mini results - charbelcher ...

[bebe]

There was a tournament today at 401 in toronto and I loaned my Charbelcher deck out to Leon to see what he thought. Leon is the store owner. He played the deck and ended up in first place losing one game only. He won once with the Hunting Pack and found he went off turn one or two about sixty percent of the time. He said he found the deck degenerate and understood why i had taken it to Vintage. He did comment that he never had to use the Welders once, and that he felt pure speed was enough. In fact he never used the Living Wishes once either. This is the deck I took to Vintage Ontario. oi dropped out feeling sick so I never got to play all the match ups and ended up on the bottom of the list. It was a small redemption. We are thinking of making a few changes but it performed so well overall that I now feel that adding FoWs are unnecessary. You need to live or die by the sword with this deck.    

Two Wishes

1 Bayou
1 Tropical Island
1 Lotus Petal
1 Mana Crypt
1 Mana Vault
1 Sol Ring
1 Black Lotus
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Sapphire
1 mox Pearl
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Emerald
1 Channel
1 Chrome Mox
2 Cabal Ritual
4 Tinder Wall
4 Chromatic Sphere
4 Dark Ritual
4 Elvish Spirit Guide
4 Land Grant

4 Goblin Charbelcher
1 Memory Jar

1 Demonic Tutor
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Yawg's will

2 Living Wish
1 Hunting Pack

2 Brainstorm
1 Transmute Artifact
1 Time Walk
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Windfall
1 Tinker
1 Timetwister

3 Goblin Welder
1 Wheel of Fortune

sb:
3 Tormod's Crypt
3 Oxidize
3 Phyrexian Negator
1 Uktabi Orangutan
1 Viridian zealot
1 Xantid Swarm
1 Tolarian Academy
1 Gemstone Mine
1 Mishra's Workshop

401 gets a decent amount of power decks. i'm not syre of all the match ups he faced but he found that he rarely got to know the opponents' decks as the matches were so quick.

[newager]

If there are five cards in the deck that never get used, why NOT make them FoW and possably Stifle, which are cards that can at least help in the mirror?

I have never played the deck, so it's all just theory to me, but that just sounds like common sense to me.

[Methuselahn]

Nice deck, and congrats on the build, to be sure.

Welders aren't even needed?  If so, do you plan on moving them to the SB in place of Negators perhaps?  Or at least 1 Welder in the Sb if you end up deciding to keep the wish?   If the deck is going to live or die by the sword per se, do you have any plans to add Grim Monolith to the build?

Thoughts on Demonic Consultation?

[theorigamist]

I have tried both Consultation and Spoils in this deck, and neither of them were nearly as good as Tainted Pact.  Lets say, for example, that you need one more mana to go off on your next turn, so you're going to tutor eot.  What do you say with Consultation or Spoils?  You could get ESG, Tinder Wall, any of 6 Rituals, a million Moxes and restricted artifacts, or Land Grant.  Any of those would win you the game.  Tainted Pact will give you the first one you come to.  It costs neither life nor cards (I have Consulted too deep down and not left enough cards to kill before).  But Tainted Pact got cut in my build because it costs 2.

So, essentially, Consult and Spoils weren't working out as well as another tutor that also got cut.

Bebe, since you seem unsatisfied with Living Wish, have you yet tried Burning Wish?  Red mana comes easily from Tinder Walls, and it allows an alternate win condition (Tendrils) in the sideboard.  One of the arguments against it has been that you can only run one, whereas you could have two Living Wishes.  My response would be, that didn't stop Demonic or Vampiric Tutor, did it?  Burning Wish is still as viable an option as Living Wish, in my opinion.

Unrelated note: Why no LED?

[Dr_Tongue]

I'll chime in on Lion's Eye Diamond. It's drawback is nonconsequential if you are using it for the "kill" mana on Belcher or in response to your draw 7.
 The deck I have runs 11 different cards main ,although I had Channel/Cabal at one time, with a few other restricted's that you may wish to consider for yourself.

Necropotence is one bad ass threat to drop via ritual.
Grim Monolith is another source of mana other than Cabal(+LED)


My list differ's as follows:
-R Channel...                            ..  +LED
-R Chrome Mox..                             .. +Grim
-2 Cabal Ritual..                           .. + Bayou(3 land for stability)

-2 Living Wish...                              ..+3 Duress (opposite end of spectrum for those who are adding/using FoW)
-1 Hunting Pack..                .. + Yawgmoth's Bargain

-1 Transmute Artifact ..                   .. +Tendril's (hunting in your dec)
-RMystical Tutor..                              .. + 1 Brainstorm
-1 Goblin Welder..                           .. + Mind Twist
-1 Charbelcher ..                             .. + Necropotence
                                         

 The  3  on my list  that are additionally threats(Bargain/Necro/Twist) that coupled with 3 Duress , should make it easier to be able to cast Bahroken doodad's and trinket's.

[bebe]

Answering one at a time.

LeD should be in the deck. However, Leon just pulled out the deck from the box never having played it before. I had misplaced my LeD and it was missing from the list. BTW, Channel absolutely rocks in the deck. both Leon and i have gone off turn one with the Channel. I wish I had four. Also great with the Pack.

Hunting Pack has been great foir both of us. Yes, you can use ?Tendrils but the Pack is just so cool when you have mana but no play other than dropping a few spells. even three spells makes Pack strong.

We kept the Welders in for safety and for the Transmute Artifact - this is big in the deck.  I could see going down to two Welders comfortably. As for Wishes, i'm sure they will come in handy but so far I've used them two or three times for mana sources only.

Never liked Potence in the deck. too often it has been dead weight in my hand as generally if i have the nmana i have a win anyway.

Finally concluded that Duress is pretty useless in the deck. If they top deck a Rod, play first turn sphere, etc., Duress does nothing. Stifles and FoWs just do not fit.

Three lands are enough to kill you. It just screws the odds too much. Belching for 15 points of damage and then losing sucks.

By no means do I feel this is the best build yet. We played this build before the German results but after stealing Welder tech from Lucienspirit. We also changed Death Wishes to Living Wishes because of Lucien. I think the build is pretty good as is but I will change at least one or two cards.

Pretty much, the Germans have the build right. Eschew everything for speed and hope to catch them napping game two with Negators and Pack against control.

[teletubby]

LED has to be in the deck as Channel has to be. Both cards are very good.

I'd never add a third land. Two is just the right number. All lands are easily fetched out with Land Grants as long as you play two. I'm not sure that this ist still possible with three lands in the deck. And with only two lands you can easily win via Belcher when you only fetched one land / no land at all. Three lands would definitely reduce the win percentage.

There also should be four Belchers in the deck, I think. Belcher.dec often wins through topdecking.

[factorx]

I'm not exactly sure how this combo works if, say, you have the bayou in play, and then you draw into the tropical island.  If you have the only two lands in your deck in your hand and in play, how does the belcher stop?

[Dozer]

It stops once all cards in your library are revealed.

From the Oracle:

Goblin Charbelcher

Artifact
, : Reveal cards from the top of your library until you reveal a land card. Goblin Charbelcher deals damage equal to the number of nonland cards revealed this way to target creature or player. If the revealed land card was a Mountain, Goblin Charbelcher deals double that damage instead. Put the revealed cards on the bottom of your library in any order.

You perform these in order. First, you reveal all cards until you hit a land. If you don't hit a land, you reveal all cards in your library. Once there is nothing left to reveal (no more cards in your library), the reveal-part stops, Belcher deals its damage, and you put all revealed cards under your library. You obviously don't lose the game, because you have not drawn a card.

Dozer

[wuaffiliate]

This is the deck I took to Vintage Ontario. oi dropped out feeling sick so I never got to play all the match ups and ended up on the bottom of the list.

this was just plain bad luck though. you played so much control, including me round1 . i can attest that this deck is insanely broken, but has alot of weakness vs control, more so than the other playable combo decks out there.

[factorx]

Thanks for the clarification dozer, I wasn't sure if once you hit the bottom of the library and there is no cards left, you just put them on the bottom in any order and continue, which would make an infinite loop.

[Zeke]

Is the version posted at the top of the thread what is considered the "best version" as of right now?  Here is my version, I post it because I see quite a few differences (that and no other forum I've posted on seems to be able to help).

Mana:
4x Land Grant
4x Elvish Spirit Guide
4x Tinder Wall
4x Dark Ritual
1x Bayou
1x Tropical Island
5x Moxen
1x Black Lotus
1x Lion's Eye Diamond
1x Mana Vault
1x Mana Crpyt
1x Sol Ring
1x Lotus Petal
1x Grim Monolith
1x Channel

Draw:
4x Chromatic Sphere
1x Ancestral Recall
1x Windfall
1x Yawgmoth's Bargain
1x Memory Jar
1x Wheel of Fortune
1x Timetwister

Tutorage:
2x Living Wish
1x Demonic Tutor
1x Spoils of the Vault
1x Tinker
1x Vampiric Tutor

Utility:
4x Duress
3x Goblin Welder
1x Yawgmoth's Will

Kill:
4x Goblin Charbelcher

Sideboard:
1x Mishra's Workshop
1x Tolarian Academy
1x Uktabi Orangutan
1x Scavanger Folk
1x Goblin Welder
1x Gemstone Mine
1x Elvish Lyrist
1x Boneshredder
4x Phyrexian Negator
1x Deconstruct
1x Naturalize
1x Oxidize

[Lucentspirit]

I don't think there is a "best version" of belcher right now. Not enough people play it to really have any solid evidence as to what syle of deck would work better then others.
     Personally I really like having mystical tutor in the deck. It lets you get cards like Tinker, Channel, Yag. Will, Draw 7, Oxidize (post SB). I also really like having Tendrils as a back up kill in case my opponent gets something like a meddling mage or damping matrix on the table and you can't use/play the belcher. (If you feel like some heavy reading you should check out the old charbelcher 2004 thread) here
        @Zeke I'd say you build looks pretty good. The only thing I might strongly suggest is putting artifact mutaion in the SB. It can be HUGE in a stax matchup and it does pretty well against other workshop decks.  [/code]

[bebe]

I don't think there is a "best version" of belcher right now. Not enough people play it to really have any solid evidence as to what syle of deck would work better then others.

Amen to that. My build was heavily influenced by yours. We've been discussing it lately and it is still evolving.
 I like the Wishes but find the Welders most often suk in the deck. I think I would rather Wish for them.
I also do not like Duress. Enough testing has convinced me that they are just not helpful against the worst match ups.
As for Artifacyt Mutation - well that or Oxidizes. We are planning to add two Oxidizes main deck for two Welders, remove Transmute Artifact  and add a Tainted Pact. Also a an LeD will come in for a Cabal which really was the original intent. I will remove the second Cabal and another card for two BoPs as well.
I noticed a deck i8n Europe that won with Duresses and Eladamri's Vineyards. So it seems various builds are performing well.
Oh yes. Mystical Tutor is da bomb in this deck.  

Lucienspirit - you need to write a primer listing some of the decks that have performed well and some insights on playing the builds.

[KrauserKrauser]

Maybe try Orim's chant?  I know that is one card that has been agrued over alot while making Draw7 and think that while you would have a harder time generating the white necessary to cast it, it would help the deck out alot.