I was playing in my first tournament ever at my LGS. This was a two-headed giant tourney. I had a really janky RUG Seismic Assault deck. My teammate had a UW Control deck with Celestial Colonnades and a bunch of counter and removal. Our opponents were playing mono blue control, and black discard. Long story short, my deck revolves around getting Seismic out and then comboing with Scouting Trek and Treasure Hunt for the win. It took me too long to get the combo together but eventually I did, but only had 12 lands left in my deck (their life total was still at 30). So I deal them the 24 from the seismic. I'm about to pass turn and the mono blue player points out that I have Trade Routes on the field and 4 untapped lands. I tap them to return them to my hand then discard them to seismic for the win. I thought that was awesome that he took the loss to help me out like that. They had the game next turn if he would have let that go. We went into the second round and got our butts handed to us by a Dreadstill deck that we had no answer for. But it was one heckuva learning experience.
I like the idea of this. My thought on it would be to change up the wording a little bit. Have it more like: Apocalypse (Whenever this creature deals combat damage to another creature, put an Apocalypse counter on that creature. When a creature with an Apocalypse counter on it dies, return that creature to the battlefield under your control. It becomes a zombie in addition to its other creature types).
So... I sleeved up the deck below (proxying most of it) and played 5 matches this weekend. Overall record was 3-2. Was not a tournament, but a couple of the guys had decent decks. Here's the first match breakdown
Opponent is playing Sneaky Show
Game 1: Strong opening hand with Duress, Thoughtseize, Maralen, Lightning Bolt, Ghost Quarter, Blood Crypt, Swamp. I am on the play. I drop the swamp, cast Thoughtseize. He has Show and Tell, Sneak Attack, Emrakul, the Aeons Torn, Griselbrand, Ancient Tomb, 2 Volcanic Island, Scalding Tarn. I take the Sneak Attack. End turn. He draws, drops Scalding Tarn, ends turn. I draw Extirpate. Drop the Blood Crypt untapped. Cast Duress, he pops the Tarn, gets an island, plays Brainstorm, casts Daze. I don't pay the one. Duress is countered. I Extirpate the Sneak Attack. He draws, drops a Volcanic Island, ends turn. I draw Hymn to Tourach. Drop the Ghost Quarter. I cast Hymn. He ends up discarding Griselbrand, and Volcanic Island. I Ghost Quarter his other Volcanic Island and he searches out an island. I end turn. He draws, drops the Ancient Tomb, plays Show and Tell. He drops Emrakul, I drop Maralen. He ends his turn. I search up diabolic Edict, cast it. He sacs Emrakul and shuffles. I couldn't get Maralen/Stranglehold on line early, and didn't have enough land to do anything before he tutored up another SHow and Tell and Emrakul again. (0-1)
Game Two: I open with Thoughtseize, Hymn to Tourach, Maralen, Stranglehold, Swamp, Mountain, Blood Crypt.I drop swamp and cast Thoughtseize, he Forces, pitching Brainstorm. I end turn. He drops Scalding Tarn and ends turn. I draw a Swamp. I drop the swamp, cast Hymn. He ends up discarding Show and Tell, and Sneak Attack! He cracks the Tarn, gets a Volcanic Island. I end my turn. He draws, plays Ancient Tomb, ends turn. I draw Extirpate. I cast it targeting Show and Tell. I drop my Blood Crypt tapped and end my turn. He draws, plays an Island, casts a Brainstorm. Casts a Ponder. Shuffles and draws one. Ends his turn. I draw Elixir of Immortality, drop my Mountain, and drop Stranglehold. He has no response. He drops a Mountain and says done. I search up Winds of Change. I cast it. He scoops. (1-1)
Game 3: I side out the 4 Maralens, 4 Stranglehold, 4 Winds of Change, 1 Elixir, 1 Past in Flames, 1 Lightning Bolt, and bring in my entire sideboard to test it. I open with 2x Leyline of the Void, Helm of Obedience, Thoughtseize, Duress, 2x Swamp. I drop the two Leylines. My opponent has no idea what just happened. He plays a tarn and ends his turn. I play a swamp and Duress. He Forces and pitches Ponder. He cracks his Tarn and plyas a Volcanic Island. He plays an Ancient Tomb, and then Show and Tell. He drops Emrakul, I drop Helm of Obedience. He scoops. (2-1)
1-0
I'm not going to go in detail with the rest of the matches but the results are as follows:
GW Enchantress (W 2-1, Same player as the Sneaky Show deck)
Dragonstorm (L 1-2) (would have been a draw if the match was timed)
Merfolk (no Forces or TNN) (W 2-0)
Zoo (L 0-2)
In retrospect, I need my sideboard better tuned for the aggro matchups. Dragonstorm.. I just had horrible draws. So I'm think out with the archive traps and in with some Damnation. That should do it. If I would have drawn one damnation in either of the games against zoo, I would have been fine. I'm also thinking possibly Shrieking Affliction might be good too. Don't know yet. Will need much more testing before it's done. But I am certainly happy with the results thus far.
Eater of Days was kind of a win more card... just accelerated the process... I skip two turns which mean I skip two draw steps to avoid the Maralen life loss. If I have the lock down in place, it means my opponent will lose 9 life from Maralen whilst I lose 3.
Another card I thought of that could be helpful, but it's a 5 drop would be Exquisite Blood. Essentially negates my Maralen life loss, but it's probably too slow. Still need to think about the sideboard. I'm not up to date on the current meta so I really don't know how to build my board with that in mind. If I just built it off the cuff, I would probably build something like this:
Added an Elixir of Immortality, a Past in Flames, and two Hero's Downfall. Removed the Mogis, 1 Duress, and the Red Sun's Zenith. I think I like the looks of the main board. The mana base might need some help down the line, but if this deck starts to run decently and I keep it around for awhile, I might be willing to invest in fetches and revised duals. Next up is the sideboard. I'm trying to decide if I just want a bunch of things to help me against specific matchups, or to make a transformative sideboard. If I'm going to go the matchup dependent sideboard (and I'm leaning that way), what would be the most likely candidates to have in there? Thanks again for all the help.
Ghost Quarter is good with Stranglehold, not sure how you feel about the colorless lands though. I don't think Eater of Days works with stranglehold the way you want it to.
Hadn't thought of Ghost Quarter. Makes it a faux Wasteland. Nice! Eater of Days works great with this deck idea. I ran a different build a couple of years ago that Eater of Days won me an entire tournament. With Stranglehold and Maralen of the Mornsong in play, the Eater basically reads, Deal 9 damage to each opponent and deal 3 damage to yourself. It works in a janky way. But I like the Gate idea for the play style. I think I might try that out. Thoughtseize is out, but I happen to have 3 Inquisition of Kozilek and can easily get a 4th if I need to. Those could make a decent replacement. I'll play with the decklist some more this weekend and post what I come up with. Thank you guys for your input. Much appreciated.
Hello all. So ever since the original Commander decks came out, I fell in love with Stranglehold. I thought it was such a cool card and I wanted to build a deck around it. I thought it had a great synergy with Maralen of the Mornsong, and I wanted to try and build a budget deck with those two cards as the feature of it, but that wouldn't necessarily fall completely flat without them. The list below is what I've come up with so far. I had to go Legacy for the format since Stranglehold is not legal in anything besides Legacy, Vintage, and Commander, but my budget does not allow me to have all the great Legacy staples at my disposal. I'm looking to stay below $250.00 for the total deck price, but could possibly stretch to $300.00 if need be. I don't currently have much in the way of a playgroup. The one shop that I used to play at closed and the next closest one is 45 minutes away. So I'm not sure what to expect meta-wise. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated, but please keep the budget in mind. Thank you!
A shop near me has one for $240 right now. I'm thinking of grabbing it before the price goes up, but I don't know if I can spare the cash right now. Maybe he'd let me put it on layaway or something and drop $40 bucks a week on it or something.
Semi casual Legacy tournament at my LGS a couple of years ago. I'm playing a mono black janky deck. My opponent is playing a weird Leyline Deck Wins deck. Game one, I'm on the play. I have a God hand. My opponent drops Leyline of the Void, Leyline of Sanctity, and 2x Leyline of Anticipation from his opening hand. I say Damn and move on. I play Swamp, Dark Ritual,Dark Ritual,Dark Ritual, Liliana's Caress, Liliana's Caress, Pox. Everything resolves and since Pox doesn't target, I'm at 13 and he's at 1 with two cards left in his hand. I'm feeling pretty confident at this point. I can take one life away before he kills me.... I pass turn. He draws. Drops Serra's Sanctum (uh-oh), Lotus Petal (huh?), and then Near-Death Experience. He smiles and passes turn. I draw a swamp, scoop and shake his hand for the mind blowing play. Game two he drops 5 Leylines and 1st turn Opalescence before I get to play.
Player A in my play group played Collective Voyage paying 5 into it. Player B was tapped out, Player C added 1, and I added 14 (lots of artifact mana with Unwinding Clock on the field). So we all got to search for 20 basic lands. My deck at the time was mono blue/artifact, so I pulled out 20 islands, leaving me 3 lands in my library. Player B searched for nothing. The other two emptied their libraries of basic lands. End turn. Player B untaps, draws, plays brainstorm, then brainstorms with Jace, The Mind Sculptor , drops Hive Mind, and then plays Mind Funeral. Player A had 3 cards left in his library (thankfully he was running some non basics), I was toast, and so was Player C. Player B had 3 lands on top of his library, and then the 5th card was a land. Talk about your all time backfires.
Chub Toad - Best flavor text ever. "Chub Toad, Chub Toad at the door. Run away quick or you'll run no more." At my LGS we had a game going for awhile where we had one that kept getting randomly inserted into people's decks during casual games. If you found it in your deck and had the ability to get it into play (whether casting, reanimating, Sneak Attack, etc.) you got a free bulk rare from the shop. If you managed to use it to kill your opponent, you got a free booster pack. My buddy was playing his Sneak Attack deck (not Sneak and Show... mono red) and I was at two life. He snuck in the Chub Toad, attacked (no blockers), and then used Fling for the win. As far as I know he was the only one that got a booster pack off of it.
Opponent is playing Sneaky Show
Game 1: Strong opening hand with Duress, Thoughtseize, Maralen, Lightning Bolt, Ghost Quarter, Blood Crypt, Swamp. I am on the play. I drop the swamp, cast Thoughtseize. He has Show and Tell, Sneak Attack, Emrakul, the Aeons Torn, Griselbrand, Ancient Tomb, 2 Volcanic Island, Scalding Tarn. I take the Sneak Attack. End turn. He draws, drops Scalding Tarn, ends turn. I draw Extirpate. Drop the Blood Crypt untapped. Cast Duress, he pops the Tarn, gets an island, plays Brainstorm, casts Daze. I don't pay the one. Duress is countered. I Extirpate the Sneak Attack. He draws, drops a Volcanic Island, ends turn. I draw Hymn to Tourach. Drop the Ghost Quarter. I cast Hymn. He ends up discarding Griselbrand, and Volcanic Island. I Ghost Quarter his other Volcanic Island and he searches out an island. I end turn. He draws, drops the Ancient Tomb, plays Show and Tell. He drops Emrakul, I drop Maralen. He ends his turn. I search up diabolic Edict, cast it. He sacs Emrakul and shuffles. I couldn't get Maralen/Stranglehold on line early, and didn't have enough land to do anything before he tutored up another SHow and Tell and Emrakul again. (0-1)
Game Two: I open with Thoughtseize, Hymn to Tourach, Maralen, Stranglehold, Swamp, Mountain, Blood Crypt.I drop swamp and cast Thoughtseize, he Forces, pitching Brainstorm. I end turn. He drops Scalding Tarn and ends turn. I draw a Swamp. I drop the swamp, cast Hymn. He ends up discarding Show and Tell, and Sneak Attack! He cracks the Tarn, gets a Volcanic Island. I end my turn. He draws, plays Ancient Tomb, ends turn. I draw Extirpate. I cast it targeting Show and Tell. I drop my Blood Crypt tapped and end my turn. He draws, plays an Island, casts a Brainstorm. Casts a Ponder. Shuffles and draws one. Ends his turn. I draw Elixir of Immortality, drop my Mountain, and drop Stranglehold. He has no response. He drops a Mountain and says done. I search up Winds of Change. I cast it. He scoops. (1-1)
Game 3: I side out the 4 Maralens, 4 Stranglehold, 4 Winds of Change, 1 Elixir, 1 Past in Flames, 1 Lightning Bolt, and bring in my entire sideboard to test it. I open with 2x Leyline of the Void, Helm of Obedience, Thoughtseize, Duress, 2x Swamp. I drop the two Leylines. My opponent has no idea what just happened. He plays a tarn and ends his turn. I play a swamp and Duress. He Forces and pitches Ponder. He cracks his Tarn and plyas a Volcanic Island. He plays an Ancient Tomb, and then Show and Tell. He drops Emrakul, I drop Helm of Obedience. He scoops. (2-1)
1-0
I'm not going to go in detail with the rest of the matches but the results are as follows:
GW Enchantress (W 2-1, Same player as the Sneaky Show deck)
Dragonstorm (L 1-2) (would have been a draw if the match was timed)
Merfolk (no Forces or TNN) (W 2-0)
Zoo (L 0-2)
In retrospect, I need my sideboard better tuned for the aggro matchups. Dragonstorm.. I just had horrible draws. So I'm think out with the archive traps and in with some Damnation. That should do it. If I would have drawn one damnation in either of the games against zoo, I would have been fine. I'm also thinking possibly Shrieking Affliction might be good too. Don't know yet. Will need much more testing before it's done. But I am certainly happy with the results thus far.
Lands (21)
4 Blood Crypt
4 Dragonskull Summit
3 Ghost Quarter
3 Mountain
7 Swamp
Creatures (4)
4 Maralen of the Mornsong
Spells (35)
3 Duress
4 Winds of Change
4 Hymn to Tourach
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Inquisition of Kozilek
4 Stranglehold
2 Dreadbore
2 Thoughtseize
2 Diabolic Edict
2 Extirpate
2 Hero's Downfall
1 Past In Flames
1 Elixir of Immortality
3 Archive Trap
2 Extirpate
2 Thoughtseize
4 Leyline of the Void
4 Helm of Obedience
Another card I thought of that could be helpful, but it's a 5 drop would be Exquisite Blood. Essentially negates my Maralen life loss, but it's probably too slow. Still need to think about the sideboard. I'm not up to date on the current meta so I really don't know how to build my board with that in mind. If I just built it off the cuff, I would probably build something like this:
2 Pithing Needle
2 Damnation
1 Duress
2 Thoughtseize
4 Leyline of the Void
4 Helm of Obedience
Lands (21)
4 Blood Crypt
4 Dragonskull Summit
3 Ghost Quarter
3 Mountain
7 Swamp
Creatures (4)
4 Maralen of the Mornsong
3 Duress
4 Burning Inquiry
4 Hymn to Tourach
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Inquisition of Kozilek
4 Stranglehold
2 Dreadbore
2 Thoughtseize
2 Diabolic Edict
2 Extirpate
2 Hero's Downfall
1 Past In Flames
1 Elixir of Immortality
Lands (21)
4 Blood Crypt
4 Dragonskull Summit
3 Ghost Quarter
3 Mountain
7 Swamp
Creatures (6)
4 Maralen of the Mornsong
2 Mogis, God of Slaughter
4 Duress
4 Burning Inquiry
4 Hymn to Tourach
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Inquisition of Kozilek
4 Stranglehold
2 Dreadbore
2 Thoughtseize
2 Diabolic Edict
2 Extirpate
1 Red Sun's Zenith
Hadn't thought of Ghost Quarter. Makes it a faux Wasteland. Nice! Eater of Days works great with this deck idea. I ran a different build a couple of years ago that Eater of Days won me an entire tournament. With Stranglehold and Maralen of the Mornsong in play, the Eater basically reads, Deal 9 damage to each opponent and deal 3 damage to yourself. It works in a janky way. But I like the Gate idea for the play style. I think I might try that out. Thoughtseize is out, but I happen to have 3 Inquisition of Kozilek and can easily get a 4th if I need to. Those could make a decent replacement. I'll play with the decklist some more this weekend and post what I come up with. Thank you guys for your input. Much appreciated.
Lands (22)
4 Blood Crypt
4 Dragonskull Summit
7 Mountain
7 Swamp
Creatures (11)
3 Avatar of Discord
3 Demigod of Revenge
1 Eater of Days
4 Maralen of the Mornsong
4 Blightning
3 Burning Inquiry
4 Dark Ritual
3 Dreadbore
1 Ensnaring Bridge
4 Lightning Bolt
1 Red Sun's Zenith
1 Rite of Consumption
4 Stranglehold
2 Terminate
We played another game after that. I didn't survive past my 3rd turn.