did you guys ever discuss running Panglacial Wurm in this deck?
this seems like one of the few competitive decks that could ever feasibly run the creature. summoner's pact for a primeval titan at your opponents end step and cast wurm from your library seems like a strong move, or even cast a search and get a blocker.
The deck doesn't usually get the requisite 7 mana until it combos off, which means that it wouldn't be using that Summer Bloom to cast Primeval Titan. It isn't worth it.
SSG lets you go off earlier than probe would, and I have also cast SSG to use as a chump blocker at times which can be nice, specially when it means the difference between winning the game and loosing.
Probe is nearly useless unless you are running a glass cannon style. Or pure combo version of the deck. Ive played around with a set of them and street wraith times 3 at one point. The issue with that is you have too much hidden info. Do you keep a hand with amulet, bloom and 2 probes? You can and about 60% of the time you will be kicking yourself in the ass for doing so.
Also what good does it really do to see if they have removal for your titan? If they do do you simply not cast it or do you get west bounce rather than haste? Idk in that regard. Seems like If Im playing a deck with heavy removal and mana left open I would play like they have removal. Why not unless you are about to be delt lethal? In which case paying 2 life probably isnt the best of plans. Play how you need to to give you the best chance. Like if I see you have 1b left open and are threat light I would probably go the west bounce route anyways. If you have 1b open and threatening lethal I would get blockers and or life probably. Probe does make it more obvious but spending a card to do while also hoping to have that card in hand at the time to use it is kinda a stretch.
Panglacial Wurm is funny. Kitchen table fun. Too unreliable to make it into the deck. Always sucks to draw it and you dont always have the spare 7 to cast it.
I'm still tweaking the basic land slot and possibly the 4th remand slot.
So it is a Hive Mind/Possibility Storm deck. Emrakul gets cheated in with Zoetic Cavern morph. The big mana engine is Amulet/Summer Bloom. However, Amulet is fine without summer bloom. Turn 1/2 Amulet, bounce land into Prism gives you 5/6 mana on turn 3. Once you have explosive mana, then the fun begins.
The magic mana numbers to win are 6 (hard cast Hive Mind with pact), 8 (Possibility Storm with Morph), 9 (Hive Mind and transmute), 11 (hard cast Possibility Storm, transmute and morph). At 5, you can have a near win with Possibility Storm hard cast and draw/bounce/transmute into Caverns.
It's a lot of fun but the deck has a very steep learning curve because of all of the interactions. If you can figure out the interactions, the deck will do extremely well for a fringe deck.
For example -
Tolaria West --> Pact/Zoetic Cavern/Bounce Land.
Bounce Lands --> bounce Tolaria West or Zoetic Cavern or another bounce land to correct mana colors.
With Possibility Storm in play, all of your Pacts become free cantrips. The 16 instants are a combination of 11 counterspells (4 Remand, 3 Izzet, 4 Pact) or 9 drawing effects (Remand, Izzet, Telling Time). You play the percentages. The deck packs as much counter magic as other permission decks.
Pact of Titan/Remand = Cantrip.
With double Amulet, Emrakul can be hard cast on Summer Bloom.
Pros of Playing -
#1 - The deck wins out of nowhere both late game and early game. You can set up the win by turn 2.
#2 - Requires lots of thinking. There is a lot of synergy built into the deck. Everything interacts with each other for redundancy. Pacts become disposable for Possibility Storm (see above).
#3 - "Cheap" to build. No fetch lands. Pact of Negation is down to $8 so Grove is the only big ticket left, along with Emrakul. Remand is stupidly expensive though.
#4 - Frustrate your opponent since the deck is very non-intuitive and your opponent has to guess. Opponents also have lots of dead cards. Zero obvious creatures. No graveyard use except for flashback Looting. Minimal use of searching (2 Tolaria West). Resistant to Tectonic Edge as the deck can operate on 3 lands due to bouncing. Once Possibility Storm hits play, everything becomes erratic. With two distinct victory conditions, your opponent will have difficulty siding in correct hate.
#5 - Frustrate your opponent's win strategy. Opponents' life totals are almost irrelevant since they die to Pact or annihilation. In all of the games I've played, I've won with 4/4 Titan tokens exactly twice. It's always been Emrakul scoop or Hive Mind.
Cons of Playing -
#1 - Too much thinking involved. You need to know how Hive Mind and Possibility Storm interacts with everything, including stacking Pacts. The deck doesn't "misplay" as much as sub-optimal play. Without practice and knowing your opponent's deck, you can easily find yourself winning on turn 4/5 rather than 3/4. Knowing which hands to keep is a big deal as well.
#2 - Misfires. The deck is fairly consistent because it has 22 lands (7 of which bounce), 4 Amulets and 4 Prisms to support the mana base. That said, it's a combo deck so you can occasionally misfire and simply not draw what you want. You end up sitting there drawing dead. I used to have a dedicated Hive Mind deck and added in the 3 Storms/Emrakul to give it an alternate win condition. Now you have 7 combo outs.
#3 - Shuffle your deck thoroughly. The deck needs to be very randomized.
That's an interesting take. I might have to try it out. On the one hand, you lose the tutors for a win-con (Summoner's Pact and Tolaria West), but on the other your win conditions are much less vulnerable to removal and you get more ways to interact. Also, Emrakul.
I disagree with the mana base, though. Gemstone Mine and Ice Bridge have worked so well for me, I don't see a reason to use duals. And 4 summer bloom seems like a must.
It's not good. It tries to use the Amulet/Bloom engine to ramp out a combo win, but that doesn't work quite as well. Why?
1) Too few lands. 22 is way too low to abuse with Bloom. You need 26-28.
2) Both wincons are 2-card combos. In our normal deck, our plan A (Titan) is a one-card, self-contained wincon; once it ETBs, everything you need can be tutored from your library. Pump lands, Glimmerposts, Tolaria Wests, etc.
This deck has 2 cards (Possibility Storm + Cavern) in place of Titan...needless to say that is less consistent than just 1 card. Titan is "can I cast it? If yes, I win." Possibility Storm is "can I cast it AND do I have Cavern? If yes, I win."
3) You're not using Amulet/Bloom for any purpose other than ramping mana, which makes me question why you'd want to play Amulet in the first place. A less flashy, but more consistent option is Lotus Bloom + Pentad Prism, which is played in Ad Nauseam. You don't need 28 lands if Bloom + Prism is your way of getting to 6 or 8 mana.
The Amulet/Bloom engine is unfortunately only suited for a Titan deck. It imposes so many restrictions (28 lands, must play karoos, wincon should preferably be a single 6CMC card) that you'd be hard-pressed to find another deck that can use that engine and not cripple itself.
I'm not really the biggest fan of Leyline against 8Rack. It doesn't stop Liliana, The Rack, Shrieking Affliction, or Ensnaring Bridge. Instead I prefer bringing in Seal of Primordium, Chalice of the Void, and Engineered Explosives. Chalice at 1 stops all the same stuff as Leyline, plus doesn't let them play Racks/Afflictions. EE can blow up Racks/Afflictions, as well as Bitterblossom tokens, and, in a pinch, Bridges and Lilianas.
Maybe I should test Leyline some more, but I feel like Seals are necessary against them and I don't want to bring in 7+ cards.
Turn one: exile simian, make a red, play amulet, bounce a karoo with green in it, summer bloom, karoo with a blue land three times, play hive mind, summoner's pact for a Primeval titan, and... what, with hive mind they also played a summoners pact? well, I hope they can pay 2GG or lose.
Turn two: lose cause you can't make 4 mana before playing land. But they should have lost last turn so it doesn't matter, you win.
SSG also lets you power out a quick Firespout, which could be very good against Affinity. Speaking of Affinity: what's everyone's sideboard plan for that matchup? Seal of Primordium seems good, Firespout seems good, Chalice seems good, Engineered Explosives seems good...But that's 10 cards. Way too many to bring in.
Anyway, Ancient Stirrings feels like one of the weakest cards in the deck to me. More often than not I'll draw it when I need a Summer Bloom or a win condition. And it's pretty easy to whiff when looking for an Amulet too. That leaves it to finding lands, and while I have been stuck without a karoo before, we have 9 of them so the odds are pretty low.
I'm considering trying Gitaxian Probe in the slot. I think knowing whether to go for a hasty Titan or a pact (and importantly, which Pact) would be quite valuable.
What about scrylands? Sounds interesting imo, basically a dual with scry who can give u good sinergy with karoo lands re-scrying, im looking slots for it, and removing some gemstone, what u think guys?
People have played them here and there, but the count usually comes out to one Temple of Mystery.
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Vive, vale. Siquid novisti rectius istis,
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
~~~~~
You are playing against Scapeshift. The Scapeshift player has five lands, one of which was tapped to suspend a Search for Tomorrow. The other four are untapped and include 3 blue for Cryptic Command. The Scapeshift player has four cards in hand.
You have an Amulet in play and a bunch of lands from an earlier resolved Summer Bloom. But in your hand you have only lands, a Gemstone Mine and a bounceland.
You draw Tolaria West. Do you transmute, and if so, what do you transmute for?
Unfortunately, if they have both Cryptic and Scapeshift, a single blue Pact won't save you because they'll have the mana for both when they go to cast the Scapeshift. It does mean they have to hold back a counter, though, if they want to resolve their Scapeshift.
For what it's worth, this scenario was from a practice game I did. I chose to transmute for Pact of Negation. I drew a Primeval Titan the next turn and eventually won the game, but that seemed like a luck shot so I figured I'd ask you guys what you thought.
The deck doesn't usually get the requisite 7 mana until it combos off, which means that it wouldn't be using that Summer Bloom to cast Primeval Titan. It isn't worth it.
Storm Crow is strictly worse than Seacoast Drake.
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Also what good does it really do to see if they have removal for your titan? If they do do you simply not cast it or do you get west bounce rather than haste? Idk in that regard. Seems like If Im playing a deck with heavy removal and mana left open I would play like they have removal. Why not unless you are about to be delt lethal? In which case paying 2 life probably isnt the best of plans. Play how you need to to give you the best chance. Like if I see you have 1b left open and are threat light I would probably go the west bounce route anyways. If you have 1b open and threatening lethal I would get blockers and or life probably. Probe does make it more obvious but spending a card to do while also hoping to have that card in hand at the time to use it is kinda a stretch.
Panglacial Wurm is funny. Kitchen table fun. Too unreliable to make it into the deck. Always sucks to draw it and you dont always have the spare 7 to cast it.
For those that don't see it right away morphing a Zoetic Cavern with a Possibility Storm in play lets you hard cast Emrakul, the Aeons Torn for free
I disagree with the mana base, though. Gemstone Mine and Ice Bridge have worked so well for me, I don't see a reason to use duals. And 4 summer bloom seems like a must.
1) Too few lands. 22 is way too low to abuse with Bloom. You need 26-28.
2) Both wincons are 2-card combos. In our normal deck, our plan A (Titan) is a one-card, self-contained wincon; once it ETBs, everything you need can be tutored from your library. Pump lands, Glimmerposts, Tolaria Wests, etc.
This deck has 2 cards (Possibility Storm + Cavern) in place of Titan...needless to say that is less consistent than just 1 card. Titan is "can I cast it? If yes, I win." Possibility Storm is "can I cast it AND do I have Cavern? If yes, I win."
3) You're not using Amulet/Bloom for any purpose other than ramping mana, which makes me question why you'd want to play Amulet in the first place. A less flashy, but more consistent option is Lotus Bloom + Pentad Prism, which is played in Ad Nauseam. You don't need 28 lands if Bloom + Prism is your way of getting to 6 or 8 mana.
The Amulet/Bloom engine is unfortunately only suited for a Titan deck. It imposes so many restrictions (28 lands, must play karoos, wincon should preferably be a single 6CMC card) that you'd be hard-pressed to find another deck that can use that engine and not cripple itself.
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Big Johnny.
Maybe I should test Leyline some more, but I feel like Seals are necessary against them and I don't want to bring in 7+ cards.
Turn one: exile simian, make a red, play amulet, bounce a karoo with green in it, summer bloom, karoo with a blue land three times, play hive mind, summoner's pact for a Primeval titan, and... what, with hive mind they also played a summoners pact? well, I hope they can pay 2GG or lose.
Turn two: lose cause you can't make 4 mana before playing land. But they should have lost last turn so it doesn't matter, you win.
Anyway, Ancient Stirrings feels like one of the weakest cards in the deck to me. More often than not I'll draw it when I need a Summer Bloom or a win condition. And it's pretty easy to whiff when looking for an Amulet too. That leaves it to finding lands, and while I have been stuck without a karoo before, we have 9 of them so the odds are pretty low.
I'm considering trying Gitaxian Probe in the slot. I think knowing whether to go for a hasty Titan or a pact (and importantly, which Pact) would be quite valuable.
Amulet of Vitor + Patron of the Moon + Oboro Breezecaller (with 3 lands out/2 karoos) = infinite mana.
With infinite mana (so Patron out), Meloku the Clouded Mirror, can create infinite tokens.
People have played them here and there, but the count usually comes out to one Temple of Mystery.
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
~~~~~
You are playing against Scapeshift. The Scapeshift player has five lands, one of which was tapped to suspend a Search for Tomorrow. The other four are untapped and include 3 blue for Cryptic Command. The Scapeshift player has four cards in hand.
You have an Amulet in play and a bunch of lands from an earlier resolved Summer Bloom. But in your hand you have only lands, a Gemstone Mine and a bounceland.
You draw Tolaria West. Do you transmute, and if so, what do you transmute for?
For what it's worth, this scenario was from a practice game I did. I chose to transmute for Pact of Negation. I drew a Primeval Titan the next turn and eventually won the game, but that seemed like a luck shot so I figured I'd ask you guys what you thought.
Please continue the Amulet discussion in the new thread by izzetmage. You can find it here.