1) It is relatively non-counterable.It can't be Spell Pierced, it can't be reliably Mana Leaked on the draw, it can't be Deprived pretty much any time.
2) It is a pure tutor, ala Demonic Tutor. (but better!)
Fauna Shaman feels like a fairer tutor, because it effectively has summoning sickness, and doesn't net you up a card.
Can you imagine if SFM was 1W, T, Discard an Equipment, search your library for a equipment card and put it into your hand? (Instead of it's tutor ability, it can keep the vial-version)
Can you imagine if Fauna Shaman searched your library for a creature when it came into play as well as it's current ability? (In addition to it's swap)
The old semi-broken tutors (Enlightened, Vampiric) put the card on top of your library (aka card disadvantage). Stoneforge Mystic seems predicated on the idea that either having a creature to equip is worth no cards, or equipment is not worth a card, and both seem ludicrious at this time.
Demonic Tutor is a restricted card in VINTAGE, and Stoneforge Mystic has a few ways that it is better than Demonic in STANDARD. Would you even play Demonic Tutor to get a sword in standard, if it was legal?
3) It tutors for things that shut down entire decks.
It is similar to Enlightened Tutor in Legacy, where you can get your silver bullet 1-of, that the other deck probably can't interact favorably with. Moat, Ensnaring Bridge, COP Red, Solitary Confinement, etc, etc, etc. (Except SFM doesn't cost you a card, and it makes the spell you tutor for uncounterable as well)
Try playing a mono-colored deck (aka mono red) with a tutorable protection from red equipment. Try playing a mono-green deck in a format with two tutorable pro green equipment.
Try playing an aggro deck with a t3 unkillable (as if BSA was killable) instant speed Baneslayer Angel.
Try playing a enemy colored deck, that happens to be in sword-colors. Green-Black. Red-White. Green-Blue. Good luck winning against discard + untap in GB. Or gain 6+ life a turn and kill an attacker each turn in RW. Or blocking the 4 turn clock of mill + generate chump blockers in GU.
All of these are shut down pretty hard by your opponents turn two play. You battle it out, but your odds aren't north of 50% before the game even starts.
4) It makes the thing you tutor for uncounterable.
Spell Pierce, Mana Leak, Steel Sabotage, etc, are ways for blue to interact with a reusable creature enchantment.
Instant speed, etc. It combos too well with other (white) instant speed removal or (blue) counters.
5) Equipment is too good to mess around with.
Tom Lapile doesn't like equipment, because it breaks the small vs big creature curve. You can just play small creatures with equipment, and you don't have to worry about the top end of your curve. A Squadron Hawk with a matchup-appropriate sword on it is in the realm of a titan for that matchup, and it costs so much less.
Protection is an ability that shouldn't just be thrown around on artifacts. Nor should about half of the abilities on swords to begin with. It's not like you need to be Green or Black to get the Green and Black abilities off the GB sword. Can you imagine how it would change the power level of these puppies if they had an equip of GB instead of 2, or RW instead of 2?
Bonesplitter. Darksteel Axe. Vulshok Morningstar. Fine.
Swords, Jitte, Batterskull (or really any living weapon), not so great.
The mitigating factors:
A) All colors can in theory deal with equipment.
Red has Manic Vandal, Crush, Shatter. (and many answers at 4+)
Black has Inquisition, Duress, Despise
Blue has Steel Sabotage, Into the Roil (for tempo, not as real solutions)
White has Divine Offering, Revoke Existance, Kor Sanctifiers.
Green has Naturalize, Nature's Claim, Viridian Corruptor, Acidic Slime
The problem with these arguements:
I) The card you're spending a card destroying (or a terrible creature, like a Grey Ogre, or better yet, a 5-drop Grey Ogre) didn't cost your opponent any cards! It may not even cost them any tempo, if you're paying 5 to kill something that cost 2 to Vial in, and 2 to equip. And worse yet with that solution, they STILL get to hit you with the equipment once! And if it's Batterskull, you're in no way guaranteed to actually kill it. Or, you're playing a hard to cast creature that isn't doing real damage to your opponent. Or, you're just delaying them with a blue deck. Meh.
II) They are tutoring for their problem, you're naturally drawing your answer. So unless you have a disproportionate amount of answers to their threats, you're going to run out first, or just straight up not have one when they attack you on turn 4. So your answers have to be generally useful, and it's pretty hard to find that. Acidic Slime comes the closest, and it's almost laughable to try and kill a Batterskull with that, or to even resolve it against a blue opponent.
III) Most of these cards aren't exactly great even once they do their job. Many of the instants can't be played for "true" tempo, because the longer you wait to destroy their equipment, the more likely your one answer can be dealt with by one of their counter-answers (bounce, counter, etc). Discard can't be played for tempo ever, because it's natural tempo disadvantage. And of course, the top of your deck is perfectly safe from discard spells. They can even just tutor for something non-amazing with SFM #1, and tutor for the good equipment with SFM #2, or on 5 mana, and just play their card that destroys your whole deck concept naturally, without you having a chance to discard it.
B) Just play a 3 color deck!
Then your opponent will only have protection from two of your colors with one sword? Hopefully your removal isn't in Black or White or Red or Green or Blue only.... (or in the two colors that the sword gives protection from...) Hope your blockers aren't of that color...
Only Grixis (RBU) and Esper (BUW) are three color decks that DON'T have two of their colors on one sword. The other eight three-color combinations have all three colors on two swords. (BUG, BGW, BGR, GUW, RUG, RWB, RWG, RWU) Some of these have multiple combinations of two swords that can lock all three colors. FUN!
Playing a colorless deck, or a mono-Blue deck (since the GU sword sees the least play) could be a real answer to equipment.
C) Just play aggro, and kill them before their invincible combo comes online!
Problem: It comes online on turn 3.
Sure, you can slow it down with removal for their SFM, or removal for their equipment, but that is likely to slow you down enough that the late-game of the Mystic deck can take over. Again, it's not like they had to spend a card to get the equipment! It's not like you're getting card advantage, even with a Manic Vandal, or the like. You're just breaking even, best case, and casting a otherwise non-useful spell, if they just draw the other 80% of their deck.
======================
There are decks that do fairly well against Caw. Decks that don't use the combat step for non-infinite damage. Decks that kill on turn 2. Decks with infinite artifact, planeswalker, and colorless removal for creatures, that don't mind being bounced by Jace or lured/killed by Gideon.
Other tutors in standard, like Quest for the Holy Relic, give a strong advantage, but the decks they are in are often so terrible. What you have to do to use QFTHR effectively is so constricting, that if you deal with that one threat (via one of the many artifact hate cards above), the match may be won on the spot. Caw isn't anywhere near this problem.
Archmage Ascension is incredibly prohibitive to charge.
Birthing Pod is interesting, but quite restrictive, and relatively expensive to use. (And again, destroy it or they don't draw it, and the deck probably falls apart)
Stoneforge Mystic requires nothing out of your deck to use well. In the worst case scenario, it tutors for, plays, and carrys the sword all by itself, starting to swing with it (or Batterskull) by turn 4. Sure you can have Squadron Hawks, or Vengevines, or Pilgrim's Eyes, or Sea Gate Oracles, or Kraken Hatchlings carry the sword if you want, but none of these are part of a required strategy.
You don't auto-scoop to Pyroclasm, or Shatter, or Into the Roil. You aren't dead to Duress, or Memoricide.
============================================
Okay, so what if I was brewing to beat Caw? What is a real solution to this problem?
Splinter Twin, if it can be consistant at all.
Mono-U artifact might be good enough to see play.
A deck with casual artifact destruction (Manic Vandal, Corruptor, Slime) as part of it's normal game plan could have a shot.
For Pyromancer, I'm going to put (at least) two Shatters main-deck. Between copying them, and drawing a million cards, that might be enough to swing the matchup back to even. They won't exactly be awesome against aggro, or combo, but hopefully the sideboard (or 14 main-deck burn + 12 draw) can take care of that.
================
Do we need to ban SFM? I don't know. Give it a week or two at least, and see if Splinter can put up results. See if Manic Vandal and other main-deck artifact removal is enough. See if some other crazy deck can put up some results in the hands of some crazy deckbuilder.
If we go a month with 80% of the top 16 as Caw, that's probably not a format that people will enjoy.
Mike Flores is right in that Caw is causing good players to win tournaments. It makes it more of a skill game. That is one definition of a good format. But for the non-top-10% to continue playing, there needs to be some variety, and one dominant, expensive, deck doesn't give you that. At least not at the top tables.
=================
6/8 Edit:
Wizards releases event decks for casual players to get a start in magic.
One of the event decks is a white equipment deck.
This deck has 2 Stoneforge Mystics in it.
There is no way that Wizards is going to release an event deck with 2x of a rare, and then ban that rare. However stupid, however oppressive, however degenerate it makes the format, the event decks are the spearhead of SFM not being banned. So be it.
Tuesday, May 31, 2011
Monday, May 30, 2011
Testing results: 5/29
I was extremely fortunate this weekend, and two more of my friends, Joe and Nick (Talisen/Banach in WoW) came over to do even more testing with the revised list this Sunday.
Joe was 1.5 hours early, so I laid out the decks plan for him, and what I was thinking about, as well as some of the other options. He convinced me to but a copy of Into the Roil into the main-deck (not too hard), and Surreal Memoir ("why not" I thought) in place of some of the red spells. (2x Searing Blaze, since those are the most likely to be non-castable). I played 24 lands, with 4x Halimar Depths, 4x Treasure Hunt, 4x Arc Trail, 2x Searing Blaze, 0x Tectonic Edge, 1x Surreal, 1x Into the Roil.
I stuck Joe with Valakut, and the PA deck was victorious in all four games. Some notes:
==1 mulligan for me, at least 3 for Valakut.
==Primeval Titan cast count was pretty low. I was able to kill Lotus Cobra, and Overgrown Battlement whenever he was land-light, and not when he was threat light, which may have been a fortunate coincidence for me.
==Often Valakut just ran out of the appropriate "gas". Either they had 1-2 too few lands, or 0-1 threat, that was killed or a turn too late. Joe didn't have the topdeck "skills" to make the games really close by drawing like 3 primeval titans in a row, or, say, a Mountain when he needed it.
==The 1-ofs did not really show their faces. ITR isn't exactly awesome against Valakut, and Surreal is just 2x Burn spells that take a while to cast.
==This Valakut list had 4x Harrow, 4x GSZ, 0x Summoning trap, to match up quite well with my 0x Counterspell. You can't "Whiff" on trap, and you'll never cast it for free, and your Harrow will never be countered. The Cobras are fairly common for Valakut now(?) and occasionally lived a turn. (with a heavy-blue draw)
==Since Valakut does not have many creatures, or creature threats early, most/all of the burn could go to their head. The difference between doing 1 damage to a Lotus Cobra, and killing 4 Hawks and a Mystic is something like 8-10 life damage to a player, so the threshold for "just killing them" is quite low. All these games ended around turn 7-8, for that very reason.
I think this is the key point. I could just do incidental damage to them (Arc Trail, Searing Blaze, Staggershock rebounds), or just actual damage to them (full Staggershocks, Volt Charge, etc), because they don't have targets I must kill with my red spells, which puts them low enough to die in a one-turn window to any PA that is drawn, or sometimes even without it. I had enough red spells to 2-spell-kill (or one spell + charged PA) kill a Titan, so they needed multiple threats (2 without PA, 3 with PA, just because Valakut triggers add up), as well as the non-creature mana to cast them all, which just didn't happen all that often in the 7-8 turns they had to win.
I don't think this matchup is as lopsided as our 7-2 testing would indicate, but it clearly seems at least "okay", where my previous version of this deck (counterEverything.dec, vs burnEverything.dec) was 0-5 in TPR play.
I had joe play one of my Ultra-aggro decks (GW shaman/quest) for a change
==Joe never had a turn 1 quest, but still smashed me with quest when drawn, because of the mechanics of the quest (I have 5 creatures, and one of them gets equipped at hyper-instant speed, on my turn)
==I can often kill quite a few of their creatures, but they can put them out so quickly at the start, that there isn't enough time to cast all my spells.
==I often had to Arc Trail just a Fauna Shaman, which was incredibly annoying. Maybe this is a mistake, since getting a 2:1 and making them use mana is probably worth the occasional search for a (non-castable?) vengevine, and me spending 2 mana better.
==We only played 2 games, but I lost both, so maybe some attention needs to be paid to this, and other hyper-aggro strategies (presuming they aren't decimated by freaking Batterskull.
Nick showed up, and he played a game using my deck against the GW shaman deck, and he also lost, while I took care of the food I promised my fine testers.
Then, since we had two guys, I had them play cooperatively with the Caw Blade deck, against my PA deck, since Caw can be incredibly complex, etc.
==I won 2 of the 7 games.
==One of the two games I won was a game where they mulliganed to 4, and drew all lands.
The key point of this matchup is that I pretty much could not beat the RW sword (or Batterskull), and they just cast the RW sword on turn 3 after tutoring it out with Stoneforge Mystic (which died), and then from there on out, they threatened equipping anything they cast with the Sword, and near-guaranteeing me losing.
If they didn't manage to get the Sword equipped to a 2-casting cost creature on turn 4-6, they sure could equip it to a Batterskull, or Gideon Jura on turn 5-7.
Batterskull was near-unbeatable. It took two burn spells to kill, and on turn 7 or so they'd just equip it to their 3-power pro-red 2-drop, and gain 13 life a turn instead of "just" 6.
They couldn't cast their spells fast enough to not gain ~5-7 life per RW sword swing, and I couldn't cast my spells fast enough to not be dead in 2-4 turns to the extra damage from the RW sword.
This matchup really felt unwinnable. So I got frustrated, and played a different deck, because if I can't beat Caw, there's no point in playing the deck.
==I went 4-6 with that deck, which also nearly auto-lost to the freaking RW sword, or Batterskull.
==I won games where the Caw deck mulliganed low, or never got to 4 lands, or where they underestimated how much damage Inferno Titan, or a fully-leveled Dragonlord can do. I lost every game where they got Batterskull and RW sword on the same creature, because that was like 13 life per turn, that I couldn't even throw a Goblin Guide in front of.
This was pretty dismal, but it turns out to be critical for my Pyromancer deck, because we decided to throw in some main-deck artifact hate in this deck (that I didn't care about as much, so I was willing to do it), and I went 3-2, with similarly good draws, and no mana-screw for them.
It really felt like I was losing games to the artifacts, and nothing else. Gideon was annoying, Jace was annoying, Collonade was semi-annoying, but they were only fatal when combined with the artifacts. So if I can kill their artifacts, the rest of the deck seems like it just falls apart. This was somewhat reflected in the testing, because I was 3-1 in games where I drew and cast artifact destruction. (I did lose a game where I "saw" three artifact removal spells out of the four I eventually had in (jace-bottomed one, one countered, one resolved)
Joe and Nick remarked that the games had gone from near-auto-pilot, feeling the same every game:
Land (Preordain or no)
SFM, get RW sword (SFM dies, or doesn't, almost irrelevant)
Cast or SFM-in + Spell Pierce sword.
Equip sword on SFM + gain 8 life, or cast + equip some other 2-drop.
Gain 7-8 life next turn, and for the rest of the game, good luck!
To:
Maybe we'll lose...
Crushing their RW sword on the attack, and blocking a SFM with a Goblin Guide was a pretty good swing for me.
The games I won with both decks all happened at the start, when they were perhaps not as familiar with the deck, mulliganing, etc.
So, I made them play two more games with Caw vs Pyro + 2x Shatter (in place of Surreal + ITR)
I won both, and they were close, but they got super-legitimate draws for their deck.
Both games were relatively long(10-12 turns), and relatively close (I won at 1, and 7 life), but they had alot going on.
In both games, they:
==Bounced a newly charged PA with kicked Into the Roil
==Cast Gideon and multiple Jaces (w/enough life to survive multiple burn spells)
==Had relevant counters, and used/threatened them at valid times, causing me to over-burn things. Countered Staggershocks, which prevent a ton of damage.
==Mystic into RW Sword.
Clearly this is not enough testing to draw long-term conclusions, but it was encouraging enough where I should make this change, and try a few more games.
I thought I wanted these artifact destruction spells to be Crushes (harder to Pierce/Leak, easier to cast when I also have other spells), but I think I want them to be Shatters, for the additional utility.
Spellskite is a card that eats two burn spells normally, and prevents me from killing a Exarch.
Artifact aggro is likely a deck, and being able to kill a creature there is reasonable.
Inkmoth Nexus is a card.
The artifact removal in general won't be dead against other decks. against GW quest it is probably better than ITR, because you rarely draw off ITR on T3 Argentum Armor, and Shatter solves the problem forever. Tezzeret decks will have plenty of targets. Valakut won't have any targets, but Into the Roil isn't exactly hot there anyway. Ratchet Bomb was a problem ITR "solved", but Shatter is much more efficient at.
Aggro decks (without swords) is where it Shatter will be weakest, but hopefully the quantity of 2:1's I have against aggro, and 4 sideboard slots to improve those matchups in general will be useful. General aggressive decks are pretty likely to be packing artifacts (equipment) anyway, so maybe they won't be dead there. Vampires is the one matchup I can think of where it's 100% dead.
============================================================
Conclusions/Follow-up:
Charging PA with Staggershock, Tezzeret's Gambit, and Volt Charge is near-trivial. Re-charging it is near-trivial.
I felt like I was on the edge, as far as running out of "gas" in some of the games. (having no cards, or having 5 land + no spells in hand). Perhaps better Preordaining, or keeping more Tez's Gambits will be required.
RW sword (+ Batterskull) is neigh-unbeatable with the quantity of random creatures in caw. (Without artifact removal)
Valakut is an okay matchup, definately a better plan than 12counters.dec
Need to test some against aggro, see how much sideboard space I need.
Need to test against Caw with 2x Shatter main. Is this enough to tip G1 from 25% to 50+%?
What's the right Mix of Searing Blaze, Arc Trail? (currently 2xSB, 4x AT)
Treasure hunt drew me 3, 4, 2, 2, 3, 4, 3, 2, 3, 2, 3, 2, 1, 1, 1, 1 cards on the day. It was around 1.5 cards on average blind, and 2.5 cards with Halimar Depths assistance. The goldfish games I played with Gitaxian Probe instead seemed pretty weak. Need to keep considering See Beyond, since the population at large likes it quite a bit. The instant-speed proliferate+draw would be nice, but is yet another 3 casting cost spell.
There was only one game where I really wanted Tec Edge, and I ended up winning it anyway, so cutting it seems pretty reasonable.
Joe was 1.5 hours early, so I laid out the decks plan for him, and what I was thinking about, as well as some of the other options. He convinced me to but a copy of Into the Roil into the main-deck (not too hard), and Surreal Memoir ("why not" I thought) in place of some of the red spells. (2x Searing Blaze, since those are the most likely to be non-castable). I played 24 lands, with 4x Halimar Depths, 4x Treasure Hunt, 4x Arc Trail, 2x Searing Blaze, 0x Tectonic Edge, 1x Surreal, 1x Into the Roil.
I stuck Joe with Valakut, and the PA deck was victorious in all four games. Some notes:
==1 mulligan for me, at least 3 for Valakut.
==Primeval Titan cast count was pretty low. I was able to kill Lotus Cobra, and Overgrown Battlement whenever he was land-light, and not when he was threat light, which may have been a fortunate coincidence for me.
==Often Valakut just ran out of the appropriate "gas". Either they had 1-2 too few lands, or 0-1 threat, that was killed or a turn too late. Joe didn't have the topdeck "skills" to make the games really close by drawing like 3 primeval titans in a row, or, say, a Mountain when he needed it.
==The 1-ofs did not really show their faces. ITR isn't exactly awesome against Valakut, and Surreal is just 2x Burn spells that take a while to cast.
==This Valakut list had 4x Harrow, 4x GSZ, 0x Summoning trap, to match up quite well with my 0x Counterspell. You can't "Whiff" on trap, and you'll never cast it for free, and your Harrow will never be countered. The Cobras are fairly common for Valakut now(?) and occasionally lived a turn. (with a heavy-blue draw)
==Since Valakut does not have many creatures, or creature threats early, most/all of the burn could go to their head. The difference between doing 1 damage to a Lotus Cobra, and killing 4 Hawks and a Mystic is something like 8-10 life damage to a player, so the threshold for "just killing them" is quite low. All these games ended around turn 7-8, for that very reason.
I think this is the key point. I could just do incidental damage to them (Arc Trail, Searing Blaze, Staggershock rebounds), or just actual damage to them (full Staggershocks, Volt Charge, etc), because they don't have targets I must kill with my red spells, which puts them low enough to die in a one-turn window to any PA that is drawn, or sometimes even without it. I had enough red spells to 2-spell-kill (or one spell + charged PA) kill a Titan, so they needed multiple threats (2 without PA, 3 with PA, just because Valakut triggers add up), as well as the non-creature mana to cast them all, which just didn't happen all that often in the 7-8 turns they had to win.
I don't think this matchup is as lopsided as our 7-2 testing would indicate, but it clearly seems at least "okay", where my previous version of this deck (counterEverything.dec, vs burnEverything.dec) was 0-5 in TPR play.
I had joe play one of my Ultra-aggro decks (GW shaman/quest) for a change
==Joe never had a turn 1 quest, but still smashed me with quest when drawn, because of the mechanics of the quest (I have 5 creatures, and one of them gets equipped at hyper-instant speed, on my turn)
==I can often kill quite a few of their creatures, but they can put them out so quickly at the start, that there isn't enough time to cast all my spells.
==I often had to Arc Trail just a Fauna Shaman, which was incredibly annoying. Maybe this is a mistake, since getting a 2:1 and making them use mana is probably worth the occasional search for a (non-castable?) vengevine, and me spending 2 mana better.
==We only played 2 games, but I lost both, so maybe some attention needs to be paid to this, and other hyper-aggro strategies (presuming they aren't decimated by freaking Batterskull.
Nick showed up, and he played a game using my deck against the GW shaman deck, and he also lost, while I took care of the food I promised my fine testers.
Then, since we had two guys, I had them play cooperatively with the Caw Blade deck, against my PA deck, since Caw can be incredibly complex, etc.
==I won 2 of the 7 games.
==One of the two games I won was a game where they mulliganed to 4, and drew all lands.
The key point of this matchup is that I pretty much could not beat the RW sword (or Batterskull), and they just cast the RW sword on turn 3 after tutoring it out with Stoneforge Mystic (which died), and then from there on out, they threatened equipping anything they cast with the Sword, and near-guaranteeing me losing.
If they didn't manage to get the Sword equipped to a 2-casting cost creature on turn 4-6, they sure could equip it to a Batterskull, or Gideon Jura on turn 5-7.
Batterskull was near-unbeatable. It took two burn spells to kill, and on turn 7 or so they'd just equip it to their 3-power pro-red 2-drop, and gain 13 life a turn instead of "just" 6.
They couldn't cast their spells fast enough to not gain ~5-7 life per RW sword swing, and I couldn't cast my spells fast enough to not be dead in 2-4 turns to the extra damage from the RW sword.
This matchup really felt unwinnable. So I got frustrated, and played a different deck, because if I can't beat Caw, there's no point in playing the deck.
==I went 4-6 with that deck, which also nearly auto-lost to the freaking RW sword, or Batterskull.
==I won games where the Caw deck mulliganed low, or never got to 4 lands, or where they underestimated how much damage Inferno Titan, or a fully-leveled Dragonlord can do. I lost every game where they got Batterskull and RW sword on the same creature, because that was like 13 life per turn, that I couldn't even throw a Goblin Guide in front of.
This was pretty dismal, but it turns out to be critical for my Pyromancer deck, because we decided to throw in some main-deck artifact hate in this deck (that I didn't care about as much, so I was willing to do it), and I went 3-2, with similarly good draws, and no mana-screw for them.
It really felt like I was losing games to the artifacts, and nothing else. Gideon was annoying, Jace was annoying, Collonade was semi-annoying, but they were only fatal when combined with the artifacts. So if I can kill their artifacts, the rest of the deck seems like it just falls apart. This was somewhat reflected in the testing, because I was 3-1 in games where I drew and cast artifact destruction. (I did lose a game where I "saw" three artifact removal spells out of the four I eventually had in (jace-bottomed one, one countered, one resolved)
Joe and Nick remarked that the games had gone from near-auto-pilot, feeling the same every game:
Land (Preordain or no)
SFM, get RW sword (SFM dies, or doesn't, almost irrelevant)
Cast or SFM-in + Spell Pierce sword.
Equip sword on SFM + gain 8 life, or cast + equip some other 2-drop.
Gain 7-8 life next turn, and for the rest of the game, good luck!
To:
Maybe we'll lose...
Crushing their RW sword on the attack, and blocking a SFM with a Goblin Guide was a pretty good swing for me.
The games I won with both decks all happened at the start, when they were perhaps not as familiar with the deck, mulliganing, etc.
So, I made them play two more games with Caw vs Pyro + 2x Shatter (in place of Surreal + ITR)
I won both, and they were close, but they got super-legitimate draws for their deck.
Both games were relatively long(10-12 turns), and relatively close (I won at 1, and 7 life), but they had alot going on.
In both games, they:
==Bounced a newly charged PA with kicked Into the Roil
==Cast Gideon and multiple Jaces (w/enough life to survive multiple burn spells)
==Had relevant counters, and used/threatened them at valid times, causing me to over-burn things. Countered Staggershocks, which prevent a ton of damage.
==Mystic into RW Sword.
Clearly this is not enough testing to draw long-term conclusions, but it was encouraging enough where I should make this change, and try a few more games.
I thought I wanted these artifact destruction spells to be Crushes (harder to Pierce/Leak, easier to cast when I also have other spells), but I think I want them to be Shatters, for the additional utility.
Spellskite is a card that eats two burn spells normally, and prevents me from killing a Exarch.
Artifact aggro is likely a deck, and being able to kill a creature there is reasonable.
Inkmoth Nexus is a card.
The artifact removal in general won't be dead against other decks. against GW quest it is probably better than ITR, because you rarely draw off ITR on T3 Argentum Armor, and Shatter solves the problem forever. Tezzeret decks will have plenty of targets. Valakut won't have any targets, but Into the Roil isn't exactly hot there anyway. Ratchet Bomb was a problem ITR "solved", but Shatter is much more efficient at.
Aggro decks (without swords) is where it Shatter will be weakest, but hopefully the quantity of 2:1's I have against aggro, and 4 sideboard slots to improve those matchups in general will be useful. General aggressive decks are pretty likely to be packing artifacts (equipment) anyway, so maybe they won't be dead there. Vampires is the one matchup I can think of where it's 100% dead.
============================================================
Conclusions/Follow-up:
Charging PA with Staggershock, Tezzeret's Gambit, and Volt Charge is near-trivial. Re-charging it is near-trivial.
I felt like I was on the edge, as far as running out of "gas" in some of the games. (having no cards, or having 5 land + no spells in hand). Perhaps better Preordaining, or keeping more Tez's Gambits will be required.
RW sword (+ Batterskull) is neigh-unbeatable with the quantity of random creatures in caw. (Without artifact removal)
Valakut is an okay matchup, definately a better plan than 12counters.dec
Need to test some against aggro, see how much sideboard space I need.
Need to test against Caw with 2x Shatter main. Is this enough to tip G1 from 25% to 50+%?
What's the right Mix of Searing Blaze, Arc Trail? (currently 2xSB, 4x AT)
Treasure hunt drew me 3, 4, 2, 2, 3, 4, 3, 2, 3, 2, 3, 2, 1, 1, 1, 1 cards on the day. It was around 1.5 cards on average blind, and 2.5 cards with Halimar Depths assistance. The goldfish games I played with Gitaxian Probe instead seemed pretty weak. Need to keep considering See Beyond, since the population at large likes it quite a bit. The instant-speed proliferate+draw would be nice, but is yet another 3 casting cost spell.
There was only one game where I really wanted Tec Edge, and I ended up winning it anyway, so cutting it seems pretty reasonable.
Saturday, May 28, 2011
Testing Ascension: Results: 5/28/2011
My friend Larry came by to do some testing this afternoon, and we got in 13 games against a variety of decks. The list I was using was: (All games presideboard)
4x:
Preordain
Gitaxian Probe
Treasure Hunt
Tezzeret's Gambit
Lightning Bolt
Arc Trail
Staggershock
Volt Charge
Pyromancer Ascension
1x
Red Sun's Zenith
Into the Roil
4xIsland
4xScalding Tarn
3x Halimar Depths
8x Mountain
3x Tectonic Edge
The first set was against RG Valakut, a deck the pre-NPH version of this could not beat.
I took this set 3-2. I was able to kill the first PT played in every game. However, if I had to use two cards to kill it, without a PA out, it resulted in a loss for me, "running out of gas". One other game, their deck blanked on them for three turns in a row, with me at 1, while I was trying to find mana to spend all the cards in my hand.
I noticed during these games that the land was moderately light in the PA deck, even with Gitaxian Probe, and HD + TH. I often got "stuck" at 3-5 land, which didn't allow me to cast multiple spells in a turn.
All the games ended fairly early, too early for them to "natural" Valakut me after I burned out their first one. I drew alot of early PA's, and charging them was never a problem.
I Tech Edged a grand total of 1 land in the 5 games, which was in the third game, a game where the Valakut deck choked for 3 turns. It was a potential answer to a huge (5/5, going to 7/7) Raging Ravine, but Lightning Bolt (doubled) worked there.
UW Caw-Blade: I went 1-4 in this set.
The game I won, Caw Blade mulliganed to 4.
The R/W sword was an absolute beating. I was often (always) two-shot from near-full life by a sword hit for 9-15.
I underestimated the ability of pretty much anything to kill me via the RW sword. At least one of the games, I needed to Arc Trail away a mortarpod germ in order to not take a million from the sword.
Again, in this series, I ascended almost at will. The three-mana spells, and Gitaxian Probe (to draw/add counters for free) were extremely reliable in charging PA whenever I drew it. Into the Roil was just a 1 turn delay, even with as few as 2 cards in my hand. When there are ~4 different spells that can relatively reliably charge PA on their own, charging up the quest was quite trivial.
I was able to keep their creatures/planeswalkers under control until around turn 6 or 7, when a Hawk or Gideon would grab a R/W sword, and I would be on a 0-1 turn clock.
Without Into the Roil (x4) I was super-reliant on red burn spells to take care of their creatures, so if a creature got equipped, it was almost invulnerable. The one game I won, it was on the back of my singleton Into the Roil on a sword, then killing all their creatures, then winning at 2 life. (On their mull to 4...)
Against Aggro, Vampires got crushed 3-0, even though multiple Bloodghasts.
General conclusions:
Treasure Hunt was never great. Sometimes it drew alot of lands, and I had to discard them. Sometimes it drew me one card. I should have kept track, but I only assembled TH + HD perhaps 3 times across the 13 games. I often had to play HD turn one, just so I could cast all my spells. I had no Deprive to pick the land back up.
I activated Tectonic Edge one time total, as I said. I got my Halimar Depths Tec Edged three times. I had minor mana problems with the edge perhaps twice. (often lack of blue)
I only cast RSZ once, and never to remove Bloodghast, etc.
I cast ITR once to win against Caw Blade, and it was irrelevant for all the other matchups.
I'm not really sold on Gitaxian Probe.
So, we'll have to make some changes for V2.
4x:
Preordain
Gitaxian Probe
Treasure Hunt
Tezzeret's Gambit
Lightning Bolt
Arc Trail
Staggershock
Volt Charge
Pyromancer Ascension
1x
Red Sun's Zenith
Into the Roil
4xIsland
4xScalding Tarn
3x Halimar Depths
8x Mountain
3x Tectonic Edge
The first set was against RG Valakut, a deck the pre-NPH version of this could not beat.
I took this set 3-2. I was able to kill the first PT played in every game. However, if I had to use two cards to kill it, without a PA out, it resulted in a loss for me, "running out of gas". One other game, their deck blanked on them for three turns in a row, with me at 1, while I was trying to find mana to spend all the cards in my hand.
I noticed during these games that the land was moderately light in the PA deck, even with Gitaxian Probe, and HD + TH. I often got "stuck" at 3-5 land, which didn't allow me to cast multiple spells in a turn.
All the games ended fairly early, too early for them to "natural" Valakut me after I burned out their first one. I drew alot of early PA's, and charging them was never a problem.
I Tech Edged a grand total of 1 land in the 5 games, which was in the third game, a game where the Valakut deck choked for 3 turns. It was a potential answer to a huge (5/5, going to 7/7) Raging Ravine, but Lightning Bolt (doubled) worked there.
UW Caw-Blade: I went 1-4 in this set.
The game I won, Caw Blade mulliganed to 4.
The R/W sword was an absolute beating. I was often (always) two-shot from near-full life by a sword hit for 9-15.
I underestimated the ability of pretty much anything to kill me via the RW sword. At least one of the games, I needed to Arc Trail away a mortarpod germ in order to not take a million from the sword.
Again, in this series, I ascended almost at will. The three-mana spells, and Gitaxian Probe (to draw/add counters for free) were extremely reliable in charging PA whenever I drew it. Into the Roil was just a 1 turn delay, even with as few as 2 cards in my hand. When there are ~4 different spells that can relatively reliably charge PA on their own, charging up the quest was quite trivial.
I was able to keep their creatures/planeswalkers under control until around turn 6 or 7, when a Hawk or Gideon would grab a R/W sword, and I would be on a 0-1 turn clock.
Without Into the Roil (x4) I was super-reliant on red burn spells to take care of their creatures, so if a creature got equipped, it was almost invulnerable. The one game I won, it was on the back of my singleton Into the Roil on a sword, then killing all their creatures, then winning at 2 life. (On their mull to 4...)
Against Aggro, Vampires got crushed 3-0, even though multiple Bloodghasts.
General conclusions:
Treasure Hunt was never great. Sometimes it drew alot of lands, and I had to discard them. Sometimes it drew me one card. I should have kept track, but I only assembled TH + HD perhaps 3 times across the 13 games. I often had to play HD turn one, just so I could cast all my spells. I had no Deprive to pick the land back up.
I activated Tectonic Edge one time total, as I said. I got my Halimar Depths Tec Edged three times. I had minor mana problems with the edge perhaps twice. (often lack of blue)
I only cast RSZ once, and never to remove Bloodghast, etc.
I cast ITR once to win against Caw Blade, and it was irrelevant for all the other matchups.
I'm not really sold on Gitaxian Probe.
So, we'll have to make some changes for V2.
Saturday, May 21, 2011
Pyro Ascension in New Phyrexia pt. 2
I'm pretty happy with:
4x:
Treasure Hunt + Halimar Depths (+ Scalding Tarn) is a pretty good mini-combo. If the HD reveals 3 nonland, you just wait to cast TH. If the HD reveals land, you draw past them all, or draw 2-3 cards for 2 mana. When you consider that in the rest of the format, you have to pay something like 4 mana to draw two cards, getting at "worst" a draw 2 for 2 is pretty awesome.
Preordain is non-cuttable. It is pretty much the best spell you can cast after Ascending (because it costs the least mana, and draws you the best 2 cards in your top 6 - aka Foresee), and also the best spell you can cast to draw and play Ascension. Also, keeping both and drawing the non-Ascension on turn 1 against discard is pretty phenomenal.
The proliferate effects are pretty amazing. Volt Charge and Tezzeret's Gambit are very nice cards on their own. It's unfortunate that VC can't kill the 4-toughness threats out of Splinter-Twin, but it doubles with Bolt to kill a Titan/C-Sphynx, and eats pretty big chunks out of their life total at an easy to cast three mana instant. Tezzeret's Gambit is simply amazing. (3)-Draw 2 cards would be pretty good, but this is so much more. Super easy to cast, super good pre or post Ascension. But the proliferate effects offer you pretty amazing ways to one-card charge the Ascension.
The rebound spells can full-one-card charge the spell (at the cost of waiting a turn) if you have another copy in your graveyard, but the proliferate spells also do that. The proliferate spells have the additional charge scenario where you already have one counter, but no copy of the proliferate spell in your graveyard.
Staggershock is definitely the best rebound spell, because it is the cheapest one, you can cast. It is very often card advantage, and random aggro destroying. It is a huge 8-point life chunk post-Ascending, though it can be problematic that you have to wait for a turn to get the second 4. There are also some scenarios you can get into, where you plan to use the second half, to combine with another spell to kill larger creatures (like Leatherback Baloth), or combo with a spell like Arc Trail to get a 3-for-2.
Scalding Tarn is the only "dual land" that exists in standard these days for enemy colors. Sure, you could use Terramorphic Expanse or Evolving Wilds, but you can only use so many tap-lands, because you really need to be spending all your mana each turn. You do have some gaps in the curve, like 4, and 5, where you can't cast two three mana spells, so perhaps including some of the "bad" fetches is a good idea. One thing people will do wrong with the deck is cracking the Tarns for no real purpose. The advantage you get for saving them for a Halimar Depths, or to fix your mana on a critical turn is quite good. Often you can run into situations on your last turn where you need to have RR or UU, and if you fetch too early, you can be "stuck" on only being able to cast one burn spell, or one draw spell.
PA is fairly obvious. It is very hard for decks to remove game 1, so even if I wanted to play Koth, I'd sideboard it.
And of course, playing 4x of all of these is near-mandatory, because of the way PA works. You want to be casting spells that are the same as spells you have cast already, and rebound and proliferate get exponentially better in these scenarios.
That is 8 land slots, and 28 spell slots that are taken.
What about the rest? Lands...
Tectonic Edge is a pretty good land. It kills man-lands (Creeping Tar Pit, Celestial Colonnade, Raging Ravine), and Valakuts. With the cards we have listed already, the edge is pretty good at producing useful mana. Among those 28 non-lands, there are only 24 hard-and-fast mana symbols. None of the spells have more than a single colored mana, and there are 28 colorless mana symbols. It also works fairly well at keeping a 3-color Exarch-Twin deck off their 2RR for Splinter Twin.
However, there are some downsides. Since our mana-fixing is pretty terrible, being able to go UURR2 on turn 6, to cast two draw spells and two burn spells is sometimes hard.
Also, if we consider cards we might put in, they tend to be more mana-intensive. Searing Blaze (RR), Jace Beleren (1UU), Into the Roil (1U/2UU), Koth the Hammer (2RR), or even the older versions of Deprive (UU) and Mindbreak Trap (2UU) are more mana-intensive. And Koth definately wants Mountains, due to the ease at which we can ultimate it.
Island-Mountain balance: It really depends on the other cards that are taken below, so this will be a dynamic solution based on the answer chosen for the Non-Land question. Currently there are 8 blue + 4 phyrexian blue mana symbols, and 16 red mana symbols. (+28 colorless mana symbols)
This would indicate a skew towards red, but not an extreme one, without knowing our answer to other non-land cards.
Overall, we're going to be playing 22 land at an absolute minimum, with 24 being the likely target.
What about the rest? Non-Lands...
Card Draw:
Gitaxian Probe is pretty good. It can be free, which is often relevant. It lets you know whether they can counter your turn 2 PA, while still being able to cast your PA. It can give you your first counter for free, to cast a proliferate spell. It doesn't require anything else in play to be cast (no creatures in play, etc). Really, the way the deck plays out (without counters), there aren't a lot of decision points where this information will change what you do, so it may be a trap. But being able to cast it for (0), especially against control decks, is a great way to charge up your Ascension, draw cards when you are Ascended, and burn your opponent out.
Twisted Image is okay. It kills a few cards. Notably:
Spellskite (pretty good against your 3 damage burn spells)
Overgrown Battlement (Valakut, Turboland)
Signal Pest (hyper-aggro)
Ornithopter (Tempered Steel, Vengevine)
Birds of Paradise (Green aggro)
Hedron Crab (Rogue.dec)
Some Allies (including some good ones, but allies aren't exactly popular)
Steppe Lynx (Boros is mostly dead though)
and draws a card, of course. It is a draw-3 against Precursor Golem, which is something. (it doesn't deal with it at all, but...)
There aren't a ton of ways to get value out of it by switching a creature's power and toughness, since there aren't many Ball Lightnings in the format, most things are relatively even in power and toughness. So maybe TI is a sideboard card, against Wall-Valakut, or Spellskite-Splinter-Twin (though it does nothing to answer the combo, boo)
Into the Roil is pretty solid. It has way more uses than people realize, and people are rarely playing around it. As an instant, it can be cast in combat, or at end of turn. It is a card draw spell late, and is pretty awesome against several hate cards, or in response to removal on your PA, which makes it a sort of counterspell as well. It is the heaviest blue spell that is being strongly considered, and it is fairly hard to cast UU spells with so much of your blue mana coming from Halimar Depths. It is pretty much the only answer to Leyline of Sanctity, Kor Firewalker, and Ratchet Bomb, Splinter Twin and Nature's Claim. It really doesn't answer some other problems that the deck has though, like Thrun, Calcite Snapper, Sphinx of Jwar Isle, Gaea's Revenge, or Titans, which are somewhat more prevalent problems.
The problem I have with ITR now is that it is the most reactive card in the deck. It doesn't kill them, it is a very expensive card draw spell, and I don't have the countermagic to back it up. I'd much rather just kill my opponent these days, and ITR really doesn't help with that. Koth is a pretty good answer to most of the answers to PA (as is Kiln Fiend), so you're not "dead" to Leyline, or Kor Firewalker or some shroud-creature, if you just kill them.
See Beyond is an okay draw spell. It is better than a lot of other options, and it is a 2 mana spell, which gives some good options on turn 5. If you discarded the card instead of shuffling it back in, I'd be 100% behind this card. Treasure Hunt definitely stocks you up with land, so shuffling one away to See Beyond could be a pretty nice combo.
Call to Mind was a one-card charge spell that I cut in favor of Surreal Memoir. Surreal Memoir is actual card advantage, and pretty insane at killing people (with bolts). It is also a one-card charge, if you have cast another Surreal Memoir (or discarded it, SM is a prime card to discard) CTM is somewhat better at burning people out, but both are pretty slow.
Steady Progress is a proliferate card, which I've been talking up left and right. It is also an INSTANT SPEED card draw spell, which is not to be underestimated. Unfortunately, it is also a 3 mana spell, which you have near-infinite of in this deck. It is hard to play two spells in a turn until turn 6, and once you are ascended, it is a Gitaxian Probe that costs 3 mana instead of maybe 0. That's pretty rough.
Jace Beleren is a card I don't think I have ever cast in a real game. It doesn't do anything to charge up PA, or really to help you win the game at all, but it is a planeswalker, and you could in theory kill a control deck with it, via milling, or preventing other Jaces. The problem is that the "control" deck plays a ton of creatures to bash down your Jace, so it's not exactly safe, like it might be against a UW planewalker do-nothing deck.
Surreal Memoir I've talked about a bit above. Rebound spells are pretty strong with PA, both before and after charging it up. It costs four, and probably gives you a three casting cost spell back, so it often is not amazing for using your mana. Three of these is about as many as you'd want, so it's pretty rare to cast to charge up PA. You'd better win the game if you cast this post-Ascending. (You can cast bolts in your upkeep before the rebound copy resolves, which is a great way to optimize your mana spent)
The options I like the most here are:
Gitaxian Probe, because it can be cast for free.
See Beyond, because it costs two.
Into the Roil, because it is so versatile.
Call to Mind, because of the raw utility.
Surreal Memoir, as a finisher.
Blue Non-Card Draw: Aka counterspells
Turn Aside is a one-mana counterspell for anything that targets perminants (aka Koth, PA, Kiln)
Mana Leak is general goodness.
Deprive is the "best" general purpose hard counter. (And combos okay with Halimar Depths)
Flashfreeze is good against G/R (Valakut, Rug)
Dispel/Spell Pierce/Negate are good in counter-wars
Fuel for the Cause is a proliferate counterspell, but it costs 4, with double-blue(ug - what the heck are they casting that you need to pay 4 to counter it?)
The problem with ALL of these is that they don't do anything proactive towards winning the game. They also don't do much against Valakut (aka lands + summoning trap), or Grixis Twin (discard + tapping lands), or Stoneforge/Squadron Hawk. (+ Spell Pierce)
An advantage to them, is that they do give you something to do with mana you leave open to cast your instant-speed burn. If this was not a PA deck, I'd play like 1x Spell Pierce, 1x Mana Leak, in order to screw with my opponent to the max, but because singletons, and counters, are so bad at charging PA, I don't think that's a great plan.
Red Burn:
Burst Lightning is good because it costs R, or R4, which are both pretty easy to cast. It is an instant, so you can use your mana well each turn. It is also a pretty good spell for killing players. Four damage is a pretty good number for killing Deceiver Exarchs, Spellskites, Overgrown Battlements (not really), and maybe some other stuff. Two damage (for R) is pretty good at killing Goblin Guide, Stoneforge Mystic, Fauna Shaman, Lotus Cobra, and a bunch of other stuff.
Arc Trail is a spell I really like. It is a really solid 2 mana spell. It gets some incidental damage in to players while killing creatures. It costs 2, which is way better than 3, along with all the 3's we already have. It comes down early enough to take care of the 2-casting cost creatures, and it is never dead. You can always shoot yourself for one and kill your control opponent. (Your control opponent is never going to be putting you in life-danger)
Searing Blaze gives Arc Trail a run for it's money. Three damage is a lot of damage, and you get the three damage to their head when it is doubled with Ascension, unlike some other options (Into the Roil) when they only have one creature-target. You have Scalding Tarn to turn it on sometimes, but IMO casting it as a sorcery is 80% effective. The biggest downside to this spell is it's casting cost (RR). It is pretty hard to cast a double-red spell on even 3 mana. Including Searing Blaze would be the biggest reason to cut Tectonic Edge. (Searing Blaze would kill them faster, which would make Tech Edge less necessary, so that at least is a double-advantage for dropping TE).
I like Searing Blaze.
Combust is good against cards people aren't playing (Baneslayer), and Deciever Exarch, because it will not be redirected by Spellskite, is a cheap spell, and it can't be countered, all of which are quite important. It is not amazing against BRU lists, because they make you discard it, but it is better than Into the Roil, against that deck.
Pyroclasm, and Combust, are pretty bad, because doubling them is pretty bad, and they are just another 2:1, that does not kill super-big creatures (titans), and also doesn't go to the head. When you're facing down a Jace, or a Primeval Titan, or a Collonade, and your answer is Pyroclasm, you're just dead. Lava Axe is a better spell for those purposes, and who the heck plays Lava Axe? And why the heck doesn't Lava Axe cost 4? Anyway, spells that can't possibly target players are not good, because you can end up drawing them, and that doesn't kill your opponent. So many games come down to attrition-fests.
Slagstorm is okay. It'd be a fine main-deck option, but as a sweeper, it really seems like Arc Trail is better. There are so many three-mana spells in the deck already, putting another one is is pretty meh. Staggershock and Arc Trail do a pretty good Pyroclasm/Slagstorm impersonation, so I'm not overly tempted to include more.
Red Sun's Zenith is an odd duck. It does not charge PA up very well at all, but it totally demolishes after Ascending. (or even without Ascending). It is about as good as Burst Lightning early, and is about as good late. It solves some problems, like Vengevine and Bloodghast, very well. It does a pretty good job of being a finisher to the dome. You have no trouble getting Ascended, so drawing into one of these with multiple draw spells on turn n, and then just blowing them away on turn n+1.
I see RSZ competing with Surreal Memoir, as a finisher spell. Having 1-3 of them main-deck seems like a pretty reasonable plan. You don't need 4, because they won't end up in the graveyard. And as a finisher, having just a few is a solid plan.
Lavaball Trap makes me "squee". 4-damage pyroclasm that kills off many of the shroud creatures (Turtle, Thrun), yum! It can definitely mana-screw these three-color decks, or even two-color decks that we see these days. Grixis Twin only plays two Mountains, so shutting that off could be good. It seems like it should be pretty okay against Valakut, though it may be a turn too slow, especially with no countermagic. I really want to play it, but my rational brain knows that it is terrible. It needs to cost about 3 to be reasonable, so at 8, trap cost of 5, it's just too expensive.
Conclusions:
I really like Red Sun Zenith as a 1-3 of.
Arc Trail (+ Tectonic Edge) and Searing Blaze compete for good additional anti-aggro slots.
Burst Lightning is good, but it competes with RSZ (and competes well, to be sure)
Overall Top Candidates:
There are alot of 2's here, which is no coincidence. The mana curve before these extra cards looks like this:
1: ||||||||
2: ||||||||
3: |||||||||||| (counting Tezz. Gambit)
Searing Blaze and Arc Trail compete strongly. Both may be sideboard options, because aggro is fairly under control via the omni-burn.
See Beyond and Gitaxian Probe compete strongly.
Red Sun's Zenith and Into the Roil aren't competing for anything but slots. ITR is so versitile, but maybe we don't need it main-deck, and out of the sideboard it will be just as effective dealing with sideboarded Leylines, etc.
I'll play a few games with 4x gitaxian, considering whether I'd rather they were See Beyond, 2x RSZ, 2x Into the Roil (and think about whether these should be See Beyond). I'll also play 4x tech edge, and see how hard Searing Blaze would be to cast, with 8x mountain, 4x Island, 4x Halimar, 4x Tech Edge, 4x Scalding Tarn.
4x:
Preordain is non-cuttable. It is pretty much the best spell you can cast after Ascending (because it costs the least mana, and draws you the best 2 cards in your top 6 - aka Foresee), and also the best spell you can cast to draw and play Ascension. Also, keeping both and drawing the non-Ascension on turn 1 against discard is pretty phenomenal.
The proliferate effects are pretty amazing. Volt Charge and Tezzeret's Gambit are very nice cards on their own. It's unfortunate that VC can't kill the 4-toughness threats out of Splinter-Twin, but it doubles with Bolt to kill a Titan/C-Sphynx, and eats pretty big chunks out of their life total at an easy to cast three mana instant. Tezzeret's Gambit is simply amazing. (3)-Draw 2 cards would be pretty good, but this is so much more. Super easy to cast, super good pre or post Ascension. But the proliferate effects offer you pretty amazing ways to one-card charge the Ascension.
The rebound spells can full-one-card charge the spell (at the cost of waiting a turn) if you have another copy in your graveyard, but the proliferate spells also do that. The proliferate spells have the additional charge scenario where you already have one counter, but no copy of the proliferate spell in your graveyard.
Staggershock is definitely the best rebound spell, because it is the cheapest one, you can cast. It is very often card advantage, and random aggro destroying. It is a huge 8-point life chunk post-Ascending, though it can be problematic that you have to wait for a turn to get the second 4. There are also some scenarios you can get into, where you plan to use the second half, to combine with another spell to kill larger creatures (like Leatherback Baloth), or combo with a spell like Arc Trail to get a 3-for-2.
Scalding Tarn is the only "dual land" that exists in standard these days for enemy colors. Sure, you could use Terramorphic Expanse or Evolving Wilds, but you can only use so many tap-lands, because you really need to be spending all your mana each turn. You do have some gaps in the curve, like 4, and 5, where you can't cast two three mana spells, so perhaps including some of the "bad" fetches is a good idea. One thing people will do wrong with the deck is cracking the Tarns for no real purpose. The advantage you get for saving them for a Halimar Depths, or to fix your mana on a critical turn is quite good. Often you can run into situations on your last turn where you need to have RR or UU, and if you fetch too early, you can be "stuck" on only being able to cast one burn spell, or one draw spell.
PA is fairly obvious. It is very hard for decks to remove game 1, so even if I wanted to play Koth, I'd sideboard it.
And of course, playing 4x of all of these is near-mandatory, because of the way PA works. You want to be casting spells that are the same as spells you have cast already, and rebound and proliferate get exponentially better in these scenarios.
That is 8 land slots, and 28 spell slots that are taken.
What about the rest? Lands...
However, there are some downsides. Since our mana-fixing is pretty terrible, being able to go UURR2 on turn 6, to cast two draw spells and two burn spells is sometimes hard.
Also, if we consider cards we might put in, they tend to be more mana-intensive. Searing Blaze (RR), Jace Beleren (1UU), Into the Roil (1U/2UU), Koth the Hammer (2RR), or even the older versions of Deprive (UU) and Mindbreak Trap (2UU) are more mana-intensive. And Koth definately wants Mountains, due to the ease at which we can ultimate it.
Island-Mountain balance: It really depends on the other cards that are taken below, so this will be a dynamic solution based on the answer chosen for the Non-Land question. Currently there are 8 blue + 4 phyrexian blue mana symbols, and 16 red mana symbols. (+28 colorless mana symbols)
This would indicate a skew towards red, but not an extreme one, without knowing our answer to other non-land cards.
Overall, we're going to be playing 22 land at an absolute minimum, with 24 being the likely target.
What about the rest? Non-Lands...
Card Draw:
Gitaxian Probe is pretty good. It can be free, which is often relevant. It lets you know whether they can counter your turn 2 PA, while still being able to cast your PA. It can give you your first counter for free, to cast a proliferate spell. It doesn't require anything else in play to be cast (no creatures in play, etc). Really, the way the deck plays out (without counters), there aren't a lot of decision points where this information will change what you do, so it may be a trap. But being able to cast it for (0), especially against control decks, is a great way to charge up your Ascension, draw cards when you are Ascended, and burn your opponent out.
Twisted Image is okay. It kills a few cards. Notably:
Spellskite (pretty good against your 3 damage burn spells)
Overgrown Battlement (Valakut, Turboland)
Signal Pest (hyper-aggro)
Ornithopter (Tempered Steel, Vengevine)
Birds of Paradise (Green aggro)
Hedron Crab (Rogue.dec)
Some Allies (including some good ones, but allies aren't exactly popular)
Steppe Lynx (Boros is mostly dead though)
and draws a card, of course. It is a draw-3 against Precursor Golem, which is something. (it doesn't deal with it at all, but...)
There aren't a ton of ways to get value out of it by switching a creature's power and toughness, since there aren't many Ball Lightnings in the format, most things are relatively even in power and toughness. So maybe TI is a sideboard card, against Wall-Valakut, or Spellskite-Splinter-Twin (though it does nothing to answer the combo, boo)
Into the Roil is pretty solid. It has way more uses than people realize, and people are rarely playing around it. As an instant, it can be cast in combat, or at end of turn. It is a card draw spell late, and is pretty awesome against several hate cards, or in response to removal on your PA, which makes it a sort of counterspell as well. It is the heaviest blue spell that is being strongly considered, and it is fairly hard to cast UU spells with so much of your blue mana coming from Halimar Depths. It is pretty much the only answer to Leyline of Sanctity, Kor Firewalker, and Ratchet Bomb, Splinter Twin and Nature's Claim. It really doesn't answer some other problems that the deck has though, like Thrun, Calcite Snapper, Sphinx of Jwar Isle, Gaea's Revenge, or Titans, which are somewhat more prevalent problems.
The problem I have with ITR now is that it is the most reactive card in the deck. It doesn't kill them, it is a very expensive card draw spell, and I don't have the countermagic to back it up. I'd much rather just kill my opponent these days, and ITR really doesn't help with that. Koth is a pretty good answer to most of the answers to PA (as is Kiln Fiend), so you're not "dead" to Leyline, or Kor Firewalker or some shroud-creature, if you just kill them.
See Beyond is an okay draw spell. It is better than a lot of other options, and it is a 2 mana spell, which gives some good options on turn 5. If you discarded the card instead of shuffling it back in, I'd be 100% behind this card. Treasure Hunt definitely stocks you up with land, so shuffling one away to See Beyond could be a pretty nice combo.
Call to Mind was a one-card charge spell that I cut in favor of Surreal Memoir. Surreal Memoir is actual card advantage, and pretty insane at killing people (with bolts). It is also a one-card charge, if you have cast another Surreal Memoir (or discarded it, SM is a prime card to discard) CTM is somewhat better at burning people out, but both are pretty slow.
Steady Progress is a proliferate card, which I've been talking up left and right. It is also an INSTANT SPEED card draw spell, which is not to be underestimated. Unfortunately, it is also a 3 mana spell, which you have near-infinite of in this deck. It is hard to play two spells in a turn until turn 6, and once you are ascended, it is a Gitaxian Probe that costs 3 mana instead of maybe 0. That's pretty rough.
Jace Beleren is a card I don't think I have ever cast in a real game. It doesn't do anything to charge up PA, or really to help you win the game at all, but it is a planeswalker, and you could in theory kill a control deck with it, via milling, or preventing other Jaces. The problem is that the "control" deck plays a ton of creatures to bash down your Jace, so it's not exactly safe, like it might be against a UW planewalker do-nothing deck.
Surreal Memoir I've talked about a bit above. Rebound spells are pretty strong with PA, both before and after charging it up. It costs four, and probably gives you a three casting cost spell back, so it often is not amazing for using your mana. Three of these is about as many as you'd want, so it's pretty rare to cast to charge up PA. You'd better win the game if you cast this post-Ascending. (You can cast bolts in your upkeep before the rebound copy resolves, which is a great way to optimize your mana spent)
The options I like the most here are:
Gitaxian Probe, because it can be cast for free.
See Beyond, because it costs two.
Into the Roil, because it is so versatile.
Call to Mind, because of the raw utility.
Surreal Memoir, as a finisher.
Blue Non-Card Draw: Aka counterspells
Turn Aside is a one-mana counterspell for anything that targets perminants (aka Koth, PA, Kiln)
Mana Leak is general goodness.
Deprive is the "best" general purpose hard counter. (And combos okay with Halimar Depths)
Flashfreeze is good against G/R (Valakut, Rug)
Dispel/Spell Pierce/Negate are good in counter-wars
Fuel for the Cause is a proliferate counterspell, but it costs 4, with double-blue(ug - what the heck are they casting that you need to pay 4 to counter it?)
The problem with ALL of these is that they don't do anything proactive towards winning the game. They also don't do much against Valakut (aka lands + summoning trap), or Grixis Twin (discard + tapping lands), or Stoneforge/Squadron Hawk. (+ Spell Pierce)
An advantage to them, is that they do give you something to do with mana you leave open to cast your instant-speed burn. If this was not a PA deck, I'd play like 1x Spell Pierce, 1x Mana Leak, in order to screw with my opponent to the max, but because singletons, and counters, are so bad at charging PA, I don't think that's a great plan.
Red Burn:
Burst Lightning is good because it costs R, or R4, which are both pretty easy to cast. It is an instant, so you can use your mana well each turn. It is also a pretty good spell for killing players. Four damage is a pretty good number for killing Deceiver Exarchs, Spellskites, Overgrown Battlements (not really), and maybe some other stuff. Two damage (for R) is pretty good at killing Goblin Guide, Stoneforge Mystic, Fauna Shaman, Lotus Cobra, and a bunch of other stuff.
Arc Trail is a spell I really like. It is a really solid 2 mana spell. It gets some incidental damage in to players while killing creatures. It costs 2, which is way better than 3, along with all the 3's we already have. It comes down early enough to take care of the 2-casting cost creatures, and it is never dead. You can always shoot yourself for one and kill your control opponent. (Your control opponent is never going to be putting you in life-danger)
Searing Blaze gives Arc Trail a run for it's money. Three damage is a lot of damage, and you get the three damage to their head when it is doubled with Ascension, unlike some other options (Into the Roil) when they only have one creature-target. You have Scalding Tarn to turn it on sometimes, but IMO casting it as a sorcery is 80% effective. The biggest downside to this spell is it's casting cost (RR). It is pretty hard to cast a double-red spell on even 3 mana. Including Searing Blaze would be the biggest reason to cut Tectonic Edge. (Searing Blaze would kill them faster, which would make Tech Edge less necessary, so that at least is a double-advantage for dropping TE).
I like Searing Blaze.
Combust is good against cards people aren't playing (Baneslayer), and Deciever Exarch, because it will not be redirected by Spellskite, is a cheap spell, and it can't be countered, all of which are quite important. It is not amazing against BRU lists, because they make you discard it, but it is better than Into the Roil, against that deck.
Pyroclasm, and Combust, are pretty bad, because doubling them is pretty bad, and they are just another 2:1, that does not kill super-big creatures (titans), and also doesn't go to the head. When you're facing down a Jace, or a Primeval Titan, or a Collonade, and your answer is Pyroclasm, you're just dead. Lava Axe is a better spell for those purposes, and who the heck plays Lava Axe? And why the heck doesn't Lava Axe cost 4? Anyway, spells that can't possibly target players are not good, because you can end up drawing them, and that doesn't kill your opponent. So many games come down to attrition-fests.
Slagstorm is okay. It'd be a fine main-deck option, but as a sweeper, it really seems like Arc Trail is better. There are so many three-mana spells in the deck already, putting another one is is pretty meh. Staggershock and Arc Trail do a pretty good Pyroclasm/Slagstorm impersonation, so I'm not overly tempted to include more.
Red Sun's Zenith is an odd duck. It does not charge PA up very well at all, but it totally demolishes after Ascending. (or even without Ascending). It is about as good as Burst Lightning early, and is about as good late. It solves some problems, like Vengevine and Bloodghast, very well. It does a pretty good job of being a finisher to the dome. You have no trouble getting Ascended, so drawing into one of these with multiple draw spells on turn n, and then just blowing them away on turn n+1.
I see RSZ competing with Surreal Memoir, as a finisher spell. Having 1-3 of them main-deck seems like a pretty reasonable plan. You don't need 4, because they won't end up in the graveyard. And as a finisher, having just a few is a solid plan.
Lavaball Trap makes me "squee". 4-damage pyroclasm that kills off many of the shroud creatures (Turtle, Thrun), yum! It can definitely mana-screw these three-color decks, or even two-color decks that we see these days. Grixis Twin only plays two Mountains, so shutting that off could be good. It seems like it should be pretty okay against Valakut, though it may be a turn too slow, especially with no countermagic. I really want to play it, but my rational brain knows that it is terrible. It needs to cost about 3 to be reasonable, so at 8, trap cost of 5, it's just too expensive.
Conclusions:
I really like Red Sun Zenith as a 1-3 of.
Arc Trail (+ Tectonic Edge) and Searing Blaze compete for good additional anti-aggro slots.
Burst Lightning is good, but it competes with RSZ (and competes well, to be sure)
Overall Top Candidates:
There are alot of 2's here, which is no coincidence. The mana curve before these extra cards looks like this:
1: ||||||||
2: ||||||||
3: |||||||||||| (counting Tezz. Gambit)
Searing Blaze and Arc Trail compete strongly. Both may be sideboard options, because aggro is fairly under control via the omni-burn.
See Beyond and Gitaxian Probe compete strongly.
Red Sun's Zenith and Into the Roil aren't competing for anything but slots. ITR is so versitile, but maybe we don't need it main-deck, and out of the sideboard it will be just as effective dealing with sideboarded Leylines, etc.
I'll play a few games with 4x gitaxian, considering whether I'd rather they were See Beyond, 2x RSZ, 2x Into the Roil (and think about whether these should be See Beyond). I'll also play 4x tech edge, and see how hard Searing Blaze would be to cast, with 8x mountain, 4x Island, 4x Halimar, 4x Tech Edge, 4x Scalding Tarn.
Sunday, May 15, 2011
You know what's pretty good with a sword?
Right now, Swords are pretty amazing, and a pretty big part of the metagame. I can think of a few things that "combo" pretty well with swords. (Edit: Apologies for the formatting, ug)
1) Ways to tutor them out. Ultra-Duh on this one. Not much to say here, since this is arguably the best card in standard right now. (Tie with Jace?) Tutors add amazing consistency to decks, and when they come on a near-impossible to counter card, that also doubles as a way to play them in a near-impossible-to-counter way, you have a pretty good package.
3) Unblockability. See protection. Unblockability is primarily a blue ability, and we can see that reflected in these cards. Creeping Tar Pit seems a lot of play for this reason.
4) Trample. If they block you, and you trample over the top, you still get your sword ability.
5) What goes well with a sword? Well, more swords of course! Vengance helpfully gives trample, one of the things we talked about earlier, as well as vigalence (so you don't need to "reequip"), haste, to make combat unpredictable, and just about everything else as well.
6) Ways to abuse the equipment.
So, that's a lot of cards, now what?
The most impressive angles seem to be a white or black-based approach.
The thing that catches my eye the most is the white double-strike, and the black infect + Trample.
Let's consider Black first.
Unfortunately, Phyrexian Crusader is a not great with the R/W sword (the sword deals the damage, so it is not infect damage), so that way of near-one-shotting is not available. Either of the other two swords compliment the black Crusader's innate protections, but neither really works to further the general cause of the Crusader, other than giving it +2/+2 and even less killability. Generating a wolf, milling them, untapping your lands, and them discarding a card are all useful abilities, but they don't kill your opponent very well.
On the other hand, the black tramplers can use all the protection they can get, and the abilities granted by the swords are guaranteed to land, when equipped onto a trampler. All three swords have their uses when combined with these creatures, and which work the best will depend on the approach you have for filling out the other ~48 cards.
What about White?
White is almost too easy. It has Stoneforge Mystic to tutor for the equipment you want, which is huge.
Mirran Crusader + Sword of War and Peace kills your opponent if they have cards in hand equal to (Life total - 2)/2. 12 life = 4 cards. 14 life = 5 cards. 16 life = 6 cards.
Puresteel Paladin triggers on equipment entering the battlefield, which is gravy with Stoneforge Mystic. Tossing in some utility artifact creatures, like Glint Hawk Idol, Porcelan Legionairre, Phyrexian Revoker, Mox Opal, and the like could help power up this Knight even further, and perhaps enable high-quality removal like Dispatch while you are at it.
As the deck becomes more aggressive, the Red/White sword seems like the best option. It combines well to combat a common removal color, common blocking color, and does not double-up with a common white protection (Black).
White has a ton of omni-white creatures, like Puresteel, Relic-Warder, White Knight, Devout Lightcaster, Kor Firewalker, and the like, but even so, splashing M11 + Scars duals would provide a low-downside second color, similar to how omni-black Vampires can splash Red (or Blue) with little to no downside. Splashing for Garruk's Companion is not exactly advisable, but a friendlier splash card like Mana Leak, or Nature's Claim, could be doable. (or Jace TMS, boo...) I wouldn't advocate Worldwake manlands, if you have use of your mana on turn 1, but as your mana cost (and late game aspirations) climb, they become more reasonable options.
Hero of Bladehold and Knight Exemplar might round out a Knight sub-theme. Indestructable isn't what it used to be though, with -x/-x, Sacrifice, and jace-bounce effects running around, but it is something.
That's all I've got tonight. Again, apologies for the horrendous formatting.
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