Sligh Mana issues

[doctrellor]

I am curious, about a good steady mana look at Sligh, this one is unpowered, since I don't have P9.. so no moxes/lotus... even though I could use it in the deck..

Now most Sligh, no matter if a variation of Burn, Old Sligh, Goblin Sligh, or Goblin Horde, the deck is nearly all Mono-Red with a slaph of green, usually Food Chain or Pernicious Deed...

BUT, a MAJOR consideration is that T1 is HEAVY into non basic lands...

therefore, Wasteland/Strip Mine and PoP

BUT, a Key to Red is keeping Heavy consistent pressure on an opponent with damage...

So, for Mana, we have in a Standard Sligh Deck..

4 Wasteland
1 Strip Mine
4 Barbarian Rings
11 Mountains

Now, what I am curious about is...

If we add a consistent pressure...

4x Ghitu Encampments

4 Wasteland (to fight thier non-basic lands)
1 Strip Mine (LD)
4 Ghitu Encampment (Manlands)
4 Barbarian Rings (Sac land for damage)
7 Mountains

So here, we see, Damage, and with encampments, a consistent damage...now, I haven't looked at any other sets to see if there are more, but I am hoping there are, I really want to replace those Rings, since it depends on cards in graveyard..

So, with so many non-basic lands in a SLigh deck, a good PoP can REALLY hurt you..

So my question...

What do we replace it with? or is PoP a SB card then?

[Kowal]

Sligh isn't playable.  The deck can't adapt to the metagame now that decks better than Keeper exist.  Control decks can goldfish as fast as you, and you have no shot at beating combo or decent aggro.  FCG and Madness will steamroll you, for example.

Before trying to tweak your manabase to make the deck better, you should analyze whether or not there's any reason to run the deck.

[E Face]

i'd have to agree with ben in saying that sligh at the moment is a totally unplayable archetype, red has little to no defense against combo with the exceptions of blood moon and REB (null rod fits here too, but is available to all colors), and sligh is on the whole way slower than say a food chain goblins deck. madness is also faster, with better support from its multiple colors (often times RuG) and its creatures are also beefier.

sligh is best to be played in extended, along with its cousins RDW and goblin bidding.

[ELD]

Let me go on the record and say that I've never been impressed with the idea of running sligh.  I feel that one should play with the most broken cards available, so not running the full moxen and other powerhouse cards is a losing choice IMO.  

Allow me to make some points about sligh's match-ups.

Welder based decks don't like burn.  Nearly every card in the deck kills welders.  Bad news for Control Slaver and HHH.  I mention this because these are two solid decks that sligh can beat.  

There are many decks that sligh has little game against.  

Burn is not impressive against workshop aggro and staxs.  I'll start by saying staxs is brutal and nearly unwinnable.  Moving on, these decks are not as reliant on welder and don't care about mana denial as much.  3sphere or sphere of resistance are a kick in the yams.  In my experiance, sligh tries to play the control route here, burning out creatures.  I'm not going to lie to you, playing control w/o a draw engine is an automatic game loss in most tournaments.  

Combo is more of the same problem.  To beat combo, one must play control.  The only other option is to combo out faster.  When one uses cards like REB or Tomad's crypt vs combo, drawing cards becomes important.  Those cards do nothing to help win the game.  They only prevent losing the game temporarily.  Card drawing, or savage topdecking, is the only way to push through a win during the window disruption buys.  

Anything running wild mongrel or tog tends to be a problem.  Either one of those critters tend to own the board.  

All that said, I'm not impressed with that manabase.  Ghitu Encampment is so terrible it's not even funny.  CIPT in a tempo based deck is so very bad.  I'm not advocating man lands, but Mishra's Factory is much stronger.  

The only way I've done well with sligh is with some sick tech.  When I ran sligh, I boarded in Alter Reality.  It destroyed CoP red and chill two devestating sideboard cards.  At the time those were two cards that were a part of the meta.  A color splash for some tech could be a way to make sligh playable, but I wouldn't bet on it.

[doctrellor]

ok, Since the post dealt with Mono-Red....let's say we're playing FCG, which is pretty damn fast...:)and really is just a splash with Food Chain and maybe Pernicius Deed. so maybe only several dual lands will suffice

4x Taiga

so ...

1 Strip Mine
4x Wasteland
4x Ghitu Encampments
4x Barb Rings
4x Taiga
3x Mountains

What about taking out the Barbarian Rings, and having them as Treetop Villages? for an extra damage source to pressure them with...

a 3/3 green critter w/ trample that counts as a land (not bad)

1 Strip Mine (LD)
4x Wasteland (LD)
4x Ghitu Encampment (Manland)
4x Treetop Village (Manland)
4x Taiga
5x Mountain

for 22 mana sources, since were dealing with 2 colors here, I am still not sure if Fetch lands are needed...

But I am curious, if using Manlands for extra damage, and a constant pressure on the opponent is worth it?.. since technically we have 8 more critters, 4 are 2/1 and 4 are 3/3 (trample)

[Ifflejink]

You may have extra creatures, but these creatures require mana to animate every time that you want to use them. Also, adding so many "comes into play tapped" lands would slow your deck down immensly- that's the main reason that many Fish builds are using less Faerie Conclaves.

[doctrellor]

All that said, I'm not impressed with that manabase.  Ghitu Encampment is so terrible it's not even funny.  CIPT in a tempo based deck is so very bad.  I'm not advocating man lands, but Mishra's Factory is much stronger.  

.

Thanks for the tips, I am slowly.. changing my sligh deck to a FCG, but I am still not sure about factories... they are colorless mana, with a FCG, one needs R or G, although I like factories myself, I figure they would be used in more artifact/colorless based decks.

[doctrellor]

You may have extra creatures, but these creatures require mana to animate every time that you want to use them. Also, adding so many "comes into play tapped" lands would slow your deck down immensly- that's the main reason that many Fish builds are using less Faerie Conclaves.

Ah, ok..so Manlands are on thier way out then, except for Factories?

Cool, thanks

[Yokomoto]

Its a loss of tempo because it comes into play tapped, now you're one turn behind your opponent, allows for no first turn plays since your unpowered as well.

[doctrellor]

Ah ok, thanks for the explanation..