low cost of U. My overall impression of Top was that it was fine. I think if I were playing another cantrip I would prefer to have Preordain, but Top has some big upsides against discard and with Mentor.

So to answer that question of is Tendrils necessary, I marked one Top and thought about if it were LDV, and considered the other as if it were Tendrils when I drew them. One game of 25 I fizzled because of not drawing a way to continue while at the same time drawing the appropriate mana and the "Tendrils top". I hardcast Emrakul something like 8 times. It's actually quite easy to do, although it takes some game time.

Thanks for the clarifications. I agree that LDV is slow - I've been a little resistant to it for that reason. I finally broke down and tested it, and haven't swooned yet. 2 tops in place of 2 LDV is what intuitively sounds more promising to me.

As for tendrils, 4% fizzle without it - that's not bad at all. Maybe I need to reconsider.

Just thinking out loud: what hate cards would change that arithmatic and make us want tendrils? Ensaring Bridge G1 out of Painter/MUD maybe? Anything else, if you're drawing enough G2 to cast Emrakul, you can just abrupt decay away any problems.

[Koby]

LDV is very slow too. It costs 2 and takes another turn to draw the card. Also it can cost a significant amount of life. I don't see Top and Ponder as occupying the same slots at all - LDV and Top are both later-game ways to find what you need, while Ponder finds a specific card at the low cost of U. My overall impression of Top was that it was fine. I think if I were playing another cantrip I would prefer to have Preordain, but Top has some big upsides against discard and with Mentor.

So to answer that question of is Tendrils necessary, I marked one Top and thought about if it were LDV, and considered the other as if it were Tendrils when I drew them. One game of 25 I fizzled because of not drawing a way to continue while at the same time drawing the appropriate mana and the "Tendrils top". I hardcast Emrakul something like 8 times. It's actually quite easy to do, although it takes some game time.

This is silly. If you're hard casting Emrakul, you're just wasting time. Yea, it's fun and showboaty, but it doesn't win the game more efficiently than just Tendrils with Petals/Rituals. You don't need to perform any awkward and mechanic reshuffling with Emrakul/Kids looping. It just finishes the game right there and then and you move on to the next game/match/lunch.

As for LDV being very slow, it's miles faster than Intuition, which we deemed to be too mana intensive. 2 mana is nothing, and it's typically only paying 2 life to find action. Combined with Brainstorm or Gitaxian Probe, you can also turn it into a same turn tutor. I'll concede, it's no Vampiric Tutor; but it mimics it very closely in Turn 3 kills.

[Secretly.A.Bee]

I hate repetitious conversations. LDV is what makes this deck consistent, if we could play Mystical/Vampiric Tutor, we would. We cannot, therefore this is the next best thing. It's necessary.

From my phone. I do my best, dammit!

[alastair]

I cut 2 LDV in place of Jace-V recently. Looting and flashing back are sweet, but the loss of a tutor for the missing part was just too great. LDV fixes the hand to essentially guarantee T3, finds hate G2/3, and bates counters in the control games. I’m completely off Jace-V, leave him to Reanimator decks.

SDT is fine, played 1-3 MD with a Painter SB. Its just frustrating in this deck as SDT gains advantage the longer the game plays and we want to end it early. Quality card, just too slow and despite 7-8 fetch and 4 entomb, I was repeatedly short of shuffle effects.

On the Mentor SB’s, Bob was good and I’d take him over SDT every time (we don’t have the mana for cute SDT/Mentor interactions).

[hoolegr]

Hi guys,

Long time lurker, part time burster.

Just wondering if someone could explain the choice of Serenity over Abrupt Decay? (I am aware that Serenity hits all enchantments, but it has to wait a turn before it can do this, and therefore can be answered).

I am currently running abrupt decay in the slots where serenity appears in the Reactive/Proactive sideboard. But my Meta is very Miracles heavy, which is why I favour the Abrupt decays as a way of dealing with counterbalance.

Sorry if this has been asked before and I'm just not seeing it.

My board was looking like

2 Abrupt Decay
2 Chain of Vapor
2 Pithing Needle
2 Massacre
3 Silence
2 Stifle
2 Mindbreak trap

As the local tournaments consisted of around 26-30 people, and we usually had around 8-10 miracles, 3 different variations of Tin Fins, 2 storm (One TES, one ANT i think), then a mixture of things including Elves, MUD, and reanimator.

Now shifted to:

Abrupt Decay 2
Pithing Needle 2
Chain of Vapor 3
Silence 3
Massacre 2
Surgical Extraction 3 - *Flex as unsure for number of these/if this should be included over Stifle/Mindbreak in my meta for the storm players.


Thanks in advance guys

[Richard Cheese]

Hi guys,

Long time lurker, part time burster.

Just wondering if someone could explain the choice of Serenity over Abrupt Decay? (I am aware that Serenity hits all enchantments, but it has to wait a turn before it can do this, and therefore can be answered).

I am currently running abrupt decay in the slots where serenity appears in the Reactive/Proactive sideboard. But my Meta is very Miracles heavy, which is why I favour the Abrupt decays as a way of dealing with counterbalance.

Sorry if this has been asked before and I'm just not seeing it.

My board was looking like

2 Abrupt Decay
2 Chain of Vapor
2 Pithing Needle
2 Massacre
3 Silence
2 Stifle
2 Mindbreak trap

As the local tournaments consisted of around 26-30 people, and we usually had around 8-10 miracles, 3 different variations of Tin Fins, 2 storm (One TES, one ANT i think), then a mixture of things including Elves, MUD, and reanimator.

Now shifted to:

Abrupt Decay 2
Pithing Needle 2
Chain of Vapor 3
Silence 3
Massacre 2
Surgical Extraction 3 - *Flex as unsure for number of these/if this should be included over Stifle/Mindbreak in my meta for the storm players.


Thanks in advance guys

Decay is fine, although I think you probably want your green source in the board rather than main. Serenity is mostly in the conversation again lately because we're talking about a Monastery Mentor board, which would put us more heavily into white, and the green splash becomes a lot more awkward.

You might want to look at dropping Silence from the board in favor of Flusterstorm since it's a lot easier on the manabase and serves the same function for the most part. Maybe something like:

3 Decay
2 Needle
3 Chain
2 Massacre/Dread of Night
1 Bayou
2 Flusterstorm
2 Surgical

[hoolegr]

Decay is fine, although I think you probably want your green source in the board rather than main. Serenity is mostly in the conversation again lately because we're talking about a Monastery Mentor board, which would put us more heavily into white, and the green splash becomes a lot more awkward.

You might want to look at dropping Silence from the board in favor of Flusterstorm since it's a lot easier on the manabase and serves the same function for the most part. Maybe something like:

3 Decay
2 Needle
3 Chain
2 Massacre/Dread of Night
1 Bayou
2 Flusterstorm
2 Surgical

Thanks, I will Consider this, and see if I can get my hands on some flusterstorms

[.dk]

I cut 2 LDV in place of Jace-V recently. Looting and flashing back are sweet, but the loss of a tutor for the missing part was just too great. LDV fixes the hand to essentially guarantee T3, finds hate G2/3, and bates counters in the control games. I’m completely off Jace-V, leave him to Reanimator decks.

SDT is fine, played 1-3 MD with a Painter SB. Its just frustrating in this deck as SDT gains advantage the longer the game plays and we want to end it early. Quality card, just too slow and despite 7-8 fetch and 4 entomb, I was repeatedly short of shuffle effects.

On the Mentor SB’s, Bob was good and I’d take him over SDT every time (we don’t have the mana for cute SDT/Mentor interactions).

That's my feeling on Jace as well, but I haven't personally tested him. Just watched Acclimation play with him.

As far as SDT goes - what do you mean we don't have the mana? What else are you doing with your rituals and petals once you've boarded into Mentor?

For the DD transformation config, I'm toying with cutting a Ponder for a maindeck SDT, freeing up another slot in the sideboard for a second CoV. I will be trying to goldfish that today and see if there is any appreciable result. I played about 8 games with it last night, but it never came up one way or another.

[Richard Cheese]

As far as SDT goes - what do you mean we don't have the mana? What else are you doing with your rituals and petals once you've boarded into Mentor?

I think he's referring to running them main over LDV.

Also I just pulled the trigger on Russian Bosk Bannerets, Sapling of Colfenor, and Dauntless Dourbark, so I might have to be on Treefolk for the GP...sorry guys.

[.dk]

I think he's referring to running them main over LDV.

Also I just pulled the trigger on Russian Bosk Bannerets, Sapling of Colfenor, and Dauntless Dourbark, so I might have to be on Treefolk for the GP...sorry guys.

I don't think so...

On the Mentor SB’s, Bob was good and I’d take him over SDT every time (we don’t have the mana for cute SDT/Mentor interactions).

[Richard Cheese]

I don't think so...

Yeah nevermind I shoud read the entire quote.

[alastair]

To really boost Mentor you need a pair of SDT, and it's just not come up so often to categorically reach a conclusion, but I've been unimpressed. Petals is effectively reserved as a W source for Mentor (lots of wasteland here !!), and I will bottom / shuffle everything including lands and spare SDT to focus on finding Mentor.

I prefer Bob for card advantage digging to Mentor over SDT; and as a lightning rod for those who keep StP, Bolt, or Decay, G2.

Post making Mentor, SDT and Bob both fuel Mentor effectively; I just find Bob stronger beforehand (but SDT is a solid card).



DD SB I've thought of SDT main to effectively permit a sixteenth SB slot; but untested as lately I've been struggling G1. All my onions have been pickled :-(

[.dk]

Yep, fair enough. I'll have to defer to you guys for now in regards to Mentor + Top, as I haven't ever actually tested it.

On your other note, with 1 SDT maindeck to support Doomsday better... I did do another 100 hands/games of goldfishing today. The results were in line with my previous data. Percentages were slightly different, but pretty sure that was just variance. SDT only ever came up a couple of times in the 100 hands - it never prevented me from winning. There were a couple of turns that I spent 1 more mana than I would have if it were Ponder, but that was almost always on T3 and I ended up winning anyway. I can post the full data set again if anyone is interested.

[Secretly.A.Bee]

Anyone ever consider Tidespout Tyrant? I know Goryo's doesn't hit it, but it and two petals makes infinite monk tokens/infinite storm count as well as bouncing problematic permanents.

From my phone. I do my best, dammit!

[TTX]

That's a good idea, especially when Karakas and Needles are present.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[phazonmutant]

Sorry I didn't post the data sooner, it's been a while since I've had the time and inclination to sit down and type out a long post. First, to address some comments:

This is silly. If you're hard casting Emrakul, you're just wasting time. Yea, it's fun and showboaty, but it doesn't win the game more efficiently than just Tendrils with Petals/Rituals. You don't need to perform any awkward and mechanic reshuffling with Emrakul/Kids looping. It just finishes the game right there and then and you move on to the next game/match/lunch.

As for LDV being very slow, it's miles faster than Intuition, which we deemed to be too mana intensive. 2 mana is nothing, and it's typically only paying 2 life to find action. Combined with Brainstorm or Gitaxian Probe, you can also turn it into a same turn tutor. I'll concede, it's no Vampiric Tutor; but it mimics it very closely in Turn 3 kills.

My consideration isn't efficiency in terms of time spent in game, it's efficiency in deck construction. Saving a largely useless slot on Tendrils allowed me to play both 2 Tops and a Lim-Dul's Vault - a card I don't love, but agree is necessary. Your argument that hardcasting Emrakul is just wasting time is exactly the same as saying we shouldn't waste time with Ponder when instead we could just jam more Reanimates and Griselbrands and cast them without dicking around.

SDT and Intuition are mana intensive in different ways. Top is almost always castable and spinnable, and the expenditure of 2 mana allows you the option to draw a card that turn if the top 3 are good, which can be even faster than LDV. I also found it to be great going late, which does happen more often than we'd like to admit. But I'm not advocating cutting LDV entirely, just adding in some Tops.

... I can post the full data set again if anyone is interested.

I am! The summary is fine. The more data I can add to my spreadsheet, the more statistically powerful our kill percentage chart can be.

Ok, and now for the data. Same considerations as .dk and acclimation, except:

• I don't know what YOLO keep means. Every hand is YOLO.
• Tendrils fizzle means a game where the marked Top would have been lethal with Tendrils, but instead was a fizzle.
• I kept on playing games out until I could kill. The latest turn was 5, and every kill past turn 3 didn't fizzle. So I'm marking T4+ kills as separate from fizzles.

Summary:

	Kills	Fizzles
T1	1	1
T2	5	3
T3	10	2
T4+	3	0

Full data. The additional columns are subsets of the ones above - not additive.

	Kills	Fizzles	Killed w/5th IMS	Fizzled missing IMS	Mulligan Kills	Mulligan Fizzles	Tendrils Fizzle	Fizzle, but kill next turn
T1	1	1	0	1	1	0	1	1
T2	5	3	1	1	1	0	0	2
T3	10	2	0	0	1	1	1	1
T4+	3	0	0	0	0	0	0	0

Some takeaways:

• My mulligan rate was very low, but my kill turn was off from other data. I think I need to mulligan more aggressively. My one turn 1 kill was off a mulligan.
• There was exactly one game where Tendrils would have won, but I killed next turn.
• I hard cast Emrakul 9 times of 19 total wins. ~50%. I expect that it's possible to hard-cast Emrakul almost every time you go off.
• There were two games where I cast Chrome Mox on turn 1 and it was useful. It wasn't often necessary in going off, but I think it deserves its place.

I updated the spreadsheet. And, handy dandy new analysis! The kill-turn confidence interval at 95% confidence: [2.22, 2.52] (mean=2.37)

And now, anecdotes from playing with TinFins on Sunday to 3-1, then handing it cold to a friend on Monday (at our casual 71 player weekly tournament), also to 3-1:
I boarded in Mentor against Grixis control. He discarded my Mentor, but I set up this sequence: Shallow Graved Mentor, played Lotus Petal, flashed back Therapy to bait his removal spell. He took the bait, I flipped Top and Chained Top and Mentor. Then recast Mentor. The next turn I played Top and Therapy, flash backed Therapy, flipped top to cast another spell, killed him dead.

Game 1 against Shardless BUG I have Top in play but stone nothing else but lands. Top finds me Goryo's and I draw it for turn. Then I look through 6 cards, fetching after both, and finally with my last uncracked mana and a fresh top, I play Dark Ritual, spin Top, and find Entomb smiling back at me. I kill him with lethal on board. It only took 9 cards, but Top did it!

Against Shardless BUG I boarded in Mentor game 2. I wasn't able to get going with it though, and he killed me with beats, Cage in play. Game 3 I boarded back to combo, but he was packing 2 Surgicals and a Cage. Lesson? Keep in Mentor against Deathrite. You never know how hateful they are.

My friend also boarded out of Mentor game 3 against BUG Delver and lost horribly. He mostly had savage topdecks and killed people turns 1-2 though.

[alaska]

I boarded in Mentor against Grixis control. He discarded my Mentor, but I set up this sequence: Shallow Graved Mentor, played Lotus Petal, flashed back Therapy to bait his removal spell. He took the bait, I flipped Top and Chained Top and Mentor. Then recast Mentor. The next turn I played Top and Therapy, flash backed Therapy, flipped top to cast another spell, killed him dead.

That's hot fire right there.

[Richard Cheese]

• I don't know what YOLO keep means. Every hand is YOLO.

That's some prophetic shit right there.

Have you ever encountered a scenario where hardcasting Emrakul wasn't possible, but lethal Tendrils was?

What about the mini-Tendrils for more Grizzlebees angle? Does anyone actually pull that off on a regular basis?

[phazonmutant]

That's some prophetic shit right there.

Have you ever encountered a scenario where hardcasting Emrakul wasn't possible, but lethal Tendrils was?

What about the mini-Tendrils for more Grizzlebees angle? Does anyone actually pull that off on a regular basis?

Truth.

I mentioned in the summary that there was one game out of 25 where I actually drew the Top that I marked (to distinguish it from the other), had the mana to cast Tendrils, and couldn't cast Emrakul. I was short a Shallow Grave I think and cantrips bricked.

It seems unlikely. After attacking them and getting enough mana to cast Tendrils, you've already played at least 4 spells. Maybe others' experiences have been different.