Hi All,
To update, U/B was very disruptive in testing, but actually struggled to find a great discard outlet, Thirst for Knowledge and Pieces of the Puzzle were great but a bit too slow, so shifted back to Grixis because Faithless Looting is the strongest at what it does, and Izzet Charm proves to be very efficient, especially compared to Remand.
However, it did prompt another brewing session (after being frustrated that Worldly Tutor or Eldamri's Call weren't legal, and Summoner's Pact awkward to combo with) to see just how fast and streamlined you could get Bubble Hulk.
Running it through a quick 50 game goldfish, it averaged a turn 3.53 kill, with 2 Fizzles/Mulls into oblivion. Likely faster in reality once I/you get the hang of mulligans. Happy to post the full excel spreadsheet of games, average amount of pain taken, and a note on the game(s) if its of interest.
One thing to note was Mishra's Bauble WAY over-performed, having that card with either Opt or Serum Visions and a Fetchland just felt like cheating with how quickly you could get through your deck.
Would be interested on people's thoughts on whether you'd keep or mull these hands:
1. 3 land Body Double Footsteps Traverse Serum
2. Tarn, 2 Hulk, Footsteps, Fanatic, Opt, Izzet
3. Hulk, Footsteps, Fanatic, 2 land, Street Wraith
To try and bring this thread back to life.
I've been starting to brew just straight U/B Bubble Hulk recently, to some interesting results.
This is pretty exciting as you essentially take the disruptive core of Grixis Death Shadow, but rather than trying to play Delve guys or Shadow, you just kill them when you get Hulk in yard and Footsteps in hand
Looking forward to any thoughts or opinions if anyone has gone down a similar route.
Pack Rat seems like an interesting way to try and side-step hate.
Pro to going straight U/B
1. Largely Painless manabase
2. Simplifies your mana requirements
3. You're almost a Splinter-Twin esque deck where you're either tapping out for disruption or holding mana up for instants, with the chance of using Mannequin to go off at Instant speed.
Downsides
1. This deck probably abuses Faithless Looting just as much as Dredge
2. Some SB Options you lose (EE less useful if it can't ticked to 3 every time)
3. Probably weaker to blood moon, as with Faithless looting and a heavier fetch manabase you can try to have an island or swamp in play to let you go off.
Obviously the nut-draw here is pretty great:
T1 Thoughtseize
T2 Collective Brutality, discarding Hulk
T3 Footsteps Hulk
Cards to consider: Splashing Red for Faithless Looting or Izzet Charm, playing Liliana of the Veil or Search for Azcanta, moving to more discard outlets such as Strategic Planning or Taigam's Scheming or potentially Thought Scour.
Other options are to go to a more instant heavy deck that focuses on Makeshift Mannequin over Footsteps.
So I've been continuing my testing, still impressed by this deck, went 3-2 in a league yesterday. (Beating Green Devotion, Fish, Living End, losing to UW Eldrazi to footsteps/mannequin being 20 cards down, after T2 Thought-Knot Seer, T3 Displacer T4 getting cliqued every turn, then T1 Mimic, T2 TKS, T3 Reality Smasher, didnt draw a 3rd land. Similar story vs UR, won G1 easily, G2 fought through T1 Relic T2 TKS but had Reality Smasher on T5. G3 Mulled to 3 and you can imagine what happened.
To that extent, I was hoping to get the consensus views on a few hands I'd come across.
1. Izzet Charm x2 Faithless Lootingx2 footsteps Serum Visions land - Keep
2. Faithless Looting x2, Serum Visions, ssg, Taigam's Scheming, land - Keep
3. Faithless Looting x2, seer x2, makeshift, land - Mull
4. Serum Visions, City, Mogg, Izzet Charm, Lightning Axe, Protean Hulk - Tentative Keep
5. Faithless Looting x2 makeshift x2 3 land - Mull
6. makeshift, Protean Hulk, axe, seer, 3 land - Tentative Keep (If t4 fast enough vs deck)
7. Serum Visions, 2 land, Body Double, seer, 2x Faithless Looting - Mull
8. 2 Izzet Charm Serum Visions 3 land seer - Mull
9. Protean Hulk, Serum Visions, Taigam's Scheming, Izzet Charm, Faithless Looting, makeshift, land - Keep
10. Mannequin, 2 land, Lark, Izzet Charm , Faithless Looting, SSG - Mull (Would keep if Footsteps over Makeshift)
11. Protean Hulk x 2, darkslick, Serum Visions, 2x city - Mull
What matchups are other people finding good/bad? Pretty happy with most of our matchups, even Eldrazi, despite losing to it twice in League. Feels like if they dont have T2 Thought-Knot Seer we're ahead, on the play we can kill before T3 Thought-Knot Seer on their behalf, and even UW's Path to Exiles only fight the Footsteps Plan, not Makeshift Mannequin.
Edit: Looking at AJ Sacher's old hulk videos (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtjZYSfOCLk) he runs 1 MD Lark, is that worth us shaving 1 Lark to have an extra MD slot? Obviously bad if we draw lark after Izzet/Faithless/Taigams but before Footsteps/Makeshift
Thing i'm looking at testing:
Maindeck: Subbing out SSG and/or Lightning Axe for some variant of 4 Lightning Axe (Strong vs Eldrazi, additional discard outlet for when that's necessary) or even 4 Darkness (which seems strong vs the Eldrazi/Infect/Affinity meta).
Sideboard: Your standard mix of Leyline of Sanc / Echoing Truth etc. Of more interest is Pack Rat which if there was a large amount of hate seems like an interesting way to attempt to side-step it.
Amusingly you can actually beat Rule of Law effects if you have unlife, as your turn, cast unlife, their turn, eot ad nauseum, your turn cast lightning storm. So thats an easy way to beat it if you dont draw Patrician's Scorn/Echoing Truth.
As for Lab Maniac I guess you try to go off before having played a land or SSG that turn to win instantly (Draw deck, 4xSSG for 4 red, use 2 red to cast pentad, pentad for a blue and tap land for a blue to have RRUU cast Lab Maniac and Serum Visions.
On a completely unrelated note, the success of a Faerie's daily list with 4 SB Pack Rat has me thinking that card could be viable for us as a SB option, particularly against Jund and UWR who will side out most of the removal that would normally kill it, and since our combo is compact we can discard excess cards, am I crazy here or is that a legitimate idea? (Side benefit of being good in the mirror, for what thats worth)
Well...I see that we have rather differing views on SBing.
Vs UWR I keep in all the Prisms. With an abundance of mana, you can blank one Mana Leak and let Thoughtseize/Silence handle the other counterspells. If it eats a Snare, well, you can Peer in peace.
I have never thought of cutting Boseiju, but now that you mentioned it, it does become useless if you're at 2 life or less, even if you have Grace/Unlife.
P.S. Wedges: please check your PMs and reply to me/ktkenshinx.
Checked and replied to PMs.
My bad about the Abrupt Decay, derped there.
I think your approach is also perfectly valid and given Mana Leak's importance vs Spell Snare probably more optimal, to be honest the UWR matchup is so far in our favour that its difficult to lose so probably keep all the prisms in (I'd normally only cut one prism, e.g cut Caverns, 1 Prism, 1 Sleight, 1 Slaughter Pact and an Unlife for Gigadrowse, 2 Silence and 2 Thoughtseize). E.g playing Ad Nauseum against Dan Unwin (who Top8'd with GBW) pre-GP Brisbane in the grinders was enough to convince him to drop UWR the day before, because he just didnt think he could ever beat Ad Nauseum)
Essentially I like the Boseiju MD and wouldn't cut it from the MD (and I think of it as a spell), but after Sideboarding i'd only want it still there if playing against Merfolk/UWR/Scapeshift.
That list is practically identical to Wedges', except the mana base (no Scars lands).
Spoils is invaluable as the 5th AN, but it causes you to autolose about 1/5 of the time when you cast it (if you name Ad Nauseam and reveal Lightning Storm before the first AN), and a bit more on top of that if you lose too many lands to it. Personally I prefer a third Peer in that slot.
I know the Spoils looks a little loose, and it's probably the card most likely to get changed in the list I had, but my reasoning is that whilst you'll auto-lose around 20% of the time when you cast it, the times when you need to cast it (when you're under a huge amount of pressure and only have the single spare mana (e.g on T4 4 land lotus and Spoils+Grace in hand facing lethal) it will improve your overall win-rate.
Could anyone help me out with sideboarding? With such a compact combo list I'm finding it hard to decide what to cut especially. My main is all most identical to izzetmages, and my sideboard is 3 leylinen of sancity, 1 patricians scorn, 1 silence, 1 pte, 1 echoing truth, 1 pact of negation, 1 gigadrowse, 2 duress, 2 infest, 1 pitching needle, and 1 favor of mighty. Any changes to the board you would suggest, and just a basic sideboard plan would be great!
I'd agree with what izzetmage has said regarding sideboarding, although generally against slower decks i'd probably cut the Pyretic Ritual, Slaughter Pact, maybe a Pact of Negation (if they're not UWR) possibly a single Unlife and some number of Pentad Prisms (I cut some Prisms vs UWR because its the only thing they can spell snare)
Against faster decks you can cut some number of teachings, the boseiju, some number of pacts (if they have abrupt decays i'd probably leave one pact of negation post-sb if you need to combo via Unlife), possibly cut an unlife/all of them if they're affinity or similar
Beyond that you never sideboard more than 5-6 cards (Probably only bring in that many cards when it's 4 Leylines and other stuff against BGx decks)
RE: Gemstone Caverns, I really like this card, it provides a lot of positive variance, since when it works it can really change a game in a way that few other cards do, and at worst it just taps for a colourless (coloured mana hasn't usually been a problem for me playing this deck), also simplifies sideboarding because if youre on the play you can side it out.
On an unrelated note, I saw a twitch.tv streamer playing this deck who had altered the manabase to include 2-3 City of Brass, and was playing SB Pyroclasms (which I actually like since it's basically a cheaper Infest).
Might even allow the deck to play some number of Faithless Lootings in the MD (Which might be better than Peer, which a substantial amount of the time I wish would just find me mana)
What's everyones thoughts on adding a bit more rainbow mana to open up that possibility (I think doing it just for Pyroclasm is solid, but Faithless as well might prove even better)
Has anyone noticed that Vs RG tron, we suffer from turn 3 karn? Without t1 lotus bloom or t2 prism, they can keep us in check because of the mana denial... Any tips?
Given that the obvious tip is to focus on having a prism or bloom in your opening hands, (even t2 bloom is fine if hand has lots of manipulation (e.g 2x Serum, 1x Sleight in hand)
Beyond that it's not really a concern for myself when playing against Tron, since it really has to be T3 Karn, on the play, and even then you can have a surprising amount of counterplay with Prism/Lotus.
E.g At GP:Brisbane I lost to Tron but that was on the play t3 Karn, T4 Karn, T5 Sundering Titan no permanents in play, and even then I had to miss hitting an SSG or Land on my T4 to lose.
On that note I've often wondered how good Pithing Needle as a SB card would be, seems useful for Cranial Plating/Ravager, Karn and Liliana, which are the cards that normally scare me most in respective matchups
As for SB tweaks, I would think that in your list, Favor the Mighty is replaceable. What is it for anyway? Awesome Monkey Spirits?
Another one you could do w/o would probably be Infest.
As mentioned by others, Favor is a backbreaking SB Card against Bogles, Infect and Splinter Twin, all of which are decks that potentially could be faster than you and are worse matchups than Tron/Jund/UWR/Pod. Naturally if your meta doesn't really have those decks then it could be some other slot, but you have some space, since your SB plans against Jund/k, Pod decks and Tron/UWR are pretty compact.
With regards to the Infest, that was prob my second best SB card (behind the Leylines) actually want to fit in a few more infests, probably cutting the path or similar, card was backbreaking against Affinity and Pod, and fairly good against Jund/Junk (Slows down their draws with Ooze/Bob/Deathrite, doesn't do much against Goyf usually).
Fluke32: What about the SB makes it tight 'in a bad way'? What cuts/additions would you recommend.
What role do Slaughter Pact and Spoils of the Vault take? I've put in a Mystical Teachings and another Unlife for them at present.
Spoils is (most of the time) just a 5th ad nauseum, since often you just need to hit Ad Nauseum under pressure, especially against aggressive decks, sometimes it's also useful to hit more protection G1.
Slaughter Pact is just a general good card for you to have, naturally drawing it is useful vs pod/affinity/jund/k, and useful G1 to kill some sort of protection creature such as spellskite (most of the time you just redirect the spellskite trigger by pitching another land). Essentially the slaughter pact takes up very little room, isn't often dead G1 and can save you in some tough spots vs hatebears etc G1.
On a totally unrelated note, thoughts on good SB cards in this deck, while playing at the GP I kinda wanted Pithing Needle in the SB for Plating/Karn/Liliana/Pod, but not sure what the cut would be or how impactful it would actually be since many people bring in artifact hate post-SB.
PS. I'll write a primer, when does it need to be completed by?
Top 32 from GP Brisbane
1 Boseiju, Who Shelters All
2 Darkslick Shores
1 Gemstone Caverns
2 Gemstone Mine
1 Godless Shrine
1 Hallowed Fountain
2 Island
2 Marsh Flats
1 Misty Rainforest
1 Plains
3 Scalding Tarn
2 Seachrome Coast
1 Swamp
2 Watery Grave
22 lands
4 Simian Spirit Guide
4 creatures
4 Ad Nauseam
4 Angel's Grace
1 Lightning Storm
4 Lotus Bloom
2 Mystical Teachings
3 Pact of Negation
2 Peer Through Depths
4 Pentad Prism
2 Phyrexian Unlife
4 Serum Visions
1 Slaughter Pact
2 Sleight of Hand
1 Spoils of the Vault
34 other spells
Sideboard
1 Echoing Truth
1 Favor of the Mighty
1 Gigadrowse
1 Infest
4 Leyline of Sanctity
1 Path to Exile
1 Patrician's Scorn
2 Silence
1 Steel Sabotage
2 Thoughtseize
For reference this deck is actually really good, and both players who played Ad Nauseum went deep in Day 2 with the deck (Second player was playing an... interesting version with MD Signets+Talismans, no cantrips, more teachings and SB Grave Titans)
I lost to Eggs Day 1 because I forgot to SB in hate for leyline and scooped to it G3.
Day 2 lost a close game 3 to Affinity where I raw Ad Nauseum'd from 19 with 2 Ad Nauseum and 6 3-drops remaining in the deck and died from there without hitting Angel's Grace (Unlife was the card that killed me once I hit it) and Lost to Tron when he was on the play, cast drew natural tron, t3 Karn->Vindicate Pentad Prism my t3 cast Pentad Prism again, T4 Vindicate, Cast 2nd Karn, Vindicate again, my t4 Lotus came into play, failed to draw land or SSG to combo, then turn 5 he cast Sundering Titan and Vindicated my lotus bloom to leave me with 0 permanents.
G2 I mulled to 5, he had T3 Wurmcoil, T4 Karn, T5 Karn, and I failed to keep enough mana together to kill him (was 1 short on my T5, drew lotus bloom rather than a land/ssg)
Deck is really really good, was well positioned and top8 had reasonable/good matchups so you should play this deck until wizards realises it's degenerate and bans a card.
I wouldn't want you to reveal your tech if you think it's going to affect you, but it would be great to hear what changes you made and what changes you're planning to make. I'm playing the deck at a PTQ this weekend and some recap on your match-ups would be great information to have.
So...is anyone else envisioning tiny little apple mafia with townie tomatoes? Cause I'm having visions over here.
But not all the mafia must be bad apples (Obvious bad pun is obviously bad)
I'd rather townie bananas, are you pushing the tomato agenda?
Hmm... Ace is acting strangely, what with his blatant pushing for pro-tomato ideals as opposed to other fruits and vegies. Ace even attempts to distract us with his pointing and such! (A very serious post, as you can see:rolleyes:)
To update, U/B was very disruptive in testing, but actually struggled to find a great discard outlet, Thirst for Knowledge and Pieces of the Puzzle were great but a bit too slow, so shifted back to Grixis because Faithless Looting is the strongest at what it does, and Izzet Charm proves to be very efficient, especially compared to Remand.
However, it did prompt another brewing session (after being frustrated that Worldly Tutor or Eldamri's Call weren't legal, and Summoner's Pact awkward to combo with) to see just how fast and streamlined you could get Bubble Hulk.
Suicide Hulk
4 Gemstone Mine
4 Polluted Delta
1 Steam Vents
1 Watery Grave
1 Breeding Pool
1 Blood Crypt
1 Swamp
3 Scalding Tarn
1 Island
// Creatures
1 Reveillark
2 Viscera Seer
1 Mogg Fanatic
2 Body Double
4 Protean Hulk
4 Street Wraith
1 Insolent Neonate
4 Footsteps of the Goryo
4 Traverse the Ulvenwald
4 Mishra's Bauble
4 Faithless Looting
4 Opt
4 Serum Visions
4 Izzet Charm
Running it through a quick 50 game goldfish, it averaged a turn 3.53 kill, with 2 Fizzles/Mulls into oblivion. Likely faster in reality once I/you get the hang of mulligans. Happy to post the full excel spreadsheet of games, average amount of pain taken, and a note on the game(s) if its of interest.
One thing to note was Mishra's Bauble WAY over-performed, having that card with either Opt or Serum Visions and a Fetchland just felt like cheating with how quickly you could get through your deck.
Would be interested on people's thoughts on whether you'd keep or mull these hands:
1. 3 land Body Double Footsteps Traverse Serum
2. Tarn, 2 Hulk, Footsteps, Fanatic, Opt, Izzet
3. Hulk, Footsteps, Fanatic, 2 land, Street Wraith
I've been starting to brew just straight U/B Bubble Hulk recently, to some interesting results.
This is pretty exciting as you essentially take the disruptive core of Grixis Death Shadow, but rather than trying to play Delve guys or Shadow, you just kill them when you get Hulk in yard and Footsteps in hand
Looking forward to any thoughts or opinions if anyone has gone down a similar route.
Pack Rat seems like an interesting way to try and side-step hate.
4x Darkslick Shores
1x Geier Reach Sanitarium
3x Island
4x Polluted Delta
4x River of Tears
1x Swamp
1x Watery Grave
Sorcery (16)
4x Collective Brutality
4x Footsteps of the Goryo
4x Serum Visions
4x Thoughtseize
2x Body Double
1x Death Cultist
4x Protean Hulk
1x Reveillark
1x Snapcaster Mage
2x Viscera Seer
Instant (15)
4x Fatal Push
2x Makeshift Mannequin
4x Opt
2x Remand
3x Thirst for Knowledge
1x Damnation
2x Duress
1x Echoing Truth
2x Engineered Explosives
3x Hurkyl's Recall
1x Nihil Spellbomb
4x Pack Rat
1x Snapcaster Mage
Pro to going straight U/B
1. Largely Painless manabase
2. Simplifies your mana requirements
3. You're almost a Splinter-Twin esque deck where you're either tapping out for disruption or holding mana up for instants, with the chance of using Mannequin to go off at Instant speed.
Downsides
1. This deck probably abuses Faithless Looting just as much as Dredge
2. Some SB Options you lose (EE less useful if it can't ticked to 3 every time)
3. Probably weaker to blood moon, as with Faithless looting and a heavier fetch manabase you can try to have an island or swamp in play to let you go off.
Obviously the nut-draw here is pretty great:
T1 Thoughtseize
T2 Collective Brutality, discarding Hulk
T3 Footsteps Hulk
Cards to consider: Splashing Red for Faithless Looting or Izzet Charm, playing Liliana of the Veil or Search for Azcanta, moving to more discard outlets such as Strategic Planning or Taigam's Scheming or potentially Thought Scour.
Other options are to go to a more instant heavy deck that focuses on Makeshift Mannequin over Footsteps.
To that extent, I was hoping to get the consensus views on a few hands I'd come across.
1. Izzet Charm x2 Faithless Lootingx2 footsteps Serum Visions land - Keep
2. Faithless Looting x2, Serum Visions, ssg, Taigam's Scheming, land - Keep
3. Faithless Looting x2, seer x2, makeshift, land - Mull
4. Serum Visions, City, Mogg, Izzet Charm, Lightning Axe, Protean Hulk - Tentative Keep
5. Faithless Looting x2 makeshift x2 3 land - Mull
6. makeshift, Protean Hulk, axe, seer, 3 land - Tentative Keep (If t4 fast enough vs deck)
7. Serum Visions, 2 land, Body Double, seer, 2x Faithless Looting - Mull
8. 2 Izzet Charm Serum Visions 3 land seer - Mull
9. Protean Hulk, Serum Visions, Taigam's Scheming, Izzet Charm, Faithless Looting, makeshift, land - Keep
10. Mannequin, 2 land, Lark, Izzet Charm , Faithless Looting, SSG - Mull (Would keep if Footsteps over Makeshift)
11. Protean Hulk x 2, darkslick, Serum Visions, 2x city - Mull
What matchups are other people finding good/bad? Pretty happy with most of our matchups, even Eldrazi, despite losing to it twice in League. Feels like if they dont have T2 Thought-Knot Seer we're ahead, on the play we can kill before T3 Thought-Knot Seer on their behalf, and even UW's Path to Exiles only fight the Footsteps Plan, not Makeshift Mannequin.
Edit: Looking at AJ Sacher's old hulk videos (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtjZYSfOCLk) he runs 1 MD Lark, is that worth us shaving 1 Lark to have an extra MD slot? Obviously bad if we draw lark after Izzet/Faithless/Taigams but before Footsteps/Makeshift
Is that still your latest list Lord Hazanko? How has Forbidden Alchemy/Pieces of the Puzzle been testing? Better than sleight of hand?
Here's what i'm currently testing:
2 Body Double
1 Mogg Fanatic
3 Viscera Seer
4 Protean Hulk
4 Simian Spirit Guide
2 Makeshift Mannequin
4 Faithless Looting
2 Lightning Axe
4 Taigam's Scheming
4 Serum Visions
4 Izzet Charm
4 City of Brass
4 Darkslick Shores
4 Gemstone Mine
2 Mana Confluence
4 Shivan Reef
1 Temple of Deceit
1 Watery Grave
Thing i'm looking at testing:
Maindeck: Subbing out SSG and/or Lightning Axe for some variant of 4 Lightning Axe (Strong vs Eldrazi, additional discard outlet for when that's necessary) or even 4 Darkness (which seems strong vs the Eldrazi/Infect/Affinity meta).
Sideboard: Your standard mix of Leyline of Sanc / Echoing Truth etc. Of more interest is Pack Rat which if there was a large amount of hate seems like an interesting way to attempt to side-step it.
As for Lab Maniac I guess you try to go off before having played a land or SSG that turn to win instantly (Draw deck, 4xSSG for 4 red, use 2 red to cast pentad, pentad for a blue and tap land for a blue to have RRUU cast Lab Maniac and Serum Visions.
On a completely unrelated note, the success of a Faerie's daily list with 4 SB Pack Rat has me thinking that card could be viable for us as a SB option, particularly against Jund and UWR who will side out most of the removal that would normally kill it, and since our combo is compact we can discard excess cards, am I crazy here or is that a legitimate idea? (Side benefit of being good in the mirror, for what thats worth)
Checked and replied to PMs.
My bad about the Abrupt Decay, derped there.
I think your approach is also perfectly valid and given Mana Leak's importance vs Spell Snare probably more optimal, to be honest the UWR matchup is so far in our favour that its difficult to lose so probably keep all the prisms in (I'd normally only cut one prism, e.g cut Caverns, 1 Prism, 1 Sleight, 1 Slaughter Pact and an Unlife for Gigadrowse, 2 Silence and 2 Thoughtseize). E.g playing Ad Nauseum against Dan Unwin (who Top8'd with GBW) pre-GP Brisbane in the grinders was enough to convince him to drop UWR the day before, because he just didnt think he could ever beat Ad Nauseum)
Essentially I like the Boseiju MD and wouldn't cut it from the MD (and I think of it as a spell), but after Sideboarding i'd only want it still there if playing against Merfolk/UWR/Scapeshift.
I know the Spoils looks a little loose, and it's probably the card most likely to get changed in the list I had, but my reasoning is that whilst you'll auto-lose around 20% of the time when you cast it, the times when you need to cast it (when you're under a huge amount of pressure and only have the single spare mana (e.g on T4 4 land lotus and Spoils+Grace in hand facing lethal) it will improve your overall win-rate.
I'd agree with what izzetmage has said regarding sideboarding, although generally against slower decks i'd probably cut the Pyretic Ritual, Slaughter Pact, maybe a Pact of Negation (if they're not UWR) possibly a single Unlife and some number of Pentad Prisms (I cut some Prisms vs UWR because its the only thing they can spell snare)
Against faster decks you can cut some number of teachings, the boseiju, some number of pacts (if they have abrupt decays i'd probably leave one pact of negation post-sb if you need to combo via Unlife), possibly cut an unlife/all of them if they're affinity or similar
Beyond that you never sideboard more than 5-6 cards (Probably only bring in that many cards when it's 4 Leylines and other stuff against BGx decks)
RE: Gemstone Caverns, I really like this card, it provides a lot of positive variance, since when it works it can really change a game in a way that few other cards do, and at worst it just taps for a colourless (coloured mana hasn't usually been a problem for me playing this deck), also simplifies sideboarding because if youre on the play you can side it out.
On an unrelated note, I saw a twitch.tv streamer playing this deck who had altered the manabase to include 2-3 City of Brass, and was playing SB Pyroclasms (which I actually like since it's basically a cheaper Infest).
Might even allow the deck to play some number of Faithless Lootings in the MD (Which might be better than Peer, which a substantial amount of the time I wish would just find me mana)
What's everyones thoughts on adding a bit more rainbow mana to open up that possibility (I think doing it just for Pyroclasm is solid, but Faithless as well might prove even better)
Given that the obvious tip is to focus on having a prism or bloom in your opening hands, (even t2 bloom is fine if hand has lots of manipulation (e.g 2x Serum, 1x Sleight in hand)
Beyond that it's not really a concern for myself when playing against Tron, since it really has to be T3 Karn, on the play, and even then you can have a surprising amount of counterplay with Prism/Lotus.
E.g At GP:Brisbane I lost to Tron but that was on the play t3 Karn, T4 Karn, T5 Sundering Titan no permanents in play, and even then I had to miss hitting an SSG or Land on my T4 to lose.
On that note I've often wondered how good Pithing Needle as a SB card would be, seems useful for Cranial Plating/Ravager, Karn and Liliana, which are the cards that normally scare me most in respective matchups
As mentioned by others, Favor is a backbreaking SB Card against Bogles, Infect and Splinter Twin, all of which are decks that potentially could be faster than you and are worse matchups than Tron/Jund/UWR/Pod. Naturally if your meta doesn't really have those decks then it could be some other slot, but you have some space, since your SB plans against Jund/k, Pod decks and Tron/UWR are pretty compact.
With regards to the Infest, that was prob my second best SB card (behind the Leylines) actually want to fit in a few more infests, probably cutting the path or similar, card was backbreaking against Affinity and Pod, and fairly good against Jund/Junk (Slows down their draws with Ooze/Bob/Deathrite, doesn't do much against Goyf usually).
Fluke32: What about the SB makes it tight 'in a bad way'? What cuts/additions would you recommend.
Spoils is (most of the time) just a 5th ad nauseum, since often you just need to hit Ad Nauseum under pressure, especially against aggressive decks, sometimes it's also useful to hit more protection G1.
Slaughter Pact is just a general good card for you to have, naturally drawing it is useful vs pod/affinity/jund/k, and useful G1 to kill some sort of protection creature such as spellskite (most of the time you just redirect the spellskite trigger by pitching another land). Essentially the slaughter pact takes up very little room, isn't often dead G1 and can save you in some tough spots vs hatebears etc G1.
On a totally unrelated note, thoughts on good SB cards in this deck, while playing at the GP I kinda wanted Pithing Needle in the SB for Plating/Karn/Liliana/Pod, but not sure what the cut would be or how impactful it would actually be since many people bring in artifact hate post-SB.
PS. I'll write a primer, when does it need to be completed by?
For reference this deck is actually really good, and both players who played Ad Nauseum went deep in Day 2 with the deck (Second player was playing an... interesting version with MD Signets+Talismans, no cantrips, more teachings and SB Grave Titans)
I lost to Eggs Day 1 because I forgot to SB in hate for leyline and scooped to it G3.
Day 2 lost a close game 3 to Affinity where I raw Ad Nauseum'd from 19 with 2 Ad Nauseum and 6 3-drops remaining in the deck and died from there without hitting Angel's Grace (Unlife was the card that killed me once I hit it) and Lost to Tron when he was on the play, cast drew natural tron, t3 Karn->Vindicate Pentad Prism my t3 cast Pentad Prism again, T4 Vindicate, Cast 2nd Karn, Vindicate again, my t4 Lotus came into play, failed to draw land or SSG to combo, then turn 5 he cast Sundering Titan and Vindicated my lotus bloom to leave me with 0 permanents.
G2 I mulled to 5, he had T3 Wurmcoil, T4 Karn, T5 Karn, and I failed to keep enough mana together to kill him (was 1 short on my T5, drew lotus bloom rather than a land/ssg)
Deck is really really good, was well positioned and top8 had reasonable/good matchups so you should play this deck until wizards realises it's degenerate and bans a card.
I would also be interested in this information
But not all the mafia must be bad apples (Obvious bad pun is obviously bad)
I'd rather townie bananas, are you pushing the tomato agenda?
Hmm... Ace is acting strangely, what with his blatant pushing for pro-tomato ideals as opposed to other fruits and vegies. Ace even attempts to distract us with his pointing and such! (A very serious post, as you can see:rolleyes:)
Calling everyone else scum, is that perhaps a scummy thing to do?
UNVOTE kman1474
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