Nice! Your 4th match sounds exactly like what my Aluren deck did in Louisville in the last event. Thems the breaks sometimes. Also, I've generally enjoyed playing this deck against BR Reanimator - for plays just like yours in both games.Originally Posted by KaiSchafroth
Find me on Twitter: @beanaman
Yeah, it happens - sometimes you draw all T1 kills and sometimes you draw the opposite.
On the BR I 100% agree, prime example of wishing you had less fun.
So, looking at the success of BR Reanimator, I'm wondering if we shouldn't be thinking about trading some consistency/flexibility for speed/aggressiveness. TBH I haven't really played any Legacy lately so I might just be talking out of my ass. I was just thinking "if you were going to make a highlight reel for TinFins, what would the music be?" and I'm pretty sure if the answer isn't "X Gon Give It To Ya" then we're doing something wrong.
Also can we make that video? I really want to see Koby tear up a Counterbalance while smoking a blunt in slow motion.
I think the biggest thing is the deep seeded emotional understanding that the right play is the right play regardless of outcomes. The ability to make a decision 5 straight times, lose 5 times because of it, and still make it the 6th time if it's the right play. - Jon Finkel
"Notions of chance and fate are the preoccupation of men engaged in rash undertakings."
To be honest I believe that TinFins is nearly unplayable right now thanks to the success of BR Reanimator. Everyone plays 2-3 Surgical Extractions and devotes even a couple more SB-slots (and thoughts) on that MU and we can't always pull the "reanimate in response to surgical"-trick. In paper DnT is all over the place and if they know what they're up against paired with Faerie Macabres out of the SB that's a MU I don't wanna play (to be fair we are better than Reanimator against DnT and with the correct SB it's a good MU but we give up % against other decks by devoting the SB slots). The meta seems very hateful, but I am sure it will get better once BR Reanimator leaves the stage again.
I always felt like TinFins is a 58 card deck. The last two slots are always the two cards you never wanna draw. Often they're filled with Top or Lim Duls Vault, some tried Baby-Jace and I even saw Intuition. But it's nearly always a card that makes the deck more consistent. So if you want more speed and aggression, I would cut those two and maybe even reduce the number of Ponders. Ponder is a great card, but we really don't wanna keep mono cantrips and slowly sculpt our hand. We aren't ANT.
The problem is we would rely even more on naturally drawing Entomb, if we try to be more aggressive. We can't just pull the pseudo-BR/UB-Reanimator and play more Fatties and add a couple of Looting effects. That would make the deck way too inconsistent. There is no substitute for Entomb. In the end Ponder is pretty often Entomb 5-8. Also adding stuff that dodges the GY such as SnT doesn't really work out with just 3-4 Fatties to cheat into play. Other reanimator lists play double the amount of creatures.
I guess you could try Burning Reanimator (which is kind of a TinFins variant) if you wanna go even more all-in, but if your opponents don't maindeck Ensnaring Bridge I don't see a reason to not just play BR Reanimator.
For reference my current list:
//Lands
1 Island
1 Swamp
4 Polluted Delta
2 Marsh Flats
2 Flooded Strand
2 Tundra
2 Underground Sea
1 Scrubland
//Creatures
1 Children of Korlis
1 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
2 Griselbrand
//Artifacts
1 Chrome Mox
4 Lotus Petal
2 Sensei's Divining Top
//Instants & Sorceries
4 Brainstorm
4 Cabal Therapy
4 Dark Ritual
4 Entomb
4 Gitaxian Probe
3 Goryo's Vengeance
4 Ponder
1 Reanimate
4 Shallow Grave
2 Thoughtseize
//Sideboard
SB: 1 Flusterstorm
SB: 1 Surgical Extraction
SB: 3 Swords to Plowshares
SB: 4 Monastery Mentor
SB: 4 Delver of Secrets
SB: 2 Serenity
I disagree quite strongly, this is where our SB shines. People are overloaded on cheap GY interaction, which gets squashed by Mentor easily. Even if they know about the plan from prior knowledge or G2, they still need to second guess us and dilute their deck.
Turn 1 Thoughtseize discard Mentor. Surgical target Mentor.
Surgical is quite strong against both our MD and SB plan. I believe it's a mistake to see Surgical strictly as a anti-GY-card.
A lot of stuff that's good against our MD plan is good against our SB plan.
Another random example: Thalia. Insane against our MD plan and still pretty good against us trying to go wide with Mentor. We do not dodge all hatecards just by playing Mentor.
The ability to dodge a couple of GY hate cards is our strength and we are arguably the strongest Mentor deck, but that doesn't mean GY-Hate doesn't hurt us. Splash damage is real.
To be fair we also have to second guess and we are the ones who dilute our deck even more. Our SB plan doesn't come as a surprise anymore and while Dark Confidant isn't a threat on it's own if all he does is trying to find Mentor or allow Mentor to produce more tokens, Stoneforge Mystic is just a inherently weak card.[...] they still need to second guess us and dilute their deck.
Last edited by Nicklas; 02-10-2017 at 12:18 AM.
MY highlight reel music would be "Used 2" by 2 Chainz, but that's just a personal preference.
I've been thinking the same thing recently, that speed is probably more important than it has been in recent years. A page or so back I posted a trimmed down list that brought back Chrome Mox, but as always, Entomb is our bottleneck. I've also been considering going back to a more reactive board. Mentor is insane, but 4 men isn't enough, and I'm not 100% on any of the other options to run along side it.
Here's my current list, no changes from the GP (yet):
Land (15)
1x Island
4x Marsh Flats
4x Polluted Delta
1x Scrubland
1x Swamp
1x Tundra
3x Underground Sea
Creature (4)
1x Children of Korlis
1x Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
2x Griselbrand
Artifact (4)
4x Lotus Petal
Instant (21)
4x Brainstorm
4x Dark Ritual
4x Entomb
3x Goryo's Vengeance
2x Lim-Dul's Vault
4x Shallow Grave
Sorcery (16)
4x Cabal Therapy
2x Collective Brutality (Normally Thoughtseize, but I'm still unsure)
4x Gitaxian Probe
4x Ponder
1x Reanimate
1x Tendrils of Agony
In particular, I feel like the flex slots are:
1 Tendrils
1 Island
2 LDV
4th Ponder
Instead of testing the list I proposed here, I decided to go out for drinks pre fnm one week, so I didn't have time to make changes, and then play a Doomsday Worldgorger Dragon list this week (and went 2-2, my two wins being byes).
There's a win a mox happening near me this week, and I've been considering swapping to Belcher for the event, as the loads of graveyard hate is making me gun shy, despite the deck treating me pretty well last month. Speed has been incredibly important in a lot of match-ups, and there's a lot of games that I feel like our win % goes way down after t3 (D&T, Miracles, BUG off the top of my head). I've been considering bringing back Silence for the sideboard, as Surgical has been the most popular form of hate I've come across.
Thinking a reactive board like
2 Serenity
2 Swords to Plowshares
2 Surgical Extraction
2 Pithing Needle
2 Chain of Vapor
2 Massacre
3 Silence
Silence is just so bad against Discard decks and a resolved Counterbalance, but it does give us a tool versus other combo decks, as well as eating a counterspell (Abeyance costing 2 makes it not worth it). Luckily, with the reactive board, we have 3 slots that could go for anything, so I'm not afraid of adding niche cards.
tl;dr thoughts
- List probably needs to shave a land or two and add Chrome Mox
- Thoughtseize probably needs to be mainboard
- Tendrils can be covered by Collective Brutality, as we can loop it to kill people
- A 2nd Reanimate, for those who aren't already on 2 Reanimate, should be played over an LDV, a Ponder, or maybe even the 14th land. Hell, maybe going back to 61/14 might be worth it.
- Mentor is amazing, but man plan options are all pretty rough to go along side it. Maybe Obliterator? SFM is still doable and decent, but sometimes it felt bad.
- Reactive Board w/ Silence might be a better option given the above point.
Tinfins & Bizarro Stormy & Belcher & DDFT
@acclimation6 on twitter
Back to back t1 kills at SCG STL 2013:
https://youtu.be/kk3crCPsNLg
Personally, I still think Br Reanimator looks like hot garbage on paper, but it seems to be putting up numbers, so I thought it was at least worth trying to figure out why it's doing well and if we can incorporate some of those elements. Looking at the 2nd place list from Louisville, it breaks down like this
Reanimation Targets: 10
Lands: 12
Nonland mana: 10
Reanimation: 12
Universal discard: 8
Graveyard filler: 8
So what really makes it tick? Is it just Chancellor? Is it still worth running if you never intend to reanimate it? Should we go back to risking more dead draws to just run more Grizzlebees/discard? Can we get away with 12 lands?
If anyone that actually gets to play the deck wants to test some of this stuff, I'd be interested to hear the results.
@Nicklas, wrong thread to go all Negative Nancy. Take a breather, eat some onions. We'll get through this and be wishing we had less fun again in no time.
I think the biggest thing is the deep seeded emotional understanding that the right play is the right play regardless of outcomes. The ability to make a decision 5 straight times, lose 5 times because of it, and still make it the 6th time if it's the right play. - Jon Finkel
"Notions of chance and fate are the preoccupation of men engaged in rash undertakings."
Hi guys.
A post was made regarding BR Reanimator and I was instantly alerted by my web app that texts me whenever someone says the words "unfair" "Griselbrand" or "Dark Depths". I want to help you guys out with some of my deck construction theories regarding BR Reanimator:
Having a lot of copies of each effect (bin and reanimation) vs you guys having a ton of cantrips to dig for yours changes a lot of matchups and play patterns. For example, we can jam our combo often a bit earlier and more aggressively, especially in G1, because one counterspell might not do anything because of a second copy of the effect that is countered. You guys might need to take a turn off to dig for it with a Ponder / Brainstorm. The other side of the coin is that both of our decks get hit with variance quite a bit, but while I have to mulligan quite a bit looking for a decent hand, you can frequently find a keepable hand on 6 cards that is good because of Brainstorm.
Edit: Additionally, post-board games usually feature a lot of Surgical Extractions against both of our decks. Chancellor gives BR a good chance of being able to beat it on the play or slow down another annoying card (DRS) so that we can play Thoughtseize on turn 1 before going off on turn 2.
I really recommend proxying the BR deck and trying it out a bit, or even trying out one of my versions with Children of Korlis if you like. It might give you some ideas about how to modify TinFins or BR to have the most fun with your Griselbrand magic cards.
One decklist I saw that I liked quite a bit on MTGGoldfish was essentially the UB Reanimator deck with Force of Wills, Dazes, Careful Study, but also Dark Ritual, Shallow Grave, Goryo's, and a modified creature suite of Griselbrand, Emrakul, Children. You guys might want to check that out.
If you're wondering how I produce blue mana, I copy my opponent's Island with Thespian's Stage
My Youtube and Twitch usernames are DNSolver.
I am the Legacy metagame:
-2016 Eternal Weekend Europe won by BR Reanimator (I wrote the primer)
-2016 Eternal Weekend North America won by Turbo Dark Depths (I write about and develop the winning version specifically)
-Refiner of Hogaak Depths.
Saw this post and before I forgot wanted to search up the list you mentioned for my and others reference. Two links, same user - the 2nd link is from a separate league a week apart. Looks to have swapped from a counter-based support to discard based.
https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/565431#online
https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/571191#online
I'm clone103 on modo. I've been tinkering a lot with various builds using unmask (force of will being pseudo-unmask) as I posted above. It's just been so good that I wouldn't consider playing less than 4.
The blue idea seemed really good at first (I went 5-0 in my very first league) but it wasn't performing very well in subsequent runs. The beauty of unmask is that you are often pitching redundant or unneeded spells...griselbrand, the second entomb or goryo's vengeance, etc. it also helps your fizzle rate because giving yourself a free discard outlet often matters when going off (and is sometimes necessary to keep chain going vs chalice on 1). With force of will I was finding that I more often wouldn't have a card to pitch, or that card was a ponder or brainstorm that I really wanted to use. It was nice to get an opposing deathrite shaman on the draw a few times though.
The abrupt decay version I am very happy with. I do really miss chrome mox and probably want to shave a land for it, but the mana is really tight with the abrupt decays. Island might have to lose out, which is a real drawback.
My league records with that list are 4-1 2-3 4-1 4-1 5-0 3-2 3-2.
Abrupt decay has been instrumental in beating miracles (don't get me wrong it's not a good matchup but I'm 2-2 and would be worse without them) and also make turn 1 deathrite a lot less scary. I think I'm sticking with them for now.
I really feel like 2 careful study main is perfect. With 4 griselbrand main they are often entomb 5-6, and when they aren't you are digging and probably discarding redundant stuff. Post board I usually cut them and 2 griselbrand because you can't safely throw a grIselbrand in the gy early due to opposing extractions. The card disadvantage matters more when you're fighting through more hate as well.
G probe and collective brutality are the final two slots that could change. I think exactly one brutality is correct. It does a lot of things, of course none super efficiently. Incidentally it even inefficiently serves the role of tendrils if they have something like ensnaring bridge you could brutality their face 10 times, though it's not something I've done. The first probe is the best probe because it gives you the most info but I could see cutting it for fourth thoughtseize, 3rd ponder or careful study or chrome mox. I like the "59" card deck for now.
Try this list out if you don't mind the reactive board. It's really not possible to transform to mentor without the probes I'd think.
I just unmasked opponent in game 3. My choices were Surgical Extraction, Surgical Extraction, Surgical Extraction, Surgical Extraction or Tarmogoyf.
I guess Cabal Therapy has its advantages.
Oh don't worry, a deck being not a good choice never stopped me from playing it. It's actually rather the opposite: I stepped back from Infect when it became good and same is true for Grixis Delver. Now I am mostly on Esper Delver, Bant Thopter, TinFins and random Brews. This is Legacy, not Modern or Yugioh.@Nicklas, wrong thread to go all Negative Nancy. Take a breather, eat some onions. We'll get through this and be wishing we had less fun again in no time.
I am just very much a fan of a honest discussion... :)
I am quite happy with the 4 Delver 4 Mentor SB.
Since I won a medium sized local tournament a while back I haven't changed much (here is the decklist + german report if interested: http://www.mtg-forum.de/topic/103106...ins/?p=1263904 ), but moved from SFM package to Delver. The maindeck seems well tuned to me. As I mentioned earlier I think only 2 STD/LDV/Baby-Jace are the flex slots. Tendrils seems like a wasted slot to me. Maybe the land configuration isn't perfect.
A Valentine's Day poem for my fellow bursters
Roses are red
For lord Griselbrand I do sin
Dark Rit, Entomb, Shallow Grave
Oh whoops, looks like I win
Sounds like Acclimation and I will both be at the win-a-mox this weekend so currently in the process of list tweaks. He brought up a valid point of possible public decklists making the 'surprise-getcha' mentor plan value less desirable. Granted, I'm being honest and plan to punt my way out of any t8 contention where that'd be relevant early on but still...
Will put some more thought into things and post for the group input
Seems like if you want the reanimation plan to be the most consistently fast - you may actually want to go to 4 Griselbrands. So something like this:
4 Marsh Flats
4 Polluted Delta
1 Scrubland
1 Swamp
4 Underground Sea
4 Brainstorm
4 Cabal Therapy
1 Children of Korlis
1 Chrome Mox
4 Dark Ritual
1 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
4 Entomb
4 Gitaxian Probe
3 Goryo's Vengeance
4 Griselbrand
4 Lotus Petal
2 Ponder
2 Careful Study
1 Reanimate
4 Shallow Grave
1 Collective Brutality
2 Thoughtseize
That basically replaces the 2 LDV/SDT with 2 more Griselbrands, Tendrils with Collective Brutality, and swaps 2 Careful Study in for 2 Ponder. This should make the main weakness of the maindeck plan less pronounced, as your reliance on Entomb is drastically decreased. You have 7 ways to self discard in black and 2 Careful Study in addition to the 4 Entomb. While this may be slightly less consistent at hitting Turn 3 kills, I think it probably offers the highest potential for Turn 1 kills.
Granted, I haven't tested a configuration with 4 Griselbrands in many years at this point, so it's just theory talking.
Find me on Twitter: @beanaman
Even with 4 Griselbrands, you really don't have enough creatures to justify the Careful Study. The most often end up being garbage. BR Reanimator is a very well-designed deck at doing what it sets out to do, which is be a fast, consistent non-blue reanimator deck. The big discovery is that Chancellor is excellent disruption while also increasing the fat dude density. It's not clear what TinFins brings to the table there except its sideboard plan of Mentors. Shallow Grave and Goryo's don't really play well with the Chancellors, Reanimate and Exhume are hot garbage with Emrakul, and Reanimate on Griselbrand is a bit conditional.
So exploring from those ideas:
- If you cut Emrakul, then Shallow Grave and Goryo's seem pretty bad, so might as well swap in Reanimate and Exhume. Cutting Emrakul means it's impossible to redraw your deck, so you need an alternate win. Losing the haste (and life loss from Reanimate) makes doing a Children chain harder, which makes getting mana and storm for Tendrils harder. I just don't think this approach does anything better than BR.
- If you cut some of Goryo's and Shallow Grave but not Emrakul, then you can still go deep with Griselbrand chains, but the rest of your reanimation targets get much weaker. Maybe this could be a good approach with Careful Study to set up EOT Shallow Grave on Chancellor and then have protection for another combo attempt?
Here's what that might look like:
4 Griselbrand
4 Chancellor of the Annex
1 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
1 Jin-Gitaxias, Core Auger
1 Children of Korlis
1 Tendrils of Agony
4 Brainstorm
4 Careful Study
4 Entomb
4 Unmask
4 Reanimate
4 Exhume
4 Shallow Grave
4 Dark Ritual
4 Lotus Petal
1 Swamp
2 Underground Sea
1 Tundra
1 Bayou
4 Polluted Delta
3 Marsh Flats
This list looks like garbage to me, but I can't come up with anything better. I'm normally not a fan of the Tendrils in the main, but I have less confidence in Griselbrand chains with this build. Maybe that's undeserved since there are more ways to reanimate Children? But between Reanimate and Exhume, you start at a lower life total when comboing.
Languages and dates for every set. For all you true pimps.
While sitting through a conference call this is the abomination of a list I started writing.
-Bayou on the assumption of Decay out of the board
-Basic Island probably less valuable in this build so Tundra might just be fine (makes fetches less shitty too)
-Only has 59 so probably just adding another Probe or Therapy
-Love Unmask but having not tested could theoretically see shaving there to round out Probe/Therapy/Ponder count
-Haven't built a reactive board for this in a while so literally a list of cards that came to mind
1 Children of Korlis
1 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
4 Griselbrand
4 Brainstorm
4 Dark Ritual
4 Entomb
3 Goryo's Vengeance
1 Lim-Dul's Vault
4 Shallow Grave
3 Cabal Therapy
1 Collective Brutality
1 Gitaxian Probe
2 Ponder
1 Reanimate
2 Thoughtseize
4 Unmask
1 Chrome Mox
4 Lotus Petal
1 Bayou
1 Island
4 Marsh Flats
4 Polluted Delta
1 Scrubland
1 Swamp
2 Underground Sea
Abrupt Decay
Chain of Vapor
Echoing Truth
Fatal Push
Flusterstorm
Mindbreak Trap
Silence
Surgical Extraction
Massacre
Pithing Needle
Tormod's Crypt
Serenity
Yeah, wasn't sure on Careful Study - hence only 2. You might be right - I haven't goldfished that list at all, much less played a game. But I do think running 4 Griselbrands has merit to decrease dependency on Entomb. Maybe you run 3 Ponder and 1 LDV or something. That might not be awful.
@Kai - Unmask does become a bit attractive when running 4 Griselbrands. Seems likely that you'll have extra black cards to pitch. I think I would personally rather run 4 Therapy, 3 Unmask, 0 Thoughtseize, and the grip of Probes myself though. Also, I think instead of island, you just want another Underground Sea. Tundra doesn't do much without a fair number of white cards in the board - would rather just protect against wasteland by overloading on Seas. Also, if you're running Bayou already for Decay, might as well add Reverent Silence and City of Solitude to that list of possibilities.
Find me on Twitter: @beanaman
Unmask - agreed, it's what caught my attention in what Jblinder was doing online.
Actually don't hate that config on TS/Therapy, etc.
Only reason I was considering Tundra was if I went heavier in Silence/Serenity (ala Acclimation's recent post) but extra Seas certainly make more sense otherwise
I mean, I wouldn't hate casting Reverent Silence against an Enchantress player again...
Silence is nice as it stops our opponent or baits out a counterspell. However, at 1 it is hard to find even with probe/bs/LDV.... and at more it starts to take away other cards that I evaluate more highly over it (Therapy, TS, etc).
Serenity is nice, but if you already have the green splash, reverent silence might be what you want instead as it is (1) free, (2) allows for less interaction from an opponents side, and (3) keeps the splash to 1 color. There is the downside of not hitting artifacts but that is what the decay is for anyways (hopefully I haven't let my mud opp. get 30 mana off me in a turn before winning).
Keeping the splash open to just green also allows for a krosan grip instead which hits top in the miracles MU where something like serenity doesn't.
The only real reason why I would include a white splash is for mentor, and if I include mentor I might also keep StP in the sideboard.
Good luck spreading the joyful word of Griselbrand.
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