1. Tidehollow resolves, ETB effect (1st triggered ability) goes on stack.
2. With ability on stack, hold priority, activate Displacer ability.
3. Tidehollow LTB effect (2nd triggered ability) goes on stack.
4. Tidehollow LTB effect (2nd triggered ability) resolves (no card to return).
5. Displacer ability resolves, Tidehollow 'blinks', triggers ETB effect (1st triggered ability).
6. Repeat 2-5 as many times as you want cards exiled forever.
7. Resolve most recent Tidehollow ETB effect trigger (1st triggered ability) - this one will be exiled under Tidehollow.
8. Resolve all other Tidehollow ETB effect triggers (1st triggered ability).
9. Cards exiled with Tidehollow's ability (except the last) will be gone forever, since LTB triggers already resolved.
10. Opponent hopefully has no nonland cards in hand.
This is close.
1) Sculler resolves, ETB (henceforth ETB1) ability is placed on the stack.
2) With ETB1 still on the stack, hold priority, and activate Displacer's ability targeting Sculler.
3) Pass priority, hopefully Displacer's ability resolves.
4) If Displacer's ability resolves, Sculler will leave the battlefield and then return to the battlefield with ETB1 still on the stack. Sculler's LTB trigger (henceforth LTB1) and its ETB trigger (henceforth, ETB2) will be placed on the stack (in the order of its owner's choosing) above the ETB1 trigger.
5) Pass priority, so that ETB2 and LTB1 can resolve.
6) When ETB2 resolves, you will be forced to remove a nonland card from your opponent's hand (valid target), and that card will be returned once Sculer leaves the battlefield (henceforth, LTB2).
6) When LTB1 resolves, but there will be no card to return, since ETB1 is still on the stack.
7) Pass priority, so that ETB1 can resolve.
8) ETB1 resolves, exiling a nonland card permanently.
Importantly, your opponent will need to have at least 2 nonland cards in hand for tricks like this to work. You'll never be able to permanently exile their last card in hand. That last card will always be returned once Sculler leaves the battlefield. However, you can soft-lock your opponent during his or her draw step by activating Displacer twice (6 total mana) targeting Sculler after your opponent has drawn the card. If the stack is ordered properly, your opponent will be forced to exile one of theirr cards, and the other will always remain under Sculler. It's a soft-lock because your opponent can cast any instant-speed card (likely removal) they find, and that's going to disrupt the plan.
If you do this 3 times, exiling 2 cards permanently, this is the order of how the stack resolves for these portions to show why those cards get exiled forever:
Tidehollow LTB (2nd time - no card to return, card not chosen yet)
Tidehollow LTB (1st time - no card to return, card not chosen yet)
Tidehollow ETB (3rd time - choose no card, or card will return when Tidehollow LTB)
Tidehollow ETB (2nd time - choose card, exiled forever, LTB trigger already resolved)
Tidehollow ETB (1st time - choose card, exiled forever, LTB trigger already resolved)
Just to be clear, you can't "choose no card". Sculler's ETB trigger isn't a "may" ability. If you have at least one legal target, you must select one.
Frank Karsten and @charonsobol are players that are responsible for me taking my game plan above "feeling" good and launching plans that have best statistical outcomes/opportunities.
I actually wrote a blog post about that last point a while ago: about whether or not you should opt to mulligan in post-sideboard games based on how many game-winning cards you've boarded in (using Rest in Peace as an example).
Great post! The inclusion of a minimum-land count is an interesting way to create a multivariate matrix out of that information. It's a cool representation, although you should probably run it for more than just the 23-land standard.
The major take-away is: if you've committed a heavy portion of sideboard space to cards that will swing a particular matchup in your favour (e.g. Rest in Peace versus Dredge) - there's basically absolutely no reason to keep a 7-card hand without any of them. Your odds are too good to not mulligan. (This is also a manifestation of another important principle in Modern: just because a hand has lands and spells doesn't mean it's keepable).
Although looking at mulligan rules is important (Karsten is a pioneer for incorporating it in his Monte Carlo analysis), your analysis fails to accurately capture the decision gates presented to the player. What matters is the stepwise probability of getting a mixture of lands and spells in the subsequent hand (6 cards, 5 cards, etc.). That way, a player can look at a marginal hand and have a better idea of whether or not he or she should mulligan. That post is still really great though. It should be required reading.
I also enjoyed this post. I've thought about this topic myself, but in particular for D&T builds. Sheepz used to run a WB D&T deck with Dark Confidant that had an average CMC of 1.3. I was always curious about how the manabase for a deck like that should be different from a manabase where the player is trying to run 4 copies of Restoration Angel. As you mention in that post, part of the reason decks with a low average CMC have a low standard deviation is because their mana costs are low to begin with. But if you hold things like CMC or standard deviation constant and look for trends in their corresponding manabase construction, you may be able to learn lessons about the number and types of utility lands that they run...or maybe not. But it would be interesting to know.
I plan to play this for a couple of months, whilst acquiring the cards required for the G/W variant of the deck. Could anyone post or point me to a good list for this colour combination? Cheers.
You might have to be a little more specific about what you're looking for, because there are a bunch of WG lists that are easily found in this thread. For example, Catmix has a WG list in the primer post. If that doesn't work for you, SpiderSpace posted a link to his current WG list on the last page:
I'm actually gearing up for GP las vegas and I've been trying to figure out what feels best. Part of what Charons mentioned was that testing, but I'm fairly convinced I'll be playing something very similar if not identical to the above GW list.
I understand everyone has an aversion to running anyhting less than exactly 23 lands, but I'm comfortable at 22 with the reasoning that in my lists I've chosen to go down to a 3/3 split of sculler and strangler while running 3 dark confidants. Dark confidant has been amazing at helping take over a game once the initial taxes are in place, while cutting a sculler has lead to less mulligans due to not having the correct colors. In addition to this, eldazi temple functionally acts as ancient tomb for just over 1/3 of the creature base, so many games I'm comfortable keeping 2-land hands with a temple, or 2-land hands with a vial. You mentioned my mulligan situation last night, which unfortunately was due to often drawing 5 or 6 land hands.
Be careful about using anecdotal evidence when you could otherwise use math. The "it worked for me" mentality is not much more compelling than simply pointing out you were a statistical anomaly in the 6 games that you played.
Cutting that land makes you ~3.5% less likely to make your 3rd land drop (75.53% vs. 71.90%), ~5% less likely to make your 4th land drop (58.60% vs. 53.85%), and about ~5% less likely to make your 5th land drop (41.67% vs. 36.71%). Does that matter in a 3-round FNM? Maybe not. Does that matter in a 15-round tournament? Probably.
I think you're probably more likely to be able to cut to 21 or 22 lands on a more classic D&T list, but I wouldn't do it on E&T unless you're in a metagame where Burn, Zoo, and Affinity simply don't exist.
Hi there! Long time lurker, first time poster. Was just wondering if anyone regularly streams gw taxes, been playing it in paper for a few months and it feels like such a rewarding deck to play when u pick the correct lines, I've scoured the interwebs and I think I've seeen most of the content in it. Any info on matchups and SB tech would also be great, I love researching decks. Does catmix have it on mtgo? I like the rest of his content so seeing u play a similar list would probably make my taxes game better as well.
@Spider: you're wanted in the thread!
@R1ngoL2p: The person you're looking for is probably SpiderSpace. He used to stream WG pretty often, but recently he's been playing the WR D&Staxes deck instead. I also play WG a lot, but I don't play on MTGO. Here is the link to Spider's sideboard guide. I think Catmix does have the WG cards on MTGO, but it's just not usually his go-to build.
In principle, being a creature seems like a liability, but in practice, it's actually an advantage.
This is probably one of the few cases where you probably want needle over revoker since 99% of their deck is made up of creatures. Revoker sits in play doing the same thing as needle until a fiend hunter scoops it away :c
I know what you're saying (and you're right), but Revoker is the better soft read in an open metagame. If you know that your metagame is just your D&T deck and a bunch of Abzan Counters decks, then you're right; you would make a hard read and just run Pithing Needle instead. Revoker is a more flexible option than Needle, but you're right that against Abzan Counters specifically, Needle is probably better.
The difference between Thalia, Confidant and Revoker, it's that you can't risk the Revoker because it could be the only tool that prevents your lost. The rival is going to block it. You don't want to attack with the revoker. The Revoker/Needle is a defensive tool that gives you time and prevents from death. You shouldn't risk your shield.
A long time ago, this was my original objection to Catmix about his choice of Revoker over Needle. Specifically, that in the matchups where you want it, Needle has much more staying power than Revoker. Long story short, I was wrong and he was right.
Let me start by saying that your analysis isn't wrong. Needle is, in fact, harder to remove than Revoker. The problem is that in Catmix's version of the deck, it doesn't matter. Catmix maindecks Revoker. It would be a mistake to maindeck Pithing Needle, because although it's relevant in a lot of matchups, it's dead in certain other ones. Revoker is never dead. Sometimes it's Pithing Needle; sometimes it's a fragile Pithing Needle; sometimes it's a 2/1 bear; sometimes it's a helicopter pilot. I've watched Catmix play a lot of games where Revoker is holding LotV at bay while it still swings in for damage. I've watched Revoker shut off multiple Noble Hierarchs making the Ghost Quarter/Arbiter combo relevant in matchups that it would ordinarily be useless.
Revoker is fragile, but it's the Swiss Army knife of disruption. It's usually not the best tool for any given application, but it usually is the only tool that you'll want to take with you wherever you go.
If you want a sideboard card that comes in post-board (obviously) and sits on the battlefield for long periods of time, then Pithing Needle is a better option than Revoker. But that's not how Catmix is using it. He's using Revoker like we've always used Thalia - as a maindeck piece of disruption with legs. And he was right about it being extremely useful in that way. If you want to run Pithing Needle out of the sideboard because it's good at what it does and it's difficult to remove, that's fine. You could also run Thorn of Amethyst in your sideboard as a hedge against Storm, Ad Nauseam, and Bogles, all of which will have a much harder time removing Thorn than Thalia. But as a maindeck option, Revoker is the correct choice. And frankly, even out of the sideboard, Revoker gives you much more flexibility than Pithing Needle does, even if it eats removal that Pithing Needle doesn't.
@charonsobol you are such an underused resource in this thread! Thank you so much for that data! I'm actually surprised that the variance is as low of an impact! I guess it makes sense and also means there are more live draws!
To be clear, a simple analysis like that won't tell the whole story. For example, that list has 3 copies of Tidehollow Sculler; the odds that it comes down on T2 are pretty low, given there are 8 colorless sources (out of 20) and two of the colored sources enter the battlefield tapped.
As an example of a laughable keep, my analysis up there thinks a hand of Swamp, Vault of the Archangel, Tidehollow Sculler, Flickerwisp, Mirran Crusader, Thought-Knot Seer, and Reality Smasher, is totally fine.
Going back to that 20-land build, I suspect that there are fewer live draws than the numbers up there suggest, because Tidehollow Sculler, Flickerwisp, and Mirran Crusader are all very mana-intensive, and the curve itself is relatively high, topping out at 5 for Reality Smasher (of course, Eldrazi Temple is doing some work to offset that last one). Honestly, I don't really like this list. I think it's too slow against Burn and Zoo, and I think it's weak to T1 discard. But still, congratulations to the pilot for getting there.
The hard part about a mulligan analysis is coming up with a consistent set of "mulligan rules" (i.e., things that denote when a mulligan takes place). If you ask a more complicated question, I should still be able to answer it. For simple probability questions (e.g., what are the odds I draw my sideboard cards?), I use a hypergeometric probability calculator. For complicated probability questions (e.g., what are the odds I draw Hierarch, Arbiter, and Ghost Quarter in my opening hand?), I use a monte carlo simulator. The former gives an exact answer, while the latter gives an approximate answer +/- about 0.1% (although it varies based on sample size).
Ignoring some rounding error (the above will sum to 99.999%), those are the exact probabilities.
So if you think that 0, 1, 5, 6, and 7-land hands are unkeepable, then the odds of you having to mulligan are 28.256%.
By comparison, if you run the same analysis having 23 lands instead of 20, then the odds of you having to mulligan are 23.344%. So by running an additional 3 lands, you mulligan one fewer time in 20 games.
1) The hypergeometric distribution treats all of the lands as though they produce the same mana color.
2) Sometimes we get greedy and we keep a 1-lander with a Vial on the play, or on the draw against an opponent that we know doesn't have discard spells.
@CharonsObol - to try and make your point a bit more explicit, are you saying that their string of 5-0 finishes may be attributable to them playing lots of games, rather than their chance of going 5-0 with the deck being particularly high?
Yes. I'm sure Penips is a good player; after all, he or she 6-0'd an online PTQ. But looking at a results page filled with 5-0 finishes doesn't impress me when the system is designed to only record wins.
Catmix has this right; as a player, Penips is putting in a lot of time to be good with E&T. I'm sure that Penips is winning some leagues and losing others, but you're not seeing the losses. From that results page, I don't even know that Penips is achieving a positive EV. I suspect that he or she is a positive-EV player, but without that extra bit of information, all that page tells me is that Penips is capable of 5-0'ing an event. That's better than knowing nothing, I guess. But sometimes you have a league where you're paired against Tron twice, Storm, Ad Nauseam, and Eggs.
We may be a deck that rewards metagame knowledge, but we don't consistently T8 big tournaments. It's possible that Penips is the best Modern D&T player that doesn't ever play the deck in a GP, SCG, or PT event, but it's much more likely that he or she is just grinding away with the deck and you're seeing a skewed version of the results. That's not to knock Penips. Again, I'm sure he or she is a good player. But a list of 5-0 finishes doesn't give you a complete picture of his or her performance.
Does anyone know if the MTGO penips streams at all?
From the sample data it looks like they put up some serious results. Would love to see them play...
I don't know the answer to your question, but without a "number of tournaments played" sample size, I find MTGGoldfish's results page woefully incomplete.
Hey everyone I recently got into playing death and taxes, specifically white black eldrazi and taxes. I'm still working on getting the hang of it but I have a question. Is there a sideboard guide or any type of article that explains what cards to sideboard out. I find myself having a hard time in choosing what to take out in game 2. Off course this varies depending on what I'm up against that's why I asking if there's a guide. Thanks in advance!
There's a sideboard guide located in the Leonin's Library section of the Primer post. It was written by Spider. Link here.
This list did pretty well. Odd that he opted for only 3 hierarchs, but I do like that mana tithe, and I'm a huge fan of renegade rallier. Why is it that more GW lists don't play voice of resurgence? Also, when do you think the pilot would bring in the 3 copies of wilt leaf liege? Perhaps against GBX decks with Liliana? I pretty much have GW built in paper, just trying to make some final touches before an event this Saturday...
I actually run 3 Hierarchs in my WG, and Spider runs only 7 Vial/Hierarchs at a time, depending on if he's on the play or draw. Our reasoning is essentially the same: mitigate the number of dead, late-game topdecks.
Singleton Mana Tithe is a fine idea, but it's another bad topdeck. I think it's fine to run one, but as soon as your opponent sees it, you should probably board it out, because he or she will be playing around it for the rest of the match anyway.
Renegade Rallier is okay, but it's highly dependent on the structure of the rest of your deck. I'm not actually sure if I like it in that list, because there are only sevenlands that enable it. I'm sure it plays better because the pilot is blinkingBlade Splicers, but you need to have an active Vial in order to enable that line.
I play Voice of Resurgence in my WG build. My metagame is filled with spot removal, so Voice was a great way to punish my opponents for running it. Most people don't run it because it doesn't actually do anything to affect the boardstate. It's a pseudo-Grand-Abolisher timing restriction, but as anyone who's played with Abolisher can tell you, your opponents are just going to play around it. Voice of Resurgence is pretty awful as a 2/2 bear, but if your opponents are running attrition or control decks, it can be a nice card to have.
Wilt-Leaf Liege does come in against GBx. Like Loxodon Smiter, it's a great way of punishing your opponent for running discard. Remember that if Smiter is the only legal target in your hand, your opponent must choose it. Liege is used when you're running cards like Voice and Smiter, because they get +2/+2 instead of +1/+1. This typically means you have to build your deck less like D&T, and more like Hatebears; you lose a lot of your control elements in favor of your raw power and clock.
1) Sculler resolves, ETB (henceforth ETB1) ability is placed on the stack.
2) With ETB1 still on the stack, hold priority, and activate Displacer's ability targeting Sculler.
3) Pass priority, hopefully Displacer's ability resolves.
4) If Displacer's ability resolves, Sculler will leave the battlefield and then return to the battlefield with ETB1 still on the stack. Sculler's LTB trigger (henceforth LTB1) and its ETB trigger (henceforth, ETB2) will be placed on the stack (in the order of its owner's choosing) above the ETB1 trigger.
5) Pass priority, so that ETB2 and LTB1 can resolve.
6) When ETB2 resolves, you will be forced to remove a nonland card from your opponent's hand (valid target), and that card will be returned once Sculer leaves the battlefield (henceforth, LTB2).
6) When LTB1 resolves, but there will be no card to return, since ETB1 is still on the stack.
7) Pass priority, so that ETB1 can resolve.
8) ETB1 resolves, exiling a nonland card permanently.
Importantly, your opponent will need to have at least 2 nonland cards in hand for tricks like this to work. You'll never be able to permanently exile their last card in hand. That last card will always be returned once Sculler leaves the battlefield. However, you can soft-lock your opponent during his or her draw step by activating Displacer twice (6 total mana) targeting Sculler after your opponent has drawn the card. If the stack is ordered properly, your opponent will be forced to exile one of theirr cards, and the other will always remain under Sculler. It's a soft-lock because your opponent can cast any instant-speed card (likely removal) they find, and that's going to disrupt the plan.
Just to be clear, you can't "choose no card". Sculler's ETB trigger isn't a "may" ability. If you have at least one legal target, you must select one.
Great post! The inclusion of a minimum-land count is an interesting way to create a multivariate matrix out of that information. It's a cool representation, although you should probably run it for more than just the 23-land standard.
Although looking at mulligan rules is important (Karsten is a pioneer for incorporating it in his Monte Carlo analysis), your analysis fails to accurately capture the decision gates presented to the player. What matters is the stepwise probability of getting a mixture of lands and spells in the subsequent hand (6 cards, 5 cards, etc.). That way, a player can look at a marginal hand and have a better idea of whether or not he or she should mulligan. That post is still really great though. It should be required reading.
I also enjoyed this post. I've thought about this topic myself, but in particular for D&T builds. Sheepz used to run a WB D&T deck with Dark Confidant that had an average CMC of 1.3. I was always curious about how the manabase for a deck like that should be different from a manabase where the player is trying to run 4 copies of Restoration Angel. As you mention in that post, part of the reason decks with a low average CMC have a low standard deviation is because their mana costs are low to begin with. But if you hold things like CMC or standard deviation constant and look for trends in their corresponding manabase construction, you may be able to learn lessons about the number and types of utility lands that they run...or maybe not. But it would be interesting to know.
In the maindeck, the only change was:
-1 Serra Avenger
+1 Mirran Crusader
In the sideboard, the only change was:
-1 Mirran Crusader
+1 Stony Silence
So in the end, one of the 3 Crusaders in the board was moved to the main. And a Serra Avenger was turned in for an extra Stony Silence.
I'm happy to see the deck doing well, but disappointed at the magnitude of the netdecking. Somebody please ship Theau Mery some extra prize money.
Cutting that land makes you ~3.5% less likely to make your 3rd land drop (75.53% vs. 71.90%), ~5% less likely to make your 4th land drop (58.60% vs. 53.85%), and about ~5% less likely to make your 5th land drop (41.67% vs. 36.71%). Does that matter in a 3-round FNM? Maybe not. Does that matter in a 15-round tournament? Probably.
Dark Confidant and Aether Vial are going to help, but the former is going to be a lightning rod and the latter is going to be slow for playing Thought-Knot Seers and Reality Smashers.
I think you're probably more likely to be able to cut to 21 or 22 lands on a more classic D&T list, but I wouldn't do it on E&T unless you're in a metagame where Burn, Zoo, and Affinity simply don't exist.
@R1ngoL2p: The person you're looking for is probably SpiderSpace. He used to stream WG pretty often, but recently he's been playing the WR D&Staxes deck instead. I also play WG a lot, but I don't play on MTGO. Here is the link to Spider's sideboard guide. I think Catmix does have the WG cards on MTGO, but it's just not usually his go-to build.
EDIT: Sarnath'd by Catmix.
A long time ago, this was my original objection to Catmix about his choice of Revoker over Needle. Specifically, that in the matchups where you want it, Needle has much more staying power than Revoker. Long story short, I was wrong and he was right.
Let me start by saying that your analysis isn't wrong. Needle is, in fact, harder to remove than Revoker. The problem is that in Catmix's version of the deck, it doesn't matter. Catmix maindecks Revoker. It would be a mistake to maindeck Pithing Needle, because although it's relevant in a lot of matchups, it's dead in certain other ones. Revoker is never dead. Sometimes it's Pithing Needle; sometimes it's a fragile Pithing Needle; sometimes it's a 2/1 bear; sometimes it's a helicopter pilot. I've watched Catmix play a lot of games where Revoker is holding LotV at bay while it still swings in for damage. I've watched Revoker shut off multiple Noble Hierarchs making the Ghost Quarter/Arbiter combo relevant in matchups that it would ordinarily be useless.
Revoker is fragile, but it's the Swiss Army knife of disruption. It's usually not the best tool for any given application, but it usually is the only tool that you'll want to take with you wherever you go.
If you want a sideboard card that comes in post-board (obviously) and sits on the battlefield for long periods of time, then Pithing Needle is a better option than Revoker. But that's not how Catmix is using it. He's using Revoker like we've always used Thalia - as a maindeck piece of disruption with legs. And he was right about it being extremely useful in that way. If you want to run Pithing Needle out of the sideboard because it's good at what it does and it's difficult to remove, that's fine. You could also run Thorn of Amethyst in your sideboard as a hedge against Storm, Ad Nauseam, and Bogles, all of which will have a much harder time removing Thorn than Thalia. But as a maindeck option, Revoker is the correct choice. And frankly, even out of the sideboard, Revoker gives you much more flexibility than Pithing Needle does, even if it eats removal that Pithing Needle doesn't.
In principle, being a creature seems like a liability, but in practice, it's actually an advantage.
As an example of a laughable keep, my analysis up there thinks a hand of Swamp, Vault of the Archangel, Tidehollow Sculler, Flickerwisp, Mirran Crusader, Thought-Knot Seer, and Reality Smasher, is totally fine.
Going back to that 20-land build, I suspect that there are fewer live draws than the numbers up there suggest, because Tidehollow Sculler, Flickerwisp, and Mirran Crusader are all very mana-intensive, and the curve itself is relatively high, topping out at 5 for Reality Smasher (of course, Eldrazi Temple is doing some work to offset that last one). Honestly, I don't really like this list. I think it's too slow against Burn and Zoo, and I think it's weak to T1 discard. But still, congratulations to the pilot for getting there.
The hard part about a mulligan analysis is coming up with a consistent set of "mulligan rules" (i.e., things that denote when a mulligan takes place). If you ask a more complicated question, I should still be able to answer it. For simple probability questions (e.g., what are the odds I draw my sideboard cards?), I use a hypergeometric probability calculator. For complicated probability questions (e.g., what are the odds I draw Hierarch, Arbiter, and Ghost Quarter in my opening hand?), I use a monte carlo simulator. The former gives an exact answer, while the latter gives an approximate answer +/- about 0.1% (although it varies based on sample size).
With a 20-land manabase, like the one in this list, the odds of having X lands in your 7-land hand are as follows:
0: 4.827%
1: 19.877%
2: 32.372%
3: 26.976%
4: 12.395%
5: 3.131%
6: 0.401%
7: 0.020%
Ignoring some rounding error (the above will sum to 99.999%), those are the exact probabilities.
So if you think that 0, 1, 5, 6, and 7-land hands are unkeepable, then the odds of you having to mulligan are 28.256%.
By comparison, if you run the same analysis having 23 lands instead of 20, then the odds of you having to mulligan are 23.344%. So by running an additional 3 lands, you mulligan one fewer time in 20 games.
2) Sometimes we get greedy and we keep a 1-lander with a Vial on the play, or on the draw against an opponent that we know doesn't have discard spells.
Catmix has this right; as a player, Penips is putting in a lot of time to be good with E&T. I'm sure that Penips is winning some leagues and losing others, but you're not seeing the losses. From that results page, I don't even know that Penips is achieving a positive EV. I suspect that he or she is a positive-EV player, but without that extra bit of information, all that page tells me is that Penips is capable of 5-0'ing an event. That's better than knowing nothing, I guess. But sometimes you have a league where you're paired against Tron twice, Storm, Ad Nauseam, and Eggs.
We may be a deck that rewards metagame knowledge, but we don't consistently T8 big tournaments. It's possible that Penips is the best Modern D&T player that doesn't ever play the deck in a GP, SCG, or PT event, but it's much more likely that he or she is just grinding away with the deck and you're seeing a skewed version of the results. That's not to knock Penips. Again, I'm sure he or she is a good player. But a list of 5-0 finishes doesn't give you a complete picture of his or her performance.
Singleton Mana Tithe is a fine idea, but it's another bad topdeck. I think it's fine to run one, but as soon as your opponent sees it, you should probably board it out, because he or she will be playing around it for the rest of the match anyway.
Renegade Rallier is okay, but it's highly dependent on the structure of the rest of your deck. I'm not actually sure if I like it in that list, because there are only seven lands that enable it. I'm sure it plays better because the pilot is blinking Blade Splicers, but you need to have an active Vial in order to enable that line.
I play Voice of Resurgence in my WG build. My metagame is filled with spot removal, so Voice was a great way to punish my opponents for running it. Most people don't run it because it doesn't actually do anything to affect the boardstate. It's a pseudo-Grand-Abolisher timing restriction, but as anyone who's played with Abolisher can tell you, your opponents are just going to play around it. Voice of Resurgence is pretty awful as a 2/2 bear, but if your opponents are running attrition or control decks, it can be a nice card to have.
Wilt-Leaf Liege does come in against GBx. Like Loxodon Smiter, it's a great way of punishing your opponent for running discard. Remember that if Smiter is the only legal target in your hand, your opponent must choose it. Liege is used when you're running cards like Voice and Smiter, because they get +2/+2 instead of +1/+1. This typically means you have to build your deck less like D&T, and more like Hatebears; you lose a lot of your control elements in favor of your raw power and clock.