Thanks! And they went...something haha. It was real rough. Hopefully I did juuuuuust well enough for the pass.
Yeah it was filmed a couple weeks before my most recent updates, which is a bit awkward for that reason.
He sort of is, though I wouldn't phrase it as an answer, and more as a play pattern. I like to tutor for him if I have a single creature tutor and maybe a grindy card, with the rest of my resources being ramp. Getting a mana advantage early and then tanking under a Sylvan Library or with Leovold + Tymna is a great spot to be in.
Hahaha thanks, I think I will. And don't feel too bad. I thought I would be casting Doomsday way more than I normally do. If I was going to shy away from storm, I would still probably leave in Hurkyl's to fight stax decks or harass Teferi. And I would definitely turn Into the Roil into Cyclonic Rift at that point. And slot in Dramatic Scepter combo and such. But that's a lot of changes that I don't think are warranted right now, given how powerful the storm kill really is in this deck.
Honestly, nothing has really underperformed for me. Even Mind's Desire was doing it's job excellently for me while it was in the deck. Doomsday is actually the least used of my kill cards, with Bomberman being 1 and storm being 2. I haven't gotten a chance to slot in either of those two yet, as I haven't been playing much lately (PhD qualifying exams coming up next week) so I haven't given it much thought yet. Remand is still only Remand because "mana issues" but it probably will turn into Counterspell the next time I chew through my list again, maybe in a week or two. I am 100% open to suggestions, and even prefer suggestions from newer players because they don't have entrenched opinions. If the suggestions isn't one I like, I may even change opinions while I'm trying to argue in favor of the card I thought I wanted to keep, and so on. Season 2, while technically not specified, will likely end up starting sometime in May or June. We'll be posting announcements about it when Season 1 is wrapping up. While I don't want to spoiler future episodes, I think I might be able to squeeze another game in with this deck before the end of the season, but we shall see.
I have, and it's one of the main cards I want to find room for next. I'm still testing, so I'm not sure what to do about it yet. In a similar vein, Dark Confidant is also on my watch list for cards to cram in. We try and go on a King of the Hill type system, so if you reverse Episode 4 and 5 (since those got released in reverse order), I won two in a row and lost the third, forcing me to switch off. Don't worry though, it'll absolutely be coming back, but it might take until Season 2 depending on how things break! That isn't totally against the LabMen, since I do play pickup games with other people on the Discord, but the majority of the games do tend to end up being mostly LabMen, for whatever reason. I do admit that it is extremely good against our current meta, which is part of the reason for the bizzarely high win rate. Tasigur certainly wins a decent amount, but I haven;t been paying super close attention to the other players deck to try and track their stats. I'm going to start actively tracking all my decks win stats going forward to figure these things out, though.
Thank you! Definitely got blasted that game. I'm not a fantastic Jeleva pilot yet, but things definitely broke the wrong way that game. Wait until you see my next deck choice, I bet you'll never be able to guess it hahaha! Thank you for all the kind words! Look forward to even more improvements this season, and plenty more with Season 2!
Ah not at all! It's probably just a really good meta for this type of list to be in. Since no one else really plays this deck (that I know of) it needs a lot more testing to be able to get fully vetted. My main goal with this primer was to attract enough interest to have multiple players to discuss and improve the deck with!
Hahaha I am, yeah! In off camera games my record is even better, or, well, larger. I probably have something like a 66% win rate with it across tens of games. We're really enjoying our little project at this point. It's gotten way bigger way faster than we expected, glad you're enjoying it! I know most people don't have competitive scenes near them, that's why we all started playing over Discord! If you have access to a webcam and computer (though even a phone camera can work) you should join and play!
Heh, I wouldn't say I'm any better honestly. I don't honestly know about Into the Roil vs. Cyclonic Rift. I don't usually have enough mana to Overload, but that potential upside might really be better than drawing a card. It's likely going to be a slot I swap back and forth between the two forever and never really come to a conclusion on. Turnabout isn't as necessary in those lists as they run less fat, inherently, than I do due to the presence of Auriok Salvagers and a couple green "midrangey" cards. Having a card that's a gigantic storm-off ritual has proven useful, but I can totally see cutting it. Those lists do run a lot more artifacts than I do, but I could be totally wrong in omitting Mana Vault and Grim Monolith. The only real way to know for sure is to try, so if you do run the list with those cuts, I would love to hear how it turns out!!
Has Mana Vault or Grim Monolith been considered for the deck?
I've thought about Mana Vault a bit, but in practice, I'm using less and less colorless mana as I play, so while Mana Crypt and Sol Ring make the cut, I don't think Mana Vault does, and Grim Monolith certainly doesn't. I was actually just reconsidering Mana Vault in this deck like an hour ago, funny you should ask now. If I was running more artifacts, or things like Helm of Awakening, Mana Vault might be good enough. Or if I were trying to go off with Monolith combos, obviously Grim Monolith would be worth it. But right now that's not where I think this deck wants to be at.
Mental Misstep requires inclusion in literally every competitive list that can run it. So many of the most powerful cards cost 1 mana that countering one for free is a must have. I would never exclude Misstep, as the 'situation' it is most useful in is when your opponents are casting 20+% of their deck.
Could Reality Spasm work as a one shot Candelabra? I mean there is magus of the candelabra as well but hes rather bad.
Reality Spasm seems worse than Magus of the Candelabra I think, because of our ability to use Candelabra multiple times in a turn. Theoretically, you can Turnabout on creatures if you have a couple dorks and the Magus and get a similar effect.
Is the deck playable without Candelabra? And if so what would you replace it with?
Also could paradox engine work in something like this?
Thanks for taking the time to respond!
The deck is certainly playable without Candelabra, the High Tide into Aetherflux line is just much harder to achieve without it. Still doable though. Honestly, I'm not sure what I'd replace with it. Some kind of efficient draw filtering spell I think. And Paradox Engine could work, but it's not really needed with the main lines we take, so it's pretty bad as a splash card since it makes Ad Nauseam somewhat worse. In a list dedicated to some kind of Paradox Engine combo, I'm sure it would be just fine. This isn't quite that deck, though.
I only have some minor experience playing with Skuloth's list, so I can't be 100% confident about a comparison, but I can certainly give some impressions. Zur is such a strong deck because of the sheer inevitability of the combo. It's not the fastest deck in the format, but it is fast enough to keep up. It draws its power from being able to basically guarantee you a turn 4-6 win off the back of Zur swing for Necro. Even if you keep a hand of just straight acceleration, you can likely win on turn 4. This deck does not have that guarantee of a clock. We draw a lot of power from Tymna or Thrasios over the course of a long game, and can facilitate that with Leovold, but we can't just swing and surprise Necro to win. We have to build to it. That being said, if you can prevent the casting of Ad Nauseam/Doomsday and remove Zur before the first attack, the deck struggles to keep going, from what I have experienced. We have much more resilience for win attempts 3+ than Zur does, and I think our attempt 1 can be just a smidge faster. Against sphere effects, Zur probably has the edge because Necroing for a win will generall set you up to deal with the sphere and then kill, without being too stymied by them. We don't have that luxury. Against any other prison effects, I feel we are the stronger deck, as we have a better grindy game thanks to our green cards and Tymna. Hopefully that helps answer some of your questions. There will be a Laboratory Maniac Deck Tech featuring this list soon, so that should have some additional explanations, and maybe help answer lingering questions! Feel free to ask more on here, though!
Hey, so sorta. Mostly no, but a bit yes. I firmly believe there is no strongest deck, as everything is super meta dependent. That being said, I've had a ton of success with this deck in a diverse enough meta to say it has game against everything, and I've had a ton of fun playing it. So in that sense, yeah I think it's the best. It's good enough that if you enjoy this style of play, you'll be able to win a fair amount and have fun doing it. That is how I would define the "best" deck, honestly. Nothing is going to reasonably win more than 25-33% of the time, but if you can hit that mark and have fun, it's the best for you.
hey Myojiin what do you think about an oath of druids package in this deck?
yes this would need to cut 7 creatures:
Hey! I've actually tried several different Oath of Druid builds, and this is 100% not one I really want. I've always used it to try and assemble Bomberman, and this is definitely the color set to do it in, but this deck is so much stronger and faster and less gimmicky than that would make it. The elves really do provide a lot of quality mana acceleration that rocks can't do for the same cost. While I could find arguments to cut JVP and Leovold, I would almost never want to cut LabMan. He really does make Doomsday a lot better.
Making a Dramatic Scepter totally spell reliant version of this could work, though, I personally just don't like getting rid of all of the mana dorks and Leovold to enable a spell that hasn't shown to be very good for me in testing. I would definitely encourage you to try it, though. I can help you tweak it if you want to PM me a decklist!
Yeah it was filmed a couple weeks before my most recent updates, which is a bit awkward for that reason.
He sort of is, though I wouldn't phrase it as an answer, and more as a play pattern. I like to tutor for him if I have a single creature tutor and maybe a grindy card, with the rest of my resources being ramp. Getting a mana advantage early and then tanking under a Sylvan Library or with Leovold + Tymna is a great spot to be in.
Thank you! Definitely got blasted that game. I'm not a fantastic Jeleva pilot yet, but things definitely broke the wrong way that game. Wait until you see my next deck choice, I bet you'll never be able to guess it hahaha! Thank you for all the kind words! Look forward to even more improvements this season, and plenty more with Season 2!
I've thought about Mana Vault a bit, but in practice, I'm using less and less colorless mana as I play, so while Mana Crypt and Sol Ring make the cut, I don't think Mana Vault does, and Grim Monolith certainly doesn't. I was actually just reconsidering Mana Vault in this deck like an hour ago, funny you should ask now. If I was running more artifacts, or things like Helm of Awakening, Mana Vault might be good enough. Or if I were trying to go off with Monolith combos, obviously Grim Monolith would be worth it. But right now that's not where I think this deck wants to be at.
Mental Misstep requires inclusion in literally every competitive list that can run it. So many of the most powerful cards cost 1 mana that countering one for free is a must have. I would never exclude Misstep, as the 'situation' it is most useful in is when your opponents are casting 20+% of their deck.
Reality Spasm seems worse than Magus of the Candelabra I think, because of our ability to use Candelabra multiple times in a turn. Theoretically, you can Turnabout on creatures if you have a couple dorks and the Magus and get a similar effect.
The deck is certainly playable without Candelabra, the High Tide into Aetherflux line is just much harder to achieve without it. Still doable though. Honestly, I'm not sure what I'd replace with it. Some kind of efficient draw filtering spell I think. And Paradox Engine could work, but it's not really needed with the main lines we take, so it's pretty bad as a splash card since it makes Ad Nauseam somewhat worse. In a list dedicated to some kind of Paradox Engine combo, I'm sure it would be just fine. This isn't quite that deck, though.
Hey! I've actually tried several different Oath of Druid builds, and this is 100% not one I really want. I've always used it to try and assemble Bomberman, and this is definitely the color set to do it in, but this deck is so much stronger and faster and less gimmicky than that would make it. The elves really do provide a lot of quality mana acceleration that rocks can't do for the same cost. While I could find arguments to cut JVP and Leovold, I would almost never want to cut LabMan. He really does make Doomsday a lot better.
Making a Dramatic Scepter totally spell reliant version of this could work, though, I personally just don't like getting rid of all of the mana dorks and Leovold to enable a spell that hasn't shown to be very good for me in testing. I would definitely encourage you to try it, though. I can help you tweak it if you want to PM me a decklist!