Ok, I think I've cracked it. Not too hard. I'll add a matchup for it tomorrow.
Edit: Just barely beat a Tron list that basically played Stax, with Thorns, Lodestone Golem, 3Sphere, Chalice, and some counterspells. Is that a thing? Because it looks really annoying.
I think that style of Tron is viable in this metagame, but most people are probably going to play more standard Tron lists, if they're picking up the deck to play for one or two tournaments this late into the season. I know that Tron is the deck which really good players will take and customize, so it's possible you and I could run into it at the tournament in a crucial round (such as the top 8). However, fortunately those lock pieces are answered by much the same answers we are going to have for Affinity and for grave hate rocks. Chalice for 1 is pretty bad against us in terms of stopping the combo, and we have the bigger manabase and storage lands for being able to EoT answer Thorn/Sphere. I'm sure the match-up is very annoying, but if we acknowledge it with HRecall/Shattering Spree etc. in the sideboard, I expect it to be favorable.
I also want to point out that I put Cryptic Command in this deck because I have had a lot of experience with it in Solidarity in Legacy, where it's a maindeck out to all kinds of annoying lock pieces as well as a generally strong defense spell when countering and/or tapping down attackers. If it's good enough for that format (and it was a fantastic 2-of for a number of us High Tide players), then it's going to be great in a similar control/combo deck which wants some outs to a highly varied format.
And I agree; Bant doesn't seem that hard. It's not particularly more dangerous than any other ~fish strategy; the main distinctions for that deck are its mana dorks and its ability to run virtually any hate bear.
I'm very interested in playing this deck for an upcoming PTQ. I've read through the primer, and understand that the deck is very difficult to play. Do you guys think the deck is viable as two-colour? Or have you found that three colour is without a doubt the best approach? Does the sideboard have any key pieces to it? Or are you guys always shifting it to what you expect the metagame to be - and if you are, what specific cards have you found fantastic?
I personally believe that the manabase is very stable with a couple of splash-color shocklands to reach into that third or fourth color. Manamorphose really does a lot for helping this, as well. Burning a Manamorphose to cast a Cryptic Command isn't generally going to hurt your combo turn because you just need red mana to start going off, and then after you Past in Flames you have access to that Manamorphose again to get back your blue mana. So to me, since it's viable, I'm definitely happy with playing more than 2 colors. Slaughter Pact is phenomenal, Mystical Teachings is very strong, and having access to sideboarded Extirpate is fantastic.
On another note, have you guys considered Venarian Glimmer as a sort of vendilion clique that you can grab with scroll? it doesn't seem amazing, but it's a card that no one's ever heard of, so it's always worth asking.
That card was showing up in some mono-blue 12post decks online a few months ago when the format was wild and crazy before some major bannings. It's good for a Tron-style deck, and it's probably decent in here--maybe just to get an Extirpate out of your opponent's hand. However, you could stop Extirpate with Gigadrowse, and if they have fetches open you can use Gigadrowse in conjunction with Remand. Also, Teferi, which is tutorable by Teachings, stops Extirpate--and packs a lot more utility than a Duress effect. I would have to test it...I'll do that this week. But my initial instinct is that it wouldn't be necessary. And, considering the serious space issues with this deck, anything unnecessary should probably be excluded. I already have to narrow down what's essentially a 45 card sideboard....
Both. Basically, what I found is that, because of the tutor power in the deck, it's better suited to operate with 61 cards than most decks in the format. That said, I'm sure an optimal 60-card list would still function more effectively.
I believe that 61 is wrong for a tournament, but fine for testing. I think that I have solved some of the maindeck space issues by including a copy of Research//Development. I did a lot of research into the card pool this weekend, and I think that's probably the best way to cram more stuff in. If you think about it, you can shuffle in a full Gifts pile that way...more on this below. I should post my updated list before saying anything else.
Research is a blue instant, meaning it's fetchable by both Teachings and Merchant Scroll. As Research, you can use it to shuffle in 4 Gifts targets to solve any problem. It can also be used to set up a full-blown Teferi-->Bomb endgame, like this:
Teachings-->Research. Research for Teachings, Teferi, the Bomb, and something else. Flashback Teachings for the Teachings you shuffled in, then use that to get Teferi and then get the Bomb with your Teachings' flashback while Teferi is out. Yes, it's slower than molasses, but this is the kind of thing that will win attrition wars and give the deck a completely different angle of attack. I like the idea of having a creature win-condition in the maindeck, but I don't want to lean on Unburial Rites because I plan to really lean on it for some game 2 and 3 situations where I'm fighting through lots of grave hate and what-not. It's also safer because it's all instant-speed, and having access to Teferi means being able to combo while ignoring stuff like Extirpate or Mindbreak Trap.
Development is also a reasonable card because it's actually well-within the deck's gameplan of getting to 4+ mana and casting bomb instants. It's either going to be a Jace's Ingenuity or it's going to make a trio of 3/1 creatures, if not some middle ground (for whatever reason). Jace's Ingenuity paid for my PTQ entry fees for an entire year, so I obviously stand behind that card. And the creatures are useful because they can either be roughly a 2-turn clock (basically with haste, since you get them EoT), or they can trade pretty efficiently with opposing threats and act like a 2-for-1 or 3-for-1 removal spell.
As far as other sideboard stuff, I have a giant stack of cards to test. I've whittled some of it down over the weekend, and I'm going to finish that over the next couple of the days. I have a giant chart of problems and solutions, and it's going to take some time to work through all of this. That's OK, though--this deck is worth it.
The stax tron list sounds very interesting - I've been playing U/W Tron at PTQs, and something like that does seem to shore up some of the nightmare matchups. But on the topic of this deck, I was sort of wondering if you two have come to a consensus on the numbers required in the main deck, and if the tweaking of these values makes you more/less controlly and more/less explosive. But really, these kinds of questions are about optimization and streamlining
For example, LK, your list has :
20 Lands (6 Storage)
8 Counters (5 Conditional, 3 Unconditional but non-permanent)
15 Rituals
3 Gifts
4 Sweepers
4+1 Searchers (Scroll and Teachings)
Unburial Rites Package (2 cards, reanimate target is big + hard to deal with but has no immediate board impact - this is not necessarily a bad thing)
Engine - 2 PiF 1 IV
1 Grapeshot
Now - I'm not an expert on this archetype, at all - actually I'm more of a n00b, as internet speak would put it. So I'm just going to ask a few questions based on these numbers, and hopefully the answers'll be able to show me a little bit about how the deck is constructed - and maybe even lead you guys to realize a thing or two. Are 20-22 lands enough? If the deck really wants to hit 4, I'd imagine a couple more would be in order, but then I guess Remand and rituals do a good job of letting you Gifts on time. But then I guess the question is: are 20-22 lands optimal under these conditions? Also, what is the optimal number of counters? Sweepers? I guess that would depend on the number of maindeck tutor abilities + digging available to you, but still, you guys seem to agree that 7-8 counters and 2-4 sweepers is where you want to be, so that looks good. Also - INS, in your list, I'm having trouble figuing out what the second Increasing Vengeance is for. I'm not saying it's a bad choice or anything I just have no idea what it's there for -and like I said before I'm more a less of a scrub to this archetype so there could be a variety of reasons for that xD. The ritual split between you two is the most eyebrow raising though. A 12-15 difference is quite large - is there a playstyle difference present in each list that I'm missing, or does the mana seism in INS' list do the heavy lifting that the spare rituals in LK's list end up doing?
The reason I ask all these questions is to try and find out what a basic skeleton of the deck would be, and which branches you could take from there and what sideboard choices + maindeck bullets those branches would necessitate. If one of these could be constructed, not only would it be a great addition to the primer but it would also promote an easier way of thinking about the deck and also a way to more easily see how new-fangled thigns could be incorporated into the list.
None of this is meant to be critique - in the end, you guys have put in the playtest hours, not me. All I'm trynig to do is to ask some questions to hopefully get this beast streamlined and ready to demolish the meta. Atleast form LK's tourney reports, the deck seems to have no real bad match-ups, and a large portion of the games lost really come down to mulliganing to hell. Maybe this is something that the deck has to do, but hopefully we can negate this as much as possible by streamlining the deck and making sure that all the ratios are as close to ideal as possible. I know I'm new to the discussion, but hopefulyl my inquisitiveness can lead you guys' helping me help you too :).
That's the problem. Since relatively few people are playing the archetype, the optimal version hasn't been found yet. INS and I have very different lists, because we have different approaches. It also doesn't help that the deck is inherently very customizable, because of the tutor power of Gifts.
The thing with the deck is, it has no unwinnable matchups. it helps that I'm frankly a fairly good player, a fair amount of my competition isn't exactly LSV or PV, and that I have some surprise factor, but the sheer power of the deck combined with the tutoring capabilities makes it so versatile that, played correctly, it only has ok and good matchups. I don't want to give the impression it's unbeatable. I mean, the odds that a random amateur player would unintentionally break the entire format in two with a pet deck are astronomical. But it's definitely strong, and gives a lot of room for the opponent to mess up, and not a lot of room to recover when they do. That gives it a huge advantage in situations like ptqs, fnms, and local tournaments, where the deck is new, players are more likely to make mistakes, and their decks are less tuned themselves.
You're making very helpful insights. In my case, you generally have enough lands that you can get off an early gifts and capitalize on rituals until you get the necessary lands. I probably should fit a couple more in, though.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Go to my blog, Musings of the False God, for in-depth guides playing the game, from the building blocks of deck design to deceiving your opponent through clever game play!
You may also know me as the guy in the art of Dark Confidant. No, not Bob Maher, the OTHER one.
Now - I'm not an expert on this archetype, at all - actually I'm more of a n00b, as internet speak would put it. So I'm just going to ask a few questions based on these numbers, and hopefully the answers'll be able to show me a little bit about how the deck is constructed - and maybe even lead you guys to realize a thing or two. Are 20-22 lands enough?
If the deck really wants to hit 4, I'd imagine a couple more would be in order, but then I guess Remand and rituals do a good job of letting you Gifts on time. But then I guess the question is: are 20-22 lands optimal under these conditions? Also, what is the optimal number of counters? Sweepers? I guess that would depend on the number of maindeck tutor abilities + digging available to you, but still, you guys seem to agree that 7-8 counters and 2-4 sweepers is where you want to be, so that looks good.
I find that 22 is fine--at least for the maindeck. Generally speaking, I want to be hitting all of my land drops--but if I'm missing them, what kind of spells have I drawn too many of? Probably countermagic and removal/disruption, which has kept me in the game. Or rituals, which substitute for lands in many cases (the Desperate-->Gifts play being a prime example). In addition, those storage lands play a huge role in generating resources. Storing mana is exactly like holding onto more and more rituals--and this works well for this particular archetype because we actually just win in one turn, thereby making 2 storage counters as valuable as a pair of lands...even if just for one turn.
I ideally want to play about 24 lands if I stick with a full-blown transformation into Teferi/Teachings control, but this could also be met halfway. It is possible to replace Peer Through Depths (or Merchant Scroll, since they do about the same job) with some kind of cantrip which can dig up lands. That would really gloss over the need to play a higher land count while trying to dig up land drop after land drop, for some of those match-ups where it's desired. I wouldn't play Serum Visions because it's awful with a bunch of shuffle effects, but maybe Sleight of Hand or Telling Time...something to compliment Halimar Depths is what I would like.
Also - INS, in your list, I'm having trouble figuing out what the second Increasing Vengeance is for. I'm not saying it's a bad choice or anything I just have no idea what it's there for -and like I said before I'm more a less of a scrub to this archetype so there could be a variety of reasons for that xD. The ritual split between you two is the most eyebrow raising though. A 12-15 difference is quite large - is there a playstyle difference present in each list that I'm missing, or does the mana seism in INS' list do the heavy lifting that the spare rituals in LK's list end up doing?
IV does 3 things for me in this deck:
1. It becomes an additional ritual. In fact, it's the best ritual when you flash it back on a Song/spliced Desperate. IV is the card that lets me make that gross 15+ red mana count, which means I can afford to cast those flashbacked 4-mana spells to finish the combo. Having a second IV means I can get away with one less ritual, which is why I moved from 13 down to 12.
2. It copies dig spells. If you Fork a Peer Through Depths and flashback the Fork, you will see 20 cards of your deck, take a select 4 from them, and basically stack most of that aspect of your deck. If you Fork a Gifts, you're getting most of the rituals out of your deck and into a handy location (be it the hand or 'yard). Also, copying Manamorphose is never really bad, since it really fixes your colors and it digs you a little deeper. A lot of the time, I find myself Forking a Peer EoT or Forking Teachings, which creates a faux-Gifts that usually finds the only things I was missing.
3. It fights through hate. When playing against countermagic, IV often acts like a RR-costing Muddle the Mixture that helps me stick EoT Gifts or win a counter-war to avoid dying to Splinter Twin. I have already mentioned this before, but it cannot be emphasized enough: unless your opponent is in the habit of prematurely popping his Tormod's Crypt (or similar grave-hate rock), you can use a Fork to copy your Past in Flames with his Crypt activation on the stack. Since the combo pieces are nearly all instants, you can flashback everything relevant in response to the Crypt activation and then let it resolve, then keep playing your spells in response to your original Past in Flames.
I also want to point out that most players these days are more accustomed to creature combat and board positions than they are to Stack interaction. Sure, anyone understands when you play with Leaks and Cancels that the last one to play a counterspell is probably the counter-war winner. But in this format, Remanding your own spells to get 2-for-1s or Forking rituals and then paying for Leaks with the Fork's mana...well, it takes some creativity and a lot of understanding of Stack mechanics. That's a skill I have developed from years of playing High Tide, where you literally kill your opponent with his game-winning play on the stack. I don't think it's out of reach for most players to grasp these kinds of concepts, but it's just not something that Wizards has emphasized much in their newer cards for the past couple of years (although it has started to come back a lot recently). Because of that, a lot of the competition--even pros--no longer understands the stack like they should.
The reason I ask all these questions is to try and find out what a basic skeleton of the deck would be, and which branches you could take from there and what sideboard choices + maindeck bullets those branches would necessitate. If one of these could be constructed, not only would it be a great addition to the primer but it would also promote an easier way of thinking about the deck and also a way to more easily see how new-fangled thigns could be incorporated into the list.
None of this is meant to be critique - in the end, you guys have put in the playtest hours, not me. All I'm trynig to do is to ask some questions to hopefully get this beast streamlined and ready to demolish the meta. Atleast form LK's tourney reports, the deck seems to have no real bad match-ups, and a large portion of the games lost really come down to mulliganing to hell. Maybe this is something that the deck has to do, but hopefully we can negate this as much as possible by streamlining the deck and making sure that all the ratios are as close to ideal as possible. I know I'm new to the discussion, but hopefulyl my inquisitiveness can lead you guys' helping me help you too :-).
These are the major differences (as I see them) between Karona's build and my build:
-I'm running Halimar Depths, which overlaps with my dig suite and lets me play a couple of extra lands.
-Karona is running Merchant Scroll as his primary engine, whereas I am using Gifts as my primary engine. This is why he runs less than a set of Gifts, and why my deck has some more singleton action going on. This is probably the biggest difference in our decks and our playing philosophies--I much prefer instants to even direct 2-mana tutors. This also ties into my extra Fork, which is generally more reliable when playing more at instant-speed. This makes me wonder about whether I should be playing more Teachings and less Gifts, since Teachings is basically a Merchant Scroll that finds Volcanic Fallouts and Slaughter Pact and Extirpate, for 2 more mana.
-We differ on backup finisher preference, although we both seem to agree that there should be a back-up finisher--and probably access to it in the maindeck. I'm of the opinion that Unburial Rites is not bad, but I think we can do better.
Well, to be fair, the deck's primary engine is Gifts. Merchant Scroll just lowers the curve and stocks your graveyard a bit more, which is helpful. I'd really call it the combination of the two, because without Gifts, Scroll is unplayable, and without Scroll, You have to play way more filtering, which is the path i-n-s is taking.
By the way, I'm having a very busy week, so it may be a while before I can get those tournament reports posted.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Go to my blog, Musings of the False God, for in-depth guides playing the game, from the building blocks of deck design to deceiving your opponent through clever game play!
You may also know me as the guy in the art of Dark Confidant. No, not Bob Maher, the OTHER one.
If your at 3 or less lands, pyrite gives you more mana at no cost.
If were are at 4or more, you needto sacrifice 4 lands to make it better, and then even then it is only colorless.
Because you need to sac lands, it makes flashing it back with PIF just says 1R storm +1 as you would have no lands to sac.
And then if we have 6+ lands in play, why would we need +3+3 mana for 2 and all our lands (Ritual gets us 3) at that point. Its possible, but in most of my goldfishes, I fizzle due to a lack of U if anything, but normally I have 4-8 R floating at the time of a Grapeshot for storm 20+ storm 21. Plus it seems weaker as a sorcery. I see the fringe case where it is better than pyrite, but I'm seeing 95% of the time pyrite will just be better
Mana Seism is literally in the deck as a 1-of to build a Gifts Pile with enough rituals to go off.
Think about this: what do you need in order to start comboing? You need:
-A Past in Flames
-A Manamorphose or some kind of land that lets you cast a Gifts from your yard
-Said Gifts in the yard (or just a lot of gas, if you need to go off now)
-Enough mana to cast the Past in Flames, cast at least one ritual after that, and then have enough mana to cast a ritual after you resolve the Gifts. (And this is where Mana Seism is clutch--it pays for that ripoff 3U Gifts and it chips in for the 3R/4R Past in Flames).
If your graveyard has a bunch of stuff in it, it's easier. For example, if you have a Desperate in your yard because you played a Gifts on turn 3, it's going to be useful once you Yawg Will. That's just how Yawg Will works. So Mana Seism seems counter-intuitive because you aren't going to use it early on to ramp into a Gifts, and it won't pull double duty on a combo turn--it's just going to be useful one time when you are all-in. But that's fine; if you go off with 4 lands on the table, it's still as powerful as a Seething Song or as a Pyretic cast once before the PiF and flashbacked after. You're spending 2 mana and getting 4, which is +2 acceleration. That's the power of Seething Song, which costs 1 more mana than Mana Seism. It's obviously better as the game goes on and you have more lands to dump into it, but the fact that it's a +2 ritual on 4 lands makes it worth the slot in my opinion.
The fact that it makes colorless mana isn't a big deal. I like to think of it as a very similar tool to Mana Drain...while it obviously isn't a counter spell, it will make you a bunch of colorless mana to help you cast those annoying expensive bombs like Past in Flames and Gifts Ungiven. Seething Song takes 2 colorless mana, and most everything else in the deck (aside from forks) is going to use your colorless mana while you're going off. Sure, you have to be careful with the order in which you cast your rituals and the way in which you float your mana, but that's just part of playing Storm combo.
I think if you're trying to cast this ritual multiple times to abuse the flashback mechanic, you're working too hard to abuse the flashback mechanic. The point is that you build a Gifts pile that gives you enough mana to work with, and this card will do that either when its spoonfed to your hand or when you start flashing everything back. You don't need to cast something like this twice. Turning 1R into 4 or 5 colorless is good enough to cut one corner on a mana cost and get you into that range where you can afford to cast the expensive spells in this deck. And that's why I gradually have cut down to just 12 ritual effects.
I don't believe that a combo deck needs to go off as soon as it has the chance. All I care about is winning the race by one turn. If I can play tempo games with my opponent in order to draw more cards, make more land drops, augment my graveyard, and position myself to ravage opposing combo hate, then that's what I want to do. I don't want to be going off on Turn X and trying to win as fast as possible; I just want to be ahead. The scoreboard only reads W's and L's to me. So I bide my time, wait until the opportune moment, and then pull the trigger. If it's time to go off, there should be no hesitation--go all in and end the game; this is what you have been working all game to accomplish.
Hmm....
This might be all wrong, but I'm going to try and see if I can maximize "the engine" by playing the max number of gifts and scrolls and see if the deck can operate like that. This is going to cut into ritual count and maybe counterspell and sweeper count minorly, but it might payoff, especially if there's a backup win condition in the maindeck. To reliably hit the gifts mana, I'm going to try with 23 lands and see how that works. I might even up it to 24. This should look a lot like LK's list, and would look a little like:
4 Merchant Scroll
1 Mystical Teachings
4 Seething Song
4 Manamorphose
2 Desperate Ritual
1 Pyretic Ritual
1 Mana Seism
3 Remand
2 Spell Pierce
2 Spell Snare
1 Flex Slot (Mystic Retrieval or Past in Flames, most likely)
1 Grapeshot
The cards listed with numbers next to them in the Gifts packages are part of the deck.
So, I guess the real question is whether cutting down the number of critical combo components, namely the PiF, to one, is safe. It seems okay, but in order for the chain to continue after the first PiF, the Flashbacked Gifts needs to be able to get Grapeshot and remand. Mystic Retrieval does this fairly well, and lets you actually remand the Grapeshot if they force you to bin it, as a flashbacked grapeshot that gets remanded is actually exiled instead of moved to your hand. The one thing that might be a problem is that by adding all the lands you increase flooding risk, so you really do need to get one of your 9 cards that gets action. To that end, the Halimar Depths that INS has been running might make an appearance here too.
It feels kind of like a hybrid, and once I get home I'm going to load it up and see how it runs. I haven't even thought about the sideboard yet, so that might be an issue to think about, but I figure between the sweepers and the counterspells that are dead in a matchup a suitable card to take out can be found. If on the draw, the option of cutting land is very enticing in a build like this, as it can actually sort of afford it. I'll hopefully be able to tell you guys how it goes tomorrow
That's quite astute. I've tried 4-Gifts builds before, and they haven't worked as well, but I didn't put that much time into the concept. I like the idea of Mystic Retrieval a lot. I'm not sure what my list would need if for, but it feels like it has the potential to be really good.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Go to my blog, Musings of the False God, for in-depth guides playing the game, from the building blocks of deck design to deceiving your opponent through clever game play!
You may also know me as the guy in the art of Dark Confidant. No, not Bob Maher, the OTHER one.
If you're running two Past In Flames, I feel Mystic Retrieval is fairly useless.
I think you can compare it to Karona's initial use of Snapcaster Mage - it's just mediocre when you can do the same thing to your entire graveyard. I use Noxious Vapors sort of like how I envision you would use Mystic - when I absolutely need to draw something in my graveyard that PiF hasn't hit, like a Grapeshot. I can cast a manamorphose or remand (many times my own things) and draw the grapeshot for a very large number.
Regardless, this deck rarely fizzles. You shouldn't have too much issue with binned Grapeshots. Now, an exiled grapeshot is a bigger issue, but as game one the likelihood of encountering any grave hate is slim to none, it's a fairly safe gameplan.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Tantarus: It didn't make the gaka greifer level, so it should be fine
The initial idea was that it would replace the second past in flames, as when you PiF for your big Gifts pile, you typically combo off and then flashback the Gifts Ungiven. That's all well and good - but the main "kill" for this deck is to get your storm in the low teens, cast a grapeshot, and then remand it, casting it again. If they bin your grapeshot with the second gifts, and you flash it back, remanding it will cause it to be exiled, not moved to your hand, as that's how flashback works. So instead of making the second gifts stack:
Grapeshot
PiF
Remand
(something)
It could be:
Grapeshot
Mystic Retrieval
Remand
(something)
This change costs the same amount, if not less mana, and lets you put the grapeshot directly into your hand if they don't give it to you. This means that you don't have to get to 20 storm to go off, basically ever. This lets you run a few less rituals main deck, and frees up space for other things, such as land, more Gifts, more counter-spells, bullets etc.
The initial idea was that it would replace the second past in flames, as when you PiF for your big Gifts pile, you typically combo off and then flashback the Gifts Ungiven. That's all well and good - but the main "kill" for this deck is to get your storm in the low teens, cast a grapeshot, and then remand it, casting it again. If they bin your grapeshot with the second gifts, and you flash it back, remanding it will cause it to be exiled, not moved to your hand, as that's how flashback works. So instead of making the second gifts stack:
Grapeshot
PiF
Remand
(something)
It could be:
Grapeshot
Mystic Retrieval
Remand
(something)
This change costs the same amount, if not less mana, and lets you put the grapeshot directly into your hand if they don't give it to you. This means that you don't have to get to 20 storm to go off, basically ever. This lets you run a few less rituals main deck, and frees up space for other things, such as land, more Gifts, more counter-spells, bullets etc.
Among the virtues of having two PiF instead of one is sheer redundancy. It also gives you better topdecks - if you need to go off NOW, what would you rather draw?
Having two past in flames also lets you set up your next turn. An early past in flames for hand sculpting and the incremental advantages of flashing back a repeal or similar disruption, and then a second one later for the win. It just seems like intentionally limiting your options isn't a good path to take.
I'm inclined to agree with what's said here. It's just not necessary in the deck at this point. Not really worth the addition. Also, Gaka is right: one of the key strengths of the deck is that, even if you're under a lot of pressure and have almost no resources, you can just randomly topdeck a Past in Flames and win.
I meant to mention this: At one point in the semis, I presented a Gifts pile of Past in Flames, Increasing Vengeance, Seething Song, and Desperate Ritual. My opponent gave me Past in Flames and Increasing vengeance, cutting me off of comboing out until I drew a ritual (I drew one in time). What do you think of that split? It was surprisingly effective, even though you're giving your opponent 2 Game ending bombs that way.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Go to my blog, Musings of the False God, for in-depth guides playing the game, from the building blocks of deck design to deceiving your opponent through clever game play!
You may also know me as the guy in the art of Dark Confidant. No, not Bob Maher, the OTHER one.
I'm inclined to agree with what's said here. It's just not necessary in the deck at this point. Not really worth the addition. Also, Gaka is right: one of the key strengths of the deck is that, even if you're under a lot of pressure and have almost no resources, you can just randomly topdeck a Past in Flames and win.
I meant to mention this: At one point in the semis, I presented a Gifts pile of Past in Flames, Increasing Vengeance, Seething Song, and Desperate Ritual. My opponent gave me Past in Flames and Increasing vengeance, cutting me off of comboing out until I drew a ritual (I drew one in time). What do you think of that split? It was surprisingly effective, even though you're giving your opponent 2 Game ending bombs that way.
That kind of feels like a similar pile I presented my opponent, but I always ensure my piles are going to either win the game or force my opponent to win the game. With that pile, I would have been perfectly fine gifting for PiF, Song, Desperate Ritual, and Mana Seism. Regardless of what happens, I am going to generate an obscene amount of mana and go off, and I've probably got a manamorphose by this point or I wouldn't have cast gifts for those specific cards
By the way, Mana Seism is nuts. I-N-S is completely correct about its application in the deck. It's generally 4+ mana by the time you go off, which pays for PiF by itself. If you haven't tried it already, you definitely should. And Noxious Vapors. That alone has won me several games by fetching that grapeshot from the yard and drawing into it with manamorphose or remand. I've even used it to get back a fetchland early on so I could ensure my 3rd land drop, which turned out to be a pretty good idea because that game ended with the possibility of 6 or 7 grapeshots at 23 storm for the first, 31 or 32 for the last.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Tantarus: It didn't make the gaka greifer level, so it should be fine
I made a couple of adjustments to the manabase. Most notably, I dropped the 'backup win condition' slot from the main and just made it a 23rd land, since having stable mana by hitting land drops is the best way to be able to win games. I went with Reflecting Pool, which covers some of the demands of the deck--being untapped, not being painful, and adding any of the 3 colors pretty simply (especially since it synergizes with storage lands). I also put a Shivan Reef into the manabase because I wanted to have an additional turn 1 blue source for boarded Spell Snares and the maindeck 1-mana counters. I prefer about 11 for a permission deck, but 10 is fine for this deck as I'm primarily using Snares to help when I'm on the draw in some match-ups.
I have gone down to 11 rituals, in favor of a second maindeck Teachings. I find myself boarding out those 2-mana rituals all the time anyways, so clearly the deck can handle comboing with a lower critical mass of mana. I also decided that Repeal was pretty lackluster in this metagame (aside from cute tricks against Delver), so I cut it for Wipe Away--which is a hard out to Splinter Twin and allows me to run one less spot removal spell in the board to that end.
The board is about 2/3 obvious cards and 1/3 madness. I think the countermagic and removal is all pretty straightforward, and the Spellskite is clearly a nod to the Twin match-up. As for the curve balls:
-I chose Ignite Memories as the back-up combo finisher because most people seem to have forgotten about this card, and that makes it very dangerous. Yes, it's chance-based, but this is also a metagame where people are playing Emrakuls and a lot of 3-4 drops. If my opponent misses a land drop or if he's playing something like Tron, he's probably not going to give this to me in a Gifts pile--which means Noxious/Ignite Memories/X/Y is a pile that gives me X/Y, and I'm totally cool with directly tutoring 2 cards that I want. If my opponent's hand is all 3-drops, a storm of 7 will win the game--6 if he shocked earlier. It's worth a sideboard slot over Warrens, which is a well-known quantity (and is adversely affected by the rise of Jund Charms).
-Teferi is basically Gigadrowse on legs, but it also allows the Teachings engine to directly find some kind of creature as your back-up win condition. Since none of this requires tapping out or a resolved Gifts, it has an edge over the Unburial Rites plan. Teferi is really good against any kind of control or combo deck, since it gives you complete control over the stack if it resolves.
-Meloku has proven to be the most useful creature bomb from my testing with this metagame. If your opponent boards out his removal, Meloku will basically lock out a board position by itself and kill your opponent with an army of fliers. It's also blue, which means it's pitch-able to Commandeer. That's why I like it over Bogardan Hellkite--which does a similar job (change the dynamics of a board position, then beatdown in the air), but doesn't have as much overall synergy with the deck. Also to be noted: Meloku and Halimar Depths is not just a cute trick; it's a full-blown Sensei's Divining Top.
-Detritivore is a tool in attrition wars, and it's also a back-up win condition in a lot of cases. Storing up a couple of times, then suspending this for 4 on turn 6...it's going to Geddon your opponent or at least put him down a lot of mana. It's a tap-out play, but it's also uncounterable and there are only 3 (unplayed) answers in the format to a suspend card like this. This card is a bit dangerous against Tron because they can roll a bomb of their own while you're tapped out, but that doesn't make it a bad tool. You just have to weigh the consequences. If they board into a full-on prison deck, this is my go-to plan. Also notable: this counts fetchlands and Wasteland effects, so it's not that bad to just roll it for cheap against Zoo or any other Knight of the Reliquary-based deck. It'll kill a couple of lands and then be bigger than their Goyfs.
-Volcanic Awakening is an experiment that I was trying against Tron, and I really liked it. I think of it as the dedicated slot against Tron, and I'm fine with giving that match-up one slot in the board. I bring it in against a few other decks, too...it's good alongside the Detritivore plan to just play a very attrition-based war where you kill them off with Teferi/Meloku. This card is also good at forcing your opponent into holding all his higher-drop spells, which means Ignite Memories a turn or two after VAwakening will probably be lethal. At worst, this is the kind of card that you throw into a Gifts pile to scare the crap out of your opponent, because it presents a threat that isn't solved by grave hate or board sweepers and it makes people start countering spells they otherwise wouldn't, while dealing with Past in Flames.
EDIT: I am playing the above list tomorrow at a PTQ. Here are the only debates left for me, today:
-I'm on board with 4 storage lands, but I'm not sure whether it's better to play 4 different ones or to just play R/B and U/B ones. Reflecting Pool becomes a black dual land with black storage lands, and that's relevant for a few cards in the deck (Teachings, Extirpate, Slaughter Pact). I'm currently leaning towards still having that 3-4 storage land Gifts pile, which completely destroys control decks that want to play the long game. I'm also not complaining about the ability to get an Explosives down at 4 mana when needed, thanks to the 2 off-color storage lands and the 4 Manamorphose...it makes for another built-in out to Leyline of Sanctity (which shuts down Gifts).
-The only other cards I really want to put into the deck are 1-2 more Volcanic Fallout and 1 more Spell Snare. I wouldn't mind fitting that Snare into the maindeck, but I'm not cutting any of the existing MD counters because they're all way too important for a number of specific jobs. I also found that I was winning games against Delver decks and all kinds of other aggro-control variants without multiple Fallouts, so that's why they didn't make it into this cut of the board. I might try to fit in one or two Fallouts somewhere, just to get that really strong edge against beats+disruption decks, but I really don't know what I would cut. The last change I made t my board was taking out that second Fallout for a Shatterstorm, which is better against Etched Champion, Arcbound Ravager, and the inevitable 8-9 damage from Galvanic/Shrapnel Blast after a fallout takes me down from double digits to single ones.
Everything else is prettymuch solid, in my book. I am very comfortable with this configuration of the deck. This seems to be the right balance of control and combo for me, and there is no question of inevitability this build represents. I feel like I'm playing a completely different game with this deck...it's more like macro Starcraft than it is Magic, for those who get the reference.
I like the analogy. To extend the analogy, I think that's a major difference between your deck and mine: mine is more of a fast expand into a timing push, as it were, though I never played that much starcraft.
I like the idea of Meloku. I still think my configuration is quite strong, but I should start testing a few more of your choices. The Storage Lands, Mystical Teachings, and Increasing Vengeance were all very helpful.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Go to my blog, Musings of the False God, for in-depth guides playing the game, from the building blocks of deck design to deceiving your opponent through clever game play!
You may also know me as the guy in the art of Dark Confidant. No, not Bob Maher, the OTHER one.
Knowing the term 'timing push' is a pretty good foundation for real-time-strategy understanding, in and of itself.
I definitely picked up a lot of good ideas from testing your build, too. I liked Merchant Scroll a lot, but ended up going with more of instant-speed stuff...which is why I'm running a pair of Teachings. I feel like Teachings is just a big Merchant Scroll--you're paying twice the mana but getting all kinds of rewards. Of course, I have experience playing with Merchant Scroll in Vintage (and its cousin, Cunning Wish in multiple formats), and I have played tons and tons of games with Teachings, so I obviously knew about both those engines...but your build definitely made me think a lot more about approaching the singleton concept and figuring out how to build my draw suite. I didn't end up using Merchant Scrolls in my build, but the concept of Scroll-->Mindbreak Trap or Scroll-->Hurkyll's Recall reminded me of the power that tutors represent, in terms of sideboard strategy.
i think that's also a major strength of the scroll build. You can get effective answers answers very quickly, and being able to reliably grab a Tickbind or Wipe Away against Twin or Storm is a serious advantage.
I should be able to get tournament reports up some time this weekend.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Go to my blog, Musings of the False God, for in-depth guides playing the game, from the building blocks of deck design to deceiving your opponent through clever game play!
You may also know me as the guy in the art of Dark Confidant. No, not Bob Maher, the OTHER one.
I'll write a tournament report for tomorrow's PTQ as well.
By the way, since adding the second Teachings, I've been finding that it's honestly really strong for combo turns. The 2 Increasing Vengeances allow some ridiculous mana counts with Songs, so I'll often use Teachings to get either IV or Song and it's all I really need in order to go off. In fact, while I'm starting my combo turn, I find myself using the Teachings before Past in Flames to get more gas into action. A play I really like is this:
Get to 6 mana with at least one blue from Manamorphose/an open Island
Cast Song and Vengeance it
Get RRRRR from Vengeance, leaving Song on the stack
Tap that spare Island and cast Teachings with Song still on the stack, and RR in the pool
Get the other Increasing Vengeance and cast it on the Song
Let both resolve for RRRRR RRRRR
Cast Past in Flames with 6 red, Song, double double fork to work with in the yard
You need a Manamorphose to get blue again, but it's assumed it's somewhere in the yard at that point. From there, you get UU, Teachings for Gifts, Gifts and double Fork it, game over. That's kinda mana-intensive on paper, but it's a lot more practical and it really makes me happy that I've gone up to a second Teachings in the main. I was concerned about Teachings being somewhat dead or weak for combo turns when I put it in, but the more I use it, the more I'm impressed by it.
And good grief, is it ever good with Increasing Vengeance. I'm forking my Teachings EoT all the time, now, when I play the control game and wind up with those two cards and no other combo gas...which usually leads to combo gas or a few functionally Time Walk turns for me in the near future.
I'll write a tournament report for tomorrow's PTQ as well.
By the way, since adding the second Teachings, I've been finding that it's honestly really strong for combo turns. The 2 Increasing Vengeances allow some ridiculous mana counts with Songs, so I'll often use Teachings to get either IV or Song and it's all I really need in order to go off. In fact, while I'm starting my combo turn, I find myself using the Teachings before Past in Flames to get more gas into action. A play I really like is this:
Get to 6 mana with at least one blue from Manamorphose/an open Island
Cast Song and Vengeance it
Get RRRRR from Vengeance, leaving Song on the stack
Tap that spare Island and cast Teachings with Song still on the stack, and RR in the pool
Get the other Increasing Vengeance and cast it on the Song
Let both resolve for RRRRR RRRRR
Cast Past in Flames with 6 red, Song, double double fork to work with in the yard
You need a Manamorphose to get blue again, but it's assumed it's somewhere in the yard at that point. From there, you get UU, Teachings for Gifts, Gifts and double Fork it, game over. That's kinda mana-intensive on paper, but it's a lot more practical and it really makes me happy that I've gone up to a second Teachings in the main. I was concerned about Teachings being somewhat dead or weak for combo turns when I put it in, but the more I use it, the more I'm impressed by it.
And good grief, is it ever good with Increasing Vengeance. I'm forking my Teachings EoT all the time, now, when I play the control game and wind up with those two cards and no other combo gas...which usually leads to combo gas or a few functionally Time Walk turns for me in the near future.
Extremely impressed with the development of your build INS. Isn't it amazing that once people broke away from the UR Storm thread that the deck has gone this far?
This deck is so similar to Mean Deck Storm from Vintage that it is scary. Such amazing redundancy against hate. Not to mention that most people simply can't pilot this build. I built your list this morning and tried it out with some guys who are testing for the Allentown PA PTQ. By the end of our testing people wanted the list to try it out. I handed it over to a friend who failed terrible every game with it. You're going to catch a ton of people off guard. Which in my experience is how you win big events. Good luck and please for the love of all things holy prove unkyunk wrong.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
In case I didn't tell you, I don't care about your opinion I just want your facts. And not the facts that make you seem smart. I want the ones that are actual facts.
I also decided that Repeal was pretty lackluster in this metagame (aside from cute tricks against Delver), so I cut it for Wipe Away--which is a hard out to Splinter Twin and allows me to run one less spot removal spell in the board to that end.
I agree. Repeal is not only mana hungry, it's counterable. Wipe Away deals with the problem for exactly three mana, all the time, any time. I also run Echoing Truth main, but the threat of Iona is almost enough reason to try out Slaughter Pact, which is my assumption for it's main inclusion. No one expects black removal in a largely U/R deck.
However, I've yet to actually lose with a resolved Iona, naming either blue OR red. This deck is capable of either tutoring for bounce with blue, or just killing them with red. Quite nice.
-I chose Ignite Memories as the back-up combo finisher because most people seem to have forgotten about this card, and that makes it very dangerous. Yes, it's chance-based, but this is also a metagame where people are playing Emrakuls and a lot of 3-4 drops. If my opponent misses a land drop or if he's playing something like Tron, he's probably not going to give this to me in a Gifts pile--which means Noxious/Ignite Memories/X/Y is a pile that gives me X/Y, and I'm totally cool with directly tutoring 2 cards that I want. If my opponent's hand is all 3-drops, a storm of 7 will win the game--6 if he shocked earlier. It's worth a sideboard slot over Warrens, which is a well-known quantity (and is adversely affected by the rise of Jund Charms).
I'm still sticking with ETW in the side, but this is an interesting idea that might have some merit to it. Generally, I'm casting grapeshot at 30 or 40 storm (mostly because I can) which is clearly quite lethal. As this is a sideboard option, I assume it's for the chance that your opponent extirpate's your grapeshot somehow and you need a way to storm out and win anyways. I'm not sure if this is worth a sideboard spot, but I'm willing to try it.
-Teferi is basically Gigadrowse on legs, but it also allows the Teachings engine to directly find some kind of creature as your back-up win condition. Since none of this requires tapping out or a resolved Gifts, it has an edge over the Unburial Rites plan. Teferi is really good against any kind of control or combo deck, since it gives you complete control over the stack if it resolves.
Agree completely with Teferi in the board. I was never a fan of gigadrowse, mostly due to it's mana requirements, but teferi is a nice catchall that does turn your next Mystical Teachings into a wincon. I'm currently running one Teachings and one Scroll, partially as a gifts protection addition, but if I'm going to try for a Teferi//Teachings win-post board in some cases, your two teachings make more sense.
-Detritivore is a tool in attrition wars, and it's also a back-up win condition in a lot of cases. Storing up a couple of times, then suspending this for 4 on turn 6...it's going to Geddon your opponent or at least put him down a lot of mana. It's a tap-out play, but it's also uncounterable and there are only 3 (unplayed) answers in the format to a suspend card like this. This card is a bit dangerous against Tron because they can roll a bomb of their own while you're tapped out, but that doesn't make it a bad tool. You just have to weigh the consequences. If they board into a full-on prison deck, this is my go-to plan. Also notable: this counts fetchlands and Wasteland effects, so it's not that bad to just roll it for cheap against Zoo or any other Knight of the Reliquary-based deck. It'll kill a couple of lands and then be bigger than their Goyfs.
-Volcanic Awakening is an experiment that I was trying against Tron, and I really liked it. I think of it as the dedicated slot against Tron, and I'm fine with giving that match-up one slot in the board. I bring it in against a few other decks, too...it's good alongside the Detritivore plan to just play a very attrition-based war where you kill them off with Teferi/Meloku. This card is also good at forcing your opponent into holding all his higher-drop spells, which means Ignite Memories a turn or two after VAwakening will probably be lethal. At worst, this is the kind of card that you throw into a Gifts pile to scare the crap out of your opponent, because it presents a threat that isn't solved by grave hate or board sweepers and it makes people start countering spells they otherwise wouldn't, while dealing with Past in Flames.
Detritivore is interesting tech, but I think it might be too slow to combat the archetype you've discussed. While this is ticking down from the two or three counters you've stacked onto it, they're attempting to beat your face in and kill you, assuming they understand the threat this deck poses.
Volcanic Awakening.. kind of feels clunky. It's a blowout assuming your opponent kept a greedy hand, and in the event you're casting this, you're probably able to combo out anyways, barring something unforseeable. I don't think intentionally neutering your chances of winning for some cute anti-tron tech is going to work well.
I'm personally trying Blood Moons to combat tron, as to be perfectly honest, Moons don't really hurt. (At least my more basic-oriented list doesn't mind them so much)
And good grief, is it ever good with Increasing Vengeance. I'm forking my Teachings EoT all the time, now, when I play the control game and wind up with those two cards and no other combo gas...which usually leads to combo gas or a few functionally Time Walk turns for me in the near future.
You're in line with double teachings? I've found them to be great postboard, but preboard are little more than gifts tutors. I'm running a one teaching, one scroll split at the moment. Gifting for a Remand, Dispel, Teaching or noxious vapors, and Scroll pretty much ensures you're going to get the protection you need.
Some other thoughts on sweepers:
My sweepers at the moment are:
1 Volcanic Fallout
1 Slagstorm
1 Echoing Truth (sort of)
and i've been looking at the idea of Engineered Explosives one more time. At first, I was a little put-off by it's cost compared to the other options, but it's flexibility might be worth it. Manamorphose basically means you can sweep for up to five, and hits non-creatures as well. I mean, forcing a spellbomb activation or killing a leyline seems top-class, but as I've seen mostly creature-based decks i've stuck with the slagstorm for now.
How useful is EE, and is it a better option over slagstorm in our even/bad matchups? Should I run it in addition to Fallout and Slagstorm? I've got it in the side right now, but I am wondering if it is really mainboardable over or alongside my other options.
Because all of this is pointless without a decklist:
Extremely impressed with the development of your build INS. Isn't it amazing that once people broke away from the UR Storm thread that the deck has gone this far?
This deck is so similar to Mean Deck Storm from Vintage that it is scary. Such amazing redundancy against hate. Not to mention that most people simply can't pilot this build. I built your list this morning and tried it out with some guys who are testing for the Allentown PA PTQ. By the end of our testing people wanted the list to try it out. I handed it over to a friend who failed terrible every game with it. You're going to catch a ton of people off guard. Which in my experience is how you win big events. Good luck and please for the love of all things holy prove unkyunk wrong.
Well, hopefully I can pilot it tomorrow. I've been conditioning myself by playing the deck while really tired and/or drunk, so that should help for later rounds when my brain starts to wear down. Unfortunately, I got a little under 4 hours of sleep, and now I'm wide awake at 3 AM the morning before this tournament. (Oh Sleeping Disorders, what would I ever do without you? :mad:) Normally, I bring a 4-pack of Rockstars with me to every tournament, but this might be a day to bring two packs instead.... That's all right, though. I have tons of practice with this deck and I firmly believe it is the most powerful consistent deck in the format.
I agree. Repeal is not only mana hungry, it's counterable. Wipe Away deals with the problem for exactly three mana, all the time, any time. I also run Echoing Truth main, but the threat of Iona is almost enough reason to try out Slaughter Pact, which is my assumption for it's main inclusion. No one expects black removal in a largely U/R deck.
While Iona was a major reason for including it, Slaughter Pact is also a strong out to Splinter Twin. Post-board, the Gifts package for Twin is:
Slaughter Pact
Wipe Away
Combust
Spellskite
Good luck beating that with crappy 2U flash creatures.
SPact is additionally the go-to out to Canonist and most other hatebears. It's especially good if you don't feel like the game needs to go on another turn, in which case it'll solve the problem for free and generate +1 storm (+2 if you flash it back on some random other threat with Past in Flames).
However, I've yet to actually lose with a resolved Iona, naming either blue OR red. This deck is capable of either tutoring for bounce with blue, or just killing them with red. Quite nice.
I've played through Iona a number of times with Cryptic-bounce or with Grapeshot for 7, after it has landed. However, since Slaughter Pact is such a useful card for Splinter Twin and for sideboard plans against hatebears, you might as well run it--and if it's in the deck, it might as well be main to hose Iona/Twin. At worst, you can use it to kill a Goyf or Delver or Vendilion Clique, buying yourself time.
I'm still sticking with ETW in the side, but this is an interesting idea that might have some merit to it. Generally, I'm casting grapeshot at 30 or 40 storm (mostly because I can) which is clearly quite lethal. As this is a sideboard option, I assume it's for the chance that your opponent extirpate's your grapeshot somehow and you need a way to storm out and win anyways. I'm not sure if this is worth a sideboard spot, but I'm willing to try it.
It is indeed a nod to Grapeshot being Extirpated, as well as a generally dangerous threat for Gifts piles.
Agree completely with Teferi in the board. I was never a fan of gigadrowse, mostly due to it's mana requirements, but teferi is a nice catchall that does turn your next Mystical Teachings into a wincon. I'm currently running one Teachings and one Scroll, partially as a gifts protection addition, but if I'm going to try for a Teferi//Teachings win-post board in some cases, your two teachings make more sense.
Gigadrowse is especially strong against balls-out aggression (Red decks and Affinity) and against any kind of counterspell-based deck. It's also a way to beat a lot of grave hate effects on your combo turn, since you can use it to tap down Relic/Nihil Spellbomb/Crypt, or to tap down a (Jund deck's) lands so that Jund Charm/Extirpate isn't actually cast-able when you go off.
Detritivore is interesting tech, but I think it might be too slow to combat the archetype you've discussed. While this is ticking down from the two or three counters you've stacked onto it, they're attempting to beat your face in and kill you, assuming they understand the threat this deck poses.
If you can spend one turn suspending and then clean up the board the next turn, that's ideal. It's also a pretty good ritual sink--you can translate Seething Song into 2 destroyed lands. This is a dangerous threat for those match-ups where you're not going to lose if you tap out for one big bomb, when you're on more of an attrition/control game-plan. It's not something I board in automatically in any match-up; it's there for games when I want a serious change of gameplan to throw my opponent off.
Volcanic Awakening.. kind of feels clunky. It's a blowout assuming your opponent kept a greedy hand, and in the event you're casting this, you're probably able to combo out anyways, barring something unforseeable. I don't think intentionally neutering your chances of winning for some cute anti-tron tech is going to work well.
I'm personally trying Blood Moons to combat tron, as to be perfectly honest, Moons don't really hurt. (At least my more basic-oriented list doesn't mind them so much)
Moon doesn't really hurt this deck. However, Moon also doesn't actually remove lands from the table. If your opponent's deck isn't a pile of crap, he'll fetch a basic or two and have plenty of room to work with under the Moon--either that, or he can probably just operate underneath it. All Tron has to do is play a Signet, and Moon is basically useless. Sure, you stopped the Tron lands from making a lot of colorless mana for the immediate future, but Tron is a deck designed to use tons of colorless lands. It's going to get great usage out of all that red mana from its nonbasics.
Volcanic Awakening is stronger because it's going to actually blow up multiple lands. If you storm it for even just 3, that's not a large investment, and it can put your opponent on a very small economy. It also happens to blow up basic lands, which makes it infinitely better than Blood Moon when facing Faeries or Teachings or any other type of heavy-Island deck. Being counter spell-resistent is also a big plus...if your opponent starts countering every ritual he sees, he's going to lose the game by running out of gas. If he counters the Awakening with anything other than a Mindbreak Trap (which can be worked around), he has to use multiple counters and/or just fight with countermagic to keep some resources intact on the table. And if he really forces counter-wars on your combo turn because he's expecting Past in Flames, you can wreck him by using that jacked-up storm count to Geddon his entire manabase.
You're in line with double teachings? I've found them to be great postboard, but preboard are little more than gifts tutors. I'm running a one teaching, one scroll split at the moment. Gifting for a Remand, Dispel, Teaching or noxious vapors, and Scroll pretty much ensures you're going to get the protection you need.
I felt like they were just extra Gifts for this deck, but the more I drew them, the more I realized they were as good or better in many situations. You're either getting the correct answer with Teachings, or you're getting that critical combo part so you can go off next turn. It's smoother than you would think on paper--I know this because I personally thought the second would really slow the deck down when I initially put it in, but it turned out that that wasn't actually the case.
A big part of the strength of that maindeck second Teachings is that, while it's slower than Merchant Scroll, it also happens to save deck space. I think the second Teachings should be present somewhere in the 75, so I initially put it in my sideboard for attrition wars. However, deck space is at a premium for this deck, That extra slot in the board could be a Spell Snare or a Volcanic Fallout, or a Shatterstorm or Extirpate. The most difficult aspect of tuning this deck has been trying to conserve deck space by finding the minimal number of rituals, the minimal number of engine parts and finishers, and cards which overlap their utility across multiple match-ups. For me, moving that SB Teachings into the main is a pretty obvious choice after testing it and looking in hindsight--I went from a 14 card sideboard to a 15 card sideboard.
Some other thoughts on sweepers:
My sweepers at the moment are:
1 Volcanic Fallout
1 Slagstorm
1 Echoing Truth (sort of)
and i've been looking at the idea of Engineered Explosives one more time. At first, I was a little put-off by it's cost compared to the other options, but it's flexibility might be worth it. Manamorphose basically means you can sweep for up to five, and hits non-creatures as well. I mean, forcing a spellbomb activation or killing a leyline seems top-class, but as I've seen mostly creature-based decks i've stuck with the slagstorm for now.
How useful is EE, and is it a better option over slagstorm in our even/bad matchups? Should I run it in addition to Fallout and Slagstorm? I've got it in the side right now, but I am wondering if it is really mainboardable over or alongside my other options.
ETruth is probably the answer I miss most in the main, but I think the deck is fine without is because it's not cold to Blood Moon (gotta love Manamorphose) and it already has some really good answers to an army of 1/1 or 2/2 tokens. If you're in the Scroll plan, it makes more sense because you can Teachings for Volcanic Fallout but you cannot Scroll for it. I think that's probably why I ended up just dropping ETruth from my main...it just wasn't necessary anymore.
Slagstorm is fine, but I ultimately just cut mine (which was in my sideboard) for a Shatterstorm, mostly because I don't really care about wiping the board against most any aggro deck besides Affinity. For the most part, putting a Volcanic Fallout into the pile is a tool I use to gain leverage. If I get it, I kill 3 creatures against whatever creature deck I'm facing, and my opponent is sent back to the stone age. If I get 2/3 of the other cards, I combo off and my opponent has a swift chariot ride to Elysium. I mean, if I had space, I would definitely play a Slagstorm--but if I had space, my sideboard would be 50 cards large.
Put an EE in your maindeck and don't look back. It kills tokens and Memnites and Opals, it kills an army of 1-drops (for boros/fighting mana dorks), it kills Cranial Plating(s), and it can stretch to kill 3-4 mana annoying lock pieces--and it does that EoT, the way you want it to happen. If you are comboing off, you can cast it for 0 to ramp your storm count, and then you can Remand it to use your Remands as 2-mana cyclers which generate +2 storm each while you're digging for gas. You can set it on 1 or 2 to force your opponent into playing more expensive cards into Remands. You can set it on 1 to force your opponent into only playing one 1-drop for a few turns, then when he plays three 2-drops you EoT bounce your Explosives, untap and set it for 2 and get a 3-for-1. And, most of the time, you're popping Explosives EoT, so you're leaving mana open. This deck is built upon the concept of having options, and no other non-counterspell answer in the format gives you more options than Engineered Explosives
Because all of this is pointless without a decklist:
It's definitely similar to my list, so I have to like it. I understand all of the choices you have made differently here, so I don't really have any complaints. I do want to point out that you should play a 2/2 split of Islands and Snow Islands, though, since there is absolutely no downside and you might find yourself in situations where you want to Gifts for multiple basic Islands. You are boarding Blood Moons, after all. You can search for 2 different fetches, but considering the lack of downside attached to snow basics...just upgrade half your Islands.
It seems when I win I end up noxtious revival to put grapeshot on top of the deck, manamorphose it into hand, and then cast it and remanding it back to hand 2-4 times. when the storm count is around 13-15.
I guess winning is winning. But if there is another scenerio that allows you to win as I basically keep doing the same loop over and over again despite trying to get lethal a different way..
It seems like its
EoT teachings for gifts
Eot gifts for
*seething song
*past in flames
*increasing vengence
*manamorphose
(substitute a ritual if PiF is in hand)
If need be wait a turn to gigadrowse/teaching for drowse.
ramp using above spells to approx 15-18 Red mana.
Cast manamorpose for UU
Cast gifts for
*Grapeshot
*revival
*manamorphose
*remand
if need be recast past in flames leaving you with about 6 mana.
which allows you revival grapeshot and manamorphose into it and then grapeshot/remand 2-3 times (depending if you needed to recast PiF)
Gigadrowse is especially strong against balls-out aggression (Red decks and Affinity) and against any kind of counterspell-based deck. It's also a way to beat a lot of grave hate effects on your combo turn, since you can use it to tap down Relic/Nihil Spellbomb/Crypt, or to tap down a (Jund deck's) lands so that Jund Charm/Extirpate isn't actually cast-able when you go off.
I'll have to play around with it, I think I want to cut one of the spell pierces or dispels anyways (maybe even a ritual) so that gives me a spot.
If you can spend one turn suspending and then clean up the board the next turn, that's ideal. It's also a pretty good ritual sink--you can translate Seething Song into 2 destroyed lands. This is a dangerous threat for those match-ups where you're not going to lose if you tap out for one big bomb, when you're on more of an attrition/control game-plan. It's not something I board in automatically in any match-up; it's there for games when I want a serious change of gameplan to throw my opponent off.
Moon doesn't really hurt this deck. However, Moon also doesn't actually remove lands from the table. If your opponent's deck isn't a pile of crap, he'll fetch a basic or two and have plenty of room to work with under the Moon--either that, or he can probably just operate underneath it. All Tron has to do is play a Signet, and Moon is basically useless. Sure, you stopped the Tron lands from making a lot of colorless mana for the immediate future, but Tron is a deck designed to use tons of colorless lands. It's going to get great usage out of all that red mana from its nonbasics.
Volcanic Awakening is stronger because it's going to actually blow up multiple lands. If you storm it for even just 3, that's not a large investment, and it can put your opponent on a very small economy. It also happens to blow up basic lands, which makes it infinitely better than Blood Moon when facing Faeries or Teachings or any other type of heavy-Island deck. Being counter spell-resistent is also a big plus...if your opponent starts countering every ritual he sees, he's going to lose the game by running out of gas. If he counters the Awakening with anything other than a Mindbreak Trap (which can be worked around), he has to use multiple counters and/or just fight with countermagic to keep some resources intact on the table. And if he really forces counter-wars on your combo turn because he's expecting Past in Flames, you can wreck him by using that jacked-up storm count to Geddon his entire manabase.
This is sufficient reason for me to test Volcanic and drop the moons. If all is agreeable, that's another sideboard slot open, and I'm perfectly fine with that. Much as you said, there have been times Moon has been great, and others that it has been just a small speed-bump. However, an additional sideboard slot is worth more than a 50/50 useage rate, so once more, I will test it.
I felt like they were just extra Gifts for this deck, but the more I drew them, the more I realized they were as good or better in many situations. You're either getting the correct answer with Teachings, or you're getting that critical combo part so you can go off next turn. It's smoother than you would think on paper--I know this because I personally thought the second would really slow the deck down when I initially put it in, but it turned out that that wasn't actually the case.
A big part of the strength of that maindeck second Teachings is that, while it's slower than Merchant Scroll, it also happens to save deck space. I think the second Teachings should be present somewhere in the 75, so I initially put it in my sideboard for attrition wars. However, deck space is at a premium for this deck, That extra slot in the board could be a Spell Snare or a Volcanic Fallout, or a Shatterstorm or Extirpate. The most difficult aspect of tuning this deck has been trying to conserve deck space by finding the minimal number of rituals, the minimal number of engine parts and finishers, and cards which overlap their utility across multiple match-ups. For me, moving that SB Teachings into the main is a pretty obvious choice after testing it and looking in hindsight--I went from a 14 card sideboard to a 15 card sideboard.
ETruth is probably the answer I miss most in the main, but I think the deck is fine without is because it's not cold to Blood Moon (gotta love Manamorphose) and it already has some really good answers to an army of 1/1 or 2/2 tokens. If you're in the Scroll plan, it makes more sense because you can Teachings for Volcanic Fallout but you cannot Scroll for it. I think that's probably why I ended up just dropping ETruth from my main...it just wasn't necessary anymore.
While testing, I've come to a similar conclusion. Merchant Scroll was great while setting up to a combo, or if you needed to have that bounce NOW, but mid-combo it's pretty much always a dead draw. As it's a sorcery, you can't use it in response to your opponent's counter to find a counter of your own. As it's restricted to blue, I can't look for a fallout or a manamorphose when I need it.
Teachings, though more expensive, is conductive to a mostly instant speed deck, that tries to win the turn before your opponent's deck does. While explaining this strategy to some other players, they were too engrossed in UR Storm's "WIN NOW" plan instead of the "Just win" plan that this follows, and they weren't able to understand a lot of the choices in the deck. That's just fine by me, because if they don't know what to hit, they can't defend against it post-board. Teachings is better for the post-board plan (which is, after all, 66% of your matches) which gives it yet one more nod.
Echoing Truth is my nod to token decks in the area, among others. I dig it hard. With merchant scroll now cut from the deck, I thought that this might fade away in favor of something else, perhaps the slaughter pact. Instead, I find I'm using it just as often. I don't think I could see myself cutting it in the near future, simply on the basis of how useful it is to snag multiples. I tried Cryptic Command, but the UUU was too stressful on me to reach it by turn 4 or 5 without some serious Manamorphosing. I'm not a fan of that.
Slagstorm is fine, but I ultimately just cut mine (which was in my sideboard) for a Shatterstorm, mostly because I don't really care about wiping the board against most any aggro deck besides Affinity. For the most part, putting a Volcanic Fallout into the pile is a tool I use to gain leverage. If I get it, I kill 3 creatures against whatever creature deck I'm facing, and my opponent is sent back to the stone age. If I get 2/3 of the other cards, I combo off and my opponent has a swift chariot ride to Elysium. I mean, if I had space, I would definitely play a Slagstorm--but if I had space, my sideboard would be 50 cards large.
Put an EE in your maindeck and don't look back. It kills tokens and Memnites and Opals, it kills an army of 1-drops (for boros/fighting mana dorks), it kills Cranial Plating(s), and it can stretch to kill 3-4 mana annoying lock pieces--and it does that EoT, the way you want it to happen. If you are comboing off, you can cast it for 0 to ramp your storm count, and then you can Remand it to use your Remands as 2-mana cyclers which generate +2 storm each while you're digging for gas. You can set it on 1 or 2 to force your opponent into playing more expensive cards into Remands. You can set it on 1 to force your opponent into only playing one 1-drop for a few turns, then when he plays three 2-drops you EoT bounce your Explosives, untap and set it for 2 and get a 3-for-1. And, most of the time, you're popping Explosives EoT, so you're leaving mana open. This deck is built upon the concept of having options, and no other non-counterspell answer in the format gives you more options than Engineered Explosives
All completely correct. I've placed the EE main instead of the slagstorm, and found myself wanting EE more than I ever wanted slagstorm. Versatility is the name of the game, and this does it quite well. +1 sideboard slot.
It seems when I win I end up noxtious revival to put grapeshot on top of the deck, manamorphose it into hand, and then cast it and remanding it back to hand 2-4 times. when the storm count is around 13-15.
I guess winning is winning. But if there is another scenerio that allows you to win as I basically keep doing the same loop over and over again despite trying to get lethal a different way..
It seems like its
EoT teachings for gifts
Eot gifts for
*seething song
*past in flames
*increasing vengence
*manamorphose
(substitute a ritual if PiF is in hand)
If need be wait a turn to gigadrowse/teaching for drowse.
ramp using above spells to approx 15-18 Red mana.
Cast manamorpose for UU
Cast gifts for
*Grapeshot
*revival
*manamorphose
*remand
if need be recast past in flames leaving you with about 6 mana.
which allows you revival grapeshot and manamorphose into it and then grapeshot/remand 2-3 times (depending if you needed to recast PiF)
There really isn't a "correct" goldfish. I personally prefer to combo off with at least Ux floating into the past in flames (or through as much of it as I can) to deal with well-timed counterspells that seek to thwart me. Many times, this pretty much forces me to get the storm to insane levels, and kill with a grapeshot for more than lethal. martyr-proc doesn't have much of a chance against a storm deck capable of dealing upwards of 100 damage when it feels like it.
My favorite style is to seek out at least 6r and 2u floating, then grapeshot at a low count, maybe 4 or 5, then increasing vengeance and flash it back for the kill. It's easy, and feels good man.
Pyretic Ritual - RRR - 1
Seething Song - RRRRR - 2
Manamorphose - UURRR - 3
Desperate Ritual - UURRRR - 4
Seething Song - UURRRRRRR - 5
Grapeshot - UURRRRR - 6
Increasing Vengeance - UURRR - 7 Deal 7 to opponent.
Increasing Vengeance - 8 Deal 16 to opponent.
Grapeshot resolves, kill your opponent if they gained any life.
Best part, it doesn't require a past in flames and only two mana. If they try to counter anything past the manamorphose, you can kill them anyways with the extra storm added... but you should probably wait and go off with a bit of extra mana to provide a split-second counter if you're playing a blue deck. If they've cracked a fetch, it's even easier. Post-board I find myself gunning for this setup the most often, as it completely dodges the graveyard hate that so annoys past in flames users. And if you do have a past in flames.. well. Increasing Vengeance on the Song, and you're in business.
Gifting for this setup is incredibly easy, too. If you've got even two pieces in your hand, EOT gifts for the rest pretty much seals it.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Tantarus: It didn't make the gaka greifer level, so it should be fine
I think that style of Tron is viable in this metagame, but most people are probably going to play more standard Tron lists, if they're picking up the deck to play for one or two tournaments this late into the season. I know that Tron is the deck which really good players will take and customize, so it's possible you and I could run into it at the tournament in a crucial round (such as the top 8). However, fortunately those lock pieces are answered by much the same answers we are going to have for Affinity and for grave hate rocks. Chalice for 1 is pretty bad against us in terms of stopping the combo, and we have the bigger manabase and storage lands for being able to EoT answer Thorn/Sphere. I'm sure the match-up is very annoying, but if we acknowledge it with HRecall/Shattering Spree etc. in the sideboard, I expect it to be favorable.
I also want to point out that I put Cryptic Command in this deck because I have had a lot of experience with it in Solidarity in Legacy, where it's a maindeck out to all kinds of annoying lock pieces as well as a generally strong defense spell when countering and/or tapping down attackers. If it's good enough for that format (and it was a fantastic 2-of for a number of us High Tide players), then it's going to be great in a similar control/combo deck which wants some outs to a highly varied format.
And I agree; Bant doesn't seem that hard. It's not particularly more dangerous than any other ~fish strategy; the main distinctions for that deck are its mana dorks and its ability to run virtually any hate bear.
I personally believe that the manabase is very stable with a couple of splash-color shocklands to reach into that third or fourth color. Manamorphose really does a lot for helping this, as well. Burning a Manamorphose to cast a Cryptic Command isn't generally going to hurt your combo turn because you just need red mana to start going off, and then after you Past in Flames you have access to that Manamorphose again to get back your blue mana. So to me, since it's viable, I'm definitely happy with playing more than 2 colors. Slaughter Pact is phenomenal, Mystical Teachings is very strong, and having access to sideboarded Extirpate is fantastic.
That card was showing up in some mono-blue 12post decks online a few months ago when the format was wild and crazy before some major bannings. It's good for a Tron-style deck, and it's probably decent in here--maybe just to get an Extirpate out of your opponent's hand. However, you could stop Extirpate with Gigadrowse, and if they have fetches open you can use Gigadrowse in conjunction with Remand. Also, Teferi, which is tutorable by Teachings, stops Extirpate--and packs a lot more utility than a Duress effect. I would have to test it...I'll do that this week. But my initial instinct is that it wouldn't be necessary. And, considering the serious space issues with this deck, anything unnecessary should probably be excluded. I already have to narrow down what's essentially a 45 card sideboard....
I believe that 61 is wrong for a tournament, but fine for testing. I think that I have solved some of the maindeck space issues by including a copy of Research//Development. I did a lot of research into the card pool this weekend, and I think that's probably the best way to cram more stuff in. If you think about it, you can shuffle in a full Gifts pile that way...more on this below. I should post my updated list before saying anything else.
4 Scalding Tarn
1 Misty Rainforest
1 Steam Vents
1 Watery Grave
1 Blood Crypt
1 Breeding Pool
1 Island
1 Snow-Covered Island
1 Mountain
2 Cascade Bluffs
1 Dreadship Reef
1 Calciform Pools
1 Fungal Reaches
1 Molten Slagheap
1 Engineered Explosives
1 Repeal
1 Spell Pierce
1 Dispel
1 Gigadrowse
4 Remand
1 Cryptic Command
1 Volcanic Fallout
1 Slaughter Pact
4 Gifts Ungiven
1 Mystical Teachings
2 Past in Flames
2 Increasing Vengeance
1 Noxious Revival
2 Desperate Ritual
1 Pyretic Ritual
4 Seething Song
1 Mana Seism
4 Manamorphose
1 Research//Development
1 Grapeshot
1 Extirpate
1 Mystical Teachings
1 Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir
1 (Some kind of Bomb Creature)
11 (Slots I'm still working on)
Teachings-->Research. Research for Teachings, Teferi, the Bomb, and something else. Flashback Teachings for the Teachings you shuffled in, then use that to get Teferi and then get the Bomb with your Teachings' flashback while Teferi is out. Yes, it's slower than molasses, but this is the kind of thing that will win attrition wars and give the deck a completely different angle of attack. I like the idea of having a creature win-condition in the maindeck, but I don't want to lean on Unburial Rites because I plan to really lean on it for some game 2 and 3 situations where I'm fighting through lots of grave hate and what-not. It's also safer because it's all instant-speed, and having access to Teferi means being able to combo while ignoring stuff like Extirpate or Mindbreak Trap.
Development is also a reasonable card because it's actually well-within the deck's gameplan of getting to 4+ mana and casting bomb instants. It's either going to be a Jace's Ingenuity or it's going to make a trio of 3/1 creatures, if not some middle ground (for whatever reason). Jace's Ingenuity paid for my PTQ entry fees for an entire year, so I obviously stand behind that card. And the creatures are useful because they can either be roughly a 2-turn clock (basically with haste, since you get them EoT), or they can trade pretty efficiently with opposing threats and act like a 2-for-1 or 3-for-1 removal spell.
As far as other sideboard stuff, I have a giant stack of cards to test. I've whittled some of it down over the weekend, and I'm going to finish that over the next couple of the days. I have a giant chart of problems and solutions, and it's going to take some time to work through all of this. That's OK, though--this deck is worth it.
For example, LK, your list has :
20 Lands (6 Storage)
8 Counters (5 Conditional, 3 Unconditional but non-permanent)
15 Rituals
3 Gifts
4 Sweepers
4+1 Searchers (Scroll and Teachings)
Unburial Rites Package (2 cards, reanimate target is big + hard to deal with but has no immediate board impact - this is not necessarily a bad thing)
Engine - 2 PiF 1 IV
1 Grapeshot
I-N-S, on the other hand has:
22 Lands (4 Depths, 4 Storage Lands)
12 Rituals
7 Counters (4 Unconditional non-permanent, 2 Conditional, 1 Cryptic)
1(2) Tempo Generators/General Answers (Repeal (Cryptic))
2 Sweepers
4 Gifts + 1 Noxious Revival
1 Mystical Teachings
2 Diggers (Peer through Depths)
2 Specialised Gifts+Teachings Targets (Slaughter Pact, Gigadrowse)
1 Target Generator (Research)
An expanded engine - 2 PiF and 2 IV
1 Grapeshot
Now - I'm not an expert on this archetype, at all - actually I'm more of a n00b, as internet speak would put it. So I'm just going to ask a few questions based on these numbers, and hopefully the answers'll be able to show me a little bit about how the deck is constructed - and maybe even lead you guys to realize a thing or two. Are 20-22 lands enough? If the deck really wants to hit 4, I'd imagine a couple more would be in order, but then I guess Remand and rituals do a good job of letting you Gifts on time. But then I guess the question is: are 20-22 lands optimal under these conditions? Also, what is the optimal number of counters? Sweepers? I guess that would depend on the number of maindeck tutor abilities + digging available to you, but still, you guys seem to agree that 7-8 counters and 2-4 sweepers is where you want to be, so that looks good. Also - INS, in your list, I'm having trouble figuing out what the second Increasing Vengeance is for. I'm not saying it's a bad choice or anything I just have no idea what it's there for -and like I said before I'm more a less of a scrub to this archetype so there could be a variety of reasons for that xD. The ritual split between you two is the most eyebrow raising though. A 12-15 difference is quite large - is there a playstyle difference present in each list that I'm missing, or does the mana seism in INS' list do the heavy lifting that the spare rituals in LK's list end up doing?
The reason I ask all these questions is to try and find out what a basic skeleton of the deck would be, and which branches you could take from there and what sideboard choices + maindeck bullets those branches would necessitate. If one of these could be constructed, not only would it be a great addition to the primer but it would also promote an easier way of thinking about the deck and also a way to more easily see how new-fangled thigns could be incorporated into the list.
None of this is meant to be critique - in the end, you guys have put in the playtest hours, not me. All I'm trynig to do is to ask some questions to hopefully get this beast streamlined and ready to demolish the meta. Atleast form LK's tourney reports, the deck seems to have no real bad match-ups, and a large portion of the games lost really come down to mulliganing to hell. Maybe this is something that the deck has to do, but hopefully we can negate this as much as possible by streamlining the deck and making sure that all the ratios are as close to ideal as possible. I know I'm new to the discussion, but hopefulyl my inquisitiveness can lead you guys' helping me help you too :).
The thing with the deck is, it has no unwinnable matchups. it helps that I'm frankly a fairly good player, a fair amount of my competition isn't exactly LSV or PV, and that I have some surprise factor, but the sheer power of the deck combined with the tutoring capabilities makes it so versatile that, played correctly, it only has ok and good matchups. I don't want to give the impression it's unbeatable. I mean, the odds that a random amateur player would unintentionally break the entire format in two with a pet deck are astronomical. But it's definitely strong, and gives a lot of room for the opponent to mess up, and not a lot of room to recover when they do. That gives it a huge advantage in situations like ptqs, fnms, and local tournaments, where the deck is new, players are more likely to make mistakes, and their decks are less tuned themselves.
You're making very helpful insights. In my case, you generally have enough lands that you can get off an early gifts and capitalize on rituals until you get the necessary lands. I probably should fit a couple more in, though.
You may also know me as the guy in the art of Dark Confidant. No, not Bob Maher, the OTHER one.
I find that 22 is fine--at least for the maindeck. Generally speaking, I want to be hitting all of my land drops--but if I'm missing them, what kind of spells have I drawn too many of? Probably countermagic and removal/disruption, which has kept me in the game. Or rituals, which substitute for lands in many cases (the Desperate-->Gifts play being a prime example). In addition, those storage lands play a huge role in generating resources. Storing mana is exactly like holding onto more and more rituals--and this works well for this particular archetype because we actually just win in one turn, thereby making 2 storage counters as valuable as a pair of lands...even if just for one turn.
I ideally want to play about 24 lands if I stick with a full-blown transformation into Teferi/Teachings control, but this could also be met halfway. It is possible to replace Peer Through Depths (or Merchant Scroll, since they do about the same job) with some kind of cantrip which can dig up lands. That would really gloss over the need to play a higher land count while trying to dig up land drop after land drop, for some of those match-ups where it's desired. I wouldn't play Serum Visions because it's awful with a bunch of shuffle effects, but maybe Sleight of Hand or Telling Time...something to compliment Halimar Depths is what I would like.
IV does 3 things for me in this deck:
1. It becomes an additional ritual. In fact, it's the best ritual when you flash it back on a Song/spliced Desperate. IV is the card that lets me make that gross 15+ red mana count, which means I can afford to cast those flashbacked 4-mana spells to finish the combo. Having a second IV means I can get away with one less ritual, which is why I moved from 13 down to 12.
2. It copies dig spells. If you Fork a Peer Through Depths and flashback the Fork, you will see 20 cards of your deck, take a select 4 from them, and basically stack most of that aspect of your deck. If you Fork a Gifts, you're getting most of the rituals out of your deck and into a handy location (be it the hand or 'yard). Also, copying Manamorphose is never really bad, since it really fixes your colors and it digs you a little deeper. A lot of the time, I find myself Forking a Peer EoT or Forking Teachings, which creates a faux-Gifts that usually finds the only things I was missing.
3. It fights through hate. When playing against countermagic, IV often acts like a RR-costing Muddle the Mixture that helps me stick EoT Gifts or win a counter-war to avoid dying to Splinter Twin. I have already mentioned this before, but it cannot be emphasized enough: unless your opponent is in the habit of prematurely popping his Tormod's Crypt (or similar grave-hate rock), you can use a Fork to copy your Past in Flames with his Crypt activation on the stack. Since the combo pieces are nearly all instants, you can flashback everything relevant in response to the Crypt activation and then let it resolve, then keep playing your spells in response to your original Past in Flames.
I also want to point out that most players these days are more accustomed to creature combat and board positions than they are to Stack interaction. Sure, anyone understands when you play with Leaks and Cancels that the last one to play a counterspell is probably the counter-war winner. But in this format, Remanding your own spells to get 2-for-1s or Forking rituals and then paying for Leaks with the Fork's mana...well, it takes some creativity and a lot of understanding of Stack mechanics. That's a skill I have developed from years of playing High Tide, where you literally kill your opponent with his game-winning play on the stack. I don't think it's out of reach for most players to grasp these kinds of concepts, but it's just not something that Wizards has emphasized much in their newer cards for the past couple of years (although it has started to come back a lot recently). Because of that, a lot of the competition--even pros--no longer understands the stack like they should.
These are the major differences (as I see them) between Karona's build and my build:
-I'm running Halimar Depths, which overlaps with my dig suite and lets me play a couple of extra lands.
-Karona is running Merchant Scroll as his primary engine, whereas I am using Gifts as my primary engine. This is why he runs less than a set of Gifts, and why my deck has some more singleton action going on. This is probably the biggest difference in our decks and our playing philosophies--I much prefer instants to even direct 2-mana tutors. This also ties into my extra Fork, which is generally more reliable when playing more at instant-speed. This makes me wonder about whether I should be playing more Teachings and less Gifts, since Teachings is basically a Merchant Scroll that finds Volcanic Fallouts and Slaughter Pact and Extirpate, for 2 more mana.
-We differ on backup finisher preference, although we both seem to agree that there should be a back-up finisher--and probably access to it in the maindeck. I'm of the opinion that Unburial Rites is not bad, but I think we can do better.
By the way, I'm having a very busy week, so it may be a while before I can get those tournament reports posted.
You may also know me as the guy in the art of Dark Confidant. No, not Bob Maher, the OTHER one.
When is it ever better than a pyrite ritual?
If your at 3 or less lands, pyrite gives you more mana at no cost.
If were are at 4or more, you needto sacrifice 4 lands to make it better, and then even then it is only colorless.
Because you need to sac lands, it makes flashing it back with PIF just says 1R storm +1 as you would have no lands to sac.
And then if we have 6+ lands in play, why would we need +3+3 mana for 2 and all our lands (Ritual gets us 3) at that point. Its possible, but in most of my goldfishes, I fizzle due to a lack of U if anything, but normally I have 4-8 R floating at the time of a Grapeshot for storm 20+ storm 21. Plus it seems weaker as a sorcery. I see the fringe case where it is better than pyrite, but I'm seeing 95% of the time pyrite will just be better
MOD::symw::symu::symb: Gifts
LEG::symg::symb: Infect
Think about this: what do you need in order to start comboing? You need:
-A Past in Flames
-A Manamorphose or some kind of land that lets you cast a Gifts from your yard
-Said Gifts in the yard (or just a lot of gas, if you need to go off now)
-Enough mana to cast the Past in Flames, cast at least one ritual after that, and then have enough mana to cast a ritual after you resolve the Gifts. (And this is where Mana Seism is clutch--it pays for that ripoff 3U Gifts and it chips in for the 3R/4R Past in Flames).
If your graveyard has a bunch of stuff in it, it's easier. For example, if you have a Desperate in your yard because you played a Gifts on turn 3, it's going to be useful once you Yawg Will. That's just how Yawg Will works. So Mana Seism seems counter-intuitive because you aren't going to use it early on to ramp into a Gifts, and it won't pull double duty on a combo turn--it's just going to be useful one time when you are all-in. But that's fine; if you go off with 4 lands on the table, it's still as powerful as a Seething Song or as a Pyretic cast once before the PiF and flashbacked after. You're spending 2 mana and getting 4, which is +2 acceleration. That's the power of Seething Song, which costs 1 more mana than Mana Seism. It's obviously better as the game goes on and you have more lands to dump into it, but the fact that it's a +2 ritual on 4 lands makes it worth the slot in my opinion.
The fact that it makes colorless mana isn't a big deal. I like to think of it as a very similar tool to Mana Drain...while it obviously isn't a counter spell, it will make you a bunch of colorless mana to help you cast those annoying expensive bombs like Past in Flames and Gifts Ungiven. Seething Song takes 2 colorless mana, and most everything else in the deck (aside from forks) is going to use your colorless mana while you're going off. Sure, you have to be careful with the order in which you cast your rituals and the way in which you float your mana, but that's just part of playing Storm combo.
I think if you're trying to cast this ritual multiple times to abuse the flashback mechanic, you're working too hard to abuse the flashback mechanic. The point is that you build a Gifts pile that gives you enough mana to work with, and this card will do that either when its spoonfed to your hand or when you start flashing everything back. You don't need to cast something like this twice. Turning 1R into 4 or 5 colorless is good enough to cut one corner on a mana cost and get you into that range where you can afford to cast the expensive spells in this deck. And that's why I gradually have cut down to just 12 ritual effects.
I don't believe that a combo deck needs to go off as soon as it has the chance. All I care about is winning the race by one turn. If I can play tempo games with my opponent in order to draw more cards, make more land drops, augment my graveyard, and position myself to ravage opposing combo hate, then that's what I want to do. I don't want to be going off on Turn X and trying to win as fast as possible; I just want to be ahead. The scoreboard only reads W's and L's to me. So I bide my time, wait until the opportune moment, and then pull the trigger. If it's time to go off, there should be no hesitation--go all in and end the game; this is what you have been working all game to accomplish.
This might be all wrong, but I'm going to try and see if I can maximize "the engine" by playing the max number of gifts and scrolls and see if the deck can operate like that. This is going to cut into ritual count and maybe counterspell and sweeper count minorly, but it might payoff, especially if there's a backup win condition in the maindeck. To reliably hit the gifts mana, I'm going to try with 23 lands and see how that works. I might even up it to 24. This should look a lot like LK's list, and would look a little like:
23 lands
4 Gifts Ungiven -Gifts branches are:
Reanimator package: 1 Unburial Rites + 1 Fatty (inkwell leviathan for now)
Storm Package: 1 Past in Flames + 1 Increasing Vengeance + Rituals
Defensive Package: 1 Volcanic Fallout + 1 Earthquake + 1 Engineered Explosives + (counter magic,a ritual, more gifts, Mystic Retrieval?)
4 Merchant Scroll
1 Mystical Teachings
4 Seething Song
4 Manamorphose
2 Desperate Ritual
1 Pyretic Ritual
1 Mana Seism
3 Remand
2 Spell Pierce
2 Spell Snare
1 Flex Slot (Mystic Retrieval or Past in Flames, most likely)
1 Grapeshot
The cards listed with numbers next to them in the Gifts packages are part of the deck.
So, I guess the real question is whether cutting down the number of critical combo components, namely the PiF, to one, is safe. It seems okay, but in order for the chain to continue after the first PiF, the Flashbacked Gifts needs to be able to get Grapeshot and remand. Mystic Retrieval does this fairly well, and lets you actually remand the Grapeshot if they force you to bin it, as a flashbacked grapeshot that gets remanded is actually exiled instead of moved to your hand. The one thing that might be a problem is that by adding all the lands you increase flooding risk, so you really do need to get one of your 9 cards that gets action. To that end, the Halimar Depths that INS has been running might make an appearance here too.
It feels kind of like a hybrid, and once I get home I'm going to load it up and see how it runs. I haven't even thought about the sideboard yet, so that might be an issue to think about, but I figure between the sweepers and the counterspells that are dead in a matchup a suitable card to take out can be found. If on the draw, the option of cutting land is very enticing in a build like this, as it can actually sort of afford it. I'll hopefully be able to tell you guys how it goes tomorrow
You may also know me as the guy in the art of Dark Confidant. No, not Bob Maher, the OTHER one.
I think you can compare it to Karona's initial use of Snapcaster Mage - it's just mediocre when you can do the same thing to your entire graveyard. I use Noxious Vapors sort of like how I envision you would use Mystic - when I absolutely need to draw something in my graveyard that PiF hasn't hit, like a Grapeshot. I can cast a manamorphose or remand (many times my own things) and draw the grapeshot for a very large number.
Regardless, this deck rarely fizzles. You shouldn't have too much issue with binned Grapeshots. Now, an exiled grapeshot is a bigger issue, but as game one the likelihood of encountering any grave hate is slim to none, it's a fairly safe gameplan.
EDH:
RNorin the WaryR <-Link! (Primer - Mono Red Control)
GUEdric, Spymaster of TrestUG <- Link! (Mini-Primer - Dredge)
Duel Commander:
WUGeist of Saint TraftUW <- Link! (Aggro-Control)
BGSkullbriar, the Walking GraveGB <- Link! (Aggro)
BUGDamia, Sage of StoneGUB <- Link! (Extinction Control)
Church of the Wary
Grapeshot
PiF
Remand
(something)
It could be:
Grapeshot
Mystic Retrieval
Remand
(something)
This change costs the same amount, if not less mana, and lets you put the grapeshot directly into your hand if they don't give it to you. This means that you don't have to get to 20 storm to go off, basically ever. This lets you run a few less rituals main deck, and frees up space for other things, such as land, more Gifts, more counter-spells, bullets etc.
Among the virtues of having two PiF instead of one is sheer redundancy. It also gives you better topdecks - if you need to go off NOW, what would you rather draw?
Having two past in flames also lets you set up your next turn. An early past in flames for hand sculpting and the incremental advantages of flashing back a repeal or similar disruption, and then a second one later for the win. It just seems like intentionally limiting your options isn't a good path to take.
EDH:
RNorin the WaryR <-Link! (Primer - Mono Red Control)
GUEdric, Spymaster of TrestUG <- Link! (Mini-Primer - Dredge)
Duel Commander:
WUGeist of Saint TraftUW <- Link! (Aggro-Control)
BGSkullbriar, the Walking GraveGB <- Link! (Aggro)
BUGDamia, Sage of StoneGUB <- Link! (Extinction Control)
Church of the Wary
I meant to mention this: At one point in the semis, I presented a Gifts pile of Past in Flames, Increasing Vengeance, Seething Song, and Desperate Ritual. My opponent gave me Past in Flames and Increasing vengeance, cutting me off of comboing out until I drew a ritual (I drew one in time). What do you think of that split? It was surprisingly effective, even though you're giving your opponent 2 Game ending bombs that way.
You may also know me as the guy in the art of Dark Confidant. No, not Bob Maher, the OTHER one.
That kind of feels like a similar pile I presented my opponent, but I always ensure my piles are going to either win the game or force my opponent to win the game. With that pile, I would have been perfectly fine gifting for PiF, Song, Desperate Ritual, and Mana Seism. Regardless of what happens, I am going to generate an obscene amount of mana and go off, and I've probably got a manamorphose by this point or I wouldn't have cast gifts for those specific cards
By the way, Mana Seism is nuts. I-N-S is completely correct about its application in the deck. It's generally 4+ mana by the time you go off, which pays for PiF by itself. If you haven't tried it already, you definitely should. And Noxious Vapors. That alone has won me several games by fetching that grapeshot from the yard and drawing into it with manamorphose or remand. I've even used it to get back a fetchland early on so I could ensure my 3rd land drop, which turned out to be a pretty good idea because that game ended with the possibility of 6 or 7 grapeshots at 23 storm for the first, 31 or 32 for the last.
EDH:
RNorin the WaryR <-Link! (Primer - Mono Red Control)
GUEdric, Spymaster of TrestUG <- Link! (Mini-Primer - Dredge)
Duel Commander:
WUGeist of Saint TraftUW <- Link! (Aggro-Control)
BGSkullbriar, the Walking GraveGB <- Link! (Aggro)
BUGDamia, Sage of StoneGUB <- Link! (Extinction Control)
Church of the Wary
4 Scalding Tarn
1 Misty Rainforest
1 Steam Vents
1 Blood Crypt
1 Watery Grave
1 Island
1 Snow-Covered Island
1 Mountain
2 Cascade Bluffs
1 Shivan Reef
1 Reflecting Pool
1 Dreadship Reef
1 Molten Slagheap
1 Calciform Pools
1 Fungal Reaches
4 Manamorphose
4 Seething Song
1 Mana Seism
1 Desperate Ritual
1 Pyretic Ritual
2 Increasing Vengeance
2 Mystical Teachings
2 Peer Through Depths
2 Past in Flames
1 Noxious Revival
1 Grapeshot
4 Remand
1 Spell Pierce
1 Dispel
1 Cryptic Command
1 Gigadrowse
1 Wipe Away
1 Engineered Explosives
1 Slaughter Pact
1 Volcanic Fallout
1 Hurkyl's Recall
1 Shattering Spree
1 Shatterstorm
1 Spellskite
1 Combust
1 Extirpate
1 Mindbreak Trap
1 Commandeer
2 Spell Snare
1 Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir
1 Meloku the Clouded Mirror
1 Ignite Memories
1 Detritivore
1 Volcanic Awakening
I have gone down to 11 rituals, in favor of a second maindeck Teachings. I find myself boarding out those 2-mana rituals all the time anyways, so clearly the deck can handle comboing with a lower critical mass of mana. I also decided that Repeal was pretty lackluster in this metagame (aside from cute tricks against Delver), so I cut it for Wipe Away--which is a hard out to Splinter Twin and allows me to run one less spot removal spell in the board to that end.
The board is about 2/3 obvious cards and 1/3 madness. I think the countermagic and removal is all pretty straightforward, and the Spellskite is clearly a nod to the Twin match-up. As for the curve balls:
-I chose Ignite Memories as the back-up combo finisher because most people seem to have forgotten about this card, and that makes it very dangerous. Yes, it's chance-based, but this is also a metagame where people are playing Emrakuls and a lot of 3-4 drops. If my opponent misses a land drop or if he's playing something like Tron, he's probably not going to give this to me in a Gifts pile--which means Noxious/Ignite Memories/X/Y is a pile that gives me X/Y, and I'm totally cool with directly tutoring 2 cards that I want. If my opponent's hand is all 3-drops, a storm of 7 will win the game--6 if he shocked earlier. It's worth a sideboard slot over Warrens, which is a well-known quantity (and is adversely affected by the rise of Jund Charms).
-Teferi is basically Gigadrowse on legs, but it also allows the Teachings engine to directly find some kind of creature as your back-up win condition. Since none of this requires tapping out or a resolved Gifts, it has an edge over the Unburial Rites plan. Teferi is really good against any kind of control or combo deck, since it gives you complete control over the stack if it resolves.
-Meloku has proven to be the most useful creature bomb from my testing with this metagame. If your opponent boards out his removal, Meloku will basically lock out a board position by itself and kill your opponent with an army of fliers. It's also blue, which means it's pitch-able to Commandeer. That's why I like it over Bogardan Hellkite--which does a similar job (change the dynamics of a board position, then beatdown in the air), but doesn't have as much overall synergy with the deck. Also to be noted: Meloku and Halimar Depths is not just a cute trick; it's a full-blown Sensei's Divining Top.
-Detritivore is a tool in attrition wars, and it's also a back-up win condition in a lot of cases. Storing up a couple of times, then suspending this for 4 on turn 6...it's going to Geddon your opponent or at least put him down a lot of mana. It's a tap-out play, but it's also uncounterable and there are only 3 (unplayed) answers in the format to a suspend card like this. This card is a bit dangerous against Tron because they can roll a bomb of their own while you're tapped out, but that doesn't make it a bad tool. You just have to weigh the consequences. If they board into a full-on prison deck, this is my go-to plan. Also notable: this counts fetchlands and Wasteland effects, so it's not that bad to just roll it for cheap against Zoo or any other Knight of the Reliquary-based deck. It'll kill a couple of lands and then be bigger than their Goyfs.
-Volcanic Awakening is an experiment that I was trying against Tron, and I really liked it. I think of it as the dedicated slot against Tron, and I'm fine with giving that match-up one slot in the board. I bring it in against a few other decks, too...it's good alongside the Detritivore plan to just play a very attrition-based war where you kill them off with Teferi/Meloku. This card is also good at forcing your opponent into holding all his higher-drop spells, which means Ignite Memories a turn or two after VAwakening will probably be lethal. At worst, this is the kind of card that you throw into a Gifts pile to scare the crap out of your opponent, because it presents a threat that isn't solved by grave hate or board sweepers and it makes people start countering spells they otherwise wouldn't, while dealing with Past in Flames.
EDIT: I am playing the above list tomorrow at a PTQ. Here are the only debates left for me, today:
-I'm on board with 4 storage lands, but I'm not sure whether it's better to play 4 different ones or to just play R/B and U/B ones. Reflecting Pool becomes a black dual land with black storage lands, and that's relevant for a few cards in the deck (Teachings, Extirpate, Slaughter Pact). I'm currently leaning towards still having that 3-4 storage land Gifts pile, which completely destroys control decks that want to play the long game. I'm also not complaining about the ability to get an Explosives down at 4 mana when needed, thanks to the 2 off-color storage lands and the 4 Manamorphose...it makes for another built-in out to Leyline of Sanctity (which shuts down Gifts).
-The only other cards I really want to put into the deck are 1-2 more Volcanic Fallout and 1 more Spell Snare. I wouldn't mind fitting that Snare into the maindeck, but I'm not cutting any of the existing MD counters because they're all way too important for a number of specific jobs. I also found that I was winning games against Delver decks and all kinds of other aggro-control variants without multiple Fallouts, so that's why they didn't make it into this cut of the board. I might try to fit in one or two Fallouts somewhere, just to get that really strong edge against beats+disruption decks, but I really don't know what I would cut. The last change I made t my board was taking out that second Fallout for a Shatterstorm, which is better against Etched Champion, Arcbound Ravager, and the inevitable 8-9 damage from Galvanic/Shrapnel Blast after a fallout takes me down from double digits to single ones.
Everything else is prettymuch solid, in my book. I am very comfortable with this configuration of the deck. This seems to be the right balance of control and combo for me, and there is no question of inevitability this build represents. I feel like I'm playing a completely different game with this deck...it's more like macro Starcraft than it is Magic, for those who get the reference.
I like the idea of Meloku. I still think my configuration is quite strong, but I should start testing a few more of your choices. The Storage Lands, Mystical Teachings, and Increasing Vengeance were all very helpful.
You may also know me as the guy in the art of Dark Confidant. No, not Bob Maher, the OTHER one.
I definitely picked up a lot of good ideas from testing your build, too. I liked Merchant Scroll a lot, but ended up going with more of instant-speed stuff...which is why I'm running a pair of Teachings. I feel like Teachings is just a big Merchant Scroll--you're paying twice the mana but getting all kinds of rewards. Of course, I have experience playing with Merchant Scroll in Vintage (and its cousin, Cunning Wish in multiple formats), and I have played tons and tons of games with Teachings, so I obviously knew about both those engines...but your build definitely made me think a lot more about approaching the singleton concept and figuring out how to build my draw suite. I didn't end up using Merchant Scrolls in my build, but the concept of Scroll-->Mindbreak Trap or Scroll-->Hurkyll's Recall reminded me of the power that tutors represent, in terms of sideboard strategy.
I should be able to get tournament reports up some time this weekend.
You may also know me as the guy in the art of Dark Confidant. No, not Bob Maher, the OTHER one.
By the way, since adding the second Teachings, I've been finding that it's honestly really strong for combo turns. The 2 Increasing Vengeances allow some ridiculous mana counts with Songs, so I'll often use Teachings to get either IV or Song and it's all I really need in order to go off. In fact, while I'm starting my combo turn, I find myself using the Teachings before Past in Flames to get more gas into action. A play I really like is this:
Get to 6 mana with at least one blue from Manamorphose/an open Island
Cast Song and Vengeance it
Get RRRRR from Vengeance, leaving Song on the stack
Tap that spare Island and cast Teachings with Song still on the stack, and RR in the pool
Get the other Increasing Vengeance and cast it on the Song
Let both resolve for RRRRR RRRRR
Cast Past in Flames with 6 red, Song, double double fork to work with in the yard
You need a Manamorphose to get blue again, but it's assumed it's somewhere in the yard at that point. From there, you get UU, Teachings for Gifts, Gifts and double Fork it, game over. That's kinda mana-intensive on paper, but it's a lot more practical and it really makes me happy that I've gone up to a second Teachings in the main. I was concerned about Teachings being somewhat dead or weak for combo turns when I put it in, but the more I use it, the more I'm impressed by it.
And good grief, is it ever good with Increasing Vengeance. I'm forking my Teachings EoT all the time, now, when I play the control game and wind up with those two cards and no other combo gas...which usually leads to combo gas or a few functionally Time Walk turns for me in the near future.
Extremely impressed with the development of your build INS. Isn't it amazing that once people broke away from the UR Storm thread that the deck has gone this far?
This deck is so similar to Mean Deck Storm from Vintage that it is scary. Such amazing redundancy against hate. Not to mention that most people simply can't pilot this build. I built your list this morning and tried it out with some guys who are testing for the Allentown PA PTQ. By the end of our testing people wanted the list to try it out. I handed it over to a friend who failed terrible every game with it. You're going to catch a ton of people off guard. Which in my experience is how you win big events. Good luck and please for the love of all things holy prove unkyunk wrong.
Cockatrice username: Blackcat77
I agree. Repeal is not only mana hungry, it's counterable. Wipe Away deals with the problem for exactly three mana, all the time, any time. I also run Echoing Truth main, but the threat of Iona is almost enough reason to try out Slaughter Pact, which is my assumption for it's main inclusion. No one expects black removal in a largely U/R deck.
However, I've yet to actually lose with a resolved Iona, naming either blue OR red. This deck is capable of either tutoring for bounce with blue, or just killing them with red. Quite nice.
I'm still sticking with ETW in the side, but this is an interesting idea that might have some merit to it. Generally, I'm casting grapeshot at 30 or 40 storm (mostly because I can) which is clearly quite lethal. As this is a sideboard option, I assume it's for the chance that your opponent extirpate's your grapeshot somehow and you need a way to storm out and win anyways. I'm not sure if this is worth a sideboard spot, but I'm willing to try it.
Agree completely with Teferi in the board. I was never a fan of gigadrowse, mostly due to it's mana requirements, but teferi is a nice catchall that does turn your next Mystical Teachings into a wincon. I'm currently running one Teachings and one Scroll, partially as a gifts protection addition, but if I'm going to try for a Teferi//Teachings win-post board in some cases, your two teachings make more sense.
Detritivore is interesting tech, but I think it might be too slow to combat the archetype you've discussed. While this is ticking down from the two or three counters you've stacked onto it, they're attempting to beat your face in and kill you, assuming they understand the threat this deck poses.
Volcanic Awakening.. kind of feels clunky. It's a blowout assuming your opponent kept a greedy hand, and in the event you're casting this, you're probably able to combo out anyways, barring something unforseeable. I don't think intentionally neutering your chances of winning for some cute anti-tron tech is going to work well.
I'm personally trying Blood Moons to combat tron, as to be perfectly honest, Moons don't really hurt. (At least my more basic-oriented list doesn't mind them so much)
You're in line with double teachings? I've found them to be great postboard, but preboard are little more than gifts tutors. I'm running a one teaching, one scroll split at the moment. Gifting for a Remand, Dispel, Teaching or noxious vapors, and Scroll pretty much ensures you're going to get the protection you need.
Some other thoughts on sweepers:
My sweepers at the moment are:
1 Volcanic Fallout
1 Slagstorm
1 Echoing Truth (sort of)
and i've been looking at the idea of Engineered Explosives one more time. At first, I was a little put-off by it's cost compared to the other options, but it's flexibility might be worth it. Manamorphose basically means you can sweep for up to five, and hits non-creatures as well. I mean, forcing a spellbomb activation or killing a leyline seems top-class, but as I've seen mostly creature-based decks i've stuck with the slagstorm for now.
How useful is EE, and is it a better option over slagstorm in our even/bad matchups? Should I run it in addition to Fallout and Slagstorm? I've got it in the side right now, but I am wondering if it is really mainboardable over or alongside my other options.
Because all of this is pointless without a decklist:
2 Desperate Ritual
2 Dispel
1 Echoing Truth
4 Gifts Ungiven
2 Increasing Vengeance
4 Manamorphose
1 Mystical Teachings
1 Noxious Revival
2 Peer Through Depths
1 Pyretic Ritual
4 Remand
4 Seething Song
2 Spell Pierce
1 Volcanic Fallout
1 Wipe Away
1 Grapeshot
1 Mana Seism
1 Merchant Scroll
2 Past in Flames
1 Slagstorm
Lands - 22
1 Breeding Pool
2 Cascade Bluffs
1 Dreadship Reef
1 Fungal Reaches
4 Halimar Depths
4 Island
1 Misty Rainforest
1 Mountain
4 Scalding Tarn
2 Steam Vents
1 Watery Grave
1 Engineered Explosives
1 Meloku the Clouded Mirror
1 Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir
2 Blood Moon
2 Combust
1 Extirpate
1 Hurkyl's Recall
1 Slaughter Pact
2 Spell Snare
1 Trickbind
1 Volcanic Fallout
1 Empty the Warrens
Sideboard is tentative.
EDH:
RNorin the WaryR <-Link! (Primer - Mono Red Control)
GUEdric, Spymaster of TrestUG <- Link! (Mini-Primer - Dredge)
Duel Commander:
WUGeist of Saint TraftUW <- Link! (Aggro-Control)
BGSkullbriar, the Walking GraveGB <- Link! (Aggro)
BUGDamia, Sage of StoneGUB <- Link! (Extinction Control)
Church of the Wary
Well, hopefully I can pilot it tomorrow. I've been conditioning myself by playing the deck while really tired and/or drunk, so that should help for later rounds when my brain starts to wear down. Unfortunately, I got a little under 4 hours of sleep, and now I'm wide awake at 3 AM the morning before this tournament. (Oh Sleeping Disorders, what would I ever do without you? :mad:) Normally, I bring a 4-pack of Rockstars with me to every tournament, but this might be a day to bring two packs instead.... That's all right, though. I have tons of practice with this deck and I firmly believe it is the most powerful consistent deck in the format.
While Iona was a major reason for including it, Slaughter Pact is also a strong out to Splinter Twin. Post-board, the Gifts package for Twin is:
Slaughter Pact
Wipe Away
Combust
Spellskite
Good luck beating that with crappy 2U flash creatures.
SPact is additionally the go-to out to Canonist and most other hatebears. It's especially good if you don't feel like the game needs to go on another turn, in which case it'll solve the problem for free and generate +1 storm (+2 if you flash it back on some random other threat with Past in Flames).
I've played through Iona a number of times with Cryptic-bounce or with Grapeshot for 7, after it has landed. However, since Slaughter Pact is such a useful card for Splinter Twin and for sideboard plans against hatebears, you might as well run it--and if it's in the deck, it might as well be main to hose Iona/Twin. At worst, you can use it to kill a Goyf or Delver or Vendilion Clique, buying yourself time.
It is indeed a nod to Grapeshot being Extirpated, as well as a generally dangerous threat for Gifts piles.
Gigadrowse is especially strong against balls-out aggression (Red decks and Affinity) and against any kind of counterspell-based deck. It's also a way to beat a lot of grave hate effects on your combo turn, since you can use it to tap down Relic/Nihil Spellbomb/Crypt, or to tap down a (Jund deck's) lands so that Jund Charm/Extirpate isn't actually cast-able when you go off.
If you can spend one turn suspending and then clean up the board the next turn, that's ideal. It's also a pretty good ritual sink--you can translate Seething Song into 2 destroyed lands. This is a dangerous threat for those match-ups where you're not going to lose if you tap out for one big bomb, when you're on more of an attrition/control game-plan. It's not something I board in automatically in any match-up; it's there for games when I want a serious change of gameplan to throw my opponent off.
Moon doesn't really hurt this deck. However, Moon also doesn't actually remove lands from the table. If your opponent's deck isn't a pile of crap, he'll fetch a basic or two and have plenty of room to work with under the Moon--either that, or he can probably just operate underneath it. All Tron has to do is play a Signet, and Moon is basically useless. Sure, you stopped the Tron lands from making a lot of colorless mana for the immediate future, but Tron is a deck designed to use tons of colorless lands. It's going to get great usage out of all that red mana from its nonbasics.
Volcanic Awakening is stronger because it's going to actually blow up multiple lands. If you storm it for even just 3, that's not a large investment, and it can put your opponent on a very small economy. It also happens to blow up basic lands, which makes it infinitely better than Blood Moon when facing Faeries or Teachings or any other type of heavy-Island deck. Being counter spell-resistent is also a big plus...if your opponent starts countering every ritual he sees, he's going to lose the game by running out of gas. If he counters the Awakening with anything other than a Mindbreak Trap (which can be worked around), he has to use multiple counters and/or just fight with countermagic to keep some resources intact on the table. And if he really forces counter-wars on your combo turn because he's expecting Past in Flames, you can wreck him by using that jacked-up storm count to Geddon his entire manabase.
I felt like they were just extra Gifts for this deck, but the more I drew them, the more I realized they were as good or better in many situations. You're either getting the correct answer with Teachings, or you're getting that critical combo part so you can go off next turn. It's smoother than you would think on paper--I know this because I personally thought the second would really slow the deck down when I initially put it in, but it turned out that that wasn't actually the case.
A big part of the strength of that maindeck second Teachings is that, while it's slower than Merchant Scroll, it also happens to save deck space. I think the second Teachings should be present somewhere in the 75, so I initially put it in my sideboard for attrition wars. However, deck space is at a premium for this deck, That extra slot in the board could be a Spell Snare or a Volcanic Fallout, or a Shatterstorm or Extirpate. The most difficult aspect of tuning this deck has been trying to conserve deck space by finding the minimal number of rituals, the minimal number of engine parts and finishers, and cards which overlap their utility across multiple match-ups. For me, moving that SB Teachings into the main is a pretty obvious choice after testing it and looking in hindsight--I went from a 14 card sideboard to a 15 card sideboard.
ETruth is probably the answer I miss most in the main, but I think the deck is fine without is because it's not cold to Blood Moon (gotta love Manamorphose) and it already has some really good answers to an army of 1/1 or 2/2 tokens. If you're in the Scroll plan, it makes more sense because you can Teachings for Volcanic Fallout but you cannot Scroll for it. I think that's probably why I ended up just dropping ETruth from my main...it just wasn't necessary anymore.
Slagstorm is fine, but I ultimately just cut mine (which was in my sideboard) for a Shatterstorm, mostly because I don't really care about wiping the board against most any aggro deck besides Affinity. For the most part, putting a Volcanic Fallout into the pile is a tool I use to gain leverage. If I get it, I kill 3 creatures against whatever creature deck I'm facing, and my opponent is sent back to the stone age. If I get 2/3 of the other cards, I combo off and my opponent has a swift chariot ride to Elysium. I mean, if I had space, I would definitely play a Slagstorm--but if I had space, my sideboard would be 50 cards large.
Put an EE in your maindeck and don't look back. It kills tokens and Memnites and Opals, it kills an army of 1-drops (for boros/fighting mana dorks), it kills Cranial Plating(s), and it can stretch to kill 3-4 mana annoying lock pieces--and it does that EoT, the way you want it to happen. If you are comboing off, you can cast it for 0 to ramp your storm count, and then you can Remand it to use your Remands as 2-mana cyclers which generate +2 storm each while you're digging for gas. You can set it on 1 or 2 to force your opponent into playing more expensive cards into Remands. You can set it on 1 to force your opponent into only playing one 1-drop for a few turns, then when he plays three 2-drops you EoT bounce your Explosives, untap and set it for 2 and get a 3-for-1. And, most of the time, you're popping Explosives EoT, so you're leaving mana open. This deck is built upon the concept of having options, and no other non-counterspell answer in the format gives you more options than Engineered Explosives
It's definitely similar to my list, so I have to like it. I understand all of the choices you have made differently here, so I don't really have any complaints. I do want to point out that you should play a 2/2 split of Islands and Snow Islands, though, since there is absolutely no downside and you might find yourself in situations where you want to Gifts for multiple basic Islands. You are boarding Blood Moons, after all. You can search for 2 different fetches, but considering the lack of downside attached to snow basics...just upgrade half your Islands.
Am I goldfishing it correctly?
It seems when I win I end up noxtious revival to put grapeshot on top of the deck, manamorphose it into hand, and then cast it and remanding it back to hand 2-4 times. when the storm count is around 13-15.
I guess winning is winning. But if there is another scenerio that allows you to win as I basically keep doing the same loop over and over again despite trying to get lethal a different way..
It seems like its
EoT teachings for gifts
Eot gifts for
*seething song
*past in flames
*increasing vengence
*manamorphose
(substitute a ritual if PiF is in hand)
If need be wait a turn to gigadrowse/teaching for drowse.
ramp using above spells to approx 15-18 Red mana.
Cast manamorpose for UU
Cast gifts for
*Grapeshot
*revival
*manamorphose
*remand
if need be recast past in flames leaving you with about 6 mana.
which allows you revival grapeshot and manamorphose into it and then grapeshot/remand 2-3 times (depending if you needed to recast PiF)
MOD::symw::symu::symb: Gifts
LEG::symg::symb: Infect
I'll have to play around with it, I think I want to cut one of the spell pierces or dispels anyways (maybe even a ritual) so that gives me a spot.
Another "I suppose I'll have to try it" response.
This is sufficient reason for me to test Volcanic and drop the moons. If all is agreeable, that's another sideboard slot open, and I'm perfectly fine with that. Much as you said, there have been times Moon has been great, and others that it has been just a small speed-bump. However, an additional sideboard slot is worth more than a 50/50 useage rate, so once more, I will test it.
While testing, I've come to a similar conclusion. Merchant Scroll was great while setting up to a combo, or if you needed to have that bounce NOW, but mid-combo it's pretty much always a dead draw. As it's a sorcery, you can't use it in response to your opponent's counter to find a counter of your own. As it's restricted to blue, I can't look for a fallout or a manamorphose when I need it.
Teachings, though more expensive, is conductive to a mostly instant speed deck, that tries to win the turn before your opponent's deck does. While explaining this strategy to some other players, they were too engrossed in UR Storm's "WIN NOW" plan instead of the "Just win" plan that this follows, and they weren't able to understand a lot of the choices in the deck. That's just fine by me, because if they don't know what to hit, they can't defend against it post-board. Teachings is better for the post-board plan (which is, after all, 66% of your matches) which gives it yet one more nod.
Echoing Truth is my nod to token decks in the area, among others. I dig it hard. With merchant scroll now cut from the deck, I thought that this might fade away in favor of something else, perhaps the slaughter pact. Instead, I find I'm using it just as often. I don't think I could see myself cutting it in the near future, simply on the basis of how useful it is to snag multiples. I tried Cryptic Command, but the UUU was too stressful on me to reach it by turn 4 or 5 without some serious Manamorphosing. I'm not a fan of that.
All completely correct. I've placed the EE main instead of the slagstorm, and found myself wanting EE more than I ever wanted slagstorm. Versatility is the name of the game, and this does it quite well. +1 sideboard slot.
There really isn't a "correct" goldfish. I personally prefer to combo off with at least Ux floating into the past in flames (or through as much of it as I can) to deal with well-timed counterspells that seek to thwart me. Many times, this pretty much forces me to get the storm to insane levels, and kill with a grapeshot for more than lethal. martyr-proc doesn't have much of a chance against a storm deck capable of dealing upwards of 100 damage when it feels like it.
My favorite style is to seek out at least 6r and 2u floating, then grapeshot at a low count, maybe 4 or 5, then increasing vengeance and flash it back for the kill. It's easy, and feels good man.
Pyretic Ritual - RRR - 1
Seething Song - RRRRR - 2
Manamorphose - UURRR - 3
Desperate Ritual - UURRRR - 4
Seething Song - UURRRRRRR - 5
Grapeshot - UURRRRR - 6
Increasing Vengeance - UURRR - 7 Deal 7 to opponent.
Increasing Vengeance - 8 Deal 16 to opponent.
Grapeshot resolves, kill your opponent if they gained any life.
Best part, it doesn't require a past in flames and only two mana. If they try to counter anything past the manamorphose, you can kill them anyways with the extra storm added... but you should probably wait and go off with a bit of extra mana to provide a split-second counter if you're playing a blue deck. If they've cracked a fetch, it's even easier. Post-board I find myself gunning for this setup the most often, as it completely dodges the graveyard hate that so annoys past in flames users. And if you do have a past in flames.. well. Increasing Vengeance on the Song, and you're in business.
Gifting for this setup is incredibly easy, too. If you've got even two pieces in your hand, EOT gifts for the rest pretty much seals it.
EDH:
RNorin the WaryR <-Link! (Primer - Mono Red Control)
GUEdric, Spymaster of TrestUG <- Link! (Mini-Primer - Dredge)
Duel Commander:
WUGeist of Saint TraftUW <- Link! (Aggro-Control)
BGSkullbriar, the Walking GraveGB <- Link! (Aggro)
BUGDamia, Sage of StoneGUB <- Link! (Extinction Control)
Church of the Wary