I'd recommend against anything less than 20 lands - flooding is annoying when it happens, but I think you'll find it to be very occasional, and some of the numbers we crunched from a while back suggests that 20 is more consistent. Your list looks mostly fine, though I will say that I don't think a 1-of Sea's Claim will accomplish all that much for you. I would either find room for more or swap it for something else.
First off, thanks for the advice!
I guess I probably should do a bit more testing before I decide to cut lands. There's a good chance I've just been incredibly unlucky so far. I think I'm going to try and make room for one if not two more Sea's Claim as well. With as much Tron as there is running around in my meta I'm definitely going to need it.
I am fairly certain that the general consensus is to run all 4 (giving the deck the nickname 8-Seas) or none at all. If that effect is something you want more than 4 of, you want as many as possible.
Global ladder: each week every deck above 3.50% meta share gets a tier1-point, every other deck above 1.50% gets a tier2-point, every other deck above 0.50% gets a tier3-point. Points are then converted in percentage over the total points obtainable in that category (one per week). Global tier1 decks are those decks with a tier1 points % above 75%, global tier2 decks are, among the others, those decks with a tier1 + tier2 points % above 66%, global tier3 decks are, among the others, those decks with a tier1 + tier2 + tier3 points % above 66%.
By the way, I don't know if I mentioned it, but while we haven't adapted your system as of now, I really do appreciate you keeping it updated weekly. We have been looking into ways to weigh data and improve methods, and this may very well be one of them .
Hi everybody, I just wanted to get your thoughts on this list that I used in my article to theorize about how Living End will look like in the post-Amonkhet world. In particular, I'm interested in your thoughts on what the color base for the cyclers will be going forward. Some folks have been advocating going mono-R for cyclers, whereas others are OK with a BR base. I'm kind of leaning in the latter direction, given how quickly the combination of Desert Cerodon, Horror of the Broken Lands, and more or less anything can close out a game (which means a lot more T3 Cascades). What do you think?
This list that you shared was almost exactly the list I imagined my current paper version of LE becoming after Amonkhet release. Basically dropping Deadshot for Ceradon, misc. flex spots for the Horror, and the colorless spiders for Archfiend making the mana base a little more R/B focused. Seems safe to stick to what's tried and true with some minor upgrades and an even more consistent mana base.
Yea, that was my thought process as well when making the list. Glad someone else sees eye to eye
What do you think would be the now ideal deck list based on testing. Along with this do you think forbidden orchard might be safer to play now thanks to the Archfiend of Ifnir existing.
Wow boy ! Not so fast ! The cards aren't out yet, how do you want us to make lists based on any kind of relevant testing sessions ?...
Player's level is all over the place on Cockatrice so I wouldn't count that as proper testing unless you're taking part in some kind of league.
Okay, so I'd like to share my thought process and conclusions with the new cards as well as a decklist and some testing results with what used to be essentially the worst matchup.
Obviously, as everyone knows by now, we have new toys. These cards (Desert Cerodon, Horror of the Broken Lands) are huge upgrades to what we previously were working with, and give us many options on what direction to take the deck. There are also a couple new 2 drop options in the Archfiend and Wurm, but those are much less important.
So, my thought process was as follows. We now have an abundance of 1 mana cyclers. We can now cut some of the underpowered cyclers and the flex spots for these new brutes. My immediate thought was making the manabase much easier: how about we make green a light splash? I modeled around the idea that Deadshot Minotaur (Who, by the way, is MUCH worse than Architects of Will) wasn't necessary and you could lean heavily on a RB manabase that doesn't need Green until Turn 3 (or T2 with an SSG, but that is less important). With a lot of new 1 drops, you no longer need as much mana or mana sources to function. For this reason I dropped a land to 18, and dropped an SSG as part of the flex spots being cut.
As a side note, with the new split card change, I dug through all the split cards now available to us. Granted we want to stick to Jund colors, so there wasn't much of use... except one card that caught my attention. Crime // Punishment. Or more specifically, Punishment. It hits chalice at X=0, and can be ramped up to catch other forms of hate, including enchantments which we didn't have a whole lot for before. The card is flexible, so I'm going to try 1 in the board over the third Ingot Chewer for now. We'll see how that works out.
For the manabase, I wanted enough green to consistently get 1 by T3, and then the rest to be red or black. With this line of thinking, having a basic Forest in the main would be detrimental, so I found room for it in the side to bring in against Blood Moon decks. In what would have been its slot, I put a Gemstone Mine, which helps by being nonpainful, something I really wanted to stress when building the mana. The primary reason for this stress is that the burn matchup used to be pretty terrible. You didn't do anything for the first couple turns except hurt yourself with fetches, then lets say you survive long enough to LE, then your mopy 3/4s and 4/4s give the burn player tons of time to draw the last bolt or two to win. Now, the matchup is easier, as I'll get to soon, but correcting that was my main priority.
Some notes:
I wanted to try 1 Archfiend. It's possible the answer to "which 2 drop do we play" is neither, and we should just throw a Deadshot Minotaur back in. Going back to getting our Faerie Macabres shot down post LE is gonna suck tho. That was infuriating at times.
I moved a Beast Within to the side. This was a concession to a loss of flex spots as well as a concession to manabase. I wanted to ensure that even though the manabase can support getting single green by T3 just fine, it didn't hurt as bad when we missed on it. There are 10 Green sources in 18 lands though, so it shouldn't happen often. But the more we can play with only Red and Black in the main the better, I think.
You could try to fit in 3-4 Leyline of the Void over the 2 Ravenous Traps, but good luck finding what to cut, and I still don't like the whole leyline idea in the first place.
So I decided to test the deck against Burn, partially because I was wondering if it was even worth sideboarding the Brindle Boars or if maybe we should just punt the matchup. Turns out the new changes are awesome. The new cyclers are great, and close the game spectacularly fast. You now only need 3-4 dudes in the yard to kill on T4. 1 Horror, 1 Cerodon, and 1 Carabid along with a couple cyclers in hand will do just fine - that's 18 damage. Anything more than that, such as some free Street Wraiths or the Carabid being one of the other two just make it easier. These new guys really increased our closing speed. Fantastic.
Guys, the manabase was incredible. Against burn, where you want to be as painless as possible, I never once had to play a shockland untapped. I only had to fetch for basics a few times, and even then it never cut me off a color (again, bonuses of Green only being a splash now). I always had green for Brindle Boar when needed, and many times had multiples. Gemstone Mine being painless was as spectacular as expected, and never once got used up - if it did it wouldn't have mattered anyway, I was going through my deck fast enough that I always had an abundance of lands.
The results were great, surprisingly. Game 1 is still really difficult, because even with the speed ups and the easy mana you are usually just a little short. Multiple times I had the kill with my 3 fatties and they just burned me out just before. Eidolon is still a beating (you take 4 from going off). But postboard games get easier. Brindle Boar is a great roadblock, and now that you can almost always kill the turn after going off, the burn player is extremely pressured to win before a Living End resolves. Brindle Boar, obviously, helps stop that. Block+Sac for days, bois. Drawing multiple boars feels like cheating, unless of course they have a Skullcrack... or 8. All in all, the matchup is still hard, but is no longer horrid.
I'd like to see where the deck development goes past this as people test the new cards. I also now see what WotC meant when they said they took precaution in trying to not break LE. Just these couple draft commons made the deck worlds stronger and more consistent. Imagine what else they could have done...
Ad Nauseam wins at instant speed, so I'm afraid this effect is irrelevant against them. U/R Storm is a tough matchup though, and this could hit an important piece there.
Today alone Dredge had, what, 3 copies in the league results? I added Ravenous Traps and Nature's Claims in my sideboard before entering the Comp League this evening.
Oh, right, they'll go of on your upkeep... riperino
I could honestly see this helping against Ad Naus... we only need an extra turn there (usually). You could also name lotus bloom and really set them back. Exciting.
Unrelated: Well, we spiked even more this week, and now hold a 5.5% meta share, the most of any deck that is not Death's Shadow Jund or Burn... This is cool but also worrying...
The expertise needs a target (creature) to be cast. This doesn't, and lets you cast anything. On the other side, Expertise cast your LE right now, and As Foretold takes 1 turn.
I wouldn't play either, though.
I wouldn't either, but As Foretold doesn't actually take a turn. It's worded weirdly but you can use it immediately for a 0 CMC spell.
Why are you saying Merfolk is a bad match up? Some draws (especially with fast Cursecatchers and Kira) can be problematic but overall big Conflagrate wins by itself. It only becomes harder after they play Relic but then we lose to grave hate not merfolks.
Because now we are slower than before and they go through our blocks.. cursecatcher is really scary against cathartic and conflag, and they have more copies of relic.. another way to kill us is negating our green source with spreading seas, which means that our conflags are less effective. In general, they can tempo us depending from their hands, and often we dont have the solution on the spot. G1 master of waves is pretty gg
Yea, basically what was said here, but I'd like to add a couple things. The issue with Spreading Seas isn't just negating the green source... it can be negating conflag, period. Merfolk players versed in the matchup will always (or, should always) play seas on T2 over a dude. This puts us off a color and conflag mana, and we can get straight run over from there. Like, as a general rule, land distruption against a deck that doesn't really aim to play more than 2-3 lands (until setting up loamflag ofc) is gonna be great. Also, you underestimate the beating that is Harbinger of the tides... this card is insanely good in the matchup, negating a guy for a couple turns and completely screwing up all combat math. Like, we are built on the premise that removal only slows us down. Unfortunately, this makes bounce incredibly powerful against us, and that is the main form of removal Merfolk employs. As a sidenote, the matchup is made even harder by the fact that all their dudes usually are unblockable (Islandwalk is annoying AF) so its not like we can actually value them out with big board stalls...
Overall, its just a bad bad matchup, and the help out of the board is mostly negated by them bringing in relic and (sometimes) echoing truth, which REALLY hose us.
I dint think reanimation is the way to go right now. I just want to expand on that bit in the primer eventually, and I think its probably good info just to know.
Right now we arent rainbow enough, and our reanimation spells arent good enough. If we a "fixed" dread return is printed well see something maybe.
Yea, I wasn't implying that we should go over to that package. I was saying that if trends continue and decks like Ad Nauseam or Merfolk, bad matchups that could be helped by a reanimation package, keep rising, then maybe we should consider having a package in the board. Like, for instance, 1-2 unburial rights, 1 sire of insanity, 1 elesh, maybe 1 iona. Again, only in the extreme circumstance that enough decks that are actually impacted by this are that popular. The main reason I brought it up is that both Ad Naus and Merfolk were in fact spiking at that time and both of which are bad matchups for us so we may need to figure something out for them in the future - and the reanimation was likely the best option.
I think the meta is moving closer and closer to a place where a Sided reanimation package could be pretty good. Both Merfolk and Ad Naus (bad MU, horrible mu) are gaining in popularity, and having an elesh or sire respectively can help those MUs tremendously while also happening to be awesome in other matchups, specifically when games grind a bit more and a huge bomb would be good. IDK, we'll see. If I keep seeing lots of Ad Naus on modo tho I may experiment with this...
Still need something against Ad Nauseam too. There's a Devour Mind Twist guy.
Yea, this is a real problem... Ad Naus is like our worst matchup, and I would have hoped this package could have brought us something since Ad Naus has been growing and growing in popularity... rip
Elderspine Wurm, Emperial Archangel, Sphinx of the Steel Wind, Platinum Emperion/Angel, Angelic Skirmisher, Exquisite Archangel, Resolute Archangel - Burn
Borborygmos Enraged - Maybe Death's Shadow Zoo? After Loaming?
Blazing Archon - affinity, Infect, Dredge (well, they still have Conflagrate..), Merfolk
Iona - Burn, Jund
Sire of Insanity- blue
Realm Razer - Tron?
Craterhoof Behemoth - Anything that you can kill with it that turn?
Stormtide Leviathan - Zoo
Ghosts of the Innocent - STORM LOL
Ruric Thar - Storm
Saheeli Rai, Sun Titan - Something?
Woodfall Primus - Lantern
It's tricky to think of something against Eldrazi. Terastodon or Hoof, I guess. They have Paths.
Still need something against Ad Nauseam too. There's a Devour Mind Twist guy.
This is a great list, much better than what I said
Still need something against Ad Nauseam too. There's a Devour Mind Twist guy.
Yea, this is a real problem... Ad Naus is like our worst matchup, and I would have hoped this package could have brought us something since Ad Naus has been growing and growing in popularity... rip
Glad you like it
I am fairly certain that the general consensus is to run all 4 (giving the deck the nickname 8-Seas) or none at all. If that effect is something you want more than 4 of, you want as many as possible.
Yea, that was my thought process as well when making the list. Glad someone else sees eye to eye
Yea. Everyone has their own list. Mine is here
We can argue about the lists all day, but until actual testing is done, there is no "best list".
Obviously, as everyone knows by now, we have new toys. These cards (Desert Cerodon, Horror of the Broken Lands) are huge upgrades to what we previously were working with, and give us many options on what direction to take the deck. There are also a couple new 2 drop options in the Archfiend and Wurm, but those are much less important.
So, my thought process was as follows. We now have an abundance of 1 mana cyclers. We can now cut some of the underpowered cyclers and the flex spots for these new brutes. My immediate thought was making the manabase much easier: how about we make green a light splash? I modeled around the idea that Deadshot Minotaur (Who, by the way, is MUCH worse than Architects of Will) wasn't necessary and you could lean heavily on a RB manabase that doesn't need Green until Turn 3 (or T2 with an SSG, but that is less important). With a lot of new 1 drops, you no longer need as much mana or mana sources to function. For this reason I dropped a land to 18, and dropped an SSG as part of the flex spots being cut.
As a side note, with the new split card change, I dug through all the split cards now available to us. Granted we want to stick to Jund colors, so there wasn't much of use... except one card that caught my attention. Crime // Punishment. Or more specifically, Punishment. It hits chalice at X=0, and can be ramped up to catch other forms of hate, including enchantments which we didn't have a whole lot for before. The card is flexible, so I'm going to try 1 in the board over the third Ingot Chewer for now. We'll see how that works out.
For the manabase, I wanted enough green to consistently get 1 by T3, and then the rest to be red or black. With this line of thinking, having a basic Forest in the main would be detrimental, so I found room for it in the side to bring in against Blood Moon decks. In what would have been its slot, I put a Gemstone Mine, which helps by being nonpainful, something I really wanted to stress when building the mana. The primary reason for this stress is that the burn matchup used to be pretty terrible. You didn't do anything for the first couple turns except hurt yourself with fetches, then lets say you survive long enough to LE, then your mopy 3/4s and 4/4s give the burn player tons of time to draw the last bolt or two to win. Now, the matchup is easier, as I'll get to soon, but correcting that was my main priority.
So, the deck:
4 Street Wraith
4 Monstrous Carabid
4 Architects of Will
4 Desert Cerodon
4 Horror of the Broken Lands
1 Archfiend of Ifnir
Wincons: (11)
3 Living End
4 Demonic Dread
4 Violent Outburst
Utility: (10)
4 Fulminator Mage
2 Faerie Macabre
2 Simian Spirit Guide
2 Beast Within
4 Blackcleave Cliffs
3 Copperline Gorge
4 Bloodstained Mire
2 Swamp
1 Mountain
1 Overgrown tomb
1 Blood Crypt
1 Stomping Ground
1 Gemstone Mine
3 Ricochet Trap
1 Beast Within
2 Shriekmaw
2 Ravenous Trap
2 Ingot Chewer
1 Crime // Punishment
4 Brindle Boar
1 Forest
Some notes:
I wanted to try 1 Archfiend. It's possible the answer to "which 2 drop do we play" is neither, and we should just throw a Deadshot Minotaur back in. Going back to getting our Faerie Macabres shot down post LE is gonna suck tho. That was infuriating at times.
I moved a Beast Within to the side. This was a concession to a loss of flex spots as well as a concession to manabase. I wanted to ensure that even though the manabase can support getting single green by T3 just fine, it didn't hurt as bad when we missed on it. There are 10 Green sources in 18 lands though, so it shouldn't happen often. But the more we can play with only Red and Black in the main the better, I think.
You could try to fit in 3-4 Leyline of the Void over the 2 Ravenous Traps, but good luck finding what to cut, and I still don't like the whole leyline idea in the first place.
So I decided to test the deck against Burn, partially because I was wondering if it was even worth sideboarding the Brindle Boars or if maybe we should just punt the matchup. Turns out the new changes are awesome. The new cyclers are great, and close the game spectacularly fast. You now only need 3-4 dudes in the yard to kill on T4. 1 Horror, 1 Cerodon, and 1 Carabid along with a couple cyclers in hand will do just fine - that's 18 damage. Anything more than that, such as some free Street Wraiths or the Carabid being one of the other two just make it easier. These new guys really increased our closing speed. Fantastic.
Guys, the manabase was incredible. Against burn, where you want to be as painless as possible, I never once had to play a shockland untapped. I only had to fetch for basics a few times, and even then it never cut me off a color (again, bonuses of Green only being a splash now). I always had green for Brindle Boar when needed, and many times had multiples. Gemstone Mine being painless was as spectacular as expected, and never once got used up - if it did it wouldn't have mattered anyway, I was going through my deck fast enough that I always had an abundance of lands.
The results were great, surprisingly. Game 1 is still really difficult, because even with the speed ups and the easy mana you are usually just a little short. Multiple times I had the kill with my 3 fatties and they just burned me out just before. Eidolon is still a beating (you take 4 from going off). But postboard games get easier. Brindle Boar is a great roadblock, and now that you can almost always kill the turn after going off, the burn player is extremely pressured to win before a Living End resolves. Brindle Boar, obviously, helps stop that. Block+Sac for days, bois. Drawing multiple boars feels like cheating, unless of course they have a Skullcrack... or 8. All in all, the matchup is still hard, but is no longer horrid.
I'd like to see where the deck development goes past this as people test the new cards. I also now see what WotC meant when they said they took precaution in trying to not break LE. Just these couple draft commons made the deck worlds stronger and more consistent. Imagine what else they could have done...
Oh, right, they'll go of on your upkeep... riperino
Yes, could be good for storm though.
Unrelated: Well, we spiked even more this week, and now hold a 5.5% meta share, the most of any deck that is not Death's Shadow Jund or Burn... This is cool but also worrying...
I wouldn't either, but As Foretold doesn't actually take a turn. It's worded weirdly but you can use it immediately for a 0 CMC spell.
Yea, basically what was said here, but I'd like to add a couple things. The issue with Spreading Seas isn't just negating the green source... it can be negating conflag, period. Merfolk players versed in the matchup will always (or, should always) play seas on T2 over a dude. This puts us off a color and conflag mana, and we can get straight run over from there. Like, as a general rule, land distruption against a deck that doesn't really aim to play more than 2-3 lands (until setting up loamflag ofc) is gonna be great. Also, you underestimate the beating that is Harbinger of the tides... this card is insanely good in the matchup, negating a guy for a couple turns and completely screwing up all combat math. Like, we are built on the premise that removal only slows us down. Unfortunately, this makes bounce incredibly powerful against us, and that is the main form of removal Merfolk employs. As a sidenote, the matchup is made even harder by the fact that all their dudes usually are unblockable (Islandwalk is annoying AF) so its not like we can actually value them out with big board stalls...
Overall, its just a bad bad matchup, and the help out of the board is mostly negated by them bringing in relic and (sometimes) echoing truth, which REALLY hose us.
Yea, I wasn't implying that we should go over to that package. I was saying that if trends continue and decks like Ad Nauseam or Merfolk, bad matchups that could be helped by a reanimation package, keep rising, then maybe we should consider having a package in the board. Like, for instance, 1-2 unburial rights, 1 sire of insanity, 1 elesh, maybe 1 iona. Again, only in the extreme circumstance that enough decks that are actually impacted by this are that popular. The main reason I brought it up is that both Ad Naus and Merfolk were in fact spiking at that time and both of which are bad matchups for us so we may need to figure something out for them in the future - and the reanimation was likely the best option.
Nah, that gives them a turn to go off before they have to drop the hand. Sire nukes it immediately.
Wait, wouldn't Sire of Insanity just win here?
This is a great list, much better than what I said
lol. troo tho
Yea, this is a real problem... Ad Naus is like our worst matchup, and I would have hoped this package could have brought us something since Ad Naus has been growing and growing in popularity... rip