[Primer] R/G Lands

[Rivfader]

I think I may test a black splash without molten vortex. I like vortex alot, but there is alot of Grixis & BUG delver in my meta, so I like being able to recur P Fire through loams and being able to gamble for it. One card I've wanted to test for awhile in the board is Slaughter Games, I think it would be solid against alot of combo decks, as well miracles. I also think Bob is a great choice for miracles as well as other matches where P Fires aren't good. For those running the Black splash, what is the split between Decay and Grip? 3 Decay & 2 grip seems like it would be right, anyone care to share?

The problem of a black splash is that you need sufficient black mana. Splashing a bayou for Abrupt Decay might be just enough, but not if reliably want to cast Thoughtseize turn 1. I've been playing Thoughtseize in the side for some time now, along with 4 additional black sources (bayou, 2 fetch and Urborg). David Long played an additional 3 black sources. You have to cut other cards, and while I took out 2 tickets (which you probably can't afford if you run the Decays in the main), chasm in the side and a 61st card, Long cut 3 Groves (and the fourth for another Taiga).

Black splash and Punishing Fire is probably too tight to play if you wanna maindeck the Decays, because of the deckspace taken by the Groves. Just my two cents though.

[jarvisyu]

No P-fire, and a lot of black cards, this list by David Long looks like something already discussed by Jarvis Hue, iirc.

That said congrats with this result, mr. Long.

EDIT: congrats to all Lands-pilots. Mr. Doumanis, congrats on an excellent result! Can we expect a report?

Jarvis Who?

#joking

In all seriousness, I mentioned the possibility of 4x vortex with lots of taigas. the black splash was new to me (i was busy playing GP Houston).

I'm pretty sure this list is super sick.

[Croprot]

Jarvis Who?

#joking

In all seriousness, I mentioned the possibility of 4x vortex with lots of taigas. the black splash was new to me (i was busy playing GP Houston).

I'm pretty sure this list is super sick.

I've also been tinkering with a 4x vortex list but I don't know if it makes sense to play that instead of seismic assault if we are playing more red sources in our deck?

[fluuu]

I've also been tinkering with a 4x vortex list but I don't know if it makes sense to play that instead of seismic assault if we are playing more red sources in our deck?

Do u think dark depths are needed (at least 3 main 1 sb?

[barcode]

Back about 20 or 30 pages ago I tried out a black splash (in various degrees of sanity) to try and combat pre-DTT ban Omnitell. The requirement for Punishing Fire made the mana worse, but Thoughtseize was great.

[chalupa43087]

The thing I like about molten vortex over punishing fire is I have basically never won a game where I had to cast punishing fire 20+ times to win, but in the past dozen plus games I have tested the 3-4 vortex version I have actually won with Vortex as my audible to plan B doing 20 damage with it. The downside is that you cant get the consistency to get a deathrite shaman with Pfire can but if we look at lands as a deck that with Pfire was 99% to win with dark depths then moving to vortex doesn't change our win percentage but in facts adds to that, because of the decrease need for 8 cards that in the past didn't add to our main win condition we can do things like play more cycle lands or w/e. I'm really excited to see what further design space comes with vortex and can report that as an alternate win condition it is a legitimate threat against miracles. While being much more narrow, I wonder how the card Conflagrate would work in lands?

[UnsungHero]

I tried David Long's list from SCG Philly at a local event tonight and here is how I did.

1-2 Sneak Show
0-2 Esper Deathblade
2-0 Esper Deathblade
2-0 BUG Delver

The list was interesting,There was some instances where I really wish there was a punishing fire in the yard so I could shoot some small stuff like deathrite, sfm & delver. Most of the time I wish I had punishing in hand rather then vortex. I think I loamed a Vortex every game. One thing I did like about the list is since it runs twice as many fetches (6 total) I never got wasted off of a color, which was nice.

I think the lists are cool, I may test it some more, but I really like the straight R/G lists more. Its great to see players trying different things though. I'd love to hear more peoples thoughts on the black splash builds, as well as how people are still doing with the traditional R/G builds.

[gigapatrick]

I tried David Long's list from SCG Philly at a local event tonight and here is how I did.
I'd love to hear more peoples thoughts on the black splash builds, as well as how people are still doing with the traditional R/G builds.

Right now, I'm testing Long's list (or an approximation of it) online. I still plan to join the League again and make a set of videos with it, but I have mixed feelings about it. I definitely don't think that Vortex is superior to Punishing Fire. There's no doubt that once it's on board it's less mana intensive, but it feels much harder to set up successfully. If you have to shoot down multiple creatures, you've got to discard lands instead of playing them, which means you're not developing your board. Furthermore, I feel like by the time I'm ready to start using Vortex to good effect (that is, I have Loam going and extra lands to pitch to Vortex), I'm ready to win with a witch anyway. I like the discard in the sideboard since it is generally more versatile than Sphere-effects (which aren't really good against non-Storm combo decks), but I'm stilling losing my ass off to Sneak and Show anyway, discard or not. As for Confidant: I haven't seen him in action yet, but green has a less vulnerable corollary in Sylvan Library (which everyone knows I think is amazing). Granted, all this is said with only a couple of days testing, so I haven't learned the nooks and crevasses of this new deck. I'd imagine it improves the Miracles matchup by a few percentage points and the non-Storm combo matchups by much less, while losing the consistency of Grove-Fire and thus shaving a small percentage off our Delver.dec and Deathrite.dec matchups.

[supremePINEAPPLE]

I played a little with the black list and it just made me want to play with some vortices in a more normal RG build. I ended up putting something together running 34 lands with 3 vortex and 3 punishing fire with full sets of grove and taiga for plenty of red sources and it's been pretty fun in the first few test matches I played. David's list certainly got the gears turning in everyone's head which is awesome.

[heckler]

I have only won 2 games with punishing fire alone, granted. But punishing fire has set up the board so that I could effectively imprison the enemy until I got the combo online so many times. It's something you can gamble for without too much worry if you have a grove in play. I like the idea of the black for abrupt decay, but in playing test hands i find that I dredge a bit too much to reliably draw into them.

I like the confidants in the board though. by game 2, most players sideboard out their creature hate and he is almost a sylvan library at that point and will rarely cost you more than a life.

A friend/coworker of mine just put together sneak and show. The match feels horrendously against us. Game 1 is solidly unwinnable unless he kept a bad hand and we can combo early, or if show and tell allowed us to put in the last combo piece and we can attack back to clear his creature. i lost most games post board as well. the only games I won(2 out of 9) were when I put sphere effects into play and proceeded to imprison him with ports and wastelands. Another time I kept him off being able to get me until he snuck an emrakul but I made the token and had more than enough to sacrifice and block. If the discard package doesn't significantly add to our percentage here then I have to say that we just have to take the match as pretty much a loss.

I've debated upping my vortex count in the SB from 1 to 3. whenever i turn 1 vortex against miracles and it sticks, I win that game without question. Ive also been running the boils instead of choke lately (due to being able to cast it with boseiju) and it has wrecked them as well when successful. They fetch up mostly basics and if they don't have the counter in their hand, it's unlikely to be countered with their combo, assuming you don't have boseiju in play.

[Nikolai004]

#116

That game one, I have to question why you loamed anything back at all. You had everything you needed to make a Marit Lage and pass the turn. Which would've meant a single PoP wouldn't have killed you and you still had maze and a token to block for any creatures.

[gigapatrick]

That game one, I have to question why you loamed anything back at all. You had everything you needed to make a Marit Lage and pass the turn. Which would've meant a single PoP wouldn't have killed you and you still had maze and a token to block for any creatures.

Yeah, upon rewatching, I facepalmed. Why in the heck didn't I just make the freaking token? I could have won that game . . .

[UnsungHero]

A friend/coworker of mine just put together sneak and show. The match feels horrendously against us. Game 1 is solidly unwinnable unless he kept a bad hand and we can combo early, or if show and tell allowed us to put in the last combo piece and we can attack back to clear his creature. i lost most games post board as well. the only games I won(2 out of 9) were when I put sphere effects into play and proceeded to imprison him with ports and wastelands. Another time I kept him off being able to get me until he snuck an emrakul but I made the token and had more than enough to sacrifice and block. If the discard package doesn't significantly add to our percentage here then I have to say that we just have to take the match as pretty much a loss.

Its a tough matchup for sure, however its far from unwinnable. Karakas shines here, and keeping them off mana via port & waste is very important. Sometimes they get through all of that with things like petals and a sol land too, but thats sometimes how it goes, and sometimes they pull through the breech or blood moon you.

[Chatto]

Jarvis Who?

#joking

In all seriousness, I mentioned the possibility of 4x vortex with lots of taigas. the black splash was new to me (i was busy playing GP Houston).

I'm pretty sure this list is super sick.

My bad, Jarvis

I'm keeping it old-school for now. One thing I am considering is Ghost Quarter again, in case of Eldrazi becoming huge.

[Darkgobs]

My bad, Jarvis

I'm keeping it old-school for now. One thing I am considering is Ghost Quarter again, in case of Eldrazi becomes huge.

Speaking of which: what is our best plan against them? I mean in case we can't make a witch in the early turns and it has to come to mid-late game? I honestly hadn't the chance to meet one on cockatrice right now (I don't have much time to play atm anyway), so I have a bad idea of how the match-up goes. Would someone please enlighten me?
As long as they don't get an early Chalice to shut our Gamble / Crop down or a totally broken start, I feel like we should be in a pretty good spot, don't we?

PS: postboard, it seems a bit harder with some list playing Leyline, Winter Orb or this horrible Endbringer (really strong against us!).

[CptHaddock]

Speaking of which: what is our best plan against them? I mean in case we can't make a witch in the early turns and it has to come to mid-late game? I honestly hadn't the chance to meet one on cockatrice right now (I don't have much time to play atm anyway), so I have a bad idea of how the match-up goes. Would someone please enlighten me?
As long as they don't get an early Chalice to shut our Gamble / Crop down or a totally broken start, I feel like we should be in a pretty good spot, don't we?

PS: postboard, it seems a bit harder with some list playing Leyline, Winter Orb or this horrible Endbringer (really strong against us!).

I can't speak for any of the builds that are splashing white but for the uncolored builds this is pretty much it. I think the games are highly favorable towards us besides wasteland, chalice and sometimes TKS they really have little to no ways of interacting with us.

They actually have no answer to a marit lage so as long as you get one out in a timely manner you'll more than likely win the game. If you get a wasteland/ghost quarter lock game 1 is super easy. Postboard games get a little harder because of the amount of hate that they bring in. I've seen faerie macabres, surgicals, pithing needles and surgical extractions come out of the boards my opponents have been playing. It looks like from the lists this weekend people may also be playing leylines and I assume some people are playing crypts as well.

[blubberpompnao]

I can't speak for any of the builds that are splashing white but for the uncolored builds this is pretty much it. I think the games are highly favorable towards us besides wasteland, chalice and sometimes TKS they really have little to no ways of interacting with us.

They actually have no answer to a marit lage so as long as you get one out in a timely manner you'll more than likely win the game. If you get a wasteland/ghost quarter lock game 1 is super easy. Postboard games get a little harder because of the amount of hate that they bring in. I've seen faerie macabres, surgicals, pithing needles and surgical extractions come out of the boards my opponents have been playing. It looks like from the lists this weekend people may also be playing leylines and I assume some people are playing crypts as well.

I've also seen people play Tsabo's Web which is a fine card against us but pretty easy to play around if you expect it or know its coming.

[jjrotzo]

In my area, people have begun to combat Eldrazis with Price of Progress. I've seen it in Burn (of course), Delver and even Miracles (combined with Snapcaster ).

This card is a nightmare. Is there anything I can do to fight it? (except for drawing Magic-Wonder-Christmas hands with turn 2 combo or chasm lock)

[gigapatrick]

As promised, the first in a set of black-splash videos:

#117

[Croprot]

In my area, people have begun to combat Eldrazis with Price of Progress. I've seen it in Burn (of course), Delver and even Miracles (combined with Snapcaster ).

This card is a nightmare. Is there anything I can do to fight it? (except for drawing Magic-Wonder-Christmas hands with turn 2 combo or chasm lock)

Crop rotation into glacial chasm.