Obviously, I have considered and tried most of the things you suggest. We'll do this one at a time.
@JD.
I REALLY LIKE the lacking of blu in this deck.
It have been the BEST improvement since LucientSpirit and me were toying about the old versions.
Thank you sir.
Would you find some space for a single copy of ToA?
Sometimes it is really longer and difficult to play a Belcher rather then playing the Storm-Winning-Route.
I don't play Tendrils because past the first couple turns, you aren't storming, and the deck isn't centered around Will. Once your Moxes are in play, that's where they're staying. Storm combo can play Rebuild and Hurkyl's Recall, which can turn Tendrils into an instant win, but Belcher doesn't get to do that. In the middle of the game, it's often a completely dead draw. That's just not very good. Plus Chalice for 1 pretty much negates any chance of trying to win with Tendrils. There's just too many situations where you look at the Tendrils in your hand and say "man, I wish I could cast this."
Winning with the Belcher is often a safer path to victory in my opinion. Tendrils requires you to go all in, and that means resolving all the mana. If you attempt to go for it, and you can't get a Dark Ritual to resolve or whatever, you're stopped cold in your tracks. In fact, when you play Tendrils, your opponent is more likely to attempt to stop your mana, which makes it a lot harder to get stuff done. Dark Ritual that lets you play Chromatic Sphere is not very intimidating but often something that's essential for the deck. The threat of Tendrils can make an opponent fear the start of a huge chain, and he might not allow it to resolve.
Then there's the whole "how do I play 10 spells." There are 2 Draw7s in the deck, and Yawgmoth's Will. Those are the only ways to get more cards outside of Bargain and Necro, and you really don't need any more ways to win after resolving either of those. Resolving Will means finding it and protecting it (i.e., Duress), and with no Brainstorms and a handful of tutors that find Will, that's often very difficult. Belcher is not much of a Will deck. It is not built to find and play it like Storm combo or even control decks these days. It's really in the deck only because it's too good not to include.
The Belcher itself is just a safer way to go. Joblin Welder makes finding a Belcher the only thing you need to do. Essentially, you could try a turn 1 Belcher and be met with Force of Will, and follow it up with a Welder, and you've got yourself a win.
[Would you play that deck in every field you are going to find or do you think that you are doing well because of the hyperpowered field dominated by Mana Drain.decs?
I read all your reports ( YEAH! YOU ARE SOOO INTRIGUING! ) and I found a lot of game situations during which the opponent is on the play and MORE THAN HALF of your hand/deck have been blocked by a couple of his cards ( Rods, Chalices, Wires, Multiple Counters ).
Actually, note that at the events I've been too, I've been playing in fields larely without a huge presence of Mana Drain. Ogre's cards is generally pretty lacking in the Mana Drain department.
Also note that I won though most of the Chalices. I need a little more practice against Null Rod for sure. The one game with Ninja Mask took the following to beat me: Chalice at 0, Chalice at 1, 3x FoW. That's one hell of a lot of hate. How many decks can realistically fight through that? Take any one of those cards out of the picture and I win the game.
Even counting your good results, would you state that the deck is SAFE to play or not?
Due to the fact that I really like your deck, I cannot convince myself about playing a "thing" that can simply lose a game because of deckbuilding reasons instead of losing games because of interactions or errors or because you have outplayed your opponent.
I'm glad you liked the reports and the deck.
Here are my finishes with the deck in the five events I've played in:
Gencon Thursday - 1st
Vroman's 8/28/05 - T4
Springfield 9/10/2005 - 1st (split)
Vroman's 10/21/05 - 1st (split)
SCG Chicago - T8
I have posted the following records against the following decks at tournaments:
Slaver: 3-1
Gifts: 0-1
Other Drain decks: 2-1
Oath: 2-0
Stax: 3-0
Vroman: 2-2 (+1 split)
Grim Long: "1-0"
Dragon: 1-0
Joblins: 3-0
undefeated against other random decks
I think the deck is perfectly safe to play. My results are just too good to make me think otherwise. I was never able to put up those kinds of results with Long, despite knowing the deck completely inside out, even more so than I know this one.
I felt REALLY BAD when playing against Duresses+FoWs+Drains.
Those matchups are REALLY the worst ones.
Your hand usually have a couple of threats and some Mana available.
Their hand usually have cheap Drawers and Cheap disruption.
Coupling those problems with the ones when playing against Stax and Fish, you have two or three different blocks of decks that would hardly threaten you.
Fortunately, most decks don't play with all those cards. Also, remember that Magic is a game of percentages. They won't always have turn 1 Duress, Force your other first threat, and then STILL have Drain left over. If they get that every game, I'd suspect some savage stacking.
Now, the Stax match is heavily in Belcher's favor in my opinion. Why? Same reason Dragon and Oath are good against Stax. You resolve one big spell and there's not much they can do about it. Once the Belcher is in play, what do they do? You can just win with Smokestack on the stack. You might say that you open yourself up to more disruption though, such as Chalice and SoR. The speed makes it easy to make the disruption insignificant by the time it comes down. You're just resolving a huge bomb before Stax can even get a chance to fire up. Tangle Wire just doesn't do much against you when you have 5 permanents in play, and you can often wait out a Smokestack with as many permanents as you play. Crucible is an irrelevant card, and Wasteland is hit and miss since you aren't playing with lands. You have Welders, which are just golden. You can stall on a Welder for almost forever until you get something. Chalices are completely hit and miss. Often, my opponent plays a Chalice and I've got a hand that doesn't care about that Chalice. Again, Welder can be amazing. You can resolve Black Lotus through Chalice for 0 by playing Chromatic Sphere and Welding it out for Lotus. Pretty good no?
You can win turn one or two, but Is Speed Worth So Many Risks?I says those exact things to Steve when he proposed some of his Speedy Combo Decks with unstable decks configurations to maximize the Winning Rate on turn one and two.
A lot of games CANNOT be won with Belcher if you surpass those ONLY LITTLE FEW TURNS.
Yes, I think it's worth it. You'd be amazing at what a long time you can last against Stax. The deck plays the long game against Stax really well. Against control, it's not so good. But your Welders can be golden again. Belcher makes a signifcant play on turn 1 almost every game, with much higher frequency than an opponent has Force of Will. Resolving Welder on turn 1, for instance, means that all you need to do is find a Belcher and 7 mana, not especially a feat in a deck with 38 mana sources. I don't even think it's that big of a risk. I don't see it being more of a liability to take to a tournament than Stax, which can often suffer from similar problems with countermagic and mulliganing issues.
If I have to concentrate on my initial Roll Dice more than on what I'm going to play, I'm going to feel that the deck have some INHERENT problems ( despite HIS POSSIBLE STRIKING winning rate ).
You read the reports, so you'll note that I won a lot of games on the draw through Chalices at all sorts of various numbers. Against Vroman, I won a game on turn 1 after removing a Chalice for 1.
Btw, MaxxMatt, good post.
