After losing in the top 8 and 4 to the eventual PPTQ winners so far this season with Titan Shift, I am wondering if I should just default to the deck I know very well and is just so explosive. I may eventually try Grishoalbrand this season, but I also have been toying with Knightfall and GDS itself.
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Legacy - Sneak Show, BR Reanimator, Miracles, UW Stoneblade
Premodern - Trix, RecSur, Enchantress, Reanimator, Elves https://www.facebook.com/groups/PremodernUSA/ Modern - Neobrand, Hogaak Vine, Elves
Standard - Mono Red (6-2 and 5-3 in 2 McQ)
Draft - (I wish I had more time for limited...)
Commander - Norin the Wary, Grimgrin, Adun Oakenshield (taking forever to build) (dead format for me)
Seems like you're doing pretty well with titanshift, FCG! Obviously do whatever you're most comfortable with, but I think there's something to be said about having good matchups against three of the most played decks (GDS, affinity, Eldrazi Tron). With Grishoalbrand it's a game of "dodge grixis shadows and hope for the best". If you can dodge them though, I think Grishoalbrand is in a reasonable spot, as the rise of Grixis Shadows has given rise to the increase in archetypes like dorky value-based creature decks (slightly good for us), UWx control (good for us), titanshift (laughable for us before, still pretty good for us because of maindeck relics that seem to be stock right now) as well as the resurgence of Gx Tron.
Seems like you're doing pretty well with titanshift, FCG! Obviously do whatever you're most comfortable with, but I think there's something to be said about having good matchups against three of the most played decks (GDS, affinity, Eldrazi Tron). With Grishoalbrand it's a game of "dodge grixis shadows and hope for the best". If you can dodge them though, I think Grishoalbrand is in a reasonable spot, as the rise of Grixis Shadows has given rise to the increase in archetypes like dorky value-based creature decks (slightly good for us), UWx control (good for us), titanshift (laughable for us before, still pretty good for us because of maindeck relics that seem to be stock right now) as well as the resurgence of Gx Tron.
Yeah, you're probably right. I just had expected to win one already. The 2 PPTQs I went to had 32 and 24 players and were on days when another PPTQ with presumably much more players was happening. So, I thought it would be an easy picking, right? Titan Shift is indeed in a good spot right now, but I think some players are catching on to that in the past 1-2 weeks. (I lost in the top 4 to the mirror and he beat Eldrazi Tron in the finals.)
I have actually been able to dodge GDS a bit, only playing against it twice in these tournaments (lost in the top 8 to the eventual winner on it in my first PPTQ this season; would have won if I had drawn a Mountain in either game to cast a lethal Primeval Titan, before dying - drew Explore and Relic in those 2 games)
I think you're probably right. There won't be any regular Tron. I never see this deck anywhere anymore. Eldrazi Tron is worse for us than it used to be and even though we're favored against Titanshift, there's always the consistency issues. They're slower, but more consistent. It's just always tempting to run Grishoalbrand since it has given me my highest win percentage of any Modern deck at over 71%. It's the only deck I'm over 70% on, although I'm close on a few other decks. It's also part of the reason I don't want to run it anymore - to potentially make it go down, lol.
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Legacy - Sneak Show, BR Reanimator, Miracles, UW Stoneblade
Premodern - Trix, RecSur, Enchantress, Reanimator, Elves https://www.facebook.com/groups/PremodernUSA/ Modern - Neobrand, Hogaak Vine, Elves
Standard - Mono Red (6-2 and 5-3 in 2 McQ)
Draft - (I wish I had more time for limited...)
Commander - Norin the Wary, Grimgrin, Adun Oakenshield (taking forever to build) (dead format for me)
Chalices are worth playing just for games like these
Did you remember your triggers :D.
I nearly died of laughter
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I'm actively maintaining a comprehensive article to help explain to new cube players how some complex vintage level cards work in a cube environment. Vintage Cube Cards Explained
what's our plan against storm? In my eyes, they are faster, more consistent and have disruption. My current plan is to take out
-3 hugs
-2 ritual
+2 chalice
+2 pacts
+1 reckoning
but even that seems loose. i doubt they want to be emptying us very often after knowing what we are playing and 3 mana to sweep away one enabler seems super bad. maybe that should be a brutality, but that can't hit baral
Grixis Shadows is completely unwinnable. I think the best way we can tackle this is to transform into a bad big red prison deck and hope to cheese them out that way, rather than trying to combo asap. I'm thinking something like the below - maybe I'm taking too bleak of a view at the matchup but it's really hard to win through normal means. Thoughts?
+3 Chalice
+3 Moon
+2 Bontu's Last Reckoning/Pact of negation
-3 Hugs
-2 Night's Whispers
-1 TTB (highly unlikely you get to 5 mana and resolve this)
-1 Shoal
-1 Wurm (unlikely you need to combo out vs Grixis Shadows - usually a Borborgymos+attack is enough anyway, or a breached wurm)
Would really appreciate a line check on this game that I played. Thought there were a few decision points where I may have misplayed my hand. I think I've overextended with Griselbrand and self destructed that way more times that appropriate.
Relevant info: My maindeck has 3 desperate rituals, 4 SSGs, 1 manamorphose, 2 Borborygmos
Mulligan. No action, can keep vs burn though
keep. really light on mana, but at least there is a path to victory. I scry a borborygmos to the bottom
I can double shoal ritual into Breach, but that's likely suicide vs UW Control. I play on either ditching a green card and hope they tap out to breach into a Griselbrand, or ditch the griselbrand and add 4 goryo's vengeance as a live draw (this is dangerous because a wurm may not be a win condition vs path). In hindsight discarding a green card is likely the right answer
I get a pleasant surprise when he taps out to set me back a land and draw a card. I think it's appropriate to jam griselbrand and gain 22 life
I know i'm going to draw some card. But i'm not sure what my general plan is, given that i'll only have 2 lands.I have 4 SSGs and 2 rituals in the deck. I either need to draw enough to play a long game with all the good cards or go for it right now (because drawing too many lands and fizzling is real bad with borborygmos, and wurm is not a reliable win con.
My general plan is hope to draw enough shoals and fast mana to Breach in a borborygmos at EOT, and if that gets countered, have a SSG handy for my own main phase to looting->vengeance borborygmos
My draws and the resulting life totals are below. 1) do you stop to do something different at any point? 2)now that you've arrived here with you at 7 life and your opponent with 5 open mana, what's your plan?
I think you should have gone for the kill immmediately while opponent was tapped out on your end step. I'm on a bus right now but can provide detailed analysis in a few hours.
interesting. that's a line that I never considered. The thesis I guess is that they cannot disrupt you but in return you only get to work with 2 rituals, 4 SSGs and 2 shoals for splicing for mana. You do start with 42 life which is pretty significant but I did consider mana to be the biggest bottle neck, not permission
Mulliganing the 7 card hand and keeping the 6 card hand I agree with 100%.
Your play on turn 4 (passing with an 8 card hand with the intention to discard a green card) I agree with 100%, even down to not being sure if discarding Griselbrand is better.
At your end of turn 4 I play differently in response to the Cryptic Command. I think Cryptic Command here indicates either a strong hand (i.e. another Cryptic Command next turn) or a misevaluation of your strength. Based on this I think this is your best chance to kill, as I have a strong feeling that if you let your opponent untap you may have to deal with either another Cryptic or multiple pieces of disruption.
My play from the end of your turn 4 is:
1. Respond to the Cryptic Command with Nourishing Shoal for 11 splicing Desperate Ritual. (RRR floating).
2. Cast the Desperate Ritual (RRRR floating)
3. Nourishing Shoal for 11 splicing Through the Breach (no mana left) and put Griselbrand into play.
4. Draw 35 cards, dropping to 7 life.
Based on your screenshots, you get to the point where you have 7 life and two Nourishing Shoals, two Simian Spirit Guides, the Manamorphose, and a Desperate Ritual in hand. You should have 50 - 35 = 15 cards left in library at this point.
5. Exile Simian Spirit Guides and cast Nourishing Shoal for 8 (pitch Borborygmos Enraged) splicing Desperate Ritual (RRR floating). You'll be at 15 life.
6. Draw 14 cards, dropping to 1 life. At this point, you should have a kill by drawing any two Rituals/Spirit Guides to Through the Breach out Borborygmos Enraged. You'll have one card remaining in library and if it's Borborygmos Enraged, you can draw it by casting the Manamorphose. Mana shouldn't be a problem as you still have two Simian Spirit Guides and at least one Desperate Ritual left, and will draw at least one Worldspine Wurm so that you can use your remaining Nourishing Shoal to splice the Ritual already in your hand and generate one mana. You'll have enough to cast or splice Through the Breach.
I think I did this right, let me know if I screwed it up somehow. Letting the opponent untap seems like it would probably lead to a loss. How did it turn out?
1. Cryptic Command - I think this is not particularly indicative of his hand strength. Having 2 lands out with nothing in the graveyard, I could very much see the opponent making the tempo play and bounce the land (which is likely safe unless my hand is perfect) and then slam Gideon Jura and ride that to victory, regardless of whether he has more dispels/leaks/negates. However, I do agree that letting him untap is dangerous. At the time I just disliked the idea of having to discard a bunch if I went off.
What I ended up was Shoal pitching Wurm splicing Ritualx2 (RRRR), cast ritual. I didn't think about your line there, same result but you save a Breach, which does add non-zero amount of equity
You are correct on the library numbers - I am at 7 life with the hand in the screenshot and 15 cards left in the library. I agree that your line is the line to go for if you are to go for the win right there. On the spot, I was thinking about the best way to play around one counterspell - we likely cannot beat two. If you go for the line as you described and get blown out by a counterspell, I think we must now shoal pitching Manamorphose, draw 7 more and hit a SSG and a borb. Then untap, looting pitching SSG, borb hopefully FTW. The risk of this line (assuming 1 counterspell) is 1) you don't hit a SSG+borb in the next 8 out of the 15 remaining (ritual is now useless if we have to pitch Manamorphose). FWIW, I calculate the probability of hitting a SSG and a borb in the next 8 to be 56%.
My actual line was that I stopped at 7 life, sacrificed Griselbrand, and drew another ritual. with 2 lands, 2 SSG and 2 rituals, I threw out a harmless looking shoal pitching 'phose splicing ritual+SSG, plan being making RRRRBB so I'm able to loot twice if my first gets countered (hug as a back up discard outlet), then still be able to Vengeance twice. He ended up having a path but no counterspell, so I won on my turn.
I think in evaluating your method (win on their turn by shoal pitching borb) and mine (win on my turn) is interesting - your method loses to 1 counterspell 44% of the times. Mine loses 100% of the times, but inexperienced control players may not counter an innocent looking shoal for X=2 (granted, with the ritual spliced). I'm guessing that doesn't happen more than 56% of the times, so I think your method is better.
Hopefully this makes sense - hard to do this math and logic in game heh.
i think i misunderstood. your 5. im assuming is a continuation of your end of my turn kill scenario. yes, agree with your line. i did miss a fairly clean kill at instant speed:(
Yeah, it's supposed to be all in response to the end step Cryptic Command. I don't think you should let your opponent untap after casting an end step Cryptic Command.
Yesterday's modern challenge's top 32 had 1 deck with death's shadow. 5 Colonnade decks which are obviously great against death's shadow. Clearly the meta is adapting with more pure control, more dorky creature value decks, and more Valakut decks. Realize paper is usually behind the online meta, but I suspect Goryo's Vengeance is going to be a fine choice and I'm going to be playing it for the rest of the PPTQ season.
Just for funsies, the top 32 SCGNY metagame breakdown, followed by my estimation of the matchup:
Affinity – 11 (45/55)
Grixis Death’s Shadow – 8 (20/80)
Eldrazi Tron – 6 (55/45)
Scapeshift – 6 (60/40)
Burn – 5 (60/40)
Merfolk – 4 (33/66)
U/R Gifts Storm – 4 (42/58)
Jeskai Control – 4 (55/45)
Abzan – 4 (even)
Counters Company – 3 (even-ish)
Dredge – 2 (55/45)
G/B Tron – 2 (60/40)
Madcap Moon – 2 (65/35)
Living End – 2 (45/55)
Death and Taxes – 2 (45/55)
G/W Company – 2 (55/45)
U/W Control – 2 (60/40)
Ad Nauseam – 1 (even)
Slivers – 1 (huh)
Four-Color Death’s Shadow – 1 (45/55 if white splash, 33/66 if jund plus blue)
Elves – 1 (55/45)
Amulet Titan – 1 (55/45)
U/W Thopter Foundry – 1 (huh)
R/G Vengevine – 1 (even)
B/G Midrange – 1 (55/45)
B/W Smallpox – 1 (55/45)
B/W Eldrazi Taxes – 1 (55/45)
Enduring Ideal – 1 (60/40)
What's the play part deux. Spoiler alert: things went horribly for the hero in the end. I thought there's a lot of subtle facts that could influence the decision tree in this game and how any seemingly inconsequential decision could decide the game. I thought it's worth sharing.
The situation: Game 2 OTD vs an interesting mono-u delver. G1 I saw Censor, Clique, Thing in the Ice, Disrupting Shoal pitching Snapcaster. Safe to assume there are delvers, spell snares, and negates lurking around. You win game 1. In the sideboarded game you have 4 SSG, 1 manamorphose, and 1 ritual
One more very important note: I have played my land for the turn, and have bottomed a Nourishing Shoal TO THE BOTTOM turn 3
This is going to set the tone for the rest of the game. What do you loot away? I loot away the ritual and the swamp, as I thought it's unlikely I'll combo and need the ritual this turn. I also want to be working towards a hardcast Griselbrand, thus keeping one of the lands.
I discard the Mire and the Manamorphose, reasoning that mana would be the bottle neck if i were to go off, not color filtering. I ditch the fetch because If I get to go off next turn I can play another fetch, shuffle the deck and remove the Shoal from the bottom of the deck. My plan A actually is to go off instant speed in response to what I suspect is an EOT think twice (flips TiTi, get some pressure on me).
What I did not remember at the time was that I had discarded my only Ritual left in the deck. Meaning I had to make with precisely 2 SSGs in hand (+1 left in deck), 0 rituals and 1 land, meaning I had to go off via a Shoal'd TTB or a Manamorphosed Goryo's Vengeance.
I'm about to be under heavy pressure from a 7/8 Awoken horror. I have 3 shoals that are live, 0 ritual and 1 SSG, plus 3 mana after a Vengeance. I figure this is good enough to go for it with one Pact.
Therefore, I let the TiTi trigger resolve, then let the Awoken Horror trigger resolve, then I pitch a SSG, make a black, cast Goryo's Vengeance.
Not much to say here. I didn't realize Disrupting Shoal is a "counter IF cmc is x", not "counter target spell with cmc=x". Shoal for 11's CMC is obviously 13 - I waste a very valuable resource in Pact of Negation here. As the industry saying goes, I got got.
Once I get going, it's pretty academic from here I think. I come down to the last draw needing to draw one of the two remaining shoals plus one of the two remaining Borborygmos to win (remember I had scried a Shoal to the bottom). We have 5 cards remaining in the deck, will need to Pact the Psionic Blast and have 2 Pact triggers to pay for next upkeep. Game now looks lost.
You have 2 pacts to pay for next upkeep.
All of the shoals in the image are gone as they were needed to draw all of these cards. You have no way to reanimate Borborygmos this turn,
nor can you keep a 7 card hand that includes a SSG, Vengeance, and enough lands to deal 20 damage. You have 4 lands in the graveyard,
4 in play, and 10 in hand, with 1 remaining in your 5 card deck. You have 2 Worldspine Wurms in hand, 1 Vengeance in the graveyard, 3 vengeances in hand and you are at a precarious 4 life. Things look hopeless. Are you drawing dead?
T4P4-2: Thought this is an interesting side note. I thought I was drawing dead but played it out anyway and I concocted a scenario where I wouldn't be drawing dead.
Yes, I believe you are drawing dead. But I think think it's closer than it seems. In fact, if you had 3 lands remaining in the deck, you are still live. The problem is that you have 5 cards in the deck, meaning you cannot cleanly draw the rest of your library with griselbrand, without even taking into account the two pact triggers that you have. If you have two lands remaining in the deck, and assume the opponent has no disruption (tall order, but the question is about whether you are drawing dead or not), you can do the following:
1. Discard to the following:
4 land
2 Goryo's Vengeance
Simian Spirit Guide
2. Discard your hand, triggering two Worldspine Wurms. The deck is now 7 cards large. Opponent takes his turn, attacks with the Awoken Horror. Block with Griselbrand, gain 7 life up to 11.
3. On his end step, pitch SSG and Vengeance back a Griselbrand.
4. On your upkeep with Pact triggers on the stack, draw your entire library, cast Vengeance on the Borborygmos that you discarded. You should now have 7 lands in hand and win.
0)In a cruel twist, the most innocent looking decision actually decided the game for us. I still think keeping a land is better here for hardcasting Griselbrand. If you accept that, keeping the SSG over ritual is better IMO because it's uncounterable and hardcasting SSGs will matter a non-zero amount of time (like when you breach a wurm). Counterpoint is if you expect to combo this turn, mana will be a bottle neck and having a ritual to splice multiple times will save you. What do you guys think?
Verdict: I don't know
1)This is a tough spot. Before you decide what to discard away, you have to decide your path to victory. On one hand, you are about to face a 3 turn clock with tons of assumed disruption. On the other hand, you have no ritual left, (potentially) no manamorphose and 4 mana left with a shoal.
I believe from what I've seen (tempo deck, disrupting shoal, bunch of presumed countermagic)+the fast clock, I must go for it while he's tapped out.
From that point, I believe what to discard is trivial: Manamorphose and the fetch. You have no way to bin the Borborygmos at instant speed, therefore the 'phose is likely to matter way less than the extra mana or the Pact.
Verdict: I would still discard the fetch and the Manamorphose
2)Refer to 1). Once I make the decision the moves here are academic: let the Titi/Awoken Horror triggers resolve, then try to go off
3)Verdict: Don't be a dumbass and RTFC
4)As is, I do not see a solution to the puzzle, given the resources and the constraints we have. If someone sees a win from this spot that I'm not seeing (like a_m_a_t did in my previous scenario) I would love to hear it
Verdict: I am drawing dead..
5)You are much closer to winning that it appears. Remembering that Wurm triggers grows your library to a number divisible by seven is step 1.
Figuring out how to not die, gain 7 life, and draw the rest of your library before your draw step is step 2. Unfortunate that the deck stacked out this way.
In a cruel twist, the most innocent looking decision actually decided the game for us. I still think keeping a land is better here for hardcasting Griselbrand. If you accept that, keeping the SSG over ritual is better IMO because it's uncounterable and hardcasting SSGs will matter a non-zero amount of time (like when you breach a wurm). Counterpoint is if you expect to combo this turn, mana will be a bottle neck and having a ritual to splice multiple times will save you. What do you guys think?
I think that you have to be planning to Combo here, and that saving resources to hardcast Griselbrand is incorrect. While you have the mana to do so, you still need to draw one of your 3 remaining Griselbrands for that to even be an option, and you're only going to have ~1-2 turns to do that before the Thing in the Ice makes it mostly irrelevant anyway.
You have a Pact, and a reasonable hope that your opponent is going to cast something and give you a window when they are tapped low to go for it. Given that I expect the game to be over one way or another within 1 turn, I'm discarding both lands here. Then on the 2nd Looting I'm discarding the Manamorphose and 1 SSG, leaving 2x SSG + Ritual in hand. Then when you go off you can Splice the Ritual onto both Shoals, giving you 4 Mana. Cast the ritual for the 5th and Breach the Borborygmos for the win.
@finalnab, in the second scenario I would never pitch the last Ritual I have in the deck. Hardcasting Griselbrands vs a U Delver deck with Cryptic and Snapcaster is nigh impossible. Either, you are already dead, or he counters him for days :/
In theory, if you had 8 or more life, you could win in your clean-up step. You pitch everything but 1 SSG, 1 Goryo's, 5 lands. Due to the trigger from the Wurms, both players get priority again which allows you, after shuffling both Wurms into your deck, to draw your whole deck and than win with an easy reanimate on the now ditched Borbor.
This is a line I did regularly vs Control players to not let them untap but still "win" on my turn when I had no access to TTB mana.
Besides this, you did some great analysis of those cases, that you oversaw the obvious line in the first scenario is quite funny though
Greetings,
Kathal
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What I play or have:
Modern/Legacy
either funpolice (Delver, Deathcloud, UW Control) or the fun decks (especially those ft. Griselbrand)
Appreicate the thoughts guys. It's really helpful to look back and review your lines, because it's much easier to formulate the rational lines after versus with the in-game pressure.
At the time, I thought leaving myself the Griselbrand hardcast out would be worth a non-zero amount of equity, even through two Awoken Horror attacks which would leave it at 3. Reason being that there are way more spells that counter Goryo's Vengeance than Griselbrand (Cryptic, mana leak?). I thought one pact would be enough. I obviously misevaluated my position here - I should be dead in 4 turns, and Griselbrand is likely not going to save you with 3 life , no shoal in hand, and 1 shoal at the very bottom of the deck. So even though looting into a Goryo's Vengeance this turn is still an unlikely event, I should've realized that that is my out and I needed to play to my out.
I also misevaluated the constraints were I to find a Vengeance. It was mana, and Ritual is going to be unequivocally worth more mana than a SSG because of Splicing possibilities. At the time I did not think through how many rituals was in the graveyard, deck and sideboard, which was another huge mistake. I actually honed in on the plays 1-4, only to realize that play 0, the play that I didn't even consider to be a possible mistake, actually buried me. @Kathal your evaluation of my thought process is exactly right Sometimes you just gotta punt
Also @Kathal, that is a really good point. Very subtle but that's a really clever way to abuse triggers and win on the spot still. I will definitely keep that in mind.
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After losing in the top 8 and 4 to the eventual PPTQ winners so far this season with Titan Shift, I am wondering if I should just default to the deck I know very well and is just so explosive. I may eventually try Grishoalbrand this season, but I also have been toying with Knightfall and GDS itself.
Premodern - Trix, RecSur, Enchantress, Reanimator, Elves https://www.facebook.com/groups/PremodernUSA/
Modern - Neobrand, Hogaak Vine, Elves
Standard - Mono Red (6-2 and 5-3 in 2 McQ)
Draft - (I wish I had more time for limited...)
Commander -
Norin the Wary, Grimgrin, Adun Oakenshield (taking forever to build)(dead format for me)Yeah, you're probably right. I just had expected to win one already. The 2 PPTQs I went to had 32 and 24 players and were on days when another PPTQ with presumably much more players was happening. So, I thought it would be an easy picking, right? Titan Shift is indeed in a good spot right now, but I think some players are catching on to that in the past 1-2 weeks. (I lost in the top 4 to the mirror and he beat Eldrazi Tron in the finals.)
I have actually been able to dodge GDS a bit, only playing against it twice in these tournaments (lost in the top 8 to the eventual winner on it in my first PPTQ this season; would have won if I had drawn a Mountain in either game to cast a lethal Primeval Titan, before dying - drew Explore and Relic in those 2 games)
I think you're probably right. There won't be any regular Tron. I never see this deck anywhere anymore. Eldrazi Tron is worse for us than it used to be and even though we're favored against Titanshift, there's always the consistency issues. They're slower, but more consistent. It's just always tempting to run Grishoalbrand since it has given me my highest win percentage of any Modern deck at over 71%. It's the only deck I'm over 70% on, although I'm close on a few other decks. It's also part of the reason I don't want to run it anymore - to potentially make it go down, lol.
Premodern - Trix, RecSur, Enchantress, Reanimator, Elves https://www.facebook.com/groups/PremodernUSA/
Modern - Neobrand, Hogaak Vine, Elves
Standard - Mono Red (6-2 and 5-3 in 2 McQ)
Draft - (I wish I had more time for limited...)
Commander -
Norin the Wary, Grimgrin, Adun Oakenshield (taking forever to build)(dead format for me)Did you remember your triggers :D.
I nearly died of laughter
Vintage Cube Cards Explained
Here are some other articles I've written about fine tuning your cube:
1. Minimum Archetype Support
2. Improving Green Archetypes
3. Improving White Archetypes
4. Matchup Analysis
5. Cube Combos (Work in Progress)
Draft my Cube - https://cubecobra.com/cube/overview/d8i
-3 hugs
-2 ritual
+2 chalice
+2 pacts
+1 reckoning
but even that seems loose. i doubt they want to be emptying us very often after knowing what we are playing and 3 mana to sweep away one enabler seems super bad. maybe that should be a brutality, but that can't hit baral
+3 Chalice
+3 Moon
+2 Bontu's Last Reckoning/Pact of negation
-3 Hugs
-2 Night's Whispers
-1 TTB (highly unlikely you get to 5 mana and resolve this)
-1 Shoal
-1 Wurm (unlikely you need to combo out vs Grixis Shadows - usually a Borborgymos+attack is enough anyway, or a breached wurm)
Relevant info: My maindeck has 3 desperate rituals, 4 SSGs, 1 manamorphose, 2 Borborygmos
I can double shoal ritual into Breach, but that's likely suicide vs UW Control. I play on either ditching a green card and hope they tap out to breach into a Griselbrand, or ditch the griselbrand and add 4 goryo's vengeance as a live draw (this is dangerous because a wurm may not be a win condition vs path). In hindsight discarding a green card is likely the right answer
My general plan is hope to draw enough shoals and fast mana to Breach in a borborygmos at EOT, and if that gets countered, have a SSG handy for my own main phase to looting->vengeance borborygmos
My draws and the resulting life totals are below. 1) do you stop to do something different at any point? 2)now that you've arrived here with you at 7 life and your opponent with 5 open mana, what's your plan?
Mulliganing the 7 card hand and keeping the 6 card hand I agree with 100%.
Your play on turn 4 (passing with an 8 card hand with the intention to discard a green card) I agree with 100%, even down to not being sure if discarding Griselbrand is better.
At your end of turn 4 I play differently in response to the Cryptic Command. I think Cryptic Command here indicates either a strong hand (i.e. another Cryptic Command next turn) or a misevaluation of your strength. Based on this I think this is your best chance to kill, as I have a strong feeling that if you let your opponent untap you may have to deal with either another Cryptic or multiple pieces of disruption.
My play from the end of your turn 4 is:
1. Respond to the Cryptic Command with Nourishing Shoal for 11 splicing Desperate Ritual. (RRR floating).
2. Cast the Desperate Ritual (RRRR floating)
3. Nourishing Shoal for 11 splicing Through the Breach (no mana left) and put Griselbrand into play.
4. Draw 35 cards, dropping to 7 life.
Based on your screenshots, you get to the point where you have 7 life and two Nourishing Shoals, two Simian Spirit Guides, the Manamorphose, and a Desperate Ritual in hand. You should have 50 - 35 = 15 cards left in library at this point.
5. Exile Simian Spirit Guides and cast Nourishing Shoal for 8 (pitch Borborygmos Enraged) splicing Desperate Ritual (RRR floating). You'll be at 15 life.
6. Draw 14 cards, dropping to 1 life. At this point, you should have a kill by drawing any two Rituals/Spirit Guides to Through the Breach out Borborygmos Enraged. You'll have one card remaining in library and if it's Borborygmos Enraged, you can draw it by casting the Manamorphose. Mana shouldn't be a problem as you still have two Simian Spirit Guides and at least one Desperate Ritual left, and will draw at least one Worldspine Wurm so that you can use your remaining Nourishing Shoal to splice the Ritual already in your hand and generate one mana. You'll have enough to cast or splice Through the Breach.
I think I did this right, let me know if I screwed it up somehow. Letting the opponent untap seems like it would probably lead to a loss. How did it turn out?
1. Cryptic Command - I think this is not particularly indicative of his hand strength. Having 2 lands out with nothing in the graveyard, I could very much see the opponent making the tempo play and bounce the land (which is likely safe unless my hand is perfect) and then slam Gideon Jura and ride that to victory, regardless of whether he has more dispels/leaks/negates. However, I do agree that letting him untap is dangerous. At the time I just disliked the idea of having to discard a bunch if I went off.
What I ended up was Shoal pitching Wurm splicing Ritualx2 (RRRR), cast ritual. I didn't think about your line there, same result but you save a Breach, which does add non-zero amount of equity
You are correct on the library numbers - I am at 7 life with the hand in the screenshot and 15 cards left in the library. I agree that your line is the line to go for if you are to go for the win right there. On the spot, I was thinking about the best way to play around one counterspell - we likely cannot beat two. If you go for the line as you described and get blown out by a counterspell, I think we must now shoal pitching Manamorphose, draw 7 more and hit a SSG and a borb. Then untap, looting pitching SSG, borb hopefully FTW. The risk of this line (assuming 1 counterspell) is 1) you don't hit a SSG+borb in the next 8 out of the 15 remaining (ritual is now useless if we have to pitch Manamorphose). FWIW, I calculate the probability of hitting a SSG and a borb in the next 8 to be 56%.
My actual line was that I stopped at 7 life, sacrificed Griselbrand, and drew another ritual. with 2 lands, 2 SSG and 2 rituals, I threw out a harmless looking shoal pitching 'phose splicing ritual+SSG, plan being making RRRRBB so I'm able to loot twice if my first gets countered (hug as a back up discard outlet), then still be able to Vengeance twice. He ended up having a path but no counterspell, so I won on my turn.
I think in evaluating your method (win on their turn by shoal pitching borb) and mine (win on my turn) is interesting - your method loses to 1 counterspell 44% of the times. Mine loses 100% of the times, but inexperienced control players may not counter an innocent looking shoal for X=2 (granted, with the ritual spliced). I'm guessing that doesn't happen more than 56% of the times, so I think your method is better.
Hopefully this makes sense - hard to do this math and logic in game heh.
Just for funsies, the top 32 SCGNY metagame breakdown, followed by my estimation of the matchup:
Affinity – 11 (45/55)
Grixis Death’s Shadow – 8 (20/80)
Eldrazi Tron – 6 (55/45)
Scapeshift – 6 (60/40)
Burn – 5 (60/40)
Merfolk – 4 (33/66)
U/R Gifts Storm – 4 (42/58)
Jeskai Control – 4 (55/45)
Abzan – 4 (even)
Counters Company – 3 (even-ish)
Dredge – 2 (55/45)
G/B Tron – 2 (60/40)
Madcap Moon – 2 (65/35)
Living End – 2 (45/55)
Death and Taxes – 2 (45/55)
G/W Company – 2 (55/45)
U/W Control – 2 (60/40)
Ad Nauseam – 1 (even)
Slivers – 1 (huh)
Four-Color Death’s Shadow – 1 (45/55 if white splash, 33/66 if jund plus blue)
Elves – 1 (55/45)
Amulet Titan – 1 (55/45)
U/W Thopter Foundry – 1 (huh)
R/G Vengevine – 1 (even)
B/G Midrange – 1 (55/45)
B/W Smallpox – 1 (55/45)
B/W Eldrazi Taxes – 1 (55/45)
Enduring Ideal – 1 (60/40)
The situation: Game 2 OTD vs an interesting mono-u delver. G1 I saw Censor, Clique, Thing in the Ice, Disrupting Shoal pitching Snapcaster. Safe to assume there are delvers, spell snares, and negates lurking around. You win game 1. In the sideboarded game you have 4 SSG, 1 manamorphose, and 1 ritual
One more very important note: I have played my land for the turn, and have bottomed a Nourishing Shoal TO THE BOTTOM turn 3
What I did not remember at the time was that I had discarded my only Ritual left in the deck. Meaning I had to make with precisely 2 SSGs in hand (+1 left in deck), 0 rituals and 1 land, meaning I had to go off via a Shoal'd TTB or a Manamorphosed Goryo's Vengeance.
Therefore, I let the TiTi trigger resolve, then let the Awoken Horror trigger resolve, then I pitch a SSG, make a black, cast Goryo's Vengeance.
All of the shoals in the image are gone as they were needed to draw all of these cards. You have no way to reanimate Borborygmos this turn,
nor can you keep a 7 card hand that includes a SSG, Vengeance, and enough lands to deal 20 damage. You have 4 lands in the graveyard,
4 in play, and 10 in hand, with 1 remaining in your 5 card deck. You have 2 Worldspine Wurms in hand, 1 Vengeance in the graveyard, 3 vengeances in hand and you are at a precarious 4 life. Things look hopeless. Are you drawing dead?
T4P4-2: Thought this is an interesting side note. I thought I was drawing dead but played it out anyway and I concocted a scenario where I wouldn't be drawing dead.
Yes, I believe you are drawing dead. But I think think it's closer than it seems. In fact, if you had 3 lands remaining in the deck, you are still live. The problem is that you have 5 cards in the deck, meaning you cannot cleanly draw the rest of your library with griselbrand, without even taking into account the two pact triggers that you have. If you have two lands remaining in the deck, and assume the opponent has no disruption (tall order, but the question is about whether you are drawing dead or not), you can do the following:
1. Discard to the following:
4 land
2 Goryo's Vengeance
Simian Spirit Guide
2. Discard your hand, triggering two Worldspine Wurms. The deck is now 7 cards large. Opponent takes his turn, attacks with the Awoken Horror. Block with Griselbrand, gain 7 life up to 11.
3. On his end step, pitch SSG and Vengeance back a Griselbrand.
4. On your upkeep with Pact triggers on the stack, draw your entire library, cast Vengeance on the Borborygmos that you discarded. You should now have 7 lands in hand and win.
0)In a cruel twist, the most innocent looking decision actually decided the game for us. I still think keeping a land is better here for hardcasting Griselbrand. If you accept that, keeping the SSG over ritual is better IMO because it's uncounterable and hardcasting SSGs will matter a non-zero amount of time (like when you breach a wurm). Counterpoint is if you expect to combo this turn, mana will be a bottle neck and having a ritual to splice multiple times will save you. What do you guys think?
Verdict: I don't know
1)This is a tough spot. Before you decide what to discard away, you have to decide your path to victory. On one hand, you are about to face a 3 turn clock with tons of assumed disruption. On the other hand, you have no ritual left, (potentially) no manamorphose and 4 mana left with a shoal.
I believe from what I've seen (tempo deck, disrupting shoal, bunch of presumed countermagic)+the fast clock, I must go for it while he's tapped out.
From that point, I believe what to discard is trivial: Manamorphose and the fetch. You have no way to bin the Borborygmos at instant speed, therefore the 'phose is likely to matter way less than the extra mana or the Pact.
Verdict: I would still discard the fetch and the Manamorphose
2)Refer to 1). Once I make the decision the moves here are academic: let the Titi/Awoken Horror triggers resolve, then try to go off
3)Verdict: Don't be a dumbass and RTFC
4)As is, I do not see a solution to the puzzle, given the resources and the constraints we have. If someone sees a win from this spot that I'm not seeing (like a_m_a_t did in my previous scenario) I would love to hear it
Verdict: I am drawing dead..
5)You are much closer to winning that it appears. Remembering that Wurm triggers grows your library to a number divisible by seven is step 1.
Figuring out how to not die, gain 7 life, and draw the rest of your library before your draw step is step 2. Unfortunate that the deck stacked out this way.
I think that you have to be planning to Combo here, and that saving resources to hardcast Griselbrand is incorrect. While you have the mana to do so, you still need to draw one of your 3 remaining Griselbrands for that to even be an option, and you're only going to have ~1-2 turns to do that before the Thing in the Ice makes it mostly irrelevant anyway.
You have a Pact, and a reasonable hope that your opponent is going to cast something and give you a window when they are tapped low to go for it. Given that I expect the game to be over one way or another within 1 turn, I'm discarding both lands here. Then on the 2nd Looting I'm discarding the Manamorphose and 1 SSG, leaving 2x SSG + Ritual in hand. Then when you go off you can Splice the Ritual onto both Shoals, giving you 4 Mana. Cast the ritual for the 5th and Breach the Borborygmos for the win.
In theory, if you had 8 or more life, you could win in your clean-up step. You pitch everything but 1 SSG, 1 Goryo's, 5 lands. Due to the trigger from the Wurms, both players get priority again which allows you, after shuffling both Wurms into your deck, to draw your whole deck and than win with an easy reanimate on the now ditched Borbor.
This is a line I did regularly vs Control players to not let them untap but still "win" on my turn when I had no access to TTB mana.
Besides this, you did some great analysis of those cases, that you oversaw the obvious line in the first scenario is quite funny though
Greetings,
Kathal
Modern/Legacy
either funpolice (Delver, Deathcloud, UW Control) or the fun decks (especially those ft. Griselbrand)
At the time, I thought leaving myself the Griselbrand hardcast out would be worth a non-zero amount of equity, even through two Awoken Horror attacks which would leave it at 3. Reason being that there are way more spells that counter Goryo's Vengeance than Griselbrand (Cryptic, mana leak?). I thought one pact would be enough. I obviously misevaluated my position here - I should be dead in 4 turns, and Griselbrand is likely not going to save you with 3 life , no shoal in hand, and 1 shoal at the very bottom of the deck. So even though looting into a Goryo's Vengeance this turn is still an unlikely event, I should've realized that that is my out and I needed to play to my out.
I also misevaluated the constraints were I to find a Vengeance. It was mana, and Ritual is going to be unequivocally worth more mana than a SSG because of Splicing possibilities. At the time I did not think through how many rituals was in the graveyard, deck and sideboard, which was another huge mistake. I actually honed in on the plays 1-4, only to realize that play 0, the play that I didn't even consider to be a possible mistake, actually buried me. @Kathal your evaluation of my thought process is exactly right Sometimes you just gotta punt