I don't see how people want to put Gifts in here.

You're usually going to have a sphere or two out so its going to cost five. You can't cast it off workshop mana. It's definitely win more.

Steve, I try not to troll on here too much, and I'm sorry that I'm rezing this thread, but i feel like i have to question one of your plays.



Why would you consider recall here? What are your ideal cards to draw. Ideally, you hit tinker and some blue mana to play recall and tinker. But if you just tutor for tinker, you save a whole turn if your recall doesn't get you mana. If you do hit tinker+blue source, you are up one card, which is (mostly) irrelevant because you are going to break jar next turn anyway. I just wanted to know what your ideal cards were and why you decided to get three random cards over a card that wins you the game. Thanks.

Becker ended up cutting Mystical for I Seal, I'm pretty sure. He also cut down to two SW. They were mainly there in the beginning because they created a 56 card deck, as brainstorms were gone, but as we got more comfortable with the deck, we felt that other cards would be better in a couple of those slots.

Also, I haven't played TK's list, but I will in the near future. Having played with GWS Long from 6/20 up to today, I can tell you that it is a house in the current metagame, it's fun to play, and it demolishes control slaver. I hope Eric can answer the questions that I didn't.

B) 21

Becker, what's up? Are you going?

EDIT: Sorry Smennen, that was uncalled for. At least you admitted to your mistakes. That's how we get better, after all.

I'll see you at the next SCG P9 tournament.

(If that ever happens? Help me out here; are they having any more?)

They changed it. You now discard the land when Mox Diamond comes into play.

EDIT: Errata'd wording.

If Mox Diamond would come into play, you may discard a land card instead. If you do, put Mox Diamond into play. If you don't, put it into its owner's graveyard.

Will you be supplying the plastic, or should I bring my own?

12.

Eric will place second, but I will take home the cup. I love the idea of the finals being played out at Applebees. That's fucking hilarious/awesome. "Alright, Dark Rit. Necro?" "Let me take a bite of cheeseburger....yeah, that's fine."

GWS vs. Arsenal....hmm wonder who wins that one. 


EDIT: Cody, I don't know how stable the actual cup part of the trophy is, but as an additional perk, the winner gets to pour his drink into the cup and drink out of that.

Smennen, you're proving our point. We don't want to see land on the draw seven. And I have to agree with Phil and say that I've had way too many draw 7s fizzle because lack of bombs.

I'm going to go with Bert here and give him Lotus and Walk.

A couple of things. First off, Steve, we all know that you have experience with the deck. You don't need to clog up the threads with multiple tourney reports telling us that you did so. It's just arrogant. (However, I did enjoy the puzzle article and came to the same Necro --> Wheel play as your second teammate on the third hand.)

 I'm going to quote this one more time for clarification's sake:
Were you saying that duressing after the tinker is always the right play? I may have misread and you simply thought that it was the correct play in that instance, but I'm pretty sure that you were making a generalization. When to duress always depends on the situation, and to think otherwise is ignorant.


No, I'm a player who likes to maximize his odds of finding the cards that I need. In this case, Grim Tutor or Will. Let's not make hasty generalizations about people that we don't know, okay?

Steve, I like how you cited one example and I disagree with it. With your desire hand of Mire, Cabal Rit, Emerald, Tinker, Duress, you say that playing duress after tinker is the right play.

Just because your opponent did not counter mana for the desire doesn't mean that they don't have a counter. You fail to give a game state; maybe they couldn't have countered the mana. Also, if you are waiting to fetch so you can hit an academy, what are you trying to cast off the academy? The extra mana off academy is IRRELEVANT! You have SEVEN mana right now, so thinning to find a grim tutor to cast will is the correct play. Basically what I'm saying is that you've already cast desire and the only card that you want to cast with blue is Twister, so why not fetch now and increase your chances of finding the grim/will. 4 cards out of ~45 and 4 cards ~44 isn't a big difference, but you are playing for specific cards with the Jar, not more mana.

You just pull out some of the combo kill and leave like three of's so you can win with either kill.



I tend not to like SBing in a kill that still dies to Leyline.

I think extirpate is far better against flash and slows down ichorid sufficiently to the point where we should win.

It get's around a burn or removal spell like STP.

Don't worry about it. Mine's dying anyway. Like I said, in the tourney I went to this past weekend, all game ones were won by flash and all game twos were won by tinker. I actually didn't face much hate in a couple of rounds, but just drew tinker before i drew the combo. If you are running the robot sideboard, it is really important to run mana crypt. I had this play in game 2 of round 2( he's playing Cody Vinci's DT list) . I get thoughtsiezed for a hand of Hulk, Tinker, Vamp, and Merch Scroll with only two Underground Seas on the table. He has an Island and an U. Sea in play tapped. He takes hulk, fearing the combo kill in two turns, but this allows me to vamp on upkeep for crypt (the only artifact that would allow this play to happen) play tinker for the titan that I brought in (because this is a drain deck) and kill his two lands, causing him to scoop. Anyway.

I'm glad that you edited the first post - I think that the robot plan is possibly the best SB strategy for flash.

You asked about what I take out in my matches. Well, I guess I'd better share my list first.

Flash

Lotus
5 Moxen
Crypt

Recall
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
3 Merch Scroll

4 Pact of Negation
4 FoW
2 MisD

1 DT
1 VT
1 MT
1 CoV

4 Flash
4 Hulk
2 Summoner’s Pact
5 Combo Critters (lark kill, obv)

3 Sea
3 Island
4 Delta
2 Strand


And as i noted earlier my SB is...
1 Carrion Feeder
4 Duress
1 Tinker
1 DSC
1 Plats
1 Titan
1 Gigadrowse
4 Extirpate

I realize that this is only 14 Cards. I bring in gigadrowse vs black decks that i feel are likely to SB in extirpate and decks with tormod's crypt. I bring in an extra Carrion feeder for red decks, and ichorid. Two carrion feeders and a body snatcher with its CIP ability on the stack dodges a burn spell, and mogg fanatics, which are popular in my meta. Ichorid just doesn't want to see creatures put into my GY. Running it out there on turn one isn't the best play ever, but it's better than naught. Extirpate comes in vs Ichorid also, as extirpate on dread return slows them down a ton, along with tinker for plats. Duress comes in against drains and gushs, combo, etc. Basically everything. I've got to test a LOT more, but I'll let ya'll know how it goes.


EDIT: I also bring in gigadrowse against those who i think might be playing awfulsnout. Seriously, that guy is horrible.

I already wrote about a page on this over in the improvement forums, so yall can check that out at your leisure.
http://www.themanadrain.com/index.php?topic=35546.0

Basically you dilute the flash kill and bring in the tinker plan. Tinker is tutored for with scroll for MT. I run seven artifacts main (mana crypt) and 4 ponder in addition to BS so finding one is not really a problem. You've got time post board if they find their hate anyway. You bring in the robots depending on the matchup. You can still falsh kill pretty easily if they don't find their hate.

SB atm:
1 Carrion Feeder
4 Duress
1 Tinker
1 DSC
1 Plats
1 Titan
1 Gigadrowse
4 Extirpate
1 X (used to be rebuild but there are no shops in our meta)

I wasn't advocating the transformational sideboard. Rather, I was adding an alternate win condition while not taking away too much of the flash kill to begin with.

I like the 3x Goyf kill, but if the opponents have leylines, then they goyfs get nerfed, and you have to hardcast them. The main reason you run tinker is to get around leyline, crypts, and extirpate, all of which nerf your plans.

I attended the Mox Tourney in Charleston, SC this weekend, and, much to Eric Becker's disdain, played Flash. Although our tournout made it impossible to completely solidify my deck's credibility (we had 16 people), the four matches that I played (lol) and the testing that I did the week before HAVE solidified my choice for a flash sideboard. At least, until the deck is restricted.

Becker and I were talking about different sideboard possibilities, and he suggested the total transformation into the oath sideboard. For those unfamiliar, the changes look something like this:

- 4 Flash
- 4 Hulk
- 5 Combo Creature
- X Summoners Pact

+ 4 Oath
+ 4 Orchard
+ 3 Plats
+ 2+X  Duress

The idea is that the opponent brings in graveyard hate, which you get around by oathing, and, much like platinum angel control, you have more angels than they have answers. In theory, this sounds great. So I proxied it all up and started testing. Boy, was it underwhelming. It solved the problem against hate, but not against ichorid, and obviously not against combo, because as all oath players know, passing the turn after Oath resolves and the turn after really sucks when TTS or Long decides to blow up in your face. So i tried to tinker with the sideboard. Wait. Tinker? Could that work? People have tried it before, and it didn't look promising. According to SCG database, all of the Flash decks running MD tinker hadn't placed higher than 8th. Those running sideboard Tinker hadn't placed higher than 19th. But after another conversation with Becker (props), we figured that running different tinker targets for the different matchups would make SB tinker much more playable. So my new sideboard plan went something like this:

- X(2) Summoner's Pact
- 1 Flash
- X (Matchup dependant)

+ Tinker
+ DSC ( For aggro, non blue decks, basically)
+ Plats (Always comes in, with one of the other two, usually)
+ Titan (For the decks with duals)
+ Whatever else needed to go in for the matchup.

The idea here is that instead of using just DSC or just Angel, you get to dodge the gy hate AND hit 'em where it hurts, as they say. You dilute the flash kill so if they mull to six (or five) and don't find the leyline, then you can still win with flash, albiet a turn slower. The angel always goes in so if you have to protect the tinker with a pact, you don't lose the game.

I also ran an extra carrion feeder in the side, to fix the triskellion and the burn "problem".

Gigadrowse was Eric's hot tech (from someone else's list) that let you tap down crypts and swamps EOT to stop extirpate and the GY hate. All for only  (merch scroll).


The funny thing is, it worked. My first three rounds were all won G1 by a flash kill, G2 by a tinker kill. DSC, Titan, DSC respectively. I played against Eric in the last round and he got savagely lucky, but i did turn 1 (G2) Tinker-->Angel him with double pact backup. Test and let me know how things go. I'll post my list in a bit.

I didn't take any notes either, sorry. All I remember is the first turn crypt(?)-->sphere trying to get you to play moxen so I could eat them. I played monkey on turn 2 so I don't think it mattered as I lost a flip already and was at 17. Anyway, I'm putting stax on the backburner for what I think is a better deck, Pitchlong. Of course, this gives me an even worse matchup against you, but alas, I would probably lose anyway. Funny after round 2 we were like, "well, it's either next round or the finals." Then I proceeded to lose 3 straight and go home. Anyway, the next one should be fun, I just hate all this hindsight bias....

Gus

I still don't think that not eating my crypt was the wrong play. I had the trike in hand, and the longer I let the game go on the better chance you have of somehow comboing me out. I thought that you were locked out anyway, so I guess my logic is flawed. Anyway, I didn't have much experience versus your deck, so next time may be different. I did enjoy playing you, however, and am looking forward to future matchups.

Props to arsenal for making the tourney more fun.

The sideboard is messed up for my deck. It had 2 stifle and 1 skullclamp (dont ask). The fluxes were indeed energy, i may have written them down wrong. Better check it next time.