Is Meandeck Doomsday the five Proxy deck of Choice?

[Smmenen]

Is Doomsday the new budget deck of choice?

Here is the list:

3rd Place
Stephen Menendian - Meandeck Doomsday
Main Deck
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Beacon of Destruction
1 Black Lotus
4 Brainstorm
2 Cabal Ritual
1 Chromatic Sphere
4 Dark Ritual
1 Demonic Tutor
4 Doomsday
4 Duress
2 Flooded Strand
4 Force of Will
1 Gush
1 Hurky's Recall
3 Island
1 Lim-Dul's Vault
1 Lion's Eye Diamond
1 Lotus Petal
1 Mind's Desire
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Necropotence
4 Polluted Delta
1 Swamp
1 Tendrils of Agony
1 Time Twister
1 Time Walk
4 Underground Sea
4 Unmask
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Yawgmoth's Will

Sideboard:
3 Black to Basics
1 Chain of Vapor
2 Defense Grid
3 Energy Flux
2 Null Rod
3 Old Man of the Sea

The deck wasn't touched for a full month becuase it was leaked.  But there is lots of areas for improvement.  If you don't want to run the Twister, you could possibly run a Jar in that spot and it would be awesome.  Alternatively, you could just run a Windfall, or even better Lim-Dul's Vault.

I hate it that people new to the format have to play Null Rods to compete in Type One.  Does this provide a real choice, or is it too difficult to play?  

I think that the oops, I win factor will mean that budget players will be able to play this deck and pwn.  Thoughts?

[Komatteru]

I think it can make a very suitable proxy deck for some players.  However, the deck's difficulty of play poses a significant problem.  I'm certain a fair number of the budget players do not own the power cards because they do not get a chance to play enough Vintage to make the purchases worthwhile.  This makes them less aware of the subtleties of a Vintage combo deck and all the little things in the format that can break them.  I'm not implying that budget players are bad players, but a large number of them are inexperienced, especially in Vintage.  Doomsday is even more difficult to play than DeathLong, which, in turn, is more difficult to play than TPS.  Even many experienced players are reluctant to play combo because of its difficulty.  Certainly that isn't much of a turn-on for new players.  The more experienced players who want to play combo already own the power, and the other "odd" components of the deck are not expensive enough to proxy (it's not like a Storm combo player who wants to play Dragon for a change of pace would proxy Bazaars).

That said, I think that Doomsday is now the best 5-proxy deck.  Whether or not its something that is accessible for new players is another question alltogether.

Addition: A new player can learn to play this deck in time.  I'm a believer that playing combo really helps elevate one's understanding of the format and the game itself because of the different level of thinking required to play combo.  That is very good for a new player, but learning a complex deck and trying to understand the most complex format in Magic all at the same time might be just way too much.

What in the world is happening in this thread? I keep seeing posts disappear.

[Necrologia]

Doomsday is even more difficult to play than DeathLong, which, in turn, is more difficult to play than TPS.

I've been hearing this tossed around, and frankly I disagree. After hundreds of goldfishes plus some tourney experience I still believe long is harder to pilot than Doomsday. It's not to say that Doomsday is a walk in the park, but it seems less challenging than long.

With Doomsday there are 2 general, all purpose stacks, Beacon or Tendrils. After that there are 3 or so variations depending on what's in hand, and how much mana you have available. Even taking into account all the different hand/mana combinations it's still something in the range of 10 stacks. It's really not that hard to remember all of them, and even if you forget, a goodly chunk of them are: Lotus, LED, Will, Sphere, Tendrils, Ancestral, Ritual, pick 5. What I'm saying is that while there are lots of possiblities with the deck, the vast majority of the time it comes down to turn 1 disruption, doom turn 2 for a memorized stack.

Long on the other hand had like 700 different ways to win depending on whether or not you're going the draw 7 plan, or wish will, or consult wish for RFG'd card, or whatever. Maybe it's just me, but I'm finding Doomsday to be much easier, if only because it has a single definate game plan that it follows 90% of the time.

On topic: Doomsday is great for some budget players, but it's definately not for everyone. Some people only lack power because it's out of their price range. They read articles online, and play often enough to keep up with the current metagame. They go to a tourney to try and win a piece of power. Doomsday is ideal for these people.

Other budget players, however, lack the power because they don't spend enough time playing magic to make such a huge investment worthwhile. These are the people who walk in to a tourney with 5 year old random jank.dec. They play magic almost casually and will enter into a tourney if they have nothing better to do on a saturday. Trying to pick up Doomsday would be much more trouble than it's worth. To people in this category, they'd probably rather spend a few hours playing slivers vs counter rebel than try and take the time to learn the deck. It's also quite unlikely that Doomsday resembles their pet deck of choice.

[Dante]

It's not just about goldfishing and setting up the 2 basic stacks (Beacon or Tendrils)...there are SOOOOO many in-game choices to stack and when to Doomsday, esp vs decks with counterspells or the potential of trinisphere.

In terms of a strict power sense, this deck is the best 5-proxy choice, BUT, you MUST playtest this deck hundreds of times to have a chance.  I playtested Deathlong hundreds of times and thought it would translate to this deck in the 5pm side tournament - it didn't.

[MSR9889]

ill be honest. im new to combo, and i just dont see the combo in the deck. as imbarrassing as this is, could someone explain it to me in a response or PM please. thanks...?

[PittSoothSayer]

JP Meyer wrote an entire article on the deck.  It can be found here:http://www.starcitygames.com/php/news/expandnews.php?Article=8372

[andrewpate]

While I agree that the difficulty of the deck can be a turn-off to some newer players, I think some of you underestimate one of the big draws of Vintage:  the potential to combo out with one huge play.  Many of the newer Vintage players I know started checking it out after they got sick of their KCI and Beacon/Station decks getting invalidated by the ubiquity of 8+ md artifact hate.  A lot of them start out by getting on Apprentice or MWS with Belcher, TPS, etc.  Those players would be very much drawn to the concept of competitive combo with 5 proxies, since many of them have deep Extended collections but lack power.  I think that a lot of players are going to cut their combo teeth on this Doomsday deck before they move on to decks like MeanDeath, etc.

[jazzykat]

Now I don't have the first idea about playing doomsday combo, but this is obviously a good deck, that could be 5 proxy without F'ing null rods!!!!!!!! Let's look at that statement again...this could be a 5 proxy deck that doesn't try to hate the power but just wins!

I think this is fantastic. People on a budget can play a really nasty deck that is also very challenging. I think this should bring in more players since this provides a huge challenge and incentive to master something that can bring home moxes.

Everyone is going to say, what about fish. It's great, but this is budget combo. Before Steve posted 3rd. and brought it up I thought he did it with a full powered deck (I didn't look at the list). And I wouldn't take fish to a major tournament anymore, all those artifact dudes kill fish, and I think it has problems with oath as well.

Kudos to budget players who learn this and do well.

[dicemanx]

Keep in mind that PTW's Dragon build can also make for a good 5-Proxy deck , as all you would need to proxy are 4 Bazaars and a Lotus.

But since Dragon barely gets any attention as it doesn't seem part of a "coherent" meta, it will probably continue to go unnoticed.

[jazzykat]

maybe we need a post with all the non null rod budget decks. I completely forgot about dargon.

Because in my mind:  Budget = 4 Null Rod + 56 Cards someone thought of


The dargon kills turn 2 right?

[mongrel12]

PTW's Dragon build???? where is this, or could someone post a list? i know its somewhat off topic, but its another competing 5-proxy combo deck.

[dicemanx]

PTW's build used 4 Spoils of the Vault and 4 Rituals/4 ESGs for mana acceleration; apart from that, it used the standard Dragon combo cards along with 8 disruption spells. It was designed to be a turn two kill deck, and has many similarities to Doomsday combo decks.

[Ifflejink]

This deck is definitely a great choice for a budget player, but not the kind of player who doesn't want to do any play testing. This, I believe, is a great opportunity for skilled combo players without the budget to play something like Deathlong or TPS. Thank you, Meandeck.

[Whatever Works]

This deck is a very good budget deck, but as said... it is extremely difficult to play even for very skilled players. The deck is a great choice if your a very good combo player, but if your a very good combo player it is probably because you have played combo in the past, and if that is the case then you most likely arent a "budget" player to begin with.

It is the best budget deck IF and only IF the budget player (or any player) goldfishes ALOT of games pre-sideboard, and post sideboard, and games against decks like Stax where you can be put in situations that you will not find in goldfishing.

[bebe]

Having done some testing with a version of our own and also being familiar with DeathLong, I would be somewhat hesitant to recommend this deck to anyone without a lot of combo matches ( real time ) in his resume. This is considerably harder to master than Rector, Dragon or Belcher - all decks that I've played at tournaments and had some success with. There are a lot of decisions to made on each draw and it is not hard to mess up your win - I once Tendriled for 18 and another time just miscounted my stack. This was after some heavy testing. I would imagine that at a long tournament you would need to focus very hard as mistakes are often made from sheer exhaustion.  
The question is not how good the deck is but how good the skill of the player is. The deck can be a force without a doubt and Steve's version is really strong. We have switched to a version that ios almost identical - a little secret tech of our own. Sideboarding is also quite skill intensive as you need to really know your meta and what cards can be removed and which added after sideboarding. We use four Hurkyl's and four Ground Seals (that's correct) in our sideboard for our meta.
So I would say play it but be prepared to lose a few games first time out unless you ahve done a lot of preparation.

[VonDouche]

I've fished this out probably over 50 times so far, and I have to say that it is my new deck of choice.  Even though from those 50+ games, I only went off correctly in the first few turns a handful of them, I am very optimistic.  This is an awesome deck for anybody who is excited and wants to try to get better.  Yes it obviously has its issues, like play difficulty, but with some practice anyone can get a hang of the basic nuances of the deck.

         Of the games I didn't go off correctly with this deck, probably 80% were my fault for not knowing the deck well enough yet.  This is a huge breakthrough for closet combo fans on a budget, and I look forward to seeing more results of the deck.

[Xman]

I have fished this and other D-day builds which I think are reasonable.  I would have to say this is a pretty good build, but I don't know if I would qualify it as the 5-proxy deck of choice.

Here is why
1) It is difficult enough to run without serious testing
2) It is an unforgiving deck (similar to most combo decks.  1 mistake, and you lose)
3) 5 proxy control is easier to run & is more forgiving.

However, this has an upside.  you can proxy a combo deck effectively in a 5 proxy envrionment.  This is a good factor for this deck.

Now, serious testing and play skill involved, we all know how hard this is to get right.  We all know about Smmenen's mistake at SCG Chicago, that arguably, lost him his chance at T2.  Most players, with all do respect, don't have the skill to play combo and pilot it as well as people like Smmenen.  This actually covers both of my first two points.

The third point is n a 5 proxy meta, you usually have drains, and if you don't, you can sub in coutnerspells or other decks.  A control deck is a straight forward deck to play without to much investment, depending on the budget you are going for.  And they are more forgiving.

I think instead of calling this "the 5-proxy deck of choice," perhaps it should be "The 5-proxy COMBO deck of choice."

[Necrologia]

The third point is n a 5 proxy meta, you usually have drains, and if you don't, you can sub in coutnerspells or other decks.

Good control neds 4 drains and most of the power 9 outside of twister. Since most people don't have Drains I fail to see how that works in a 5 proxy tourney.

I think this is the 5 proxy deck of choice for serious players. A well played combo deck just runs over most decks. The trick is just playtesting enough.

[Xman]

The third point is n a 5 proxy meta, you usually have drains, and if you don't, you can sub in coutnerspells or other decks.

Good control neds 4 drains and most of the power 9 outside of twister. Since most people don't have Drains I fail to see how that works in a 5 proxy tourney.

While this is true, combo is very difficult to play.  Don't get me wrong, I love playing combo, but control is more forgiving.  Control does not need all of the P9 sans twister.  to proxy contorl for a meta, youneed the on color moxen, Time Walk, Ancestral Recal.  Yea, you can't proxy 4cc.  The rest of the moxen can be dubbed off for Mox Diamond & the like.

And as I said, it is more forgiving than combo decks are.  And any serious player will have dual, drains, etc, even if they can't afford power yet, they are working on it.  I know quite a few serious players who don't have power, but everything else they need.  They are working on power, like myself.  I know a lot of people with drains, and if you really want to compete, you will have these kinds of cards avaliable.

Combo is NOT easier to proxy in a 5 proxy meta.  Control is.  I stand by what I said, This could be the 5 proxy COMBO deck.

[Necrologia]

Control does not need all of the P9 sans twister. to proxy contorl for a meta, youneed the on color moxen, Time Walk, Ancestral Recal. Yea, you can't proxy 4cc. The rest of the moxen can be dubbed off for Mox Diamond & the like.

This is blatantly wrong. The only control decks I can think of off the top of my head are 4cc, Tog, Control Slaver, and Mono Blue. All of these decks run 4-5 Moxen, Walk, Recall and Lotus. With 5 proxies you’re going to be cutting a few cards, and Chrome Mox and Mox Diamond do NOT make up the difference. The pseudo Moxen are card disadvantage, and that’s a very big difference in control.

Control Slaver is absolutely impossible to do on a budget. It needs all 4 drains, plus all 6 loMoxen for welder targets. Ancestral and Walk, while not key are obviously powerhouses. Even with 4 drains you still have to do something like -Mox, -Walk, -Recall. That sucks, especially considering that the inferior moxen you'll be adding aren't nearly as good for welder.

4cc and Tog are similar, but since you've admitted that 4cc fails lacking power I'll drop it. Tog's game plan is not to drop tog, but to accelerate into intuition/AK. That's 5 mana, which makes the deck very mana hungry. Tog will frequently drain a spell of only moderate importance just for the mana. Cutting moxen is therefore ill advised. Time Walk, however, is vital, while Recall is AK #5. What are you cutting again?

Finally is Mono Blue. Like all the other control decks, this runs the entire power 9 minus twister. Mono Blue's game plan is to drop turn 1 land Mox for mana leak, then either phid or hold mana for 2 counters. Cutting moxen greatly reduces the chance of a turn 1 counter, which virtually kills the deck. Mono Blue can't deal with permanents on the board; it survives by keeping the opponent from resolving anything of consequence.

Combo is NOT easier to proxy in a 5 proxy meta. Control is. I stand by what I said, This could be the 5 proxy COMBO deck.

Part of the problem is that you seem to assume most serious players have 4 drains. At current market prices a set of drains easily costs more than even a Mox Sapphire. I don't see why you assume that people won't have power, but will have Drains.

Even assuming that a person has Drains though, Doomsday is a combo deck that can be played with only 5 proxies, without losing anything. An ideal combo deck list versus a butchered control deck shouldn’t be competition at all. Control may be easier to play, but playing a deck that’s packing all the power it needs is simply a better idea. This is why people say Fish is a budget deck, not Tog packing random bad moxen.

[jpmeyer]

Doomsday has 9 $20 cards (Force of Will, Vampiric Tutor, and Underground Sea), needs only 5 proxies, and then has nothing more expensive than $10.  Nine cards that cost around $20 is about comparable to what a deck in Standard would cost, so I think that that makes it a good comparison for what "budget" should be.

[andrewpate]

That's an interesting point, JP.  What qualifies as budget?  In Standard, even decks like Goblin Bidding that have tons of chase rares in them basically never cost more than $300 to assemble.  Is that our baseline for budget?  Suppose a deck was all $10 cards but just NEEDED, say for example, Drains, Walk, and Twister, just theoretically.  Would this qualify as budget, forcing the player to buy one $100 card?  I tend to consider "budget" to be anything with no cards worth more than $100 that can't be proxied, meaning no more than 5 out of P9, Library, Workshop, Drain, and I guess Juzam Djinn.  I would be interested to hear other people's opinions on this.  Of course, that would probably need its own thread.

More on-topic, I agree that Drain-based control is unfeasible on a budget, and since Doomsday is better than Fish, it appears to be top dog for now.  That said, Standard players making the jump might not really understand Storm combo well enough and could be better off building Fish as their first deck if they don't want to log in dozens of hours on MWS.

[pox_reborn]

While doomsday is good in a 5 proxy meta and proved to hold its own in scg 3, would Death long still be the atomatic combo deck to choose if one had access to the cards for both decks?

[Shades]

While doomsday is good in a 5 proxy meta and proved to hold its own in scg 3, would Death long still be the atomatic combo deck to choose if one had access to the cards for both decks?

I think that is heavily metagame dependant. If you are expecting a lot of Drain based Control Decks, go for Doomsday. If you are expecting more Workshops I'd play Death Long.

[The M.E.T.H.O.D]

I think its a very good option.

It's not worth it bitching about the difficulty.

Its chance for the "good" players who feel that because they don't have power they cant compete to step it up and prove their worth.

I personally played the deck in a tourney already and I love it.

[Revvik]

The arguments about play skill being too big a factor when deciding whether a deck is budget or not have no merit.  

#1. Play skill doesn't change the fact that, aside from a few duals, this deck is pretty cheap, and most of the cards are portable to other decks (Yawg Will, Force of Wills, etc.) i.e.: cards you should own.
B) These days you can't just walk into a tournament after picking up a deck and goldfishing a couple of times.  The decision to play a deck should be followed by an immense amount of practice & playtesting

I'm already getting a friend of mine into this deck, despite the fact that the only real T1 experience he's had has been with FCG (which he started to be truly amazing with after about two weeks   )

[Ifflejink]

The amount of skill required to pilot Doomsday, coupled with it's relatively low pricetag, really makes it beneficial to the meta, at least in the future. Budget players using this deck gain skill, thereby lowering the amount of scrubby players who just walk into a tournament with a great deck they have no idea how to play.

[Smmenen]

I think that to play this deck perfectly 85% of the time requires much less skill than to play Fish perfectly even 50% of the time.  I think most people underestimate how hard it is to play Fish well.  Fish is a very counterintuitive deck to play perfectly imo.  One mistake with Fish and you are toast since it has so little true power.  

Most of the time I was winning with Doomsday, the plays were obvious.  Turn one Duress.  Turn Two, Dark Ritual, Doomsday.  Turn Three Win with standard combo.

Even the times where I used the non standard kill - about 40% of the time, the majority of the time I was just tutoring for Tednrils after playing Yawg will.

The real difficulty is when you have to DDay in extremely difficult situations.  There is almost always a way to win, but it is usually hard to find.  

Dday seems to provide budget players with a consistent and non-difficult deck to play.   The only hard part is choosing which 5 cards you are going to get.

I'd like to see people post difficult but interesting kills they got with this deck.

[Komatteru]

I think that to play this deck perfectly 85% of the time requires much less skill than to play Fish perfectly even 50% of the time.  I think most people underestimate how hard it is to play Fish well.  Fish is a very counterintuitive deck to play perfectly imo.  One mistake with Fish and you are toast since it has so little true power.  

Most of the time I was winning with Doomsday, the plays were obvious.  Turn one Duress.  Turn Two, Dark Ritual, Doomsday.  Turn Three Win with standard combo.

Even the times where I used the non standard kill - about 40% of the time, the majority of the time I was just tutoring for Tednrils after playing Yawg will.

The real difficulty is when you have to DDay in extremely difficult situations.  There is almost always a way to win, but it is usually hard to find.  

Dday seems to provide budget players with a consistent and non-difficult deck to play.   The only hard part is choosing which 5 cards you are going to get.

I'd like to see people post difficult but interesting kills they got with this deck.

Fish is indeed very difficult to play because of its lack of power.  It may very well be true that it is easier to play Doomsday perfectly more often than it is to play Fish perfectly.  However, combo is generally unforgiving.  One mistake and you can be toast.  Pick the wrong 5 cards?  You lose, sorry.  Fish, on the other hand, does not need to be played perfectly to win.  You can make small mistakes and still win on a regular basis.  When you make a mistake with Fish, you do not shoot yourself in the foot, as you do with combo.  You don't get to make small mistakes with Doomsday/combo.  Every mistake is large.  Your opponent has to be able to capitalize on your misplay to make it hurt when you play Fish.  You don't lose to yourself when you make a mistake with Fish.

Edit: I apologize for the like 4th grade sentences in this post.  I'm posting inbetween homework questions and my brain is half fried.

[h9565]

I'd like to see people post difficult but interesting kills they got with this deck.

I'm not sure if this qualifies as difficult, but with a lethal Akroma sitting across table you have:

1x Spirit Token
1x Chromatic Sphere
1x Island
1x Swamp
2x Underground Sea

Hand:
Force of Will
2x Junk

Graveyard:
7x Junk (disruption, fetchlands, etc)

Have not used land drop.

Here's the path to victory:
Break Chromatic Sphere for U.  Draws Brainstorm.  Brainstorm, drawing Cabal Ritual, Demonic Tutor, Doomsday.  Put back 2x Junk.  Ritual, Demonic Tutor for Yawgmoth's Will.  Will.  Drop fetchland and fetch.  Ritual (still barely have Threshhold).  Demonic Tutor for Gush.  Doomsday:
-- top --
Ancestral
Mox Sapphire
Black Lotus
Lotus Petal
Tendrils
-- bottom --
Gush.  Mox.  Ancestral. Lotus. Petal.  Tendrils for 26.

I think I got that down all right (doing this from memory here).  That took a while to figure out, and maybe there was simpler path to victory (just starting to work with this deck).  I kept thinking I was either one mana or one storm short until I hit upon this solution.

Edit: Just checked with my opponent.  This isn't quite right.  In this situation, I can DT for Gush and then Doomsday right away.  The Brainstorm was in the graveyard and the Ritual must have been in my hand...  The point was to find a zero mana Doomsday stack (requires Gush in hand and 4 storm).