[Discussion] Adapting Tog to win in this metagame.

[Thug]

Why does everyone bring up drawing the Library early? This confuses the hell out of me - it's restricted, therefore drawing it early should happen rarely, if at all.

Dammit, man.

Let's say you're playing against Oath (hell - ANY deck), and you've managed to make it to the midgame, and you've spent a couple of draw spells, maximized your hand size, and have 2 islands, a swamp, and a fetch, but are holding zero Wishes, AKs, Deeps, tutors, etc. Three land, a Duress, Drain, and two other cards I don't feel like making up names for compose your hand. Your opponent passes, and you draw... Library. You just won, don't even play it out, because you now have the ability to replace any spent resource in hand, whether it be a counter to their threat or a threat itself.

Having 7 cards in hand in the midgame and still not being sure of winning  is very rare.

Having LoA early on is pretty good still, especially in a deck running Duresses, since you can spend turn two playing a Duress to make up for the fact that you don't have UU open.

I'm not sure about the inclusion of LoA though, since it will most likely take the place of a Basic. It seems doable in a three-colour config, four-colour with LoA seems almost impossible to me unless you up the land count or with very little basics.

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Sarcatog:

What is everybodies opinion on this? At first it seemed pretty akward to me, but after some test runs it's actually has some nice advantages over Psychatog.

- It doesn't get hit by REB (this can be pretty important)
- Psychatog and Sarcatog can often grow to the same power/toughness, but Sarcatog doesn't force you to give up your whole hand, so you can take bigger risks with it.
- Sarcatog has better synergy with Will (this rarely matters though, since resolving Will with a ToG in play should win you the game anyway.)

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What I like about the UBR version is the amazing versatility of the wishes (the only thing the italians seems to lack in something to take care of Mongrel since Snuff Out doesn't hit it. Smother could be an option). Right now people tend to shy away from wishes because they seem to be pretty slow in the current metagame, but with so many cheap and efficient answers Wishes most certainly aren't too slow.

Koen

[Revvik]

Despite what it may sound like, I'm not contradicting myself here.  Losing to a lucky topdeck on their part can happen at anytime, Library decreases those odds by letting you see more of your deck (dig deeper) and find answers/win conditions first.  The odds of being left open decrease.

And what does it matter if you're not playing against a control deck?  Brainstorm it back, and shuffle it up (tutor, fetch).  Use it to distract enemy Wastelands.

Sarcatog:
THIS was an interesting thing to see.  The first time I saw an Italian UBr list, I laughed.  I stopped laughing after I saw my first Cranial Extraction played against me.  Though it didn't resolve, other stuff did because the Extraction forced my hand.

Here's the thing - if you're seeing a lot of Extractions in your area, then Sarcatog is a really good backup plan (combined with the five moxen, sol ring, Lotus, and Yawg Will. Sac, Will, Replay, Sac, remove other stuff, 'Zerk).  Otherwise, Psychatog has better interactions with the rest of the deck, and it's not worth diluting your normal gameplan.

[Ultima]

If you still lose after making it to the mid-game without losing already, then all i can say is, library wouldn't have let you win the game either.  It makes no sense that more card advantage would have won you the game if it isn't already.  

As far as Sarcatog, the Italian metagame is primarily combo based with TPS and cranial extraction is more prevalent.  This is what I think to be the primary reason since sarcatog is good against combo and another win condition.  You probably wouldn't want to run him around the US metagame especially if your expecting to play workshop, since Sarcatog is really, really, really awful against Workshop.

[onelovemachine]

I'll go on record as saying that neither of these are the case. I believe you were a little tone deaf to the hyperbole there, and the basic gist of thecapn's sentiment was valid.

If you know him personally than maybe you would be apt to pick up on his exaggerations.  You could ask him to be more clear in the future.  I simply read his post which says he does not fear stax because he plays artifact mutation, which I feel I at least argued a point against.

On paper, it looks kind of terrible, but that's the way it looks if you measure almost any deck against $T4KS without playing the match out.

I play test stax vs a VERY adept player by the name of brian demars regularly.  I haven't seen a stax player play as well as he does except for possibly kevin cron (btw, I'm not saying one is better than the other, cron is a great stax player).  He and I both feel the tog matchup is NOT favorable.  It used to be.... before mutation was so hard to cast and resolve.  But nowadays we both feel the matchup has turned.

[Revvik]

If you still lose after making it to the mid-game without losing already, then all i can say is, library wouldn't have let you win the game either.  It makes no sense that more card advantage would have won you the game if it isn't already.  

It is ridiculous that people on this thread, not just Ultima here, are debating whether or not Library is included.  "More card advantage?  Why?"

Look at the most popular control deck today - Control Slaver.  I swear, half of this deck is nothing but "Draw an assload of cards."  How is drawing cards unfavorable here?  Without Library, CS can outdraw you on a bad day.  The inclusion of Library, and proper utilization of it, can allow 'Tog to draw two cards per turn without playing any spells.  Now you can keep up.  
And don't give me that "if I play Library, I can't make it to two blue fast enough" crap.  You have Force of Will and Duress, so Library is potent in the early game.  And if you don't draw Library early on (and you shouldn't), then you can get Drain mana up as per your usual plan.

[Addolorisi]

When my manabase can support an early Library, everything's all well and good. But quite frankly, that doesn't happen very often when Drain accounts for a bit more than 1/3 of my counterbase.

When I get Library midgame, I generally need to have other draw up and running to be able to activate it. I don't know if my experiences are universal, but a card that only helps me after resolving at least one draw spell factors pretty low on my list. That said, it's still in my maindeck, but I'm strongly debating its merits.

[GotRealLucky]

If you still lose after making it to the mid-game without losing already, then all i can say is, library wouldn't have let you win the game either.  It makes no sense that more card advantage would have won you the game if it isn't already.  

It is ridiculous that people on this thread, not just Ultima here, are debating whether or not Library is included.  "More card advantage?  Why?"

Look at the most popular control deck today - Control Slaver.  I swear, half of this deck is nothing but "Draw an assload of cards."  How is drawing cards unfavorable here?  Without Library, CS can outdraw you on a bad day.  The inclusion of Library, and proper utilization of it, can allow 'Tog to draw two cards per turn without playing any spells.  Now you can keep up.  
And don't give me that "if I play Library, I can't make it to two blue fast enough" crap.  You have Force of Will and Duress, so Library is potent in the early game.  And if you don't draw Library early on (and you shouldn't), then you can get Drain mana up as per your usual plan.

If you like Library and you can find the space for it in your deck, play it. It's not such a big issue. I don't have it in my current list (the Italian build) but I can understand people who want to play with it. It has advantages and disadvantages, you should make your decision on what you value most (in your metagame).

[Smmenen]

It should be relatively clear that Tog should be designed for the anticipated metagame.  Whatever the case may be, it should be equally clear that UBg Tog decks are a dead item.  

Duress is insffucient to equip Psychatog to deal with the multiplicity of Welder decks.  To even begin to compete, you  have to have a realistic chance of taking game one and pack multiple Red Elemental Blasts in games two and three.  

In my experience from the first part of 2004, Psychatog has a surprisingly strong match against Control Slaver decks if you load up on the Red Elemental Blasts.  I watched Eli Kassis and Rich Shay play the top 8 match at newington to interesting results.

First of all, Rich Shay kept a hand that was like this: Lotus, Land, Fact, Yawg Will, and two other cards.  He had mullliganed to six.  Eli was playing a list that Carl Winter gave him, and that list had only one Red Elemental Blast in the sideboard.  That was the critical mistake.  Eli's opening hand was something like this:  Island, Brainstorm, Brainstorm, Brainstorm, Mana Drain, Mana Drain, Mana Drain, Mana Drain - or something bizaare like that but only had one land.  Eli could have pulled out the match under many circumstances.  First, Rich resolved Blood Moon.  That didn't matter over the course of hte game becuase Eli drew both of his Islands and plenty of off color Moxen, including the Lotus.  The problem was that his lack of Red Elemental Blast to stop Rich's draw spells via Cunning Wish meant that he could not effectively stop Rich's draw and countermagic with Blood Moon on the table, which  it could have done qutie effectively other wise.

In my view, UBr is the only way you can build three color Tog.  Such a deck could have done wonders at this past waterbury.  I would not advocate the lack of green in a workshop metagame, but there were barely a half dozen Workshop decks in the whole tournament.  

Here is one proposal for Tog for you Northeasterners:

3 Psychatog
4 Mana Drain
4 Force of Will

1 Time Walk
1 Ancestral
4 Brainstorm
3 Intuition
4 AK
3 Deep Analysis
1 Skeletal Scrying

The Deep Analysis will help win the Slaver AK mirror and you should find it, as I did when I was testing Goth Slaver mid summer, superior to their Thirsts - as I'll explain in a bit.

1 Demonic Tutor
2 Duress - this is here just to clear the way for Yawg Will
1 Mind Twist - again, control field
1 Yawg Will

3 Cunning Wish - I'll explain in a moment

4 Underground Sea
3 Volcanic Island
5 Fetchland
2 Tropical Island
2 Island
1 Library of Alexandria

5 Moxen
1 Sol Ring
1 Lotus

SB:
1 Fact or Fiction
4 Red Elemental Blast
1 Pyroblast
1 Firestorm
1 Fire/Ice
2 Ground Seal
2 Artifact Mutation
1 Berserk
2 Old Man of the Sea

Although this would not have been perfectly metagamed, I beleive this sort of deck is best equipped to handle the Slaver decks that proliferate that region.  

Here is why:

While it is axiomatic that you will probably lose if you get slaved, Tog is the more stream lined deck.  In pitting Goth Slaver against Tog during mid summer, we found that although Goth Slaver had two draw engines (which we imagined would be like Tog having 4 Fact or Fictions), it had more unsynergistic cards.  If you can keep Thirst For Knowledge from resolving, the Slaver player will be sitting on  bad expensive artifacts.  

In other words, the matchup is an AK mirror that goes like this: neither player can play AKs early - as a result, both sides devolve into two draw engines: Tog plays DAs and Slaver players Thirst.  The primary objective of the Tog player has to do is stop the Thirsts from resolving.   If this occurs, one of a few things happens: 1) The Slaver player has to try to force through AKS and stop the opponent's f rom resolving, or 2) Inuition for the broken artifacts and use them with Welder.  

What makes the objective of stopping Thirst from resolving realistic is the use of Wish.  The Psychatog deck should be the control role.  You should use your Wishes eot at the earliest convenience to find REBs.  This works.  At origins, I played match before the Origins midnight tournament against Rich and won 2-1 on this principle.  Your draw engine is superior to the regular Control Slaver player - you are faster and they have to outbroken you.  If they resolve Mind Twist or Tinker, then you are in trouble - but aside from some insane restricted cards, your game plan meshes very well as an answer to theirs.  

The board plan against Slaver is something like this:

+ Pyroblast and 3 Rebs
+ 2 Ground Seals
- 1 Tog
- 1 Mind Twist
- Scrying
- 3-4 AKs (in the AK mirror)

The Control Slaver deck is built upon the synergy between Welder (often expendable) and Thirst.  If you stop thirst, then the Control Slaver player is holding overcosted artifacts and has a useless Goblin in play.  

I found, in testing, one problematic card was the Citadel.  If the Control Slaver player goes first and has Duress and Citadel, they can resolve their first Thirst before you can stop it and then you will have to deal with each Welder.  Ground Seal should help this cause.  But most of the time, you have favorable chances.  

In all honesty, you could cut Green for this environment (The NE), but it is, in my view, important and helpful for the environment you will face elsewhere, although perhaps not strictly necessary.  Rack and Ruin and Shaman may suffice as a weak substitute.  

If post board against Control Slaver your deck looks like this:

2 Tog

4 Drain
4 FOW
3 Wish (with one Reb and Fire/ice still in the board)
3 REB
1 Pyroblast
3 Intuition
2 Duress
1 DT
1 Yawg Will

3 Deep Anal
1 Scrying

4 Brainstorm
1 Ancestral
1 Time Walk
2 Ground Seal

With 24 Mana, you have a very strong maindeck.  Intuitions can find FOW in a pitch, so your effective countermagic is: 4 Drains, 4 FOW, 3 Red blast, 1 Pyro, 2 Duress, 3 Wish (for Reb), and in desperation, 3 Intuitions.  That's 20 potential countermagic.  You play it like mono blue and then use the Drain mana to fuel your spells.  

Why Scrying?  I have found that Scrying, despite the apparent lack of synergy with Tog, actually has a great deal of synergy.  You can Scry away an AK 3 or 4 and then Wish for it again - using Wish as a regrowth.  The Scrying also fulfills a card Tog doesnt have: a 3cc draw spell.  You can eot: spend three mana to draw 2 cards.  

The lack of Wastelands in the Waterbury environment probably means that you don't really need to have more Islands.  Should Blood Moon hit, you will have at least one island in play and Red Elemental Blasts and Fire/ice to wish for to stop Welders and draw.  So I wouldn't be too concerned about that.  

The real weakness of the deck isn't Control in my view - it's Combo.  A deck like TPS can be a nightmare matchup.  For that reason, you might want to devote the two Old Men slots to Arcane Lab in consideration of the total lack of Fish in the NE anymore (perhaps that should change?).

I would not be concerned with whether to run Psycha or Sarca-Tog.  The win condition in this sort of matchup is mostly a formality.  The advantage of Tog is that it permits you to spend only a minimal amount of slots devoted to a win condition  becuase it is so effeicient and powerful.  

Your ultimate game plan should be as follows: out draw your opponent.  This cant' really be described in great detail - it's something that good control players execute well, and you just have to have a sense for the flow of the match.  This  point is best illustrated through what *not* to do, but I don;t have any illustrative counterexamples on  hand.  The game should end either with Mind Twist (against most control decks) or Yawg Will.  Yawg Will is really your win condition, so don't be too concerned if your Togs are murdered before that point.

By now it should be apparent why I believe that UBg Tog is dead.  ALthough you may be able to outdraw your opponent, you are less efficient in terms of being able to translate that card advantage into conintual board control and eventual game win.  Red does that  much  better than green.  I suggest that Ultima try it.  

I was going to make Tog  my big deck of the year becuase I figured it was simply the best deck out there - the problem was that I learned that Tog has problems with Combo and, more importantly, a horrible match against Fish.  Fortunately, I beleive that Tog has the flexibility to deal with all of these threats adequately in a four color build, and probably in a 3 color build with Red - but definately not in a UBg build.  I think Kowal learned his lesson.

[Revvik]

It should be relatively clear that Tog should be designed for the anticipated metagame.  Whatever the case may be, it should be equally clear that UBg Tog decks are a dead item.  

<sigh> True.  In general, UBg is ass against Control Slaver.  I've had a lot of success, but not enough to where if I was going to any tournament in the NE area, I'd play something, anything else, although anything but UBr - the deck seems to have issues from the ground up.

There really should be no discussion about 3 Cunning Wish - they make for excellent utility and are one thing that I've often been wanting in my list when I'm straining for answers or trying to push a kill through a narrow window.

Your list looks really solid, Smmenen, although I'm curious as to the absence of Gush.  What would you feel about cutting Scrying for Gush, or fitting it in the sideboard?

And on a different topic, I've noticed that most lists put forth by either you or Team Meandeck as a whole (that run a heavy blue element) use Old Man of the Sea.  A lot.  I'm not questioning his power level, I'm just questioning the love for him.

[Godot]

The Deep Analysis will help win the Slaver AK mirror and you should find it, as I did when I was testing Goth Slaver mid summer, superior to their Thirsts - as I'll explain in a bit.

Clown of Tresserhorn and I were testing this matchup this past weekend, and we were pretty suprised at how much game Tog has in the matchup.  We assumed that Slaver would have the edge as TFK is a stronger secondary draw engine, but the real key is Intuition.  Slaver cannot use its Intuitions to develop its draw engine while Tog still can.

I'll also second the point about Wish -> REB being huge.  My current build runs 4x Wishes and just about every game in testing I was able to get a REB by turn 2 which definitely turns the tide in Togs favor.

[Saucemaster]

And on a different topic, I've noticed that most lists put forth by either you or Team Meandeck as a whole (that run a heavy blue element) use Old Man of the Sea.  A lot.  I'm not questioning his power level, I'm just questioning the love for him.

Rack and Ruin : Workshops :: Old Man of the Sea : ???

[Smmenen]

It should be relatively clear that Tog should be designed for the anticipated metagame.  Whatever the case may be, it should be equally clear that UBg Tog decks are a dead item.  

<sigh> True.  In general, UBg is ass against Control Slaver.  I've had a lot of success, but not enough to where if I was going to any tournament in the NE area, I'd play something, anything else, although anything but UBr - the deck seems to have issues from the ground up.

There really should be no discussion about 3 Cunning Wish - they make for excellent utility and are one thing that I've often been wanting in my list when I'm straining for answers or trying to push a kill through a narrow window.

Your list looks really solid, Smmenen, although I'm curious as to the absence of Gush.  What would you feel about cutting Scrying for Gush, or fitting it in the sideboard?

And on a different topic, I've noticed that most lists put forth by either you or Team Meandeck as a whole (that run a heavy blue element) use Old Man of the Sea.  A lot.  I'm not questioning his power level, I'm just questioning the love for him.

The Togs biggest weakness is Fish.  I cannot stand Fish but fear it.  There is only one silver bullet in the entire Vintage card pool for Fish - one as pathetic and sad as the deck its self.  That card goes in any deck that I beleive is threatened by Fish.  

I would like to note that John Blake played DA in either the Slaver MD or SB, I'm not sure.  A consequence of that will be a reevaluation of that matchup.  As more and more decks continue to add AKs, that will put pressure on the Tog deck to adapt more.

As for Gush, I really like Gush, but I think that Skeletal Scrying is more appropriate in that metagame.  I would run Gush if I expected more Workshop Aggro.

[Saucemaster]

The Togs biggest weakness is Fish.  I cannot stand Fish but fear it.  There is only one silver bullet in the entire Vintage card pool for Fish - one as pathetic and sad as the deck its self.  That card goes in any deck that I beleive is threatened by Fish.

Oh sure, fine.  I get all cryptic and you have to go and be HELPFUL.  Pshaw.

[Smmenen]

This isn't the SAT.  I actually answer questions.  

One other thing is worth mentioning.  In my hands I might play AKs even in an AK mirror if I am fairly confident that I can capitalize on it very quickly and shut my opponent out and prevent them from playing their AKs.  I would be far more likely to do that against Goth Slaver than the Tog mirror.

[Revvik]

such as intuitioning for the AKs when you have one in hand, especially post-board with the Blasts in the main?
This configuration is definitely a nightmare for a lot decks to face - I did some testing last night, but one final question - are you comfortable with only one form of mass removal (Firestorm)?

[Smmenen]

I play the deck a very specific way.    Your best form of mass removal, frankly, is a berserking Tog.  Pernicious Deed is an ATROCIOUS card in t his deck for several reasons.  First of all, 90% of th e time, Psychatog is a superior card.  Agianst Fish?  I'd rather Have Tog.  Against Stax, Tog (you'd be surprised how true this is).  Against 5/3, Tog.  The small minority of the time that Deed is better does  not make it worth it to run that singleton.

I don't see what you need to remove that you can't just win to solve the problem that same way.

[Whatever Works]

I play the deck a very specific way.    Your best form of mass removal, frankly, is a berserking Tog.  Pernicious Deed is an ATROCIOUS card in t his deck for several reasons.  First of all, 90% of th e time, Psychatog is a superior card.  Agianst Fish?  I'd rather Have Tog.  Against Stax, Tog (you'd be surprised how true this is).  Against 5/3, Tog.  The small minority of the time that Deed is better does  not make it worth it to run that singleton.

I don't see what you need to remove that you can't just win to solve the problem that same way.

Isnt that why the deck runs red over green to begin with???

Another question is has the deck been tested with fewer/no cunning wishes??? Several of the new decks that have had success have removed Wish from the deck to try and improve either the early game or the draw engine... Tog's Draw Engine is amazing so can the deck be warped to improve the early game, and matchups like Control Slaver???

I was thinking something along the lines of switching 2 (of 4) cunning wishes for 2 more maindeck Engineered explosives (which are incredible), or perhaps a Fire/Ice, or even a maindeck Cranial Extraction to help have a maindeck answer to Oath/TPS/Dragon etc. (though it probably is to slow to do much vs. Belcher or SX sinse this deck can rev up the mana quite as fast as TPS.

[GotRealLucky]

Another question is has the deck been tested with fewer/no cunning wishes??? Several of the new decks that have had success have removed Wish from the deck to try and improve either the early game or the draw engine... Tog's Draw Engine is amazing so can the deck be warped to improve the early game, and matchups like Control Slaver???

I was thinking something along the lines of switching 2 (of 4) cunning wishes for 2 more maindeck Engineered explosives (which are incredible), or perhaps a Fire/Ice, or even a maindeck Cranial Extraction to help have a maindeck answer to Oath/TPS/Dragon etc. (though it probably is to slow to do much vs. Belcher or SX sinse this deck can rev up the mana quite as fast as TPS.

Why would you cut Cunning Wish for situational cards? Cunning Wish is the solution to just about any problem. You can either get a removal spell or find something to make Psychatog lethal. I run 4 in my UBr Tog deck and I would never go below 3.

In a Wasteland-heavy metagame I wouldn't want to run Smmenens list. I really like having 3 Island en 6 Polluted Delta/Flooded Strand. The only card you really miss is the Artifact Mutation but it's not very easy to cast. I think Annul is a decent replacement considering you can keep a stable manabase.

[Smmenen]

I've tinkered around with several mana bases.  

If you want to run 4 colors, I hit upon two or three possibilities aside from the one I presented in the previous page:

The first is to up the mana to 25 mana sources and then just run another Fetchland or Island in the 25th slot.   The second is to cut an Underground Sea and run a 6th Fetch or a 3rd Island.  So it would look like this: 6 Fetch, 3 Sea, 3 Volc, 2 Trop, 2 Island, 1 LOA.  This gives you 8 functional basic islands.  This is probably better than the mana base I have - which is: 5 Fetch, 4 Sea, 3 Volc, 2 Trop, 2 Island, 1 LOA.  But the basic problem I've encountered is that I've discovered little to no marginal difference between 2 and 3 basic lands.  However, there is a huge spike from 1 to 2 basic lands and from 3 to 4.  It may be that the 6th Fetch and 3rd Island maindeck provide a similar effect - since the real count should be the number of functional Islands in the deck (which would then be 9).  

If you want to run 4 color mana base in a wasteland environment, then one possibility, therefore, is this:

6 Fetchland, 3 Underground Sea, 3 Volc, 3 Island, 2 Trop, 1 LOA.  This gives you 25 mana sources but by upping the Fetchland count, you haven't dropped any black.

[Revvik]

I've given this thing a week of playtesting, and these are the results I've had, for anyone still interested in this thread to dissect:

Over the weekend, I did a LOT of playtesting against both Control Slaver, and my friend-who-refuses-to-change, R/G Beatz.  Beatz dies horribly to Firestorm and careful plays.  Not going into any more detail about this matchup due to irrelevancy.

The Control Slaver matchups were VERY interesting.  The particular build tested against was, card for card, Gothenburg Slavery.  To note, with my old UBg build, I used to have a lot of difficulty keeping up, winning mostly off the back of Deep Analysis and very lucky topdecks.  Not entirely so with the posted 4-color list.

Of Importance:
Cunning Wish --> Red Elemental Blast
Incredibly powerful play, especially psychologically.  And as mentioned before, cutting off Thirst for Knowledge makes it hard for a Control Slaver deck to function.
Overall, it ended up about 70% in my favor.  Rock on.  This seals the idea to bring this to our weekly mini-T1 tournaments.

Tournament Results:
I went 3-1 in matches through 4 rounds of swiss, and if I wasn't an idiot it would've been 4-0.  I won matches easily that I had no business winning with either UBg or UBr.  5/3 and Control Slaver?  No problem.  Creatures on the board?  Not any more.
Ended up second.  Aside from the $25 in store credit, I think it was a valuable experience, learning what is powerful against certain matchups, the ins and outs of the deck, and the fact that it does extremely well against a lot of the popular decks in the field.  Only one really bad thing to say here though.  I got annihilated 5/5 against Stax.  Now, take Menendian's list provided a few posts back.  Drop the Old Men from the board and add Rack and Ruins.  Now you have what I ran.  What was I doing wrong?  It felt like every time I was about to rebound back, I got puched back down into the dirt again.  Part of this was the high nonbasic count, allowing him to use Wastelands & Crucible to stall while he set up reusable Tangle Wires.  
Is there any advice to be given to play this matchup out better?  Other than the nonbasic count, I feel strongly that the way I played the match out, along with hands I kept, were not optimal for that matchup, despite the strong wins I had achieved with them earlier in the day.

[NicolaeAlmighty]

Takes more than a well placed Firestorm and "careful playing". You die miserably to Beatz. You win around 15-20% depending on the draws before siding. Afterwards, odds decrease even more. Then again, as you said, it's a minority that shouldn't be addressed... Right?

[Smmenen]

Takes more than a well placed Firestorm and "careful playing". You die miserably to Beatz. You win around 15-20% depending on the draws before siding. Afterwards, odds decrease even more. Then again, as you said, it's a minority that shouldn't be addressed... Right?

What the hell is beatz?  Is that a deck?

[Revvik]

Smmenen: somewhere in the open forum is a thread with the words R/G Tempo in the title.  It's his pet deck.  Amazingly enough the damn thing IS a pretty good foil to developed metagames.  It's a minority deck, but a good pilot can do well with it.

Nicolae Almighty: Any day of the week, fool.  Any day of the week.

[Thug]

Ever since Tog changed some of the mroe combo orientated cards for control cards it is doomed to have problems with creature decks.

A foil that proofed pretty good in testing is adding Tinker + Platinum to the sidebaord. Al you have to do than is keep things like Bouncer off the table and ride the Angel to victory.

Koen

[Whatever Works]

How does tog do against some of the newer versions of control slaver that have more draw then tog (4 TfK, 3 Intuition, 2 DA, 4 AK) etc.? It seems that it would come down to the ak war more then anything, and If they side out AK's the draw engines would still be simalar. I never considered this to be a good matchup for Hulk by any means, but now it would appear to be rather weak.

[God_Campbell]

The thing is you will have more rebs to help you with their own da's.
Their will not know if oyu sb'ed all your aks out so will be heistant to intutiong up aks and will not play 1 at a time so it buys you time to deep your self.
All in all I think tog is better at the moment as the hate is not there and as long as fish is dead then tog can come back.

[Revvik]

How does tog do against some of the newer versions of control slaver that have more draw then tog (4 TfK, 3 Intuition, 2 DA, 4 AK) etc.?

Control Slaver has a next-to-impossible time functioning when they can't resolve their Thirst for Knowledges and Intuitions.  Red Elemental Blast goes a long way to making this matchup a cakewalk.  
Last Tuesday, I lost only one game all day to Control Slaver decks of different varieties, and that was due to sloppy play on my part.

[jpmeyer]

How does tog do against some of the newer versions of control slaver that have more draw then tog (4 TfK, 3 Intuition, 2 DA, 4 AK) etc.? It seems that it would come down to the ak war more then anything, and If they side out AK's the draw engines would still be simalar. I never considered this to be a good matchup for Hulk by any means, but now it would appear to be rather weak.

Personally, I consider those versions of Control Slaver to be--dare I say it--strictly superior to Tog.

[onelovemachine]

Why is goth slaver superior to tog?  In general? In the metagame? Or in this matchup?  In this matchup I will disagree.  I feel the same way pretty much everyone else does that it can be a positive matchup for tog.  I, like others, let welders resolve but counter/ duress the crap out of intuitions and thirsts.  If the deck doesn't resolve those... it doesn't do anything.  Little red man beats don't scare me.  Eight counterspells (eleven or twelve total after boarding) don't scare me.  If we are talking the metagame, then again I disagree.  Fish can't surface.  It doesn't win vs shop which happens to be pretty decent.  Other than that and the slaver matchup we just went over... what is problematic?  In general, slaver can do very powerful things.  But tog has very powerful draw engine, backed up by powerful countermagic, backed up by powerful win condition.  I don't think its fair to say tog sucks: play slaver without an explanation.

[Hi-Val]

What you are dealing with is a deck with a higher threat density than yours. Goth Slaver can throw wave after wave of draw at you, and if even one resolves, you usually sink. It becomes the beatdown deck and Hulk becomes control, if that makes sense. And Goblin Welder buys back tempo a lot better than Psychatog these days.