Hey, Just wondering if I could get some ideas flowing for a tournament I will be entering this Sunday. The tournament is a 10 proxy type one event, but I basically have any cards to work with anyways. I'm a fairly seasoned Type one player, so I know the basic card choices and obviously there are certain meta tweaks I can't expect you guys to know about. Other than that here is my current list that I have been testing with.
As for the card choices, I think most of them are self explanatory.
Some good synergies in the deck include the drain mana with Scrying which is why it's such a good draw card. Exalted win can also be fueled out early and take the game.
I think the one of's are justified by the number of tutors in the deck and basically you can get anything you want to help solve the certain situation.
I would like to somhow fit in a Darkblast for optimal Welder control but the deck seems to be very tight. Also, Tinker Collossus could be a more efficient win. But lets leave that up to discussion.
Anyways I have the rest of the week to come up with an optimal maindeck. As far as a sideboards concerned, I have one in mind but it is strictly meta game dependant and I will save the flames by not posting it.
If you want to contribute to this deck post here please and I will hopefully do well enough in the tourny to put up a report and keep the dicussion going!
They mana base! It burns my eyes! Serriously, especially if you are running null rods, that base is attrocious. If you are really gung-ho about it, you need to at least have main deck sacred grounds. How do you expect to win against stax with that base? Negator/Angel seem kinda bad when you could be running Tinker/colosus, as you mentioned. Imho, right now probably every control deck with blue in it needs to run Colossus as a "win now card." You can't randomly win off of an angel. Angel gives your opponant plenty of time to figure out what to do about it. As for the base, you need a swamp in there, and more islands. You don't need so many duels. How are the wastes working with your base? It seems that they hurt more than they help. What you really need to adress is how this deck is better than Ub or mono U. You sacrifice quite a bit of mana stability for what? Angel?
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It's a local tournament not OVC. Also I will fit in Tinker Collossus but I dont think I will have too many problems if I add some basics. This deck is better than Mono U because of ummm. Swords, duress, yawg win, tutors, and just about anything else in the board.
- You have seven colored mana producing lands in a deck with 3 colors.
- you have seven artifact mana in a deck with 3 null rods
- this is not better than mono blue, because this deck is absolutely slaughtered by wastelands; "swords, duress, yawg win, tutors" is kinda pointless if you can't cast them
- Angels and Negators are too small to be decent threats. Angels buy you a bit of life, but unless you're facing sligh (heh) that really won't help, and considering the amount of permanents this deck has, your Negator will just likely slam into a small creature and take you out with it
- suggestion: look up fish
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"Sometimes, the situation is outracing a threat, sometimes it's ignoring it, and sometimes it involves sideboarding in 4x Hope//Pray." --Doug Linn
First of all you should learn not to talk down to people and to provide ways to help the deck and not just shrug it off and tell me to play something else. I like to play my own decks and don't think for a second that I'm going to resort to fish. Fish dies to stax and there are basically no "blockers" in my meta just Gifts and Slaver. Last time I played this I top 8, so it can't really be as bad as you say it is! I agree the mana base is messed up right now but please provide some sort of constructive critisism.
While mondu's tone may not have been the greatest, he actually did make several valid points which I will reiterate.
1)You're not playing enough lands. I have a deck similar to this, and with the mana base of:
4xFlooded Strand
4xTundra
4xUnderground Sea
4xCity of Brass
4xWasteland
1xStrip Mine
5xMoxen
1xBlack Lotus
Even I have problems scraping together enough mana to do what I want sometimes. You're playing a full five lands less than that.
2)The large amount of artifact mana seems antithetical to Null Rod.
Moxen+Lotus is still usually... OK with some Null Rods. Lotus Petal and Mana Vault, though, are major problems. You have no way to get Mana Vault out of play short of Echoing Truth (and is that really what you want to use it on?) so if you have Null Rod out you're never untapping it. Plus your colorless mana requirements really aren't that big. I would personally cut Sol Ring and Mana Vault for more lands.
3)Wasteland really does cause huge problems for this deck. The three ways to mitigate that are:
Adding more basics (not a bad idea considering low land count)
[card]Crucible of Worlds
Suppression Field[/card]
The deck's answers are definitely superior to monoblue, however without a solid mana base to support them you will have problems even playing StP when you need to.
4)Angel is decent in aggro matchups, but not much of anywhere else. It's too hard to get flipped in time for the life gain to mean anything vs combo.
5)Negator is very much a meta-dependent creature, and strangely enough, the more "powered" your meta is, the better Negator is. Powered environments typically have fewer aggro decks and direct damage. If you play in a highly powered environment then Negator isn't terrible.
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If Slaver plays Trike, Negator is absolutely 115% terrible. The more competent the Slaver player is, the worse it gets, as he can force you to sacrifice 3 permanents on a single Trike charge, or 5 with a full Trike charge and a single active Welder. And, in the 5 permanent scenario, none of those permanents will be the Negator itself. In neither scenario is a Slaver activation required.
What I gave are simple observations, but since you seem to be confused to what constructive criticism is and what it isn't, let me change the tone of my post to fit your response better.
A 3 color deck with 7 colored mana producing lands is a indicative of a zero-tournaments-attended player. It shows a lack of understanding of what lands are as opposed to what moxen are. "I don't like being mana flooded". Bzzt. If you've actually played in a tournament setting you'd quickly realize that the threat of not having enough land is far worse than having too much.
Null rods + moxen is possible. However, far too many people unthinkingly auto-include cheap restricted cards like sol ring and mana vault in their decks without care of their actual contribution to the deck. "Ohh, sol ring!" Hello? How many cards actually benefit from sol ring and mana vault in this deck? The half-baked creatures? Or casting the null rods? Is this usually a good play: land, mana vault, nullrod, done? (actually, I've done this in several times, and in all those cases I wasn't running a deck with 7 artifact mana).
(I'd also like to take the time out to point out that untapping a mana vault is a triggered ability, not an activated one, so it can untap even with a null rod in play)
First of all you should learn not to talk down to people and to provide ways to help the deck and not just shrug it off and tell me to play something else. I like to play my own decks and don't think for a second that I'm going to resort to fish.
Like I said, what I gave were plain observations, and wasn't talking down to you. I never told you to play another deck. I told you to look up fish. Why? Because fish already plays countermagic+occasional null rod+occasional mox+wasteland+not so large manabase. It might have given you ideas you to pull off what you're trying to do. You didn't even look it up, did you? I mean, you spew forth lines like "it auto loses to stax". You did know that white-based fish was/is the biggest threat to decks like UBA stax, right? Right? You claim to play in an environment like slaver, and yet fail to recognize that Slaver _does_ carry creatures. Heck, normally Welder isn't a blocker, but seeing your low permanent count I'd block the dumb attacking negator if I can't productively use its ability.
Go play fish or 3/4cc instead. Don't think for a minute that you're being original. "I like to play my own decks?" Whatever.
(i'd also like to take the time out to ask this question: shouldn't you be able to sac the negator before it receives more than 1 point of damage from a trike? Something like:
shoot. stack.
shoot. stack. (etc)
last shoot resolves, negator sacced.
remaining shoots countered
?)
Last time I played this I top 8, so it can't really be as bad as you say it is!
In, what, an 8-person tourney? Lying impresses no one. Either that or your meta is scrubby. As it is, this is a horrid deck that would have trouble with, well, anything. I can't see it winning even against substandard decks. So, either you are lying or your meta is so horrible that you're deluded to believe that this deck is playable.
(i'd also like to take the time out to ask this question: shouldn't you be able to sac the negator before it receives more than 1 point of damage from a trike? Something like:
shoot. stack.
shoot. stack. (etc)
last shoot resolves, negator sacced.
remaining shoots countered
?)
Here's how it works with a fully charged Trike and no Welder. I am the Trike player, you are the Negator player.
I shoot Negator once using Trike's ability. I pass, you pass, Trike's ability resolves. One point of damage is dealt to Negator. Negator's "sacrifice a permanent" triggered ability goes on the stack.
In response to Negator's ability, I shoot it again, with Trike's ability. I pass, you pass, blah blah blah, same as before, now there are two instances of "sacrifice a permanent" on the stack.
With those still on the stack, I shoot Negator a final time. I pass, you pass, blah blah blah, same as before, now there are three instances of "sacrifice a permanent" on the stack. Now we let them resolve. Even if you sacrifice Negator to the first triggered ability that resolves, there are still two "Sacrifice a permanent" objects on the stack. Those will resolve and carry their effects out regardless of Negator's in-play status.
Too many people get all butt hurt here and cannot handle some critisizms even if they are pretty accurate and not meant to be mean...grow some balls people, sheesh...
Anyways....here is my tip, its easy and painless...
Use the starcity database and look up EBA, or do a search for EBA on themanadrain....either should get you a nice looking 3cc deck list that is geared up a little to try and have a clock similar to other control decks in the format...
The day people started winning on turn 3 or 4 with control is the day that keeper died...somebody tried to fix this with EBA and it did well shortly, and in a very very excellent players hands it could still do well...but it must be meta gamed extreemly well and played almost perfect to do well in a real tourney...in a local small event under 20 players then its not so difficult, but its still going to be very hard to actually win with.
The example of Trike is a very good one against the use of negator...there are a lot of other little pingers like this being used as well..Lava Dart (on the decline though thanks to darkblast), Barbarian Ring, Triskelion, Razormane Masticore, and in a small tourney you can almost always expect a sligh deck or two......Negator equals bad against everything but the control matchup, and then only if they cant get a triskelion out quickly in the case of CS (or heck, even blockers of any type can stall out the permanents enough to make life difficult)
When you couple this with the fact that your mana base is one of the worst ive ever seen then you are going to be in for a rude awakening at some point...
But yeh, the original statement was assinine since EBA is an already existing deck and your idea isnt original, its just a bad reproduction....(changing a few cards doesnt make it a new original deck..)
Wow, sorry if you guys got the wrong impression, but I'm usually not such a b!tch. I agree that the deck is a pile and I have come up with another list scrapping the rods and adding to the mana base. I hope you can forgive me for my reactions and I could say some random excuse about me being under X amount of stress considering I am at school when I usually reply, but that would be useless. Instead, to prove I can make a deck I will post up another 3cc variant to try to prove myself...
was, card for card, a deck I played in Spring 2004. Tinker->DSC wasn't so hot because lots of StP's were running around, Crucible wasn't legal at that point, and Petal just sucked.
well at least I know what you will be playing on sunday paul lol.
I just have to ask why you would want to run an extra couple of off colour moxen, over a couple more islands, you are running alot of artifacts anywyas so maybe cutting a useless emerald for an island would be a good play, and defently try and find room for a dark blast md as you need to have an answer to welders and dustins damn fcg cuase if he wins another tourney i will flip.
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3 Exalted Angel
2 Phyrexian Negator
4 Force of Will
4 Mana Drain
4 Brainstorm
3 Null Rod
3 Duress
2 Skeletal Scrying
1 Time Walk
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Balance
1 Echoing Truth
1 Swords to Plowshares
1 Yawgmoth's Will
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Vampiric Tutor
4 Wasteland
3 Tundra
3 Underground Sea
1 Strip Mine
1 Island
1 Mana Vault
1 Sol Ring
1 Lotus Petal
1 Black Lotus
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Sapphire
As for the card choices, I think most of them are self explanatory.
Some good synergies in the deck include the drain mana with Scrying which is why it's such a good draw card. Exalted win can also be fueled out early and take the game.
I think the one of's are justified by the number of tutors in the deck and basically you can get anything you want to help solve the certain situation.
I would like to somhow fit in a Darkblast for optimal Welder control but the deck seems to be very tight. Also, Tinker Collossus could be a more efficient win. But lets leave that up to discussion.
Anyways I have the rest of the week to come up with an optimal maindeck. As far as a sideboards concerned, I have one in mind but it is strictly meta game dependant and I will save the flames by not posting it.
If you want to contribute to this deck post here please and I will hopefully do well enough in the tourny to put up a report and keep the dicussion going!
Thanks, R&Doom for the sick sig!
-Lance
Spread the word.
Thanks, R&Doom for the sick sig!
- you have seven artifact mana in a deck with 3 null rods
- this is not better than mono blue, because this deck is absolutely slaughtered by wastelands; "swords, duress, yawg win, tutors" is kinda pointless if you can't cast them
- Angels and Negators are too small to be decent threats. Angels buy you a bit of life, but unless you're facing sligh (heh) that really won't help, and considering the amount of permanents this deck has, your Negator will just likely slam into a small creature and take you out with it
- suggestion: look up fish
"Sometimes, the situation is outracing a threat, sometimes it's ignoring it, and sometimes it involves sideboarding in 4x Hope//Pray." --Doug Linn
Thanks, R&Doom for the sick sig!
1)You're not playing enough lands. I have a deck similar to this, and with the mana base of:
4xFlooded Strand
4xTundra
4xUnderground Sea
4xCity of Brass
4xWasteland
1xStrip Mine
5xMoxen
1xBlack Lotus
Even I have problems scraping together enough mana to do what I want sometimes. You're playing a full five lands less than that.
2)The large amount of artifact mana seems antithetical to Null Rod.
Moxen+Lotus is still usually... OK with some Null Rods. Lotus Petal and Mana Vault, though, are major problems. You have no way to get Mana Vault out of play short of Echoing Truth (and is that really what you want to use it on?) so if you have Null Rod out you're never untapping it. Plus your colorless mana requirements really aren't that big. I would personally cut Sol Ring and Mana Vault for more lands.
3)Wasteland really does cause huge problems for this deck. The three ways to mitigate that are:
Adding more basics (not a bad idea considering low land count)
[card]Crucible of Worlds
Suppression Field[/card]
The deck's answers are definitely superior to monoblue, however without a solid mana base to support them you will have problems even playing StP when you need to.
4)Angel is decent in aggro matchups, but not much of anywhere else. It's too hard to get flipped in time for the life gain to mean anything vs combo.
5)Negator is very much a meta-dependent creature, and strangely enough, the more "powered" your meta is, the better Negator is. Powered environments typically have fewer aggro decks and direct damage. If you play in a highly powered environment then Negator isn't terrible.
A 3 color deck with 7 colored mana producing lands is a indicative of a zero-tournaments-attended player. It shows a lack of understanding of what lands are as opposed to what moxen are. "I don't like being mana flooded". Bzzt. If you've actually played in a tournament setting you'd quickly realize that the threat of not having enough land is far worse than having too much.
Null rods + moxen is possible. However, far too many people unthinkingly auto-include cheap restricted cards like sol ring and mana vault in their decks without care of their actual contribution to the deck. "Ohh, sol ring!" Hello? How many cards actually benefit from sol ring and mana vault in this deck? The half-baked creatures? Or casting the null rods? Is this usually a good play: land, mana vault, nullrod, done? (actually, I've done this in several times, and in all those cases I wasn't running a deck with 7 artifact mana).
(I'd also like to take the time out to point out that untapping a mana vault is a triggered ability, not an activated one, so it can untap even with a null rod in play)
Like I said, what I gave were plain observations, and wasn't talking down to you. I never told you to play another deck. I told you to look up fish. Why? Because fish already plays countermagic+occasional null rod+occasional mox+wasteland+not so large manabase. It might have given you ideas you to pull off what you're trying to do. You didn't even look it up, did you? I mean, you spew forth lines like "it auto loses to stax". You did know that white-based fish was/is the biggest threat to decks like UBA stax, right? Right? You claim to play in an environment like slaver, and yet fail to recognize that Slaver _does_ carry creatures. Heck, normally Welder isn't a blocker, but seeing your low permanent count I'd block the dumb attacking negator if I can't productively use its ability.
Go play fish or 3/4cc instead. Don't think for a minute that you're being original. "I like to play my own decks?" Whatever.
(i'd also like to take the time out to ask this question: shouldn't you be able to sac the negator before it receives more than 1 point of damage from a trike? Something like:
shoot. stack.
shoot. stack. (etc)
last shoot resolves, negator sacced.
remaining shoots countered
?)
In, what, an 8-person tourney? Lying impresses no one. Either that or your meta is scrubby. As it is, this is a horrid deck that would have trouble with, well, anything. I can't see it winning even against substandard decks. So, either you are lying or your meta is so horrible that you're deluded to believe that this deck is playable.
"Sometimes, the situation is outracing a threat, sometimes it's ignoring it, and sometimes it involves sideboarding in 4x Hope//Pray." --Doug Linn
Here's how it works with a fully charged Trike and no Welder. I am the Trike player, you are the Negator player.
I shoot Negator once using Trike's ability. I pass, you pass, Trike's ability resolves. One point of damage is dealt to Negator. Negator's "sacrifice a permanent" triggered ability goes on the stack.
In response to Negator's ability, I shoot it again, with Trike's ability. I pass, you pass, blah blah blah, same as before, now there are two instances of "sacrifice a permanent" on the stack.
With those still on the stack, I shoot Negator a final time. I pass, you pass, blah blah blah, same as before, now there are three instances of "sacrifice a permanent" on the stack. Now we let them resolve. Even if you sacrifice Negator to the first triggered ability that resolves, there are still two "Sacrifice a permanent" objects on the stack. Those will resolve and carry their effects out regardless of Negator's in-play status.
Anyways....here is my tip, its easy and painless...
Use the starcity database and look up EBA, or do a search for EBA on themanadrain....either should get you a nice looking 3cc deck list that is geared up a little to try and have a clock similar to other control decks in the format...
The day people started winning on turn 3 or 4 with control is the day that keeper died...somebody tried to fix this with EBA and it did well shortly, and in a very very excellent players hands it could still do well...but it must be meta gamed extreemly well and played almost perfect to do well in a real tourney...in a local small event under 20 players then its not so difficult, but its still going to be very hard to actually win with.
The example of Trike is a very good one against the use of negator...there are a lot of other little pingers like this being used as well..Lava Dart (on the decline though thanks to darkblast), Barbarian Ring, Triskelion, Razormane Masticore, and in a small tourney you can almost always expect a sligh deck or two......Negator equals bad against everything but the control matchup, and then only if they cant get a triskelion out quickly in the case of CS (or heck, even blockers of any type can stall out the permanents enough to make life difficult)
When you couple this with the fact that your mana base is one of the worst ive ever seen then you are going to be in for a rude awakening at some point...
But yeh, the original statement was assinine since EBA is an already existing deck and your idea isnt original, its just a bad reproduction....(changing a few cards doesnt make it a new original deck..)
Creatures:
4 Meddling Mage
1 Darksteel Collossus
Other:
4 Force of Will
4 Mana Drain
4 Brainstorm
4 Duress
2 Skeletal Scrying
1 Time Walk
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Balance
1 Echoing Truth
1 Swords to Plowshares
1 Yawgmoth's Will
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Decree of Justice
1 Tinker
1 Crusible of Worlds
Mana
4 Polluted Delta
4 Wasteland
3 Tundra
3 Underground Sea
1 Strip Mine
1 Island
1 Swamp
1 Mana Vault
1 Sol Ring
1 Lotus Petal
1 Black Lotus
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Ruby
Thanks, R&Doom for the sick sig!
-1 Tinker
-1 DSC
-1 Crucible
-1 Lotus Petal
+3 Exalted Angel
+1 Mana Crypt
was, card for card, a deck I played in Spring 2004. Tinker->DSC wasn't so hot because lots of StP's were running around, Crucible wasn't legal at that point, and Petal just sucked.
Thanks, R&Doom for the sick sig!
I just have to ask why you would want to run an extra couple of off colour moxen, over a couple more islands, you are running alot of artifacts anywyas so maybe cutting a useless emerald for an island would be a good play, and defently try and find room for a dark blast md as you need to have an answer to welders and dustins damn fcg cuase if he wins another tourney i will flip.
Spread the word.