Indeed you can. If you make the Golem untargetable in response to the Echoing Truth, it will become an illegal target for the spell and the spell will be countered on resolution.
Solemn vs. Trellis: I'm getting to the point of not gearing solidly for the turn 4 tooth. The deck is still capable of it and it's spiffy when it happens, but it shouldn't be the be all/end all goal of the deck. Jens gives you a very important thing in Tooth: Card advantage. Trellis is all well and good, but once it's gone it's gone, and face it: Creature kill is a lot more prevalent than land kill. Jens doesn't drop as fast, but he's almost as effective as a blocker simply because opponents are afraid to swing into it, and once he's gone the land he fetched is still there and you've drawn a card. I have tried trellis in my deck, and I've found that Jens just works better for me in almost every situation.
Maindeck O-Stone: If you've never seen it before, look over the last 20 posts on this thread. It singlehandedly saved my ass numerous times last night. I'm pretty sure it went off against all four matchups. In the red matchups it got rid of things such as Genju, Slith, and Scepter. Against the MBC it cleared the board at least twice. (It was a more permanent-based MBC build focusing on discard rather than board control.) For WW, it cleared out a small army of men including a Leonin Shikari and a Lightning Greaves allowing me to Tooth up the T/V, keep him off his creatures, and Tooth again a couple turns later for the win. Against mono-blue it clears out their Shackles and Magpies. When it goes off it doesn't really hurt me that much because it's almost always done as a delaying/clearing tactic before Tooth, and before Tooth my only permanents are the following: Elder (which I sacrifice), Jens (which draws me a card), Witness (which has already done its job), and Top (which draws a card and sits on the library). Off the top of my head the only matchup it's not nuts against is the mirror. IMO it's one of the must-have cards in the deck. I think I am going to pull out the Shaman for the fourth O-Stone next week and see how it does.
You are correct. An attacker is not considered to have dealt damage just because it was unblocked. It must actually deal some amount of damage greater than zero in order to trigger Sigil of Sleep.
The Pittsburgh regionals is new, yes. They added that one in this year, which gives Professional Events Services a regionals in each of their major cities (Columbus, Pittsburgh, and Detroitish). I think that if Ohio Valley, Great Lakes, and Western Pennsylvania all have big turnouts this year then they might consider a northern Ohio regional, but being familiar with some of the politics around here I wouldn't hold my breath.
Yes, Top is a personal preference, and I personally love it. With all the shuffle effects in this deck, I'm thinking about putting in the fourth one, though I probably won't.
As for tooth targets, I think T/V vs. A/A has to be a metagame decision. Creature-based decks are huge around here (WW, mono-red, and so forth), so I run T/V. If you find yourself wanting A/A more than T/V, run A/A. Because of all the creatures I also run the Duplicant main. I ran without it for a few weeks and found myself wanting it over and over. It's just too good against large creatures as well as the mirror. (Last night I got rid of a Slogger and a huge Slith by fetching up Kiki/Dup without having to worry about him doing wonky things to my combo with the Slogger.) Shaman is currently in there as a one-of tooth target, but I may drop that in favor of the fourth o-stone.
As for the board, I could never get Plow Under to work either, so Slaver comes in against controllish things. I also bring in Troll Ascetic against control decks, primarily blue. It's not that good against aggro, realistically you can't get it on the board and keep it there, and if I can't keep it there I'd rather just block with an Elder or a Jens. Five mana, three of it green is a little too much against the fast decks. Against MUC... unless they Bribe it out or run Evacuation, there's precious little they can do to stop that guy. (Well, counter it, but you always have to get around that little hurdle.)
Yes and yes. You always choose the targets for the ability before you pay the costs, so you could choose the target for Shatter or Pillage to be the Black Lotus and then sacrifice the Lotus to pay the cost. Shatter/Pillage will then be countered on resolution for lack of a legal target.
As-CIP abilities are not replacement effects. They're simply static abilities which generally create either a one-shot or continuous effect. An example of a similar ability which does create a replacement effect is Phyrexian Dreadnought, but that's "If <foo> would come into play, instead..." However, since they are static abilities, that means they're not activated or triggered, and Stifle won't work.
Sorry to revive an old thread, but I just noticed this thread and I've been through the BOK book.
Spoilers for Heretic (the BOK book) follow. You have been warned.
The spirit Konda kidnapped from the spirit world is not a myojin. It is actually a piece of the o-kagachi (basically the uber-spirit), which Mochi (the kami of the crescent moon) describes as o-kagachi's "daughter". O-kagachi was the spirit who originally separated the spirit world from the physical world and is the spirit who guards the border between them. When Konda stole the spirit, he created a rift in the border between the two worlds, so o-kagachi not only wants revenge for the theft of its daughter, it needs to get the captured spirit back and punish those who stole it (Konda in particular and possibly all of Eiganjo, maybe even more) in order to heal the rift between the two worlds.
At the moment, it appears that this works, since an unblocked attacking creature stays unblocked and attacking until the end of the combat phase. The first creature will attack and deal its first strike combat damage during the first strike damage step, then you can Ninjutsu another creature into play and deal regular damage with that creature. However, as with all such questions, we won't know for sure until the FAQ comes out with the official rules for the ability.
The card with affinity will be affected by trinisphere since it looks at the casting cost not at the CMC( a frogmite with 4 artifacts in play has a casting cost of 0 and a mana cost of 4) so as long as a spell will cost less than 3 it will be affeted by trinisphere
Not quite. A spell's mana cost and converted mana cost never change, and there's no longer such a thing as the "casting cost" of a card. What Trinisphere does is look at the net cost of the card after cost increases and reductions, and if it's less than three mana, it bumps it up to three. (As far as I know there's no official term for the cost that you actually have to pay. I usually refer to it as the "play cost" or simply the cost to play the spell.)
Please note that what you said about Counterspell is incorrect. A spell can never target itself, so you can't play Counterspell without a spell already on the stack that you can target.
(You may be asking why? Well, it gets into weird headache-type situations. Essentially, in order for Counterspell to actually counter the spell, the Counterspell has to resolve. But when you counter a spell, it goes to the graveyard without effect. So Counterspell goes to resolve, attempts to counter itself, but if it gets countered it shouldn't be resolving in the first place, but in order to be countered the spell has to resolve... you just keep going in circles until the game implodes, basically.)
Maindeck O-Stone: If you've never seen it before, look over the last 20 posts on this thread. It singlehandedly saved my ass numerous times last night. I'm pretty sure it went off against all four matchups. In the red matchups it got rid of things such as Genju, Slith, and Scepter. Against the MBC it cleared the board at least twice. (It was a more permanent-based MBC build focusing on discard rather than board control.) For WW, it cleared out a small army of men including a Leonin Shikari and a Lightning Greaves allowing me to Tooth up the T/V, keep him off his creatures, and Tooth again a couple turns later for the win. Against mono-blue it clears out their Shackles and Magpies. When it goes off it doesn't really hurt me that much because it's almost always done as a delaying/clearing tactic before Tooth, and before Tooth my only permanents are the following: Elder (which I sacrifice), Jens (which draws me a card), Witness (which has already done its job), and Top (which draws a card and sits on the library). Off the top of my head the only matchup it's not nuts against is the mirror. IMO it's one of the must-have cards in the deck. I think I am going to pull out the Shaman for the fourth O-Stone next week and see how it does.
4 Urza's Tower
4 Urza's Power Plant
3 Urza's Mine
11 Forest
1 Okina, Temple to the Grandfathers
Search
4 Sakura-Tribe Elder
4 Sylvan Scrying
4 Reap and Sow
4 Solemn Simulacrum
Other
3 Sensei's Divining Top
4 Eternal Witness
3 Oblivion Stone
4 Tooth and Nail
1 Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker
1 Darksteel Colossus
1 Duplicant
1 Sundering Titan
1 Viridian Shaman
1 Mephidross Vampire
1 Triskelion
1 Boseiju, Who Shelters All
3 Mindslaver
3 Troll Ascetic
4 Naturalize
1 Sundering Titan
2 Platinum Angel
1 Leonin Abunas
Yes, Top is a personal preference, and I personally love it. With all the shuffle effects in this deck, I'm thinking about putting in the fourth one, though I probably won't.
As for tooth targets, I think T/V vs. A/A has to be a metagame decision. Creature-based decks are huge around here (WW, mono-red, and so forth), so I run T/V. If you find yourself wanting A/A more than T/V, run A/A. Because of all the creatures I also run the Duplicant main. I ran without it for a few weeks and found myself wanting it over and over. It's just too good against large creatures as well as the mirror. (Last night I got rid of a Slogger and a huge Slith by fetching up Kiki/Dup without having to worry about him doing wonky things to my combo with the Slogger.) Shaman is currently in there as a one-of tooth target, but I may drop that in favor of the fourth o-stone.
As for the board, I could never get Plow Under to work either, so Slaver comes in against controllish things. I also bring in Troll Ascetic against control decks, primarily blue. It's not that good against aggro, realistically you can't get it on the board and keep it there, and if I can't keep it there I'd rather just block with an Elder or a Jens. Five mana, three of it green is a little too much against the fast decks. Against MUC... unless they Bribe it out or run Evacuation, there's precious little they can do to stop that guy. (Well, counter it, but you always have to get around that little hurdle.)
Spoilers for Heretic (the BOK book) follow. You have been warned.
The spirit Konda kidnapped from the spirit world is not a myojin. It is actually a piece of the o-kagachi (basically the uber-spirit), which Mochi (the kami of the crescent moon) describes as o-kagachi's "daughter". O-kagachi was the spirit who originally separated the spirit world from the physical world and is the spirit who guards the border between them. When Konda stole the spirit, he created a rift in the border between the two worlds, so o-kagachi not only wants revenge for the theft of its daughter, it needs to get the captured spirit back and punish those who stole it (Konda in particular and possibly all of Eiganjo, maybe even more) in order to heal the rift between the two worlds.
"You" refers to Stax, and his statement about Counterspell countering itself.
(You may be asking why? Well, it gets into weird headache-type situations. Essentially, in order for Counterspell to actually counter the spell, the Counterspell has to resolve. But when you counter a spell, it goes to the graveyard without effect. So Counterspell goes to resolve, attempts to counter itself, but if it gets countered it shouldn't be resolving in the first place, but in order to be countered the spell has to resolve... you just keep going in circles until the game implodes, basically.)