Anyone able to give me a lift from NYC area to this? Happy to travel to get to lift and split tolls/gas.

I think its valid and useful to compare ToA and Dryad as kill conditions in this deck because, as i said, they both rely on you playing spells.
I don't think the decks need to be as far apart as you're making out. Esentially you could take GAT and remove the creatures to replace them
with 2 storm cards. You want a full complement of artifact mana for storm but you don't need as much green and i for one think GAT should run all
the accelerants anyway.

I don't think your point about the "Tendrills infastucture" being large and having large casting costs is valid. No one forces you to play
Mind's Desire or Gifts in order to run Tendrils. If they are too expensive and not worth their slot: don't play them. Gifts very rarely played
Mind's Desire. Actually, as i said, one of the benefits of the tendrils kill is that it is smaller. You could cut 4 Dryads, the tog and the C.Wish for
1 ToA and 1 EtW.I'd probably run rituals in the 4 free spaces I've just generated so that would help make the deck less mana tight as well.

I see this deck as esentially being an engine that allows you chain together a large number of spells and be rewarded for doing so by Dryad. Is that fair?
What do people think are the advantages of Dryad over that other card that rewards you for chaining spells: Tendrills of Agony?

I can see that Dryad allows you to win small because you don't need to get to 10 spells on a single turn but a storm deck could
run Empty the Warrens to achieve this so i feel its a mute point. I feel that the storm kill is superior since:

a) ToA and EtW reward you with 2 damage per spell rather than the 1 extra damage Dryad gives you

b) Artifacts (and green cards) also count towards your spell count

c) Storm is harder to counter, imune to StP etc.

d) Storm takes up fewer slots in your deck (maybe 1 ToA and 1 EtW vs 4 Dryad, a 1 tog and a CWish)

e) You play ToA at the end of the chain whereas you need to play Dryad at the start (or rather the previous turn
if you want to attack with it on the turn you "go off"). Playing a chain of draw and tutor cards will help you to find
your kill card so you prefer to have the kill at the end of the chain rather than the start of it.


I'm struggling to see many benefits of Dryad over storm. I'm wondering if the only reason Dryad was ever played
was because it was the best way of rewarding you for playing spells that existed at the time?

James

Steve,

I agree 100% that Mana Crypt > Mox pearl in this deck but are you sure that the Mox doesn't deserve to be in the deck in the slot you currently have as Strip Mine/ Island? Particular if you went the strip mine route.
You have a lot of 2 mana spells you want to cast early (4 Dryad, 4 Merchant, DT, Time Walk - bigger in this deck than in most since you want to get to 2 lands and start gushing) and i would have thought that you were better off maximising your chance of being able to play these turn 1 rather than running Strip Mine. The deck doesn't have a mana denial stratery and you want your land drops to be Islands so you can gush.

James

It looks like an auto-include in almost every deck to me. The only possible excuse for not playing it is that you are either playing Oath or you think the life loss is a problem.
Talking about your deck being too tight is non-sense. If I sat down opposite you at a tourney and told you you could add and extra Will, Lotus, FoW and Ancestral to your deck if you took four
cards out to fit them in, I'd imagine you'd take me up on that offer. While obviously not as powerful, that is the type of effect this card is giving you.

I would be laughed at if i proposed a 64 card deck on these forums. All the reasons not to run 64 cards apply to why you should run this card.

I don't agree that you need to play 4 or nothing. There are very few cards that are truly like that, only things like AK. OK if you Pact once in a turn you might as well Pact twice but how often are you going to be able to go off and have 2 Pacts in hand?

What you would do if you were only playing 2 Pacts is use the Duress, Fow, ReB or whatever you are playing instead of the addional two Pacts.

OK so it dodges stifle but it is vulnerable to counter spells! One of the things that makes storm so strong is that it is uncounterable. I don't think the question is whether we want one big creature or lots of Goblin tokens but rather whether we want an uncounterable win condition or not and (as far as I'm concerned) that's a very easy decision to make.
Also are we sure it even dodges stifle? I could see it worded: "When storm entity comes into play put a 1/1 counter on it for each other spell played this turn"

There Isn't a lot of synergy between Necro and Pact or often Tinker/Jar and Pack. These are two of the bombs that you want to use your disruption to force though and yet you never want to Pact to protect a Necro and there will be many times when you'd rather wait with the jar than crack it straight away which you can't do with Pact either. My gut feel is that you might just be better of with FoW in those slots. Or maybe cut Necro for something which says "I win now" rather than "I win next turn" - I know there is already some pressure on Necro and If Pact starts showing up in Long lists then it might be that Necro's lack of synergy with Pact is another strike against it. Would be v. interested to know how it tests for you though!

 

I don't think the double counter example is relevant. Pact of Negation will be used in decks that are killing very quickly (turn 1 or 2) so the chance of the opponent having 2 counters is extremely small - either the opponent has 2 active forces or you're on the draw and he gets 2 blue mana first turn AND has Mana Drain AND has an active force. Both of these are very unlikely and to be honest Pact or Negation or not you've almost certainly lost of if you're playing turn 1 combo and your opponent has 2 turn 1 counters.

As well as Belcher, Ichorid and Pitch I want to try it in Meandeck Tendrills.

Has anyone considered banning Lotus rather than Will?

Lotus, unlike Will, is in EVERY type 1 deck. Even "manaless" Ichorid now plays one. Is it right that a card be in every competative deck?
Additionally Lotus requires no set up. If I have Will in my first hand I probably don't want to play it first turn. Lotus in the first hand is always a huge advantage.
Often gifts has won the game before will hits. Certainly in the control mirror you have to set up and protect your Will. I'd far rather be beaten by someone who manovered the game to their advantage then tutored up and cast Will than by someone who gets lucky and has 4+ mana turn one.
Banning lotus would signifcantly reduce the power of Will. Decks like Gifts could switch to LED or rituals but its much harder for them to combo safely with either of these.
You just need to compare Lotus to other cards to see how insane it is. Lotus petal is infinitely worse and still restricted. As is LED. There is always pressure on Ritual despite
the fact it is trash compared to Lotus. DT is a spectacularly broken card but does it need to be the 2nd best ritual in the game in addition to everything else it can do?

I'm confused. It's suggested that Imperial Seal and Personal Tutor could be unrestricted and everyone is worried about the effect Personal Tutor could have?
So Imperial doesn't pitch to FoW -  I'd still rather have any card than be restricted to sorceries.

@ Implaceable

I think drain and ritual decks will find it harder to deal with 6 1/1's than they will the DSC. All those decks run either artifact bounce or goblin welders (CS) which are ideal for removing him. 6 1/1 are harder because there are 6 of them. Unless it's echoing truth bounce can't handle 6 1/1's. Additionally EtW is basically uncounterable because of the storm - making it strong against Drain decks. Think of it as an Angel or Morphling gambit that can't be countered and is harder to remove as there are 6 of them instead of 1.

Has anyone considered what the changes mean for the future of Yawgmoth's Will? I believe that there is a critical number of playable tutors, beyond which the format becomes very difficult to control because there are enough good ways to tutor for restricted cards. With portal we gain Personal, Imperial Seal and Grim tutor. Assuming for the moment that grim gets the axe, we then have 6 playable tutors (VT, MT, DT, plus the three portal tutors). With Will itself that is 7. It must make the case for banning Yawg Will a lot stonger.

James

I can't agree that Sol Ring is better than the Moxen. Expecially not a sapphire. Possibly if he had the Sol above the other moxen then sapphire at number 2 i could accept it but there is no way Sol is stronger than sapphire. What would you rather have in your first hand: a sapphire and a land or a Sol and a land? Almost certainly the Sapp since it means turn 1 Mana Drain or turn one Brainstorm off the Mox then play a fetchland and shuffle. The other moxen are weaker but still allow plays like first turn Mana Leak, first turn time walk or first turn Oath. Yeah the two colourless is stronger in the long run but accel is really broken on turn 1, who cares if you draw a land, a mox or a sol ring on turn 4, the difference is irrelevent then. The turn you play it, a mox is stronger than a sol and in a format this fast that's the most important factor. Just look at Steve's old Tog lists: 5 moxen, a crypt, no Sol!

Surely this would have no effect at all. Everybody already knows about welder and frankly if you go to a tournament without a welder plan then you deserve to get pounded by Control Slaver all day long. The format has been trying to respond, look at how many decks are now packing Lava Dart main.

Steve, thank you for a terrific article! I've felt for some time that if any card needs to be restricted it should be welder. It was nice to read an article arguing for the right card for a change, rather than all the misguided ramblings about trinisphere and workshop.

I find ESG would be better than BOP in this deck. First turn survival seems like a crucial play to me because you need to get it down before the opponent gets UU up. Even fully powered decks don't see artifact accel in every first hand and i would hate to get survival but be unable to play it because i had BOP not ESG.
I also find ESG to be more powerful when you do have artifact accel since it would allow you play a cost 1 spell AND the survival. So you could play brainstorm, find the survival with the 'storm and then drop it with ESG and a mox. Or if you've got a God hand you could play survival with ESG and then a welder.  Is BOP actually any good when you can play 1st turn survival? In this case I don't think that you would want to waste G to play the BOP, but rather you would just start your survial chain.

I support the quirion ranger sugguestion. Vengeur masque decks here are currently playing 3 and it makes wasteland very week against them.

James

The problem I see with splashing black is that you never want to break your searchland for a swamp early on in a game. The result is that duress is a lot less powerful than it looks. Say you have a duress in your first hand, you probably want to play either a swamp or an underground sea and duress your opponent.  If you play a swamp then you have a land that doesn't produce blue and so it will take you until turn 3 or later to get UU up for mana drain or counterspell. If however you take the underground sea you open yourself up to wasteland and have to delay your B2B. You've lost mono Us main advantage which is that it is unaffected by wasteland and can drop B2B to lock the opponent.

PS if you keep black in the deck, you MUST play Yawg Will. It is too powerful not to include in a control deck playing black.

I think that the question that needs to be addressed with this deck is why shouldn't i just play Tog instead? Oath has a kill condition that takes up at least 6 cards (4 oath, 1 creature, 1 reclamation/blessing) Tog's kill condition takes only 3 slots. Once tog hits the tables you normally win as fast as you could with a colossus or Cog. Crucially however you can actually hard cast the Togs so you don't need to go by some convoluted route via oath and orchard to kill. Having tested oath my impression was that i was better off playing tog.

James

My testing has shown this to be true

Steve:
Your original post said you'd gone to 17 counter spells, but i can only count 16 in the post. Are you running 4 Vanilla counter? How do you find the misdirection? I can see that it can be used as a 5th force during counter wars in a control matchup, but there are also matches were it will be dead (stax for example) and without brainstorm you have no way to get rid of it. Given that i expect mono U to own the control matchups i was wondering if the misdirction was worth it.

James

I've found Trinisphere to be better than sphere of resistance in almost all cases. I would certainly run 4 trini before adding any sphere of resistance to the deck.

Also how about Masticore as sideboard creature removal (or main board in place of Jesters Cap)? As well as acting as a machine gun, it is fast fat (ie as fast and as fat as su-chi) and the regeneration capability will help against common artifact removal. Null rod will shut him down but you still have a 4/4 beatstick. Skullcap has shown that WelderMUD doesn't mind discarding and your Minds Eyes should help reduce the effect of the upkeep. I prefer Masticore to Trisk mainly due to casting cost. I am confident that i can get 4 mana, while 6 seams to be a lot, even for a workshop deck.