The Perfect Storm: A Primer

[elias]

Thanks BigMac. And sorry to Jacob about that. I'll stick to the rules.

I just tested out my unpowered TPS today against two random decks. One was a random ponza packing 8 LD spells and one was a stasis-go deck.

I noticed that I usually combo out turns 3-5. Way slower than normal TPS. To make up for this delay, I've put in cards such as Zuran Orb (spell count, great with Yawg Bargain and the skull), Balance and an additional copy of Tendrils for those times I come up short.

In the first two games, I get wrecked by the LD. I could've won the second game if I had picked Molten Rain instead of Desperate Ritual as a duress target. In the next five games I got the hang of using my intuitions (Yawg Bargain/Will, M Desire, Future Sight) Whatever they pick, I usually get enough mana to do a lethal tendrils, or at least a high enough count to stabilize my hand/board/grave for another go.

Thanks for the thread. Even if I can't find any decent budget builds, I'm still learning lots.

Would TPS be better with a gifts/recoup engine or would it just be jankier and more likely to fizzle out? Coffin purge wrecks a lot of Gifts tricks...

Oh, and for those with budget experience, would putting in two cabal rituals and ESG's in place of MoxenLotus be a good call?

[BigMac]

Gifts recoup is nice when you actually can go gifts for 4 moxen and then the second one would be devastating with recoup will as two of the cards.  For that reason i do not think in a budget deck it would be wise to run them.

As for your matches, i play it powered and the times i combo before turn 4 are very limited. Always remember you are a control combo. First set up your hand and then go wild. Take your time. It does not matter if you win in turn 3, 4 or 5 or even later. If you win it is ok. Off course there are people that say the sooner the better. But those are the same people that will stall out more easily because the hand they were comboing with was not good enough yet. Haste with this deck never is good.

Hope this helps a little more.

[elias]

I agree with playing it safe in TPS. I usually save my duress (unless I know the deck wins faster than me) up to the point where I go off to draw possible counters or to nab counters. I also wait to untap after casting Yawg Bargain unless I have multiple Rits in hand.

I'd just like to know the philosophy of the thread starter. Do you wait a turn or just go off ASAP?

[Nehptis]

What is the preferredd SB strategy for dealling with a heavy control Metagame.  I'm talking BBS / 4CC heavy.  Decks packing 12+ counters and post SB Arcane Labs, as well?

Currently I am thinking either 2-3 Defense Grid or 2 B Who Shelters All.

I run U/B TPS so, Xantids are not an option for me.

[mongrel12]

Beating control-heavy metagames is what TPS is designed to do. I would suggest boarding out draw 7s for cards like Fact or Fiction, Skeletal Scrying, Gifts Ungiven, and Misdirection, as well as Daze, if you run it. I hear Defense Grid is rather solid, but i like to bring in instant speed threats such as to play around drain as effectively as possible, and because they are instant-speed, your opponenet cannot effectively counter them. If you anticipate an Arcane Lab, just bring in some Echoing Truths from the board and you should be fine--Arcane Lab is pretty easy to deal with unless they have like triple counter backup, which Duress deal's with rather adequately.

[BigMac]

For me my transformational sideboard to oath has done me wonders. Backed up with duress and FoW it is a real threat to them as they probably will not have any bounce left. I basically only need 1 critter to get oathed up and i will most definately win. And still if they use all the counters to stop the oaths you still have the tendrils combo in there as well.

But that is me, it seems not to many people trust this strategy.

[Nehptis]

A trans Oath SB does sound risky.  My feeling is that if they have the counters to stop your normal MD plays then they will have them to counter Oath.  They are not going to let Oath resolve and see what happens next.  On the flip side if you have the FOW / Duress to protect your spell, then resolving Oath or a business TPS spell for the win is going to have the same outcome....you winning.

I'm trying to approach this by lessening the affect of their counters.  Either via a preventative measure like Defense Grid or a card advantage technique like Scrying.

Perhaps Mind Twist is a good play.  Best case you strip away their hand, average case you pushed them into using a Counter to stop your Twist, Worst case your twist gets Drained.

[prosbloom225]

I don't like the transitional sideboard in the first place, but going to oath seems too risky.  The tog/tinker route is definately better.  You have less to defend, and you don't get screwed by a bad oath or no creatures/orchard.

[BigMac]

First of all, it has proven to be the right choice for me on three out of four occasions. The one i didn't make top 8 was in its early stages when i was still getting used to using the sideboard correctly and when to use it.

The other three occasions it was gold as i won 2 times and lost one quarter due to a bad play of mine after a minds desire of six. So it is very good against counterheavy decks.

First of all you can almost always drop it turn 1 or 2. If you cannot you can still go combo but it is still good mid and late game. It has changed my manabase considerably so it has hurt my speed somewhat. On the other hand i have been able to put in some really nice cards that help me with consistency. The beauty of being able to drop it turn 1 or turn 2 is that only FoW can stop it. If you have FoW backup or a duress to start of with chances of you actually dropping the oath before any other spells become active are pretty good. Chances of them having boarded in a couple of anti combo cards are pretty good so they will have some dead cards then. Getting an orchard shouldn't be to hard with the numerous draw spells you have. The surprise will help as well.

Even when your opponent should have double FoW you should play it as he will have to use other valuable resources to use on the FoW leaving him with some mana sources and nothing else, perhaps a brainstorm or something. But remember, you can bounce back more easily with my build due to the draw sevens and other drawspells i have. Together with the tutors your build is better equipped to go for the kill i think.

As said, people may not agree with me here, all i am saying is that it has worked well for me so far. Even when people know i have the transformational sideboard it is hard for them to know what or if i even boarded anything in. I have taught myself to always put in all 15 sideboard cards and then pile shuffle, and then remove 15 cards. That way your opponent never knows what to expect, even when he knows your sideboard. This will give you an advantage most of the times.

The best thing i think is that it is more easy to work around hate. If they go chalice 0 or chalice 1 you go for your oath strategy. If they go for chalice 2 (which is highly unusual against TPS when they do not know what your sideboard is) you simply stay on your original storm combo. The beauty of this is when you do that right they still will not have a clue what you have boarded in or if you have boarded at all.

This strategy also works against stax decks of various builds.

I am still working on the deck but i think i have a pretty decent version. It is stable, has a stable manabase, has some nice otherwise not includable cards, and wins more than it loses. Yes it is somewhat slower. Yes both builds are slightly worse than the fully build TPS and oath builds. Yes it does have not to good matchups against those decks.  But being able to win versus most decks i normally lose from, and perhaps lose to decks that are hardly played in my region, for me is a very good tradeoff.

[mongrel12]

Lets just assume that this is for the discussion of ub or ub/r TPS without a transformational SB...it seems like all this talk of transformational SBDing has gotten us off topic. I would suggest bigmac, that you start another topic regarding the merits of a trans sb.

[BigMac]

there is such a topic.

http://www.themanadrain.com/forums/index.php?topic=23199.0

[Wudil]

@mongrel12:

I don't think the build of BigMac is off topic.

We're under a primer of TPS, and this includes whatever build of this deck which can be competitive (if not the best one to find)

@BigMac:

There is some serious issues with your build in my point of view.

Since you dedicated many slots of your sideboard to this plan, you had to change your manabase. This makes it a bit worse than it can be originally (even the one I run with the red splash), then a lot worse after sideboard and this makes you more vulnerable to other mana disrupts. (CoTV for 0 slows both of your plans after sideboard and can be very annoying not letting you to try to resolve a first turn Oath, CoTV for 1 also makes your duress dead and doesn't let you protect whatever you will try, Oath or combo routine, which is a serious issue too, letting you counting on your FoWs, that's all...)

When you applicate your transformal plan, you also have to put out some business cards from your MD. This IS the worst issue I can assume because if your Oath plan is countered, removed (Duress, Naturalize etc...) or backed to your hand, your other plan to combo him out will be great delayed/diluted.

I mean by this that you've put in several dead cards in this purpose, which would let you get more and more fizzle.
We, players of TPS (and also opponents should) know that this deck can fizzle out after a resolved bomb (it can happen without intervention from our opponent) and makes you stall for too long to recover (most of the time).
These "dead" cards like Oath or fatties (worst ever) can let you try to come back to your original plan but what a waste of ressources you've made. The opponent would/should have already won since that time or being able to make it asap.
On the other hand, these business spells you're removed from your MD to make space for your Oath plan will miss you when you'll try to come back to the combo routine.

This makes me wonder how is your transformal plan, what cards do you remove in order to make space. I assume there is a total of 6 to 10 cards that you have to remove without speaking about lands, 10 making your duress removed too, so you couldn't rely on them and would count on Mana Leaks?

Now, I know that the main purpose of this transformal sideboard plan is to make your opponent surprised, and this can happen (I assume this happened quite many times when seeing your good results with it)

Anyway, I thank you for this idea which can help us to make TPS better than it is today. Was a rather simple but really good idea 

Wudil, very happy with his red splash TPS 

PS: Sorry about my bad english, I hope you could understand what I wanted to explain.
PS bis: If you think I shouldn't have answered on this topic as I am off topic, I'm sorry, just wanted to answer to BigMac and wanted to point out some issues which annoyes me with this plan.

[mongrel12]

The issue with a trans sb is that you are running suboptimal builds of 2 decks, and the suprise factor is rarely worth the mana and consistency issues that come up later.

[BigMac]

I agree that after sideboarding you run 2 suboptimal decks in 1 deck with a transformational sideboard. I also agree that after sideboarding you have possible dead cards when comboing out. That is a choice you make when you decide to make a transformational sideboard.

However, i do think the surprise factor warrants this choice. First of all, as said before the build of the maindeck is very stable and only a fraction less fast. As TPS is a control combo it does not really matter if you kill on turn 5, 6 or 7. As long as you win it is not an issue when you win. Then you have to make a choice when you sideboard. You do not sideboard against all decks. You do not always sideboard in your whole sideboard. You make choices. When you think your matchup improves with the oath plan you board it in. This decision has to do with original matchup, possible hatesideboard your opponent may have and your ability to really surprise him.

People in my region now know i play this transformational TPoath. And still i do well. We have a good meta and fully powered players and proxie tournaments. So that is not an issue. So to me consistency and speed are not the issue and to me the risk of playing a somewhat less stable deck is no longer an issue. Because of my manabuild i no longer have colour issues and i can play any card i like. Those cards actually make my deck better and more versatile and people never know what to expect next. Then there is the question of how to bait your opponent. I have actually drawn a counter sometime with my ancestral to get oath into play for the win. So its all about sacrifice and skill. Play it smart and you will win with any deck. This si no exception of that.

[Wudil]

I haven't spoke about specific metagame and matchup but this can be another (big not to say worst) issue.

Since you told us your metagame is nearly full powered, this seems a good thing but what does it look like? How many workshop.dec are there for example?

This question isn't made by random. More and more, I do have some problems with workshop and more specifically Stax deck since they run more and more hate cards with their usual lock components (ITEOC, Uba, Chains and so on).
I've also seen many matchups (in tests and tournaments) where Oath had many problems in this matchup as well since Tangle Wire and Smokestack was enough to simply wipe its board and plan out.

This is were your build makes me feel you certainly have problems, in the first game against them with all the dead cards you already run. But after sideboarding, this seems even worse since you have two choices.
Run you transformal sideboard and this leads you to have even lesser chances to win (even worse manabase where their land disrupt will even more shine, more dead cards to win asap if the oath routine doesn't succeed or simply doesn't come into your hand as I assume you don't mulligan until you get your Plan B on, right? and so on...)
Second choice is to run the same build but since your plan B took most of the place in your sideboard (not to say the whole place), you have no cards at all to come in to improve your matchup (like Rebuild, Hurkyl's Recall and so on...) and some cards like duress will have to stay in your maindeck and have the nearly uselessness we all know they are.

So, I won't ask this for every matchup you meet but this can illustrate how such a transformal plan isn't what we need in TPS in general purpose. I mean, what matchups we already fear (there aren't many around) where your transformal plan improves that much your life against them?
Missing sooooo many anti hate cards and removal, drawers etc... in your sideboard seems also make your deck even less versatile to specific or dedicated hate.

Finally, I think that your plan can be good but only in really specific metagames and with your skill and proper sideboard cards, you would still make good results in there, not to say better ones.

[BigMac]

For a specific metagame roundup (or at least what i played against, which is pretty versatile) you can read two of my reports on tmd tournament forum.

What i personally do not understand is where your assumption of dead cards game one comes from. I almost never have dead cards game 1, unless somebody has chalice main deck which is hard for most deck but is pretty specific and should have them lose games along the way as they tend to be dead draws later on.
Specially against stax you do not have to be concerned with counters so you pretty much couls side out your duresses and FoWs as they are your protection, leaving you combo intact.
You probably will not have looked at my deck as you say my manabase is getting weaker after boarding. It is getting stronger as i board in 2 extra lands, which menas i draw more lands and always have the right colour. As i have maindeck hurkyls recall and chain of vapor i could get around game 1 problems. You just have to know how to play against it and then there is your average luckpile.

But yeah, i played staxx and i won. Thusfar the hardest game i can play against is oath. It is counterheavy and has a reasonably fast killcondition. All the other decks i have encountered i could beat. But again, it is important to know when you need to sideboard what. It is not just blindly throwing in some other stuff hoping it to go right for you. As with all decks it is a learning experience. And when i first started out playing this deck i made more than a few mistakes. (either with boarding or with playing) But after you learn from your mistakes and you hone your deck better and better, the results will follow.

[prosbloom225]

This is bar none, the toughest deck in vintage to pilot.  Every choice you make affects your choices down the line.  Throwing in the randomness of opposing countermagic makes this deck even more skill dependant.  Though with a good pilot the deck can T8 no doubt.  The sheer  number of broken cards makes the deck work.  The only downside to the deck is the incredible amount of luck you need in addition to skill.  It is probably the only deck in the format that can minds desire for 8 and still lose.

[b-tings]

No, it isn't. Gifts is much more difficult to play than TPS is, and I'd wager that Meandeck Tendrils, while not as tough to pilot perfectly, is tougher to pilot to a good finish, not because it's worse, but because it's less forgiving. That's not to say that TPS isn't skill-intensive; I see people who have been playing it for over a year making mistakes with it all the time, and it is an incredibly difficult deck to master. But Gifts has a million and one permutations of the card by itself, and a fistful of tutors to back it up. That adds up to a lot of decision-making, and combined with a greater percentage of interactive cards (both the counters and Gifts itself) leading to more bluffing and playing the opponent, Gifts is as close to impossible to pilot perfectly as it gets.