@YamiJoey: Yes, but a 5-card combo requiring 2 copies of the same card and at least 1 copy in your hand is a lot different from a 4-card combo in which only 3 are required to be in your hand.
@Donathin: I was thinking about that. Would it be easier to build a turbo-combo deck or build a draw-go control-style deck with a combo finish? That is to say, would this deck be better playing a bunch of ramp, or would it be better as a wincon spliced into an otherwise ordinary Burning Vengeance deck? I don't know the answer, maybe you have a thought? =D
@Geleroff: I thought about that, except Grimgrin is the only one that can be cast for free on the turn you go off. It's just a zillion times better than anything else out there. Maybe when we see the rest of the set we'll get some better options.
I'm not sure this will be viable in standard.
Step one costs 6 mana, can be removed by a huge range of spells.
A Rooftop Storm infinite combo has been discovered before Innistrad was even released. This one is no better than the last one.
For reference, what was the previous one? I don't recall one being talked about previously.
Not that I want to argue Whipflare v. Slagstorm (because I'm open to trying both), but you seem to be glossing over the 2 toughness or less artifact creatures.
Postboard you bring out Whipflares and bring in Ancient Grudges. Preboard, most 2-toughness-or-less artifact creatures in the format, in fact, have 1 toughness (Porcelain Legionnaire, Memnite, Inkmoth Nexus) and can be burned off by Geistflames. Tempered Steel is a rough game 1, but Ancient Grudge is just sick against them in games 2 and 3.
@YamiJoey: Would be nice if that was true. You still need to pay 1 mana per spell you want to cast, and you can't do it the turn it comes into play (because you don't have enough mana to do anything useful with it). If Dark Ritual was legal, I'd be singing a different tune, but there's a reason Past in Flames hasn't seen play in Standard, and it's not because it's a bad card.
@Donathin: I understand that, but you said it requires fewer combo pieces, which it doesn't; you still need 4: Gravecrawler, Rooftop Storm, a damage outlet, and a sac outlet.. I was just making sure I wasn't missing anything.
There are several decks such as Affinity, Thresh and Team America that do not commonly run basics at all.
Any budget card is always going to worse than the best; however I disagree with you on GQ. I think it is the best, not the worst, of the budget options. You can use it to cut off a colour from many decks as they only run 1-2 basics of a particular colour. If you need something to deal with special lands (Maze of Ith, Karakas, Whatever) then Ghost Quarter is the best budget option.
Except you don't know why Wasteland is in the deck. Rather than explain it again, I'm going to ask you to scroll up and read my post on this very page which explains it.
Seriously, if you're going to make a silly comment, the least you could do is read the very page you're posting on to understand why your comment is silly.
@YamiJoey: Lich is bad and should feel bad. It's a 6-drop (who are we kidding?) who requires additional mana investment to win the game.
@Donathin: Please explain how Burning Vengeance + Rooftop Storm + Gravecrawler wins the game, because I don't see it. AFAIK, you still need a sac outlet to do it.
Also, most people don't play enchantment hate maindeck, while people do play creature removal maindeck. I fail to see how a 6-drop which takes 2 turns to win the game is better than an enchantment which wins the game instantly, when the latter is much more difficult to interact with and is much faster. I don't see that either.
You've sold me. I'm going to give Whipflare a try and see how it goes. I'm going to keep working on URW though, and use Whipflare to supplement, rather than replace, Day of Judgment.
ETA: I did some searching on Gatherer because I was curious. Here are some numbers:
In standard right now there are 269 creatures total with toughness 2 or less, and 50 of those are artifact creatures. That gives us a total of 219 Whipflare targets.
In standard right now there are 377 creatures with toughness 3 or less. That means that there are a total of 158 creatures Slagstorm can hit but Whipflare can't.
There are a total of 546 creatures. So, Slagstorm can kill 69% of creatures in standard, while Whipflare can kill 40% of the creatures.
The next question, that I'm not going to get into, is how many of all those creatures actually see play, and at what frequency.
And how many of those 158 creatures see play in 60-card decks? If they don't see play, they're not "in the format".
There are precisely 2 cards in that list (Fiend Hunter and Glissa, the Traitor) which see any play at all (Olivia Voldaren doesn't actually have 3 toughness). Glissa is only played by Conley Woods, meaning there is precisely 1 creature which Slagstorm kills but Whipflare doesn't, and it's a bad card vs this deck anyway since we play no creatures.
So, I want to build Rooftop Storm combo for post-DKA Standard. Here's the combo:
1) Cast Rooftop Storm
2) Cast Grimgrin, Corpse-Born for free
3) Cast Gravecrawler for free (out of your yard, maybe)
4) Sac Gravecrawler to Grimgrin
5) Cast Gravecrawler again
6) Rinse + repeat for arbitrarily large Grimgrin
7) Fling.
The question is, what does the rest of the deck look like? What colors is this deck? The only color the deck actually needs is blue; Fling isn't entirely necessary, since you actually can win via the combat phase if you have to. Is this deck a turbo-combo deck devoted to finding and casting Rooftop Storm as fast as possible, or is it a control deck with a combo finish? Do you play Burning Vengeance to deal infinite damage with Gravecrawler, using Grimgrin only as a sac outlet? How many Zombies do you play?
What are people's thoughts on Ghost Quarter? My wastelands are tied up and short of tec edge, I've been considering GQ
Thoughts?
The point of Wasteland in this deck is not to mess with an opponent's manabase. It's to keep them short on mana going into the midgame so that your threats are better than theirs. If you're not stunting their mana development, it's not worth it. That's why Tec Edge is good as "the budget Wasteland" (it's still godawful and you probably shouldn't be playing it anyway, but it's not as awful as Ghost Quarter) but Ghost Quarter is not.
Actually, no, it's not my responsibility to get you to accurately convey information.
Firstly and overwhelmingly, because I don't consider your playtesting relevant or informative.
If you're not going to bother to actually provide useful information in these random drive-by swipes you like to throw my way, you should probably stop posting them.
"Just saying."
That's fair enough. If you don't consider other people's results relevant, you will never improve and never learn. You may as well leave this forum if you don't consider other peoples' experiences relevant. You can obviously build and tune this deck much better than any of us, so why are you here?
I'm not sure what exactly you aimed to do with this post, but it certainly isn't helping the discussion along.
EDIT: Oops, disagreed with God, got an infraction. Sincerest apologies.
would you run both whipflare and slagstorm? do a 2/2 split
Depends on how many colors you're playing. I wouldn't run, for example, Sanpcaster Mage, Slagstorm, and Curse of Death's Hold in the same deck.
AFAIK, though, every creature in standard either has toughness 2 or less, or toughness 4 or greater. There are no non-artifact creatures that Whipflare can't hit that Slagstorm can, so it's hardly worth stretching your manabase over.
You can actually see a few pages behind that i said something about taking out Think twice to add more direct removals.
I think you want to cut both Alchemy and Think Twice. I think Think Twice is a better card because Alchemy just costs so much to flashback, so it'll often be a 1-shotter anyway, so if you only cut 1, I would cut Alchemy. Both cards are giant do-nothings though, so I don't like playing either of them.
Whipflare is probably the best Standard-legal card that nobody is playing.
"Game 1 I let him resolve a turn 3 ESG-fueled GSZ for an Enchantress on turn 2 and then killed him on turn 4 anyway"
A turn 3 Enchantress on turn 2? Okay, I guess that makes sense in some strange way I'm not seeing because I count numbers sequentially.
Ertai - So what did he do on turn 3? And what were you doing that got you a turn 4 kill with merfolk? If merfolk has a turn 4 kill with FoW backup, a lot of decks will lose that game. That doesn't happen very often though.
Sorry, that was a typo. It was a while ago, but I believe it was a turn 2 Enchantress for 3 mana (off a GSZ). As for what the rest of the game looked like, he didn't have protection; I think he dumped a bunch of Wild Growths and so on on turn 3 but can't recall. I don't think there is a possible 10 (or even 11) cards that Merfolk can have that results in a turn 4 kill with Force of Will. Maybe some ridiculous nut draw can, but an average draw doesn't.
If you actually wanted to know what happened, though, you should have asked a week ago; I've forgotten.
EDIT: As to your previous post, he played WoWar around turn 5 or 6, if memory serves. I believe he did have Sigil in his deck (I don't know what his hand was), but he had about 4 or 5 Enchantresses out, fewer than 30 cards in his deck, and no Emrakul in his deck to stop him from killing himself, even if he had the Sigil in hand. Again, though, if you wanted clear details, you should have asked last week.
@Donathin: I was thinking about that. Would it be easier to build a turbo-combo deck or build a draw-go control-style deck with a combo finish? That is to say, would this deck be better playing a bunch of ramp, or would it be better as a wincon spliced into an otherwise ordinary Burning Vengeance deck? I don't know the answer, maybe you have a thought? =D
@Geleroff: I thought about that, except Grimgrin is the only one that can be cast for free on the turn you go off. It's just a zillion times better than anything else out there. Maybe when we see the rest of the set we'll get some better options.
For reference, what was the previous one? I don't recall one being talked about previously.
Postboard you bring out Whipflares and bring in Ancient Grudges. Preboard, most 2-toughness-or-less artifact creatures in the format, in fact, have 1 toughness (Porcelain Legionnaire, Memnite, Inkmoth Nexus) and can be burned off by Geistflames. Tempered Steel is a rough game 1, but Ancient Grudge is just sick against them in games 2 and 3.
@Donathin: I understand that, but you said it requires fewer combo pieces, which it doesn't; you still need 4: Gravecrawler, Rooftop Storm, a damage outlet, and a sac outlet.. I was just making sure I wasn't missing anything.
Except you don't know why Wasteland is in the deck. Rather than explain it again, I'm going to ask you to scroll up and read my post on this very page which explains it.
Seriously, if you're going to make a silly comment, the least you could do is read the very page you're posting on to understand why your comment is silly.
@Donathin: Please explain how Burning Vengeance + Rooftop Storm + Gravecrawler wins the game, because I don't see it. AFAIK, you still need a sac outlet to do it.
Also, most people don't play enchantment hate maindeck, while people do play creature removal maindeck. I fail to see how a 6-drop which takes 2 turns to win the game is better than an enchantment which wins the game instantly, when the latter is much more difficult to interact with and is much faster. I don't see that either.
And how many of those 158 creatures see play in 60-card decks? If they don't see play, they're not "in the format".
EDIT: //gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Search/Default.aspx?page=0&action=advanced&tough=+=[3">&format=|[%22Standard%22]"]Standard-legal creatures with toughness of 3.
There are precisely 2 cards in that list (Fiend Hunter and Glissa, the Traitor) which see any play at all (Olivia Voldaren doesn't actually have 3 toughness). Glissa is only played by Conley Woods, meaning there is precisely 1 creature which Slagstorm kills but Whipflare doesn't, and it's a bad card vs this deck anyway since we play no creatures.
For anyone who was wondering.
Good, I've sufficiently drilled it into your head.
1) Cast Rooftop Storm
2) Cast Grimgrin, Corpse-Born for free
3) Cast Gravecrawler for free (out of your yard, maybe)
4) Sac Gravecrawler to Grimgrin
5) Cast Gravecrawler again
6) Rinse + repeat for arbitrarily large Grimgrin
7) Fling.
The question is, what does the rest of the deck look like? What colors is this deck? The only color the deck actually needs is blue; Fling isn't entirely necessary, since you actually can win via the combat phase if you have to. Is this deck a turbo-combo deck devoted to finding and casting Rooftop Storm as fast as possible, or is it a control deck with a combo finish? Do you play Burning Vengeance to deal infinite damage with Gravecrawler, using Grimgrin only as a sac outlet? How many Zombies do you play?
What do you think?
The point of Wasteland in this deck is not to mess with an opponent's manabase. It's to keep them short on mana going into the midgame so that your threats are better than theirs. If you're not stunting their mana development, it's not worth it. That's why Tec Edge is good as "the budget Wasteland" (it's still godawful and you probably shouldn't be playing it anyway, but it's not as awful as Ghost Quarter) but Ghost Quarter is not.
That's fair enough. If you don't consider other people's results relevant, you will never improve and never learn. You may as well leave this forum if you don't consider other peoples' experiences relevant. You can obviously build and tune this deck much better than any of us, so why are you here?
I'm not sure what exactly you aimed to do with this post, but it certainly isn't helping the discussion along.
EDIT: Oops, disagreed with God, got an infraction. Sincerest apologies.
Depends on how many colors you're playing. I wouldn't run, for example, Sanpcaster Mage, Slagstorm, and Curse of Death's Hold in the same deck.
AFAIK, though, every creature in standard either has toughness 2 or less, or toughness 4 or greater. There are no non-artifact creatures that Whipflare can't hit that Slagstorm can, so it's hardly worth stretching your manabase over.
I think you want to cut both Alchemy and Think Twice. I think Think Twice is a better card because Alchemy just costs so much to flashback, so it'll often be a 1-shotter anyway, so if you only cut 1, I would cut Alchemy. Both cards are giant do-nothings though, so I don't like playing either of them.
Whipflare is probably the best Standard-legal card that nobody is playing.
Sorry, that was a typo. It was a while ago, but I believe it was a turn 2 Enchantress for 3 mana (off a GSZ). As for what the rest of the game looked like, he didn't have protection; I think he dumped a bunch of Wild Growths and so on on turn 3 but can't recall. I don't think there is a possible 10 (or even 11) cards that Merfolk can have that results in a turn 4 kill with Force of Will. Maybe some ridiculous nut draw can, but an average draw doesn't.
If you actually wanted to know what happened, though, you should have asked a week ago; I've forgotten.
EDIT: As to your previous post, he played WoWar around turn 5 or 6, if memory serves. I believe he did have Sigil in his deck (I don't know what his hand was), but he had about 4 or 5 Enchantresses out, fewer than 30 cards in his deck, and no Emrakul in his deck to stop him from killing himself, even if he had the Sigil in hand. Again, though, if you wanted clear details, you should have asked last week.
You know what card is very good against Snapcaster and SFM and fits great in Merfolk anyway? I don't think I have to tell you for a 7th time.