After the storm.... CDM part II

[psyduck]

When i first posted CDM, the original idea was to forsake the power of Survivial of the Fittest or any type of engine and rip wins based on symmetric card drawing, mana acceleration up the wazoo, and a combination of pump and creatures (8 negators)

The first version was never put up to serious practice and was posted as an inquiry into the idea of a new form of aggro that was engineless but could theoretically dish out more than sligh in the first few turns. Unfortunately, i failed to note that the deck was clearly in developing stages, and of course it fairly got flamed to holy hell.

The second version was based on running mask / naught and dropping the "bad" negators (drinkers), in an effort to increase the clock.

Still, that version too was disruptionless, engineless apart from "brainstorms/sac lands" and "sylvan library draw 6's put myself at 4 life kind of gambles" and needless to say, it just didnt prove itself as what the critics had expected came true, there were too many conditional cards, as CF had predicted and others.

But the post was still based on my excitment on the discovery based on DanDan's "joke" suggsetion of fling, and that, fling on occasion is incredible with a Dreadnaught.
In my excitement i had to have 4 flings, period. Seeing the look on a keeper's face after he grabs his stp and then dropping fling was priceless, but it came at the cost of serious consistency which is the obvious fact that 4 flings are going to be way too conditional.

Also another observation was made, and that is this. Reckless charge on a freshly cast naught deals 15 on turn x. Dealing 15 on turn x or 12 on turn x+1 has little difference, the conditionality of charge overwhelmed any shock value that a turn x 15 dmg dealt, especially since there were essenially 8 creatures to meaningfully charge, even running 1 charge was one charge too many.


Finally, I decided to look into familiar terriority and even though I knew how nice Survival was , i kept resisiting it since the point was that i wanted to make an original deck that could make a serious clock in league with others. But alas, the quality of survival was kept being lauded by everyone i knew and hence I decided to go full swing into survival, but still keeping some remants of the original CDM in mind. Realizing the obvious that anger is simply far superior to Charge if you run survival, and that survival is far superior to a full run of brainstrorms simply because survival allows you to compete much more fully against disruption and control, I decided on the following list, while trying not to go too much into FEB territory, although the similiarities are clear. After some thought on Fling, i came up with this, about 40-60% of your things will actually hit the table, hence on average you want half the number of flings with respect to the number of naughts in the deck. The result is a deck that has characterisitics of FEB, mask, and old school Survival that im much happier with, and hopefully you'll find the list more compelling, and id like some feedback on it.

SB:  1 Treetop Village
SB:  1 Harmonic Convergence
SB:  1 Masticore
SB:  1 Devout Witness
SB:  1
SB:  1 Arcane Laboratory
SB:  1 Withered Wretch
SB:  1 Bottle Gnomes
SB:  1 Waterfront Bouncer
SB:  1 Wall of Roots
SB:  1 Savannah
SB:  1 Gilded Drake
SB:  1 Thornscape Battlemage
SB:  2 Tormod's Crypt


        1 Underground Sea
        1 Taiga
        1 Volcanic Island
        1 Badlands
        2 Bayou
        2 Tropical Island
        3 Bloodstained Mire
        4 Wooded Foothills
        1 Mana Crypt
        1 Sol Ring
        1 Black Lotus
        1 Mox Sapphire
        1 Mox Ruby
        1 Mox Pearl
        1 Mox Jet
        1 Mox Emerald
        1 Mystical Tutor
        1 Brainstorm
        1 Vampiric Tutor
        1 Demonic Tutor
        1 Time Walk
        1 Sylvan Library
        1 Ancestral Recall
        1 Uktabi Orangutan
        1 Gorilla Shaman
        1 Monk Realist
        1 Quirion Ranger
        1 Squee, Goblin Nabob
        1 Genesis
        1 Anger
        2 Fling
        1 Berserk
        2 Volrath's Shapeshifter
        4 Phyrexian Negator
        4 Birds of Paradise
        4 Phyrexian Dreadnought
        4 Illusionary Mask
        4 Survival of the Fittest

rough sideboarding guide:

Dragon  -1 Q Ranger - 1 FTK  - 1 Uktabi  - 1 Shaman + 2 Tormod's crypt  +1 Waterfront Bouncer + 1 Withered Wretch

TNT - 1 Bloodstained Mire -4 Negator +1 Thornscape Battlemage + 1 Savannah +1 Masticore + 1 Withered Wretch
+1 Monk Realist

Gro -1 FtK -1 Berserk - 2 Fling -1 Uktabi + 1 Waterfront Bouncer  + 1 Masticore + 1 Wall of Roots +1 Gilded Drake

Sligh -1  Shaman -1 Q ranger  -1 Mana Crypt +1 Wall of Roots + 1 Bottle Gnomes + 1 Masticore

Enchantress -1 FTK -1 Uktabi + 1 Harmonic Convergence +1 Devout Witness

Academy / Other combo (replenish, etc) -2 Fling -1 Berserk -1 FTK + 1 Arcane Laboratory + 1 Withered Wretch + 2 crypt

Urrphid  -1 Bloodstained Mire + 1 Treetop Village (+ possible others , not sure)

[MoreFling]

Although I still think it's a pile, and regular mask is just way better, wouldn't Living Wish seem like a good slot in your deck?

Will you, or anyone, be piloting this at a serious tournament any soon?

[psyduck]

Quote (MoreFling @ Feb. 16 2003,03:14)Although I still think it's a pile, and regular mask is just way better, wouldn't Living Wish seem like a good slot in your deck?

Will you, or anyone, be piloting this at a serious tournament any soon?

A pile? Certainly. I couldn't have it any other way.  

Earlier I did give thought to Living Wish. The most obvious natural replacement would be -FTK + Living Wish. But a creature over wish has the benefit of being immediately tossable to the Survival without the hindrance of conjuring additional spells, offers up any benefit it can muster in an aggro matchup, and has recursion with Genesis in the instance that Living Wish is disrupted. Should Living Wish be in the deck? It's an obvious card choice but the deck is performign the way i like, however most of my testing are unsideboarded matches with alot of different decks to get a general feel for what's working well, so living wish is and has been in my mind for some time. Most of the time games never come down "did the card that could have been living wish cost me or win me the game", since that requires a specific set of circumstances that only endless testing would unearth. Lately, I've been finding myself with birds in play and ditching the FtK to start the process, so I'm happy with the FtK at this point.

As for piloting the deck, i'll ask my friends to borrow some pieces (namely the ones that make the deck cost a total of over $1100). Hopefully Ill have results within the month or so.

[Matt The Great]

The lone Brainstorm seems incredibly random. Is it just a placeholder for a better idea, or is there something spectacular that I'm missing (yes, I see the interaction with the number of shuffle effects, in which case you'd want to run 3-4 Brainstorms)?

[psyduck]

Quote (Matt The Great @ Feb. 16 2003,21:11)The lone Brainstorm seems incredibly random. Is it just a placeholder for a better idea, or is there something spectacular that I'm missing (yes, I see the interaction with the number of shuffle effects, in which case you'd want to run 3-4 Brainstorms)?

No, the lone brainstorm is not incredibly random. In fact, I used to run 4 brainstorm.

Brainstorm's optimal useage comes under these conditions:

1. When you play a land and have an active sac land waiting to shuffle, or a shuffling spell.
2. If condition 1 is met, then you have to also meet the requirement that nothing better is spent on that mana being used to brainstorm. With roughly 15 meaningful 1-2 cc spells(meaningful meaning not berserk or flings etc), you will be hard pressed to not find better uses of your mana immediately.
3. If condition 2 is met, then you also have to assume that anything good you could dig off the brainstorm would have the mana to back it up immediately.
4. What this boils down to is that having 1 virtually guarantees that when you do in fact draw into brainstorm, you will have satisfied conditions 1-3 first. Having anymore and you threaten satisfying those conditions. Having 2 increases your chance of not having met all these conditions while encountering your brainstorm. Having 3 really places you in danger of soaking up alot of early game mana when you digging won't help since you don't have enough mana to enforce the quality of anything you drew, hence you might as well have something playable in those brainstorm slots.

Running 4 brainstorms for the sake that its great considering how many sac lands I run ignores conditions 2 and 3, and that is just as relevant when deciding on your number to run.

the rest is an answer to an earlier question about someone who was questioning if living wish should be in the deck.

The only card that is a placeholder for a better idea is FtK and after examination I have changed that to Monk Realist. I am of the opinion that Living Wish is really bad with survival for the following reasons.

If your opponent duresses you, and you don't have Survival in play but in your hand, then he will take the survival. This means you are in the early game since you would have cast survival if you could have but were mana limited. Hence you will either wish or not wish on the next turn. If you don't wish then the wish is dead in your hand at the moment, if you do wish, then you will again be mana limited and have wasted that turn to wish for the sake of creature selection, and be forced to try to convert the quality of your selection into the maximum leverage possible on the turn after that, which is not reasonable since you can't expect your opponent to not do something fairly broken the next turn, reducing the leverage possible on that creature selection. If you do have the survival on the table, then the wish can be duressed (or countered).  If it doesn't, then you have to spend two mana to get the creature into your hand.

If you have a creature instead of the wish, the advantage of not soaking up 2 mana to get the creature you need in your hand will be such a greater play since on average, the survival will be able to be in play since you will not be mana limited hence we should only consider the scenario in which you are not mana limited. In the first scenario in which you are mana limited and dont have the surivval on the table, he wish is better, but since on average this scenario won't happen more than 70-80% of the time, you are better to go with the odds and assume you will be able to cast any top deck survivals, and save yourself the 2 mana + any threat of counters on the wish.

[j_orlove]

What about running Monk Idealist? If the kill your survival, you can fetch idealist in response, and get it back. Or do you not run enough white?

Also, you have plenty of Islands, and 4x survival, but I see no Wonder anywhere. Wouldn't it be useful at least in the SB?

[psyduck]

Quote (j_orlove @ Feb. 17 2003,09:02)What about running Monk Idealist? If the kill your survival, you can fetch idealist in response, and get it back. Or do you not run enough white?

Also, you have plenty of Islands, and 4x survival, but I see no Wonder anywhere. Wouldn't it be useful at least in the SB?

If keeper had to do such a thing, then it would be likely there would be a turn where they went to tutor into it and now are waiting for an additional 3 mana to d blow it, which means I most likely would have gotten to survival a few times before it got d enchanted, and then I would have gotten my maximal utility out of it before it died, gaining all the tempo i need.

if a parfait/white weenie got to it, then I'd think Im playing a favorable matchup, especially since aura is 3 mana and survival is two. If Seal of Cleansing fights a survival, then it is parity since both are two mana and it is reasonable to assume both of us would be tapped out, and his SoC would wipe my survival one for one. So the optimal condition for Monk idealist is to either have one and only one green source open after survival is cast (otherwise i would have sur. twice and gotten my maximal utility out of it any more would be "win more"), or have a Survival countered/duress'd and have
a Idealist in my hand already.

The last situation where the survival is countered/duresse'd and I have an idealist in my hand would have the most regularity with respect to the other situations as it is independent of the amount of mana I have open. This does sound good, but then I think it starts interfering with the deck's idea of just dropping negators as an alternate plan if the survivals dont hit or draw. The idealist seems to overcommmit the deck to an old school survival deck, whereas if you look at TNT, if you disrupt their survival then they will just start dropping the juggernauts and su-chi's and see what happens from there. the worst case scenario for idealist is where you have no survivals in sight and an idealist in hand. Then you really start feeling sorry since it offers very little board control at that point. But, having a creature to toss to Survival on the off chance you have survival without a creature in hand is always nice, but at that point I would look to a more offensive creatur, like lord of tresserhorn, but without cutting into my non combo aspects as well.