Not only that, but it has to deal with all kinds of other hate cards, like Arcane Lab, Chalices, etc. What I found from playing the deck is that it goldfishes great, but when put up against another competitive Vintage deck the hate proves overpowering. Even if you bring in a ton of answers, you're adding cards that are dead while you're going off. How much does it suck to have a Storm count of 6 or so and Night's Whisper up a Duress and a FoW instead of some more gas,
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Luiggi
Arcane Lab does very little against this deck. It hits play too late unless coupled with a Lotus or other rude mana acceleration.
And decks that play Arcane Lab have 2-3 in the board or they're playing bad Erayo combo - they'll roll over either way.
On top of this, you should remember that even with a Lotus + Arcane Lab starthand, you're probably gonna lose around 65% of the time, if the Tendrils player goes first (disregarding FoW on your part, which would make you a total git to play against, You mising lucksack :lol:)
I've faced Stax decks pre-Trinisphere restriction, but as stated in the original SCG article about the Tendrils deck, this was and still is actually an ok matchup. Stax have around 40% chance of getting a lock component that wrecks Tendrils, but Tendrils still have the 65% chance of winning first turn and almost certainly on turn 2 if that fails. The cointoss is of course immensely important here, which is the fall of this deck... If you lose too many dicerolls to see who goes first, during the day, you're not gonna make it to the top 8.
My advice for you with ways to combat FoW with this deck is simply: "don't". The deck is SO tight, and it really only works optimally when it is in it's maindeck mode... removing cards to add Duress or FoW drops your chances of going off by too much to make it viable. Let's face it: you only play this deck if your balls are the size of Melons, so you might as well play 4 Stream Of Life and 11 Forests in your sb. trying to make this become TPS after sideboarding wont work. Play TPS or Sensei, Sensei if you want to play a combo deck that can handle disruption.
I still think this is one of the most savage decks ever created. Play it in a tournament once and never pick it up again.. just try it once - it's really worth it.
My mini report:
Rnd 1 - Stax
1: He mulligans twice and goes land, mox, mox, Sol Ring. I go off in my turn 1.
2: He Jester's Caps me turn 2, removing 3 Tendrils Of Agony. I win on my turn 2 with the tendrils i have in hand.
Rnd 2 - Stax
1: He plays a Welder and a mox. I go off on my turn 2.
2: He plays turn 1 Workshop, Trinisphere. I scoop before my turn.
3: He mulligans looking for lock components, I go off on my turn 2
(4 - we play another game, because there's lots of time left. I tinker forth a colossus, achieve storm count 11 and kill myself with spoils - all in turn 1.)
Rnd 3 - TPS
1: He Duresses twice, I lose.
2: I get storm count 22 on turn 3. He stifles
Rnd 4 - Hulk
1: I have a slow hand and he Engineered Explosives 2 of my moxen and Wasteland my Bayou. I lose
2: He Forces turn 1 Land Grant and Mind Twists me for the win.
I scoop with the flu.
As you can tell, I won the dice roll in game 2 only. Had I won the dice rolls in game 3 and 4, it would have been very different.
