MTG Salvation

Any opinions on the recent Keranos tech for games that get grindy and long? Path is a real tempo loss, but it could gain you some cards or dmg over a couple turns if they're clutching their removal for a bear. My gut tells me it's bad, but having played Keranos in the past in Twin and Grixis Control, the card is definitely beast mode.

From talking w/Caleb at the Louisville Open and a quick double check on Twitter, this is his first draft for where to start w/Opt in fetchless Storm.







Changes from the Louisville list: -3 Strategic Planning, -1 Goblin Electromancer

The sideboard from Louisville list isn't entirely correct. He played at least with one Swan Song. In the stream appear 1 Swan Song and 1 Wipe Away, insted of 2 Wipe Away.

Quote from Teacher RL »

The sideboard from Louisville list isn't entirely correct. He played at least with one Swan Song. In the stream appear 1 Swan Song and 1 Wipe Away, insted of 2 Wipe Away.

He mentioned on Twitter that he meant that slot to be the second Wipe Away, but that he couldn't find an extra copy at the event, so he had to put in a Swan Song instead

Does anyone have a good side board guide for storm /w fetches that they can link? I feel like this is an area i struggle with most.thanks in advance!

Quote from PurpleIntet »

Appalling. Absolutely appalling. You're going to sit here and denigrate a man with one of the most successful event streaks with the deck ever because he doesn't agree with your assessment of the correct build? Shame on you.

His play are not "unexpected", as his sideboard strategies have been written about by both himself and by Emma Handy on SCG. His lack of success with his online stream is due to 1. Trying out new ideas every stream that may or may not work, and 2. Trying to simultaneously answer chat questions while playing an already difficult deck, which undoubtedly creates some mistakes.

How is finding ANY specific card in Fetch storm easier than Fetchless? Variance reduction due to a greater number of cantrips increases your odds to find any individual card. Just because you struggled to find an Empty in your "few" playtested games does not imply that the math is worse for Fetchless to find its cards. I suggest you refer to introductory statistics if you have inquiries about this idea.

I take no issue with Fetch Storm at all; both decks, while still running the core Gifts kills, are looking to achieve that goal through slightly different avenues, with Fetch storm looking to force medallion bears onto the table while Fetchless is designed to be less reliant on the bears and have greater velocity. They both obviously compete and have their own pros and cons.

As a community, we cannot embrace this closed-off mindset. We should be excited that there appears to be TWO very viable strategies for the deck, with each having slightly different playstyles and lines to take. Feel free to disagree with me, but I am not afraid to call out toxic commentary when I see it.

I cannot justify a list with 17 lands. It should fold to itself way too often to be consistent, and that it doesn't at a professional level is an outlier. And if you want introductory statistics, let's go with Hypergeometric Distribution. I'm using this calculator for these calculations.

17 lands in a 60 card deck, opening hand of 7 cards. P(X>=1) = 0.9165. That means 8.35% of the time we'll draw a no-land hand and send it back. P(X=1) = 0.2684. So almost 27% of the time we'll have a one-lander which apparently is good enough. HOWEVER, five of those lands (the 1 mountain and the 4 Shivan Reef) don't adequately let us try and filter our way through to find a second and third land, so a one-lander with any of those 5 is as much of a snap-ship as a no-lander. 5/17~ = 0.2941, so 29% of the 27% of 1-land hands are unkeepable as well, adding 7.89% to the "snap-ship" pool. And while it's uncommon, a 5-land opener or more is similarly useless. P(X>=5) = 0.0159, so another 1.59% of hands will be mulled due to flood. Add those up and you have 17.83% of all opening hands that will be instant mulligans due to land issues. That's one out of every 5.6 games. Even if you assume that every 2, 3 or 4-land hand and every 1-lander with a non-painful blue mana source is good enough to keep, Every other round you will have to send a hand back.

Sure, adding an 18th land lowers all those numbers significantly, but what land? Cascade Bluffs is equally worthless if it's your only land. Sulfur Falls does always tap for blue but puts you a turn behind. A 5th basic Island works, but it feels bad. The fetchland route makes more sense at that point.

More than that, the sideboard plan of "Oh let's hit them with Empty the Warrens after they board in all their spot removal" straight-up FAILS when you look at the sideboards of most of the other top8 decks. Very few ways to stop the maindeck plan of grapeshot for 20, but when we get to boards? Jeskai has Izzet Staticaster and Anger of the Gods. Eldrazi Tron has Ratchet Bomb and Engineered Explosives. They know what we're going to do, and boarding out the grapeshots turns our advantage from the diversity into a liability the other player knows to exploit. Smoke-screening into sticking with plan A against these decks is ironically the best way to beat them, because they're so focused on beating plan B. This means we need grapeshot, and to that end we need to keep the bears. Empty is good primarily for decks that have a way to shut down the storm game but NOT the go wide approach - white and green and to a lesser extent blue decks.

Was it worth trying? Absolutely. Did it do well? Sure, hard to argue with what Caleb has put up. Did it help us understand the theory of what makes a good deck good? Probably. Should we simply parrot this decklist as the best thing ever? Absolutely not. Any combo deck that relies on not playing a "fair" game of magic needs to continue to change and adapt to make it harder for our opponents to force us into that "fair" game. Doing the same thing all the time is anathema to that.

tl;dr the fetchless approach requires a much more risky gameplan that the meta is already adapting to, and any gains to "consistency" that are disputable are offset by the fact that you should lose to yourself with depressing regularity.

Quote from Charm_Master3125 »

More than that, the sideboard plan of "Oh let's hit them with Empty the Warrens after they board in all their spot removal" straight-up FAILS when you look at the sideboards of most of the other top8 decks. Very few ways to stop the maindeck plan of grapeshot for 20, but when we get to boards? Jeskai has Izzet Staticaster and Anger of the Gods. Eldrazi Tron has Ratchet Bomb and Engineered Explosives. They know what we're going to do, and boarding out the grapeshots turns our advantage from the diversity into a liability the other player knows to exploit. Smoke-screening into sticking with plan A against these decks is ironically the best way to beat them, because they're so focused on beating plan B. This means we need grapeshot, and to that end we need to keep the bears. Empty is good primarily for decks that have a way to shut down the storm game but NOT the go wide approach - white and green and to a lesser extent blue decks.

Jeskai and ELdrazi play Leyline of Sanctity and Orbs of Warding, so only plan A isn't realistic.

We didnt sell caleb's list as the best thing ever. it was portrayed as a bad deck putting up results only because of a genius pilot, and our replies were the backlash.

Deal with it.

Quote from Teacher RL »

Jeskai and ELdrazi play Leyline of Sanctity and Orbs of Warding, so only plan A isn't realistic.

Both of which get handled with bounce spells in all versions of the deck

Dude I completely forgot the not a creature part. Gonna def see if I like it.

Quote from Oo_Dragonexis_oO »

This is not a bad idea, keranos will not be a créatures in this deck so we don't care about path

Dude I completely forgot the not a creature part. Gonna def see if I like it.

hrrmm, considering we can ramp our way into a keranos on turn 3, or sometimes 2 if we're lucky, this could be good against both burn and 8rack on the play. That's something worth thinking about, since i hate those 2 MU.

Quote from SSquirrel »

Quote from Teacher RL »

Jeskai and ELdrazi play Leyline of Sanctity and Orbs of Warding, so only plan A isn't realistic.

Both of which get handled with bounce spells in all versions of the deck

So you will rely all your chances in grapeshot and one or two bounce spells?

Quote from Teacher RL »

Quote from SSquirrel »

Quote from Teacher RL »

Jeskai and ELdrazi play Leyline of Sanctity and Orbs of Warding, so only plan A isn't realistic.

Both of which get handled with bounce spells in all versions of the deck

So you will rely all your chances in grapeshot and one or two bounce spells?

And a bunch of cantrips to find them, and 4 gifts ungiven to get them. Seems reasonable, yes.

OK! You play what you like and in the way you want. My advice for you is play Wipe Away because all other bounce spells against Jeskai seams awful if you don't have board presence to make presure.

Quote from Charm_Master3125 »

A 5th basic Island works, but it feels bad. The fetchland route makes more sense at that point.

But the 5th basic Island solves the problem right? why did you choose to remove it from the consideration simply because you were feeling bad?
You don't mind your first land is a basic island but somehow its a problem when you have practically 4/17 vs 3/17 chances of drawing next island(if and only if your topdeck is a land)

why dont you run your numbers back and check what if 5th basic island is used and see if its good or not...seems that you dont particularly like drawing a basic mountain(which is understandable...i didnt like it either)

Triple post

sorry

Hey all.

I’m running the list with fetches, short story is I’ve just got peer through depths and I want to jam two in. Running the usual core with 7 mancers, 1 Noxious revival, 3 remands, three grapeshot and an empty in the main. I have room for one peer as it stands, but I’d like two. What do I do?

Go to two grapeshot in the main?

Go to two remands in the main?

Lose empty? (There are a few decks that mainboard leyline of sanctity and what have you, so I don’t like that)

Or is one peer enough?

Quote from spike4972 »

Quote from Teacher RL »

Quote from SSquirrel »

Quote from Teacher RL »

Jeskai and ELdrazi play Leyline of Sanctity and Orbs of Warding, so only plan A isn't realistic.

Both of which get handled with bounce spells in all versions of the deck

So you will rely all your chances in grapeshot and one or two bounce spells?

And a bunch of cantrips to find them, and 4 gifts ungiven to get them. Seems reasonable, yes.

I just have to point out that the original problem states Leyline of Sanctity and Orbs of Warding. So if you think you can look for your answer using Gifts, you might want to rethink that. Gifts will not find you your answer for hexproof players OR graveyard hate. That's why its frequently sided out in game 2.

Fair point, the 14-16 cantrips plus sometimes Peer through Depths or Pieces of the Puzzle from the side are still pretty solid for digging to sideboard stuff though.