This doesn't make sense.  Your logic says that random Tinker for Colossus is a reason to cut Tinker and Colossus from the deck.  Draw7s offer an alternative way to win when Crypt is on the table or if you need to refill your hand.

Kyle Leith's sideboard is mixed in with Eric Dupuis's deck at the top.

Really interesting decklist!  I was always curious about the deck ever since it was mentioned in passing in a tournament report but never unveiled.

I have a couple of questions:

1) The 2:3 ratio of Brainstorms to Night's Whisper.  You have 6 fetchlands to maximize the power of Brainstorm.  It seems silly not to run more to maximize your ability to optimize your hand on turn one.
2) Cutting Mox Pearl.  You mention that an ideal start for this deck starts off with Night's Whisper.  Therefore, why did you decide to cut a Moxen that allows you to power out Night's Whisper?
3) Is it really worth it to run blue in the main?  This may seem like an absurd question, but ever since the builds of KI.TT that ran blue in the sideboard, it seems like it might be worth it here as well.  Needless to say it adds a lot of flexibility, but I wonder if it might be easier to just be more stable and run straight black/green.
4) It's too bad the card disadvantage of Bazaar makes Culling the Weak a poor play here, as it would otherwise be very interesting.

The card is Strip Mine. (or Wasteland) First you attack with everything (Sundering Titan and Gorilla Shaman).  Your opponent is now at one.  You need to get Threshold so you can activate Barbarian Ring and throw it at his head.  This is what you need to do:

1) Tap the Mox Pearl and use the W mana to blow it up with Gorilla Shaman
2) Play Strip Mine
3) Float one mana from a City of Brass.  You now have one damage to you on the stack.
4) On top of that damage to you that's on the stack, use Strip Mine to destroy the City of Brass.  Also use Gorilla Shaman's ability to destroy the Sol Ring by tapping it and using the mana from City of Brass.
5) Your graveyard is now 2 City of brass, Pearl, Sol, 3 other cards - you have threshold.  The one damage from CoB is still on the stack.
6) Now tap the second city of brass for R - you now have 2 damage to you on the stack.  in response to those resolving throw Barbarian Ring at your opponent.  They are dead.

EDIT: I see I got a different solution.  I may have made a mistake with regard to how the City of Brass triggers work.

By -4 Extirpate do you mean -4 Shambling Shell?

This past Sunday, your recommended version of Bauble Ichorid made top 4 at a Mox Emerald tournament in California.  (I believe this is the highest-finishing Ichorid list since The Mana Clash.)  What do you think of the minor changes made to the list?  Would you alter your original list now that Extirpate has settled into the metagame as a minor force?

-2 Blinkmoth Nexus
+1 Strip Mine
+1 Sundering Titan

Yay for my Ichorid build!

I think the Sundering Titan is fine to add to the maindeck. There isn't a whole lot of difference between 6 or 7 manlands. I don't really 'get' Strip Mine in Ichorid. I mean I understand that yeah, sometimes you sack out your opponent and you get an awesome start and hitting a land is the big elbow slam. But realistically I found I rather have the minimum 6 manlands to consistently help with Dread Return.

As for Expirate, I honestly don't care. This deck gets hurt much worse by Leyline or Crypt than Expirate. Not to mention the manlands already help give a built-in defense against them as far as alternate kill conditions go. Sure they could slow you down with it, but you aren't going to auto-lose if you do. Plus people tend to over value cards like that in this match-up, meaning they keep weaker hands on the average when they see one.

Also for note, the Nexus's were originally added to give an alternate attack route via early Dread Returns as well as giving extra defense against grave hate.

I was curious how City of Brass interacts with effects like Orb of Dreams and Root Maze that make permanents come into play tapped.  I tried searching here and on Starcity but found nothing.  The Oracle texts:

City of Brass:
Whenever City of Brass becomes tapped, it deals 1 damage to you.
Tap: Add one mana of any color to your mana pool.

Orb of Dreams:
Permanents come into play tapped.

It seems to me that given the wording on City of Brass, you would not take one damage when it comes into play because it does not become tapped but starts tapped, and it seems that the static trigger would not count if it comes into play.  Is this correct?

Regarding the weird word shifts:

It's an April 1 Joke:

April Fo0l = meandeck

Mana Dra1n = Prohibit

There are probably more.

As far as the decklist goes, I definetly agree that you need to include Time Walk.  I think that you also need more Nevinyral's Disk - it was the backbone of U/R Landstill's board control suite and I think it should be here too especially with its uses against artifacts, EtW tokens (although it is slow - maybe Powder Keg is better)

Actually, Black Lotus, Black Lotus, The Cheese Stands Alone is a turn one kill but is banned for other reasons.

You need as much power as you can to feed Sutured Ghoul and Shambling Shell is a 3/1.

I completely disagree that Tormod's Crypt does a good job of slowing down Dragon.  Crypt is simple to play around - any combination of 2 animate spells, 2 Dragons, Cunning Wish, etc. is sufficient to play around it.  4 Duress is all you have against Extirpate.

Your logic seems to suggest that Dragon is unbeatable.  I would say that Extirpate does a better job of holding it in check than Swords, Stifle, etc.

You are looking at Extirpate too one-dimensionally.  In the situation you just mentioned Extirpate should be cast on Deep Analysis to destroy Dragon's draw engine.

I don't see why 7 Smokestacks is necessary.  I think that at most 5 would be sufficient for your purposes, because in many cases it is simply a dead draw.

As far as the board goes,  I think that Duplicants are just better than Maze of Ith in almost all situations because they are a threat in and of themselves.

One issue I've come up with Mana Ichorid is that it becomes much easier to fight through graveyard hate.  However, the lower black creature count and the low dredge count have come up as a serious issue against decks that pass both graveyard hate and creature hate (Swords/Darkblast/Lava Dart/Fire/Ice).  How much testing have you done against combinations of graveyard and non-graveyard hate?  I find Manaless Ichorid superior at handling non-graveyard hate.

Since Demonfire has "x" in its mana cost and you use Imp's Mischief to misdirect it you will only end up doing one more damage to yourself.  If the Demonfire is lethal for both players, you will still lose because SBEs will be checked after Imp's Mischief resolves but before the redirected Demonfire targets the opponent.

Is it just me or has that thread disappeared entirely?

Congrats on the Top 8.  In this environment it seems that a switch back to 4 Stifle might be necessary.

I think a comment made on another thread is very applicable here (I honestly can't remember where - I think it was comment by Anusien).  Someone mentioned that old Vintage players have experience with pure archetypes and therefore, when moving to a different format have a better understanding of how cards interact.  The example given in the thread was that once you have learned how to play Forbiddian or Draw-Go it is easier to just pick up a deck from standard because it has similar mechanics.  Therefore, it seems that a good vintage player should have a good chance at a PTQ as well if they are familiar with the archetype being played.

That was a typo.  My mistake.  I have lost because of having too few black creatures.  However, I do concede that I was exaggerating a bit.  As I mentioned in my post, (no reading minds  ) I think a worthwhile change might be -1 Lotus Petal, -1 Gemstone Mine, +1 Golgari Thug, +1 Ashen Ghoul or some combination thereof.

Oedipus - as posted on Starcity, the list is better with -1 Maze of Ith -1 Gigapede +2 Shambling Shell, and Smennen himself prefers Wastelands now to Leyline of the Void.

I really like the new Mana Ichorid list.  However, I think it is really way too low on black creatures.  In numerous playtesting games I barely had enough black creatures to kill the opponent with Ichorids.  Also, I feel like 12 dredgers is too few.  I also feel like there is too much mana in the deck.  I think a reasonable change worth looking at is cutting Lotus Petal and/or Gemstone Mine for Ashen Ghoul or Golgari Thug.

I'd also like to share two cool moments in playtesting:

1) I mulliganed down to one card, which happened to be a Bazaar, and proceeded to win on Turn 4 on the play.
2) After being Crypted, I won the game by Cabal Therapying myself for an extra Ichorid, despite having a Bazaar out, because I only had one card left in my Library.  This risky move would have been safer if I had more black creatures because I could have used the Cabal Therapy to make sure there was no Ancestral, Repeal, etc.

I think another angle worth evaluating is nataz's 4 Field/2 Bayou approach.  I think that just running 2 Cities (or 2 Bayous) main along with 2 Ghoul, or some combination that uses very little land main, might be beneficial.

As far as sideboarding, this is my current setup, but I'm notoriously bad at this:

Versus Stax
-4 Chalice of the Void
-4 Unmask (is this correct?)
+4 Gemstone Caverns
+4 Chain of Vapor (I tried bringing in the Ancient Grudges but I found they were overkill and couldn't get around Welders when facing down Ensnaring Bridge, for example.)

I'd like to echo meadbert's comment on the Starcitygames.com boards - in a metagame where Probasco Gifts runs maindeck Tormod's Crypt, Rich Shay runs double Crypt main plus 4 Leylines in the side, and DA runs Crypt main plus 4 Leylines and 2 Planar Void in the side, Ichorid may just not be a feasible choice.

EDIT: I just got my most amazing win yet.  I won, post-sideboard, through 2 Tormod's Crypt, Leyline of the Void (although at that point I was beating down with Nether Shadows), and 2 Empty the Warrens (just to make chump-blockers for my Nether Shadows.)  I dealt the final point of damage with a hardcasted (!) Stinkweed Imp.  Mana Ichorid is excellent and the ability to cast Duress/Cabal Therapy is fantastic.

Chain of Vapor also allows some crazy combat tricks.

They've already been spoiled.  The black one is Magus of the Coffers, the white one is Magus of the Vale, and the red one is, as mentioned, Magus of the Arena.

It's Davide Cohen from Italy I believe.

Don't worry - I certainly agree that it is important to counter spells.  Let me rephrase my arguments:

For Trickbind:
1) As was mentioned in the tournament report, Trickbind can act as a counter by stifling fetchlands.
2) Trickbind is better than a hard counter when facing storm decks without Duress.
3) Other decks function fine without a ninth hard counter, opting for something else like Misdirection.
4) Against decks where Red Elemental Blast is traditionally brought into control decks, TAL brought in Trickbinds with great success.

Against Trickbind:
1) The mana cost - it costs more, but it can also be cast off a random mox + island instead of requiring a volcanic island.
2) It isn't a hard counter for blue spells.
3) It can't kill blue creatures.

I really like the new list and I've been playtesting it a lot.  However, I have to question the inclusion of Red Elemental Blast as the twelfth disruption spell.  I think that this is a suboptimal choice in comparison to alternatives, notably Trickbind.  As I see it, both are a serious boost to the Gifts matchup, and Trickbind adds a nice surprise to the combo matchup.  It seems like the unique benefit to Red Elemental Blast is that it costs less and that it can destroy Meddling Mage.  It seems like the need to destroy Meddling Mage isn't as important in a varied deck like Slaver, and the one mana difference is minimal because it requires a Volcanic Island.  Therefore, I think Trickbind is a better maindeck choice.

Although it's a bit of a different build, I've been exploring Smennen's 5C Pitch Long recently.  It's regular Grim Long with the following changes:

-4 Duress
-2 ESG

+4 Force of Will
+1 Misdirection
+1 Hurkyl's/Chain to complement your other bounce spell

I've been having some success but I was wondering what would be a good sideboard configuration.

In his original articles on SCG, he suggested the following set-up:

2 Hurkyl's Recall
2 Chain of Vapor
1 Rebuild
1 Burning Wish
3 Xantid Swarm
2 Elvish Spirit Guide
4 Orim's Chant

Unfortunately, comparing this setup to Pitch Long boards doesn't seem to do us much good because they take two forms.  Either they are stuffed with Massacres/basic lands to handle the stax and fish matchups or they are TK's creations with Thrashing Wumpus, Plague Spitter, etc.  In this case it seems Burning Wish is a better provider of a back-up win condition.  Nonetheless, I don't think this setup is optimal.  First, removing the ESGs from the main suggests we should add more ESGs to the board to shore up the Stax matchup.  In addition, Orim's Chant seems inferior to Duress.  Smennen later stated this himself in another article.  However, does anyone have any more concrete suggestions on what to change?

How is 11 lands too few if aiming for a turn 1 or 2 win?  There was some calculation done in the Pitch Long thread I believe that showed that 11 lands was the current number for Grim Long (4 Cities/3 Mines/2 USea/1 Orchard/Academy).  Since this deck runs even less disruption and more aggressive spells like Night's Whisper it seems like 11 is a good number, maybe 12, but not 13.

Looking at your deck, memnarch, the thing I don't understand is why you aren't simply running Meandeck Tendrils or Workshop Tendrils.  The newest version of Meandeck Tendrils can win on turn 1 70% of the time at least in the hands of an excellent pilot.  The only advantage you gain is mana stability and 3 Duress.  However, if you simply add Duress to the Meandeck Tendrils shell you can probably achieve 80% second-turn kills with the same amount of disruption as the version you posted.

I also notice some bizarre spell choices.  You run Personal Tutor and Time Spiral but don't use Mind's Desire, Brainstorm, or 4 Repeal.  It seems like your deck is torn between a slower TPS-type game and a faster, early-kill game.  However, you don't have the disruption to accomplish the first or the speed to accomplish the second.

@netherspirit: I think that Imperial Seal is better than Mystical Tutor in this case.  Also, I don't understand why you aren't running Mana Vault - it seems like a great choice for a fast storm combo deck.  I think that Frantic Search is a definite candidate for cutting - it doesn't accomplish much more than Careful Study and you don't want to have the 3 lands available to actually use it to its full potential.  I also love how Chain of Vapor qualifies as 'brokenness' 

TD:


I'm still preferring Symbiotic Wurm/Sundering Titan to Sutured Ghoul simply because it is a better crypt defense - you don't want to have to go all in with Ghoul.

How can you ever accomplish a turn 2 win even with Sutured Ghoul?  When you play with only Bazaar as a discard outlet is it really possible to get three creatures in your graveyard at the beginning of your upkeep, reanimate them all, and also have the Ghoul, Breath, and Dredger to keep going?

In his post Vroman mentioned that he thought Angel of Despair should be replaced by a Mishra's Factory, not a second Riftstone Portal.  What makes you desire the Portal instead of the Factory?

I like the list a lot.  I think that running Shambling Shells over Gigapedes is a good call.  It provides more black cards to feed Ichorid and also helps when you mull low to a Bazaar.  I think something people ignore a lot with this deck is the fact that just getting a bazaar is meaningless if you don't have a dredge card.  Adding four Shells alleviates this more than Gigapedes and also get around Wasteland.