This deck plays lots of lands to sacrifice I hear. You manabond it into play or have exploration(s) in play to easily maintain it with loam.
Zuran orb is a 4 of in the MD; either you draw it as is or you transmute for it with tolaria west which is grim tutor in this deck without lifeloss. It isn't hard to get z.orb.
Intuition >>>>>>>>>>> Realms uncharted. By far. I'm not even exaggerating this point. Realms doesn't get loam. Intuition does. Intuition can grab any nonland card in the deck which is key for fighting anti hate, getting a manabond/exploration, the loam/artifact/academy ruins pile...the list goes on for what intuition can do while all realms does is get 4 lands with different names. At 2 mana, it might have been playable. At 3 mana, it is not remotely playable.
Manabond is the best and worst card in the deck. You really want to see it game 1 but games 2 and 3 it is boarded out why? Because it is weak against hate. Games 2 and 3 I would infinitely prefer an exploration in my opening hand. 3 is the correct number IMO. 3 enables you to get it with intuition with ease and you can still see it in your opener. The list is very tight as well so 3 leaves room for other cards.
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Does anyone actually ever win without seeing a Manabond or Exploration? I run 4 and board out 1 on occasion, but boarding out all Manabonds and relying on 4 Explorations to win seems wrong, especially when the only way to find them is Intuition, which is easily countered when you're playing against blue. My tournament records with Lands are 4-0, 5-3, 3-1, 3-1, and I feel as if my losses come from bad matchups. Why sacrifice consistency of the engine? It seems like the extremely favorable matchup of Merfolk will become difficult if you see only one engine piece in a game and it gets countered.
Imo, if your goal is consistent wins, running too many of a card can hurt consistency just as much as too few.
The deck should be tuned for specific matchups using the 13 or so singleton slots and the sideboard, rather than focusing on the engine pieces.
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Does anyone actually ever win without seeing a Manabond or Exploration? I run 4 and board out 1 on occasion, but boarding out all Manabonds and relying on 4 Explorations to win seems wrong, especially when the only way to find them is Intuition, which is easily countered when you're playing against blue. My tournament records with Lands are 4-0, 5-3, 3-1, 3-1, and I feel as if my losses come from bad matchups. Why sacrifice consistency of the engine? It seems like the extremely favorable matchup of Merfolk will become difficult if you see only one engine piece in a game and it gets countered.
Game 2 you board out normally 2 Manabond. This is only because your opponent is going to board in some stuff like Tormod's Crypt and they can just kill you if you go Turn 1 Manabond, dump hand and they go Crypt. The reason we can afford to board out some of them though is because many decks board out their proactive cards for reactive ones, making them slower decks, so we don't have to be nearly as quick out of the gate.
Does anyone actually ever win without seeing a Manabond or Exploration? I run 4 and board out 1 on occasion, but boarding out all Manabonds and relying on 4 Explorations to win seems wrong, especially when the only way to find them is Intuition, which is easily countered when you're playing against blue. My tournament records with Lands are 4-0, 5-3, 3-1, 3-1, and I feel as if my losses come from bad matchups. Why sacrifice consistency of the engine? It seems like the extremely favorable matchup of Merfolk will become difficult if you see only one engine piece in a game and it gets countered.
without dropping an Enchantment. I will never mull this hand blind: Loam, Diamond, Wasteland, Maze, 3x Lands.
I would also keep that hand, but I would try to find a Manabond or Exploration at some point by drawing with cyclers each turn. It looks like round 1 game 1 you got lucky that you were able to stall long enough with Ghost Quarter. Usually a single Ghost Quarter each turn is nowhere near good enough vs. faster decks. Round 3 game 2 your opponent kept a no land hand... Round 4 game 1 the only threats he saw were 2 Goyfs and you dredged 2 consecutive Mazes.
My point was that Exploration and Manabond are the key parts of our strategy, but if people want to play less than 4 Manabond, I guess I'll just have a leg up in the mirror!
I have won several times without an exploration. It helps if you are playing against merfolk or zoo. Against something like Threshold or goblins it seems bad.
Has anyone tested out the version with Burning Wish and scapeshift?
Thought Scour is terrible in BV. How many flashback spells are being run? Say roughly 15. This gives you a roughly 38% chance of milling one flashback spell. And even if you do, you paid one mana to cantrip and dump an overcosted spell. Alchemy, Geistflame, Devil's play, etc. all cost much more to flash back than your average card, so you're not getting full value out of it.
You'd much rather play Ponder. At least that generates a tangible advantage.
I'm currently playing without the Intuition package (so no mindslaver / pithing needle, no bridge and obviously no Intuition). For those slots I stuck in 4x Bob and 1x Chimeric Mass and one (fourth) Tolaria West.
The biggest con of this approach IMO is that you cannot tutor for the Loam, but I haven't really gotten into any trouble because of this. I can't really pinpoint what it is, but it feels more robust.
On the other hand, the intuition package can hold any creature or artifact that will be useful in your meta...so I was thinking, with TES and CounterTop most likely being the predominant non-aggro decks could cards like Mold Shambler or Angel of Despair (maybe even Necrotic Sliver or Terastodon with EE) help with these matchups? They can take out land (for TES) and Counterbalance and you can recur them by not paying the tabernacle upkeep...I'm just not sure if they're to mana intensive
Just thinking out of the box...let me know if its crap
Playing Bob in the maindeck is an interesting choice and not awful, however, I don't think it is worth cutting Intuition though. I side Bob but when he comes it I cut cards that are just dead like Tabernacle and Chasm.
On the creature idea, I think the idea is poor. We already have Wasteland and Ghost Quarter to deal with their lands and really TES can run off no lands.
I really like the idea of Null Rod against TES. Just as they don't need lands in play to go off, we don't need moxes active to win... Imo the only question then is how much of the sideboard to devote to the matchup?
Really I think Bob and Chalice are the best options. Bob gives you a clock and gives you a digger to find either Intuition or Chalice. Null Rod is niffty idea, but Null Rod is also garbage against Belcher, whereas Chalice and Bob are okay there.
Koopa, could you elaborate on your reasoning there?
Seems to me that Null Rod shuts off the Charbelcher itself along with their artifact mana, and we don't care about a swarm of gobbos, since we just go get Tabernacle.
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Really I think Bob and Chalice are the best options. Bob gives you a clock and gives you a digger to find either Intuition or Chalice. Null Rod is niffty idea, but Null Rod is also garbage against Belcher, whereas Chalice and Bob are okay there.
I'm new to the deck (have managed to misplace a crypt, a thicket, and my bridge, so despite having the stack of moxes/duals/tabernacle, I still can't sleeve the thing up :(), but how is null rod a bad card against belcher? It's my understanding that belcher has two win conditions - belch or storm up some empty warrens, and the warrens situation is pretty easily solvable by lands, and null rod stops their ability to belch without first dealing with the rod.
Against Belcher I'd toss in the 3 Grip, Canonist, Chalices, Null Rod, and then have the plans of intuition for chalice/canonist/rod or transmute for chalice.
I'm new to the deck (have managed to misplace a crypt, a thicket, and my bridge, so despite having the stack of moxes/duals/tabernacle, I still can't sleeve the thing up :(), but how is null rod a bad card against belcher? It's my understanding that belcher has two win conditions - belch or storm up some empty warrens, and the warrens situation is pretty easily solvable by lands, and null rod stops their ability to belch without first dealing with the rod.
Against Belcher I'd toss in the 3 Grip, Canonist, Chalices, Null Rod, and then have the plans of intuition for chalice/canonist/rod or transmute for chalice.
Grip really isn't that good against Belcher, as they can simply go off without passing priority to you (if they're not terrible.)
While we do have Tabernacle we do only have one Tabernacle (and I suppose one Glacial). While it does feel ever so good to simply drop Tabernacle on their Goblin plan, it isn't something that I want to bank my whole matchup on.
I'm not suggesting Null Rod is 100% bad, it maybe just what we are looking for. Test it out and let us know how it goes.
hey you guys, since combo was really hot at the last gp, do you guys have any suggestions on how to tweak the deck mainboard or side to have a better matchup against combo?
I'll put this bluntly. If a really cool, unique guy went up to a normal girl, and is ugly, he's weird. if he goes up and is hot, then he's cool and unique.
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It's like watching grass grow, except it's ridculously expensive.
The last GP? Wasn't that Columbus? Combo wasn't really "big" there.
However, tweaking the deck for combo is very difficult. The best you can do is play a card that gives you some clock and play with a combo hate card whether it be Chalice of the Void or as you can tell from out discussion, you can test Null Rod.
The reason everyone doesn't play raven's crime is because the card is black. And most lists don't play black because people like Guwr lands typically at least around here everyone plays red only for gamble and flame jab perhaps in the board. Mindslaver is GG's against combo if you activate it. Good luck doing that with any manner of speed; the reason it is good is because you simply slaver them, and if they can play ad nauseam next turn, you cast ad nauseam, draw the entire deck, and make them lose. Or you mind twist them by casting all their rituals, wishing for crap, etc. etc. and then just ending the turn. The most hilarious play is if they EtW then you slaver them and have tabernacle out, wrathing their board. But yeah, mind slaver against combo is really good if it fires but good luck getting to that point because the MU is abyssmal.
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Gamble>>>>>>>Entomb in here. Entomb only gets loam or once you have loam toolbox pieces like tolaria west already does. Gamble can grab manabond/exploration, chalice of the void, sideboard cards....it is a lot better than entomb in this deck. The black splash IMO just isn't worth it over the other version that version being 4c without black.
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Gamble>>>>>>>Entomb in here. Entomb only gets loam or once you have loam toolbox pieces like tolaria west already does. Gamble can grab manabond/exploration, chalice of the void, sideboard cards....it is a lot better than entomb in this deck. The black splash IMO just isn't worth it over the other version that version being 4c without black.
Have you seen what an unanswered Dark Confidant does? That card is simply insane, and basically the biggest reason to run Black. I haven't run Gamble in 6 months, and never looked back.
Predominantly being a Dredge player I know how to play around graveyard hate with that deck. However, I'm not really sure how to do the same with Lands.
I get the Crucible as Life from the Loam replacement. I get the cycling to keep Loam (which gets harder if you're relying on Manabond). With Dredge you just have to apply slow pressure and force them to use the hate or go off when you're clear of hate. Lands, on the other hand, does not go off and does not really apply pressure. It also doesn't seem too hard to remove all the win-conditions.
Am I missing something here? Or can the collateral damage from (for instance) Dredge remove enough of the decks power / kill to "destroy" it?
All Lands as a deck does is apply pressure. Wasteland, Port, Tabernacle and Maze all pressure an opponent's manabase.
There are many skill plays to deal with grave hate. Oftentimes, opponents will need to choose between giving you Wasteland, Maze, Tolaria West and Life from the Loam.
Lands plays enough win conditions that it is difficult to remove them all. Additionally, Game 1 slants heavily in Lands favor, so you sometimes only need to draw the second game (without slow-playing, but without rushing yourself)
I have never had all of my win cons removed.
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Zuran orb is a 4 of in the MD; either you draw it as is or you transmute for it with tolaria west which is grim tutor in this deck without lifeloss. It isn't hard to get z.orb.
Intuition >>>>>>>>>>> Realms uncharted. By far. I'm not even exaggerating this point. Realms doesn't get loam. Intuition does. Intuition can grab any nonland card in the deck which is key for fighting anti hate, getting a manabond/exploration, the loam/artifact/academy ruins pile...the list goes on for what intuition can do while all realms does is get 4 lands with different names. At 2 mana, it might have been playable. At 3 mana, it is not remotely playable.
Manabond is the best and worst card in the deck. You really want to see it game 1 but games 2 and 3 it is boarded out why? Because it is weak against hate. Games 2 and 3 I would infinitely prefer an exploration in my opening hand. 3 is the correct number IMO. 3 enables you to get it with intuition with ease and you can still see it in your opener. The list is very tight as well so 3 leaves room for other cards.
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The deck should be tuned for specific matchups using the 13 or so singleton slots and the sideboard, rather than focusing on the engine pieces.
I am John Galt.
Game 2 you board out normally 2 Manabond. This is only because your opponent is going to board in some stuff like Tormod's Crypt and they can just kill you if you go Turn 1 Manabond, dump hand and they go Crypt. The reason we can afford to board out some of them though is because many decks board out their proactive cards for reactive ones, making them slower decks, so we don't have to be nearly as quick out of the gate.
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I won a mox (http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?19206-A-Moxen-Victory-1st-Place-at-The-Portal-s-Mox-Tournament) and won:
R1G1
R3G2
R4G1
without dropping an Enchantment. I will never mull this hand blind: Loam, Diamond, Wasteland, Maze, 3x Lands.
I would also keep that hand, but I would try to find a Manabond or Exploration at some point by drawing with cyclers each turn. It looks like round 1 game 1 you got lucky that you were able to stall long enough with Ghost Quarter. Usually a single Ghost Quarter each turn is nowhere near good enough vs. faster decks. Round 3 game 2 your opponent kept a no land hand... Round 4 game 1 the only threats he saw were 2 Goyfs and you dredged 2 consecutive Mazes.
My point was that Exploration and Manabond are the key parts of our strategy, but if people want to play less than 4 Manabond, I guess I'll just have a leg up in the mirror!
Has anyone tested out the version with Burning Wish and scapeshift?
Playing Bob in the maindeck is an interesting choice and not awful, however, I don't think it is worth cutting Intuition though. I side Bob but when he comes it I cut cards that are just dead like Tabernacle and Chasm.
On the creature idea, I think the idea is poor. We already have Wasteland and Ghost Quarter to deal with their lands and really TES can run off no lands.
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Something like,
3x Null Rod
4x Chalice of the Void
2x Ancient Grudge
2x Ray of Revelation
1x Flame Jab
1x Karakas
... which kind of ignores the idea of grave-hate. I'd hesitate to take out chalices, so for more balance, maybe
3x Chalice of the Void
3x Tormod's Crypt
2x Ancient Grudge
2x Ray of Revelation
1x Flame Jab
1x Karakas
Thoughts?
Edit: Although, going full-on resource denial with LD and Null Rod makes Chalice kind of redundant, so maybe
4x Null Rod
1x Chalice of the Void
3x Tormod's Crypt
2x Ancient Grudge
2x Ray of Revelation
1x Flame Jab
1x Karakas
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Seems to me that Null Rod shuts off the Charbelcher itself along with their artifact mana, and we don't care about a swarm of gobbos, since we just go get Tabernacle.
I am John Galt.
I'm new to the deck (have managed to misplace a crypt, a thicket, and my bridge, so despite having the stack of moxes/duals/tabernacle, I still can't sleeve the thing up :(), but how is null rod a bad card against belcher? It's my understanding that belcher has two win conditions - belch or storm up some empty warrens, and the warrens situation is pretty easily solvable by lands, and null rod stops their ability to belch without first dealing with the rod.
My current board looks something like this:
4 Bob
2 Chalice (1 main)
1 Ethersworn Canonist
1 Smokestack
1 Crucible
3 Grip
1 Null Rod
2 Unknown Cards
Against Belcher I'd toss in the 3 Grip, Canonist, Chalices, Null Rod, and then have the plans of intuition for chalice/canonist/rod or transmute for chalice.
Grip really isn't that good against Belcher, as they can simply go off without passing priority to you (if they're not terrible.)
I'm not suggesting Null Rod is 100% bad, it maybe just what we are looking for. Test it out and let us know how it goes.
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Ray is almost entirely for Back to Basics and Blood Moon, as well as Leyline of the Void and Planar Void.
Counterbalance can usually hit your 2-drop spells.
By adding all their mana and floating the activation mana before casting belcher, right? I hadn't considered that initially.
However, tweaking the deck for combo is very difficult. The best you can do is play a card that gives you some clock and play with a combo hate card whether it be Chalice of the Void or as you can tell from out discussion, you can test Null Rod.
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But if combo is big, play a different deck. Seriously. You can mise game wins here and there, but combo is largely an impossible matchup.
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Have you seen what an unanswered Dark Confidant does? That card is simply insane, and basically the biggest reason to run Black. I haven't run Gamble in 6 months, and never looked back.
My list does, you just run one of each dual land. If you feel like it isn't consistant enough you can add another fetch to find your dual lands.
Dark Confidant is amazing in the board. Perhaps Raven's Crime>Chalice.
Also don't forget you have 4 Mox Diamond.
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All Lands as a deck does is apply pressure. Wasteland, Port, Tabernacle and Maze all pressure an opponent's manabase.
There are many skill plays to deal with grave hate. Oftentimes, opponents will need to choose between giving you Wasteland, Maze, Tolaria West and Life from the Loam.
Lands plays enough win conditions that it is difficult to remove them all. Additionally, Game 1 slants heavily in Lands favor, so you sometimes only need to draw the second game (without slow-playing, but without rushing yourself)
I have never had all of my win cons removed.