You can redirect all of the Valakut triggers to Spellskite. For example, even though 2 triggers will kill Spellskite, if there are 6 on the stack, you can still aim all 6 at Spellskite.
Which still costs you 12 life unless you have tons of blue open, and then you're probably dead next turn anyway.
Budget discussions aren't permitted in the competitive forums - you need to have Skith and Nexus. You also need to update your list with the NPH cards, most notably Dismember. Go for the Throat is not maindeckable anymore.
For a so called dominant and format warping deck, it didn't win a single last chance qualifyer either thinking about it. I honestly believe its still overhyped and do believe its success was on the back of team fireball playing it and for some strange reason, almost as if they were too lazy to try, were anable to find a deck to beat it. Yet SO many other people did.
You do know that the LCQs were Standard, not Block?
It's not overhyped. It's the best deck. By a pretty fair margin. Everyone is saying "It was ONLY 21% of the meta" which they are only saying because the hype beforehand led people to believe it would be near 50%. But before you go around saying 21% isn't meta-distorting, remember that Caw-Blade at its peak made up about...20% of the meta in Standard.
Throw in the fact that for those of us who can actually play Block - on MTGO - and that TS decks there are more like 40% of the meta, and it is definitely distorting.
Someone earlier nailed it - it would've been played more at the PT except Pros don't like to put their fate in the hands of hyper aggro decks. But for those of you that know LSV or follow his work, the fact that he would play TS speaks tons about its power.
I'm more interested in the card/number choices the pros used - almost no Porcelain Legionnaires anywhere, still using Hero of Bladehold, pretty low numbers of Spined Thopter and Vault Skirge. Seems very strange to me.
Sometimes, some "Pro-players" should be allowed to shut up.
The problem is, he's right.
I've spent the last few weeks post-NPH release on MTGO trying to come up with a deck that is meant to blow out TS while still keeping a decent game against the rest of the field. The problem is the deck doesn't exist.
The biggest problem with trying to beat TS is you cannot, cannot, cannot just try to 1-for-1 them and then drop some kind of trump. For one, they now have Dispatch and/or Dismember to easily remove trumps. For two, 1-for-1s arent always even possible because of TS and Nexi, etc. For three, they have LOTS more threats than you have 1-for-1 answers.
That means you have to have 2-for-1s are better than you can play before T6. Because of Slagstorm, Scrapmelter, and Into the Core, Big Red probably has the best matchup against TS, but it's still not great (probably 60-40 total, because Game 1 is still close to a tossup unless you max out on MD Slagstorm, and WW can still easily win 1 postboard game on the play by dropping T3 TS).
UW is interesting, but game 1 is still heavily disfavored, and if you don't have a Marrow Shards post-board and/or cant counter or keep TS off the table, you lose post-board too.
Green would be the natural foil to TS everywhere because of access to Corrosion, but the support just isn't there. Using cards like Emissary, Thrun, etc. to try and stall just doesn't work now because almost all of WW's threats fly.
Believe me, if the pros or MTGO grinders knew of a deck that consistently beat WW while not auto-losing to other decks, it would've been played at the PT. Everyone expected TS decks to be everywhere, so they would've played a deck that beats it, if it existed. Turns out, similar to Caw-Blade in standard, the best way to fight TS and not auto-lose to the field is just to play TS yourself and win mirrors.
WW now gets to play all its Phyrexian mana creatures with no drawback against it, Red decks get access to Dismember (the biggest reason to play Infect was it destroyed red), which kills everything for 1 mana (again life loss wont matter), and even GB Birthing Pod just wrecks it with all the 2-for-1s.
Red is better than black in this deck because the only creatures that you'd really want black for (presumably for Go for the Throat) would be opposing Sphinxes, Hoard-Smelter Dragon, Phoenixes, and possibly Vatmother. The maindeck Pistus Strikes do a pretty amazing job of dealing with all those except Vatmother, which can still be shrunk down by a blocking Corrupter and then burned out. Plus all those threats can be profitably Reinsed.
If your goal is to have a better g1 vs WW, then I have to think more Shatter/Slagstorm/Into the Core effects are much better. Anatomist is wayyyyy too slow in constructed.
Try -3 Anatomist, +2 Shatter +1 Slagstorm main, then that opens your SB for more Dragons/Reins, etc.
Are there still people actually arguing that Boros is well-positioned in the metagame? Wow.
I loved the deck during it's time. But that time is over. Look at the results of the recent SCG Opens. Hell look at the results of anything post-PT Paris. Boros is nowhere to be found. There's a reason. While it's the most powerful aggro deck in a vacuum, and would be great in a meta of normal UW/UB control builds, it SUCKS against CawBlade variants and a meta of decks trying to beat CawBlade variants. Which is pretty much...everything right now.
There's an article on TCGplayer that you all should read. It pretty much explains why there is no reason to play Boros right now.
It's slightly outdated because it kind of dismissed EsperBlade, but it's discussion of Boros is spot on. It's about a third of the way down the article.
Quote from from article »
Take a look at Caw-Blade's numbers against all of the decks. Now compare them to Boros' numbers. We see that in the observed sample, Caw-Blade has done better than Boros in every matchup. Specifically, Caw-Blade is 50.0% against Caw-Blade, whereas Boros is only 40.5%. Likewise, against Valakut, Caw-Blade leads 61.0% to 58.3%. Versus Boros, Caw-Blade has the edge, 59.5% to 50.0%. Finally, against Vampires, it is 61.9% for Caw-Blade to 39.3% for Boros. Thus, for all four of the most popular decks in Standard, Caw-Blade has performed better than Boros. Game theoretically, we would say that Caw-Blade strictly dominates Boros in this fantasy world where the raw numbers are actually real, and thus we should rationally not play Boros.
If you look at the past MTGO and Open series Boros only has 11.4 % of its users get a 4-0, that is behind Caw-Blade, Vampires and Valakut. Most decks are gunning for Caw-Blade and Boros, which allows Valakut to come back because of the small creature based meta. Both Caw-Blade and Valakut have 24-25% of its users go 4-0, which are the highest ratings right now. At the Open series Boros just gets crushed by all the hate for Caw-Blade, by no means is Boros a bad deck, its just that other decks have adapted to play bigger creatures at faster rates which just kill us.
And I'm willing to bet that number is FAR smaller after Gerry T came out with the UWr version, which is really what started the kill shot.
Echoing your statement - I never said Boros is bad. It's got great overall power - but the meta just isn't right for it right now.
Anyone remember the BW Ghost Husk deck from CHK-LRW standard? One of the most powerful standard decks ever in terms of pure power, because of all the interactions it had with Nantuko Husk, Promise of Bunrei, Orzhov Pontiff, Ghost Council, etc. But once decks specifically started gunning for it, it dropped off a cliff because if you just traded cards 1 for 1 with it, it became a deck of Grey Ogres and Mons Goblin Raiders.
That's kind of what's happening to Boros now. Except that they don't even have to 1 for 1 with us, because they have about 10 ways to 3 for 1 us.
Which still costs you 12 life unless you have tons of blue open, and then you're probably dead next turn anyway.
The likely choice would be Slagstorm.
You do know that the LCQs were Standard, not Block?
It's not overhyped. It's the best deck. By a pretty fair margin. Everyone is saying "It was ONLY 21% of the meta" which they are only saying because the hype beforehand led people to believe it would be near 50%. But before you go around saying 21% isn't meta-distorting, remember that Caw-Blade at its peak made up about...20% of the meta in Standard.
Throw in the fact that for those of us who can actually play Block - on MTGO - and that TS decks there are more like 40% of the meta, and it is definitely distorting.
Someone earlier nailed it - it would've been played more at the PT except Pros don't like to put their fate in the hands of hyper aggro decks. But for those of you that know LSV or follow his work, the fact that he would play TS speaks tons about its power.
I'm more interested in the card/number choices the pros used - almost no Porcelain Legionnaires anywhere, still using Hero of Bladehold, pretty low numbers of Spined Thopter and Vault Skirge. Seems very strange to me.
The problem is, he's right.
I've spent the last few weeks post-NPH release on MTGO trying to come up with a deck that is meant to blow out TS while still keeping a decent game against the rest of the field. The problem is the deck doesn't exist.
The biggest problem with trying to beat TS is you cannot, cannot, cannot just try to 1-for-1 them and then drop some kind of trump. For one, they now have Dispatch and/or Dismember to easily remove trumps. For two, 1-for-1s arent always even possible because of TS and Nexi, etc. For three, they have LOTS more threats than you have 1-for-1 answers.
That means you have to have 2-for-1s are better than you can play before T6. Because of Slagstorm, Scrapmelter, and Into the Core, Big Red probably has the best matchup against TS, but it's still not great (probably 60-40 total, because Game 1 is still close to a tossup unless you max out on MD Slagstorm, and WW can still easily win 1 postboard game on the play by dropping T3 TS).
UW is interesting, but game 1 is still heavily disfavored, and if you don't have a Marrow Shards post-board and/or cant counter or keep TS off the table, you lose post-board too.
Green would be the natural foil to TS everywhere because of access to Corrosion, but the support just isn't there. Using cards like Emissary, Thrun, etc. to try and stall just doesn't work now because almost all of WW's threats fly.
Believe me, if the pros or MTGO grinders knew of a deck that consistently beat WW while not auto-losing to other decks, it would've been played at the PT. Everyone expected TS decks to be everywhere, so they would've played a deck that beats it, if it existed. Turns out, similar to Caw-Blade in standard, the best way to fight TS and not auto-lose to the field is just to play TS yourself and win mirrors.
WW now gets to play all its Phyrexian mana creatures with no drawback against it, Red decks get access to Dismember (the biggest reason to play Infect was it destroyed red), which kills everything for 1 mana (again life loss wont matter), and even GB Birthing Pod just wrecks it with all the 2-for-1s.
Still doesn't really change my point that the card is mediocre. 6 mana sorceries that don't impact the board are poor in the majority of situations.
The card is mediocre at best.
Memoricide is awful, period. I would never side it in for any matchup.
Try -3 Anatomist, +2 Shatter +1 Slagstorm main, then that opens your SB for more Dragons/Reins, etc.
I loved the deck during it's time. But that time is over. Look at the results of the recent SCG Opens. Hell look at the results of anything post-PT Paris. Boros is nowhere to be found. There's a reason. While it's the most powerful aggro deck in a vacuum, and would be great in a meta of normal UW/UB control builds, it SUCKS against CawBlade variants and a meta of decks trying to beat CawBlade variants. Which is pretty much...everything right now.
There's an article on TCGplayer that you all should read. It pretty much explains why there is no reason to play Boros right now.
http://magic.tcgplayer.com/db/article.asp?ID=9507
It's slightly outdated because it kind of dismissed EsperBlade, but it's discussion of Boros is spot on. It's about a third of the way down the article.
And I'm willing to bet that number is FAR smaller after Gerry T came out with the UWr version, which is really what started the kill shot.
Echoing your statement - I never said Boros is bad. It's got great overall power - but the meta just isn't right for it right now.
Anyone remember the BW Ghost Husk deck from CHK-LRW standard? One of the most powerful standard decks ever in terms of pure power, because of all the interactions it had with Nantuko Husk, Promise of Bunrei, Orzhov Pontiff, Ghost Council, etc. But once decks specifically started gunning for it, it dropped off a cliff because if you just traded cards 1 for 1 with it, it became a deck of Grey Ogres and Mons Goblin Raiders.
That's kind of what's happening to Boros now. Except that they don't even have to 1 for 1 with us, because they have about 10 ways to 3 for 1 us.