I'm feeling Laboratory Maniac is a wasted slot most of the times, I'm tempted to go back to Conflagrate (there's not infinite lifegain around and it's not prevalent much anyways).
While there isn't really an infinite lifegain deck any more, Bogles is a lot more popular and the mainstream lists are all running maindeck Leyline.
This could be manaical, but how about playing Ensnaring Bridge in the sideboard? Aim is to have a 1 card win condition vs. Humans/Hollow One/Shadows/Bogles/Eldrazi variants whoa re not likely to have answers to a Bridge post-board
That's spicy! The tricky part, I think is managing the number of cards in your own hand. You'll need to keep your hand small enough that they can't attack through the bridge, but at the same time build towards comboing off (which more than likely will be with TTB as opposed to Goryo's, since GY hate is more common in those matchups). Worth testing for sure though.
The benefit it has over a normal sideboard plan is that in the matchups where you bring it in, they typically have some sort of hate that you'll need to fight through. Instead of trying to fight through it, you instead go completely around it and win on a different axis than they were expecting. I brought it in against any creature based matchup that was unlikely to have (or leave in) answers for either Elesh Norn or Blazing Archon. Many of those matchups are good game 1, but then get harder game 2 as they bring in or focus on a bunch of hate pieces (e.g. Eidolon of Rhetoric, Thalia, Stony Silence, etc.) If you can sidestep their sideboard plans, it makes winning the match significantly easier.
The trouble comes when it becomes more popular and well known, as then those players will be more likely to leave in some outs against a haymaker creature (I actually lost a match when GW Valuetown forgot to board out path, so he still had them in for G2 and found it on the last possible turn before Blazing Archon killed him).
IME You only bring it in when it's basically a complete game winner. You also don't board out the regular combo at all, you just board out what you would normally take out to fit in the pieces in whatever matchup. That's the reason I wound up dropping the Iona from the package, there weren't any common matchups where it was completely lights out, except Burn which is already a good matchup and probably too fast for the gifts package to really matter.
That said, I'm not really sure if it's better then a more traditional sideboard plan, but it does give you an opportunity in some matches to attack from a different angle. As it becomes more popular and known, however, it loses a good amount of value.
and interesting (but extremely corner case) advantage with damage lands like adakar or city and angels grace is if you are below 1 life with angels active and you take damage you go back to 1
This isn't true, so don't try this as you'll have a bad time. Angel's Grace (and similar effects like Worship) say "Damage that would reduce your life total to less than 1 reduces it to 1 instead." If you are already below 1 life, then damage would not reduce your life total to less than one, so those effects don't have any effect.
Edit: As for the list: While I disagree with maindeck Leylines, if you're playing them they basically have to go in the Pact spots. Otherwise you have way too many do-nothings in many matchups (Pact is mostly useless against non-control decks and Leyline is bad against anything that isn't burn or BGx). That also informs your SB as you likely need to include the Pacts there so that you can swap them in for the leylines when necessary.
Cruious, which is the best cards to give to a storm player in that pile? I usually give them the 2 red rituals and put PiF and morphose in the graveyard.
1.) when they have a blue source
2.) which is more mana intensive
3.) which gives more possibilities of the storm player blanking
If they have 3+ mana floating and you don't have a pact to interact, then it pretty much doesn't matter which cards you give them, at that point the kill is deterministic. However, if you have a pact, then you should put the PIF in the Graveyard so you can counter it and set back their turn / fizzle it. If they have 2 or fewer mana floating, then you should put the rituals in the GY and give them Morphose + PIF, in case they don't have another ritual (because they can't continue to go off without extra mana at that point).
Anyone up for Ghalta, Primal Hunter instead of Wurm?
Pro: Legendary target for Goryo and 1 Life more with Shoal
Con: Less damage with Breach and you have no tokens
Any suggestions?
I've been thinking about it since it was spoiled, and ultimately I don't think it's worth it. The issue is that the extra life from Shoal doesn't matter that much, since we already can get 3 activations from 2 Wurm Shoals. And the damage is a lot less, so it hurts the "Plan C" of just smacking with a Wurm and leaving behind lethal tokens. Another issue is that being legendary for Goryo's means you have the same "Do I keep it in hand or discard it" tension that you have with Griselbrand, instead of always wanting it in hand like you do with Wurm.
That being said, I think it's worth testing in actual games, since the lowered damage might be mitigated by having more ways to cheat it into play. The extra life could be valuable as well, since I have gone off several times at 17 life, and getting 12 from the first shoal would open up an extra activation (2 down to 3, then up to 15 meaning you can do 2 more).
btw, in the last 2 months or so I've been experiencing frequent errors when Splicing onto Arcane (when I try to splice a spell, sometimes the game crashes and rewinds itself until it restarts the game. Has anyone else seen this? Been very frustrating as it's forced me to play suboptimally knowing that splicing may crash the game.
I've run into this several times as well. From what I can tell, it's triggered by splicing a targeted spell (like Goryo's Vengeance) onto a non-targeted spell (like Nourishing Shoal). I never had any trouble while comboing off splicing rituals onto other rituals or through the breaches, but when playing around countermagic and trying to do the Shoal + Vengeance is when I saw it most often.
Or am I mistaken that they can't counter a Laboratory Maniac win. (If it was Lightning Storm, they can just counter 1 of the lands you pitch and the rest will still go through - right?
Nimble Obstructionist doesn't do anything to a Lab Maniac kill. Lab Maniac's ability is a static ability generating a replacement effect, it isn't an activated or triggered ability, so there isn't any interaction with the Obstructionist. The only caveat would be if you are drawing the card using an activated or triggered ability (e.g. Cycling), then they could counter that. However, the usual line is just casting Serum Visions, which Obstructionist can't affect in any way.
In a cruel twist, the most innocent looking decision actually decided the game for us. I still think keeping a land is better here for hardcasting Griselbrand. If you accept that, keeping the SSG over ritual is better IMO because it's uncounterable and hardcasting SSGs will matter a non-zero amount of time (like when you breach a wurm). Counterpoint is if you expect to combo this turn, mana will be a bottle neck and having a ritual to splice multiple times will save you. What do you guys think?
I think that you have to be planning to Combo here, and that saving resources to hardcast Griselbrand is incorrect. While you have the mana to do so, you still need to draw one of your 3 remaining Griselbrands for that to even be an option, and you're only going to have ~1-2 turns to do that before the Thing in the Ice makes it mostly irrelevant anyway.
You have a Pact, and a reasonable hope that your opponent is going to cast something and give you a window when they are tapped low to go for it. Given that I expect the game to be over one way or another within 1 turn, I'm discarding both lands here. Then on the 2nd Looting I'm discarding the Manamorphose and 1 SSG, leaving 2x SSG + Ritual in hand. Then when you go off you can Splice the Ritual onto both Shoals, giving you 4 Mana. Cast the ritual for the 5th and Breach the Borborygmos for the win.
Is there anyway around Trickbind when already committing to lightning storm?
Just discard another land? Trickbind counters one activation and that's it. Trickbind's additional clause only applies if it counters an activated ability of a permanent. Lightning Storm isn't a permanent, so it isn't affected by that part so all Trickbind does is act as a Split-Second Stifle for one activation.
How are you beating UW so well? It seems like a tough matchup for us.
My experience has been the exact opposite, UW with Titanshift has been really easy (while when I was on Breach Titan it seemed really hard). They present almost no pressure, so you can build up a board without presenting anything and then force them to counter multiple threats each turn. Don't present your Valakuts early and give them opportunities to use Spreading Seas / Ghost Quarter / Tec Edge on them. Don't play into obvious situations like them having 1UUU open.
Prismatic Omen definitely helps, as it's a threat you can land early under their disruption and then win the game without casting another spell (or put enough pressure on them with just land drops that their forced to respond, which can give you a window to resolve an actual game-ender).
As you noted in your edit, Cloudshift won't help you because it instructs you to return the creature to the battlefield under your control. However, assuming you are using something like Momentary Blink, then yes this will work. If you cast it in response to the Phage trigger, then Phage will leave and come back under your opponent's control. This will cause it to trigger again (for your opponent this time), and that trigger will be placed on the stack above your own Lose the Game trigger. Your opponent's trigger will resolve first, causing them to lose the game (and thus you to win the game assuming you are the only two players) before your trigger.
You're correct, Vizier of Remedies replaces you putting one counter on Devoted Druid with you putting zero counters on it. Since no counters were put on the Druid, Nest of Scarabs doesn't trigger.
A card I saw in the GP Vegas 9th place Titan Breach list that I think would do well here against Grixis Death's Shadow: Chameleon Colossus They don't have any way to remove it in the current stock lists, and even if they adapt to Mirran Crusader by re-adding bolts, they still need to have 2 bolts at the ready the turn we play it in order to do anything about it. After that, it's relatively easy to use it as a road block until you get enough mana to just end the game in a single swing. Thoughts?
While there isn't really an infinite lifegain deck any more, Bogles is a lot more popular and the mainstream lists are all running maindeck Leyline.
That's spicy! The tricky part, I think is managing the number of cards in your own hand. You'll need to keep your hand small enough that they can't attack through the bridge, but at the same time build towards comboing off (which more than likely will be with TTB as opposed to Goryo's, since GY hate is more common in those matchups). Worth testing for sure though.
The trouble comes when it becomes more popular and well known, as then those players will be more likely to leave in some outs against a haymaker creature (I actually lost a match when GW Valuetown forgot to board out path, so he still had them in for G2 and found it on the last possible turn before Blazing Archon killed him).
That said, I'm not really sure if it's better then a more traditional sideboard plan, but it does give you an opportunity in some matches to attack from a different angle. As it becomes more popular and known, however, it loses a good amount of value.
This isn't true, so don't try this as you'll have a bad time. Angel's Grace (and similar effects like Worship) say "Damage that would reduce your life total to less than 1 reduces it to 1 instead." If you are already below 1 life, then damage would not reduce your life total to less than one, so those effects don't have any effect.
Edit: As for the list: While I disagree with maindeck Leylines, if you're playing them they basically have to go in the Pact spots. Otherwise you have way too many do-nothings in many matchups (Pact is mostly useless against non-control decks and Leyline is bad against anything that isn't burn or BGx). That also informs your SB as you likely need to include the Pacts there so that you can swap them in for the leylines when necessary.
If they have 3+ mana floating and you don't have a pact to interact, then it pretty much doesn't matter which cards you give them, at that point the kill is deterministic. However, if you have a pact, then you should put the PIF in the Graveyard so you can counter it and set back their turn / fizzle it. If they have 2 or fewer mana floating, then you should put the rituals in the GY and give them Morphose + PIF, in case they don't have another ritual (because they can't continue to go off without extra mana at that point).
I've been thinking about it since it was spoiled, and ultimately I don't think it's worth it. The issue is that the extra life from Shoal doesn't matter that much, since we already can get 3 activations from 2 Wurm Shoals. And the damage is a lot less, so it hurts the "Plan C" of just smacking with a Wurm and leaving behind lethal tokens. Another issue is that being legendary for Goryo's means you have the same "Do I keep it in hand or discard it" tension that you have with Griselbrand, instead of always wanting it in hand like you do with Wurm.
That being said, I think it's worth testing in actual games, since the lowered damage might be mitigated by having more ways to cheat it into play. The extra life could be valuable as well, since I have gone off several times at 17 life, and getting 12 from the first shoal would open up an extra activation (2 down to 3, then up to 15 meaning you can do 2 more).
I've run into this several times as well. From what I can tell, it's triggered by splicing a targeted spell (like Goryo's Vengeance) onto a non-targeted spell (like Nourishing Shoal). I never had any trouble while comboing off splicing rituals onto other rituals or through the breaches, but when playing around countermagic and trying to do the Shoal + Vengeance is when I saw it most often.
Nimble Obstructionist doesn't do anything to a Lab Maniac kill. Lab Maniac's ability is a static ability generating a replacement effect, it isn't an activated or triggered ability, so there isn't any interaction with the Obstructionist. The only caveat would be if you are drawing the card using an activated or triggered ability (e.g. Cycling), then they could counter that. However, the usual line is just casting Serum Visions, which Obstructionist can't affect in any way.
I think that you have to be planning to Combo here, and that saving resources to hardcast Griselbrand is incorrect. While you have the mana to do so, you still need to draw one of your 3 remaining Griselbrands for that to even be an option, and you're only going to have ~1-2 turns to do that before the Thing in the Ice makes it mostly irrelevant anyway.
You have a Pact, and a reasonable hope that your opponent is going to cast something and give you a window when they are tapped low to go for it. Given that I expect the game to be over one way or another within 1 turn, I'm discarding both lands here. Then on the 2nd Looting I'm discarding the Manamorphose and 1 SSG, leaving 2x SSG + Ritual in hand. Then when you go off you can Splice the Ritual onto both Shoals, giving you 4 Mana. Cast the ritual for the 5th and Breach the Borborygmos for the win.
Just discard another land? Trickbind counters one activation and that's it. Trickbind's additional clause only applies if it counters an activated ability of a permanent. Lightning Storm isn't a permanent, so it isn't affected by that part so all Trickbind does is act as a Split-Second Stifle for one activation.
My experience has been the exact opposite, UW with Titanshift has been really easy (while when I was on Breach Titan it seemed really hard). They present almost no pressure, so you can build up a board without presenting anything and then force them to counter multiple threats each turn. Don't present your Valakuts early and give them opportunities to use Spreading Seas / Ghost Quarter / Tec Edge on them. Don't play into obvious situations like them having 1UUU open.
Prismatic Omen definitely helps, as it's a threat you can land early under their disruption and then win the game without casting another spell (or put enough pressure on them with just land drops that their forced to respond, which can give you a window to resolve an actual game-ender).
You're correct, Vizier of Remedies replaces you putting one counter on Devoted Druid with you putting zero counters on it. Since no counters were put on the Druid, Nest of Scarabs doesn't trigger.