Debate/Discussion: TPS vs. Doomsday

[pox_reborn]

I find myself constantly wrestling with the debate of TPS vs. Doomsday. Both are combo decks which go by the philosophy that one well protected bomb is better than breaking down the barriers with many attempts that could fail. I go back and forth and can see justifications pertaining to each side.

The goal when I started this topic was to get input and help to see which deck is the "training wheels" deck. This is the same concept Rich Shay uses in his scg article on control slaver. So I present the debate question: Which of these 2 decks adds cards that already improve its good matchups and really are just "win more cards" ?

- stopping at this point we can see that doomsday may fir this criterion. It runs 4 more disruption cards than tps which could be used for more game breaking cards. The extra disruption will win some games on its own but it is unnecessary when played with skill and intuition (no not the card)

Continuing on, I looked at deck construction between the 2 decks:

Doomsday has a more streamlined approach and more definite build.

on the other hand, TPS has a list of core cards and slots for customization.


These are a sample of a list of thoughts on mind to get the discussion started.

so, which is the training wheels deck for combo: TPS or Doomsday ?

[Das_Boot]

While both of them rely on one bomb to win, Doomsday's bomb is an auto-win, versus the TPS bombs, where anyone who has fizzled off a Bargain or Desire can tell you that they, while strong and usually leading to wins, are far more prone to stalling and fizzling than Doomsday.  The thing about Doomsday is that you can heavily disrupt your opponent and just Doomsday.  You can use your resources to disrupt you opponent and the last card in your hand can be a Doomsday, and you are good.  In that scenario for TPS, the bomb replenishes the opponent's hand, or requires waiting turns to untap/tutor, or could simply reveal/draw land, mox, duress, fow, sol ring, land, ritual.  The Gifts deck works on similar principles as these decks, playing one bomb, but they get even more disruption and control with Drain.  In conclusion:  DDay: Untap, win.  Gifts:  EOT Gifts, untap, win, and get to use Drains.  TPS:  That Play Stalled.

[Mind_under_Matter]

Both TPS and D-Day are very good at protecting their combo, that said, I'd rather have a turn one Duress and Unmask in a meta featuring alot of Oath. Letting them have time to amass counters and the mana to play them all isn't something I care to do, and it's something that is very relevant when you only have Duress and FoW as your disruption. TPS is something I'd rather bring to a Workshop meta. My only concern with D-Day is the slightly slower ability for it to refill it hand after doing something like this, running somewhere in the range of 4-6 draw spells. Given a choice between the two before a tournament I'd pick D-Day every time, but that's largely because that's where my practice lies.

[Imsomniac101]

TPS is the training wheels deck. TPS is better at refilling the hand and has more bombs but is more prone to fizzling after you resolve a "bomb". However, Doomsday is a lot harder to play as it requires a lot of thinking before you create a Doomsday stack. On the other hand Doomsday is much easier to proxy. As Mind said, you also have to take your meta into account.

Being a combo player at heart, I'd have to say Doomsday but it is far harder to play than TPS.

[VonDouche]

I don't really know that any form of combo should be classified as having "Training wheels".  About 99% of all combo is ridiculously hard to play in a long tournament, and all are pretty intimidating to try to learn at the start. 

Using your definition though, I may have to say that TPS would fit in here, simply because I think it protects the combo, and itself better in the long run.  Doomsday may have more disruption in its game, but TPS has more versatility in many situations.  Plus you don't have to rack your brain on trying to find the right stack for your doomsday with a TPS deck.

[crazynlazy]

d-day has a lot more potential than TPS IMO but that doesn't make TPS bad, it seems to T8 at a lot more tournaments than d-day does. so if you are looking to play one of these decks soon than by all means play TPS but if you are looking for a deck that you will need a lot of time to master than play d-day. It's really just a preferance/time thing

[Mind_under_Matter]

I was under the impression that the training wheels comment was more a relative term for the two decks instead of combo as a whole, and indeed as it has been pointed out D-day is a mother to win with. Another point which has just came to mind is the slightly better ease of sideboarding with D-day, cards like Unmask and Duress can be taken out in ones or twos to fit in the sb cards, while TPS tends to be harder to squeeze these cards into. It will always take a dedicated person to play combo, but D-day even more so. I have found myself driven to distraction running numbers on situations through my head. I've never had that problem with TPS or Dragon, though Death Long was interesting.

[Imsomniac101]

What I meant by my comment on TPS was that it was easier to play than TPS as you had a lot of bombs to fall back on. But Dday is more synergestic.