Could something like Caltrops work? How fast can you empty your hand (Ensnaring Bridge, would work nicely against RGSA and AStompy too)?

Nothing constructive to say...

Just had to give you mad props about an infinity cool to the max deck, reminds me of the old survival extended decks.

About goblins, Silent Arbiter? Would probably be burned regardless, maybe just more Frogs? Or if you can reach 5 mana, at which point you would probably win anyway, Extinction?

What about something as janky as Propaganda, seems like you just need to stall until you have Fog + Recursion + Vial (optional) setup..

Ok. Small update. Reanimate+Dragon Breath > Shallow Grave/Corpse Dance when going for speed (which is really what I want when going for the Illusionist combo...)

Oh my god. I'm such a fool.   Thought I could respond to it being shuffled back...


TR, Krosan Reclamation allows me to stack my library so I can find a reanimation spell if I don't already have one, setting up for turn three kill. When going hybrid I don't think I can squeeze in enough reanimation spells to allow for safe usage of Blessings.

I'm not terrible scared about Ancestral Recall due to Cabal Therapies, when going off for the kill I'll be able to cast at least two, plus I don't have to mill my entire library - with all the search being able to find a reanimation spell isn't impossible.

Polar Kraken it is!

1) Sure? I got enough for a total of 22 damage. But I suppose I could try and fit in one more creature with phat. Woodripper? Just in case they get a Platz into play, I'll be able to shoot it down, eat some other artifacts and animate a phat Ghoul into play.

2) There's why I added the Breakfeast combo, as an attempt to race them. Maybe it'd be better to go pure MD Life and then SB into Breakfeast?



You are probably right that it'll be better in Legacy, but I can give it a try in T1. There's T1 tournaments every other week here, while I haven't seen a T1.5 tournament for years.

About racing with Tendrils, my life turn is 2 or 3. So we're able to go off at about the same turns. HOWEVER, Tendrils got a much larger chance of turn 1 and turn 2.

I started working on a Cephalid Life deck, and started wondering how fast we could constistantly get it in T1, I mean it's pretty much turn 3 when well played in extended. Plus having 28346287364872 life would be pretty amusing against any of the Tendrils combo decks.  

The Cephalid combo comes in as a both a finisher and as a way to gain a fighting chance against decks that don't need to win by damage. For instance a Crucibe/Slaver lock or Brain Freeze sillyness.

Now I'm pretty sure I'll hear, "Why not just play Hermit Druid?", well the druid has summoning sickness plus I kind of want to fit in a Shuko or to, to go off through a Cursed Totem - not like anyone really plays it, but yeah having the flexibility is nice.

Having been tied down to the bed with the flu I haven't been able to test the list I'm going to present in other ways than apprentice - which is bad testing, in my opinion. Sitting with the actual cards gives a much cleaner understanding.

In my testing the the list below has a very consistant turn 3 combo - both combos can go off easily turn 3.

Updated: 15/3/05
Creatures - 14
4 Nomads En-Kor
4 Daru Spiritualist
3 Cephalid Illusionist
2 Polar Kraken
1 Sutured Ghoul

Draw/Search/Broken - 14
4 Living Wish
4 Brainstorm
1 Time Walk
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Imperial Seal
1 Mystical Tutor

Disruption - 8
4 Cabal Therapy
4 Force of Will
The blue card count is kind of low, I know. But I'm still reluctant to drop them, combined with Therapy they make brute forcing the last spell through rather easy.

Win - 4
1 Krosan Reclamation
1 Worthy Cause
1 Dragon Breath
1 Reanimation
Having tested Shallow Grave/Corpse Dance in the Reanimation/Breath place, I often found the extra mana requirement a hassle.

Speed - 8
3 Aether Vial
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Mox Pearl
1 Black Lotus
The vial might seem odd in T1 at first, but being able to have uncounterable combo pieces and "I win" (Starlit Sanctum, or Cephalid mill -> double Therapy pretty much equal undisruptable) cards is cool.

Lands - 12
4 City of Brass
4 Forbidden Orchard
2 Gemstone Mine
2 Starlit Sanctum
It looks odd I know, but I really need the right colored mana now. Haven't tested alot with duals/fetches tho

Sideboard:
Wishables - 4[/i]
1 Task Force
1 Shaman En-Kor
1 Starlit Sanctum
1 Cephalid Illusionist
Not sure if I'm better off moving the two good combo pieces to the SB and then have two more draw/searchers in the main...

As a sidenote the deck transforms rather well into a budget version.

It was in the ones I played against, and with too (unless they were the animate/triskillion version). Steel Golem was a finisher of choice in European Draw Go too, tempest/mirage age T2.

That's my point. (Looking back I can see it didn't came out clearly, well not at all!)

I haven't paid much attention to T1 for some time, but it seems that most decks are "IN YOUR FACE" in essence, always trying to do their thing and win. Then "The Best Player in the world" (tm) walks up with an interactive deck, which many seems to think is badly configured for todays envioment and takes the entire tournament. Is this a sign of things to come?

The general consensus seems to be that the pro players can take everything with an interactive deck - or many outs if you want. Maybe it's time to put down the Hypergun and go with the Railgun, yeah bad Q2 analogy I know but couldn't resist.

Would he have been able to do it with say, Doomsday or another combodeck?

Heh. So a good player can win with a bad version of EBA? Then how would a good player fare with a good version of EBA?

For glory and honor! In tournaments I always play to win, if I play for fun it's with my friends over a beer or two friday night before heading to the pub.  

I'd vote for a huge giant about to stomp on a planewalker (just hinting it's a planewalker).

I think humor could bring this far, as long as it's not overdone.

That is my point; against the three deck types I listed all of them share the feat of being able to more or less play around counter magic (Overwhelm-tactic, utility cards like Aether Vial, and disruption in the likes of Cabal Therapy (works nicely with Spirit tokens by the way)/Duress), and in some of the cases the all-time active counter magic drops to twelve – Misdirection will be of limited use and a first turn Vial + Duress could be quite a beating in Affinity. Of course I realize, that clogging the deck with control spells and removal is not the way to go, just merely asking if it would make the deck distort too much from the original game plan and thusly warrant a completely re-design, I haven’t had the joy of playing with this particular form of Oath in real life so please, take some of my concerns with a grain of salt.


EDIT: This is too small to warrant it's own post, have Cabal Therapy abuse of 1/1 tokens been a problem? I'm thinking of a game where Oath isn't cast before you have to activate the Orchard for something else?
--Just wanted to know if I'm overrating Cabal Therapy in my current "mind deckbuilding" phase. (You have to do something to keep you occupied when at work, hehe)

Firstly I’d like to say congratulations (and celebrations) to Smmenen and the other Meandeckers on a job well done.

Let’s just get right to it.

One thing that struck me concerning the U/G Oath list was the absolute lack of removal both in the main deck and in sideboard (baring Control Magic). This "flaw", or choice of design, looks to me as it could easily be this deck’s Achilles Heel as the opponent could simply out-fat/out-speed you and ignore Oath of Druids - which paradoxically enough seemed to be this deck's plan, ignoring of the opponent and thusly rendering this deck a sluggish mono-blue BBS with high casting cost finishers. Bad.

There's a myriad of decks that could be able to ignore Oath’s game plan and its scrawny creatures:

Goblins.dec: Blazingly fast, Akroma might block and attack but Sharpshooters or a horde of green men accompanied by one or two 10+/2 Piledrivers can make mincemeat of the life total, faster than the Angel/Spirits. The ability to go, “Oops, I win� with Sharpshooters/Goblin Grenade kind of scare me.

Angry Hermit: Again, like Goblins, amazing speed. All this deck cares for is to resolve Hermit Druid and activate him - due to no removal this is easily done if he resolves (Duress and Cabal Therapies help fighting the counter wall), if he gets countered chances of resolving a Buried Alive and getting the win that way increases. 26+/26+ Ghouls trample over puny 5 to 6 toughness pro-blackers.

Affinity: Still smoking from the last PT, some part of me doesn’t want it to happen, but some part of me thinks it could. Due to Fish slowly disappearing in the meta game, and thereby lowering the amount of Null Rods, could Affinity rear it's ugly head here? The deck is fast enough to out speed Oath (and most decks baring blistering fast combination decks), and their creatures can easily out-fat Angel/Spirit and any other for that matter. The latest Extended builds of Affinity were incredible resistant against hate, I wonder if the T1 versions can be too.


So really, my question is, in the upcoming tournaments wouldn't it be a liability to run the stable U/G version instead of opting for, perhaps, U/G/W for swords? (Or did the lately Ravager smashing just scared me too much).
Is it really worth having the more stable mana base and more consistency in terms of more 3/4-offs (the correct name in this context is dodging me - sorry), over being able to handle decks that can run you over, faster than you can run them over. Or am I looking at this with completely wrong glasses? (still in my control oath mindset?)

/Grrrollub

Demonic Horde + Instil Energy was my favorite combo, I loved it in my Royal Assassin/Icy deck, heh.

But it's so much fun flashing your pimped out deck to T2 players, they are all like "Uuuuuuh, I guess my all foil deck isn't all that braggy anyway...". Heh, but trading Legend legends to kids (for practically nothing - don't like to rip them off) is fun, so little can make someone's day.

I love how they used state-of-the-art PDP-11s

Because I've been playing since unlimited and I want to use all my cards.