The same is said about various infinite mana combos.
Unlike other infinite mana combos staff of dominion not only gives you infinite mana it lets you draw your whole deck meaning you will have the win everytime whereas with other infinite mana combos you need other cards besides the combo to do anything
The game can end just as easily off the back of a Power Artifacted Grim Monolith as a Panoptic Mirror, yet neither of those are banned.
power artifact+monolith again needs other cards to to anything while panoptic mirror+time warp is a 2 card combo that ends the game a better comparison would have been kiki-jiki+pestermite but even that is worse than mirror as creatures are infinitely easier to kill than artifacts.
The lists I've seen recently play bob instead of tombstalker, don't know if that's standard now or just a coincidence, either way bringing in my 4 bridges for 4-8 creatures seems odd, I might think about switching out ghostlies for bridges as they usually won't be attacking with more than 1 or 2 creatures.
My friend came up with a good idea, ghost quarter it's a stripmine vs team america(and canadian thresh I believe but I'm not sure) as the play exactly zero basics and brings our waste count up to 6 taking out tabernacle and 1 other land as they don't play enough creatures for tabernacle to be amazing and I still have magus. This has an added bonus of upping our land count against their wastes.
So now my board looks like this:
2 choke
4 ensnaring bridge
1 aven mindcensor(basically a suppression field that beats in the air and is particularly nasty against bant)
1 trinisphere
3 Leyline of Sanctity
2 suppression field
2 ghost quarter
I feel like this covers almost all of our bad matchups except enchantress, which I never found to be unwinnable personally, while placing emphasis on the fish matchup as that will hands don be the most common deck at the gp. Fortunately fish is cutting threats and counterspells for misstep and standstill neither of which we care about.
I boarded leyline in against a monoblack deck got it in my opening hand and my opponent goes dark rit into hymn. I'm like you are the only legal target, he goes oh and discards two cards. It was great he had one card left and I was just glad he was a bad player. I don't think I would side it in against junk as I already have more cards I want more in that matchup than I have cards I want to take out
If you can find a way to pay 5 mana to do nothing and then use 5 draw 4s(and not win) then yes lich's mirror would work but until then no it is horrible.
I don't have much experience in the MU, but I'd guess that Chalice at one is very important. I'd also try not to walk into Stifle on wasteland, and don't keep a hand that folds to wasteland. Magus of the Tabernacle could be solid too - blocks stuff, taxes them. It dies a lot though....
Oh, and going first is probably pretty important.
it's kinda hard to play around stifle since it costs just u and wasteland is the only thing they can profitably stifle.
I'm trying to go. I need to get my metaphorical ☺☺☺☺ together though to be able to do well. What are matchups are we favored in? Knowing that might help me.
as ecophagy said combo is a really good match up.
zoo is good unless they get multiple pridemages
goblins is in our favor, ghostly and armageddon are amazing against them, chalice at 1 before they get a vial hurts them a lot
bant is in our favor as long as you don't get a slow hand and they don't get a large amount of countermagic. chalice at 1 is great and so is trinisphere, ghostly is problematic for them because they like their 3 mana dudes.
counterbalance decks are generally really good, especially dreadstill since chalice at 1 means they have to win with trinket mages and factories.
affinity is good unless they go first and get a god hand. Just remember chalice at 0 is better than chalice at 1.
Hard matchups are:
junk, too many thre drops, mainboard vindicates are bad for us, discard generally hurts us a lot.
merfolk I find is 45-55 to 40-60 in their favor. They have hands that we just cannot beat, but our mana denial is very good against them and the matchup gets much better post board with ensnaring birdges. I think post NPH this matchup will be better since they will be switching out spell pierces and sovereigns for mental misstep and with them thinking about standstill since we rarely care about standstill and it means they are running less threats.
I've hand trouble with team america and thresh, though I haven't played against them much so maybe that's why. Anybody have any tips for tempo matchups?
I forgot to mention my friend got a tabernacle at scg boston and let me borrow it for the legacy open, now I never had access to one before so I was just theorycrafting but I decided that I would rather have a magus over a tabernacle. Later I decided to cut my lands from 26 to 25 but couldn't decide what to put in the slot then my friend gave me his tabernacle so I thought I'd try it and it was so much better than I ever imagined, if you can you should try it out it's a lot better than it seems on paper.
I decided to put a revoker in the tabernacle slot for whenever I don't have access to a tabernacle, because it has a lot of utility, plus it has 2 power.
I just realized, thanks to Frenadol that defense grid is pretty good against hightide it forces them to play their spells on their turn meaning they can't go eot rebuild or wipe away then win on their turn, it also stops counterspells and eot meditates.
Formerly I used Baneslayer Angel as a beater, but found that getting 5 mana available was much more difficult that one would expect, and on the other hand, 4 mana could be get easily, so Exalted Angel works much better, and it has the ability to ambush people who doesn't know what it is. I also wanted to put in a fourth copy of Magus, but don't know what to take out. Also considering another copy of Elspeth, she's extremely versatile and hard to deal with, can make fodder for the Stack, or generate blockers against Knight of the Reliquary, and costs only 4. Another card that surprised me is Dust Bowl. With cards like City of Traitors and Flagstones of Trokair it works much better than Crucible+Wasteland, while being perfectly combinable with the Crucible too.
The sideboard is a mess, I ask for your help in making a decent one. My meta is heavy on aggro/aggrocontrol and light on combo, composed of Zoo, Maverick, Rock, Merfolk, Enchantress, Red Stompy, Dredge and Aggroloam being the most popular ones. I find it very hard to deal with Loam and Rock, would like some advice on dealing with those decks too.
Thanks in advance.
I thought about dust bowl too a while ago, but it's a bit too mana intensive, a couple of reasons why wasteland is good are 1 you can use it in the early turns unlike dust bowl which needs 4 mana and later on you can waste a land and still do things that turn. I would put a tabernacle in that slot but I understand that not everyone has access to one. Though like I said I like 25 lands over 26 especially since you're playing exalted angel over baneslayer which needs 4 instead of 5 mana.
Since you're meta is mostly aggro, I would cut a trinisphere and add another ghostly prison(I would do this in most metas though)
EDIT: Do you think I should run a 1 of revoker or aven mindcensor, mindcensor is just a 2/1 flier in some match ups but in some it wrecks face while revoker's ability is generally live in most matchups but is much less powerful, I'm liking the aven what do you all think?
I tested ratchet bomb and I feel it's really bad against fish. Besides aether vial their threats are spread out between 2 and 3 cmc, you never want to blow up the bomb at 3 because that takes out all of your lock pieces and crucibles. At 2 it's ok but usually won't hit more than one or two creatures. And it's very slow.
For now I'm just uping my ensnaring bridge count to 4 since landing 1 locks them out of winning giving you all the time in the world to set up stax or magus+geddon. If you really want to kill their creatures I would rather play wrath than ratchet bomb it often goes off the same turn as the bomb but wipes all their creatures with minimal impact to our board. But even that isn't very good, I think 3 or 4 ensnaring bridge is the way to go and pretty much all we need since there's not much they can do against it.
Now I need to figure out what to put in the 1 or 2 free slots, I'm thinking about running some rule of law since there were around 12 high tide players at scg open boston and they have rebuild to bounce all artifacts with one spell but only have single target bounce spells for enchantments but that will only be relevant at GP providence so until then I'm not sure what to run
1) They are psudo-immune to Wasteland, which hits 90% of decks used in legacy and is used in just about the same number. Sure, they can waste their waste (pun intended) and you get a basic (and pretty much untouchable) plains in return. Fair trade for not nuking one of your 2lands.
2) Need to sacrifice something to smokestack? Sac this and still have the same number of permanents! Even better, sac this, pull a plains, then play it via Crucible. +1 Permanent ftw!
3) It makes W. Granted a lot of decks don't play Baneslayer in favour for Wurmcoil now (so can afford fewer white sources), but White is always useful!
4) Lets you start a land ahead when you Armageddon, two lands if you have a Crucible out and play this before your land drop.
5) Lets you keep your Magus after the classic "Magus, Geddon, No more Gobbos for you" play if you don't have a Mox out.
6) It allows you to rip plains from your deck via the Legend rule, and thus "thin" your deck (yes I know its almost negligible. :P)
He was talking about the list with no geddon stax or crucible that antiria posted
I'm thinking take out the fields and add 2 matrix and 1 bridge. I feel bad giving up the field but I think matrix is better against junk which is a bad match up and seems to be popular right now, though it doesn't stop their wastelands or fetches it stops their problem cards cold instead of making them cost more. It's also good against some vial decks, high tide, and counterthopter.
I haven't tested it yet but it seems good right now even though it doesn't fit into the mana denial theme. What do you guys think?
I also came across the card presence of the master the other day aside from countering our o-rings it seems pretty good against enchantress if you get it down before they get a win con or too many enchantress effects. Would force us to side in 3-4 other cards since you would want to take out all the prisons and rings unless you are feeling ballsy.
EDIT: My maindeck is the 2nd to last post on the page before this
Merfolk has always been my worst matchup and I have yet to find a working board plan against them, they have the perfect balance of control against your lock pieces and aggro to put you on a clock. I would suggest taking out your O-rings for the bombs because of the fact that they can hit multiple targets as opposed to just one.
While I find merfolk to be usually around if a little less than 40/60 in their favor, they definitely have a few hands that we cannot win against, I think you're right that o-ring would be the best choice to side for the bomb I also like how orings can act like an oh ☺☺☺☺ button to kill a lord or vial but I'm going to try it and hope they prevent more oh ☺☺☺☺ situations that they end up being bad in.
I currently run 3 Aura in my sideboard as well, but I have a couple of Enchantress players in my meta and its very helpful against them. It is also good, like you said against painters grindstone. One thing I have realized is that against other prison decks, this is a godsend. Counter-top Thopters dies to this if it hits the board.
I think it's definitely a meta call, but thank you for reminding me about how good it is in counterthopter. I usually don't side it in against countebalance because counterbalance is usually a dead card against us anyways but thopter sword is showing up around here and there is a dreadstill player where is becomes a ☺☺☺☺ you nought and standstill.
I only run two suppression fields right now, but im thinking of putting it up to 3. Its such a good card against almost any deck. It acts as a mini armageddon to any deck that runs primarily on fetches, and destroys combo decks that rely on activated abilities like cephalid breakfast, grindstone, and even the discard outlets of dredge (though dredge is pretty much an auto win for us anyway)
I just feel it ends up being an add on in most match up where I'm bringing in 3 other cards and I find it hard to fit in more than 5 cards. I always feel wrong taking out oring because it has so much utility in every match up.
I'm kinda in the same boat as you here. I currently run 3 of these sideboard and I feel that they are not necessary. Stax already has a good matchup against combo and I feel that our sideboard should be focusing on what we lose against, not what we have inherently good matchups against.
Yeah I ran it because combo was a large part of my meta so I wanted it to try to prevent variance that occurs from playing the same deck type many times I definitely need to take it out now though.
The only thing I run to face Junk is Bottled cloister. But that is not much. It stops (Almost?) all discard due to that fact that your hand is not it play to target, but getting it down before a hymm is kind of difficult. It does however replenish your hand after it has been hit by the discard. The only times I've really beaten a junk deck is when I had a decent stall in the beginning followed up by a chalice at 3 to turn off deed and vindicate. If anyone has any super secret tech against them, please share.
That seems like a horrible card against them, yeah it turns of their discard but if make their vindicates get rid of your card draw and your whole hand since the cloister is no longer on the field to tell you to return your hand. So you're turning off 8 cards(4 of which are turned of by chalice at 1) and turns 10-11 of their cards into target player discards their hand or destroy target permanent(vindicate+kgrip+pridemage+pulse if they run it) basically you're making their best non-knight spell even better to basically turn off hymn.
I think damping matrix+ensnaring bridge might be our best bet which turns off pridemage top swords knights and I guess mystic which should slow them down espcially if we have a bridge stopping their creatures. Unfortunately they still have 6-7 artifact/enchantment destruction spells but it hopefully would solve the main problem which is their ability to apply pressure while destroying our ☺☺☺☺. The problem is I want to put suppression fields in too to stop fetches and wastelands but there's too much overlap where field becomes a dead or bad card(never thought I would say that) since it could very likely effectively lock only you out.
So I played in a few GPTs after a little break and I realized that I don't remember my boarding plans too well. Could you guys look at my list and help me out?
There's a lot of fish, a lot of junk, a fair amount of NO, and landstill-like control decks as well as some zoo and goblins in my meta.
I haven't really played since survival was banned so I haven't changed my sb except for the CoP: Greens I had.
Bridge is for merfolk/nopro/show and tell this card is great and I'm thinking of bumping it up to 3.
bomb was also for merfolk I think but I don't see anything I would want to side out for it after I sided in the bridges in. Can you guy figure out how you would side against merfolk with this list? If you also can't figure out anything to side out for the bombs what do you think I should put in that spot?
Aura is kind of a place holder, I had CoP green here before but there's at least one enchantress player here who frequently loans the deck out so it's usually at every tournament in the area, I also saw a painter's servant grindstone combo player recently.
As for suppression field, I love this card but I never seem to be able to fit more than 2 when I side, what do you think about cutting them down to 2 and using the slot for something else?
The leyline was there because I used to have a burn deck and a couple of combo deck in my meta, most of the combo deck seem to have dissappeared but a tide player is there now and the burn player is still there they're very easy match ups but I put these in because I had a high chance of seeing them but now I don't think it's good enough.
Have any of you found any good sideboard cards for junk? There are a lot of them around here and it's a pretty hard match up for us.
I also was wondering what people are running in their sbs now.
EDIT: Damping Matrix is looking good right now, it hits pridemage, vial, the swords, jitte, top, candelabra unfortunately it doesn't hit fetches but we still have suppression field for that though there's significant overlap
I would play this in the nonwhite aggro mirror, or maybe if turbo fog was viable but even then probably not because there would usually be better choices.
This is only good if you can reliably put your opponent on a clock or make them lose more life than they are dealing(usually with blockers). It's kind of nice with gideon because if they want to attack they have to pay life to attack gideon before they can hit you, and the longer they wait to hit gideon the harder it will be to kill him.
Of course if they are playing white it becomes unplayable. It's also bad if their creatures are very large.
Unlike other infinite mana combos staff of dominion not only gives you infinite mana it lets you draw your whole deck meaning you will have the win everytime whereas with other infinite mana combos you need other cards besides the combo to do anything
power artifact+monolith again needs other cards to to anything while panoptic mirror+time warp is a 2 card combo that ends the game a better comparison would have been kiki-jiki+pestermite but even that is worse than mirror as creatures are infinitely easier to kill than artifacts.
My friend came up with a good idea, ghost quarter it's a stripmine vs team america(and canadian thresh I believe but I'm not sure) as the play exactly zero basics and brings our waste count up to 6 taking out tabernacle and 1 other land as they don't play enough creatures for tabernacle to be amazing and I still have magus. This has an added bonus of upping our land count against their wastes.
So now my board looks like this:
2 choke
4 ensnaring bridge
1 aven mindcensor(basically a suppression field that beats in the air and is particularly nasty against bant)
1 trinisphere
3 Leyline of Sanctity
2 suppression field
2 ghost quarter
I feel like this covers almost all of our bad matchups except enchantress, which I never found to be unwinnable personally, while placing emphasis on the fish matchup as that will hands don be the most common deck at the gp. Fortunately fish is cutting threats and counterspells for misstep and standstill neither of which we care about.
Is there any bad matchup I missed?
not sure if that's optimal though
EDIT: I'm not sure if I already asked this, but do we have anything we can side against team america and other tempo decks?
it's kinda hard to play around stifle since it costs just u and wasteland is the only thing they can profitably stifle.
as ecophagy said combo is a really good match up.
zoo is good unless they get multiple pridemages
goblins is in our favor, ghostly and armageddon are amazing against them, chalice at 1 before they get a vial hurts them a lot
bant is in our favor as long as you don't get a slow hand and they don't get a large amount of countermagic. chalice at 1 is great and so is trinisphere, ghostly is problematic for them because they like their 3 mana dudes.
counterbalance decks are generally really good, especially dreadstill since chalice at 1 means they have to win with trinket mages and factories.
affinity is good unless they go first and get a god hand. Just remember chalice at 0 is better than chalice at 1.
Hard matchups are:
junk, too many thre drops, mainboard vindicates are bad for us, discard generally hurts us a lot.
merfolk I find is 45-55 to 40-60 in their favor. They have hands that we just cannot beat, but our mana denial is very good against them and the matchup gets much better post board with ensnaring birdges. I think post NPH this matchup will be better since they will be switching out spell pierces and sovereigns for mental misstep and with them thinking about standstill since we rarely care about standstill and it means they are running less threats.
I've hand trouble with team america and thresh, though I haven't played against them much so maybe that's why. Anybody have any tips for tempo matchups?
I decided to put a revoker in the tabernacle slot for whenever I don't have access to a tabernacle, because it has a lot of utility, plus it has 2 power.
I just realized, thanks to Frenadol that defense grid is pretty good against hightide it forces them to play their spells on their turn meaning they can't go eot rebuild or wipe away then win on their turn, it also stops counterspells and eot meditates.
I thought about dust bowl too a while ago, but it's a bit too mana intensive, a couple of reasons why wasteland is good are 1 you can use it in the early turns unlike dust bowl which needs 4 mana and later on you can waste a land and still do things that turn. I would put a tabernacle in that slot but I understand that not everyone has access to one. Though like I said I like 25 lands over 26 especially since you're playing exalted angel over baneslayer which needs 4 instead of 5 mana.
Since you're meta is mostly aggro, I would cut a trinisphere and add another ghostly prison(I would do this in most metas though)
EDIT: Do you think I should run a 1 of revoker or aven mindcensor, mindcensor is just a 2/1 flier in some match ups but in some it wrecks face while revoker's ability is generally live in most matchups but is much less powerful, I'm liking the aven what do you all think?
For now I'm just uping my ensnaring bridge count to 4 since landing 1 locks them out of winning giving you all the time in the world to set up stax or magus+geddon. If you really want to kill their creatures I would rather play wrath than ratchet bomb it often goes off the same turn as the bomb but wipes all their creatures with minimal impact to our board. But even that isn't very good, I think 3 or 4 ensnaring bridge is the way to go and pretty much all we need since there's not much they can do against it.
Now I need to figure out what to put in the 1 or 2 free slots, I'm thinking about running some rule of law since there were around 12 high tide players at scg open boston and they have rebuild to bounce all artifacts with one spell but only have single target bounce spells for enchantments but that will only be relevant at GP providence so until then I'm not sure what to run
He was talking about the list with no geddon stax or crucible that antiria posted
1 Trinisphere
3 Suppression Field
2 Ensnaring Bridge
3 Leyline of Sanctity
3 Aura of Silence
3 Ratchet Bomb
I want to fit in a couple damping matrix and an Ensnaring bridge
I'm thinking take out the fields and add 2 matrix and 1 bridge. I feel bad giving up the field but I think matrix is better against junk which is a bad match up and seems to be popular right now, though it doesn't stop their wastelands or fetches it stops their problem cards cold instead of making them cost more. It's also good against some vial decks, high tide, and counterthopter.
I haven't tested it yet but it seems good right now even though it doesn't fit into the mana denial theme. What do you guys think?
I also came across the card presence of the master the other day aside from countering our o-rings it seems pretty good against enchantress if you get it down before they get a win con or too many enchantress effects. Would force us to side in 3-4 other cards since you would want to take out all the prisons and rings unless you are feeling ballsy.
EDIT: My maindeck is the 2nd to last post on the page before this
While I find merfolk to be usually around if a little less than 40/60 in their favor, they definitely have a few hands that we cannot win against, I think you're right that o-ring would be the best choice to side for the bomb I also like how orings can act like an oh ☺☺☺☺ button to kill a lord or vial but I'm going to try it and hope they prevent more oh ☺☺☺☺ situations that they end up being bad in.
I think it's definitely a meta call, but thank you for reminding me about how good it is in counterthopter. I usually don't side it in against countebalance because counterbalance is usually a dead card against us anyways but thopter sword is showing up around here and there is a dreadstill player where is becomes a ☺☺☺☺ you nought and standstill.
I just feel it ends up being an add on in most match up where I'm bringing in 3 other cards and I find it hard to fit in more than 5 cards. I always feel wrong taking out oring because it has so much utility in every match up.
Yeah I ran it because combo was a large part of my meta so I wanted it to try to prevent variance that occurs from playing the same deck type many times I definitely need to take it out now though.
That seems like a horrible card against them, yeah it turns of their discard but if make their vindicates get rid of your card draw and your whole hand since the cloister is no longer on the field to tell you to return your hand. So you're turning off 8 cards(4 of which are turned of by chalice at 1) and turns 10-11 of their cards into target player discards their hand or destroy target permanent(vindicate+kgrip+pridemage+pulse if they run it) basically you're making their best non-knight spell even better to basically turn off hymn.
I think damping matrix+ensnaring bridge might be our best bet which turns off pridemage top swords knights and I guess mystic which should slow them down espcially if we have a bridge stopping their creatures. Unfortunately they still have 6-7 artifact/enchantment destruction spells but it hopefully would solve the main problem which is their ability to apply pressure while destroying our ☺☺☺☺. The problem is I want to put suppression fields in too to stop fetches and wastelands but there's too much overlap where field becomes a dead or bad card(never thought I would say that) since it could very likely effectively lock only you out.
There's a lot of fish, a lot of junk, a fair amount of NO, and landstill-like control decks as well as some zoo and goblins in my meta.
1 Kor Haven
2 Horizon Canopy
6 Plains
4 Ancient Tomb
3 Flagstones of Trokair
4 City of Traitors
4 Wasteland
2 Mishra's Factory
Creatures
2 Baneslayer Angel
3 Magus of the Tabernacle
3 Smokestack
4 Ghostly Prison
3 Trinisphere
4 Mox Diamond
3 Oblivion Ring
4 Armageddon
4 Crucible of Worlds
4 Calice of the Void
1 Trinisphere
3 Suppression Field
2 Ensnaring Bridge
3 Aura of Silence
3 Ratchet Bomb
3 Leyline of Sanctity
I haven't really played since survival was banned so I haven't changed my sb except for the CoP: Greens I had.
Bridge is for merfolk/nopro/show and tell this card is great and I'm thinking of bumping it up to 3.
bomb was also for merfolk I think but I don't see anything I would want to side out for it after I sided in the bridges in. Can you guy figure out how you would side against merfolk with this list? If you also can't figure out anything to side out for the bombs what do you think I should put in that spot?
Aura is kind of a place holder, I had CoP green here before but there's at least one enchantress player here who frequently loans the deck out so it's usually at every tournament in the area, I also saw a painter's servant grindstone combo player recently.
As for suppression field, I love this card but I never seem to be able to fit more than 2 when I side, what do you think about cutting them down to 2 and using the slot for something else?
The leyline was there because I used to have a burn deck and a couple of combo deck in my meta, most of the combo deck seem to have dissappeared but a tide player is there now and the burn player is still there they're very easy match ups but I put these in because I had a high chance of seeing them but now I don't think it's good enough.
Have any of you found any good sideboard cards for junk? There are a lot of them around here and it's a pretty hard match up for us.
I also was wondering what people are running in their sbs now.
EDIT: Damping Matrix is looking good right now, it hits pridemage, vial, the swords, jitte, top, candelabra unfortunately it doesn't hit fetches but we still have suppression field for that though there's significant overlap
This is only good if you can reliably put your opponent on a clock or make them lose more life than they are dealing(usually with blockers). It's kind of nice with gideon because if they want to attack they have to pay life to attack gideon before they can hit you, and the longer they wait to hit gideon the harder it will be to kill him.
Of course if they are playing white it becomes unplayable. It's also bad if their creatures are very large.
How can you miss-translate something you are not translating? It's not like mana symbols are different in different languages.