[Deck] Phantom Tape Worm's latest decklist: Fro

[Phantom Tape Worm]

Well gang, this one is hot off the presses; just won its first tourney (actually top 2 split the prize).  And it's more fun to play with than that private area between your legs!  I give you:

Fro (aka babycakes.dec)
4 Forgotten ancient
4 Werebear
4 Bird of paradise

4 Force of will
4 Merchant scroll
4 Brainstorm

1 ancestral recall
1 time walk
2 Damping matrix
1 winter orb
1 naturalize
1 mindtwist
1 demonic tutor
1 yawgmoth's will
1 future sight
1 gush
1 fact or fiction
1 regrowth
1 mystical tutor
1 recoil

7 solomoxen
4 underground sea
4 tropical island
4 flooded strand
1 polluted delta
1 stripmine


Sideboard
1 sylvan library
1 winter orb
1 damping matrix
2 naturalize
3 energy flux
2 hurkyll's recall
1 submerge
1 BEB
1 Hydroblast
1 Rootmaze
1 tsabo's web

I'll go into detail later on card choices, how this fits into the metagame, advantages/disadvantages of this vs gro/gat and how I continue to come up with such f'd up looking decklists that win.  But right now your job as a member of the TMD community is to first comment on how terribly bad this thing looks.  Dis it for the next year, even though it continues to do well whenever it is played.  Until finally an overhyped trendy metagame dependant card is printed that this deck _can_  support (but probably shouldn't in the maindeck as more than a 1 of), at which point Fro will be embraced and loved by all.

[Zherbus]

It looks soooo bad, but really good at the same time.

My 2 Questions are:

Why Birds? Aren't the lands and Moxen enough? Is Gush having that much effect on mana development, or am I digging in the wrong spot here?

Why not Dryads? It seems like they would be either a likely replacement for Birds, but that aside I am not sure Ancient and Werebear are both superior creatures in this deck.

[Phantom Tape Worm]

It looks soooo bad, but really good at the same time.

I know    Ain't it cool!

Why Birds? Aren't the lands and Moxen enough? Is Gush having that much effect on mana development, or am I digging in the wrong spot here?

Birds are necessary.  The reason that gro couldn't accomodate forgotten ancient in previous attempts was because it lacked enough acceleration to play them on turn 2 or 3.  Everyone complained that babycakes was one mana too much...well that was because they were thinking about inserting him into gro and that just wasn't going to work with gro's curve.  This curve (if you include the birds and the bears) is much more like keeper's, and as such it plays lots of big spells like FoF and future sight.  This is one of the benefits of running the ancient, it forces you to adjust your curve and therefore allows you to accomodate spells that gro wouldn't realistically be able to cast with any regularity.  This kind of spills into your next question about bad sub-optimal creatures like bears.  They are necessary to power out the ancient into play.  There really just aren't any other creatures for the job.  Adding in queer dryads instead of the bears doesn't quite work because the mana just isn't built for it.

So then why ancient and not dryads to begin with?  Because ancient is bigger faster and this _is_ relevant in a creature metagame.  I expected to play against a lot of o.stompy, fish, sui, reg.stompy and i knew the best way to deal with them was to have more fat than they could deal with.  Quite frankly, a turn 2 or 3 ancient just ruins all of them.  They can't run past it by throwing more rootwallas down for fear of the thing getting out of control.  I did face off against o.stompy, fish and sui at the tourney and (as expected) they simply cannot deal with an ancient once it hits; a dryad on the otherhand can be just a speed bump.

Is gush bad for mana development?  No not at all.  Ideally by the time you are gushing (turn 3 or so) you should have bear/bird/moxen in play.  Gush is fantastic!  you'll just have to take my word for it

Keep in mind, i do well with bad decks though   8)  so perhaps not everyone can expect PTW-like results

[Mon, Goblin Chief]

I love the looks of this deck. It feels a little like when I looked at the first GAT decklist. The deck looks incredibly strange and incredibly fun.

I'd be a little concerned by the lack of countermagic (only the 4 FoWs, if I didn't miscount), though. And seeing that there are a lot of sinks for Mana Drain-mana, I'd probably try adding those. Had you tried them already and dismissed? If yes, could you please elaborate why they didn't do well?

[Phantom Tape Worm]

Using manadrain would result in a total deck overhaul and dojo drift this thing into hulk.  The deck is designed to be very proactive and aggressive with a focus on fat creatures to block/attack with.  I know, blocking in type 1?!?!

Manadrain would likely replace werebear as that is the card it is most analogous to, however look at the different role they perform in the aggro matchups like o.stompy, 9 land stompy and sui.  Werebear effectively counters all of o.stompy's creatures with the exception of mongrel while still providing acceleration and green mana.  Believe it or not manadrain is actually not as good as werebear in certain matchups.  I know, this all sounds like heresy, but it really is the case.

In most cases lack of counter magic is only a concern in the face of hardcore combo.  Short of dragon, i did not expect to see any pure combo, and since dragon is so hated against right now, who would have the balls to play it anyway?  If you have bazaars right now, you're playing o.stompy, not dragon.  Also, since dragon is stopped better by cards that are _not_ counterspells, i didn't feel that any more countermagic was needed.

Is this a metagame deck?  well yeah.  I wouldn't bring any deck to a tournament that wasn't appropriately metagamed.




For the record my tourney report with Fro:
Dreamwizards in Rockville, MD. 32 people.  5 proxy.  1st place: mishra's workshop.

Round 1: Fro vs B/u/w aggro-control
2-0

Round 2: Fro vs Scepter Keeper
0-2

Round 3: Fro vs Sui Black w/red
2-1

Round 4: Fro vs Rector Tendrils
2-1

Round 5: Fro vs O.Stompy
2-0

Top 8
Round 6: Fro vs Gay Fish
2-0

Round 7: Fro vs Scepter Keeper
2-1

Round 8: Fro vs Dragon
we split prize and draw

[waSP]

I have to thank Milton for inspiring me to post today (see Eastman's thread).  PTW played a version of this deck against me about a month and a half ago (while TMD was down).  I was impressed by its ability to ramp up quickly, but I dismissed it in the way that he dismissed it (its weaker than Hulk).

With the reopening of the Mana Drain, he published his tech.  I fired up the list on apprentice and went n00b-hunting on #apprentice.  I won 8 straight games without coming close to losing.  I lost the next 3 .  I've found this deck to be very interesting.

On to some content.  The birds I've found to be wonderful, but only when I see them early.  If this is truly an early game deck, I'm having difficulty understanding why it only has 4 REAL threats (werebears don't count because they won't often hit your opponent for the necessary 16-20 points.  My problem has been drawing into the conditional cards (birds and werebears) late.  I don't care about the birds at all, but I want to be able to attack with the werebears immediately, since I'm usually on some sort of clock.  This is an impression I got playing the deck and can be interpreted by those that care.

In trying to interpret my impression, I thought of the deck I've been doing the most testing of recently, Slavery.  What is my third favorite redundant card to draw?  Thirst for Knowledge.  I know its more of a midgame card, but might it have a place in here?  It draws 3 all the time, and you usually have 3 mana on turn 2 (while not always having 4 mana to drop an Ancient).

Also, might 1 Tog be useful as a mid-game finisher?

Edit:  Mana Drain is terrible in decks that plan on winning early (sans Tog).  I've tried it in most concepts I attempt to better control the game, but it always serves as a speed bump for me, and not my opponent.  It doesn't belong here, as the deck is now.  If it switches to something more controlling, I'd love to see it run.

[Phantom Tape Worm]

If this is truly an early game deck, I'm having difficulty understanding why it only has 4 REAL threats

Truth be told, it doesn't really have many "real spells" at all.  There are 16 library manipulation/tutor/draw spells in the deck, that's a little more than 25% of the deck.  Once you start subtracting mana (about 50% of the deck if you include the birds and the bears), you are left with only 25% of the deck for cards that actually do something menacing to your opponent and his board position.

The ability to run through your library quickly is very important for this deck (for the sake of threshold as well growing a big fro) .  I don't really think it needs to add any more creatures in order to up the threat density simply because the deck itself is so empty to begin with.  If I were going to add more critters though, it would be in the utility slots (ie. damping matrix, worb and naturalize) but i just don't feel that is necessary at this point.  Incidently, the creature that i would first consider is nimble mongoose (can't be the target is amazing vs control if you can sneak some counters onto him), not tog which lacks syergy with the bears.

Thirst for knowledge is an interesting thought, but with only 10 artifacts in the deck it is more likely to be a glorified catalog than a card advantage engine.  I'll give it a try but right now the 4 merchant scroll tech is working just fine.  With misdirection at a low in the format, Fro can afford to have "cast ancestral every game" as part of the plan (just like keeper used to back in the day).

The 4 merchant scrolls is actually one of my favorite aspects of the deck.  The deck is more aggro than control, but it plays like keeper (wierd, i know).  In my initial playtesting sessions back in june I'd spend more time with my deck in my hand thumbing through my library than I did with it on the table.  Gronx, who was testing out the shinning at the time, would be doing the same thing.  "only in type 1 "  he'd say.



[slightly off topic] Regarding eastman's thread, i just don't see it at all.  Many people seem to think the metagame is in a depression right now, but i see the metagame as being alive and well.  The death of long.dec left the metagame open for aggro utility, eg. o.stompy.  Which can prey on the decks that had risen to power in the metagame to combat long, eg. fish.  Fro preys on other aggro decks and decks that have little creature removal.  It's a very natural logical evolutionary cycle really.[/slightly off topic]

[Milton]

My innitial thoughts are this (no playtesting, no experience with this deck at all...)

1) There are very few threats.  I would think that an early Ancient is crucial, but with only four it seems that much of the game would be spend searching for an Ancient, then setting up casting one.  Some of waSPs comments reflect this.  I wonder if Intuition is a good card in this deck.  A first turn Intuition shouldn't be that hard to pull off considering the mana base.  Intuition for Ancient.  Cast a second turn Ancient.  Would this card be a good idea?

2) Fastbond might be a good play in this deck.  It would speed up the casting of Ancient, would be a great late game play with Gush, works well with Winter Orb...

3) Future Sight and MindTwist both seem very out of place in this deck.  I wonder if Sylvan Library would be a better card?  It would seem that Sylvan would be better than Future Sight if your deck is about playing an early threat.  Sylvan would help set this up earlier.

4) One Winter Orb seems very random, but effective.  I would be curious to know the rational behind this card.

5) Love the Recoil.  Phenomonal card.

Those are my thoughts.  I'll try to make the deck up and playtest it a little bit.

[Razor]

[slightly off topic] Regarding eastman's thread, i just don't see it at all. Many people seem to think the metagame is in a depression right now, but i see the metagame as being alive and well. The death of long.dec left the metagame open for aggro utility, eg. o.stompy. Which can prey on the decks that had risen to power in the metagame to combat long, eg. fish. Fro preys on other aggro decks and decks that have little creature removal. It's a very natural logical evolutionary cycle really.[/slightly off topic]

This is yet more proof that Type 1 is evolving faster than ever right now.  I mean, Oshawa Stompy is a good example.  You've built a great hate deck in reaction to it in less than 4 weeks after I built the *initial* version.  Wow.

Whomever thinks the metagame is 'depresed' or 'stagnant' needs to play in more tournies!

[MuzzonoAmi]

I also find it amazing that people are building hate decks to fight hate decks. That's something innovative, but I'm not quite sure if that's 'evolution'

[Phantom Tape Worm]

I also find it amazing that people are building hate decks to fight hate decks. That's something innovative, but I'm not quite sure if that's 'evolution'

Of course it is!  If we begin with a metagame of combo vs combo-hate, then remove combo from the metagame, what is left?  obv combo-hate.  So combo-hate rises to power.  Naturally, the answer to combo-hate is combo-hate-hate.  Now, assuming people begin to catch on and start playing combo-hate-hate such that the metagame is now predominately these decks, the solution is to go one step further than everyone else and play combo-hate-hate-hate.  And finally once that catches on, decks are so far removed from combo-hate that the solution is of course to go full circle and play combo again.  And thus the evolutionary cycle continues.  

now, plug in long and dragon as the combo.
plug in metagamed fish, metagamed keeper, etc as combo-hate.
plug in new good decks like o.stompy as the combo-hate-hate
plug in fro as combo-hate-hate-hate
and now you're inside my head

Actually, you could probably plug in a few more layers into this process before it loops out, ie. combo-hate-hate-hate-hate and combo-hate-hate-hate-hate-hate.  Who knows what the future holds, the seismic assult/land tax deck may be the next big thing once everyone starts playing fro  

There are very few threats. I would think that an early Ancient is crucial, but with only four it seems that much of the game would be spend searching for an Ancient, then setting up casting one.

Yes, it sure seems that way on paper.  But this is also like saying that keeper has too few counters; mana drain and FoW are analagous to Bears and Babycakeseses.  Remember, like keeper, the deck is pretty hollow, you should be able to find a threat fast enough.  But, if you don't open with a quick threat, you can usually go the card advantage route as well until you are in a position to drop one.  There are also alternative plans in mindtwist and futre sight.  Dropping either of these is usually just as bad as dropping an ancient for your opponent.

Intuition for Ancient. Cast a second turn Ancient. Would this card be a good idea?

Intuition is a good idea, with ak it has proven itself as a very solid engine.  There are however 2 fundamental problems with ak right now.  1) everyone is doing it.
I expect to play against blue based control.  I don't want to lose my drawing engine against those decks.  
2) intuition ak is a little clunky for a deck not running manadrain.  As any hulk player can tell you, draining into intuition is better than steak and sex.  There's actually a big speed issue for your card draw as well.  Intuition ak is about a turn slower than merchant scroll ancestral.

Fastbond might be a good play in this deck. It would speed up the casting of Ancient, would be a great late game play with Gush, works well with Winter Orb...

Until crucible of worlds (yes, the second you make the card in the deck w/babycakes!  Together!) hits the print runs, i think fastbond just doesn't do enough.  My eventual plan is to attempt plugging in the crucible/fastbond/zorb/stroke of genius combo to this deck.  I know it all sounds sooo bad, but i just can't help myself  

One Winter Orb seems very random, but effective. I would be curious to know the rational behind this card.

It was a completely metagame dependant slot that could just as easily have been another naturalize.  However, because i knew fish was going to be a presence at this particular tourney, i opted to maindeck one.  Again, so much of this deck is hollow, tutoring for and finding the lone orb is not as difficult as you might think.

Love the Recoil. Phenomonal card.

OMG!  it SO is!  I first saw it used by thorme in his mask deck, and it is just soooo good with merchant scroll that i'm getting wet just thinking about it.  Capsize was suggested to me as an alternative but i'm so in love with recoil i don't even want to test anything else in that slot.

[Milton]

Intuition is a good idea, with ak it has proven itself as a very solid engine. There are however 2 fundamental problems with ak right now. 1) everyone is doing it.
I expect to play against blue based control. I don't want to lose my drawing engine against those decks.
2) intuition ak is a little clunky for a deck not running manadrain. As any hulk player can tell you, draining into intuition is better than steak and sex. There's actually a big speed issue for your card draw as well. Intuition ak is about a turn slower than merchant scroll ancestral.

I wasn't suggesting Intuition with AK.  I was suggestiong Intuition on it's own to fetch three Ancients.  Two go to the grave, but one gets cast right away.  It just up's your threat count, kinda like Spoils in Mask decks.

[Phantom Tape Worm]

I wasn't suggesting Intuition with AK.  I was suggestiong Intuition on it's own to fetch three Ancients.  Two go to the grave, but one gets cast right away.  It just up's your threat count, kinda like Spoils in Mask decks.

But that would be a fair use for intuition...eww.  No no no, this is type 1, we don't play cards as they were intended    .  Intuition needs so much more in order for it to be type 1 quality; it needs ak, deep analysis, and other mini-combos that WotC had never intended.  Using it as it was intended is not only sub-optimal (3cc tutor that rapes your deck of its redundancy, bleh), but goes against the very spirit of type 1.

Again, i really don't feel as if the low threat count is a problem at all.  There are basically the same amount of threats in fro as there are in gat.