I was obviously freaking out after this match and it's still annoying, so please pardon me not laughing =)

It was the BoM4 list, also piloted by fabian.
To swap the Triskelions for Hellkites and SoF/I for sculpting steel (nowadays phyr. metamorph) was the logical evolution for this deck (which can be seen here: http://morphling.de/top8decks.php?id=1372 ).

I wouldn't swap karns for panthers, because in this kind of deck every non-land-card must have any kind of disrupting factor or direct impact to the battlefield. Panther, which is pretty much like Char, doesn't fulfill that standard.

The reason why you have to play trinisphere in this (at least european) meta is gush. One or even two spheres aren't disrupting enough to stop gush's draw engine efficiently. To stop it you would need at least 3 sphere effects. Trinisphere solves this kind of problem in a single card.

I was playing hellkite-MUD at OvinoSex and I'm still confident of this deck. I've started 4:0, defeating 8-Null Rod GW, Kuldotha MUD, Anti-MUD-Fish (Uwg) and Bob-Gush, then lost against some kind of Ubr Jace/Drains/time Vault deck and finally dropped after losing to 1st round tinker with double FoW back-up and in the 2nd game double FoW, 1st turn tinker and steel sabotage back-up^^

yea, I think he was playing Blightsteel Colossus in his maindeck

morphling doesn't have the lists, the tournament was on sunday (2nd october) and the top8-lists aren't available now.

I don't know how the list of the tournament winner was looking like, but fabian (who ends up in second place) played his standard-list which can be found in nearly every german top8 ^^


Maindeck (60):
Spells (43):

1 Black Lotus
4 Chalice of the Void
1 Duplicant
1 Karn, Silver Golem
4 Kuldotha Forgemaster
4 Lodestone Golem
1 Mana Crypt
1 Mana Vault
4 Metalworker
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Myr Battlesphere
1 Sol Ring
3 Sphere of Resistance
1 Steel Hellkite
1 Sundering Titan
4 Tangle Wire
4 Thorn of Amethyst
1 Trinisphere
1 Wurmcoil Engine

Lands (17):

4 Ancient Tomb
3 City of Traitors
4 Mishra's Workshop
1 Strip Mine
1 Tolarian Academy
4 Wasteland


Sideboard (15):

2 Crucible of Worlds
3 Duplicant
3 Phyrexian Metamorph
1 Platinum Angel
4 Relic of Progenitus
1 Steel Hellkite
1 Tormod's Crypt

why you're running this event parallel to OVINO6???

A third mega-event in europe would have been nice, but running two of them at the same time will demage both events =(

I will be at OVINO6 since I booked the journey some month ago...

I don't know if you (Wmagzoo7) are playing in an european or american meta, but to be honest, I really doubt that Espresso Stax is the more consistent deck. If you look at top8s of bigger european tournaments (7+ rounds of swiss) most of them will include at least 2 MUD lists. to give two examples:

Bazaar of Moxen 2010: 4 MUD lists in the top 8 after nine rounds of swiss (place 8 was a null rod list)

German Magic 2: 4 MUD lists in the top 8 after seven rounds of swiss (all of them include 4 metalwokers)

also in a lot of testing it feels to me like good old metalworker MUD would be much more consistant than espresso stax. statistics speak for themselves, at least in the european metagame. in my opinion your "if you are planning to play in a 5-6 round tournament there is only one logical choice [= Espresso Stax]" statement is strictly wrong.

I know, we're talking about sideboards and boarding plans, but I'm very interested in your maindeck as well. Due to the lag of CC2 spheres I guess you have a hard time (compared to e.g. 12 or 13 sphere MUD) facing any blue deck in general.

Especially the Oath and the Fish MU should be very hard without at least 4 Sphere of Resistance. Fair enough, you've got CotV to stop oath playing it's keycard(s), but it doesn't really stop Fish (if set on 2, it will stop pridemage and goyf, but doesn't do anything against their biggest threat, trygon predator. If set on 3 it only does sth against trygon but let them play every other card included to the deck.

wouldn't it be better to play play 4 Sphere of resistance instead of 4 CotV, since sphere gives you more time to establish a smokestack or even a welder/dup-"lock". It also wouldn't hurt as much as CotV, which, set on 1 or 2 cuts of either your main engine (goblin welder) or your key lockelement (null rod).

the only reason why running CotV over SoR in this deck could be the increadible 1st turn with lodestone+chalice, but its brokenes IMO is nullified by the 4 maindeck null rods.


To the Sideboard:

I don't know if REB is worth to be played over the 4th Relic and the 3rd bridge, since oath, ichorid and mud are tough MUs and you could leave in the 3rd crucible against fish, which is IMO very important for this MU.

if you want to play MUD, you should decide to play either 4 juggernauts + 3 swords or 4 smokestack + 3 crucible of worlds. I would never play swords, stack and crucible in one pile.
furthermore you shouldn't play less than 3 thorns; in an aggro version (4 Juggs + 3 SoF/I) you should always run 4 copies of them.

the next point is the question of "staff of domination/ no staff of domination"? the thing is, that your deck should be as immune as possible to Null Rod. Staff is simply unresistant and therefore a bad wincondition.

now your mana base: the 4th ancient tomb and the mana vault is missing. the only decision in a MUD mana base should be a) 3 waste/3 factory oder b) 4 waste/2 factory. the rest of your mana base contains exactly 7 SoLoMoxen, 1 mana vault, 1 crypt, 4 shops, 4 tombs, 2 cities, 1 strip mine and 1 academy.

my last point depending to your mainboard is the sundering titan: he has been a bomb some years ago, but today i would always prefer the 2nd Karn, Silver Golem.


now your sideboard:
why do you want to run Leylines? you've got tormod's crypt AND relic of progenitus, which are MUCH better than leyline in this deck. I'm playing a mix of 3 relic/2 crypt... but the "right" mixture is more a question of belief than anything else...

duplicants gone bad after the restriction of thrist for knowledge (darksteel colosses sees less and less play). instead of 3 duplicants i would play 3 razormane masticore.

the last 3 slots (after replacinf 4 leylines with 5 crypts/relics) i would fill up with 3 pithing needle.