i agree that dack is almost surely worse than intuition. however, if you made me play a planeswalker in lands, this is EASILY my pick. lands likes looting more than brainstorming and 1UR is significantly easier to make than 2UU. i've been playing 2 faithless looting in my control/midrange-y lands build for about a month and i really, really like the card.
maybe he'll crop-up in some weird RUG depths deck a la kennen haas's jund depths list with blue instead of black, but as far as true lands decks, i don't see it happening.
i played RG combo lands at SCGLA this last weekend to an unspectacular-though-respectable finish. my list is similar to kurt spiess's list, though i think i'll be mixing it up a little in the upcoming weeks based on a couple of chronic underperformers (maindeck glacial chasm -- i'm looking at you). anyways, my list was:
Loved reading your tourney report. I just recently started playing RG combolands myself, and picked up quite some stuff from your post.
I wonder how good a singleton Engineered explosives, backed up by Academy ruins (and perhaps a fetchable tropical Island) would be, instead of 1 Pfire, chasm and Karakas. It would definitely help with problematic situations, like a lonely pithing needle on thespians stage, an ensnaring bridge or swarms of opposing creatures.
thanks -- glad you enjoyed it.
yeah i really like EE lock, too, but if i'm going to run EE's i want to be playing tolaria west. tolaria west does find both combo pieces, but not as quickly as crop rotation and gamble do. there is probably a medium-speed lands deck that would run some combination of crop rotations and tolaria west. not sure how good it would be.
thanks for the replies, guys. i agree with sparkii's assessment that glacial chasm is an auto-include in control lands, but combo lands rarely locks the game down hard enough to be on the glacial chasm plan. let's look at the outs some of the more-played decks have to glacial chasm lock:
death and taxes: flickerwisp, wasteland, mangara (sometimes), and RIP and cataclysm out of the board
RUG delver: wasteland, forcing the loam, lightning bolt (can be dodged with thespian's stage, though)
UWR delver: wasteland, forcing the loam, lightning bolt (" "), RIP out of the board
BUG delver: wasteland, forcing the loam, DRS
sneak and show: emrakul, forcing the loam
miracles: jace, countertop-ing the loam, forcing the loam, blood moon, RIP
jund: DRS, lightning bolt, extraction effects out of the board
all manner of storm combo and omnishow don't care about glacial chasm at all
of the above decks, i can see a strong case being made for it against jund and UWR delver. while UWR and RUG delver have the same pre-board hate against chasm, RUG delver's clock is much faster and it seems unrealistic to get the lock set-up before the RUG delver player kills you. just making a fast marit lage is the much better plan in this case. jund and UWR delver are already excellent match-ups for combo lands, so i don't want to dedicate more maindeck hate slots against some of my best match-ups while my problem match-ups (D+T, miracles) are laughing at glacial chasm.
on the topic of diamond valley...waaaay too narrow. in control lands (which is the build i assume you're talking about, since you also talk about urborg), marit lage is just there to officially put an end to the game. your opponent should be out of resources before you even consider going for the lage. if you are going to die on the crack-back, get a tabernacle, EE lock, punishing fire, or glacial chasm online to kill/neuter the opponent's creatures.
edit: and on the topic of the as-of-yet-unrealized white member of the volrath's stronghold cycle, control lands will be insane if they print that card. we could run maindeck nether void or the abyss without fear of dredging them away. hell, we could run solitary confinement lock using tranquil thicket dredging LFTL to fuel the confinement. chains of mephistopheles out of the board sounds pretty amazing, too.
i played RG combo lands at SCGLA this last weekend to an unspectacular-though-respectable finish. my list is similar to kurt spiess's list, though i think i'll be mixing it up a little in the upcoming weeks based on a couple of chronic underperformers (maindeck glacial chasm -- i'm looking at you). anyways, my list was:
i don't remember these games too well, but they were brutal. at one point i was one land short of being able to put him off all of his white sources so i could go for the EOT lage (which is guaranteed to get there w/o white mana up for terminus or STP) and then he drops a karakas. so i get another port and drop it -- i'll kill him next turn! but he drops another white source. ugh. we durdle around and he eventually gets a jace online. i have to go for the lage but it's a desperation play. he has the swords and i lose to jace ultimate.
the second game goes even worse. the only memorable thing that happened was that at one point i tapped a grove for red mana and gave him a point of life. my opponent "responds" with a brainstorm. i tell him he can't respond to the grove because it's a mana ability and that he can instead respond to whatever i'm going to do with the mana. i don't understand why he would even want to respond to a mana ability, but he pushes the issue and calls a judge over. we explain the situation and the judge issues him a warning for trying to cast a spell when he doesn't have priority. owned.
he beats me soundly, but i get the moral victory.
games: 0-2
record: 0-1
moral victories: 1
round 2 -- punishing jund
i got paired against my friend, who was borrowing the deck. i knew what he was on and that the match would be an easy one. game 1 i hold back a crop rotation until i find the first combo piece. i find and drop a thespian's stage after a couple of turns, then crop rotate into a dark depths on his end of turn without fear -- playing against non-blue decks is awesome. game 2 he puts on pressure with goyfs and DRS. i find a couple mazes of ith to hold off the goyf onslaught, but can't complete the stage/depths combo despite my dredging. eventually a third goyf and second drs come down and i die.
game 3 was funny. i have a really strong opener, and on my (i believe) turn 3 i have a seven card hand which includes gamble. i can gamble for a dark depths and if the gamble hits anything but the depths i've got a guaranteed win on the following turn (i know my opponent's 75 since he's my friend). if my gamble hits the depths, i don't have any way to recur it and i'm going to be in a pretty bad position. so i go for it, and naturally i discard the depths. at this point i'm thinking how embarrassing losing to jund is going to be and how gamble is my absolute least favorite magic card. my opponent swings, plays something i don't care about and passes the turn. naturally, i rip the one remaining copy of depths in my deck, make marit lage at my opponent's EOT, and kill him. the magic gods giveth, and the magic gods taketh away. my opponent goes on serious life tilt for the rest of the day.
games: 2-1
record: 1-1
friends i've defeated in an embarrassing fashion: 1
round 3 -- UWR delver
my opponent is a cool guy with a bunch of SCG top 8 pins on his playmat and he's unsurprisingly a really tight player. i don't remember the first game too well, but i believe game 1 started with me on the wasteland plan for a while, and after a few loam dredges + wastes, i assemble the combo and kill him. game 2 my opponent gets an early RIP, but i have a k-grip waiting for him. i assemble the combo, but make what has to be by far the most common play mistake when piloting this deck: i don't make marit lage at the right time.
sidebar: when to make marit lage
when you assemble the stage depths combo, there are broadly two times you should consider actually making the beasty: your EOT / your opponent's upkeep OR your opponent's EOT. the reason to pull the trigger before your opponent's main phase is one card: wasteland. if your opponent drops a wasteland they can stop you from going off by leaving it untapped (because they can kill the depths in response to the stage activation). if you think your opponent will drop a wasteland on their main phase, go for the early marit lage.
there are things you can do to fight back against your opponent's wastes. the most obvious is having an active life from the loam to reset the combo after he wastes you. however, anything that forces him to blow his waste will work too. this includes a waste of your own; a rishadan port and a land to activate the port with; or two thespian's stages and the mana to activate both of 'em.
the reason to wait on the marit lage is more obvious -- you play around sorcery speed answers to the beasty by waiting until your opponent's EOT. the most common sorcery speed threats -- by far -- are jace and lili.
in light of our little sidebar, it's clear that UWR delver falls under the category of decks where we go for lage before the opponent's main phase (since they run wasteland, but no jace or lili). like an idiot, i assembled the combo and passed the turn without pulling the trigger. i realize my mistake right as we entered the opponent's mainphase and sure enough, he rips a wasteland off the top. daaaamnit. so we sit there with me threatening the combo for a few turns while some durdly creatures beat me up (he can't waste me, cause i can combo off in response). fortunately, i dig up a wasteland, which forces his hand and lets me make lage. he sends lage plowing (ugh!) and i go up to 33 life. this buys me enough turns to find a loam, get back the combo and do it all over. my opponent doesn't have the swords this time and he dies to a couple swings from the big boy.
my opponent told me after the match that he left 2 out of 4 swords in as an answer to lage. i've noticed more and more pilots doing that lately, and it's definitely the right thing to do -- people are catching on.
games: 2-0
record: 2-1
round 4 -- feces bant
my opponent gets a quick start and i don't have the combo onboard, so i go for the grind plan. i waste a couple of duals and p-fire a hierarch. i try to apply pressure with waste recursion and tabernacle while hiding behind a maze of ith but a true-name nemesis comes down and my opponent seals the deal.
i don't remember much of game 2, but i believe i make a fast lage and it eats a swords. so i wait a couple of turns and remake the lage FTW?? not sure on this one.
game 3 i have a turn 1 lage hand but i decide not to go for it because i have no way to recur the combo pieces if he has a swords or a karakas. i had a manabond and some other cool stuff in my hand that i wasn't interested in dumping to the manabond. this was almost certainly a misplay. i think my chances of winning on the spot are higher than my chances of winning a protracted game, but -- you know -- hindsight is 20/20 and all that. i almost stabilize but jace, karakas, wastelands, TNN and knight happen and i die.
this matchup feels really bad -- it's a good thing nobody plays this deck anymore.
games: 1-2
rounds: 2-2
round 5 -- monoblue omnishow
this match was against another of my friends, a good player who is probably the person i have played the most legacy matches against, so we know each other's decks and skill levels. i was scared of the bounce out of his washboard going in, but in-terms of speed, i'd say the decks are pretty similar. counterspells on my crop rotations were also something to be wary of. i win the roll and draw my seven, which turns-out to be the stone-cold nuts. i can goldfish a turn 1 lage off a manabond, so i go for it. the manabond gets countered, so i have to settle for a turn 2 or 3 lage instead. my opponent dies.
i bring in 12 cards and my opponent's on the play. we each mulligan to 6. on my turn 1 i go for an exploration which gets forced. so i go for a turn 2 exploration, which also gets forced. my opponent, totally out of gas from dumping his hand countering my explorations, has to let a turn 3 crop rotation resolve. marit lage rears his tentacled head and my opponent dies with something like 1 card in hand and 2 islands in play.
games: 2-0
record 3-2
friends i've defeated in an embarrassing fashion: 2
round 6 -- death and taxes
when i played 4 color control lands, this matchup was a cakewalk. as we'll see, that's not the case with combo lands.
game 1 he opens with ghost quarter => aether vial. wtf?! i put him on some weird D+T build with leonin arbiter and lots of mindcensors, but it turns-out his deck was just a little budget and is otherwise standard. i assemble punishing fire + grove of the burnwillows, but i have to loam back the burnwillows, get back the punishing fire, and take care of his mom before i can start mowing-down the team of creatures that's beating me down. thalia plus ghost quarter makes that plan take forever and i die to beatdown before i can stabilize.
game 2 my opponent drops an early karakas which puts me on the grind plan yet again (the combo plan isn't that good against D+T anyways, since they have flickerwisp, karakas, swords, and flying chump blockers). the grind plan ends in failure as my opponent drops lots of basic plains to support a brimaz and serra avenger, which make my punishing fire look pretty silly. thalia joins the team to slow my punishing fire recursion down to a crawl and i die in spectacular fashion.
i've played this matchup with combo lands a few times and it feels BAD. i'd love to hear suggestions for how to improve my D+T game.
games: 0-2
record 3-3
round 7 -- punishing jund
i drop an early thespian's stage with a crop rotation in-hand to defend against wasteland. the wasteland doesn't show, so i rotate into the combo on his EOT and kill him on turn 3 or 4. game 1 against jund is amazing.
i only board-in bojuka bog and a crop rotation and off we go. eventually we get to a point where he has one card in hand and only one black mana source. he misses a land drop, so that last card is probably not a land. i have the combo assembled, and this is clearly one of those situations where you go for lage before the opponent's main phase, since lili is less of a concern than wasteland off the top. on his turn, he draws the third land and plays........ensnaring bridge. daaaaamnit!! i have no outs, and we durdle for a long time until i find a punishing fire and he finds a lili. i have to punishing fire the lili while leaving-up a grove to defend against extraction effects. he drops some DRS's, which also get the p-fire treatment. he finds a p-fire too and we are off to the races. he extracted my wastelands, so he has a reasonable number of lands in play (enough to hit me for one or two points of damage a turn on net). i have something like 10 lands at this point and i end up winning the race by one turn. good games, cool opponent.
games: 2-0
record: 4-3
round 8 -- ANT
i realize what my opponent is on turn 2. he kills me turn 3.
i board in all 15 cards and we each mull to 6. my 6 is disgustingly good with 2 sphere of resistance and a k-grip. my opponent concedes after he gets stuck on one land and sees the 2nd sphere of resistance.
game 3 i take a mulligan and keep 1 lander with taiga, gamble, trinisphere, sphere of resistance, phyrexian revoker, and something else. after i don't see a second land for a turn or 2 i decide i have to gamble for a second land -- i choose port since my opponent has two basics at this point. feels bad. gamble hits the sphere of resistance, and the next turn my opponent duresses the trinisphere out of my hand. ruh roh! next turn i obviously draw a land (another port), drop revoker naming lion's eye diamond and pass the turn, praying that my opponent doesn't kill me. he continues to sculpt and passes. i draw my fourth land and go on the D+T plan -- i beat him down while double-porting him on upkeep. this goes on for a few turns. he finds a volcanic, but i immediately find a wasteland for it. he finds a third basic, but i find a thespian's stage which turns into a third port. finally, revoker has beat him down to 1 life and he has to go for it. by this time, i've drawn a crop rotation, and i rotate into a bojuka bog in response to a crucial cabal ritual. he whiffs and phyrexian revoker gets in for the tenth and final hit. again, cool opponent and good games.
games: 2-1
record: 5-3
round 9 -- BUG delver
game 1 goes on forever. i spend most of the game slowly hemorrhaging life as he nickels and dimes me with the occasional DRS activation or delver that gets in around a punishing fire. i have a dark depths and i'm dredging DEEP with multiple tranquil thickets and loams dredging multiple times per turn trying to find ONE OF FOUR thespian's stages to seal the game. i get 2/3rds of the way through my library without seeing a single one (!) and lose the game to a wasteland on my glacial chasm.
game 2 we each mull to 5 and i assemble the combo very quickly. he dies.
we start game 3 with almost no time left on the clock. i mull to THREE, but it's actually a solid start with an exploration and a loam online. i get some mazes going and start to stabilize, but time is called.
games 1-1-1
final record: 5-3-1
props:
- all my opponents, who were really cool guys (except my round 1 opponent).
- manabond and all the degeneracy it allows.
- thespian's stage. ETB untapped, makes mana, copies random utility lands, and just generally doesn't afraid of anything.
- punishing jund.
slops:
- gamble. god i hate that card.
- glacial chasm and karakas for being next-to-useless the whole day.
- only running three fetchable lands.
- death and taxes.
hope you enjoyed it. the maindeck changes i'm going to try are:
the chasm can go to the side since it autowins against decks like elves and dredge. karakas is better SB material, too. i'd be very interested to hear any and all feedback.
wow...guess i need to read the cards next time. completely forgot she had that second ability. that's pretty nuts that she's a one-card combo if you're running children.
how about running some white fetches and mistveil plains? then, with children of korlis and some way to tutor them up, you've got yourself a soft lock -- every turn you take some damage, tutor up children, sac them, put them back in your library with mistveil, and you're back where you were. you've got the game locked down as long as your opponent doesn't have enough on-board to kill you in one turn. or hell, with two mistveil plains, you'd be gaining life every turn.
the combo doesn't really cost you any slots, either. you just have to swap out some lands.
the current "best list" that is being tested right now doesn't have any candles OR a tabernacle in the side, making it one of the cheapest legacy decks on the block at the moment.
Interesting idea. It would seem like you'd get a lot of combos that violate this though just by dealing any even amount of damage, etc. (your rules only bar ones that can deal any integer amount)
that's not how their definition works. it's just like the math definition of divergence. if the combo can be repeated AT LEAST n times, for all integers n, then it is considered an infinite combo. it doesn't matter if your combo can only deal even amounts of damage or what have you.
i'm going to go out on a limb and say that i might like magic more with most, or all, of the flavor stripped away. the whole stigma associated with magic really gets to me, and i'm still very much "in the closet" about my MTG playing with some of my friends.
the flavor really doesn't do much for me, besides help me identify cards more quickly and make cards easier to remember. (what does form of the dragon do again? oh right -- turns you into a dragon.) and if the art/name of the card are helping you to functionally play/remember the game, does that even count as flavor still? i would argue it doesn't, as i consider flavor to be the extra stuff that doesn't help the mechanics of the game, but that some players still enjoy.
so the only way that TRUE flavor affects me is by increasing the stigma associated with playing magic. compare this with chess -- there is probably some negative stigma associated with being really into playing chess, but i would argue it's not nearly as bad as the magic stigma.
as others have said, it's something to do instead of just starring at your opponent awkwardly/motionlessly during their turn.
doing it after you draw does serve a purpose, though. people do it between drawing and laying lands/playing spells because they do not want to reveal if they are laying/playing the card that they just drew. but this definitely doesn't account for the majority of the hand-shuffling.
i have, to my surprise, never seen deathgrip in a sideboard. better yet, i'd like to see it run maindeck with painter's servant. it would be like a janky, black version of countertop.
maybe he'll crop-up in some weird RUG depths deck a la kennen haas's jund depths list with blue instead of black, but as far as true lands decks, i don't see it happening.
thanks -- glad you enjoyed it.
yeah i really like EE lock, too, but if i'm going to run EE's i want to be playing tolaria west. tolaria west does find both combo pieces, but not as quickly as crop rotation and gamble do. there is probably a medium-speed lands deck that would run some combination of crop rotations and tolaria west. not sure how good it would be.
death and taxes: flickerwisp, wasteland, mangara (sometimes), and RIP and cataclysm out of the board
RUG delver: wasteland, forcing the loam, lightning bolt (can be dodged with thespian's stage, though)
UWR delver: wasteland, forcing the loam, lightning bolt (" "), RIP out of the board
BUG delver: wasteland, forcing the loam, DRS
sneak and show: emrakul, forcing the loam
miracles: jace, countertop-ing the loam, forcing the loam, blood moon, RIP
jund: DRS, lightning bolt, extraction effects out of the board
all manner of storm combo and omnishow don't care about glacial chasm at all
of the above decks, i can see a strong case being made for it against jund and UWR delver. while UWR and RUG delver have the same pre-board hate against chasm, RUG delver's clock is much faster and it seems unrealistic to get the lock set-up before the RUG delver player kills you. just making a fast marit lage is the much better plan in this case. jund and UWR delver are already excellent match-ups for combo lands, so i don't want to dedicate more maindeck hate slots against some of my best match-ups while my problem match-ups (D+T, miracles) are laughing at glacial chasm.
on the topic of diamond valley...waaaay too narrow. in control lands (which is the build i assume you're talking about, since you also talk about urborg), marit lage is just there to officially put an end to the game. your opponent should be out of resources before you even consider going for the lage. if you are going to die on the crack-back, get a tabernacle, EE lock, punishing fire, or glacial chasm online to kill/neuter the opponent's creatures.
edit: and on the topic of the as-of-yet-unrealized white member of the volrath's stronghold cycle, control lands will be insane if they print that card. we could run maindeck nether void or the abyss without fear of dredging them away. hell, we could run solitary confinement lock using tranquil thicket dredging LFTL to fuel the confinement. chains of mephistopheles out of the board sounds pretty amazing, too.
i played RG combo lands at SCGLA this last weekend to an unspectacular-though-respectable finish. my list is similar to kurt spiess's list, though i think i'll be mixing it up a little in the upcoming weeks based on a couple of chronic underperformers (maindeck glacial chasm -- i'm looking at you). anyways, my list was:
sideboard:
round 1 -- UWr miracles
i don't remember these games too well, but they were brutal. at one point i was one land short of being able to put him off all of his white sources so i could go for the EOT lage (which is guaranteed to get there w/o white mana up for terminus or STP) and then he drops a karakas. so i get another port and drop it -- i'll kill him next turn! but he drops another white source. ugh. we durdle around and he eventually gets a jace online. i have to go for the lage but it's a desperation play. he has the swords and i lose to jace ultimate.
the second game goes even worse. the only memorable thing that happened was that at one point i tapped a grove for red mana and gave him a point of life. my opponent "responds" with a brainstorm. i tell him he can't respond to the grove because it's a mana ability and that he can instead respond to whatever i'm going to do with the mana. i don't understand why he would even want to respond to a mana ability, but he pushes the issue and calls a judge over. we explain the situation and the judge issues him a warning for trying to cast a spell when he doesn't have priority. owned.
he beats me soundly, but i get the moral victory.
games: 0-2
record: 0-1
moral victories: 1
round 2 -- punishing jund
i got paired against my friend, who was borrowing the deck. i knew what he was on and that the match would be an easy one. game 1 i hold back a crop rotation until i find the first combo piece. i find and drop a thespian's stage after a couple of turns, then crop rotate into a dark depths on his end of turn without fear -- playing against non-blue decks is awesome. game 2 he puts on pressure with goyfs and DRS. i find a couple mazes of ith to hold off the goyf onslaught, but can't complete the stage/depths combo despite my dredging. eventually a third goyf and second drs come down and i die.
game 3 was funny. i have a really strong opener, and on my (i believe) turn 3 i have a seven card hand which includes gamble. i can gamble for a dark depths and if the gamble hits anything but the depths i've got a guaranteed win on the following turn (i know my opponent's 75 since he's my friend). if my gamble hits the depths, i don't have any way to recur it and i'm going to be in a pretty bad position. so i go for it, and naturally i discard the depths. at this point i'm thinking how embarrassing losing to jund is going to be and how gamble is my absolute least favorite magic card. my opponent swings, plays something i don't care about and passes the turn. naturally, i rip the one remaining copy of depths in my deck, make marit lage at my opponent's EOT, and kill him. the magic gods giveth, and the magic gods taketh away. my opponent goes on serious life tilt for the rest of the day.
games: 2-1
record: 1-1
friends i've defeated in an embarrassing fashion: 1
round 3 -- UWR delver
my opponent is a cool guy with a bunch of SCG top 8 pins on his playmat and he's unsurprisingly a really tight player. i don't remember the first game too well, but i believe game 1 started with me on the wasteland plan for a while, and after a few loam dredges + wastes, i assemble the combo and kill him. game 2 my opponent gets an early RIP, but i have a k-grip waiting for him. i assemble the combo, but make what has to be by far the most common play mistake when piloting this deck: i don't make marit lage at the right time.
sidebar: when to make marit lage
when you assemble the stage depths combo, there are broadly two times you should consider actually making the beasty: your EOT / your opponent's upkeep OR your opponent's EOT. the reason to pull the trigger before your opponent's main phase is one card: wasteland. if your opponent drops a wasteland they can stop you from going off by leaving it untapped (because they can kill the depths in response to the stage activation). if you think your opponent will drop a wasteland on their main phase, go for the early marit lage.
there are things you can do to fight back against your opponent's wastes. the most obvious is having an active life from the loam to reset the combo after he wastes you. however, anything that forces him to blow his waste will work too. this includes a waste of your own; a rishadan port and a land to activate the port with; or two thespian's stages and the mana to activate both of 'em.
the reason to wait on the marit lage is more obvious -- you play around sorcery speed answers to the beasty by waiting until your opponent's EOT. the most common sorcery speed threats -- by far -- are jace and lili.
in light of our little sidebar, it's clear that UWR delver falls under the category of decks where we go for lage before the opponent's main phase (since they run wasteland, but no jace or lili). like an idiot, i assembled the combo and passed the turn without pulling the trigger. i realize my mistake right as we entered the opponent's mainphase and sure enough, he rips a wasteland off the top. daaaamnit. so we sit there with me threatening the combo for a few turns while some durdly creatures beat me up (he can't waste me, cause i can combo off in response). fortunately, i dig up a wasteland, which forces his hand and lets me make lage. he sends lage plowing (ugh!) and i go up to 33 life. this buys me enough turns to find a loam, get back the combo and do it all over. my opponent doesn't have the swords this time and he dies to a couple swings from the big boy.
my opponent told me after the match that he left 2 out of 4 swords in as an answer to lage. i've noticed more and more pilots doing that lately, and it's definitely the right thing to do -- people are catching on.
games: 2-0
record: 2-1
round 4 -- feces bant
my opponent gets a quick start and i don't have the combo onboard, so i go for the grind plan. i waste a couple of duals and p-fire a hierarch. i try to apply pressure with waste recursion and tabernacle while hiding behind a maze of ith but a true-name nemesis comes down and my opponent seals the deal.
i don't remember much of game 2, but i believe i make a fast lage and it eats a swords. so i wait a couple of turns and remake the lage FTW?? not sure on this one.
game 3 i have a turn 1 lage hand but i decide not to go for it because i have no way to recur the combo pieces if he has a swords or a karakas. i had a manabond and some other cool stuff in my hand that i wasn't interested in dumping to the manabond. this was almost certainly a misplay. i think my chances of winning on the spot are higher than my chances of winning a protracted game, but -- you know -- hindsight is 20/20 and all that. i almost stabilize but jace, karakas, wastelands, TNN and knight happen and i die.
this matchup feels really bad -- it's a good thing nobody plays this deck anymore.
games: 1-2
rounds: 2-2
round 5 -- monoblue omnishow
this match was against another of my friends, a good player who is probably the person i have played the most legacy matches against, so we know each other's decks and skill levels. i was scared of the bounce out of his washboard going in, but in-terms of speed, i'd say the decks are pretty similar. counterspells on my crop rotations were also something to be wary of. i win the roll and draw my seven, which turns-out to be the stone-cold nuts. i can goldfish a turn 1 lage off a manabond, so i go for it. the manabond gets countered, so i have to settle for a turn 2 or 3 lage instead. my opponent dies.
i bring in 12 cards and my opponent's on the play. we each mulligan to 6. on my turn 1 i go for an exploration which gets forced. so i go for a turn 2 exploration, which also gets forced. my opponent, totally out of gas from dumping his hand countering my explorations, has to let a turn 3 crop rotation resolve. marit lage rears his tentacled head and my opponent dies with something like 1 card in hand and 2 islands in play.
games: 2-0
record 3-2
friends i've defeated in an embarrassing fashion: 2
round 6 -- death and taxes
when i played 4 color control lands, this matchup was a cakewalk. as we'll see, that's not the case with combo lands.
game 1 he opens with ghost quarter => aether vial. wtf?! i put him on some weird D+T build with leonin arbiter and lots of mindcensors, but it turns-out his deck was just a little budget and is otherwise standard. i assemble punishing fire + grove of the burnwillows, but i have to loam back the burnwillows, get back the punishing fire, and take care of his mom before i can start mowing-down the team of creatures that's beating me down. thalia plus ghost quarter makes that plan take forever and i die to beatdown before i can stabilize.
game 2 my opponent drops an early karakas which puts me on the grind plan yet again (the combo plan isn't that good against D+T anyways, since they have flickerwisp, karakas, swords, and flying chump blockers). the grind plan ends in failure as my opponent drops lots of basic plains to support a brimaz and serra avenger, which make my punishing fire look pretty silly. thalia joins the team to slow my punishing fire recursion down to a crawl and i die in spectacular fashion.
i've played this matchup with combo lands a few times and it feels BAD. i'd love to hear suggestions for how to improve my D+T game.
games: 0-2
record 3-3
round 7 -- punishing jund
i drop an early thespian's stage with a crop rotation in-hand to defend against wasteland. the wasteland doesn't show, so i rotate into the combo on his EOT and kill him on turn 3 or 4. game 1 against jund is amazing.
i only board-in bojuka bog and a crop rotation and off we go. eventually we get to a point where he has one card in hand and only one black mana source. he misses a land drop, so that last card is probably not a land. i have the combo assembled, and this is clearly one of those situations where you go for lage before the opponent's main phase, since lili is less of a concern than wasteland off the top. on his turn, he draws the third land and plays........ensnaring bridge. daaaaamnit!! i have no outs, and we durdle for a long time until i find a punishing fire and he finds a lili. i have to punishing fire the lili while leaving-up a grove to defend against extraction effects. he drops some DRS's, which also get the p-fire treatment. he finds a p-fire too and we are off to the races. he extracted my wastelands, so he has a reasonable number of lands in play (enough to hit me for one or two points of damage a turn on net). i have something like 10 lands at this point and i end up winning the race by one turn. good games, cool opponent.
games: 2-0
record: 4-3
round 8 -- ANT
i realize what my opponent is on turn 2. he kills me turn 3.
i board in all 15 cards and we each mull to 6. my 6 is disgustingly good with 2 sphere of resistance and a k-grip. my opponent concedes after he gets stuck on one land and sees the 2nd sphere of resistance.
game 3 i take a mulligan and keep 1 lander with taiga, gamble, trinisphere, sphere of resistance, phyrexian revoker, and something else. after i don't see a second land for a turn or 2 i decide i have to gamble for a second land -- i choose port since my opponent has two basics at this point. feels bad. gamble hits the sphere of resistance, and the next turn my opponent duresses the trinisphere out of my hand. ruh roh! next turn i obviously draw a land (another port), drop revoker naming lion's eye diamond and pass the turn, praying that my opponent doesn't kill me. he continues to sculpt and passes. i draw my fourth land and go on the D+T plan -- i beat him down while double-porting him on upkeep. this goes on for a few turns. he finds a volcanic, but i immediately find a wasteland for it. he finds a third basic, but i find a thespian's stage which turns into a third port. finally, revoker has beat him down to 1 life and he has to go for it. by this time, i've drawn a crop rotation, and i rotate into a bojuka bog in response to a crucial cabal ritual. he whiffs and phyrexian revoker gets in for the tenth and final hit. again, cool opponent and good games.
games: 2-1
record: 5-3
round 9 -- BUG delver
game 1 goes on forever. i spend most of the game slowly hemorrhaging life as he nickels and dimes me with the occasional DRS activation or delver that gets in around a punishing fire. i have a dark depths and i'm dredging DEEP with multiple tranquil thickets and loams dredging multiple times per turn trying to find ONE OF FOUR thespian's stages to seal the game. i get 2/3rds of the way through my library without seeing a single one (!) and lose the game to a wasteland on my glacial chasm.
game 2 we each mull to 5 and i assemble the combo very quickly. he dies.
we start game 3 with almost no time left on the clock. i mull to THREE, but it's actually a solid start with an exploration and a loam online. i get some mazes going and start to stabilize, but time is called.
games 1-1-1
final record: 5-3-1
props:
- all my opponents, who were really cool guys (except my round 1 opponent).
- manabond and all the degeneracy it allows.
- thespian's stage. ETB untapped, makes mana, copies random utility lands, and just generally doesn't afraid of anything.
- punishing jund.
slops:
- gamble. god i hate that card.
- glacial chasm and karakas for being next-to-useless the whole day.
- only running three fetchable lands.
- death and taxes.
hope you enjoyed it. the maindeck changes i'm going to try are:
-1 karakas
-1 glacial chasm
-1 tranquil thicket
-1 gamble
+ 3 faithless looting
+1 taiga
the chasm can go to the side since it autowins against decks like elves and dredge. karakas is better SB material, too. i'd be very interested to hear any and all feedback.
the combo doesn't really cost you any slots, either. you just have to swap out some lands.
http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?24848-Deck-Turbo-Eldrazi/page34
the current "best list" that is being tested right now doesn't have any candles OR a tabernacle in the side, making it one of the cheapest legacy decks on the block at the moment.
what's the format? what deck am i playing? what's in my opening hand?
that's not how their definition works. it's just like the math definition of divergence. if the combo can be repeated AT LEAST n times, for all integers n, then it is considered an infinite combo. it doesn't matter if your combo can only deal even amounts of damage or what have you.
the flavor really doesn't do much for me, besides help me identify cards more quickly and make cards easier to remember. (what does form of the dragon do again? oh right -- turns you into a dragon.) and if the art/name of the card are helping you to functionally play/remember the game, does that even count as flavor still? i would argue it doesn't, as i consider flavor to be the extra stuff that doesn't help the mechanics of the game, but that some players still enjoy.
so the only way that TRUE flavor affects me is by increasing the stigma associated with playing magic. compare this with chess -- there is probably some negative stigma associated with being really into playing chess, but i would argue it's not nearly as bad as the magic stigma.
doing it after you draw does serve a purpose, though. people do it between drawing and laying lands/playing spells because they do not want to reveal if they are laying/playing the card that they just drew. but this definitely doesn't account for the majority of the hand-shuffling.
i have, to my surprise, never seen deathgrip in a sideboard. better yet, i'd like to see it run maindeck with painter's servant. it would be like a janky, black version of countertop.
that's not the way the dryad works. it only gets one counter from those.