Went 3-1 last night at LGS with Naya. Beat jeskai copy cat 2-0, d&t 2-0 and burn 2-0, and lost to burn in round two 2-1. Mirror entity and kor firewalker were the MVPs as I had very few combo kills. The good news was that I was still winning despite mostly poor draws and a lot of mulligans due to mana screw. The caveat to that is that my d&t and copy cat opponents both made punts in g2 that, while they may have lost anyway, handed me the game, and my Rd 4 burn opponent flooded both games.
Ultimately, despite a decent record, last night was not a good showcase for how the deck plays - other than showing it's very good when piloted decently at the LGS level. I definitely can see how pros can be down on the druid/vizier combo for it's inconsistencies, despite the through-the-roof power level, when they're facing down opponents who aren't going to punt games away when faced with novel situations and board states.
Another local guy who plays a similar list to mine plays 4x oath of Nissa in his build, and while I'm not about to do that, I'm considering playing 2x, swapping out the md crusader (still very hit or miss) and commune with nature (which actually has been pretty good as a one-of), to improve the decks consistency in hitting dorks and land drops early.
Re: non graveyard-based value options at CMC 2 or 3 -- thanks for the suggestions, but yeah, not many good options - courser, for instance, is basically in the same boat as tracker in that it's very hit or miss due to not often generating any instant value, and yeah, elvish visionary is just not good. I guess I'm looking at another finks or a voice - though if I guess if I cut the mb crusader I could put that in trackers place instead. I may try leap, but am somewhat reluctant to take the plunge given I'm already playing 4 non creature spells in the board.
Currently I'm running a 2nd scooze in the sb, and that has been solid but not spectacular. Any ideas about other graveyard hate cards that are coco hits in Naya (other than loaming shaman)?
Elvish visionary is the only real other option and it's not good. There is a serious shortage of good rw or rg value creatures. Seriously try leap.
Im on GW and its still nuts. Had a recent match against GDS, droped it on t2 and used it like 7 times while chumping and dodging removal. He conceded after i rallied back my lone missionary and went to 25 life as i slowy developed a board. that was hilarious.
im running a singleton thraben inspector. whats your oppinion about that? i know its far from perfect, but its a 1 drop, it enables revolt plus is a fine rallier target and most important, i can take the draw while i combo to get a final shot at finding an outlet. i know it might sound weird, but there is a significant difference between drawing instatly and drawing after all other sources are exhausted.
I think the deck is really starved for 1-drops in GW but I would max out mana dorks first. I have been very happy with grim LM in naya.
Re: non graveyard-based value options at CMC 2 or 3 -- thanks for the suggestions, but yeah, not many good options - courser, for instance, is basically in the same boat as tracker in that it's very hit or miss due to not often generating any instant value, and yeah, elvish visionary is just not good. I guess I'm looking at another finks or a voice - though if I guess if I cut the mb crusader I could put that in trackers place instead. I may try leap, but am somewhat reluctant to take the plunge given I'm already playing 4 non creature spells in the board.
Currently I'm running a 2nd scooze in the sb, and that has been solid but not spectacular. Any ideas about other graveyard hate cards that are coco hits in Naya (other than loaming shaman)?
I would just keep playing oozes if you need more yard hate. If there was a better creature option than Ooze I think we'd be running it already but there ain't that I can think of.
You probably already know how I feel about Voice right now but it was really not good for me. I even tried it in a shell with 4 ralliers and it was bad. The card right now is just not super strong due to the shortage of countermagic.
I can get behind Aether Vial: ticking up to two, Vialing in Druid eot on an opponent's turn, then playing/vialing Vizier on your turn seems like a good way to save Druid from removal sorceries while still threatening combo.
It basically gives Druid and Vizier flash and pays for their mana cost after two turns. Closest thing to that is Aluren in Legacy, which, as a note, costs 4 mana compared to Vial's 1 generic and 2 turn build up.
If you're doing that then why not just merge this deck with GW Hatebears? I've thought about it and the added bonus of Leonin Arbiter paired with Knight of the Reliquary and Ramunap Excavator will do some serious work with Ghost Quarter. That however is a completely different deck and merging the two different strategies makes for an overall worse game plan.
There have been a few vial decks which have ad success, but overall the results show that Chord + Company are the way to go.
Correct me if I am wrong, but I believe you're thinking of the classic persist combo as opposed to the druid combo. The former was a remnant of good old Birthing Pod days where the combo pieces actually lined up in CMC order (and ended in Siege Rhino value), whereas the latter has its three main combo pieces all sitting at 2 CMC.
Also, as an observation, going from 1 to 3 mana by turn 2 is not as important to us as going from 2 to 4 mana by turn 3; Company is still a great card with or without Chord (which is typically only useful with x=>2) and vialing in a dork eot on turn 2 works well in that regard.
Anyhow, here's the skeleton I would personally use for a Vial Leap Company list:
8-9 One Drop Dorks
10-11 Two Drop Combo
8-9 Three Drop Value
1 ? Drop Win-Con
4 Vial
2 Leap
4 Company
20-23 Land
I need to test this out at my lgs a few nights, but being able to operate as though your creatures had flash is one reason Company itself is strong; why cant the same apply to Vial and Leap?
Given the prevalence of Death's Shadow and ETron, Has anyone looked at going back to a grindier, more value-oriented version with combo as backup? The format is much less linear than it has been in the past and most people seem to be packing a premium of the most efficient removal, so they might be weak to a wider strategy. Death's Shadow especially. Finks and voice can block all day long (and getting some value out of a stubborn denial-ed company would be nice) and something like Big Game Hunter kills everything of consequence in both DS and ETron. And, if all else fails, wait until they've spent all their removal killing and re-killing finks before jamming an infinite combo off company/chord
I admit I haven't had the opportunity to test this, but it seems strong against the current field
I am running a version of the deck that has 3x Voice, 2x Rallier, 4x Finks, 3x Ewit, and 1x Saffi for the recursion/value side of the deck, and it performs great against the field while giving up percentage points in the mirror. Depending on how saturated your local area is with Coco decks, it could be a good choice. Maybe the best example I've had is facing down a smattering of board wipes and Ballistas out of Tron and never ending his turn with less than 2 creatures on my side of the board. The amount of recursion in the deck is just silly, the only card I never want to see out of that deck these days is Ugin, and luckily, he's gone out of style with most Tron players these days.
My deck runs 4 Noble, 2 BoP, 4 Druids, and 20 lands. 30 mana sources is plenty for a deck that tops out at 4 CMC and focuses on 2 drops. I have a single Godless Shrine, and a single Overgrown Tomb, and my 2 BoPs as my only B sources with my only B spells in the 75 being 1 Viscera Seer and 3x Tide hollow Scullers.
I am running a version of the deck that has 3x Voice, 2x Rallier, 4x Finks, 3x Ewit, and 1x Saffi for the recursion/value side of the deck, and it performs great against the field while giving up percentage points in the mirror. Depending on how saturated your local area is with Coco decks, it could be a good choice. Maybe the best example I've had is facing down a smattering of board wipes and Ballistas out of Tron and never ending his turn with less than 2 creatures on my side of the board. The amount of recursion in the deck is just silly, the only card I never want to see out of that deck these days is Ugin, and luckily, he's gone out of style with most Tron players these days.
My deck runs 4 Noble, 2 BoP, 4 Druids, and 20 lands. 30 mana sources is plenty for a deck that tops out at 4 CMC and focuses on 2 drops. I have a single Godless Shrine, and a single Overgrown Tomb, and my 2 BoPs as my only B sources with my only B spells in the 75 being 1 Viscera Seer and 3x Tide hollow Scullers.
How many Vizier in the main deck? I keep going back and forth between 3 and 4. Also with Saffi, do you also run Anafenza?. I'm interested in trying out these ideas, mind sharing your list?
In general I think the meta is still better suited to focusing on your bad matchups first and then sideboarding to fix matchups like Grixis Shadow and UW Control -- those matchups are not terrible if you're running 3-4 spell lands and the full 4 witness, they just need a little shoring up post board.
Combo, tron and big mana are still problems, and you can beat those if you combo fast and through one piece of interaction. At least that's my opinion.
Play AT MINIMUM 3 townships and 3 canopies before complaining about losing vs. control. Straight GW should run 4 townships.
In general I think the meta is still better suited to focusing on your bad matchups first and then sideboarding to fix matchups like Grixis Shadow and UW Control -- those matchups are not terrible if you're running 3-4 spell lands and the full 4 witness, they just need a little shoring up post board.
Combo, tron and big mana are still problems, and you can beat those if you combo fast and through one piece of interaction. At least that's my opinion.
Play AT MINIMUM 3 townships and 3 canopies before complaining about losing vs. control. Straight GW should run 4 townships.
Township has priority? Always thought it would be Canopy . . . good to know
From personal experience of what works with the deck, I've decided to look for hands that, against an unknown opponent, are solid mana-wise and get out of the gate fast - so my general rule for keeping a 7-card hand is 2+ lands and 1+ dork, otherwise I mulligan it. I've also just started testing 2x Oath of Nissa in the main to improve early mana consistency (with the added benefit of some digging for combo pieces as well).
On 7 cards:
With 22 lands, we should hit 2+ lands 81% of the time. (on 6 it's 72%, not including the scry)
With 10 mana dorks we should 1+ dork 74% of the time. (on 6 it's 68%, not including the scry)
This means that 60% of starting hands should contain 2+ lands and 1+ dorks. (on 6 it's 49%, not including the scry).
So this means that about 80% the time we'll see a 6 or 7 card hand with 2+ lands and 1+ dork (not including the scry), and that number goes up to 89% if we keep any hand with 2+ lands on 6, knowing we still have a scry.
Now, some small percentage of hands that meet this criteria will be unkeepable due to mana source flood, lack of a green source, or be something useless like 3 lands, 2 dorks, 2 viziers, that decreases the keepable percentage by a small amount, which I'm going to guesstimate is maybe 5%?? So mulling to 5, which is still sometimes winnable with this deck, should happen less than 15% of the time (and even less than that if, like me, your willing to keep the occasional risky one-landers because the rest of the hand is perfect).
On 7, the odds of seeing a Druid in our starting hand is 40%, which means that 32% of hands will have 1+ druid and 2+ lands (these are the hands I almost always snap keep vs. an unknown deck). If you were to *really* aggressively mulligan any hand that doesn't have this configuration, you're still likely to be okay.
On 6, this is 35% to see a druid, and 25% to have a hand with 1+ druid and 2+ lands (and again, 49% to have a dork + 2 lands, not including the scry).
This means that with *really* aggressive mulling, we're about 49% to have a 6 or 7 with druid + 2 lands if we use this strategy, so 45%+ that's good enough to keep (not including scry on 6) where we'll be can cast t2 druid just based on what we have in our starting hand.
What all these numbers say to me is show the numerical evidence for aggressively mulliganing your draws, particular as potential t3 kill draws appear to be about two or three times as common as the times we end up mulling to 5 and have to keep whatever we get. After all, this is also *not* including draws that have lands, dorks and chords/cocos to hit druid for a t4 kill.
Township has priority? Always thought it would be Canopy . . . good to know
Canopy is really painful in multiples, hence sticking at 3. Personally, I wouldn't use more than 3 utility lands (and one plains) in a deck with only 22 lands due to increasing your risk of having to mull due to no green source. Even with 18 green sources, if you want to have 2 or more lands in hand with at
least one of them being green, you're only going to see that 75% of the time on 7 cards.
There are a lot of 1 landers that are keepable (land dork dork druid xxx for example), so I factor that in. In my experience 17 green sources has been sufficient with the full 12 dorks--hell, my elf deck only has 15 and it's been fine, scary as that is). The reason being you can make your second G off any of 12 dorks, so it's less critical to have GG by turn 3 like in normal abzan company -- also, since I run 4 ralliers, that helps fix for colors quite a lot more than you'd think.
In a 22 land GW only deck I think 4 township and 17 green producing lands with 1 basic plains is fine. I expect you will win more games drawing a township every game than a tiny increase in your mulligan chance. However, I do believe you should be running all 8x1CMC dorks to build like that.
I would consider 4 canopy in a hypothetical GW build, but there'd need to be a good reason (e.g. playing 2-3+ coursers and ghost quarters or something and trying for a mix of the ramunap excavator build). Not really sure though.
Rd 2 vs. BW tokens
Game 1 I kill him turn 3 when he taps out for procession. I can't actually kill him but I dump my hand with a mirror entity and 10 dudes and he scoops having no answer to that.
Game 2 He zealous persecution blows me out, and I find that evolutionary leap is way too slow for his build. I would have beaten him had I tapped differently and not put a counter on my druid, but I boned up - shoulda tapped the bird I had instead. Was just a dumb mistake.
Game 3 I kill him turn 3 when he taps out for sculler on turn 2, sees Witness, Chord, Chord Land and my board of druid. Seemed like a reasonable play but bad luck. I straight up kill him by chording for vizier then recruiter, then rec saging his sculler and mirror entity kill via witness chord.
He shows me a hand of Infinite Obliteration. Ugh. Makes me want to play some kind of answer to that effect but it's not great.
My sideboard vs. BW tokens is bad, especially with how fast his spectral proc build was.
Rd 3 vs. my buddy on burn.
We agree to a prize split and play it out (hooray 4 packs?! And a rallier promo!!) Digression: I cannot get anyone to trade me their damned rallier promos so I gotta tough it out til next week
Game 1: I mull to 4, he annihilates me. My 4 is Canopy, Canopy, Noble, Druid, just to add insult to injury.
Game 2: I mull a slow starting hand to a very fast 6 of druid dork land land missionary coco. Combo on turn 3, but only coco as an outlet (having chorded into vizier), coco into missionary + rec sage killing his eidolon then dropping 3 mana dorks I'd drawn. He stalls on one mana and I beat him down with grizzly bears and he chump blocks a few times. Eidolon is very bad when you're at a board disadvantage vs. a coco deck.
Game 3: I mull again to 6. My hand is very good. I luck sack out and win after he blazes my t1 dork and draws lands and no removal for my druid. I combo kill him on turn 5 or something I think, but I can't remember. There were 2 or 3 more lone missionaries here, and I come back from 4 life to 8 then get burned down to 4 or so and kill him. Had his lava spike in hand been a bolt I woulda been dead for sure as he'd have bolted my druid.
Burn is such a terrifying matchup. Searing blaze so good. I got pretty lucky to win through one. It's almost a hate card vs. us it's so good, I feel like I stand as much chance of beating a blaze game 1 as Affinity beating stony silence.
Not really sure what the answer is, maybe it's a weird sideboard plan like 4x auriok champion or something. Missionary is such a terrible card vs. any other deck, nearly completely dead. Main issue is it's hard to cast WW.
I have won so many games off people killing my T1 dork in this new build. It happens at least once a night someone gets greedy trying to stone rain me by killing a dork with a removal spell. I am nearly convinced it is incorrect most of the time *even if you have multiple removal spells* now.
The burn match I won tonight was 100% because he greedily blazed my mana dork instead of saving it for my druid. Had he blazed my turn 2 druid I would have lost that game most likely, or at the very least it would have been much closer.
I love this dynamic because it puts your opponent in a really poor position. If they kill my turn 1 dork it can open the door for the druid, and if they don't it puts me likely way ahead on mana.
This is part of the power of the new deck's ability to play mana dorks as a combo piece. Playing a druid is so much better than a viscera seer because it both puts you ahead on mana AND threatens to win the game.
Sure, just like the old days sometimes they kill your t1 dork and you stall out or miss colors or whatever. It happens. But it's a lot less often with the additional mana creatures (12 v. 9 in my case).
Playing wolf run helps the uw control matchup a lot; it's way better than gavony in top deck mode due to making every dude an instant threat, and each time they path one of your dudes the ramp makes subsequent activations better. Where wolf run falls flat sometimes is that its mana hungry and slow when your have to deal 10+ dmg - fortunately control decks give you lots of time!
I think this seems worse in theory than it actually is in practice, though Spreading seas hurts more than gq or tec edge because I don't have a way to answer it pre-board. Witness is great for recurring your most relevant card, and chord and coco help find witness or Knight. Running 4x KotR significantly increases the number of times I find one of my 2x wolf run or 1x township, and you can always search out or play a utility land from hand to use immediately for one activation even if they have a live gq or tec edge.
This goes back to the idea that if we're presenting a lot of must-answer threats (druid, duskwatch, Knight, wolf run) that if not addressed care of take over the game, it gives control a tough time because their answers have to line up well with our threats. Adding wolf run to the must answer threat base is great at stretching their answers. Post board they have to decide if they really need to keep seas, which generally isn't great, or go heavier on removal.
It definitely happens, but personally I've not had much of an issue with them keeping me off utility lands permanently. Granted my experience is anecdotal, and I mostly only play on cockatrice and at lgs's where the competition isn't as good as larger tournaments, but for me the matchup has been quite favorable.
Any advice for how to play against Uxx Tempo archetypes like Merfolk and Spirits? Seems liie the combination of an evasive fast clock and stack-based disruption really puts us in a bad position game 1 and an even worse one game 2 and (if we make it) game 3.
Any advice for how to play against Uxx Tempo archetypes like Merfolk and Spirits? Seems liie the combination of an evasive fast clock and stack-based disruption really puts us in a bad position game 1 and an even worse one game 2 and (if we make it) game 3.
I think you want to take a different approach to each of those decks. Merfolk doesn't actually have a ton of interaction with the combo plan, especially game one. It's generally just limited to harbinger of the tides and a few copies of dismember, so you can usually just ignore them and race to the combo. I would stay focused on the combo postboard and possibly board out some of your worse utility creatures like scavenging ooze for a few removal spells to slow them down.
Spirits actually has enough disruption to stop you from goldfishing them between spell queller and path. Queller hitting collected company in particular is really devastating. I would board into lots of removal and tireless trackers or voices of resurgence and try to beat them in a fair game. Voice in particular is very nice against them, since playing at instant speed is their whole shtick.
Any advice for how to play against Uxx Tempo archetypes like Merfolk and Spirits? Seems liie the combination of an evasive fast clock and stack-based disruption really puts us in a bad position game 1 and an even worse one game 2 and (if we make it) game 3.
Your chances of beating Merfolk without comboing are basically nil, so you should focus on jamming the combo. You cannot possibly race them on a regular basis. Post board you can gain some ground by removing unblockable but you won't be able to have enough removal to kill their lords. My experience with Merfolk in the end has been that you just combo them out at a rate that's really high and a tiny percentage of the games they don't draw a seas and township gets there. They can't really compete with township without making their dudes unblockable or getting lucky and hitting it with seas.
My lifetime record against merfolk is probably in the 80% vicinity with various company decks. They just do not pack enough interaction.
UW Spirits is not a real deck. I wouldn't worry about it too much. Fliers are a problem for our deck (and evasive threats in general), but luckily the clock is slow enough that you can usually just force the combo through. It is one of the reasons I prefer to play all 4 birds.
Of note, Flickerwisp is very good in this matchup as you can flicker a queller and get your spell back, and then trade with it. Birds of Paradise are also great as birds + township represent a viable plan to put them down as there is zero way they can kill your birds (because their removal sucks vs. 1 cmc creatures). In general I would focus on out-valuing them and try to race them on the ground with township if you cannot combo, as they rarely can answer a pile of mana dorks and township.
Huh ... always thought Merfolk was more interactive (well in terms of the stack and maybe a stray Path to Exile). Good information to know against Spirits though (friend plays a UW list at the LGS level, and in my experience it is tricky beast to defeat; probably because he mains some number of Ghost Quarter as well as Quellers, Paths, Mausoleum Wanderer, and other disruption hehehe).
I'll have to apply both strats to their respective matchups.
Notably, you cannot keep hands in the same manner that you would with a bigger mana base as most other people are playing Abzan Company decks right now. I think of it more like burn. When you look at your hand, you need a clear plan for the first few turns and acknowledge that the deck probably needs to give you a certain set of cards for you to really kick things into high gear, given that you run 20 lands and 10 dorks, that thing is often more mana, but again, mana is literally half your deck, so that tends not to be an issue.
Also, you can end up stuck on 2-3 mana for a while so don't expect to hit T3 CoCo every game like you can with more traditional builds, and can just as often have a very stale game where you play out a druid, only to have your opponent kill it, only to play out another druid the next turn.
At the end of the day, the deck is primarily a GW beatdown deck with obviously undersized creatures, but that gives it the tools to play an older Abzan Company style where you keep presenting threats until your opponent is forced to answer them, at which point you get to combo in response, which means you play at a very different tempo than a deck that is primarily trying to kill it's opponents on turn 3 with a Druid>Vizier>Recruiter>Ballista combo. Not that you DON'T ever get T3 kills, you definitely do, you're just not going to be as consistent as someone running more mana sources and combo pieces when it comes to early combo kills.
One more thing about merfolk. Always play around harbinger if you can. Do not try to chip in for 1 or 2 with exalted dorks and get them bounced. Assume they have a harbinger. It's awful when you t2 Fink's, swing with it then get it bounced.
Also good to know; it sounds like a similar strategy to use against Jeskai Nahiri.
Anyhow, this may be a very bad idea, but given the Druid combo revolves around 2-3 pieces that each cost CMC 2, could a build using Uncage the Menagerie be viable?
The sequence Im imaging would be turn 1 Temple Garden, Dork, turn 2 Forest, Devoted Druid, turn 3, Land, Uncage the Menagerie for 2 into Vizier then Recruiter, win.
It would improve our less interactive matchups by giving us a faster win, albeit at the cost of increased fragility.
Actually this may just be a different archetype; one that's less combo-midrange and more pure-combo.
Ultimately, despite a decent record, last night was not a good showcase for how the deck plays - other than showing it's very good when piloted decently at the LGS level. I definitely can see how pros can be down on the druid/vizier combo for it's inconsistencies, despite the through-the-roof power level, when they're facing down opponents who aren't going to punt games away when faced with novel situations and board states.
Another local guy who plays a similar list to mine plays 4x oath of Nissa in his build, and while I'm not about to do that, I'm considering playing 2x, swapping out the md crusader (still very hit or miss) and commune with nature (which actually has been pretty good as a one-of), to improve the decks consistency in hitting dorks and land drops early.
Re: non graveyard-based value options at CMC 2 or 3 -- thanks for the suggestions, but yeah, not many good options - courser, for instance, is basically in the same boat as tracker in that it's very hit or miss due to not often generating any instant value, and yeah, elvish visionary is just not good. I guess I'm looking at another finks or a voice - though if I guess if I cut the mb crusader I could put that in trackers place instead. I may try leap, but am somewhat reluctant to take the plunge given I'm already playing 4 non creature spells in the board.
Currently I'm running a 2nd scooze in the sb, and that has been solid but not spectacular. Any ideas about other graveyard hate cards that are coco hits in Naya (other than loaming shaman)?
I think the deck is really starved for 1-drops in GW but I would max out mana dorks first. I have been very happy with grim LM in naya.
I would just keep playing oozes if you need more yard hate. If there was a better creature option than Ooze I think we'd be running it already but there ain't that I can think of.
You probably already know how I feel about Voice right now but it was really not good for me. I even tried it in a shell with 4 ralliers and it was bad. The card right now is just not super strong due to the shortage of countermagic.
UW Ephara Hatebears [Primer], GB Gitrog Lands, BRU Inalla Combo-Control, URG Maelstrom Wanderer Landfall
Correct me if I am wrong, but I believe you're thinking of the classic persist combo as opposed to the druid combo. The former was a remnant of good old Birthing Pod days where the combo pieces actually lined up in CMC order (and ended in Siege Rhino value), whereas the latter has its three main combo pieces all sitting at 2 CMC.
Also, as an observation, going from 1 to 3 mana by turn 2 is not as important to us as going from 2 to 4 mana by turn 3; Company is still a great card with or without Chord (which is typically only useful with x=>2) and vialing in a dork eot on turn 2 works well in that regard.
Anyhow, here's the skeleton I would personally use for a Vial Leap Company list:
8-9 One Drop Dorks
10-11 Two Drop Combo
8-9 Three Drop Value
1 ? Drop Win-Con
4 Vial
2 Leap
4 Company
20-23 Land
I need to test this out at my lgs a few nights, but being able to operate as though your creatures had flash is one reason Company itself is strong; why cant the same apply to Vial and Leap?
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I admit I haven't had the opportunity to test this, but it seems strong against the current field
My deck runs 4 Noble, 2 BoP, 4 Druids, and 20 lands. 30 mana sources is plenty for a deck that tops out at 4 CMC and focuses on 2 drops. I have a single Godless Shrine, and a single Overgrown Tomb, and my 2 BoPs as my only B sources with my only B spells in the 75 being 1 Viscera Seer and 3x Tide hollow Scullers.
How many Vizier in the main deck? I keep going back and forth between 3 and 4. Also with Saffi, do you also run Anafenza?. I'm interested in trying out these ideas, mind sharing your list?
Combo, tron and big mana are still problems, and you can beat those if you combo fast and through one piece of interaction. At least that's my opinion.
Play AT MINIMUM 3 townships and 3 canopies before complaining about losing vs. control. Straight GW should run 4 townships.
UW Ephara Hatebears [Primer], GB Gitrog Lands, BRU Inalla Combo-Control, URG Maelstrom Wanderer Landfall
Township has priority? Always thought it would be Canopy . . . good to know
Avatar and Signature by XenoNinja via Heroes of the Plane Studios
UW Ephara Hatebears [Primer], GB Gitrog Lands, BRU Inalla Combo-Control, URG Maelstrom Wanderer Landfall
Out of curiosity, I ran some numbers using a hypergeometric calculator - http://stattrek.com/online-calculator/hypergeometric.aspx
On 7 cards:
With 22 lands, we should hit 2+ lands 81% of the time. (on 6 it's 72%, not including the scry)
With 10 mana dorks we should 1+ dork 74% of the time. (on 6 it's 68%, not including the scry)
This means that 60% of starting hands should contain 2+ lands and 1+ dorks. (on 6 it's 49%, not including the scry).
So this means that about 80% the time we'll see a 6 or 7 card hand with 2+ lands and 1+ dork (not including the scry), and that number goes up to 89% if we keep any hand with 2+ lands on 6, knowing we still have a scry.
Now, some small percentage of hands that meet this criteria will be unkeepable due to mana source flood, lack of a green source, or be something useless like 3 lands, 2 dorks, 2 viziers, that decreases the keepable percentage by a small amount, which I'm going to guesstimate is maybe 5%?? So mulling to 5, which is still sometimes winnable with this deck, should happen less than 15% of the time (and even less than that if, like me, your willing to keep the occasional risky one-landers because the rest of the hand is perfect).
On 7, the odds of seeing a Druid in our starting hand is 40%, which means that 32% of hands will have 1+ druid and 2+ lands (these are the hands I almost always snap keep vs. an unknown deck). If you were to *really* aggressively mulligan any hand that doesn't have this configuration, you're still likely to be okay.
On 6, this is 35% to see a druid, and 25% to have a hand with 1+ druid and 2+ lands (and again, 49% to have a dork + 2 lands, not including the scry).
This means that with *really* aggressive mulling, we're about 49% to have a 6 or 7 with druid + 2 lands if we use this strategy, so 45%+ that's good enough to keep (not including scry on 6) where we'll be can cast t2 druid just based on what we have in our starting hand.
What all these numbers say to me is show the numerical evidence for aggressively mulliganing your draws, particular as potential t3 kill draws appear to be about two or three times as common as the times we end up mulling to 5 and have to keep whatever we get. After all, this is also *not* including draws that have lands, dorks and chords/cocos to hit druid for a t4 kill.
Canopy is really painful in multiples, hence sticking at 3. Personally, I wouldn't use more than 3 utility lands (and one plains) in a deck with only 22 lands due to increasing your risk of having to mull due to no green source. Even with 18 green sources, if you want to have 2 or more lands in hand with at
least one of them being green, you're only going to see that 75% of the time on 7 cards.
In a 22 land GW only deck I think 4 township and 17 green producing lands with 1 basic plains is fine. I expect you will win more games drawing a township every game than a tiny increase in your mulligan chance. However, I do believe you should be running all 8x1CMC dorks to build like that.
I would consider 4 canopy in a hypothetical GW build, but there'd need to be a good reason (e.g. playing 2-3+ coursers and ghost quarters or something and trying for a mix of the ramunap excavator build). Not really sure though.
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I did OK at FNM tonight. 3-rounder with 9 of us.
Rd 1 bye.
Rd 2 vs. BW tokens
Game 1 I kill him turn 3 when he taps out for procession. I can't actually kill him but I dump my hand with a mirror entity and 10 dudes and he scoops having no answer to that.
Game 2 He zealous persecution blows me out, and I find that evolutionary leap is way too slow for his build. I would have beaten him had I tapped differently and not put a counter on my druid, but I boned up - shoulda tapped the bird I had instead. Was just a dumb mistake.
Game 3 I kill him turn 3 when he taps out for sculler on turn 2, sees Witness, Chord, Chord Land and my board of druid. Seemed like a reasonable play but bad luck. I straight up kill him by chording for vizier then recruiter, then rec saging his sculler and mirror entity kill via witness chord.
He shows me a hand of Infinite Obliteration. Ugh. Makes me want to play some kind of answer to that effect but it's not great.
My sideboard vs. BW tokens is bad, especially with how fast his spectral proc build was.
Rd 3 vs. my buddy on burn.
We agree to a prize split and play it out (hooray 4 packs?! And a rallier promo!!) Digression: I cannot get anyone to trade me their damned rallier promos so I gotta tough it out til next week
Game 1: I mull to 4, he annihilates me. My 4 is Canopy, Canopy, Noble, Druid, just to add insult to injury.
Game 2: I mull a slow starting hand to a very fast 6 of druid dork land land missionary coco. Combo on turn 3, but only coco as an outlet (having chorded into vizier), coco into missionary + rec sage killing his eidolon then dropping 3 mana dorks I'd drawn. He stalls on one mana and I beat him down with grizzly bears and he chump blocks a few times. Eidolon is very bad when you're at a board disadvantage vs. a coco deck.
Game 3: I mull again to 6. My hand is very good. I luck sack out and win after he blazes my t1 dork and draws lands and no removal for my druid. I combo kill him on turn 5 or something I think, but I can't remember. There were 2 or 3 more lone missionaries here, and I come back from 4 life to 8 then get burned down to 4 or so and kill him. Had his lava spike in hand been a bolt I woulda been dead for sure as he'd have bolted my druid.
Burn is such a terrifying matchup. Searing blaze so good. I got pretty lucky to win through one. It's almost a hate card vs. us it's so good, I feel like I stand as much chance of beating a blaze game 1 as Affinity beating stony silence.
Not really sure what the answer is, maybe it's a weird sideboard plan like 4x auriok champion or something. Missionary is such a terrible card vs. any other deck, nearly completely dead. Main issue is it's hard to cast WW.
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A summary comment I wanted to make:
I have won so many games off people killing my T1 dork in this new build. It happens at least once a night someone gets greedy trying to stone rain me by killing a dork with a removal spell. I am nearly convinced it is incorrect most of the time *even if you have multiple removal spells* now.
The burn match I won tonight was 100% because he greedily blazed my mana dork instead of saving it for my druid. Had he blazed my turn 2 druid I would have lost that game most likely, or at the very least it would have been much closer.
I love this dynamic because it puts your opponent in a really poor position. If they kill my turn 1 dork it can open the door for the druid, and if they don't it puts me likely way ahead on mana.
This is part of the power of the new deck's ability to play mana dorks as a combo piece. Playing a druid is so much better than a viscera seer because it both puts you ahead on mana AND threatens to win the game.
Sure, just like the old days sometimes they kill your t1 dork and you stall out or miss colors or whatever. It happens. But it's a lot less often with the additional mana creatures (12 v. 9 in my case).
UW Ephara Hatebears [Primer], GB Gitrog Lands, BRU Inalla Combo-Control, URG Maelstrom Wanderer Landfall
I think this seems worse in theory than it actually is in practice, though Spreading seas hurts more than gq or tec edge because I don't have a way to answer it pre-board. Witness is great for recurring your most relevant card, and chord and coco help find witness or Knight. Running 4x KotR significantly increases the number of times I find one of my 2x wolf run or 1x township, and you can always search out or play a utility land from hand to use immediately for one activation even if they have a live gq or tec edge.
This goes back to the idea that if we're presenting a lot of must-answer threats (druid, duskwatch, Knight, wolf run) that if not addressed care of take over the game, it gives control a tough time because their answers have to line up well with our threats. Adding wolf run to the must answer threat base is great at stretching their answers. Post board they have to decide if they really need to keep seas, which generally isn't great, or go heavier on removal.
It definitely happens, but personally I've not had much of an issue with them keeping me off utility lands permanently. Granted my experience is anecdotal, and I mostly only play on cockatrice and at lgs's where the competition isn't as good as larger tournaments, but for me the matchup has been quite favorable.
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I think you want to take a different approach to each of those decks. Merfolk doesn't actually have a ton of interaction with the combo plan, especially game one. It's generally just limited to harbinger of the tides and a few copies of dismember, so you can usually just ignore them and race to the combo. I would stay focused on the combo postboard and possibly board out some of your worse utility creatures like scavenging ooze for a few removal spells to slow them down.
Spirits actually has enough disruption to stop you from goldfishing them between spell queller and path. Queller hitting collected company in particular is really devastating. I would board into lots of removal and tireless trackers or voices of resurgence and try to beat them in a fair game. Voice in particular is very nice against them, since playing at instant speed is their whole shtick.
Your chances of beating Merfolk without comboing are basically nil, so you should focus on jamming the combo. You cannot possibly race them on a regular basis. Post board you can gain some ground by removing unblockable but you won't be able to have enough removal to kill their lords. My experience with Merfolk in the end has been that you just combo them out at a rate that's really high and a tiny percentage of the games they don't draw a seas and township gets there. They can't really compete with township without making their dudes unblockable or getting lucky and hitting it with seas.
My lifetime record against merfolk is probably in the 80% vicinity with various company decks. They just do not pack enough interaction.
UW Spirits is not a real deck. I wouldn't worry about it too much. Fliers are a problem for our deck (and evasive threats in general), but luckily the clock is slow enough that you can usually just force the combo through. It is one of the reasons I prefer to play all 4 birds.
Of note, Flickerwisp is very good in this matchup as you can flicker a queller and get your spell back, and then trade with it. Birds of Paradise are also great as birds + township represent a viable plan to put them down as there is zero way they can kill your birds (because their removal sucks vs. 1 cmc creatures). In general I would focus on out-valuing them and try to race them on the ground with township if you cannot combo, as they rarely can answer a pile of mana dorks and township.
UW Ephara Hatebears [Primer], GB Gitrog Lands, BRU Inalla Combo-Control, URG Maelstrom Wanderer Landfall
I'll have to apply both strats to their respective matchups.
Avatar and Signature by XenoNinja via Heroes of the Plane Studios
Here's the list:
4x Noble Hierarch
2x Birds of Paradise
4x Devoted Druid
Recursive Dudes (13)
4x Kitchen Finks
3x Voice of Resurgence
3x Eternal Witness
2x Renegade Rallier
1x Saffi Eriksdotter
Utility & Combo crap I never want to draw (9)
3x Vizier of Remedies
1x Anafenza, Kin-Tree Spirit
1x Duskwatch Recruiter
1x Fiend Hunter
1x Scavenging Ooze
1x Viscera Seer
1x Walking Ballista
4x Chord of Calling
4x Collected Company
Land (20)
3x Forest
2x Gavony Township
1x Godless Shrine
2x Horizon Canopy
1x Overgrown Tomb
1x Plains
2x Temple Garden
4x Verdant Catacombs
4x Windswept Heath
3x Tidehollow Sculler
3x Path to Exile
2x Qasali Pridemage
1x Aven Mindcensor
1x Burrenton Forge-Tender
1x Kataki, War's Wage
1x Linvala, Keeper of Silence
1x Orzhov Pontiff
1x Reveillark
1x Selfless Spirit
tappedout link:
http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/voice-company/
Notably, you cannot keep hands in the same manner that you would with a bigger mana base as most other people are playing Abzan Company decks right now. I think of it more like burn. When you look at your hand, you need a clear plan for the first few turns and acknowledge that the deck probably needs to give you a certain set of cards for you to really kick things into high gear, given that you run 20 lands and 10 dorks, that thing is often more mana, but again, mana is literally half your deck, so that tends not to be an issue.
Also, you can end up stuck on 2-3 mana for a while so don't expect to hit T3 CoCo every game like you can with more traditional builds, and can just as often have a very stale game where you play out a druid, only to have your opponent kill it, only to play out another druid the next turn.
At the end of the day, the deck is primarily a GW beatdown deck with obviously undersized creatures, but that gives it the tools to play an older Abzan Company style where you keep presenting threats until your opponent is forced to answer them, at which point you get to combo in response, which means you play at a very different tempo than a deck that is primarily trying to kill it's opponents on turn 3 with a Druid>Vizier>Recruiter>Ballista combo. Not that you DON'T ever get T3 kills, you definitely do, you're just not going to be as consistent as someone running more mana sources and combo pieces when it comes to early combo kills.
UW Ephara Hatebears [Primer], GB Gitrog Lands, BRU Inalla Combo-Control, URG Maelstrom Wanderer Landfall
Anyhow, this may be a very bad idea, but given the Druid combo revolves around 2-3 pieces that each cost CMC 2, could a build using Uncage the Menagerie be viable?
The sequence Im imaging would be turn 1 Temple Garden, Dork, turn 2 Forest, Devoted Druid, turn 3, Land, Uncage the Menagerie for 2 into Vizier then Recruiter, win.
It would improve our less interactive matchups by giving us a faster win, albeit at the cost of increased fragility.
Actually this may just be a different archetype; one that's less combo-midrange and more pure-combo.
Avatar and Signature by XenoNinja via Heroes of the Plane Studios