Forbidian - which build is best and is it tier 1?

[Forbiddian]

oh yeah, forgot about the whole board <smacks some newbie upside the head for no reason>     

I think that the blood moon hurts you too. You are left with islands and colorless sources. It just hurts you a lot less than it hurts keeper. (even more than b2b unless he has mox ruby+sappire and dismantling blow in hand).

Forbiddian is a great deck as it is, what is the real point in letting it ruin its own mana base was my point. Will it lose to keeper game 1? yes, or bad odds for winning becuase of no B2B main. Will it lose to other forbiddian? yes, B2B will hurt it a lot, to which it has no defense other than siding in moons just to untap (dead cards). Will OSE beat it....

The whole point of forbiddian (In my 5+ years of playing BBS, BSB, SB, BS, or whatever you want to call it or abbreviate it as) is to play snakes as a way to draw more than your opponent, and from then on, win every counterspell war over everything important. Every deck from keeper to sligh has trouble beating its draw after a single phid hits, despite keeper having everything from sylvan to ancestral to help itself outdraw me.

I like pro/con tables:

Forbiddian's advantages: Huge Stupid Blue Card Draw or HSUCD for short. ancestral, LoA, Fact, ophid, Merchant scroll for stuff, mana draining into a huge stroke, I run geyser in mine (dunno why though), etc.

Card advantage vs decks that it needs help against (speedy stuff): these come in beautiful little packages I like to call Powder Keg. heheheheh cadets and jackal pups don't look so hot together do they? heheheh

Mono Colored: hahhahahhaha you MD pops, they do you no good ahahhahah; B2B, trade forces, opponent scoops. That is so fun!!! B2B of a fast dual mox or lotus... opponent never gets to use his precious duals.

Simple: Counterspell, island, draw, go

Yawn, counter, draw, LoA, go

Just draw big, counter anything dangerous. The deck is consistant too, you always have a counter if you use them with care, you can search for a lot of shit. (does anyone else run mystical tutors?).

Cons: Fast decks are hard to beat (they force stuff through since they play 2-3 spells per turn)

Too slow: there is a perfect time in every single game vs keeper to drop morphling. wait too long, and they could get the momentum back with a massive stroke after they drain a force of will and you let them take the cards, after mana leaks become crap, yawgmoth's will can kill you etc. If you are too early, they might be able to kill it/leaves you too open to them massively stroking or something lethal to you.

My lists are lame to read I know.  

I don't think that U/Rphiddian is Forbiddian in any sense. Forbiddian abuses a few cards: Powder Keg (AWOL) and B2B (fell in a bottomless pit in the mines of moria and was reincarnated as Keeper-Kill the Red). Of course, draws, broken counterspells, and fast mana, but those aren't my point  ignore those....

URphiddian loses many of those key cards and ideas that forbiddian thrives off. It has completely different ideals, and has gone from pure control to aggro-control.

P9 forever.

Why did I even make this post? It has no real point other than to classify Forbiddian and URphiddian as two different decks (restating the obvious).

Oh well, it promotes mono-uphiddian....

EDIT: I love this avatar. It reminds me of being a little 6 year old scrub clutching to a fistful of P9 and beating down on 20 year olds. I think it looks a little like a Phid....

[BigChuck]

Well half of the first part of your arguement is flawed. The blood moons make your non basic lands mountains, therefore not really hurting you all that much. Consider that they can play basically nothing, and you can still go ahead doing whatever you want, its a great card.

[pernicious dude]

@Forbiddian: UrPhidian has answers for black,
without giving up much of anything.

@Phoenix: Do you miss the blue blasts against Sligh?
I'm interested in the MD Wish and SB 1-ofs,
but I sure do like my Hydroblasts.

[spin13]

The thing you have to look at with this deck when siding against Sligh is what Hydro or BEB would actually do.  Considering the high density of removal for all of their critters, and the fact that each removal spell is neither REB-able and is card advantage means that blue blasts are primarily going to be counterspells and not removal.  If you look at the rest of the deck, you have card drawing and counters.  Are you going to remove card drawing so that you have even more counters?  So you essentially trade Mana Leaks for blue blasts.  With this you have 2 problems.  One, you are using up multiple sideboard slots to cheapen your counters my 1 colorless mana, and two, you lose the ability to counter Cursed Scroll with X number of counters.

The only thing that would actually change the deck in a significant way against Sligh would be to add life-gain or Chill, but there are no good life gaining cards for this deck. Zuran Orb would require multiple slots, would be dead in multiples, and it can't be forgotten that it is pure card disadvantage to begin with, and there is no Demonic Tutor in this deck.  Unless you want to run Chill, there doesn't seem to be much point in siding against Sligh.

As for adding red to the deck and the decks matchups with Keeper and OSE and mono-U game 1.... You can make the arguement that U/r Ophidian has a weaker game one for two reasons.  One, it has no permanent source of non-basic hate maindeck.  Two, it has nonbasics itself.  Its removal, while cycle-able is still weaker than 4 Kegs (which can kill opposing Ophids and Morphlings).  You will fall prey to opposing Wastelands, Back to Basics, and Ophidians more often than mono-U forbiddian will.  While this is technically a drawback on paper, the actual results will probably only drop a little bit.  In no way does this make game 1 an auto-loss.

What it does add, as people have previously mentioned, is sideboard.  Against mono-U, you have 4 Red Elemental Blasts, which mean all your counters are now fully functiona and non-conditional (unless they, for some reason, side in Disks), you have extra removal for Ophids and B2B (should they be silly enough to leave it in, as it is still fairly ineffective with 14 unaffected sources).  Against Keeper you have Blood Moon.  Blood Moon is far superior to shutting down Keeper than B2B is.  While B2B's strength may be that its blue, that is also a weakness.  Not only does Keeper still have a functional chance of resolving an Aura Fracture or D.Blow after B2B hits, but they have REBs to remove it.  Blood Moon essentially turns Keeper into a deck of X REB, 1 Sapphire, 1 Pearl, 1 Jet.  I'll take my chances against that.  In addition, you have your own REBs to make sure the early game goes your way.  Essentially, OSE is the same.  Take the number of games won by Forbiddian with B2B and forget all the times Keeper or OSE REB'ed or somehow killed it, and thats the power of Red.

In addition, you gain power against Suicide.  While your maindeck has already traded power against control for kill ass Sligh and other critter deck removal (including Suicide, as F/I works a lot better against Hyppies and early Negators than Keg does).  Mono-U doesn't have anything to compare to 4 Flametongues and 4 Fire/Ices in the battle against Suicide.  Flametongues essentially becomes an Abyss in a deck with so many counters, as it removes any creature on the board (barring a Shade with Rituals in hand) and stays on the board to again remove any creature they attack with.  It is a beating against Negators and Reavers alike, and you still have F/I to remove early Hyppies and unprotected Shades.  If you've ever seen the power of Abyss against Suicide, imagine running 4 copies that aren't dead in multiples.  Then add to the fact that they only have Sinkholes to deal with your mana if you play your red sources only when you need them, and you really shouldn't have a problem getting to 4 mana to clear the board, then 4 mana again by the time they get another significant threat.

Overall, I'd say you improve the Sligh, random aggro matchup maindeck and slightly increase Suicide and decrease its game 1 capabilities against control and Stompy.  In turn, you need no sideboard for Sligh and get huge improvements in all the decreased matchups (Flametongue still isn't Powder Keg against Stompy, but it can still pose a threat).  Unless you see tons of control and feel the need to play a deck that allows for 'pre-sideboarding'/metagaming, or see tons of decks already using this strategy, there is no real disadvantage to playing Red and a number of sideboard options that are interesting to say the least.

Besides, who plays mono-colored decks in Type 1?
 -Eric

[the phoenix]

lol, I couldn't have said it better myself, Spin.

On a side not, I'm thinking about swaping the 4 Blood Moons in the board for 4 Pyroblasts, in the right metagame. If you see lots of (mono-U and/or U/r) forbiddian, Blood Moons aren't too helpful.\n\n

[BigChuck]

Pheonix:
Personally, I think you would want at least some blood moons in the board. Even if there isn't MUCH, there is probably still some, and even with 2, it would still be gamebreaking. 6 blasts is also probably enough also, and it may prove to be overkill with testing.

[Forbiddian]

Quote (BigChuck @ Aug. 15 2002,08:40)Well half of the first part of your arguement is flawed. The blood moons make your non basic lands mountains, therefore not really hurting you all that much. Consider that they can play basically nothing, and you can still go ahead doing whatever you want, its a great card.

hmmmm I remember saying that it turns your mana into blue and colorless (from the standpoint of blue since there are few red spells in the deck).

This definately makes morphlings a lot harder to protect.

You lose the B2B first game (the moons have to go board)

You SB looks outstanding, but opening yourself up to blue mana source attacks could weaken your deck A LOT. Wastelands and strip mines and sinkholes hurt more, PoP, other B2B, and even dwarven miner's can slice and dice you up.

it's nice to be able to B2B against keeper and have him scoop as we trade forces.

Those were my points....

Oh well.... What is the new decklist for Forbiddian (why is it called forbiddian if forbid is no longer in forbiddian?)?

Thx in advance (I think mine is out of date. I don't have anything from OB, my newest card is fact or fiction). Everyone is talking about cunning wish    

[the phoenix]

BigChuck -  Euh, yeah, you're absolutely right. Like Spin said about BEB, I'd be trading Mana Leaks for Pyroblasts. Well, through my mistake, at least we've established that boarding 8 blasts *isn't* a strong choice. Perhaps 6 blasts, since there are 6 cards (4 Fire/Ice 2 Kegs) that can be removed.

Forbiddian - One of the nice things about Blood Moon compared to B2B is its strengh against keeper. Blood Moon leaves them with only Moxes, and can't be REBed away with all the red mana that the keeper player is left with. On the flip side, B2B is far from game winning against keeper. By leaving all of his mana untaped until it's time to force through one particular spell like Morph or Dismantling Blow, the keeper player can come back from B2B much more easily then from Blood Moon.

My newest decklist is posted on the top of page two in this thread, and it's called (...well, at least I call it) urphidian. "ur" because the deck is a U/r coloured deck. Spiffy, no?

[BigChuck]

Well, I've been playing this deck IRL and on apprentice, and I've found that the wish is very good. I said before how I didn't think that playing the stroke in the board was good, but between the stroke, and the bolt, it has made the wish worth it. I would REALLY like to find something else to put in there that could be gamebreaking. I haven't found the capsize particularly useful either(though I wouldn't take it out). Also, in the testing, I've found that a lot of times, I've wanted to be able to wish for a counterspell, so, I would consider putting one there.

[Smmenen]

Right before the TOC5, Acolytec and I were both discussing our mono blue builds and performing last week changes before submitting our decklists.  At that time, I proposed a radical change at the time -- taking out 8 islands and adding four volcs and four reefs.  Then, simply add four fire/ice as creature control -- which are never dead, and the preliminary SB would be as follows:
B: 3 Pyroclasm
SB: 1 Morphling
SB: 4 Blood Moon
SB: 3 Red Elemental Blast
SB: 4 Annul

Most of this can be recounted at: http://forums.delphiforums.com/TypeOne/messages?msg=21.1

Ultimately, we both said we would play that.  But ultimately, neither of us did.  

I'll admit I didn't do much testing with that deck, but one of the things that turned me off to the deck immediately, and was soon noticed was the renewed vulnerability to Wastelands.  I hate being destroyed by wastelands.   That's one of the advantages of mono blue - not being ruined by Wastelands and Miners.  

I've gone quite extreme in some of my thought processes with mono blue, and so far they have proved successful.
One of my more questionable decisions has been to totally replace maindeck Wastelands with Back to Basics.  The obvious flaw in such a strategy is that Back to Basics is a spell and Wasteland is not.  However, it seems equally obvious to me, that if I cast it, unless I'm playing against a deck with abnormally unusual counter power like Grow, my B2B is going to resolve.  

I tried going back to a combination of Wastelands and Back to Basics and was most displeased.  The tentative conclusion is that, for me and my mono blue build, Back to Basics are Wastelands that can be pitched to Blue countermagic.  

I'm also convinced of the value of Capsize.  Capsize, as some would see, is never a dead card.  If my opponent plays with nonbasics and basic land, lock down the non basics with B2B and use the Capsize to "eot, bounce your land to your hand" so that they can't get more land into play and also keep them mana deprived while your ophidians seal the deal soon to be followed by Morphling.  

Capsize has helped against so many and numberous issues, it's hard to believe that I didn't use it.  Capsize gives mono blue a long term solution to Oath, and a resolved Choke and Mesa.  I also use Capsize to bounce opponents moxen which I subsequently counter.  But the most annoying thing to bounce is land, also becuase, their lack of mana avalability means their hand will build up -- this means that they have alot of cards in hand.  Doing EOT, bounce a land will force them to begin discarding good cards.  This is particularly demoralizing and fun.  

Also, I am sure beyond a reasonable doubt (about 95% sure) that at least 4 moxen are necessary.  They make the deck better.  Faster Phids, Faster Mana Leaks, Faster B2B, faster Kegs (good against grow and mask), and faster Impulses.  But if you feel, consistantly time and agian, that you run too many moxen, start cutting until your just at that place where you want some more but not enough to actually add another.

Impulse is also very, very necessary and very good.  In a deck as redundant as mono blue, the deck can be devided into approximately one/third mana, one/third counters, and one/third B2B, Kegs, Creatures and Draw.  

Impulse gives you what ever you want.  I however, and very much NOT a fan of getting two impulses in the opening hand, so I have just recently moved to three impulses and it works like a charm.  

A common mistake made about mono blue is that it can't handle Stompy and certain kinds of aggro well.  That generalization depends, in individual cases, entirely on the Sideboard used.  I have been using a SB that gives me phenomenal win rates against Stompy -- I'm only gonna say it once, but control magic is da bomb.  

Stephen Menendian

[the phoenix]

Yeah, Wastelands can be a pain but, considering that before this deck I played keeper, it's really not that bad.

Capsize is indeed awsome, for the reasons you described. Are you suggesting that I run Impulse, or are you just explaining how good it is in your mono-U deck?

Oh hell yeah, urphiddian/forbiddian beats all kinds of aggro. And your Control Magic is my FtK...it's tough to say which is better; I'd probably go with FtK since the average target for control magic is smaller then a 4/2.

[FeverDog]

Considering Blood Moon wrecks control just as bad as B2B, and that Red also lets you run Fire/Ice instead of Kegs, i dont think anyone can argue for MonoU over Ur. I suppose if you face an unhealthy amount of non-basic hate you might consider going one color, but i cant fathom it.\n\n

[Big Blue]

Often 1 Wasteland can make all the difference. Most decks play 3-4 of them (not to mention what you refer to as "non-basic hate", i.e. B2B, Dwarven Miner, Blood Moon, PoP, etc.).

mono-U is more consistent, that's for sure - the question is (as stated before by others): does adding Red result in enough brokenness to compensate this loss of consitency?

With Ub the answer is probably yes (cf. OSE), with Red the answer is probably no - although Urphidian is still a very good deck - just not better than Uphidian, IMHO

Kegs have the added bonus of killing Cursed Scrolls,WOrbs etc. - and playinga "Wrath of Moxen" against Keeper is also often quite good (if you play B2B in the deck, which you should); sometimes you might even kill an opposing Ophidian/Disk/Morphling, although this happens admittedly rarely. So I don't see F&I superior to Keg. It is a blue instant, that's a relevant advantage (though in mono-U you have enough blue spells to allow for 6-8 FoW/Mis-D without problems). But otherwise Keg is just better due to its flexibility.

[the phoenix]

Keg and Fire/Ice are both good in different ways...I prefer having 4 Fire/Ice as my main creature control card and 2 Kegs as a "general purpose" card.

The thing with Keg is that a) it's slow and b) it's not very effective against decks like sui (that run such a diverse mana curve). I can answer a first turn Hippie with Fire/Ice and be done with it, while with Keg I'll have taken 6 damage and discarded 3 cards before I kill the Hippie; that's a big difference. It's also important to be able to deal with Shade quickly, since the little guy can deal you a huge amount of damage quickly. EoT Fire/Ice usually solves that problem. And when a first turn Negator is met with a first turn Fire/Ice...well, you get the picture. On the flip side, Powder Keg is much better against stompy, since all of its creatures have a 1CC.

Like Keg and Fire/Ice, mono-U forbiddian and urphiddian are also both good in different ways. Red gives urphidian FtK, but mono-U has PsiBlast and Control Magic. I say FtK is better, but it's close. Blood Moon is better then BtB, but BtB usually still gets the job done. REB is just better then BEB. Mono-U is certainly more consistent then urphidian, and 1 Wasteland can certainly make all the difference, like Big Blue said. While I'm not as overwhelmingly in favour of U/r over mono-U as Feverdog is, I feel that the advatages outweigh the dissadvantages enough to make urphiddian the better deck.

[Elgon]

In my area suicide black is very popular, and i find your version of Urphidian to be a great choice right now. However, one question comes to my mind, my apologies if this too obvious or has been discussed before:

Why not run 4*Brainstorm? Against Hymn it either hides my real weapons or finds that Misdirection. After Mana Drain it gives me more options to play.

With Moxen Impulse is probably better, but without them i am always glad to have one Brainstorm in my starting hand.

- Elgon -

[the phoenix]

First, I don't run Brainstorm because Impulse is better. For one extra mana, Impulse lets you dig one card deeper and, most importantly, lets you put some cards that you'd rather not draw on the bottom of your library. Impulse improves the quality of your cards, while Brainstorm just puts the bad cards on top of your library for you to draw into later on.

So, why no Impulse? Well, one reason is that the deck is very monotonous. Mono-U needs Impulse more because, while also monotonous, it has very few ways of dealing with creatures (Keg) and often needs to find one quickly. Impulse helps in that case. But urphidian runs 9 anti-creatures cards main (4 Fire/Ice, 2 Merchant Scroll to fetch Fire/Ice, 1 Cunning Wish to fetch PBolt, and 2 Keg, none of which, incidentally, are dead against control ), which means that search cards like Impulse to find them are less important.

Another reason that Impulse isn't in the deck is because there's no room. If I had a few slots that I didn't know what to do with then I would definitely consider Impulse; it's a good card to fill in those last few slots. But there are no free slots in this deck.

[Big Blue]

The Brainstorm vs. Impulse discussion has quite some history. What it boils down to is that you compare apples with oranges. The main purpose of Brainstorm is to be able to hide the GOOD cards (not the bad ones) on top of your library vs. cards like Duress, Hymn, Mindtwist, Balance or Wheel of Fortune.

In Moxless decks 1-2 ON TOP OF 4 IMPULSE can be good, if you face a lot of Sui. Brainstorm has also nice interaction with Thawing Glaciers, a card which is sometimes played in powerless Uphidian.

In powered deck there is simply no room - to many cards compete for those last few slots, and Brainstorm usually loses this competition.

[Elgon]

On a related note, what do you think are the best and the worst match-ups for Urphidian?

I have limited possibilities for serious playtesting, so i was wondering if it has any vulnerabilities i have missed.

- Elgon -

[Abra_Volta]

I am interested in making a Phid deck. It seems the debate is over which is the stronger of the 2 current genres: Mono-U or Urphidian. I can see the basic points of each.

Has anyone tried making an UBeRphidian deck? Something like:

4 Ophidian
2 Morphling

4 Fire/Ice
3 Powder Keg
2 Diabolic Edict

4 Force of Will
4 Mana Drain
2 Misdirection
4 Impulse
1 Capsize

1 Ancestral Recall
1 Time Walk
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Merchant Scroll


5 SoLoMoxen (dropping the Pearl and Emerald)
4 Volcanic Island
4 Underground Sea
1 Strip Mine
3 Wasteland
7 Islands

[spin13]

I've run a 4-color Phiddian deck before.  It really only ran White for Balance, but the mana was much better running 4 Volcs (the secondary color) and then City of Brass.

I really think you want Yawg Will over Vamp Tutor.  I'm also not sure you really want Edict in addition to Keg/Fire.  The point of not just playing OSE is that you have more redundancy in counters to make up for the lack of flexible removal.  While you lose power against some decks (suicide, etc), you gain against others (combo, etc).

The real question, besides whether Cities really hurt you that much more than Shivan Reefs, is whether you can justify cutting cards for Demonic and Will and Mind Twist. I'd say no, because then you are just running a weak, counter heavy OSE.  And yes, I've tried it, and its not very strong.

 -Eric

[verlorene]

Quote (Abra_Volta @ Sep. 12 2002,13:07)Has anyone tried making an UBeRphidian deck?

I ran URb for the past few months and I have noticed some weaknesses with my version as well as the UR one.

my URb was similar to pheonix's UR with a few exceptions:
-1 Cunning Wish     +1 Yawgmoth's Will
-1 Merchant Scroll  +1 Demonic Tutor
-1 Morphling           + 1 Mind Twist
                             + Mystical Tutor
-2 Fire/Ice             +2 Diabolic Edict
-4 Island               +4 Underground Sea
-4 Shivan Reef       +4 City of Brass

When I last played it I was considering taking out 1 Fire/Ice and 1 Mana Leak instead of 2 Fire/Ice.

Every time I drew an Edict I ask myself if this would be better as Fire/Ice (the cards they are replacing), in almost every instance the answer was no. Keep in mind I don't play in tournaments but I do play against competitive decks. In real life tournaments you might go up against multiple Sligh decks with many x/1 creatures, F/I would then be more useful.

The addition of black signifanctly hurts your mana base when facing nonbasic hate, Price of Progress, Blood moon and Back to Basics are big problems now.

Fire/Ice alone just dosen't seem to be enough against some decks. TNT and B/U Mask are 2 good examples, luckly neither of these decks are popular. With either of these deck you are screwed when threats eventually get past your counters.

Despite the loss of versitility, I have cut back to U/R and added 2 Mishra's Factory in place of 2 Islands. They help in presideboarded games vs TNT and Suicide (when blocking they can deal 5 points of damage when combined with Fire/Ice, can take out Juggernauts by themselves, and are pretty good blockers vs Negators) and against bad decks. After boarding Blood Moon is paticularly mean vs TNT.
EDIT: I realize Mishras are not a good idea if you do use Blood Moon but I think it's cheap so I don't use it.
EDIT 2: Fuck it, tournaments are for winning, do whatever it takes to win.

[GreatAngle21]

Just a question but against Gro how do you sb with Urphidian?

The Gro deck has mostly basics so the bloodmoon plan doesn't work at all.  

I went something like 4xFTK, 4xREB, 1xCapsize but I didn't know what to take out.  What would the good way to SB or takeout cards in this situation?

[thombligh]

Ive played Urphidian two weeks in a row now at our weekly Type 1 tournaments. The first week, I beat 2 fully powered keeper decks with the help of blood moon.  But I lost to mono-white Parfait, and a third keeper deck in the semi-finals.  The second week I changed the two main-deck powder kegs into Nevinyrral's Disks, and added 2 anarchy, 2 tormod's crypt, and 1 Jester's Cap to the sideboard.  I played the same Parfait deck and lost!!!! Any pointers on how to play the Urphidian vs. Parfait matchup?  

For reference, here was the difference between my deck and the deck Phoenix listed on the top of the second page...

Main Deck:
+2 Nevinyrral's Disk -2 Powder Keg

Sideboard:
-4 Flametongue Kavu (Aggro is dead in my meta-game)
-1 Blood Moon (Don't have 4)

+2 Anarchy
+2 Tormod's Crypt
+1 Jester's Cap

...and the matchups I faced in the first and second weeks.
(We play 4 rounds of swiss, then cut to top 4)
1st Week:                       2nd Week:
Win vs. Keeper                 Win vs. Ice-Blue Zoo  
Win vs. Keeper                 Win vs. Sui-Black(minus sinkholes)
Win vs. Sligh                    Win vs. TNT (w/o Survival)
Loss vs. Parfait                Loss vs. Parfait
Loss vs. Keeper                Loss vs. Parfait  

Btw - Parfait has won the past 2 tournaments here...Is there any hope? Should I play a different deck?  Or Is there anything you think would help. maindeck or in the sideboard?

[the phoenix]

verlorene - I've tried splashing black also, and I didn't like it either. When I make decks I always try to splash that 3rd or 4th or 5th colour that would make the deck perfect, and I always end up regreting it. KISS - keep it simple stupid

thombligh - Don't worry, the parfait match-up is definitely winable. It's certainly a good deck and somtimes runs you out of counters, but the trick is to know what to counter and what not to counter. And the best way to figure this out is to playtest the match-up. One or two copies of Scrying Glass in your SB (or even main deck if your meta is purely control) would help as well.

[GreatAngle21]

Personally I've never looked at the Parfait matchup as a problem.  Of course unless you completley gets hosed by your draws but with the amount of card draw with Urphidian that usually doesnt happen.

First off my decklist goes

4xOphidian
2xMorphling
1xMasticore (sooooo much sui in my environment)

4xFow
4xMana Drain
4xMana Leak
2xMis Direction

1xStroke of Genius
1xAncestral Recall
1xFact or Fiction
1xMerchant Scroll

1xTime Walk
1xShattering Pulse (this thing Rocks)

3xFire/Ice
3xPowder Keg

1xLibrary of Alexandria
7xSolo Moxen
2xWasteland
1xStripmine
4xVolcanic Island
4xShivan Reef
8xIsland

SB
4xREB
4xBlood Moon
2xBEB
2xTormod's Crypt
3xFlametongue Kavu

To me BEB is a must because there almost all sligh decks have Scald and Scald is very problamatic.

By the way I really don't think the parfait deck is that much of a problem.  You need to know the right spell to counter as Phoenix stated before.  In my experience I never counter the land tax (unless scroll rack is somehow on the board first), and I always counter the other 1/2 of the combo, scroll rack.  

The rest just comes from playtesting I guess and it just becomes common sense after you've played it enough.  The maindeck inclusion of Shattering Pulse also helps against this matchup.  Shattering Pulse helps almost all matchups.  

BBS has kegs, keeper has artifacts in some shape or form, sligh has scrolls, parfait has scroll rack and such, excellent against TnT, and zoo has scrolls.

The only bad matchup for this would be Sui and Gro.  First since people don't run legend black around my area, shattering pulse still works against kegs.  Against Gro it has no use but no one plays gro in my area.

I could add cunning wish instead of shattering pulse but after testing with this deck, i found out the deck is way too slow with the cunning wish.  And the sb must be dedicated to the cunning wish in some way and the sb for the non cunning wish version simple works better.

[thombligh]

Thank you Phoenix and GreatAngle21,  you were right about the matchup, of course.  I wanted to playtest against the parfait deck this person was playing, but I didn't know every card in his build.  But, as luck would have it, I found out his name on these message boards along with his posted decklist.  To my surprise, it was klOwn! Well to make a long story short, Ive been playtesting against this as much as possible, and hopefully by tomorrow, (weekly tournament time), I will have some good results!  

I can't divulge exactly what I've learned yet because who knows, klOwn might actually read my post but I promise to post something Sunday.  Who knows, maybe I can help others who don't have a chance to play against parfait that much.

[thombligh]

Well, I finally did it!  Beat the parfait deck I was talking about 2-0 this Saturday.  

Before I talk about the match, here are the changes between my deck and the deck listed by Phoenix at the top of the 2nd page.  

-3 Mana Drain     +3 Counterspell
-2 Powder Keg    +2 Capsize
-1 Cunning Wish  +1 Nevinyrral's Disk

Sideboard:
-4 Flametongue Kavu  +2 Anarchy
-1 Blood Moon           +2 Tormod's Crypt
-1 Stroke Of Genius    +2 Earthquake
-1 Capsize                +1 Jester's Cap
-1 Prophetic Bolt        +1 Timetwister
-1 Pyroblast              +1 Nevinyrral's Disk
      
Let me explain some of my choices...

-The Cunning Wish came out because frankly it was too slow, I found myself siding it out to put in the Capsize over and over.  

-I upped the Capsize count to 2 because it is one of my favorite spells in the deck and sometimes I was forced to sac it to a Force of Will or Misdirection in the early game, leaving me without it for the mid to late game.

-About the mana drains....Well really there is no excuse for taking them out, but I recently had to return borrowed mana drains, so I had to play without them.  If you have 4, its a very good idea to play four, trust me...One of the best ways to win against another control deck is to resolve a Mana Drain on a 3 or higher casting cost spell, and then use the mana to cast Morphling.  The normal problem is that you don't have enough mana to cast Morphling and to counter as well.  With help from the mana drain, you can now counter back as well as have some extra mana to pay for mana leak, and untargetability.

-About the missing Powder Kegs...Well first of all powder kegs are good choices for any unknown metagame, but for my metagame, (characterized by control decks), more powerful, and higher casting cost spells like Nevinyrral's Disk and Capsize would be better choices, because often the game goes very long.

-The sideboard is really a messed up choice on my part. First of all I played with 7 cards specifically for the Parfait matchup.  2 Anarchy, 2 Tormod's Crypt, 1 Nevinyrral's Disk,
1 Jester's Cap, and 1 Timetwister. This really shows my fear of the parfait matchup, but I think now that I have enough experience playing against parfait, I will lower the number of hate cards. This will allow me more room in my sideboard for things like Shattering Pulse...on a side note, for some reason everytime I play a TNT type deck, they always get that damn Mishra's Workshop out first turn.

Well onto the matchup, which I might add was kind of disappointing...

The first game, klOwn mulligans down to 4!  Unfortunately he has no land...guess he was to scared to go down to 3...
I get out an early Morphling, but I tap out to do it...(I had 2 Force of Wills in my hand, and he had no land out.)  He goes and plays Black Lotus, (my mistake, should of Force of Willed it), he sacs the Lotus for 3 white.  He casts Orim's Chant, I FoW it. He casts a second Orim's Chant and I let it go since I will have no counter left if I FoW it.  He cast swords on my Morphling.  Well really it doesn't matter because by the time he starts drawing land, one of my other Morphlings is beating him in the head.  He doesn't have enough mana to get around my Counterspells by casting more than one spell per turn, so he dies shortly afterwards.

The second game I mulligan down to 5 and keep a hand of Ancestral Recall, Mox Sapphire, Island, Counterspell, and Ophidian. The pivotal point in the game comes when at the end of his turn, I use a disk to get rid of his scroll rack and land tax, (he actually got to use the land tax/scroll rack one time.).  On my turn I cast timetwister, (negating the extra cards he drew), he casts orim's chant in response, and I tap out to counter it.  We draw our new hand and mine is pretty busted, (4 counterspell type cards), while he draws nothing worthwhile, (lots of land).  I end up getting morphling out.  He keeps casting humility, but I keep returning it to his hand at the end of his turn with capsize/buyback, saving my counter for more important spells.  In the end he tried a last ditch effort to get off a replenish, but It gets countered and I win.  

The most dissapointing part was that he had to mulligan down to 4 first game, this makes this game almost a useless learning experience.  

What I learned about parfait through playtesting:

What to counter:
-Scroll Rack
-Sacred Mesa
-Orim's Chant (If it leaves you able to counter again and they have enough mana to play another spell that you think could hurt you really bad)
-Replenish (If sacred mesa is in the graveyard or there is another enchantment in there that you have no way to get rid of and would hurt you very much i.e. Humility)
-Stp, Balance, Wrath (If you have Morphling out.)

What not to counter:
-Land Tax (unless your opponent is mana screwed)
-Humility (Capsize and Disk will take care of this)
-Blood Moon (unless all you have is non-basic land out)
-Aura of Silence (unless you have an active disk that you dont want to blow quite yet, often times you will waste a capsize to get rid of this, and then put disk out.)
-Zuran Orb (just prolongs the inevitable, unless you are about to run out of cards and are beating them down with morphling, or if they have land tax/scroll rack but cant use them because they have more or the same amount of land as you)
-Story Circle (again you can get rid of this with capsize or disk, doesn't stop you from drawing cards with ophidians)
-Stp, Wrath of God (if you stop them from killing your ophidians, but leave yourself with no counter, you are walking right into there trap.)
-Balance (If they dont have Zuran Orb out, or if all you have out is an Ophidian)

Really parfait forces you to be carefull with what you counter, even if you are playing a lot of counterspells, you have to force yourself to rethink the way you use them.  By not countering a lot of early enchantments sometimes argivian finds and replenish sit out as dead cards in your opponents hand.  Try to get a Morphling out, and protect it with everything you have.  If you are sucessful, they will be dead shortly after.  If not, there's always the next Morphling...
Capsize is your best friend!!  Remember that you have it, it makes not countering certain spells easier to stomach!

Well, hope this helps, I really didn't keep enough notes during our last tournament to write a complete tournament report.  But this was our biggest Type 1 turn out in months, 20 people showed up.  I ended up tied for 3rd with a mono-blue ophidian deck.  My matchups looked like this:
Win vs. a very Bad Enduring Renewal deck
Win vs. an opponent who didnt show up for his match in time
Loss vs. Keeper (not exactly sure as all I saw was Blue and Black) played by Leviat.
Win vs. Parfait played by klOwn
-----Cut to Top 8---------------
Win vs. Chrono-Stasis
Loss vs. Mono-Blue Forbiddian

One final note, my friends sometimes tell me that I "belabor the obvious".  What this means is that a lot of the stuff I wrote is just common sense.  But in order to steer people into the right direction sometimes it takes a lot of common sense.  

Please feel free to reply and comment.

[Magimaster]

thombligh : That match report of your urphidian deck against the Parfait deck was a really good read  too bad the games were a little skewed.

Basically, Capsize is your MVP. Parfait dies to Capsize. It's only hope is to Seal or Aura the Enchantment you targeted with the Capsize to stop the buyback.

Other than that, Parfait's massive amounts of recursion (Finds, Replenish) and bomb cards, as well as other annoyances (Chant) makes it a tough match sans-Capsize, as you can't possibly hope to counter everything they can bust out at you.

[Razor]

thombligh: "I can't divulge exactly what I've learned yet because who knows, klOwn might actually read my post but I promise to post something Sunday."  Sure....test his decklist to death but don't post your own.  tsk tsk  

Well done in beating The Hype.

You must have read my "cards to fear" post in the Parfait thread where you scooped KlOwn's decklist.  Capsize is indeed MVP in this matchup.  Both Parfait and Enchantress have abused Control decks' general lack of enchantment control for at least a year now unchecked in most metas.  Disks are an old-school way for blue-based decks to handle permanent threats.  I wondered how long Kegs would take their place for.

[thombligh]

Well since you put it that way, here is my current version of Urphidian...

 klOwn, CrazyCarl, and Leviat here u go...

Urphidian November 2002 by thombligh

Counterspells: (14)
4 Force of Will
4 Mana Leak
3 Counterspell
2 Misdirection
1 Mana Drain

Search/Drawing: (9)
4 Ophidian
2 Merchant Scroll
1 Fact or Fiction
1 Time Walk
1 Ancestral Recall

Removal: (7)
4 Fire/Ice
2 Capsize
1 Nevinyrral's Disk

Win Condition: (3)
3 Morphling

Mana Sources: (27)
7 SoLoMoxen
8 Islands
4 Volcanic Islands
3 Shivan Reef
3 Wasteland
1 Strip Mine
1 Library of Alexandria

Sideboard:
4 Pyroblast
3 Blood Moon
2 Earthquake
2 Tormod's Crypt
1 Anarchy
1 Nevinyrall's Disk
1 Timetwister
1 Shattering Pulse

Since my version of Urphidian is only off by a couple cards from most other standard versions, I am not going to go into detail like klOwn did about his version of Parfait, (The Great White Hype).  The only thing I will say is that the counterspells should be mana drains, and I will be getting them soon!