[Deck] Meandeck Tendrils

[Covetous]

Z wrote:

1) I actually ran Wooded Foothills maindeck. We needed the fetch and only two lands to minimize the number of turn 2 kill hands.

2) I personally liked 2 egg, 2 bounce, 1 Necro, 1 Chrome config. Necro treated me better than anyone and I never had a beef with running Chrome main. I only wanted 2 eggs to fix the mana a bit. I thought 4 was too much personally. We all ran 4 at Waterbury, but in retrospect the 2 slots being bounce would have saved us an ass-ton of Platinum Angel losses.

3) It mulligans a lot. It can easily rip a turn 1 win even after Mulliganing twice. You really need to train yourself about what is a turn 1 kill hand, a turn 2 kill hand, and the rest is junk.

1.  Does this mean that you would discourage running 3 non-fetch lands (i.e. Sea instead of Delta)?  If so, do you find yourself with the types of hands I describe--needing U and B for a turn 2 win but having delta?  Or, is this a scenario when you would mulligan because turn 2 is too slow....

2.  So, would you recommend replacing 1 egg with chrome mox, considering that I play chain of vapor and hurkyll's recall maindeck?  Necro is a bomb, but it seems like an unnecessary card that facilitataes turn 2 kills rather than turn 1 kills.

3.  If you don't know that you can kill turn 1, do you mulligan, or do you accept some turn 2 win hands?

Thanks.

[Zherbus]

1) That extra non-fetchland comes up WAY too often. I had a Sea in there early on.

2) Well, we all originally had Chrome Mox and Necro. Look at Justin's Waterbury list, take out 2 Eggs and add two bounce. That's what I'd play today... if I were to actually take a chance on this again.

3) If you know what you're facing, you can stick with a lot of turn 2 hands. However, if you're facing Workshop Trinisphere, you want to just win first.

[Rico Suave]

Let's assume for a moment that playskill is the only thing wrong with this deck.  A perfect combo player is playing it.  

Approximately what percentage of games will this perfect player lose simply because of the deck losing to itself?  I know Spoils will do it, but certainly there must be mulligan issues and other things on top of that.  I'm just looking for a general number.

[Saucemaster]

To simplify the process, let's count anything that doesn't win by turn 3 as simply a loss.  Against any viable deck in this format, that should usually hold.  Also counting Spoils death, this deck will simply kill itself right around 10% of the time (the number might seem slightly low, but spread across the length of an eight-round Swiss you can see why it starts to become very difficult to avoid two match losses).

[Subversity]

Posted: Sun Jan 23, 2005 3:09 am
I think Land Grant was a mistake too. Drawing multiple Land Grants with its 1G casting cost is just as detrimental to the deck as drawing multiple Underground Sea's would have been.

Are people really disparaging Land Grant in this deck?

No, just me, and I hereby retract that remark. I shouldn't be doing deck analysis at three o'clock in the morning.  

[giddygorgon]

As I ahve played this deck more and more, i am having troubles figuring out what to spoils for.  EG. — If i have played 7-8 spells and have 3 floating before spoils and just like a land grant in hand (land played htis turn alerady) what do i want to spoils for? it seems like i keep getting in these situations and cannot pull it out.  Thanks for any help I may recieve.

[Bakes]

Just goldfishing with this deck i had some(or I should say alot) of problems with spoils of the vault. This card is key to getting the win but most of the time it is pure luck. I mean if your fishing for a ritual that has four copies then your pretty much set but that lotus is tempting...This calls on if you are a good mtg player or not also.

[Moxlotus]

Why the hell would you Spoils for a 1 of in the deck unless you are about to die on the stack/phase?  Of course it would be pure luck to do something like that.  It is also pure idoicy.

 I mean if your fishing for a ritual that has four copies then your pretty much set but that lotus is tempting...This calls on if you are a good mtg player or not also.

Tempting...or dumb as hell.  I could almost see Consulting for Black Lotus, but trying to Spoils for it is ridiculous.

[CrazyCarl]

One of the keys to becoming a better combo player is to be able to determine situations in which consulting for Black Lotus is the right play.  Hell, I've backed myself into corners where my only out was to Spoils for X.  It didn't work out, but there are times when you just -have- to make the unorthodox play.  On the other hand, I Consult for restricted cards on a scarily regular basis and I've only been bitten in the ass by it once in the past year iirc.

[TJ-Whoopy]

we DO call you crazy for a reason, and really CC you need to start putting a "Kids Don't Try This at Home" at the beginning of any post like that

[Jacob Orlove]

Consulting for a restricted card is actually just as safe as spoilsing for a 4-of when you have 50 cards left in your deck (~10% chance of instant death).

[the Luke]

The whole deck is about playing the probabilities.  If Consulting for a restricted card will win or almost certainly win the game this turn and there was no better target and I had a roughly full library left, I'd do it.

-Luke

[Jacob Orlove]

Some people didn't listen to Hyperion, so I had to take a bunch of posts out of this thread.

[That0neguy]

The only time i spoils for restricted cards is when im at like storm 9 and tendrils in hand and im going to be short mana if i get anything else.  Ive died a couple times but it does just win the game sometimes too.

Also I consult for restricted cards all the time since its more likley that its in the lower 44 cards than the top 6.  In fact the only time i can rember dieing to consult is when I went for will and it was the last card and i still had a spoils for tendrils that i needed for the kill.

[Imsomniac101]

First of all, congratulations to Team Meandeck for creating such a monster. At first I was worried that releasing this decklist to the public would result in a whole load of people calling for the restriction of dark ritual, but that doesn't seem to be the case.

Some of the problems I have encountered while playing this deck is that it seems that this deck depends (to a certain degree) on the roll of the dice. If your opponent goes first he can lay down a chalice for 1 or a trinisphere or just pull a plain duress. Does this deck depend too much on the die roll? And what do you do in the face of said disruption? Also what do you take out to side in the FoW's?

[That0neguy]

If any card in the deck would go i think it would probably be spoils not dark ritual.  Killing dark ritual would kill almost every combo deck.  however probably not a good idea to turn this into another restrict x forum.

Also the deck is decent but i don't think it will see much play unless there is some other card that can push it over the top (Like a cantrip duress, which I doubt will happen anytime soon).  Either that or the meta shifts to non workshop aggro aggro, or slow combo

[Snoop]

I think honestly the problem with this deck is you are limiting the possibilities that having the eggs open up to you. Mystical, Vampiric, and Enlightened Tutor are all missing as well as a solid way to refill your hand such as Timetwister or Tinker for Jar. I feel minimum adding the three tutors has helped me as I can find chains or hurkyl's in a snap and it increases the efficiency of draws and INCREASES CONSISTENCY. I don't think I can stress that enough. Remember even Long didn't desire to win turn one all the time. It would go off turn 2 realistically all the time. Maybe that's the problem with the direction of this forum. My intent would be to make this a tournament worthy deck much like Longdeath or TPS . This is also why i think the deck should add Duress, the tutors, maybe Timetwister and Tinker and focus more on consistent turn 1/2 kills instead of these insane ballz to the wallz, win or crap out luck draws.

Maybe I'm just too used to having those options available to me in other combo decks. I know the reasoning of not running draw 7's, but is there some happy medium between draw7's and personal draw that could stabilize this deck better. I mean honestly as explosive as this deck is I feel like giving your opponent a new hand after you have already played your out is minimal and will give you even insaner possibilities to go off.

My point is this deck has opened up the explosive tutoring power of spoils and i think if refined into a more consistent deck it could see success much like Long did.

[Smmenen]

As I will cover in the primer - we tested a number of cards: Pentad Prism, Serum Visions, Vamp Tutor, Conjuror's Bauble, Infernal Contract, Culling of the Weak, draw7s, Necropotence, Hurky's and Chains, various land permutations, ESGs - we tested almost anything you can think of.

The problem with Vamp Tutor wasn't that it wasn't flexible enough or helped the decks consistency - it was the card disadvantage.  I loved tutoring for Lotus - but the cost of storm often made it a bad play.   I would rather cantrip into another random card just to up the storm count.  Vamp Tutor made it much more difficult to consistently reach the needed storm - thus making it less consistent, not more.

[Subversity]

This deck is a unique creation. It is the first 'faith-based' deck that I've ever played. It takes overextending yourself to the limit and actually pulls it off. I find myself quickly counting the mana, the draw and checking the probability of drawing into what I need and then ... it works ... if you make the right count, and know the limits of what your likely to draw. Good Job.

[Imsomniac101]

Okay, let me just say that this combo deck is not as hard to play as people make it out to be. The deck runs 10 playsets so the deck is extremely consistent. The number of times where you get hands that say "I win" is actually quite high.

While playtesting I found that the weakest cards in the deck were not actually the Sleight of Hands but the Darkwater Eggs themselves, I just always seem to get crap draws off them (I don't know why). Maybe it's just my inexperience with the deck.....

[Covetous]

Why would you ever run Enlightened tutor in this deck?  You would have to use a chromatic sphere to play the enlightened tutor in the first place, thus eliminating the synergy between sphere and top-deck tutors.  Plus, what would you tutor for?  Lotus?  No offense, but that's terrible.  

The point of this deck is not bombs--it's cantrips.  There is only a single bomb in this deck--will.  True, it might be nice to turn 1 vamp turn 2 win with will, but wouldn't it just be better to win turn 1 because you didn't have to wait a turn?  A deck with moe bombs like timetwister, tinker/jar, etc. might support vampiric tutor better, but this deck doesn't have those cards.  Vampiric tutor could potentially be good, but I believe Smmenen when he says he tested it and it fell flat.  I mean--a combo deck without vampiric tutor?  That's lunacy!  Except, it's not really because losing card advantage rapes this deck really hard when it's playing so many spells which generate mana rather than cards.  

This deck isn't about draw-7's, but if it was, then maybe topdeck tutors would be better.  But, as far as I can tell, the manabase will not support draw-7's and they are simply unnecessary.  Why give your opponent another 7 cards to draw force of will if they don't have it already?

On another note, I replaced egg #4 with chrome mox and I haven't looked back.  I also replaced the delta with an underground sea, and I'm still on the fence about whether I like it or not.  I feel like it can be the difference between winning turn 2 or not at all, which seems like a good reason to run it.  The question will ultimately be:  Does it interfere with winning turn 1?  I have been mostly goldfishing and in that capacity, I have been finding Hurkyll's recall and chain of vapor to suck, but I doubt that's the point of having them in the deck, so I'll leave them in until I play some real matches against other decks.  I'm still trying to understand the deck, what to spoils for, etc.  I find myself demonic consulting for yawgwin an awful lot, which occasionally backfires but it the bomb when it hits.

[thecapn]

Re: Underground Sea
We originally had only 2 lands, and added the fetch as a way to add stability.  In matchups where you want to go off right away, such as vs. ST4K$, I always side out the third land.  The Fetch thins a land out of your deck out and adds to threshold, and you really rarely ever want to see 2 real lands.  For those reasons, I would stick with the fetch.

Cutting Egg #4 for Chrome Mox is a viable option.  At Waterbury we had Necro, Chrome Mox, 4 Eggs.  At Virginia we decided the right cuts for the necessary 2 bounce spells (Jacob and I ran 2 Chain of Vapor on the chance that spoilsing for them would be our only out, Smmenen ran 1 Chain 1 Hurkyl's) were Necro and Chome Mox.  A whole lot of the time Chrome Mox didn't help in it's Mox capacity, but was just a 0cc spell that upped storm, which Chain of Vapor does quite well.  I ran Chrome Mox in the SB at VA to bring in for the fetch.  Zherbus only wants 2 Eggs, I really like the Eggs and wouldn't cut one any time soon.

Oh, and the Chains/ Chain+Hurkyl's were for early Platinum Angel or random main deck CoTV.  Often you can do things like play a bunch of moxes and then bounce them back to your hand and generate a bunch of storm and extra manas.  Sometimes the land sacrifice even gives you threshold!

[Jacob Orlove]

Chain and Hurkyl's are awesome for raising the storm count, and Chain can sometimes actually generate mana.

[E Face]

i played against "the cap'n" in round one of SCG this past weekend at richmond and i was most impressed by the tricks that chain of vapor produced. i had an early arcane lab out in game two after winning game one, but chain EOT allowed him to go off rather easily after stocking cards in his hand.

game three i watched in horror as he used chain of vapor to bounce mana crypt, moxen and vault all over the place after saccing all his tapped out lands to create incredible amounts of mana and storm count. the eggs are the exceptional, and i even was forced to counter one in game one to deny him of the mana fixing which appeared to be so crucial to the deck.

the deck has alot of tricks inside of it and just from watching the cap'n sit across from me and stare at two cards off a sleight of hand leads me to believe that this deck is harder to play than we give it credit for. our match almost went to time in game three before he was able to tendrils me TWICE in one turn for the win.

awesome match cap'n

[Mal3kh1]

What about retract over Hurkyl's Recall? Because you would usually Bring your own Artis back right?

Ken

[Hi-Val]

Retract isn't as good because you really want to bounce an opponent's Trinisphere or Chalice of the Void.

[Snoop]

In all honesty I don't see how chain of vapor would be an answer to chalice, and neither will help you against trinisphere if you're on the draw (but i guess that's an acceptable loss given the speed of the deck?). It seems to me like if you're going to play any removal (especially with the lack of tutor/drawing power) you have to play hurkyl's in multiples. I mean by the time you get it after already being held down with trinisphere (assuming you're on the play since on the draw is a loss) or chalice they will have already stabilized much bigger and badder threats and mass removal is pretty much your only answer. Much as I had stated when talking about TPS and Longdeath what are you really afraid of that Rebuild (or in this case Hurkyl's) can't handle? Meddling Mage, statistically unlikely but possible. Oath, D4rg0n, etc. Nothing out of that will touch you if you have a winning hand ... and if you didn't then you were gonna lose anyway.

Just an idea but how important are the darkwater eggs? Conjurer's bauble accomplishes the virtually same thing:

Darkwater egg (3) mana -> UB + draw
Conjurer's bauble (1) mana -> draw + put a card on the bottom of your library

so for less mana you get the same effect provided you don't need the blue mana. I could be wrong but this seems like it'd be much more effective giving you more slack when it comes to your mana being tight. I'm not saying cut them completely or at all maybe just conjurer's would be a more effective cantrip then say sleight. if you dropped sleight then you could focus more on just black and colorless creating less guessing games and a stronger reliability when floating mana.

[Freelancer]

@snoop Recall doesn't bounce lab/rod wich after sideboarding are real big problems (rod even before sideboarding) and you really need a answer to them (preferably in the main)... IMHO smmenen has the right set up with recall/chain since he can answer anything while still having the mass bounce spell if needed, although this is probably more personal preference than anything else...

Darkwater eggs both add to storm count, draw and optimize mana...and optimize mana is almost as important as storm/draw since you often need U to cast your brainstorms/sleight of hands...if you only have 1 mana available after casting the egg...there is a decent chance that bauble wouldn't have helped much either (the only way it could top you from fizzling is when the topcard is a mana source, anything else and your dead) in that case...
Replacing the sleight with bauble isnt a great plan either IMHO since sleight let's you see two cards instead off 1...wich VERY is important.

I think the build meandeck released is really close to optimal and that only the amount off bounce/eggs/lands is interchangable...everything else is essentially set in stone because if you use a different configuration you turn 1 win ratio will drop significantly...(yeah I couldn't resist trieing out different things either )

[Covetous]

Egg is not there because it's a draw spell.  It's there as a mana fixer, giving you U which can be hard to come by in this deck.  If you could run 6-8x chromatic sphere, you would.  But, you can't--so you run Egg.  For this reason, bauble isn't the right card.  Add to that the fact that threshold is good for the deck and putting cards on the bottom of your library is bad for threshold.

On Delta vs. Sea--I was forgetting about using the Delta to add to Threshold.  That alone makes it good.  My beef was that I find myself occasionally in need of both black and blue (i.e. turn 1 brainstorm, turn 2 DR/win) with only one U/B source available.  

On 2 chain vs. chain + hurkyll's--is hurkyll's there specifically as an answer to chalice for 1?  Because otherwise, I can't see it as more useful than chain or rebuild.  Basically, for this deck, turn 1 trinisphere = game loss.  So, chain, hurkyll's and rebuild are equally useless because you can't play any of them off 2 lands with 3sphere in play.

[Zherbus]

Retract isn't as good because you really want to bounce an opponent's Trinisphere or Chalice of the Void.

...and Platinum Angel. Tinker sure does show up turn 1 a lot for being a restricted card.

Just an idea but how important are the darkwater eggs? Conjurer's bauble accomplishes the virtually same thing

We all had Conjurer's Bauble initially. We run Eggs for color fixing, not for the cantrip, that's just a bonus. I actually ran 2 Baubles at Waterbury in the Sideboard because I found them helpful in going off faster against non-FoW decks (the reasoning is that you don't have to worry about having your colored mana countered). Thing is, I never used them because everything I faced had Force of Will.

On 2 chain vs. chain + hurkyll's--is hurkyll's there specifically as an answer to chalice for 1? Because otherwise, I can't see it as more useful than chain or rebuild. Basically, for this deck, turn 1 trinisphere = game loss. So, chain, hurkyll's and rebuild are equally useless because you can't play any of them off 2 lands with 3sphere in play.

Chalice wasn't much of a factor. In fact, you can win pretty handily through a Chalice for 1, since the Storm count still happens. My build runs 2 Hurkyl's because often times you don't need the bounce and Hurkyl's is just better at generating Storm Count/Excess Mana for yourself.