They shouldnt be able to kill you with Grapeshot without resolving a past in flames.
Thus:
1. Save your counters for Past in flames.
2. DO NOT BE AFRAID TO TURN 2 SNAPCASTER. Its not the ambush viper you want buts its the one you need.
2. Board in all gy hate.
3. Don't side out wraths. Side in extras.
4. For extra percentage against Storm, board in VCliques. Which is very good in mirror and against Twin as well.
I know a lot of canadians are going ~100 (including myself).
I think the coverage thing has more to do with TOs then wizards per se.
Oakland/Miami etc.. are run by TOs who wanted to make sure there was coverage and went out of the way to provide it.
How do you know what % of the metagame a deck is? Many sites record the daily results, but I didnt think there was something that reported overall percentages.
5-0-1 in Swiss. Lost in top 4. Both other LE lost in t8.
Win vs Enchantments
Win vs Affinity (Who split top 2)
Win vs Twin (Who split top 2)
Win vs Twin
Draw vs LE
Win vs LE
---- T8
Win vs Twin
Lose vs Twin (from round 3).
--------------------
Observations on deck:
A lot of my wins came from people not really knowing how my deck worked/what the important cards were. This isn't a knock on the deck, but I think its important to be realistic about deck strengths/weaknesses.
19 lands + 3 ssg was good, maybe 18/4 or 18/3 is better. Definitely would not add lands.
My SB is different then what other people are trying. I assumed Burn/UR delver would be small players and the matchups are so bad its not worth dedicating lots of space. I wanted robust plans for UWR, BG, Affinity, Pod.
All my twin opponents kept in Dispels (or sideboarded in more) against me, so the riccochet traps were fairly miserable and many had relics (also awkward).
I think I might try NoSB or something similar in the future if I were to pick this deck up again.
--------------------
Testing afterwards:
BG ooze, this matchup was much worse then I thought it would be. LE for small numbers wasn't enough to guarantee wins. And couldn't go big because of Scavenging Ooze/Deathright Shaman.
Discard was surprisingly awkward. As were post board fulms.
RG Tron, seemed favorable, but again my opponents initially were just dying to suboptimal play.
Warning for failing to use deck/card tags
-ktkenshinx-
I started testing Tempo Twin this weekend. I took it through a half-dozen 2-man queues, and everything ran really smooth. But the dailies didn't go so well. I went 0-2 against Tron and Affinity in the first (the Tron match was an abberation where game one I couldn't hit a fourth land for the win even after cantripping and Remanding for four turns, and game two I drew enough lands to have mana parity with my Tron opponent until something like turn 11), and 1-2 in the second, beating some UR control deck, and losing to Affinity and UR Fae.
A few thoughts:
1) UR Fae is a really bad matchup, and this is confirmed by talking to some people who play UR Fae. They basically view Twin as a bye; unless you assemble an early combo attempt with Dispel backup, winning is really difficult. You can't reliably beat them the fair way because they're the good version of your fair gameplan, and resolving the combo through their disruption is nigh-impossible.
2) Affinity is a race (assembling the combo vs them resolving Cranial Plating). I lost both matches, but I think the matchup is quite even, if not in our favor. I think I was too timid with mulligans in these matchups; I kept marginal sevens postboard with burn and Snapcasters, but was relying on drawing both halves of the combo to win, and that didn't happen. I think I should have shipped, looking for either one half of the combo, or something better to fight Cranial Plating (Ancient Grudge).
3) My gut wants to say that this version isn't very good, but the continued results it puts up on MTGO are evidence that my gut is wrong. As has been the case when I've tried to play this deck in the past, I get tripped up a lot. I've called this the list that requires the most skill to play correctly, and I'm definitely not that high up on the skill spectrum. It's funny - I can play UR Fae pretty well, and I'm quite confident in my play with UR All-In Twin, but when you jam them together I get completely lost.
I need to practice this a lot more more. 2-mans are really bad EV, but it probably makes sense to get some more practice in there before next weekend's dailies. The TP room is just garbage.
For reference, I was on this list pulled from the recent MOCS:
Somewhat off topic, but it sounds like the issue your having isn't so much playing as identifying the right plan during a given game. E.g. you know how to play a twin deck and you know how to play a UR Aggro Control deck, but picking which one you should be (as well alternating between the roles) in a given game is a different skill set.
Top 16 from GP Calgary:
Avacyn's Pilgrim 4
Arbor Elf 1
Ghor-Clan Rampager 3
Flinthoof Boar 4
Scavenging Ooze 3
Boros Reckoner 4
Loxodon Smiter 3
Thundermaw Hellkite 4
Bonfire of the Damned 4
Domri Rade 4
Selesnya Charm 2
Mountain 1
Rootbound Crag 4
Sunpetal Grove 3
Clifftop Retreat 3
Sacred Foundry 4
Temple Garden 4
Stomping Ground 4
Forest 1
SB
Kessig Wolf Run 1
Pillar of Flame 2
Mizzium Mortars 1
Rest in Peace 1
Unflinching Courage 2
Oblivion Ring 2
Ruric Thar 2
Assemble the Legion 1
Celestial Flare 1
Ray of Revelation 2
reasons to play this over R/G Kibler:
Better in "Mirror"
Beter against Mono-Red and Hexproof
Better against UW Wilson/LSV control
Downsides:
Worse against Jund/UWR (though this will change if they start being prepared for Manabarbs).
More losses to your own mana.
---------
Would also cut a domri for a chandra.
Really surprised (and happy?) people are still reading this. I don't want to go into too much detail since I have already talked about it a long time.
After thinking about it heavily, I think Soul Ransom is the right play 100%. Whether he has the Rally or not. If he has the Rally its much better. Any line where you don't fumes mage is a loss.
@adam0
Regarding the end and what I said. Its exactly that. What I said. It could be wrong, but thats how you talk at a team event.
Not included in this dialogue is we didn't think he had bloodrush. Someting we discussed in game 2. This is something you should actually know in a team draft. But our team is really only tier 1.25. Since I knew he first picked an uncommon in gatecrash and Maksym didn't think he passed any bloodrush except the 5/1, which I had seen. Players like efro will memorize close to everything they pass and since the guy downstream is doing the same you should know pretty much every trick in the opponents deck. Barring them first picking commons.
In hindsight we all wished we had stuck to our/my guns on the read. But all I can say is that this was a learning experience. And the point was to write something useful for everyone who is trying to get better at magic. Coincedence or not, I have been on a small tear since Providence so hopefully this is helping me get better.
Starting to test for GP Detroit. And I saw a Rb burn list which looked really good.
What are the good and bad matchups for generic burn lists (thinking Rb)?
In particular what are the 3 best board cards for:
Pod
Twin
UWR?
-------------------------
On a side note, for people who want to work on competitive decks coming here and seeing a 1 page discussion of Spark Trooper, is really frustrating.
While turn 4 may have been a mistake (I don't think it was), it certainly didn't cost us the game. Since we could of won by playing Turn 7 better.
And fumes isn't more tempo then Soul Ransom, because they can't get their guy back right away (they have to draw the 2nd card first). Thus their guy gets summoning sickness. Their is no tempo to be gained by using fumes first unless they play poorly (as discussed above). However if you let them get to two cards in hand then Soul Ransom truly becomes +0 tempo. Does this make sense? Its what I was trying to explain in the original post.
What I wrote is about the level of depth I thought in that game. Obviously its not perfect and we prefer intuition. I missed some valid lines that people have brought up since then. But if you think the best players aren't going that deep on a regular basis your going to be surprised.
In constructed intuition matters a lot more because you can practice and eventually internalize many difficult situations.
I think making a rat on turn 3 is pretty risky.
a) You don't know you will have access to 6th lands on turn 6.
b) If you don't cast Ransom or you don't get it cracked, you will only have the ability to "make two rats" for one turn. On turn 6, you played 6 lands and 4 cards (Turns 2/3/4/5, not including discarding twice for turn 6). So you only have 2 cards left in your hand.
c) We agree that we want the long game, don't you think the hover barrier is more likely to do that?
@pierrebai
re: Rat size. I mean thats the whole point of the game. Was there a point to start making rats earlier? Obviously if we had less pressure on us the game is easy. Note we never cast CotN.
The sunfire is more dangerous, because:
a) He can make a guy a turn. Its hard for us to attack, because we need guys back.
b) Lets his cheap tokens trade for rats.
c) Beck//Call and Goblin Rally, + all his cheap 2/1s are much better with Sunhome in play.
d) Paladin can hopefully be stopped by Call or quad blocking with 4/4 rats! Sunhome doesnt do that.
@Tahn
What if he pumps paladin, we play fumes and next turn he casts Rally. I don't think you can rule that out. he doesn't mind getting "time walked" because he knows his guildmage is much more valuable (given holding Rally). and baiting our removal is worth it. I think we lose with this line.
also its very likely he attacks with sunhome, because its a really rough block for us. They aren't terrible. If they send their sunhome, I am unlikely to make a 2/2 to block knowing that the play is obvious. Hard to call that bluff, so its a bluff they can (and often will) make.
The above is a blog post I wrote about a game vs LSV/CHeon/Froelich at GP Providence on Day 2. The game was very interesting. If you are trying to get better at limited this is the exact kind of thinking you will need to develop.
You can read this one of two ways.
1) Just for entertainment.
2) Try and recreate the game for yourself. At each turn (and its a short game), think about what the relevant questions are. See if they line up with the rhetorical questions I pose. Then try to answer those rhetorical questions. See if you can find the right lines.
FWIW had a brief conversation with Sam Black, and he agrees with you all Cloudskate>Careful Consideration. I still think its wrong.
Off topic, but I still consider rebels the control deck of the format.
I think one important thing to consider with this strategy is trying to get some GY hate. Don't want to get ground out by Pilferer or Sanctum gargoyle based archetypes.
it would be useful to know how much you felt bombs impacted your draft results.
I mean its hard to interpret these results as "here is a cool archetype" vs Oona/Meloku are still some of the best limited cards ever made.
Also were these phantom?
---------
In TSP Careful Consideration was much better than Riftwing cloudskate (assuming you were blue), I have to imagine the same is true here, but you were tabling them anyways so maybe riftwing is the right pick.
How does one tempo a bad player outside the game? I guess I need this "team play' concept explained a little more. I thought that everyone just played as per a normal sealed event (after deckbuilding), and teammates totaled their points. Am I hopelessly incorrect?
You are all sitting beside each other. So if the skill discrepancy is large.
Basically you try get the bad player in to a fast tempo. Where he forgets to ask questions and is making quick decisions.
You want the good player's match to last longer so its harder for him to focus across matches. Keep his focus on his match. For example asking questions and talking to him.
This usually comes at the cost that you don't get to communicate with your teammates. But thats worth it imo to isolate weaker players.
If this comes off extremely spiky, well thats what it is.
They shouldnt be able to kill you with Grapeshot without resolving a past in flames.
Thus:
1. Save your counters for Past in flames.
2. DO NOT BE AFRAID TO TURN 2 SNAPCASTER. Its not the ambush viper you want buts its the one you need.
2. Board in all gy hate.
3. Don't side out wraths. Side in extras.
4. For extra percentage against Storm, board in VCliques. Which is very good in mirror and against Twin as well.
I know a lot of canadians are going ~100 (including myself).
I think the coverage thing has more to do with TOs then wizards per se.
Oakland/Miami etc.. are run by TOs who wanted to make sure there was coverage and went out of the way to provide it.
Also FWIW RG Tron top 8ed GP Chicago last year.
There were 3 living end players at the tournament all of whom were beginners. All 3 made top 8.
My list:
4 Street Wraith
3 SSG
2 Ridge Rhannet
1 Jungle Weaver
4 Fulimnator MAge
1 Shriekmaw
1 Avalanche Riders
2 Pale Recluse
2 Twisted Abom
7 Cascade Spells
3 Living end
2 Beast Within
1 Dismember
3 Blackcleave
2 Forbidden Orchards (pretty good)
3 Gemstone Mines (bad)
1 Kessig (decent)
3 Shocks
1 Forest
1 Swamp
1 Urborg (bad once, good once)
4 Faerie Macabre
4 Ingot Chewer
3 Riccochet Trap
1 Avalanche Riders
1 Beast Within
2 Dismember
5-0-1 in Swiss. Lost in top 4. Both other LE lost in t8.
Win vs Enchantments
Win vs Affinity (Who split top 2)
Win vs Twin (Who split top 2)
Win vs Twin
Draw vs LE
Win vs LE
---- T8
Win vs Twin
Lose vs Twin (from round 3).
--------------------
Observations on deck:
A lot of my wins came from people not really knowing how my deck worked/what the important cards were. This isn't a knock on the deck, but I think its important to be realistic about deck strengths/weaknesses.
19 lands + 3 ssg was good, maybe 18/4 or 18/3 is better. Definitely would not add lands.
My SB is different then what other people are trying. I assumed Burn/UR delver would be small players and the matchups are so bad its not worth dedicating lots of space. I wanted robust plans for UWR, BG, Affinity, Pod.
All my twin opponents kept in Dispels (or sideboarded in more) against me, so the riccochet traps were fairly miserable and many had relics (also awkward).
I think I might try NoSB or something similar in the future if I were to pick this deck up again.
--------------------
Testing afterwards:
BG ooze, this matchup was much worse then I thought it would be. LE for small numbers wasn't enough to guarantee wins. And couldn't go big because of Scavenging Ooze/Deathright Shaman.
Discard was surprisingly awkward. As were post board fulms.
RG Tron, seemed favorable, but again my opponents initially were just dying to suboptimal play.
Warning for failing to use deck/card tags
-ktkenshinx-
Somewhat off topic, but it sounds like the issue your having isn't so much playing as identifying the right plan during a given game. E.g. you know how to play a twin deck and you know how to play a UR Aggro Control deck, but picking which one you should be (as well alternating between the roles) in a given game is a different skill set.
http://alexneufeldt.blogspot.ca/
Had a detailed post on the twin list your considering as well.
Avacyn's Pilgrim 4
Arbor Elf 1
Ghor-Clan Rampager 3
Flinthoof Boar 4
Scavenging Ooze 3
Boros Reckoner 4
Loxodon Smiter 3
Thundermaw Hellkite 4
Bonfire of the Damned 4
Domri Rade 4
Selesnya Charm 2
Mountain 1
Rootbound Crag 4
Sunpetal Grove 3
Clifftop Retreat 3
Sacred Foundry 4
Temple Garden 4
Stomping Ground 4
Forest 1
SB
Kessig Wolf Run 1
Pillar of Flame 2
Mizzium Mortars 1
Rest in Peace 1
Unflinching Courage 2
Oblivion Ring 2
Ruric Thar 2
Assemble the Legion 1
Celestial Flare 1
Ray of Revelation 2
reasons to play this over R/G Kibler:
Better in "Mirror"
Beter against Mono-Red and Hexproof
Better against UW Wilson/LSV control
Downsides:
Worse against Jund/UWR (though this will change if they start being prepared for Manabarbs).
More losses to your own mana.
---------
Would also cut a domri for a chandra.
all the succesful decks from last season ran 0 of either. And the cutting of your 3-drop chaff was what made the deck good.
If Jund wasn't popular I could see cutting Souls for one of the other three drops. But your glutted on 3s with this deck as is.
Seems like if you are actually interested in making this deck competitive again:
1.
Figure out what changed since end of last modern PTQ season when it was the best deck.
Portland and Kansas are the most important tournaments since then. MODO the best guide to whats good now.
2.
Figure out if anything new addresses the new threats to the deck. or if theres something old that could be useful.
3.
Incorporate these answers cards in a newer version of the deck designed for today's meta.
After thinking about it heavily, I think Soul Ransom is the right play 100%. Whether he has the Rally or not. If he has the Rally its much better. Any line where you don't fumes mage is a loss.
@adam0
Regarding the end and what I said. Its exactly that. What I said. It could be wrong, but thats how you talk at a team event.
Not included in this dialogue is we didn't think he had bloodrush. Someting we discussed in game 2. This is something you should actually know in a team draft. But our team is really only tier 1.25. Since I knew he first picked an uncommon in gatecrash and Maksym didn't think he passed any bloodrush except the 5/1, which I had seen. Players like efro will memorize close to everything they pass and since the guy downstream is doing the same you should know pretty much every trick in the opponents deck. Barring them first picking commons.
In hindsight we all wished we had stuck to our/my guns on the read. But all I can say is that this was a learning experience. And the point was to write something useful for everyone who is trying to get better at magic. Coincedence or not, I have been on a small tear since Providence so hopefully this is helping me get better.
What are the good and bad matchups for generic burn lists (thinking Rb)?
In particular what are the 3 best board cards for:
Pod
Twin
UWR?
-------------------------
On a side note, for people who want to work on competitive decks coming here and seeing a 1 page discussion of Spark Trooper, is really frustrating.
And fumes isn't more tempo then Soul Ransom, because they can't get their guy back right away (they have to draw the 2nd card first). Thus their guy gets summoning sickness. Their is no tempo to be gained by using fumes first unless they play poorly (as discussed above). However if you let them get to two cards in hand then Soul Ransom truly becomes +0 tempo. Does this make sense? Its what I was trying to explain in the original post.
What I wrote is about the level of depth I thought in that game. Obviously its not perfect and we prefer intuition. I missed some valid lines that people have brought up since then. But if you think the best players aren't going that deep on a regular basis your going to be surprised.
In constructed intuition matters a lot more because you can practice and eventually internalize many difficult situations.
@bataleur
I think making a rat on turn 3 is pretty risky.
a) You don't know you will have access to 6th lands on turn 6.
b) If you don't cast Ransom or you don't get it cracked, you will only have the ability to "make two rats" for one turn. On turn 6, you played 6 lands and 4 cards (Turns 2/3/4/5, not including discarding twice for turn 6). So you only have 2 cards left in your hand.
c) We agree that we want the long game, don't you think the hover barrier is more likely to do that?
@pierrebai
re: Rat size. I mean thats the whole point of the game. Was there a point to start making rats earlier? Obviously if we had less pressure on us the game is easy. Note we never cast CotN.
The sunfire is more dangerous, because:
a) He can make a guy a turn. Its hard for us to attack, because we need guys back.
b) Lets his cheap tokens trade for rats.
c) Beck//Call and Goblin Rally, + all his cheap 2/1s are much better with Sunhome in play.
d) Paladin can hopefully be stopped by Call or quad blocking with 4/4 rats! Sunhome doesnt do that.
@Tahn
What if he pumps paladin, we play fumes and next turn he casts Rally. I don't think you can rule that out. he doesn't mind getting "time walked" because he knows his guildmage is much more valuable (given holding Rally). and baiting our removal is worth it. I think we lose with this line.
also its very likely he attacks with sunhome, because its a really rough block for us. They aren't terrible. If they send their sunhome, I am unlikely to make a 2/2 to block knowing that the play is obvious. Hard to call that bluff, so its a bluff they can (and often will) make.
The above is a blog post I wrote about a game vs LSV/CHeon/Froelich at GP Providence on Day 2. The game was very interesting. If you are trying to get better at limited this is the exact kind of thinking you will need to develop.
You can read this one of two ways.
1) Just for entertainment.
2) Try and recreate the game for yourself. At each turn (and its a short game), think about what the relevant questions are. See if they line up with the rhetorical questions I pose. Then try to answer those rhetorical questions. See if you can find the right lines.
Off topic, but I still consider rebels the control deck of the format.
I think one important thing to consider with this strategy is trying to get some GY hate. Don't want to get ground out by Pilferer or Sanctum gargoyle based archetypes.
I mean its hard to interpret these results as "here is a cool archetype" vs Oona/Meloku are still some of the best limited cards ever made.
Also were these phantom?
---------
In TSP Careful Consideration was much better than Riftwing cloudskate (assuming you were blue), I have to imagine the same is true here, but you were tabling them anyways so maybe riftwing is the right pick.
You are all sitting beside each other. So if the skill discrepancy is large.
Basically you try get the bad player in to a fast tempo. Where he forgets to ask questions and is making quick decisions.
You want the good player's match to last longer so its harder for him to focus across matches. Keep his focus on his match. For example asking questions and talking to him.
This usually comes at the cost that you don't get to communicate with your teammates. But thats worth it imo to isolate weaker players.
If this comes off extremely spiky, well thats what it is.