[Article] I Have a Death Wish for Yawgmoth's Will, Part 1

[Smmenen]

http://www.starcitygames.com/php/news/expandnews.php?Article=8181

This is the first part of my primer laying out, in great detail, how to play this deck.

[shaq]

Excellent article, but I expected a bit more focus on the "how-d'you-play-around-chalices" question.

menendian wrote:

If you happen to be on the draw against Workshop decks, take solace in the following facts. They no longer run Sphere of Resistance or Chalice of the Void.

I agree with that, but since your Mono-U primer, CotV popularity has increased (noy only in monoU, but in general) and seems a problem for this deck to play around those chalices. i might be wrong, but I think a turn 1 chalice for 0 with FoW backup* is game loss.






* for your hurkyl

[Malhavoc]

I take distance from Tolarianacademy's tone. However, IMHO the Workshop prison matchup is incredibly hard for this deck. If the player has a first hand trinisphere the possibility to cast it is quite good: not only workshop, but even city of traitors or an ancient tomb plus a single mox will do the trick. And if you don't have a force of will, or if you did not went first to duress him, the match is going to be *really* hard, if not impossible at all. The workshop player could easily drop an terrible series of bombs, from a match-winner smokestack to a chalice for 2 to prevent hurkyl, to spheres of resistance to make death wishes and rebuild much more mana intensitive, to a crucible + wasteland, another match winner.

Of course without the trinisphere, the workshop player must hope to draw other cards, like sphere and chalices above anything else, but still those cards are threats which cannot be passed by.

Of course I'm talking about artifacts deck which run all of these cards, as it happens here. Decks without some of these cards have of course less and less possibility to threaten such combo decks.

[rozetta]

Of course, fortunately, MUD decks still have huge consistency problems - probably more so than a deck like DeathLong (oops, sorry, MeanDeath(tm) ).

It's a gamble playing either deck in an unknown field. However, the MUD deck needs a specific, very narrow set of circumstances (going first, for example) to not just nail a trinisphere soft lock down early but continue to apply pressure with other lock components without the opponent's possibility of recovery (amidst common disruption like FoW or Wasteland) whereas the combo deck needs a specific set of circumstances to win very quickly. Remember that the Workshop deck must then play games 2 and 3 versus things like Energy Flux and Rack and Ruin.

Essentially, the combo deck can, for the most part, ignore the CoW/Wasteland threat (apart from unlucky games where the opponent goes turn 1 Trinisphere, turn 2 CoW+Waste which, let's face it, any deck will die to) and only worry about overpowering FoW.

I, for one, have the cards to build either deck and love playing Workshops, but given the massive amount of good artifact hate being played right now, I'd choose to play the combo deck, since it might actually have better odds in an unknown field than playing a deck you automatically know will be hated left, right and centre.

[dicemanx]

Another nice article Steve.

You are right that fast combo decks don't have much to fear from the current Workshop builds as they will mostly rely on Trinisphere and perhaps Wastelands backed by CoW, but that doesn't give them good odds game 1. However, we've experienced a "combo drought" for the past 8 months or so - it is only recently that fast combo decks are starting to re-emerge. To account for this, Workshop decks will very likely adapt by running much more combo hate, especially in the form of 4x Chalice of the Void in the main deck and possibly even Spheres of Resistance in Stax/MUD style decks.

[Razvan]

The deck only has 11 land and 2 Elvish Spirit Guides, and one of those lands is Tolarian Academy. So only 12 cards which work under Trinisphere.

Steve, the problem with your analysis against a crappy workshop opening is that they will draw other stuff, including Wastelands, and even one such Wasteland will completely wreck you. And keep in mind that Workshop decks are quite explosive themselves, and designed to work under the Trinisphere. Even if they keep a subpar hand, they can still do rather well, whereas you might get stuck, as I often see you keep 1-2 lands hands in your articles.

And Workshops, at least here, still play Chalice of the Void maindeck.

[Saucemaster]

Is it just me, or is everyone missing the point of the Workshop/Trinisphere/draw-go example?  The point was that Trinisphere is by far the biggest threat that WS decks have against MeanDeath, and that while it's bad, it's not impossible to play around.  What Steve is saying is that with MeanDeath perfectly capable of winning on turns one or two a majority of the time, a Workshop player often faces the grim choice of keeping a hand that may just get shut out on turn one, or mulliganing aggressively for Trinisphere.  And that, contrary to popular belief, simply mulling for 3Sphere won't win unless it's also backed up by other threats--and if you had to mull too aggressively, you frequently have to rely solely on the topdeck after the first-turn Sphere.

What Steve is NOT saying is that his example is an average game, or is representative of the matchup.  Just that "mull aggressively for 3Sphere" isn't the world-beating strategy against MeanDeath that it's sometimes made out to be.  I thought that was abundantly clear from the article.

Shaq and malhavoc have a valid criticism, though, in that maybe 3Sphere isn't worth mulling into in the first place; maybe there are other cards that are just as bad.  Obviously there are other cards that are horrible for you, but I'm inclined to agree with Steve's assessment that, at least here in the U.S., most Workshop-based decks aren't playing them.  Not, at least, in game one.

[Smmenen]

Thank you.  Justin (Saucemaster) said I was about to say.  Please read what I wrote in context.  

I agree that the re-emergence for Chalice and Workshop heavy metas will pose problems, but they are matters of degree.  I am proposing this deck not just as somethign that one should play in their next tournament, but as a longterm weapon that can be deployed when your metaagme conditions are hospitable.  

Hopefully, this will be clear in subsequent parts to this series.

[Razvan]

I don't think we are missing the point of the Trinisphere Draw-Go example.

Yes, if theoretically, the Workshop player played Trinisphere and does nothing, yes, DeathLong, at some point, will win. So will anything else. That's not that point.

Let's look at the odds.

By turn 3, the odds of having 3 mana (by any combination of ESG and Land), is about 30-31%, give or take. This assumes that there is absolutely nothing else done by the Workshop player, which, I guess was your point.

Should the Workshop player have anything else that he can do, say, a Wasteland, your chances drop to 10%.

By turn 6, the odds are a bit better, about 50% that you get your 3rd mana source by then, with no disruption, and about 23% with disruption.

Those aren't great odds to even get out of that lock... and even if you do get to that mana plateau, you need to fire off a tutor to get the Hurkyll's recall, which means that the chances dip a bit more, since the ESG cannot be reused.

Anyhow, that was too long-winded. I am only debating a minor point of your article, which is great, regardless.

[wuaffiliate]

It seems like people like to put a target on Steve's head, i have in the past, just get over yourselves people, keep what you read in context. Oh and stop fucking using "u" in place of "you" it makes you look like a retard.

[shaq]

smmenen wrote:

Please read what I wrote in context.

It's clear we all read in context (this should be one of the rules of EVERY forum), but it's impossible for us to try and figure out what the author EXACTLY said.

This is what happens when primers are published in parts - there's always missing things. I'm sureyou'll be able to fix this and make clear the "hosers" part in the next chapter.

[Smmenen]

The only point I was trying to make is that Workshop players can't mulligan to five or four and go Workshop, Trinisphere and expect to win.  More importantly, the MeanDeath players shouldn't expect to lose.  They may lose - but they are still in the game. That's all.  That's the only point I was trying to make with that example.

Since I deleted all the posts in between the two of yours, I merged them.
-Jacob

Take a look at this:

http://www.themanadrain.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=14950  

The first Long lists with Death Wish came from my team as I played it in the January Waterbury.  I think the only other person to come up with lists independently at that time was goober or someone else.  Additionally, people know that I was primarily responsible for making original Long popular and for refining it to the monster that it was when lots of other players passed on it.

[MaxxMatt]

@Smemmen.

I think that you make a good "fast-combo" deck another time, you rise the number of "protections" in your maindeck, but another time, this combo deck could die to:

1) Hulk with Duresses, Drains, FoWs and a lot of Wishes
2) Keeper with Drains, FoWs, Denial and Wishes ( in the right order of course... )
3) MUD, WelderMUD, UR-Stax with a not so strong hand
4) Control Madness with FoWs, Circular Logis and Wasteland
5) Slavery because of CotVs and FoWs and their hate
6) CotVs, Pirostatic Pillar, Null Rod and Blood Moons

I tested a lot this build ( similar to your previous ones and the ones that well-placed at Waterbury played by CrazyCarl ) to be sure of what I was going to say and the results that I found convince me that your deck is really good ONLY if your opponent let you use your proactive resources.

A lot of opponent strategies avoid you to use entire portions of you decks and you are unable to prevent them to stop them if you exclude random one turn win

On the other hand, it seems really strange to me that a so good deck-builder as you are, continue to assemble decks without FoWs.
The deck as it is now don't have the minimum number of blu cards to support FoWs, but there are a lot of blue substitutes for some of your non-blue bombs

In my experience, it is far better to have a little hope to counter an huge opponent’s treat on his first turn, rather than hoping that he could not be able to capitalize his own advantage after that first or second turn.

Imho, you are trying to develop and sponsor a deck that isn’t so good in that specific metagame. There is too much hate and too much attention on what every other MW.dec can do on his first turn, to convince us that a fast combo deck like this could win a lot, because it has one of the best goldfish rate all around. There are so many things to take into account when playing a combo deck that reducing all the games to a flip isn't always satisfing.

Take into account only your American’s last game experience:
1)   UR.Stax    ïƒ  Trinispheres, CotVs, Blasts, Crypts, CoWs and a lot of drawers
2)   3C-DARgon    ïƒ  FoWs, Duress, Bazaars, Crypts, Chalices,
3)   UG-Oath   ïƒ  Kegs, BtB, A Pletora of Counters, CotVs,
4)   MonoU    ïƒ  You perfectly know what this deck can do..
5)   Atog       ïƒ  Duresses, FoWs, Drains,  CotVs and the best engine all around
6)   GayRed   ïƒ  the best denial plan,  FoWs and Rods
7)   LandStill   ïƒ  Bye for you
8)   UR-Stax    ïƒ  Smokestacks, Trinispheres, CoWs, Wastelands, Drawers backup.

If you take into account that you can find and face decks like MUD, Welder-MUD and Slavery 1&2 too, I don’t know how “simple & strong� could be your path to victory.

On the other hand, the article itself is really well written and self-explanatory as usual. Good Work!



MAxxMAtt

[Smmenen]

Rather than address those criticisms point by point let me clarify what I'm trying to do with this article series.

I'm not trying to suggest that this is THE deck to play.   I'm not offering this as the metagame breaker.  I'm simply writing this to offer to other people my experience with the deck should they be interested in playing a different combo deck.  I'm offering this to people who also love combo and want to give a new deck a try - hopefully bolster some magical skills in the process.  

I really enjoy playing the deck and I would hope that other people could share that joy.  That's the point of the series.  So don't come away thinking that I am trying to say that this is the best deck, I'm just trying to make the case that this is a VIABLE deck.

[Thug]

With all respect Steve, I think It's a little too late to change the deck's name, as said before It's looks too much like the old long, and on top of that, it had existed for several months already, labaled Death Long.

So what if it doesn't carry the Meandeck label, as long as people know where it's from it shouldn't really bother you. I think most people know that you were on of the main reasons Long ever got so popular, so just stick with the name, I say.

---

I fail too see the power of this deck, but people get more than decent results playing this deck. To me the deck has slowed down too much (yes it did slow down, 1R and 1BB makes a turn difference and that is huge) and the metagame is prepared for such a deck.

The succes on Long was not just because it was soo powerfull, the right answers either not been printed yet or not been discovered yet. But when more people started taking notice of Long people came prepared. For one, a well built dragon with Null Rods in the sideboard could easily win the match againt Long. I think the Restriction of LED was not really because Long was dominating ('cause it wasn't) but it was more because Long showed that LED was abusable.

If Burning Wish and LED would be unrestricted right now I doubt I would lay my hands on Long. So why bother with a powered down version?

---

You do a good job of explaining why this might be viable in the current metagame (although it only works in theory for me), but what really cathes my eye is that all the points you give us also count for TPS, except that it doesn't outspeed Stax, but it has enough other tools for that.

I really fail to see any reason to play this deck over TPS, and I think I'm not the only one. So maybe you could focus a little more on comparing this deck to current decks than to the old Long. Times have changed and Mirrodin gave us a lot of artifacts a Long player just doesn't want to see.

TPS is more prepared to deal with Hate and is equipped for the midgame with basics and a much more stable manabase overal.

TPS has acces to Demonic, Vampiric, Mystical, LD Vault etc. to Find Will when you need it, so what makes Death Wish the better choice? Wishing for an answer is awfully slow and I almost never did it with Long, just the fact that you could play with 4 Wills made burning so good in the deck, but you don't have LED anymore to make Will a game winner very early on, so what do you Wish for in the early game? TPS just takes a little more time and then still wins by tutoring for Will 5 out of 10 times. So I think I shouldn't be too hard to compare both decks, since they have a lot in common.

Koen

[goober]

Yea that was me who made it back in late December, but I wasn't able to run it much due to a lack of power.

I really like this new build, it seems very solid.  I cut Crop Rotation in favor of another Hurkyl's main.  Workshops are showing their face more often, so I like being able to deal with them easier.  It went to the sb in place of the Spiral, because I found it to be the least useful.  The only sideboarding I do against fish is to bring out the Hurkyl for the Rotation.  I am probably trying this out tomorrow so I will have more to say after that.

[wonkey_donkey]

If the Workshop player does get Trinisphere, they may have mulliganed or kept a bad hand simply on the strength of Trinisphere. I have played uncountable games where Workshop players have gone:

Turn One:
Mishra's Workshop, Trinisphere, go

Me:
Land, go

Turn Two:
Workshop player: Draw, Go

Me:
Land, Remove Elvish Sprit Guide and play Death Wish (I find Hurkyl's Recall) or tutor up your maindeck Hurkyl's Recall.

Turn Three:
Workshop player: Draw, go.

Me: Land, go.

Turn Four:
Them:
Oh look another spell. Crucible, Juggernaut, or whatever.

On their endstep, I Hurkyl's Recall all of their stuff to their hand and combo out on my turn.

People who haven't tested against me will just assume, wrongly, that the Trinisphere will be enough. Some combo players might be stupid enough to just scoop.

Can people please stop talking about the stax example? It was there to show that trinisphere by itself does not automatically defeat the combo player. Please stop telling everyone that it doesn't prove that the workshop prison match is easy or anything like that - this example isn't supposed to do so.

There was far less detail in this one than any of the long.dec articles, though - any particular reason for this other than risk of repeating yourself? I'm also still a little sceptical about your ability to fight through a mana drain in some cases, however - I feel that you're right in so far as vanilla counterspells are not a threat, but the boost that control decks can get from mana drain can be too much for you to handle, I would have thought. True, you have duresses and swarms post-sb, but I'm not convinced. Is this a fair assessment?

Nice article, Steve - I enjoy reading your storm articles. Keep it up.

Tom

[wuaffiliate]

You people are useless, no wonder the quality of the forums dips occasionally, shit like this makes me wonder why articles are posted here. All people do is look for small holes and just hammer at them because they dont understand.

I do agree with Koen that TPS is a stronger choice but that doesnt make this deck invalid, it has obviously had multiple strong showings in recent past.

[everythingitouchdies]

The point is that STAX does not have an AUTO WIN against DEATH LONG. Yes, Trinisphere is painful. No, We dont lose to it. No, its not the only card in STAX that is hard to play against. No, STAX is not the funnest matchup for DEATH LONG. No, WE DONT SCOOP TO TRINISPHERE.

Thats the point. Thats it. Nothing more. No one said all a STAX player can do is play Trinisphere. And there is no denying that STAX is a deck that DOES mulligan alot, looking for a strong lock hand. Steve just said that this is where the opportunity to gain an edge in the game comes from.

What more can be said?

EITD

[wonkey_donkey]

trinisphere is not a killer card, is a card that slow the opponent play, if you don't play anything after trini you loose this is obvious; so if you play a deck with trinisphere you must have this idea in your mind: i have 2 turns when i can win the game, so i have to draw a killer card (smokestack etc) an put it into play.

Which is precisely the point steve was making - if you agressively mulligan, then you are playing off the top of your deck. You also have 2 turns to live. Not a pleasant situation, I'm sure you agree?

You also seem to claim that workshop.dec plays the following. I did a bit of searching and came up with the following.

Your claim:

4 cotv
4 trini
4 sphere
4 smokestack
4 tangle wire
4 wasteland
1 strip

Whilst the evidence says:

3 Trinisphere
4 Wasteland
1 Strip Mine
...
Sideboard
4 Chalice of the Void
1 Trinisphere

4 Smokestack
4 Tangle Wire
4 Trinisphere
4 Wasteland
1 Strip Mine

4 Trinisphere
4 Wasteland
1 Strip Mine

4 Trinisphere
4 Wasteland
1 Strip Mine
...
Sideboard
2 Chalice of the Void

4 Smokestack
4 Tangle Wire
4 Trinisphere
4 Wasteland
1 Strip Mine

This doesn't show every deck with a great number of the threats that you mentioned. Not a single sphere of resistance, and most threats are accounted for by the 2 trinistax decks in there. Get your facts straight, and get back on topic.

Well said, Dante.

Tom

[jpmeyer]

You people are useless, no wonder the quality of the forums dips occasionally, shit like this makes me wonder why articles are posted here. All people do is look for small holes and just hammer at them because they dont understand.

Also, people need to recognize that in a thread, there are more posts than just the initial one, the shitty one that you are about to make, and all the ones that will be posted flaming your shitty post.  Learn to read the other ones first, pls tks.

[racetraitor]

wonkey_donkey: Point taken, but I think your analysis is a bit flawed by the fact that you only use American tournament results. Here in Europe Workshops are primarily used to cast lock components, not fatties, for several resons. Less proxy tournaments -> Less aggro-control -> Less need for big creatures. Thus, the Workshop matchup cannot be reduced to "Trinisphere or no?" since there are several other hosers played that have a similar effect (and can be cast on the first turn without having to mulligan aggressively). I guess this is what has the Italians going berserk, and the reason for TPS being the superior combo deck in Europe right now.

Let us also not forget in our comparison to old Long that Death Wish eats away half your life and is a turn slower than Burning Wish. In my experience, you often cannot cast Will the same turn you wished for it (not having LED really hurts), which can mean game against aggro-combo decks like Affinity that can drop you from 10 to 0 in one fast swing. Is the versatility of Death Wish over TPS's tutors really worth this risk? I tend to agree with Koen that wishing for answers was never that good of an idea to begin with, unless the situation absolutely requires it.

I'm looking forward to the next article in the series to see if these points have been considered...

[Jacob Orlove]

This is getting closed and cleaned up. It'll be reopened after I delete all the garbage people managed to post.

Edit: thread cleaned. If you still don't understand the workshop/trinisphere example, read jp's post before saying anything.

[Methuselahn]

Ok, so I decided it would be worth it to read this thread after it had been cleaned up.   The article is pretty good Steve.  I think it is odd that you have done an exhaustive article on a deck that is VIABLE when when the right conditions are met.  Surely, such articles are ripe targets for flaming and criticisms.

The one thing that absolutely bears mention is that you lose virtually no speed against control decks. Why? Because, as I described in the primer for Long in playing against Control, sacrificing your Lion's Eye Diamond on turn 1 against Control is begging to lose. Old long.dec would not go: Burning Wish for Yawgmoth's Will, in response sacrifice LED on turn 1 against a control deck because it would lose its hand and then lose to Force of Will. You always play your other threats first and wear down there resistance before you use the Lion's Eye Diamond.

If I had a cookie for every time I saw my opponent make this error, I'd have a shitton of cookies.

I think Koen brings up alot of great points regarding TPS vs 'MeanDeath' and agree with mostly all of them.  To me, you really seem to go 'all in' in comparison to the force-toting TPS decks.  I'm not sure which is the best route.

For someone who has proclaimed that deck naming should stick to strictly functional motives,  I don't see the logic in naming this 'MeanDeath,' especially when it has already had another non functional name "DeathLong" for so long.  Couldn't have been named 'DeathWish-Will' or 'YWill-Tendrils'  *shrugs*

[JuJu]

Methu, I believe Knut changed DeathLong to Meandeath for some odd reason. Someone correct me if I'm wrong.

[wonkey_donkey]

so, in a public forum we cannot post something that isn't right for the moderators?

good job...

This isn't a public forum. It's a private forum that everyone is invited to join at the discretion of Zherbus (and to a lesser extent the moderators). There is a difference.

I'm really interested in why a guy can't write his opinions

If you want to express your opinion, do it helpfully. We heard your opinions, decided they weren't a useful contribution (largely because they weren't an opinion on the article), so Jacob got rid of them. Fair enough, really. If you don't like the system, then you won't like it in any forum - it's the same everywhere. It's just that the standards here are higher, although by different amounts depending on the forum.

Good job mods... but your work can't change facts

What are you talking about, exactly? This seems to be fairly nosensical and pointless to me. No-one's changing any facts. If you're referring to the trinisphere example, then please don't.

Sorry to be irritable, but there's been 1.5 posts of real substance since Jacob cleaned the thread (@JuJu: nothing wrong with it, just a little light on the detail ). This is supposed to be a discussion of Steve's article, not on the merits of one's ability to express one's opinon subject to some blindingly obvious rules.

Tom

[jpmeyer]

Your posts are being deleted AGAIN because you obviously failed to read what the mods had said, and by complaining about mods because this is a "public forum," you obviously haven't read about the site.  Someone asked a question about why Steve chose to use a Workshop hand like that and half a dozen posts were spent explaining it.  A discussion of what cards are in Workshop decks is irrelevant to the discussion over whether or not a Trinisphere BY ITSELF (and "by itself" is important here because if you are mulliganing to like 4 cards thinking that your Trinisphere will be enough BY ITSELF, you aren't going to cast 13 Tangle Wires and 9 Smokestacks with your two mana sources and 1 other card in hand) is enough to win the game.

Also, if you are bringing up THE EXACT SAME POINT as was already brought up by someone else (you know, because you're not reading the thread or you're only selectively reading the thread to see what you want to see,) you are not accomplishing anything and you are just wasting space.[/color]

[WildWillieWonderboy]

The important thing to realize here is that $T4KS and Deathlong / Longdeath / Meandeath / the deck in question are both combo decks. To this end, it is important to view the matchup as a race, just like any other combo matchup. $T4KS has 4 cards that stop Deathlong and they must be played very early, then followed up with other specific cards to win. All this with little library manipulation. Deathlong has 60 cards centered on playing the cards that beat $T4KS (or any other deck for that matter) that can be played in almost any order.  Also, because of Deathlongs speed, having part of the lock doesn't necessarily help $T4KS get any closer to the full lock the way it does in other matches.

The biggest disadvantage for the Long player in this case and in others is the disparity in requisite skill, which helps balance the fact that the deck is ridiculous. Right now, the metagame is slow enough that playing a fast enough deck with resilience to FoW blows everything in the meta out of the water. In other words, if the metagame wins on turn 3 and you win on turn 2, it doesn't really matter what your opponent is playing.

Wonderful article Steve, I wait with baited breath for part II.

[dicemanx]

A discussion of what cards are in Workshop decks is irrelevant to the discussion over whether or not a Trinisphere BY ITSELF... is enough to win the game.

Perhaps the problem is that this is so trivial, that there was perhaps little point in bringing it up in the article in the first place.  And sure we can argue that a Workshop player shouldn't just assume that mulliganing into a Trinisphere hand will automatically win. However, whether he assumes that or not is irrelevant - he *doesn't have much of a choice* about mulliganing if his MD is light on disruption.

Plus, discussion about disruption cards in Workshop decks is *very* relevant to this article, and shouldn't have been wiped out by our overzealous mods. Belcher/Tendrils-based combo is on the rise in Noth American metas, and if Workshop decks are to compete, they have to adjust accoringly.

[Anusien]

I agree with Smmenen on the original point that it is winnable under a Trinisphere.  The arguments he makes in the primer about it being winnable for the MeanDeath player (although not necessarily easy) is true.  The problem is if the Workshop player does start adjusting to MeanDeath, then the matchup becomes much more difficult.  Still, it would be interesting, and if Workshop changes slots around to hurt combo, it will lose some of its power in other matchups.  All in all, this deck is incredibly difficult to play.  It reminds me of the articles surrounding BBS back when it was first created (I think Oscar Tan's articles).  He said the reason the deck has problems winning against, say, The Deck is because the deck was more broken.  If it resolves any card, that card will wreck the entire BBS gameplan.  T1 is all about winning with the most broken deck (Fish notwithstanding).

I'm waiting anxiously for Part 2.