Sweet! Thanks again for testing this stuff out. It's so nice to have facts instead of just hunches on this stuff.
The SSG version is certainly hit or miss. I wonder if anything else in modern can boast a 60% t3 kill rate? In keeping with the balls-to-the-wall philosophy I think it actually rewarded playing out all equipment ASAP more than the usual list. You're very likely to draw something to get you started again if you miss and with six retracts there's a lot more "oops-I-win" scenarios. You also get edge cases like SSG + Opal to drop a mid-combo Sram.
Any chance you can run the numbers with the more aggressive tactic? My gut feeling is that you can spike the T1 rate to 5% and I'm really curious what that does to the overall numbers.
Non Cheerios player reporting in. Just confirming that SCG messed up, and the second place was actually Faeries. The deck was well represented though. I played against it during the open when I was on Merfolk, and got paired against it in round 8 of the classic - he wanted the ID to get in to top 8, and I was more than happy to sit another round out.
Thanks for the insider scoop. Hopefully SCG fixes that in the near future, but still cool to see the Cheeri0s player hit T8. Do you know what he lost to in the quarterfinals?
Really fast, and very consistent. I had forgotten how wonderful it was to play with so many cheeri0s. 2 engine fizzle rates were below 2% I had also forgotten how it was to play with only 8 engines. 8% of the T7+ games were due to mulling to oblivion.
How many games did you test out? I'm curious because I want to compare it to my own numbers with the SV list and see if the distribution is much different.
Thanks for the insider scoop. Hopefully SCG fixes that in the near future, but still cool to see the Cheeri0s player hit T8. Do you know what he lost to in the quarterfinals?
He lost to the Fairies. He was sitting next to me in the quarterfinals, but I wasn't paying any attention to how their match played out. Im guessing things just got countered frequently.
Non Cheerios player reporting in. Just confirming that SCG messed up, and the second place was actually Faeries. The deck was well represented though. I played against it during the open when I was on Merfolk, and got paired against it in round 8 of the classic - he wanted the ID to get in to top 8, and I was more than happy to sit another round out.
Thanks for the insider scoop. Hopefully SCG fixes that in the near future, but still cool to see the Cheeri0s player hit T8. Do you know what he lost to in the quarterfinals?
Really fast, and very consistent. I had forgotten how wonderful it was to play with so many cheeri0s. 2 engine fizzle rates were below 2% I had also forgotten how it was to play with only 8 engines. 8% of the T7+ games were due to mulling to oblivion.
How many games did you test out? I'm curious because I want to compare it to my own numbers with the SV list and see if the distribution is much different.
I did 200 games. I mostly went aggressive on trying to combo as early as possible unless I was down to just 1 cheeri0 and no bounce effects. I could try all in, but I dunno, I have found after 2500 games that you fizzle and lose far more turns even with all-in builds vs sticking the second engine the next turn.
I am working on 18 cheeri0s, 5 protection, 10 engines, 2 SV, 14 land, 5 bounce atm. While the spread is deteriorating a bit it has done one thing for me. It has forced me into situations where you have to get a lot more creative when stacking scry/draw triggers
and how to squeeze out the most engines onto the board. It may not be what you run in the future, but it has made me a lot better with the combo.
Ok, finished a set with 10 engine, 1 noxious,1 GS, 5 protection, 18 cheeri0's, 5 bounce, 14 land/4 opal, 2 SV. Here is the distibution:
T1 0%
T2 3%
T3 36%
T4 21%
T5 11%
T6 11%
T7+ 19%
That 19% of 7+ rounds are split up as follows:
Short Land: 58%
Short Cheeri0's: 16%
Short Bounce: 11%
Short Engine: 11%
Hard Fizzles: 4%
14 land and 2 SV is just worse than 15 land and 1 SV. That 5 protection may give us extra turns in the form of discard against both our good match-ups and bad, but that will take testing against another deck to find out the rate of success.
@M2xxU: thanks for the report! Great to hear your experience, even if DS Jund ruined your day.
In fact, it looks like DS Jund is the deck that is going to be a problem for us, and the deck which is going to keep us out of T8s at major events. In your average 9 round IQ or other larger event, you're overwhelmingly likely to hit one DS Jund matchup, not to mention the other interactive decks which aren't quite favorable, so we need to figure out a gameplan.
For me, Paradoxical Outcome is out. It's too slow against DS Jund, which kills a non-interactive deck by T4 after ripping up its hand. That's too bad because Outcome was so good against regular BGx Midrange, but just doesn't cut it here. One alternative is Leyline. Although Leyline does beat DS Jund's discard, it increases variance and leads to dead draws and bad openers. I'm nervous about running it. Another alternative is to jam threats. This is historically one of the best ways to beat BGx after Keranos-style card advantage effects, and I think it can work here. I'm feeling 3 Mentor in the SB, but am open to other ideas.
Finally, if we want to improve DS Jund, we need to play 4 SV. SV is amazing agaisnst discard and is one of the best and most versatile ways to defeat discard in both G1 and G2/G3.
Holy disruption. In the MD alone, we have 4 IoK and 3 Clique to target the hand, 2 Snares and 4 Spellstutters as countermagic, 1 Disfigure/Dismember/Cut/Throat and 4 Push as spot removal, 3 Lily, and 4 Snapcaster to buy them back. This is the matchup where I want more threats, not just Leylines.
Both of Datka's States performances involved maindeck Mentor. We should definitely consider that until the DS hype settles down. Slamming more threats and going wide are both super solid against them. Also beats non-revolt Push =P
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Slowly breaking.
Any more of this, and Team Troll will be more than just a name.
First version is -3 Kite Shield, -1 Noxious Revival, +4 Serum Visions:
T1: 4%
T2: 22%
T3: 26%
T4: 22%
T5: 6%
T6: 16%
T7+: 4%
Second version is -3 Kite Shield, +3 Serum Visions:
T1: 2%
T2: 24%
T3: 36%
T4: 12%
T5: 8%
T6: 2%
T7+: 14%
Compared to what Shaffalahien had with the pure all in deck we see fewer games hitting the T7+ number. The T4 kill rate seems similar.
One thing that I found interesting was that the SV-only keep could go horribly wrong. Seven card hands with SV and no engines saw kills on: 3, 3, 6, 8, 10, 10
By comparison, 3 and 4 card hands saw kills on: 4, 4, 5, 6, 7
It's all small sample sizes but it does match up with my gut feeling. Basically, once an engine was down SV would smooth things out and make sure you could close the game in a turn or so. It also helped alleviate mana screw concerns if I could cast it. However, the SV is no substitute for having an engine to begin with.
I'll try running some more test games with a new mulligan rule of pitching 7 card SV-only hands. Besides testing out deckbuilding tweaks I plan to test for resiliency by running goldfish+ tests that assume the first engine dies at instant speed.
First version is -3 Kite Shield, -1 Noxious Revival, +4 Serum Visions:
T1: 4%
T2: 22%
T3: 26%
T4: 22%
T5: 6%
T6: 16%
T7+: 4%
Second version is -3 Kite Shield, +3 Serum Visions:
T1: 2%
T2: 24%
T3: 36%
T4: 12%
T5: 8%
T6: 2%
T7+: 14%
Compared to what Shaffalahien had with the pure all in deck we see fewer games hitting the T7+ number. The T4 kill rate seems similar.
One thing that I found interesting was that the SV-only keep could go horribly wrong. Seven card hands with SV and no engines saw kills on: 3, 3, 6, 8, 10, 10
By comparison, 3 and 4 card hands saw kills on: 4, 4, 5, 6, 7
It's all small sample sizes but it does match up with my gut feeling. Basically, once an engine was down SV would smooth things out and make sure you could close the game in a turn or so. It also helped alleviate mana screw concerns if I could cast it. However, the SV is no substitute for having an engine to begin with.
I'll try running some more test games with a new mulligan rule of pitching 7 card SV-only hands. Besides testing out deckbuilding tweaks I plan to test for resiliency by running goldfish+ tests that assume the first engine dies at instant speed.
In my testing you combo at least 1.5 turns faster if you mull to 6, or even 5 cards, rather than keep a no engine SV hand. At 5 cards with 1 SV you have better speed than mulling again to 4 on average. 2 SV is good though at 6 or lower.
I've been away, so not testing or playing, but based on the posts in this thread, I'd be extremely comfortable saying that the answer is jamming more threats. Serum visions is simply not good enough to help against DS. It neither digs deep enough, nor does it give actual card advantage to combat hand shredding.
Mentor is the obvious choice, but I think the 3-cost is a dealbreaker personally. Personally I would use maverick thopterist, but I'm partial to the guy so this may be my bias than a real answer. bastion inventor feels kind of irrelevant in a board stuffed with big butt goyfs and shadows. I also strongly think that real card draw is the go-to answer vs discard: namely, thoughtcast and reverse engineer. This does slow down the deck and potentially interrupt the combo though, but if we can't win without them its better to go with a bad plan B than a terrible plan A.
I've been away, so not testing or playing, but based on the posts in this thread, I'd be extremely comfortable saying that the answer is jamming more threats. Serum visions is simply not good enough to help against DS. It neither digs deep enough, nor does it give actual card advantage to combat hand shredding.
On the one hand, I agree that SV alone isn't enough. As you said, it's not card advantage, so it's not a strict counter to discard the same way AV is currently or TC was back in 2014. On the other hand, SV is absolutely part of the answer to disruption. Setting up a strong draw with SV isn't quite Brainstorm in Legacy, but scrying gas to the top of your deck does hide it from discard for a turn. Digging three deep through garbage also helps you recover from a discard spell; DS Jund doesn't give you the luxury of living through three dead draws in most cases. So yes, although we need to augment SV with a harder threat, we also need SV as part of that answer.
Mentor is the obvious choice, but I think the 3-cost is a dealbreaker personally. Personally I would use maverick thopterist, but I'm partial to the guy so this may be my bias than a real answer. bastion inventor feels kind of irrelevant in a board stuffed with big butt goyfs and shadows. I also strongly think that real card draw is the go-to answer vs discard: namely, thoughtcast and reverse engineer. This does slow down the deck and potentially interrupt the combo though, but if we can't win without them its better to go with a bad plan B than a terrible plan A.
Mentor is better than Thopterist because it can actually close out a game on a counterswing. Thopterist is almost never going to do that. If an opponent has removal, Thopterist's upside is a pair of 1/1 flyers that aren't typically fast enough to win even with Bone Saw. If an opponent doesn't have removal, Mentor's upside is a lethal threat next turn. We need to play to our outs, and our out against DS Jund is sticking a dangerous engine that threatens lethal if an opponent can't answer it.
Agree that Inventor is terrible. It can't even fight Goyf without equipment.
I don't hate Thoughtcast and Reverse Engineer, but they aren't maindeckable over SV, and they aren't good in the sideboard unless we increase our threat density. 8 engines and some number of TS/RE isn't going to punch through disruption. 11-12 engines might.
Incorporating these ideas, here's where I'd start my sideboard.
Mentor and TS make up the anti-DS Jund package. I'm dropping 1 Silence because the countermagic decks are less common today than they were a month ago. I'm doing -1 Truth because Chalice decks are less common, and Outcome is gone because it's too slow against DS Jund. I'm using TS instead of RE because it's less dead during the combo and because our basic Plains is going to cause problems with RE's mana cost.
We have a real design dilemma: the more effort we put into keeping our engines alive, the more engines we need to combo off. In the more all-in versions of the deck you can win by sticking one engine and stringing one retract into another. By the time you're down to 18 0s those mostly go away and you just about need two draw engines on the board to go off. The first can draw you into the second but if you're playing against a disruptive deck then it's asking a lot to keep two guys alive. Of course the all in version has a hard time keeping the one engine alive.
I can see stealing a few wins against DS Jund with Monastery Mentor but I'm not sure there's anything we can do about something like Faeries.
the card itself really isn't worth the card board its printed on...does it serve a purpose? Sure its a blue 1 drop that might not be a 1/1. I would not put it in a list and expect to win a PTQ or GP though.
Ktkenshinx what would you suggest if I need to replace PtE? Both of my teammates are playing white in San Antonio.
You're all playing a deck that wants the same card at a Team Unified Modern event? 🤔
If it's a Team Unified Modern scenario, I'd use Dismember instead. Worse vs. Eidolon in Burn but acceptable elsewhere. You can also use Vapor Snag but it's not a permanent answer and it's terrible against Vial decks.
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The SSG version is certainly hit or miss. I wonder if anything else in modern can boast a 60% t3 kill rate? In keeping with the balls-to-the-wall philosophy I think it actually rewarded playing out all equipment ASAP more than the usual list. You're very likely to draw something to get you started again if you miss and with six retracts there's a lot more "oops-I-win" scenarios. You also get edge cases like SSG + Opal to drop a mid-combo Sram.
Any chance you can run the numbers with the more aggressive tactic? My gut feeling is that you can spike the T1 rate to 5% and I'm really curious what that does to the overall numbers.
Thanks for the insider scoop. Hopefully SCG fixes that in the near future, but still cool to see the Cheeri0s player hit T8. Do you know what he lost to in the quarterfinals?
How many games did you test out? I'm curious because I want to compare it to my own numbers with the SV list and see if the distribution is much different.
He lost to the Fairies. He was sitting next to me in the quarterfinals, but I wasn't paying any attention to how their match played out. Im guessing things just got countered frequently.
I did 200 games. I mostly went aggressive on trying to combo as early as possible unless I was down to just 1 cheeri0 and no bounce effects. I could try all in, but I dunno, I have found after 2500 games that you fizzle and lose far more turns even with all-in builds vs sticking the second engine the next turn.
I am working on 18 cheeri0s, 5 protection, 10 engines, 2 SV, 14 land, 5 bounce atm. While the spread is deteriorating a bit it has done one thing for me. It has forced me into situations where you have to get a lot more creative when stacking scry/draw triggers
and how to squeeze out the most engines onto the board. It may not be what you run in the future, but it has made me a lot better with the combo.
Nice work! How did you find your wins, were they all pretty much blow-outs? And how close were the losses? Looking forward to the list.
T1 0%
T2 3%
T3 36%
T4 21%
T5 11%
T6 11%
T7+ 19%
That 19% of 7+ rounds are split up as follows:
Short Land: 58%
Short Cheeri0's: 16%
Short Bounce: 11%
Short Engine: 11%
Hard Fizzles: 4%
14 land and 2 SV is just worse than 15 land and 1 SV. That 5 protection may give us extra turns in the form of discard against both our good match-ups and bad, but that will take testing against another deck to find out the rate of success.
Are you doing these assuming we're on the play or on the draw?
In fact, it looks like DS Jund is the deck that is going to be a problem for us, and the deck which is going to keep us out of T8s at major events. In your average 9 round IQ or other larger event, you're overwhelmingly likely to hit one DS Jund matchup, not to mention the other interactive decks which aren't quite favorable, so we need to figure out a gameplan.
For me, Paradoxical Outcome is out. It's too slow against DS Jund, which kills a non-interactive deck by T4 after ripping up its hand. That's too bad because Outcome was so good against regular BGx Midrange, but just doesn't cut it here. One alternative is Leyline. Although Leyline does beat DS Jund's discard, it increases variance and leads to dead draws and bad openers. I'm nervous about running it. Another alternative is to jam threats. This is historically one of the best ways to beat BGx after Keranos-style card advantage effects, and I think it can work here. I'm feeling 3 Mentor in the SB, but am open to other ideas.
Finally, if we want to improve DS Jund, we need to play 4 SV. SV is amazing agaisnst discard and is one of the best and most versatile ways to defeat discard in both G1 and G2/G3.
EDIT: also, here's the list that beat Cheeri0s at the SCG Classic last weekend.
http://sales.starcitygames.com//deckdatabase/displaydeck.php?DeckID=112258
Holy disruption. In the MD alone, we have 4 IoK and 3 Clique to target the hand, 2 Snares and 4 Spellstutters as countermagic, 1 Disfigure/Dismember/Cut/Throat and 4 Push as spot removal, 3 Lily, and 4 Snapcaster to buy them back. This is the matchup where I want more threats, not just Leylines.
Any more of this, and Team Troll will be more than just a name.
I know where you post.
1 Marsh Flats
4 Rugged Prairie
2 Plains
2 Hallowed Fountain
4 Simian Spirit Guide
4 Mox Opal
4 Puresteel Paladin
4 Retract
2 Hurkyl's Recall
1 Noxious Revival
1 Grapeshot
4 Bone Saw
4 Cathar's Shield
4 Paradise Mantle
4 Spidersilk Net
3 Kite Shield
First version is -3 Kite Shield, -1 Noxious Revival, +4 Serum Visions:
T1: 4%
T2: 22%
T3: 26%
T4: 22%
T5: 6%
T6: 16%
T7+: 4%
Second version is -3 Kite Shield, +3 Serum Visions:
T1: 2%
T2: 24%
T3: 36%
T4: 12%
T5: 8%
T6: 2%
T7+: 14%
Compared to what Shaffalahien had with the pure all in deck we see fewer games hitting the T7+ number. The T4 kill rate seems similar.
One thing that I found interesting was that the SV-only keep could go horribly wrong. Seven card hands with SV and no engines saw kills on: 3, 3, 6, 8, 10, 10
By comparison, 3 and 4 card hands saw kills on: 4, 4, 5, 6, 7
It's all small sample sizes but it does match up with my gut feeling. Basically, once an engine was down SV would smooth things out and make sure you could close the game in a turn or so. It also helped alleviate mana screw concerns if I could cast it. However, the SV is no substitute for having an engine to begin with.
I'll try running some more test games with a new mulligan rule of pitching 7 card SV-only hands. Besides testing out deckbuilding tweaks I plan to test for resiliency by running goldfish+ tests that assume the first engine dies at instant speed.
On the play.
In my testing you combo at least 1.5 turns faster if you mull to 6, or even 5 cards, rather than keep a no engine SV hand. At 5 cards with 1 SV you have better speed than mulling again to 4 on average. 2 SV is good though at 6 or lower.
Mentor is the obvious choice, but I think the 3-cost is a dealbreaker personally. Personally I would use maverick thopterist, but I'm partial to the guy so this may be my bias than a real answer. bastion inventor feels kind of irrelevant in a board stuffed with big butt goyfs and shadows. I also strongly think that real card draw is the go-to answer vs discard: namely, thoughtcast and reverse engineer. This does slow down the deck and potentially interrupt the combo though, but if we can't win without them its better to go with a bad plan B than a terrible plan A.
On the one hand, I agree that SV alone isn't enough. As you said, it's not card advantage, so it's not a strict counter to discard the same way AV is currently or TC was back in 2014. On the other hand, SV is absolutely part of the answer to disruption. Setting up a strong draw with SV isn't quite Brainstorm in Legacy, but scrying gas to the top of your deck does hide it from discard for a turn. Digging three deep through garbage also helps you recover from a discard spell; DS Jund doesn't give you the luxury of living through three dead draws in most cases. So yes, although we need to augment SV with a harder threat, we also need SV as part of that answer.
Mentor is better than Thopterist because it can actually close out a game on a counterswing. Thopterist is almost never going to do that. If an opponent has removal, Thopterist's upside is a pair of 1/1 flyers that aren't typically fast enough to win even with Bone Saw. If an opponent doesn't have removal, Mentor's upside is a lethal threat next turn. We need to play to our outs, and our out against DS Jund is sticking a dangerous engine that threatens lethal if an opponent can't answer it.
Agree that Inventor is terrible. It can't even fight Goyf without equipment.
I don't hate Thoughtcast and Reverse Engineer, but they aren't maindeckable over SV, and they aren't good in the sideboard unless we increase our threat density. 8 engines and some number of TS/RE isn't going to punch through disruption. 11-12 engines might.
Incorporating these ideas, here's where I'd start my sideboard.
2 Thoughtcast
3 Silence
3 Path to Exile
2 Echoing Truth
2 Fragmentize
Mentor and TS make up the anti-DS Jund package. I'm dropping 1 Silence because the countermagic decks are less common today than they were a month ago. I'm doing -1 Truth because Chalice decks are less common, and Outcome is gone because it's too slow against DS Jund. I'm using TS instead of RE because it's less dead during the combo and because our basic Plains is going to cause problems with RE's mana cost.
I can see stealing a few wins against DS Jund with Monastery Mentor but I'm not sure there's anything we can do about something like Faeries.
Any more of this, and Team Troll will be more than just a name.
I know where you post.
As in, you can't run the 3 Paths in the board and you want a replacement?
Counter-Cat
Colorless Eldrazi Stompy
If it's a Team Unified Modern scenario, I'd use Dismember instead. Worse vs. Eidolon in Burn but acceptable elsewhere. You can also use Vapor Snag but it's not a permanent answer and it's terrible against Vial decks.