Battle of the Sets IV - Reports & Results

[Legend]

Yes, you are correct, Quirion Ranger was in the deck last time out, a fact that I overlooked earlier for whatever reason. I still don't like Ranger, though, but I guess it will have to remain, due to Stampeeding Wildebeests and mana curve issues. I suppose the Ranger ability can sometimes prove useful as well, although it has been lackluster (at least with the Visions card pool) when it was used in earlier Battles of the Sets. Of course, in past Constructed formats, Ranger has been very good with the right cards to work with.

Regarding Stronghold, I don't see how converting it to an Exodus wannabe helps the cause when it currently has a functional aggro deck. I'm not going to lie to you, I'm not particularly impressed with the proposed Black/Green deck for Stronghold. It seems to be very slow in developing its strategy and while there are certain strong combos/interactions, most of the big decks would still blow it out of the water. I would also question certain card choices, such as the use of the full four Volrath's Strongholds with it being a legendary land. For Tolarian Academy, yes, four is great even though it is legendary. But three Volrath's Strongholds would seem more appropriate for this deck. I don't like Mox Diamond either - and if it were to be used, I would use four to maximize the chance of drawing it early - its a wasted draw after the first couple of turns anyway, so three is too much of a compromise - four or zero - my choice would be zero. Yes, it would be nice to speed up the deck a bit, but not at the cost imposed by Mox Diamond. I just don't support the proposed Black/Green design for Stronghold.

[Alfred]

Quirion elves isn't too bad actually, if you miss a land drop she can generate mana, and she is also helpful against decks with land destruction elements such as Ice Age or Alliances. Speaking of Ice Age, Legend, I know you don't want to talk about decks right now, but I'm testing a new Ice Age deck. What I noticed with the current Ice Age deck was that it is too dependant on the land destruction element, especially against decks that can develop their board position quickly i.e. fast aggro decks (darksteel) which make up a majority of the field.

Necrohaups:

Lands:
4x Sulfurous Springs
8x Mountains
13x Swamp

Creatures:
4x Abyssal Specter
3x Hyalopterous Lemure

Removal:
4x Pyroclasm
4x Dark Banishing
4x Jokulhaups

Necropotence etc.:
4x Dark Ritual
4x Necropotence
4x Demonic consultation
4x Zuran Orb

This matchup plays out nicely against aggro, basically use pyroclasm, dark banishing and your creatures to apply pressure. Your life total really doesn't matter too much, because you can 'haups with a orb in play, and that's 12 life right there. Just keep 'Haupsing and playing creatures, and your necropotence will make sure that, even if he/she holds threats back you will win. I've tested this deck on the internet, and have beaten t1 WW decks, t2 aggro decks, and almost every deck this deck has faced in a best of 3 series.

Jokulhaups is retarded, this + necro allows you to play threats out quickly. If they overextend to match your pressure, they walk into haups, if they hold back (lands, creatures, artifacts) Specter and Lemure will hurt them, while keeping their hand size low. With necropotence in play, each Jokulhaups sends each player back to the beginning of the game, where you start out with 7 cards in hand, and they have essentially mulliganed down to 3 or 4. The only problem matchups this deck has is against LD and counter-heavy control decks (both of which aren't very popular in this format).

[Legend]

OK, I'll go for the Necrohaups deck - after all, Ice Age has nothing to lose, and at the very least, I can see your overall point about this deck's strengths over the current Ice Age list. You've brought out a good idea here. Let's just refine the list a bit.


1) Have you considered Foul Familiar? The ability to return to hand would work well with Jokulhaups and Pyroclasm, and it hits pretty hard for a very respectable mana cost. I think 4 Foul Familiars have a place in this deck. Plus, with a Ritual, Familiar can come right out again after a Jokulhaups, putting the opponent immediately back in trouble.

2) What about 3 Zuran Orbs rather than 4? On the one hand, it seems that 3 would be more appropriate since you don't want to draw more than one, and with Necro out, it shouldn't be too hard to find.  But on the other hand, 4 does seem like a good number, since this deck has no other life gain (lacking Soul Burn obviously) and extras can simply be tossed away after some Necroing - the amount of cards you can pull with Necro cuts both ways then - yes, it makes the Orbs easier to find, but it also makes wasted draws of extra Orbs a non-issue in most situations. This could go either way, we'll see.

3) Are there any other card choices you've thought about? I'd be interested in hearing about any of those options.

[Alfred]

I had considered foul familiar, but for some reason I was thinking about it's "poor interaction" with pyroclasm. You are probably right though, I find myself wanting to get attacking right after the haups and returning it eot, jokuhaupsing, land drop and ritualing it out would be a very strong play. I also had reservations about it's inability to block, but in reality the card it would be replacing comes out too late to matter in defense most of the time. I was also experimenting with goblin mutant, which was okay. I think more testing/brainstorming is in order for the finisher. Technically you want something that is evasive or large, so that weenies that are dropped post-haups won't hold you at bay.

One thing that I don't want to change about the deck is the zuran orb count, because it is important to have this before you haups. Jokulhaups + Zuran Orb means that all of the cards that they spend hurting you meant nothing. Also, the great thing about this deck is it's ability to haups more than once. If the first haups hurt them, then the second one will just blow them out of the water, and as you said any excess orbs drawn once necro is in play can be disregarded.

In and earlier version I was using blue for brainstorm and other cards. It sucked. The problem with introducing a 3rd color, after casting jokulhaups, you probably will have a hard time casting that color. Unless you held the land back, in which case you probably weren't playing efficiently. Johtull Wurm would be a great finisher otherwise.

In the non-Abyssal Specter creature category, what we have so far is:
1. Foul Familiar (Good Power to CC ratio, useful ability)
2. Hyalopterous Lemure (Evasive, good clock)
3. Goblin Mutant (Trample, best clock, relatively cheap)

This is what I've come up with. I like foul familiar BUT I don't like the fact that it lacks evasion. Any type of first striker/creature with +3 toughness could hold this back forever, and you really don't want to be playing silly "stack damage, return, cast it again" games when you could be hitting for 3 every turn. I'll test it out in the mean time.

[Legend]

OK, we'll work on this some more tomorrow. Right now, though, I'm with you on the 4 Zuran Orbs, and I'm thinking that the correct creature base would be 4 Foul Familiars and 4 Abyssals. Familiar fits in too well with this strategy not to use, and in addition to its own ability and Jokulhaups, there is enough additional removal to clear the path for it if need be (Pyroclasm and Dark Banishing).


EDIT (Update):


After some testing, we've come up with the following as our list for the Ice Age Necrohaups deck. The changes from Alfred's original design are
 -3 Lemure, -1 Consult, -4 Pyroclasm, +4 Foul Familiar, +4 Incinerate, leaving us with:


-Necrohaups-


4 Jokulhaups
4 Incinerate
3 Demonic Consultation
4 Abyssal Specter
4 Foul Familiar
4 Dark Banishing
4 Necropotence
4 Zuran Orb
4 Dark Ritual
4 Sulfurous Springs
8 Mountain
13 Swamp


That's all for now. Perhaps more tomorrow if we come up with anything else.

[Alfred]

Okay, first of all, legend and I tested my BG stronghold deck against mirage, and it sucked some serious shit. I still think that Stronghold can do better than it's current list. Blue in Stronghold is actually quite strong, boasting cards such as cloud spirit, mana leak and thalakos deciever. I decided to create a skies-ish deck. The cardpool in stronghold isn't deep enough really to go mono-blue, so I decided to go with a UW build.

UW Stronghold:

14x Island
10x Plains
4x Cloud Spirit
4x Spindrift Drake
4x Thalakos Deceiver
4x Crystalline Sliver
4x Soltari Champion
4x Youthful Knight
4x Silver Wyvern
4x Hesitation
4x Mana Leak

This build goldfishes faster than the GW deck, and it packs actual disruption! Thalakos deciever is very strong against aggro decks, acting as a delayed control magic, while not being a dead card in the control matches. Silver Wyvern in my testing is better than warrior angel, as it costs 1 less, has built-in removal dodging and is a faster clock. Hesitation acts as a psuedo standstill, except instead of cards it gains you tempo. This deck is also a lot more evasive than the current deck, with over half of the creatures having evasion of one type or another.

[Legend]

Well, as we learned tonight from testing, Stronghold will remain as is. The original GW build has withstood every challenge from other possible designs, and will remain for the fifth tournament as it has for each of the first four. No changes to Stronghold.

We do have a new Fifth Dawn deck to announce, though:


3 Door to Nothingness
4 Skyreach Manta
4 Pentad Prism
4 Wayfarer's Bauble
4 Bringer of the Green Dawn
4 Bringer of the Blue Dawn
4 Channel the Suns
4 Eternal Witness
4 Joiner Adept
3 Island
3 Mountain
3 Plains
3 Swamp
13 Forest

[Alfred]

Well, you can see correctly, we finally caved in and made a sunburst deck! Legend and I both agreed that the previous list wasn't good enough, so we decided to put as many powerful cards on the list as possible, and after messing around with a RG design we settled upon sunburst. This is a very powerful strategy, as you are able to crank out turn 3 mantas and bringers, and still have the opportunity to play the über brØken (character map is FUN!) door to nothingness.

[Zelc]

Have you thought about adding Engineered Explosives to the Fifth Dawn deck?  I know the deck is really tight, but the Explosives seem too good to not include.  They can shore up the deck against fast aggro strategies.  Perhaps you could take out some Bringers to fit in 3 or 4 of them.

[Alfred]

We actually considered engineered explosives for the list, and we decided to cut it for whatever reason. In retrospect though, I could see this card being much more useful than door to nothingness.

[Legend]

Yeah, I was also reconsidering Engineered Explosives yesterday, then I discussed it again with Alfred earlier - so right now, we're looking at:

-3 Door to Nothingness, -1 Forest
+4 Engineered Explosives


So, the list is:

4 Engineered Explosives
4 Pentad Prism
4 Wayfarer's Bauble
4 Skyreach Manta
4 Bringer of the Green Dawn
4 Bringer of the Blue Dawn
4 Channel the Suns
4 Eternal Witness
4 Joiner Adept
3 Swamp
3 Mountain
3 Plains
3 Island
12 Forest


And we'll go with G/B for Visions after all:


4 Nekrataal
4 Wake of Vultures
4 Tar Pit Warrior
4 Fallen Askari
4 Creeping Mold
4 Stampeeding Wildebeests
4 Uktabi Orangutan
4 River Boa
4 Quirion Ranger
2 Undiscovered Paradise
10 Swamp
12 Forest



That completes the current round of updates. Enjoy the rest of summer, and look for Battle of the Sets V come autumn!

[Jet]

Been awhile since I've commented on this, but I really think Visions should go lock-combo, and there's nothing for it to lose at this point.

Yeah, so it probably still loses to the control heavy decks, but atleast it can sweep the floor with the creature based decks.




//NAME: Sandsipoise
//  combo
        4 Equipoise
        4 Sands of Time
        1 Squandered Resources
//  search
        1 Teferi's Puzzle Box
        4 Anvil of Bogardan
        4 Vampiric Tutor
        2 Inspiration
        4 Impulse
        4 Foreshadow
//  other
        4 Vision Charm
        3 Coercion
// Mana
        9 Island
        6 Swamp
        6 Plains
        4 Undiscovered Paradise



If you're not familiar with the combo, it involves phasing out creatures with Equipoise and preventing them from ever phasing back in with Sands of Time. Then locking out thier lands with Squandered once the creature lock is in place.
Kill is via decking with Vision Charm, Anvil and Inspiration. All of which also have an alternate function in the deck.

[Jacob Orlove]

I'm pretty sure that combo doesn't work anymore.

[Jet]

I'm pretty sure that combo doesn't work anymore.

Quoted from Magic Comp Rules, 6/10/04

302. Untap Step

302.1 First, all permanents with phasing that the active player controls phase out, and all phased-out objects that the active player controlled when they phased out simultaneously phase in (this game action doesn't use the stack). See rule 217.8, "Phased-Out," and rule 502.15, "Phasing."

502.15. Phasing

502.15a Phasing is a static ability that modifies the rules of the untap step.

502.15b During each player's untap step, before the active player untaps his or her permanents, all permanents with phasing the player controls phase out. Simultaneously, all objects that had phased out under that player's control phase in. (See rule 217.8, "Phased-Out," and rule 302.1.)

502.15c If an effect causes a player to skip his or her untap step, the phasing event simply doesn't occur that turn.