Perfect Storm - Playstyle & Sideboard

[Gekoratel]

First thing, anybody telling me "Tezz can still win after you take TV, Bot, Will" out of the deck because they have confidant should seriously reconsider if a 2/1 that's most likely to be costing them 1-5 life every turn is REALLY a threat for a deck like TPS. I've never EVER felt threatened  by any 2/1 dork, not even Confidant. The entire and single reason Tezzeret is able to win against any TPS players comes down to 2 and only 2 scenario's.

You often complain about people making gross oversimplifications regarding TPS and this is about as bad as any I have seen on TMD.  First off I don't agree at all with the 3 cards that you would take with Sacrement, you need to take Tezzeret over Will because it will only take 1-3 turns after resolving Tezzeret for them to just kill with its ultimate.  So whenever the Tez player hit Vamp,DT or draws into the card your in big trouble.  Also you glossed over the part where the Tez opponent could naturally have Robot or Tezzeret in hand.

Not every game that TPS loses is because they mess up, granted there are a lot of ways to play the deck incorrectly.  You can easily lose by just drawing into a clump of fast mana/lands after having your first threat stopped just as any deck can be manaflooded/screwed.  Regarding a 3rd way that TPS can lose, Tez hits a critical mass of disruption between draw/tutoring where the Tez player has more disruption then the TPS player has disruption + threats.

@Workshop matchup - I agree that Shops are a natural predator to decks like Ant, Long Variants and Gush decks because they all cheated on lands and ran greedy manabases.  TPS has one of the most solid manabases in Vintage with 4 Basics and 12-13 lands in addition to all the fast mana in T1.  Also your going to win a non-trivial number of games on the play with TPS because you can nail a threat(Tinker,Necro,Bargain) before Shops gets a chance to do anything.  Also from the TPS side you have an easier time forcing one threat and then winning moreso than Tezzeret.  Lastly TPS doesn't care about a good amount of Stax's disruption, the cards you really care about are Resistors, 3sphere, and based on the gamestate Tangle Wire.  Also if your opponent doesn't know what your playing then there's a good chance the Stax player will make plays that you care less about.  I'm not saying this is an easy matchup but I don't believe its TPS' hardest matchup.

I do agree with your statements about Leyline being the best card against Dredge.

[Marske]

You often complain about people making gross oversimplifications regarding TPS and this is about as bad as any I have seen on TMD.  First off I don't agree at all with the 3 cards that you would take with Sacrement, you need to take Tezzeret over Will because it will only take 1-3 turns after resolving Tezzeret for them to just kill with its ultimate.  So whenever the Tez player hit Vamp,DT or draws into the card your in big trouble.  Also you glossed over the part where the Tez opponent could naturally have Robot or Tezzeret in hand.

I've not face a list running Tezzeret (the card) in a long time, overhere people have abandoned playing him for just having TV/key + Robot, so obviously you're correct in taking Tezzeret. I should have realized you guys still see the planeswalker. Seriously though, having Robot in hand? How is that helping them? They gonna hardcast Sphinx / Inkwell? It's not over simplification, it's a simple fact that an opponent having 1-2-3 or even four 2/1 creatues shouldn't EVER trouble you when playing TPS. Confidant doesn't disrupt you going off.

Not every game that TPS loses is because they mess up, granted there are a lot of ways to play the deck incorrectly.  You can easily lose by just drawing into a clump of fast mana/lands after having your first threat stopped just as any deck can be manaflooded/screwed.  Regarding a 3rd way that TPS can lose, Tez hits a critical mass of disruption between draw/tutoring where the Tez player has more disruption then the TPS player has disruption + threats.

This is, off course true. every deck can fail out. Without a fast combo kill from the Tezzeret player, you should be able to plow through a full grip of counters (Desire) you'd have no problem setting it up if they have no realistic clock.

@Workshop matchup - I agree that Shops are a natural predator to decks like Ant, Long Variants and Gush decks because they all cheated on lands and ran greedy manabases.  TPS has one of the most solid manabases in Vintage with 4 Basics and 12-13 lands in addition to all the fast mana in T1.  Also your going to win a non-trivial number of games on the play with TPS because you can nail a threat(Tinker,Necro,Bargain) before Shops gets a chance to do anything.  Also from the TPS side you have an easier time forcing one threat and then winning moreso than Tezzeret.  Lastly TPS doesn't care about a good amount of Stax's disruption, the cards you really care about are Resistors, 3sphere, and based on the gamestate Tangle Wire.  Also if your opponent doesn't know what your playing then there's a good chance the Stax player will make plays that you care less about.  I'm not saying this is an easy matchup but I don't believe its TPS' hardest matchup.

I agree with everything, I didn't say it was "the hardest" matchup, I just said it's one of your worse or lesser matchups. Dismissing Stax as a serious threat is foolish, it IS the natural predator and it can very easily overwhelm you, it's by no means an easy matchup and saying EOT, Bounce, Untap = Win is one thing, actually pulling it off consistently is another. That's all I wanted to stress for beginning TPS players.

[Doomsday]

Thanks Marske.  Just to clarify, you're agreeing that Sacrament is basically game over if resolved vs Tezz/Oath/the mirror/ANT.  Would you sideboard 2 of them if you expected to play vs lots of Tezz?

[Marske]

Thanks Marske.  Just to clarify, you're agreeing that Sacrament is basically game over if resolved vs Tezz/Oath/the mirror/ANT.  Would you sideboard 2 of them if you expected to play vs lots of Tezz?

I'd still run 1 as a tutor target in the board.

[Gekoratel]

I've not face a list running Tezzeret (the card) in a long time, overhere people have abandoned playing him for just having TV/key + Robot, so obviously you're correct in taking Tezzeret. I should have realized you guys still see the planeswalker. Seriously though, having Robot in hand? How is that helping them? They gonna hardcast Sphinx / Inkwell? It's not over simplification, it's a simple fact that an opponent having 1-2-3 or even four 2/1 creatues shouldn't EVER trouble you when playing TPS. Confidant doesn't disrupt you going off.

Having Robot in your hand is quite relevant especially if your running Inkwell because if its midgame you can Drain a 2-3cc spell into it, cast through Lotus, or Tolarian.  If a TPS player was casting a Sacrement at me and I had Inkwell and a decent amount of mana I'd let the spell resolve over Forcing it, this way I still have Force in my hand and a win condition.  Also its not like Confidant is a 2/1 with no ability that wouldn't be very intimidating for TPS but if they have 1-2 Confidants then they are going to be signifigantly outdrawing you and therefore seeing more disruption.  Not to mention the fact that Tez will have at least +2 REB post-board and 1-2 Remora wouldn't surprise me either.  If they have Glen out of the board then Sacrement becomes a joke, Bob + Glen will kill you.  After you have taken TV, Bot, Tez the goal of Tezzeret is to get ahead with card advantage and while also ending the game with beats.  This is done by resolving Confidant, Key+Top, Recall.  Tezzeret also will have the ability to cast Time Walk with Bob in play to get ahead and seting up a Will duressing you multiple times and then riding Confidant to victory.  I think its hubris to think that resolving Sacrement will win the match.

[honestabe]

@ Marske.  I'm not saying Stax is easy, but there are worse matchups.  If I were to play TPS in a tournament tomorrow, I'd probably run 3 mass bounce in my board.  I'm just saying I don't feel that 2 in the sideboard is ridiculous.  I do however, feel that 6 is.

Also, let's not forget that Confidant is feeding your opponent extra duress/force of will/mana drain.  Your opponent having 1 out shouldn't be too bad of a problem, but when they have 2-3, it gets dangerous.  They raw card advantage can overwhelm you, not to mention, the 4-6 damage a turn that cutts off bargain, necro, and makes it difficult to vamp, imperial seal, and grim tutor.
Basically, TPS is in my oppinion, a better, faster deck that Tezz, so why not use that natural ability and just combo thier ass before they can do anything relavent?

[Marske]

@Gekoratel,
I'm sorry, I just don't see "I'll just hardcast Inkwell and in the mean time beat with confidant" as a realistic (I cannot stress REALISTIC) win condition for them against TPS. Sure against Stax this might work, but it's not like TPS goes: Sacrament, do nothing. I'm not suggesting Sadistic Sacrament is the be All end All. I'm merely suggesting I'd consider boarding it in over a card that isn't worth much in that particular matchup (if you play Chain, Hurkyl's, Rebuild main you can easily swap a Rebuild for Sacrament for example)

@ Marske.  I'm not saying Stax is easy, but there are worse matchups.  If I were to play TPS in a tournament tomorrow, I'd probably run 3 mass bounce in my board.  I'm just saying I don't feel that 2 in the sideboard is ridiculous.  I do however, feel that 6 is.

I was losing very solidly vs European 9Sphere MUD / Mono Red lists with just 2 basics 2-3 Bounce, since I upped it to 2 basic, 2 hurkyls, 3 Confidant, 1 Needle I started winning those matches. Now, if we're talking 5c Stax lists, I can easy see why you can get away with just bounce and basics. It depends highly on the amount of "spheres" stax runs I guess.

[personalbackfire]

@Gekoratel,
I'm sorry, I just don't see "I'll just hardcast Inkwell and in the mean time beat with confidant" as a realistic (I cannot stress REALISTIC) win condition for them against TPS. Sure against Stax this might work, but it's not like TPS goes: Sacrament, do nothing. I'm not suggesting Sadistic Sacrament is the be All end All. I'm merely suggesting I'd consider boarding it in over a card that isn't worth much in that particular matchup (if you play Chain, Hurkyl's, Rebuild main you can easily swap a Rebuild for Sacrament for example)

Markse I think you are missing the point. The longer the game goes the more Tezzeret is favored to win. Lets say you Sac and the Tezz player has Inkwell in hand, you then take Vault,Tezz, Will. The TPS player has now most likely wasted a ritual, and whatever Sacrament could have been to gain you some time. The problem with this is that Tezz is more then content to just play Bob and pass. Tezz decks around here play 4 Drains in addition to 4 Duress. Now every turn they are drawing atleast two cards a turn and are guaranteed to stay a card ahead of the TPS player in terms of disruption.

Bob starts swinging at you making your Necro and Bargain have less value and they just continue to stay ahead of you. Now its the late game and you finally think you have a play only to get it double countered. The next turn they can then Drop the Inkwell with the drain mana and win a turn later.

As soon as the Tezz player gets sacramented the game plan becomes bob, and potentially Inkwell if it is still in the deck or hand.

At workshop match up:  I have found this to be one of the easier matchups that TPS has for all the reasons that Gekoratel listed. In tournament play I have only lost to 5c once out of like 6 times playing against the best Stax players in the area, and have beaten 9sphere work shop aggro piloted by another competent player.

In actuality the reason I have dropped playing TPS is because I can not win against Tezz anymore consistently.

[Marske]

@PersonalBackFire,
I understand your point very well, I was just saying Sacrament isn't a bad card vs Tezz decks.

At workshop match up:  I have found this to be one of the easier matchups that TPS has for all the reasons that Gekoratel listed. In tournament play I have only lost to 5c once out of like 6 times playing against the best Stax players in the area, and have beaten 9sphere work shop aggro piloted by another competent player.

I've lost to 9Sphere MUD and Mono Red 9Sphere, I've not yet lost to 5c Stax as it's the easiest configuration to face. I don't know what the biggest difference is between our experience regarding this matchup

In actuality the reason I have dropped playing TPS is because I can not win against Tezz anymore consistently.

For me it's the other way around, I've not lost to Tezz since TFK got the axe. I lost once when I faced Tezzeret because I Tinkered Inkwell instead of Jar with Cabal Rit (thresh) and the mana to cast it. This I consider misplaying instead of "losing because Tezz beat me". Now, keep in mind, there is a huge difference regarding the Meta-game we're both in so this could be a factor when we're talking about matchups and how they play out.

[LennoxLewis86]

I fail to see why the Tezzeret match-up is supposed to be harder than the workshop aggro. I agree that Staxx is beatable because with 4 basics you should be able to make your land drops and find the bounce spell to eot bounce and go nuts. But against the shop aggro deck it's different. I have more trouble against the deck that plays LESS resistors because the other cards work towards the same goal, but differently: allowing you to draw less cards, putting you an a clock. It's this combination of disruption and pressure that gives me a hard time beating the deck. One sphere is enough to stop you from comboing out and when the WS aggro player follows up with a Karn or something I'm on a serious clock. Ofcourse it is easier to use your resources to find your bounce when there are less spheres on the table but then it becomes less easy to go off after bouncing because you have used a precious tutor to find a bounce spell, very weak.

Tezzeret on the other hand has reactive disruption, it's much easier to play around it because it allows you to do the single most important thing a TPS deck is supposed to be doing before trying to win: sculpt your hand. After boarding they will be bringing more disruption to the table, disruption that attacks your hand. This is very annoying and will make the Tezzeret deck much harder to beat. Dark Confidant doesn't scare me. You can compare it to a suspended Night's Whisper. Life is a resource but we're talking 4 points of damage before the game is going to be ''decided''. Either the TPS player manages to resolve a bomb and is in great shape to seal the game or the Tezz player gets too many turns and becomes the more powerful deck, it will be hard to steal the game for the TPS player.

I personally don't board in Sad Sac against Tezzeret decks because of the reasons outlined by others. But I most definately think it's awesome against Oath decks and other TPS decks. It's not very realistic to try and win the game with Confidant beats but there is a chance it works. When I resolve my Sacrament I want my opponent to scoop, if he doesn't, I'm worried because I've burned a lot of resources in casting it.

I have a good record vs. Drain Tendrils and Tezzeret decks. I have a bad record against the red shop aggro deck. I made top 4 by beating Drain Tendrils with Spell Pierces and beat a Tezz deck with Mystic Remora. My only loss in the Swiss was against the Red Shop Deck. The same guy beat me in the semi's. The raw power of TPS is best attacked if you go for mana denial over spell denial. This is based on my experience with the deck. I'm playing this for 6 months but put a lot of time and effort into testing and it did pay off.

On the 5 color Staxx deck, I agree 100% with Marske. This is by far the easiest configuration to beat with TPS.

[failtofind]

@ Marske

I agree that shops is difficult, but in my experience, a drain deck piloted by a top notch player with spell pierces is the worst match up, i currently playtest it a lot with good drain players, but i feel i haven't found a solid answer for it yet. Sacrament was strictly bad against it..like i said, desire is key, there is nothing in the deck that i would board out for sacrament..i don't take out much v tezz because i have to keep the deck as quick and explosive as possible, the game can't go long or it is lost.

i have never had real problems with shops, maybe it's because i am in new england and the meta is drain and fish, ichorid is a non issue..like a 50% chance of winning game one, and 100% chance of winning games 2 and 3


the only deck i lose to in top 8's is tezz with pierce.

[Marske]

I agree that shops is difficult, but in my experience, a drain deck piloted by a top notch player with spell pierces is the worst match up, i currently playtest it a lot with good drain players, but i feel i haven't found a solid answer for it yet. Sacrament was strictly bad against it..like i said, desire is key, there is nothing in the deck that i would board out for sacrament..i don't take out much v tezz because i have to keep the deck as quick and explosive as possible, the game can't go long or it is lost.

If everybody reads carefully you'd see my suggesting Desire in this topic as a way to battle Drains.... I've had my fair share of facing "Top Notch" Drain pilots as I test with some of the best out there. I'm not at a negative total against them. All I ever said was TPS could and should beat Drain decks, my boarding plan vs Tezz (if I see it) would probably come down to bringing in Extirpate (a singleton), Dorks (when they have Arcane Lab) and if not, I'd board nothing. Basically I've had the same results as Steve had which he wrote about a while back when facing Tezzeret. So, either  Smmenen, LennoxLewis and myself are wrong and aren't testing against the same level of opponents as you guys or something else is going on.

Workshop Aggro is one of the worst things to face, unlike Stax which wants a hardlock WS aggro is perfectly content with a softlock as it can lay down the beats. If you face the build my team member Mantis created (and played to a 2nd place finish) not even Inkwell can save you (Sculpting Steel doesn't target.....) as both LennoxLewis and myself have noticed when facing him. How anybody can claim these matchups are a walk in the park or "easier" then the deck that's supposed to be our "prey" (Dark ritual decks are the natural predators for Drain decks) is truly beyond me, even with PersonalBackFire and Gekoratal and their massive finishes with TPS claiming multiple top 8's saying it...

Now, I'd like to explain something, when I say "worst" I am not saying "it's impossible to beat" or "It's 20-80 in their advantage MU" I'm saying Tezzeret is around 55 to 60 percent in our favor depending on the play skill of each pilot. This changes after boarding to around even depending on what cards get boarded in. When facing Workshop decks (and WS aggro in general) I feel the roles are turned and we start game one at a 45% shot at winning it which switches to around 50-55% games 2 / 3.

The great thing with TPS imho is that it CAN beat anything out there, I cannot think of a Matchup that isn't around a 45-50% chance of winning, something that cannot be claimed by every deck, certainly not Tezzeret as it gets facerolled by any decent build Null rod deck.

[personalbackfire]

Basically I've had the same results as Steve had which he wrote about a while back when facing Tezzeret. So, either  Smmenen, LennoxLewis and myself are wrong and aren't testing against the same level of opponents as you guys or something else is going on.

Just had a quick question about this. Are you testing against Tezz builds similar to this build, that you linked to, or are you testing against Tezz decks that are running 4 Duress/seize main?

[Marske]

@PBF,
The only Tezz lists I've (and LennoxLewis as well obv) faced were direct copies of Itou's Tezz list or Mastriano's Bob / Remora list.... Tezzeret is all but gone where I play as recent events have been dominated by storm decks. To illustrate what I mean:

Hengelo event
Dutch Vintage Champs
The Dutch Vintage Tournament Series IX

As you can see, it's mostly ANT, WS aggro, Selkie, TPS, 5c Stax Almost Blue with a mix of Dredge and Oath with hardly any "real" Tezzeret. So testing against a Tezzeret list with 4 duress seems highly irrelevant for me. This might be why I don't have the same problem as you guys, but I already said this could be the case before in this thread.

[personalbackfire]

This might be why I don't have the same problem as you guys, but I already said this could be the case before in this thread.

Yea, I was just asking in response to you getting different results. I would imagine a big reason why we are experiencing different results would be that around here people run Duress main in tezz, and the deck is still prominent.

If people aren't running Duress main, or Tezz in general I would be very happy picking up the deck to play in tournaments again.

[Marske]

@PBF,
People  over here haven't really ran Tezz since TFK got the axe. Still, I advocated running TPS when Tezz had 4x TFK and Duress main, so I would still advocate TPS when they have 0 TFK but Confidant instead as Confidant has made Tezz even worse compared to what it used to be. But then again I'm biased as hell as TPS is and will always be my favorite deck in all of Magic.

[Ten-Ten]

...I don't know bout dark confidant or SadSac. but I side in 3 Phyrexian Negators against Tezz or any Drain deck game#2. any thoughts?

[Killane]

...I don't know bout dark confidant or SadSac. but I side in 3 Phyrexian Negators against Tezz or any Drain deck game#2. any thoughts?

While this is a solid and time-tested strategy, two things give me pause:

1. Confidant is becoming almost ubiquitous in Drain builds. The ability to block your Negator and take out 2 permanents makes negator worse than it used to be.
2. Negator is a dead card in other match-ups. The TPSideboard at best is extremely flexable and abel to give the deck the slight edge it needs vs many archetypes. I don't really know that it has room for 3 Negators.

For more on my thoughts, see here: http://www.themanadrain.com/index.php?topic=39652.0

[i_set_fire]

sorry to bring back a kinda dead thread but this seemed like a good place for this:

since the release of worldwake i have been running one bojuka bog maindeck in place of one swamp.  so far it has hurt me a couple times by slowing me down with the comes in to play tapped thing, and actually cost me one game due to it.  however, it has won me, or was the main contributor to winning, many games. 
there is the obvious usage against dredge.  i have also had good luck with it against oath and tezz.  for oath after they search out their first creature playing bog seriously messes up their yawg will/regrowth for time walk/other bomb.  this is especially true if they only run one or two targets and you hit the majority of their deck.  for tezz, counter vault and then bog has been good.  bog doesnt necessary win you the game like bargain or some other huge bomb, but has proven itself as a good way to slow an opponent down to allow an additional turn or two to set up the finish.

has anyone else been testing out bog MD?  what results have you had? 

[Cruel Ultimatum]

sorry to bring back a kinda dead thread but this seemed like a good place for this:

since the release of worldwake i have been running one bojuka bog maindeck in place of one swamp.  so far it has hurt me a couple times by slowing me down with the comes in to play tapped thing, and actually cost me one game due to it.  however, it has won me, or was the main contributor to winning, many games.  
there is the obvious usage against dredge.  i have also had good luck with it against oath and tezz.  for oath after they search out their first creature playing bog seriously messes up their yawg will/regrowth for time walk/other bomb.  this is especially true if they only run one or two targets and you hit the majority of their deck.  for tezz, counter vault and then bog has been good.  bog doesnt necessary win you the game like bargain or some other huge bomb, but has proven itself as a good way to slow an opponent down to allow an additional turn or two to set up the finish.

Also, with stax lists adopting Golems, Negater has lost a lot of weight. If they ever land a golem, your 5/5 has basically been turned off. Because of this a move towards more bounce spells may be needed, since you do not have as much time to draw your bounce spells.

has anyone else been testing out bog MD?  what results have you had?  

With the rise of stax due to lodestone golem, I  would be hard pressed to cut a basic land. Against Oath, If they already brought out an Iona or an elephant, they probobly don't need to oath again. You will be pretty hard pressed to win with 1/2 your deck shut off/no board. Even against Dredge, while strong having a land come into play tapped seems like the worst thing that you want. The matchup (especially game 1) largly comes down to a race.

[Killane]

sorry to bring back a kinda dead thread but this seemed like a good place for this:

since the release of worldwake i have been running one bojuka bog maindeck in place of one swamp.  so far it has hurt me a couple times by slowing me down with the comes in to play tapped thing, and actually cost me one game due to it.  however, it has won me, or was the main contributor to winning, many games.  
there is the obvious usage against dredge.  i have also had good luck with it against oath and tezz.  for oath after they search out their first creature playing bog seriously messes up their yawg will/regrowth for time walk/other bomb.  this is especially true if they only run one or two targets and you hit the majority of their deck.  for tezz, counter vault and then bog has been good.  bog doesnt necessary win you the game like bargain or some other huge bomb, but has proven itself as a good way to slow an opponent down to allow an additional turn or two to set up the finish.

Also, with stax lists adopting Golems, Negater has lost a lot of weight. If they ever land a golem, your 5/5 has basically been turned off. Because of this a move towards more bounce spells may be needed, since you do not have as much time to draw your bounce spells.

has anyone else been testing out bog MD?  what results have you had?  

With the rise of stax due to lodestone golem, I  would be hard pressed to cut a basic land. Against Oath, If they already brought out an Iona or an elephant, they probobly don't need to oath again. You will be pretty hard pressed to win with 1/2 your deck shut off/no board. Even against Dredge, while strong having a land come into play tapped seems like the worst thing that you want. The matchup (especially game 1) largly comes down to a race.

QFT.

One of TPS's strengths is a rock-solid base of basic lands. The Bog is also really really bad dredge hate - far wrose than the other available options as you want to be able to remove the yard on their turn, not your own.

[honestabe]

Yeah, TPS has a pretty good Dredge matchup anyway, I don't think maindeck Bog is really needed

[failtofind]

                  bog sucks, your deck should beat ichorid 100% of the times games 2 and 3...40% of the time game 1
                   you need as many basics as you can cram in there for decks that are good against tps like shops and fish, losing tempo by playing a land that comes into play against a drain deck is really bad, you want to be able to fire off as many spells as you can.