I've recently become a fan of:
+3 Pyroblast +4 Xantid Swarm
-4 Land Grant -1 Taiga -1 Chrome Mox -1 Manamorphose
when sideboarding to beat Force of Will.
I've recently become a fan of:
+ 3 Pyroblast +4 Xantid Swarm
-4 Land Grant -1 Taiga -1 Chrome Mox -1 Manamorphose
when sideboarding to beat Force of Will.
Side out Taiga? That never occurred to me. Do you run the 1 land version?
That's a really cool idea. At no point did I ever think about siding the land.
This is something I've been thinking about. Someone was asking about a no land list. I'm gonna mws playtest -3 Sylvan Scrying, -1 Tiega, + 4 Mox Opal. Just to see....
I really like that sb plan too. My question is if swarm gets countered is there any way that this deck can win through all of the counterspells in merfolk? Blasts, spell pierce, fow, daze. Seems tough... That said I'm still playing it, haven't decided on 1-land or no land. Anyone wanna sway me one way or another?
My question is if swarm gets countered is there any way that this deck can win through all of the counterspells in merfolk? Blasts, spell pierce, fow, daze. Seems tough...
It is indeed tough. I've beaten Merfolk in a tournament setting, but I got very lucky with my draws. You should not expect to beat Merfolk very often.
A Belcher deck made the Top 8 of the SCG LA Legacy Open this past weekend. That list deviated from the list in the primer by the following sideboard choices: -3 Ingot Chewer, +1 Infernal Tutor, +1 Tendrils of Agony, +1 Pyroblast. (The list from SCG actually had Red Elemental Blast instead of Pyroblast, but this is clearly wrong.) I'm testing this sideboard, and may update the primer to reflect it if the consensus seems to be that the Chewers are no good.
It is indeed tough. I've beaten Merfolk in a tournament setting, but I got very lucky with my draws. You should not expect to beat Merfolk very often.
A Belcher deck made the Top 8 of the SCG LA Legacy Open this past weekend. That list deviated from the list in the primer by the following sideboard choices: -3 Ingot Chewer, +1 Infernal Tutor, +1 Tendrils of Agony, +1 Pyroblast. (The list from SCG actually had Red Elemental Blast instead of Pyroblast, but this is clearly wrong.) I'm testing this sideboard, and may update the primer to reflect it if the consensus seems to be that the Chewers are no good.
Personally, I like Shattering Spree over any other artifact destruction. It gets past Chalice @ 1.
Personally, I like Shattering Spree over any other artifact destruction. It gets past Chalice @ 1.
Well, it gets past Chalice @ 1 if you replicate it. But yeah, I agree, it's the best artifact hate card available, and it makes Ingot Chewer useless. Chewer was there just to beat chalice, but now we can do that with Shattering Spree or Hull Breach.
Does anyone have Tendrils of Agony in their SB? I'm wondering if it's actually worth a slot. I can't think of a time when I'd be using it for lethal unless I used Diminishing Returns first, and I feel like there are most useful wishboard slots that I could use instead, like for Reverent Silence or Goblin War Strike.
Does anyone have Tendrils of Agony in their SB? I'm wondering if it's actually worth a slot. I can't think of a time when I'd be using it for lethal unless I used Diminishing Returns first, and I feel like there are most useful wishboard slots that I could use instead, like for Reverent Silence or Goblin War Strike.
I've had it in at various times; it's never been relevant for me.
@thealmighty, I run tendrils, and have since the inception of my deck. I like tendrils over the goblin win, and it usually gets the job done quicker.
But how often do you get enough storm to cast it for lethal? Do you first get Diminishing Returns? Because I'd figure that with DR, you could whiff on your next seven and completely screw yourself.
Also, Fring, we should add major tournament reports to the primer, because they really help when you read from guys who did well at major tourneys.
@almighty, rarely ever am I able to pull off lethal damage with tendrils in my Charbelcher deck.
Sometimes, it completely screws me over.
But then again, in competitive Legacy, if I'm trying to go for the gusto with tendrils, there is a good chance that is my last resort anyway. So when I go for tendrils, if it's not lethal I've probably lost.
But when it does work out, it's that last ditch third win condition that wins. Tendrils is so much fun, especially if they already wasted their fows in hand.
@thefring, I too think it would be sweet to include recent winning decks in the primer:)
Alright guys. I did some playtesting the yesterday, and I'm gonna talk about our matchup against High Tide.
I'm not going to lie, Belcher sucks hard against High Tide. I don't think it's like any other Force of Will deck, where you have to play around Daze, maybe eat a FoW, and then continue on with your combo. High Tide decks have so much draw power (Brainstorm, Ponder, Preordain, Meditate, Merchant Scroll, Cunning Wish/Blue Sun's Zenith) that after Forcing your win condition the first time around, your opponent will go look for another Force (Merchant Scroll is particularly good at this), while slowly building up their lands and getting ready to ramp up into their combo.
The other terrible part is that our wins can just be too hard to pull off. If you wanna win with Goblin Charbelcher, you've gotta get to 8 mana so you can protect your Belcher with a Pyroblast, not to mention keep one mana open during your combo at all times. That 8-mana is really hard to get. The other option is to Empty the Warrens which will give them a turn or two to High Tide and win, so even casting EtW is not a sure path to victory. And don't forget, they can Merchant Scroll/Cunning Wish/Echoing Truth too.
I think your best bet to win this matchup is to get them Game 1 with a quick win, because hopefully they kept a Force-less hand. Then Game 2, side in your Xantid Swarms and Pyroblasts, so you have something to eat their counters. T1 Xantid Swarm works very well against this deck, because their only answer is really Force, or Echoing Truth and then Force again. I think a really good hand in this deck would have Xantid Swarm, Pyroblast, and a win condition, although I would keep a hand with 2 of the 3. Another thing to note is that you definitely want to get your Chrome Moxen out, because those permanent mana sources will make it REALLY easy to reload, which is extremely important in this deck, since you might have to reload 2 or 3 times.
Now when using Pyroblast, obviously the best time to use it is while protecting your important spells. But sometimes, you are just playing draw-go, and happen to have some mana on the field, and a Pyroblast in your hand. I'm still not really sure what to counter when playing High Tide, especially because it sometimes seems like counters don't affect them, and they can just get what they want. I think maybe their first High Tide would be a good thing to counter, although if anyone has a better suggestion, that might work too. Also, anything that gets them more cards in mass amounts like Blue Sun's or Time Spiral, maybe even Meditate? - you might want to counter those too. Although sometime's you have no choice. They might play BSZ AND Time Spiral in the same turn, in which case, you can just watch and enjoy the game. One thing to note is that it's probably good to leave mana open, so that you can threaten Pyroblast. This will slow them down considerably because they'll have to play around it. And who knows? You might Time Spiral into a Pyroblast and be able to do some damage to them.
Another thing I'm still trying out is what to do with an LED in your hand. Having LED speeds your deck up so much, but it also makes the opponent wary if played too early. If you play the LED, your opponent is sure to counter the Belcher. If you leave it in your hand, it might get Time Spiraled away, which might be bad, but if the opponent played Time Spiral, you're probably screwed anyway.
Overall, this is really a bad matchup for us. Fortunately, Candelabra of Tawnos is a very expensive and hard card to find, so I wouldn't expect to see very many High Tide decks in your metagame, unless you go to a major tournament. Just know that you're going to need those Xantid Swarms, and hopefully you can pull off a 2-1 in this matchup, but don't be too discouraged if you don't.
Should I keep this hand or mull to 5? As a rule of thumb, what do I do with hands that are almost the nuts, except I need to draw a form of free mana?
It turns out that in about 3-4 turns, I didn't draw any free mana, and got run over by a Lackey, Ringleader, and Piledriver. I didn't play anything that game except a Lion's Eye Diamond.
That game really shifted the tournament for me. I lost G1 to Goblins, and then G2 to Mindbreak Trap. We played a 3rd game for fun, and I slowrolled my spells and won with a Xantid Swarm and Charbelcher. I lost the 2nd round, and played New Horizons 3rd round, and fell 0-2 to Force of Will. Meanwhile, the Goblins player I lost to ended up playing for 1st place against Burn, a matchup I believe is very favorable for Belcher.
I haven't truely tested this as there hasn't been a big event near by in the past week (when I developed this list), but I have been working on it at school for a while and it goldfishes decently (I have a mtg deck builder on my itouch). I feel that the main weakness is the transition from 1 to 2 mana, but I'm unsure how to improve that. I feel that on occation I cannot go off because I have one mana of the wrong color (for Rite or Tinder), so I have been thinking about Wild Cantor, but I'm unsure about that move.
Maybe try throwing in sme dark rituals?
Let me think about this for a while before I produce some solid suggestions.
The first thing I tried was RB, then RGB, then RGb, but I found that I couldn't hit B on any kind of reliable basis and still be able to cast other spells (since the black rituals turn out unconvertable black mana).
1-2 Seething songs
and btw, do we really need only 1 for enchantment removal (hull breach)? how about simplify and reverent silence?
+3 Pyroblast +4 Xantid Swarm
-4 Land Grant -1 Taiga -1 Chrome Mox -1 Manamorphose
when sideboarding to beat Force of Will.
Side out Taiga? That never occurred to me. Do you run the 1 land version?
How does that work out for you?
I used to run two, but it kinda slowed me down.
Putting the sexy in Science Fiction!
gamertag: filthychocolate
This is something I've been thinking about. Someone was asking about a no land list. I'm gonna mws playtest -3 Sylvan Scrying, -1 Tiega, + 4 Mox Opal. Just to see....
Putting the sexy in Science Fiction!
gamertag: filthychocolate
Deck List:
Dredge
BUW Sharrum.Edh
GGGGG Omnath.Edh
UUUUU Alexi.Edh
Putting the sexy in Science Fiction!
gamertag: filthychocolate
A Belcher deck made the Top 8 of the SCG LA Legacy Open this past weekend. That list deviated from the list in the primer by the following sideboard choices: -3 Ingot Chewer, +1 Infernal Tutor, +1 Tendrils of Agony, +1 Pyroblast. (The list from SCG actually had Red Elemental Blast instead of Pyroblast, but this is clearly wrong.) I'm testing this sideboard, and may update the primer to reflect it if the consensus seems to be that the Chewers are no good.
Personally, I like Shattering Spree over any other artifact destruction. It gets past Chalice @ 1.
Well, it gets past Chalice @ 1 if you replicate it. But yeah, I agree, it's the best artifact hate card available, and it makes Ingot Chewer useless. Chewer was there just to beat chalice, but now we can do that with Shattering Spree or Hull Breach.
Does anyone have Tendrils of Agony in their SB? I'm wondering if it's actually worth a slot. I can't think of a time when I'd be using it for lethal unless I used Diminishing Returns first, and I feel like there are most useful wishboard slots that I could use instead, like for Reverent Silence or Goblin War Strike.
Putting the sexy in Science Fiction!
gamertag: filthychocolate
But how often do you get enough storm to cast it for lethal? Do you first get Diminishing Returns? Because I'd figure that with DR, you could whiff on your next seven and completely screw yourself.
Also, Fring, we should add major tournament reports to the primer, because they really help when you read from guys who did well at major tourneys.
Here's Matt Hazard's 2nd place at GenCon:
http://www.eternal-central.com/?p=659
Here's Ben Perry's 8th place at the SCG Open in LA:
http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?20418-8th-at-SCG-LA-with-Belcher-and-undefeated-in-the-swiss-A-long-Report
Sometimes, it completely screws me over.
But then again, in competitive Legacy, if I'm trying to go for the gusto with tendrils, there is a good chance that is my last resort anyway. So when I go for tendrils, if it's not lethal I've probably lost.
But when it does work out, it's that last ditch third win condition that wins. Tendrils is so much fun, especially if they already wasted their fows in hand.
@thefring, I too think it would be sweet to include recent winning decks in the primer:)
Putting the sexy in Science Fiction!
gamertag: filthychocolate
I'm not going to lie, Belcher sucks hard against High Tide. I don't think it's like any other Force of Will deck, where you have to play around Daze, maybe eat a FoW, and then continue on with your combo. High Tide decks have so much draw power (Brainstorm, Ponder, Preordain, Meditate, Merchant Scroll, Cunning Wish/Blue Sun's Zenith) that after Forcing your win condition the first time around, your opponent will go look for another Force (Merchant Scroll is particularly good at this), while slowly building up their lands and getting ready to ramp up into their combo.
The other terrible part is that our wins can just be too hard to pull off. If you wanna win with Goblin Charbelcher, you've gotta get to 8 mana so you can protect your Belcher with a Pyroblast, not to mention keep one mana open during your combo at all times. That 8-mana is really hard to get. The other option is to Empty the Warrens which will give them a turn or two to High Tide and win, so even casting EtW is not a sure path to victory. And don't forget, they can Merchant Scroll/Cunning Wish/Echoing Truth too.
I think your best bet to win this matchup is to get them Game 1 with a quick win, because hopefully they kept a Force-less hand. Then Game 2, side in your Xantid Swarms and Pyroblasts, so you have something to eat their counters. T1 Xantid Swarm works very well against this deck, because their only answer is really Force, or Echoing Truth and then Force again. I think a really good hand in this deck would have Xantid Swarm, Pyroblast, and a win condition, although I would keep a hand with 2 of the 3. Another thing to note is that you definitely want to get your Chrome Moxen out, because those permanent mana sources will make it REALLY easy to reload, which is extremely important in this deck, since you might have to reload 2 or 3 times.
Now when using Pyroblast, obviously the best time to use it is while protecting your important spells. But sometimes, you are just playing draw-go, and happen to have some mana on the field, and a Pyroblast in your hand. I'm still not really sure what to counter when playing High Tide, especially because it sometimes seems like counters don't affect them, and they can just get what they want. I think maybe their first High Tide would be a good thing to counter, although if anyone has a better suggestion, that might work too. Also, anything that gets them more cards in mass amounts like Blue Sun's or Time Spiral, maybe even Meditate? - you might want to counter those too. Although sometime's you have no choice. They might play BSZ AND Time Spiral in the same turn, in which case, you can just watch and enjoy the game. One thing to note is that it's probably good to leave mana open, so that you can threaten Pyroblast. This will slow them down considerably because they'll have to play around it. And who knows? You might Time Spiral into a Pyroblast and be able to do some damage to them.
Another thing I'm still trying out is what to do with an LED in your hand. Having LED speeds your deck up so much, but it also makes the opponent wary if played too early. If you play the LED, your opponent is sure to counter the Belcher. If you leave it in your hand, it might get Time Spiraled away, which might be bad, but if the opponent played Time Spiral, you're probably screwed anyway.
Overall, this is really a bad matchup for us. Fortunately, Candelabra of Tawnos is a very expensive and hard card to find, so I wouldn't expect to see very many High Tide decks in your metagame, unless you go to a major tournament. Just know that you're going to need those Xantid Swarms, and hopefully you can pull off a 2-1 in this matchup, but don't be too discouraged if you don't.
Round 2, Game 1, I know that I'm playing against Goblins. I mull to 6 and get this opening hand:
I keep the hand on the play, hoping that I get one of my outs, Chrome Mox, Elvish Spirit Guide, Lotus Petal, Land Grant, and Stomping Ground. I have a 31.48% chance of drawing one of them next turn.
Should I keep this hand or mull to 5? As a rule of thumb, what do I do with hands that are almost the nuts, except I need to draw a form of free mana?
It turns out that in about 3-4 turns, I didn't draw any free mana, and got run over by a Lackey, Ringleader, and Piledriver. I didn't play anything that game except a Lion's Eye Diamond.
That game really shifted the tournament for me. I lost G1 to Goblins, and then G2 to Mindbreak Trap. We played a 3rd game for fun, and I slowrolled my spells and won with a Xantid Swarm and Charbelcher. I lost the 2nd round, and played New Horizons 3rd round, and fell 0-2 to Force of Will. Meanwhile, the Goblins player I lost to ended up playing for 1st place against Burn, a matchup I believe is very favorable for Belcher.
Putting the sexy in Science Fiction!
gamertag: filthychocolate
4x Chrome Mox
4x Goblin Charbelcher
4x Lion's Eye Diamond
4x Lotus Petal
2x Mox Opal
Creatures
4x Simian Spirit Guide
4x Elvish Spirit Guide
4x Street Wraith
4x Tinder Wall
4x Manamorphose
4x Pyretic Ritual
4x Seething Song
4x Desperate Ritual
4x Burning Wish
2x Empty the Warrens
4x Rite of Flame
3x Deus of Calamity
4x Xantid Swarm
4x Pyroblast
1x Chain Lightning
1x Empty the Warrens
1x Goblin War Strike
1x Shattering Spree
I haven't truely tested this as there hasn't been a big event near by in the past week (when I developed this list), but I have been working on it at school for a while and it goldfishes decently (I have a mtg deck builder on my itouch). I feel that the main weakness is the transition from 1 to 2 mana, but I'm unsure how to improve that. I feel that on occation I cannot go off because I have one mana of the wrong color (for Rite or Tinder), so I have been thinking about Wild Cantor, but I'm unsure about that move.
Level 1 Judge
Currently Playing:
W Death and Taxes
BGR ScapeWish Nic Fit
BGR Punishing Nic Fit
Let me think about this for a while before I produce some solid suggestions.
Putting the sexy in Science Fiction!
gamertag: filthychocolate
The first thing I tried was RB, then RGB, then RGb, but I found that I couldn't hit B on any kind of reliable basis and still be able to cast other spells (since the black rituals turn out unconvertable black mana).
Level 1 Judge
Currently Playing:
W Death and Taxes
BGR ScapeWish Nic Fit
BGR Punishing Nic Fit
Putting the sexy in Science Fiction!
gamertag: filthychocolate