Shriekhorns are, i feel, just better than the neonates. Might be wrong to play them, but i like the added benefit of being able to flip amoebas mid combat, mill additional prized amalgams after certain triggers or surprise mill my opponent after they serum visions or scry with a mulligan. it "feels" a bit more explosive than neonate. Against a deaths shadow opponent who cast Kozilek's Return, i was able to mill 2 amoebas after putting them both on top of my library with 2 thugs who had died, so as to block the death shadow, which was nice.
19 lands is ok i feel, haven´t had any issues, as long as you can hit 2 lands. This deck NEEDS minimum of 2 lands to play, 1 of which has to be able to produce green, for loam, which is absolutely essential for the deck to work as you might know. You can keep 1 mountain + looting, for this reason. I have mulled to 5, 4 multiple times, (and even 3 once) and have won easily following that rule.
On confluence. Could be gemstone mine? It´s really up to you, i would have played blackcleave cliffs maybe, if i had any. Life loss to confluence are only REALLY relevant against burn (for which i should have more collective brutality in the sideboard). It´s just an additional source of green for early game, you don´t use it later on that much.
Took down a 45 man tounrament yesterday, going 9-0-1 (draw being intentional). After almost giving up on the deck, because of how badly it was performing, i came back to the primere here (to look at the lists), only to realized i was playing fewer dredgers than needed (gotta have around 900 games with this deck, should have noticed before :/). All in all, still solid deck, sad i misjudged it . Keep it up guys!
So there hasn´t been much talk lately about the deck i feel. Is it probably not good enough to be running? I mean, i think it´s still really good, but since it hasn´t been popping up anywhere, i kind of had my doubts.
Still, the fact that it´s a R/G agro deck that´s running U for 4 resilient beaters, and a tonne of cheap counterspells, makes it so good against control decks it´s not even funny. On friday i was playing against control and was stuck on 3 lands, thinking about how i would crush the deck with the sideboard i had for it, and i didn´t even lose that game, he played an ugin with me stuck on 3 lands i still won (he was at 8 so my shaman and hasty knuckleblade delt pretty well with him).
For these and for other reasons, i´ve decided to play this deck at the ptq next weekend. But i do however have a dilema. Recently i switched from polukranos, stormbreath build, to basically a frost walker without flamewake phoenix build to see how it went. As arkaniss said, frost walker is the card we needed to be able to fight back against abzan agro (Before, they were playing 2 mana 3/3´s and we were playing 2 mana 2/1´s and 2/2´s. This card can give us a fighting chance against that deck in the early turns, which is great) but it´s real bad against tokens, (like... real bad), and i´m expecting the following decks to appear at the ptq:
-UX control
-R/G agro
-Abzan (all varieties i guess mostly agro)
-Mardu
-Constellation (either with whip or without)
-Boros agro
So i kind of liked the deck with frost walkers, but i also only played with it for one weekend. The sideboard was changed pretty heavily, i had to swap the anger of the gods for arc lightnings, since i was now playing more agro (still i liked the arcs). I took out 2 back to nature (probably a mistake) and i also switched 1 hunt the hunter for a savage punch since i had gone -3 polukranos -2 boon satyr and gone +4 frost walker. Still i had no clue how to sideboard with it.
Lists with frost walkers and flamewake are the lists that have been doing best lately, so maybe i should hop on the train this time around ( although the deck is playing without polukranos which actually stopped rhinos, and with almost no copies of stormbreath, which also stopped rhinos and other storbreaths, and that has me rather disturbed). Personally i think it taxes the mana a lot. Having to have U turn 2 and RR for turn 3 is pretty complicated i think. Are flamewakes good enough?
Regardless, i want to try to find the best sideboard possible against that meta. This is also really tough to do, not so much because of the meta, but because there is no one, best, defined temur agro list, and this also changes with every change of the main deck.
If we´re under the assumption that control is our best matchup, which it is, i think maybe the surrak dragonclaw and temur charms could be removed. What where you guys bringing the charms in against? Where surrak just for control decks? I remember seeing a list somewhere that did well in a daily that had 4 disdainful strokes and 3 surraks in the side. Maybe in place of surrak (or any other control sideboard card) you could consider monastery siege. Siege is a card you definitely don´t want as a 1 of, but maybe as a 2 of it´s good. It serves as the "sideboard slot" against control (both modes are great) but it can also come in against mardu and maybe burn? It gives the sideboard more flexibility I mean, thoughtseize costs 3, downfall costs 5, lightning strike costs 4, too bad crackling doom does´t target :/ still descent i think, i´m going to try it out, it´s like having "more cards" in a single sideboard slot.
Also, against mardu, i always had the issue of "do i bring in back to nature against their 4 chained to the rocks?" and i never did. Maybe reclamation sage is better. Still a 2/1, breaks the chained to the rocks, but is also pretty good against whip decks and i´d actually bring it in against control just to break prerilous vaults.
Against the agro decks, could feed the clan or winds of qal sisma even be considered? they´r the types of cards that could swing a game around, almost useless by themselves, but they have some potential right?
What do you guys think of something like the following against that meta?
Have we reached a somewhat general consensus of what cards are bad against what matchup? I still agree that against R/W and R/G -4 frost walkers is almost a given.
How have people been dealing with the likes of polukranos and siege rhinos now a days?
PaBlItO, can you share your build? I'm looking into putting Temur together but I'd like more baseline for things that work over just throwing stuff together (like I kind of am now).
So i spent about an hour and a half writing about the choices of my decklist, just to press some button on the pc and have it close google chrome... not cool. Let´s try this again.
-I think the decks maindecking stubborn denial are the way to go. Countering elspeths, removals, thoughtseizes on turn 1, it´s great. Plus, now with all the mardu running around, it has gotten even more important in my opinion. Sometimes it can just lock up a game and because it´s so cheap, it allows you to keep playing while still having mana up for it (unlike temur charm, most of the time, since it costs 3)
-Surrak should just probably be a dragon. I love the flexibility of this card, flashing it in to block something, flashing it so that heir of the wilds can trample over to kill an elspeth or sarkan. Flashing it in eot against control with a denial backup is the best, countering the downfall (since they keep downfalls in hand against you) then playing an uncounterable knuckleblade with haste (and bounce mana) and hitting for 10. The thing is, your matchup is already really good against control and stormbreath has more protection (plus it has evation, surrak doesn´t)
-Craters claws: You definitely want this card, but most likely not as a 4 of. Kibler´s last take on the deck still plays 4 copies, but he has mentioned it´s possible he could cut it down to 3 copies. Being able to play a big threat and have this in your hand really gives you a good advantage since now you can both remove craetures and still attack + play other threats. It´s also a "pseudo win con", since if your opponents block incorrectly or don´t play around it, you can usually just dome them for 7-8 damage. It also kills elspeth, late in the game when they stabilize (happened to me on friday, topdecked the claws to stay alive).
-Temur Charm: 3 copies is probably too much. Don´t get me wrong, i love this cards. Some times it´s the card that just "wins me the game" and i just need to topdeck. I´ve been in that position and luckly i´ve drawn it and because because of that, i´ve never changed the numbers on it. It helps you win through caryatids, coursers, elspeths, hornet queen tokens, wingmate rocs and the likes (and that is if any one outside courser and caryatid even resolve through it). It´s also great if your opponent doesn´t have the answer for your early knuckleblade or if he or she stumbles a single turn, but 3 mana is expensive though and it´s what i usually side out when i´m on the draw, but that´s also because i don´t know how to sideboard most of the time
-Fall of the hammer. It´s a bad card on it´s own of course. But it´s not "fight" and it´s instant (as opposed to hunt the hunter and savage punch). I was looking for another removal spell and i was pretty pleased with it. The fact that your creatures are mostly bigger than theirs and that you´re playig heir of the wilds makes it so that it´s actually very descent (basically becomes murder with heir). I´ve killed Anafenzas, rhinos, polukranos, dragons, arbor colossus, coursers etc etc, with this card, whereas if it had been say lightning strike, it might not have worked out as fine. The thing is because this is such a tempo oriented deck being able to quickly deal with a threat while having counters or creatures with haste or that are difficult to deal with, becomes important, and that´s why i like this card. Some weeks ago, i had a heir in play and 3 lands, my opponent plays anafenza i eot boon satyr, and untap with fall of the hammer target heir and anafenza and hit for 7 with denial backup, it´s pretty much exactly what i need at that moment. The card is however mediocre against mardu and jeskai (particularly mardu) because of HOW MUCH removal they have, it basically becomes a dead card really early on, so much so, that it´s almost never reliable to kill say a goblin rabblemaster with it, and that´s it´s biggest downside (also, they can kill your creature in response but i still haven´t had that happen to me)
Sideboard is, weird. I should probably change it to something similar to what kibler is playing although i don´t like the chandra´s and nissas that much. Of course it depends on the meta and sideboarding is REALLY REALLY important.
How possible do you guys think it is, now with mardu being everywhere, literally to turn into a control deck post board without compromising the other matchups? Boon satyr and heir are probably disposable in that matchup (which makes rattleclaw draws probably less reliable than before, but hey), and temur is really good at switching geers (with the proper tools of course). The main problem i see is being able to kill both rabblemaster and butcher, survive through all the thoughtseizes, chained to the rocks and crackling dooms, and still win
By the way, on friday i played against a friend round 4, i was 3-0 and he was 2-1. He was playing mardu, and before the match started he said to me "geez i have no idea how to beat you" and i was like "...yeah, you don´t have to do much at all". Game one was something like the following: t2 heir, eot magma jet. Turn 3 knuckleblade, eot crackling doom. Eot 4 boon satyr, lightning stike it. Turn 5 Polukranos, Crakling doom. His turn rabblemaster and game 1 was over. It´s getting really troublesome... that crackling doom.
1
19 lands is ok i feel, haven´t had any issues, as long as you can hit 2 lands. This deck NEEDS minimum of 2 lands to play, 1 of which has to be able to produce green, for loam, which is absolutely essential for the deck to work as you might know. You can keep 1 mountain + looting, for this reason. I have mulled to 5, 4 multiple times, (and even 3 once) and have won easily following that rule.
On confluence. Could be gemstone mine? It´s really up to you, i would have played blackcleave cliffs maybe, if i had any. Life loss to confluence are only REALLY relevant against burn (for which i should have more collective brutality in the sideboard). It´s just an additional source of green for early game, you don´t use it later on that much.
2
1
So there hasn´t been much talk lately about the deck i feel. Is it probably not good enough to be running? I mean, i think it´s still really good, but since it hasn´t been popping up anywhere, i kind of had my doubts.
Still, the fact that it´s a R/G agro deck that´s running U for 4 resilient beaters, and a tonne of cheap counterspells, makes it so good against control decks it´s not even funny. On friday i was playing against control and was stuck on 3 lands, thinking about how i would crush the deck with the sideboard i had for it, and i didn´t even lose that game, he played an ugin with me stuck on 3 lands i still won (he was at 8 so my shaman and hasty knuckleblade delt pretty well with him).
For these and for other reasons, i´ve decided to play this deck at the ptq next weekend. But i do however have a dilema. Recently i switched from polukranos, stormbreath build, to basically a frost walker without flamewake phoenix build to see how it went. As arkaniss said, frost walker is the card we needed to be able to fight back against abzan agro (Before, they were playing 2 mana 3/3´s and we were playing 2 mana 2/1´s and 2/2´s. This card can give us a fighting chance against that deck in the early turns, which is great) but it´s real bad against tokens, (like... real bad), and i´m expecting the following decks to appear at the ptq:
-UX control
-R/G agro
-Abzan (all varieties i guess mostly agro)
-Mardu
-Constellation (either with whip or without)
-Boros agro
My list as of right now:
4 Savage knuckleblade
4 frost walker
4 heir of the wilds
4 shaman of the great hunt
2 Yasova dragonclaw
4 Rattleclaw Mystic
3 Ashcloud Phoenix
Non-Creatures
3 Wild slash
4 Stubborn denial
4 Crater's claws
4 Frontier bivouac
4 wooded foothills
2 shivan reef
4 yavimaya coast
3 Mountain
3 Forest
2 temple of abandon
2 temple of mystery
2 surrak dragonclaw
3 disdainful stroke
3 arc lightning
2 Hunt the hunter
1 Savage punch
2 Hornet nest
2 Temur charm
So i kind of liked the deck with frost walkers, but i also only played with it for one weekend. The sideboard was changed pretty heavily, i had to swap the anger of the gods for arc lightnings, since i was now playing more agro (still i liked the arcs). I took out 2 back to nature (probably a mistake) and i also switched 1 hunt the hunter for a savage punch since i had gone -3 polukranos -2 boon satyr and gone +4 frost walker. Still i had no clue how to sideboard with it.
Lists with frost walkers and flamewake are the lists that have been doing best lately, so maybe i should hop on the train this time around ( although the deck is playing without polukranos which actually stopped rhinos, and with almost no copies of stormbreath, which also stopped rhinos and other storbreaths, and that has me rather disturbed). Personally i think it taxes the mana a lot. Having to have U turn 2 and RR for turn 3 is pretty complicated i think. Are flamewakes good enough?
Regardless, i want to try to find the best sideboard possible against that meta. This is also really tough to do, not so much because of the meta, but because there is no one, best, defined temur agro list, and this also changes with every change of the main deck.
If we´re under the assumption that control is our best matchup, which it is, i think maybe the surrak dragonclaw and temur charms could be removed. What where you guys bringing the charms in against? Where surrak just for control decks? I remember seeing a list somewhere that did well in a daily that had 4 disdainful strokes and 3 surraks in the side. Maybe in place of surrak (or any other control sideboard card) you could consider monastery siege. Siege is a card you definitely don´t want as a 1 of, but maybe as a 2 of it´s good. It serves as the "sideboard slot" against control (both modes are great) but it can also come in against mardu and maybe burn? It gives the sideboard more flexibility I mean, thoughtseize costs 3, downfall costs 5, lightning strike costs 4, too bad crackling doom does´t target :/ still descent i think, i´m going to try it out, it´s like having "more cards" in a single sideboard slot.
Also, against mardu, i always had the issue of "do i bring in back to nature against their 4 chained to the rocks?" and i never did. Maybe reclamation sage is better. Still a 2/1, breaks the chained to the rocks, but is also pretty good against whip decks and i´d actually bring it in against control just to break prerilous vaults.
Against the agro decks, could feed the clan or winds of qal sisma even be considered? they´r the types of cards that could swing a game around, almost useless by themselves, but they have some potential right?
What do you guys think of something like the following against that meta?
3 Disdainful stroke
2 Hornet nest
2 Monastery siege
2 Reclamation sage
3 Arc lightning / barrage of boulders
2 Hunt the hunter
1 somthing
Have we reached a somewhat general consensus of what cards are bad against what matchup? I still agree that against R/W and R/G -4 frost walkers is almost a given.
How have people been dealing with the likes of polukranos and siege rhinos now a days?
1
So i spent about an hour and a half writing about the choices of my decklist, just to press some button on the pc and have it close google chrome... not cool. Let´s try this again.
4 Heir of the wilds
4 Savage Knuckleblade
4 Boon Satyr
3 Polukranos, World Eater
3 Ashcloud phoenix
2 Stormbreath Dragon
1 Surrak Dragonclaw
3 Crater's Claw
3 Temur Charm
3 Stubborn Denial
2 Fall of the hammer
4 Wooded Foothills
3 Frontier Bivouac
3 Temple of Abandon
2 Temple of mystery
4 Yamivaya Coast
2 Shivan Reef
3 Mountain
3 Forest
3 Disdainful Stroke
3 Hunt the hunter
2 Hornet Nest
2 Magma Spray
2 Back to Nature
So, some things about the numbers and choices:
-I think the decks maindecking stubborn denial are the way to go. Countering elspeths, removals, thoughtseizes on turn 1, it´s great. Plus, now with all the mardu running around, it has gotten even more important in my opinion. Sometimes it can just lock up a game and because it´s so cheap, it allows you to keep playing while still having mana up for it (unlike temur charm, most of the time, since it costs 3)
-Surrak should just probably be a dragon. I love the flexibility of this card, flashing it in to block something, flashing it so that heir of the wilds can trample over to kill an elspeth or sarkan. Flashing it in eot against control with a denial backup is the best, countering the downfall (since they keep downfalls in hand against you) then playing an uncounterable knuckleblade with haste (and bounce mana) and hitting for 10. The thing is, your matchup is already really good against control and stormbreath has more protection (plus it has evation, surrak doesn´t)
-Craters claws: You definitely want this card, but most likely not as a 4 of. Kibler´s last take on the deck still plays 4 copies, but he has mentioned it´s possible he could cut it down to 3 copies. Being able to play a big threat and have this in your hand really gives you a good advantage since now you can both remove craetures and still attack + play other threats. It´s also a "pseudo win con", since if your opponents block incorrectly or don´t play around it, you can usually just dome them for 7-8 damage. It also kills elspeth, late in the game when they stabilize (happened to me on friday, topdecked the claws to stay alive).
-Temur Charm: 3 copies is probably too much. Don´t get me wrong, i love this cards. Some times it´s the card that just "wins me the game" and i just need to topdeck. I´ve been in that position and luckly i´ve drawn it and because because of that, i´ve never changed the numbers on it. It helps you win through caryatids, coursers, elspeths, hornet queen tokens, wingmate rocs and the likes (and that is if any one outside courser and caryatid even resolve through it). It´s also great if your opponent doesn´t have the answer for your early knuckleblade or if he or she stumbles a single turn, but 3 mana is expensive though and it´s what i usually side out when i´m on the draw, but that´s also because i don´t know how to sideboard most of the time
-Fall of the hammer. It´s a bad card on it´s own of course. But it´s not "fight" and it´s instant (as opposed to hunt the hunter and savage punch). I was looking for another removal spell and i was pretty pleased with it. The fact that your creatures are mostly bigger than theirs and that you´re playig heir of the wilds makes it so that it´s actually very descent (basically becomes murder with heir). I´ve killed Anafenzas, rhinos, polukranos, dragons, arbor colossus, coursers etc etc, with this card, whereas if it had been say lightning strike, it might not have worked out as fine. The thing is because this is such a tempo oriented deck being able to quickly deal with a threat while having counters or creatures with haste or that are difficult to deal with, becomes important, and that´s why i like this card. Some weeks ago, i had a heir in play and 3 lands, my opponent plays anafenza i eot boon satyr, and untap with fall of the hammer target heir and anafenza and hit for 7 with denial backup, it´s pretty much exactly what i need at that moment. The card is however mediocre against mardu and jeskai (particularly mardu) because of HOW MUCH removal they have, it basically becomes a dead card really early on, so much so, that it´s almost never reliable to kill say a goblin rabblemaster with it, and that´s it´s biggest downside (also, they can kill your creature in response but i still haven´t had that happen to me)
Sideboard is, weird. I should probably change it to something similar to what kibler is playing although i don´t like the chandra´s and nissas that much. Of course it depends on the meta and sideboarding is REALLY REALLY important.
How possible do you guys think it is, now with mardu being everywhere, literally to turn into a control deck post board without compromising the other matchups? Boon satyr and heir are probably disposable in that matchup (which makes rattleclaw draws probably less reliable than before, but hey), and temur is really good at switching geers (with the proper tools of course). The main problem i see is being able to kill both rabblemaster and butcher, survive through all the thoughtseizes, chained to the rocks and crackling dooms, and still win
By the way, on friday i played against a friend round 4, i was 3-0 and he was 2-1. He was playing mardu, and before the match started he said to me "geez i have no idea how to beat you" and i was like "...yeah, you don´t have to do much at all". Game one was something like the following: t2 heir, eot magma jet. Turn 3 knuckleblade, eot crackling doom. Eot 4 boon satyr, lightning stike it. Turn 5 Polukranos, Crakling doom. His turn rabblemaster and game 1 was over. It´s getting really troublesome... that crackling doom.