Doomsday as a game plan is powerful, but if its always the focus of your deck then you need to put Doomsday and a cantrip together, which usually means setup. Thats not always such a good choice in the current metagame because discard will rip you apart.
The plan is not to be aggro ramp, the plan is to play your hand quickly into a win condition, and if you get tripped up by too much disruption, hate, or permission, the biz-types and outs-options are numerous so you can more easily construct a situation where you can steal the game. If you want to have another out, Eternal Witness gives you +1 and then all the Pacts.
I'll break down the outs-options according to the current build:
- Infernal Tutor (1B and hellbent)
Often this is how you will produce your turn 1 kills, or turn 1 inevitabilitys. Otherwise, it often functions in the hand to produce another acceleration spell, usually a LED. Sometimes I also like to mini-Tendrils from a high life total (since we are not playing AdN), and then finish my opponent off later either by BW for Damnation for a board wipe, and then go for the throat with Wolfbriar, or BW into EtW. It really depends on the board state, how much life you gain, your opponent, are we in post-board or pre-board, etc. The 1'ofs facilitates this because Summoner's Pact allows you to double shuffle because cracking an Explorer means you shuffle. That means a Top allows you to see 9 cards to find a business spell, and with a lot of life from mini-Tendrils, you have more time to look through your deck for what you need.
IT --> Tendrils (the go to kill in busted hands, or the finisher)
Needs 3BBB mana, and 10 storm. Mini-tendrils is also an option.
IT --> IT
1B per. When you have a retarded amount of mana and not enough storm, this is what you do. You chain ITs together until you have enough storm to then grab Tendrils for the kill.
IT --> Wolfbriar (the deck's pseudo Empty the Warrens)
Needs 3BGG, and as many LEDs as you can get for the extra 2/2 dudes
IT --> Cruel Bargain
Needs 1BBBB. I'd play this in a clutch situation. Typically Bargain is used with Doomsday, but its also randomly awesome since Drit and CtW provide at least BBB.
IT --> Doomsday
Needs 1BBBB, and a cantrip + floating mana. Very much based on your hand, the board state, etc. The Doomsday piles for this deck are fairly simple. If you can't put them together yourself then there are plenty of articles on how to do it. I can post them if anyone is interested.
IT --> IU
Needs 1BUU. Its cheaper than Cruel Bargain for even clutchier situations, or ones in which you want to keep your life total. Other than that IU is mostly used in Doomsday piles or cast naturally in nuts hands for card advantage during your combo turn, or for set up so you can discard some Cabal Therapy's and then crack your Explorers.
IT --> BW ( --> Empty the Warrens)
Needs 2BR, and then 3R, so 5BRR. There are a retarded number of possible plays that could be made from BW. I suggest that playing a single BW means a microwishboard so we can actually play a relatively full-sized sideboard.
Doomsday (BBB and a cantrip)
Needs BBB and a cantrip. There are 16 potential cantripping options, SDT being the best because it stays in play and lets you abuse 18 shuffle effects (TES having 11, and ANT having 12-18 typically). Its worth noting that this deck has an even more powerful Brainstorm and Top than normal Doomsday which doesn't usually top 16 shuffle effects, and Summoner's Pact allows you to double shuffle if you also can crack the Explorer. Though the deck doesn't want to focus on Doomsday because it allows you to conserve the deck space by putting 5 of the cantrips within the Pact-package.
I'm not going to go over the Doomsday piles in depth because I frankly don't have the time. If you want to learn how to play one of the best business spells in magic, there's no auto-bacon button.. and if Ad Nauseam pisses you off because it feels too automatic, Doomsday will always give you that kind of rush you are looking for in storm combo because you actually have to think to get **** done. Anyone coming from a pre-Ad Nauseam background in storm combo knows this.
Moving on, the structure needed for Doomsday is valuable on its own. Cruel Bargain and Ideas Unbound are incredible at providing a dense enough hand to produce a kill when you don't quite have enough resources to go off. These can also be excellent early plays that give you the card advantage you need to beat a control player when you have extra business and not enough protection. This is one of the reasons I choose to include a Doomsday option rather than a Doomsday focus. IT is a safer focus because with the most powerful acceleration package in Legacy storm combo, it makes sense to have a powerful turn 1 play that isn't tied down to cantrips. Then the acceleration package is fully exploited, the business spells do not conflict quite as much, and your business spells are just as dangerous as your protection spells, which are often just 1 mana cheaper anyway. The mana base and VE's means that extra 1 mana isn't quite as important. If you step outside the traditional method of stapling together a storm combo deck, then you can see Cabal Therapy is there as an enabler of VE just as much as protection. Extra protection would almost be pointless, but BW is technically protection, and IT can double you up on Therapy's, which often means acquiring 4 protection spells and the mana base to slow play that strategy. Also, shuffling through the deck and sifting with Top means finding a Therapy means finding 2 protection spells. So what does this have to do with Doomsday.. Doomsday needs a specific deck structure. The one I'm talking about works because we aren't constantly trying to set up a Doomsday. Instead, I tend to go for Doomsday if it falls into my lap or if I think I can set it up. Otherwise, I've been mostly getting Wolfbriar kills and Tendrils kills. The thing is, even if Doomsday were the worst business spell in the deck based on its current structure, its still worth keeping in because the deck structure supports it really well. You don't want to take out Brainstorms and SDTs really because they are some of the most powerful cards in context of the shuffle effects. However, -1 Wild Dogs, -1 Cruel Bargain, -1 Ideas Unbound, -1 Doomsday, -1 Burning Wish.. gives you 5 slots (4 if you REALLY want to stay under 60 because you're neurotic). If you were to take out those cards though, you could focus on a Burning Wish game plan. I just tend to dislike getting 3 Burning Wishes in my opening hand vs. a Wild Dogs, Doomsday, Cruel Bargain hand. I can work with that because Wild Dogs could be my DD cantrip or my CtW target, while CB could set me ahead before Doomsday or draw me 4 cards, drop LED, and Probe into BW into Tendrils. So you see, sometimes redundancy can be limiting. Thats why I don't play TES. Its too streamlined for being efficiently aggressive, and that is Bryant (and crew's) niche.
Now the question is, with that fat acceleration package, doesn't this deck want to play Ad Nauseam in the maindeck? Actually I believe the answer is no based on how far I've gotten in testing.. the problem is the non-land IMS's need to be there so that you can get an initial black mana. Granted, you will usually have mana floating but you should expect to have to pay for Daze, x2 Pierce sometimes so you need those Chrome Moxen and Petals. Chrome Moxen is the worst card that Legacy storm combo currently has to play because its card disadvantage. It was the first card I dropped from this list. If I play with AdN, and if you are interested in crafting your own build with AdN, please try it first with just Lotus Petals and more ESGs with a Wild Cantor within the Pact-package. That worked for me but I switched to this build for reasons I've been describing.
Burning Wish (1R and mana)
Burning Wish is one of those cards I started with at 4, and then I tried a 3 BW, 3 DD config and didn't like it as much as this current one, though it worked, it just felt a little bit too slow and clunky in comparison. I'd recommend trying different builds with BW in particular, just remember to alter the mana base accordingly. You want Taiga through your fetchlands if you are playing to BW as a set up spell AND Veteran Explorer as a setup spell, and you'll want a Badlands for protection + redsource for other situations, and you'll need the basic mountain obviously. Tinderwall might also be applicable in the Pact-package.
I don't think Burning Wish ought to be more than 1'of, based on testing thus far. Why? It leads to Tendrils in certain DD piles, it allows you to get rid of hate in certain DD piles.. its that one out for situations that you didn't want to waste maindeck space on; however, only playing one means more space in the sideboard. Micro-wishboards have been a thing in Belcher for some time now (along with other Belcher SBtech thanks to yours truly). I don't know how micro the wishboard should be constructed for this particular version because that comes with testing.
One variation to Explore with BW is Bubbling Muck in the board, but with multiple maindeck Swamps. This means you can turn BW into acceleration, something that neither TES or ANT currently do because they don't play Veteran Explorer.
Tendrils of Agony (2BB and 10 spells)
Casting Tendrils naturally is much harder in other storm combo decks in which you don't get the benefit of a flashbacked Therapy or a creature from Summoner's Pact as extra storm. Other players who are testing this deck are playing Eternal Witness for the Tendrils --> Ewit --> Tendrils line of play. Because this deck does not play Ad Nauseam and has non-Tendrils outs, you can play mini-Tendrils in some cases as well, as mentioned earlier. I'm not as afraid of having this card in my opening hand as I was in other storm combo builds.
Ideas Unbound (UU)
Obviously this card is usually utilized in Doomsday piles. However, in set up it can put Therapy's in the grave and whatever else you'd rather filter out of your hand. Therapy's in the yard can be relevant if you don't have the right mana configuration, and this happens on occasion if you keep an iffy hand. If this were my only business spell, I'd probably mulligan.
Cruel Bargain (BBB and half your life)
Again, this card is for Doomsday piles but on its own, its fantastic as a business spell. Getting card advantage early is valuable, but a successful Bargain early on could lead directly to a kill based on the acceleration. And if it doesn't, it could just lead to powerful Cabal Therapy lines of play in which you decimate your opponents hand. I'd keep this hand if it were my only business spell, as long as you hold back on your Pacts and see what you draw first.
Summoner's Pact (0 mana) // Wolfbriar Elemental (2GG + green mana)
This card is normally not a business spell, but since adding Wolfbriar in, I kinda like having 1 slot = 5 business spells so I'm going to keep playing it. In no time at all I discovered just how strong this card is. It basically puts the same amount of power on the field that Empty the Warrens tends to (10 to 20 power), only its the go to line of play when you know you will have 2GG in your upkeep, usually the case if you can set things up correctly with your Explorers. If you recall, ANT is known for its 'inevitability' in comparison to TES's aggression. Grinding Station and Doomsday are known for their inevitability as well. This deck, however, fits inbetween those two states rather nicely thanks to Pact/Wolfbriar. You don't need storm for Wolfbriar to work, its non Spell Pierceable, and if your opponent wipes the board, you'll still have a 4/4 body unless they Deed for 4 (EE will only hit the tokens).. there are so many reasons to play this card its retarded. Just note that unless you have the situation set up perfectly, its not a go to kill options like ToA because of the multikicker's green mana limitation. In general, Wolfbriar makes me feel really safe playing this build because I know that with VE's and LEDs hanging around after my main game plan gets stuffed by permission, I know that I can rebuild easily because of my perpetual mana sources and Wolfbriar.
Also, Wolfbriar is much harder for fair decks to deal with than EtW. I've seen Maverick stabilize from small RG Classic Belcher goblin tokens with Thalia and friends. However, 2/2's and a 4/4 are much more difficult to deal with. Its a minor advantage over Empty the Warrens but its worth noting. We could counterbalance the advantages of the storm trigger and Spell Pierce as well, since a good control player knows how to answer EtW by preventing you from getting to 3R
Sensei's Divining Top
I know this card isn't business but its as close as we can get to a business spell while still being a cantrip. I say this because this deck can make lines of play that other decks playing Top cannot, because of the combination of both the multitude of shuffle effects and the acceleration package. The line of play I'm referring to is when you are SOL if you don't go off THIS TURN. In those clutch situations, you can dump all your acceleration into your mana pool and then start topping as you shuffle away what you don't like. It helps to have a Probe/Brainstorm so you can grab whatever resources you want off the top of your deck as you are sifting through it. Note that no other storm combo deck has this many shuffle effects (18), and none of these other storm variants has a shuffle effect as powerful as Pact, because Pact allows you to shuffle twice, so you can Top in between each shuffle and see 9 cards. I've tried this line of play a lot and most of the time (stats pending) I've been able to find a business spell and secure myself a win. I wouldn't recommend this line of play unless you know you are done for if you don't go off.
Aside, having these business spells as 1'ofs each but with a deck structure to support them means you could probably board in 2 DD, and Emrakul + Shelldock Isle to beat stuff like Counterbalance. Then again, you could board into a manplan with Wolfbriar, Omnath, Phyrexian Obliterator, and Pernicious Deeds. Then again, you could board into straight up protection with Past in Flames and maindeck Empty the Warrens... see the potential customization options? I think that we probably won't ever find 'the right build' with this deck because the acceleration package means you could play huge spells or set up effectively with a stable mana base. The acceleration package is really the draw here because its literally stronger than anything else in storm combo (even PSI). VE by itself opens up basically any business option you wanted, which is why I'm only playing 1'of each. VE/Pact/fetches are incredible flexible and conveinently well protected from Wasteland.
@WeaponX
To directly answer your question, I wouldn't say the deck is aggro-ramp and also Doomsday. I would say this deck is a storm variant that is trying to conserve deck space as much as possible, while trying to capitalize on synergy from the Pact system in PSI and the Doomsday cantrip system. Put simply, this is a hybrid of Doomsday and Pact Spanish Inquisition. The interconnectedness and interchangeability of the config. is more satisfying than anything I've played so far, and the more I alter my build to conserve deck space, the more 7 card hands I've been able to keep. Thats why I made changes like +1 Wolfbriar; is it worth one slot for 1 business spell + 4 business spells? I think so, yes. Then you notice you can find Wolfbriar with IT as well and you have 9 ways to find Wolfbriar. In that sense I see why you think it was an aggro-ramp deck, because you can play it that way.. but thats just semantics. If the situation calls for it, its aggro-ramp. Post-board, however, you COULD play it aggro-ramp, though I would refer to that as 'man-plan'.
EDIT:
@gromgrom
Perhaps we should play a singleton Living Wish since it can find Wolfbriar as a pseudo-EtW option, and when we have too much black mana, we can find Obliterator or something else if you have more black mana than green mana.
I wouldn't say don't approach this deck like SI. Its really a hybrid of Doomsday and PSI, so remember your PSI skill tree because sorting through cards like Culling the Weak, LED, and Drit quickly are things we are used to. Also, quickly calculating your opening hand in terms of Pact or not, set up or not.. these are skills we already have from playing PSI. I have no idea how to configure the sideboard yet. I think we ought to stick to the maindeck first, unless you want to figure out something like Living Wish in the maindeck, or like a Bubbling Muck line of play via BW because you play multiple maindeck Swamps. Multiple Swamps would be good as well if you want to play Obliterator.
EDIT 2:
Emidln in the MTGtheSOURCE thread for this deck mentioned the possibility of a pass the turn BW line of play that works well with Explorers, and you'll never guess what it is; Time Spiral. So this deck can play Time Spiral? I'm totally ****ing in, right?
I'm still just tweaking everything to see how 1'of business configurations end up once you are cantripping your way into a positive combination. For example, I've been playing with only 1 Doomsday because when it falls into my lap, its usually works the way you want it to. I think that having the option to Doomsday can be just as powerful as making it the focus of your game plan. However, diversifying business options means that when you have multiple business, they don't conflict and slow you down. One example I noticed that worked incredibly well is giving Pact the opportunity to be a business spell. I stopped my testing to write this particular post because I had a turn 4 situation in which I had LED in play and 2 ESGS. I Pact for Wolfbriar Elemental, and then I get a 4/4 and 5 2/2's, with 4 lands in my upkeep. 14 power out of a 0 mana spell thats usually a manasource, color fixer, or cantrip for Doomsday? You see where this is going. Pact is incredibly strong, but a single Wolfbriar can mean that you can stretch out your game a bit by playing the role of finding BW into Damnation, and then go for a mid to late game Wolfbriar. Normally you can't just cast it (G mana limitations) for incredible plays like you might think initially; its best used with LEDs, ESGs, and G-duals and a Pact once you've already hit 4 lands (which can happen turn 2 thanks to VE, making Wolfbriar viable as a business spell). It almost seems like a green empty the warrens with a elegant 4/4 body attached to it. Excellent card design. However, its a business spell that plays nicely with Tendrils as well, since you can mini-tendrils against aggro, and then multikicker your way into a combat race against aggro decks if you need to. I'm about to go back to testing, but Wolfbriar might also be good in some kind of Belcher variant, or Elves which is already playing Summoner's Pact.
For anyone interested in working on VANT and Veteran Explorer storm variants, I moved the discussion on that to the Developmental, and I've moved on to a Doomsday list as it seems to be more consistent and far more stable than Ad Nauseam lists. We ought to resume discussion of PSI in this thread.
I've been trying to get this to work lately, specifically Veteran Explorer in storm combo. Against RUG, its free basics and against other decks, we exploit the lands better. Pact isn't as dangerous before turn 2 as you might think, having ported a lot of the acceleration structure of this deck from Pact Spanish Inquisition. Even if your entire hand gets stuffed by permission, often you will still have 4 lands to pay the upkeep.
Cabal Therapy is one of the better disruption spells in Legacy, but not how its been played in current versions of TES and ANT. Its a subpar protection spell that occasionally does work when you play it with another subpar protection spell, Gitaxian Probe. In this deck, though, Cabal Therapy is fully exploited because you can actually flashback it.
Currently the list is 62 cards. I'd appreciate some help in figuring out what to cut. The list is incredibly fun to play, though its obviously a little more challenging than whatever storm variant you're familiar with.
Some cards in the deck allow you to look like Nic fit by opening with cards like Therapy, Explorer, Top, Arbor, Bayou, Catacombs.
Note that Wild Dogs has cycling. Therefore, Pact allows you to cantrip into Doomsday in addition to being a powerful, color fixing mana source as Veteran Explorer, Dryad Arbor, and ESG. Eternal Witness is another card I'd consider to take further advantage of Summoner's Pact but its probably unnecessary.
I dropped Chrome Mox and Lotus Petals from my original build upon dropping Ad Nauseam. Probe is useful for some piles so I kept it in. I think that Idea's Unbound and Cruel Bargain allow for increased flexibility but I'm sure that more testing will narrow that slot to one or the other.
The absurd amounts of mana in this deck and cantrip chaining can lead to some incredible plays that have lead me to want the maindeck Tendrils quite often.
I haven't begun to work on a sideboard.
I've also worked on versions with Ad Nauseam. Those versions go off faster than ANT, a little slower than TES but better slow playing due to Therapy flashbacks, Explorers, Tops, etc.
Please note that a **** ton of mana, a couple Summoner's Pacts, and a Top are excellent and can actually stretch the deck's win potential because you can look at the top 3, Pact (shuffles), look at the top 3, play Explorer, crack explorer (shuffle), look... so you see double shuffling is extremely relevant at making your Tops and Brainstorms that much stronger.
I was playing a variant of VANT today, mostly keeping 7 card hands.
The list feels comfortable and adaptable. Burning Wishes are excellent set up tools, and the Cabal Therapy's Flashback makes this deck have the most effective protection of the storm combo variants. 7 Protection spells, and 4 Pact potentially as virtual Xantid Swarms if your discard sees no Wastelands after you hit 4 lands via Veteran Explorer. The asymmetry in the 3 BS + 1 SDT has felt more or less elegant to my combo tastes. The deck also plays 4 BW, 2 IT, and 1 Diabolic Intent (DI), for a total of 7 dangerous tutors. At 6cc, Empty the Warrens has been incredibly easy and consistent to pull off turn 2 against fair decks (gold fishing game 1's). The DI has been flexible when I've had it because hands with IT have often easily led to Ad Nauseam as well. The deck hits 7 mana no problem. 8 acceleration that net you BBB mana means that combinations of those powerful acceleration in the more mid range power hands are about 6 or 7 mana, so racing TES, blue combo decks, Elves, Dredge, Belcher, seems within reach of this build. One worth noting is chaining extra tutors into specialized accelerants such as Burning Wish into Bubbling muck when you acquire extra Swamps, and then DI can find Rain of Filth if you happen to have DI, when you also have BW, and perhaps another tutor such as IT or a cantrip, etc. Basically the difference between BW in this deck and TES is that Bubbling Muck and Rain of Filth take advantage of Veteran Explorer to its potential. Conveinently VE is hard to Daze, and thanks to 6 instant speed IMS, and 4 Lotus Petal (and no card disadvantage from Chrome Mox), playing turn 1 power plays like VE + Culling or VE + Cabal Therapy opens up the explosivity of the deck to levels that even threshed Cabal Rituals cannot bolster. VE is also immune to Spell Pierce. 13 lands seems correct to me as most ANT lists seem to play 15-17 while TES is playing 12 lands typically, some pilots playing 13 lands. But what if VE is the holy grail of color fixing in storm combo? It allows you to flashback Therapy, and combo off Culling for turn 1 Ad Nauseams when you draw it in your opening grip. Also, the deck not playing Chrome Mox means no card disadvantage, and instead you have 6 anti-Daze tech, that can also be Veteran Explorers that allow you to pay for Summoner's Pact if you play it on turn 2. The deck has 6 fast mana + 13 land + 4 petal makes 23 IMS, and leading with GB to 2 different accelerants, with the x8 virtual VE redundancy, I've found exploiting both a sac effect and VE to be not that difficult, and sometimes extra BW excited me to produce a more adaptable wishboard so that BW is more powerful. One addition I really liked was Reverse the Sands. I was thinking that in a couple hands I had a couple BW against a hypothetical 3sphere and Chalice at 1. so I was trying to BW my way out of it when I discovered myself getting hid by lodestone golems and such, and then it occured to me, after destroying my opponents team with Shattering Spree, why not continue with Reverse the Sand via BW + LED? BW + LED is the fastest way to that route. And also if you do something like Damnation, you can drop ESG, BW + LED for Reverse the Sands on the following turn unless they are playing Burn and can close the gap before you can get another turn on them after blowing the board. Lots of tricks with this list, immensely fun to goldfish.
VANT - Veteran Ad Nauseam Tendrils Business - 9
4 Burning Wish
2 Infernal Tutor
1 Diabolic Intent
1 Empty the Warrens
1 Ad Nauseam
Cantrip - 4
3 Brainstorm
1 Sensei's Divining Top
Accelerants - 13
4 Lion's Eye Diamond
4 Culling the Weak
4 Dark Ritual
1 Rain of Filth
Pact Package and fast mana - 16
4 Lotus Petal
4 Summoner's Pact
4 Veteran Explorer
2 Elvish Spirit Guide
1 Xantid Swarm
1 Wild Cantor
Sideboard - 15
1 Innocent Blood
1 Deathmark
1 Thoughtseize
1 Bubbling Muck
1 Shattering Spree
1 Pyroclasm
1 Hull Breach
1 Infernal Tutor
1 Cruel Bargain
1 Damnation
1 Ill-Gotten Gains
1 Past in Flames
1 Empty the Warrens
1 Tendrils of Agony
1 Reverse the Sands
62 cards
These are my brew notes.
Acceleration premises:
Summoner’s Pact > Chrome Mox > ESG
Because
(Veteran Explorer <-- Summoner’s Pact ) > Chrome Mox > ESG
- on turn 2 you have 4 lands to pay for Pact if you want to sneak past opponents who can’t exploit extra lands in time. If you get an early look at their hand with disruption, then you can make plays like this and exploit the extra land before an opponent. For example, if you play discard, and they hide their disruption, you can summoner’s pact for Xantid Swarm and then upkeep for Pact with 4 lands. If they have Wasteland then perhaps they can set you back to 3 lands during your upkeep, but ESG’s and petals can help with that as well, and cantrips and LEDs.
- I need a deed
Culling the Weak > Threshed Cabal Ritual > Dark Ritual (thanks to Pact)
Rain of Filth > Cabal Ritual (thanks to Pact)
LED interacts with – 10 cards
4 Brainstorm
1 Sensei’s Divining Top 5 (cantrips)
Protection:
Cabal Therapy is better than it is with Probe. Probe is just information at a cost. Therapy with potential flashback options puts pressure on the opponent differently because it can happen a second time. Also, with 9 instant speed 2 to 3 net mana cards, and Summoner’s Pact as an option on turn 2 when an opponent tries to dodge therapy with Brainstorm, you can fetch Xantid Swarm and pay the upkeep on turn 2 by cracking an Explorer. This play happens on occasion and careful thinking with the 5 cantrips and 4 tutors that conveniently do not conflict with another that much in terms of where they go for cards and interact and give the deck a feeling of gravity; depending on the opponent, you can lean on cantrips and tutors in different ways based on information you get from discard, and set up back up plans in cantrips. Also, Eternal Witness is a potential variation that allows the topdeck mode to get even better if you decide to keep a hand that’s very land, disruption, acceleration, and cantrip heavy on a 7 card hand because the hand can quickly accelerate where your opponent might get a bunch of lands but you get extra protection, sometimes a Cruel Bargain and 4 cards, and in the post board Death’s Shadows are brutal along with a Deed that you can find through multiple ways to deal with big problems. More importantly, Sensei’s Divining Top does not interfere too much with Brainstorms. Also, the Burning Wishes allow the deck to morph into a particular game plan against opponents who have hands stacked with protection so we can just get by with a single kind of acceleration spell. Each of the tutors can either find Bubbling Muck (producing anywhere from a net of BBB after a single veteran explorer fetching 2 Swamps), or a Rain of Filth which after Explorer is typically a net of BBB as well). That means with early information from Thearpy, even if it misses, we can configure the tutors toward a specific kind of game plan. Then attempt to flash back, and each of these extra 1cc acceleration spells conveniently cost 1. Bubbling Muck off Burning Wish is better against decks that are trying to play a gameplan would be a good plan if you had striped your opponent of counter magic but needed that last little bit to get there to 7, say, with BBBB from 2 Swamps and BBB from somewhere else so you can play Ad Nauseam. The Rain of Filth is better for a surprise Ad Nauseam. Same with ESG + Pact + Culling the Weak + Ad Nauseam, will randomly result in fast kills.
Business mana light plays:
Cruel Bargain at 3cc
Empty the Warrens at 4cc
Death Wish into Death’s Shadow at 4cc (especially when you have Thoughtseize to boost him to a 5/5, and catacombs for a 6/6)
Ad Nauseam at 5cc
Business mana heavy plays:
1 Burning Wish 1R + 3R (Empty the Warrens) = 6cc
1 Death Wish 1BB + 3BB (Ad Nauseam from 10 life), 8cc
1 Infernal Tutor 1B + 3BB (Ad Nauseam) = 7cc
1 Diabolic Intent 1B + 3BB (Ad Nauseam) = 7cc
Avg. converted mana cost = 2 even total maindeck CC = 30 out of 60 cards, avg. is 2.
The net avg. mana from your 13 rituals is 2.76. That doesn't include the extra fast mana. ESG and Pact are deceptively good at removing a single Daze when we try to play with Cabal Therapy, and they are not aware of what deck we are playing yet.
Potential sideboard:
1 Bubbling Muck
1 Thoughtseize
1 Pyroclasm
1 Empty the Warrens
1 Tendrils of Agony
1 Ill-Gottens Gains
1 Past in Flames
4 Death’s Shadow
2 Phyrexian Obliterator
1 Tomb of Urami
Acceleration combinations
Net mana
Rain of Filth 1-8
LED XXX
Culling the Weak (BBB) CtW 3
Dark Ritual (BB) Drit 2
Veteran Explorer (X) VE X
Summoner’s Pact (G/X) Pact XG
ESG 1
Petal 1
Burning Wish into Bubbling Muck after VE is BBBB, and then after you’ve tapped all of them another tutor like DI as a 2 of can find Rain of Filth and then IT for BW for Tendrils. This is a way to unchain all your tutors against a slower deck on turn 2.
Anyone interested, the 62 cards has been relaxing in just goldfishing 7 card hands. I find that sometimes brewing storm variants can be a kind of neurosis as you try to figure out the method to pick better synergy's. I've found being willing in a build with cantrips and lots of flexible tutors like this one to be willing to go over 60 by a couple cards. You could probably cut the Wild Cantor but I like that it makes Pact + G, which is incredibly easy, 1 mana of any color for if we need to find a sac outlet to combine with a VE post-Ad Nauseam.
Also, the 9 creatures + 4 Pact - 2 Elvish Spirit Guide as IMS more than creatures makes about 11 creatures, + 6 lands that function as virtual Dryad Arbors, for 17 creatures, before we consider 4 cantrips + 16 shuffle effects (TES having a mere 10 while ANT has anywhere from 12 to 16, so we have a powerful Brainstorm, but also with explosive power that even TES cannot have). Also, the Burning Wishes as flexible, flashbackable protection and access to acceleration to basics has been fantastic. In general, the tutors don't get into much conflict with one another because a certain number of BW and a certain number of lands determines how you ought to try the hand because the Pact system in this variant seems to be particularly useful since there are 10 sac outlets to take advantage of.
Nice! Those look like they were incredibly fun games. A good Dredge player is always a treat. One time I remember a game when I was in LA where the Dredge player sides in 4 Force of Will, and completely ****ed up my opening 7 into Belcher. He had mulled to 4 or something, Forces, so we are both in topdeck mode. But I draw into the ****ING NUTS as my topdeck after having 0 cards in hand was Petal, LED, Drit, IT, I kid you not. And my goblins got there.
MUD can be a tough matchup. Honestly, you win the dice roll, or you don't. How many Obliterators were you playing? I'm not sure if we want 1 as an IT target, or 2 for additional redundancy.
I know you weren't taking notes judiciously but what happened in game 1 against DNT with Pact? I'm a bit confused. The hands that bust with Pact are definitely ones to discuss so we can determine whether or not it could have been avoided, or if it was just one of those like 5% of games where you lose to Pact. This factor is one of the most obvious prejudices other players tend to have toward this deck before they understand how it works. The other factor is most obviously play skill (meaning commitment), and obviously you have ridiculous high priced alternative combo decks like ANT and TES that are in comparison easier and generally better positioned in the 'world or internet' metagame.
Honestly its hard to take notes with SI anyway unless you practice while you goldfish. However, once you do, a lot of your goldfish games just become recorded 7 card hands, and we can read the code btw since we play the deck so feel free to abbreviate with IT, Drit, Crit, LED, etc. It also makes prying eyes have to work a little harder to figure out how to actually play against us. Hence the giant text wall of information that you would have to already be learned and dedicated to the deck to really understand.
When you're on the play, Empty the Warrens is your best bet against most hate. If you're on the draw, the man plan is quite excellent unless you can race the hate because its a 2cc hate-piece. Everything depends on your metagame.
As a general rule, I tend to go for Empty the Warrens against fair decks and Carpets/Grind plan against permission suites. The permission suites can topple quite easily if you draw a good 7. This will more than likely happen if you get a lot of powerful 1cc cards in your opening hand. When that happens, your opponent will likely be baffled as to which card to force, especially when you choose your order carefully, because you guess at your opponents intuition. I usually make these guesses based upon their reaction to the first game; sometimes people will call the deck 'a tendrils deck', other times 'belcher', other times 'SI', other times 'Ad Nauseam', storm, etc. I think this can be a way to guess at the tech they expect you to bring in. In that case, you can play into their suppositions as the dark horse, and perhaps draw a Force of Will on Carpet of Flowers.
There is one example, in which a player thinks they can out play the Carpet of Flowers, but you have something like 3 of them in your hand. When that happens, you can resolve one after the other, and soon you have multiple Carpets in play, and though they only leech off one Island, together they produce 3 mana, which is enough mana to start a spell chain. Then your hand either produces multiple turns at one business spell a turn, or multiple acceleration options that allows you to play through soft permission walls.
When you aren't trying to grind like this, you have either already pushed through a business spell and you start to gain card advantage on them, though usually you only have about a turn or two to keep doing this before your clock shrinks to nothing, so you have to time early business very carefully. Sometimes opponents can give away that they are vulnerable with hesitation, false hestiation, etc. These are good times to trust your intuition and go for the kill. Other opponents will sand bag your Carpets and try to kill you slowly with one or two creatures. In this case, you have to recognize this game plan immediately and take advantage of a tapped out control player. If they go for a creature early it means you have to out play Daze or Force. That either means having that extra one mana to play an early business spell and secure a new set of 4 cards, and know the clock will quickly shrink, or it means throwing a business spell into Force of Will, which usually means you are sacrificing a business spell in order to gain something or your business gets stuffed. With a very good hand, you can just play 2 business spells, or a Duress and a business spell.
Sometimes you can make more convoluted plays, like having 6 mana in the face of Daze/Force, with IT and Cruel Bargain as your business. Your opponent just played Delver and you have Carpet to his one Island, but you also have a Chrome Mox. So you play the acceleration, he Dazes, you pay 1, so only 5 floating, Cruel Bargain gets Forced, but IT grabs something, now what is it? I like to either have a Tomb of Urami waiting because I can play LED into it rather easily and its not hard to hit 5 with this deck, but that is bad against 1 Delver already on the field. Another option is to get Goblin Charbelcher. This is what I usually do because when you get your most dangerous business early on with 20 life and a couple perpetual resources, your topdeck mode can easily produce a win from here because when both players are leaning on the topdeck mode after a situation like this, SI will more than likely win because its topdeck mode is stronger. Our opponent has traded 3 cards for our entire hand, but we still have 20 life because they Forced the Cruel Bargain. Now if they don't Force the Cruel Bargain, then we can potentially draw enough resources to topple them before the Delver goes to town. This is the risk they take by Forcing early business. Frankly this is a risk that we want them to take because our topdeck mode is stronger. Trying to accelerate that topdeck mode also means cutting our life total is half, which means making the opponents job twice as easy for every 4 turns of topdeck mode we steal on them. That usually means you don't want to board in Tomb of Urami against a deck like RUG because it just stops Belcher from firing more than it wins you games outright, however this does happen if you have a man plan focused sideboard. Otherwise, you can't get the early jump on the life total race and Delvers will beat you because of RUG's reach spells. Obliterators, Tombs, etc. are most effective when you focus on the strategy. Otherwise, I leave the Tomb in the board for Stoneblade matchups where it randomly wins games.
Anyway, so when you are grinding (I'm mostly thinking right now in terms of grinding against RUG because its easier against slower control decks) and they give you the D4, they can either break your hand wide open, or bust. When a D4 breaks your hand wide open, I usually consider a few different lines of play. Double business lines of play can outdistance one counterspell but you always want the D4s to come first because IT's and Belchers will win the game outright. Duress's before D4's are an excellent way to protect your business spells. However, its important to note that sometimes, your opponent really doesn't have a counterspell, and you overthink the hand into a Rube Goldberg machine to the point where you can't actually go off. This is the trick; did your opponent let you have the D4 or did you get the D4 because they have no permission? This is the game you play with your opponents as they try to figure out how your post-board actually works; should I give this SI-opponent his D4's or not? You want your opponent to think you want the D4 to resolve when in reality D4s distract the opponent from the more dangerous business spells by stripping the opponent of their permission; however, this way of leaning on the deck puts its confidence in topdeck mode and often is the result of a very fast hand within the context of the post-board. Other hands are slower and more ardous, but set up a board state far more quickly. In these cases your opponent thinks they know what to out play based upon their own island count + their own clock + their permission, while you then have to out play that intuition. Because you know your opponents intuition is tied to how many islands they have and their clock, you can guess at their softer permission spells quite easily. Usually if they think they can get there with one creature (say Delver or threshed goose), they will throw back their Goyfs and play with a single Island for Cantripping. If they get more adventurous with Islands, they probably have more business and that means they will try to stuff your acceleration spells with softer permission. In these cases you want to get to 3, ideally 4 mana, so you can play business spells through their permission. When you hit 4 perpetual mana, D4s can play through Daze, so they will save Dazes for Belchers. Forces are for ITs, and Flusterstorms hit anything before Belchers. In this case, you can just run your opponent out of permission spells, especially if they let you get LEDs and multiple carpets because once one business spell resolves, it could mean the end of the game. if they let one slip through its because they are waiting, in which case you have to play through double permission post-D4, which is more difficult but if they let you slip through while you are grinding it means they don't think the D4 will let you win. When it just produces resources like LEDs, more Carpets, acceleration, etc. then on the following turn you have enough extra mana to play through soft permission, and this is precisely why they don't let the D4's resolve. When you hit 4 perpetual mana and they don't let anything resolve, it probably means they don't have reach yet and they are holding permission. Usually this situation is the most standstill-y of all the ways to play against PSI, which is for both players to play against the topdeck; the control player is trying to keep drawing permission while the SI player is trying to keep drawing business. This is where it gets closer to 50/50. If the blue player is to cantrip into more permission to get out of this grind, he has less for Spell Pierce/Flusterstorm. Flusterstorm is good against everything but Belcher so I always save Belchers for last, and I will on occasion risk everything into a Belcher and hope my opponent is holding Flusterstorm or Stifle and not Spell Pierce. These are the kinds of choices you have to make when the opponent is trying to both stay within the confines of both few Islands, and a business spell every other turn or so from your end. Every non-business spell that you draw after you've hit 4 mana is just cake that helps you play around the soft permission. Sometimes, that means your business will sneak through, other times, it means you are still whittling. I find that the whittling usually comes to an end either when the opponent ****s up and you take advantage of a mistake, or they run out of permission and just lose. The best situations are usually the ones in which the opponent has a lot of early Force of Wills. In cases like these, the opponent is usually as close to you are to being in topdeck mode, which means you probably have the advantage. If they have a clock while you have the advantage, then you are in a tight spot, but the PSI player is far more comfortable in topdeck mode. Remember though, this sense of topdeck mode is in context of a grind plan. You don't really want to go into topdeck mode against a control player with a clock if you can help it. If you want that situation, its because they've over played their mana base and your topdeck mode can exploit that situation. In many cases, good control players won't buy that though. So how do you beat a good control player? It all depends on your opening hand because SI has no cantrips so everything after that is the luck of the draw. Against a control player, I tend to look at my hand in terms of a fast play or a control play, and whether or not I think my opponent wants me to play faster or slow. This is where metagaming comes into play. PSI still retains a lot of its speed post-board because Dark Ritual and LED are powerful accelerants with the business suite SI has. No other combo deck has that kind of turn 1 potential after boarding out 15 cards. Often control players forget this, making turn 1 D4 lines of play incredibly powerful. However, early D4's in context of the grind plan doesn't usually mean you are going to win outright. Rather, it means you've acquired a lot of resources for your next turn because you de-boarded a lot of your speed. This means your opponent will have their soft permission next turn, but you will have acquired resources. On the following turn, your opponent will have the option to cantrip into force, or at worst, we encounter Daze and Spell Pierce. If I early D4, it puts a lot of early pressure on the opponent. Its kind of like an early Empty for 6 or 8 in Belcher/TES/ANT. You do it if you have access to that line of play because it allows you to win the game later. If our opponent doesn't counter the D4, they will be hard pressed to put a clock on us because it means they have to tap out on turn 1, or wait until turn 2, and drop another island. You can see that an early D4 will lead to potential line of play with Carpet of Flowers because we force the opponent to play an additional Island. This is huge if they don't have Daze. If they do have Daze, then we fall back to one Island. Players will often play their creatures, and then Daze. Knowing this, you can set them back a couple a turn by playing into their Daze. In this case, ESG becomes incredibly useful because it allows you to pay for Daze, and this scenario is no better use for ESG. If you wait too long to out play them, you miss opportunities like these. Ultimately as the aggressor, we are trying to out guess our opponents permission and pick the right time to go for it. However, as we can see, going for it early on, produces entirely different lines of play, like in the case of an early D4, or early Carpets.
Early Carpets is the other line of play that really tripped me up when my opponents started to sand bag Carpet by holding their extra Islands because they were also holding Force of Will. Early Carpet is only good in certain situations. Otherwise, you can hold onto it, and play it when its more dangerous. If you play it right away, its because you are playing against Stoneblade, BUG, etc. where they usually play many Islands (play Carpet early against decks with a lot of basic Islands as well). Against a deck like RUG, an early Carpet means that you can exploit it with 2 mana, or you played it wrong. If you can exploit a Carpet with only 2 mana against RUG, go for it early because sometimes they will get to 2 or 3 mana, play a Goyf, and then try to go to town before the Carpet gets there. I say 2 mana because you should not expect more than 2 against a good RUG player. However, if they don't think you have Carpet, you can save it for later where it can be a powerful ritual. For example, if you Duress early and see no Dazes, hold on to your Carpets because it means that if your opponent over plays his Islands so he can play Goyf, then you can play Carpet in your main phase and add the mana in the 2nd main phase. For this reason, I liked playing with Lotus Blooms because then you can play early Carpets and they can't play too many Islands the turn before Bloom resolves because otherwise they have to deal with Black lotus on the stack, and LEDs (conditional black lotus). You then go for it with at least 2 business spells. Depending on how they prepare with Islands for your Bloom turn, your Carpet determines how good your topdeck mode is.
Against discard, you almost always keep your 7 unless you know you are playing first. That way you at least have resources when they try to trade your combo pieces for disruption. In PSI, Chrome Mox is your best friend against discard matchups. For example, I had one game against Pox in which he was banking on a turn 2 Hymn because he didn't have a turn 1 play. I had mulliganed to 5, and emptied my entire hand into Chrome Moxen so he couldn't nuke my hand. Pox conveinently has trouble destroying artifact mana sources. Eventually I was able to hard cast a Belcher and kill him. In another game, he stripped my entire hand but in the course of trying to kill me I was able to rebuild with artifact sources because I kept my opening 7 (which had a Chrome Mox). This is one reason that I really like playing 4 Charbelchers in my business suite. I've found that the heavier Tendrils builds mean playing through discard based disruption is more difficult. Having access to even just one Charbelcher then means that IT can pull you out of some non-storm situations, which is often the case with the amount of mana SI can sit on in topdeck mode.
Against decks with artifact permanents, you want to race, or pour everything into Empty the Warrens. Trying to Nature's Claim things isn't optimal. I've found that this deck can play through things like Chalice at 0, 1, or 2 quite easily. Trinisphere we are dead in the water. The thing is, without multiple permanent mana sources and something like Rebuild, a deck that can stick one 3sphere is also going to stick Lodestone Golem or something. We can't expect to win in this situation so I prefer to race it. Turn 1 lines of play in those decks are rather inconsistent so few people play them anyway. If you run into them though, Tomb of Urami's definitely come in, and I'd say Empty is the main game plan, and Tombs are 2nd. The man plan is also quite good against decks like MUD.
Against fair decks that bring in hate, go for Empty the Warrens or Belcher pass the turn if your hand doesn't win outright, mulligan aggressively, don't be afraid of playing 2nd. I like to play 2nd in most of these cases actually because SI has something like an 80% chance of going off turn 1 if you're on the draw. That extra card makes all the difference. The only advantage for going off turn 1 is being able to bust. The versions that play Empty the Warrens and 4 Belchers are more easily able to play 2nd. Empty is usually my out for Leyline of Singularity, which comes up more and more, but with 7 outs post-board, your goal is to chain D4s together and hit one of those 7 cards. Mulliganing is incredibly important here and its important to remember that the way you practice as a goldfish your mulliganing is entirely different when you have the pressure of a real game. Don't overthink it, trust your intuition and experience. I usually find that 'pretending a confident 7' post-board hand is incredibly threatening with this deck because your opponent feels that they should mulligan. When that happens, don't get tripped up on what kind of hate they have. Just bank on Empty the Warrens because it solves the problem of most types of hate, and if you get Mindbreak trapped, it happens. It comes with the territory. Aggro will always be able to steal games a couple games from an aggro player. The decks you'll lose to, however, will not be as well equipped to deal with other decks, since Mindbreak Trap is a card that cannot easily be ported to other matchups. So generally, you'll beat aggro players with good sideboards.
Wizards is generally apathetic about Legacy. I figure they think releasing only a couple new staples every so often for Legacy makes the format evolve more slowly. I think people forget, though, that they are trying to balance elements of a new set for the more popular formats so if you want to look at changes in legacy, the best way is really to look at how modern is evolving. Also, its worth noting that wizards has no intention of killing Legacy because there is a huge turn out for events thanks to SCG and other venues. For that reason, they know that they ought to pay attention to the Legacy because its part of their player base, not to mention the 'adults with jobs' demographic is incredibly useful for getting younger players into the game. The other formats obviously have priority over Legacy but those formats only come first in context of the formats that precede them or everything falls apart.
I'm so glad they returned the art style to classical antiquities. Perhaps now they further will explore new potential creature types of the old greek tales.. though I'm hoping they come up with some new 'magic' because lately its just been looking like they are selling products. Specifically I'd like to see more Dryads, more nymphs, and perhaps some kind of integrations of old magic creatures and old mythic beasts.
Take a look in the Spanish Inquisition thread if you want to try VANT, Veteran Explorer Tendrils. I haven't written a primer for the deck yet but its about in between TES and ANT in terms of speed, TES being slightly faster. However, maindeck Veteran Explorers and Culling the Weaks produce incredibly powerful plays that TES and ANT have to build toward through much cantripping. However, VANT has an intricate tutor system that plays Entomb, Diabolic Intent, Infernal Tutor, and Summoner's Pact to produce one of the most non-cantrip flexible decks in the format, boasting 15 tutors in VANTs current form. Its more along the lines of DDFT in terms of pilot skill level but I'm trying to gather some support for the deck so we can test new variants. Veteran Explorer in particular is incredible against RUG but it provides all sorts of mana flexibility that the other storm decks wish they had. There is an absurd amount of discussion on the deck if you're curious for more information.
Ah that makes more sense. I missed the lack of ESGs.
We will certainly have to do something about heavy discard disruption suites. I'm thinking that Sensei's Divining Top is something we ought to explore because it allows us to hide key ingredients for our combo turn on top of our deck. We already play more shuffle effects than ANT or TES so SDT seems like an excellent candidate for a cantrip slot. This makes me think of Doomsday, but a Doomsday package makes the deck significantly more complicated and I think the more we try to tweak it to Doomsday, the more it will just start to look like DDFT. Ad Nauseam is our main game plan, and then the grind station strategy with Tendrils and PIF is the other line of play.
Then again, Griz is an excellent strategy when we know we will encounter discard. We still have a lot of different routes to test to determine which business suite best supports VANT's explosive mana base.
Damn.. why were you running SSG? I think you pushed your avg. CC too high with your build. Ad Nauseam should have killed you. Also, I'm still not sold on the 2 AdN lists because IT/DI are great for creating redundancy the turn before you go off.
Then again, it sounds like the build wasn't as good as you hoped it was. I think we still need to work on it. The 7 cards hand of the deck by my assessment is on avg. a turn 3.65. Honestly, I usually try to keep my opening 7 when I'm just goldfishing this deck for fun. It helps you acquire a sharper intuition when feeling out your set up.
I'm retarded. Recurring Nightmare? Griz. Entomb. Its perfect post-board material. We can play Deed along side it and completely switch it up on aggro. We like to think that combo is supposed to beat aggro. But aggro players are thriving on that concept currently by playing lots of hatebears and beating bad storm combo players who don't know that once you get to turn 2, they can lay down bear after bear after hate piece and get there sometimes. Maverick and DnT are excellent at this and they steal games from storm combo players all the time. We ought to attack that aspect of the metagame. Even if they board in graveyard hate, we still have a storm plan main deck. Its just two angles of attack instead of one. We can slow down and play Deed that way we can clear the way of hate and develop a plan as the game develops. This will allow us to play better against decks that play a discard disruption suite. Also, I think Sensei's Diving Top could be good.
We could also try developing a maindeck that plays Griz instead of AdN that way we aren't as pressed for time, and then cut ITs for Burning Wishs and plays DI's along side them. Its just more flexible tutors. Entomb + Recurring Nightmare is only 4 mana and Entomb + DI --> Reanimate is 4 mana. Entomb + DI --> Recurring Nightmare is 6 mana. Then we have BW into EtW at 6 mana. We also have Entomb + BW --> Tendrils, Entomb for PIF, but this is a lot of mana and requires a full yard. We then have DI --> Griz which is an absurd amount of mana. We could probably also then do DI --> BW into Tendrils. I think we could probably cut Tendrils from the maindeck. If we get Griz working we can make short work of an opponent or just go straight for the tendrils by drawing a bunch of cards, but through Burning Wish.
EDIT:
There will probably also be cases in which we can replay Recurring Nightmare to grab Veteran Explorer again to fetch extra basics. I also see potential tricks with Eternal Witness. It could be an excellent way to take advantage of multiple creatures in one hand ultimately playing into multiple Witness triggers so we can regain business in a bad situation.
I like your analysis Admiral_Arzar. I'd say your spot on about too many Entombs/ESGs. The thing is, PIF is the best reason to run Entomb so if we cut Entombs and PIF, we might just want to return to a blue build and instead take advantage of Brainstorm with many shuffle effects. We would also be able to look into deeper into blue for some synergy since this deck plays weird cards; I'm thinking about creatures that are UG.
I haven't had too many problems with multiple Entombs actually. I've been having more trouble with too many ITs and DI's, especially DI's. If you have too many Entombs, you can usually chain them together into something. I'll break down how I usually think about Entomb when its in my opening 7.
1 Entomb
- Here I'm thinking of going for Entomb, AdN and Ewit via Pact to play it. If you draw another Entomb then you want to go for Tendrils/PIF with both of them. When your inside that line of play you can recycle one of the Entombs into a Narcomoeba for Culling the Weak. If you draw an IT, DI, or AdN, then Entomb usually grabs either Narcomoeba or Cabal Therapy. If you draw PiF, then you Entomb for Tendrils.
2 Entomb
Here you are probably going for a PIF/Tendrils line of play depending on how much mana you are short. However, you could potentially draw a business spell like IT/DI/AdN/Tendrils/PIF that completely changes how the hand works and then its likely a turn 3 as Entombs dig for Narco or Therapy. If you are short mana, depending on how much, this might be a hand to throw back.
3 Entomb
This is much harder to pull off but you have 2 Entomb for PIF + Tendrils and then a third if one for Therapy or Narco. This depends on how much mana you have.
4 Entombs
I doubt there are many 4 Entomb hands I'd want to keep.
I see Entomb as a sort of built in Grinding Station strategy. Then we have 7 tutors into Ad Nauseam as a faster line of play when we have a more explosive hand. Then we also have the Eternal Witness line of play simply because the deck has so much mana.
I don't think we have to play Entomb but if we figure out how to break it in storm combo, it gives us an angle of attack that nobody else is playing and that means we can get crafty. Brainstorm might be better but I strayed away from blue just because Pyroblasts usually come in from RUG's post-board.
Also, a note on sideboard tech... Every control player you want to play against knows about Empty the Warrens. People are ready for that. What they aren't ready for though is a well played Tendrils. I don't think we really want to play EtW except perhaps against decks that bring in Leyline. EtW in that sense is an answer rather than an alternative form of attack. It works in Belcher because all Belcher does is play EtW to maximum efficiency. Same goes for Xantid Swarm. Its extremely old news and its basically a silver bullet against Merfolk and against everything else it can get you lucky. Even Carpet of Flowers is getting played in Belcher and ANT these days. Thankfully, PSI can still take advantage of it far better than the other storm decks since PSI has a high business density. Things like Lotus Bloom as potential Carpet replacements or compliments still intrigues me. I like playing the PSI post-board that way. Then you have man plans. Phyrexian Obliterator is ****ing incredible against RUG. They can't get rid of it so they basically have to win with Delver at that point. Desecration Demon seems like a nice compliment to Obliterator though 2 bolt/chain makes me wonder if its worth it. Death's Shadow has been a moot point but I don't know now that Toxic Deluge is a thing.
One thing does intrigue me though. If we were to play Burning Wish, Sensei's Diving Top gets WAY better because then we can slow the deck down and fetch board sweepers or removal if we need it. We might even be able to cut a few IT's, and cut the DI's down to one just so we don't draw multiples. IT's aren't as effective as I'd like them to be. DI's and BW are so much more flexible. We could then potentially split the board between a faster list with a 2nd copy of AdN and ITs, and then a small anti-control supplement like 2 Carpets of Flowers and 2 Thoughtseize, and then play a microwishboard for BW's.
The plan is not to be aggro ramp, the plan is to play your hand quickly into a win condition, and if you get tripped up by too much disruption, hate, or permission, the biz-types and outs-options are numerous so you can more easily construct a situation where you can steal the game. If you want to have another out, Eternal Witness gives you +1 and then all the Pacts.
I'll break down the outs-options according to the current build:
- Infernal Tutor (1B and hellbent)
Often this is how you will produce your turn 1 kills, or turn 1 inevitabilitys. Otherwise, it often functions in the hand to produce another acceleration spell, usually a LED. Sometimes I also like to mini-Tendrils from a high life total (since we are not playing AdN), and then finish my opponent off later either by BW for Damnation for a board wipe, and then go for the throat with Wolfbriar, or BW into EtW. It really depends on the board state, how much life you gain, your opponent, are we in post-board or pre-board, etc. The 1'ofs facilitates this because Summoner's Pact allows you to double shuffle because cracking an Explorer means you shuffle. That means a Top allows you to see 9 cards to find a business spell, and with a lot of life from mini-Tendrils, you have more time to look through your deck for what you need.
IT --> Tendrils (the go to kill in busted hands, or the finisher)
Needs 3BBB mana, and 10 storm. Mini-tendrils is also an option.
IT --> IT
1B per. When you have a retarded amount of mana and not enough storm, this is what you do. You chain ITs together until you have enough storm to then grab Tendrils for the kill.
IT --> Wolfbriar (the deck's pseudo Empty the Warrens)
Needs 3BGG, and as many LEDs as you can get for the extra 2/2 dudes
IT --> Cruel Bargain
Needs 1BBBB. I'd play this in a clutch situation. Typically Bargain is used with Doomsday, but its also randomly awesome since Drit and CtW provide at least BBB.
IT --> Doomsday
Needs 1BBBB, and a cantrip + floating mana. Very much based on your hand, the board state, etc. The Doomsday piles for this deck are fairly simple. If you can't put them together yourself then there are plenty of articles on how to do it. I can post them if anyone is interested.
IT --> IU
Needs 1BUU. Its cheaper than Cruel Bargain for even clutchier situations, or ones in which you want to keep your life total. Other than that IU is mostly used in Doomsday piles or cast naturally in nuts hands for card advantage during your combo turn, or for set up so you can discard some Cabal Therapy's and then crack your Explorers.
IT --> BW ( --> Empty the Warrens)
Needs 2BR, and then 3R, so 5BRR. There are a retarded number of possible plays that could be made from BW. I suggest that playing a single BW means a microwishboard so we can actually play a relatively full-sized sideboard.
Doomsday (BBB and a cantrip)
Needs BBB and a cantrip. There are 16 potential cantripping options, SDT being the best because it stays in play and lets you abuse 18 shuffle effects (TES having 11, and ANT having 12-18 typically). Its worth noting that this deck has an even more powerful Brainstorm and Top than normal Doomsday which doesn't usually top 16 shuffle effects, and Summoner's Pact allows you to double shuffle if you also can crack the Explorer. Though the deck doesn't want to focus on Doomsday because it allows you to conserve the deck space by putting 5 of the cantrips within the Pact-package.
I'm not going to go over the Doomsday piles in depth because I frankly don't have the time. If you want to learn how to play one of the best business spells in magic, there's no auto-bacon button.. and if Ad Nauseam pisses you off because it feels too automatic, Doomsday will always give you that kind of rush you are looking for in storm combo because you actually have to think to get **** done. Anyone coming from a pre-Ad Nauseam background in storm combo knows this.
Moving on, the structure needed for Doomsday is valuable on its own. Cruel Bargain and Ideas Unbound are incredible at providing a dense enough hand to produce a kill when you don't quite have enough resources to go off. These can also be excellent early plays that give you the card advantage you need to beat a control player when you have extra business and not enough protection. This is one of the reasons I choose to include a Doomsday option rather than a Doomsday focus. IT is a safer focus because with the most powerful acceleration package in Legacy storm combo, it makes sense to have a powerful turn 1 play that isn't tied down to cantrips. Then the acceleration package is fully exploited, the business spells do not conflict quite as much, and your business spells are just as dangerous as your protection spells, which are often just 1 mana cheaper anyway. The mana base and VE's means that extra 1 mana isn't quite as important. If you step outside the traditional method of stapling together a storm combo deck, then you can see Cabal Therapy is there as an enabler of VE just as much as protection. Extra protection would almost be pointless, but BW is technically protection, and IT can double you up on Therapy's, which often means acquiring 4 protection spells and the mana base to slow play that strategy. Also, shuffling through the deck and sifting with Top means finding a Therapy means finding 2 protection spells. So what does this have to do with Doomsday.. Doomsday needs a specific deck structure. The one I'm talking about works because we aren't constantly trying to set up a Doomsday. Instead, I tend to go for Doomsday if it falls into my lap or if I think I can set it up. Otherwise, I've been mostly getting Wolfbriar kills and Tendrils kills. The thing is, even if Doomsday were the worst business spell in the deck based on its current structure, its still worth keeping in because the deck structure supports it really well. You don't want to take out Brainstorms and SDTs really because they are some of the most powerful cards in context of the shuffle effects. However, -1 Wild Dogs, -1 Cruel Bargain, -1 Ideas Unbound, -1 Doomsday, -1 Burning Wish.. gives you 5 slots (4 if you REALLY want to stay under 60 because you're neurotic). If you were to take out those cards though, you could focus on a Burning Wish game plan. I just tend to dislike getting 3 Burning Wishes in my opening hand vs. a Wild Dogs, Doomsday, Cruel Bargain hand. I can work with that because Wild Dogs could be my DD cantrip or my CtW target, while CB could set me ahead before Doomsday or draw me 4 cards, drop LED, and Probe into BW into Tendrils. So you see, sometimes redundancy can be limiting. Thats why I don't play TES. Its too streamlined for being efficiently aggressive, and that is Bryant (and crew's) niche.
Now the question is, with that fat acceleration package, doesn't this deck want to play Ad Nauseam in the maindeck? Actually I believe the answer is no based on how far I've gotten in testing.. the problem is the non-land IMS's need to be there so that you can get an initial black mana. Granted, you will usually have mana floating but you should expect to have to pay for Daze, x2 Pierce sometimes so you need those Chrome Moxen and Petals. Chrome Moxen is the worst card that Legacy storm combo currently has to play because its card disadvantage. It was the first card I dropped from this list. If I play with AdN, and if you are interested in crafting your own build with AdN, please try it first with just Lotus Petals and more ESGs with a Wild Cantor within the Pact-package. That worked for me but I switched to this build for reasons I've been describing.
Burning Wish (1R and mana)
Burning Wish is one of those cards I started with at 4, and then I tried a 3 BW, 3 DD config and didn't like it as much as this current one, though it worked, it just felt a little bit too slow and clunky in comparison. I'd recommend trying different builds with BW in particular, just remember to alter the mana base accordingly. You want Taiga through your fetchlands if you are playing to BW as a set up spell AND Veteran Explorer as a setup spell, and you'll want a Badlands for protection + redsource for other situations, and you'll need the basic mountain obviously. Tinderwall might also be applicable in the Pact-package.
I don't think Burning Wish ought to be more than 1'of, based on testing thus far. Why? It leads to Tendrils in certain DD piles, it allows you to get rid of hate in certain DD piles.. its that one out for situations that you didn't want to waste maindeck space on; however, only playing one means more space in the sideboard. Micro-wishboards have been a thing in Belcher for some time now (along with other Belcher SBtech thanks to yours truly). I don't know how micro the wishboard should be constructed for this particular version because that comes with testing.
One variation to Explore with BW is Bubbling Muck in the board, but with multiple maindeck Swamps. This means you can turn BW into acceleration, something that neither TES or ANT currently do because they don't play Veteran Explorer.
Tendrils of Agony (2BB and 10 spells)
Casting Tendrils naturally is much harder in other storm combo decks in which you don't get the benefit of a flashbacked Therapy or a creature from Summoner's Pact as extra storm. Other players who are testing this deck are playing Eternal Witness for the Tendrils --> Ewit --> Tendrils line of play. Because this deck does not play Ad Nauseam and has non-Tendrils outs, you can play mini-Tendrils in some cases as well, as mentioned earlier. I'm not as afraid of having this card in my opening hand as I was in other storm combo builds.
Ideas Unbound (UU)
Obviously this card is usually utilized in Doomsday piles. However, in set up it can put Therapy's in the grave and whatever else you'd rather filter out of your hand. Therapy's in the yard can be relevant if you don't have the right mana configuration, and this happens on occasion if you keep an iffy hand. If this were my only business spell, I'd probably mulligan.
Cruel Bargain (BBB and half your life)
Again, this card is for Doomsday piles but on its own, its fantastic as a business spell. Getting card advantage early is valuable, but a successful Bargain early on could lead directly to a kill based on the acceleration. And if it doesn't, it could just lead to powerful Cabal Therapy lines of play in which you decimate your opponents hand. I'd keep this hand if it were my only business spell, as long as you hold back on your Pacts and see what you draw first.
Summoner's Pact (0 mana) // Wolfbriar Elemental (2GG + green mana)
This card is normally not a business spell, but since adding Wolfbriar in, I kinda like having 1 slot = 5 business spells so I'm going to keep playing it. In no time at all I discovered just how strong this card is. It basically puts the same amount of power on the field that Empty the Warrens tends to (10 to 20 power), only its the go to line of play when you know you will have 2GG in your upkeep, usually the case if you can set things up correctly with your Explorers. If you recall, ANT is known for its 'inevitability' in comparison to TES's aggression. Grinding Station and Doomsday are known for their inevitability as well. This deck, however, fits inbetween those two states rather nicely thanks to Pact/Wolfbriar. You don't need storm for Wolfbriar to work, its non Spell Pierceable, and if your opponent wipes the board, you'll still have a 4/4 body unless they Deed for 4 (EE will only hit the tokens).. there are so many reasons to play this card its retarded. Just note that unless you have the situation set up perfectly, its not a go to kill options like ToA because of the multikicker's green mana limitation. In general, Wolfbriar makes me feel really safe playing this build because I know that with VE's and LEDs hanging around after my main game plan gets stuffed by permission, I know that I can rebuild easily because of my perpetual mana sources and Wolfbriar.
Also, Wolfbriar is much harder for fair decks to deal with than EtW. I've seen Maverick stabilize from small RG Classic Belcher goblin tokens with Thalia and friends. However, 2/2's and a 4/4 are much more difficult to deal with. Its a minor advantage over Empty the Warrens but its worth noting. We could counterbalance the advantages of the storm trigger and Spell Pierce as well, since a good control player knows how to answer EtW by preventing you from getting to 3R
Sensei's Divining Top
I know this card isn't business but its as close as we can get to a business spell while still being a cantrip. I say this because this deck can make lines of play that other decks playing Top cannot, because of the combination of both the multitude of shuffle effects and the acceleration package. The line of play I'm referring to is when you are SOL if you don't go off THIS TURN. In those clutch situations, you can dump all your acceleration into your mana pool and then start topping as you shuffle away what you don't like. It helps to have a Probe/Brainstorm so you can grab whatever resources you want off the top of your deck as you are sifting through it. Note that no other storm combo deck has this many shuffle effects (18), and none of these other storm variants has a shuffle effect as powerful as Pact, because Pact allows you to shuffle twice, so you can Top in between each shuffle and see 9 cards. I've tried this line of play a lot and most of the time (stats pending) I've been able to find a business spell and secure myself a win. I wouldn't recommend this line of play unless you know you are done for if you don't go off.
Aside, having these business spells as 1'ofs each but with a deck structure to support them means you could probably board in 2 DD, and Emrakul + Shelldock Isle to beat stuff like Counterbalance. Then again, you could board into a manplan with Wolfbriar, Omnath, Phyrexian Obliterator, and Pernicious Deeds. Then again, you could board into straight up protection with Past in Flames and maindeck Empty the Warrens... see the potential customization options? I think that we probably won't ever find 'the right build' with this deck because the acceleration package means you could play huge spells or set up effectively with a stable mana base. The acceleration package is really the draw here because its literally stronger than anything else in storm combo (even PSI). VE by itself opens up basically any business option you wanted, which is why I'm only playing 1'of each. VE/Pact/fetches are incredible flexible and conveinently well protected from Wasteland.
@WeaponX
To directly answer your question, I wouldn't say the deck is aggro-ramp and also Doomsday. I would say this deck is a storm variant that is trying to conserve deck space as much as possible, while trying to capitalize on synergy from the Pact system in PSI and the Doomsday cantrip system. Put simply, this is a hybrid of Doomsday and Pact Spanish Inquisition. The interconnectedness and interchangeability of the config. is more satisfying than anything I've played so far, and the more I alter my build to conserve deck space, the more 7 card hands I've been able to keep. Thats why I made changes like +1 Wolfbriar; is it worth one slot for 1 business spell + 4 business spells? I think so, yes. Then you notice you can find Wolfbriar with IT as well and you have 9 ways to find Wolfbriar. In that sense I see why you think it was an aggro-ramp deck, because you can play it that way.. but thats just semantics. If the situation calls for it, its aggro-ramp. Post-board, however, you COULD play it aggro-ramp, though I would refer to that as 'man-plan'.
EDIT:
@gromgrom
Perhaps we should play a singleton Living Wish since it can find Wolfbriar as a pseudo-EtW option, and when we have too much black mana, we can find Obliterator or something else if you have more black mana than green mana.
I wouldn't say don't approach this deck like SI. Its really a hybrid of Doomsday and PSI, so remember your PSI skill tree because sorting through cards like Culling the Weak, LED, and Drit quickly are things we are used to. Also, quickly calculating your opening hand in terms of Pact or not, set up or not.. these are skills we already have from playing PSI. I have no idea how to configure the sideboard yet. I think we ought to stick to the maindeck first, unless you want to figure out something like Living Wish in the maindeck, or like a Bubbling Muck line of play via BW because you play multiple maindeck Swamps. Multiple Swamps would be good as well if you want to play Obliterator.
EDIT 2:
Emidln in the MTGtheSOURCE thread for this deck mentioned the possibility of a pass the turn BW line of play that works well with Explorers, and you'll never guess what it is; Time Spiral. So this deck can play Time Spiral? I'm totally ****ing in, right?
This isn't a classic Doomsday list, its new school. That deck plays more lands, more cantrips, and is therefore slower and less explosive.
@gromgrom
I've been playing this list four a couple days, modified from the original.
- VE Doomsday -
Pact-package - 13
4 Veteran Explorer
4 Summoner's Pact
2 Elvish Spirit Guide
1 Wild Dogs
1 Dryad Arbor
1 Wolfbriar Elemental
Acceleration - 13
4 Lion's Eye Diamond
1 Lotus Petal
3 Culling the Weak
4 Dark Ritual
1 Rain of Filth
Land - 13
1 Forest
1 Island
1 Mountain
1 Swamp
1 Bayou
1 Tropical Island
1 Underground Sea
2 Misty Rainforest
4 Verdant Catacombs
Cantrip/Protection - 13
4 Brainstorm
4 Sensei's Divining Top
4 Cabal Therapy
1 Gitaxian Probe
Business - 9
1 Burning Wish
1 Idea's Unbound
1 Cruel Bargain
1 Doomsday
4 Infernal Tutor
1 Tendrils of Agony
61 cards
I'm still just tweaking everything to see how 1'of business configurations end up once you are cantripping your way into a positive combination. For example, I've been playing with only 1 Doomsday because when it falls into my lap, its usually works the way you want it to. I think that having the option to Doomsday can be just as powerful as making it the focus of your game plan. However, diversifying business options means that when you have multiple business, they don't conflict and slow you down. One example I noticed that worked incredibly well is giving Pact the opportunity to be a business spell. I stopped my testing to write this particular post because I had a turn 4 situation in which I had LED in play and 2 ESGS. I Pact for Wolfbriar Elemental, and then I get a 4/4 and 5 2/2's, with 4 lands in my upkeep. 14 power out of a 0 mana spell thats usually a manasource, color fixer, or cantrip for Doomsday? You see where this is going. Pact is incredibly strong, but a single Wolfbriar can mean that you can stretch out your game a bit by playing the role of finding BW into Damnation, and then go for a mid to late game Wolfbriar. Normally you can't just cast it (G mana limitations) for incredible plays like you might think initially; its best used with LEDs, ESGs, and G-duals and a Pact once you've already hit 4 lands (which can happen turn 2 thanks to VE, making Wolfbriar viable as a business spell). It almost seems like a green empty the warrens with a elegant 4/4 body attached to it. Excellent card design. However, its a business spell that plays nicely with Tendrils as well, since you can mini-tendrils against aggro, and then multikicker your way into a combat race against aggro decks if you need to. I'm about to go back to testing, but Wolfbriar might also be good in some kind of Belcher variant, or Elves which is already playing Summoner's Pact.
For anyone interested in working on VANT and Veteran Explorer storm variants, I moved the discussion on that to the Developmental, and I've moved on to a Doomsday list as it seems to be more consistent and far more stable than Ad Nauseam lists. We ought to resume discussion of PSI in this thread.
Cabal Therapy is one of the better disruption spells in Legacy, but not how its been played in current versions of TES and ANT. Its a subpar protection spell that occasionally does work when you play it with another subpar protection spell, Gitaxian Probe. In this deck, though, Cabal Therapy is fully exploited because you can actually flashback it.
Currently the list is 62 cards. I'd appreciate some help in figuring out what to cut. The list is incredibly fun to play, though its obviously a little more challenging than whatever storm variant you're familiar with.
- VE Doomsday -
Pact-package - 12
4 Veteran Explorer
4 Summoner's Pact
2 Elvish Spirit Guide
1 Wild Dogs
1 Dryad Arbor
Acceleration - 14
4 Lion's Eye Diamond
1 Lotus Petal
4 Culling the Weak
4 Dark Ritual
1 Rain of Filth
Land - 13
1 Forest
1 Island
1 Mountain
1 Swamp
1 Bayou
1 Tropical Island
1 Underground Sea
2 Misty Rainforest
4 Verdant Catacombs
Cantrip - 8
4 Brainstorm
4 Sensei's Divining Top
Protection - 5
4 Cabal Therapy
1 Gitaxian Probe
Business - 10
1 Burning Wish
1 Idea's Unbound
1 Cruel Bargain
2 Doomsday
4 Infernal Tutor
1 Tendrils of Agony
62 cards
Some cards in the deck allow you to look like Nic fit by opening with cards like Therapy, Explorer, Top, Arbor, Bayou, Catacombs.
Note that Wild Dogs has cycling. Therefore, Pact allows you to cantrip into Doomsday in addition to being a powerful, color fixing mana source as Veteran Explorer, Dryad Arbor, and ESG. Eternal Witness is another card I'd consider to take further advantage of Summoner's Pact but its probably unnecessary.
I dropped Chrome Mox and Lotus Petals from my original build upon dropping Ad Nauseam. Probe is useful for some piles so I kept it in. I think that Idea's Unbound and Cruel Bargain allow for increased flexibility but I'm sure that more testing will narrow that slot to one or the other.
The absurd amounts of mana in this deck and cantrip chaining can lead to some incredible plays that have lead me to want the maindeck Tendrils quite often.
I haven't begun to work on a sideboard.
I've also worked on versions with Ad Nauseam. Those versions go off faster than ANT, a little slower than TES but better slow playing due to Therapy flashbacks, Explorers, Tops, etc.
Please note that a **** ton of mana, a couple Summoner's Pacts, and a Top are excellent and can actually stretch the deck's win potential because you can look at the top 3, Pact (shuffles), look at the top 3, play Explorer, crack explorer (shuffle), look... so you see double shuffling is extremely relevant at making your Tops and Brainstorms that much stronger.
The list feels comfortable and adaptable. Burning Wishes are excellent set up tools, and the Cabal Therapy's Flashback makes this deck have the most effective protection of the storm combo variants. 7 Protection spells, and 4 Pact potentially as virtual Xantid Swarms if your discard sees no Wastelands after you hit 4 lands via Veteran Explorer. The asymmetry in the 3 BS + 1 SDT has felt more or less elegant to my combo tastes. The deck also plays 4 BW, 2 IT, and 1 Diabolic Intent (DI), for a total of 7 dangerous tutors. At 6cc, Empty the Warrens has been incredibly easy and consistent to pull off turn 2 against fair decks (gold fishing game 1's). The DI has been flexible when I've had it because hands with IT have often easily led to Ad Nauseam as well. The deck hits 7 mana no problem. 8 acceleration that net you BBB mana means that combinations of those powerful acceleration in the more mid range power hands are about 6 or 7 mana, so racing TES, blue combo decks, Elves, Dredge, Belcher, seems within reach of this build. One worth noting is chaining extra tutors into specialized accelerants such as Burning Wish into Bubbling muck when you acquire extra Swamps, and then DI can find Rain of Filth if you happen to have DI, when you also have BW, and perhaps another tutor such as IT or a cantrip, etc. Basically the difference between BW in this deck and TES is that Bubbling Muck and Rain of Filth take advantage of Veteran Explorer to its potential. Conveinently VE is hard to Daze, and thanks to 6 instant speed IMS, and 4 Lotus Petal (and no card disadvantage from Chrome Mox), playing turn 1 power plays like VE + Culling or VE + Cabal Therapy opens up the explosivity of the deck to levels that even threshed Cabal Rituals cannot bolster. VE is also immune to Spell Pierce. 13 lands seems correct to me as most ANT lists seem to play 15-17 while TES is playing 12 lands typically, some pilots playing 13 lands. But what if VE is the holy grail of color fixing in storm combo? It allows you to flashback Therapy, and combo off Culling for turn 1 Ad Nauseams when you draw it in your opening grip. Also, the deck not playing Chrome Mox means no card disadvantage, and instead you have 6 anti-Daze tech, that can also be Veteran Explorers that allow you to pay for Summoner's Pact if you play it on turn 2. The deck has 6 fast mana + 13 land + 4 petal makes 23 IMS, and leading with GB to 2 different accelerants, with the x8 virtual VE redundancy, I've found exploiting both a sac effect and VE to be not that difficult, and sometimes extra BW excited me to produce a more adaptable wishboard so that BW is more powerful. One addition I really liked was Reverse the Sands. I was thinking that in a couple hands I had a couple BW against a hypothetical 3sphere and Chalice at 1. so I was trying to BW my way out of it when I discovered myself getting hid by lodestone golems and such, and then it occured to me, after destroying my opponents team with Shattering Spree, why not continue with Reverse the Sand via BW + LED? BW + LED is the fastest way to that route. And also if you do something like Damnation, you can drop ESG, BW + LED for Reverse the Sands on the following turn unless they are playing Burn and can close the gap before you can get another turn on them after blowing the board. Lots of tricks with this list, immensely fun to goldfish.
VANT - Veteran Ad Nauseam Tendrils
Business - 9
4 Burning Wish
2 Infernal Tutor
1 Diabolic Intent
1 Empty the Warrens
1 Ad Nauseam
Cantrip - 4
3 Brainstorm
1 Sensei's Divining Top
Accelerants - 13
4 Lion's Eye Diamond
4 Culling the Weak
4 Dark Ritual
1 Rain of Filth
Pact Package and fast mana - 16
4 Lotus Petal
4 Summoner's Pact
4 Veteran Explorer
2 Elvish Spirit Guide
1 Xantid Swarm
1 Wild Cantor
Land - 13
4 Verdant Catacombs
2 Polluted Delta
1 Bayou
1 Underground Sea
1 Taiga
1 Mountain
1 Island
1 Swamp
1 Forest
Sideboard - 15
1 Innocent Blood
1 Deathmark
1 Thoughtseize
1 Bubbling Muck
1 Shattering Spree
1 Pyroclasm
1 Hull Breach
1 Infernal Tutor
1 Cruel Bargain
1 Damnation
1 Ill-Gotten Gains
1 Past in Flames
1 Empty the Warrens
1 Tendrils of Agony
1 Reverse the Sands
62 cards
These are my brew notes.
Anyone interested, the 62 cards has been relaxing in just goldfishing 7 card hands. I find that sometimes brewing storm variants can be a kind of neurosis as you try to figure out the method to pick better synergy's. I've found being willing in a build with cantrips and lots of flexible tutors like this one to be willing to go over 60 by a couple cards. You could probably cut the Wild Cantor but I like that it makes Pact + G, which is incredibly easy, 1 mana of any color for if we need to find a sac outlet to combine with a VE post-Ad Nauseam.
Also, the 9 creatures + 4 Pact - 2 Elvish Spirit Guide as IMS more than creatures makes about 11 creatures, + 6 lands that function as virtual Dryad Arbors, for 17 creatures, before we consider 4 cantrips + 16 shuffle effects (TES having a mere 10 while ANT has anywhere from 12 to 16, so we have a powerful Brainstorm, but also with explosive power that even TES cannot have). Also, the Burning Wishes as flexible, flashbackable protection and access to acceleration to basics has been fantastic. In general, the tutors don't get into much conflict with one another because a certain number of BW and a certain number of lands determines how you ought to try the hand because the Pact system in this variant seems to be particularly useful since there are 10 sac outlets to take advantage of.
MUD can be a tough matchup. Honestly, you win the dice roll, or you don't. How many Obliterators were you playing? I'm not sure if we want 1 as an IT target, or 2 for additional redundancy.
I know you weren't taking notes judiciously but what happened in game 1 against DNT with Pact? I'm a bit confused. The hands that bust with Pact are definitely ones to discuss so we can determine whether or not it could have been avoided, or if it was just one of those like 5% of games where you lose to Pact. This factor is one of the most obvious prejudices other players tend to have toward this deck before they understand how it works. The other factor is most obviously play skill (meaning commitment), and obviously you have ridiculous high priced alternative combo decks like ANT and TES that are in comparison easier and generally better positioned in the 'world or internet' metagame.
Honestly its hard to take notes with SI anyway unless you practice while you goldfish. However, once you do, a lot of your goldfish games just become recorded 7 card hands, and we can read the code btw since we play the deck so feel free to abbreviate with IT, Drit, Crit, LED, etc. It also makes prying eyes have to work a little harder to figure out how to actually play against us. Hence the giant text wall of information that you would have to already be learned and dedicated to the deck to really understand.
As a general rule, I tend to go for Empty the Warrens against fair decks and Carpets/Grind plan against permission suites. The permission suites can topple quite easily if you draw a good 7. This will more than likely happen if you get a lot of powerful 1cc cards in your opening hand. When that happens, your opponent will likely be baffled as to which card to force, especially when you choose your order carefully, because you guess at your opponents intuition. I usually make these guesses based upon their reaction to the first game; sometimes people will call the deck 'a tendrils deck', other times 'belcher', other times 'SI', other times 'Ad Nauseam', storm, etc. I think this can be a way to guess at the tech they expect you to bring in. In that case, you can play into their suppositions as the dark horse, and perhaps draw a Force of Will on Carpet of Flowers.
There is one example, in which a player thinks they can out play the Carpet of Flowers, but you have something like 3 of them in your hand. When that happens, you can resolve one after the other, and soon you have multiple Carpets in play, and though they only leech off one Island, together they produce 3 mana, which is enough mana to start a spell chain. Then your hand either produces multiple turns at one business spell a turn, or multiple acceleration options that allows you to play through soft permission walls.
When you aren't trying to grind like this, you have either already pushed through a business spell and you start to gain card advantage on them, though usually you only have about a turn or two to keep doing this before your clock shrinks to nothing, so you have to time early business very carefully. Sometimes opponents can give away that they are vulnerable with hesitation, false hestiation, etc. These are good times to trust your intuition and go for the kill. Other opponents will sand bag your Carpets and try to kill you slowly with one or two creatures. In this case, you have to recognize this game plan immediately and take advantage of a tapped out control player. If they go for a creature early it means you have to out play Daze or Force. That either means having that extra one mana to play an early business spell and secure a new set of 4 cards, and know the clock will quickly shrink, or it means throwing a business spell into Force of Will, which usually means you are sacrificing a business spell in order to gain something or your business gets stuffed. With a very good hand, you can just play 2 business spells, or a Duress and a business spell.
Sometimes you can make more convoluted plays, like having 6 mana in the face of Daze/Force, with IT and Cruel Bargain as your business. Your opponent just played Delver and you have Carpet to his one Island, but you also have a Chrome Mox. So you play the acceleration, he Dazes, you pay 1, so only 5 floating, Cruel Bargain gets Forced, but IT grabs something, now what is it? I like to either have a Tomb of Urami waiting because I can play LED into it rather easily and its not hard to hit 5 with this deck, but that is bad against 1 Delver already on the field. Another option is to get Goblin Charbelcher. This is what I usually do because when you get your most dangerous business early on with 20 life and a couple perpetual resources, your topdeck mode can easily produce a win from here because when both players are leaning on the topdeck mode after a situation like this, SI will more than likely win because its topdeck mode is stronger. Our opponent has traded 3 cards for our entire hand, but we still have 20 life because they Forced the Cruel Bargain. Now if they don't Force the Cruel Bargain, then we can potentially draw enough resources to topple them before the Delver goes to town. This is the risk they take by Forcing early business. Frankly this is a risk that we want them to take because our topdeck mode is stronger. Trying to accelerate that topdeck mode also means cutting our life total is half, which means making the opponents job twice as easy for every 4 turns of topdeck mode we steal on them. That usually means you don't want to board in Tomb of Urami against a deck like RUG because it just stops Belcher from firing more than it wins you games outright, however this does happen if you have a man plan focused sideboard. Otherwise, you can't get the early jump on the life total race and Delvers will beat you because of RUG's reach spells. Obliterators, Tombs, etc. are most effective when you focus on the strategy. Otherwise, I leave the Tomb in the board for Stoneblade matchups where it randomly wins games.
Anyway, so when you are grinding (I'm mostly thinking right now in terms of grinding against RUG because its easier against slower control decks) and they give you the D4, they can either break your hand wide open, or bust. When a D4 breaks your hand wide open, I usually consider a few different lines of play. Double business lines of play can outdistance one counterspell but you always want the D4s to come first because IT's and Belchers will win the game outright. Duress's before D4's are an excellent way to protect your business spells. However, its important to note that sometimes, your opponent really doesn't have a counterspell, and you overthink the hand into a Rube Goldberg machine to the point where you can't actually go off. This is the trick; did your opponent let you have the D4 or did you get the D4 because they have no permission? This is the game you play with your opponents as they try to figure out how your post-board actually works; should I give this SI-opponent his D4's or not? You want your opponent to think you want the D4 to resolve when in reality D4s distract the opponent from the more dangerous business spells by stripping the opponent of their permission; however, this way of leaning on the deck puts its confidence in topdeck mode and often is the result of a very fast hand within the context of the post-board. Other hands are slower and more ardous, but set up a board state far more quickly. In these cases your opponent thinks they know what to out play based upon their own island count + their own clock + their permission, while you then have to out play that intuition. Because you know your opponents intuition is tied to how many islands they have and their clock, you can guess at their softer permission spells quite easily. Usually if they think they can get there with one creature (say Delver or threshed goose), they will throw back their Goyfs and play with a single Island for Cantripping. If they get more adventurous with Islands, they probably have more business and that means they will try to stuff your acceleration spells with softer permission. In these cases you want to get to 3, ideally 4 mana, so you can play business spells through their permission. When you hit 4 perpetual mana, D4s can play through Daze, so they will save Dazes for Belchers. Forces are for ITs, and Flusterstorms hit anything before Belchers. In this case, you can just run your opponent out of permission spells, especially if they let you get LEDs and multiple carpets because once one business spell resolves, it could mean the end of the game. if they let one slip through its because they are waiting, in which case you have to play through double permission post-D4, which is more difficult but if they let you slip through while you are grinding it means they don't think the D4 will let you win. When it just produces resources like LEDs, more Carpets, acceleration, etc. then on the following turn you have enough extra mana to play through soft permission, and this is precisely why they don't let the D4's resolve. When you hit 4 perpetual mana and they don't let anything resolve, it probably means they don't have reach yet and they are holding permission. Usually this situation is the most standstill-y of all the ways to play against PSI, which is for both players to play against the topdeck; the control player is trying to keep drawing permission while the SI player is trying to keep drawing business. This is where it gets closer to 50/50. If the blue player is to cantrip into more permission to get out of this grind, he has less for Spell Pierce/Flusterstorm. Flusterstorm is good against everything but Belcher so I always save Belchers for last, and I will on occasion risk everything into a Belcher and hope my opponent is holding Flusterstorm or Stifle and not Spell Pierce. These are the kinds of choices you have to make when the opponent is trying to both stay within the confines of both few Islands, and a business spell every other turn or so from your end. Every non-business spell that you draw after you've hit 4 mana is just cake that helps you play around the soft permission. Sometimes, that means your business will sneak through, other times, it means you are still whittling. I find that the whittling usually comes to an end either when the opponent ****s up and you take advantage of a mistake, or they run out of permission and just lose. The best situations are usually the ones in which the opponent has a lot of early Force of Wills. In cases like these, the opponent is usually as close to you are to being in topdeck mode, which means you probably have the advantage. If they have a clock while you have the advantage, then you are in a tight spot, but the PSI player is far more comfortable in topdeck mode. Remember though, this sense of topdeck mode is in context of a grind plan. You don't really want to go into topdeck mode against a control player with a clock if you can help it. If you want that situation, its because they've over played their mana base and your topdeck mode can exploit that situation. In many cases, good control players won't buy that though. So how do you beat a good control player? It all depends on your opening hand because SI has no cantrips so everything after that is the luck of the draw. Against a control player, I tend to look at my hand in terms of a fast play or a control play, and whether or not I think my opponent wants me to play faster or slow. This is where metagaming comes into play. PSI still retains a lot of its speed post-board because Dark Ritual and LED are powerful accelerants with the business suite SI has. No other combo deck has that kind of turn 1 potential after boarding out 15 cards. Often control players forget this, making turn 1 D4 lines of play incredibly powerful. However, early D4's in context of the grind plan doesn't usually mean you are going to win outright. Rather, it means you've acquired a lot of resources for your next turn because you de-boarded a lot of your speed. This means your opponent will have their soft permission next turn, but you will have acquired resources. On the following turn, your opponent will have the option to cantrip into force, or at worst, we encounter Daze and Spell Pierce. If I early D4, it puts a lot of early pressure on the opponent. Its kind of like an early Empty for 6 or 8 in Belcher/TES/ANT. You do it if you have access to that line of play because it allows you to win the game later. If our opponent doesn't counter the D4, they will be hard pressed to put a clock on us because it means they have to tap out on turn 1, or wait until turn 2, and drop another island. You can see that an early D4 will lead to potential line of play with Carpet of Flowers because we force the opponent to play an additional Island. This is huge if they don't have Daze. If they do have Daze, then we fall back to one Island. Players will often play their creatures, and then Daze. Knowing this, you can set them back a couple a turn by playing into their Daze. In this case, ESG becomes incredibly useful because it allows you to pay for Daze, and this scenario is no better use for ESG. If you wait too long to out play them, you miss opportunities like these. Ultimately as the aggressor, we are trying to out guess our opponents permission and pick the right time to go for it. However, as we can see, going for it early on, produces entirely different lines of play, like in the case of an early D4, or early Carpets.
Early Carpets is the other line of play that really tripped me up when my opponents started to sand bag Carpet by holding their extra Islands because they were also holding Force of Will. Early Carpet is only good in certain situations. Otherwise, you can hold onto it, and play it when its more dangerous. If you play it right away, its because you are playing against Stoneblade, BUG, etc. where they usually play many Islands (play Carpet early against decks with a lot of basic Islands as well). Against a deck like RUG, an early Carpet means that you can exploit it with 2 mana, or you played it wrong. If you can exploit a Carpet with only 2 mana against RUG, go for it early because sometimes they will get to 2 or 3 mana, play a Goyf, and then try to go to town before the Carpet gets there. I say 2 mana because you should not expect more than 2 against a good RUG player. However, if they don't think you have Carpet, you can save it for later where it can be a powerful ritual. For example, if you Duress early and see no Dazes, hold on to your Carpets because it means that if your opponent over plays his Islands so he can play Goyf, then you can play Carpet in your main phase and add the mana in the 2nd main phase. For this reason, I liked playing with Lotus Blooms because then you can play early Carpets and they can't play too many Islands the turn before Bloom resolves because otherwise they have to deal with Black lotus on the stack, and LEDs (conditional black lotus). You then go for it with at least 2 business spells. Depending on how they prepare with Islands for your Bloom turn, your Carpet determines how good your topdeck mode is.
Against discard, you almost always keep your 7 unless you know you are playing first. That way you at least have resources when they try to trade your combo pieces for disruption. In PSI, Chrome Mox is your best friend against discard matchups. For example, I had one game against Pox in which he was banking on a turn 2 Hymn because he didn't have a turn 1 play. I had mulliganed to 5, and emptied my entire hand into Chrome Moxen so he couldn't nuke my hand. Pox conveinently has trouble destroying artifact mana sources. Eventually I was able to hard cast a Belcher and kill him. In another game, he stripped my entire hand but in the course of trying to kill me I was able to rebuild with artifact sources because I kept my opening 7 (which had a Chrome Mox). This is one reason that I really like playing 4 Charbelchers in my business suite. I've found that the heavier Tendrils builds mean playing through discard based disruption is more difficult. Having access to even just one Charbelcher then means that IT can pull you out of some non-storm situations, which is often the case with the amount of mana SI can sit on in topdeck mode.
Against decks with artifact permanents, you want to race, or pour everything into Empty the Warrens. Trying to Nature's Claim things isn't optimal. I've found that this deck can play through things like Chalice at 0, 1, or 2 quite easily. Trinisphere we are dead in the water. The thing is, without multiple permanent mana sources and something like Rebuild, a deck that can stick one 3sphere is also going to stick Lodestone Golem or something. We can't expect to win in this situation so I prefer to race it. Turn 1 lines of play in those decks are rather inconsistent so few people play them anyway. If you run into them though, Tomb of Urami's definitely come in, and I'd say Empty is the main game plan, and Tombs are 2nd. The man plan is also quite good against decks like MUD.
Against fair decks that bring in hate, go for Empty the Warrens or Belcher pass the turn if your hand doesn't win outright, mulligan aggressively, don't be afraid of playing 2nd. I like to play 2nd in most of these cases actually because SI has something like an 80% chance of going off turn 1 if you're on the draw. That extra card makes all the difference. The only advantage for going off turn 1 is being able to bust. The versions that play Empty the Warrens and 4 Belchers are more easily able to play 2nd. Empty is usually my out for Leyline of Singularity, which comes up more and more, but with 7 outs post-board, your goal is to chain D4s together and hit one of those 7 cards. Mulliganing is incredibly important here and its important to remember that the way you practice as a goldfish your mulliganing is entirely different when you have the pressure of a real game. Don't overthink it, trust your intuition and experience. I usually find that 'pretending a confident 7' post-board hand is incredibly threatening with this deck because your opponent feels that they should mulligan. When that happens, don't get tripped up on what kind of hate they have. Just bank on Empty the Warrens because it solves the problem of most types of hate, and if you get Mindbreak trapped, it happens. It comes with the territory. Aggro will always be able to steal games a couple games from an aggro player. The decks you'll lose to, however, will not be as well equipped to deal with other decks, since Mindbreak Trap is a card that cannot easily be ported to other matchups. So generally, you'll beat aggro players with good sideboards.
We will certainly have to do something about heavy discard disruption suites. I'm thinking that Sensei's Divining Top is something we ought to explore because it allows us to hide key ingredients for our combo turn on top of our deck. We already play more shuffle effects than ANT or TES so SDT seems like an excellent candidate for a cantrip slot. This makes me think of Doomsday, but a Doomsday package makes the deck significantly more complicated and I think the more we try to tweak it to Doomsday, the more it will just start to look like DDFT. Ad Nauseam is our main game plan, and then the grind station strategy with Tendrils and PIF is the other line of play.
Then again, Griz is an excellent strategy when we know we will encounter discard. We still have a lot of different routes to test to determine which business suite best supports VANT's explosive mana base.
Then again, it sounds like the build wasn't as good as you hoped it was. I think we still need to work on it. The 7 cards hand of the deck by my assessment is on avg. a turn 3.65. Honestly, I usually try to keep my opening 7 when I'm just goldfishing this deck for fun. It helps you acquire a sharper intuition when feeling out your set up.
We could also try developing a maindeck that plays Griz instead of AdN that way we aren't as pressed for time, and then cut ITs for Burning Wishs and plays DI's along side them. Its just more flexible tutors. Entomb + Recurring Nightmare is only 4 mana and Entomb + DI --> Reanimate is 4 mana. Entomb + DI --> Recurring Nightmare is 6 mana. Then we have BW into EtW at 6 mana. We also have Entomb + BW --> Tendrils, Entomb for PIF, but this is a lot of mana and requires a full yard. We then have DI --> Griz which is an absurd amount of mana. We could probably also then do DI --> BW into Tendrils. I think we could probably cut Tendrils from the maindeck. If we get Griz working we can make short work of an opponent or just go straight for the tendrils by drawing a bunch of cards, but through Burning Wish.
EDIT:
There will probably also be cases in which we can replay Recurring Nightmare to grab Veteran Explorer again to fetch extra basics. I also see potential tricks with Eternal Witness. It could be an excellent way to take advantage of multiple creatures in one hand ultimately playing into multiple Witness triggers so we can regain business in a bad situation.
I haven't had too many problems with multiple Entombs actually. I've been having more trouble with too many ITs and DI's, especially DI's. If you have too many Entombs, you can usually chain them together into something. I'll break down how I usually think about Entomb when its in my opening 7.
1 Entomb
- Here I'm thinking of going for Entomb, AdN and Ewit via Pact to play it. If you draw another Entomb then you want to go for Tendrils/PIF with both of them. When your inside that line of play you can recycle one of the Entombs into a Narcomoeba for Culling the Weak. If you draw an IT, DI, or AdN, then Entomb usually grabs either Narcomoeba or Cabal Therapy. If you draw PiF, then you Entomb for Tendrils.
2 Entomb
Here you are probably going for a PIF/Tendrils line of play depending on how much mana you are short. However, you could potentially draw a business spell like IT/DI/AdN/Tendrils/PIF that completely changes how the hand works and then its likely a turn 3 as Entombs dig for Narco or Therapy. If you are short mana, depending on how much, this might be a hand to throw back.
3 Entomb
This is much harder to pull off but you have 2 Entomb for PIF + Tendrils and then a third if one for Therapy or Narco. This depends on how much mana you have.
4 Entombs
I doubt there are many 4 Entomb hands I'd want to keep.
I see Entomb as a sort of built in Grinding Station strategy. Then we have 7 tutors into Ad Nauseam as a faster line of play when we have a more explosive hand. Then we also have the Eternal Witness line of play simply because the deck has so much mana.
I don't think we have to play Entomb but if we figure out how to break it in storm combo, it gives us an angle of attack that nobody else is playing and that means we can get crafty. Brainstorm might be better but I strayed away from blue just because Pyroblasts usually come in from RUG's post-board.
Also, a note on sideboard tech... Every control player you want to play against knows about Empty the Warrens. People are ready for that. What they aren't ready for though is a well played Tendrils. I don't think we really want to play EtW except perhaps against decks that bring in Leyline. EtW in that sense is an answer rather than an alternative form of attack. It works in Belcher because all Belcher does is play EtW to maximum efficiency. Same goes for Xantid Swarm. Its extremely old news and its basically a silver bullet against Merfolk and against everything else it can get you lucky. Even Carpet of Flowers is getting played in Belcher and ANT these days. Thankfully, PSI can still take advantage of it far better than the other storm decks since PSI has a high business density. Things like Lotus Bloom as potential Carpet replacements or compliments still intrigues me. I like playing the PSI post-board that way. Then you have man plans. Phyrexian Obliterator is ****ing incredible against RUG. They can't get rid of it so they basically have to win with Delver at that point. Desecration Demon seems like a nice compliment to Obliterator though 2 bolt/chain makes me wonder if its worth it. Death's Shadow has been a moot point but I don't know now that Toxic Deluge is a thing.
One thing does intrigue me though. If we were to play Burning Wish, Sensei's Diving Top gets WAY better because then we can slow the deck down and fetch board sweepers or removal if we need it. We might even be able to cut a few IT's, and cut the DI's down to one just so we don't draw multiples. IT's aren't as effective as I'd like them to be. DI's and BW are so much more flexible. We could then potentially split the board between a faster list with a 2nd copy of AdN and ITs, and then a small anti-control supplement like 2 Carpets of Flowers and 2 Thoughtseize, and then play a microwishboard for BW's.