Personally, I dont think Guildmage would be bad at all. Being able to counter Gempalm Incenerators and/or Creatures with Equipment. I think could be something I could side in against Angel Stompy and Faerie Stompy variants.
ICBE - We're totally the coolest Anti-Thesis ever.
"The Citrus-God just had a Citrus-Supernova... in your mouth."
Azorius Guildmage is only great if you can spare the mana. And most of the time, I can't. Anyway, Meddling Mage just rocks in my meta..
Gempalm Incinerator has a triggered and an activated ability, so yes you can counter the cycling, but damage-clausule will trigger nonetheless. You can counter equipment activations as well, however, creatures can be re-equipped. Using 3 mana in a land-light deck to counter a 2 mana recurring ability isn't that hot. You still can tap the creature, if it's not equipped with SoFI.Originally Posted by Anti~American4621
Tapping fatties is nice, but taking care of one creature for a recurring cost of 3...sounds sub-par, you'll be better of playing some flexible removal.
Which brings me to the following point: I saw that some people put up reprisal as additional removal, but I can imagine most people are wary putting potentially dead cards in their deck. So what about radiant's judgement?
Enough. We get it.
On another note. Who else is favoring the Dryad over Werebear plan? Seems better in the face of graveyard hate.
-Steve
How come it needs to be a holiday to bang noobslayer's sister?
I don't like the fact that Dryad comes into play as a 1/1. I usually play the Bear when I already achieved threshold to keep it from being burned to a crisp. Dryad seems to fragile to me against decks packing burn spells, I'm gonna stick to the Bear.
Team BadPlay: We spoil Magic for everyone!
Once I take care of the humans, I will take care of... the bees...
Well if you wait until turn 4 or 5( when you would get threshold) to play the Bear, you probably have enough mana to play Dryad and protect with counters or play cantrips in response to the burnspell. I don't think it's a valid argument, or atleast one who counts far more then being less dependent on graveyard hate.
I would play the Bear, because it gives mana and it allows you to play cantrips before you play it. I'm testing Gro-A-Tog and although Dryad is very powerfull on turn 2, it's rather weak later on. I think that also was the initial reason to play Thresholdcreatures over Dryad anyway.
I think you contradict yourself here. In the first argument you suggest to just keep the dryad in hand 'til turn 4-5 because it's easy to protect that way, in the second argument you say it's a rather weak play later in the game.
the first part isn't advocating the use of the dryad, he was just explaning on when it was safe to use him. going off that, he tells us that he would rather play the bear because of that fact.
You guys are going to ruin this deck. You can't improve on perfection. I have found that in my own testing, The only thing better than changing your favorite deck, is putting it back the way it was. You really want to take out Meddling Mage and Werebear? It's called Threshold because of the thresh creatures, and it's white mostly FOR Mage...
So, what I guess I am saying, is if you want to change it so much, maybe you should just play a different deck. I run a list very similar to Bardo's, and IT WINS! I know that a lot of people want to personalize the deck, but when you are taking out huge peices.. it almost makes it a different deck.
~Just Advocating for those who can't speak for themselves.
AoD
Now rocking a job at Off the Wall Games!!
~Team Necro~
There are people that are computer illiterate?
But seriously, shes right. Werebear is such a house and Mage is the reason you play White over Red. Seriously guys, why would you even take Mage out of the deck? You know how crucial he is, dont be a n00b. If anything, he baits out your opponents removal, making Werebear better. Stick with the creatures, they're pretty badass.
EDIT: Its funny. You can tell the mods dont read this thread. Solipugid posted the same thing 5 times.....
I managed to drop by and notice that too. Quintuple post ftl. -Di
Team Solo
Wow, quite a bit of material to cover here.
Let's just start with Meddling Mage. Far more than any other card in the deck, this is the Thresh's most intense skill tester. In all honestly, I would recommend that players that are new to Thresh and/or Legacy, just play something else in the Mage slot (like more Enforcers and cantrips), because playing MM properly requires three distinctly different sets of knowledge: the format, the match-up, the game state.
In Vintage you can just drop Mage on something over-powered (Tinker, Will) and he can get the job done before you start getting fancy (naming "Thirst" against Control Slaver, for instance). But with the relatively lower power level of Legacy, naming the right card is much harder in this format. Nonetheless, the range of MM's goodness is enormous, from being a terribly cost Grizzly Bear to a game-winner. Generally though, the greatest value of MM is that you can conserve your resources (counters and removal) for secondary threats.
Re: Azorius Guildmage. Um, really? If you're playing this guy you're just playing another deck. But he illustrates a good point of why Meddling Mage is so good. All of the Guildmages' abilities cost a load of mana; where MM requires no maintenance once he's in play (i.e. more resource conservation).
Sure, technically you can stop counter a Wasteland or Incinerator, but against a good player, this isn't likely to happen; cost/effect-wise, the cheapest cost usually wins. (Incidentally, I'm pretty sure you can counter the cycling of Gempalm Incinerator with Stifle/Guildmage, but you can only choose one effect; i.e. the damage or drawing a card.)
Re: Dryad over Werebear. In most cases, Werebear is a 4/4 for 1G. It's a solid draw at all points in the game, unlike Dryad, which is often a crap topdeck. If Dryad had some kind of evasion (flying, trample), then she'd be a fine pick, but the difference between a 4/4 for 1G and a non-evasive 7/7 for 1G that required you to cast six other non-green spells (4-8 mana over several turns) is a minor distinction.
And while Dryad makes you a little more resilient to graveyard hate, is it really that big of a deal? I mean, the last time I took Thresh to a tournament I had three straight rounds of opponents playing 3-4 Crypts in their sideboard each, followed by a round against an opponent with 4 maindeck Leylines of the Void. And you know what? I won all of those matches. Dealing with hate just means you have to play tighter. It's not like Goblins became unplayable because some people start running Engineered Plague in their board.
I think the deck will always need to adapt and keep updating itself, but if someone is going to make changes, it's best to get familiar with the proven builds before you go tinkering around.
Edit - Just to be clear, AoD, I was agreeing with you. Though I can see that it didn't necessarily come across that way. :)
Last edited by Bardo; 10-07-2006 at 12:08 AM.
I meant that I was speaking for Werebear and Mage. On Nantuko Monastery, How do you get away with 2 maindeck, I tested with it maindeck, and I took it out completely, because of Wasteland/Swords. Also, it was horrible for mana, I could never even use it, so I had one in the sideboard for a little bit, but decided that Grunt is just better. There are actually plenty of better choices...at least for my build.
~AoD
Now rocking a job at Off the Wall Games!!
~Team Necro~
First of all, I want to apologize for the multiple posts a few days ago. My computer's internet connection suddenly failed as I was posting and refused to submit my comments. Every time I tried to resubmit the post, the action appeared to have failed...I guess it didn't. Again, sorry for that.
I think I'm starting to realize how potentially bad 2 maindeck monasteries are. Later in the game they are amazing cards to have, but having them as your only land in your opening hand forces an otherwise avoidable mulligan. I think I'll drop a monastery for another tundra (wasteland is nowhere to be found in my area, by the way).
I used to play this deck a while back with dryads in it. I ended up giving up on the deck because I didn't think it was good enough. Later on I revisited it, and replaced dryads with mongooses and the deck runs much more smoothly, so I personally would not be an advocate of dryad in thresh. And even if you wanted to play it, I would suggest it over mage (which I think should at least be in the board) and not over threshold creatures. This would take you in a very aggro direction, but it might work.
... I turely disagree with the fact that Meddling Mage is the reason why White is splashed in Thresh. Honestly, it's for Removal, Sideboard, and Metagaming, since white is more flexible than most colors.
As for the Monastery debate.
What's your mana base people? Only two slots maximum in your mana base is allowed for off-colored Lands. Bardo's has two, and so does Ben Goodman. Alix and Jesse Hatfield have 1. And I run my mana base differently than most people, as I adapted this from the Hatfield mana base.
// Lands 17
4 Windswept Heath
3 Polluted Delta
3 Tropical Island
4 Tundra
2 Island
1 Forest
My Needles can call Flooded Strand, yay!
Yes, how hypocrtical of me. I dont run Monasteries Maindecked. In fact, I side out the lone Forest and spells to avoid making mulligans. People, you build your mana base around the deck. You need at least 16 blue sources.
As for my build, it's rather close to Mr. Nightmare's build. I dislike Mental Note, but it seems to be the best I've got for metagaming in my area at the moment, and I guess it isnt so bad, since my Cantrips make Mental Note not suck.
ICBE - We're totally the coolest Anti-Thesis ever.
"The Citrus-God just had a Citrus-Supernova... in your mouth."
My Manabase is as follows:
4 Tundra
3Tropical Island
4 Flooded Strand
3 Windswept Heath
2 Islands
1 Forest
1 Plains (wicked heavy wasteland and other LD in my meta)
I can name Polluted Delta too! Let's just hope everyone isn't running a similar mana base
Now rocking a job at Off the Wall Games!!
~Team Necro~
Actually you only had one in your maindeck but each time you drew it it still lost you games. Colorless mana for the lose. This card is not worth a spot in an already stretched 3c manabase, imo. I could maybe see it played in a build were monastary isnt counted in the manabase as land.. Maybe an 18-19 land build. It also seems costly to me to have since the activation isnt always cheap, and interfers with countermagic.
It doesnt seem to help the thresh reliant problem either. It is a thresh creature, it also sucks against crypt.
Now playing real formats.
I didn't say I played MORE than one. I simply said that it sucked for me. I hated drawing colorless, and I hate putting all that time, threshold, and mana into a 4/4, when I already had 4 in my deck.(Werebear)
Now rocking a job at Off the Wall Games!!
~Team Necro~
Wow... I didnt actually believe people would have problems with Monastery, that, or I drew more lands than most people because I run a higher cantrip count.
ICBE - We're totally the coolest Anti-Thesis ever.
"The Citrus-God just had a Citrus-Supernova... in your mouth."
This is the Gro deck I played to a top two split at the Duel for Duals on October 7th, and with one minor sideboard difference, my (as well as Obfuscate Freely's) current decklist.
4x Brainstorm
4x Serum Visions
4x Portent
4x Predict
4x Nimble Mongoose
4x Werebear
2x Mystic Enforcer
4x Force of Will
3x Counterspell
3x Daze
4x Swords to Plowshares
3x Pithing Needle
4x Tundra
3x Tropical Island
3x Island
3x Windswept Heath
2x Flooded Strand
1x Polluted Delta
1x Forest
Sideboard:
3x Naturalize
3x Blue Elemental Blast
3x Stifle
3x Jotun Grunt
3x Loaming Shaman
The maindeck is the same standard we've been running for quite a while, some noticable features being a healthy 16 library manipulation/draw spells and no Meddling Mage. I'll get to both in a moment but first I'd like to talk about the sideboard.
It was meant to have a single Mystic Enforcer rather than the third Loaming Shaman, but I couldn't find it until after I had to hand in my decklist. Whether that's even correct is debatable, but it didn't end up mattering. Those last 5-6 slots are experimental; we haven't gotten a chance to test this configuration in the mirror yet (and neither of us played it in two days), but ideally they should allow you to attack your opponent's graveyard while making you less reliant on your own. Nantuko Monastery is a great card (obviously you should never cut any blue lands for it, though), but it is another threshold creature, and Grunts are becoming quite popular (likely a good deal more so than they deserve) along with the graveyard hate we already have to deal with. Granted, Enforcer is another threshold creature, but there are a number of other matchups where you want to be able to go up to three after game one (RGSA, Angel Stompy, essentially any slow creature deck). Grunt vs. Shaman is an interesting decision, and as I've said we haven't tested it yet so we don't know what the best configuration would be, but they both have strengths and weaknesses. Loaming Shaman, of course, has an immediate impact, and doesn't require anything special to keep around. Grunt, on the other hand, matches up better against threshed or re-threshed creatures (trades with Bear, kills Goose) as well as opposing copies of itself. I hope to get some testing done in the mirror soon so we can see how well this plan compares to the many other options, but I can't say for sure yet.
One thing I do believe, however, is that Tivadar's Crusade is not necessary. I boarded as follows against Goblins on Saturday:
-2 Mystic Enforcer
-1 Counterspell
-1 Predict
-1 Portent
-1 Serum Visions
+3 Blue Elemental Blast
+3 Stifle
Enforcer is the first card to get boarded out in this matchup because it's generally too slow to risk having in your hand early and rarely necessary later in the game. Draw and counters need to go to make room for anything more, which is unfortunate, but acceptable in small numbers. My exact configuration might not be correct, but I'd recommend something similar. Blast is able to replace and complement the counters, and Stifle is able to answer Matron, Ringleader, Gempalm, and Siege-Gang Commander but also safeguards against Tormod's Crypt. Both are far more versatile than Crusade and less of a strain on the manabase, and yet both are very strong in the matchup. This maindeck is already consistent enough (running a healthy amount of draw spells and few suboptimal cards against Goblins) that these six cards are enough to make the matchup at least even, and probably favorable. A lot of people seem to think that this matchup is unfavorable or even unwinnable, but it just isn't the case.
Perhaps even more prevalent is the mistaken idea that the deck isn't heavily favored against combo without Meddling Mage. The following was my board plan against Solidarity:
-4 Swords to Plowshares
-3 Pithing Needle
-2 Mystic Enforcer
-1 Forest
+3 Stifle
+3 Blue Elemental Blast
+2 Jotun Grunt
+2 Loaming Shaman
Swords is obviously dead here and Pithing Needle next to useless. Enforcer may be worse than both because on the off chance you accidentally cast it, you may very well lose on the spot. I think it's safe to take Forest out here (and a few other matchups with no land destruction or nonbasic hate) because the land count that really matters is how many blue sources you have. Forest rarely makes any opening hands better, isn't affected by High Tide, and is generally shuffled away or put on the bottom if at all possible. I can't remember the last time I lost to combo because of manascrew, but almost all of the ones I can remember involve manaflood.
Stifle, while not as good as Mage in this particular matchup, is quite relevant and much less narrow. A good portion of the games Gro loses to Solidarity are the result of multiple Brain Freezes after a counter war, which Stifle obviously stops. It can also hit fetchlands for a serious tempo boost, though they can play around it if they know you have it. What Stifle does is give you more freedom in deciding what to counter. Often it's easier to counter their draw than anything else, but if you let them have all the mana they want, they might be able to storm up high enough to kill you with Brain Freeze even if none of their draw spells resolve. If you've got a Stifle in your hand, you don't have to worry about that and can focus on whichever resource you think they're weak in. Blue Elemental Blast is just a blue card. Yes, blue cards are better than extra creatures in this matchup. Grunt and Shaman are the worst of the bunch but they each have their uses. They have a similar effect to Stifle; if Grunt is in play or Loaming Shaman in your hand, a Brain Freeze isn't lethal without a draw spell. However, they have serious drawbacks - Grunt can't stay out long and can be bounced, but Shaman is inefficient and you may not be able to play him after a counter war.
People are often surprised when I tell them I don't even board Mage, but the card is too narrow in the current Legacy metagame to be worth it. It's only really good in your best matchups. This deck, properly built, shouldn't have trouble with combo with or without Mage. Solidarity loses to counters and a decent clock, and if you can't pull that together consistently, chances are there's a deeper problem. If your build is too inconsistent to run smoothly against combo, you can use Mage to patch up that one matchup, but that inconsistency is still going to cost you games everywhere else. Better to fix the underlying problem and improve all your matchups. If you don't have enough experience to beat combo without Mage, you won't be guaranteed to beat it with Mage either. Better to test against it and improve the matchup without spending card slots. If you've had an unlucky streak, you can run Mage to make you more comfortable, but you're wasting space and weakening your deck overall. Better to accept the losses as exceptions and plan to win in the future.
Aside from the five or six sideboard slots for the mirror, I don't have any major complaints about the deck right now. I still believe 16 draw spells to be necessary. The draw has always been what makes this deck work; it lets us run a low land count, balance our counters, threats, and removal, and lets us find threats reliably without forcing us to run more than a few, making sure that the ones we do play are the best possible. I believe this deck (regardless of build or player) still loses more games because of not drawing enough cards than any other reason. I think trying to cut corners on draw, either by running too few or by running cards like Mental Note that don't actually manipulate your draw, is a serious mistake. If anything, I'd add draw (and I'm always looking out for ways to do that).
There's been some negative hype recently, but I still believe Gro to be the best deck in the format, and I'm posting this to hopefully start some discussion about it. There's no shortage of issues to be talked about given the variation between lists, and I hope we can be civil and productive. I'd love to hear any ideas about how to improve the deck or your reasoning for disagreeing with me on any of these points.
Last edited by Mad Zur; 10-10-2006 at 08:09 PM. Reason: 1x Forest
To tell the truth... I'm literally am in love with your build.
Also, why did you cut the lone Forest? I love having 17 lands around. Why do you have 2 Flooded Strands and 1 Polluted Delta? How often do you name fetchlands with them? If so, do you name Polluted Delta or Flooded Strand?
As for your 6 slots, I think Loaming Shaman should be cut for something else. Maybe more general utility. Grunt looks good.
So may I have more information to why Nantuko Monastery had to get cut. It was so good in my metagame. It helps me with all my bad match ups, like EBA. Even if Grunt is around, more removal can easily be sided in to take care of him. Monastery was also my MVP for awhile.
What do you side in versus mirror?
What's Obfuscate Freely's current build at the moment?
I think you guys should write a primer on this particular build. Bardo has one view of the deck, I think we need another.
ICBE - We're totally the coolest Anti-Thesis ever.
"The Citrus-God just had a Citrus-Supernova... in your mouth."
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