Coming all the way back to TMD (last post somewhere in the 2009/2010 timeframe, I think) to say thanks for streaming this. It was enjoyable to watch.

Grove of the burnwillows.

Sounds wonderful, I think that'd be a fairly desirable additional prize.

Is this a serious example?  I mean, he's saying that with petal you play petal, play welder, they counter so you resolve your threat.  You lost petal and welder to resolve your threat.  With lotus there, you lose your lotus then resolve your threat.  How is losing a second card for no reason better here?  There may be times where petal is better than lotus, but this doesn't seem like one of them to me.

@lord shaper- I played shusher with significant success in GWR aggro.

@steve- an enlightened tutor toolbox can be pretty painful, as was discussed, simply due to the fact that it essentially gives them "extra" hate pieces. If they have one on turn one or two, then e tutor can usually find the next one before I get too far ahead from answering the first.  Other than that, children of korlis is definately better than heap doll.  The extra card out of the yard against ichorid vs an extra card against combo that also does almost the same thing vs ichorid, and isn't an artifact...well, it's not really close.  I get that you can then e tutor for it, but in that case I think I'd rather be getting crypt/relic every time.

Personally, I like relic of progenitus and tormods as your ichy hate.  Keep in the pridemages and seals, obviously, to deal with leyline.  If you have something like children, then bring 'em in.  Wastelands should get you pretty far when combined with one of these cards.  The important thing to remember is not to be afraid to crypt them early- if they start to accumulate zombies, you're sunk.  Keep a clock going.  The worst thing to see when you're playing ichorid is a hate component on the board and you've only got a few turns to deal with it and win.

Could not possibly agree more.

Pilot.

Planar void is the biggest blowout.  It makes you actually destroy it, instead of just bounce it like leyline of the void.  Taking away chain of vapor as an out is really annoying.  Relic and extirpate are really only annoying if you have another piece of hate to go with them, or if you find them in multiples.  Pithing needle is really unimpressive.  Jailer is good, but it's easier to deal with than a planar/leyline of the void because I can use bazaar more freely to find the answers, and once I take care of one I'll make sure I've always got a darkblast in my hand for the rest of the game until I win.  Don't forget to bring in your pyroclasm effects, either.

The real answer to beating ichorid post board is to actually test the post-board ichorid match.  I beat people with dredge all the time when I shouldn't just- and it's just because they don't know what they're doing.  People make a million and one stupid mistakes playing against dredge, usually because they don't have a firm understanding of what makes the deck go.  It's important that you take as much notice of all of their triggers as they do, and know when you can and can't interrupt them successfully.

Why would you possibly want to let your opponent filter 3 cards instead of just playing careful study or breakthrough?

Smasher, why did you bring in heretic against dredge and not explosives?  Explosives seems like a much more relevant card there.

I'm speaking from experience, not theory.  By and large, a 6 fetch manabase vs an 8 fetch manabase will play out identically in the matchups where you don't need to worry about your opponents affecting your mana production.  The minimal effect of 2 additional fetches deck thinning is negligible compared to the ability to fearlessly and aggressively fetch out your colors against an opponent who is packing wastelands as well.  The suggestion to run only six colored sources will run you out of one color in these matches much more frequently than you might think, and that can easily cost you games you should otherwise win.

Smasher's idea on the manabase will wreck your world if you try it.  Your colored sources are more important than your fetchlands in this deck.  I would cut down to six fetches and cut a taiga and a canonist.  You can fit in three wastes and a strip that way if that's what you're looking to do.

I was referring only to the fact that i've played similar decks to the one you played off and on for quite a while, and for much of that time period Soly was one of my primary testing partners.

Yeah Ryan, Soly has some experience pulling wins out against decks kind of like that one.

Goyf does do something.  He provides you with your victory while your other dudes disrupt and help him along.  Given time, your vintage opponent will overcome your dudes- and that is why you need a body like goyf.  Honestly, that list looks pretty sloppy to me.  You're playing four magus on a manabase consisting almost entirely of non-basics. You're only running four fetches to go get your one basic.  I'm sure you have some lovely argument for me about how if magus is down you should be winning anyway, but that simply isn't the case.

Ichorid is your reason for needle over null rod?  Really?  Well, ok, fair enough.  But let's not make it a four of.  Is it useful against a number of decks? I suppose so.  Is it useful in multiples against many of those decks?  Not really.  The problem with the deck you're building (well, one of the problems) is that it's trying to do what fish decks do, but it can't do it as well as they can.  In my experience, the way to build an effective vintage aggro deck is to include the minimum amount of disruption that the metagame with a solid clock and the maximum amount of consistency.  If you're looking to something more disruptive (and less true to the "aggro" name) then Steve has some decent builds he's put forth in his articles.  If you're looking for highly aggressive beats decks in the colors you've chosen, I won some tournaments you'd have to look back a while to find, and I'm sure someone else has placed reasonably more recently.  Hell, my lists even ran skullclamp (Yeah that's right i said it skull clamp!).


Oh.  Also.  Needs moar Gaddock Teeg.

This also dodges upkeep/cumulative upkeep.

I've been a solid supporter of ancient grudge in dredge for a long time now.  I also have not run angel for a very long time.  I've never missed the angel at all.  Granted, I play mana ichorid, but I stand by those sentiments for manaless builds as well.

For clarity, the hand I kept game 3 was 2x chalice, 2x wispmare, 2x 5c lands, ancestral recall.  I just needed that recall to hit me a little bit of gas, but it didn't.  That's ok though- I'm happy with the mox from the day before.

Also, if "overthinking a play" you mean "playing your mystical tutor into a chalice at one like a donkey" then yes you overthought your play.

Nice finish, soly. I'll be interested to see how this goes over at the next large event.

Thanks for the write up, Duncan.  Glad you could make it out for the GP.

I was disappointed to lose to brett in the last round, as that loss bumped me from beta sapphire to guru swamp.  I must admit, however, that my loss was all my fault.  I made three glaring errors over the course of the match, and they cost me.  The worst of these was that, despite the fact that he dredged his entire library game 2, I didn't realize he wasn't packing leyline.  If I had taken note of this information, I would have taken a different course with my mulligan game 3.  Also, I failed to activate tormod's crypt at the appropriate time, allowing two narcomoebas to enter play when I should have just nuked the bin right there with them on the stack.  My third mistake was trying to use drawstep dredges to get there against him while hiding behind my crypt.  If I were to play that game again with the hand I kept, I would take actual draw steps to try and find more gas instead of going down the road I did. The path I took really only has one eventuality in the mirror when your opponent has bazaar- losing.

I had fun with the event overall, but I must share in the expressed disgust regarding the prize pool.  I must admit that it was a very nice mox, though.

Explain to me again how you "race the much slower archangel."

Gaddock teeg plus 4x tutorable children of korlis and 2 saffi says that the list you're running has a winnable game 1 vs ichorid.  Just throwing that out there.

I had tested anger previously, and found it to be less than impressive.  Most of the time it cost me a turn of actually playing a dude to put it in the bin unless it was the mid game, and frankly I don't feel like the few times in the mid game where I can cut a turn off by getting up 3/4 mana are worth drawing crappy anger most of the time.  I already have to run one dead card to make the engine work (squee), and I don't like the idea of adding another.  Your draws need to be as consistent as you're able to make them for your deck to function well.  This philosophy goes even more strongly for the other targets you've mentioned.  Play them if you like- as of right now, they haven't made the cut in my deck.

4x stingscourger is too many IMO.  Do you need the ability to answer dsc? Yes. I would, however, prefer and answer that also takes care of goyf, or welder, or painter, or any other dude.  You swords/path a dude and it's GONE gone.  You scourger it and it'll be back. For painter, that means that unless they're dying they probably don't care that you bounced it.  One scourger, or if you're REALLY worried then two, is plenty with the survival plan. You can access it when you want it, and you won't draw it when it's crap too much.

I feel pretty strongly that the correct approach to use here is to bring the new engine into an already viable deck, and not allow that new engine to become its own entity.  If you make the deck about survival, I think that you will find yourself with too many less than impressive draws when you don't have it active.

People do actually board firespout around here enough that it's relevant.  The squee is the only thing that makes the survival engine good enough to play over clamp. Continuous card advantage is something that is difficult to accomplish in these colors, and survival/squee gets there.  You're right that it's often a dead draw without survival, but that's an acceptable tradeoff. As you mentioned though, every so often it can become an infi-blocker. I had exactly the scenario you suggested going against a 7/10 on sunday.  Tariff just seems kind of pointless.  If they have an akroma, i'll swords it or lose. If they have an angel, i'll kill it by attacking or i'll lose.  Basically, if they get oath active you're in a bad way, so it's better to board with the intention of not allowing that than to board based on already being backed into a corner.

The unicorn is the only dedicated anti-oath card, although I was expecting it in some amount (and it showed to about that expectation.)  The seals and zealot do a killer job of getting in the way of time vault combo and painter- things that tin street just can't get the job done at as a sorcery speed effect.  The survivals accomplish what skullclamp has in the past, but more consistantly and with the ability to feed me the appropriate creatures at the right times.   

Regarding spirit guides, they serve a multi-layered purpose.  The allow you to slide a turn one seal or survival against a drain deck, forcing them to force if they want to counter it.  I'll always take that exchange if they do, but if they don't then you've got your relevant permanent and they're unlikely to get there.  With shusher, it lets you use him when they don't think you can- getting them to use a fow on a goyf that's going to resolve is even better than them not using that fow because they can see you have a mana up.  Additionally, the SSG allows for reb before your turn one on that draw, which can be relevant.  The last usage is that you can use survival to ramp mana when you're stuck below where you need to be- for instance, against oath I had two mana with an active survival. He had resolved oath.  I was holding a kgrip, but two mana doesn't get there.  Eot I survival for an esg, and damned if that oath didn't come right off the board.

As for the anti-combo plan...well, you pretty much got it.  Actually, I only had one canonist, not two.   Anway, I expected minimal combo (i think two showed up, maybe three) and I was rocking both children of korlis and pyro pillar in the board.  My board was thrown together really hastily, but what I played was 2 grip, 3 pillar, 3 children, 2 reb, 2 pyro, 1 stp, 2 pithing needle.

Well, I did kind of poorly at the tournament, finishing 3-2, but I don't feel like my list was too bad for something with no testing behind it.  I did not get the survival engine going too often, but that is partially because it drew force of wills all day.  If it had resolved in one of my games when I cast it on turn one, I would have won...so that's something going for it. On the other hand, I did wind up siding it out a few times over the course of the day.  This was the list:

3 survival of the fittest
1 squee
4 goyf
4 nacatl
1 canonist
2 teeg
1 ronom unicorn
1 viridian zealot
1 stingscourger
4 fanatic
4 vial
2 vexing shusher
2 SSG
2 ESG
4 taiga
3 savannah
2 plateau
3 windswept heath
2 wooded foothills
1 forest
1 plains
3 mox
1 lotus
2 seal of primordium
1 seal of cleansing
3 swords to plowshares
2 gorilla shaman

i beat oath, painter and tez. I lost to tez and painter.

I'll post a list for rgw vial tomorrow.  We'll see if I scrub with it or not at the icbm open. I think it'll be pretty strong, but I've hardly been able to get any testing in.

It seems to me that the two points of damage are less useful than being able to cast negate off a colorless source like a wasteland.

Of the cards listed, misdirection hits only one.  It seems much narrower in its scope.

Read through the post- he listed quite a number of cards that were stolen.

Edit: Ech, answered while I was stil reading.

If you're looking for space for chalice, your mana base might be a good place to get a slot.  Chalice is golden, and I was glad all day that Soly advised me to run it when I asked him for preliminary suggestions for an ichorid build.  If you haven't already, you can take a look at the list I just won with in milwaukee to get an idea of the kind of numbers I favor, but our lists carry some obvious fundamental differences.

I would say that derek's board holds pretty much the most you would want to devote to anti-dredge spots...2 jailer, 1 crypt, 1 extirpate? Seems fine.  Maybe flop out one jailer for one needle or relic, but in a deck able to abuse draws and tutors it isn't too necessary to board more heavily than that against dredge.