Sorry for the slight off topic. Has anyone experienced playing the non-storm Menendian version of this deck? (is there a specific forum for that?). Ive been playing it and the deck feels very strong but i want to share experiences on how to pilot it.
thanks
There are some old threads in Developing about the deck, but I don't think they offer much. When Menendian first showcased the deck, it was in a article you have to pay for, and he tried to market it by claiming it was objectively a better deck than the Tendrils version, despite his examples of his deck beating various hate displaying that he wasn't aware the Tendrils deck is just as capable of beating much of the same hate. As a result, a lot of the threads kind of devolved into arguments about the deck. I'd actually suggest making a new thread now that tempers have cooled down. I also know there's a thread on the Storm Boards that was a little more productive if you want to look there. I have minimal experience playing the non-Storm deck. Doomsday is hard to use no matter what deck you put it in and there are a lot of different things going on in that deck that I am not used to, so I didn't really give it much of a chance. I can post more at length about that if you end up reviving one of the old threads or you make a new one.
There is one thing I'll say about the deck because I think it's good information for Tendrils players too...I don't like having a lot of reactive protection like counters in Doomsday. Being 100% sure your opponent can't disrupt you seems easier when you play proactive cards like discard or chants, and I think that's pretty important when getting disrupted mid-combo is much deadlier for you than it would be for decks that can rebuild.
I have scenario i've encountered in a couple games that i'm wondering if I can win from. I havent come up with anything yet. Might not be possible. Here's the scenario:
Assume a standard grixis doomsday build, with lab maniac main in case it's needed. You know your opponent has no interaction, so going off without passing the turn is desirable. Doomsday is on the stack. You have a Top on the field. After doomsday resolves, you will have 2 lands, an UgSea and Volc untapped, and no cards in hand. Can you win this turn? I know that certain cards in hand let you win from that spot, but I can't figure out a win with no cards in hand. What if one of the lands was an uncracked fetch? Would that change anything?
I know there are a lot of variables unaccounted for, so feel free to make assumptions about the decklist, life total, etc.
I can't find a way either (if you have no Tendrils main and that one would involve a ton of lands (5 to be exact, 6 for 2 more Storm)). You are either missing one Mana for Labman pile, or R f or Tendrils.
However, 1 Mana more is enough to win with a Labman pile and with 2 non relevant cards you could do a BS pile (use BS as an IU).
Greetings,
Kathal
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What I play or have:
Modern/Legacy
either funpolice (Delver, Deathcloud, UW Control) or the fun decks (especially those ft. Griselbrand)
Thanks. That's pretty much the conclusion I'd come to. One more of practically any resource and there are tons of piles that work. I guess I'd probably just pass the turn there and hope I didn't get screwed. It's likely I played myself into that corner anyway.
Interesting. In the actual game where this scenario came up I did have 5 lands out. In my decklist I've been playing cabal ritual over rain of filth (been considering switching anyway) and no infernal contract main. But it is an interesting pile.
Has anyone tried Dark Petition in this deck? It doesn't seem that great to me, but most of the other storm decks have adopted it. I'm probably going to do a bit of testing with it but I don't expect much. It just doesn't seem that powerful. Having to get to 5 mana seems like the weak point.
You seem to share my basic concern with it, which is that in our deck, 5 mana is a lot of resources to invest. I suppose it could open up lines of play where you tutor for a probe or something and use your BBB to play a dday already in hand, but that seems pretty marginal. Still I have a slot I've been playing with that I may test it in. I've also tried 1 Night's Whisper in that slot and it had been okay, let me build 1 weird pile where I couldn't have won otherwise and is decent before the combo turn, but I wasn't thrilled with it.
Emidln, the creator of Doomsday, had this to say about Dark Petition: "Dark Petition is a Burning Wish that forces you to cast Doomsday the same turn you cast Petition."
Basically, when you compare Burning Wish to Dark Petition in this deck, the cost of the additional color is justified by the additional flexibility you gain (being able to pay the 5 mana over the course of two turns; Burning Wish is +1 Storm in most piles; being able to not play maindeck Tendrils). The only way I see Petition making sense here is if you already have 4 Burning Wishes but for some reason still want more business.
d8dk32, what does your deck look like right now? Knowing the list would help with giving you suggestions for the free slot you're talking about.
Match 1: 0-2 vs grixis delver
This match wasn't a good start to my day. Mulled to 5 on the draw game 1 and kept a 1 lander. My turn 1 Top got Dazed and my land wasted, and I never played another spell. This made my opponent think I was on a control deck of some kind, which was good but not enough to get me a win. I mulled to 6, kept an anemic hand, was able to cobble together a pass the turn pile, but he didn't give me the turn I needed.
Match 2 vs stiflenaught paintedstone 2-1
This deck was a sweet amalgamation of stifle naught and painter's servant/grindstone. Game 1 I dressed turn 1 and did a double take when I saw his hand. I snagged a stifle, which slowed him down and cleared the way for me. I combed him out a turn or 2 later easily wit lab maniac. Game 2 he outraged my combo. Game 3 was my favorite of the night. I got to a point where I could combo out but he had 1 blue open so I was thinking stifle on my top when I tried to draw into the pile. I managed to come up with something that could win right then with storm or with lab maniac the next turn if I got stifled. He stifled my top, and on his turn dropped blood moon, which forced me to wait an extra turn to win with maniac, but I got there.
Match 3 vs elves 2-1. This match was just a race. He took game 1 with natural order on turn 3. I took game 2 with a fast combo kill. Game 3 we destroyed eacother's hands, but I got down a top which made my top decks not really topdecks, and I was able to find an LED and a doomsday in short order.
Match 4 vs turbo depths
He mulls to 4 on the play game 1, I keep a turn 1 kill hand that leans heavily on dark ritual. He proceeds to thoughtseize my ritual, rendering my hand pretty crappy, and then top deck himself into his combo peices before I rebuild. Game 2 we each keep 7 and I combo him fairly easily despite some discard. Game 3 I keep a sketchy 6, he mulls to 5, and basically we have a repeat of game 1. He topdecks his win before I can rebuild from some well placed discard. I do get to a point where he'll kill me on his next turn I'd I don't top deck doomsday, and I dont.
On the whole I felt like I played pretty decently for my first time out in a tournament with the deck, having previously only played some games here and there with friends.
It looks like you put Chain of Vapor in your free spot. I would consider either Laboratory Maniac or Chain of Vapor to be your "maindeck beat hate" card, because they have a lot of overlap in the kinds of cards they help you beat, but they're both bad draws so including both will make you more often draw something that doesn't immediately help you. Looking over your 60, I play the 17th land in the spot where your Chain of Vapor is. There are some other differences, too:
How are you liking the 4th Cabal Therapy instead of the 4th Duress? I'm no slouch when it comes to Cabal Therapy, but there are just some matches where missing on a Therapy is basically fatal.
I don't like Badlands nor Bayou here. Badlands is justifiable because it enables you to cast Burning Wish on turn two and still cast Doomsday on turn three with just lands, and some people swear by this card for that reason, but when I played it I found myself more often punished because it's non-blue than rewarded for having my red source also tap for black. I feel the same way about Bayou, because it's basically just a Swamp that dies to Wasteland in your maindeck; also, without seeing your sideboard to confirm, I'm guessing the main green card you play is Abrupt Decay, which requires another black source in play anyway so you don't gain much from having your green source also tap for black.
1) It looks like you put Chain of Vapor in your free spot. I would consider either Laboratory Maniac or Chain of Vapor to be your "maindeck beat hate" card, because they have a lot of overlap in the kinds of cards they help you beat, but they're both bad draws so including both will make you more often draw something that doesn't immediately help you. Looking over your 60, I play the 17th land in the spot where your Chain of Vapor is. There are some other differences, too:
2) How are you liking the 4th Cabal Therapy instead of the 4th Duress? I'm no slouch when it comes to Cabal Therapy, but there are just some matches where missing on a Therapy is basically fatal.
3) I don't like Badlands nor Bayou here. Badlands is justifiable because it enables you to cast Burning Wish on turn two and still cast Doomsday on turn three with just lands, and some people swear by this card for that reason, but when I played it I found myself more often punished because it's non-blue than rewarded for having my red source also tap for black. I feel the same way about Bayou, because it's basically just a Swamp that dies to Wasteland in your maindeck; also, without seeing your sideboard to confirm, I'm guessing the main green card you play is Abrupt Decay, which requires another black source in play anyway so you don't gain much from having your green source also tap for black.
Added sideboard to my previous post.
1) For a while I'd been playing with night's whisper in my free slot but even though it enabled a couple of very odd piles it wasn't very good otherwise. Chain took its spot. I personally have found CoV to be pretty decent. It can enable straight storm kills, stall opponents, and of course beat hate. I'd maybe consider moving Maniac to the sideboard. I also think I'll probably drop the 2nd Lotus Petal for another land. In testing it felt good and I liked the added speed, but in actual play it felt less than stellar and I would have preferred another permanent mana source.
2) I usually play 4 Duress/3 Therapy main with the 4th in the board, but I switched it last minute to 4 Therapy/3 Duress main with the 4th in the board. My sample size is small but it felt pretty good. Needs some more testing.
3) your call about the bayou was correct, Decay was in my sideboard. I put the bayou in the main to free up a sideboard slot. Not sure how I liked it. I did very little sideboarding, brought in Decay against the Painter's Servant/Stiflenaught deck but that was it so it was hard to tell if it was worth it. Another reason I played it was because I own it, and don't own a Tropical Island. As for the Badlands, I am one of those people who swear by it. I find myself fetching for it over the Volc more often than not in fact.
A big part of the reason behind my deck configuration was that I simply didn't know what kind of metagame I was getting into. It was a little game store about 2 hours out into the boonies from where I live that has a small but stable legacy scene. I was anticipating a very inbred metagame, but wasn't sure what kind of inbreeding would occur. So I just prepared for as much as I could without severely damaging the consistency of the deck.
Whether you want Chain of Vapor or Maniac depends on the way you want to play. Chain of Vapor has more utility outside of being an anti-hate card, but Laboratory Maniac beats more hate. I prefer the Maniac because it does way more as an anti-hate card despite being Grey Ogre otherwise and I feel that it actually gives more sideboard space because it does the job of Time Spiral, a card you will often see in sideboards when you don't play Maniac. Also, I'm noticing that you're not playing Chromatic Sphere despite playing Maniac. Can you talk about why you aren't playing Sphere?
Going down to one Lotus Petal is defensible; this deck doesn't aim to build up an overwhelming amount of mana like ANT does. You have to keep in one Lotus Petal for Doomsday Piles, but they really are just a bad draw against decks where you're going to go long.
Why do you like Therapy more than Duress? Are you anticipating a lot of maindeck creatures you want to discard with it? I don't think that it's wrong to play more Therapy over more Duress, I just feel uneasy about the idea of playing against other combo decks and possibly losing on the spot to my disruption spells actually not doing any disrupting; I also tend to like Therapy as a Wish Target because I normally have enough info to know what I want to name if I'm casting Wish for a discard spell.
If the Bayou is a card availability issue, that's all there is to say about that. I still don't like Badlands because this deck needs blue mana way more than it needs black mana when you're setting up, but there are definitely some benefits to playing Badlands.
Your current sideboard looks to be missing some of the more established Burning Wish Toolbox cards. Why Ideas Unbound over Infernal Contract/Cruel Bargain? Why Deathmark and Massacre and Void Snare? Why Shattering Spree? I'd like to hear some of your thought process on some of these cards. Overall, I think your 75 is serviceable but it feels to me that a bunch of your cards overlap more than they need to, so you have some room to play other cards to shore up more matches.
I'm not playing chromatic sphere because I don't think it's that useful. I've only tested it a little bit but it don't feel like it did enough. And since mana can be tight in piles, and you need 2 Mana to play and activate, it just doesnt seem worth it. Outside of piles it's a weak cantrip that can sometimes fix your colors, but that rarely is needed.
Sideboard choice questions:
Duress - it was kind of just an impulse but there's some reasoning behind it. Could be off base. If you wish for a cabal therapy to clear out countermagic before combo, and they have multiple counters, they'll just counter therapy and you won't know what they havr, whereas theyll let duress resolve so you at least get to see what you're up against. I considered thoughtseize here. 4 therapies main was because I simy swapped the 4th duress and 4th therapy to try it out.
Ideas unbound - I've never been in a situation where a sideboard Draw4 would win and IU wouldnt but I have been in situations where the reverse was true. Could be I just couldn't see those piles, and I am much more comfortable with IU piles. The ability to draw 4 to refill before trying to go off feels so marginal that I chose the card I was more comfortable using for its intended purpose.
Massacre/void snare/deathmark/shattering spree - there definitely is needless overlap here. I'd cut deathmark next time. Shattering spree I'll probably keep. I never needed it but I liked having it and I think it's the best sideboard artifact destruction option.
Namida, what does your list look like? I'm wondering what sideboard cards I'm missing and what a more focused decklist might look like.
The draw 4 spells get around REB/Pyro/spellsnare which makes them pretty good not to mention in some MU you can SB them in just as a card advantage spell. Not only that but if you wish them to open a doomsday pile or crack and led to BW post DD etc they are no longer as reliant on having top as your not cantriping into and can keep a BW on bottom of the pile. I like massacre and void snare and I have even used pyroclasm but deathmark and SS seem unneeded to me. I too prefer 4 duress main for similar reason when you BW a discard spell you normally want therapy and I prefer max duress main deck. I still play a list with MD CoV and I love that card. I personally am a large fan of time spiral as a BW target despite most people seeing it as uneeded it gives you lines of play to win the game in grinder matches off a single BW with no DD or cantrip and one of the boons of running this deck over ANT is its better at going late with more lands. I do think IU is playable as a an card but I can't see it being run before a black draw 4. If your going to MD the labman I would cut the 2nd petal you don't like for the sphere it is very useful with laboratory maniac.
There are plenty of places here to mess with the numbers, as long as you feel like you have a reason to do so. The deck is very customizeable because having a Wishboard and Doomsday being 5x Vampiric Tutor means that you have access to a lot of your 75 most of the time, so it's a matter of figuring out what cards you want access to.
I understand where you're coming from on Chromatic Sphere, because it took me a while to warm up to it myself. It opens up the Maniac Piles by letting you focus on your opponent's real disruption instead of their removal in the times that the removal would randomly be good against you. Chromatic Sphere as a saved cantrip or color-fixing is marginal, but not non-existent and it has won me games. That being said, you can certainly opt not to play Chromatic Sphere, but that makes it a bit less effective against certain decks that play counters and creature removal.
In the situation that your opponent counters a Cabal Therapy, it does exactly what a Duress would, minus giving you information. Therapy did its job in that scenario because I think most of the times you choose to spend Burning Wish on discard, the game has developed in a way where you should know your opponent's hand. I really just prefer 4 Duress in the main, but Therapy is reasonable if you're concerned about opponents playing cards that Duress can't hit, or if you're just a mind assassin and you're confident that you can make your Therapies hit reliably against the decks where a miss would be fatal. Thoughtseize is also not the worst option here, though you can see the potential downsides.
Moxnix already gave some of the reasons a D4 is good, but I'll go over a few. Having this card in your sideboard allows you to construct piles that are immune to Red Blasts. Post-sideboard, it also lets you construct piles that are immune to Spell Snare (against RUG Delver I often side out all my Burning Wishes, and siding Tendrils lets you win without casting any 2 mana spells). I routinely side this in against Miracles, Show and Tell, and Storm because life is less of an issue than cards are in those matches. It can also come in against most discard decks because card advantage really makes decks like Jund look silly. Also, many of those sorts of decks are playing Surgical Extraction too--Surgical Extraction is secretly very good against Doomsday, and drawing four cards is better than drawing three when you have to try to pick up the pieces of a messed up pile.
Here's what I mean by overlap: Why do you need a sideboard artifact destruction option? I'm sure you can come up with any number of situations where it'd be nice to have a Wish target that destroys artifacts, but I think that your other cards cover most of these situations. Consider the following: the deck already plays 4 Abrupt Decay to side in as artifact hate post-sideboard, so you're really only playing Shattering Spree to be safe against the situations where it is Game 1 and your opponent has played an artifact you actually care about but *can't* Void Snare, or your opponent has played multiple artifacts that matter and you've managed to put together multiple red mana and had it survive to replicate Shattering Spree (not a given since most artifact decks play Wasteland and you have to expose your plan ahead of time to Wish for Spree). The only time I think these situations will occur is against MUD and Chalice of the Void, which is actually something you already have a shot of beating with Laboratory Maniac in your deck. I'm seriously more afraid of Chalice than most because it's always in my metagame, but I still don't know that I'd dedicate a sideboard slot to fighting it in Game 1. Normally I play Hurkyl's Recall if I intend to play artifact hate (Maniac gives you a Game 1 shot to win against resolved Chalice, and post-sideboard Doomsday tutoring up Hurkyl's Recall or Abrupt Decays shuts your opponent down).
I didn't even consider the red blast immunity of the black draw 4, which is a great point. Thats convincing enough for me to swap it back in. And you're probably right about shattering spree too. I'll probably drop that for something else, although I'm not sure what. Maybe ill try your xantid swarms. I'll probably keep trying the 4 therapy main, since I'm a pretty good therapist and the meta where I played seemed creature heavy.
Xantid Swarms are okay, but I'm not entirely sure about them myself these days because Griselbrand decks aren't as popular as they used to be. I've been considering either Emrakul and Shelldock Isle or Flusterstorms in those spots.
When you say the meta is creature heavy, what creatures are you anticipating needing to Therapy away?
Finally got 2 Underground Seas for this deck but I only own 3 LEDs. Would it be possible to run another Lotus Petal and still run the deck?
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Stasis players like me are like those old gray haired convicts that have been locked up for 40 years straight. You can take us in a fight but you know you'll lose a testicle in the process of winning.
Decks I play
Legacy
Dredge 0
DredgeGBRU
AffinityXRUB
GoblinsRWB
10 land StompyG
BurnR
DreadstillURW
BelcherGR
Death and Taxes W
Enchantress GWR
BUILDING
Legacy Lands GBRUW
I'll never tell you the flavor text of Teferi's Imp!!
3 LED is perfectly fine. You lose a little speed against decks you need to be fast against, but you side out an LED against many blue decks anyway and there have been times where players have voluntarily chosen to build their deck with only 3 LED despite owning 4. I don't know that I like a Lotus Petal in that spot instead, but I don't know what you would play in its place.
If you only have 3 LED I would run some piece of interaction in that open slot, like another protection/diseuption spell, the reasoning being if you're going to be a bit slower you want to live that long.
I have decided to start messing around with Doomsday for fun and see the reaction from my lgs. So I have looked over the sheet from the premier and I am trying to understand all those piles. The only ones I cannot understand are the lines with the card "X" in the hand. What is "X"? I keep messing up and I have not come across those scenarios yet so...
Of course the sideboard options will be trimmed down and sadly I only have 1 Tropical Island so I use a Bayou for green. But I want to run Lab Man in the main with Chromatic Sphere (let's me use my copy from Invasion block) so I was thinking of taking out 2 Petals for the Lab man and the Sphere. Just really sad about only having 3 LEDs over here.
Stasis players like me are like those old gray haired convicts that have been locked up for 40 years straight. You can take us in a fight but you know you'll lose a testicle in the process of winning.
Decks I play
Legacy
Dredge 0
DredgeGBRU
AffinityXRUB
GoblinsRWB
10 land StompyG
BurnR
DreadstillURW
BelcherGR
Death and Taxes W
Enchantress GWR
BUILDING
Legacy Lands GBRUW
I'll never tell you the flavor text of Teferi's Imp!!
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There are some old threads in Developing about the deck, but I don't think they offer much. When Menendian first showcased the deck, it was in a article you have to pay for, and he tried to market it by claiming it was objectively a better deck than the Tendrils version, despite his examples of his deck beating various hate displaying that he wasn't aware the Tendrils deck is just as capable of beating much of the same hate. As a result, a lot of the threads kind of devolved into arguments about the deck. I'd actually suggest making a new thread now that tempers have cooled down. I also know there's a thread on the Storm Boards that was a little more productive if you want to look there. I have minimal experience playing the non-Storm deck. Doomsday is hard to use no matter what deck you put it in and there are a lot of different things going on in that deck that I am not used to, so I didn't really give it much of a chance. I can post more at length about that if you end up reviving one of the old threads or you make a new one.
There is one thing I'll say about the deck because I think it's good information for Tendrils players too...I don't like having a lot of reactive protection like counters in Doomsday. Being 100% sure your opponent can't disrupt you seems easier when you play proactive cards like discard or chants, and I think that's pretty important when getting disrupted mid-combo is much deadlier for you than it would be for decks that can rebuild.
Assume a standard grixis doomsday build, with lab maniac main in case it's needed. You know your opponent has no interaction, so going off without passing the turn is desirable. Doomsday is on the stack. You have a Top on the field. After doomsday resolves, you will have 2 lands, an UgSea and Volc untapped, and no cards in hand. Can you win this turn? I know that certain cards in hand let you win from that spot, but I can't figure out a win with no cards in hand. What if one of the lands was an uncracked fetch? Would that change anything?
I know there are a lot of variables unaccounted for, so feel free to make assumptions about the decklist, life total, etc.
Thanks
However, 1 Mana more is enough to win with a Labman pile and with 2 non relevant cards you could do a BS pile (use BS as an IU).
Greetings,
Kathal
Modern/Legacy
either funpolice (Delver, Deathcloud, UW Control) or the fun decks (especially those ft. Griselbrand)
Duress, IU, LED, GP, Labman
It requiers 4 Mana (BUUX) and 3 life (or 5 mana) for a protected kill.
Greetings,
Kathal
Modern/Legacy
either funpolice (Delver, Deathcloud, UW Control) or the fun decks (especially those ft. Griselbrand)
But yeah, if you want to learn about Contract piles, look the Meditate piles up. The only difference is the required mana.
Greetings,
Kathal
Modern/Legacy
either funpolice (Delver, Deathcloud, UW Control) or the fun decks (especially those ft. Griselbrand)
Basically, when you compare Burning Wish to Dark Petition in this deck, the cost of the additional color is justified by the additional flexibility you gain (being able to pay the 5 mana over the course of two turns; Burning Wish is +1 Storm in most piles; being able to not play maindeck Tendrils). The only way I see Petition making sense here is if you already have 4 Burning Wishes but for some reason still want more business.
d8dk32, what does your deck look like right now? Knowing the list would help with giving you suggestions for the free slot you're talking about.
4 burning wish
4 dark ritual
1 Rain of filth
4 brainstorm
4 ponder
4 sensei's divining top
4 GitaXian probe
4 lion's eye diamond
2 lotus petal
1 chain of vapor
1 laboratory maniac
1 ideas unbound
4 cabal therapy
3 duress
4 Polluted Delta
4 Bloodstained Mire
3 underground sea
1 badlands
1 volcanic island
1 bayou
1 Swamp
1 Island
1 Doomsday
1 Tendrils of Agony
1 Ideas Unbound
1 Duress
1 Empty the Warrens
1 Shelldock Isle
1 Emrakul
4 Abrupt Decay
1 Void Snare
1 Deathmark
1 Massacre
1 Shattering Spree
Match 1: 0-2 vs grixis delver
This match wasn't a good start to my day. Mulled to 5 on the draw game 1 and kept a 1 lander. My turn 1 Top got Dazed and my land wasted, and I never played another spell. This made my opponent think I was on a control deck of some kind, which was good but not enough to get me a win. I mulled to 6, kept an anemic hand, was able to cobble together a pass the turn pile, but he didn't give me the turn I needed.
Match 2 vs stiflenaught paintedstone 2-1
This deck was a sweet amalgamation of stifle naught and painter's servant/grindstone. Game 1 I dressed turn 1 and did a double take when I saw his hand. I snagged a stifle, which slowed him down and cleared the way for me. I combed him out a turn or 2 later easily wit lab maniac. Game 2 he outraged my combo. Game 3 was my favorite of the night. I got to a point where I could combo out but he had 1 blue open so I was thinking stifle on my top when I tried to draw into the pile. I managed to come up with something that could win right then with storm or with lab maniac the next turn if I got stifled. He stifled my top, and on his turn dropped blood moon, which forced me to wait an extra turn to win with maniac, but I got there.
Match 3 vs elves 2-1. This match was just a race. He took game 1 with natural order on turn 3. I took game 2 with a fast combo kill. Game 3 we destroyed eacother's hands, but I got down a top which made my top decks not really topdecks, and I was able to find an LED and a doomsday in short order.
Match 4 vs turbo depths
He mulls to 4 on the play game 1, I keep a turn 1 kill hand that leans heavily on dark ritual. He proceeds to thoughtseize my ritual, rendering my hand pretty crappy, and then top deck himself into his combo peices before I rebuild. Game 2 we each keep 7 and I combo him fairly easily despite some discard. Game 3 I keep a sketchy 6, he mulls to 5, and basically we have a repeat of game 1. He topdecks his win before I can rebuild from some well placed discard. I do get to a point where he'll kill me on his next turn I'd I don't top deck doomsday, and I dont.
On the whole I felt like I played pretty decently for my first time out in a tournament with the deck, having previously only played some games here and there with friends.
It looks like you put Chain of Vapor in your free spot. I would consider either Laboratory Maniac or Chain of Vapor to be your "maindeck beat hate" card, because they have a lot of overlap in the kinds of cards they help you beat, but they're both bad draws so including both will make you more often draw something that doesn't immediately help you. Looking over your 60, I play the 17th land in the spot where your Chain of Vapor is. There are some other differences, too:
How are you liking the 4th Cabal Therapy instead of the 4th Duress? I'm no slouch when it comes to Cabal Therapy, but there are just some matches where missing on a Therapy is basically fatal.
I don't like Badlands nor Bayou here. Badlands is justifiable because it enables you to cast Burning Wish on turn two and still cast Doomsday on turn three with just lands, and some people swear by this card for that reason, but when I played it I found myself more often punished because it's non-blue than rewarded for having my red source also tap for black. I feel the same way about Bayou, because it's basically just a Swamp that dies to Wasteland in your maindeck; also, without seeing your sideboard to confirm, I'm guessing the main green card you play is Abrupt Decay, which requires another black source in play anyway so you don't gain much from having your green source also tap for black.
Added sideboard to my previous post.
1) For a while I'd been playing with night's whisper in my free slot but even though it enabled a couple of very odd piles it wasn't very good otherwise. Chain took its spot. I personally have found CoV to be pretty decent. It can enable straight storm kills, stall opponents, and of course beat hate. I'd maybe consider moving Maniac to the sideboard. I also think I'll probably drop the 2nd Lotus Petal for another land. In testing it felt good and I liked the added speed, but in actual play it felt less than stellar and I would have preferred another permanent mana source.
2) I usually play 4 Duress/3 Therapy main with the 4th in the board, but I switched it last minute to 4 Therapy/3 Duress main with the 4th in the board. My sample size is small but it felt pretty good. Needs some more testing.
3) your call about the bayou was correct, Decay was in my sideboard. I put the bayou in the main to free up a sideboard slot. Not sure how I liked it. I did very little sideboarding, brought in Decay against the Painter's Servant/Stiflenaught deck but that was it so it was hard to tell if it was worth it. Another reason I played it was because I own it, and don't own a Tropical Island. As for the Badlands, I am one of those people who swear by it. I find myself fetching for it over the Volc more often than not in fact.
A big part of the reason behind my deck configuration was that I simply didn't know what kind of metagame I was getting into. It was a little game store about 2 hours out into the boonies from where I live that has a small but stable legacy scene. I was anticipating a very inbred metagame, but wasn't sure what kind of inbreeding would occur. So I just prepared for as much as I could without severely damaging the consistency of the deck.
Going down to one Lotus Petal is defensible; this deck doesn't aim to build up an overwhelming amount of mana like ANT does. You have to keep in one Lotus Petal for Doomsday Piles, but they really are just a bad draw against decks where you're going to go long.
Why do you like Therapy more than Duress? Are you anticipating a lot of maindeck creatures you want to discard with it? I don't think that it's wrong to play more Therapy over more Duress, I just feel uneasy about the idea of playing against other combo decks and possibly losing on the spot to my disruption spells actually not doing any disrupting; I also tend to like Therapy as a Wish Target because I normally have enough info to know what I want to name if I'm casting Wish for a discard spell.
If the Bayou is a card availability issue, that's all there is to say about that. I still don't like Badlands because this deck needs blue mana way more than it needs black mana when you're setting up, but there are definitely some benefits to playing Badlands.
Your current sideboard looks to be missing some of the more established Burning Wish Toolbox cards. Why Ideas Unbound over Infernal Contract/Cruel Bargain? Why Deathmark and Massacre and Void Snare? Why Shattering Spree? I'd like to hear some of your thought process on some of these cards. Overall, I think your 75 is serviceable but it feels to me that a bunch of your cards overlap more than they need to, so you have some room to play other cards to shore up more matches.
Sideboard choice questions:
Duress - it was kind of just an impulse but there's some reasoning behind it. Could be off base. If you wish for a cabal therapy to clear out countermagic before combo, and they have multiple counters, they'll just counter therapy and you won't know what they havr, whereas theyll let duress resolve so you at least get to see what you're up against. I considered thoughtseize here. 4 therapies main was because I simy swapped the 4th duress and 4th therapy to try it out.
Ideas unbound - I've never been in a situation where a sideboard Draw4 would win and IU wouldnt but I have been in situations where the reverse was true. Could be I just couldn't see those piles, and I am much more comfortable with IU piles. The ability to draw 4 to refill before trying to go off feels so marginal that I chose the card I was more comfortable using for its intended purpose.
Massacre/void snare/deathmark/shattering spree - there definitely is needless overlap here. I'd cut deathmark next time. Shattering spree I'll probably keep. I never needed it but I liked having it and I think it's the best sideboard artifact destruction option.
Namida, what does your list look like? I'm wondering what sideboard cards I'm missing and what a more focused decklist might look like.
Damia http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/showthread.php?t=410191
DDFT Legacyhttp://forums.mtgsalvation.com/showthread.php?t=505247
Domain Zoo http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/showthread.php?p=10212429#post10212429
4 Flooded Strand
4 Polluted Delta
1 Misty Rainforest
3 Underground Sea
2 Volcanic Island
2 Island
1 Swamp
Spells
4 Lion’s Eye Diamond
1 Lotus Petal
1 Chromatic Sphere
4 Sensei’s Divining Top
4 Gitaxian Probe
4 Ponder
4 Brainstorm
3 Cabal Therapy
4 Duress
4 Dark Ritual
1 Rain of Filth
1 Ideas Unbound
4 Burning Wish
1 Laboratory Maniac
3 Doomsday
2 Tropical Island
1 Void Snare
1 Cabal Therapy
2 Xantid Swarm
4 Abrupt Decay
1 Cruel Bargain
1 Doomsday
1 Massacre
1 Tendrils of Agony
1 Empty the Warrens
There are plenty of places here to mess with the numbers, as long as you feel like you have a reason to do so. The deck is very customizeable because having a Wishboard and Doomsday being 5x Vampiric Tutor means that you have access to a lot of your 75 most of the time, so it's a matter of figuring out what cards you want access to.
I understand where you're coming from on Chromatic Sphere, because it took me a while to warm up to it myself. It opens up the Maniac Piles by letting you focus on your opponent's real disruption instead of their removal in the times that the removal would randomly be good against you. Chromatic Sphere as a saved cantrip or color-fixing is marginal, but not non-existent and it has won me games. That being said, you can certainly opt not to play Chromatic Sphere, but that makes it a bit less effective against certain decks that play counters and creature removal.
In the situation that your opponent counters a Cabal Therapy, it does exactly what a Duress would, minus giving you information. Therapy did its job in that scenario because I think most of the times you choose to spend Burning Wish on discard, the game has developed in a way where you should know your opponent's hand. I really just prefer 4 Duress in the main, but Therapy is reasonable if you're concerned about opponents playing cards that Duress can't hit, or if you're just a mind assassin and you're confident that you can make your Therapies hit reliably against the decks where a miss would be fatal. Thoughtseize is also not the worst option here, though you can see the potential downsides.
Moxnix already gave some of the reasons a D4 is good, but I'll go over a few. Having this card in your sideboard allows you to construct piles that are immune to Red Blasts. Post-sideboard, it also lets you construct piles that are immune to Spell Snare (against RUG Delver I often side out all my Burning Wishes, and siding Tendrils lets you win without casting any 2 mana spells). I routinely side this in against Miracles, Show and Tell, and Storm because life is less of an issue than cards are in those matches. It can also come in against most discard decks because card advantage really makes decks like Jund look silly. Also, many of those sorts of decks are playing Surgical Extraction too--Surgical Extraction is secretly very good against Doomsday, and drawing four cards is better than drawing three when you have to try to pick up the pieces of a messed up pile.
Here's what I mean by overlap: Why do you need a sideboard artifact destruction option? I'm sure you can come up with any number of situations where it'd be nice to have a Wish target that destroys artifacts, but I think that your other cards cover most of these situations. Consider the following: the deck already plays 4 Abrupt Decay to side in as artifact hate post-sideboard, so you're really only playing Shattering Spree to be safe against the situations where it is Game 1 and your opponent has played an artifact you actually care about but *can't* Void Snare, or your opponent has played multiple artifacts that matter and you've managed to put together multiple red mana and had it survive to replicate Shattering Spree (not a given since most artifact decks play Wasteland and you have to expose your plan ahead of time to Wish for Spree). The only time I think these situations will occur is against MUD and Chalice of the Void, which is actually something you already have a shot of beating with Laboratory Maniac in your deck. I'm seriously more afraid of Chalice than most because it's always in my metagame, but I still don't know that I'd dedicate a sideboard slot to fighting it in Game 1. Normally I play Hurkyl's Recall if I intend to play artifact hate (Maniac gives you a Game 1 shot to win against resolved Chalice, and post-sideboard Doomsday tutoring up Hurkyl's Recall or Abrupt Decays shuts your opponent down).
When you say the meta is creature heavy, what creatures are you anticipating needing to Therapy away?
Decks I play
Legacy
Dredge 0
DredgeGBRU
AffinityXRUB
GoblinsRWB
10 land StompyG
BurnR
DreadstillURW
BelcherGR
Death and Taxes W
Enchantress GWR
BUILDING
Legacy Lands GBRUW
I'll never tell you the flavor text of Teferi's Imp!!
Greetings,
Kathal
Modern/Legacy
either funpolice (Delver, Deathcloud, UW Control) or the fun decks (especially those ft. Griselbrand)
4 Brainstorm
4 Burning Wish
3 Cabal Therapy
1 Chain of Vapor
4 Dark Ritual
3 Doomsday
4 Duress
4 Gitaxian Probe
1 Ideas Unbound
4 Ponder
1 Rain of Filth
3 Lion's Eye Diamond
4 Lotus Petal
4 Sensei's Divining Top
Lands
1 Badlands
2 Bloodstained Mire
3 Flooded Strand
2 Island
3 Polluted Delta
1 Swamp
2 Underground Sea
2 Volcanic Island
1 Tropical Island
1 Bayou
3 Abrupt Decay
3 Xantid Swarm
1 Pulverize
1 Meltdown
1 Shattering Spree
1 Infernal Contract
1 Void Snare
1 Massacre
1 Doomsday
1 Tendrils of Agony
1 Empty the Warrens
1 Time Spiral
1 Tranquility
1 Ill-Gotten Gains
1 Shelldock Isle
1 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
Of course the sideboard options will be trimmed down and sadly I only have 1 Tropical Island so I use a Bayou for green. But I want to run Lab Man in the main with Chromatic Sphere (let's me use my copy from Invasion block) so I was thinking of taking out 2 Petals for the Lab man and the Sphere. Just really sad about only having 3 LEDs over here.
Decks I play
Legacy
Dredge 0
DredgeGBRU
AffinityXRUB
GoblinsRWB
10 land StompyG
BurnR
DreadstillURW
BelcherGR
Death and Taxes W
Enchantress GWR
BUILDING
Legacy Lands GBRUW
I'll never tell you the flavor text of Teferi's Imp!!