No no no, Krosan Cloudscraper has an upkeep of Two Green. That's really nothing if you ask me. To speed this deck you could splice green and add Birds of Paradise. So Turn three you could have a 14/14.
Or you could not use green and keep the Colossus. Just as likely to get through but without all the hassle of unnecessary Birds.
And, like Isamaru said, it will likely be Swordsed, chumped or otherwise dealt with anyway. It's really not worth the trouble of trying to squeeze in green mana.
I motion to name your deck Flickering Horde. If you remember the crappy ol' white player who was/is in your playgroup, maybe he'll know the pun if you don't.:D
Game 1: I drop Chalice for one, turn two Silent Specter, turn three Otherworldly Journey. He does nothing but play a werebear and FoW something in the lategame, as his hand was full of 1-cost cards.
1-0
Game 2: I only have Akroma in hand and she gets Dazed. Meddling Mages come out, but don't name anything relevant. I don't draw another threat until near the end, and it meets FoW as I die to Mystic Enforcer.
1-1
Game 3: I have to mulligan to 6. My turn 1 Chalice meets Disrupting Shoal pitching Predict. It was a close and swingy game, and I have Akroma and the dragon out, but I get swarmed by thresholded Werebears and Enforcers.
1-2
Game 4: Mulligan to 4...'nuff said.
1-3
Game 5: I bait out a Swords with Quicksilver Dragon, and then resolve Akroma. My hand is full of blinks, and it looks bad as the opponent hits threshold with 4 (!) Mongooses on the table. But I manage to stabilise the board by playing and blinking Exalted Angel all in the same turn. The lifegain saves me as my opponent hits a bunch of cantrips and worthless counterspells, and the two angels soon beat down for the win.
2-3
A few notes:
-despite the small amount of land the deck needs, I keep getting frustrated by the amount of times I have lost games due to mulligan because of mana screw. More land maybe?
-1st turn Chalice is the best thing about the Thresh matchup. If you resolve it things start to look a lot sunnier; Swords can be a big problem otherwise.
I can't comment on Ghostway as I never drew it
-The deck is powerful enough, but feels clunky and unrefined to play. I think streamlining the mana base, and further examining the card choices, would be in order. I'm thinking Swords or FoW in place of the SoFaI. The deck needs card draw less than it needs answers.
Running more creatures than blinks may be a good idea; it sucks to run out of creatures to drop and have dead cards in hand. Maybe 18/14?
22 mana sources instead of 20 I think.
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Johnny (with a touch of Spike)..
Creator of Thoughtless Sensei and Morph Aggro
Gaymer Raccoons please My artworkz
"We've made OVER NINE THOUSAND unique cards."
- MaRo, October 8th, 2007 IT'S OVER NINE THOUSAAAAAND!!!!!
I think having 16 blink effects are way too many for this deck. I think 12-14 should be plenty. We can run Ghostway down to 2x or maybe drop all four blink spells to 3x. That gives us 4x slots to dedicate to counters/removal like SotP or FoW.
I am playing with this deck and it seems to be going well playing casual, I have yet to run into a lot of the decks to beat in Legacy though. However, I think I make some decent points below.
Here's why I chose what I did... About the Blinking Spells:Ghostway almost seems like a dead card to me and I'm really considering taking it out. With a God hand, this deck will drop a face-down creature first turn and have it face-up on turn 2. Ghostway costing 1 more additional mana hurts you because 99% of the time, on second turn, you'll only have 2 mana for the flip, not 3.
As for the rest of the blinks, I brought them down to 3 "ofs" instead of 4 "ofs" so I could include 3 Voyager Staff cards. I did this for two reasons. The first reason is that although Voyager Staff takes away from the "surprise" of your deck, you can still get heavily mana screwed if you don't have the W mana. This deck revolves around relying on W to blink. Without it, you have a lame 2/2 in play.
Secondly, all 3 of the four original blink spells (Ghostway, Liberate, Momentary Blink) were usable only on your creatures. What if there's a threat that you need to get rid of? You can then only rely on Otherworldly Journey, which will give your opponent a +1/+1 counter. That's bad. With the Staff you can remove an opponent's threats temporarily as well.
I dropped 2 Chrome Moxes because having 4 of them hurts you in my opinion. Thus I dropped them for Lotus Petals (for now). The Lotus Petals are all I have for a substitute, but I like them. They still allow for 1st turn drops just as the Moxes do, but don't screw you over if you don't have cards you can imprint. I've had several bad hands where I had 1-2 Moxes in my hand that I couldn't play (this includes first hand draws and later game draws).
Finally, the ratio of 16 Blink Effects to 16 Creatures sucks. It's overkill and by the time you end up blinking 1-2 creatures and then start swinging, the game is close to being over by then if your opponents has no answers. It's better to draw creature cards than blink spells. Drawing more blinks (especially ones that are usable only on your creatures) are just dead cards in your hand. So with that said, I'm running 16 creatures to 14 blinks, but I might drop it down to 12 blinks so I can have answers to other threats. I even dropped Akroma down to three to reduce the number of times I draw her. She's good, but her legendary supertype hurts you if you have an awesome hand (but 2 of her).
I'm not sure if I like the inclusion of U in this deck. Sure it's good for using Flashback with Momentary Blink as well as redirecting using Quicksilver Dragon but it's not essential. Running mono-W helps with your mana base plus you don't take damage from the fetchlands (I've had a few games where I won with just 1 life).
The SoFi seems a little slow, so maybe dropping them down to 2 for something quicker, like Jitte might help.
Again, this is a rough "beta" deck. I don't have some of the cards that I need but by using this deck's idea with what I had, I was able to learn some of its weaknesses. I'm thinking dropping the Ghostway will give me 2 slots for answers. The 2 Disenchants in there were there merely because the meta I had ran heavy Artifact/Enchantments. So the 2 Ghostway + 2 Disenchants gives you a 4 slot for maybe StP or something. Other possible 4-ofs could be Mana Tithe or Rebuff the Wicked. Just throwing some stuff out there.
Thanks for your input in testing the deck Falazure!
You make good points, although I have a couple of queries...
*Firstly, if you play a turn 1 morph, how can you avoid having 3 mana for Ghostway on turn 2? Well I can see it happening in your version with Lotus Petals and extra Crystal Vein, but in a 4x City of Traitors build it's not usually a problem. I'm assuming you are running 2 because of card availability? (I think its awesome you made the deck in real life though...most people stick to MWS...)
*No Chalice of the Void? I guess you can live without it, but in the more competitive metas it's a godsend.
*I bet the extra mana in your deck helps though. But if you're gonna run plains, don't do it because of fear of Wasteland, because the deck really doesn't care to much about that card.
*Are you sure about Krosan Colossus? We had cut the big guy from the deck because he can be chump-blocked.
Hey guys, have we thought of any good reasons to play this over the (similar) Faerie Stompy deck? Our creatures are bigger? Its just more fun?
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Johnny (with a touch of Spike)..
Creator of Thoughtless Sensei and Morph Aggro
Gaymer Raccoons please My artworkz
"We've made OVER NINE THOUSAND unique cards."
- MaRo, October 8th, 2007 IT'S OVER NINE THOUSAAAAAND!!!!!
Thanks for your input in testing the deck Falazure!
You make good points, although I have a couple of queries...
*Firstly, if you play a turn 1 morph, how can you avoid having 3 mana for Ghostway on turn 2? Well I can see it happening in your version with Lotus Petals and extra Crystal Vein, but in a 4x City of Traitors build it's not usually a problem. I'm assuming you are running 2 because of card availability? (I think its awesome you made the deck in real life though...most people stick to MWS...)
*No Chalice of the Void? I guess you can live without it, but in the more competitive metas it's a godsend.
*I bet the extra mana in your deck helps though. But if you're gonna run plains, don't do it because of fear of Wasteland, because the deck really doesn't care to much about that card.
*Are you sure about Krosan Colossus? We had cut the big guy from the deck because he can be chump-blocked.
Hey guys, have we thought of any good reasons to play this over the (similar) Faerie Stompy deck? Our creatures are bigger? Its just more fun?
I guess you're right about that, but isn't Ghostway only good for multiple morph drops? I guess it becomes relevant for later game when you're able to drop double/triple face-down creatures and Ghostway pops them all up. I might keep it in there but I'll leave the quantity at 2 at the most. More often than not, I'd rather have a single target blink.
I can get more City of Traitors. I'm kind of reluctant to use too many though. I don't like having to sac them if I end up having a plains in my hand that I need. I'll test it out more.
As for Chalice of the Void, I do have those, but not in my possession at the moment. After I made this post, I realized that it was the key card I was missing (a couple of my morphs ate a StP). I will include those back in when I get them. You are correct, they are SB worthy if I don't keep them MD vs Metagame.
I only used Krosan Colossus because of the fact that I only have 1 Quicksilver Dragon. You're right he can be chump blocked really easy but negatives aside, I have had him help clear the board. Especially against pesky green and their mana-accelerant Llanowar Elves. Most green in my metagame heavily relies on the elf-kin/BoPs to ramp their mana up for quick plays. If they block, being able to swing puts them back a turn or two. If they concentrate on removal, like StP, that's 9 life for me. 9 life is usually good for 2-3 turns if your opponent are dropping some small casting cost threats. In addition, we have 12 cards dedicated to flying-evasion. Having four stay on the ground isn't that bad.
Again, as I play this more, I'll fine-tune it and work on getting the Quicksilvers. I have lots of room for improvement. It's really fun to play though. I like the change of pace. I personally would prefer this over Faerie Stompy. I'm biased though because I currently have an Angel Stompy.
Green improves the deck, i think. It gives you wall of blossoms, loxodon hierarch, eternal witness... These cards work well with blink-style cards. With green Krosan Cloudscraper could have a place in this deck...
I just played a crazy reanimator deck. I ended up losing 1-2.
In the first game, I came across too quickly for him to do anything. Essentially ending the game by turn 4. This was essentially a God hand draw/play.
In the second game, it was a lot closer. I was in the lead in terms of beats until he got a Keiga, the Tide Star out with a Plagued Rusalka available. That pretty much put me to a halt because I only had a Krosan Colossus and Exalted Angel. With no blink cards in my hand to stop his Keiga's control magic, I couldn't do anything. Thus I didn't attack and he reanimated a Kuro, Pit Lord next turn and spent most of his life wiping out my Exalted Angel, then sacrificing his Keiga to take my Krosan Colossus. He freaking won the game with 3 life (I swung at him for 3 turns with Exalted Angel, 12, then his Kuro, he paid 5 life to nuke my Exalted). The reason I didn't have blink cards is because I used them for my Chrome Moxes to have a first turn Exalted Angel drop. As much as I like the Chrome Mox, losing opportunities to blink REALLY hurts you.
Third game, it was again neck and neck but I ended up losing because he had his damn Keiga out again, which made me realize one thing. This deck really needs an outlet to remove opposing creatures. All these huge morphed creatures swing big, but if your opponent is able to stall you, you need to be able to do something reactively.
Again, as I play this more, I'll fine-tune it and work on getting the Quicksilvers. I have lots of room for improvement. It's really fun to play though. I like the change of pace. I personally would prefer this over Faerie Stompy. I'm biased though because I currently have an Angel Stompy.
Well, Quicksilver's probably the worst creature in the deck...Just waiting to see if they print something better in FS.
StP's been at the top of my 'must add' list for some time...
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Johnny (with a touch of Spike)..
Creator of Thoughtless Sensei and Morph Aggro
Gaymer Raccoons please My artworkz
"We've made OVER NINE THOUSAND unique cards."
- MaRo, October 8th, 2007 IT'S OVER NINE THOUSAAAAAND!!!!!
Hey Xandercoon. I was thinking about it further after my post last night. What do you guys think about the inclusion of Parallax Wave? After skimming through this thread, I noticed Finn first mentioned it. I think this is definitely a card that should be reconsidered. My reasoning is this:
Parallax Wave vs StP? I run a pretty good Angel Stompy deck that runs the Wave and StP. I can say without a doubt, that Parallax Wave really does get you out of most creature-based threats. It is pretty much a 100% positive version of Safe Haven but with bonuses. Just like Safe Haven, it is anti-Wrath of God, it is anti targeted removal on your own creatures but you can do it on more than one creature. In addition, it is removing opposing worrysome threats for a few turns, it lets you sneak in some swings while removing your opponent's chump blockers, and finally... it will flip up your own creatures when it goes away. You can even use the fading counters in response to it being disenchanted for free multiple flips or forcing your opponent's creatures to have summoning sickness.
Cost Issues? Although the CMC is 4, that should be no problem with our inclusion of Chrome Mox for easy white. The generic mana is easily paid for via Ancient Tomb/City of Traitors/Crystal Vein. It's very possible to have Parallax Wave drop in at turn 2 or 3.
Better than Safe Haven! We originally wanted to use Safe Haven in this deck but didn't due to possible Wasteland/Sinkhole problems. Safe Haven also took away from a good mana-ability land drop.
No Anti-Synergy With Chalice. StP is 1 CMC. If we drop the Chalice for 1 on turn one, then we just screwed over our ability for creature removal. We need to be able to remove creatures.
Uncounterable (Almost). If you can drop a Parallax Wave, consider all your removals from itself uncounterable (unless the opponent is playing a Stifle or some other anti-activated ability spell/ability.) You can remove creatures from the game whenever you want.
*LOL* And you still won after he said that? Funniest thing ever. What was he playing, for interest's sake?
That's an interesting build you got there. Wastelands and Crucible sound tech. Note: I think you should max out your City of Traitors, considering you can replay it out of your graveyard if it dies, and it doesn't hurt you. I'd be interested to know how Rockshard stacks up against Quicksilver Dragon.
Does Eternal Dragon do anything very useful? A redundant threat would be nice...
I've decided to cave in and add a significant amount of disruption to the deck. For consistency, creatures/blinks/hate are as close to equal amounts as possible. Also gone up to 22 mana sources.
The only thing that irritates me is the antisynergy between StP and CotV...You really shoot yourself in the foot if you try to run both.
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Johnny (with a touch of Spike)..
Creator of Thoughtless Sensei and Morph Aggro
Gaymer Raccoons please My artworkz
"We've made OVER NINE THOUSAND unique cards."
- MaRo, October 8th, 2007 IT'S OVER NINE THOUSAAAAAND!!!!!
But it is possible to construct the deck without StP or Staff; and setting it to one is the most strategically valuable play the deck can make against the normal metagame...
Is there a playable on-colour creature destruction spell that doesn't cost 1?
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Johnny (with a touch of Spike)..
Creator of Thoughtless Sensei and Morph Aggro
Gaymer Raccoons please My artworkz
"We've made OVER NINE THOUSAND unique cards."
- MaRo, October 8th, 2007 IT'S OVER NINE THOUSAAAAAND!!!!!
Does Eternal Dragon do anything very useful? A redundant threat would be nice...
I think Eternal Dragon doubles as a Flooded Strand and I'm actually thinking about using him. Considering how most of spells are colorless and our blinks require W, it's a real pain in the ass to have to mulligan because we don't have that W mana source. I'd rather have a surefire way of getting W than rely on topdecking. Most everything else in this deck relies on colorless mana, which we have an abundance of.
That's interesting (using Crucible). Too bad I only have 2.... and 0 Mox Diamonds. Crap.
Well, if you're going to include lands in that mix, try Mouth of Ronom. It can pretty much wipe most threats on the board. Then we could replace all our Plains/Islands with Snow-Covered Plains/Islands.
I believe Quicksand is better. If you play removal, you want to be able to remove a first turn lackey with it. Quicksand can kill almost any creature in the meta. The only creatures you can kill with Mouth of Ronom but not with Quicksand are probably a threshold-Werebear and a Hyppie.
You're exactly right. Late game, this deck should overwhelm the opponent with big enough beaters. It's that first/second turn drop that we would have trouble with (ie, lackey).
I think Quicksand is the answer the deck is looking for.
*Allows us to run Chalice
*Recursible with Crucible for Goblin hate, and thus improves the bad Goblins matchup (it basically kills a Goblin a turn.)
*Kills most relevant threats in the meta.
However I think we should run a set of StP in the sideboard, in case we run into Reanimator or similar decks. The Chalices can be sided straight out for the Swords.
The only question is, how to incorporate it into the landbase?
My suggestion is to cut Wasteland, unfortunately. As useful as it is, its still next to useless against: Goblins, Solidarity, Faerie Stompy, Angel Stompy...and lets face it, the decks that fear it are all built to be able to deal with it...its just no longer a game-breaker in Legacy.
Whereas Quicksand/Crucible improves our matchup against the all-important Goblins (not to mention Angel Stompy).
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Johnny (with a touch of Spike)..
Creator of Thoughtless Sensei and Morph Aggro
Gaymer Raccoons please My artworkz
"We've made OVER NINE THOUSAND unique cards."
- MaRo, October 8th, 2007 IT'S OVER NINE THOUSAAAAAND!!!!!
Gah, as happy as I am to see this deck evolve from our ideas & testing, it makes me extremely sad to realize that it's going the Crucible route. It's not that I don't agree with it, but I'm seriously lacking in cards for that route.
I totally missed the everything after Visions -> Onslaught. I've slowly picked up cards here and there in that set range. As of now, I only have 2 Crucible of Worlds and 0 Mox Diamonds...
With that said... I may have to splash green as an alternative and pop down some Life from the Loam as my "backup" tactic to Crucible. That still doesn't give me the 1st turn drop advantage that is Mox Diamond though... so I still have to use the Chrome Mox. With that said, I really like the latest lists though. I was thinking about running something like this:
1) This is far from tested/tweaked. I just had to come up with an alternative to the Crucible/Mox Diamond route. Again, I play on MWS, but I play in real life more. Being limited to a lot of decent cards makes it harder for me to make this deck. Krosan Colossus is now ok because it can be pitched to Chrome Mox for green. That green will give me access to my Life from the Loam.
2) With the addition of Quicksand, general removal via StP is now not that necessary. This allows us access "late gate removal". I was thinking something like Parallax Wave in place of StP.
3) Eternal Dragon gives me an alternate way to fetch my Savannah (much like Windswept Heath). Plus it's a recurring (yet expensive) threat.
Sheesh, good job, Cubus! Quicksand looks amazing. I am loving this even more. I will try to help this weekend if I get some time to put it into MWS. Don't let this die, Xandercoon! [can you update first post with a recent list too please?]
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Celebrating 3 years of open-minded acceptance, indispensable help, great advice, and incalculably-creative deck-design... Thanks for all the magic!
While netdecking and testing VileHorror i thought about Biorhythm. Sure its really expensive, off-color and crappy but still you're always the one with creatures while playing VH. That made me think.
The new list is broken sometimes. I just goldfished a game:
Turn 1: Land, double Mox Diamond, Crucible.
Turn 2: Land, Chalice@2.
Turn 3, City of Traitors, hardcast Exalted Angel face up with no blink in sight. Ouch.
I have been thinking about the sideboard. I would suggest 1st of all 4 Swords, to side in for Chalice against Reanimator, Sneak Attack, Survival and other randoms.
To improve our combo matchup to breaking point, how about a transformative sideboard into quasi-Angel Stax? We're already running Crucible and Chalice after all!
Something like:
So Chalice didn't cut the mustard? WHAMMMM STAX!!!111!!11!
I think the addition of Quicksand makes aggro a much better prospect. As Stax is subpar in Legacy mainly due to its bad Goblins matchup, this seems like the best prospect.
And I think this deck has come a long way and is looking almost respectable, although I get a strange feeling that the Astral Slide debate will soon raise its head again...
Johnny (with a touch of Spike)..
Creator of Thoughtless Sensei and Morph Aggro
Gaymer Raccoons please My artworkz
"We've made OVER NINE THOUSAND unique cards."
- MaRo, October 8th, 2007 IT'S OVER NINE THOUSAAAAAND!!!!!
The new list is broken sometimes. I just goldfished a game:
Turn 1: Land, double Mox Diamond, Crucible.
Turn 2: Land, Chalice@2.
Turn 3, City of Traitors, hardcast Exalted Angel face up with no blink in sight. Ouch.
I have been thinking about the sideboard. I would suggest 1st of all 4 Swords, to side in for Chalice against Reanimator, Sneak Attack, Survival and other randoms.
To improve our combo matchup to breaking point, how about a transformative sideboard into quasi-Angel Stax? We're already running Crucible and Chalice after all!
Something like:
So Chalice didn't cut the mustard? WHAMMMM STAX!!!111!!11!
I think the addition of Quicksand makes aggro a much better prospect. As Stax is subpar in Legacy mainly due to its bad Goblins matchup, this seems like the best prospect.
And I think this deck has come a long way and is looking almost respectable, although I get a strange feeling that the Astral Slide debate will soon raise its head again...
I LOVE this deck. it is like angel stompy on steroids!!! good job Xandercoon for coming up with a decklist. i think this deck should move into developing competitive.
Its a shame that Quicksand only works on attacking creatures , as Wasteland sort of trumps it.
After getting destroyed by Goblins about 10 games in a row, I'm putting more land in. I'm sick of always being mana-screwed.
-3 Silent Specter, -1 Ghostway, -1 Crucible of Worlds
+1 Plains, +2 Tundra, +1 Akroma, +1 Rockshard Elemental
If we go with the stax sideboard, Combo can be defeated without Specter, and to be frank, its rather useless in most other matchups. Crucible is great, but dead in multiples.
Preliminary results after the changes suggest the Goblin game to be much improved.
Johnny (with a touch of Spike)..
Creator of Thoughtless Sensei and Morph Aggro
Gaymer Raccoons please My artworkz
"We've made OVER NINE THOUSAND unique cards."
- MaRo, October 8th, 2007 IT'S OVER NINE THOUSAAAAAND!!!!!
I would suggest at least one Flagstones of Trokair instead of plains as they love the stax sideboard and are just an awsome card in general along with CoW. I don't know if I'd run more than 3 as too many could lead to a tempo loss but getting at least one with a Smokestack can be amazing.
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And, like Isamaru said, it will likely be Swordsed, chumped or otherwise dealt with anyway. It's really not worth the trouble of trying to squeeze in green mana.
RON PAUL
R[ƎVO˩]UTION
The Philosophy of Liberty
I used this list:
4 Exalted Angel
4 Quicksilver Dragon
4 Silent Spectre
4 Akroma, Angel of Fury
4 Momentary Blink
4 Liberate
4 Otherworldly Journey
4 Ghostway
4 Chalice of the Void
Mana
4 Ancient Tomb
4 City of Traitors
2 Crystal Vein
4 Chrome Mox
4 Tundra
2 Flooded Strand
1-0
Game 2: I only have Akroma in hand and she gets Dazed. Meddling Mages come out, but don't name anything relevant. I don't draw another threat until near the end, and it meets FoW as I die to Mystic Enforcer.
1-1
Game 3: I have to mulligan to 6. My turn 1 Chalice meets Disrupting Shoal pitching Predict. It was a close and swingy game, and I have Akroma and the dragon out, but I get swarmed by thresholded Werebears and Enforcers.
1-2
Game 4: Mulligan to 4...'nuff said.
1-3
Game 5: I bait out a Swords with Quicksilver Dragon, and then resolve Akroma. My hand is full of blinks, and it looks bad as the opponent hits threshold with 4 (!) Mongooses on the table. But I manage to stabilise the board by playing and blinking Exalted Angel all in the same turn. The lifegain saves me as my opponent hits a bunch of cantrips and worthless counterspells, and the two angels soon beat down for the win.
2-3
A few notes:
-despite the small amount of land the deck needs, I keep getting frustrated by the amount of times I have lost games due to mulligan because of mana screw. More land maybe?
-1st turn Chalice is the best thing about the Thresh matchup. If you resolve it things start to look a lot sunnier; Swords can be a big problem otherwise.
I can't comment on Ghostway as I never drew it
-The deck is powerful enough, but feels clunky and unrefined to play. I think streamlining the mana base, and further examining the card choices, would be in order.
I'm thinking Swords or FoW in place of the SoFaI. The deck needs card draw less than it needs answers.
Running more creatures than blinks may be a good idea; it sucks to run out of creatures to drop and have dead cards in hand. Maybe 18/14?
22 mana sources instead of 20 I think.
Creator of Thoughtless Sensei and Morph Aggro
Gaymer
Raccoons please
My artworkz
"We've made OVER NINE THOUSAND unique cards."
- MaRo, October 8th, 2007
IT'S OVER NINE THOUSAAAAAND!!!!!
11 Plains
4 Ancient Tomb
2 City of Traitors
3 Crystal Vein
Creatures:
4 Exalted Angel
3 Akroma, Angel of Fury
4 Krosan Colossus
4 Silent Specter
1 Quicksilver Dragon
3 Voyager Staff
3 Liberate
3 Otherworldly Journey
3 Momentary Blink
2 Ghostway
Spells - Other
2 Disenchant
2 Chrome Mox
2 Lotus Petal
4 Sword of Fire and Ice
About the Blinking Spells: Ghostway almost seems like a dead card to me and I'm really considering taking it out. With a God hand, this deck will drop a face-down creature first turn and have it face-up on turn 2. Ghostway costing 1 more additional mana hurts you because 99% of the time, on second turn, you'll only have 2 mana for the flip, not 3.
As for the rest of the blinks, I brought them down to 3 "ofs" instead of 4 "ofs" so I could include 3 Voyager Staff cards. I did this for two reasons. The first reason is that although Voyager Staff takes away from the "surprise" of your deck, you can still get heavily mana screwed if you don't have the W mana. This deck revolves around relying on W to blink. Without it, you have a lame 2/2 in play.
Secondly, all 3 of the four original blink spells (Ghostway, Liberate, Momentary Blink) were usable only on your creatures. What if there's a threat that you need to get rid of? You can then only rely on Otherworldly Journey, which will give your opponent a +1/+1 counter. That's bad. With the Staff you can remove an opponent's threats temporarily as well.
I dropped 2 Chrome Moxes because having 4 of them hurts you in my opinion. Thus I dropped them for Lotus Petals (for now). The Lotus Petals are all I have for a substitute, but I like them. They still allow for 1st turn drops just as the Moxes do, but don't screw you over if you don't have cards you can imprint. I've had several bad hands where I had 1-2 Moxes in my hand that I couldn't play (this includes first hand draws and later game draws).
Finally, the ratio of 16 Blink Effects to 16 Creatures sucks. It's overkill and by the time you end up blinking 1-2 creatures and then start swinging, the game is close to being over by then if your opponents has no answers. It's better to draw creature cards than blink spells. Drawing more blinks (especially ones that are usable only on your creatures) are just dead cards in your hand. So with that said, I'm running 16 creatures to 14 blinks, but I might drop it down to 12 blinks so I can have answers to other threats. I even dropped Akroma down to three to reduce the number of times I draw her. She's good, but her legendary supertype hurts you if you have an awesome hand (but 2 of her).
I'm not sure if I like the inclusion of U in this deck. Sure it's good for using Flashback with Momentary Blink as well as redirecting using Quicksilver Dragon but it's not essential. Running mono-W helps with your mana base plus you don't take damage from the fetchlands (I've had a few games where I won with just 1 life).
The SoFi seems a little slow, so maybe dropping them down to 2 for something quicker, like Jitte might help.
Again, this is a rough "beta" deck. I don't have some of the cards that I need but by using this deck's idea with what I had, I was able to learn some of its weaknesses. I'm thinking dropping the Ghostway will give me 2 slots for answers. The 2 Disenchants in there were there merely because the meta I had ran heavy Artifact/Enchantments. So the 2 Ghostway + 2 Disenchants gives you a 4 slot for maybe StP or something. Other possible 4-ofs could be Mana Tithe or Rebuff the Wicked. Just throwing some stuff out there.
You make good points, although I have a couple of queries...
*Firstly, if you play a turn 1 morph, how can you avoid having 3 mana for Ghostway on turn 2? Well I can see it happening in your version with Lotus Petals and extra Crystal Vein, but in a 4x City of Traitors build it's not usually a problem. I'm assuming you are running 2 because of card availability? (I think its awesome you made the deck in real life though...most people stick to MWS...)
*No Chalice of the Void? I guess you can live without it, but in the more competitive metas it's a godsend.
*I bet the extra mana in your deck helps though. But if you're gonna run plains, don't do it because of fear of Wasteland, because the deck really doesn't care to much about that card.
*Are you sure about Krosan Colossus? We had cut the big guy from the deck because he can be chump-blocked.
Hey guys, have we thought of any good reasons to play this over the (similar) Faerie Stompy deck? Our creatures are bigger? Its just more fun?
Creator of Thoughtless Sensei and Morph Aggro
Gaymer
Raccoons please
My artworkz
"We've made OVER NINE THOUSAND unique cards."
- MaRo, October 8th, 2007
IT'S OVER NINE THOUSAAAAAND!!!!!
I guess you're right about that, but isn't Ghostway only good for multiple morph drops? I guess it becomes relevant for later game when you're able to drop double/triple face-down creatures and Ghostway pops them all up. I might keep it in there but I'll leave the quantity at 2 at the most. More often than not, I'd rather have a single target blink.
I can get more City of Traitors. I'm kind of reluctant to use too many though. I don't like having to sac them if I end up having a plains in my hand that I need. I'll test it out more.
As for Chalice of the Void, I do have those, but not in my possession at the moment. After I made this post, I realized that it was the key card I was missing (a couple of my morphs ate a StP). I will include those back in when I get them. You are correct, they are SB worthy if I don't keep them MD vs Metagame.
I only used Krosan Colossus because of the fact that I only have 1 Quicksilver Dragon. You're right he can be chump blocked really easy but negatives aside, I have had him help clear the board. Especially against pesky green and their mana-accelerant Llanowar Elves. Most green in my metagame heavily relies on the elf-kin/BoPs to ramp their mana up for quick plays. If they block, being able to swing puts them back a turn or two. If they concentrate on removal, like StP, that's 9 life for me. 9 life is usually good for 2-3 turns if your opponent are dropping some small casting cost threats. In addition, we have 12 cards dedicated to flying-evasion. Having four stay on the ground isn't that bad.
Again, as I play this more, I'll fine-tune it and work on getting the Quicksilvers. I have lots of room for improvement. It's really fun to play though. I like the change of pace. I personally would prefer this over Faerie Stompy. I'm biased though because I currently have an Angel Stompy.
In the first game, I came across too quickly for him to do anything. Essentially ending the game by turn 4. This was essentially a God hand draw/play.
In the second game, it was a lot closer. I was in the lead in terms of beats until he got a Keiga, the Tide Star out with a Plagued Rusalka available. That pretty much put me to a halt because I only had a Krosan Colossus and Exalted Angel. With no blink cards in my hand to stop his Keiga's control magic, I couldn't do anything. Thus I didn't attack and he reanimated a Kuro, Pit Lord next turn and spent most of his life wiping out my Exalted Angel, then sacrificing his Keiga to take my Krosan Colossus. He freaking won the game with 3 life (I swung at him for 3 turns with Exalted Angel, 12, then his Kuro, he paid 5 life to nuke my Exalted). The reason I didn't have blink cards is because I used them for my Chrome Moxes to have a first turn Exalted Angel drop. As much as I like the Chrome Mox, losing opportunities to blink REALLY hurts you.
Third game, it was again neck and neck but I ended up losing because he had his damn Keiga out again, which made me realize one thing. This deck really needs an outlet to remove opposing creatures. All these huge morphed creatures swing big, but if your opponent is able to stall you, you need to be able to do something reactively.
Blazing Archon, Keiga, the Tide Star, Windborn Muse are all things that can put our deck to a blazing halt.
I'm thinking there needs to be an inclusion for StP. I need to go back to the drawing board for this one.
Well, its actually a Liberate that has some extra flexibility.
Well, Quicksilver's probably the worst creature in the deck...Just waiting to see if they print something better in FS.
StP's been at the top of my 'must add' list for some time...
Creator of Thoughtless Sensei and Morph Aggro
Gaymer
Raccoons please
My artworkz
"We've made OVER NINE THOUSAND unique cards."
- MaRo, October 8th, 2007
IT'S OVER NINE THOUSAAAAAND!!!!!
Parallax Wave vs StP? I run a pretty good Angel Stompy deck that runs the Wave and StP. I can say without a doubt, that Parallax Wave really does get you out of most creature-based threats. It is pretty much a 100% positive version of Safe Haven but with bonuses. Just like Safe Haven, it is anti-Wrath of God, it is anti targeted removal on your own creatures but you can do it on more than one creature. In addition, it is removing opposing worrysome threats for a few turns, it lets you sneak in some swings while removing your opponent's chump blockers, and finally... it will flip up your own creatures when it goes away. You can even use the fading counters in response to it being disenchanted for free multiple flips or forcing your opponent's creatures to have summoning sickness.
Cost Issues? Although the CMC is 4, that should be no problem with our inclusion of Chrome Mox for easy white. The generic mana is easily paid for via Ancient Tomb/City of Traitors/Crystal Vein. It's very possible to have Parallax Wave drop in at turn 2 or 3.
Better than Safe Haven! We originally wanted to use Safe Haven in this deck but didn't due to possible Wasteland/Sinkhole problems. Safe Haven also took away from a good mana-ability land drop.
No Anti-Synergy With Chalice. StP is 1 CMC. If we drop the Chalice for 1 on turn one, then we just screwed over our ability for creature removal. We need to be able to remove creatures.
Uncounterable (Almost). If you can drop a Parallax Wave, consider all your removals from itself uncounterable (unless the opponent is playing a Stifle or some other anti-activated ability spell/ability.) You can remove creatures from the game whenever you want.
What do you guys think?
*LOL* And you still won after he said that? Funniest thing ever. What was he playing, for interest's sake?
That's an interesting build you got there. Wastelands and Crucible sound tech. Note: I think you should max out your City of Traitors, considering you can replay it out of your graveyard if it dies, and it doesn't hurt you. I'd be interested to know how Rockshard stacks up against Quicksilver Dragon.
Does Eternal Dragon do anything very useful? A redundant threat would be nice...
I've decided to cave in and add a significant amount of disruption to the deck. For consistency, creatures/blinks/hate are as close to equal amounts as possible. Also gone up to 22 mana sources.
4 Momentary Blink
4 Otherworldly Journey
4 Ghostway
4 Exalted Angel
3 Rockshard Elemental
3 Akroma. Angel of Fury
3 Silent Specter
4 Chalice of the Void
3 Umezawa's Jitte
2 Swords to Plowshares
3 Mox Diamond
2 Crystal Vein
4 City of Traitors
3 Ancient Tomb
4 Wasteland
2 Tundra
2 Plains
2 Flooded Strand
The only thing that irritates me is the antisynergy between StP and CotV...You really shoot yourself in the foot if you try to run both.
Creator of Thoughtless Sensei and Morph Aggro
Gaymer
Raccoons please
My artworkz
"We've made OVER NINE THOUSAND unique cards."
- MaRo, October 8th, 2007
IT'S OVER NINE THOUSAAAAAND!!!!!
Is there a playable on-colour creature destruction spell that doesn't cost 1?
Creator of Thoughtless Sensei and Morph Aggro
Gaymer
Raccoons please
My artworkz
"We've made OVER NINE THOUSAND unique cards."
- MaRo, October 8th, 2007
IT'S OVER NINE THOUSAAAAAND!!!!!
I think Eternal Dragon doubles as a Flooded Strand and I'm actually thinking about using him. Considering how most of spells are colorless and our blinks require W, it's a real pain in the ass to have to mulligan because we don't have that W mana source. I'd rather have a surefire way of getting W than rely on topdecking. Most everything else in this deck relies on colorless mana, which we have an abundance of.
That's interesting (using Crucible). Too bad I only have 2.... and 0 Mox Diamonds. Crap.
As for creature-destruction, we have the following options with CMC of 2 or greater:
Reprisal
Terashi's Verdict
Afterlife
Eightfold Maze or Just Fate
Wing Shards
Chastise
Retaliate
Well, if you're going to include lands in that mix, try Mouth of Ronom. It can pretty much wipe most threats on the board. Then we could replace all our Plains/Islands with Snow-Covered Plains/Islands.
You're exactly right. Late game, this deck should overwhelm the opponent with big enough beaters. It's that first/second turn drop that we would have trouble with (ie, lackey).
*Allows us to run Chalice
*Recursible with Crucible for Goblin hate, and thus improves the bad Goblins matchup (it basically kills a Goblin a turn.)
*Kills most relevant threats in the meta.
However I think we should run a set of StP in the sideboard, in case we run into Reanimator or similar decks. The Chalices can be sided straight out for the Swords.
The only question is, how to incorporate it into the landbase?
2 Crystal Vein
4 City of Traitors
3 Ancient Tomb
4 Wasteland
2 Tundra
2 Plains
2 Flooded Strand
My suggestion is to cut Wasteland, unfortunately. As useful as it is, its still next to useless against: Goblins, Solidarity, Faerie Stompy, Angel Stompy...and lets face it, the decks that fear it are all built to be able to deal with it...its just no longer a game-breaker in Legacy.
Whereas Quicksand/Crucible improves our matchup against the all-important Goblins (not to mention Angel Stompy).
Creator of Thoughtless Sensei and Morph Aggro
Gaymer
Raccoons please
My artworkz
"We've made OVER NINE THOUSAND unique cards."
- MaRo, October 8th, 2007
IT'S OVER NINE THOUSAAAAAND!!!!!
I totally missed the everything after Visions -> Onslaught. I've slowly picked up cards here and there in that set range. As of now, I only have 2 Crucible of Worlds and 0 Mox Diamonds...
With that said... I may have to splash green as an alternative and pop down some Life from the Loam as my "backup" tactic to Crucible. That still doesn't give me the 1st turn drop advantage that is Mox Diamond though... so I still have to use the Chrome Mox. With that said, I really like the latest lists though. I was thinking about running something like this:
4 Momentary Blink
4 Otherwordly Journey
3 Ghostway
Interchangeable Creatures
4 Exalted Angel
3 Akroma, Angel of Fury
2 Krosan Colossus
3 Rockshard Elemental (or Silent Specter)
2 Eternal Dragon
3 Life from the Loam
4 Chalice of the Void
3 Umezawa's Jitte (or Sword of Fire and Ice)
2 Parallax Wave
Mana
3 Chrome Mox
2 Crystal Vein
4 City of Traitors
4 Ancient Tomb
4 Quicksand
2 Savannah (or Temple Garden)
2 Plains
2 Windswept Heath
2) With the addition of Quicksand, general removal via StP is now not that necessary. This allows us access "late gate removal". I was thinking something like Parallax Wave in place of StP.
3) Eternal Dragon gives me an alternate way to fetch my Savannah (much like Windswept Heath). Plus it's a recurring (yet expensive) threat.
Celebrating 3 years of open-minded acceptance, indispensable help, great advice, and incalculably-creative deck-design... Thanks for all the magic!
I like this deck idea too.
The new list is broken sometimes. I just goldfished a game:
Turn 1: Land, double Mox Diamond, Crucible.
Turn 2: Land, Chalice@2.
Turn 3, City of Traitors, hardcast Exalted Angel face up with no blink in sight. Ouch.
I have been thinking about the sideboard. I would suggest 1st of all 4 Swords, to side in for Chalice against Reanimator, Sneak Attack, Survival and other randoms.
To improve our combo matchup to breaking point, how about a transformative sideboard into quasi-Angel Stax? We're already running Crucible and Chalice after all!
Something like:
4 Trinisphere
4 Sphere of Resistance
3 Smokestack
I think the addition of Quicksand makes aggro a much better prospect. As Stax is subpar in Legacy mainly due to its bad Goblins matchup, this seems like the best prospect.
And I think this deck has come a long way and is looking almost respectable, although I get a strange feeling that the Astral Slide debate will soon raise its head again...
Creator of Thoughtless Sensei and Morph Aggro
Gaymer
Raccoons please
My artworkz
"We've made OVER NINE THOUSAND unique cards."
- MaRo, October 8th, 2007
IT'S OVER NINE THOUSAAAAAND!!!!!
I LOVE this deck. it is like angel stompy on steroids!!! good job Xandercoon for coming up with a decklist. i think this deck should move into developing competitive.
Mod? Aok? what are your opinions?
After getting destroyed by Goblins about 10 games in a row, I'm putting more land in. I'm sick of always being mana-screwed.
-3 Silent Specter, -1 Ghostway, -1 Crucible of Worlds
+1 Plains, +2 Tundra, +1 Akroma, +1 Rockshard Elemental
If we go with the stax sideboard, Combo can be defeated without Specter, and to be frank, its rather useless in most other matchups. Crucible is great, but dead in multiples.
Preliminary results after the changes suggest the Goblin game to be much improved.
First post updated, again.
Creator of Thoughtless Sensei and Morph Aggro
Gaymer
Raccoons please
My artworkz
"We've made OVER NINE THOUSAND unique cards."
- MaRo, October 8th, 2007
IT'S OVER NINE THOUSAAAAAND!!!!!
I would suggest at least one Flagstones of Trokair instead of plains as they love the stax sideboard and are just an awsome card in general along with CoW. I don't know if I'd run more than 3 as too many could lead to a tempo loss but getting at least one with a Smokestack can be amazing.