[Deck Discussion]Madness

[JuJu]

In light of the lack of content on the site lately, I decided to get off my lazy ass and finally post my Madness list, along with a few notes that I'll run by at the end. So to start the discussion here's the decklist, the cards with an Asterix beside it are card choices that will be explained below.

2 Anger
2 Wonder

4 Arrogant Wurm
4 Basking Rootwalla
4 Wild Mongrel
4 Roar Of The Wurm*

3 Deep Analysis
4 Fiery Temper
1 Timetwister*
1 Wheel of fortune*
1 Windfall*
1 Frantic Search*
1 Time Walk
1 Ancestral Recall
4 Bazaar Of Baghdad

2 Riftstone Portal*
4 Taiga
3 Tropical Island
2 Volcanic Island
3 Wooded Foothills
1 Forest

1 LED
1 Mana Crypt
5 Moxen
1 Black Lotus

4 Roar Of The Wurm: I decided to run four when I found the deck to be running out of steam too often, so far it's been great by giving me that extra beef to kill Dryads, TnT beats and etc.

Wheel of Fortune: I've always liked this card in Madness, whether Hyperion says it's good or not, it's staying Maindeck

Windfall: Wheel's little brother, this is really good also, a bit more situational in some cases, I'd almost never cut this

Timetwister: I cut the Careful Studies after a while and ran the Draw sevens and Frantic Search, of all of them, this seems the least spectacular, I'm still not sure yet, but this might get the cut.

Frantic Search: This is probably the most controversial of the bunch. Sometimes this is complete bomb letting me get extra mana and get another draw out of Bazaar(I think I got bout 10 cards in hand once because of this, Bazaar and Deep Anal). However, other times it's an overcosted Careful Study. I'm still not sure about this one.

Riftstone Portal: Since Talking with Kowal, I've played this and will never ever look back, these are so good it's amazing. I'm sure alot of you must notice the interaction between these and Bazaar but it's just so goooooooooodly!!!1!1!1ONE11!1!!!!!ELEVEN!!1!111!!

Sideboard:
4 PyroStatic Pillar
4 Artifact Mutation
4 Red Elemental Blast
3 Tormod's Crypt

The Sideboard is pretty much self explanitory, The Arti Mutations against Slaver, Stax and the odd Welder Mud. The Rebs versus Control and Maybe Slaver(not quite sure how to sb yet). The Pillar is to try and help the Combo matchup obviously. I'm only running 3 Tormod's Crypt because Dargon is just hated out way too much anymore for me to even think about it.

Questions?

[Vegeta2711]

Right so anyways, why are you running all the Draw-7's? Nearly every deck in the format can do more with a brand new hand than you can.

Frantic Search is garbage, complete garbage, Odds are you won't even be using 3 lands to cast it in the first place. In the best case scenario it untaps Bazaar for a 2nd use and gives you another mana or two. You know what else untaps Bazaar though? Twiddle. That'd be some svg tech right there. Careful Study > Search, by a long shot, hell I'd put Quiet Speculation over it, at least it fetches me some goodness for sure.

@Portal. Ehhh... your choice. Personally I never felt tapping my Bazaar's for mana was a big deal, but whatever works for you.

Um, 3rd Anger probably outranks a 4th ROTW though. Honestly how many times have you needed to cast 1 or 2 of those to smash someone?

[The Atog Lord]

I know that you mention cutting Careful Studies, but I was wondering why. The Draw Seven spells certainly have more potential for being powerful. In my experience with the deck, however, while Studies certainly are not the most explosive card possible, they do make the deck far more consistent than it otherwise was. They smooth out the mana base while at the same time allowing you to discard Flashback and Madness spells.

My other concern regards the four Roar of the Wurms. In a creature-heavy metagame, they can be strong cards. However, their problem is that they are especially inviting targets for Mana Drain. At seven mana, having one of them drained often ends the game for the Madness player. Arrogant Wurm, though also expensive, can be cast as an instant, thereby allowing the Madness player to play around the Drains. I’m not sure that four Wurms is optimal.

I also believe that there is a detailed and well-written primer for Madness on this sight. It is certainly worth reading.

[DEA]

OS makes a good point about the draw-7s

I'm Vegeta2711/Josh, not OS-Vegeta. He quit a while ago.
-V

an aggro deck that gives the opponent 7 topdecks to find solutions isn't likely to hang around very much longer
keeper can dig for balance, tog will just kill you, stax will say thanks and lock you out the next turn, and slaver will shake your hand (or start playing your deck for you :lol:)

what's your rationale for timetwister?
you remove riftstone portals, rotws, the incarnations
not much point, is there?

[JuJu]

Eh, Sry for not posting my thoughts on the Careful Studies. I know that the Careful Studies don't have an effect for both players, which makes it somewhat better. But it's just not as much of a bomb as the Draw Sevens. I know most decks can usually run better with the hand that they get, but sometimes they don't and takes me two turns of beating to win. The Draw Sevens make the deck into a Combo-Aggro deck. I know very well about the 3rd Anger over the 4th RotW, and Frankly It doesn't really matter to me. In my playtesting the 4th RotW outshined the 3rd Anger. Obviously, the RotW is a bullseye for Mana Drain targets, and yes they do win, but when playing vs control, you have to cast a flurry of threats at them. Sometimes, they counter the Arrogant Wurm, Swords your Mongrel and Bounce your Token, but that's how things work. In most cases however it will resolve, even though you're usually already winning.

Rich, I have been playing Madness since Adam won his first Tourney with it, of course I've read his primer, I've read almost any relevant discussion of Madness there's been on TMD(The original, the temp, and this one) and I'm not new to any of this. I'm not trying to Obnoxious or anything, I'm just saying, I know what I'm talking more than you'd expect.

I know Very Well what Frantic Search can and can't do Veggies, I'm still wondering for the md, along with TimeTwister, but what would I replace them with? I still find Careful Studies to be small in effect, has anyone thought of some other Draw Spell?

A few things I didn't mention earlier, what does everyone think of Crop Rotation, I tryed it early in testing and turned up to be really useless, either you had a Bazaar and play and you were already winning or you were saving it from a wasteland(Basically replacing the land) which seemed too small an effect. Also, how does the manabase look?

EDIT: DEA, I know what the Draw Sevens can do, but with Anger, sometimes those Draw Sevens can either wreck there hand that they had set up the earlier turn or make yours better. I'm not quite sure how to explain it. But playing a Windfall or Wheel First Turn gives you threats and a fresh hand, apparently that's good. Also, unless you're going to post something constructive that I could use in Timetwister's place, don't post at all.

[Clown of Tresserhorn]

I played Madness for awhile and quit, for basically 2 reasons:

1) It has no distuption what so ever. Period. I found this to be a huge problem for madness. It does race decks like nothing else, but it really isn't good enough vs. combo and control. Bear in mind this is only my take on it. I had MAD troubles beating Tog, and keeper became increasingly hard because Mana Drain----> Exalted angel WAS GAME OVER unless I could get anger in the yard and a couple of creatures and roar, which was nearly impossible.

2) The deck sometimes just fizzled. The true power of madness was the fact that it had 4 LED and could go broken before control got 2 UU. Now, you give control the edge, as you will rarely cast a significant creature by your turn 2.

I highly recommend you talk with Hyperion and read his primer. It is excellent, and he definitely answered my problems when I played the deck.

As for changes, I would stick with careful study, as they are MUCH more reasonable madness outlets. Plus, you don't give the other player a new hand. Wheel helps tog, and twister dicks you over. Careful study is definitely house though.

I would probably add a sol ring as well, just for acceleration, but it's optional. Anyways, good luck with the deck.

[Kowal]

Stay on topic please.
-- Toad

[Dozer]

I wonder, is the opinion expressed in the primer about Survival of the Fittest a general consensus? If so, why?

I understand that the reasoning is that Survival and Bazaar are competing for the same task, and that Survival ties up too much mana, increasing the necessary Madness mana beyond a tolerable level.

However, compared to Careful Study (and Frantic Search), I feel that Survival has more merit to its name. Both increase the Madness cost, since you have to spent the mana to cast the spell and need to count it towards the total cost. So, considered the Madness mana, the record is almost even. Careful Study has an edge here because it is able to discard two Madness creatures at once, for which you will need to pay with Survival.

What Careful Study cannot do, though, is a Rootwalla Chain, a trick I have seen winning games more often than not. Also, and that is the major point IMO, Survival has another benefit that has been discarded in the primer, which is the possibility of utility creatures. Yes, I can hear the screams coming already, that Madness is so fast that it does not need disruption. Maybe, but it is running red already, and a single Gorilla Shaman would increase Madness' midgame potential. Also, Survival has the additional benefit of being able to tutor up an Incarnation. The need to run 2 Anger/2 Wonder diminishes fast, since you can search out any one of them, and usually the graveyard hate that will come from opposing decks is too slow (barring Withered Wretch) to deal with even one Incarnation fast enough. Cunning Wish for Coffin Purge does not cut it, because if an opponent has the time to do that, he's probably already winning.

Survival can also replace the clumsy Roars, if need be, since they will provide a nearly endless stream of creatures, dropping first the Rootwallas, then following up with Arrogant or whatever. Even if you don't want to discard the Wurm via Survival on terms of being too expensive, I don't see why being able to tutor it up for the use with another Madness outlet (e.g. a Mongrel you have tutored up before) is a bad thing.

The Survivals are a threat that any opponent WILL have to get rid of. If he leaves it on the table, he is going to get overwhelmed no matter what. Careful Studies do not provide this kind of pressure. One shot, deal with what they brought, and wait for the next one. In short, Survival combines the benefits of providing additional creatures, providing a Madness outlet, being a threat by itself, and opening the possibility for midgame utility in one card, for which you'd otherwise need 4 Incantations, 4 Careful Study and 3-4 Roar.

Considering the point of Survival competing with Bazar, I think this point is moot. I agree that you will rather use Bazaar when you have both on the table. That is not a reason not to run both, I think, because you increase your overall chances to draw either one of them. Both are a serious problem for any opponent, and dealing with one of them is easier than dealing with both.
Of course, Survival gives you the added benefit of being able to abuse Squee at his best, from which in turn the Bazaar also profits.

With the loss of 3 LED's from the deck, I think that Survival is also warranted because it compensates for the lost explosiveness by adding extreme consistency, keeping up the stream of threats instead of presenting them all first turn, as LED was wont to do.

Maybe I am just biased by the German MadDragon builds, where Survival is simply a necessity. But even trying to get out of this biased view and trying another perspective, I don't see why I should play the one-shot Careful Study over the staying Survival any given day. (Of course, it is possible to fit in both. But SotF takes priority, in my eyes.)

---

One other thing:
Going over the card choices, I am surprised to see Timetwister. I believe there are few cards that are this anti-synergistic for Madness. I'd never play Timetwister in Madness, simply because you have better tools available to draw cards and apply constant pressure (Survival being one of them). I understand Wheel of Fortune, because it involves a discard, thus enabling you to come off better from it than your opponent by dropping one or two Madness creatures into play. Timetwister, on the other hand, I don't get. It does not make you discard, so your Madness creatures do not benefit. It shuffles your graveyard back in, so it removes your Incarnations. Even worse, it shuffles your opponent's graveyard back in, returning already spent resources to his deck. The only situation I can see you getting the better off a Timetwister is when it is the only card left in your hand, and you have no incarnation in your graveyard. I don't think that warrants its inclusion, because that is a situation you don't want to happen in the first place anyway.

Dozer

[ill_Dawg]

If it were me, I'd cut 1 temper, 1 roar, and the forest for another anger, a strip mine, and a sol ring.  Basic lands make the manabase too damned stable for my tastes.  

About the draw-7's in general: Those things sure do say your opponant has to discard their whole hand.  One of them even resets the graveyard.  I can rememner kicking the shit out of TnT just be making him discard the welders he survivaled for and then tossing his anger and wonder back into the deck with a twister.  Effective use of the twister also makes the tog matchup a lot easier, gives you back your bazaars, and lets you re-use the lotus and the LED. More importantly, if you set them up right, you just win the game right then.  Trust me, I've done it.  Of course they can be risky, but if you don't want to deal with randomness go play checkers; or at least play a different deck.

-=ADAM=-

[Rico Suave]

Stay on topic please.
-- Toad

[Shadow Ninja]

In my mind SotF has some major drawbacks that Bazaar shrugs off.  Survival can be countered, for one, whereas Bazaar only has to worry about strip effects.  While Bazaar has the disadvantage of slowing down mana development for a turn, it is easily active immediately, and becomes a beast of a draw engine.  Also, with SotF you have to use green mana to activate it, whereas if you fetch something like Arrogant (you'll most likely go for Squee, Wallas, or Anger first, correct), you have to have the 2GGG available (G to fetch it, G to pitch it, and 2G to cast) to make it drop fast.

[c9h13no3]

My opinion on madness coincides with Clown of Tresserhorn's.  The versions with no disruption are not as sucessful.  Most of the madness decks that I've seen top 8 recently have either run FoW & Circular Logic, or have ran the dragon combo.  Both of these give the deck the ability to either deal with what the opponent does turn 1-3 or to completely disregard it (in the case of the combo).  So I think decklists need to be updated to reflect this, since it's pretty common knowledge that in type 1, you just can't ignore what the other deck is doing.

[Hyperion]

There have been some good points raised on this thread about Madness' place in the current metagame.

1) It has no distuption what so ever. Period. I found this to be a huge problem for madness. It does race decks like nothing else, but it really isn't good enough vs. combo and control. Bear in mind this is only my take on it. I had MAD troubles beating Tog, and keeper became increasingly hard because Mana Drain----> Exalted angel WAS GAME OVER unless I could get anger in the yard and a couple of creatures and roar, which was nearly impossible.

I think you are right but maybe for the wrong reasons. Madness' lack of (maindeck) disruption really comes into play against Control Slavery more so than other control decks.  I feel comfortable playing Madness against Hulk but helpless against Control Slavery before boarding because Mana Drain->Pentavus, Platinum Angel, or Mindslaver is basically game. Before Slavery entered the picture, Madness could be built to perform well against any non-combo deck before boarding without maindeck disruption. With Slaver being a prevalent archetype, that is no longer the case.

The difficulties with running maindeck disruption in Madness are severalfold. Firstly, the best disruption options are often narrow in scope to the point that they aren't maindeckable (REB, Artifact Mutation), or require significant alteration to the way the deck works to incorporate successfully (FoW, Null Rod). Secondly, there's the problem that most means of disruption don't fit well into Madness because they aren't discard outlets or pitchable to Bazaar. This is less of an issue with O.Stompy because Squee/Bazaar lets it run more spells that don't facilitate an engine, whereas Madness' cards have to.

One noticable exception to this is Waterfront Bouncer, which has uses in many matchups (Hulk, Keeper, Dragon, Control Slaver for bouncing Platinum Angel, etc.). However, I am not sure if it's enough by itself, and it probably isn't.

The true power of madness was the fact that it had 4 LED and could go broken before control got 2 UU. Now, you give control the edge, as you will rarely cast a significant creature by your turn 2.

I disagree with this as well because of how risky LED is against control. You made the point that Madness is prone to fizzling out, but LED only augments this problem against control because Mana Drain isn't the whole story....you can't afford to blindly walk into Force of Will either (with LED).

Rootwalla and Mongrel are "signifcant creatures" that enter play by turn 2.

Dozer,

That was an excellent response and I agree with a lot of your points. In analyzing this issue the most important points I consider are speed and space availability.

If Madness runs Survival, it basically has to run Squee as well, which constrains the space availability for utility creatures and disruption. At this point Madness is caught in a Catch-22 of sorts, which is that if you run Survival you also have to run disruption because Survival slows the deck down to the point where it needs disruption to slow the opponent down as well. You can't just run Survival and Squee in Madness and change nothing else because now you have a slower deck without disruption - I've tried this before, but to no avail, which isn't to say it can't be done...I'm just not sure how you could make it better than O.Stompy at that point.

The Survivals are a threat that any opponent WILL have to get rid of. If he leaves it on the table, he is going to get overwhelmed no matter what.

I think this is only partially true. Against other aggro, combo, Hulk, and Slaver, Survival is oftentimes too slow, because these decks don't give you the time to set up and use it (it is, however, excellent against the likes of Landstill or Keeper for example). In the faster matchups Careful Study is preferable because even though it's a one-shot deal, all you want/need/have time for is a one-shot deal. It puts extra pressure on in the early game and makes Madness' turn 1 so much better than every other aggro deck in the format becuase you've looked at more cards, sometimes put Rootwallas into play, and often put Incarnations/Deep Anals in the graveyard as well.

[JuJu]

Woah, thx for the quality posts guys, I really enjoy it <3.

Anyways, few things. I've thought of Survival countless times and it always comes down to a few things. It costs mana to activate, which in my opinion is bad. I'm not sure how others take it, but Using Mana to search for a creature when you could be Bazaaring for free and getting a creature seems uncomforting. Dozer mentioned Running SotF with Bazaar and it might even seem playable. What do you guys think about cutting Twister and F-Search for 2 SotF?

Adam, great to see you. How's Poland. Anyways, enough with small talk. Adam, I'm wondering about your thoughts on TimeTwister and Frantic Search. I know you have limited posting time. Trying to make strips good in Europe and all(Go Team!). I'm probably going to cut the forest for something, not quite sure what yet, most probably the Strip Mine or the Sol Ring.
Adam brings up a valid point in how the Draw Sevens are a sort of disruption that no one really thinks of at first glance. I saw this a few times though, the nicest mize I had was playing against Rico and Slaver. I think I windfalled first turn, he cursed, I drew into Wheel, he did land-go, I wheel, he curses again and he scoops. I know that this is hard to pull off, but it's a valid example. The Draw Sevens perform disruption, even though it will backfire. Also, if you're playing Madness, it's balls to the walls.
Hyperion, I've tried WaterFront Bouncer. It's simply just not enough, the only use I can see it having is when Keeper or the mirror are playing Tokens, both matches you should be winning though.

[Vegeta2711]

The Draw Sevens perform disruption, even though it will backfire.

That's the issue I have with them, odds are more for it backfiring against you than it working for you.

Yes you can get lucky and your opponent gets screwed with a bad hand, but that's not even close to their main puropse. You have just as good odds of drawing a awful hand as they do.

On Bouncer, let's ponder this a second shall we? Since your concept of using it against Keeper was fundementally flawed from the get-go, let's give it another shot. Try it against, Dragon, Mask and some use against Tog and Artifact Aggro.

[InsaneScrub]

I have to agree, Exalted Angel = Game over for many aggro decks, unless they have an answer.  Furthermore, I think without the disruption in madness, the deck is lacking an element that will prevent the cards that screw it over.  Not to mention your opponent getting an insane advantage over you.  Aggo to me is dead, food chain goblins is undoubtably one of the finest aggro decks I have seen, but it loses to 3 decks, and that is bad.  If madness seeks to win, it will have to have seek professional answers to decks it cannot deal with, without weakening it's overall base advantage.  Good luck in finding that answer.

[wuaffiliate]

FCG is a combo deck.

Exalted can be a problem, but she is slow most of the time she will not come down early enough to save the control player's ass. remember madness if built and played correctly is VERY fast they have so much to deal with if they concentrate on getting angel out they will be at a VERY low life by the time she is active. flying roars and puppys are tech.