@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.
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.
On the topic of Ash Barrens, I think running them as a 4 of is correct. They're amazing with brainstorm, which i've also added a fourth copy of.
@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.
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.
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.
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.
I'm giving Barrens a shot and I'm trying out 4 in the main. I think playing 18 lands will reduce the mulligan issue I was having before. After reading the previous comments in the thread, I've been persuaded to go down to two gigadrowse in the main. I moved one the the sideboard to see how often I want three. I'll try to track how often I bring it in, and what matchups. One thing that I have noticed with Barren is that it plays very differently in this deck than the other fetches in the format. It adds a whole new element to the deck, and I think it actually has a lot of depth to it. I will have to practice with it and get used to it.
Thanks for all of the great responses. I've been testing 4 AK, 4 inner fire, 4 vines, and 4 winds in the maindeck and it has been working excellently. This is my current list:
The major problem with this build is that by only running 12 islands in the main, we are forced to have a high mulligan rate. While AK does partially mitigate this, I think finding a way to run 13 islands would probably make the deck better. The other problem i've been having with the build is sideboarding, as cards like rite and AK tend to be inflexible. However, I don't think that this is a significant problem with the build, as we cannot sacrifice a lot of slots in the deck for sideboarding in any build of the deck.
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.
The major problem with this build is that by only running 12 islands in the main, we are forced to have a high mulligan rate. While AK does partially mitigate this, I think finding a way to run 13 islands would probably make the deck better. The other problem i've been having with the build is sideboarding, as cards like rite and AK tend to be inflexible. However, I don't think that this is a significant problem with the build, as we cannot sacrifice a lot of slots in the deck for sideboarding in any build of the deck.
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.
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.
In terms of the 4 copies of each combo piece, I'm not sure if it is worth it. At the moment, I don't think it is entirely set in stone which is better. There isn't enough evidence to prove it either way as the deck is still in its infancy. However, what I would argue is that I feel that going down to three of each copy is worth the trade of getting 2 more slots for the deck. I have noticed that Accumulated Knowledge has allowed for better digging with the deck, so if you maximize the number of cards you see when going off by sequencing things correctly, you are likely to get the other half of the combo if you are missing it. In a perfect world, the deck would get to play 4 of each combo piece, have a solid land count, and have 2-3 gigadrowe in the deck without going over 60. But as it stands, there has to be a cut made somewhere. I'm not sure what the correct way to cut the deck is, but that is my argument for one possible way.
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.
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.
I haven't got to test the deck a lot lately, but I've been thinking about how to improve the board. What do you guys feel about the sideboards in these high tide builds? I know high tide is a different deck all together (and way more busted than this deck let's not get ahead of ourselves) but I'm thinking their sideboards might be a good reference. Thoughts?
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.
I've played remora in the past. The card is really disgusting. It let me win a game because my opponent felt forced to do nothing until turn 5 when I lost it. At that point, I had enough time to sculpt a hand and win. I've also had games where they play into it and I get the near perfect hand by turn 4 or 5. I have a feeling that a lot of blue decks would play it if it were legal, and I'm not sure the card is entirely healthy for the format. That being said, if it was legal, I would play 3-4, as it is bonkers good.
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.
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.
From my testing with ash barrens, I've gone to 50/50 Barrens wilds. I had issues with hands that were great but only had barrens, and I didn't like the mull issues. The card is still relatively new, so it is still in the air at this point. On a side note, I've found barrens to be great in control decks that run 3 colors. Getting the third color you need on time matters. I've been playing grixis teachings with Wilds for years, and in that deck ash barrens has felt like a strict upgrade.
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?).
Hey all, thanks for all of the great ideas that you have been brewing for the deck. What follows are some morning thoughts on the conversation since my previous post.
Ash Barrens is an amazing card once one learns how to use it (which i'm still in the process of). There are so many niche situations where the fixing or shuffle effect has significantly impacted the game in my favour. In builds that I run evolving wilds, I rarely keep hands that only have one of them without any other lands. This is the same as Ash Barrens. So while the mulligan rate is slightly higher running Ash Barrens, the payoff is well worth it.
Spell pierce is great in the board, but I think we ought to keep at least a couple dispels for the delver matchups. They can usually just pay for spell pierce by the time we go off, which makes it an ineffectual card in the matchup.
I really like the idea of moment's peace in the board. How have you found it in testing so far?
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.
I'm not sure if this is the flu talking, but I believe that main deck AK is incorrect and that instead we should run a combination of card selection/Words of Wisdom. I'm not going to give an exhaustive argument here, because i'm exhausted.
First, it makes sideboarding clunky.
Second, running AK over selection/tutors (like impulse or Muddle) makes our sideboard worse. With a greater amount of selection we can look through a greater set of cards to find our high impact sideboard cards.
Third, it makes much more vulnerable to GY hate.
Finally, words of wisdom is a better card the majority of the time. Words of wisdom is better on the first cast, and is equally good on the second. The value of the third and fourth cast is not strong enough to justify main deck AK, as they are often auxiliary to our combo. While it can lead to some feel bad moments where our opponent draws a counterspell off our words, these cases are insignificant.
tl;dr pls send flu cure 2 canada.
I also think we should run a 3 brainstorm/1 ponder split. But that is a different story.
I'm not sure if this is the flu talking, but I believe that main deck AK is incorrect and that instead we should run a combination of card selection/Words of Wisdom. I'm not going to give an exhaustive argument here, because i'm exhausted.
First, it makes sideboarding clunky.
How so? What matchups are you struggling to board against?
Second, running AK over selection/tutors (like impulse or Muddle) makes our sideboard worse. With a greater amount of selection we can look through a greater set of cards to find our high impact sideboard cards.
I don't like muddle at all. IMO the card is garbage in this list (not in general but in this list it is). merchant scroll is where you want to be if you are playing tutors, but that is not legal online as of now.
I have played impulse for quite some time. The three issues that I had with the card was that it never provided card advantage, did not allow you to get ahead, and sometimes forced you to bottom needed combo pieces. One thing I have noticed with the deck is that if you don't play AK, the only way to net cards and generate mana is with gush, which felt weaker to me. I have also tried peer through depths, but I felt like impulse was better as it could get lands and petals.
Third, it makes much more vulnerable to GY hate.
I have rarely had gy hate be an issue, and this deck is not that weak to gy hate imo. I have beaten multiple relics and spellbombs in the past, and I am fine if people want to bring them in over discard or counter magic. Long story short, you can beat relics if you know how to bait. If your opponent doesn't crack them when you bait you can often get ahead and then combo off and win anyways. If they do take the bait and crack, then you can go off without fear. Most of the time it's a win win. If you somehow let your torch hit the bin, then it can be an issue, but that is a rare occurrence and you can always board in the second fireball over a bauble if you feel it is a legitimate issue.
Finally, words of wisdom is a better card the majority of the time. Words of wisdom is better on the first cast, and is equally good on the second. The value of the third and fourth cast is not strong enough to justify main deck AK, as they are often auxiliary to our combo. While it can lead to some feel bad moments where our opponent draws a counterspell off our words, these cases are insignificant.
I have tried words of wisdom in the past and I didn't like the card it gave to my opponent. Against decks like stompy affinity and burn, you could never cast it. Against blue decks, sometimes I would be in the middle of the combo, they have 2 blue open (no counters in hand), and you were in a position where you were forced to cast words of wisdom and you drew them into their out. Giving the opponent a card matters quite a bit. I initially thought it was irrelevant, but an extra card can spell disaster. AK does not have this problem, and has more synergy with the deck. If you draw one before you cast winds, you can just discard it to tolarian to fuel the other copies. That's just my two cents on the card.
I also think we should run a 3 brainstorm/1 ponder split. But that is a different story.
Highly disagree. Brainstorm is miles above ponder in this deck provided you have your list built with ways to make brainstorm effective. The instant speed and synergy it has with things like sprouting vines and tolarian winds matter a lot. It has a much higher skill cap than ponder, but if you use it properly it can win games.
Thanks so much for the reply! I still have the flu, so i'm sorry if some of these points lack clarity. Please inform me if anything need elucidation.
How so? What matchups are you struggling to board against?
Mostly faster match ups where I want at least 3 sideboard cards, like Affinity, Stompy, Delver, Burn, and RDW. How would you sideboard when faced with these matchups in a list that runs AK?
I don't like muddle at all. IMO the card is garbage in this list (not in general but in this list it is). merchant scroll is where you want to be if you are playing tutors, but that is not legal online as of now.
I agree that it probably shouldn't be run main deck, I only intended it to be an example of a card we might consider.
I have played impulse for quite some time. The three issues that I had with the card was that it never provided card advantage, did not allow you to get ahead, and sometimes forced you to bottom needed combo pieces. One thing I have noticed with the deck is that if you don't play AK, the only way to net cards and generate mana is with gush, which felt weaker to me. I have also tried peer through depths, but I felt like impulse was better as it could get lands and petals.
Impulse does not directly provide card advantage, but it can find gush/words and does net a card in conjunction with vines. I'm not sure what you mean when you say that AK "did not allow you to get ahead". Additionally, i'm not sure how it forces one to bottom their combo pieces. Are you talking about situations in which you have neither main combo pice in hand, and impulse into both of them? If so, these situations are rare and when they do occur, the fact that you must bottom at least one combo piece is a very minor downside.
I have rarely had gy hate be an issue, and this deck is not that weak to gy hate imo. I have beaten multiple relics and spellbombs in the past, and I am fine if people want to bring them in over discard or counter magic.
People won't bring gy hate in over discard or counter magic, but instead bring all of them in amd boarded out creature removal. While you can play around gy hate in many situations it makes your AKs and rite of flames much worse.
Suppose you're planning on casting tolarian winds with rolling thunder in hand, you have two AK's in the yard, and a third AK in your hand. Your opponent has a relic and has the option to crack it. Your best play in this situation is to cast AK, and bait your opponent to crack relic in response so that you can eventually bauble your thunder. In this case, the best possible situation is one where you just used 1b to cantrip a card, and in which your next AK will also be significantly worse.
Situations where either your AK or rite gets significantly worse occur almost every time your opponent sides in GY hate.
I have tried words of wisdom in the past and I didn't like the card it gave to my opponent. Against decks like stompy affinity and burn, you could never cast it. [/qoute]
Words of wisdom is better than AK against stompy, affinity, and burn because it nets a card on the first cast. One doesn't have the time or mana against these decks to develop AKs. You can cast words against these decks at the end of the turn before you go off or on the combo turn.
[quote] Against blue decks, sometimes I would be in the middle of the combo, they have 2 blue open (no counters in hand), and you were in a position where you were forced to cast words of wisdom and you drew them into their out. Giving the opponent a card matters quite a bit.
The blue deck situation is not worth considering, as it is a very fringe case. The card can lose you the game, but these situations are very rare.
Highly disagree. Brainstorm is miles above ponder in this deck provided you have your list built with ways to make brainstorm effective. The instant speed and synergy it has with things like sprouting vines and tolarian winds matter a lot. It has a much higher skill cap than ponder, but if you use it properly it can win games.
Brainstorm is better than ponder in vinestorm. But it is only strong in two situations. The first is when you cast it in conjunction with some shuffle effect (vines or shuffle land), and the second is on your combo turn but before you cast vines/winds. In the grand majority of cases, the amount of brainstorms we want in our hard is at most n+1, where n is the number of shuffle effects in our hand. Running brainstorm as a 4 of increase the probability that you will have multiple copies of brainstorm in hand before you combo of. Ponder also works very well with our shuffle effects, doesn't require shuffle effects, is good on our combo turn as it can go 4 cards deep, and allows us to keep a larger set of 1 land hands. I'm not sure if brainstorm is good enough to run as a 4 of because of this.
Thanks so much for the reply! I still have the flu, so i'm sorry if some of these points lack clarity. Please inform me if anything need elucidation.
Mostly faster match ups where I want at least 3 sideboard cards, like Affinity, Stompy, Delver, Burn, and RDW. How would you sideboard when faced with these matchups in a list that runs AK?
( I should note the arcane denial is just a random one of, and I feel it should be something else, I'm just not sure what.)
For Burn, I board like this: -3 drowse, +1 BEB,+1 hydro, +1 dispel, for Stompy I board like this: - 2 drowse, - 1 rite of flame, +2 withdraw, + 1 trap, For affinity I board like this: -1 drowse, - 1 rite, + 2 dispel. RDW and mono blue delver are awful matchups in moy opinion, and I'm still trying to determine what the corrrect boarding for those matchups should be. I'm pretty confident with how I board for the matchups given, but I'm not sure how to configure the deck to maximize my chances against those two, but here is how I board. RDW: - 1 rite - 1 drowse, +2 withdraw, Mono U delver: -1 rite, + 1 dispel.
I agree that it probably shouldn't be run main deck, I only intended it to be an example of a card we might consider.
That makes sense. Maybe it could be a sb card or something.
Impulse does not directly provide card advantage, but it can find gush/words and does net a card in conjunction with vines.
Very true, this is a perk of the card. It is great early on, but it can be bad in the later stage of the combo depending on the situation. If you are looking for multiple cards, it will only get you one, while AK has the ability to get multiple later in the combo.
I'm not sure what you mean when you say that AK "did not allow you to get ahead".
I think you mean when I referred to impulse not allowing me to get ahead, not AK, I'll elaborate. When playing the deck, I have noticed that impulse never let me increase my hand size, nor did it allowed me to get on parity with my opponent in terms of card advantage. I feel that this is a huge aspect of pauper, and having card advantage- whether it be real or virtual - is a key part of the format. Impulse grants card selection, but no card advantage. I feel that having card advantage is more relevant, as key combo pieces like inner fire and tolarian winds rely on this. I feel like getting ahead in this aspect is more important to the deck, and you should let cards like preordain and brainstorm do the card selection for you.
Additionally, i'm not sure how it forces one to bottom their combo pieces. Are you talking about situations in which you have neither main combo piece in hand, and impulse into both of them? If so, these situations are rare and when they do occur, the fact that you must bottom at least one combo piece is a very minor downside.
It's mostly that I would get situations like this: cast impulse seeing - brainstorm, gush, manamorphose, island. In play: Island Island Hand: tolarian winds, sprouting vines, lotus petal, preordain, gigadrowse, Inner fire. Do I take the manamorphose to guarantee I have green mana or hope to draw a petal or another manamorphose? Do I get the gush and hope it draws me into what I need? I also need a third land, should I take that as well to help make gigadrowse and gush viable in the coming turns? All of these are legitimate concerns, and I felt like AK alleviated this "issue" (i'll address this at the end). We could argue which play is correct here percentage wise, but in each case you are losing cards that you need, and there is not a guarantee you will draw them when you need them when going off. I understand that this is a weak argument, so I'm not trying to say impulse is a bad card because of this. Rather, it was more of a means to illustrate one conundrum I would run into when playing the card, and how making the wrong pick would lose me the game. AK does not have this issue and is more straight forward in this aspect. While both AK and Impulse have their strengths and weaknesses, I do like not having to deal with the headache that impulse brings in this deck.
People won't bring gy hate in over discard or counter magic, but instead bring all of them in amd boarded out creature removal. While you can play around gy hate in many situations it makes your AKs and rite of flames much worse.
you are correct here. My previous statement was incorrect. However, I still believe that graveyard hate is the least of the decks worries.
Suppose you're planning on casting tolarian winds with rolling thunder in hand, you have two AK's in the yard, and a third AK in your hand. Your opponent has a relic and has the option to crack it. Your best play in this situation is to cast AK, and bait your opponent to crack relic in response so that you can eventually bauble your thunder. In this case, the best possible situation is one where you just used 1b to cantrip a card, and in which your next AK will also be significantly worse.
I suppose this can be an issue. At any rate, you're stil going to go off, so I don't see it as being that much of a problem. You could circumvent this by just siding in the second fireball effect over the bauble.
Situations where either your AK or rite gets significantly worse occur almost every time your opponent sides in GY hate.
Even then, I often can just go off through gy hate. Inner fire does the majority of the heavy lifting. If you lose 6 mana from the total 10 that rite of flame brings, then so be it. If your Ak's draw you 5 out of the 10 cards they offer, that is fine as well. You have tolarian winds, BS, and preordain to dig your way through the deck.
Words of wisdom is better than AK against stompy, affinity, and burn because it nets a card on the first cast. One doesn't have the time or mana against these decks to develop AKs. You can cast words against these decks at the end of the turn before you go off or on the combo turn.
Sure, you can do it end of turn before you combo. But here is the issue, if you have to cast it because you need cards - and it's not on the turn before you are go off - then you are helping your opponent kill you faster. Against fast decks, the extra card matters. I had a lot of situations where I would be giving them a card and hoping it didn't spell death. It gets them closer to the pump spell or the burn spell to kill me.
The blue deck situation is not worth considering, as it is a very fringe case. The card can lose you the game, but these situations are very rare.
I agree it is rare, but when it happens you feel terrible.
Brainstorm is better than ponder in vinestorm. But it is only strong in two situations. The first is when you cast it in conjunction with some shuffle effect (vines or shuffle land), and the second is on your combo turn but before you cast vines/winds. In the grand majority of cases, the amount of brainstorms we want in our hard is at most n+1, where n is the number of shuffle effects in our hand. Running brainstorm as a 4 of increase the probability that you will have multiple copies of brainstorm in hand before you combo of. Ponder also works very well with our shuffle effects, doesn't require shuffle effects, is good on our combo turn as it can go 4 cards deep, and allows us to keep a larger set of 1 land hands. I'm not sure if brainstorm is good enough to run as a 4 of because of this.
It has more uses than just those two cases. 1. It helps protect against discard 2. It nets cards off vines 3. It fixes mulligans and makes crappy hands into playable hands 4. You will have hands where you are forced to go off with double winds. When the second one is one the stack and you drew into vines, you can use the brainstorm you drew into to put back cards like inner fire to prevent discarding them. This is a fringe case, but it can make the difference between a win and a loss. I feel brainstorm is a harder card to play, but it gives the deck more reach. I'm sure there are other uses that I forgot, but these are off the top.
I disagree with only wanting brainstorm with only shuffle effects. If it's not good to cast, then hold it. Wait until the combo turn to cast it.
I can understand why brainstorm can be bad with only one land hands, but it can also make crappy 6 card hands into playable hands when you draw it. It has pros and cons. I feel the pros make it worth playing the full 4.
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've been busy with school lately, but got sick again so i've had some time to think about the deck. In the last couple of days, i've been testing a BUG version of vinestorm, and am convinced that it is worth exploring.
My current list wins using an infinite combo with Disciple of the Vault, Etherium Sculptor, and Conjurer's Bauble. It can use the synergy between Ehterium Sculptor, 1 cmc cycling artifacts, and sprouting vines to go off; however, it is not reliant on this to win, as the black rituals are stronger than the red ones. It is obviously untuned.
Other ideas include running some number of Balustrade spy, brainstorm, ash barrens, maindeck protection, and Fortuitous find.
Let me know if you have any questions, and I would love to hear your thoughts.
I've been busy with school lately, but got sick again so i've had some time to think about the deck. In the last couple of days, i've been testing a BUG version of vinestorm, and am convinced that it is worth exploring.
My current list wins using an infinite combo with Disciple of the Vault, Etherium Sculptor, and Conjurer's Bauble. It can use the synergy between Ehterium Sculptor, 1 cmc cycling artifacts, and sprouting vines to go off; however, it is not reliant on this to win, as the black rituals are stronger than the red ones. It is obviously untuned.
Other ideas include running some number of Balustrade spy, brainstorm, ash barrens, maindeck protection, and Fortuitous find.
Let me know if you have any questions, and I would love to hear your thoughts.
I like the idea however I do have a number of concerns.
In terms of the list posted, my biggest concern is in terms of setting things up. Having 8 rituals is fine, however setting things up with only 4 preordain and 3 ponder is a concern.
I'm not sure if you want to open yourself up to removal with disciple or sculptor. I can see why you want to play 4 sculptor as they allow you to have the chromatic effects cost 0, but it seems like an issue. You pay 2 mana to have sphere's costs 0 mana, but generate no mana. You could argue that the payoff is in the "free" cards off the chromatic effects, but it still is a concern.
Graveyard hate seems to be a concern in that list. If they have a relic, bomb, or macabre you have to deal with it before the combo turn or figure out a way to time things during the actual combo turn itself. This is similar to setting up double gigadrowse, one on end step, one on main phase.
It feels like the combo itself takes up a lot of space. I'm in the camp that you want your win condition to take up as little space as possible. If I could, I would play Devil's Play just to get a free slot. If there was a way to have an alternate win-con that took up very little space and didn't require you to have 20+ mana after you draw your deck, I'd be all for it.
My last concern has to deal with protecting the combo itself. If you face against any deck with counterspells, it seems like you are going to lose game one. Unlike pauper spy decks, you can't win on turn 1 consistently enough to warrant the all in style strategy.
I'm not trying to discourage this idea as I like it quite a bit. However, if we are going to improve upon it we have to address areas of concern. I'm not able to spend time working on it at the moment, but I'm sure you could figure something out.
In terms of the deck, I've made some minor changes to the list that I am currently playing.
I've gone up to 61 cards mainboard which I know seems questionable. I've added a 18th land in the form of Terramorphic Expanse. In all honesty I've been quite satisfied with this configuration overall. It's made brainstorm better, and it makes it easier to hit land drops. I know 61 cards is wrong 99 percent of the time, but I've been liking it a lot so far.
In terms of sideboarding, I've been trying out Uncovered Clues as a way to let me deal with grindy decks. I like that it doesn't put cards into my gy, and it's not too bad overall. It is still experimental though, so it's not like it is set in stone or anything.
Lastly I tried out the card flux to see how it compared to tolarian winds. Long story short it's not as good. There are fringe cases where it is better, but they are not worth running the card over. I know this seems like useless information, but I decided to try it out just in case.
Yah, the final version of the BUG list should almost certainly run 2-3 gigadrowse. I like your current list, and think builds over 60 cards are worth consideration due to the unique limitations of the deck (primarily because of the necessity of running at least 14 basics).
It's funny you should mention flux, I learned about the card about a week ago and have been thinking that it would be good in a build that uses drift of phantasms to tutor either one of your combo pieces.
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.
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.
On the topic of Ash Barrens, I think running them as a 4 of is correct. They're amazing with brainstorm, which i've also added a fourth copy of.
@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.
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.
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 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.
Cool. Sometimes it's hard to tell.
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 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.
4 Brainstorm
4 Preordain
4 Accumulated Knowledge
4 Gush
Combo / Protection [10]
3 Tolarian Winds
3 Sprouting Vines
2 Gigadrowse
1 Kaervek's Torch
1 Conjurer's Bauble
13 Snow-Covered Island
1 Snow-Covered Mountain
4 Ash Barrens
Rituals [16]
4 Lotus Petal
4 Inner Fire
4 Rite of Flame
4 Manamorphose
3 Outwit
1 Izzet Boilerworks
1 Hydroblast
1 Flaring Pain
3 Dispel
2 Withdraw
1 Lethargy Trap
1 Blue Elemental Blast
1 Rolling Thunder
1 Gigadrowse
I'm giving Barrens a shot and I'm trying out 4 in the main. I think playing 18 lands will reduce the mulligan issue I was having before. After reading the previous comments in the thread, I've been persuaded to go down to two gigadrowse in the main. I moved one the the sideboard to see how often I want three. I'll try to track how often I bring it in, and what matchups. One thing that I have noticed with Barren is that it plays very differently in this deck than the other fetches in the format. It adds a whole new element to the deck, and I think it actually has a lot of depth to it. I will have to practice with it and get used to it.
4x Ash Barrens
4x Brainstorm
1x Conjurer's Bauble
1x Gigadrowse
4x Gush
4x Inner Fire
12x Island
1x Kaervek's Torch
4x Lotus Petal
4x Manamorphose
1x Mountain
4x Preordain
4x Rite of Flame
4x Sprouting Vines
4x Tolarian Winds
The major problem with this build is that by only running 12 islands in the main, we are forced to have a high mulligan rate. While AK does partially mitigate this, I think finding a way to run 13 islands would probably make the deck better. The other problem i've been having with the build is sideboarding, as cards like rite and AK tend to be inflexible. However, I don't think that this is a significant problem with the build, as we cannot sacrifice a lot of slots in the deck for sideboarding in any build of the deck.
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.
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.
In terms of the 4 copies of each combo piece, I'm not sure if it is worth it. At the moment, I don't think it is entirely set in stone which is better. There isn't enough evidence to prove it either way as the deck is still in its infancy. However, what I would argue is that I feel that going down to three of each copy is worth the trade of getting 2 more slots for the deck. I have noticed that Accumulated Knowledge has allowed for better digging with the deck, so if you maximize the number of cards you see when going off by sequencing things correctly, you are likely to get the other half of the combo if you are missing it. In a perfect world, the deck would get to play 4 of each combo piece, have a solid land count, and have 2-3 gigadrowe in the deck without going over 60. But as it stands, there has to be a cut made somewhere. I'm not sure what the correct way to cut the deck is, but that is my argument for one possible way.
Just going to +1 this.
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.
I haven't got to test the deck a lot lately, but I've been thinking about how to improve the board. What do you guys feel about the sideboards in these high tide builds? I know high tide is a different deck all together (and way more busted than this deck let's not get ahead of ourselves) but I'm thinking their sideboards might be a good reference. Thoughts?
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.
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.
From my testing with ash barrens, I've gone to 50/50 Barrens wilds. I had issues with hands that were great but only had barrens, and I didn't like the mull issues. The card is still relatively new, so it is still in the air at this point. On a side note, I've found barrens to be great in control decks that run 3 colors. Getting the third color you need on time matters. I've been playing grixis teachings with Wilds for years, and in that deck ash barrens has felt like a strict upgrade.
Edit: List:
4 Ash Barrens
1 Terrmorphic Expanse
1 Mountain
11 Island
Rituals:
4 Rite of Flame
4 Inner Fire
4 Lotus Petal
4 Manamorphose
4 Preordain
4 Brainstorm
4 Accumulated Knowledge
Bomb Draw:
4 Gush
3 Sprouting Vines
3 Tolarian Winds
Protection:
2 Gigadrowse
Win:
1 Rolling Thunder
2 Conjurer's Bauble
1 Forest
4 Moment's Peace
2 Keep Watch
1 Flaring Pain
1 Rolling Thunder
1 Repeal
4 Spell Pierce
Testing the Keep Watches alongside the Peaces.
it is interesting. I have thought of playing it in the past. what is it for specifically? What decks would you bring it in against?
Ash Barrens is an amazing card once one learns how to use it (which i'm still in the process of). There are so many niche situations where the fixing or shuffle effect has significantly impacted the game in my favour. In builds that I run evolving wilds, I rarely keep hands that only have one of them without any other lands. This is the same as Ash Barrens. So while the mulligan rate is slightly higher running Ash Barrens, the payoff is well worth it.
Spell pierce is great in the board, but I think we ought to keep at least a couple dispels for the delver matchups. They can usually just pay for spell pierce by the time we go off, which makes it an ineffectual card in the matchup.
I really like the idea of moment's peace in the board. How have you found it in testing so far?
My current list is:
1x Gigadrowse
4x Gush
2x Impulse
4x Manamorphose
4x Sprouting Vines
4x Tolarian Winds
1x Conjurer's Bauble
4x Lotus Petal
4x Inner Fire
1x Kaervek's Torch
1x Pieces of the Puzzle
4x Preordain
4x Rite of Flame
4x Ash Barrens
13x Island
1x Mountain
I've also been running one with + Muddle the Mixture and Rolling Thunder, - Pieces and Torch.
Moment's Peace is amazing if you can find it. I'm starting to miss Impulse.
First, it makes sideboarding clunky.
Second, running AK over selection/tutors (like impulse or Muddle) makes our sideboard worse. With a greater amount of selection we can look through a greater set of cards to find our high impact sideboard cards.
Third, it makes much more vulnerable to GY hate.
Finally, words of wisdom is a better card the majority of the time. Words of wisdom is better on the first cast, and is equally good on the second. The value of the third and fourth cast is not strong enough to justify main deck AK, as they are often auxiliary to our combo. While it can lead to some feel bad moments where our opponent draws a counterspell off our words, these cases are insignificant.
tl;dr pls send flu cure 2 canada.
I also think we should run a 3 brainstorm/1 ponder split. But that is a different story.
How so? What matchups are you struggling to board against?
I don't like muddle at all. IMO the card is garbage in this list (not in general but in this list it is). merchant scroll is where you want to be if you are playing tutors, but that is not legal online as of now.
I have played impulse for quite some time. The three issues that I had with the card was that it never provided card advantage, did not allow you to get ahead, and sometimes forced you to bottom needed combo pieces. One thing I have noticed with the deck is that if you don't play AK, the only way to net cards and generate mana is with gush, which felt weaker to me. I have also tried peer through depths, but I felt like impulse was better as it could get lands and petals.
I have rarely had gy hate be an issue, and this deck is not that weak to gy hate imo. I have beaten multiple relics and spellbombs in the past, and I am fine if people want to bring them in over discard or counter magic. Long story short, you can beat relics if you know how to bait. If your opponent doesn't crack them when you bait you can often get ahead and then combo off and win anyways. If they do take the bait and crack, then you can go off without fear. Most of the time it's a win win. If you somehow let your torch hit the bin, then it can be an issue, but that is a rare occurrence and you can always board in the second fireball over a bauble if you feel it is a legitimate issue.
I have tried words of wisdom in the past and I didn't like the card it gave to my opponent. Against decks like stompy affinity and burn, you could never cast it. Against blue decks, sometimes I would be in the middle of the combo, they have 2 blue open (no counters in hand), and you were in a position where you were forced to cast words of wisdom and you drew them into their out. Giving the opponent a card matters quite a bit. I initially thought it was irrelevant, but an extra card can spell disaster. AK does not have this problem, and has more synergy with the deck. If you draw one before you cast winds, you can just discard it to tolarian to fuel the other copies. That's just my two cents on the card.
Highly disagree. Brainstorm is miles above ponder in this deck provided you have your list built with ways to make brainstorm effective. The instant speed and synergy it has with things like sprouting vines and tolarian winds matter a lot. It has a much higher skill cap than ponder, but if you use it properly it can win games.
Mostly faster match ups where I want at least 3 sideboard cards, like Affinity, Stompy, Delver, Burn, and RDW. How would you sideboard when faced with these matchups in a list that runs AK?
I agree that it probably shouldn't be run main deck, I only intended it to be an example of a card we might consider.
Impulse does not directly provide card advantage, but it can find gush/words and does net a card in conjunction with vines. I'm not sure what you mean when you say that AK "did not allow you to get ahead". Additionally, i'm not sure how it forces one to bottom their combo pieces. Are you talking about situations in which you have neither main combo pice in hand, and impulse into both of them? If so, these situations are rare and when they do occur, the fact that you must bottom at least one combo piece is a very minor downside.
People won't bring gy hate in over discard or counter magic, but instead bring all of them in amd boarded out creature removal. While you can play around gy hate in many situations it makes your AKs and rite of flames much worse.
Suppose you're planning on casting tolarian winds with rolling thunder in hand, you have two AK's in the yard, and a third AK in your hand. Your opponent has a relic and has the option to crack it. Your best play in this situation is to cast AK, and bait your opponent to crack relic in response so that you can eventually bauble your thunder. In this case, the best possible situation is one where you just used 1b to cantrip a card, and in which your next AK will also be significantly worse.
Situations where either your AK or rite gets significantly worse occur almost every time your opponent sides in GY hate.
The blue deck situation is not worth considering, as it is a very fringe case. The card can lose you the game, but these situations are very rare.
Brainstorm is better than ponder in vinestorm. But it is only strong in two situations. The first is when you cast it in conjunction with some shuffle effect (vines or shuffle land), and the second is on your combo turn but before you cast vines/winds. In the grand majority of cases, the amount of brainstorms we want in our hard is at most n+1, where n is the number of shuffle effects in our hand. Running brainstorm as a 4 of increase the probability that you will have multiple copies of brainstorm in hand before you combo of. Ponder also works very well with our shuffle effects, doesn't require shuffle effects, is good on our combo turn as it can go 4 cards deep, and allows us to keep a larger set of 1 land hands. I'm not sure if brainstorm is good enough to run as a 4 of because of this.
The list that I am currently playing is this:
4 Brainstorm
4 Preordain
4 Accumulated Knowledge
4 Gush
Combo / Protection [11]
3 Tolarian Winds
3 Sprouting Vines
3 Gigadrowse
1 Kaervek's Torch
1 Conjurer's Bauble
13 Snow-Covered Island
1 Snow-Covered Mountain
1 Ash Barrens
2 Evolving Wilds
Rituals [16]
4 Lotus Petal
4 Inner Fire
4 Rite of Flame
4 Manamorphose
3 Outwit
1 Izzet Boilerworks
1 Hydroblast
1 Flaring Pain
3 Dispel
2 Withdraw
1 Lethargy Trap
1 Blue Elemental Blast
1 Rolling Thunder
1 Arcane denial
( I should note the arcane denial is just a random one of, and I feel it should be something else, I'm just not sure what.)
For Burn, I board like this: -3 drowse, +1 BEB,+1 hydro, +1 dispel, for Stompy I board like this: - 2 drowse, - 1 rite of flame, +2 withdraw, + 1 trap, For affinity I board like this: -1 drowse, - 1 rite, + 2 dispel. RDW and mono blue delver are awful matchups in moy opinion, and I'm still trying to determine what the corrrect boarding for those matchups should be. I'm pretty confident with how I board for the matchups given, but I'm not sure how to configure the deck to maximize my chances against those two, but here is how I board. RDW: - 1 rite - 1 drowse, +2 withdraw, Mono U delver: -1 rite, + 1 dispel.
That makes sense. Maybe it could be a sb card or something.
Very true, this is a perk of the card. It is great early on, but it can be bad in the later stage of the combo depending on the situation. If you are looking for multiple cards, it will only get you one, while AK has the ability to get multiple later in the combo.
I think you mean when I referred to impulse not allowing me to get ahead, not AK, I'll elaborate. When playing the deck, I have noticed that impulse never let me increase my hand size, nor did it allowed me to get on parity with my opponent in terms of card advantage. I feel that this is a huge aspect of pauper, and having card advantage- whether it be real or virtual - is a key part of the format. Impulse grants card selection, but no card advantage. I feel that having card advantage is more relevant, as key combo pieces like inner fire and tolarian winds rely on this. I feel like getting ahead in this aspect is more important to the deck, and you should let cards like preordain and brainstorm do the card selection for you.
It's mostly that I would get situations like this: cast impulse seeing - brainstorm, gush, manamorphose, island. In play: Island Island Hand: tolarian winds, sprouting vines, lotus petal, preordain, gigadrowse, Inner fire. Do I take the manamorphose to guarantee I have green mana or hope to draw a petal or another manamorphose? Do I get the gush and hope it draws me into what I need? I also need a third land, should I take that as well to help make gigadrowse and gush viable in the coming turns? All of these are legitimate concerns, and I felt like AK alleviated this "issue" (i'll address this at the end). We could argue which play is correct here percentage wise, but in each case you are losing cards that you need, and there is not a guarantee you will draw them when you need them when going off. I understand that this is a weak argument, so I'm not trying to say impulse is a bad card because of this. Rather, it was more of a means to illustrate one conundrum I would run into when playing the card, and how making the wrong pick would lose me the game. AK does not have this issue and is more straight forward in this aspect. While both AK and Impulse have their strengths and weaknesses, I do like not having to deal with the headache that impulse brings in this deck.
you are correct here. My previous statement was incorrect. However, I still believe that graveyard hate is the least of the decks worries.
I suppose this can be an issue. At any rate, you're stil going to go off, so I don't see it as being that much of a problem. You could circumvent this by just siding in the second fireball effect over the bauble.
Even then, I often can just go off through gy hate. Inner fire does the majority of the heavy lifting. If you lose 6 mana from the total 10 that rite of flame brings, then so be it. If your Ak's draw you 5 out of the 10 cards they offer, that is fine as well. You have tolarian winds, BS, and preordain to dig your way through the deck.
Sure, you can do it end of turn before you combo. But here is the issue, if you have to cast it because you need cards - and it's not on the turn before you are go off - then you are helping your opponent kill you faster. Against fast decks, the extra card matters. I had a lot of situations where I would be giving them a card and hoping it didn't spell death. It gets them closer to the pump spell or the burn spell to kill me.
I agree it is rare, but when it happens you feel terrible.
It has more uses than just those two cases. 1. It helps protect against discard 2. It nets cards off vines 3. It fixes mulligans and makes crappy hands into playable hands 4. You will have hands where you are forced to go off with double winds. When the second one is one the stack and you drew into vines, you can use the brainstorm you drew into to put back cards like inner fire to prevent discarding them. This is a fringe case, but it can make the difference between a win and a loss. I feel brainstorm is a harder card to play, but it gives the deck more reach. I'm sure there are other uses that I forgot, but these are off the top.
I disagree with only wanting brainstorm with only shuffle effects. If it's not good to cast, then hold it. Wait until the combo turn to cast it.
I can understand why brainstorm can be bad with only one land hands, but it can also make crappy 6 card hands into playable hands when you draw it. It has pros and cons. I feel the pros make it worth playing the full 4.
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've been busy with school lately, but got sick again so i've had some time to think about the deck. In the last couple of days, i've been testing a BUG version of vinestorm, and am convinced that it is worth exploring.
My current list wins using an infinite combo with Disciple of the Vault, Etherium Sculptor, and Conjurer's Bauble. It can use the synergy between Ehterium Sculptor, 1 cmc cycling artifacts, and sprouting vines to go off; however, it is not reliant on this to win, as the black rituals are stronger than the red ones. It is obviously untuned.
Other ideas include running some number of Balustrade spy, brainstorm, ash barrens, maindeck protection, and Fortuitous find.
Let me know if you have any questions, and I would love to hear your thoughts.
4 Preordain
4 Conjurer's Bauble
4 Dark Ritual
4 Chromatic Star
4 Chromatic Sphere
1 Disciple of the Vault
3 Ponder
4 Tolarian Winds
4 Cabal Ritual
4 Etherium Sculptor
4 Sprouting Vines
3 Gush
I like the idea however I do have a number of concerns.
I'm not trying to discourage this idea as I like it quite a bit. However, if we are going to improve upon it we have to address areas of concern. I'm not able to spend time working on it at the moment, but I'm sure you could figure something out.
In terms of the deck, I've made some minor changes to the list that I am currently playing.
13 Snow-Covered Island
1 Snow-Covered Mountain
2 Evolving Wilds
1 Terramorphic Expanse
1 Ash Barrens
Spells[38]
4 Preordain
4 Brainstorm
4 Accumulated Knowledge
4 Rite of Flame
4 Inner Fire
4 Manamorphose
4 Gush
3 Sprouting Vines
3 Tolarian Winds
3 Gigadrowse
1 Rolling Thunder
4 Lotus Petal
1 Conjurer's Bauble
2 Hydroblast
1 Izzet Boilerworks
1 Gigadrowse
2 Dispel
1 Flaring Pain
2 Outwit
3 Withdraw
1 Electrickery
2 Uncovered Clues
I've gone up to 61 cards mainboard which I know seems questionable. I've added a 18th land in the form of Terramorphic Expanse. In all honesty I've been quite satisfied with this configuration overall. It's made brainstorm better, and it makes it easier to hit land drops. I know 61 cards is wrong 99 percent of the time, but I've been liking it a lot so far.
In terms of sideboarding, I've been trying out Uncovered Clues as a way to let me deal with grindy decks. I like that it doesn't put cards into my gy, and it's not too bad overall. It is still experimental though, so it's not like it is set in stone or anything.
Lastly I tried out the card flux to see how it compared to tolarian winds. Long story short it's not as good. There are fringe cases where it is better, but they are not worth running the card over. I know this seems like useless information, but I decided to try it out just in case.
It's funny you should mention flux, I learned about the card about a week ago and have been thinking that it would be good in a build that uses drift of phantasms to tutor either one of your combo pieces.
something like:
4 Ash Barrens
13 Islands
1 Mountain
4 Rite of Flame
4 Preordain
4 Brainstorm
1 Conjurer's Bauble
2 Gigadrowse
4 Manamorphose
3 Sprouting Vines
2 Tolarian Winds
1 Flux
3 Drift of Phantasms
1 Seething Song
4 Inner Fire
Finally, pieces of the puzzle is significantly better than uncovered clues.