Understood, I'll keep that in mind.Originally Posted by Quasim0ff
I am not sure if I made my comment clear in the last post. I like AnziD's SB plan against Infect a lot, which is similar to your SB plan anyhow. The problem is that, even if you kept an opening hand, full of counter and removal, i.e. flusterstorm and stp, it's inevitable for Infect to chip away your infect total, 1 or 2 infect counter(s) at a time, while you unload your removal. Once you have accumulated 6~7 infect and stopped any Invigorate/pump attempts, that's when Infect starts going for the Nexus kill. You might have StP/Terminus 1 or 2 Nexus before that, but there's always more, perhaps via Crop Rotation route.
From my experience, Infect players simply don't play around FtA, they just don't. They probably have Krosan Grip for CB, and happen to kill B2B, and they still use Noble to generate Grip mana anyway. My best blow-out was to:
1. Use Clique and others to deplete Infect player's counter magic.
2. Win the counter war and killed 3 Nexus via FtA at once.
Going by Cadei's list here
http://www.tcdecks.net/deck.php?id=21755&iddeck=167246
How would you board against lands?
For me i will board in 2 Wear/Tear, 1 Extraction, 2 Clique
I am not so sure what to board out though, any advice on this? I am looking at - 2 FOW, -2 counterspell, - 1 Council's Judgement
-4 Terminus, -2 counterspell, +3 clique, +2 wear, +1 surgical.
Terminus is mostly poor postboard, CJ are needed for the chalices they might play. Counterspell is mostly just poor, in that the spells they play are Spheres/chalices/trackers.
Thanks for the prompt reply. Hmm i guess siding out terminus is logical just that there is this guy at my LGS that plays slaughter games and targeted my STP once before.
Pardon another noobish question of mine, let's say you are playing against delver, there is nothing on their board but lands. You only have a top in play, with a few lands and a fetch. You see STP and a couple of lands. Would you in this case take the plow for some sort of insurance coverage or would you guys fetch for a win con against them, be it jace, entreat or counterbalance. Perhaps i am not such a good player yet, so my decision would be to keep the plow as an insurance for anything else they might cast. Just want to listen to veteran miracles players over here.
Depends on life total, handsize etc. ;).
Take the sword, there is nothing wrong about it.
Look again and if crap is following, fetch.
| Grixis Control
| Canadian Threshold
Do you have a fetch in play, and are otherwise not close to die?
if Yes to both, I'd look for snapcaster/cb.
*also if your land opponent sideboards into Slaughter Games, don't mind him. That is not something representive for any other person than him, and that card is just bad.
Agreed with all of this. There's definitely a lot of times were draw the "insurance" STP is right. I would be less likely to do that if I was against a delver deck with things like TNN or Lily/Jace. Against delver, anytime your not getting attacked you are winning, even if you are doing nothing.
despite this being a great counterargument, i think i would take the stp. its still a very high quality card that answers delver/drs/dudes. i'd be kicking myself later if i dont have the removal spell for their lethal attacker knowing that i shuffled away a removal spell that could have been. if i already have a plow in hand 'im more inclined to be aggressive with the fetch.
re: lands w cadei's list; rather than give you a "take these out put these in" i think its a good idea to discuss postboard expectations. this way your sideboarding can be more fluid, and therefore more accurate
recently lands decks have adopted ghost quarter in lieu of rishadan port. the upside is that in certain matchups, ghost quarter is basically strip mine. ghost quarter also hits basics, which gives lands "stronger" inevitability vs miracles. and, ghost quarter operates without the requirement of additional lands, unlike port with its activation cost of a colorless mana. changing from port to quarter shifts how the miracles player approaches postboard games vs lands. also, looking at the sideboard of popular gq lists, we can expect some quantity of cards like krosan grip, tireless tracker, and chalice of the void. (you might also run into noise like sphere, but in theory sphere should make the gq plan worse as it makes loam harder to cast).
so in context of miracles, the first point to observe is that the gq lands list relies a bit more on loam against miracles than the older port list. why? on average a miracles deck will feature 5 to 7 basics. this means for ghost quarter to be an effective form of mana denial (and not a shitty ramp card for the opponent), it needs to be used many, many times. to use it many times, you either need to have multiple copies (unlikely) or you need to find a way to recursively buy back the quarter. life from the loam satisfies the latter requirement at the cost of 1G. what does this mean for us as the miracles player? it means that stopping loam is about equivalent to stopping the lands player's mana denial plan, which allows us to assemble our own plan of top/cb/jace/mentor/etc. additionally, because the first gq or two are so bad at denying us of mana, it means that in the early turns we will still have access to the same amount of mana should they choose to ghost quarter us (assuming we have basics and they dont waste us). this is critical in that it allows us to cast our three drops and four drops on curve.
second point to observe is their sideboard plan: cotv, grip, and tracker. krosan grip is pretty standard tech, and to combat this you just have to be aware that it exists. this means float the 3 on top when you have cb/top, activate your top main phase so they can't grip it and deny you the info, etc. one line of play i love is extracting grip from the rg lands gy so that my future counterbalances are immune to destruction. chalice is an interesting hate piece from the lands side. while it does turn off their gambles and crop rotations, it is far more harmful to us as it shuts down our vision/cantrips/top and swords to plowshares. if chalice stays in play too long, the lands player will be able to take advantage of our clunky, unfiltrated draws and win. how do we beat chalice? like we always do. counter it. bring in artifact hate. destroy it. and lastly, tireless tracker. while the card seems anemic at first (as most creatures do against us), it is important to not be blindsided. secretly, this card is very good. it lets the loam player fight our card advantage and jund us out, while also making our STPs worse against marit lage by overloading the total # of targets. how do we beat this? respect the card and dont board out too much removal.
in short, this boils down to "stop loam and answer their threats". however, the specific nature of their threats dictates how we board. i propose the following:
- 2 terminus
- 1 ponder
- 1 fow
- 1 counterspell/fow
+2 clique
+2 w/t
+1 surgical
here's why:
-2 terminus : typically we are taught to board out all 4 terminus. would it surprise you if i told you cadei usually boards only 1 copy out? the reason to board out terminus is that plow is "enough" to answer however many marit lages they may have. sometimes terminus might be bad if they have a wasteland or port to mess up our mana (ie in response to a top activation), but in general it is not unacceptable to have some copies in your deck postboard. the card very cleanly answers tireless tracker and marit lage and keeping in 2 as opposed to 0 gives your plowshares some breathing room
-1 ponder : if we are expecting 4 chalice of the void, it is okay to cut down on 1 ponder. ponder if probably one our worse 1 drops and shaving on ponder makes us slightly more immune to chalice. cadei's list is a little land light though, so if you cut a ponder, please be a bit warier of your opening 7.
-1 counterspell/fow : counterspell can be too slow at times, force can be too expensive at times. understand that the cards still have merit, as countering a hate piece, a tracker, or a gamble/crop rotation searching for boseiju is often very very worth it. i will say that counterspell is a card directly affected by the transition from port to quarters. usually counterspell is bad against lands as rishadan port means you aren't casting counterspell until turn 3 or even later. however, given that ghost quarters keeps you at two mana on turn 2, counterspell can be cast earlier and is thus more relevant in stopping the 2 mana and 3 mana threats the new lands decks have. another card that improves (but by a lot less than counterspell improves) from the mana denial switch is council's judgment. now we actually have white man untapped to cast our judgments! be careful though, as this could potentially expose plains to ghost quarters, which is far worse than having plains ported.
+2 clique : remember how we want interaction that stops loam? draw step clique, ship your loam to the bottom does exactly that. plus the fact that it is a flash threat means that we can very nicely tempo our opponent out. also, give that we are more likely to have 3 mana on turn 3 (since gq will replace whatever it destroys), clique's expensive cost is less of a downside.
+2 wear/tear : chalice. and the upside of hitting other potential cards (sphere, choke, needle, library, song of the dryads)
+1 surgical : the most efficient way to remove loam and all future loams from the game. surgical extraction also has the upside of hitting specific lands or hate cards from their graveyard, like krosan grip or dark depths.
This was an interesting read. Just wanted to point out though that the quarters wont be aimed at all 5-7 basics, but mainly at the 2 plains (and dependant of the board the 3-4 tundras or even fetches) to destroy all white sources and deny swords, mentor and entreat.
I went with that build, but don't know how I feel with only mentors as my wincon. (and LGS only had 1 predict, waiting for 2nd to come in the mail, running another Preordain in the meantime)
Hi guys, sorry if this has been already discussed, but i couldn't find it inside this 3d. Basically, i need an advice to how to board OUT against BUG decks, expecially the Cascade version.
At the moment i'm playing a list close to BBD's one, just -1 EE +1 CJ main deck, and -2 Disenchant -1 Surgical -1 Needle +1 Fluster +2 Wear/Tear +1 Pyroblast in the SB.
I know that i want to bring in 2 Wear/Tear, 3 Pyroblasts and 2 Vendilion Cliques. The 2 Moons would be nice too, but i'm still not sure about them. The problem is when it comes to cutting cards: i would go -4 FoW for sure, but as BBD i like to keep CB in. I can see cutting one EE since we are bringing in 3 Pyroblast as a way to interact with TNN on the stack and we have Terminus to "kill" a resolved one, but I still have too many cards I need to cut to make room.
Can you help me?
Hi Sheik80,
before we speak about what should in I would like to encourage you to board Blood Moons in as they are the only "and now I win this game" card we have against them. Beside playing Moat in the Sideboard.
I'm not sure if you need 2 Wear/Tear against them as there targets are limited and there are nothing dangerous we can destroy with them beside Hatepieces from the sideboard, therefore I would probably only board one. Boarding out FoW is the right choice imho because we can't afford the card-disadvantage in such a grinding battle of resources. Beside that I usually side out EE, 1 Jace and Counterspell(s). Everything else depends on their deck. If they are more creature-heavy I would cut a mentor. If they are more spell-heavy I would cut a StP, not easy to say.
Please also consider other people advise on this point as I'm usually playing at least one Entreat in main which is awesome against them and am unsure if cutting Mentor isn't against your gameplan.
Wow thanks for the comprehensive reply Anzid, will definitely give your sb advice a shot if I encounter them.
So I was at my LGS today, played against an altered version of rug delver. Boy was it a pain to play against. Don't think the newer versions play 4 goyfs now. They cut it down to 2 and play 2 tnn. Game 1 I terminus the mongoose but died to the tnn. Game 2, he had stifles for my ee and terminus, killed me with a mongoose.
Seeing that they are down to only 4 delver, 2 goyfs, would it be wise to board out some plows for pyroblast to keep those pesky blue spells at bay? He always seem to have the pierce, stifle at the right time
My friend James and I tested this matchup (it's a RUG delver variant popularized by Jonathan Alexander) for about 6 hours on Sunday after GP Louisville, and I ended up winning out on the head to head, because I started to adapt to what the game plan became.
Basically, I board differently vs this variant than I do vs any other:
Keep in forces, board in all blasts, take out plows. Bring in Mentors/EE/Fluster as well. Treat the matchup like a Mirror or a control mirror and understand that the cards that matter the most are Winter Orb, etc. Plow can only kill delver, as they board out goyf to facilitate 3x Winter Orbs and sideboard counterspells. I would recommend giving this sideboard strategy a shot, and know when to pick your spots with your removal, as you can pace your removal to their threats fairly easily if you know that Plow does nothing and Blasts are of paramount importance.
End record ended up being 13-12 in my favor (1-1 Pre, not counted in this total, 13 Post) but I had lost like 7 in a row at first and rallied back and won the last few in a row once I started to realize what was happening and started boarding in the above way. The matchup is tough, but challenging and very rewarding once you realize that you have to approach the matchup so differently compared to every other delver deck.
Hello guys, I have a gameplay situation for you to evaluate. I'd like to know your opinion.
It's game 2 agains Reid Duke's BUG, we are on the play and you kept a hand with Tundra, Plains, Island, Terminus, Swords to Plowshares, Pyroblast, Ponder. List is really similar to BBD's, just 20 lands and the 4th Mentor.
Do you play Ponder turn 1? I played Ponder (maybe it was already a mistake) and saw Tundra, Disenchant, Vendilion Clique. Do you shuffle or do you keep them? If you keep them how do you order them?
Thanks a lot!
"You must believe you are the best, and then make sure you are" Bill Shankly
keep, isl, ponder, shuffle
yeah the ideal target is a white source, but we minimize that by just hiding our plains. if they don't use the ghost quarter, then its still fantastic because we get to develop our board on curve\
yeah just beware that this is not steadfast by any means and that you should be flexible based on what you see. ex - if you surgical and see only 2 tireless tracker instead of 4, then going into the next game (if there is one) you could have 1 terminus left in the deck instead of 2, bring back a cs or a fow, etc
Agree with this, you have to factor what you're looking for with that Ponder. You're likely looking for JTMS/Mentor/Blood Moon etc, something POWERFUL and proactive to use your defensive cards towards. That Ponder didn't find any of those cards, so it's a shuffle.
EDIT: Anu corrected me, you're also looking for a red source or a brainstorm.
thoughts on only 1 surgical in the sideboard in the current meta? containment priest is usually too slow vs BR reanimator, and does nothing vs lands. but, as you describe, surgical is one of the best cards vs lands. i've made room for 3x surgical in my list.
unless i am missing an obvious line of play, this creates an interesting game theory situation that i haven't seen explored in any forum post or article.
consider the following simplified situation:
-it's the lands player's EOT and the lands player (the active player) his priority
-both players know that the miracles player has a 3 CMC card in their top 3 cards (ofc, the miracles player knows where it is)
(a) if the lands player kgrips now, then they are doing so hoping the miracles player doesn't have the 3 on top.
(b) else if the lands player passes priority, then:
(i) if the 3 CMC card is on top, the miracles player has activate top their upkeep if they want to avoid drawing the 3 CMC card. if the miracles player choses to activates top in their upkeep, the lands player has a similar situation to (b)
(ii) if the 3 CMC card isn't on top, the miracles player doesn't _need_ to do anything.
(1) on the miracles player's upkeep they can pass priority
(2) ... or bluff by spinning top
what do you all think the right plays are here by both sides?
for starters, if we simplify matters by assuming the miracles player has infinite mana, it feels like bluffing by spinning top during the lands player's EOT but still leaving the 3 CMC card on top is the right play since it gives the lands player the opportunity to fall into our trap.
but what about the very basic situation of it being the miracles player's upkeep and the 3 CMC card is currently on top. do they activate top now or pass priority?
this is subtle, but a good point.
I don't agree with this "Because this isn't a common board plan, don't worry about it" mentality. It's still a match to be won or lost. Of course, you can't just change up your entire board to play around SG, but you should be accounting for it whenever you can. Same goes for more-obscure tech, for example Winter Orb. Let's face it, Winter RUG was a trash idea and didn't do what it was designed to (that is, beat our decks). But we should still be cognizant of Winter Orb being a possible SB plan out of RUG Delver decks in the future now because if we get matched up against a guy running this obscure hate we still have to win that round if we want to place high in the tournament. I'm not going to take the L and hope next round matches me up against a "stock" list.
The purpose of any moat is to impede attack. Some are filled with water, some with thistles. Some are filled with things best left unseen.
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