[Article] Psychatog 2005

[Smmenen]

http://www.starcitygames.com/php/news/expandnews.php?Article=9194

Check out my view on Tog in 2005.

Decklist!
-Jacob

'Tog 2K5
The Combo:
3 Psychatog
3 Cunning Wish

Draw:
3 Intuition
4 Accumulated Knowledge
3 Deep Analysis
4 Brainstorm
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Time Walk

Protection:
2 Duress
4 Mana Drain
4 Force of Will

Bombs:
1 Mind Twist
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Yawgmoth's Will

Metagame Slot:
1 Engineered Explosives

Mana:
5 Fetchlands
4 Underground Sea
3 Volcanic Island
2 Tropical Island
2 Island
1 Library of Alexandria
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Ruby
1 Black Lotus
1 Sol Ring

You can't fit all the good cards in here, but for a generalized metagame, here is a decent sideboard list:

1 Berserk
1 Fact or Fiction
4 Red Elemental Blasts
3 Arcane Laboratory
2 Ground Seal/2 Phyrexian Furnace
1 Firestorm
1 Echoing Truth
1 Rack and Ruin
1 Artifact Mutation

[Godot]

While for the most part we have similar feelings about the deck, there is one point where I vehemently disagree with you.  Only running only 2 Duress is a mistake, in my opinion.  I wrote an article on Tog several weeks ago that I didnt bother submitting in light of the restriction, but in there I spent a fair amount of time articulating the major role that Duress plays in the decks success.  

The utility of Duress is equal to the strength of the card you nab with it.

Duress does much more than just jack a card from the opponent though.  Taking a card is nice, but when playing Tog in the current metagame I would argue that the information you gain seeing your opponents hand is just as important.  In your section on playing the deck the first thing you talk about is identifying what your opponent is playing and this is exactly where Duress shines.  

An early Duress is vital in that:
a)  you can identify exactly what your opponent is playing
b)  you know how your opponent is going to attack you
c)  you are now able to use your Wishes to preemptively answer your opponents threats

Point C is really the key in my opinion.  The major problem the Wishes have as answers is that they are just so damn slow.  The information Duress gets you allows you to reduce this disadvantage by getting the REB/Dart/Bounce/etc before the actual threat hits the board.  Against Slaver for example, turn 1 Duress followed by turn 2 EOT Wish for Dart or REB is huge.  Duress turns your Wishes from reactive answers to proactive threats.  By knowing how your opponent will attack you and headnig them off at the pass you now force them to play around you.

While Duress is weaker in the midgame its so important in the early game that I cant see running less than 4.  Having success with Tog right now comes down to threat evaluation and maximizing the efficiency of your Wishes.  What do I need to stop right now?  Is Welder or TFK the bigger threat?  Do I stop the Oath or can I just bounce the dudes?  Duress lets you operate with much closer to perfect information and thus answer threats in the optimal fashion.

[Smmenen]

Out of any of the Vintage decks that are currently viable, Tog is the one deck I would say I have the most experience playing and testing with.  I have played Tog in more tournaments than any other deck in the last two years.   In addition, it is the deck that I have played on the longest time scale.  I have played in dozens of metagames from 2003 to the present.  

That said, I'm not saying your wrong.  Perhaps the current metagame justifies a return to the 4 Duress configurations.  However, that must be the way the argument is presented.  Objectively speaking, I think two is the correct number.  Now that workshops will dissapear, Duress becomes a true bomb again.

However, I don't think the information you gain by duress is even remotely enough to justify additional Duresses.  As I say in the article on how to play the deck, figuring out what your opponent is playing is crucial, but you can pretty much anticipate what your opponent is playing WITHOUT having to Duress first.  You can anticipatorily Wish (as I discuss in the article) without actually having seen their hand.  Seeing their hand is just a crutch to make you feel better about your choice.  

Do you use Dart over Firestorm?

[alvin6688]

Smemmen, could you post you posr your list? I don't have premium, but I don't want to miss out. Thanks.

[Disburden]

Today, I just ordered premium for the whole 12month subscription. I must say that this article and the other article by Toad on the Gifted Salvagers was worth the 30$ for a whole year of articles. I can't wait to see what other insightful tidbits you guys have to offer with your articles on strategy, sideboarding, new decks, etc. Thanks for everything.

Also It's good to see that you're still sticking to Tog, it's a great deck to the people that have stuck with it over the past few years.

I have to say I agree with you on the "Two Duress" part of current decussion. I have played Tog for some time, and recently through testing I've pretty much cursed my mid game draw of one of these cards, wishing I got something else in return (pretty much anything else in the deck but NOT duress would be great and then I got Duress.)

Once again, good stuff.

[Godot]

RE: your first paragraph
Just for the record, Im not some Johnny come-lately to this deck.  I've played and tested the thing consistently for well over a year and a half.  Anyways.

. As I say in the article on how to play the deck, figuring out what your opponent is playing is crucial, but you can pretty much anticipate what your opponent is playing WITHOUT having to Duress first.

Yes, very true.  No arguement here.  Maybe I stressed the points incorrectly in my previous post, but this is really the least important of hte information you can glean from a Duress.  What is more important is knowing what gameplan your opponent will be using to attack you given the tools they have available.

You can anticipatorily Wish (as I discuss in the article) without actually having seen their hand. Seeing their hand is just a crutch to make you feel better about your choice.

Effective preemptive Wishing is not possible in all matchups though(especially in some of the tougher matchups).  Some things are obvious, RnR against stax for instance.  However, against decks that can attack you using vastly different aspects of their gameplan Wishing for the wrong thing could be deadly.  In these matchups knowing their hand is crucial, not a crutch.

I'll illustrate with an example from the CS matchup, which is where I see this come up the most often.

They have a Welder on the board, but nothing juicy in the yard yet.  What do you wish for?  REB or Dart?  One play leaves you open to hardcast Slaver while the other leaves open to them resolving draw spells.  Knowing the gameplan that their hand is set up to execute lets you utilize your wish most effectively.

Perhaps the current metagame justifies a return to the 4 Duress configurations.

Duress is obviously huge against combo, which you mentioned.  But the TPS matchup w/out 4 Duress is a nightmare.  Running 4 Duress gives you the best game 1 chance against combo so you dont need to rely on SB bombs as heavily.  Additionally its great against Oath, CS and any deck that runs Skeletal Scrying as its draw engine, which is increasingly more common.

Do you use Dart over Firestorm?

Yes.  I used to run Firestorm, but since the only goblin I really see anymore is Welder I've dropped it.  The ability to kill two things with Dart while not being restricted to doing it in the same turn has been house.

[Sauron]

Since decklists are not premium it would be nice if a policy was adopted whereby people starting threads of this ilk automatically include the decklists.

At the very least it would reduce all the "could you please post your list" posts.

[TrixR4Kidz]

I can't force myself to believe psychatog can make any sort of real comeback.  Did the restriction of trinisphere inspire you to make this decklist up?  The main problem I see with this, is it still looks like it will have a hard time against goblin welder decks, despite the 1 EE.  Also, I don't think that i've ever seen tog fully recover after a titan has hit the board and nuked it's lands.  I could be wrong, but I recently playtested against a newer version of tog against a very experienced tog player and it didn't win any games.  BUT, we'll see how this turns out

[rvs]

It takes a lot of skill to understand the various dynamics which help you figure out the right time to play it. Timing is everything in matches like that and experience is the key to understanding there. I'll talk more about this later.

(since this deck is such a tempo black hole in the first few turns)

This is what is being said about Mind Twist. I guess I'll be very interested in reading about it later on, since I don't see how this is true. You even mention yourself the deck has some problems in the early game against a lot of the current archetypes, a problem that could be solved by running additional duress to determine what you have to do (in identifying what your opponent is playing without cheating/lucky scouting, especially in the first 2 or 3 rounds) and to give you the time to get your game plan going. To be fair, it can ofcourse just be a personal preference.

I was also wondering about your analysis of Library of Alexandria in this deck. Do you need it? (I know how strong it is vs control, but is it needed?) It seems that it already has a quite shaky manabase, and a colorless land that is only good in pure control mirrors (so, against other Tog or 4cc/3cc type of decks) I thought it might be a good idea to just run another blue land in its place. Since I haven't nearly done as much testing with Tog as you have, I would like to hear your opinion on this.

Another issue is: is 4 Reb really needed in the board? It seems like an awful lot, but I suppose I'll wait  for the 2nd part and the boarding process you figured out.

It's an interesting article, and since your matchup analyses are usually your best work, I'm eagerly awaiting the 2nd part of it.

[Godot]

I was also wondering about your analysis of Library of Alexandria in this deck. Do you need it? (I know how strong it is vs control, but is it needed?)

I'll chime in here since this is another aspect of Smmenens build that I disagree with.  sLoA is most definitely not needed.  In the matchups that actually matter you really dont wanna play LoA early.  Its much more important to Duress and get UU ASAP than to draw an extra card.  And if you're able to actually milk any card advantage out of the thing in the midgame then its just a win more card.

[Revvik]

Reason I bought Premium in the first place.

Good article, for reasons stated above, but I was disappointed that one topic wasn't even touched upon: Disrupting Shoal.

[forests failed you]

I really like your choice of playing Engineered Explosives, over something less versitile and more situational like Lava Dart.  Naturalize might also be a sideboard possibility in certain metagames, seeing as the posted list has only Echoing Truth to deal with  Chains or Blood Moons that slip through your early disruption/counter. Also, Naturalize can also be situationally good against a lost counter war, and resolved Oath of Druids.  Just a thought for people to consider while they are constructing their sideboards.  Other than the one observation, the list looks really solid.

[rvs]

Reason I bought Premium in the first place.

Good article, for reasons stated above, but I was disappointed that one topic wasn't even touched upon: Disrupting Shoal.

I thought it was established that Disrupting Shoal was a non-issue, except for Mono-U decks?

[Revvik]

Shoal is better in 'Tog, since it has a wider variety <believe it or not> of useful blue cards to pitch.

2cc:
AK
Mana Drain (HAHAHahaha)
3cc:
Cunning Wish
Psychatog
Intuition
4cc:
Deep Analysis

BRIEF list.  Mono-Blue can't use this kind of variety AS effectively and maintain hand size.

Either way, I remember Smmenen backing this a while back after I mentioned it in older threads, and I was looking forward to something along those lines.

[Dante]

Shoal is better in 'Tog, since it has a wider variety <believe it or not> of useful blue cards to pitch.

2cc:
AK
Mana Drain (HAHAHahaha)
3cc:
Cunning Wish
Psychatog
Intuition

4cc:
Deep Analysis

BRIEF list.  Mono-Blue can't use this kind of variety AS effectively and maintain hand size.

Either way, I remember Smmenen backing this a while back after I mentioned it in older threads, and I was looking forward to something along those lines.

Actually there's a good number of 2 and 3 cc spells to pitch:

2cc:
Impulse
Mana Leak
Mana Drain

3cc:
Back to Basics
Ophidian

In addition,  Once you get into the mid/late game, you can actually hard cast it on cheaper spells.  

But I think we're getting off topic here..

[cosineme]

This was a great read, but I have a few concerns which is the main reason I'm posting here (you said you would answer.)

First, seeing as tog and Cslaver are both combo control, which would you prefer to play? Tog has much more synergy, in the fact that everything you have in your hand is castable, winnable, and important. On the other hand, Cslaver is clogged up with huge threats that aren't active unless certain conditions are met.

However, CSlaver also carries many more MUST counter/kill/destroy spells that Tog does not.

For example, a resolved tinker can be game...Tog does not utilize this game breaking 3cc card. Crucible of worlds is also another card that is a must counter (intuition builds.) Finally, there are 4x cards that are either must counter, or must immediately deal with, and they are all castable 1st turn, before mana drain mana is up. I'm talking about the good old goblin welder, which instantly turns all moxes, artifact sources, and draw/discard (intuition, thirst) specifically, into must counters...

Of course, tog also has must counter spells, namely, yawg's i win, recall, maybe ak 3 and ak 4, however, aside from these threats, nothing that tog drops is immediately harmful, and in fact, most of these threats Cslaver packs them also. Even the win condition for tog can be easily dealt with, and really not a nuisance until time walk or wish enters the scene, all the while this is 4-5 turns down the road.

So, why would you play Tog in this current environment, and do you anticipate another time where Tog will once again dominate (if welder isn't restricted obviously)...

[Meddling Mike]

With all due respect Steve, I feel as though your analysis of the Control Slaver v. Psychatog matchup indicates a gross misunderstanding of the matchup.

Allow me to reach back approximately one year ago to Rich Shay's Control Slaver primer.

Hulk

This is probably your best match. The fact that this is favorable is a strong argument for playing Control Slaver. Hulk has a tremendous amount of control to stop what you do. On the other hand, a single use of Mindslaver usually ends the game. You can play Hulk’s Psychatog, and then have that Atog devours its owner’s hand and graveyard.

Your goal in this game is to put a Mindslaver on the board and activate it. You can resolve Slaver itself, or get a Goblin Welder into play, or Tinker the Slaver into play. Use your card drawing to get the resources you need to do this, and your countermagic to make it happen. Control Slaver generally functions as a combo deck in this match.

Your best sideboard tool in this matchup is Red Elemental Blast. Artifact removal or Blood Moon may also be viable, based on the exact build of the Hulk deck. Bring in Fact or Fiction, too. Two large artifact creatures are too many; Platinum Angel can save you from an early Berserked Psychatog, but Pentavus has better synergy with Goblin Welder. Memory Jar will enable the Tog player to Wish for and cast instant answers, as well as fuel Psychatog. If a creature and Memory Jar are both removed, then Mana Vault can also be sideboarded out. There is no need for more than two Fire/Ices in this matchup, and more than one Cunning Wish is unnecessary.

I thought it was worth noting that in your listing off "scary plays" a resolved tinker seemed to be missing. Also, the fact that many of the cards Mr. Shay cites as weak in this matchup (i.e. memory jar, mana vault, fire/ice, cunning wish) are no longer staples of the Control Slaver deck. Fact or Fiction, which has been notedly strong in this matchup, is now typically seen in the main deck.

The key to winning is stopping their draw engine. They have six primary draw spells

I think this really neglects to notice that a vast number of Control Slaver builds incorporate other forms of draw, for example, Rich Shay's recent builds included Skeletal Scrying as additional forms of draw. When put to a side by side comparison, I don't feel that a Control Slaver list featuring skeletal scrying, as in Mr. Shay's current list, is lacking far behind in the draw engine.

Psychatog 2005:
Draw:
3 Intuition
4 Accumulated Knowledge
3 Deep Analysis
4 Brainstorm
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Time Walk

Control Slaver (non intuition build)
4 Thirst for Knowledge
4 Brainstorm
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Time Walk
2 Skeletal Scrying
1 Library of Alexandria
1 Fact or Fiction

Your whole strategy against control slaver seems to hinge on the superiority of your draw engine, yet I'm not convinced of the superiority of the tog engine to that of control slaver.

Now, if you do stop their draw, what makes me so certain that you can win? The Goblin Welder and expensive artifacts basically mean that they will have to hard cast the expensive artifact. This requires them to get up to six or seven mana. Once they hard cast the expensive artifact, you will have to counter it. They will gladly let you do so because they will simply Weld it back in.

I believe you're overestimating the difficulty of control slaver producing 6 or 7 mana, is it really that inconcievable that I could mana drain an intuition/Cunning Wish on my end step, then on my next turn cast a Mindslaver or some other scary artifact? If you should force your intuition through, you may be lacking in the counters necessary to counter my thirst for knowledge, which you've designated as a must counter spell. Also large amounts of mana can be reached through welders on occasion, switching cards solomoxencrypt in the graveyard for solomoxencrypt in play in order to generate more mana.

Another means of getting a scary artifact in the graveyard relatively quickly is simply playing draw-go for a turn or two then discarding a slaver once eight cards is reached, because you've made the deck so vulnerable to mindslaver with intuition/multiple deep analyses/Cunning wish for things like firestorm I can concievably dedicate my whole game plan to making a single slaver activation occur.

2) Kill the Welder before they are in a position to hardcast the artifacts. Let their Welders resolve if you can stop their draw. Just be sure that you get to Cunning Wish for the answer before the midgame is complete. Firestorm or Fire/Ice will murder the Welders and leave them with little to nothing. All you have to do at that point is manage to continue to leverage your draw into more spells that maintain your control over the game. Your Deeps and AKs will prevent them from really ever recovering.

Again a plan that hinges upon Psychatog being able to draw circles around Control Slaver, if you've already exhausted the bulk of your counters stopping my draw spells, what's to keep my comprable counter base from keeping your firestorm or fire/ice from resolving? Also, Cunning Wish is a quite expensive answer to goblin welder. Your suggestion to wish early for an REB isn't an answer to a welder OR a skeletal scrying, as to why you would advocate wishing for that over an answer to welder is puzzling to me.

The Control Slaver match is about jockeying for card advantage - even marginal card advantage. Every little bit does make a difference. If their Thirsts resolve they will be a position to stop your attempts to stop them. That is all that matters.

I found it rather confusing that you would make a statement like the one above, yet in your sideboarding plan you suggest removing 2 Deep analysis, both very potent draw spells which can vault you well ahead in the race for card advantage.

I also found that this new Psychatog 2005 only differed in the MD from a list created by your teammate JP Meyer from Kerz's March 2004 gauntlet approximately one year ago. (http://www.themanadrain.com/marchmeta.htm) as such.

Psychatog 2005:
+1 Intuition
+1 Deep Analysis
+1 Engineered Explosives
+1 Fetchland
+3 Volcanic Island
+1 Sol Ring
-1 Duress
-1 Pernicious Deed
-1 Mystical Tutor
-1 Tropical Island
-1 Mana Crypt
-1 Island
-1 Swamp
-1 Strip Mine

Outside of some mana base tweaking to include red, this seems identical to Psychatog 2004 with the exception of 3 cards. Somehow I doubt that a few subtle changes like this would really have shifted tog from a bad Control Slaver match to a good one, especially taking into account that current builds of control slaver include more draw as well as removing some of the weaker cards as I discussed above.

[rvs]

Outside of some mana base tweaking to include red, this seems identical to Psychatog 2004 with the exception of 3 cards. Somehow I doubt that a few subtle changes like this would really have shifted tog from a bad Control Slaver match to a good one, especially taking into account that current builds of control slaver include more draw as well as removing some of the weaker cards as I discussed above.

It isn't as bad as your post is intending to point out. I made quite a number of post explaining strategy for the matchup that worked (I remember explaining a specific plan after an inquery from G.I. in a post about GaT, of all things). I'm not really interested in repeating all of it, but I don't think much of it is really different nowadays. Ofcourse, I don't have any really recent testing results to back it up, since me and my team have mostly discarded Tog as a primary deck choice, or an important gauntlet partner, for that matter.

@smennen: I'm still interested what you think about the points I made earlier in this thread.

[Hi-Val]

I thought it was worth noting that in your listing off "scary plays" a resolved tinker seemed to be missing. Also, the fact that many of the cards Mr. Shay cites as weak in this matchup (i.e. memory jar, mana vault, fire/ice, cunning wish) are no longer staples of the Control Slaver deck. Fact or Fiction, which has been notedly strong in this matchup, is now typically seen in the main deck.

I think he didn't mention it because duh, what deck doesn't have problems with a resolved Tinker? He also didn't list "They cast Yawgmoth's Will and it causes trouble" because we already know it!

That being said, I'm not sure on the Hulk vs. Slaver matchup. One has to be Beatdown and the other Control, and both decks can equally do both roles on their own. I suppose it all depends on your sideboarding strategies. Slaver seems to have inevitability over Hulk, though Hulk can kill faster.

[Meddling Mike]

It isn't as bad as your post is intending to point out.

I would say the matchup is decisively in favor of the control slaver player. I have been playing control slaver since it's infancy and have never lost a match to Hulk and I have played many. This new list is only slightly different from that of one year ago, Control Slaver has made changes that should actually improve it's matchup against Psychatog, to suggest that this should be anywhere near a good matchup for the psychatog player is absolutely rididculous.

I think he didn't mention it because duh, what deck doesn't have problems with a resolved Tinker? He also didn't list "They cast Yawgmoth's Will and it causes trouble" because we already know it!

Here are probably the only two lines of play that scare me if I am Tog. Both of them involve the Control Slaver player going first and both enable them to get their draw engine on before you can stop it.

It doesn't look to me as though he only neglected to mention an early tinker as a scary play because it was a foregone conclusion. Also, the strategy which he advocates suggests that the allegedly superior draw engine of Psychatog should have the Psychatog player adequately prepared to counter Yawgmoth's Will by the time it becomes scary in the mid/late game.

[rvs]

I never said it was a good matchup, but it isn't the walk in the park for CS that you make it out to be.

[Godot]

Though our Tog builds differ, Steve and I independently came to similar conclusions about this matchup so I'll try and address some of your points.  

The key to winning is stopping their draw engine.

Your whole strategy against control slaver seems to hinge on the superiority of your draw engine, yet I'm not convinced of the superiority of the tog engine to that of control slaver.

From my experience with the matchup, it is not that Togs draw engine is superior but that Tog has a greater number of tools at its disposal to stop CS's draw and thus force through its own.  As the Tog player establishing my draw is secondary to stopping CS's.  So instead of comparing the draw engines of the 2 decks, the real comparison becomes:

Tog-
4 FoW
4 Drain
3/4 Duress
3/4 Cunning Wish

CS-
4 FoW
4 Drain
0/2 Duress

In this comparison Tog clearly comes out ahead.  It is only through superior control of CS's draw that Tog can utilize its own draw to pull ahead.  This is why builds of CS with Duress perform better against Tog than builds with Skeletal Scrying.

as to why you would advocate wishing for that[REB] over an answer to welder is puzzling to me

Again, this comes down to the fact that the key to the matchup is stopping CS's draw.  In the early game the singular focus of the Tog player is stopping TFK at the cost of allowing Welders to resolve and dealing with them at a later time.  Under normal circumstances the Welders are not threats until TFK resolves so TFK is the threat you want to stop.  An early EOT Wish->REB is a key play if you can pull it off.  After the early game your focus shifts from stopping the draw to answering any Welders before CS can hit the 6 mana flashpoint.  

This is just the default strategy and is obviously subject to change.  This is why Duress is so huge in this matchup, since CS has so many different ways that it can get a Mindslaver into play the Tog player has to know which strategy it has to work to stop and also when it is safe to push through its own draw.  Is it a hand, for example, that can quickly generate shitloads of mana via Welder+Lotus?  In this case the Welder becomes a threat that must be dealt with earlier.  Typically, however, the card draw, specifically TFK, is your primary focus.

Also keep in mind that merely slaving Tog once is not necessarily gg.  I've won countless games in testing after getting slaved.  CS needs to do more to win than just get off a single slave.  

Basically, to echo was rvs said, this isnt an easy matchup from either side of the table and is most definitely not "decisively in favor of the control slaver player"


Note: My build of Tog has a stronger MD versus CS with 4 Duress, 4 Cunning Wish and only 2 Togs.

[Meddling Mike]

I never said it was a good matchup, but it isn't the walk in the park for CS that you make it out to be.

Ok, I'm not sure how you gentlemen define a "walk in the park" but when I think of CS's best matchup, I think of Tog, then I remember that nobody plays Tog anymore because there's so much slaver in my metagame and I get sad.

Also keep in mind that merely slaving Tog once is not necessarily gg. I've won countless games in testing after getting slaved. CS needs to do more to win than just get off a single slave.

I think this basically just speaks poorly of whomever your playtest partner was. Let's look at the vulnerability of this deck to a slaving shall we?

Primo grade A slaving material:
3 Psychatog
3 Cunning Wish
3 Intuition
3 Deep Analysis
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Mind Twist
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Yawgmoth's Will
4 Force of Will

Stuff that can be gotten rid of, but not necessarily advantageous:
4 Accumulated Knowledge
4 Brainstorm (Not bad because it can get me any number of the other slaving bombs in your deck, can work with shuffling effects to get rid of your better cards that I can't use)
4 Mana Drain
5 Fetchlands
1 Black Lotus

Slaver proof:
1 Time Walk
2 Duress (This probably won't be in your hand by the time I slave you anyways)
1 Engineered Explosives
4 Underground Sea
3 Volcanic Island
2 Tropical Island
2 Island
1 Library of Alexandria
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Ruby
1 Sol Ring

If I catch you with ANYTHING from the first pile in your hand or can draw into it, the chances of you coming back are slim to none, this is all of course presuming I'm working with limited resources and there is no recursion apparent at this time. Absolute worst case scenario the next turn I have a turn in which I'm safe from counters.

An early EOT Wish->REB is a key play if you can pull it off.

What if I respond with TFK? I'm just as likely to have a force of will as you are in this case. Cunning wish is also not an early answer, I'd say it could possibly work to facilitate my TFK resolving because you're tapping out early to go get an REB.

Duress can be a strong card in this matchup, however Smennen's list only runs 2 of these, which was the list I was addressing. Even so, I have 4 brainstorm to protect me from Duress to some extent, perhaps you'll be getting that mindslaver in the yard for me?

[Revvik]

walk in the park

The only time I have ever made things easy on a Control Slaver player (with me playing 'Tog) was by getting only two hours of sleep and almost throwing up in the store bathroom.

This matchup can be extremely tight or it can be resolved by one player spooging his brokenness all over the other.  
Tight play definitely favors the matchup, not who's playing which deck.

It should be noted that since Control Slaver has taken a huge decline in my area, I have stopped playing 'Tog.  

[onelovemachine]

Primo grade A slaving material

I think we need to set one thing straight:  I think that EVERY deck loses to an activated slaver.  Not necessarily guaranteed, but pretty damn close.  What Steve, Godot, and others are saying is that the gameplan for psychatog in this matchup is prevention.  Prevent slavering at all costs.  I agree with Godot along the line of how the deck is built.  Four duress and four cunning wish assist in your prevention of the slavering.  The key to preventing a slaver from killing you is to stop thirsts and intuitions from resolving.  With that goal in mind, you can trap your opponent's slaver in hand.  What about goblin welder and hardcasting?  Hardcast slavers are pretty easy to stop, welded slavers are not.  The wishes for lava dart are AWESOMELY powerful not to mention the fact that if your draw is stopped than slaver has to be hardcast and welded.  

Even so, I have 4 brainstorm to protect me from Duress to some extent, perhaps you'll be getting that mindslaver in the yard for me

If all you have in hand when I early duress is a bunch of land, a goblin welder and a mindslaver I am pretty sure I am winning this game.  It is still a control matchup.  Your draw has to resolve.  I have NEVER duressed a mindslaver to have it welded in my face.  It is a situation that shouldn't come up.  

but when I think of CS's best matchup, I think of Tog, then I remember that nobody plays Tog anymore because there's so much slaver in my metagame and I get sad.

I disagree with this statement.  I think tog went away because it was spread too thin over bad matchups: Control slaver, stacks, and fish just to name a few.  Time was needed to develop a stable manabase in the face of nonbasic hate as well.  It has developed to a point where it can resettle and dedicate maindeck/ sideboard resources to the bad matchups efficiently once again.  Lava dart has mad synergy with intuition and cunning wish; it is a card that is used against both fish and slaver with great success.  With trinisphere gone, the stacks matchup is a little easier than before, but the maindeck basic count has to remain high.

Allow me to reach back approximately one year ago to Rich Shay's Control Slaver primer.

One year ago control slaver could beat tog pretty easily.  Now that we have tog players packing more hate in the form of rebs, darts and groundseals and slaver packing less disruption in favor of more draw, intuition/ak, that match becomes winnable.  It may still be something like 52/48% (just a number to show how close) in the favor of slaver but tog has a game now.  A year ago lava dart didn't exist.  I think a properly metagamed tog can even create a positive matchup against slaver.

[Hi-Val]

Another thing to remember about pulling stuff from a year ago is that Slaver was relatively new then, and people had been playing against Hulk for the better part of the season. Having the information advantage over the opponent is a big benefit. At that time, we may not have known how to beat Slaver as well as we did Hulk. It's better to look at the decks squared off now. I think what onelove was saying about it being a relatively 52/48 match is correct; the better player will win, regardless of which deck they're playing. That's how control mirrors work. Whoever breaks set first loses.

[Meddling Mike]

@Revvik:
I completely disagree with your second statement for reasons I've already stated.

Your third statement doesn't make any sense whatsoever. If you've at least acknowledged that it's a tight if not decisive match between these two decks, why would the dropping off slaver cause you to stop playing Hulk? In my opinion the drop off slaver would indicate an excellent time to begin playing Tog again.

With that goal in mind, you can trap your opponent's slaver in hand.

I have NEVER duressed a mindslaver to have it welded in my face. It is a situation that shouldn't come up.

Ok, so your goal is to get it so that I only have a mindslaver in hand, but at the same time you don't acknowledge the possibility that a duress could hit a mindslaver in hand?

If all you have in hand when I early duress is a bunch of land, a goblin welder and a mindslaver I am pretty sure I am winning this game. It is still a control matchup. Your draw has to resolve.

Did you just completely miss what I said? The reason this may come up would be because I had hidden things like TFK or various broken spells with a brainstorm, leaving me with a hand like the one described. This is an unlikely situation, but my point was that Control Slaver has means of protecting it's most powerful spells from duress and on rare occasion can actually turn the duress into something beneficial.

A year ago lava dart didn't exist.

You know, it's kinda funny, I was under the impression that lava dart has been type I legal since July 1, 2002. I was also under the impression that REB and Ground Seal were legal one year ago. In fact, I think all the hate cards you listed were legal one year ago. I think it's also important to note that the list posted by Steve doesn't include lava dart, just firestorm to remove welders....which was also legal a year ago.

slaver packing less disruption in favor of more draw, intuition/ak, that match becomes winnable.

You know, it's also kinda funny, I thought I spent a large portion of my initial post talking about how Control Slaver, not Goth Slaver and it's various Intuition/AK packing builds, had actually evolved to include cards which would normally be sideboarded in against Tog (Like FoF) in the MD, and cards that had been traditionally weak in this matchup (Cunning Wish, Fire Ice, Memory Jar, Mana vault) were now not typical to slaver builds.

[JuJu]

Another thing to remember about pulling stuff from a year ago is that Slaver was relatively new then, and people had been playing against Hulk for the better part of the season. Having the information advantage over the opponent is a big benefit. At that time, we may not have known how to beat Slaver as well as we did Hulk. It's better to look at the decks squared off now. I think what onelove was saying about it being a relatively 52/48 match is correct; the better player will win, regardless of which deck they're playing. That's how control mirrors work. Whoever breaks set first loses.

Amen to that. Why are you guys still arguing?

People are making good points on both sides and the tone of the discussion is not inflammatory in nature. There's no reason to interject in this manner.

Hyperion

[Godot]

EDIT:  I wrote this post a long time ago and then got occupied w/ other thing so if any of the more recent posts have already dealt with any of this stuff thats why.

I think this basically just speaks poorly of whomever your playtest partner was. Let's look at the vulnerability of this deck to a slaving shall we?

It has nothing to with my playtest partner it has to do with the game conditions at the time.  What I was trying to illustrate was that merely getting a slaver activation is by no means an auto-win.  There are games where slaver where CS overpowers Tog, slaves and wins.  It happens.  But many times both decks will end up exhausted of resources and a slaver activation will merely be an expensive Time Walk.  Furthermore its not hard to set up your hand/draw to minimize the impact of a single slaving.

What if I respond with TFK?...I'd say it could possibly work to facilitate my TFK resolving because you're tapping out early to go get an REB.

If the Tog player is tapping out while the CS player has TFK mana up then they just seriously misplayed.  Note that I said 'if you can pull it off'.  You dont play the deck like a trained monkey--having 3 mana available doesnt mean you automatically cast Wish.


Anyways Im done discussing this.  Everytime I discuss this matchup CS players claim to have never lost a game to Tog while the Tog players claim that the matchup is not the horrid matchup that the masses of CS players claim.  My testing has supported the latter viewpoint.  If any CS player wants to PM me and show me the error of my ways I'd be happy to be proven wrong, but until then I'll be happy to be paired up against CS.

[Rico Suave]

From my experience with the matchup, it is not that Togs draw engine is superior but that Tog has a greater number of tools at its disposal to stop CS's draw and thus force through its own.  As the Tog player establishing my draw is secondary to stopping CS's.  So instead of comparing the draw engines of the 2 decks, the real comparison becomes:

Tog-
4 FoW
4 Drain
3/4 Duress
3/4 Cunning Wish

CS-
4 FoW
4 Drain
0/2 Duress

In this comparison Tog clearly comes out ahead.  It is only through superior control of CS's draw that Tog can utilize its own draw to pull ahead.  This is why builds of CS with Duress perform better against Tog than builds with Skeletal Scrying.

I want to point out why this is the wrong mindset to take.  Let me first start by saying that I would much rather have a Skeletal Scrying in the control mirror before Duress.  

What does Duress do?  It trades 1:1, causes you to lose 1 mana while your opponent never invested any mana in the lost card, and provides you with information on their hand.  At best it'll save you from a nasty Will/Tinker.  At worst your opponent will Brainstorm, hide 2 cards then show you land, land, Pentavus, Welder, Mindslaver.

Scrying, on the other hand, is a card that starts a permission war during your opponent's end step - as opposed to Duress starting one during your main phase.  You tell me, in a control mirror after you both tap out for a counter war, wouldn't you rather untap first?  Keep in mind that if Scrying resolves it often draws 3+, and against any control deck I'd rather see 3 new cards than deny my opponent 1 card.

Thus, I have to disagree with your assessment that builds of Slaver running Duress perform better against Tog than ones running Scrying.  

Not only is it possible to play around Duress, but it is also possible to play around Cunning Wish too.  If you cast C.Wish, I can respond with card draw.  C.Wish even after it resolves still doesn't stop Skeletal Scrying.  If you C.Wish for an answer to my Welder, I'll be content knowing that it's one less counter to stop Tinker/Will (actually, C.Wish can't effectively stop Will).  

Similarly, the opponent can cast Intuition during my end step for AK/DA, and I'll TFK when they're tapped out.  I like to call this "flinching."  It's when one player does something and the opponent takes advantage of that brief lapse in defense to resolve a key spell.  The saying is that the first person to flinch in a control mirror loses.  The problem is that Slaver has 8 must-counter spells that take advantage of Tog whenever it flinches, whereas Tog only has 1.  I don't count Intuition because my opponent can respond to my TFK with Intuition and I won't care since it requires additional mana to be effective.  If Tog has enough mana to cast Intuition-AK, the opponent has enough to Drain and TFK the same turn.  

That leads me to my next point.  Tog's spells are all so expensive that Slaver just simply accomplishes more with the same amount of mana than Tog can.  A 1 mana Welder requires a 4 mana answer on their part.  Duress eats up mana while costing the opponent none.  Intuition-AK is more expensive than any card draw Slaver plays.  Slaver also has more acceleration, so it's already more efficient spells are now being played sooner.  This can all be summed up with "tempo" and it certainly does not favor the Tog player by any stretch of the imagination.  

If you're not casting C.Wish or Intuition during my end step and instead intent on avoiding that "flinching" I talked about earlier, you're going to lose because now I'm going to start casting dangerous cards during your end step and I can assure you that Tog is not equipped to fight 8 permission wars during it's end step, 16 disruption cards or not.