MTG Salvation

I PMed both of you guys, but I wanted to say something here regarding the Brainstorm discussion:

Brainstorm is Ancestral Recall when you have extra storm copies of Sprouting Vines. You can win games without finding a Tolarian Winds because of the legwork that Brainstorm, AK, Gush, etc put in to find you action. Winds is the easiest way to shift your hand from a lot of blank lands to a hand saturated with business, but you can only play so many Winds, and Winds is pretty awful before you combo off. So Brainstorm might have some flaws in the early game, but it's at worst going to just cycle and show you what you're drawing. I think that makes it worthwhile.

The biggest downside used to be that, mid-combo, BS was a bad filter spell; you could see 3 deep but then need to pay another blue to scry or shuffle those 2 cards away. This is different with Ash Barrens because you now can pay a red mana to shuffle away those 2. Chances are high that if you're mid-combo and your hand is a lot of blanks, you probably have an Ash Barrens to shuffle away dead cards after a Brainstorm. That relieves some tension from the blue mana, too...in many combo turns, blue mana is precious and sparse.

So I think it's fair to look at something like Ponder as a replacement for BS #4 because--well, it would be hypocritical of me to think that 3 Vines and 3 Winds are correct but not consider 3 of another card with potential diminishing returns in multiples. However, multiple Brainstorms only get better as the combo turn goes on, and in the early game if you draw 2-3 of them you can always just cycle them.

I prettymuch just want a 3rd Gigadrowse and a really undiluted deck against Delver, so I'm not too worried about the Pierces vs them. It's so hard to grind out more card advantage against that deck through countermagic anyways, I'd rather just lean on Drowse and Rite to push through. If I went for attrition, I'd probably do Dispels like you were saying.

Moment's Peace is amazing if you can find it. I'm starting to miss Impulse.

Playing with Outwit showed me how much I wanted a one-drop counter for Duress, Curses (blue and red), and burn spells. All of those cards are non-creature, so Spell Pierce hits all of them too. It doesn't work forever, but it's so much less situational in matchups like UB Teachings where I just want to say 'No' to a couple things so Teachings can't get ahead. Pierce also hits Relic/Nihil Spellbomb and opposing counterspells, so it's good protection for AK (do you pay 2 and tap out more on your end step, or do you let me AK?).

What do you think about Spell Pierce in the board?

Edit: List:



Testing the Keep Watches alongside the Peaces.

Yeah, Remora is the definition of an unfair card: asymmetric, undercosted, and with an effect that's a higher power level than its place on prettymuch any mana curve. So while I'd love to play with it...yeah, that's not happening, lol. I think we're on the same page here, Raptor.

I just bought a set of Ash Barrens on MTGO, so I'll be playing the deck again. I'm going with 18 lands: 1 Mountain, 4 Ash, 1 Terramorphic, 12 Island. Playing 1 Giga/2 Conjurer's main, AKs main, Rites main, 4 Preordain/Brainstorm (so prettymuch same thing but with Ash Barrens). In the board I'm putting a basic Forest and a set of Moment's Peace as the anti-beatdown strat...we'll see how this goes. I think it had problems in previous iterations because of the lack of extra draw to compensate for it, but AKs should help with that. And that's a 19th land vs control, if wanted.

I think the biggest thing will be to see how much Ash Barrens affects the deck's consistency moving forward. Gonna prettymuch just focus on that, see from there.

I would do some shameful things to gain access to Mystic Remora. But otherwise, most of that stuff is legal for us. I've tried out Deep Analysis and had mixed results...it's a lot better when you can pitch it to something than when you have to pay 4 to hardcast it first. But it does also make TWinds much better.

Seems like maybe we could use something that has Mystic Remora's power level, though...something we drop early that produces some sort of steady advantage, or even just an early advantage. Rhystic Study is too slow to compare to Remora. Maybe there's a creature that costs 1-2 that can dig? IDK.

Quote from Raptor__56 »

I think the issue with your mulligan rate might be due to you only running 17 lands. I'm not sure what the circumstances are when you are mulling, but with barren I noticed that you have to up the land count to reduce mulligans with the card. Barrens is a great card, but it comes with a trade off. Mid and late game the card is great, but around turns 1 and 2 you need something other than barrens. Cards like evolving wilds and expanse don't have this issue, but they are worse in the beginning of the mid game.

Just going to +1 this.

Quote from vinestorm »

I've also been testing a single forest in the sideboard for slow matchups, which allows us to take out the petals to make more space for higher impact cards.

It's not a bad plan. I do want to point out that lotus petals are handy in the slow match-ups, though. Against MBC it's an artifact to pitch to Wrench Mind. Against blue control decks you can play a draw spell to go above 7 cards and then roll out a Petal so you don't have to discard. And it's also useful to build up more storm for a non-combo turn Vines, which can really set you up for a nice midgame.

Quote from vinestorm »

@Raptor

Gigadrowse as a one of main deck is fine in my experience. Against slower blue decks, like teachings or U/x tron, we don't need multiple copies of the spell in game one, as they don't apply enough pressure to make it necessary. Against mono-u delver, our game one matchup is terrible anyways, and i've found that even with 2 or 3 gigadrowse maindeck, we often don't have enough time to find one.

I feel like the Delver match-up is one that sometimes you can steal, especially in game one. It seems like a horrible match-up, but when they don't open turn 1 Delver they cannot kill you before turn 6. So then you get to basically just do whatever you want for 5+ turns, and every time they tap out for a ninja or spire or ponder, you get to resolve something else. If you can play through one counterspell plus one Daze/Force Spike, you can often beat them in game one (if they didn't open that T1 Delver). Playing through a counter sounds hard, but Rite of Flame is pretty good at that. AK/Words of Wisdom are both good in this situation as well, since you want to spend 2-4 more turns sculpting.

Does that make Drowse worth more in the mainboard? IDK. Drowse is bad against Snap and can be dealt with by Daze sometimes. It's still the best thing against Delver IMO, which is part of why I lean toward 2 in the main...but I'm not married to it.

@ins

I would first like to say that nothing you have said comes across to me as being overtly negative, or adversarial. I 100% support critical approaches to deck building. I will read some of Karsten's articles.

Cool. Sometimes it's hard to tell.

I agree that our combo is somewhat disanalogous to twin. As you noted, we have other lines to comboing off other than casting both vines and winds. My problem with the lines that do not use both vine and winds is that they have a low rate of success in my previous testing/builds of vinestorm. While I have never tried main deck AKs, i'm skeptical that they will provide enough of a benefit to justify running them over card selection. In my experience, if you use the vine and winds combo, then you almost always win. Because of the significant difference in winrate between lines that use both vine and winds and lines that do not, card selection seems to be a better option than main deck AK. As i've never tested main deck AK, it's too early for me to establish which version of the deck is correct. However, it is hard for me to see why we shouldn't run 4 copies of winds, as they are necessary for almost all of the winning lines in vinestorm.

Yeah, that's fair. I wouldn't mind playing 4 of them if we could get more mileage from the looting effect. When I first was messing around with Vines, it was a couple years ago and Treasure Cruise was legal...that was a big reward for cycling away a whole hand, but obviously it's never coming back. But maybe there's another option. Deep Analysis is pretty sketchy, but there could be something else. I've tried boarding some Take Inventorys in grindy match-ups (as a spare set of AKs), so maybe that's good alongside more Winds. More of a board plan, though.

I wanted to ask you both if you think Inner Fire as a 4 of is correct, as i've found that 3 is sufficient in most cases. Also, do you think Ideas is better than Words of Wisdom? The UU and sorcery speed of the spell has always been off-putting to me.

I think it's correct. I've tried boarding out basically every card in the deck at one point or another, and Inner Fire is one of the most damaging things to take out. If I'm not boarding a complete transformation into some other style of deck, I'm not taking out Inners. TBH, I think the deck could function with just 3 Rite of Flame. I board 1-2 of those out all the time. One Inner Fire is basically enough to get your combo turn going by itself, most of the time. If we could play like 6 of those, I would.

Ideas is terrible. I keep trying that card, and it keeps showing me how much I'm starved for blue mana. It sucks at setup, it's a sorcery, and it sucks up all your useful blue mana.

@vinestorm: PV is better known as a strong mechanical player than as a deck designer. If I wanted to consult any pro on how many of each card to play, I would go to Frank Karsten instead. Karsten's got PhD work on stuff like game theory; his articles can help when the situation is more complicated than "I want as many of X card as I can fit in the deck," which is definitely the case with cards like Tolarian Winds (which is card disadvantage and just generally a piece of crap before combo turns) and Sprouting Vines (which gets significantly worse after you do it once for more than 2-3 lands).

The analogy to Splinter Twin falls short when you consider that Splinter Twin decks specifically need to draw one each of an untapper guy and a twin effect. This combo deck is different. Your goal is to chain draw spells and rituals to build up a large hand for large Inner Fires and then cast your fireball effect. If you do that with Vines and Winds, that's fine. If you do that with Gush, AKs, and Winds, that's fine. If you do that with a big Vines (or two of them) and a bunch of Brainstorms, that's also fine. So there is more potential for redundancy than simply maximizing the two main bomb draw effects, and my personal solution involves the mainbord full sets of Brainstorm and AK. It might not be as simple/easy to go off on as many combo turns, but the deck sucks a lot less before combo turns because I've chosen a different suite of cards for draw redundancy. It's a trade-off, and not one with an obviously better option.

Anyway, hopefully that doesn't come across as too negative. I have a pretty strong opinion against 4/4 Vines/Winds, but I'm open to discussing its merits. I care about making the deck better more than I do about being right. Just being honest and stating my opinion.

*raptor: Ash Barrens leads to more mulligans than fetchlands, but I've always been an aggressive mulliganer so that doesn't bother me. My solution is to run more draw (AKs) to offset the card disadvantage of those mulligans.

You can consistently turn 4 combo with Simians and a tight list, but sometimes racing aggro gets complicated by them having Pyroblast or Dispel or Duress, especially vs anything red or Affinity. These are commonly played cards that don't hurt aggro's tempo much (if at all), but can completely shut down a combo turn before it gets going. This is why I would argue that Affinity is a rather poor post-board match-up.

As far as hand size goes, I tend to just put artifacts on the table or pitch Rite of Flames when I go over 7.

Both of those sound pretty good. I'll test em out when Ash Barrens becomes MTGO legal.

Double posting here because edits are harder to notice.

I think we need a more cohesive plan against aggro than just bringing in some stall tactics. Fog and bounce effects typically buy about one turn, but bringing in more than 3-4 of them starts to dilute the combo--and then there's also the fact that casting a tempo spell means not casting a spell to sculpt a better combo hand. So I think we either need stall tactics that double time walk (like Moment's Peace or a legit board sweeper) or we need a different plan in general. I'm considering the idea of something like Gurmag Angler coupled with bounce spells: put a road block out there, force them to trade board position for damage, and bounce the unblocked attackers. Withdraw would be really good for that: if they swing with 3 guys and they're tapped out, Angler can eat one while Withdraw bounces the other 2. Or if they try to kill your Angler, you Withdraw one of their guys and then use the soft part of Withdraw on your own Angler. Obviously Angler goes into another color and requires delving, but the point is to have a good blocker out there--it could be anything. I'm cool with winning on turn 8 against aggro if I've taken over the board for most of the game.

Anyway, that's where my head's at after a few dozen more games.

Thanks for the board plans. I tend to board like you do: I move Gigadrowses out for more match-up relevant interaction/stall cards, and when I bring in extra stuff I take out Rites and then start shaving combo pieces.

It's definitely safer to board a second win-con, especially against mill with Jace's Erasure. I think it's fine. Right now, I'm eschewing a boarded back-up win condition because I just want to test with more sideboard cards in the practice room. I think it's probably better to have the backup so you have a lower chance of getting wrecked against mill, but vs most of the other decks I don't think it's necessary to have a 2nd win con. My reasoning is that I'm playing 4 Brainstorm and 2 Conjurer's Baubles, and I don't board any of those out (especially vs mill--but in general I've completely quit boarding out baubles).

If I wanted to replace Rolling Thunder, the card I would most likely pick is Gorilla Shaman. That's one of those cards that I just don't own, but Affinity can be such a pain in the neck that I could see rolling 2-4 mox monkeys and just killing their dreams with it (especially with ritual support). Or, if not mox monkey, I'd want some other card that's so devastating in a particular match-up that it makes up for sometimes just losing to mill or duress+bojuka bog when I don't have a second win condition. If I play anything where product is on the line, I'll be putting the spare Rolling Thunder back into the board.

I'm going to do some more testing with Withdraw and Repeal and see where my head's at for aggro match-ups. It was really helpful to see how you're boarding; I'm going to take it into serious consideration while I try to pin down what works.

(Edited for clarity.)

Thanks!

Yeah Rolling Thunder is essentially 1 more mana (which is almost negligable) to deal with Standard Bearers, and occasionally you can Gush-->Inner Fire and just kill 3 things to survive. The counter-resistance from Torch is useless, so I dumped it back in Spring before I took my hiatus.

Okay, onto your sideboard: Honestly, I like all of the cards in it. It's easy to see that they each hold a purpose, and there is pretty clear overlap between some of the different cards (beyond just the hydros and BEBs being functionally similar). I think a bigger question is: what are your board plans? Because I think there are good arguments for whichever anti-aggro cards you want to bring, but my personal struggle is knowing what I can feasibly cut for those Withdraws. You know? That was always a big problem with the deck (at least, for me) earlier in the year.

Anyways, I also want to point out that I have tested Withdraw and Lethargy Trap after seeing those cards in this thread, and there were some times that they put in work. Right now, I'm kind of in a place where I want to know whether I can take out Rites or a TWinds or something else against those aggressive decks, the ones where you have to stall them a turn or 2 to win on the draw. I think that's where you either want a Withdraw/Trap/Gigadrowse to stall a team and take a time walk or two, or you want cantripping stall tactics that can add up to a turn or 2 while cycling into some combo fuel. Frankly, I don't know what's right. I think you have a good plan with what you're doing, so long as you aren't diluting your combo too much when you bring it in. That's the problem I've been having, anyways.

Hey.

I took a hiatus from MTG for about half a year, but I missed this deck. So I've been playing lately, and messing around with the deck's construction. I decided to check out the forums to see if anyone else has been working on the deck, and came across this thread. It's also been a couple years since I've logged in to MTGSalvation at all (due to the vast amount of stupid trolls), but I thought it was worthwhile to log in again and post here because, Raptor_56, I appreciate how hard you're trying here.

I'm currently on maindeck AK and 4 Brainstorm as well. This is my list:



I have been running this on MTGO, and also testing (through solitaire) Ash Barrens in place of the fetches as a potential alternative if/when it becomes a thing in Pauper. So far, my conclusion is that it has a large amount of upside for fixing Brainstorms in the middle of a combo turn, as well as enabling turn 1 BS into turn 2 upkeep shuffle. Its primary downside is that it leads to more mulligans--though that becomes less dangerous in an AK build. I think an 18 land build surely can support 4 Ash Barrens, and it makes the deck a lot more consistent beyond the mulligan.

On sideboarding:
I run Arcane Denial and Condescend out of the board for times when I want to take the Rites out against some of the slower match-ups. I like using a Denial on my own spell for +1 CA and I like that Condescend goes well with Brainstorm. I'd like to maximize BS's potential if possible.

I actually learned about Outwit from here, and I'm glad I tried it out. I like niche sideboard cards that work very well in a small number of match-ups. You can count on it against a UB deck with Duresses and Curses, which are the only things you need to counter, and then it's obviously good against Burn.

Other than that, most of my board is pretty typical stuff. Anyways, I'm really happy to see that there is a thread somewhere on this deck. Cya round!