Thanks for the comments jsiri, respect your opinion a lot (the original post of this primer had one of your decks but I put updated lists in recently). Out of interest have you been playing much recently? If you look in the pauper revolution thread, xmimx and I are discussing how storm seems to be moving towards pure grapeshot kills ATM which are scarily reliably happening on turn 3. That was the context in which I was considering skirge, as a sideboard option vs grapeshot. I think it's too narrow though, it must come down turn 1 to do anything and with the phyrexian cost it might only gain 2-4 life before they go off.
Also I think 4x hunger is a response to the hurge surge in ur post recently. It's literally a win con in that matchup and leaving up a mana to punish their removal is a good idea.
I haven't played much on MTGO in general this month, just started playing again regularly this week, went 3-1 in the past 2 outings losing to UR Storm and a WW luckfest.
As far as the Storm matchup goes there really are 2 variations. The UR storm matchup is centered around going off with ETW + Bushwhacker rather than the grapeshot kill which I do not think it can realistically support. Its faster but Stompy has the silverbullet cards in the sideboard to deal with it if really necessary. For the record, people play Spore Frog but I think Fog is still superior overall because you have limited number of slots and it pulls double duty in the Infect, Goblins and Affinity matchups. UR players in general will try to press the issue and against a green deck they will not bother trying to go off w/ dispel backup.
The Grixis storm version that grapplingfarang plays does have the card draw and cantrips to support the Grapeshot kill. I do not think lifegain really is an option here because they also have ETW and you need to be laying down threats to provide some sort of clock. Lifegain like Nourish, Lifestaff seem more like "don't lose" rather than trying to win. If they know what's up (thanks Gitaxian Probe) they'll sit back and sculpt the hand for double grapeshot and your lifegain doesn't matter. The best bet here is really to just try to get their life as low as possible to prevent them from using Sign in Blood and free Gitaxian Probes. The ideal situation is having 3 2/2's by the end of T2. If you look at my latest list I have been packing a single Rogue Elephant in the sideboard just for this matchup and the mirror to help give an even better clock.
The other anti-storm option (both Familiar and Grapeshot build) is start packing 4x Thermokarst in the sideboard like its 2010/early 2011. Even hosing one of their lands can slow them down enough to get you the win. Honestly the meta is going to need to have a lot more storm builds before I even consider going back to this option.
As far as Hunger, you can't justify wasting the extra slot in the maindeck for a matchup which you already should be winning easily. I could see packing the 4th hunger in the sideboard for removal heavy matchups but at that point I would prefer the 4th vines since it is better at other things. A lot of this comes down to whether you want the 25th creature or the additional pump spell. I believe Stompy is more about threat density where I would prefer the creature over the pump spell. Older builds used to run 26 and at 24 I already start to have doubts.
I have been playing Stompy for awhile MTGO in Pauper DEs and have a long history with the deck. After looking at some of the postings regarding deck choices, here are my opinions:
1) Vault Skirge has no place in the deck, especially in the current meta. In creature matchups such as WW, MUC, Goblins they have removal and blockers. In control matchups the lifegain becomes irrelevant. The lifegain benefits against storm decks are going to be corner cases at best when they try to grapeshot you for exact. Skirge is going to be a lightning rod for any removal and you cannot protect it if you run it out on T1. Looking at the other possible T1 plays and you would definitely want Quirion Ranger, Nettle Sentinel or Young Wolf over Vault Skirge in every matchup possible.
Skirge has evasion. which means something on turn one. They have removal and blockers for all your creatures so that is irrelevant too. Turns I land a turn 1 Skirge (which at the very least can just block a flipped delver) I usually win. Few decks have a turn 1 flyer to block me, and if they had removal they would kill any of my other creatures anyways. Even 1 attack without pump equals the life loss.
I just think these WW decks are way too slow, at least the ones I've been seeing. Control decks are always hard for aggro strategies. Easy for them to single out your pump spells. I play 3 skirge and 3 hunger. I go for 4 groundwell.
I played with Basking Rootwalla and Wild Mongrel in the past but I think they are slow. Though i'd go back to the rootwalla.
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I just want people who redraft to admit this:
"I can't draft objectively unless I am able to guarantee that I receive at least 3 rares. I am also better than most average/new players so I want to make sure that I get the best rares and they end up with worse ones. I care more about the monetary value of cards than actually playing the game for decent prizes."
Skirge has evasion. which means something on turn one. They have removal and blockers for all your creatures so that is irrelevant too. Turns I land a turn 1 Skirge (which at the very least can just block a flipped delver) I usually win. Few decks have a turn 1 flyer to block me, and if they had removal they would kill any of my other creatures anyways. Even 1 attack without pump equals the life loss.
I just think these WW decks are way too slow, at least the ones I've been seeing. Control decks are always hard for aggro strategies. Easy for them to single out your pump spells. I play 3 skirge and 3 hunger. I go for 4 groundwell.
I played with Basking Rootwalla and Wild Mongrel in the past but I think they are slow. Though i'd go back to the rootwalla.
Which creature from the standard Stompy build would you play Skirge over?
safehold elite he's slow, apparently the only reason he's in the deck is to fight the mythical Guardian of the Guildpact which if the deck is rolling over to a 4 cost 2/3 then I think you have to be playing the deck wrong.
I figure you want to maximize the amount of turn 2 8-9 damage you can do, the best way to do that is with a Skirge. The lifegain is always meaningless (same with the phyrexian life loss). But giving the deck a way to not only block flyers but not get chumped by a stupid ground guy is good IMO.
In the scenerio above. If you were so worried about a guardian of the guildpact, then I wouldn't mind playing the hexproof 1/1 or something else. But Wild Mongrel seems only good if you can get value out of him with Basking Rootwalla (not saying that isn't a good way to go.. I liked that too) But then I think you cut the hungers for the rootwallas and go with Mongrel instead of skirge/safehold.
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I just want people who redraft to admit this:
"I can't draft objectively unless I am able to guarantee that I receive at least 3 rares. I am also better than most average/new players so I want to make sure that I get the best rares and they end up with worse ones. I care more about the monetary value of cards than actually playing the game for decent prizes."
Maximize Turn 2 damage for 8-9? Maybe against storm, but not against any other deck.
Safehold Elite was brought into the deck because of the synergy that it has with Hunger of the Howlpack basically allowing it to reset. The ability to defend Guildpacts are a side benefit but the real benefit was against removal heavy matchups, particulary UR/UB post, where they will try to 1:1 you until you run out of gas and they just keep drawing cards. Cards like Safehold Elite and Young Wolf help to guard against this and make the deck more resilient against people who are just siding in a bunch of removal to deal with you.
At this point in a more diverse meta I think Wild Mongrel is a better option even without Basking Rootwalla and justifies playing the 17 lands over playing Land Grant. It gives you something to do with the extra lands, translates them into damage and you can later use Q.Ranger to keep feeding it to get there.
Listen to jsiri guys, he's been playing the deck longer than probably anyone else here and what he says makes a lot of sense. I'm glad he's posting here
Maximize Turn 2 damage for 8-9? Maybe against storm, but not against any other deck.
Safehold Elite was brought into the deck because of the synergy that it has with Hunger of the Howlpack basically allowing it to reset. The ability to defend Guildpacts are a side benefit but the real benefit was against removal heavy matchups, particulary UR/UB post, where they will try to 1:1 you until you run out of gas and they just keep drawing cards. Cards like Safehold Elite and Young Wolf help to guard against this and make the deck more resilient against people who are just siding in a bunch of removal to deal with you.
At this point in a more diverse meta I think Wild Mongrel is a better option even without Basking Rootwalla and justifies playing the 17 lands over playing Land Grant. It gives you something to do with the extra lands, translates them into damage and you can later use Q.Ranger to keep feeding it to get there.
Ok, well that makes a little bit more sense then the token "it's there to fight guildpact guy".
Maybe it is my philosophy of the deck that I'm thinking this way. I play it like a burn deck where I just try to throw up a "high score" as soon and as quickly as possible. Maybe I'm looking at it wrong? I agree that land grant is terrible. Although, I'm not sure I want to eat lands with the mongrel (seems like I have way too many hands where I get stuck on the bare minimum 2 lands and sometimes have to use Q ranger as a mana elf). I may take out Shinen since it appears that card has gone to the wayside of late. to add the safehold elite. I'm still not really that impressed with Hunger of the wolf pack yet. Only really got it to go off maybe once or twice. But then again, I'm not turning on Safeholds with it yet.
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I just want people who redraft to admit this:
"I can't draft objectively unless I am able to guarantee that I receive at least 3 rares. I am also better than most average/new players so I want to make sure that I get the best rares and they end up with worse ones. I care more about the monetary value of cards than actually playing the game for decent prizes."
Shinen absolutely belongs maindeck. The 1/2 might seem underwhelming in the post matchups but in any other matchup where they actually play creatuers, Shinen can totally change your position w/ one swing + pump. Against MUC and Infect, Shinen is as good as having removal in your hand. It is also an out to things g1 that give Stompy trouble such as Standard Bearer, Suture Priest, DOTV and Sparksmith. Having Shinen in the mirror also makes you the favorite as well and a couple of turns swinging with it means you win. And don't underestimate the ability of Shinen to allow you to alpha strike through a clogged board.
You wouldn't sideout Mongrel in any matchup. The card is an absolute damage machine and presents the opponent with a totally different set of decisions on how to deal with it effectively. Stompy is based around being efficient in dealing damage while presenting your opponent with creatures and options that are difficult to deal with. Mongrel lets you utilize dead cards, can swing for a huge amount of damage and usually takes multiple removal spells/creatures to get rid of. Right now, this all stuff I want in the deck, even though Safehold might be cute.
You bring in Hornet Sting for these matchups: WW, MUC, Infect, Mirror (depends), Temporal Storm. Looking at these matchups they have a lot of annoying X/1s that by dealing with it makes the matchup a lot easier. For example as you pointed out hitting Delver is big in the MUC matchup is good but also good is hitting Spellstutter Sprites to let something resolve. WW you really want it to deal with stuff like Standard Bearer or Suture Priest. Infect is usually playing only 2-3 Cystbearer/Rot Wolf which means that Hornet Sting deals with the rest of the deck and at the very worst causes them to use one of their pump spells to save their guy which is just as good as lifegain for you.
I can count the number of times in more than a year that I have used Hornet Sting to actually kill someone with direct damage in a DE: 2. Once against Temporal Storm and once in a marathon match with PaulDenton and MUC where I probably didn't sideboard correctly.
The reason for the high numbers comes down to the fact that there are matchups where you want to see it early given the threats you deal with. For example, say if I only had 2, that means I am saying "I only want to see Hornet Sting at some point during the mid-late game." This is useless against Delver where I want it in my opener almost always to hit Delver/Spellstutter early or against WW where I want to kill a T2 standard bearer. By having 4 that tells you "There are matchups where I absolutely want this in my opener or very very early on in the game." Without as much Standard Bearer in the metagame I could see possibly cutting it to 3 but I've been keeping to 4 just because having it takes these 50-55% matchups (WW, Delver, Infect, 3 of the most popular decks) and tilts them in your favor.
Hopefully that explains the logic of Hornet Sting.
I will point out that there's lots of discussion about hornet sting in the op jsiri, you mention bringing it in vs pauldenton, in my muc discussion I recommend bringing it in vs faerie delver (where it has many useful targets, including a resolving spellstutter) but not the Denton-style control version where it only hits delver in a deck which is less likely to out tempo you. Would you agree? I would still bring in scattershot/hidden spider for spire golem etc but don't see hornet sting getting that much value in that mu.
And key fan, wild mongrel and safehold are certainly substitutes. 3 mongrel is plenty. If you want to see any of his winning lists go to decks.mtgoacademy.com and search by his name.
Yes, I said in a post earlier in the thread that getting the right mix of2 drops is probably the hardest choice wit deck building for stompy. Each choice has pros and cons. Companion is better than the other options vs fairies (no late game chump blocking), storm (natural aggression, harder to chump with tokens if no bushwhacker) and has some advantages but also disadvantages in other creature matchups.
Btw I'm going to add some more details about interacting with storm to the op soon. With some more experience, my advice that the match is a pure race and ledgewalker should be sided out is wrong.
The Storm matchup (UBR/UR) have long been a weakness for Stompy. Yet I've been winning the matchup enough that I feel it is by no means unwinnable like people say. However I would definitely not be saying that we are favored. Even matches they do win it often goes to 3 games. Here's what I can say about the matchup:
1) Winning the die roll, this is pretty big even if it means just getting in an extra attack phase.
2) Opening hands have to contain: a 1 drop creature of some sort and at least 2 pump spells. The line of play you're really looking for here is to drop Pit-Skulk on T2 which is one of the few ways you can win through a non-bushwhacker ETW.
3) Leaving Fog/Sandstorm mana open. This is not always going to work but it might buy you time making the opponent think about going all in and trying to craft the perfect hand w/ Dispel backup before they go off. This leads me to my next point of..
4) Knowing how long you really have. Believe or not Storm does not always have the perfect nut opener hand. Knowing how long you have is important because it lets you know how many attack phases you have left or whether or not you can tapout rather than leaving Fog/Sandstorm mana open. Common signs of an opponent needing another turn: leading with a blue mana source rather than red, not liking the cards they see with Ponder/Preordain, missing a land drop
5) You can't sit back and hope your sb tech of Fog/Sandstorm/Nourish is going to just win you the game. You need to establish a clock and be the problem. The goal is really to get them under 10 life as quickly as possible. Having less than 10 life is important because it requires them to have the kill on the spot when they go off. When they go off they will usually burn at least 4 life (multiple gitaxian probes and/or sign in blood). If they don't have the kill on the spot, that leaves you with multiple outs to win the game after you untap if you have Pit-Skulk and/or Ledgewalker in play (groundswell, vines, additional rancor).
6) Young Wolf is better than you think in this matchup, especially against Grixis storm. It has come up a few times where I apply pressure with early creatures and they're forced to Grapeshot the board to try and buy more time. This used to be a problem because they can just reload while you're praying for a top deck to get back on the board. Young Wolf takes care of this and if they're silly enough to Grapeshot him he comes back as a 2/2.
7) If you're looking at stuff to side out, you do not want Hungers in this matchup. They're almost useless. Make sure you have the full set of Vines/Groundswell post sideboard. Even gather courage isn't bad since it can be free damage but it is not ideal. I wouldn't sideout creatures for sb stuff because nothing can be worse than having an opener with no creatures. At most I can see siding out some number of Silhana's since they're only marginally good here.
My current SB plan:
+3 Fog
+1 Vines of Vastwood
+1 Rogue Elephant
-3 Hunger of Howlpack
-1 Gather Courage
-1 Silhana
If you want to work in an additional 2 sandstorms, I can see cutting another Silhana and a Gather Courage.
Thermokarst is an option that you could use in the SB, but this requires 4x and is far better on the play than on the draw. A lot of good stompy players such as deluxeicoff and Veon used to go with this strategy but it has other applications in the Temporal Storm matchup. Like I said before I would not go this route, but it is an option if you really want to up the storm hate.
Another option is to use Giant Baiting but I'm not sure this is great since it requires 3 mana and 2 creatures in play already to really do anything. I could be wrong though, this is the only option I haven't tried out personally.
Ok added an extended writeup. Obviously Jsir's advice is very good as well, I particularly like his advice on how to spot when a storm deck is stalling. However, he is incorrect about young wolf. Unlike loyal cathar, which will always come back after a grapeshot, the storm player can kill both halves of an undying/persist creature by retargeting subsequent copies of the storm to the returned creature. The stack goes like this:
Play grapeshot, X copies go onto the stack (untargeted) based on storm count. Each of these copies is a separate copy of grapeshot and can be retargeted.
Storm player targets young wolf with the copy on the top of the stack.
Young wolf dies and undying is put on top of the stack. It resolves, 2/2 young wolf is on the table.
Storm player targets the 2/2 with the next two copies of grapeshot on the stack.
I know this from personal experience! This is why I say ledgwealker is actually quite important because (a) she has evasion to get through a mass of tokens and (b) she's the only card which can survive a grapeshot, outside of vines of course.
Also can someone confirm that the storm copies of grapeshot can't be retargeted at instant speed in response to a vines (as I say in the op)? I believe that it is the case, so you can use VoV in response to the first targeting of your creature and have it be effective, but I could be wrong. If I am wrong, then to save your creature you need to use VoV before they go off, which can be a little riskier (because you don't even know that they're using grapeshot, not ETW, at that stage so you might have been better off saving the VoV to do lethal damage the following turn).
Actually Grapeshot requires them to declare all the targets when the storm effect kicks in as they cast the spell. So Young Wolf does come back as a 2/2 which they cannot target.
Yes, but they are allowed to retarget the subsequent copies. It's why standard bearer can't stop a lethal grapeshot (see cdavis' latest event on channelfireball for a live demonstration of this!) and as I said, I personally had a board containing both young wolf and safehold elite wiped by a single grapeshot in an event recently (to my surprise at the time). The initial targeting does not bind them unfortunately, even though the gfx on mtgo is confusing by stacking all the copies up behind the initial targets. Having never played storm myself I can't say exactly how it works on the mtgo interface, it'd be good to have someone who does play storm chime in (it could be confusing which might be why not all storm players do it right if you've seen otherwise jsiri). But I've definitely seen the effects work in this way.
Here is my decklist from the 9/13 mid-morning Pauper DE where I went 4-0, beating Stompy (2-0), Blue Post (2-1), WW (2-1) and Goblins (2-0). There are some changes to the list to make it more aggressive. I've added Rootwalla back into the list because A) it is another 1 drop B) synergy with Wild Mongrel C) good mana sink mid-late game D) better top-deck in the mid-late game than a lot of other creatures. Older lists used to play the maximum 4x of these but this was before Young Wolf. Honestly I would prefer not to see Rootwalla in my opening hand because it is not so great on T1, but it is at least better than having to play a T1 Skarrgan Pit-Skulk. Rootwalla is at its best when Mongrel is out or you draw it with 3 mana up. That's why I'm playing only 3 and I believe this is the correct number.
To make room for Rootwalla, I dropped a Q.Ranger, Silhana and Shinen. As a result of this my curve is even lower which is partially why Ranger might be expendable. Older lists play 3 and I do not really want multiple rangers unless there's a longbow in play. As some people have pointed out Shinen is at its best against other aggro decks. This used to be pretty much 85% of the meta a couple of years ago but right now that just is not the case with post and storm variants being popular. Moving 1 to the sideboard seems fine here, since there are matchups where you want it. I'm pretty much leaving one in the maindeck as an out to random stuff like Sparksmith and Standard Bearer g1 if people are still doing that. Cutting Silhana is acknowledging that the format is full of flyers at this point and the evasion ability is not as good as it was before. However, the card is still far from bad and a lot more would have to change before I cut it. There's still matchups where it is going to just win you the game.
With fewer 2 drops this makes the list more consistent. People keep arguing about 2 drops but what Stompy is really about is having as many 1 drops as possible. With this change you also have slightly better creature quality in the mid-late game since Rootwalla is as good as a 3/3. Downside is you're losing a Shinen and Silhana which are capable of taking over some games. At the same time I've had too many games where these are underwhelming and need too much help to make work.
What I'm liking about the latest changes to my list is that it is becoming more efficient. After 2 lands, Stompy used to have about 15 dead draws (every other forest in the deck). Now you can translate these into points of damage with Mongrel or Rootwalla which cannot be underestimated.
Let me know your thoughts or suggestions on this latest version.
Interesting list Jsir, I'd certainly have given it a test by now except my computer has been on the blink for the past few weeks (why can't they make mtgo for ipad already?!). My biggest question though is that it seems very teched to win the type of long, grinding game that this deck both doesn't see all that often but also is generally going to lose. Rootwala is going to be a 1/1 for 1 unless you're in topdeck mode with nothing else to play. Mongrel (outside of strands, which is great) is again, only good if you're in topdeck mode and flooding. I tend to find though that once I'm in those situations, it's either against decks that are just going to beat us in the late game (MBC, WW post-board, UB teachings/rats, MUC or even post if they've managed to stabilise) or else I'm about to win anyway. Idk, it seems a bit like you've solved a problem that we're unlikely to have very often, except in the mirror where your list obviously looks very strong. The changes also don't seem to do much if anything to help us out with our worse matchups (infect, storm).
Also on a completely different topic, as far as I can tell there isn't a single card in RtR which is even worth thinking about for the deck which is a shame.
I would argue that infect is not our worst match up, I have fairly positive experience vs it outside of random t2 godhand kills.
On another topic I think vines is best pump/utility spell in the deck and I can not imagine playing less then 4. Do not forget you can cast it on opponent creature to counter his pump or rancor (extremely relevant vs infect in particular). It had won me so many games... I'd rather drop 4th copy of groundswell as it is way to often just a weaker giant growth.
I'll take a lot of convincing to believe that infect is anything other than one of our worst matchups, I've had too many impossible losses against it. Yes, it's beatable, and yes vines on their guy is good (until they kick their vines in response), but it's fundamentally a bad matchup for us. They have too many cards which we just can't answer. Blight mamba is impossible to remove. Rancor, ichorclid myr, invigorate are all huge beatings and the fact that infect counters stick after combat means we can't outlast their creatures. They play more pumps than us, they only need to do 10 damage and they have the ability to be way faster than us, which puts us on the defensive which is a role we're poorly suited for. Plus, they side in fog so even our preferred strategy of "suvive long enough to alpha ftw" is risky. The only card we have that is really good against them is viridian longbow, and it's (a) difficult to find enough sideboard slots to be able to draw it reliably and (b) it's really slow.
I know I have played insufficient amount of matches to make any strong statements on match ups, so it is just my limited personal experience. I feel storm to be the worst MU (because of it being almost fully decided by opponents draw/play and next to no interaction). Infect is poor MU obviously, but for me not the worst. At least unlike storm, there is interaction and your play matters.
I also currently have issues vs Affinity, but it seems to become better with practice.
Per the current rules (I believe this was a change at some point), you actually remove the +1 and -1 tokens when they cancel each other. It works, I promise
Hello all, first time posting, but been a lurker for awhile...(new to MTGO in the last few weeks though). I have a few questions about the primer. I've been under the assumption that the matchups on the first page of this thread were close to being correct for stompy. It has been frustrating for me to go up against Affinity and lose almost every time when I thought it was a good matchup. I was able to chat with jsirir in last night's pauper daily and he indicated that Affinity is a bad matchup for us.
I was hoping to get a better list of what we're good against and what poses the most problems for our decks so I can tweak the sideboard to not worry about the bad matchups as much. I now believe Affinity and Storm are stompy's worst matchups and may remove sideboard cards that improve these matchups altogether to shore up my win % vs the other decks. URPost and MUC are nail biter games for me, I end up losing to WW and Infect more often than win too. I've so far played in 6 pauper daillies and have placed in only 2 of them.
Based on my experience, here's been my matchup analysis for Stompy so far (I'm such a noob)...
Heagyth asked me last night about the Affinity matchup and I assumed he was referring to this thread as his source of information. Let me share a bit about my thoughts on the key matchups.
Post Matchups: Favorable - Very Favorable. UR is the most difficult since they can load up on spot removal and sweepers. Mono U seems to only have any game plan if they're on the play and can set up early but they have issues if you have multiple one drops. UB is the easiest since as jeffdmk put it "you get to choose what they kill" thanks to the sacrifice effects being nullified by Young Wolf and Safehold Elite.
Delver: Very Favorable. Game 1 they're just aiming for the quick Delver flip, nut faerie draw to race you while Game 2 and 3 you have several tools (Hornet Sting, Viridian Longbow, Primal Huntbeast, Scattershot Archer) that can really mess them up.
WW: Favorable. As mentioned above Prismatic Strands is an issue if you're racing. The other issue is Standard Bearer but that seems to no longer be an issue. I'll comment here that the new WW build with fewer lands and War Falcons can be labeled as a "Very Favorable" matchup since post board they die so hard to your removal package. You almost end up being the control deck in that matchup.
Goblins: 55/45 either way. This depends on the build. The burn oriented build I believe is actually in our favor since you limit their numbers and have the game winners Silhana/PitSkulk that you can setup to be unanswerable fast clocks. The control oriented Matron build is much more difficult since they pack more sweepers and Death Sparks. The upside here is there is a total of exactly 3 good Goblins players online and many ppl will play very poorly with this deck.
Infect: Favorable. This would be very favorable if it wasn't for the potential of T2-T3 kills. You can race them G1 especially with Nettle Sentinel and Quirion Ranger quarterbacking your defense. Post sideboard you have a lot of tools and end up becoming the control deck of the matchup. Longbow + Ranger ends up sealing the game.
MBC: Favorable - Unfavorable. This matchup is the most schizo depending on the MBC player, build and what your draw is. Sometimes they're slow and don't do anything. Other times they have every removal spell and recurring Crypt Rats where you just get locked out.
Grapeshot/ETW Storm: Extremely Unfavorable. You race or you die. End of story. I have managed to beat this in DEs a couple of times and usually it goes to 3 games. Just try to get them under 10 life ASAP and hope for the best. SB options are only valid against the ETW dependent builds.
Fissure Storm: Favorable. They take about 2 hours to win. Good thing they only have 30 minutes. Timeouts are not uncommon. Shinen and Vines are MVP G1. Post sideboard you have so many tools like Sting, Longbow, Scattershot to mess them up and even soft lock them in the right position. Put it this way: one match I got double fissured, triple snapped and Temporal Fissure still lost g2 by a mile.
Affinity: Unfavorable. They lay down so much power on the table, quickly and cheaply. They've also been packing more sweepers as of late which is a problem. Gleeful Sabotage is a plan but I believe its only worth while if you side in 3 or 4 of them because you need it early and often. Often times its better to forget trying to land screw them and just hope to hit 2 creatures. Fog helps somewhat to win races but you're relying very heavily on Pit-Skulk, Silhana and Hunger. You can grind them out a bit better now with Young Wolf/Safehold Elite but it is still rough. Be careful not to overextend.
UB Rats: Favorable. This deck is mediocre at everything. They'd really need things to line up to get to you.
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Also I think 4x hunger is a response to the hurge surge in ur post recently. It's literally a win con in that matchup and leaving up a mana to punish their removal is a good idea.
As far as the Storm matchup goes there really are 2 variations. The UR storm matchup is centered around going off with ETW + Bushwhacker rather than the grapeshot kill which I do not think it can realistically support. Its faster but Stompy has the silverbullet cards in the sideboard to deal with it if really necessary. For the record, people play Spore Frog but I think Fog is still superior overall because you have limited number of slots and it pulls double duty in the Infect, Goblins and Affinity matchups. UR players in general will try to press the issue and against a green deck they will not bother trying to go off w/ dispel backup.
The Grixis storm version that grapplingfarang plays does have the card draw and cantrips to support the Grapeshot kill. I do not think lifegain really is an option here because they also have ETW and you need to be laying down threats to provide some sort of clock. Lifegain like Nourish, Lifestaff seem more like "don't lose" rather than trying to win. If they know what's up (thanks Gitaxian Probe) they'll sit back and sculpt the hand for double grapeshot and your lifegain doesn't matter. The best bet here is really to just try to get their life as low as possible to prevent them from using Sign in Blood and free Gitaxian Probes. The ideal situation is having 3 2/2's by the end of T2. If you look at my latest list I have been packing a single Rogue Elephant in the sideboard just for this matchup and the mirror to help give an even better clock.
The other anti-storm option (both Familiar and Grapeshot build) is start packing 4x Thermokarst in the sideboard like its 2010/early 2011. Even hosing one of their lands can slow them down enough to get you the win. Honestly the meta is going to need to have a lot more storm builds before I even consider going back to this option.
As far as Hunger, you can't justify wasting the extra slot in the maindeck for a matchup which you already should be winning easily. I could see packing the 4th hunger in the sideboard for removal heavy matchups but at that point I would prefer the 4th vines since it is better at other things. A lot of this comes down to whether you want the 25th creature or the additional pump spell. I believe Stompy is more about threat density where I would prefer the creature over the pump spell. Older builds used to run 26 and at 24 I already start to have doubts.
Skirge has evasion. which means something on turn one. They have removal and blockers for all your creatures so that is irrelevant too. Turns I land a turn 1 Skirge (which at the very least can just block a flipped delver) I usually win. Few decks have a turn 1 flyer to block me, and if they had removal they would kill any of my other creatures anyways. Even 1 attack without pump equals the life loss.
I just think these WW decks are way too slow, at least the ones I've been seeing. Control decks are always hard for aggro strategies. Easy for them to single out your pump spells. I play 3 skirge and 3 hunger. I go for 4 groundwell.
I played with Basking Rootwalla and Wild Mongrel in the past but I think they are slow. Though i'd go back to the rootwalla.
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Which creature from the standard Stompy build would you play Skirge over?
I figure you want to maximize the amount of turn 2 8-9 damage you can do, the best way to do that is with a Skirge. The lifegain is always meaningless (same with the phyrexian life loss). But giving the deck a way to not only block flyers but not get chumped by a stupid ground guy is good IMO.
In the scenerio above. If you were so worried about a guardian of the guildpact, then I wouldn't mind playing the hexproof 1/1 or something else. But Wild Mongrel seems only good if you can get value out of him with Basking Rootwalla (not saying that isn't a good way to go.. I liked that too) But then I think you cut the hungers for the rootwallas and go with Mongrel instead of skirge/safehold.
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Safehold Elite was brought into the deck because of the synergy that it has with Hunger of the Howlpack basically allowing it to reset. The ability to defend Guildpacts are a side benefit but the real benefit was against removal heavy matchups, particulary UR/UB post, where they will try to 1:1 you until you run out of gas and they just keep drawing cards. Cards like Safehold Elite and Young Wolf help to guard against this and make the deck more resilient against people who are just siding in a bunch of removal to deal with you.
At this point in a more diverse meta I think Wild Mongrel is a better option even without Basking Rootwalla and justifies playing the 17 lands over playing Land Grant. It gives you something to do with the extra lands, translates them into damage and you can later use Q.Ranger to keep feeding it to get there.
Ok, well that makes a little bit more sense then the token "it's there to fight guildpact guy".
Maybe it is my philosophy of the deck that I'm thinking this way. I play it like a burn deck where I just try to throw up a "high score" as soon and as quickly as possible. Maybe I'm looking at it wrong? I agree that land grant is terrible. Although, I'm not sure I want to eat lands with the mongrel (seems like I have way too many hands where I get stuck on the bare minimum 2 lands and sometimes have to use Q ranger as a mana elf). I may take out Shinen since it appears that card has gone to the wayside of late. to add the safehold elite. I'm still not really that impressed with Hunger of the wolf pack yet. Only really got it to go off maybe once or twice. But then again, I'm not turning on Safeholds with it yet.
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You wouldn't sideout Mongrel in any matchup. The card is an absolute damage machine and presents the opponent with a totally different set of decisions on how to deal with it effectively. Stompy is based around being efficient in dealing damage while presenting your opponent with creatures and options that are difficult to deal with. Mongrel lets you utilize dead cards, can swing for a huge amount of damage and usually takes multiple removal spells/creatures to get rid of. Right now, this all stuff I want in the deck, even though Safehold might be cute.
I can count the number of times in more than a year that I have used Hornet Sting to actually kill someone with direct damage in a DE: 2. Once against Temporal Storm and once in a marathon match with PaulDenton and MUC where I probably didn't sideboard correctly.
The reason for the high numbers comes down to the fact that there are matchups where you want to see it early given the threats you deal with. For example, say if I only had 2, that means I am saying "I only want to see Hornet Sting at some point during the mid-late game." This is useless against Delver where I want it in my opener almost always to hit Delver/Spellstutter early or against WW where I want to kill a T2 standard bearer. By having 4 that tells you "There are matchups where I absolutely want this in my opener or very very early on in the game." Without as much Standard Bearer in the metagame I could see possibly cutting it to 3 but I've been keeping to 4 just because having it takes these 50-55% matchups (WW, Delver, Infect, 3 of the most popular decks) and tilts them in your favor.
Hopefully that explains the logic of Hornet Sting.
And key fan, wild mongrel and safehold are certainly substitutes. 3 mongrel is plenty. If you want to see any of his winning lists go to decks.mtgoacademy.com and search by his name.
Btw I'm going to add some more details about interacting with storm to the op soon. With some more experience, my advice that the match is a pure race and ledgewalker should be sided out is wrong.
1) Winning the die roll, this is pretty big even if it means just getting in an extra attack phase.
2) Opening hands have to contain: a 1 drop creature of some sort and at least 2 pump spells. The line of play you're really looking for here is to drop Pit-Skulk on T2 which is one of the few ways you can win through a non-bushwhacker ETW.
3) Leaving Fog/Sandstorm mana open. This is not always going to work but it might buy you time making the opponent think about going all in and trying to craft the perfect hand w/ Dispel backup before they go off. This leads me to my next point of..
4) Knowing how long you really have. Believe or not Storm does not always have the perfect nut opener hand. Knowing how long you have is important because it lets you know how many attack phases you have left or whether or not you can tapout rather than leaving Fog/Sandstorm mana open. Common signs of an opponent needing another turn: leading with a blue mana source rather than red, not liking the cards they see with Ponder/Preordain, missing a land drop
5) You can't sit back and hope your sb tech of Fog/Sandstorm/Nourish is going to just win you the game. You need to establish a clock and be the problem. The goal is really to get them under 10 life as quickly as possible. Having less than 10 life is important because it requires them to have the kill on the spot when they go off. When they go off they will usually burn at least 4 life (multiple gitaxian probes and/or sign in blood). If they don't have the kill on the spot, that leaves you with multiple outs to win the game after you untap if you have Pit-Skulk and/or Ledgewalker in play (groundswell, vines, additional rancor).
6) Young Wolf is better than you think in this matchup, especially against Grixis storm. It has come up a few times where I apply pressure with early creatures and they're forced to Grapeshot the board to try and buy more time. This used to be a problem because they can just reload while you're praying for a top deck to get back on the board. Young Wolf takes care of this and if they're silly enough to Grapeshot him he comes back as a 2/2.
7) If you're looking at stuff to side out, you do not want Hungers in this matchup. They're almost useless. Make sure you have the full set of Vines/Groundswell post sideboard. Even gather courage isn't bad since it can be free damage but it is not ideal. I wouldn't sideout creatures for sb stuff because nothing can be worse than having an opener with no creatures. At most I can see siding out some number of Silhana's since they're only marginally good here.
My current SB plan:
+3 Fog
+1 Vines of Vastwood
+1 Rogue Elephant
-3 Hunger of Howlpack
-1 Gather Courage
-1 Silhana
If you want to work in an additional 2 sandstorms, I can see cutting another Silhana and a Gather Courage.
Thermokarst is an option that you could use in the SB, but this requires 4x and is far better on the play than on the draw. A lot of good stompy players such as deluxeicoff and Veon used to go with this strategy but it has other applications in the Temporal Storm matchup. Like I said before I would not go this route, but it is an option if you really want to up the storm hate.
Another option is to use Giant Baiting but I'm not sure this is great since it requires 3 mana and 2 creatures in play already to really do anything. I could be wrong though, this is the only option I haven't tried out personally.
Play grapeshot, X copies go onto the stack (untargeted) based on storm count. Each of these copies is a separate copy of grapeshot and can be retargeted.
Storm player targets young wolf with the copy on the top of the stack.
Young wolf dies and undying is put on top of the stack. It resolves, 2/2 young wolf is on the table.
Storm player targets the 2/2 with the next two copies of grapeshot on the stack.
I know this from personal experience! This is why I say ledgwealker is actually quite important because (a) she has evasion to get through a mass of tokens and (b) she's the only card which can survive a grapeshot, outside of vines of course.
Also can someone confirm that the storm copies of grapeshot can't be retargeted at instant speed in response to a vines (as I say in the op)? I believe that it is the case, so you can use VoV in response to the first targeting of your creature and have it be effective, but I could be wrong. If I am wrong, then to save your creature you need to use VoV before they go off, which can be a little riskier (because you don't even know that they're using grapeshot, not ETW, at that stage so you might have been better off saving the VoV to do lethal damage the following turn).
4 Skarrgan Pit-Skulk
4 Young Wolf
3 Wild Mongrel
3 Quirion Ranger
3 Basking Rootwalla
3 Silhana Ledgewalker
1 Shinen of Life's Roar
4 Groundswell
4 Gather Courage
3 Vines of Vastwood
3 Hunger of the Howlpack
17 Forest
4 Hornet Sting
3 Scattershot Archer
2 Fog
2 Viridian Longbow
2 Gleeful Sabotage
1 Shinen of Life's Roar
1 Vines of Vastwood
Here is my decklist from the 9/13 mid-morning Pauper DE where I went 4-0, beating Stompy (2-0), Blue Post (2-1), WW (2-1) and Goblins (2-0). There are some changes to the list to make it more aggressive. I've added Rootwalla back into the list because A) it is another 1 drop B) synergy with Wild Mongrel C) good mana sink mid-late game D) better top-deck in the mid-late game than a lot of other creatures. Older lists used to play the maximum 4x of these but this was before Young Wolf. Honestly I would prefer not to see Rootwalla in my opening hand because it is not so great on T1, but it is at least better than having to play a T1 Skarrgan Pit-Skulk. Rootwalla is at its best when Mongrel is out or you draw it with 3 mana up. That's why I'm playing only 3 and I believe this is the correct number.
To make room for Rootwalla, I dropped a Q.Ranger, Silhana and Shinen. As a result of this my curve is even lower which is partially why Ranger might be expendable. Older lists play 3 and I do not really want multiple rangers unless there's a longbow in play. As some people have pointed out Shinen is at its best against other aggro decks. This used to be pretty much 85% of the meta a couple of years ago but right now that just is not the case with post and storm variants being popular. Moving 1 to the sideboard seems fine here, since there are matchups where you want it. I'm pretty much leaving one in the maindeck as an out to random stuff like Sparksmith and Standard Bearer g1 if people are still doing that. Cutting Silhana is acknowledging that the format is full of flyers at this point and the evasion ability is not as good as it was before. However, the card is still far from bad and a lot more would have to change before I cut it. There's still matchups where it is going to just win you the game.
With fewer 2 drops this makes the list more consistent. People keep arguing about 2 drops but what Stompy is really about is having as many 1 drops as possible. With this change you also have slightly better creature quality in the mid-late game since Rootwalla is as good as a 3/3. Downside is you're losing a Shinen and Silhana which are capable of taking over some games. At the same time I've had too many games where these are underwhelming and need too much help to make work.
What I'm liking about the latest changes to my list is that it is becoming more efficient. After 2 lands, Stompy used to have about 15 dead draws (every other forest in the deck). Now you can translate these into points of damage with Mongrel or Rootwalla which cannot be underestimated.
Let me know your thoughts or suggestions on this latest version.
Also on a completely different topic, as far as I can tell there isn't a single card in RtR which is even worth thinking about for the deck which is a shame.
On another topic I think vines is best pump/utility spell in the deck and I can not imagine playing less then 4. Do not forget you can cast it on opponent creature to counter his pump or rancor (extremely relevant vs infect in particular). It had won me so many games... I'd rather drop 4th copy of groundswell as it is way to often just a weaker giant growth.
I also currently have issues vs Affinity, but it seems to become better with practice.
I was hoping to get a better list of what we're good against and what poses the most problems for our decks so I can tweak the sideboard to not worry about the bad matchups as much. I now believe Affinity and Storm are stompy's worst matchups and may remove sideboard cards that improve these matchups altogether to shore up my win % vs the other decks. URPost and MUC are nail biter games for me, I end up losing to WW and Infect more often than win too. I've so far played in 6 pauper daillies and have placed in only 2 of them.
Based on my experience, here's been my matchup analysis for Stompy so far (I'm such a noob)...
Good: none
Average: MUC, Post, Goblins, WW, mirror
Bad: Infect, MBC, Affinity, Storm
How are folks seeing the matchups compared to the primer? Thanks for any info!
Post Matchups: Favorable - Very Favorable. UR is the most difficult since they can load up on spot removal and sweepers. Mono U seems to only have any game plan if they're on the play and can set up early but they have issues if you have multiple one drops. UB is the easiest since as jeffdmk put it "you get to choose what they kill" thanks to the sacrifice effects being nullified by Young Wolf and Safehold Elite.
Delver: Very Favorable. Game 1 they're just aiming for the quick Delver flip, nut faerie draw to race you while Game 2 and 3 you have several tools (Hornet Sting, Viridian Longbow, Primal Huntbeast, Scattershot Archer) that can really mess them up.
WW: Favorable. As mentioned above Prismatic Strands is an issue if you're racing. The other issue is Standard Bearer but that seems to no longer be an issue. I'll comment here that the new WW build with fewer lands and War Falcons can be labeled as a "Very Favorable" matchup since post board they die so hard to your removal package. You almost end up being the control deck in that matchup.
Goblins: 55/45 either way. This depends on the build. The burn oriented build I believe is actually in our favor since you limit their numbers and have the game winners Silhana/PitSkulk that you can setup to be unanswerable fast clocks. The control oriented Matron build is much more difficult since they pack more sweepers and Death Sparks. The upside here is there is a total of exactly 3 good Goblins players online and many ppl will play very poorly with this deck.
Infect: Favorable. This would be very favorable if it wasn't for the potential of T2-T3 kills. You can race them G1 especially with Nettle Sentinel and Quirion Ranger quarterbacking your defense. Post sideboard you have a lot of tools and end up becoming the control deck of the matchup. Longbow + Ranger ends up sealing the game.
MBC: Favorable - Unfavorable. This matchup is the most schizo depending on the MBC player, build and what your draw is. Sometimes they're slow and don't do anything. Other times they have every removal spell and recurring Crypt Rats where you just get locked out.
Grapeshot/ETW Storm: Extremely Unfavorable. You race or you die. End of story. I have managed to beat this in DEs a couple of times and usually it goes to 3 games. Just try to get them under 10 life ASAP and hope for the best. SB options are only valid against the ETW dependent builds.
Fissure Storm: Favorable. They take about 2 hours to win. Good thing they only have 30 minutes. Timeouts are not uncommon. Shinen and Vines are MVP G1. Post sideboard you have so many tools like Sting, Longbow, Scattershot to mess them up and even soft lock them in the right position. Put it this way: one match I got double fissured, triple snapped and Temporal Fissure still lost g2 by a mile.
Affinity: Unfavorable. They lay down so much power on the table, quickly and cheaply. They've also been packing more sweepers as of late which is a problem. Gleeful Sabotage is a plan but I believe its only worth while if you side in 3 or 4 of them because you need it early and often. Often times its better to forget trying to land screw them and just hope to hit 2 creatures. Fog helps somewhat to win races but you're relying very heavily on Pit-Skulk, Silhana and Hunger. You can grind them out a bit better now with Young Wolf/Safehold Elite but it is still rough. Be careful not to overextend.
UB Rats: Favorable. This deck is mediocre at everything. They'd really need things to line up to get to you.